I Am that I Am - Swami Vivekananda

Everything is substance plus name and form. Name and form come and go, but substance remains ever the same. Substance, form, and name make this pitcher. When it is broken, you do not call it pitcher any more, nor do you see its pitcher form. Its name and form vanish, but its substance remains. All the differentiation in substance is made by name and form. These are not real, because they vanish. What we call nature is not the substance, unchanging and indestructi-ble. Nature is time, space, and causation. Nature is name and form. Nature is Maya. Maya means name and form, into which everything is cast. Maya is not real. We could not destroy it or change it if it were real. The substance is noumenon, Maya is phenomenon. There is the real ‘me’ which nothing can destroy and there is the phenomenal ‘me’ which is continually changing and disappearing.

The fact is, everything existing has two aspects. One is noumenal, unchanging and indestructible; the other is phenomenal, changing and destructible. Man in his true nature is substance, soul, spirit. This soul, this spirit, never changes, is never destroyed; but it appears to be clothed with a form and to have a name associated with it. This form and name are not immutable or indestructible; they continually change and are destroyed. Yet men foolishly seek immortality in this changeable aspect, in the body and mind—they want to have an eternal body. I do not want that kind of immortality.

What is the relation between me and nature? In so far as nature stands for name and form or for time, space, and causality, I am not part of nature, because I am free, I am immortal, I am unchanging and infinite. The question does not arise whether I have free will or not; I am beyond any will at all. Wherever there is will, it is never free. There is no freedom of will whatever. There is freedom of that which becomes will when name and form get hold of it, making it their slave. That substance—the soul—as it were, moulds itself, as it were, throws itself into the cast of name and form, and immediately becomes bound, whereas it was free before. And yet its original nature is still there. That is why it says, "I am free: In spite of all this bondage, I am free." And it never forgets this.

© "Kalyana-Kalpataru" (April, 2001) published by Jagdish Prasad Jalan for Gobind Bhawan Karyalaya, Gita Press, Gorakhpur 273 005. Website: www.gitapress.org. Reprinted with permission.

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