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Rishis were free and variable, if their ideas were evidently in a state of flux, shifting and uncertain, a convenient license and incoherence in the sense we attach to their terminology and the relation we find between their ideas, might be justified or tolerated. But the hymns themselves on the very face of them bear exactly the contrary testimony. We have the right therefore to demand the same fidelity and scrupulousness in the interpreter as in the original he interprets. There is obviously a constant relation between the different notions and cherished terms of the Vedic religion; incoherence and uncertainty in the interpretation will prove, not that the face evidence of the Veda is misleading, but simply that the interpreter has failed to discover the right relations.

      If, after this initial labour has been scrupulously and carefully done, it can be shown by a translation of the hymns that the interpretations we had fixed fit in naturally and easily in whatever context, if they are found to illuminate what seemed obscure and to create intelligible and clear coherence where there seemed to , be only confusion ; if the hymns in their entirety give thus a clear and connected sense and the successive verses show a logical succession of related thoughts, and if the result as a whole be a profound, consistent and antique body of doctrines, then our hypothesis will have a right to stand besides others, to challenge them where they contradict it or to complete them where they are consistent with its findings. Nor will the probability of our hypothesis be lessened, but rather its validity confirmed if it be found th„t the body of ideas and doctrines thus revealed in the Veda are a more antique form of subsequent Indian thought and religious experience, the natural parent of Vedanta and Purana.

     So considerable and minute a labour is beyond the scope of these brief and summary chapters. Their object is only to indicate for those who care to follow the clue I have myself received, the path and its principal turnings, —the results I have arrived at and the main indications by which the Veda itself helps us to arrive at them. And, first, it seems to me advisable to explain the genesis of the theory in my own mind so that the reader may the better understand the line I have taken or, if he chooses, check any prepossessions or personal preferences which may have influenced or limited the right application of reasoning to this difficult problem.

     Like the majority of educated Indians I had passively accepted without examination, before myself reading the

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Veda, the conclusions of European Scholarship both as to the religious and as to the historical and ethnical sense of the ancient hymns. In consequence, following again the ordinary line taken by modernised Hindu opinion, I regarded the Upanishads as the most ancient source of Indian thought and religion, the true Veda, the first Book of Knowledge. The Rig Veda in the modern translations which were all I knew of this profound Scripture, represented for me an important document of our national history, but seemed of small value or importance for the history of thought or for a living spiritual experience.

      My first contact with Vedic thought came indirectly while pursuing certain lines of self-development in the way of Indian Yoga, which, without my knowing it, were spontaneously converging towards the ancient and now unfrequented paths followed by our forefathers. At this time there began to arise in my mind an arrangement of symbolic names attached to certain psychological experiences which had begun to regularise themselves ; and among them there came the figures of three female energies, Ha, Saraswati, Sarama, representing severally three out of the four faculties of the intuitive reason,— revelation, inspiration and intuition. Two of these names were not well known to me as names of Vedic goddesses, but were connected rather with the current Hindu religion or with old Puranic legend, Saraswati, goddess of learning and Ha, mother of the Lunar dynasty. But Sarama was familiar enough. I was unable, however, to establish any connection between the figure that rose in my mind and the Vedic hound of heaven, who was associated in my memory with the Argive Helen and represented only an image of the physical Dawn entering in its pursuit of the vanished herds of Light into the cave of the Powers of darkness. When once the clue is found, the clue of the physical Light imaging the subjective, it is easy to see that the hound of heaven may be the intuition entering into the dark caverns of the subconscious mind to prepare the delivery and out-flashing of the bright illuminations of knowledge which have there been imprisoned. But the clue was wanting and I was obliged to suppose an identity of name without any identity of the symbol.

      It was my stay in Southern India which first seriously turned my thoughts to the Veda. Two observations that were forced on my mind, gave a serious shock to my second-hand belief in the racial division between Northern

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Aryans and Southern Dravidians. The distinction had always rested for me on a supposed difference between the physical types of Aryan and Dravidian and a more definite incompatibility between the northern Sanskritic and the southern non Sanskritic tongues. I knew indeed of the later theories which suppose that a single homogeneous race, Dravidian or Indo-Aighan, inhabits the Indian peninsula ; but hitherto I had not attached much importance to these speculations. I could not, however, be long in Southern India without being impressed by the general recurrence of northern or "Aryan" types in the Tamil race. "Wherever I turned, I seemed to recognise with a startling distinctness, not only among the Brahmins but in all castes and classes, the old familiar faces, features, figures of my friends of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Hindustan, even, though this similarity was less widely spread, of my own province Bengal. The impression I received was as i f an army of all the tribes of the North had descended on the South and submerged any previous populations that may have occupied it. A general impression of a Southern type survived, but it was impossible to fix it rigidly while studying the physiognomy of individuals. And’ in the end I could not but perceive that whatever admixtures might have taken place, whatever regional differences might have been evolved, there remains, behind all variations, a unity of physical as well as of cultural type 1

      But what then of the sharp distinction between Aryan and Dravidian races created by the philologists ? It disappears. If at all an Aryan invasion is admitted, we have either to suppose that it flooded India and determined the physical type of the people, with whatever modifications, or that it was the inclusion of small bands of a less civilised race who melted away into the original population. We have then to suppose that entering a vast peninsula occupied by a civilised people, builders of

       1 I prefer not to use the term race, for race is a thing much more obscure and difficult to determine than is usually imagined. In dealing with it the trenchant distinctions current in the popular mind are wholly out of place.

      2 Always supposing that ethnological speculations have at all any validity. The only firm basis of ethnology is the theory of the hereditary invariability of the human skull which is now being challenged. If it disappears, the whole science disappears with it.

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great cities, extensive traders, not without mental and spiritual culture, they were yet able to impose on them their own language, religion, ideas and manners. Such a miracle would be just possible if the invaders possessed a very high organised language, a greater force of creative – mind and a more dynamic religious form and spirit.

       And there was always the difference of language to support the theory of a meeting of races. But here also my preconceived ideas were disturbed and confounded. For on examining the vocables of the Tamil language, in appearance so foreign to the Sanskritic form and character, I yet found myself continually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanscrit and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally, between the Greek and the Sanscrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocable net only suggested the connection, but proved the missing link in a family of connected words. And it was through this Dravidian language that I came first to perceive what seems to me now the true law, origins and, as it were, the embryology of the Aryan tongues. I was unable to pursue my examination far enough to establish any definite conclusion, but it certainly seems to me that the original connection between the Uravidian and Aryan tongues was far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed and the possibility suggests itself that they may even have been two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue. If so, the sole remaining evidence of an Aryan invasion of Dravidian India would be the indications to be found in the Vedic hymns.

       It was, therefore, with a double interest that for the first time I took up the Veda in the original, though without any immediate intention of a close or serious study. It did not take long to see that the Vedic indications of a racial division between Aryans and Dasyus and the identification of the latter with the indigenous Indians were of a far flimsier character than I had supposed. But far more interesting to me was the discovery of a considerable body of profound psychological thought and experience lying neglected in these ancient hymns. And the importance of this element increased in my eyes when I found, first, that the mantras of the Veda illuminated with a clear and exact light psychological experiences of my own for which I had found no sufficient explanation either in European psychology or in the teachings of Yoga or of Vedanta, so

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far as I was acquainted with them, and, secondly, that they shed light on obscure passages and ideas of the Upanishads to which, previously, I could attach no exact meaning and gave at the same time a new sense to much in the Puranas.

       I was helped in arriving at this result by my fortunate ignorance of the commentary of Sayana. For I was left free to attribute their natural psychological significance to many ordinary and current words of the Veda, such as dhi, thought or understanding, manas, mind, mati, thought, feeling or mental state, manisha, intellect, ritam, truth ; to give their exact shades of sense to kavi, seer, inanishi, thinker, vipra, vipaschit, enlightened in mind, and a number of similar words; and to hazard a psychological sense, justified by more extensive study, for words like daksha which for Sayana means strength and sravas which he renders as wealth, food or fame. The psychological theory of the Veda rests upon our right to concede their natural significance to these vocables.

