A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

THE REAL AND THE APPARENT MAN. 205something which is not the body to manipulate it, the brightbody, by the samS necessity, will also require somethingCfher than itself to manipulate it. So that something wascalled the soul, the Atman in Sanskrit. It was theAtmanwhich through the bright body, as it were, worked on thegross body outside.The bright body is considered as the receptacle of the mind, and the Atman is beyond that. It is notthe mind even, it works the mind, and through the mindthe body. You have an Atman, I have another, each oneof us has a separate Atman, and a separate fine body, andthrough that we work on the gross external body. Questionswere then asked about this Atman, about its nature. Whatis this Atman, this soul of man which is neither a body nora mind ? Great discussions followed. Speculations came,various shades of philosophic enquiry came into existence,and I will try to place before you some of the conclusionsthat have been reached about this Atman. The differentphilosophies seem to agree that this Atman, whatever it be,has neither form nor shape, and that which has neitherform nor shape must be omnipresent. Time begins withmind, space also is in the mind. Causation cannot standwithout time. Without the idea of succession there cannotbe any idea of causation. Time, space, and causation,therefore, are in the mind, and as this Atman isbeyond themind and formless it must be beyond time, beyond spaceand beyond causation. Now if it isbeyond time, space andcausation, it must be infinite. Then comes the highestspeculation in our philosophy. The infinite cannot be two.If the soul be infinite there can be only one soul, and allthese ideas of various souls you having one soul, and Ihaving another, and so forth are not real. The real mantherefore is one and infinite, the omnipresent spirit. Andthe apparent man is only a limitation of that real man. In