The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 6/Lectures and Discourses/Nature and Man
NATURE AND MAN
The modern idea of nature includes only that part of the universe that is
manifested on the physical plane. That which is generally understood to be
mind is not considered to be nature.
Philosophers endeavouring to prove the freedom of the will have excluded the
mind from nature; for as nature is bound and governed by law, strict
unbending law, mind, if considered to be in nature, would be bound by law
also. Such a claim would destroy the doctrine of free will; for how can that
be free which is bound by law?
The philosophers of India have taken the reverse stand. They hold all
physical life, manifest and unmanifest, to be bound by law. The mind as well
as external nature, they claim, is bound by law, and by one and the same
law. If mind is not bound by law, if the thoughts we think are not the
necessary results of preceding thoughts, if one mental state is not followed
by another which it produces, then mind is irrational; and who can claim
free will and at the same time deny the operation of reason? And on the
other hand, who can admit that the mind is governed by the law of causation
and claim that the will is free?
Law itself is the operation of cause and effect. Certain things happen
according to certain other things which have gone before. Every precedent
has its consequent. Thus it is in nature. If this operation of law obtains
in the mind, the mind is bound and is therefore not free. No, the will is
not free. How can it be? But we all know, we all feel, that one are free.
Life would have no meaning, it would not be worth living, if we were not
free.
The Eastern philosophers accepted this doctrine, or rather propounded it,
that the mind and the will are within time, space, and causation, the same
as so-called matter; and that they are therefore bound by the law of
causation. We think in time; our thoughts are bound by time; all that
exists, exists in time and space. All is bound by the law of causation.
Now that which we call matter and mind are one and the same substance. The
only difference is in the degree of vibration. Mind at a very low rate of
vibration is what is known as matter. Matter at a high rate of vibration is
what is known as mind. Both are the same substance; and therefore, as matter
is bound by time and space and causation, mind which is matter at a high
rate of vibration is bound by the same law.
Nature is homogeneous. Differentiation is in manifestation. The Sanskrit
word for nature is Prakriti, and means literally differentiation. All is one
substance, but it is manifested variously.
Mind becomes matter, and matter in its turn becomes mind, it is simply a
question of vibration.
Take a bar of steel and charge it with a force sufficient to cause it to
vibrate, and what would happen? If this were done in a dark room, the first
thing you would be aware of would be a sound, a humming sound. Increase the
force, and the bar of steel would become luminous; increase it still more,
and the steel would disappear altogether. It would become mind.
Take another illustration: If I do not eat for ten days, I cannot think.
Only a few stray thoughts are in my mind. I am very weak and perhaps do not
know my own name. Then I eat some bread, and in a little while I begin to
think; my power of mind has returned. The bread has become mind. Similarly,
the mind lessens its rate of vibration and manifests itself in the body,
becomes matter.
As to which is first—matter or mind, let me illustrate: A hen lays an egg;
the egg brings out another hen; that hen lays another egg; that egg brings
out another hen, and so on in an endless chain. Now which is first—the egg
or the hen? You cannot think of an egg that was not laid by a hen, or a hen
that was not hatched out of an egg. It makes no difference which is first.
Nearly all our ideas run themselves into the hen and egg business.
The greatest truths have been forgotten because of their very simplicity.
Great truths are simple because they are of universal application. Truth
itself is always simple. Complexity is due to man's ignorance.
Man's free agency is not of the mind, for that is bound. There is no freedom
there. Man is not mind, he is soul. The soul is ever free, boundless, and
eternal. Herein is man's freedom, in the soul. The soul is always free, but
the mind identifying itself with its own ephemeral waves, loses sight of the
soul and becomes lost in the maze of time, space, and causation—Maya.
This is the cause of our bondage. We are always identifying ourselves with
the mind, and the mind's phenomenal changes.
Man's free agency is established in the soul, and the soul, realising itself
to be free, is always asserting the fact in spite of the mind's bondage: "I
am free! I am what I am! I am what I am!" This is our freedom. The soul—
ever free, boundless, eternal—through aeons and aeons is manifesting
itself more and more through its instrument, the mind.
What relation then does man bear to nature? From the lowest form of life to
man, the soul is manifesting itself through nature. The highest
manifestation of the soul is involved in the lowest form of manifest life
and is working itself outward through the process called evolution.
The whole process of evolution is the soul's struggle to manifest itself. It
is a constant struggle against nature. It is a struggle against nature, and
not conformity to nature that makes man what he is. We hear a great deal
about living in harmony with nature, of being in tune with nature. This is a
mistake. This table, this pitcher, the minerals, a tree, are all in harmony
with nature. Perfect harmony there, no discord. To be in harmony with nature
means stagnation, death. How did man build this house? By being in harmony
with nature? No. By fighting against nature. It is the constant struggle
against nature that constitutes human progress, not conformity with it.