      Sayana gives to the words dhi, ritam, etc., very variable significances. Ritam, which is almost the key-word of any psychological or spiritual interpretation, is rendered by him sometimes as "truth," more often "sacrifice," occasionally in the sense of water. The psychological interpretation gives it invariably the sense of Truth. Dhi is rendered by Sayana variously "thought," "prayer," " action," " food, " etc. The psychological interpretation gives it consistently the sense of thought or understanding. And so with the other fixed terms of Veda. More very, Sayana tendency, is to obliterate all fine shades and distinctions between words and to give them their vaguest general significance. All epithets conveying ideas of mental activity mean for him simply "intelligent," all words suggesting various ideas of force, and the Veda overflows with them, are reduced to the broad idea of strength. I found myself on the contrary impressed by the great importance of fixing and preserving the right shade of meaning and precise association to be given to different words, however close they may be to each other in their general sense. I do not see indeed why we should suppose that the Vedic Rishis, unlike all other masters of poetic style, used words pell-mell and indiscriminately without feeling their just associations and giving them their right and exact force in the verbal combination.

       By following this principle I found that without departing from the simple natural and straightforward sense of words and clauses an extraordinarily large body

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not only of separate versos but of entire passages came at once into evidence which entirely altered the whole character of the Veda. For this Scripture then appeared to have a constant vein of the \ richest gold of thought and spiritual experience running all through it and appearing sometimes in small streaks, sometimes in larger bands, in the majority of its hymns. Moreover, besides the words that in their plain and ordinary sense give at once a wealth of psychological significance to their context, the Veda is full of others to which it is possible to give either an external and material or an internal and psychological value according to our conception of the general purport of Veda. For instance such words as raye, rayi, radhas, ratna, may mean either merely material prosperity and riches or internal felicity and plenitude applying itself equally to the subjective and the objective world; dhana, vaja, posha may mean either objective wealth, plenty and increase or all possessions internal or external, their plenitude and their growth in the life of the individual. Raye, is used in the Upanishads, in a quotation from the Rig-Veda, to mean spiritual felicity ; why should it be incapable of bearing that sense in the original text? Vaja occurs frequently in a context in which every other word has a psychological significance and the mention of physical plenty comes in with a violent jar of incoherency into the homogeneous totality of the thought. Common sense, therefore, demands that the use of these words with a psychological import should be admitted in the Veda.

       But if this is done consistently, not only whole verses and passages, but whole hymns assume at once the psychological complexion. On one condition this transformation is frequently complete, leaving no word or phrase unaffected, —the condition that we should admit the symbolic character of the Vedic sacrifice. We find in the Gita the word yajna, sacrifice, used in a symbolic sense for all action, whether internal or external, that is consecrated to the gods or to the Supreme. W^as such symbolic use of the word born of a later philosophical intellectuality, or was it inherent in the Vedic idea of sacrifice ? I found that in the Veda itself there were hymns in which the idea of the yajna or of the victim is openly symbolical, others in which the veil is quite transparent. The question then arose whether these were later compositions developing an incipient symbolism out of old superstitious practices or rather the occasional plainer statement of a sense which is in most hymns more or less carefully veiled by the figure. If there were no constant recurrence of psychological 

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passages in the Veda, the former explanation would, no doubt, have to be accepted. But on the contrary whole hymns took naturally a psychological sense proceeding with a perfect and luminous coherency from verse to verse, where the only points of obscurity we the mention of the sacrifice or of the offering or sometimes of the officiating priest, who might be either a manor a god. If these words could be interpreted symbolically, I found .always that the progression of thought became more perfect, more luminous, more coherent and the sense. of the hymn in its entirety was victoriously completed. 1 felt there fore justified by every canon of sound criticism in pursuing my hypothesis farther and including in it the symbolic sense of the Vedic ritual.

        Nevertheless here intervenes the first real difficulty of the psychological interpretation. Hitherto I had been proceeding by a perfectly straightforward and natural method of interpretation based on the surface meaning of the words and sentences. Now I came to an element in which the surface meaning had, in a sense, to be overridden, and this is a process in which every critical and conscientious mind must find itself beset by continual scruples. Nor can one always be sure even with the utmost care, of having hit on the right clue and the just interpretation.

       The Vedic sacrifice consists of three features,—omitting for the moment the god and the mantia,—the persons who offer, the offering and the fruits of the offering. If the yajna is the action consecrated to the gods, I could not but take the yajamana, the giver of the sacrifice, as the doer of the action. Yajna is works, internal or external, the Yajamana must be the soul or the personality as the doer. But there were also the officiating priests, hota, ritwij, purohit, brahma, adhvaryu etc. What was their part in the symbolism ? Poor if we once suppose a symbolic sense for the sacrifice, we must suppose also a symbolic value for each feature of the ceremony. I found that the gods were continually spoken of as priests of the offering and in many passages it wasundisguisedly a non-human power or energy which presided over the sacrifice. I perceived also that throughout Veda the elements of our personality are themselves continually personified. I had only to apply this rule inversely and to suppose that the person of the priest in the external figure represented in the internal activities figured a non-human power or energy or an element of our personality. It remained to fix the psychological sense of the different priestly offices. Here I found that the Veda itself presented a clue by its philological indications and insistences, such as the use of the word purohita in its

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separated form with the sense of the representative " put in front " and a frequent reference to the god Agni who symbolises the divine Will or Force in humanity that takes up the action in all consecration of works.

      The offerings were more difficult to understand. Even if the Soma-wine by the context in which it occurred, its use and effect and the philological indication of its synonyms, suggested its own interpretation, what could possibly be indicated by the " ghritam," the clarified butter in the sacrifice ‘? And yet the word as used in the Veda was constantly insisting on its own symbolical significance. What for instance could be made of clarified butter dropping from heaven or dripping from the horses of Indra or dripping from the mind? Obviously, this was grotesque nonsense, if the sense of ghrita as clarified butter was anything more than a symbol used with great looseness, so that often the external sense was wholly or partly put aside in the mind of the thinker. It was possible of course to vary conveniently the sense of the words, to take ghrita sometimes as butter and sometimes as water and tuanas sometimes as the mind, sometimes as food or a cake. But I found that ghrita was constantly used in connection with the thought or the mind, that heaven in Veda was a symbol of the mind, that Indra represented the illuminated mentality and his two horses double energies of that mentality and even that the Veda sometimes speaks plainly of offering the intellect (manisha) as purified ghrita, to the gods, ghritam naputam manisham. The word ghrita counts also among its philological significances the sense of a rich or warm brightness. It was by this concurrence of indications that I felt justified in fixing a certain psychological significance for the figure of the clarified butter. And I found the same rule and the same method applicable to other features of the sacrifice.

      The fruits of the offering were in appearance purely material—cows, horses, gold, offspring, men, physical strength, victory in battle. Here the difficulty thickened. But I had already found that the Vedic cow was an exceedingly enigmatical animal and came from no earthly herd. The word go means both cow and light and in a number of passages evidently meant light even while putting forward the image of the cow. This is clear enough when we have to do with the cows of the sun—the Homeric kina of Helios—and the cows of the Dawn. Psychologically, the physical Light might well be used as a symbol of knowledge and especially of the divine knowledge. But how could this mere possibility be tested and

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established? I found that passages occurred in which all the surrounding context was psychological and only the image of the cow interfered with its obtrusive material suggestion. Indra is invoked as the maker of perfect forms to drink the wine of Soma; drinking he becomes full of ecstasy and a "giver of cows"; then we can attain to his most intimate or his most ultimate right thinking, then we question him and his clear discernment brings us our highest good. It is obvious that in such a passage these cows cannot be material herds nor would the giving of physical Light carry any sense in the context. In one instance at least the psychological symbolism of the Vedic cow was established with certainty to my mind. I then applied it to other passages in which the word occurred and always I saw that it resulted in the best sense and the greatest possible coherency in the context.

