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This magic of Matter, this metamorphosis of physic-chemical into psycho-mental energies and of movement into thought, remains for Science as for Philosophy the most perplexing of enigmas.

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    We shall see how it can be solved and by what intervention of a principle opposed to that of desire, the cycle of the. creative involution gives place to the cycle of an evolution that redeems.

    While in its spatial manifestation, in its descending evolution, the movement tends towards the repose of a material inertia, the being on the contrary in its ascending evolution through Time seeks to regain the repose of the absolute movement by a progressive acceleration of what might be called an internal rapidity, which is of the mind, greatly surpassing the velocity of Light.

    This acceleration of the internal movement which makes the living being an always more rapid epitome of all the past phases of the world and all the accumulated progress of the race, enables it to embrace more and more vas-t spaces of Time and enlarge itself to the infinity of its intuitive capacities.

    It is this progress in the internal rapidity which renders some capable of living, in the course of their brief minutes, not the petty and very limited number of experiences to which existence is ordinarily reduced, but the equivalent of several successive lives. Far from being confined in the narrow circle of a given environment they seem to belong to all places and all times and participate in all the modes of human existence. In them successive traditions and contrary tendencies rejoin and become unified. And it is by the increasing acceleration of its course that the mind embracing an always vaster circle of the universal mounts from synthesis to synthesis towards the unity of the universal.

    But if each instant of its course associates it a little more with the movement of the Infinite, each instant also, if it arrests the torrent of the becoming which sweeps

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it onward, enables it to enjoy the repose of the immutable and communicate in its absolute silence with the silence of the Absolute. For in every moment there is That towards which tends its infinite progress.

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    Thus in the very excess of the individualisation by desire the being finds the conditions for a supreme transfiguration. For it is precisely in its most individualised form that it becomes again capable of thinking the Impersonal and identifying itself anew, across the domains of more and more vast realities, with the Absolute.

    Thus, when the desire of being has projected something of the absolute consciousness into the profound Night of the inconscient, into the dark field of pure impulsions, of blind and violent instinct, the obstacle of a mysterious intervention, the miracle of Matter stopping the cosmic being in its fall permits it to recover knowledge of itself and its highest possibilities.

    After it has tended by a progressive materialisation towards the growing obscurity of the relative, it tends in the forms of physical life to the recovery, by a sort of absolute individualisation, of full activity of mind.

    But does not this individualisation imply the intervention of a new absolute principle? And is it not precisely this that is intended by the religions when they speak of an incarnation of the Divinity in the world ?

    May not even the term,, creation, in the sense in which the theologians understand it, be applied to such an intervention of a supreme principle, the principle of Love, in the substance of Desire ?

    After the creation by Desire, its transformation or new creation by Love; after the progressive formation of all energies in a state of disorder, the formation of spheres of harmony in which all these energies by organising themselves may give birth to conscient life.

    And may it not be a core of love which in the atom as in the material worlds forms a centre for the condensation, the polarisation of the forces and movements of desire ?

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    If then the principle of Life is present everywhere in the universe, yet it is in the physical state that it manifests and acquires consciousness in its most individual form. And it is in this form that universal egoism is transformed into conscient impersonality.

    This is why the physical life, the individual’s participation in the universal light of consciousness has always been considered by popular intuition no less than by the inspiration of poets and thinkers the supreme and sacred boon and all birth is celebrated as a victory, for it is indeed a victory of life and light over the obscurity of the inconscient.

    So long as that underworld of subconscient forces whose sole issue is the narrow door opened by physical life on this infinite is not exhausted, the creature’s first duty of solidarity and of charity to the creature is to awaken it to the plenitude – of existence and light, to enlarge the field of this life that liberates.

    For in each living creature, in each human being something of that immense night in which the primordial being has plunged itself comes into the light, something in the fathomless’ ocean of desire reflects the heavens.

    It is thus that over the insanity of the universal delirium Thought and the possibility of knowledge prevail and Love triumphs over Death in this field of ordeal and redemption that is called the body.

    Such then is the sense of life, such the reason of the incessant passage of the being through this fugitive ray of calescent Light.

    Why must it be that this brief hour should be lost by so great a number and the inestimable privilege of being and of self-consciousness should for the most part be ignored? For so the being passes without seeing it the great half-opened gate and returns towards the night in which ignorant desires lose themselves.

    Who can say when the propitious opportunity will return for those who have once neglected it ?

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of the Veda

CHAPTER VII

VARUNA-MITRA AND THE TRUTH

    If the idea of the Truth that we have found in the very opening hymn of the Veda really carries in itself the contents we have supposed and amounts to the conception of a supramental consciousness which- is the condition of the state of immortality or beatitude and if this be the leading conception of the Vedic Rishis, we are bound to find it recurring throughout the hymns as a centre for other and dependent psychological realisations. In the very next Sukta, the second hymn of Madhuchchhandas addressed to Indra and Vayu, we find another passage full of clear and this time quite invincible psychological suggestions in which the idea of the Ritam is insisted upon with an even greater force than in the hymn to Agni. The passage comprises the last three Riks of the Sukta.

Mitram huve putadaksham, varun’am cha riradasam,

dhiyam ghr’itachim sadhanta.

R’itena mitravaruna’v, r’itavr’idhav r’itaspr’ica. ,

kratum br’ihantam asathe.

Kavi no mitra varun’a, tuvijata urukshaya,

daksham dadhate apasam.

    In the first Rik of this passage we have the word daksha usually explained by Sayana as strength, but capable of a psychological significance, the important word ghrita

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in the adjectival form ghrildchi and the remarkable phrase dhiyam ghritdchim. The verse may be translated literally " I invoke Mitra of purified strength ( or, purified discernment ) and Varuna destroyer of our foes perfecting (or accomplishing) a bright understanding."

    In the second Rik we have Ritam thrice repeated and the’ words brihat and kratu, to both of which we have attached a considerable importance in the psychological interpretation of the Veda. Kratu here may mean either work of sacrifice or effective power. In favour of the former sense we have a similar passage in the Veda in which Varuna and Mitra are said to attain to or enjoy by the Truth a mighty sacrifice, yajnam br’ihantam did the. But this parallel is not conclusive ; for while in one expression it is the sacrifice itself that is spoken of, in the other it may be the power or strength which effects the sacrifice. The verse may be translated, literally, ” By Truth Mitra and Varuna, truth-increasing, truth-touching, enjoy (or, attain) a mighty work "or" a vast (effective) power."

    Finally in the third Rik we have again daksha; we have the word kavi, seer, already associated by Madhuchchhandas with kratu, work or will; we have the idea of the Truth, and we have the expression urukshaya, where uru, wide or vast, may be an equivalent for brihat, the vast, which is used to describe the world or plane of the truth-consciousness, the "own home" of Agni. I translate the verse, literally, "For us Mitra and Varuna, seers, multiply-born, wide-housed, uphold the strength (or, discernment) that does the work."

    It will at once be evident that we have in this passage of the second hymn precisely the same order of ideas and many of the same expressions as those on which we founded ourselves in the first Sukta. But the application is different and the conceptions of the purified discernment, the richly-bright understanding, dhiyam ghritdchim, and the action of the Truth in the work of the sacrifice, apas, introduce certain fresh precisions which throw further light on the central ideas of the Rishis.

    The word daksha, which alone in this passage admits of some real doubt as to its sense, is usually rendered by

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Sayana strength. It comes from a root which, like most of its congeners, e. g. dig, dig, dah, suggested originally as one of its characteristic significances an aggressive pressure and hence any form of injury, but especially dividing, cutting, crushing or sometimes burning. Many of the words for strength had originally this idea of a force for injury, the aggressive strength of the fighter and slayer, the kind of force most highly prized by primitive man making a place for himself by violence on the earth he had come to inherit. We see this connection in the ordinary Sanskrit word for strength, balsam, which is of the same family as the Greek ballo, I strike, and belos, a weapon. The sense, strength, for daksha has the same origin.

