Already Free

"People are frightened when they are told they are Universal Being, everywhere present. “Through everything you work, through every foot you move, through every lip you talk, through every heart you feel.” People are frightened when they are told this. They will again and again ask you if they are not going to keep their individuality.

What is individuality? I should like to see it. A baby has no moustache; when he grows to be a man, perhaps he has a moustache and beard. His individuality would be lost if it were in the body. If I lose one eye or if I lose one of my hands, my individuality would be lost if it were in the body. Then a drunkard should not give up drinking, because he would lose his individuality. A thief should not be a good man, because he would thereby lose his individuality. Indeed, no man ought to change his habits, for fear of this.

Nor can individuality be in memory. Suppose, on account of a blow on the head, I forget all about my past; then I have lost all individuality, I am gone. I do not remember two or three years of my childhood, and if memory and existence are one, then whatever I forget is gone. That part of my life which I do not remember, I did not live. That is a very narrow idea of individuality.

There is no individuality except in the Infinite. That is the only condition which does not change. Everything else is in a state of flux. We are not individuals yet. We are struggling towards individuality; and that is the Infinite. That is the real nature of man. He alone lives whose life is in the whole universe; the more we concentrate our lives on limited things, the faster we go towards death.

Those moments alone we live when our lives are in the universe, in others; and living this little life is death, simply death, and that is why the fear of death comes. The fear of death can only be conquered when a man realizes that so long as there is one life in this universe, he is living. When he can say, “I am in everything, in everybody; I am in all lives; I am the universe,”then alone comes the state of fearlessness.

To talk of immortality in constantly changing things is absurd. Says an old Sanskrit philosopher: “It is only the Spirit that is the individual, because It is infinite.”Infinity cannot be divided; infinity cannot be broken into pieces. It is the same one undivided unit for ever; and this is the individual man, the Real Man.

The apparent man is merely a struggle to express, to manifest, this individuality which is beyond. Evolution is not in the Spirit. These changes which are going on—the wicked becoming good, the animal becoming man; take them in whatever way you like—are not in the Spirit. They are the evolution of nature and the manifestation of the Spirit.

Suppose there is a screen hiding you from me, in which there is a small hole through which I can see some of the faces before me, just a few faces. Now suppose the hole begins to grow larger and larger, and as it does so, more and more of the scene before me reveals itself; when at last the whole screen has disappeared, I stand face to face with you all. You did not change at all; it was the hole that was evolving, and you were gradually manifesting yourselves. So it is with the Spirit. No perfection is going to be attained. You are already free and perfect."

-- Swami Vivekananda