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SUPPLEMENT TO VOLUME 12 THE UPANISHADS
The first and second commentaries seem to belong to Sri Aurobindo’s Baroda Period and the third to the early Pondicherry Period.
This supplement is additional to the one already included in Volume 12. Page-197 THE KARMAYOGIN A COMMENTARY ON THE ISHA UPANISHAD PART II KARMAYOGIN THE IDEAL
CHAPTER
IV
I. ETERNAL TRUTH THE BASIS OF ETHICS "There is the One and It moveth not, yet is It swifter than thought, the Gods could not overtake It as It moved in front. While It standeth still, It outstrippeth others as they run. In It Matariswan ordereth the waters."
I. THE ROOT OF ETHICAL IDEALS EVERYTHING that has phenomenal existence, takes its stand on the, Eternal and has reality only as a reflection in the pure mirror of His infinite existence. This is no less true of the affections of mind and heart and the formations of thought than of the affections of matter and the formations of the physical ether-stuff out of which this material Universe is made. Every ethical ideal and every religious ideal must therefore depend for its truth and permanence on its philosophical foundation; in other words, on the closeness of its fundamental idea to the ultimate truth of the Eternal. If the ideal implies a reading of the Eternal which is only distantly true and confuses Him with His physical or psychical manifestations in this world, then it is a relatively false and impermanent ideal. Of all the ancient nations the Hindus, for this reason only, attained to the highest idea and noblest practice of morality. The Greeks confused the Eternal with His physical manifestations and realised Him in them on the side of Beauty; beauty therefore was their only law of morality which governed their Page-201 civilisation.
Ethics in their eyes was a matter of taste, balance and proportion; it hinged on
the avoidance of excess in any direction, of excessive virtue no less than of
excessive vice. The fine development of personality under the inspiration of
music and through the graceful play of intellect was the essential
characteristic of their education; justice, in the sense of a fine balance
between one’s obligations to oneself and one’s obligations to others, the ideal
of their polity; decorum, the basis of their public morality; the sense of
proportion the one law of restraint in their private ethics. Their idea of deity
was confined to the beautiful and brilliant rabble of their Olympus. Hence the
charm and versatility of Greek civilisation; hence also its impermanence as a
separate culture. The Romans also confused the Eternal with His manifestations
in physical nature, but they read Him on the side not of beauty but of force
governed by law; the stern and orderly restraint which governs the Universe, was
the feature in Nature’s economy which ruled their thought. Jupiter was to them
the Governor and great Legislator whose decrees were binding on all; the very
meaning of the word religion which they have left to the European world was
"binding back" and indicated as the essence of religion restraint and
tying down to things fixed and decreed. Their ethics were full of a lofty
strength and sternness. Discipline stood as the keystone of their system;
discipline of actions created an inelastic faithfulness to domestic and public
duties; discipline of the animal impulses an orderly courage and a cold, hard
purity; discipline of the mind a conservative practical type of intellect very
favourable to the creation of a powerful and well-ordered State but not to the
development of a many-sided civilisation. Their type too, though more long-lived
than the Greek, could not last, because of the imperfection of the ideal on
which it was based. Beauty is not the ultimate Truth of the Eternal but only a
partial manifestation of Page-202 manifestations of Himself in phenomena which are set within us to develop and around us to condition our works, but this also is not set before us as our standard or aim. The soul which follows Power as its whole end must in the long run lose measure and perish from hardness and egoism and that which sees nothing but Law wither for dryness or fossilise from the cessation of individual expansion. The Chinese seem to have envisaged the Eternal in a higher aspect than these Mediterranean races; they found Him not in the manifested physical Universe itself, but in its origination and arrangement out of the primal materials from which it arose. Heaven, Akasha or the Eternal in the element of Ether, creates in the womb of Earth or formal Matter which is the final element developed out of Ether, this arranged and orderly Universe; – He is therefore the Father, Originator, Disposer and Arranger. Veneration for parents and those who stand in the place of parents. became the governing idea of their ethics; orderly disposition, the nice care of Ceremony, manners, duties, the law of their daily life; origination and organisation the main characteristics of their intellectual activity. The permanence and unconquerable vitality of their civilisation is due to their having seized on an interpretation of the Eternal which, though not His ultimate truth to humanity, is at least close to that truth and a large aspect of it. It is really Himself in his relation to the Universe but not the whole of Himself. But the ancient Aryans of India raised the veil completely and saw Him as the universal Transcendent Self of all things who is at the same time the particular present Self in each. They reached His singleness aloof from phenomena, they saw Him in everyone of His million manifestations in phenomena, God in Himself, God in man, God in Nature were the "ideas" which their life expressed. Their civilisation was therefore more many-sided and complete and their ethical and intellectual ideals more perfect and permanent than those of any other nation. They had in full measure the sense of filial duty, the careful regulation of ceremony, manners and duties, the characteristics of origination and organisation which distinguished the Chinese. They had in full measure the Roman discipline, courage, purity, faithfulness to duty, careful conservatism; but these elements of character and culture which Page-203 in the Roman were hard, cold, narrow and without any touch of the spirit in man or the sense of his divine individuality, the Hindus warmed and softened with emotional and spiritual meaning and made broad and elastic by accepting the supreme importance of the soul’s individual life as overriding and governing the firm organisation of morals and society. They were not purely devoted to the worship and culture of beauty like the Greeks and their art was not perfect, yet they had the sense of beauty and art in a greater degree than any other ancient people; unlike the Greeks they had a perfect sense of spiritual beauty and were therefore able to realise the delight and glory of Nature hundreds of years before the sense of it developed in Europe. On the ethical side they had a finer justice than the Greeks, a more noble public decorum, a keener sense of ethical and social balance, but they would not limit the infinite capacities of the soul; they gave play therefore to personal individuality but restrained and ordered its merely lawless ebullitions by the law of the type (caste). In addition to these various elements which they shared with one civilisation or another, they possessed a higher spiritual ideal, which governed and overrode the mere ethics. (mores or customary morality) which the other nations had developed. Humanity, pity, chivalry, unselfishness, philanthropy, love of and self- sacrifice for all living things, the sense of the divinity in man, the Christian virtues, the modern virtues were fully developed in India at a time when in all the rest of the world they were either non-existent or existent only in the most feeble beginnings. And they were developed because the Aryan Rishis had been able to discover the truth of the Eternal and give to the nation the vision of the Eternal in all things and the feeling of His presence in themselves and in all around them. Page-204
CHAPTER
I The close dependence of ethical ideals on the fundamental philosophy of the Eternal and Real to which they go back is a law which the ancient Yogins had well understood. Therefore the Upanishad when it has to set forth an ethical rule or ethical ideal or intellectual attitude towards life, takes care to preface it with that aspect of the Eternal Reality on which its value and truth depend. The first principles of Karmayoga arise from the realisation of the Eternal as a great and divine Presence which pervades and surrounds all things, so that it is impossible to direct one’s thought, speech or actions to a thing or person without directing them to Him. With the declaration of the Eternal as the Universal and Omnipresent Lord the Upanishad must, therefore begin. Now it is about to take a step farther and set forth the ideal of the Karmayogin and the consummation of his Yoga. It preludes the new train of thought by identifying Isha the Lord with Parabrahman the Eternal and Transcendent Reality. Not only does He surround and sustain as the supreme Will by which and in which alone all things exist, but He is really the immutable and secret Self in all things which is ultimately Parabrahman. This Isha whose Energy vibrates through the worlds, is really the motionless and ineffable Tranquillity towards which the Yogins and the sages strive. "There is One and It unmoving is swifter than thought; the gods could not reach It moving in front; standing still, It passes others as they run; ’tis in this that Matariswan setteth the waters. Page-205 It moves, It moveth not; It is far, the same It is near; It is within every one, the same It is also outside everyone.” - There is only One existence, one Reality in apparent multiplicity. The unimaginable Presence which is manifest in the infinite variety of the Universe, is alone and alone Is. The variety of things is in fact merely the variety of forms which the play or energy of the Will only seems, by its rapidity of motion, to create; so when the blades of an electric fan go whirling with full velocity, round and round, there seem to be not four blades or two, but a whole score; so also, when Shiva in His mood begins His wild dance and tosses His arms abroad, He seems to have not two arms but a million. It is the motion of the play of Will, it is the velocity of His Energy vibrating on the surface of His own existence which seems to create multiplicity. All creation is motion, all activity is motion. All this apparently stable universe is really in a state of multifold motion; everything is whirling with inconceivable rapidity in its own orbit, and even thought which is the swiftest thing we know, cannot keep pace with the velocity of the cosmic stir. And all this motion, all this ever-evolving cosmos and universe is Brahman the Eternal. The Gods in their swiftest movements, the lords of the mind and senses cannot reach Him, for He rushes far in front. The eye, the ear, the mind, nothing material can reach or conceive the inconceivable creative activity of this Will which is Brahman. We try to follow Him pouring as light through the solar system and lo! while you are striving He is whirling universes into being far beyond reach of eye or telescope, far beyond the farthest flights of thought itself. तन्मनसो जवीयो. Material senses quail before the thought of the wondrous. stir and stupendous unimaginable activity that the existence of the Universe implies. And yet all the time He does not really move. All the time He who outstrips all others, is not running but standing. It is the others, the forms and things His energy has evolved, who are running and because He out- strips them, they think that He too moves. While we are toiling after Him, He is all the time here, at our side, before us, behind us, with us, in us, His presence pervading us like the ether, clothing us like a garment. "Standing still, He outstrips others as they Page-206 run." It is our mind and senses that are running, and all this universal motion is the result of the Avidya to which they are subject; for Avidya by persuading us to imagine ourselves limited, creates the conditions of Time, Space and Causality and confines us in them as in a prisoning wall beyond which our thoughts cannot escape. Brahman in all his creative activity is really standing still in His own being outside and inside Time and Space. He is at the same time in the Sun and here, because neither here nor the Sun are outside Himself; He has not therefore to move any more than a man has to move in order to pass from one thought to another. But we in order to realise His creative activity have to follow Him from the Sun to the Earth and from the Earth to the Sun; and this motion of our limited consciousness, this sensitory impression of a space covered and a time spent, we cannot dissociate from Brahman and must needs attribute the limitations of our own thought to Him; just as a man in a railway train has a sensitory impression that everything is rushing past him and the train is still. The stir of the Cosmos is really the stir of our own minds, and yet even that is a mere phenomenon. What we call mind is simply one play of the Will sporting with the idea of multiplicity which is, in form, the idea of motion. The Purusha, the Real Man in us and in the world, is really unmoving; He is the motionless and silent spectator of a drama of which He himself is the stage, the theatre, the scenery, the actors and the acting. He is the poet Shakespeare watching Desdemona and Othello, Hamlet and the murderous Uncle, Rosalind and Jacques and Viola, and all the other hundred multiplicities of himself acting and talking and rejoicing and suffering, all himself and yet not himself, who sits there a silent witness, their Creator who has no part in their actions, and yet without Him not one of them could exist. This is the mystery of the world and its paradox and yet its plain and easy truth. But what really is this Will which as Purusha watches the motion and the drama and as Prakriti is the motion and the drama? It is the One motionless, unconditioned, inexpressible Parabrahman of whom, being beyond mark and feature, the Upanishad speaks always as It, while of Isha, the Lord, it speaks as He; for Isha as Purusha is the male or spiritual presence which Page-207 generates forms in Prakriti, the female or material Energy. The spiritual entity does not work, but merely is and has a result; it is the material Energy, the manifestation of Spirit, which works or ceases from work. Eventually however Spirit and Matter are merely aspects of each other and of something which is behind both; that something is the motionless, actionless It. This which without moving is swifter than thought, is It; this which mind and senses cannot reach, for it moves far in front, is It; this which stands still and yet outstrips others as they run, is It. Will, Energy, Isha, the play of Prakriti for Purusha, are all merely the manifestation of that unmanifested It. What we envisage as the unmanifested Brahman is, in His reality to Himself, the unmanifest Parabrahman. It is only in His reality to us that He is the manifested Brahman. And according as a man comes nearer to the truth of Him or loses himself in Him, so will be his spiritual condition. While we think of Him as Isha, the one in innumerable aspects, the idea of difference remains though it can be subordinated to the idea of Oneness; that is the beginning of Yoga. When we realise Isha as one with Parabrahman, the idea of Oneness has sway and rules; that is the culmination of Yoga. When we realise Parabrahman Itself, that is the cessation of Yoga; for we depart utterly from Oneness and difference and no longer envisage the world of phenomena at all; that is Nirvana. Page-208
CHAPTER
II
or Prana, the great Breath of things, the mighty principle of Life, disposes forms and solidities rescuing them out of the undifferentiated state from which the world arose. To understand these two verses it is necessary to grasp clearly the ideas of creation and evolution which the Upanishads seek to formulate. What in Europe is called creation, the Aryan sages preferred to call srsti, projection of a part from the whole, the selection, liberation and development of something that is latent and potentially exists. Creation means the bringing into existence of something which does not already exist; srsti the manifestation of something which is hidden and unmanifest. The action of Prakriti proceeds upon the principle of selection leading naturally to development; she selects the limited out of the unlimited, the particular out of the general, the small portion out of the larger stock. This limited, particular and fractional having by the very nature of limitation a svabhāva, an ownbeing or as it is called in English a nature, which differentiates it from others of its Kind, develops under the law of its nature; that is its svadharma, its own law and religion of being, and every separate and particular existence whether inanimate thing or animal or man or community or nation must follow and develop itself under the law of its nature and act according to its own dharma. It cannot follow a nature or accept a dharma alien to itself except on peril of deterioration, decay and death. This nature is determined by the balance in its composition of the three guņas or essential qualities of Prakriti, passivity, activity and equipoise, which reveal themselves under different shapes in the animate as well as the inanimate, in the mind as well as in the body. In matter they appear as passive reception, reaction and retention; in human soul as the brutal animal, the active, creative man and the calm, clear-souled god. It must always be Page-209 remembered that Prakriti is no other than Avidya, the great Illusion. She is that impalpable indeterminable, source of subtle and gross matter, Matter in the abstract, the idea of difference and duality, the impression of Time, Space and Causality. The limited is limited not in reality, but by walls of Avidya which shut it in and give it an impression of existence separate from that of the illimitable, just as a room is shut off from the rest of the house by walls and has its separate existence and its separate nature, small or large, close or airy, coloured white or coloured blue. Break down the walls and the separate existence and separate nature disappear; the very idea of a room is lost and there is nothing left but the house. The sense of limitation and the consequent impulse towards development and self-enlargement immediately create desire which takes the form of hunger and so of a reaching after other existences for the satisfaction of hunger; and from desire and the contact with other existences there arise the two opposite forces of attraction and repulsion which on the moral plane are called liking and dislike, love and hatred. Thus the necessity of absorbing mental and aesthetic food for the material of one’s works; this too is hunger. The instinct of self- enlargement shows itself in the physical craving for the absorption of other existences to strengthen oneself, in the emotional yearning to other beings, in the intellectual eagemessio absorb the minds of others and the aesthetic desire to possess or enjoy the beauty of things and persons, in the spiritual passion of love and beneficence and all other activity which means the drawing of the self of others into one’s own self and pouring out of oneself on others. Desire is thus the first principle of things. Under the impulse of attraction and repulsion hunger begins to differentiate itself and develop the various senses in order the better to master its food and to feel and know the other existences which repel or attract it. So out of the primal consciousness of Will dealing with matter is developed form and organism, vitality, receptive mind, discriminating mind, Egoism. Out of this one method of Prakriti, selection, liberation and development, the whole evolution of the phenomenal world arises. Creation therefore is not a making of something where nothing existed, but a selection and new formation out of existing material; not a sudden increase, Page-210 but
a continual rearrangement and substitution; not an arbitrary manufacture, but an
orderly development. Page-211 the
law of his thought and action as a spiritual being having one
side of itself turned to phenomena and this transient life in society and
the world, the other to the single and eternal verity of things. Page-212 imagining, willing, selecting out of the matter with which Prajna provides and creating thought-forms to clothe the abundant variety of its multitudinous imaginations. The Dream-State is the psychical condition of Spirit and operates in a world of subtle matter finer and more elastic than gross physical matter and therefore not subject to the heavy restrictions and slow processes with which the latter is burdened. For this reason while physical workings are fixed, slow and confined by walls within walls, thought, psychical manifestation and other operations in subtle matter are in comparison volatile, rapid and free, reacting more elastically against the pressure of Time, Condition and Space. This State of Dream may be envisaged as Eternal Will and Energy in the process of creation, with the whole activity of the Universe teeming and fructuating within it; it is that psychical matrix out of which physical form and life are evolved and to which in sleep it partially returns so that it may recuperate and drink in a fresh store of psychical energy to support the heavy strain of physical processes in gross matter. Spirit in the middle or Dream-State is called Taijasa or Hiranyagarbha, the Shining Embryon. It is Taijasa, Energy of Light and Hiranya the Shining because in psychical matter luminous energy is the chief characteristic, colour and light predominating over fluid or solid form. It is Garbha, Embryon because out of psychical matter physical life and form are selected and evolved into the final or Waking-State in which Spirit manifests itself as physically visible, audible and sensible form and life, and arrives at last at an appearance of firm stability and solidity in gross matter. Spirit in the Waking- State is called Vaiswanor, the Universal Male, He who informs and supports all forms of energy in this physical universe; for it is a root idea of Hindu philosophy that Spirit is the Male which casts its seed into Matter and Matter the female Energy which receives the seed and with it creates and operates. Spirit and Matter are not different entities, but simply the positive and nega- tive poles in the creative operation of the All-Selfor Universal which evolves in Itself and out of Itself the endless procession of things. All things in the Universe are of one texture and substance and subject to a single law; existence is a fundamental unity Page-213 under a superficial diversity. Each part of the Universe is there- fore a little Universe in itself repeating under different conditions and in different forms the nature and operations of the wider Cosmos. Every individual man must be in little what the Cosmos is in large. Like the Cosmos therefore each individual man has been created by the evolution of Spirit from its pure essence through the three states of Sleep, Dream and Waking. But this evolution has been a downward evolution; he has descended spiritually from pure Spirit into physical matter, from self-existent, self- knowing, self-delighting God into the reasoning animal. In other words each new condition of Spirit as it evolved, has overlaid and obscured its predecessor. In the physical condition, which is the ultimate term of the downward evolution man realises himself as a body moving among and affected by other bodies and he readily understands, masters and employs physical organs, physical processes and physical forces, but he finds it difficult to understand, master or employ psychical organs, psychical processes and psychical forces, – so difficult that he has come to be sceptical of the existence of the psychical and doubt whether he is a soul at all, whether he is not merely an animal body with an exceptional brain-evolution. In his present state any evolution of the psychical force within is attended with extraordinary disturbances of the physical instruments, such as the development of delusions, hallucinations, eccentricities, mania and disease side by side with the development of genius or exceptional mental and spiritual powers in family or individual. Man has not yet discovered his soul; his main energies have been directed to- wards realising and mastering the physical world in which he moves. It is indeed, as some are beginning dimly to perceive, the soul within him which has all along been using the body for its own ends on the physical plane, but the soul has been working from behind the veil, unrealised and unseen. The Waking-State has overlaid and obscured the Dream-State. When he has mastered, as in the course of evolution he must master, the psychical world within him, man will find that there is another and deeper self which is overlaid and obscured by the psychical, – the Sleep-world within or as it is called, the causal self. At present, even when he admits the existence of the soul, he sees Page-214 nothing beyond his psychical self and speaks of soul and spirit as if they were identical. In reality, there are three spirit-states, spirit, soul and body, the sleep-state, the dream-state and the waking-state. Body has overlaid and obscured soul, soul over- lays and obscures spirit, spirit in its turn obscures and overlays the pure self from which and towards which the circle of evolution moves. Creation, then, has been a downward evolution which has for its object to create a body fit for an upward evolution into the region of pure spirit. It is in this direction that the future of human evolution lies. When man has mastered the physical world and its forces, when the earth is his and the fullness there- of, he must turn his efforts towards mastering the world within himself. Instead of allowing the soul to use the body for its own ends, he must learn to master both soul and body and use them consciously for the purposes of the spirit, that Eternal Will and Wisdom which at present operates in secrecy, veiled with dark- ness within darkness and seeming even to be blind and hidden from itself. In the end he will be master of spirit, soul and body, a Jivanmukta using them at will for cosmic purposes or transcending them to feel his identity with the Self who is pure and absolute existence, consciousness and bliss. Page-215
CHAPTER
III IN THEIR inquiry into the spiritual nature of man the ancient thinkers and Yogins discovered that he has not only three spiritual states but three bodies or cases of matter corresponding to the spiritual states. This was in accordance with the nature of phenomenal existence as determined by their inquiries. Spirit and matter, the inner inspiring presence and outward acting substance-energy, are the two necessary terms of this existence. When phenomena are transcended we come to a Self independent of Spirit or Matter; but the moment Self descends into phenomenal existence, it must necessarily create for itself a form or body and a medium in which it manifests and through which it acts. Directly, therefore, the pure transcendent Self evolves one aspect of itself as a definable spiritual condition, it must in the nature of things evolve also a form or body and a medium through and in which Spirit in that condition can manifest itself. Matter, in other words, evolves coevally and coincidentally with Spirit. As soon as the Sleep-State appears, Spirit surrounds itself with matter in that most refined and least palpable condi- tion, to which the name of causal matter may be given, the material seed state, single and elemental in its nature, from which the material universe is evolved. With the evolution of the Dream-State matter also evolves from the causal into the subtle, a condition compound, divisible and capable of definite form but too fine to be perceived by ordinary physical senses. It is only when the Waking-State is evolved that matter concentrates into that gross physical condition which is all that Science has hitherto been able to analyse and investigate. In man also as in the larger Cosmos each spiritual state lives in and uses its corresponding medium of matter and out of that matter shapes for itself its own body or material case. He has Page-216 therefore a causal body for his Sleep-State or causal self, a subtle body for his Dream-State or psychical self and a gross body for his Waking-State or physical self. When he dies, what happens is simply the disintegration of the physical body and the return of the Waking into the Dream-State from which it was originally projected. Death, in the ordinary view, is a delivery from matter; body is destroyed and only spirit or soul remains: but this view is rejected by Hindu philosophy as an error resulting from confused and inadequate knowledge of man’s psychical nature. The Waking-State having disappeared into the Dream. State and no longer existing, the physical body must necessarily disintegrate since it has no longer a soul to not follow that no body is left. Man goes on existing after death in his Dream-State and moves and acts with his subtle body; it is this Dream-State in the subtle body to which the name soul or spirit is popularly given. Even the disintegration of the subtle body and the return of the Dream-State into the Sleep-State from which it was projected, would not imply a release from all restrictions of matter; for the causal body would still remain. It is only when the Sleep-State is also transcended, that pheno- menal existence with its necessary duality of Spirit-Matter is left behind and transcended. Then spirit and body are both dissolved into pure and transcendent self-existence. In examining and analysing these spiritual conditions in their respective bodies the Rishis arrived at a theory of psychical evolution contained within and dependent on the spiritual, evolution already described. The basis of psychical as of spiritual existence is the pure Self called the Paramatman or Supreme Self when it manifests in the Cosmos and the Jivatman or individual Self when it manifests in man. The Self first manifests as Will or as the Rishis preferred to call it Ananda, Bliss, Delight. Ananda is the pure delight of existence and activity and may be identified in one of its aspects with the European Will to live, but it has a double tendency, the Will to be phenomenally and the Will to be transcendentally, the Will to live and the Will to cease from phenomenal life. It is also the Will to know and the Will to enjoy Page-217 and
in each aspect the double tendency is repeated. The Will to know eternal reality
is balanced by the Will to know phenomenal diversity; the Will to absolute
delight by the Will to phenomenal delight. Will must be clearly distinguished
from volition which is only one of the operations of Will acting in phenomena.
The impacts from the external things upon the mind result in sensations and the
reaction of the Will upon these sensations when conveyed to it, take the form of
desires. Volition is simply the impulse of the Will operating through the
intelligence to satisfy or curb the desires created in the medium between itself
and the mind. But the Will itself is antecedent to mind and intelligence and all
the operations of body, mind and intelligence are ultimately operations of
material energy ordained by the Will. Self manifesting as Will or Bliss is,
spiritually, the Sleep-State and operates absolutely and directly in the Causal
body as the creative force behind Nature, but indirectly and under limitations
in the subtle and gross bodies as the cause of all thought, action and feeling. Page-218 sions and reactions with the aid of memory evolves understanding; and by the action of Supra-intelligence on developed mind evolves reason. Mind and Supra-intelligence with reason as an intermediate link are, spiritually the Dream-State and operate absolutely and directly in the subtle body but indirectly, under limitations and as a governing and directing force in the gross body. So far spirit and soul only have been evolved; the evolution of the Will has not manifested itself in physical forms. But in Mind Will has evolved a grand primal sense by which it is able to put itself into conscious relations with external objects; before the development of mind It has been operating by methods of self-contained consciousness through the Supra-intelligence. Mind is in a way the one true and real sense; it is Mind that sees, Mind that hears, Mind that smells, Mind that feels, Mind that acts; but for the purposes of varied experience mind evolves from itself ten potencies, five potencies of knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste by which the Will receives impressions of external objects and five potencies of action, grasp, locomotion, utterance, emission and ecstasy by which it reacts on what it receives; and for each of these potencies it evolves an instrument of potency or sense-organ, making up the ten indriyas with the Mind, which is alone self-acting and introspective, as the eleventh. So far however the Mind acts with rapidity and directness under the comparatively light restrictions of subtle matter in the Dream-State; it is a psychical sense, an instrument of the soul for knowing and dealing with life in the psychical world of subtle matter. Only in the physical evolution of gross matter do the sense- organs receive their consummate development and become of supreme importance; for Will in the Waking-State acts mainly through them and not directly through the Mind. Soul-evolution precedes physical evolution. This theory directly contradicts those conclusions of modern Science which make soul an evolution of physical life and activities, not an all-important and enduring evolution, but merely their temporary efflorescence and dependent on them for its existence. Arguing from the facts of physical evolution which alone it has studied, and excluding all possibilities outside this limit, Science is justified in coming to Page-219 this conclusion, and, as a logical corollary, it is justified in denying the immortality of the soul. For if psychical activities are merely a later and temporary operation of physical life, and dependent on the physical for their own continuance, it follows that when physical life ceases with the arrest of bodily operations by the mysterious agency of death, human personality which is a psychical activity must also come to an end. When the body dies, the soul dies also; it can no more outlast the body than the flower can outlast the plant on which it grows or a house survive the destruction of its foundations. Body is the stem, soul the flower; body the foundation, soul a light and temporary super- structure. To all this Hindu thought gives a direct denial. It claims to have discovered means of investigating psychical life as thoroughly as Science can investigate physical nature and in the light of its investigations it declares that soul exists before body and outlasts it. It is physical life that is an evolution from psychical, and no more than a later and temporary operation of psychical activities. Body is the flower, soul the stem; soul is the foundation, body the fragile and transient superstructure, For the purposes of physical evolution Will evolves a new aspect of itself which is called Prana or vital energy. Prana exists in the physical state also, but there it is simple, undifferentiated, gathered up in mind and not acting as a separate agent. Prana in gross matter is an all-pervading energy which subsists wherever there is physical existence and is the principle agent in maintaining existence and furthering its activities. It is present in what seems inert and inanimate no less than in what is manifestly en- dowed with life. It lives concealed in the metal and the sod, it begins to emerge in the plant, it reveals itself in the animal. Prana is the agent of Will in all physical evolution. It is the mainspring of every hunger-impulse and presides over every process of alimentation. It creates life, it fills it with vital needs, desires, longings; it spurs it to the satisfaction of its needs and desires; and it evolves the means and superintends and conducts the processes of that satisfaction. In the course of evolution it reveals itself with an ever-rounding fulness, vibrates with an ever- swifter and more complex energy, differentiates and enriches its activity with a more splendid opulence until the crescendo reaches Page-220 its highest note in man. In this, the noblest type of physical evolution, Prana manifests itself in five distinct vital powers, to which the names, Prana, Samana, Vyana, Apana and Udana have been given by the ancient writers. Prana, the vital force par excellence has its seat in the upper part of the body and conducts all mental operations, the indrawing and the outdrawing of the breath and the induction of food. Samana, seated centrally in the body, balances, equalises and harmonises the vital operations and is the agent for the assimilation of food. Vyana pervades the whole body; on it depends the circulation of the blood and the distribution of the essential part of the food eaten and digested throughout the body. Apana, situated in the lower part of the trunk, presides over the lower functions, especially over the emission of such parts of the food as are rejected by the body and over procreation; it is intimately connected with the process of decay and death. Udana is the vital power which connects bodily life with the spiritual element in man. As in the purely vital operations, so also in the motional and volitional Prana is still the great agent of Will, and conducts such operations of Mind also as depend on the sense-organs for their instruments. Prana is the regent of the body, ministering to the Mind and rough that great intermediary executing the behests of the concealed sovereign of existence, the Will. As Prana is the first term in the physical evolution of the Self, so Anna, Food or gross visible matter is the second term. "I am food that devours the eater of food," says the Taittiriya Upanishad, and no formula could express more pregnantly and tersely he fundamental law of all phenomenal activity especially on the physical plane. The fundamental principle of vitality is hunger and all gross matter forms the food with which Prana satisfies this, its root-impulse. Hence the universality of the struggle for life, This hungry Prana first needs to build up a body in which it can subsist and in order to do so, it devours external substances so as to provide itself with the requisite material. This body once found, it is continually eating up by the ceaselessness of its vital activity and has to repair its own ravages by continually drawing in external substances to form fresh material for an ever-wasting and ever-renewing frame. Unable to preserve its body for ever Page-221 under the exhausting stress of its own activity, it has to procreate fresh forms which will continue vital activity and for the purpose concentrates itself in a part of its material which it throws out of itself to lead a similar but independent life even after the parent form decays. To satisfy its hunger it is ever evolving fresh means and new potencies for mastery and seizure of its food. Dissatisfied with the poor sustenance a stationary existence can supply, it develops the power and evolves various means of locomotion. To perceive its food more and more thoroughly and rapidly it develops the five senses and evolves the organs of perception through which they can act. To deal successfully with the food perceived, it develops the five potencies of action and evolves the active organs which enable them to work. As a centre of all this sensational and actional activity it evolves the central mind-organ in the brain and as channels of communication between the central and the outer organs it develops a great nerve-system centred in seven plexuses, through which it moves with a ceaseless stir and activity, satisfying hunger, satisfying lust, satisfying desire. At the base of all is the impulse of Life to survive, to prolong itself for the purposes of the Will to live of which it is the creature and the servant. Prana and Anna, Vitality and Physical form are, spiritually, the Waking-State and operate entirely in gross matter, – the last term of that downward evolution which is the descent of Spirit from its original purity of absolute existence into the impurity and multiplicity of matter.
