Reality of all lives can be summed up as a chain of evolution and involution; without either, nothing can exist says SWAMI VIVEKANANDA
What question has been asked a greater number of times, than about the immortality of the human soulIJ It has been the theme of poets and sages, of priests and prophets; kings on the throne have discussed it, beggars on the street have dreamt of it. The interest in the theme has not died yet, nor will it die so long as human nature exists. Often in the turmoil and struggle of our lives we seem to forget it, but suddenly someone dies — one, perhaps, whom we loved — and we ask the old question again, “What after thisIJ” “What becomes of the soulIJ”
All human knowledge proceeds out of experience; we cannot know anything except by experience. looking around us, what do we findIJ A continuous change. The plant comes out of the seed, grows into the tree, completes the circles, and comes back to the seed. The animal comes, lives a certain time, dies, and completes the circle. So does man. The mountains slowly but surely crumble away, the rivers slowly but surely dry up, rains come out of the sea, and go back to the sea. This is our everyday experience. Inside of it all, behind all this vast mass of what we call life, we find a certain unity. This is what is called evolution. There is one thing more, which the ancients perceived, but which in modern times is not yet so clearly perceived, and that is, involution. The seed is becoming the plant; a grain of sand never becomes a plant. It is the father that becomes a child; a lump of clay never becomes the child. From what does this evolution come, is the question. What was the seedIJ
It was the same as the tree. All the possibilities of a future tree are in that seed; all the possibilities of a future man are in the little baby; all the possibilities of any future life are in the germ. What is thisIJ The ancient philosophers of India called it involution. We find then, that every evolution presupposes an involution. Nothing can be evolved which is not already there. Here, again, modern science comes to our help. You know by mathematical reasoning that the sum total of the energy that is displayed in the universe is the same throughout. You cannot add or substract one atom of matter or one foot-pound of force to the universe. As such, evolution does not come out of zero; then, where does it come fromIJ From previous involution. The child is the man involved, and the man is the child evolved. The seed is the tree involved, and the tree is the seed evolved. All the possibilities of life are in the germ.
From the lowest protoplasm to the most perfect human being, there is really but one life. Just as in one life we have so many various phases of expression, the protoplasm developing into the baby, child, young man, old man, so, from that protoplasm up to the most perfect man we get one continuous life, one chain.
Therefore, this one force, this whole chain, is the involution of that cosmic life which is everywhere. It is this one mass of intelligence which, from the protoplasm up to the most perfected man, is uncoiling itself. Not that it grows. Take off all ideas of growth from your mind. With the idea of growth is associated something coming from outside, something extraneous, which would give the lie to the truth that the Infinite which lies latent in every life is independent of all external conditions. It can never grow; it was always there, and only manifests Itself.
Excerpts from Vivekananda’s discourses