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Last of Karma
Assert it, manifest it. Not to become pure, you are pure already. You are not to be perfect, you are that already Nature is like that screen which
is hiding the reality beyond. 14 As Vivekananda has been greatly influenced by Advait Philosophy, he is of the view that there are neither two nor three, it is all one. That one under the veil of Maya is seen as many, just as a rope is seen as a snake. It is that very rope which is seen in the form of a snake. These two are not separate. Man cannot see these two things at the same time. When we see the snake, we do not perceive the rope and when we see the rope, the snake vanishes. When we see illusion. we cannot see reality. We are all born monist. We cannot help it. We always perceive the one.
Heaven and hell, birth and death, are all halluciations. In fact, nobody is ever born or dies. There is neither heaven, nor hell in this world. These are all the creation of prejudiced mind. For instance, if a child is always told the stories of ghosts and he goes in the street in the evening. There is a little stump of a tree in the street. The child sees it as a ghost, with hands stretched out, ready to grab him. Now, suppose, a man comes from the corner of the street, wanting to meet his beloved. He sees that stump of tree as a girl. A police man coming from the street corner sees the stump of tree as a thief. And a thief sees it as a policeman. Now, it is the same stump of tree that was seen in various ways. The stump is the reality and the visions of the stump are the projections of the different minds. In the same way, there is one Bcing, this Self. When a man is ignorant, he thinks about the heaven and bell, birth and death etc.
Swami Vivekananda narrates a story about the potentiality of the soul :
A lioness in search of prey came upon a flock of sheep and as she jumped at one of them, she gave birth to a cub and died on the spot. The young lion was brought up in the flock, ate grass and bleated like a sheep. Moreover, it never knew that it was a lion. One day a lion came and was astonished to see a huge lion eating grass and bleating like a sheep. At his sight, the flock fled away. Now, the lion was searching an
