A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

IMMORTALITY. 121on His throne, the Self of man. He then sees and givesHis orders. T^en the mind immediately acts on the organs, and the organs on the external body. The realPerceiver, the real Kuler, the Governor, the Creator, theManipulator of all this is the Self of man. We have seenthen that this Self of man is not the body, and it is notthought. Neither body nor thought. It cannot be acompound. Why not ? Because everything that is a compound we must either see or imagine. That which we cannotimagine or perceive, that which we cannot bind together,that is not force or matter, cause or effect, or causation,cannot be a compound. The power of iscompoundso faras our mental universe, our thought universe, takes us.Beyond this it does not hold good. It is as far as law willtake it,and if it isanything beyond law, it cannot be acompound at all. I think that is easy enough to you, yetI will be more explicit.You see what makes a compound.This glass is a compound, in which the causes have combined and become the effect. So these compound things<jan be only within the circle of the law of causation, sofar as the rules of cause and effect go, so far can wehave compounds and combinations. Beyond that, it isimpossible to talk of combinations, because no law holdsgood therein. Beyond this they do not hold good, and lawholds good only in that universe which we see, feel, hear,imagine, dream, and beyond that we cannot place any law,the idea of law does not hold good beyond that. We haveseen, too, that that is our universe which we sense, orimagine, and we sense what is in our direct perception,and we imagine what is in our mind, therefore what isbeyond the body is beyond the senses, and what isbeyondthe mind isbeyond the imagination, and, therefore, isbeyond our universe. Therefore,beyond the law of causa-