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LIBERATION
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crop and is thereby transformed. In other words, the form of the next rebirth is determined. “All progress and power are already in every man,” says Vivekananda. “Perfection is in every man's nature, only it is barred in and prevented from taking its proper course. If anyone can take the bar off, in rushes nature.”
To pursue the image of the reservoir, the performance of bad deeds and the consequent accumulation of bad karma is like breaking the dam at the wrong place and thereby causing a disastrous flood which will ruin and disfigure the field. If this happens, the water is not to blame; it is in its nature to cause change of one kind or another. It has to be properly directed. And for that the farmer is entirely responsible.
It will be seen that there is a radical difference between the ancient Hindu and the modern Western theories of evolution. As Vivekananda puts it: "The two causes of evolution advanced by the moderns, viz., sexual selection and survival of the fittest, are inadequate. Suppose human knowledge to have advanced so much as to eliminate competition, both from the function of acquiring physical sustenance and the acquiring of a mate. Then, according to the moderns, human progress will stop and the race will die. But Patanjali declares that the true secret of evolution is the manifestation of the perfection which is already in every being; that this perfection has been barred and the infinite tide behind is struggling to express itself. Even when all competition has ceased this perfect nature behind will make us go forward until every one has become perfect. Therefore there is no reason to believe that competition is necessary to progress. In the animal the man was suppressed, but, as soon as the door was opened, out rushed man. So, in man there is the potential god, kept in by the locks and bars of ignorance. When knowledge breaks these bars, the god becomes manifest.”
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