    But this idea of division led up’ also in the psychology of language-development to quite another order of ideas, for when man wished to have words for mental conceptions, his readiest method was to apply the figures of physical action to the mental movement. The idea of physical division or separation was thus used and converted into that of distinction. It seems to have been first applied to distinguishing by the ocular sense and then to the act of mental separation,—discernment, judgment. Thus the root vid, which means in Sanskrit to find or know, signifies in Greek and Latintosee. DH9 to’ see, meant originally to rend, tear apart, separate; pag, to see, has a similar origin. We have three almost identical roots which are very instructive in this respect,—pis, to hurt, injure, be strong; pish, to hurt, injure, be strong, crush, pound ; and pig, to form, shape, organise, be reduced to the constituent parts,—all these senses betraying the original idea of separation, division , cutting apart,—with derivatives, pigacha, a devil, and piguna, which means on one side harsh, cruel, wicked, treacherous, slanderous, all from the idea of injury, and at the same time " indicatory, manifesting, displaying, making clear" from the other sense of distinction . So kri, to injure, divide, scatter appears in Greek krino, I sift, choose, judge, determine. Daksha has a similar history. It is kin to the root dag which in Latin gives us doceo, I teach and in Greek dokeo, I think, judge, reckon, and dokazo, I observe, am of opinion. So also we have the kindred root dig

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meaning to point out or teach, Greek deiknumi. Almost identical with daksha itself is the Greek doxa, opinion, judgment, and dexios, clever, dexterous, right-hand. In Sanskrit the root daksha means to huit, kill and also to be competent, able , the adjective daksha means clever, skilful, competent, fit, careful, attentive; dakshina means clever, skilful, right-hand, like dexios, and the noun daksha means, besides strength and also wickedness from the sense of hurting, mental ability or fitness like other words of the family. We may compare also the word dagd in the sense of mind, understanding. All this evidence taken together seems to indicate clearly enough that daksha must have meant at one time discernment, judgment, discriminative thought-power and that its sense of mental capacity is derived from this sense of mental division and not by transference of the idea of physical strength to power of mind.

    We have therefore three possible senses for daksha in the Veda, strength generally, mental power or especially the power of judgment, discernment. Daksha is continually associate with kratu; the Rishis aspire to them together, dakshdya karate, which may mean simply," capacity and effective power" or "will and discernment." Continually we find the word occurring in passages where the whole context relates to mental activities. Finally, we have the goddess Dakshina who may well be a female form of Daksha, himself a god and afterwards in the Purana one of the Prajavat, the original progenitors,—we have Dakshina associated with the manifestation of knowledge and sometimes almost identified with Usha, the divine Dawn, who is the bringer of illumination. I shall suggest that Dakshina like the more famous Ha, Saraswati and Sarama, is one of four goddesses representing the four faculties of the Ritam or Truth-consciousness,—Ha representing truth-vision or revelation, Saraswati truth-audition, inspiration, the divine word, Sarama intuition, Dakshina the separative intuitional discrimination. Daksha then will mean this discrimination whether as mental judgment on the mind-plane or as intuitional discernment on the plane of the Ritam.

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we are dealing occur as the closing passage of a hymn of which the first three verses are addressed to Vayu alone and the next three to Indra and Vayu. Indra in the psychological interpretation of the hymns represents, as we shall see, Mind-Power. The word for the sense-faculties, indriyas, is derived from his name. His special realm is Swar, a word which means sun or luminous, being akin to sur and Surya, the sun, and is used to indicate the third of the Vedic Vyahritis and the third of the Vedic worlds corresponding to the principle of the pure or unescorted Mind. Surya represents the illumination of the Ritam rising upon the mind; Swar is that plane of mental consciousness which directly receives the illumination. Vayu on the other hand is always associated with the Prana or Life-Energy which contributes to the system all the ensemble of those nervous activities that in man are the support of the mental energies governed by Indra. Their combination constitutes the normal mentality of man. These two gods are invited in the hymn to come and partake together of the Soma vine. This wine of Soma represents, as we have abundant proof in the Veda and especially in the ninth book, a collection of more than a hundred hymns addressed to the deity Soma, the intoxication of the Ananda, the divine delight of being, inflowing upon the mind from the supramental consciousness through the Ritam or Truth. If we accept these interpretations, we can easily translate the hymn into its psychological significance.

    India and Vayu awaken in consciousness ( chetathah) to the flowings of the Soma-wine ; that is to say, the mind-power and life-power working together in human mentality are to awaken to the in flowings of this Ananda, this Amrita, this delight and immortality from above. They receive them into the full plenitude of the mental and nervous energies, chetathah sutdndm vdjinivasu.* The Ananda thus received constitutes a new action preparing

V. 6.

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immortal consciousness in the mortal and Indra and Vayu are bidden to come and swiftly perfect these new workings by the participation of the thought, dydtam upa nish-kritam makshu dhiyd. * For dhi is the thought-power, intellect or understanding. It is intermediate between the normal mentality represented by the combination of Indra and Vayu and the Ritam or truth-consciousness.

    It is at this point that Varuna and Mitra intervene and our passage begins. Without the psychological clue the connection between the first part of the hymn and the close is not very clear, nor the relation between the couple Varuna-Mitra and the couple India-Vayu. With that clue both connections become obvious ; indeed they depend upon each other. For the earlier part of the hymn has for its subject the preparation first of the vital forces represented by Vayu who is alone invoked in the three opening Riks, then of the mentality represented by the couple Indra-Vayu for the activities of the Truth-consciousness in the human being; the close has for its subject the working of the Truth on the mentality so as to perfect the intellect and to enlarge the action. Varuna and Mitra are two of the four gods who represent this working of the Truth in the human mind and temperament.

    In the style of the Veda when there is a transition of this kind from one movement of thought to another developing out of ill, the link of connection is often indicated by the repetition in the new movement of an important word which has already occurred in the close of the movement that precedes. This principle of suggestion by echo, as one may term it, pervades the hymns and is a mannerism common to all the Rishis. The connecting word here is dhi, thought or intellect. Dhi differs from the more general word, mati, which means mentality or mental action generally and which indicates sometimes thought, sometimes feeling, sometimes the whole mental state. Dhi is the thought-mind or intellect; as understanding it holds all that comes to it, de fines everything and puts it into the

" V. 6.

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right place,* or often dhi indicates the activity of the intellect, particular thought or thoughts. It is by the thought that Indra and Vayu have been called upon to perfect the nervous mentality, nish-kritam dhiyd. But this instrument, thought, has itself to be perfected, enriched, clarified before the mind can become capable of free communication with the Truth-consciousness. Therefore Varuna and Mitra, Powers of the Truth, are invoked ‘* accomplishing a richly luminous thought," dhiyam ghritdchim sadandd.

    This is the first occurrence in the Veda of the word Ghrita, in a modified adjectival form, and it is significant that it should, occur as an epithet of the Vedic word for the intellect, dhi. In other passages also we find it continually in connection with the words manas, monished or in a context where some activity of thought is indicated. The root ghri conveys the idea of a strong brightness or heat such as that of fire or the summer sun. It means also to sprinkle or anoint, Greek chrio. It is capable of being used to signify any liquid, but especially a bright, thick liquid. It is the ambiguity of these two possible senses of which the Vedic Rishis took advantage indicate by the word outwardly the clarified butter in the sacrifice, inwardly a rich and bright state or activity of the brainpower, method as basis and substance of illuminated thought. By dhiyam ghritdchim is meant, therefore, the intellect full of a rich and bright mental activity.

    Varuna and Mitra who accomplish or perfect this state of the intellect, are distinguished by two several epithets. Mitra is puta daksha, possessed of a purified judgment ; Varuna is rishddasa, he destroys all hurters or enemies. In the Veda there are no merely ornamental epithets. Every word is meant to tell, to add something to the sense and bear a strict relation to the thought of the sentence in which it occurs. There are two obstacles which prevent the intellect from being a perfect and luminous mirror of the truth-consciousness ; first, impurity of

* The root "dhi" means to hold or to place.

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the discernment or discriminative faculty which leads to confusion of the Truth, secondly the many causes or influences which interfere with the growth of the Truth by limiting its full application or by breaking up the connections and harmony of the thoughts that express it and which thus bring about poverty and falsification of its contents. Just as the Gods in the Veda represent universal powers descended from the Truth-consciousness which build up the harmony of the worlds and in man his progressive perfection, so the influences that work against these objects are represented by hostile agencies, Dasyus and Vritras, who seek to break up, to limit, to withhold and deny. Varuna in the Veda is always characterised as a power of wideness and purity; when, therefore, he is present in man as a conscious force of the Truth, all that limits and hurts the nature by introducing into it fault, sin and evil is destroyed by contact with him. He is ricd dasa, destroyer of the enemy, of all that seek to injure the growth. Mitra, a power like Varuna of Light and Truth, especially represents Love, Joy and Harmony, the foundations of Mayas, the Vedic beatitude. Working with the purity of Varuna and imparting that purity to the discernment, he enables it to get rid of all discords and confusions and establish the right working of the strong and luminous intellect.

    This progress enables the Truth-consciousness, the Ritam, to work in the human mentality. With the Ritam as the agency, ritena, increasing the action of the Truth in man, r’itdvridhd, touching or reaching the Truth, enabling, that is to say, the mental consciousness to come into successful contact with and possession of the Truth-consciousness, r’itaspricd, Mitra and Varuna are’ able to enjoy the use of a vast effective will-power, kartum br’ihantam dcdthe. For it is the Will that is the chief effective agent of the inner sacrifice, but a will that is in harmony with the Truth, guided therefore by a purified discernment. The Will as it enters more and more into the wideness of the Truth-consciousness becomes itself wide and vast, free from limitation in its view and of hampering impediments

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in its affectivity. It works urav unbidden, in the wideness where there is no obstacle or wall of limitation.

    Thus the two requisites on which the Vedic Rishis always insist are secured, Light and Power, the Light of the Truth working in the knowledge, dhiyam ghritdchim, the Power of the Truth working in the effective and enlightened Will, kartum br’ihantam . As result Varuna and Mitra are shown to us in the closing verse of the hymn working in the full sense of their Truth, kavi tuvijdtd urukshaya. Kavi, we have seen, means possessed of the Truth-consciousness and using its faculties of vision, inspiration, intuition, discrimination. Tuvijdtd is "multiply born," for tive, meaning originally strength or force, is used like the French word *’ force " in the sense of many. But by the birth of the gods is meant always in the Veda their manifestation; thus tuvijdtd signifies " manifested multiply", in many forms and activities. Urukshaya means dwelling in the wideness, an idea which occurs frequently in the hymns; uru is equivalent to brihat, the Vast, and indicates the infinite freedom of the Truth-consciousness. Thus we have as the result of the increasing activities of the Ritam the manifestation in the human being of the Powers of wideness and purity, of joy and harmony, a manifestation rich in forms, seated in the wideness of the Ritam and using the faculties of the supra-mental consciousness.

    This manifestation of the Powers of the Truth upholds or confirms the discernment while it does the work, daksham daddies apasam. The discernment, now purified and supported, works in the sense of the Truth, as a power of the Truth and accomplishes the perfection of the activities of Indra and Vayu by freeing the thought and the will from all defect and confusion in their working and results.

    To confirm the interpretation we have put on the terms of this passage we may quote a Rik from the tenth Sukta of the fourth Mandala.

    Adha hyagne krator bhadrasya dakshasya sadhoh,

     Rathir r’itasya br’ihato babhuthah.

” Then indeed, O Agni, thou becamest the charioteer

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of the happy will, the perfecting discernment, the Truth that is the Vast." We have here the same idea as in the first hymn of the first Mandala, the effective will that is the nature of the Truth-consciousness, kavikratuh, and works out therefore i n a state of beatitude the good, bhadram. We have in the phrase daksha sya sadhoh at once a variant and explanation of the last phrase of the second hymn, daksham apasam, the discernment perfecting and accomplishing the inner work in man. We have the vast Truth as the consummation of these two activities of power and knowledge, Will and Discernment, kratu and daksha. Always the hymns of the Veda confirm each other by this reproduction of the same terms and ideas and the same relation of ideas. This would not be possible unless they were based on a coherent doctrine with a precise significance for standing terms such as kavi, kratu, daksha, bhadram, r’itam, etc. The internal evidence of the Riks themselves establishes that this significance is psychological, as otherwise the terms lose their fixed value, their precise sense, their necessary connection, and their constant recurrence in relation to each other has to be regarded as fortuitous and void of reason or purpose.

    We see them that in the second hymn we find again the same governing ideas as in the first. All is based on the central Vedic conception of the supra-mental or Truth-consciousness towards which the progressively perfected mentality of the human being labours as towards a consummation and a goal , In the first hymn this is merely stated as the aim of the sacrifice and the characteristic work of Agni. The second hymn indicates the preliminary work of preparation, by India and Vayu, by Mitra and Varuna, of the ordinary mentality of man through the force of the Ananda and the increasing growth of the Truth.

    We shall find that the whole of the¹ Rig-Veda is practically a constant variation on this double theme, the preparation of the human being in mind and body and the fulfilment of the godhead or immortality in him by his attainment and development of the Truth and the Beatitude.

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Selected Hymns

BRIHASPATI, POWER OF THE SOUL.

Rigveda IV. 60

1. He who established in his might the extremities of the earth, Brihaspati, in the triple world of

our fulfilment, by his cry, on him the pristine sages meditated and, illumined, set him in their front with his tongue of ecstasy.

2. They, O Brihaspati, vibrating with the impulse of their movement, rejoicing in perfected consciousness wove for us abundant, rapid, invincible, wide, the world from which this being was born. That do thou protect, O Brihaspati.

3. O Brihaspati, that which is the highest supreme of existence, thither from this world they attain and take their seat who touch the Truth. For thee are dug the wells of honey which drain this hill and their sweet nesses stream out on every side and break into overflowing.

4 Brihaspati first in his birth from the vast light, in the highest heavenly space, with his seven fronts, with his seven rays, with his many births, drives utterly away the dark nesses that encompass us with his cry.

5. He with his cohort of the rhythm that affirms, of the chant that illumines has broken Vala into

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pieces with his cry. Brihaspati drives upward the Bright Ones who speed our offerings ; he shouts aloud as he leads them, lowing they reply.

6. Thus to the Father, the universal Godhead, the Bull of the herds, may we dispose our sacrifices and submission and old? tions ; O Brihaspati, full of energy and rich in offspring may we become masters of the felicities.

7. Verily is he King and conquers by his energy, by his heroic force all that is in the worlds that confront him, who bears Brihaspati in him well-contained and has the exultant dance and adores and gives him the first fruits of his enjoyment.

8. Yea, he dwells firmly seated in his proper home and for him Ila at all times grows in richness. To him all creatures of themselves submit, the King, he in whom the Soul-Power goes in front.

9. None can assail him, he conquers utterly all the riches of the worlds which confront him and the world in which he dwells; he who for the Soul-Power that seeks its manifestation creates in himself that highest good, is cherished by the gods.

10 Thou, O Brihaspati, and Indra, drink the Soma-wine rejoicing in this sacrifice, lavishing substance. Let the powers of its delight enter into you and take perfect form, control in us a felicity full of every energy.

11. O Brihaspati, O Indra, increase in us together and may that your perfection of mind be created in us ; foster the thoughts, bring out the mind’s multiple powers; destroy all poverties that they bring who seek to conquer the Aryan.

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COMMENTARY

    Brihaspati, Brahmanaspati, Brahma are the three names of the god to whom the Rishi Vamadeva addresses this mystic hymn of praise. In the later Puranic the agonies Brihaspati and Brahma have long become separate deities. Brahma is the Creator, one of the Three who form the great Puranic Trinity; Brihaspati is a figure of no great importance, spiritual teacher of the gods, and incidentally guardian of the planet Jupiter; Brahmanaspati, the middle term which once linked the two, has disappeared. To restore the physiognomy of the Vedic deity we have to reunite what has been disjoined and correct the values of the two separated terms in the light of the original Vedic conceptions.

    Brahman in the Veda signifies ordinarily the Vedic Word or mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. It is a voice of the rhythm which has created the worlds and .creates perpetually. All world is expression or manifestation, creation by the Word. Conscious Being luminously manifesting its contents in itself, of itself, tmand, is the super-conscient; holding its contents obscurely in itself it is the subconscient . The higher, the self-luminous descends into the obscure, into the night, into darkness concealed in darkness, tamas tamasd gild’ham, where all is hidden in formless being owing to fragmentation of consciousness, tuchchhyendbh wapihitam It arises again out of the Night by the Word to reconstitute in the conscient its vast unity, tan mahindjd-yataikam. This vast Being, this all-containing and all-formulating consciousness is Brahman. It is the Soul that emerges out of the subconscient in Man and rises towards the super-conscient. And the word of creative Power welling upward out of the soul is also brahman.

    The Divine, the Deva, manifests itself as conscious Power of the soul, creates the worlds by the Word out of the waters of the subsconcient, apraketam salilam sarvam,—the inconscient ocean that was this all, as it is plainly termed in the great Hymn of Creation. This power of the Deva is Brahma, the stress in the name falling more upon the conscious Soul-power than upon the Word which expresses it. The manifestation of the different world-planes in the conscient human being culminates in the manifestation of the super-

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conscient, the Truth and the Bliss, and this is the office of the supreme Word or Veda. Of this supreme word Brihaspati is the master, the stress in this name falling upon the potency of the Word rather than upon the thought of the general soul-power which is behind it. Brihaspati gives the Word of knowledge, the rhythm of expression of the superconscient, to the gods and especially to Indra, the lord of Mind, when they work in man as "Aryan" powers for the great consummation. It is easy to see how these conceptions came to be specialised in the broader, but less subtle and profound Puranic symbolism into Brahma, the Creator, and Brihaspati, the teacher of the gods. In the name, Brahmanaspati, the two varying stresses are unified and equalised. It is the link-name between the general and the special aspects of-the same deity.

    Brihaspati is he who has established firmly the limits and definitions of the Earth, that is to say of the material consciousness. The existence out of which all formations are made is an obscure, fluid and indeterminate movement,— salaam, Water. The first necessity is to create a sufficiently stable formation out of this flux and running so as to form a basis for the life of the conscient. This Brihaspati does in the formation of the physical consciousness and its world, sahasa, by force, by a sort of mighty constraint upon the resistance of the subconscient. This great creation he effects by establishing the triple principle of mind, life and body, always present together and involved in each other or evolved out of each other in the world of the cosmic labour and fulfilment. The three together form the triple seat of Agni and there he works out the gradual work of accomplishment or perfection which is the object of the sacrifice. Brihaspati forms by sound, by his cry, raven’s, for the Word is the cry of the soul as it awakens to ever-new perceptions and formations.* "He who established firmly by force the ends of the earth, Brihaspati in the triple seat of the fulfilment, by his cry. "

    On him, it is said, the ancient or pristine Rishis meditated; meditating, they became illumined in mind; illumined,

* Yas tasthambha sahasa vi jmo antan, br’ihaspatis trishadasthe raven’s.

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they set him in front as the god of the ecstatic tongue, mandrajihvam, the tongue that takes joy of the intoxicating wine of Soma, made, madhu, of that which is the wave of sweetness, madhumdn Armih, hidden in the conscient existence and out of it progressively delivered.! But of whom is there question? The seven divine Rishis, r’itasya divide, who fulfilling consciousness in each of its seven principles and harmonising them together superintend the evolution of the world, or the human fathers, petard manushydh, who first discovered the higher knowledge and formulated for man the infinity of the Truth-consciousness ? Either may be intended, but the reference seems to be rather to the conquest of the Truth by the human fathers, the Ancients. The word dldhydna in the Veda means both shining, becoming luminous, and thinking, meditating, fixing in the thought. It is constantly being used with the peculiar Vedic figure of a double or complex sense. In the first sense it must be connected with viprdh, and the suggestion is that the Rishis became more and more luminous in thought by the triumphant force of Brihaspati until they grew into Illuminates, viprdh. In the second it is connected with dadhire and suggests that the Rishis, meditating on the intuitions that rise up from the soul with the cry of Brihaspati in the sacred and enlightening Word, holding them firmly in the thought, became illuminated in mind, open to the full inflow of the superconscient. They were thus able to bring into the front of the conscious being that activity of the soul-thoughts which works usually in the background, veiled, and to make it the leading activity of their nature. As a result Brihaspati in them became able to taste for them the bliss of existence, the wine of Immortality, the supreme Ananda. The formation of the definite physical consciousness is the first step, this awakening to the Ananda by the bringing forward in mind of the intuitive soul as the leader of our conscious activities is the consummation or, at least, the condition of the consummation.

The result is the formation of the Truth-consciousness in man. The ancient Rishis attained to the most rapid vibration of the movement; the most full and swift stream-

+ Tarn pratnasa r’itasya dldhyanah, puro vipra dadhire mandrajihvam.

