UNITY IN DIVERSITY 2

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Om Namah Sivaya

Discourse by Sri Swami Vivekananda

(Delivered in London, 3rd November 1896)

In this world we find that all happiness is followed by misery as its shadow.

Life has its shadow, death. They must go together, because they are not

contradictory, not two separate existences, but different manifestations of the

same unit, life and death, sorrow and happiness, good and evil. The dualistic

conception that good and evil are two separate entities, and that they are both

going on eternally is absurd on the face of it. They are the diverse

manifestations of one and the same fact, one time appearing as bad, and at

another time as good. The difference does not exist in kind, but only in degree.

They differ from each other in degree of intensity. We find as a fact that the

same nerve systems carry good and bad sensations alike, and when the nerves

are injured, neither sensation comes to us. If a certain nerve is paralysed, we do

not get the pleasurable feelings that used to come along that wires and at the

same time we do not get the painful feelings either. They are never two, but the

same. Again. the same thing produces pleasure and pain at different times of

life. The same phenomenon will produce pleasure in one, and pain in another.

The eating of meat produces pleasure to a man, but pain to the animal which is

eaten. There has never been anything which gives pleasure to all alike. Some

are pleased, others displeased. So on it will go. Therefore, this duality of

existence is denied. And what follows? I told you in my last lecture that we can

never hate ultimately everything good on this earth and nothing bad. It may

have disappointed and frightened some of you, but I cannot help it, and I am

open to conviction when I am shown to the contrary; but until that can be

proved to me, and I can find that it is true, cannot say so.

The general argument against my statement, and apparently a very convincing

one, is this that in the course of evolution, all that is evil in what we see around

us is gradually being eliminated, and the result is that if this elimination

continues for millions of years, a time will come when all the evil will have

been extirpated, and the good alone will remain. This is apparently a very sound

argument. Would to God it were true! But there is a fallacy in it, and it is this

that it takes for granted that both good and evil are things that are eternally

fixed. It takes for granted that there is a definite mass of evil, which may be

represented by a hundred, and likewise of good, and that this mass of evil is

being diminished every day, leaving only the good. But is it so? The history of

the world shows that evil is a continuously increasing quantity, as well as good.

Take the lowest man; he lives in the forest. His sense of enjoyment is very

small, and so also is his power to suffer. His misery is entirely on the senseplane.

If he does not get plenty of food, he is miserable; but give him plenty of

food and freedom to rove and to hunt, and he is perfectly happy. His happiness

consists only in the senses, and so does his misery also. But if that man

increases in knowledge, his happiness will increase, the intellect will open to

him, and his sense-enjoyment will evolve into intellectual enjoyment. He will

feel pleasure in reading a beautiful poem, and a mathematical problem will be

of absorbing interest to him. But, with these, the inner nerves will become more

and more susceptible to miseries of mental pain, of which the savage does not

think. Take a very simple illustration. In Tibet there is no marriage, and there is

no jealousy, yet we know that marriage is a much higher state. The Tibetans

have not known the wonderful enjoyment, the blessing of chastity, the

happiness of having a chaste, virtuous wife, or a chaste, virtuous husband.

These people cannot feel that. And similarly they do not feel the intense

jealousy of the chaste wife or husband, or the misery caused by unfaithfulness

on either side, with all the heart-burnings and sorrows which believers in

chastity experience. On one side, the latter gain happiness, but on the other, they

suffer misery too.

 

 

Sivaya Namah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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