A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

224 THE ABSOLUTE AND MANIFESTATION.the idea of causation is clinging on to all these, time, spaceand everything. This is one peculiar thing about them,,that they have no independent existence. They have noteven the existence which the chair or the wall has. It isa shadow round everything, but you cannot catch it.It hasno real existence ;we see it has not. At most a shadow,nor is it non-existence, seeing that throughit all these thingsare manifesting as this Universe, an inborn composition ofthree qualities producing progeny of various forms. Sowe see first that this combination of time, space and causation, has neither existence nor non-existence. It is like ashadow which comes round things. Secondly, it vanishes.To give an illustration, there is a wave on the sea. Thewave is the same as the ocean, certainly, and yet we knowit is a wave, and different from the ocean. What makesthis difference ? The form and the name,the ideain the mind and the form. Now can we think of awave form as anything separate from the ocean ? Certainly not. It always clings on to the ocean idea. If thewave subsides, the form vanishes in a moment, and yet theform was not a delusion. So long as the wave existed theform was there, and you were bound to see the form. Thisis Maya. The whole of this Universe, therefore, is, as itwere, a peculiar form, the Absolute is that ocean, and youand I,and suns, and stars, and everything are variouswaves in that ocean. And what makes the waves different ?Only that form, and that form is just time, space andcausation, all entirely dependent on the wave. As soon asyou take away the wave, they vanish. As soon as theindividual gives up this Maya, it vanishes for him, and hebecomes free. The whole struggle is to get rid of thisclinging on to time, space and causation. It is alwaysthrowing obstacles in our way, and we are trying to get