A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL?*None has power to destroy the unchangeable. Gita.If N the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata,fythe storyis told how the hero Yudhisthira, when asked byDharma to tell what was the most wonderful thingin the world, replied that it was the persistent beliefof mankind in their own deathlessness in spite of theirwitnessing death everywhere around them almost everymoment of their lives.And, in fact, this is the most stupendous wonder inhuman life. In spite of allarguments to the contraryurged in different times by different schools, in spite of theinability of reason to penetrate the veil of mystery whichwill ever hang between the sensuous and the supersensuousworlds, man isthoroughly persuaded that he cannotdie.We may studyall our lives, and in the end fail to bringthe problem of life and death to the plane of rationaldemonstration, affirmative or "Wenegative. may talk orwrite, preach or teach for or against the permanency orsporadicity of human existence as much as we like we ; maybecome violent partisans of this side or that we ; mayinvent names by the hundreds, each more intricate than itspredecessor, and lull ourselves in a momentary rest underthe delusion of our having solved the problem once for all* The Swami s contribution to the discussion of this questioncarried on in the pages of the New York Morning Advertiser.