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Philosophy of Swami Vivekananda
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infinite and real, which is contradiction in saying as infinite cannot be many.
But, Vivekananda is of the view that the Real Man is one, infinite, and Omnipresent Spirit. And the apparent man is only the limitation of that Real Man. This apparent man is limited by Space, time and causation. But the Real Man or Soul in other words is beyond any limitation. It is free and infinite. Therefore, there is no question of birth and death. Birth and death are applicable only to the apparent man which has been under the iron grip of space and time. So long as he is ignorant of his real nature, he has to move under the cycle of birth and death. Body and mind are continually changing like rivers whose waters are in a constant state of flux, yet presenting the appearance of unbroken streams. It is the mind which is happy at one moment and unhappy at the other moment. The soul is free from all this. It is absurd to say that the soul is changeable. Our reality, therefore, consists in the universal and not in the limited.
Here it may be asked that if we accept the universal, it means that we would lose our individuality. Swami Vivekananda is aware of this possibility. That is why he affirms that if anybody loses his one hand or one eye, would he lose his individuality ? Further, he gives an instance by saying that a body has no moustache at the time of the birth. When he grows to be a man, he has a moustache and beard. His individuality would be lost, if it were in the body. In the views of Swamiji, in fact we are not individuals. We are struggling towards individuality, and that is the infinite, that is the real nature of man. To quote him :
He alone lives whose life in the whole universe, and the more we concentrate our lifes on limited things, the faster we go toward death.13
After long searches here and there, in temples and in churches, we come back to our soul and we find that for whom we have been seeking all over the world, for whom we have been weeping and praying in the temples, is nearest of the near. It is our own self,