Page-222
CHAPTER IV
Psychical
Evolution UPWARD TO SELF
IN THIS downward psychical evolution, as the downward spiritual
evolution, each succeeding and newly evolved state of the original Self obscures
and overlays that which preceded it, until the last state of the Self appears to
be an inert brute and
inanimate condition of gross physical matter, devoid of e,
mental consciousness or spiritual possibilities. From this state inert and
lifeless matter the upward evolution starts and, as in our spiritual evolution
the course set down for us is to recover, from a firm footing in the
Waking-State mastery over the obscured and latent Dream and Sleep-States and so
return into the presence
of
that pure and unimaginable Self from whom the process
of
our evolution began, so in our psychical evolution we have
to recover out of the inertia of gross physical materiality Life, Mind,
Supra-Intelligence, Will until we know our infinite eternal Self who is one with
the Supreme Self of the Universe. Page-223 of
plant-life as in the animalcule or the jelly-fish. Or if we confine life to
organic growth, we do so arbitrarily, for recent discoveries have shown the
beginning of one element of vital activity, the one which forms the very basis
of consciousness, viz., reception
of and reaction to outward impressions and the phenomena of vigour and
exhaustion, in a substance so apparently inanimate as metal. So obscure is the
whole subject that many are inclined to regard life as a divine mystery,
breathed by God into the world or introduced, as if it were a sort of psychical
meteoric dust, from some other planet. Upanishadic philosophy accounts for the
appearance of Life in a more calm and rational manner. Life, it would say, is in
a sense a divine mystery but no more and no less so than the existence of
inanimate matter. God
did
not breathe it from outside into an inert and created body, neither did it drift
hither from some mystic and superior planet. Nor did it come into sudden being
by some fortuitous chemical process
which marked off suddenly all existences into two rigidly distinct classes,
animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic. All such ideas are, when carefully
examined, irrational and inconsistent with the unity and harmonious development
of the world under fixed and invariable laws. Life is evolved naturally and not
mysteriously out of matter itself, because it is already latent and pre-existent
in matter. Prana is involved in Anna, matter cannot exist without latent life,
and the first step in evolution is the liberation of the latent life out of the
heavy obscuration of matter in its grossest and densest forms. This evolution is
effected by the three Gunas, the triple principle of reception, retention and
reaction to outward impacts; as fresh forms of matter are evolved in which the
power of retaining impacts received in the shape of impressions becomes more and
more declared, consciousness slowly and laboriously develops; as the power of
reacting on external objects becomes more pronounced and varied, organic
life-growth begins its marvellous career; and the two, helping and enriching
each other, evolve complete, well-organised and richly-endowed Life. Page-224 therefore lies not in the farther development of vitality, but in the complete and triumphant liberation of mind out of the overlaying obscuration of the vital energies. Just as Prana is involved in Anna and has to be evolved out of it, so Mind is involved in Prana and has to be evolved out of it. The moment Life begins to liberate itself from the obscuration of gross matter, the first step has been taken towards the evolution of Mind. We see the gradual development of Mind in animal evolution; the highest animal forms below man seem to possess not only memory and individuality, but a considerable degree of understanding and even the rudiments of reason. In man the development is much more rapid and triumphant, but it is by no means, as yet, complete or perfect. Prana still to an immense extent obscures Mind, the gross body dominates the subtle. Mind is dominated by the instruments which Prana has created for it; the body, the nerve system, the sense-organs, the brain hamper and hinder its operations even more than they help them; for the mind is bound with in the narrow circle of their activity and limited by their deficiencies. The continual stir of the vital energies in the brain and throughout the whole system, disturb the Mind, the continual siege of external impressions distract it, the insistent urgency of the senses towards the external world impede the turning of the energies inward; calm and purity, concentration and introspection are rendered so difficult that the majority of men do not attempt them or only compass them spasmodically and imperfectly. Any powerful and unusual development of mind, in its intellectual and spiritual tendencies, is apt to be resented by the vital part of man and to impair or seriously disturb his vital energies and physical health. Along with the intellectual development of the race, there has been a marked deterioration of vital vigour and soundness and of the bodily organs. Moral and spiritual development is continually at war with the needs of our physical life, our hungers, desires, lusts, longings and the insistent urgency of the instincts of self-preservation and self-gratification. It is therefore towards the conquest and control of Prana and the free development of Mind that the energies of man ought in future to be directed. He must arrive at some arrangement of his social and individual life which while satisfying the legitimate Page-225 demands of his body and his vital impulses; will admit of the extreme, and unhampered perfection of his intellectual, moral and spiritual being. He must discover and practise some method of maintaining the harmony and soundness of the vital and bodily, instruments and processes without for a moment allowing the care for them to restrict the widest possible range, the most bold and powerful exercise and the most intense and fiery energisms of which the higher principle in his being is capable. He must learn how to transcend the limitations and errors of the physical senses and train his mind to act even in the physical body with the rapidity, directness and unlimited range proper to a psychical organ whose function is to operate in subtle as well as in gross matter. To see where the physical eye is blind, to hear where the physical ear is deaf, to feel where the physical sense is callous, to understand thoughts unexpressed, are legitimate functions of the mind; but they must be exercised, not as a rare power or in moments of supreme excitation, but as a regular and consciously- willed operation, the processes of which have been mastered and known. Reason, at present fallible, imperfect and enslaved to desire and prejudice, must be trained into its highest possibilities of clarity, sanity and calm energy. The Mind must be tranquillised and purified by control of the senses and the five Pranas, and trained to turn itself wholly inward, excluding at will all outward impressions, so that Man may become master of the inner world no less than of the outer, a conscious soul using the body and no longer a body governed by a self-concealing and self-guiding psychical entity. We think we have done wonders in the way of mental evolution; in reality we have made no more than a feeble beginning. The infinite possibilities of that evolution still lie unexplored in front. As Mind is involved in Prana, so is Supra-Intelligence involved and latent in all the operations of Mind. With the evolution of the Mind, some rudimentary beginnings have been unconsciously made towards the liberation of this higher and far grander force. As the mental development foreshadowed above proceeds to its goal, man will begin to evolve and realise himself as a mighty and infinite Intelligence, not limited by sense-perception or the laborious and clumsy processes of the reason, but Page-226 capable
of intuitive and infinite perception. And when the evolution
of Mind is complete and the evolution of Supra-Intelligence proceeds,
the liberation of the Will involved in its operations will lead
man to the highest evolution of all when he realises himself as
a potent and scient Will, master of creation and not its slave, whose infinite
delight in its own existence is lifted far beyond the
thraldom of pain and pleasure and uses them with as unalloyed a
pleasure as the poet
when he weaves joy and sorrow, delight and lain
and love and fear and horror into one perfect and pleasurable
masterpiece or the painter when he mixes his colours and blends
light and shade to create a wedded harmony of form and hue.
This state of unfettered Will and infinite Delight once Page-227
CHAPTER
VII THE evolution of the Cosmos has not only spiritual and psychical aspects; it has also from the moment of its inception a material element. Spirit exists from the beginning and was before any beginning, infinite and sempiternal; but Matter also is an eternal entity. In the Parabrahman, the absolute inconceivable Self, Spirit and Matter are one and undifferentiated, but the moment evolution begins Spirit and Matter manifest equally and coevally. We have seen that the first spiritual evolution from the pure self-existent Atman is Prajna of the Sleep-State, Eternal Wisdom, a supporting spiritual presence which contains in itself the whole course of cosmic evolution even as a single seed contains in itself the complete banyan-tree with all its gigantic progeny. We have seen that corresponding to this Eternal Wisdom, there is a first psychic evolution, Ananda or Will, an inspiring psychical force in man and the Cosmos which makes all the workings of Nature possible. Spirit however, even when operating as Will, is not a working force in the sense that it itself carries on the operations of Nature; it is an inspiring, impelling force, whose function is to set in motion a powerful material energy of the Self; and it is this material energy which under the inspiration of Will and at the bidding of Prajna sets about the evolution of the Cosmos. Self in its dealing with the Cosmos is a dual entity, underlying spiritual presence and superficially active material energy, or as they are called in the terminology of the Sankhya philosophy, Purusha and Prakriti; – Purusha, that which lies concealed in the Vast of universal existence, Prakriti, active or operative energy thrown forward from the concealed spiritual source. The whole of evolution, spiritual, psychical, material, is the result of Purusha and Prakriti acting upon each other; the three evolutions are really one, coincident and coeval, because throughout it is one Reality that is manifesting and not three. It is Self manifesting as spirit, Self manifesting as soul, Page-228 If manifesting as matter or body. These three manifestations are coincident in Time and Space and each condition of phenomena is a triple state with Spirit and Matter for its extreme terms and Soul for its middle. In the evolution of the spirit-states Purusha determines itself so as to inform and support the progressive manifestations of Self as soul and body; in the evolution the psychic states Prakriti worked on by Purusha creates for the manifestations of Self as spirit psychic sheaths or coverings which will at the same time inform and support the manifestation of Self as matter; in the evolution of the causal, subtle and gross bodies Prakriti shapes itself so as to create the material out of which the psychical coverings of Self as spirit may be made and the medium in which the Self as soul may operate. The three evolutions are dependent on each other, and that it is really one entity and not three which is evolving, is shown by the fact that while in the first stage of the downward evolution and the last f the upward Matter seems so refined as to appear identical with Spirit, in the last of the downward and first of the upward Spirit seems so densified as to appear identical with Matter. This possibility of evolution from and involution into each other would not be conceivable if they were not in essence one entity; and we lay legitimately deduce from the oneness of such diverse phenomena that they are no more than phenomena, merely apparent changes in one unchanging reality. In the first stage of evolution Matter appears as an aspect or shadow of Spirit, and like Spirit it is infinite, unanalysable, undifferentiated. Just as Spirit then has only three positive attributes, infinite and undefinable existence, consciousness and bliss, so original Matter has only three positive attributes, infinite and undefinable Time, Space and Causality - or, as Hindu thought phrases it, Condition. For the essence of Condition being change from one state to another, and each change standing in the relation of cause or origin to the one that follows it, Condition and causality become convertible terms. From this indefinable noumenal condition of Prakriti, the Self forms for its uses matter in its most refined and simple form, undifferentiated and undeveloped, but pregnant with the whole of material evolution. The causal state is called by the Sankhyas Pradhana, the first state or Page-229 arrangement of matter and its essential principle. The relation of Spirit and Matter in this causal seed-state is admirably expressed in the Puranic image of Vishnu, the eternal Purusha, asleep on the waveless causal ocean with the endless coils of the snake Ananta, the 1nfinite, for his couch. The sea of causal matter is then motionless and it is only when Vishnu awakes, the snake Ananta stirs and the first ever-widening ripples are created on the surface of the waters that the actual evolution of matter has begun. The first ripple or vibration in causal matter creates a new and exceedingly fine and pervasive condition of matter called Akasha or Ether; more complex motion evolves out of Ether a somewhat inetnser condition which is called Vayu, Air; and so by ever more complex motion with increasing intensity of condition for result, yet three other matter-states are successively developed, Agni or Fire, Apah or Water and Prithvi or Earth. These are the five tanmātras or subtle elements of Sankhya philosophy by the combination of which subtle forms in subtle matter are built. Here it is necessary to enter a caution against possible misunderstandings to which the peculiar nomenclature used by the Rishis and the common rendering of tanmātra and bhūta by the English word elements may very easily give rise. When we speak of elements in English in a scientific sense, we always imply elemental substances, those substances which when analysed by chemical processes, cannot be resolved into substances simpler than themselves. But when Hindu philosophy speaks of the five elements, it is not dealing with substances at all but with elemental states or conditions of matter, which are not perceptible or analysable by chemical inquiry but underlie substances and forms as basic principles of material formation. The old thinkers accepted the atomic theory of the formation of objects and substances but they did not care to carry the theory farther and inquire by what particular combinations of atoms this or that substance came into being or by what variations and developments in detail bodies animate or inanimate came to be what they are. This did not seem to them to be an inquiry of the first importance; they were content with laying down some main principles of material evolution and there they left the matter. But they were anxious to resolve not substances into their original atoms Page-230 but matter into its original condition and discover its relations to the psychical and spiritual life of man. They saw that perpetual motion involving perpetual change was the fundamental characteristic of matter and that each new motion was attended by a new condition which stood to the immediately preceding condition in the relation of effect to cause or at least of a new birth to the matrix in which it had been enembryoed. Behind the solid condition of matter, they found a condition less dense which was t the basis of all fluid forms; behind the fluid condition another still less dense which was at the basis of all igneous or luminous forms behind the igneous, yet another and finer which was at the basis of all aerial or gaseous forms; and last of all one finest and most pervasive condition of all which they called Akasha or Ether. Ether was they found, the primary substance out of which all this visible Universe is evolved and beyond ether they were unable to go without matter losing all the characteristics associated with it in the physical world and lapsing into a quite different substance of which the forms and motions were much more vague, subtle, elastic and volatile than any of which the physical world is aware. This new world of matter they called subtle matter and analysed the subtle as they had analysed the gross until by a similar procession from denser to subtler they came to a finest condition of all which they described as subtle ether. Out of this subtle ether a whole world of subtle forms and energies are evolved which constitute psychical existence. Beyond subtle ether matter lost its subtle characteristics and lapsed into a new kind which they could not analyse but which seemed to be the matrix out of which all material evolution proceeded. This they termed causal matter. In the course of this analysis they could not help perceiving that consciousness in each world of matter assumed a different form and acted in a different way corresponding to the characteristics of the matter in which it moved. In its operations in gross matter the forms it assumed were more firm, solid and durable but at the same time more slow, difficult and hampered, f, just as are the motions and acts of a man in his waking state as compared with what he does in his dreams. In its operations in subtle matter the form and consciousness assumed were freer Page-231
