A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

136 THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL.happy, without any explanation whatever. Others again*more thoughtful, bring in the theory of, Maya and soforth .But one fact stands out clearly, and it is that withwhich we have to deal. After all, these philosophicalideas and systems are but the gymnastics of the mind,intellectual exercises. The one great idea that to meseems to be clear, and comes out through masses of superstition in every country and every religion, is that oneluminous idea that man is divine, that that divinity is ournature.Whatever else comes is a mere super-imposition, asthe Vedanta calls it.Something has been super-imposed,but that Divine Nature never dies. In the most degraded,as well as the most saintly, it ispresent there. ^ \t has tobe called out, and it will work itself out. We have to askand it will manifest itself. The old people fancied that firelives in the flint, and friction of the steel is necessary tocall that fire out. Fire lives in two dry pieces of stick,friction was only necessary to cause it to manifest itself.So this fire, the natural freedom and purity, is the natureof every soul, not its qualities, because qualities can beacquired and, therefore, lost. The soul is one with freedom,and the soul is one with existence, and the soul is one withknowledge this Sat-Chit-Ananda Existence, Knowledge;and Bliss Absolute is the nature, the birthright of thesoul, and all the manifestations that we see are theexpressions of this nature of the soul, dimly or brightlymanifesting itself. Even death itself is but the manifestation of that Real Existence. Birth and death, life anddecay, degradation and degeneration, or regeneration, areall but the manifestations of that Oneness. So, knowledge,however it manifests itself, either as ignorance or aslearning, is but the manifestation of that same Chit, that