Freedom of the soul

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The writers of these books simply jotted down these lines as helps to

remember certain facts which they supposed were already well known.

In a narrative, perhaps, which they are telling, they take it for

granted that it is well known to everyone they are addressing. Thus a

great difficulty arises, we scarcely know the real meaning of any one

of these stories, because the traditions have nearly died out, and

the little that is left of them has been very much exaggerated. Many

new interpretations have been put upon them, so that when you find

them in the Puranas they have already become lyrical poems. Just as

in the West, we find this prominent fact in the political development

of Western races that they cannot bear absolute rule, that they are

always trying to prevent any one man from ruling over them, and are

gradually advancing to higher and higher democratic ideas, higher and

higher ideas of physical liberty, so, in Indian metaphysics, exactly

the same phenomenon appears in the development of spiritual life. The

multiplicity of gods gave place to one God of the universe, and in

the Upanishads there is a rebellion even against that one God. Not

only was the idea of many governors of the universe ruling their

destinies unbearable, but it was also intolerable that there should

be one person ruling this universe. This is the first thing that

strikes us. The idea grows and grows, until it attains its climax. In

almost all of the Upanishads, we find the climax coming at the last,

and that is the dethroning of this God of the universe. The

personality of God vanishes, the impersonality comes. God is no more

a person, no more a human being, however magnified and exaggerated,

who rules this universe, but He has become an embodied principle in

every being, immanent in the whole universe. It would be illogical to

go from the Personal God to the Impersonal, and at the same time to

leave man as a person. So the personal man is broken down, and man as

principle is built up. The person is only a phenomenon, the principle

is behind it. Thus from both sides, simultaneously, we find the

breaking down of personalities and the approach towards principles,

the Personal God approaching the Impersonal, the personal man

approaching the Impersonal Man. Then come the succeeding stages of

the gradual convergence of the two advancing lines of the Impersonal

God and the Impersonal Man. And the Upanishads embody the stages

through which these two lines at last become one, and the last word

of each Upanishad is, " Thou art That " . There is but One Eternally

Blissful Principle, and that One is manifesting Itself as all this

variety.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued