The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 4/Writings: Prose/Is the Soul Immortal?
| “ | None has power to destroy the unchangeable. | ” |
— Bhagavad-Gitâ.
In the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahâbhârata, the story is told how the hero,
Yudhishthira, when asked by Dharma to tell what was the most wonderful thing
in the world, replied, that it was the persistent belief of man kind in
their own deathlessness in spite of their witnessing death everywhere around
them almost every moment of their lives. And, in fact, this is the most
stupendous wonder in human life. In spite of all arguments to the contrary
urged in different times by different schools, in spite of the inability of
reason to penetrate the veil of mystery which will ever hang between the
sensuous and the supersensuous worlds, man is thoroughly persuaded that he
cannot die.
We may study all our lives, and in the end fail to bring the problem of life
and death to the plane of rational demonstration, affirmative or negative.
We may talk or write, preach or teach, for or against the permanency or
impermanency of human existence as much as we like; we may become violent
partisans of this side or that; we may invent names by the hundred, each
more intricate than its predecessor, and lull ourselves into a momentary
rest under the delusion of our having solved the problem once for all; we
may cling with all our powers to any one of the curious religious
superstitions or the far more objectionable scientific superstitions — but
in the end, we find ourselves playing an external game in the bowling alley
of reason and raising intellectual pin after pin, only to be knocked over
again and again.
But behind all this mental strain and torture, not infrequently productive
of more dangerous results than mere games, stands a fact unchallenged and
unchallengeable — the fact, the wonder, which the Mahabharata points out as
the inability of our mind to conceive our own annihilation. Even to imagine
my own annihilation I shall have to stand by and look on as a witness.
Now, before trying to understand what this curious phenomenon means, we want
to note that upon this one fact the whole world stands. The permanence of
the external world is inevitably joined to the permanence of the internal;
and, however plausible any theory of the universe may seem which asserts the
permanence of the one and denies that of the other, the theorist himself
will find that in his own mechanism not one conscious action is possible,
without the permanence of both the internal and the external worlds being
one of the factors in the motive cause. Although it is perfectly true that
when the human mind transcends its own limitations, it finds the duality
reduced to an indivisible unity, on this side of the unconditioned, the
whole objective world — that is to say, the world we know — is and can be
alone known to us as existing for the subject, and therefore, before we
would be able to conceive the annihilation of the subject we are bound to
conceive the annihilation of the object.
So far it is plain enough. But now comes the difficulty. I cannot think of
myself ordinarily as anything else but a body. My idea of my own permanence
includes my idea of myself as a body. But the body is obviously impermanent,
as is the whole of nature — a constantly vanishing quantity.
Where, then, is this permanence?
There is one more wonderful phenomenon connected with our lives, without
which "who will be able to live, who will be able to enjoy life a moment?"
— the idea of freedom.
This is the idea that guides each footstep of ours, makes our movements
possible, determines our relations to each other — nay, is the very warp and
woof in the fabric of human life. Intellectual knowledge tries to drive it
inch by inch from its territory, post after post is snatched away from its
domains, and each step is made fast and ironbound with the railroadings of
cause and effect. But it laughs at all our attempts, and, lo, it keeps
itself above all this massive pile of law and causation with which we tried
to smother it to death! How can it be otherwise? The limited always requires
a higher generalization of the unlimited to explain itself. The bound can
only be explained by the free, the caused by the uncaused. But again, the
same difficulty is also here. What is free? The body or even the mind? It is
apparent to all that they are as much bound by law as anything else in the
universe.
Now the problem resolves itself into this dilemma: either the whole universe
is a mass of never-ceasing change and nothing more, irrevocably bound by the
law of causation, not one particle having a unity of itself, yet is
curiously producing an ineradicable delusion of permanence and freedom, or
there is in us and in the universe something which is permanent and free,
showing that the basal constitutional belief of the human mind is not a
delusion. It is the duty of science to explain facts by bringing them to a
higher generalization. Any explanation, therefore that first wants to
destroy a part of the fact given to be explained, in order to fit itself to
the remainder, is not scientific, whatever else it may be.
So any explanation that wants to overlook the fact of this persistent and
all-necessary idea of freedom commits the above-mentioned mistake of denying
a portion of the fact in order to explain the rest, and is, therefore,
wrong. The only other alternative possible, then, is to acknowledge, in
harmony with our nature, that there is something in us which is free and
permanent.
But it is not the body; neither is it the mind. The body is dying every
minute. The mind is constantly changing. The body is a combination, and so
is the mind, and as such can never reach to a state beyond all change. But
beyond this momentary sheathing of gross matter, beyond even the finer
covering of the mind is the Âtman, the true Self of man, the permanent, the
ever free. It is his freedom that is percolating through layers of thought
and matter, and, in spite of the colourings of name and form, is ever
asserting its unshackled existence. It is his deathlessness, his bliss, his
peace, his divinity that shines out and makes itself felt in spite of the
thickest layers of ignorance. He is the real man, the fearless one, the
deathless one, the free.
Now freedom is only possible when no external power can exert any influence,
produce any change. Freedom is only possible to the being who is beyond all
conditions, all laws, all bondages of cause and effect. In other words, the
unchangeable alone can be free and, therefore, immortal. This Being, this
Atman, this real Self of man, the free, the unchangeable is beyond all
conditions, and as such, it has neither birth nor death.
"Without birth or death, eternal, ever-existing is this soul of man."
- Notes
- ↑ The Swamiji's contribution to the discussion of this question, carried on in the pages of The New York Morning Advertiser.