Is it clear in the following sentence the distinction between the “individual” and the “whole”?

Question

Is it clear in the following sentence the distinction between the "individual" (a single person), and the "whole" (nature, universe...everything around, etc)?

"People want to be eternal as an individual because they forgot how to be eternal as a whole."

I wrote that as an indirect way of saying: People created the soul to be eternal because they forgot that they were already eternal with nature, the universe.

Answer 1

Yes, it seems clear enough to me (assuming that the sentence occurs in some sort of context), but I might say

People want to be eternal as individuals because they have forgotten how to be eternal as a whole.

I changed individual to individuals so that it agrees with people, and changed forgot to have forgotten because it places the emphasis on the result (i.e. they don't remember anymore) rather than the event at which the forgetting took place (see uses of the present perfect simple).

If the sentence is meant to be read without any context, then it would probably be hard to understand your intended meaning. However, your explanation

People created the soul to be eternal because they forgot that they were already eternal with nature, the universe.

seems to get this point across quite well.