and more rapid, but more volatile, elastic and swiftly mutable, as are the motions and acts of a man in a dreaming state compared to the activities of his waking condition. To consciousness acting on gross matter they gave therefore the name of the Waking- State, to consciousness acting on subtle matter the name of the Dream-State. In causal matter they found that consciousness took the shape merely of the pure sense of blissful existence; they could discover no other distinguishing sensation. This therefore they called the Sleep-State. They farther discovered that the various faculties and functions of man belonged properly some to one, some to another of the three states of consciousness and its corresponding state of matter. His vital and physical functions operated only in gross matter, and they determined accordingly that his physical life was the result of consciousness working in the Waking-State on gross matter. His mental and intuitional processes were found to operate freely and perfectly in subtle matter, but in gross matter with a hampered and imperfect activity; they considered therefore that man’s mental life belonged properly to the Dream-State and only worked indirectly and under serious limitations in the Waking-State. They determined accordingly that mental life must be the result of consciousness working in the Dream-State on subtle matter. There remained the fundamental energy of consciousness, Will-to-be or shaping Delight of existence this, they perceived, was free and pure in causal matter, put to work if consciously, yet through a medium and under limitations in subtle matter, in hampered and half effectual fashion when the subtle self acted through the gross, and subconsciously only in gross matter. They considered therefore that man’s causal faculty or spiritual life belonged properly to the Sleep-State and worked indirectly and through less and less easy mediums in the Dream and Waking-States; and accordingly determined that it must be the result of Consciousness working in the Sleep-State on causal matter. The whole of creation amounted therefore to a natural outcome from the mutual relations of Spirit and Matter; these two they regarded as two terms, - call them forces, energies, substances, or what you will, - of phenomenal existence; and psychical life only as one result of their interaction. They refused however to accept any dualism Page-232 in their cosmogony and, as has been pointed out, regarded Spirit and Matter as essentially one; and their difference as no more than an apparent duality in one real entity. This one entity is not analysable or intellectually knowable, yet it is alone the real, immutable and sempiternal Self of things. It will be clear even from this brief and condensed statement the Vedic analysis of existence that the elements of the Upanishad are not the elementary substances of modern chemistry but five general states of matter to which all its actual or substantial manifestations belong. It will also be clear that the names if the five elements have a conventional, not a literal value, but may be as well to indicate why these particular names have been chosen. The first and original state of subtle matter is the pure ethereal of which the main characteristics are extreme tenuity and pervasiveness and the one sensible property, sound. Sound, according to the Vedic inquirers, is the first evolved property of material substance; it precedes form and has the power both to create it and to destroy it. Looking around them in the physical universe for a substance with these characteristics, they found it in Akasha or Vyoma (sky), implying not our terrestrial atmosphere but that which is both beyond it and pervades it, - the fine pervasive connecting substance in which, as it were, the whole universe floats. They therefore gave this name, Akasha to the ethereal condition of matter. The next matter-condition evolved from Ether and moving in it, was the pure aerial or gaseous. Here to pervasiveness was added a new potency of sensible and varied motion bringing with, as increased complexity of motion necessarily must do, increased differentiation and complexity of substance. All the variety and evolutions of gaseous matter with their peculiar activities, functions and combinations have this second state or power of matter as their substratum; it is the basis also of that universal Prana or vital energy, starting from action, retention and reaction and culminating in organised consciousness, which we have seen to be so all-important an agent in the Vedic theory of the Cosmos. In this second power of matter a new property of material substance is evolved, touch or contact, which was not fully developed in pure ether owing to its extreme tenuity and primarily Page-233 simplicity of substance. Seeking for a physical substance gaseous in nature, sensible by sound and contact, but without form and characterised chiefly by varied motion and an imperfect pervasiveness, the Rishis found it in Vayu, Wind or Air. Vayu therefore is the conventional term for the second condition of matter.
Evolved out of the pure gaseous state and moving in it is the third or
pure igneous condition of matter, which is also called Tejah, light and heat
energy. In the igneous stage pervasiveness becomes still less subtle, sensible
motion no longer the paramount characteristic, but energy, especially formative
energy attains full development and creation and destruction, formation and
new-formation are at last in readiness. In addition to sound and contact matter
has now evolved a third property, form, which could not be developed in pure Air
owing to its insufficient density and the elusive vagueness and volatility of
gaseous manifestations. The third power of matter is at the basis of all
phenomena of light and heat and Prana by its aid so develops that birth and
growth now become possible; for light and heat are the necessary conditions of
animate life-development and in their absence we have the phenomenon of death or
inert and inanimate existence: when the energy of light and heat departs from a
man, says the Upanishad, then it is that Prana, the vital energy, retires into
mind, his subtle or psychical part, and withdraws from the physical frame. The
physical substance which seemed to the Rishis to typify the igneous state was
Fire; for it is sensible by sound, contact and form and, less pervasive than
air, is distinguished by the utmost energy of light and heat. Fire therefore is
the conventional or symbolic name of the third power of matter. Page-234 fixed, perceptible by sound, contact, form and taste, has given a symbolic name to the fourth condition of matter.
The solid state is the last to develop in this progression from tenuity
to
density, for in this state pervasiveness reaches its lowest expression and
fixity predominates. It is the substratum of solid
forms and bodies and the last necessity for the development of life; for it
provides life with a fixed form or body in which
can endure and work itself out and which it can develop into organism. The last
new property of matter evolved in the solid state is
odour; and since earth is the typical solid substance, containing
all the five properties sound, contact, form, taste, and smell, Earth is the
conventional name selected for the fifth and final power of matter. Page-235
CHAPTER
VIII WE ARE now in a position to consider what may be the precise meaning of the Upanishad when it says that in It Matariswan ordereth the waters. Shankara takes āpah in a somewhat unusual and peculiar sense and interprets, "Air orders or arranges actions"; in other words, all the activity in the Cosmos is dependent upon the aerial or gaseous element in matter which enters into and supports all objects and, as Prana, differentiates and determines their proper functions. Prana, as we have seen, is the great vital energy breathing and circulating through all existence whose activity is the principal instrument of Will in the evolution of the Universe and whose mediation is necessary for all the operations of mind and body in gross matter. In psychic life also Prana is inherent in mind and supports those activities of subtle matter which are necessary for psychic existence. The intimate connection between Prana and vital activity may be best illustrated in its most obvious and fundamental function in the living organism, the regulation of breathing. So important is this function that Breath and Prana are generally identified; the usual signification of the word Prana is, indeed, breath and the five differentiated vital energies supporting the human frame are called the five breaths. So important is it, that even the searching analysis of modern science has not been able to get behind it and it is held as an incontrovertible fact that the maintenance of respiration is necessary to the maintenance of life. In reality, this is not so. Ordinarily, of course, the regular inhalation of oxygen into the system and exhalation of corrupted breath out of it, is so necessary to the body that an abrupt interruption of the process, if continued for two minutes will result in death by suffocation. But this is merely due to a persistent vital habit of the body. It needs only a careful training in the regulation of the breath to master this habit and make respiration subservient to the will. Anyone who has for a long time practised this art of. breath- Page-236 regulation or
Pranayama can suspend inhalation and exhalation nr
many minutes
and some not only for minutes but for hours together
without injury to the system or the suspension of bodily life;
for internal respiration and the continuance of the vital activities within
the body still maintain the functions necessary to life. Even the
internal respiration may be stopped and the vital activities
entirely
suspended without subjecting the body to the process of death and
disintegration. The body may be kept intact for
days, months
and years while all the functions of breath and vitality
are suspended, until the Will in its psychical sheaths chooses to
resume its interrupted communications with the world if
gross matter
and recommence physical life at the precise point which
it
was discontinued. And this is possible because Prana,
the vital energy, instead of being allowed to circulate through the
system under the necessary conditions of organic
physical activity, can be gathered up into the mind-organ and from there
in its simple undifferentiated form support and hold together the physical case. Page-237 is, as has been said, the stillness of the body, which implies the suspension of the five indriyas or potencies of action, grasp, locomotion, utterance, emission and physical ecstasy. It is a significant fact that the habit of suspending these indriyas is attended by an extraordinary activity of the five indriyas of knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, and an immense heightening of mental power and energy. In its higher stages this increase of power intensifies into clairvoyance, clairaudience, the power of reading other minds, and knowing actions distant in space and, time, conscious telepathy and other psychical powers. The reason for this development is to be found in the habit of gather- ing Prana or vitality into the mind-organ. Ordinarily the psychical life is overlaid and hampered by the physical life, the activity of Prana in the physical body. As soon as this activity becomes even partially quiescent, the gross physical obstruction of Anna and Prana is rarefied and mind becomes more self-luminous, shining out through the clouds that concealed it; vital energy is not only placed mainly at the service of the mind as in the concentration of the poet and the thinker, but is so much subtilised by the effect of Pranayama that the mind can operate far more vigorously and rapidly than in ordinary conditions. For mind operates freely and naturally in subtle matter only and the subtler the matter, the freer the workings of the mind. At an intenser stage of Yogic exercise all the vital functions are stilled and Prana entirely withdrawn from bodily functions into mind which can then retire into the subtle world and operate with perfect freedom and detachment from physical matter. Here again we see that just as Prana, differentiated and working physically, was the basis of all physical activity, so Prana, intermediate and working psycho-physically is at the basis of all mental activity, and Prana, pure and working psychically is at the basis of all psychical activity. The third outstanding fact of Yoga is that while in its earlier processes it stimulates mental activity, in its later stages it over- passes mental activity. At first the mind drawn inward from active reactions to external impacts, is able to perfect its passive reactions or power of reception and its internal reactions or powers of retention and combination. Next it is drawn inward from Page-238 external phenomena altogether and becomes aware of the internal processes and finally succeeds in concentrating entirely within itself. This is followed by the entire quieting of the subtle or psychical or sense-potencies followed by the entire quiescence mind itself. The reception of psychical impacts and the ions of subtle thought-matter are suspended; mind concentrate on a single thought and finally thought it self is surmounted and the Supra-Intelligence is potent, free and active. It is at this that Yoga develops powers which are so unlimited as to appear like omnipotence. The true Yogin, however, does not linger in this stage which is still within the confines of psychical existence, but withdraws the ill beyond Supra-Intelligence entirely into itself. The moment the Will passes out of subtle matter, activity ceases. Will has then three courses open to it; either to realise itself as the eternal Sakshi or witness and behold the vision of the Universe as a phenomenon within itself which it but does not enact; or to disappear into the Sunya Brahman, Supreme Nothingness, the great Void of unconscious mere existence with which the Parabrahman is veiled; or to return into elf and, liberated from even the vision of phenomena, exist own infinity of pure consciousness and supreme bliss. If we follow Prana through this process of Yogic liberation, we shall find that Prana ends where activity ceases. For Prana is a material entity arising out of the aerial state of subtle matter and as soon as that state is overpassed, Prana is impossible. Throughout there is this close identification of Prana with activity. It may well be said, therefore, that Matariswan is that which arranges actions. Matariswan is the philosophical expression for Vayu, the aerial principle. It means that which moves in the mother or matrix and the word implies the three main characteristics of the aerial element. It is evolved directly out of ether, the common matrix, which is therefore its own mother and ultimately the mother of all elements, forces, substances, objects; its predominant characteristic is motion, and this characteristic of motion operates in the matrix, ether. Moving in ether, developing, com- bing, it creates the substances out of which sun and nebula and planet are made; it evolves fire and water and atmosphere, Page-239
earth, stone and metal, plant, fish, bird and beast. Moving in ether, acting and
functioning through its energy Prana, it determines the nature, motions, powers,
activities of all those infinite forms which it has created. By the combinations
and operations of this aerial element the sun is built up, fire is struck forth,
clouds are formed, a molten globe cools and solidifies into earth. By the energy
of the aerial element the sun gives light and heat, fire burns, clouds give
rain, earth revolves. Not only all animate, but all inanimate existence owes its
life and various activity to Matariswan and its energy, Prana. Page-240 CHAPTER IX
Sprit
and Matter The materialistic theory of cosmic origins has a great superficial plausibility of its own and it is popular with scientists because analytical Science knows thoroughly the evolutions of matter and does not know thoroughly the evolutions of soul and spirit is therefore inevitably led to explain what it knows imperfectly or not at all by what it does know and understand. The materialistic tendency is immensely assisted by the universal interdependence of Spirit, Soul and Matter. Every spiritual and physical activity involves a material operation and this Science has clearly seen. It is natural therefore for the Scientist to argue that the material operation is the cause of the spiritual and psy- Page-241 chical
activity, nay, that the material operation is the activity and spirit and soul
do not exist, but are essentially matter. It is equally true that every material
operation involves a spiritual and psychical activity, but this Science has not
yet seen. When therefore idealistic philosophies argue in precisely the opposite
sense and urge that the spiritual activity is the cause of the material
operation, nay, that the spiritual activity is the material operation and matter
does not exist but is essentially spirit, it is natural for Science to brush
aside the argument as metaphysical, mystical and irrational. I argue from the
firm basis of well-tested certainties, thinks the Scientist, my opponent from
mere ideas the truth of which cannot be demonstrated by definite evidence or
actual experiment. Page-242 self
of things, Buddhism, still more trenchant, does away with reality
of Purusha and Prakriti altogether and regards Cosmic Evolution
as a cosmic illusion. Page-243 something we cannot recognise, an inactive energy, an immaterial substance. Without motion, Time, Space, Causality, as things in themselves, cease to be. We are face to face with blank void and nothingness - or else, since this is unimaginable and impossible, we must suppose something which cannot cease to be, an absolute Infinity undivided by Space or Time, an absolute Immutability unconditioned by cause and effect, an absolute Stillness unaffected by the illusive mobilities of Energy, an absolute Spirit ultimately real behind the phenomenon of substance.