     The cow and horse, go and asva, are constantly associated. Usha, the Dawn, is described as gomati asvavati; Dawn gives to the sacrificer horses and cows. As applied to the physical dawn gomati means accompanied by or bringing the rays of light and is an image of the dawn of illumination in the human mind Therefore asvavati also cannot refer merely to the physical steed ; it must have a psychological significance as well. A study of the Vedic horse led me to the conclusion that go and asva represent the two companion ideas of Light and Energy, Consciousness and Force, which to the Vedic and Vedantic mind were the double or twin aspect of all the activities of existence.

     It was apparent, therefore, that the two chief fruits of the Vedic sacrifice, wealth of cows and wealth of horses, were symbolic of richness of mental illumination and abundance of vital energy. It followed that the other fruits continually associated with these two chief results of the Vedic karma must also be capable of a psychological significance. It remained only to fix their exact purport.

     Another all-important feature of Vedic symbolism is the system of the worlds and the functions of the gods. I found the clue to the symbolism of the worlds in the Vedic conception of the vyahritis, the three symbolic words of the mantra, " OM Bhur Bhavah Swah," and in the connection of the fourth Vyahriti, Mahas, with the psychological term "Ritam." The Rishis speak of three cosmic divisions, Earth, the Antariksha or middle region and Heaven ( Dyaus); but there is also a greater Heaven ( Brihad Dyau) called also the Wide World, the Vast (Brihat), and type field sometimes as the Great Water, Maho Arnas. This " Brihat " is again described as "Ritam

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       Brihat." or in a triple term " Satyam Ritam Brihat." And as the three worlds correspond to the Vyahritis, so this fourth world of the Vastness and the Truth seems to correspond to the fourth Vyahriti mentioned in the Upanishads, Malms. In the Puranic formula the four are completed by three others, Jana, Tapas and Satya, the three supreme worlds of the Hindu cosmology. In the Veda also we have three supreme worlds whose names are not given. But in the Vedantic and Puranic system the seven worlds correspond to seven psychological principles or forms of existence. Sat, Chit, Ananda, Vijnana, Prana, Manas and Anna. Now Vijnana, the central principle, the principle of Mahas, the great world, is the Truth of things, identical with the Vedic Ritam which is the principle of Brihat, the Vast, and while in the Puranic system Mahas is followed in the ascending order by Jana, the world of Ananda, of the divine Bliss, in the Veda also Ritam, the Truth, leads upward to Mayas, Bliss. We may, therefore, be fairly sure that the two systems are identical and that both depend on the same idea of seven principles of subjective consciousness formulating themselves in seven objective worlds. On this principle I was able to identify the Vedic worlds with the corresponding psychological planes of consciousness and the whole Vedic system became clear to my mind.

      With so much established the rest followed naturally and inevitably. I had already sec n that the central idea of the Vedic Rishis was the transition of the human soul from a state of death to a state of immortality by the exchange of the Falsehood for the Truth, of divided and limited being for integrality and infinity. Death is the mortal state of Matter with Mind and Life involved in it; Immortality is a state of infinite being, consciousness and bliss. Man rises beyond the two firmaments, Rodasi, Heaven and Earth, mind and body, to the infinity of the Truth, Mahas, and so to the divine Bliss. This is the "great passage " discovered by the Ancestors, the ancient Rishis.

      The gods I found to be described as children of Light, sons of Aditi, of Infinity; and without exception they are described as increasing man, bringing him light, pouring on him the fullness of the waters, the abundance of the heavens, increasing the truth in him, building up the divine worlds, leading him against all attacks to the great goal, the integral felicity, the perfect bliss. Their separate functions emerged by means of their activities, their epithets, the psychological sense of the legends connected with them, the indications of the Upanishads

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and Puranas, the occasional side-lights from Greek myth. On the other hand the demons who opposed them, are all powers of division and limitation, Coverers, Tearers, Devourers, Confiners, Dualisers, Obstructers, as their names indicate, powers that work against the free and unified integrality of the being. These Vritras, Panis, Atris, Rakshasas, Sambara, Vala, Namuchi, are not Dravidian kings and gods, as the modern mind with its exaggerated historic sense would like them to be; they represent a more antique idea better suited to the religious and ethical preoccupations of our forefathers. They represent the struggle between the powers of the higher Good and the lower desire, and this conception of the Rig Veda and the same opposition of good and evil otherwise expressed, with less psychological subtlety, with more ethical directness in the scriptures of the .Zoroastrians, our ancient neighbours and kindred, proceeded probably from a common original discipline of the Aryan culture.

       Finally, I found that the systematic symbolism of the Veda was extended to the legends related of the gods and of their dealings with the ancient seers. Some of these myths, if not all, may have had, in all probability had, a naturalistic and astronomical origin ; but, if so, their original sense had been supplemented by a psychological symbolism. Once the sense of the Vedic symbols is known, the spiritual intention of these legends becomes apparent and inevitable. Every element of the Veda is inextricably bound up with every other and the very nature of these compositions compels us, once we have adopted a principle of interpretation, to carry it to its farthest rational limits. Their materials have been skillfully welded together by firm hands and any inconsistency in our handling of them shatters the whole fabric of their sense and their coherent thinking.

     Thus there emerged in my mind, revealing itself as it were out of the ancient verses, a Veda which was throughout the Scripture of a great and antique religion already equipped with a profound psychological discipline,—a Scripture not confused in thought or primitive in its substance, not a medley of heterogeneous or barbarous elements, but one, complete and self-conscious in its purpose and in its purport, veiled indeed by the cover, sometimes thick, sometimes transparent, of another and material sense, but never losing sight even for a single moment of its high spiritual aim and tendency.

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Selected Hymns

THE DIVINE DAWN

RIG VEDA III.

1. Dawn, richly stored with substance, conscious cleave to the affirmation of him who expresses thee, O thou of the plenitudes. Goddess, ancient, yet ever young thou movest many-thoughted following the law of thy activities, O bearer of every boon.

2. Dawn divine, shine out immortal in thy car of happy light sending forth the pleasant voices of the Truth. May steeds well-guided bear thee here who are golden brilliant of hue and wide their might.

3. Dawn, confronting all the worlds thou standest high-uplifted and art their perception of Immortality; do thou move over them like a wheel,

4. Dawn in her plenitude like one that lets fall from her a sewn robe moves, the bride of the Bliss; creating Swar, perfect in her working, perfect in her enjoying, she widens from the extremity of Heaven over the earth.

5 Meet ye the Dawn as she shines wide towards you and with surrender bring forward your complete energy. Exalted in heaven is the force to which she rises establishing the sweetness ; she makes the

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luminous worlds to shine forth and is a vision of felicity.

6. By heaven’s illumining one perceives her a bearer of the Truth and rapturous she comes with its varied light into the two firmaments. From Dawn as she approaches shining out on thee, O Agni, thou sleekest and attainest to the substance of delight.

7. Putting forth his impulsions in the foundation of the Truth, in the foundation of the Dawns, their Lord enters the Vastness of the firmaments. Vast the wisdom of Varuna, of Mitra, as in a happy brightness, orders multitudinously the Light.

COMMENTARY

      Surya Savitri in his task of illumination follows the progress of the Dawn. In another hymn the movements of the mind have been described as growing conscient and brilliant by the bright power of the continuous Dawns. Throughout the Veda Usha, daughter of Heaven, has always the same function. She is the medium of the awakening, the activity and the growth of the other gods ; she is the first condition of the Vedic realisation. By her increasing illumination the whole nature of man is clarified ; through her he arrives at the Truth, through her he enjoys the Beatitude. The divine dawn of the Rishis is the advent of the divine Light throwing off veil after veil and revealing in man’s activities the luminous godhead. In that light the Work is done, the sacrifice offered and its desirable fruits gathered by humanity. _

      Many are the hymns, indeed, in which rich and beautiful figures of the earthly dawn veil this inner truth of the goddess Usha, but in this hymn of the great Rishi Visvamitra the psychological symbolism of the Vedic Dawn is appetent from beginning to end by open expressions and on the surface

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of the thought. " O Dawn rich of store in thy substance, " he cries to her, " conscient. cleave to the affirmation of him who expresses thee, O thou who hast the plenitudes. " The word prachetas and the related word, vichetas, are standing terms of Vedic phraseology ; they seem to correspond to the ideas expressed in later language by the Vedantic Prajna na and vijnana. Prajna na is the consciousness that cognizes all things as objects confronting its observation ; in the divine mind it is knowledge regarding things as their source, possessor and witness. Vijnana is comprehensive knowledge containing, penetrating into things, pervading them m consciousness by a sort of identification with their truth. Usha is to occupy the revealing thought and word of the Rishi as a power of Knowledge conscient of the truth of all that is placed by them before the mind for expression in man. The affirmation, it is suggested, will be full and ample ; for Usha is vajena vajena, machine ; rich is the store of her substance ; she has all the plenitudes.

