Freedom of the soul

[Guest guest]

There are others who, though not admitting the Maya theory, stand

midway. They say that the whole of this creation forms, as it were,

the body of God. God is the Soul of all souls and of the whole of

nature. In the case of individual souls, contraction comes from evil

doing. When a man does anything evil, his soul begins to contract and

his power is diminished and goes on decreasing, until he does good

works, when it expands again. One idea seems to be common in all the

Indian systems, and I think, in every system in the world, whether

they know it or not, and that is what I should call the divinity of

man. There is no one system in the world, no real religion, which

does not hold the idea that the human soul, whatever it be, or

whatever its relation to God, is essentially pure and perfect,

whether expressed in the language of mythology, allegory, or

philosophy. Its real nature is blessedness and power, not weakness

and misery. Somehow or other this misery has come. The crude systems

may call it a personified evil, a devil, or an Ahriman, to explain

how this misery came. Other systems may try to make a God and a devil

in one, who makes some people miserable and others happy, without any

reason whatever. Others again, more thoughtful, bring in the theory

of Maya and so forth. But one fact stands out clearly, and it is with

this that we have to deal. After all, these philosophical ideas and

systems are but gymnastics of the mind, intellectual exercises. The

one great idea that to me seems to be clear, and comes out through

masses of superstition in every country and in every religion, is the

one luminous idea that man is divine, that divinity is our nature.

 

Whatever else comes is a mere superimposition, as the Vedanta calls

it. Something has been superimposed, but that divine nature never

dies. In the most degraded as well as in the most saintly it is ever

present. It has to be called out, and it will work itself out. We

have to ask, and it will manifest itself. The people of old knew that

fire lived in the flint and in dry wood, but friction was necessary

to call it out. So this fire of freedom and purity is the nature of

every soul, and not a quality, because qualities can be acquired and

therefore can be lost.

 

- Swami Vivekananda

 

.... to be continued