A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"208 THE REAL AND THE APPARENT MAN.drunkard should not give up drinking because he wouldlose his individuality. A thief need nV>t be a good manbecause he would therefore lose his individuality. No ma^.ought to change his habits for fear of this. There is noindividuality except in the Infinite. That is the only condition which does not change. Everything else is in aconstant state of flux. Neither can individuality be inmemory.Suppose I receive a blow on the head and forgetall about my past ; then I have lost allmy individuality ;I am gone. I do not remember two or three years ofmy childhood, and ifmemory and existence are one,,then whatever I forget is gone. That part of my lifewhich I do not remember I did not live. That is a verynarrow idea of individuality. We are not individuals yet.We are struggling towards individuality and that isthe infinite ;that is the real nature of man. He alonelives whose life is in the whole universe, and the more weconcentrate our lives on little limited things as bodies, weare going towards death. That moment alone we havelived when our lives were in the universe, in others ;andall those minutes which we concentrated upon this littlelife was death, simply death, and that iswhy the fear ofdeath comes. The fear of death can only be conqueredwhen man realizes that so long as there is one life in thisuniverse he is living. am in every "I thing, in every body;I am in all lives.I am the universe, this whole universe ismy body. How can I die so long as one particle remains ?Who says I will die ? Then such a man becomes fearless rthen alone comes the state of fearlessness. To talk of immortality in little constantly changing things is ridiculous.Says an old Sanskrit philosopher It is only the :spirit thatis the individual because it is infinite ;no infinity can bedivided ; infinity cannot be broken into pieces. It is the