      This dawn moves in her progression always according to the rule of a divine action ; many are the thoughts she brings in that motion, but her steps are sure and all desirable things, all supreme boons, the boons of the Ananda, the blessings of the divine existence,—are in her hands. She is ancient and eternal, the dawn of the Light that was from the beginning, purani, but in her coming she is ever young and fresh to the soul that receives her.

     She is to shine wide, she that is the divine Dawn, as the light of the immortal existence bringing out in man the powers or the voices of Truth and Joy, (sunritah,—a word which expresses at once both the true and the pleasant); for is not the chariot of her movement a car at once of light and of happiness ? For again, the word chandra in chandraratha, —signifying also the lunar deity Soma, lord of the delight of immortality pouring into man, ananda and amrita,—means both luminous and blissful. And the horses that bring her, figure of the nervous forces that support and carry forward all our action, must be perfectly controlled; golden, bright in hue, their nature (for in this ancient symbolism colour is the sign of quality, of character, of temperament, ) must be a dynamism of ideal knowledge in its concentrated luminous-ness ; wide in its extension must be the mass of that concentrated force,—prithupajaso ye.

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Divine Dawn comes thus to the soul with the light of her knowledge, prajnana, confronting all the worlds as field of that knowledge,—all provinces, that is to say, of our universal being,—mind, vitality, physical consciousness. She stands uplifted over them on our heights above mind, in the highest heaven, as the perception of Immortality or of the Immortal, amritasya ketnh, revealing in them the eternal and beatific existence or the eternal all-blissful Godhead. So exalted she stands prepared to effect the motion of the divine knowledge, progressing as a new revelation of the eternal truth, navyasi, in their harmonised and equalised activities like a wheel moving smoothly over a level field; for they now, their diversities and discords removed, offer no obstacle to that equal motion.

     In her plenitude she separates, as it were, and casts down from her the elaborately sewn garment that covered the truth of things and moves as the wife of the Lover, the energy of her all-blissful Lord, swasarasya patni. Full in her enjoyment of the felicity, full in her effectuation of all activities, snbkagd indansdh, she brings into existence in us by her revelations Swar, the concealed luminous mind, our highest mental heaven ; and thus from the farthest extremities of mental being extends herself over the physical consciousness.

     As this divine Dawn pours out widely its light upon them, so have men by submission to the law of her divine act and movement to bring forward for her the fully energised completeness of their being and their capacities as a vehicle for her light or as a seat for her sacrificial activities.

     The Rishi then dwells on the two capital works of the divine Dawn in man,—her elevation of him to the full force of the Light and the revelation of the Truth and her pouring of the Ananda, the Amrita, the Soma Wine, the bliss of the immortal being into the mental and bodily existence. In the world of the pure mind, dim, she rises into the full force and mass of the Light, urddhwam pajo asret, and from those pure and high levels she establishes the sweetness, madhu, the honey of Soma. She makes to shine out the three luminous worlds, rochanch ; she is then or she brings with her the beatific vision. By the effectual illuminations of the pure mentality, through the realising Word, divo arkaih, she is perceived as the bearer of Truth and with the Truth she

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enters from the world above Mind, full of the delight, in a varied play of her multiple thought and activity, into the mental and bodily consciousness, those established limits between which man’s action moves. It is from her, as she comes thus richly laden, vajena vajena, that Agni, the divine Force labouring here in body and mind to uplift the mortal, prays for and attains to the Soma, the wine of the Beatitude, the delightful substance.

      The supramental world in us, foundation of the Truth, is the foundation of the Dawns. They are the descent upon mortal nature of the light of that immortal Truth, ritam jyotis. The Lord of the Dawns, Master of Truth, Illuminer, Creator, Organiser, putting forth in the foundation of Truth, above mind, the impulsion of his activities, enters with them by this goddess into a bodily and mental existence no longer obscured but released from their limits and capable of vastness, tuahi rodasi. The Lord of Truth is the sole lord of things. He is Varuna, soul of vastness and purity; he is Mitra, source of love and light and harmony. His creative Wisdom, mahi Mitra sya Varuna sya ntaya, unlimited in its scope,—for he is Varuna,—.appearing, chandreva, as a light of bliss and joy,—for he is Mitra,—arranges, perfectly organises, in multitudinous forms, in the wideness of the liberated nature, -the luminous expansions, the serene expressions of the Truth. He combines the various brilliancies with which his Dawn has entered our firmaments; he blends into one harmony her true and happy voices.

      Dawn divine is the coming of the Godhead. She is the light of the Truth and the Felicity pouring on us from the Lord of Wisdom and Bliss, aniriiasya keiuh, swasarasya patni.

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Isha Upanishad

ANALYSIS IV

THIRD MOVEMENT

Verse 8*

‘‘HE "

      In its third movement the Upanishad takes up the justification of works already stated in general terms in its second verse and founds it more precisely upon the conception of Brahman or the Self as the Lord,—Ish, Ishwara, Para Purusha, Sa (He),—who is the cause of personality and governs by His law of works the rhythm of the Movement and the process of the worlds that He conceives and realises throughout eternal Time in His own self-existence.

      It is an error to conceive that the Upanishads teach the true existence only of an impersonal and actionless Brahman, an impersonal God without power or qualities. They declare rather an Unknowable that manifests itself to us in a double aspect of Personality and Impersonality. When they wish to speak of this Unknowable in the most comprehensive and general way, they use the neuter and call It Tat, That ; but this neuter does not exclude the aspect of universal and transcendent Personality acting and governing the world (of Kena Upanishad III). Still, when they intend to nuke prominent the latter idea they

     " It is he that has gone abroad — That which is bright, bodiless, without scar of imperfection, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil. The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered objects perfectly according to their nature rom years sempiternal.

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more often prefer to use the masculine, Sa, He, or, else they employ the term Deva, God or the Divine, or Purusha, the conscious Soul, of whom Prakriti or Maya is the executive Puissance, the Shakti.

      The Isha Upanishad, having declared the Brahman as the sole reality manifesting itself in many aspects and forms, having presented this Brahman subjectively as the Sell, the one Being of whom all existences are Becomings, and as that which we have to realise in ourselves and in all things and beyond all things, now proceeds to assert the same Brahman more objectively as the Lord, the Purusha who both contains and inhabits the universe.

      It is He that went abroad. This Brahman, this Self is identical with the Lord, the Ish, with whose name the Upanishad open. is, the Inhabitant of all forms : and, as we shall find, identical with the universal Purusha of the 16th verse —" The Purusha there and there, He am I." It is He who has become all things and beings,— a conscious Being, the sole existent and Self-existent, who is Master and enjoyer of all He becomes. And the Upanishad proceeds to formulate the nature and manner, the general law of that becoming of God which we call the world. For on this conception depends the Vedic idea of the two poles of death and immortality, the reason for the existence of Avidya, the Ignorance, and the justification of works in the world.

TRANSITIONAL THOUGHT.

THE DIVINE PERSONALITY.

      The Vedantic idea of God, " He," Deva or Ishwara, must not be confused with the ordinary notions attached to the conception of a Personal God. Personality is generally conceived as identical with individuality and the vulgar idea of a Personal God is a magnified individual like man in His nature but yet different, greater, more vast and all-overpowering. Vedanta admits the human manifestation of Brahman in man and to man, but does not admit that this is the real nature of the Ishwara.

