A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"Thou"VEDANTA. 391)science means that the cause of a thingis sought out bythe nature of the thing itself. As bit by bit science isprogressing, it has taken the explanation out of the handso! ghosts and demons, and therefore Advaitism is the mostscientific religion. This universe has not been created byany outside God, nor is it the work of any outside genius,self-created, self-dissolved, self -manifesting, one infiniteexistence, fhe Brahman, the Tat twam asi, O Svetaketu,that art." Thus you see that this, and this alone,none else, can be the only scientific religion, and vrith all the^prattle about science that is going on daily at the presenttime in modern half-educated India, with all the talk aboutrationalism and reason that I hear every day, I expect thatwhole sects of you will come over and dare to be Advaitists,and dare to preach it to the woyld in the words of Buddha,for the good of many, for the happiness of many."Ifyou do not, I take you for cowards. If your cowardice hasexistence, if your fear is your excuse, allow the sameliberty unto others, do not try to break up the poor idolworshipper,do not try to call him a devil, do not go aboutpreaching unto every man that does not agree entirely withyou; know first that you are cowards yourselves, and ifSociety frightens you, if your own superstitions of the pastfrighten you so much, how much more will these superstitions frighten them and bind them down who are ignorant. That is the Advaitist position. Have mercy onothers. Would to God that the whole world were Advaititsto-morrow, not only in theory, but in realisation but;if that cannot be, let us do the next best thing, take themallby the hands, lead them always step by step just as theycan go, and know that every step in all religious growth inIndia has been progressive. It is not from bad to good, butfrom good to better.