From Writings: Prose and Poems of Volume 5 of The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
[Swamiji had made the home of the Hale family his headquarters during almost all of 1894 before the pivot of his activities moved eastward to the Atlantic Coast. It was on George W. Hale’s letter paper and thus, presumably, during one of his stays in the latter’s home, that Swamiji jotted down in pencil a series of notes on the subjects of reason, faith, and love, which have recently come to light. Unfortunately the date of the manuscript cannot be accurately determined.]
Reason—has its limits—its base—
its degeneration. The walls round it—
Agnosticism. Atheism. But must not stop
The beyond is acting upon influencing us every
moment—the sky the stars acting upon us—even
those not seen. Therefore must go beyond—reason
alone can’t go—finite cannot get at the infinite
Faith its degeneration when alone—bigotry
fanaticism—sectarianism. Narrowing
finite therefore cannot get to the infinite
Sometimes gain in intensity but loses in
extensity—and in bigots & fanatics become
worship of his own pride & vanity
Is there no other way—there is Love
it never degenerates—peaceful softening
ever widening—the universe is too small
for its expansiveness.
We cannot define it we can only trace
it through its development and describe its surroundings
It is at first—what the gravitation
is to the external world—a tendency to unification
forms and conventionalities are its death.
Worship through forms—methods—services
forms—up to then no love.
When love comes method dies.
Human language and human forms God as father, God as mother, God as
the lover—Surata-vardhanam etc. Solomon’s Song of
Songs—Dependence and independence
Love Love—
Love the chaste wife—Anasuya Sita—
not as hard dry duty but as ever pleasing
love—Sita worship—
The madness of Love—God intoxicated man
The allegory of Radha—misunderstood
The restriction more increase—
Lust is the death of love
Self is the death of love
individual to general
Concrete to abstract—to absolute
The praying Mohammedan and the girl
The Sympathy—Kabir—
The Christian nun from whose hands blood came
The Mohammedan Saint
Every particle seeking its own complement
When it finds that it is at rest
Every man seeking—happiness—& stability
The search is real but the objects are themselves
but happiness is coming to them momentary at least
through the search of these objects.
The only object unchangeable and the only complement of character and
aspirations of the human Soul is God.
Love is struggle of a human Soul to find its
complement its stable equilibrium its infinite rest.