A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

240 UNITY IN DIVERSITY.different degrees and in different guise?, and producingdifferences of feeling in the same mind. So the firstthought of Vedanta is the finding of unity in the external,the one manifesting itself, however different itmay appearin manifestation. Think of the old crude theories of thePersians two gods creating this world. The good goddoing everything that is pleasurable, and the bad one everything else. On the very face of it you find the absurdity,for if it is carried out every law of nature must have twoparts, and this law of nature is sometimesmanipulated byone god, and then he goes away and the other manipulatesit. It is the law of Unity that gives us our food, and thesame law killsmany men through accidents or misadventure. Then the difficulty comes, that Jpoth are working atthe same time, and these two gods keep themselves in harmony, by injuring one and doing good to another. Thiswas a crude case, of course, the crudest way of expressingthe duality of existence. But then take the more advancedphilosophy, the abstract cases of telling people that thisworld is partly good and partly bad. This againis absurdarguing from the same standpoint.As such, we find first of all that this world isneitheroptimistic nor pessimistic ;it is a mixture of both, and aswe go on we shall find that the whole blame is taken outof the hands of nature and put upon us. And againthe Yedanta makes for a great hope. It is not thatit is a denial of evil because it analyses boldlythe factas it is,and does not seek to conceal anything. It isnot hopeless it is not; agnostic. It finds out a remedy__but it wants to place that remedy on adamantine foundations, not by shutting the child s mouth and blinding itseyes with something which is transparently untrue, andwhich the child will find out in a few days. I remember