      God is Sachchidananda. He manifests Himself as infinite existence of which the essentiality is conscious^-

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ness, of which again the essentiality is bliss, is self-delight. Delight cognizing variety of itself, seeking its own variety, as it were, becomes the universe. But these are abstract terms; abstract ideas in themselves cannot produce concrete realities. They are impersonal states; impersonal states cannot in themselves produce personal activities.

      This becomes still clearer if we consider the manifestation of Sachchidananda. In that manifestation Delight translates itself into Love, ; Consciousness translates itself into double terms, conceptive Knowledge, executive Force; Existence translates itself into Being, that is to say, into Person and Substance. But Love is incomplete without a Lover and an object of Love, Knowledge without a Know-er and an object of Knowledge. Force without a Worker and a Work ; Substance without a Person cognizing and constituting it.

      This is because the original terms also are not really impersonal abstractions. In delight of Brahman, there is an Enjoyer of delight, in consciousness of Brahman a Conscient, in existence of Brahman an Existent; but the object of Brahman’s delight and consciousness and the term nd stuff of Its existence are Itself. In the divine Being Knowledge, the Knower and the Known and, therefore, necessarily also Delight, the Enjoyer and the Enjoyed are one.

      This Self-Awareness and Self-Delight of Brahman has two modes of its Force of consciousness, its Prakriti or Maya,—intensive in self-absorption, diffusive in self-extension. The intensive mode is proper to the pure and silent Brahman ; the diffusive to the active Brahman. It is the diffusion of the Self-existent in the term and stuff of His own existence that we call the world, the becoming or the perpetual movement ( bhnvanam, jagat). It is Brahman that becomes; what He becomes is also the Brahman. The object of Love is the self of the Lover ; the work is the self-figuration of the Worker; Universe is body and action of the Lord.

      When therefore, we consider the abstract and impersonal aspect of the infinite existence, we say, " That ";

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when we consider the Existent self-aware and self-blissful, we say, "He". Neither conception is entirely complete. Brahman itself is the Unknowable beyond all conceptions of Personality and Impersonality. We may call it " That" to show that we exile from our affirmation all term and definition. We may equally call it " He ", provided we speak with the same intention of rigorous exclusion. "Tat" and " Sa " are always the same, One that escapes definition.

     In the universe there is a constant relation of One. ness and Multiplicity. This expresses itself as the universal Personality and the many Persons, and both between the One and the Many and among the Many themselves there is the possibility of an indefinite variety of relations. These relations are determined by the play of the divine existence, the Lord, entering into His manifested habitations. They exist at first as conscious relations between individual souls; they are then taken up by them and used as a means of entering into conscious relation with the One. It is this entering into various relation with the One which is the object and function of Religion. All religions are just is feed by this essential necessity; all express one Truth in various ways and move by various paths to one goal.

    The Divine Personality reveals Himself in various forms and names to the individual soul. These forms and names are in a sense created in the human consciousness ; in another they are eternal symbols revealed by the Divine who thus concretise Himself in mind-form to the multiple consciousness and aids it in its return to its own Unity.*

HE THAT WENT ABROAD

     It is He that has extended Himself in the relative consciousness whose totality of finite and changeable circumstances dependent on an equal, immutable and eternal Infinity is what we call the Universe. Sa paryagat.

* It would be an error to suppose that these conceptions are in their essence later developments of philosophical Hinduism. The conception of the many forms and names of the One is as old as the Rig Veda.

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       In this extension we have, therefore, two aspects, one of pure infinite relationless immutability, another of a totality of objects in Time and Space working out their relations through causality. Both arc different and mutually complementary expressions of the same unknowable " He ".

      To express the infinite Immutability the Upanishad uses a series of neuter adjectives, " Bright, bodiless, without scar, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil." To express the same Absolute as cause, continent and governing Inhabitant of the totality of objects and of each object in the totality (jagatyam jagat) it uses four masculine epithets, "The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent " or " the Self-Becoming ".

      The Immutable is the still and secret foundation of the play and the movement, extended equally, impartially in all things, Samain Brahma,* lending its support to all without choice or active participation. Secure and free in His eternal immutability the Lord projects Himself into the play and the movement, becoming there in His self-existence all that the Seer in Him visualises and the Thinker in Him conceives. Kavir Manishi Paribhuh Swayambhu.

THE PURE IMMUTABLE

     The pure immutability of the Lord is *’ bright." It is a luminosity of pure concentrated Self-awareness, not broken by retractions, not breaking out into colour and form. It is the pure self-knowledge of the Purusha, the conscious Soul, with his power, his executive Force contained and inactive.

      It is "bodiless,"—without form, indivisible and without appearance of division. It is one equal Purusha in all things, not divided by the divisions of Space and Time,—a pure self-conscious Absolute.

      It is without scar, that is, without defect, break or imperfection. It is untouched and unaffected by the

* Gita " The equal Brahman.’

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mutability It supports, their clash of relations, their play of more and less, of increase and diminution, of irruption and interpenetration. For Itself is without action, achara sandtana,* " motionless, sempiternal."

       It is without sinews. The reason for Its being without scar is that It does not put out Power, does not dispense Force in multiple channels, does not lose it here, increase it there, replenish its loss or seek by love or by violence its complementary or its food. It is without nerves of force ; It does not pour itself out in the energies of the Pranic dynamism, of Life, of Matariswan.

      It is pure, unpierced by evil. What we call sin or evil, is merely excess and defect, wrong placement, inharmonious action and reaction. By its equality, by its inaction even while it supports all action, the conscious Soul retains its eternal freedom and eternal purity. For it is unmodified; It watches as the Sakshi, the witness, the modifications effected by Prakriti, but does not partake of them, does not get clogged with them, receives not their impression. Na lipyate.

THE SOUL INALIENABLY FREE

       What is the relation of the active Brahman and of the human soul to this pure Inactive? They too are That. Action does not change the nature of the Self, but only the nature of the diverse forms. The self is always pure, blissful, perfect, whether inactive or participating in action.

       The Self is all things and exceeds them. It exceeds always that in which the mind is engrossed, that which it takes in a particular time and space as a figure of itself. The boundless whole is always perfect. The totality of things is a complete harmony without wound or flaw The view-point of the part taken for a whole, in other words the Ignorance, is the broken reflection which creates the consciousness of limitation, incompleteness and discord. We shall see that this Ignorance has a use

• Gita II. 24.

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in the play of the Brahman; but in itself it appears at first to be only a parent of evil.

     Ignorance is a veil that separates the mind, body and life from their source and reality, Sachchidananda. Thus obscured the mind feels itself pierced by the evil that Ignorance creates. But the Active Brahman is always Sachchidananda using for its self-becoming the forms of mind, body and life. All their experiences are therefore seen by It in the terms of Sachchidananda. It is not pierced by the evil. For It also is the one and sees everywhere Oneness. It is not mastered by the Ignorance that It uses as a minor term of its conception.

     The human soul is one with the Lord; it also is in its completeness Sachchidananda using Ignorance as the minor term of its being. But it has projected its conceptions into this minor term and established there in limited mind its centre of vision, its view-point. It assumes to itself the incompleteness and the resultant sense of want, discord, desire, suffering. The Real Man behind is not affected by all this confusion ; but the apparent or exterior Man is affected. To recover its freedom it must recover its completeness; it must identify itself with the divine Inhabitant within, its true and complete self. It can then, like the Lord, conduct the action of Prakriti without undergoing the false impression of identification with the results of its action. It is this idea on which the Upanishad bases the assertion, " Action cleaveth not to a man."

     To this end it must recover the silent Brahman within. The Lord possesses always His double term and conducts the action of the universe extended in it, but not attached to or limited by His works. The human soul, entangled in mind, is obscured in vision by the rushing stream of Prakritis works and fancies itself to be a part of that stream and swept in its currents and in its eddies. It has to go back in its self-existence to the silent Purusha even while participating in its self-becoming in the movement of Prakriti. It becomes, then, not only like the silent Purusha, the witness and upholder, but also the

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Lord, and the free enjoyer of Prakriti and her works. An absolute calm and passivity, purity and equality within, a sovereign and inexhaustible activity without is the nature of Brahman as we see it manifested in the universe.

