A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

UNITY IN DIVERSITY. 247of life, mine is the life itself. I want to squeeze the juiceout of it even in this life. My philosophy says you mustknow the whole of it and drive out your heavens and hellsarid all these superstitions, even ifthey exist in the samesense that this world exists. I would know the heart ofthis life, its very essence, how it is,not only how it worksand what are its manifestations. I want the why of everythir^,I leave the how to children. As one of your noblemen said, While I am smoking a cigarette, if I wrotedown everything that ithappens, would be the scienceof the cigarette/ It isgood and great to be scientific.Lord bless them in their search, but when a man says thatis all,he is talking foolishly, never caringto know theraison d etre of life, never studying existence itself. I mayargue that all your knowledgeis nonsense without basis.You are studying the manifestations of life, and when I askyou what life is you say you do not know. You arewelcome to your study, but leave me mine."Yet I myself am practical, very practical, in my ownway. So all these ideas about being practical are non.sense. You are practical in one way, and others inanother. But a man of another type of mind does nottalk. If he is told that he will find out the truth standing on one leg, he will find it that way. Another kindof man hears there is a goldmine somewhere, with savagesall round. Three men go. Two perish but one succeeds.The same man has heard there is a soul, and is contentto leave it to the clergyman to preach. But the firstman will not go near the savages. He says itmay beof Mountdangerous, but if you tell him that on the topEverest, 30,000 feet above the sea level, there is a wonderfulsage who can give him knowledge of the soul, he goes,without clothes or anything 40,000 may be killed, but