Swami Vivekananda
When a farmer is irrigating his field the water is already in the canals, only there are gates which keep the water in. The farmer opens these gates, and the water flows in by itself, by the law of gravitation. So, all human progress and power are already in everything; this perfection is 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. Then the man attains the powers which are his already. Those we called wicked become saints, as soon as the bar is broken and nature rushes in. It is nature that is driving us towards perfection, and eventually she will bring everyone there.
All these practices and struggles to become religious are only negative work to take off the bars, and open the doors to that perfection which is our birthright, our nature. To-day the evolution theories of the Yogis will be better understood in the light of modern research.
And yet the theory of the Yogis is a better explanation. 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 to much as to eliminate competition, both from the function of acquiring physical sustenance and of acquiring a mate. Then, according to the moderns, human progress will stop and the race will die.
And the result of this theory is to furnish every oppressor with an argument to calm the qualms of conscience, and men are not lacking, who, posing as philosophers, want to kill out all wicked and incompetent persons (they are, of course, the only judges of competency), and thus preserve the human race!
But the great ancient evolutionist, 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 it is struggling to express itself.
@SpiritualBooks
When a farmer is irrigating his field the water is already in the canals, only there are gates which keep the water in. The farmer opens these gates, and the water flows in by itself, by the law of gravitation. So, all human progress and power are already in everything; this perfection is 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. Then the man attains the powers which are his already. Those we called wicked become saints, as soon as the bar is broken and nature rushes in. It is nature that is driving us towards perfection, and eventually she will bring everyone there.
All these practices and struggles to become religious are only negative work to take off the bars, and open the doors to that perfection which is our birthright, our nature. To-day the evolution theories of the Yogis will be better understood in the light of modern research.
And yet the theory of the Yogis is a better explanation. 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 to much as to eliminate competition, both from the function of acquiring physical sustenance and of acquiring a mate. Then, according to the moderns, human progress will stop and the race will die.
And the result of this theory is to furnish every oppressor with an argument to calm the qualms of conscience, and men are not lacking, who, posing as philosophers, want to kill out all wicked and incompetent persons (they are, of course, the only judges of competency), and thus preserve the human race!
But the great ancient evolutionist, 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 it is struggling to express itself.
@SpiritualBooks