A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"ThouTHE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL. 133man ruling over them, and they are gradually advancingto higher and r/dgher democratic ideas, higher and higherideas of physical liberty ;so in metaphysics exactly thesame phenomenon happens, only in spiritual life. Multiplicity of gods gave place to one God of the Universe, andin the Upanishads there is a rebellion against that oneGod. Not only was the idea of so many governors of theUniverse ruling their destinies unbearable, but it was alsointolerable to them that there should be one person rulingthis Universe. This is the first thing that strikes us.The idea grows and grows, until it attains its climax. Inalmost all of the Upanishads we find the climax comingat the last, and that is the dethroning of this God of theUniverse^ The personality of God vanishes, the impersonality comes. God is no more a person, no more a humanbeing, however magnified and exaggerated, ruling thisUniverse, but God has become an embodied principle in us,in every being, immanent in the whole Universe. And ofcourse it would be illogical to go from the personal God tothe impersonal, and at the same time to leave man as aSo the personal man has to be broken down, manperson.is also a principle.The person is without, the principle isbehind, the Truth. Thus from both sides simultaneouslywe find tfre breaking down of personalities and the approachtowards principles, the personal God approaching theimpersonal, the personal man approaching the impersonalman, and then comes the succeeding stages of delineatingthe difference between the two advancing lines of Impersonal God and Impersonal Man. And the Upanishadsembody these succeeding stages, by which these two linesat last become one, and the last word of each Upanishad is,art That." There is but one eternally blissful, andthat one principle is manifesting itself as all this variety.