If we do not accept this transcendental reality, we must suppose that an
eternal Prakriti with eternal motion, mutability, multiplicity
as its characteristics is the alpha and omega of
existence.
But a consideration of the Universe does not justify our resting secure in that
hypothesis. In this eternal motion there is something perpetually stable, in
this eternal mutability a sum and reality which is immutable; in this eternal
multiplicity an initial, persistent and final Unity. Eternal motion in itself
would lead to nothing but eternal chaos and confusion. We know that the Cosmos
is made up of an infinite number of motions simultaneously occupying the same
Space and simultaneously existent in the same substance; but the result is not
clash or confusion, but harmony. In other words, the condition of this unending
motion is an eternal stability. Everywhere we see a variety of motions resulting
in a harmonious balance, in the orbits of the revolving planets round the moving
sun woven into one solar system we have a striking instance out of myriads of
this law which governs every object and every organism. There is therefore not
only the mobile Prakriti, but something else which is eternally stable. Page-244
permanent than the man, the community than the class, the race than the
community, mankind than the race; and so it is with existences. The parts
change, the whole persists. And it is well known that while matter goes through
infinite changes of from, its sum never changes; unincreasing it develops,
undiminishing it disintegrates. But not only is the sum of things immutable, the
laws of their development are immutable; phenomena vary but the law governing
them remains the same, and for this reason that
the nature of things is immutable. Whatever the variety
of forms, the thing in itself preserves its characteristics and remains unchanged.
Electricity works in various shapes and in many
activities, but it is always electricity preserving its true characteristics
whatever work it may do or whatever body it may wear
and
always working
and changing under the fixed laws of its
being which cannot
change. Electricity again is only one form and
function of the igneous element which takes many forms, but in all of them
preserves its true characteristics and its own law of work. We see therefore
that the parts are impermanent, the
whole
permanent; forms of things change, the reality is immutable.
The condition of this unending mutability and impermanence
is
an eternal immutability and permanence. There is therefore
not only this mutable Prakriti, but something else lich is eternally immutable. Page-245 bottom fact of the universe; all complexities and varieties resolve themselves into a precedent simplicity, and all simplicities into an original Unity. There is, therefore not only this ever-multiplying Prakriti, but something else which is eternally One. In this mobile, mutable, multitudinous Prakriti, there is then a persistent element which is stable, immutable and one. We have arrived again at that One infinitely Immutable, Immobile Sum and Reality of Things which is Parabrahman. Materialistic Analysis insists, however, that the eternal unity, immutability and immobility supporting and making possible the eternal multiplicity, mutability and motion are themselves characteristics of Eternal Matter. They are the two opposing lines of force whose action and reaction preserve the equibalance of cosmic existence, but the eternal reality in which they act is not spiritual but material. For material energy working in material substance is quite enough to explain all the evolutions of Nature and these in themselves make Eternal Matter. Hindu thought, however, has always been unable to accept this conclusion because its analysis of cosmic existence has convinced it that substance and energy are not things in themselves, but merely phenomena. Substance increases with density until it reaches its highest expression in solid physical matter; but as it is analysed and resolved nearer and nearer to its origin, its density becomes less and less, its tenuity increases, it becomes more and more unsubstantial, until, on the farther brink of causal matter, it disappears into something which is not substance. Moreover, when examined it appears that substance is really another term for energy; the conditions of density and tenuity which constitute material substance, correspond with the conditions of motional intensity and vagueness which constitute material energy. As, therefore, matter is resolved nearer and nearer, to its origins, energy, like substance, becomes less and less intense, its vagueness increases until it comes to a standstill or rather dissipates in something which is not energy. The conclusion is irresistible that substance and energy are merely a single phenomenon with a double aspect, and that in the origin of things this phenomenon, to which we may give the name of Matter, does not exist. The question remains, into what do substance Page-246 and energy disappear? out of what were they born? We are confronted again with the necessity of choosing between the unimaginable impossibility of blank void and nothingness, for which we have no warrant in reason or experience, or the One, immutable, Immobile, Infinite and Eternal Reality which is Parabrahman. This Supreme Entity is not Matter, we have seen. But it may be argued that it cannot be certainly called Spirit, since it is so absolute an entity as to be indefinable except by negatives. Vedanta concedes this caution, asserting only that Parabrahman is not a negative entity, but an eternal and positive Reality, defined by negatives simply because it is not expressible to the finite intellect, and containing in itself the unity of Spirit Matter, which is neither material nor spiritual. One argument remains open to material analysis. Granted Parabrahman as the reality of things, yet phenomenal existence it self is purely material and there is no need to call in the assistance of any other and different entity. For material energy in material substance is sufficient to explain all phenomena. Hindu thought holds, however, that it is not sufficient to explain the late phenomena of Consciousness. At the beginning of material evolution Matter is in itself inanimate, consciousness, to all appearance, non-existent. How and whence then did it ear? By the interaction of the three guņas inherent in Prakriti reception, reaction, retention. But the interaction of the three guņas did not create Consciousness, they only liberated it from dense obscuration of gross matter. For if consciousness were involved in Matter, it could never be evolved from it. For be evolved from matter as an entirely new birth, it must be either some already existent material substance in a new form – say, some kind of gas or electricity, or it must be a new substance formed by the union of two or more substances, just as water is formed out of hydrogen and oxygen. No such gas or electricity has been discovered, no such new substance exists. Indeed the evolution of a mighty, reasoning, aspiring, conquering, irrepressible Consciousness, capable of something like omnipotence and omniscience, out of mere material gases and chemical substance is a paradox so hardy, so colossally and impossibly audacious that mankind has rightly refused to accept Page-247 it even when advanced with the prestige of Science and her triumphant analysis and the almost irresistible authority of her ablest exponents to support the absurdity. Christian theology was inconsistent enough when it degraded man to the dust as a worm and clod, yet declared him capable of divinity by the easy process of belief in an irrational dogma; but the materialistic paradox, which lodges no hidden angel in the flesh, is even more startling, more naked, more inexorably irrational. Man, says materialistic Science, is an utterly insignificant unit in the universe; the infinitesimal creature of a day, he lives his short span of life and is then decomposed into the gases out of which he was made. He derives his mind, body and moral nature from his brother the chimpanzee and his father the gorilla. In his organism he is merely a mass of animalculae which belong individually to the lowest stage of animal life; but by combining into a republic with the cells of the brain as a sort of despotic senate or council, these undeveloped forms of life have been able to master the world. What has not this republic of animalculae, this Rome of protoplasms, been able to effect? It has analysed the elements; it has weighed the suns and measured the orbits of the stars; it has written the dramas of Shakespeare, the epics of Valmikie and Homer and Vyasa, the philosophies of Kant and Shankara; it -has harnessed the forces of Nature to do its bidding; it has understood existence and grasped the conception of infinity. There is something fascinatingly romantic and interesting in the conception and it is not surprising that the human intellect should have been captured for a while by its cheerful audacity. But how long can unreason prevail? Even if we regard man as a limited being and take what the race has done for the utmost measure of what the individual can do, the disproportion between the results achieved and the means supplied by this theory is too great to be overlooked. It was inevitable that .the religions formerly crushed down and almost smothered by the discoveries of Science, - even those creeds most philosophically insufficient and crude, - should be raising their heads and showing an unexpected vitality. Science prevailed for a time over religion by exposing the irrationalities and prejudices which had over- grown and incrusted spiritual truth. But when it sought to re- Page-248 place
them
by a more astounding irrationality than any religion
had been guilty of and began to contract its own hard crust of .as and
prejudices, it exposed itself to an inevitable reaction. Mankind for a time
believed because it was incredible at the biding of the theologians who ruled
reason out of court; the experiment is not likely to be repeated for long on the
authority of scientists who profess to make reason their judge. Page-249 consciousness is not a function or evolution of causal matter, but other and different from it. It is clear therefore that from the first appearance of matter, consciousness operates coevally with it, but is not dependent on it for its origin. Page-250
CHAPTER
X Page-251 itself physically at first in mere sense-pleasure and the clinging to life, it develops psychically in the emotions of love and joy, and culminates spiritually in the delight of our psychical personality in contact with or entering into the impersonal existence of our real and infinite Self. These three characteristics constitute the conception of Spirit, which by throwing its will-to-be, its power of awareness and its delight in existence into the medium of Matter sets evolution going. This is what Sankhya philosophy means when it says that Purusha imparts activity to Prakriti by its mere presence or propinquity without thereby becoming itself active. Spirit remains what it essentially is, pure existence, consciousness and delight; it is Prakriti that vibrating to the touch of this conscious delight in existence, begins to act, to move, change and evolve. The limitations of consciousness, the phenomena of consciousness are merely phenomenal results of the vibrations of Prakriti in Consciousness and not changes in Spirit itself. Purusha is the eternally immutable, immobile and singly real condition of universal Evolution; Prakriti in action is its eternal motion, mutability, multiplicity. Sankhya does not go beyond this conclusion which it finds sufficient for its purposes; it considers Purusha and Prakriti to be both ultimate eternal entities in the Supreme Reality and their propinquity a satisfactory explanation of the Universe. Vedic philosophy, going deeper, was driven both by philosophical reasoning and the ultimate experience of Yoga to the conception of the one Supreme Entity transcending the distinction between Spirit and Matter, Purusha. and Prakriti, which are merely its noumenal self-expressions. Nor could Vedanta be satisfied with mere propinquity as a sufficient explanation of the manner in which immutability, stability and unity continually interpenetrate, surround and govern the infinite motion, mutability and multiplicity of Matter, still less of the manner in which Purusha identifies itself with the merely phenomenal changes of conscious- ness. But if Spirit informs, conditions and governs Matter, just as energy informs, conditions and governs substance, it would be possible for it to impress its own nature on the motions of Prakriti at every point of its evolutions without itself moving and Page-252 acting. And if Spirit and Matter are not entirely different and separate entities but various expressions of a single supreme Ens, Matter a noumenon of apparent Self phenomenally evolving as substance and energy, Spirit, a sense of Its real self supporting and therefore pervading and conditioning phenomena, it is then not only possible but inevitable that Spirit should be so constantly and closely aware of the perpetual activity of Matter as to attribute that activity to itself. In this interpretation of the Universe Vedanta consummated its analysis. Time, Space, Condition reposing in the sense of actual Infinity and Immutability, – this is Prakriti, Origin-of-Matter working in Spirit; and all philosophic analysis of existence must inevitably culminate in this noumenon; for without it the Universe as it is, cannot be conceived; it is the very condition of thought and knowledge; it is the ultimate fact of cosmic existence. The triune noumenon of Time, Space, Condition or, in one word, Prakriti, immediately generates the noumenon of motion characterised by change and relation of parts and we have at once motion, mutability, multiplicity operating in the Infinite and Immutable. The triune noumenon of motion, mutability, multiplicity or in one word, Energy generates the noumenon of substance moving, changing, relatively shifting in the Infinity and Immutability of Spirit. The noumenon of energy-substance constitutes Pradhana, original matter, and nothing farther is needed for the evolution of the cosmos. Prakriti with its evolution Pradhana is the material cause of the Universe; the presence of Spirit containing, supporting and pervading Prakriti and its evolutions is the efficient cause of the Universe. Noumenon leads naturally to phenomenon. Consciousness and Existence in the Eternal Self being one, every noumenon of Consciousness must translate itself into an existence of which the Consciousness is aware. The conception of Time, Space, Condi- tion creates the appearance of Time, Space, Condition by that fundamental power of Consciousness which shows itself physically as formation, psychically as imagination and spiritually as Avidya, the power of conceiving what is not-Self. The conception of motion creates the appearance of energy at work. The Page-253 conception of motion-intensity as substance creates the appearance of Matter worked upon. All Matter is phenomenal; all evolution the result of Avidya. Spirit is not phenomenal, but owing to its continual immanency in Matter, attributes phenomenal existence to itself, so creating the phenomenon of soul or spirit working in matter. Thus Cosmos originates. It will be seen that in this explanation of the Universe Spirit is taken as nearer to the Supreme Reality of things than Matter; it is not absolutely the real Self of things, but it is the noumenon or sense of the real Self persisting throughout all the obscurations of Avidya. This view is triply necessitated by the truths of elemental, psychical and spiritual evolution. When we consider the relations of Spirit to elemental Matter, we see that as the obscuration of Matter thickens, Spirit becomes more and more concealed until, in gross inanimate Matter, it is utterly covered in; but as the obscuration of Matter lessens, Spirit is more and more liberated until in the origin of things Matter seems a mere appearance in the reality of Spirit. It is therefore through Spirit and not through Matter that we are likely to get nearest to the Supreme Reality. So too, when we study our psychical evolution and follow Consciousness in its progressive liberation until it becomes Will in causal matter, we find it characterised in this last stage, by the Will to be, the Will to know, the Will to enjoy; and when we get behind Will and Matter to our pure unconditioned Self, we still envisage Consciousness as pure existence, awareness and bliss. But our pure unconditioned Self is, we have seen, the Reality of Things unaffected by Prakriti or its phenomena. We may therefore safely conclude that so far as the Supreme Reality can be positively envisaged by us in its purity, it is envisaged as existence, awareness, bliss, - in terms of Spirit and not of Matter. Lastly when we analyse the evolution of Purusha in its three states, we find that it consists in the reflection of Prakriti as if by the Spirit. Spirit follows Prakriti through her three stages of material evolution, informing and sustaining them and mirrors their changes in itself as the changes of the sky may be mirrored in a clear and motionless pool; but the changes of the sky are not changes in the water. Purusha is immutable, immo- Page-254 bile and One, just as the Supreme Reality is immutable, immobile and One. Purusha or Spirit is therefore the noumenon of the true Self, Prakriti the noumenon of not-Self or apparent Self. It is in this true Self of Parabrahman that the evolutions of apparent Self take place. In It Matariswan ordereth the waters. Page-255 CHAPTER XI