     There is therefore no farther objection to works. On the contrary, works are justified by the participation or self Identification of the soul with the Lord in His double aspect of passivity and activity. Tranquillity for the Soul, activity for the energy, is the balance of the divine rhythm in man.

THE LAW OF THINGS

     The totality of objects (arthan) is the becoming of the Lord in the extension of His own being. Its principle is double. There is consciousness; there is Being. Consciousness dwells in energy ( Tapas) upon its self-being to produce Idea of itself (vijnana) and form and action inevitably corresponding to the Idea. This is the original Indian conception of creation, self-production or projection into form (srishti, prasava.) Being uses its self-awareness to evolve infinite forms of itself governed by the expansion of the innate Idea in the form. This is the original Indian conception of evolution, prominent in certain philosophies such as the Sankhya (parinama, vikara, vivarta.) It is the same phenomenon diversely stated.

     In the idea of some thinkers the world is a purely subjective evolution ( vivarta,) not real as objective fact ; in the idea of others it is an objective fact, a real modification (parinama,) but one which makes no difference to the essence of Being. Both notions claim to derive from the Upanishads as their authority, and their opposition comes in fact by the separation of what in the ancient Vedanta was viewed as one,—as we see in this passage.

     Brahman is His own subject and His own object, whether in His pure self-existence or in His varied self-becoming. He is the object of His own self-awareness ; He is the Knower of His own self-being. The two aspects are inseparable, even though they seem to disappear into each other and emerge again from each other. All appear-

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ance of pure subjectivity holds itself as an object implicit in its very subjectivity ; all appearance of pure objectivity holds itself as subject implicit in its very objectivity.

     All objective existence is the Self-existent, the Self-becoming, " Swayambhu, " becoming by the force of the Idea within it. The Idea is, self-contained, the Pact that it becomes. For Swayambhu sees or comprehends Himself in the essence of the Fact as " Kavi," thinks Himself out in the evolution of its possibilities as " Manishi," becomes form of Himself in the movement in Space and Time as " Paribhu." These three are one operation appearing as successive in the relative, temporal and spacious Consciousness.

     It follows that every object holds in itself the law of its own being eternally, shcisivatibhyah samabhyah, from years sempiternal, in perpetual Time. All relations in the totality of objects are thus determined by their Inhabitant, the Self-existent, the Self-becoming, and stand contained in the nature of things by the omnipresence of the One, the Lord, by His self-vision which is their inherent subjective Truth, by His self-becoming which, against a background of boundless possibilities, is the Law of their inevitable evolution in the objective Fact.

     Therefore all things are arranged by Him perfectly, Yathatathyatah, as they should be in their nature. There is an imperative harmony in the All, which governs the apparent discords of individualisation. That discord would be real and operate in eternal Chaos, if there were only a mass of individual forms and forces, if each form and force did not contain in itself and were not in its reality the self-existent All, the Lord.

THE PROCESS OF THINGS

     The Lord appears to us in the relative notion of the process of things first as Kavi, the Wise, the Seer. The Kavi sees the Truth in itself, the Truth in its becoming, in its essence, possibilities, actuality. He contains all that in the Idea, the Vijnana, called the Truth and Law, Satyatn Ritant. He contains it comprehensively, not piecemeal; the Truth and Law of things is the Brihat, the

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      Large. Viewed by itself, the realm of Vijnana would seem a realm of predetermination, of concentration, of compelling seed-state. But it is a determination not in previous Time, but in perpetual Time ; a Fate compelled by the Soul not compelling it, compelling rather the action and result, present in the expansion of the movement as well as in the concentration of the Idea. Therefore the truth of the Soul is freedom and mastery, not subjection and bondage. Purusha commands Prakriti, Prakriti does not compel Purusha. Na karma lipyate nare.

      The Manishi takes his stand in the possibilities. He has behind him the freedom of the Infinite and brings it in as a background for the determination of the finite. Therefore every action in the world seems to emerge from a balancing and clashing of various possibilities. None of these, however, are effective in the determi nation except by their secret consonance with the Law of that which has to become. The Kavi is in the Manishi and upholds him in his working. But viewed by itself the realm ol the Manishi would seem to be a state of plasticity, of freewill, of the interaction of forces; but of a free-will in thought which is met by a fate in things.

       For the action of the Manishi is meant to eventuate in the becoming of the Paribhu. The Paribhu called also Virat, extends Himself in the realm of eventualities. He fulfils what is contained in the Truth, what works out in the possibilities reflected by the mind, what appears to us as the fact objectively realised. The realm of Virat would seem, if taken separately, to be that of a Law and Predetermination which compels all things that evolve in that realm,—the iron chain of Karma, the rule of mechanical necessity, the despotism of an inexplicable Law.

      But the becoming of Virat is always the becoming of the self-existent Lord,—Paribhuh Swayambhuh. Therefore to realise the truth of that becoming we have to go back and re-embrace all that stands behind;—we have to return to the full truth of the free and infinite Sachchidananda.

       This is the truth of things as seen from above and from the Unity. It is the divine standpoint; but we have to

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take account of the human standpoint which starts from below, proceeds from the Ignorance, and perceives these principles successively, not comprehensively, as separate states of consciousness. Humanity is that which returns in experience to Sachchidananda, and it must begin from below, in Avidya, with the mind embodied in Matter, the Thinker imprisoned and emerging from the objective Fact. This imprisoned Thinker is Man, the " Manu ".

     He has to start from death and division and arrive at unity and immortality. He has to realise the universal in the individual and the Absolute in the relative. He is Brahman growing self-conscious in the objective multiplicity. He is the ego in the cosmos vindicating himself as the All and the Transcendent.

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The Synthesis of Yoga

V

      By the very nature of the principal Yogic schools each covering in its operations a part of the complex human integer and attempting to bring out its highest possibilities, it will appear that a synthesis of all of them largely conceived and applied might well result in an integral Yoga. But they are so disparate in their tendencies, so highly specialised and elaborated in their forms, so long confirmed in the mutual opposition of their ideas and methods that we do not easily find how we can arrive at their right union.

      An undiscriminating combination in block would not be a synthesis, but a confusion. Nor would a successive practice of each of them in turn be easy in the short span of our human life and with our limited energies, to say nothing of the waste of labour implied in so cumbrous a process. Sometimes, indeed, Hathayoga and Rajayoga are thus successively practised. And in a recent unique example, in the life of Ramakrishua Paramhansa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realisation, taking, as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realisation and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalised. Its object also was special and temporal)

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to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master-soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labouring, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. Xo know, be and possess the Divine is the one thing needful and it includes or leads up to all the rest; towards this sole good we have to drive and this attained, all the rest that the divine Will chooses for us, all necessary form and manifestation, will be added.

     The synthesis we propose cannot, then, be arrived at either by combination in mass or by successive practice. It must therefore be effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on some central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles, and on some central dynamic force which is the common secret of their divergent methods and capable therefore of Organising a natural selection and combination of their varied energies and different utilities. This was the aim which we set before ourselves at first when we entered upon our comparative examination of the methods of Nature and the methods of Yoga and we now return to it with the possibility of hazarding some definite solution.

     We observe, first, that there still exists in India a remarkable Yogic system which is in its nature synthetically and starts from a great central principle of Nature, a great dynamic force of Nature ; But it is a Yoga apart, not a synthesis of other schools. This system is the way of the Tantra. Owing to certain of its developments Tantra has fallen into discredit with those who are not Tantrics; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vamamarga, which not content with exceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed to make a method of self-indulgence, a method of ,unrestrained social immorality. Nevertheless, in its origin, Tantra was a great

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and puissant system founded upon ideas which were at least partially true. Even its twofold division into the right-hand and left-hand paths, Dakshina Marga and Varma Marga, started from a certain profound perception. In the ancient symbolic sense of the words Dakshina and Varma, it was the distinction between the way of Knowledge and the way of Ananda,—Nature in man liberating itself by right discrimination in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities and Nature in man liberating itself by joyous acceptance in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities. But in both paths there was in the end an obscuration of principles, a deformation of symbols and a fall.

