Jnana-Yoga : - 2.5.

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CHAPTER -2. THE REAL NATURE OF MAN : 5.

(Delivered in London)

Now, human language is the attempt to express the truth that is within.

I am fully persuaded that a baby whose language consists of unintelligible sounds is attempting to express the highest philosophy, only the baby has not the organs to express it nor the means.


The difference between the language of the highest philosophers and the utterances of babies is one of degree and not of kind.

What you call the most correct, systematic, mathematical language of the present time, and the hazy, mystical, mythological languages of the ancients, differ only in degree.

All of them have a grand idea behind, which is, as it were, struggling to express itself; and often behind these ancient mythologies are nuggets of truth; and often, I am sorry to say, behind the fine, polished phrases of the moderns is arrant trash.


So, we need not throw a thing overboard because it is clothed in mythology, because it does not fit in with the notions of Mr. So-and-so or Mrs. So-and-so of modern times.

If people should laugh at religion because most religions declare that men must believe in mythologies taught by such and such a prophet, they ought to laugh more at these moderns.

In modern times, if a man quotes a Moses or a Buddha or a Christ, he is laughed at; but let him give the name of a Huxley, a Tyndall, or a Darwin, and it is swallowed without salt. "Huxley has said it", that is enough for many.

We are free from superstitions indeed!


That was a religious superstition, and this a scientific superstition; only, in and through that superstition came life-giving ideas of spirituality; in and through this modern superstition come lust and greed.

That superstition was worship of God, and this superstition is worship of filthy lucre, of fame or power.

That is the difference.

Swami Vivekananda
To be continued  ...


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