A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

THE COSMOS: THE MICROCOSM. 267tha soul has not existence as its quality ; the soul has notblessedness as its quality ; these are the essence of thesoul.Again, it may be asked whyshall we take that forgranted ? Why shall we admit that the soul is knowledge,blessedness, existence, self -luminosity, as its essence, and notas borrowed. Just as we have seen that the luminosity ofthe bo(fy is borrowed from the mind so long as the mind isthere, the bodyis luminous. If the mind goes awayit fails-If the mind goes away from my eye, I may look at you allthe time and not see you, or if it leaves my ears, you maytalk and talk I shall not hear a word ;so with all the senseswe find that the luminosity of the body is not its own, butborrowed from the min,d. Similarly with the mind. It isbeing acted upon by everything in the external world, anda little molecule will make it change, a little defect somewhere in the brain makes it change. The luminosity of themind cannot be its own, because we see throughout naturethat that which is essential has no change. Only reflected qualities, borrowed qualities, change. But it may be argued whynot say that the soul s luminosity, the soul s blessedness*-the soul s knowledge, are similarly borrowed ? The defectwill be, that in that way there will be no limit. Fromwhom was that borrowed ? If we say from some othersoul, the same question will be asked, from whom was thatborrowed also ? So at last, we will have to stop at someone with whom the light was not borrowed ;to makemattersshort then, the logical way is to stop at the firstlink where we get self-luminosity, and proceed nofurther.We see then, that this human beingis composed firstof this external covering, the body. Secondly, the finerbody, consisting of mind and intellect, and egoism and sens-