A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

""where396 VEDANTA.tried to get to the other side of the footpath. And,mark you, in six months those very men were walking erect, well clothed, looking everybody in the face andj,,what makes this wonderful difference ?Say this man comesfrom Armenia, or anywhere else where he was crusheddown beyond all recognition, where everybody told him hewas a born slave and born to remain in his low state al 1his life, and the least move he made they wouM crush himout.There everything told him,Slave ; you are a slave,remain there. Hopeless you were born, hopeless remain."Even the very air murmured round him. There is nohope for you, hopeless and a slave remain the;"strong man crushed the life out of him. And when heLanded in the streets of New York he found a gentleman, well-dressed, shaking him by the hand it made;no difference that the one was in rags, and the otherwell clad. He went a step further and saw a restaurant,that there were gentlemen dining at a table, and hewas asked to take a seat at the corner of the sametable. He went about, arid found a new life, that therewas a place where he was a man among men. Perhaps hewent to Washington, shook hands with the President of theUnited States, and, perhaps, there he saw men coming fromdistant villages, peasants, and ill-clad, all shaking handswith the President. Then the veil of mayo, slipped awayfrom him. He is Brahman, who has been hypnotised intoslavery and weakness, once more awake, and he rises upand finds himself a man in a world of men. Aye, in thiscountry of ours, the very birthplace of the Vedanta, ourmasses have been hypnotised for ages into that very state.To touch them is pollution To sit with them is pollution ! !Hopeless you were born remain; hopeless and the result;is that they have been sinking, sinking, sinking, and have