Page-256 Director of cosmical evolution in matter. The Will does not move but causes and conditions the infinitely complex cosmic motions; the Will does not act, but causes and determines actions; the Will does not divide or multiply itself, but plays with the multiplicity of cosmic forms and energies and impresses or mirrors itself in each. Being essentially the Self, it is, like the Self, One and Immobile, but as seen in the moving Cosmos, pervading, in- forming and governing it, It is, even in its motionlessness, swifter than thought. The Gods could not reach It going in front. In the terminology of the Upanishads the Gods are the Potencies of the Universe which govern the Mind and the Senses in the microcosm Man and the Elements and their manifestations in the macrocosm Universe. Brahman, the One, precedes all these multiple potencies; It existed before they came into being and is there- fore beyond their grasp. The rapid and stupendous effects of Will, omnipotent and omniscient, are such that the Mind, Sight, Hearing, all the senses together cannot comprehend their origination; limited and finite, they cannot grasp that which transcends limit. To the finite intelligence, reasoning within prescribed limits, it appears that there is no Will in action; all that happens and becomes is the inevitable working of material cause and effect or of the Elements combining and working on each other. But Will is the cause of Causation and the disposer of Effect; Will preceded and dictated the workings of the Elements and arranged their combinations beforehand. This is He that from years sempiternal hath ordered perfectly all things. But the mind and senses cannot come near to and apprehend the nature of the Will or realise the how of its workings, because the mind and the senses can only understand what is done through their instrumentality or within the elemental medium to which they are limited and confined. They can analyse the physical forces of Nature and formulate the laws under which they work; they can dissect thought and sentiment and classify the mental functions and the law of reasoning. But Brahman, the Will, they cannot reach and analyse; for He does not work through them, nor does He act in phenomena. He has arranged the motions of Prakriti beforehand, from years sempiternal; He has mapped out the law Page-257 of those motions before ever they began to stir; and He now abides concealed in them, not acting but simply by His presence necessitating that the Law shall be observed and His dispositions followed. Will creates effects, outside Time, Space and Condition in a way the Mind cannot comprehend, by icchā or Wish, in other words, by Itself. Will by Will necessitates phenomena in Itself, ātmanyātmanā. But when Prakriti translates Will into phenomena in the terms of Time, Space, Causality, she does it under limitations and by limited instruments. The preordainment was immediate, unhindered and perfect, but the carrying out seems to be slow, imperfect and the result of ceaseless effort and struggle, a web of failures, incomplete realisations and transient successes, a maze of forces acting and reacting on each other, helping, hindering and repulsing and always with a partial and mechanical or only half-intelligent action. Somehow a result is worked out, progress is made, but nowhere is there any finality or completeness, nowhere the repose of consummation. This incompleteness is an illusion created by the nature of finite consciousness. The Mind and the Senses, through whom we become aware of the workings of the Universe, are themselves limited and imperfect; functioning only under limits and with effort they cannot envisage the work accomplished except in parts and with a restricted, disturbed and broken vision. To see life steadily and see it whole is only permitted to a Perfect and Infinite Consciousness standing outside Time, Space and Conditions. To such a divine Vision the working out of preordainment may present itself as a perfect immediate and unhindered consummation. God said "Let there be Light" and straightway there was Light; and when the Light came into being, God saw that it was good. But to the imperfect finite consciousness Light seems in its inception to have come into being by a slow material evolution completed by a fortuitous shock of forces; in its operation to be lavished with a prodigal wastefulness since only a small part is used for the purposes of life; in its presentation to be conveyed to a blinking and limited vision, hampered by obstacles and chequered with darkness. Limitation, imperfection, progression and retrogression are inseparable from phenomenal work, phenomenal intelligence, phenomenal pleasure and satisfaction. To Page-258 Brahman the Will who measures all Time in a moment, covers all Space with one stride, embraces the whole chain of causation in one glance, there is no limitation, imperfectition, progression, or retrogression. He looks upon his work as a whole and sees that it is good. But the Gods cannot reach to His completeness, even though they toil after it; for ever He out turns their pursuit, moving far in front. Brahman, standing still, overtakes and passes the others as they run. While the Mind and Senses press onward through Time, look before and after and see sections of the past and dim apparitions of the future from the standpoint of their moment in the present, the Will from its position beyond the beginning of the past speeds beyond them into the future and to the end of things. It has in that moment apprehended, decided and accomplished in Itself all that is to be and leaves the mind and senses to toil after It and work out the preordained ideas and forms left impressed on the mould of that future which to It already exists. It does this standing still, because to the Will Past, Present and Future are but one moment and It lives in all of them simultaneously; they do not contain Brahman but are contained in Him. The Mind and Senses hasten through Space, measuring the distance between star and star; but the Will passes them, traverses Space from one end to the other, knows it as a Whole and creates in Itself all its forms present, past and future; it leaves the Mind and Senses to gather slowly, toilfully and by parts the single comprehensive knowledge It acquired without any process and to experience under the law of Time the immediately complete Universe It has perfected without any labour. It does this also standing still, for to Brahman here and there do not exist; all is here, since He is not in Space, but Space is in Him. While the Mind and Senses run in the winding and twisted line of causation, the Will from the beginning of the chain passes them and has in a moment formed and surveyed it to its very end; It leaves them to count out the chain link by link by the imperfect aid of reason, piecing what is past to what is to come, and to trace out by the slow and endless process of work generating work and life generating life the complete and single Evolution which is already a predestined and therefore an accomplished fact. This Page- 259
too It does standing still; for to Brahman there is no succession of cause and
effect, since cause and effect exist simultaneously in the Will; cause does not
precede Him nor effect follow, but are both embraced in the single and mere
existence of Himself as Will. Page-260
CHAPTER
XII It moves, It moveth not; It is far, the same It is near; It is within all this, the same It is outside all.
THIS second verse only brings out more emphatically what is implied in the first or presents the same truth from a slightly different standpoint. Brahman moves or vibrates, and Brahman does not move or vibrate. As the One Immutable and Immobile, He does not move, but He moves as mobile and multiple Prakriti. When it is said that Brahman is One and Unmoving, it is not meant that the mobile and multiple element in the Universe is other than Brahman; the Gods who cannot reach Brahman, whom He precedes and outstrips, are yet appearances of Himself; Matariswan and the Waters, whom He contains, are also of His substance. Purusha alone is not Brahman, Prakriti also is Brahman; for He is not only the efficient cause of His Cosmos, but its material Cause’ as well. It is true that the motion and multiplicity of Prakriti are phenomenal and superficial, the stability and immutability of Purusha fundamental and real; but the phenomenal has a truth and existence of its own and is not utterly unreal. To take the suggestive human parallel, Shakespeare in himself is one and immutable, in his creations he is mutable and many; the personages of his dramas and their words and actions are not Shakespeare in the ultimate truth of himself, yet they are not other than Shakespeare; for they live in him, by him and are of his substance. It is easy to say they are unreal, but they have a reality of their own; they are true psychical images and live as phenomena in the consciousness of Shakespeare though not as separate and independent entities. So also the multiple Cosmos has a true phenomenal existence and reality in the Brahman, though no separate existence as independent entities. The tree and the river are not real as tree and river, but they are real as images, eidolons of the Brahman. In Himself He is calm, quiescent and unmoved, in them He moves and energises. It is far and It is at the same time near. Physically near and Page-261 far; the Sun and the distant constellations and Orion and Aldebaran and Lyra and whatever utmost star glitters on the outermost mesh of this network of suns and systems, all that is Brahman; and equally this earth which is our dwelling-place, and this country which is our mother and nurse, and this village or city in which we live and do business, and this house which shelters us, and these trees and tanks which were part of our childhood, and the faces we familiarly know and the voices we daily hear, all in which we habitually live and move, all this is Brahman. Emotionally near and far; for our love and our hatred, and what we love and hate, things forgotten and things remembered, things we cherish until death and things we put from us with loathing, friend and enemy, injurer and injured, our work and the daily web of our fears and hopes and longings, this is Brahman; and that which is so far from us that it cannot stir a single emotion or create a ripple of sensation in the mind, whether because it is remote in the distance of Time or hidden in the distance of Space or lost to the blindness of indifference, that too is Brahman. Intellectually near and far; for the unknown and the little known, that which is too vast or too small for us to perceive, or which our most powerful instruments cannot bring near to us or our keenest reasonings analyse or our widest comprehension embrace, that is Brahman; all we daily perceive and note, the myriad forms that Science analyses, the delight of the eye and ear and taste and smell and touch, this is Brahman; and the subjective world in ourselves which is nearest to us of all, thought and memory and sensation and feeling, volitions and aspirations and desires, these too are Brahman. Spiritually near and far; for the Omniscient and Omnipotent Cause and Ruler who creates universes with the in-drawing of its breath and destroys universes with its out-throwing, beside whom we feel ourselves to be too vile and weak and feeble to partake even infi- nitesimally of His divine nature, that is Brahman; the ineffable and unimaginable Spirit whom our senses cannot perceive, nor our minds comprehend, nor our reason touch, that is Brahman; and our own Self who eternally enthroned in the cavern-heart of our being, smiling at our pleasures and pains, mighty in our strength, as mighty in our weakness, pure in our virtues, un- Page-262 stained by our sins, no less omniscient and omnipotent than Isha, no less calm, immutable and ineffable than the Supreme Being, - this our Self too is Brahman. The Karmayogin who has realised it, must hold all existence divine, all life a sacrament, all thought and action a self-dedication to the Eternal. It is within all this, It too is without all. Brahman is within the whole Universe; every object however inanimate, every form of life however vile, is brim-full with the presence of God. The heathen who worships stocks and stones has come nearer to the truth of things, than the enlightened professor of "rational" religion who declares God to be omnipresent and yet in the next breath pronounces the objects in which He is present to be void of anything that can command religious reverence. There is no error in "idolatry"; the error is in the mind of the idolater who worships the stone as stone and the stock as stock, thinking that is God, and forgets or does not realise that it is the Divine Presence in them which is alone worship-worthy. The stock or the stone is not God, for it is only an eidolon, a symbol of His presence; but the worship of it as a symbol is not superstitious or degrading; it is true and ennobling. Every ceremony which reminds us of the presence of the Eternal in the transient, is, if performed with a religious mind, a spiritual help and assists in the purification of consciousness from the obscuration of the senses. To the ordinary intelligence, however, the idea of Brahman’s omnipresence, if pushed home, becomes a stumbling- block. How can that which is inert, senseless and helpless be full of that which is divine and almighty? Is it not a sacrilege to see Him in what is vile and repulsive? Is it not a blasphemy to envisage Him in the vicious and the criminal? Hence the popular Manicheanism which pervades every religion; hence the persistent idea of a twofold creative power, God and devil, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Allah and Iblis, the one responsible for all that is good, the other for all that is evil. This kind of spiritual and intellectual weakness loves to see God in everything good and pleasant and beautiful, but ignores Him in what is evil, ugly or displeasing. But it is an imperfect religion which thus yields to the domination of the mind and senses and allows them to determine what is or is not God. Good is a mask and evil is a Page-263 mask; both are eidola, valid for the purposes of life in phenomena, but when we seek that which is beyond phenomena, we must resolutely remove the mask and see only the face of God behind it. To the Karmayogin there should be nothing common or unclean. There is nothing from which he has the right to shrink; there is none whom he can dare to loathe. For God is within us all; as the Self pure, calm and eternal, and as the Antaryamin or Watcher within, the Knower with all thought, action and existence for His field of observation, the Will behind every movement, every emotion, every deed, the Enjoyer whose presence makes the pain and pleasure of the world. Mind, Life and all our subjective consciousness and the elements of our personal existence and activity, depend on His presence for the motive-force of their existence. And He is not only within us, but within all that is. What we value within ourselves, we must not belittle in others; what we cherish within ourselves, we must not hurt in others; what we love in ourselves, we must not hate in others. For that which is within us, is the Divine Presence, and that which is in others, is the same Divine Presence. To remember this is worth all the moral teachings and ethical doctrines in the world. Vedanta has been declared by those who have not chosen to understand it, a non-moral or even immoral philosophy. But the central truth of Vedanta enfolds in a single phrase all the highest ethics of the world. Courage, magnanimity, purity, justice, charity, mercy, beneficence, loving kindness, forgiveness, tolerance, all the highest demands that the most exalted ethical teacher can make on humanity are contained in that single doctrine; and find in it their one adequate philosophical justification and sole natural basis. That is not only within all this, It is also outside all. We have already seen that Brahman is outside all in the sense of containing the Universe and not only pervading but surrounding every object with His presence. He is also outside in the sense that He is apart from it and other than it. He is not confined in Time, Space and Condition, but is quite above and outside Time, Space and Condition: Cosmos is within Him only as the shadow of a cloud is in the water; He is in Cosmos only as the water is in the shadow and causes and contains the shadow; but He is not the Page-264 Cosmos in His nature or in His substance any more than the water is in nature or substance the shadow. The Cosmos exists in Him phenomenally and as a transient appearance, just as the shadow exists phenomenally in the water and after a time passes away. But there is this difference that the appearance in the water is the shadow of something else cast from outside, but the Cosmos is a shadow or eidolon of Himself created by Brahman in His own being. The materialistic Pantheism so natural to the sense-dominated intelligence of the West, is not Vedanta. God is not, in nature or substance, His Universe; but the Universe is He phenomenally and as a manifestation. Spirit- Matter is Brahman, but Brahman is not Spirit-Matter. This distinction must be carefully kept in mind or the doctrine of entire dentity between Brahman and the Self of Things, may lead to disastrously false conclusions. The truth that Brahman is in all this, must be carefully balanced by the truth that Brahman is outside it all. Yet to the Karmayogin the negative side of this dual truth is only necessary as a safeguard against error and confusion; it is the positive side which must be his inspiration. In its light the whole world becomes a holy place and all cause of fear or grief or hatred disappear, all reason for selfishness, grasping, greed and lust are eliminated, all excuses for ignoble desire or ignoble action are taken away. In their stead he receives the mightiest stimulus to self-purification and self-knowledge, which will lead him to the liberation of the divine in himself, to that sub dual of the bodily and vital impulses which disciplines the body into the triune strength of purity, abstemiousness and quietude; to courage, magnanimity, justice, truth, the four elements of strength; and mercy, charity, love, beneficence, the four elements of sweetness, making that harmony of perfect sweetness and strength which is perfect character, to a mind, pure of passion and disturbance and prepared against the delusions of sense and the limitations of intellect, such a mind as is alone capable of self-knowledge. In this disciplined body, a perfect heart and a pure mind he will have erected a fitting temple for the Eternal within him in which he can offer the worship of works to the Lord and of selflessness to the Self and the Eternal. For by that worship he will become himself the Lord and find release from Page-265 phenomenal life into the undisturbed tranquillity of the Spirit. The dictum, Theos ou kestin alla gignetai, God is not but is becoming, has been used to express the imperfect evolution of the cosmos but is better applied to the present spiritual progress of humanity. In the race that progress is still rudimentary but each man has that within him which is empowered to fulfil his evolution and even in this life become, no longer an animal, or a mind, a heart, an intellect, but the supreme and highest of all things - Himself. Page-266
BOOK
THREE
