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Philosophy of Swaini Vivekananda
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Both you and I have passed through many births ; you know them not, I know them all.19
At present, the greater part of the human race believes in it. Hinduism and Buddhism are based on it. Althougb Buddhism does not believe in anything which is infinite, it believes in its continuity. For them, soul is nothing but combination of Skandhas which is a stream of consciousness.
Man is only a conventional name for a collection of different constituents, the material body (Kāya), the immaterial mind (manas), the formless consciousness (vijnūna), just as a chariot is a
collection of wheels, axles, shafles etc.20 The existence of man depends upon this collection and it dissolves when the collection breaks up. Lord Buddha explains the concept of rebirth with the help of the example of a lamp burning throughout the night. The flame of each moment is dependent on its own conditions, yet there is an unbroken succession of the different flames. Again, as from one lamp, another may be lighted though the two are different, they are causally connected. Similarly the last state of this life may cause the beginning of the next life. Rebirth, therefore, is the transmigration of the same soul into another body. In other words, present life is the cause of the future life.
The educated classes among the ancient Egyptians believed in it. The Greek Philosophers made it the cornerstone of their philosophy. According to Plato, the soul must possess an apprehension of ideas prior to its contact with the world of experience. He makes the use of doctrine of reminiscence to prove the pre-existence and also presumably the continued existence of the soul after the death of the body. He accepts rebirth associated with the body and not with the soul as the soul is immortal.
I.H. Fichte, speaking about the immortality of the soul, says: “It is true there is one analogy in nature which might be brought forth in refutation of the continuance. It is the well-known argument that everything that has a beginning in time inust also perish at some period of time ; hence, that the claiin: past existence of soul necessarily implies its preexistence.'
