The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 5/Notes from Lectures and Discourses/The Cosmos and The Self
THE COSMOS AND THE SELF
Everything in nature rises from some fine seed-forms, becomes grosser and
grosser, exists for a certain time, and again goes back to the original fine
form. Our earth, for instance, has come out of a nebulous form which,
becoming colder and colder, turned into this crystallised planet upon which
we live, and in the future it will again go to pieces and return to its
rudimentary nebulous form. This is happening in the universe, and has been
through time immemorial. This is the whole history of man, the whole history
of nature, the whole history of life.
Every evolution is preceded by an involution. The whole of the tree is
present in the seed, its cause. The whole of the human being is present in
that one protoplasm. The whole of this universe is present in the cosmic
fine universe. Everything is present in its cause, in its fine form. This
evolution, or gradual unfolding of grosser and grosser forms, is true, but
each case has been preceded by an involution. The whole of this universe
must have been involute before it came out, and has unfolded itself in all
these various forms to be involved again once more. Take, for instance, the
life of a little plant. We find two things that make the plant a unity by
itself — its growth and development, its decay and death. These make one
unity the plant life. So, taking that plant life as only one link in the
chain of life, we may take the whole series as one life, beginning in the
protoplasm and ending in the most perfect man. Man is one link, and the
various beasts, the lower animals, and plants are other links. Now go back
to the source, the finest particles from which they started, and take the
whole series as but one life, and you will find that every evolution here is
the evolution of something which existed previously.
Where it begins, there it ends. What is the end of this universe?
Intelligence, is it not? The last to come in the order of creation,
according to the evolutionists, was intelligence. That being so, it must be
the cause, the beginning of creation also. At the beginning that
intelligence remains involved, and in the end it gets evolved. The sum total
of the intelligence displayed in the universe must therefore be the involved
universal intelligence unfolding itself, and this universal intelligence is
what we call God, from whom we come and to whom we return, as the scriptures
say. Call it by any other name, you cannot deny that in the beginning there
is that infinite cosmic intelligence.
What makes a compound? A compound is that in which the causes have combined
and become the effect. So these compound things can be only within the
circle of the law of causation; so far as the rules of cause and effect go,
so far can we have compounds and combinations. Beyond that it is impossible
to talk of combinations, because no law holds good therein. Law holds good
only in that universe which we see, feel, hear, imagine, dream, and beyond
that we cannot place any idea of law. That is our universe which we sense or
imagine, and we sense what is within our direct perception, and we imagine
what is in our mind. What is beyond the body is beyond the senses, and what
is beyond the mind is beyond the imagination, and therefore is beyond our
universe, and therefore beyond the law of causation. The Self of man being
beyond the law of causation is not a compound, is not the effect of any
cause, and therefore is ever free and is the ruler of everything that is
within law. Not being a compound, it will never die, because death means
going back to the component parts, destruction means going back to the
cause. Because it cannot die, it cannot live; for both life and death are
modes of manifestation of the same thing. So the Soul is beyond life and
death. You were never born, and you will never die. Birth and death belong
to the body only.
The doctrine of monism holds that this universe is all that exists; gross or
fine, it is all here; the effect and the cause are both here; the
explanation is here. What is known as the particular is simply repetition in
a minute form of the universal. We get our idea of the universe from the
study of our own Souls, and what is true there also holds good in the
outside universe. The ideas of heaven and all these various places, even if
they be true, are in the universe. They altogether make this Unity. The
first idea, therefore, is that of a Whole, a Unit, composed of various
minute particles, and each one of us is a part, as it were, of this Unit. As
manifested beings we appear separate, but as a reality we are one. The more
we think ourselves separate from this Whole, the more miserable we become.
So, Advaita is the basis of ethics.