Vivekananda on the Vedas (part 56)

June 8, 2001

Parts 1 to 55 were posted earlier. This is part 56. 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 56

4. The Atman or Self of Humanity Is beyond Body, Mind and Even Consciousness As We Know It

[in India] they became insistent upon this idea of the soul. It became [synonymous with] the idea of God.... If the idea of the soul begins to expand [humanity must arrive at the conclusion that it is beyond name and form].... The Indian idea is that the soul is formless. Whatever is form must break sometime or other. There cannot be any form unless it is the result of force and matter; and all combinations must dissolve. If such is the case, [if] your soul is [made up of name and form, it disintegrates] and you die, and you are no more immortal. If it is double, it has form and it belongs to nature and obeys nature's laws of birth and death.... They find that this [soul] is not the mind.... neither a double. (9)

The old Aryans believed in a soul, never that people are the body. (10)

It is the belief of the Hindu that the soul is neither mind nor body. What is it which remains stable - which can say, "I am I"? Not the body, for it is always changing; and not the mind, which changes more rapidly than any body, which never has the same thoughts for even a few minutes. (11)

Here I stand; and if I shut my eyes and try to conceive of my existence: "I", "I", "I", what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing but a combination of material substances? The Vedas declare, " No." I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I shall not die. Here am I in this body; it will fall, but I shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not created, for creation means a combination which means certain future dissolution . If then the soul was created, it must die. (12)

The Vedas teach that people are spirit living in a body. The body will die, but people will not. The spirit will go on living. The soul was not created from nothing, for creation means a combination and that means certain future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Therefore, it was not created. (13)

In India, if people believe that they are spirit, soul, and not a body, then they are said to have religion, and not till then. (14)

The body is here, beyond that is the mind, yet the mind is not Atman; it is the fine body, the sukshma sharira, made of fine particles, which goes from birth to death, and so on; but behind the mind is the Atman, the soul, the Self of humanity. It cannot be translated by the word soul (or mind), so we have to use the word Atman; or, as Western philosophers have designated it, by the word Self. Whatever word you use, you must keep it clear in your mind that the Atman is separate from the mind as well as from the body. (15)

The first proposition that the Hindu boy learns [is] that the mind is matter, only finer. The body is gross, and behind the body is what we call the sukshma sharira, the fine body or mind. This also is material, only finer; and it is not the Atman.

I will not translate this word to you in English because the idea does not exist in Europe; it is untranslatable. The modern attempt of German philosophers is to translate the word Atman by the word Self, and until that word is universally accepted, it is impossible to use it. So, call it Self or anything, it is our Atman. This Atman is the real person behind. It is the Atman that uses the material mind as its instrument, its antahkarana, as is the psychological term for the mind. And the mind, by means of a series of internal organs, works the visible organs of the body. (16)

All Hindus believe that people are not only a gross material body; not only that within this there is the finer body, the mind; but there is something yet greater - for the body changes, and so does the mind - something beyond, the Atman - I cannot translate the word to you, for any translation would be wrong - that there is something beyond even this fine body, which is the Atman of humanity, which has neither beginning nor end, which knows not what death is. (17)

Mind is a mixture of sensations and feelings or action and reaction; so it cannot be permanent. The mind has a fine body and through this it works on the gross body. Vedanta says that behind the mind is the real Self. It accepts the other two, but posits a third, the eternal, the ultimate, the last analysis, the unit, where there is no further compound. Birth is re-composition, death is de-composition, and the final analysis is where the Atman is found; there being no further division possible, the perdurable is reached. (18)

The Vedas teach that the Atman, or Self, is the one undivided Existence. It is beyond mind, memory or thought, or even consciousness as we know it. From it are all things. (19)

Cross reference to:

Isha Up. peace chant

Kena Up., 1.4