A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

274 THE COSMOS: THE MICROCOSM.highest human beingis in me, but it has come from bodyto body in the course of hereditary transmission. Wherewill the difficulty be ? This question is very nice, and weadmit some part of this hereditary transmission. How fa* 1 ?As far as furnishing the material. We, by our past actions,conform ourselves to a certain birth in a certain body, andthe only suitable material for that body comes from theparents who have made themselves fit to have that ^soul astheir offspring.The simple hereditary theory takes for granted a mostastonishing proposition without any proof, that mental experience can be recorded in matter, that mental experiencecan be involved in matter. When I look at you, in themind there is a wave. That wave subsides, butlake of myit remains in fine form, in an impression.We understandthat. We understand a physical impression remaining inthe body. But what proof is there for assuming that themental impression can remain in the body, since the body,breaks down ? What carries it ?Suppose, even, it werepossible for each mental impression to remain in the bodythat an impression, beginning from the first man down tomy father had been in my father s body, and is carrieddown to me. How ? By the bioplasmic cell. How can thatdoes not come to thebe possible, because the father s bodychild in toto. The same parents may have a number ofchildren ;then from this theory of hereditary transmission,where the impression and the impressed are one (that is tosay, material) it rigorously follows that, by the birth ofevery child, the parents must lose a part of their ownimpressions, or, if the parents should transmit the wholeof their impressions, then after the birth of the first child,their minds would be vacuum.Again, if in the bioplasmic cell the infinite amount of