      If, however, we leave aside, here also, the actual methods and practices and seek for the central principle, we find, first, that Tantra expressly differentiates itself from the Vedic methods of Yoga.’ In a sense, all the schools we have hitherto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their force is in knowledge, their method is knowledge, though it is not always discernment by the intellect, but may be, instead, the knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith or a knowledge in the will working out through action. In all the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power, its method, its Tantra, that the Tantric Yogin pursued the aims of his discipline,—mastery, perfection, liberation, beatitude. Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.

     We have in this central Tantric conception one side of the truth, the worship of the Energy, the Shakti, as the sole effective force for all attainment. We get the

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other extreme in the Vedantic conception of the Shakti as a power of Illusion and in the search after the silent inactive Purusha as the means of liberation from the deceptions created by the active Energy. But in the integral conception the Conscious Soul is the Lord, the Nature-Soul is his executive Energy. Purusha is of the nature of Sat, conscious self-existence pure and infinite ; Shakti or Prakriti is of the nature of Chit,—it is power of the Purushas self-conscious existence, pure and infinite. The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when the Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming. But if Ananda is the creator and begetter of all becoming, its method is Tapas or force of the Purushas consciousness dwelling upon its own infinite potentiality in existence and producing from it truths of conception or real Ideas, vijnana, which, proceeding from an omniscient and omnipotent Self-existence, have the surety of their own fulfilment and contain in themselves the nature and law of their own becoming in the terms of mind, life and matter. The eventual omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith,—a will that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea which is meant by the Gita when it says, Yo yach-chchraddhah sa eva sah, "whatever is a man’s faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes."

     We see, then, what from the psychological point of view—and Yoga is nothing but practical psychology,— is the conception of Nature from which we have to start. It is the self-fulfilment of the Purusha through his Energy. But the movement of Nature is two old, higher and lower, or, as we may choose to term it, divine and undivine. The distinction exists indeed for practical purposes only; for

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there is nothing that is not divine, and in a larger view it is as meaningless, verbally, as the distinction between natural and supernatural, for all things that are are natural. All things are in Nature and all things are in God. But, for practical purposes, there is a real distinction. The lower Nature, that which we know and are and must remain so long as the faith in us is not changed, acts through limitation and division, is of the nature of Ignorance and culminates in the life of the ego; but the higher Nature, that to which we aspire, acts by unification and transcendence of limitation, is of the nature of Knowledge and culminates in the life divine. The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher,— the ordinary view-point,—or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.

       But in either case it is always through something in the lower that we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of Yoga each select their own point of departure or their own gate of escape. They specialize certain activities of the lower Prakriti and turn them towards the Divine. But the normal action of Nature in us is an integral movement in which the full complexity of all our elements is affected by and affects all our environments. The whole of life is the Yoga of Nature. The Yoga that we seek must also be an integral action of Nature, and the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time ; for then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of short cuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our integral being into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a

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synthesis becomes necessary.

       The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sadhaka of the sadhana as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of it is own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energies the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.

      In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sadhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid,—the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It "makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills." The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds ; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings.

* Sadhana, the practice by which perfection, siddhi, is attained; sadhaka, the Yogin who seeks by that practice the siddhi.

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Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.

      There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.

      Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some element or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.

     Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes

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the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest. God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.

      An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being ; not only a realisation of the one in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self,’ but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.

      Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, Sayuja mukti, by which it becomes, free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the salokya-mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sadharmya-mukli, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.

      By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its

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attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.

      The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. An integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ananda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ananda of that which is in world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.

      Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the highest results of Raja Yoga and Hathayoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected by mankind. At any rate a full development of the general mental and physical faculties and experiences attainable by humanity through Yoga must be included in the scope of the integral method. Nor would these have any raison deter unless employed for an integral mental and physical life. Such a mental and physical life would be in its nature a translation of the spiritual existence into its right mental and physical values. Thus we would arrive at a synthesis of the three degrees of Nature and of the three modes of human existence which she has

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evolved or is evolving. We would include in the scope of our liberated being and perfected modes of activity the material life, our base, and the mental life, our intermediate instrument.

     Nor would the integrality to which we aspire be real or even possible, if it were confined to the individual. Since our divine perfection embraces the realisation of ourselves in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the extension of our liberty and of its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. And the constant and inherent attempt of such an extension would be towards its increasing and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind.

    The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort. Such a consummation being no other than the kingdom of heaven within reproduced in the kingdom of heaven without, would be also the true fulfilment of the great dream cherished in different terms by the world’s religions.

    The widest synthesis of perfection possible to thought is the sole effort entirely worthy of those whose dedicated vision perceives that God dwells concealed in humanity.

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The Eternal Wisdom

BOOK I

THE GOD OF ALL : THE GOD WHO IS IN ALL

SO SHOULD HE BE ADORED

1 So should He be adored…for it is in That all become one.

2 Hail to Thee, to Thee, Spirit of the Supreme Spirit, Soul of souls, to Thee, the visible and invisible,

3 who art one with Time and with the elements.— O obscurity of obscurity, O soul of the soul, Thou art more than all and before all. All is seen in Thee and

4 Thou art seen in all.—I see of Thee neither end nor middle nor beginning, O Lord of all and universal

5 form.—First of the elements, universal Being, Thou hast created all and preserves all and the universe is

6 nothing but Thy form.—Sole essence of the world, Thou creates it and thou dissolves it. Thou makest and unmakes the universe which is born again uncea-

7 singly by Thee.—When creation perishes, Thou dost not perish, when it is reborn, thou cove rest it, O Imperishable, with a thousand different forms.

8 Thou art the sun, the stars, the planets, the entire world, all that is without form or endowed with form, all that is visible or invisible, Thou art all these.—

9 Thou art also in the trees and the plants ; the earth bears Thee in its flanks and gives birth to Thee as its nursling, Thee, the Lord of beings, Thee, the essence

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10 of all that exists.—Whither shall I go from Thy spirit or whither shall I flee from Thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, Thon art there; if I make my bed in

11 hell, behold Thou art there.—Where shall I direct my gaze to bless Thee, on high, below, without, within ? There is no way, no place that is outside Thee, other beings exist not; all is in Thee.

12 Thou who art the soul of all things, Thy universal diffusion witnesses to Thy power and goodness. It is in thee, in others, in all creatures, in all worlds.—

13 All that is contains Thee ; I could not exist if Thou

14 wert not in me.—I have strayed like a lost sheep seeking outside me that which was within. I have run about the streets and places of the world, this great city, seeking Thee and I have not found Thee because I sought Thee ill and came not to the place where Thou wert. Thou wert within me and I sought thee without ; Thou wert near and I sought thee at a distance, and if I had gone where Thou wert, I should immediately have met Thee.

15 Thou art all that I can be, Thou art all that I can do, Thou art all that I can say; for Thou art all and there is nothing that Thou art not. Thou art all that is and all that yet is not.

16 Master invisible filling all hearts and directing them from within, to whatever side I look, Thou dwellest

17- there.—Thou art the sovereign treasure of this uni-

18 vers -Through Thy creations I have discovered the beatitude of Thy eternity.

• 1) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.—2) Vishnu Purana.—3) Farid ud. din-attar.—4)Bhagavad Gita.— 6) Vishnu Purana__6)Harivansa.—7)id- — 8) Vishnu Purana.— 9)Harivansa–IO) Psalx.s.— 11) Hermes.—12) Vishnu Purana.—13) St Augustine.—14) id. —151 Hermes.— 16) Bharon Guru—17) Bhagavad Gita.— 18) Hermes.

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TO BECOME GOD IN ORDER TO KNOW HIM.

