A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

178 MAYA AND THE CONCEPTION OF GOD.If they are low they ought to live the more. Why not ?Because they live more in the senses, they t feel pleasure andpain a thousandfold more than you or I can. Which ofyou can eat a dinner with the same gusto as a dog or awolf ? Because our energies are not in the senses, they arein the intellect, the spirit.But in the clog the whole soulis in the senses, and they become mad, enthusiastic, enjoythings which we human beings can never dream of, andthe pain is commensurate with the pleasure.The same amount of pleasure is meted out as theamount of pain. If the pleasures felt by animals are sofollowsmuch keener than those felt by man, it absolutelythat the animals sense of pain is as keen, and a thousandfold keener, than that in men, and they have to die. Sothe fact is the pain andmisery men would Teel in dying isintensified a thousandfold in animals, and yet wr e have tokill them, without troubling about their misery. This isMaya, and if we suppose there is a personal God like ahuman being, who made all, these so-called explanationsand theories, trying to explain that out of evil comes good,are not sufficient. Let twenty thousand good things come,why should they come from evil On ? that principle Ishould cut the throats of others, because I want the fullpleasure of my five senses. That is no reason. Whyshould good come through evil ?remains toThe questionbe answered, and it cannot be answered ;and philosophyin India was compelled to admit this.Vedanta is the boldest system of religion.It stoppednowhere, and it had one advantage. There was no bodyof priests trying to suppress every man who tried to tellthe truth.There was always absolute freedom of religion.Their bondage of superstition was society ;here societyis very free. Social matters in India have not been free,