A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

THE COSMOS: THE MICROCOSM. 275impressions from all time has entered, where and how isit ? This is a most impossible position, and until these physicists can prove how that impression lives in that cell, andwhere and what they mean by a mental impression sleeping in the physical cell, their position cannot be taken forgranted. So far it is clear, then, this impression is in themind, that the mind comes to take its birth, and re-birth,and thut the mind uses the material which is the most proper for it,and that the mind which has made itself fit foronly a particular kind of body, until it can get that material, will have to wait. This we understand. The theorythen comes to this, that there is hereditary transmission sofar as a furnishing the material to the soul But the soulmigrates, manufactures body after body, and each thoughtwe think, each deed we do, each work we work, is left instore for us in fine forms, ready to spring up again andWhen I look at you a wave rises in my mind.take shape.It dives down, as it were, and becomes finer and finer, butit does not die. It is ready there to start up again as awave which we call So all this"memory."mass of impressions is in my mind, and when I die the resultant force ofall these impressions is upon me. A ball is here, and eachone of us takes a mallet in our hands and begins tostrikethat ball from all sides, the ball goes from point to pointin the room, and when it reaches the door it flies out.What will it carry out with it ? The resultant of all theseblows. That also will be its direction. So, what directsthe soul when the body dies ? The resultant, the sum-totalof all the works it has done, of the thoughtsit has thought:and it will go forward with this upon itself. If the resultant is such that it has to manufacture a new body for further experience, it will go to those parents who are readyto supply it with suitable material for that body, and it will