Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 55)

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Parts 1 to 54 were posted earlier. This is part 55. Your comments are welcome... Vivekananda Centre London

Earlier postings can be seen at http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/veda.htm

 

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON THE VEDAS AND UPANISHADS

By Sister Gayatriprana

part 55

 

2. Beyond the Bright Body of the Soul, the Idea of the Freedom of the Soul Arose

In olden times, in all the ancient scriptures, the power [which manifests itself through the body] was thought to be a bright substance having the form of this body, and which remained even after this body fell. Later on, however, we find a higher idea coming - that this bright body did not represent the force. Whatsoever has form must be the result of combinations of particles and requires something else behind it to move it. If this body requires something which is not the body to manipulate it, the bright body, by the same necessity, will also require something other than itself to manipulate it. So that something was called the Soul, the Atman in Sanskrit. It was the same Atman which through the bright body, as it were, worked on the gross body outside. The bright body is considered as the receptacle of the mind and the Atman is beyond that. It is not the mind, even; it works the mind, and through the mind the body. You have an Atman, I have another; each one of us has a separate Atman and a separate fine body. (5)

Later on this idea becomes higher and higher. Then it was found out that what they called the soul before was not really the Soul. This bright body, fine body, however fine it might be, was a body, after all; and all bodies must be made up of materials, either gross or fine. Whatever had form or shape must be limited and could not be eternal. Change is inherent in every form. How could that which is changeful be eternal? So, behind this bright body, as it were, they found something which was the Soul of human beings. It was called the Atman, the Self. This Self-idea then began. It had also to undergo various changes. By some it was thought that this Self was eternal; that it was very minute, almost as minute as an atom; that it lived in a certain part of the body, and when someone died his or her Self went away, taking along with it the bright body. There were other people who denied the atomic nature of the soul on the same ground on which they had denied that this bright body was the soul. (6)

Here we find the germ out of which a true idea of the soul could come. Here it was: where the real person is not the body, but the soul; where all ideas of an inseparable connection between the real person and the body were utterly absent - that a noble idea of the freedom of the soul could arise. And it was when the Aryans penetrated even beyond the shining cloth of the body with which the departing soul was enveloped and found its real nature of a formless, individual, unit principle, that the question inevitably arose: whence? (7)

 

3. The Unchanging, Indivisible Soul Is the True Individuality behind All Phenomena

In the dualistic form of Vedic doctrines, the earlier forms, there was a clearly defined, particular and limited soul of every being. There have been a great many theories about this particular soul in every individual, but the main discussion was between the ancient Vedantists and the ancient Buddhists, the former believing in the individual soul as complete in itself, the latter denying in toto the existence of such an individual soul.... It is pretty much the same discussion you have in Europe as to substance and quality, one set holding that behind the qualities there is some such thing as substance in which the qualities inhere, and the other denying the existence of such a substance as being unnecessary, for the qualities may live by themselves. The most ancient theory of the soul, of course, is based on the argument of self-identity - "I am, I am" - that the I of yesterday is the I of today, and the I of today will be the I of tomorrow; that, in spite of all the changes that are happening to the body, I yet believe that I am the same I. This seems to have been the central argument of those who believe in a limited and yet perfectly complete, individual soul.

On the other hand the ancient Buddhists denied the necessity of such an assumption. They brought forward the argument that all that we know, and all that we can possibly know, are simply these changes. The positing of an unchangeable and unchanging substance is simply superfluous, and even if there were any such unchangeable thing, we could never understand it, nor should be ever be able to cognize it in any sense of the word....

In India this great question did not find its solution in very ancient times, because we have seen that the assumption of a substance which is behind the qualities and which is not the qualities, can never be substantiated; nay, even the arguments from self-identity, from memory - that I am the I of yesterday because I remember it, and therefore I have been a continuous something - cannot be substantiated. The other quibble that is generally put forward is a mere delusion of words. For instance, someone may take a long series of sentences such as "I do", "I go", "I dream", "I sleep", "I move", and here you will find it claimed that the doing, going, dreaming, etc. have been changing, but what remained constant was that "I". As such, they conclude that the "I" is something which is constant and an individual in itself, but all these changes belong to the body. This, though apparently very convincing and clear, is based upon the mere play on words. The "I" in the going, doing, and dreaming may be separate in black and white, but no one can separate them in his or her mind.

When I eat I think of myself as eating - I am identified with eating. When I run, I and the running are not two separate things. Thus the argument from personal identity does not seem to be very strong. The other argument from memory is also weak. If the identity of my being is represented by my memory, many things which I have forgotten are lost from that identity. And we know that people under certain conditions forget their whole past. In many cases of lunacy someone will think of him or herself as made of glass, or as being an animal. If the existence of that person depend upon memory, he or she has become glass; which, not being the case, we cannot make the identity of the Self depend upon such a flimsy substance as memory. Thus we see that the soul as a limited, yet complete and continuing identity cannot be established as separate from the qualities. We cannot establish a narrowed-down, limited existence to which is attached a bunch of qualities.

On the other hand, the argument of the ancient Buddhists seems to be stronger - that we do not know, and cannot know, anything that is beyond the bunch of qualities. According to them, the soul consists of a bundle of qualities called sensations and feelings. A mass of such is what is called the soul, and this mass is constantly changing.

The Advaitist theory of the soul reconciles both these positions. The position of the Advaitist is that we cannot think of the substance as separate from the qualities, we cannot think of change and non-change at the same time; it would be impossible. But the very thing which is the substance is the quality; substance and quality are not two things. It is the unchangeable that is appearing as the changeable. The unchangeable substance of the universe is not something separate from it. The noumenon is not something different from phenomena, but it is the very noumenon which has become the phenomena. There is a soul which is unchanging; and what we call feelings and perceptions - nay, even the body - are the very soul seen from another point of view. We have got into the habit of thinking that we have bodies and souls and so forth, but really speaking, there is only One. (8)