A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"128 IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL?my idea of myself as a body. But the body is obviouslyimpermanent as is the whole of nature a constantlyvanishing quantity.Where, then, is this permanence ?There is one more wonderful phenomenon connectedwith our lives, without which who will be able to live, whowill be able to enjoylife a moment ?" the idea of freedom.This is the idea that guides every footstep of ours,makes our movements possible, determines our relations toeach other nay, is the very warp and woof in the fabric ofhuman life. Intellectual knowledge tries to drive it inchby inch from its territory, post after post is snatched awayfrom its domains, and each step is made fast and ironboundwith the railroadings of cause and effect. But itlaughs at all our attempts, and, lo! it keeps from above allthis massive pile of law and causation with which we triedto smother it to death. How can it be otherwise ? Thelimited always requires a higher generalization of theunlimited to explain itself. The bound can only beexplained by the free, the caused by the uncaused.But again the same difficulty is also here. What isfree ? The body, or even the mind ? It is apparent to all,that they are as much bound by law as anything else inthe universe.Now the problem resolves itself into this dilemma.Either the whole universe is a mass of never-ceasingchange and nothing more, irrevocably bound by the lawof causations, not one particle having a unity of itself, yetis curiously producing an ineradicable delusion of permanence and freedom, or there is in us and in the universesomething which is permanent and free, and that the basalconstitutional belief of the human mind is not a delusion.It is the duty of science to explain facts by bringing them