But he who sees all creatures in his very Self and the Self in all creatures, thereafter shrinketh not away in loathing. He who discerneth, in whom all creatures have become Himself, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have sorrow in whose eyes all are one? IN these two stanzas the Upanishad formulates the ethical ideal of the Karmayogin. It has set forth as its interpretation of life the universality of the Brahman as the sole reality and true Self of things; all things exist only in Him and He abides in all as the Self. Every creature is His eidolon or manifestation and every body His temple and dwelling-place. From Him all things began, in Him they develop and mature themselves, to Him they must in their nature strive to return. The mutual relations of all beings to each other may be summed up in the single phrase, "One Self in all creatures, all creatures in one Self"; for He is both within all and contains all. But this Self exists in each creature not partially or fragmentarily but in Its indivisible completeness. Therefore the Self in one creature is precisely the same as the Self in another, not merely kin by origin as in the Christian theology, not merely of the same kind and nature as in the Sankhya teaching, but absolutely identical. The sense of personal separation in space and substance and difference in nature has been illusorily brought about by the play of Prakriti, the noumenon of false self, on the one eternal Reality, creating an illusion of multiplicity and mutability. Self identifies itself with the phenomena of the evolved universe; habitually feeling the play of the three Gunas, the principles of material reception, reaction and retention, on the body, the vital impulses, the mind, the intellect, the supra-intelligence, it mistakes the continuity of conscious impressions for the real self, forgetting that these are merely aspects of consciousness Page-267
in relation to matter and not the true and eternal reality of consciousness. But
the end of evolution is to liberate the permanent from the impermanent, the
spiritual from the material, the Self from its bondage to the three Gunas and
the false conceptions which that bondage creates. This liberation or release
must therefore be the final aim of religion and ethics, otherwise religion and
ethics will be out of harmony with the truth of things and therefore false or
imperfect. Religion and ethics must train the individual self in a man to
discover its universality, to see himself in all creatures and all creatures in
himself, and the ideal or ethically perfect man is the one who has attained to
this vision and observes it habitually in his thoughts and actions as the one
law of his life. Page-268 practice in India more than two thousand years before Christian Europe took even slightly to heart what it had so long been professing with its lips. And not only perfect love and beneficence but perfect justice with its necessary counterpart in action, honest dealing and faithful discharge of duty are the natural outcome of the Vedantic teaching. For if we see ourself in others, we shall not only be willing but delighted to yield them all that is due to them, and must shrink from wronging or doing hurt to them as naturally as we would shrink from doing hurt to ourselves. The debts we owe to parents, family, friends, the caste, the community, the nation we shall discharge not as an irksome obligation, but as a personal pleasure. The Christian virtue of charity, the Pagan virtue of justice are the very sap and life of Vedantic morality. Seeing the Self in all creatures, implies seeing the Lord every- where. The ideal man of Vedanta will accept pain as readily as pleasure, hatred, wrong insult and injustice as composedly as love, honour and kindness, death as courageously as life. For in all things he will see the mighty Will which governs the Universe and which wills not only his own good and pleasure and success, but the good and pleasure and success of others equally with his own; which decrees that his own good and the good of others shall be worked out not only by his victories and joys, but by his defeats and sufferings. He will not be terrified by the menace of misfortune or the blows dealt him by man or nature, nor even by his own sins and failures, but walk straight forward in the implicit faith that the Supreme Will is guiding his steps aright and that even his stumblings are necessary in order to reach the goal. If his Yoga is perfect, his faith and resignation will also be perfectly calm and strong; for he will then fully realise that the Supreme Will is his own Will. Whatever happens to me, it is I that am its cause and true doer and not my friend or enemy who is merely the agent of my own Karma. But the faith and resignation of the Karmayogin will not be a passive and weak submission. If he sees God in his sufferings and overthrow, he will also see God in his resistance to injustice and evil, a resistance dictated not by selfishness and passion, but undertaken for the sake of right and truth and the maintenance of that moral order on which the Page-269 stability of life and the happiness of the peoples depend. And his resistance like all his actions will be marked by a perfect fearlessness, a godlike courage. For when a man sees God in all things and himself in all beings, it is impossible for him to fear. What is it that can cause him terror? Not danger or defeat, not death or torture, not hatred or ingratitude, not the worse death of humiliation and the fiercer torture of shame and disgrace. Not the apparent wrath of God Himself; for what is God but his own Self in the Cosmos? There is nothing that he can fear. The Christian virtue of faith and resignation, the Pagan virtue of courage are the strong stem and support of Vedic morality. The ignorant censure of Vedanta as an immoral doctrine because it confuses the limits between good and evil, or rejects the one necessary motive to action and virtue, proceeds from un- willingness or inability to understand the fine truth and harmony of its teachings. Vedanta does indeed teach that virtue and vice, good and evil are relative terms, things phenomenal and not real; it does ask the seeker to recognise the Supreme Will in what is evil no less than in what is good; but it also shows how the progression of the soul rises out of the evil into the good and out of the good into that which is higher than good and evil. Vedanta does reject the lower self of desire as a motive to action and virtue, but it replaces it by the far more powerful stimulus of selflessness which is only the rising to our higher and truer Self. It does declare phenomenal life to be an illusion and a bondage, but it lays down the practice of courage, strength, purity, truth and beneficence as the first step towards liberation from that bondage, and it demands a far higher standard of perfection in these qualities than any other creed or system of ethics. What to many moralists is the highest effort of feeble human nature is to Vedanta only the first imperfect manifestation of the divine Self in humanity. Vedanta embraces, harmonises and yet overtops and exceeds all other moralities; as Vedic religion is the eternal and universal religion, so is Vedic ethics the eternal and universal morality. Eşa dharmah sanātanah.
Page-270
CHAPTER
II EVERY system of ethics must have a sanction to validate its scheme of morals and an aim which will provide man the stimulus he needs, if he is to surmount his anti-ethical instincts and either subdue them or eradicate. Man is not a purely ethical being; he has immoral and non-moral impulses which are primarily stronger than his ethical tendencies. To check the former, to liberate, strengthen and train the latter is the first object of all practical ethics religious or non-religious. The first requisite to this end is a true knowledge of human nature and its psychology; for if an ethical system is psychologically untrue, if it is seriously mistaken in its view of human nature or fails to discern and reach his highest and noblest instincts, it will either be ineffective or possibly even do as much harm as good to the moral growth of humanity. But even a psychologically sound morality will not command general assent in practice unless there is a sanction behind it which the reason or the prejudices of mankind will accept as sufficiently strong to make a necessity of obedience. Armed with such a sanction it will influence the thoughts and the thoughts the actions of the race, but even then it will be only a repressive and disciplinary influence; to be an active stimulus or a powerful moral lever it must be able to set in our front an aim which will enlist strong natural forces on the side of virtue or an ideal which will appeal to instincts deep-seated and persistent in universal humanity. In its origin it is more than probable that morality was a social growth and limited to communal habits and communal necessities. The aim set before the individual was the continued privilege of abiding in the community and enjoying the all-important advantages of security, assistance and social life which membership of the community could alone provide. The sanction was again a communal sanction; the custom-code of the Page-271 tribe or community commanded assent and obedience precisely because it was the tribe and community that commanded and could enforce them with severe social punishments, death, ostracism, excommunication. This origin of ethics from the customs of the tribe, themselves originating from the fundamental necessities of self-preservation, is warranted by the facts of sociology as rendered by modern investigation. It agrees also with the view of nature and evolution held by the Vedic inquirers. For if we consider the history of communities and nations so far as we know them, we shall find that it consists so far in a progression from the society to the individual in society, from a basis of Tamas to an outgrowth of Rajas in the tamasic basis; while Sattwa perfected in a few individuals is, as a social force, not yet emancipated. We have seen that Prakriti or nature in all its operations works through three inherent guņas or qualities which repeat themselves in all stages and forms of her multifold activity; they are present as much in psychic and spiritual evolution as in the physical; and so all important are they that all activity of any kind whatsoever, all life, mental, vital, physical are said to be merely the natural operation of the three guņas interacting upon each other. These three guņas are called in the Sankhya terminology sattva, rajas, tamas; comprehension, activity, passivity, or as they manifest in physical substance, retention, active reaction and passive reception. None of these guņas can exist or act by themselves; the activity of each involves the activity of the other two; but according as one or the other predominates,an action, a state of things, a substance, a character, is called tamasic, rajasic, or sattwic. In the early stages of upward evolution Tamas predominates, in the medial Rajas, in the final Sattwa. In the early evolution of man it is inevitable, therefore, that the obscuration of Tamas should be very heavy and that the characteristic of passive receptivity to outside surroundings should be markedly predominant. Early man is active only under the pressure of hunger, or when moved by the primitive impulses of sense and vitality and the needs of self-preservation. His senses are keen and his power of activity great because keen senses and a strong hardy agile body are necessary to self- Page-272 preservation but in the absence of necessity or stimulus he is profoundly indolent, even inert. His sensibility, physical or mental, is small, for sensibility depends on and increases with Rajas, the power of reaction, and this power is in the savage comparatively undeveloped. His emotional reactions are also weak and primitive; in their predominantly physical character and in the helpless spontaneousness of their response to impressions they reveal the domination of tamasic passivity. The centres of individuality, a characteristically sattwo-rajasic function, are too weak as yet to control, regulate and rationalise the response. Hence the emotional nature shows itself on one side in a childishly unruly gratification of the pleasure of pleasant impressions, - the savage is easily mastered by gluttony and drunkenness but also capable of childlike worship and doglike fidelity when brought into close contact with a higher nature; on the other, it is manifested in a brutally violent response to unpleasant impressions. Anger is the primitive reaction to an unpleasant impact which is not unfamiliar, fear the primitive reaction to an unpleasant impact which is new and surprising. The savage is therefore prone to childish terror in presence of the unknown, to ferocious anger and vindictive cruelty when his hatred is aroused by injury or the presence of what, though not unfamiliar in form, is alien and therefore hateful in its features. The habit of self-indulgence in anger by an organisation of great passivity and low physical and mental sensibility creates the characteristic of a quiet un- impassioned cruelty, – the savage is, as a rule, calmly cruel. The Red-Indian’s stoicism, impassivity, immobility, quiet endurance of pain are merely the inertia of the tamasic mind and body systematised and become part of his tribal morality. But the height of passivity is reached in his intellectual organisation of which the only strong reaction is the primitive mental response to outside impressions, curiosity. This curiosity is different from the desire to know, for it consists in a childish amused wonder and a desire merely to repeat the experience, not to learn from it. Such curiosity is at the root of the practice of torture; for the primitive mind finds a never-failing delight in the physical response evoked by intense and violent pain. This pleasure in crude physical, moral, aesthetic or intellectual reactions because of their Page-273 raw intensity and violence is a sure sign of the undeveloped tamasic mind and is still common enough in the most civilised communities. Originality and independence of mind and character spring from a strong rajasic development and are therefore un- known to the savage who is the creature and slave of his environments. By far the most powerful and insistent of these environments is the community in which he lives and which is necessary to him at every turn for his security and his self-gratification. His passive mentality therefore not only accepts but welcomes the rigid control by the community; it receives the hereditary custom- law of the tribe as an inviolable natural law, and has too weak an individuality to react against it or to desire change and progress. The primitive community is therefore stationary; the individual exists in it not as an individual, but as an undetachable fragment of the whole. The social organisation, even at its best, is in type and level on a par with that of the bee- hive and the ant- hill. The tamasic state of society reaches its highest development when the community, entirely outgrowing the attractions of the nomadic instinct, settles down to a fixed habitation for centuries and adds to its original reason for existence, - communal self- preservation, - the more fruitful impulse towards communal accumulation. It has then the necessary conditions for progress from the tamasic stage to the sub-tamasic in which the individual.first begins to emerge although he is still subordinated to the community and lives chiefly for the general advantage, not for his own. The settled state of society and the expansion of the community which a more prosperous and stable life brings with it, involve an increasing complexity of the social organisation. Specialisation of function becomes pronounced, for the larger needs of the community demand an increasing division of labour. Rank and private property begin to emerge; inequality has begun. The more various activities, the more varied experience, the less primitive range. of desires and the need of a wider know- ledge of things and men create a greater mental alertness and increased mental differentiation. This in its turn means the growth of individuality. Personality, we have seen, has memory for its basis and is determined by memory; individuality or Page-274 difference of personality is originally created by difference in the nature and range of the impressions experienced and retained by the mind, which naturally results in different habits of emotional and mental reaction. The fundamental self in all men is the same, the action of external Prakriti in its broad masses is the same all over the world; therefore human personality is necessarily the same in its general nature wherever we meet it. Difference in personality arises purely from difference in the range of mental and emotional experience, from the different distribution of various kinds of experience, and from differently developed habits or ways of reaction to impressions received. For character is nothing but habit; and habit is nothing but an operation of memory. The mind remembers that it received this particular impact before and reacted on it in this particular way and it repeats the familiar experience. The repetition becomes a habit of the mind ingrained in the personality and so a permanent characteristic. Difference of experience thus creates difference of personality, and difference of experience depends on difference in life, pursuits, occupations. So long as life is bounded by the desires of alimentation, self-preservation and self-reproduction, there can be no real individuality within the species, for the processes required and the experiences involved in these functions are practically the same for each member of the species. Even the gratification of primitive sensuous desires does not involve anything more than minute and unnoticeable differences. Hence one savage very much resembles any other savage just as one animal of a species very much resembles another of the same species, and one savage community differs from another only as one animal sub-species differs from a kindred sub-species. It is only when desires and needs’ multiply, that difference of life and occupation can bring difference of experience and develop individuality. The increasing complexity of the community means the growth of individuality and the liberation of Rajas in human psychology. Rajas is the principle of activity and increases with the intensity and rapidity of the reactions of Will upon external things; it is not content like Tamas with passively receiving impressions and obeying its environments, but siezes on the impressions and Page-275 strives ever to turn them to the service of the individual personality, to master its environments and use them for its own enjoyment. Everything which it experiences, it utilises for the pleasure and pain of the individuality. The rajasic man is the creator, the worker, the man of industry, enterprise, invention, originality, the lover of novelty, progress and reform. The growth of Rajas therefore necessarily meant the inception of a great problem for society. In the tamasic and sub-tamasic states man developed the all-important faculty of conservatism, reverence for the past, fidelity to the communal inheritance, subordination of the interests and passions of the particular, be it class or individual, to the stability and safety of the whole. But here was a new element likely to disturb and upset the old state of things. The rajasic individuality was not likely to accept the traditional sanction, the communal aim as a satisfying aim and a binding sanction. The more and more he developed, the more and more strongly it would crave for the satisfaction of its expanding individual desires, ideas, activities with less and less regard to the paramount importance of social stability. How should society deal with this element? From that single difficulty arose the whole sociological problem involving difficulties of ethics, legislation and politics which after so many thousands of years mankind has not solved to its permanent satisfaction. Page-276