1-2 Only the like knows its like.—God dwells in a Light, to which a road is wanting. He who does not

3 become That himself, will never see It.—What God is one knows not. He is not light, nor spirit, nor beatitude nor unity, nor what goes by the name of divinity, nor wisdom, nor love, nor will, nor kindness, nor a thing, nor that which is not a thing, nor a being, nor a soul ; He is what neither I nor thou nor any creature will ever know until we have become what He is.

4 For nobody can see what He is, except the soul in

5 which He himself is.—Lose thyself in Him to penetrate this mystery; everything else is superfluous.

6 Do not think to gain God by thy actions…One

7 must not gain but be God.—One must be God in order

8 to understand God.—If thou canst not equal thyself

9 with God, thou canst not understand Him.—Be not astonished that man can become like God.

10 If man surrenders himself to Tao, he identifies him-

11 self with Tao.—Whoever thinks himself an imperfect and worldly soul, is really an imperfect and worldly soul ; whoever deems himself divine, becomes divine.

12 What a man thinks he is, he becomes.—That is why it is permitted to him who has attained to the truty within, to say, " I am the true Divine."

13-14 Become what thou art.—Each man ought to say to himself, " I was the creator, may I become again

15 what I was".—Before I was myself, I was God in God, that is why I can again become that when I shall be dead to myself.

* * 1) Porphyry–2) Angelus Silesius.— 3) id.— 4) Maitre Eckhart._5) Farid-ud-din-attar.—6) Angelus Silesius.— 7) Antoine the Healer__8) Hermes.—9) Epistle to Diognetus.—10) Lao-tse.— ll)Ramakrishna._12) Mohyid din in Arabi.—13) Orphic Precept.— 14) Upanishad.—15) Angelus Silesius.

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I He who knows that He is the supreme Lord, becomes that, and the gods themselves cannot prevent him…He who adores any other divinity, has not the knowledge. He is as cattle for the gods. Even as numerous cattle serve to nourish men, so each man serves to nourish the gods…That is why the gods love

2 not that a man should know That.—And the Lord Jehovah said, " Behold, the man is become as one of us…and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever—

3 The belief in supernatural beings may to a certain extent increase the action in man, but it produces also a moral deterioration. Dependence, fear, superstition accompany it ; it degenerates into a miserable

4 belief in the weakness of man.—Man is the creator of the gods whom he worships in his temples. Therefore humanity has made its gods in its own image.—

5 The Ancestors fashioned the gods as a workman

6 fashions iron.—Little children, keep yourselves from

7 idols.—For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

8 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many and lords many, ) but to us there is but one God, of whom are all things. .

9-10 All is full of gods—All the gods and goddesses are

11 only varied aspects of the One.—The gods have been created by Him, but of Him who knows the manner

12 of His being ?—We should not make comparisons between the gods. W^hen a man has really seen a divinity, he knows that all divinities are manifestations of

* * * 1) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.—2) Genesis–3) Vivekananda.— 4) Hermes.—5) Thales.—10) Ramakrishna.—11) Rig Veda. —12) Ramakrishna.—13) Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

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13 one and the same Brahman.—That is worlds, gods, beings, the All,—the supreme Soul.

THE DIVINE MAN

1 Ye are Gods.

2 None of the heavenly gods quits his sphere to come upon the earth, while man mounts up to heaven and measures it. He knows what is on high and what is below. He knows all correctly and, what is more, has no need to leave the earth in order to exalt him-

3 self.—None is greater than he. The gods themselves will have to descend upon earth and it is in a human form that they will get their salvation. Man alone reaches the perfection of which the gods themselves are ignorant.

4 What is man ? … Thou crowners him with glory and honour thou hast put all things in subjection

5 under his feet.—By the assemblage of all that is exalted and all that is base man was always the most

6 astonishing of mysteries.—The world is full of marvels

7 and the greatest marvel is man.—Man is a small

8 universe.—Placed on the borders of Time and Eternity…he holds himself somehow erect at the horizon oi Nature…Spiritual perfection is his true destiny.

9 He is the king of Nature because he alone in the world knows himself…His substance is that of God Himself.

10 Heaven and Earth are the father and mother of all beings ; among beings man alone has intelligence for

11 his portion.—It is we who, in the eyes of Intelligence,

12 are the essence of the divine regard.—That Intelligence is God within us; by that men are gods and their humanity neighbours divinity.

13 Man is divine so long as he is in communion with

14 the Eternal.—Deck thyself now with majesty and

15 excellence and array thyself with glory and beauty.—

16 Thou be longest to the divine world.—The race of men is divine.

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17 One should seek God among men.

18 Follow the great man and you will see what the world has at heart in these ages. There is no omen

19, like that.—There is always one man who more than

20 others represents the divine thought of the epoch.—A link was wanting between two craving parts of Nature and he was hurled into being as the bridge over that yawning need.

21 There is only one. temple in the universe and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this noble form. To bow down before man is a homage offered to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when

22 we lay our hand on a human body.—Within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE.

1\ Psalms.—2) Hermes.—3) Vivekananda.—4) Hebrews.—6)Farid-uddin-attar.—0) Sophocles—7) Democritus. — 8) Giordano Bruno.—9) The Rose of Bakamate. — IO) Chu-King__11) Omar Khayyam__12.— Hermes.—13) Ramakrishna__14) Job. —16) Baha-ullah.—16) Pythagoras–17) Novalis. —18) Emerson. —19) id.—20) id. —21 Novalis.—22) Emerson.

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The Question of the Month

One of our Subscribers sends us the following Question:

Are any of the following queries touched in Sanatan Dharma books of philosophy ?

7 ) The nature and formation of animal soul.

2) The shape, size, formations, nature and colour of subtle bodies.

3)  The difference between the subtle bodies of saints and ordinary people and the process of developing one in to the other.

4) The rationale of the reincarnation theory.

5) The nature, constituents and situation of invisible worlds.

          The first three questions are of a curious interest, the last two cover a very wide field. All except the fourth belong more or less to a kind of knowledge pursued with eager interest by a growing number of inquirers, but still looked on askance by the human mind in general,— the occult sciences. The Hindu Scriptures and books of philosophy do not as a rule handle such questions very directly or in any systematic fashion. They are concerned either with the great and central questions which have always occupied the human mind, the origin and nature of the universe, the why, whence and whither of life, the highest good and the means of attaining it, the nature of man and the destiny of the human soul and its relation with the Supreme, or else they deal with the regulation of ethics, society and the conduct of daily life. Occult knowledge has been left to be aquired by occult teaching. Nevertheless it was possessed by the ancient sages and our correspondent

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will find a great deal of more or less scattered information on these and cognate questions in the Veda, Upanishads and Puranas. But it is doubtful whether he would obtain a satisfactory answer to his queries in the form in which he has put them. He will find for instance a long description of invisible worlds,—invisible, that is to say, to our physical senses,—in the Vishnu Purana, but it is picturesque rather than precise. We do not think he will find much about the constituents of the worlds or the size of subtle bodies.

     The form of the third question lends itself to misconception. Obviously the method for an ordinary main to develop his subtle body into that of a saint, is to cease to be an ordinary man and to become a saint. There can be no other means. The subtle body is the mental case and reflects the changes of the mentality which is housed in it or the influence exercised on it by the activities and experiences of our physical existence.

     Reincarnation is much more prominent and the ideas about it more systematised in Buddhist than in Hindu Books. But most of the Hindu philosophies took some kind of reincarnation for granted. It was part of the ancient teaching which had come down to them from the earliest times. They are more concerned with its causes and the method of escape from the obligation of rebirth; the thing itself was for them a fact beyond question. But the nature of reincarnation is not the same for all the old thinkers. The Upanishads, for instance, seem to teach that the physical self is dissolved at death into its principle, ether; it is the mental being that appears to be born and reborn, but in reality birth and death are merely semblances and operations of Nature,—of Aditi full of the gods, Aditi devatamayi; the spirit is really one in all bodies and is neither born nor dies. Nachiketas in the Katha Upanishad raises the question whether the man as we know and conceive him really survives death and this seems to be the sense of the answer that he receives.

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