CHAPTER III Page-277
social custom-code also became more
complex in its details and wider in its comprehensiveness, in its attempt, to
pursue him into every detail of his life and control not only his broad lines of
life but his particular actions, allowing no distinction between private and
public life. Its nature had not changed; it was as rigid and inexorable in its
demands, as intolerant of individual originality and independence; its sanctions
were unaltered, the ancestral tradition of the community and the fear of social
punishments, death, ostracism, excommunication or other penalties which if less
drastic were yet sufficiently formidable. The object to be fulfilled was still
predominantly the same, the satisfaction of communal demands as the price of
communal privileges. Page-278
dry rot of hypocrisy and falseness; the end of which is either the decay and
death of the community or a purifying revolt. Society can save itself only by
conceding within limits the claim for individual freedom; outside those limits
it must persuade or compel him to conformity by influencing his mind and heart,
not by direct coercion of his words and acts. Page-279 sacrosanct character in the new form of a consciously cherished and worshipped national tradition; and the repositories of that tradition became the dominant class of the community, whether an oligarchy as in Sparta and early republican Rome or a theocracy as in Egypt. For in order to control not only the heart and imagination but the deepest self in the individual society called in the aid of a spiritual force rapidly growing in its midst, the power of religion. In some communities, it strove even to give the religious sanction to all its own ideas, traditions, demands, sanctions. In the older races and nations, Mongolian, Dravidic, Mediterranean, the sub-tamasic stage of social culture was of long duration and has left its impress in the only civilisations which have survived unbroken from that period, the Indian and Chinese. In the younger races, Aryan and Semitic, the development of the individual was far more rapid and urgent and left no time for the peculiarities of the later sub-tamasic period to crystallise and endure. Their evolution passed quickly into the rajaso-tamasic or even into the rajasic stage. In the rajasic state the individual forces himself into predominance and gets that emancipation and free play for his personality which his evolution demands, while the society degenerates into a mere frame for a mass of individuals. Social morality, once so rigid and compelling, dissolves into a loose bundle of superstitions and prejudices; tradition is broken into pieces by the desire for progress and novelty and free play of mind. The individual is governed in his conduct not by social sanctions or religious obligations and ideals, but by his personal idiosyncrasy and the stress of his own ideas, desires, passions, capacities and ambitions, which clamantly demand satisfaction. Individual originality being given free rein, there is an immense outburst of genius, talent, origination, invention or of splendid personal force and activity. Periods such as the revolutionary epoch in France when the rajasic element gets free play and communities like the Ionian democracies of which Athens was the head and type, are not only the most interesting from their fascinating abundance of stir, passion, incident, brilliance of varied personality, but also among the most fruitful and useful to humanity. In such periods, in the brief Page-280 history of such communities the work of centuries is done in a few years or in a few decades and future ages are fertilised from the seeds of a single epoch. But the history of rajasic communities is necessarily brief, the course of rajasic periods is soon run. Rajas has in itself no principle of endurance; if it is to work steadily and enduringly, it must either be weighted down by a heavy load of Tamas or sustained and uplifted by a great strength of Sattwa. But Sattwa as a social force has not yet liberated itself; it operates on society through a chosen and select few and is only rudimentary as yet in the many. For the preservation of a people Tamas is absolutely necessary; a mass of blind conservatism, intolerance of innovations, prejudice, superstition, even gross stupidity are elements essential to the safety of society. The Athenian thinkers themselves dimly realised this, hence their dislike to the mobile spirit of old democracy and their instinctive preference for the Spartan constitution in spite of its rigid, unprogressive and unintellectual character. They felt the transience and insecurity of the splendid and brilliant life of Athens. Politically the predominance of the individual was dangerous to the state and the evil might be checked but could not be mended by occasional resort to ostracism; the excessively free and varied play of intellect turned out a corrodent which too rapidly eat away the old beliefs and left the people without any fixed beliefs at all: the old prejudices, predilections, superstitions were exposed to too rapid a tide of progress: for a time they acted as some feeble check on the individual, but when the merciless questioning of Socrates and his followers crumbled them to pieces, nothing was left for society to live by. Reason, justice and enlightened virtue which Socrates and his successors offered as a substitute, could not take their place because the world was not, nor is it yet sattwic enough for society to subsist entirely or mainly by the strength of reason, justice and enlightenment. The history of Athens may be summed up from the Vedic standpoint as Rajas too rapidly developed destroying Tamas and in its turn leading to a too rapid development of Sattwa; till by an excess of the critical and judging faculty of Sattwa, the creative activity of Rajas was decomposed and came to an end. As a result the Athenian social organism lost its vitality, fell a prey to stronger organisms and perished. Page-281
Those communities have a better chance of survival which linger in the
rajaso-tamasic stage. For that is a social period when the claims of the
individual are being constantly balanced and adjusted in a manner which strongly
resembles the replacement in the physical organism of waste tissue by sound, bad
blood by good, corrupted breath by fresh inhalations; the individual is given
legitimate scope, but those irreducible demands of society which are necessary
to its conservation, are thoroughly enforced; progress is constantly made, but
the past and its traditions are, as far as is consistent with progress,
jealously preserved and cherished. England with its rapid alternations of
progress safe- guarded by conservatism and conservatism vivified by progress is
an excellent example of the rajaso-tamasic community. The English race is
pre-eminently rajaso-tamasic; tamasic by its irrational clinging to what it
possesses not because it is inherently good or satisfying but simply because it
is there, because it is part of its past and its national traditions; tamasic by
its habit of changing not in obedience to any inner voice of ethical aspiration
or sense of intellectual fitness but in answer to the pressure of environment;
but rajasic by the open field it gives to individual character and energy,
rajasic by its reliance on the conflicts and final balance of passions and
interests as the main agents of progress and conservation political and
social. Japan with her periods of splendid and magnificently fruitful progress
and activity when she is absorbing new thoughts and new knowledge, followed by
periods of calm and beautiful conservation in which she thoroughly assimilates
what she has absorbed and suits it to
her system, -
Japan with the unlimited energy and personality of
her individuals finely subservient to the life of the nation is an instance of a
fundamentally rajaso-tamasic nation which has acquired by its assimilation of
Indian and Chinese civilisation the immortalising strength of Sattwa. Page-282
Rajoguna is the basic principle of desire, so Sattwaguna is the basic principle
of knowledge. It is Sattwa that forms memory and evolves judgment. Morally it
shows itself as selfless sympathy, intellectually as disinterested enlightenment
and dispassionate wisdom, spiritually as a calm self-possessing peacefulness as
far removed from the dull tamasic inertia as from the restless turbidity of
Rajas. The growth of Sattwa in a community will show itself by the growing
predominance of these characteristics. The community will be more peaceful and
unaggressive than the ordinary rajasic race or nation, it will present a more
calm and unbroken record of culture and enlightenment, it will record its
life-history not in wars and invasions, not in conquests and defeats, not by the
measure of the births and deaths of kings and the downfall of dynasties but by
spiritual and intellectual evolutions and revolutions. The history of tamasic
nations is a record of material impacts thrown out from the organism or suffered
by it; its life is measured by the duration of dynasties or outward forms of
government. The history of rajasic nations is a bundle of biographies; the
individual predominates. The history of sattwic nations would be the story of
the universal human self in its advance to knowledge and godhead. Most of all,
the sattwic leaven will show itself in an attempt to order society not to suit
material requirements or in obedience to outward environments or under the
pressure of inward passions and interests, but in accordance with a high
spiritual and intellectual ideal applied to life. And until Sattwa is fully
evolved, the community will try to preserve all the useful forces and
institutions gathered by the past social evolution, neither destroying them
nor leaving them intact but harmonising and humanising them by the infusion of a
higher ideal and vivifying them from time to time by a fresh review in the light
of new experience and wider knowledge. The sattwic nation will avoid the dead
conservatism of tamasic communities, it will avoid the restless progress of
rajasic nations; it will endeavour to arrive at a living and healthy stability,
high, calm and peaceful, in which man may pursue undisturbed his nobler destiny. Page-283 pathy, or in the Aryan tradition of the Sattwayuga, the Golden Age, exists only as an Utopia. We have not evolved even the rajaso-sattwic community in which the licentious play of individual activity and originality will be restrained not by the heavy brake of tamasic indolence, ignorance and prejudice, but by the patient and tolerant control and guidance of the spirit of true science, sympathy and wisdom. The farthest advance made by human evolution is the sub-rajaso-tamasic stage in which Sattwa partially evolved tries to dominate its companions. Of this kind of community China, India and more recently Japan are the only known instances. In China the tamasic element is very strong; the passionate conservatism of the race, the aggregativeness of the Chinese character which seems unable to live to itself and needs a guild, an organisation or some sort of collective existence to support it, the low physical and emotional sensibility which permits the survival of a barbarous and senselessly cruel system of punishment, are striking evidences of prevalent Tamas. The rajasic element is weaker but evident enough in the religious, intellectual and, in one sense, political liberty allowed to the individual by and in the union of Mongolian industry and inventiveness with the democratic individualism which allows every man the chance his individual capacity and energy deserve. Sattwa finds its place in the high place immemorially assigned to wisdom, learning, and culture and in the noble and perfect Buddhist-Confucian system of ethics and ideal of life which regulates Chinese politics, society and individual life. In India on the other hand, as we shall perceive, we have an unique and remarkable instance of sattwic, rajasic, tamasic influences acting upon the community in almost equal degree and working at high pres- sure side by side; tamasic constraint and conservatism governs the arrangement of daily life, rajasic liberty, progress and originality brilliantly abound in the affairs of the mind and spirit, a high sattwic ideal and spirit dominate the national temperament, humanise and vivify all its life, social polity, institutions and re- turn almost periodically in a fresh wave of life and strength, to save the community when it appears doomed to decay and oblivion. From Sattwa springs the characteristic indestructibility Page-284 which Chinese and Indian society, alone of historic civilisations, have evinced under the pressure of the ages, and the shocks of repeated, even incessant national disaster. Sattwa is the principle of conservation. The passive tamasic organism perishes by decay of its unrepaired tissues or disintegrates under the shock of outward forces against which it has not sufficient elasticity to react. The restless rajasic organism dies by exhaustion of its too rapidly expended vitality and vigour. But the sattwic spirit in the rajaso-tamasic body is the nectar of the gods which makes for immortality. China and India have suffered much for their pre- mature evolution of the sattwic element; they have repeatedly undergone defeat and subjugation by the more restless and aggressive communities of the world, while Japan by keeping its rajasic energy intact has victoriously repelled the aggressor. At present both these great countries are under temporary obscuration, they seem to be overweighted with Tamas and passing through a process of disintegration and decay. In India especially long continuation of foreign subjection, a condition abhorred by Nature and accursed by Heaven, has brought about disastrous deterioration. Conquering Europe on the other hand, for the first time flooded with Sattwa as a distinct social influence by the liberating outburst of the French Revolution, has moved forward. The Sattwa impulse of the 18th century, though sorely abused and pressed into the service of rajasic selfishness and tamasic materialism, has yet been so powerful an agent to humanise and illuminate that it has given the world’s lead to the European. But these two great Oriental civilisations are not likely to perish; always they have conquered their conquerors, asserted their free individuality and resumed their just place in the forefront of the nations, nor is the future likely to differ materially from the past. So long as the sattwic ideal is not renounced, it is always there to renew itself in extremity and to save. Pre-eminently sattwic is the Universal Self in man which if realised and held fast to answers unfailingly the call for help and, incarnating in its full season brings with it light, strength and healing. "For the deliverance of the good and the destruction of the evil doers, for the restoration of righteousness, I am born from age to age."
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CHAPTER
IV IF THE view of human development as set forth in the last two chapters is correct, we shall have to part with several notions long cherished by humanity. One of these is the pristine perfection of man and his degradation from his perfect state by falling into the domination of sin; God made man perfect but man by his own fault brought sin and death into the world. This Semitic tradition, passed from Judaism into Christianity and less prominently into Mahomedanism, became for a long time part and parcel of the fixed beliefs of half humanity. Yet it is doubtful whether the original legend which enshrined and prolonged this tradition, quite bears the interpretation which has been put on it. If rightly understood, it supports rather than conflicts with the theory of trigunic development. The legend does not state that man was unfailingly virtuous by choice, but that he was innocent because he did not yet know good and evil. Innocence of this kind is possible only in the primitive state of man and the description of man as naked and unashamed shows that it is precisely the primitive state of society before arts and civilisation were developed, to which the legend alludes. Man was then innocent, because being unable to distinguish between good and evil he could not choose evil of free choice and therefore had no sense of sin and no more responsibility for his actions than the pure animal. His fall from the state of innocence was the result of the growth of rajasic individuality in his mind which led him to assert his own will and desires and disobey the law imposed on him by an external Power. In this first stage of his evolution he is not guided by a law within himself, but by prohibitions which his environment imposes on him without his either understanding or caring to understand the reason for their imposition. Certain things are forbidden to him, and it is as much a necessity for him Page-286
to refrain from them as to refrain from putting his hand in the fire lest he
should be burned; all others are allowed to him and he does them freely without
questioning whether, apart from their legality, they are bad or good. Sin comes
by disobedience and disobedience by the assertion of an inner standard as
against the external standard hitherto obeyed; but it is still a standard not of
right and wrong, but of licit and illicit. "What I desire, what my
individual nature demands, should be allowed me," reasons the rajasic man;
the struggle is between an external negation and an internal assertion, not
between two conflicting internal assertions. But once the former begins, the
latter must in time follow; the physical conflict must create its psychical
counterpart. From the opposition of punished and unpunished evolves the
opposition of licit and illicit; from the opposition of licit and illicit
evolves the opposition of right and wrong. Originally the sanction which
punishes or spares, allows or disallows, approves or disapproves, is external
and social; society is the individual’s judge. Finally, in the higher stage of
evolution, the sanction is internal and individual; the individual is his own
judge. The indulgence of individual desire in disobedience to a general law is
the origin of sin. Page-287 lible or perfect, but because moral growth depends upon development from within and to this end the independent use of the "inner monitor", when once evolved, is the first necessity. Page-288 |