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ing of the flux of consciousness which constitutes our active existence, no longer obscure as in the subconscient, but full of the joy of perfected consciousness,—not apxaketam like the Ocean described in the Hymn of Creation, but supramental. Thus they are described, dhunetayah supraketam madan-tah. With this attainment of the full rapidity of the activities of consciousness unified with its full light and bliss in the human mentality they have woven for the race by the web of these rapid, luminous and joyous perceptions the Truth-consciousness, Ritam Brihat, which is the womb or birth-place of this conscient being. For it is out of the superconscient that existence descends into the subconscient and carries with it that which emerges here as the individual human being, the conscious soul. The nature of this Truth-consciousness is in itself this that it is abundant in its out flowings, prishantam, or, it may be, many-coloured in the variety of its harmonised qualities; it is rapid in its motion, sr’ipram; by that luminous rapidity it triumphs over all that seeks to quell or break it, it is adabdham ; above all it is wide, vast, infinite, Hrvam. In all these respects it is the opposite of the first limited movement which emerges out of the subconscient; for that is stinted and grey, slow and hampered, easily overcome and broken by the opposition of hostile powers, scanty and bounded in its scope.* But this Truth-consciousness manifested in man is capable of being again veiled from him by the insurgence of the powers that deny, the Vritras, Vala. The Rishi therefore prays to Brihaspati to guard it against that obscuration by the fullness of his soul-force.

    The Truth-consciousness is the foundation of the superconscient, the nature of which is the Bliss. It is the supreme of the superconscient, paramd par vat, from which the being has descended, the parama parardha of the Upanishads, the existence of Sachchidananda. It is to that highest existence that those arise out of this physical consciousness, atah, who like the ancient Rishis enter into contact with the Truth-consciousness*. They make it their seat and home, kshaya, okas. For in the hill of the physical being there are 

" Dhunetayah supramental mandate, br’ihaspatis abhilt ye nastatasre-Prishantam sr’ipram adabdham purvam, br’ihaspatis Rakshasa asya yonim! Br’ihaspatis ya parama proved, ate a te r’itaspricd noshed.

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dug for the soul those abounding wells of sweetness which draw out of its hard rigidity the concealed Ananda ; at the touch of the Truth the rivers of honey, the quick pouring of the wine of Immortality trickle and stream and break out into a flood of abundance over the whole extent of the human consciousness.!

    Thus Brihaspati, becoming manifest first of the gods out of the vastness of that Light of the Truth-consciousness, in that highest heavenly space of the supreme superconscient, macho jyotishah Parame vyoman, presents himself in the full sevenfold aspect of our conscious being, multiply born in all the forms of the interplay of its seven principles ranging from the material to the purest spiritual, luminous with their sevenfold ray which lights all our surfaces and all our profundities, and with his triumphant cry dispels and scatters all powers of the Night, all encroachments of the Inconscient, all possible dark nesses. + +

    It is by the powers of the Word, by the rhythmic army of the soul-forces that Brihaspati brings all into expression and dispelling all the dark nesses that encompass us makes an end of the Night. These are the " Brahma’s of the Veda, charged with the word, the brahman, the manlra; it is they in the sacrifice who raise heavenward the divine Rik, the Stubs or Stoma. Rik, connected with the word arka which means light or illumination, is the word considered as a power of realisation in the illuminating consciousness; Stubh is the Word considered as a power which affirms and confirms in the settled rhythm of things. That which has to be expressed is realised in consciousness, affirmed, finally confirmed by the power of the Word. The " Brahma’s or Brahmana forces are the priests of the Word, the creators by the divine rhythm. It is by their cry that Brihaspati breaks Vala into fragments.

    As Vritra is the enemy, the Dasyu, who holds back the flow of the sevenfold waters of conscient existence,—Vritra, the personification of the Inconscient, so Vala is the enemy, the Dasyu, who holds back in his hole, his cave, bilam, guha, the herds of the Light; he is the personification of the sub-

+ Tubhyam khata a vat A. adridugdha, madhwah rchotaiiti abhito virap cam.

++ Br’ihaspatih prathamam jayamilno, maho jyotishah parame vyoman: Saptasyas tuvijato raven’a, vi saptarashmir adhamat tamansi.

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conscient. Vala is not himself dark or inconscient, but a cause of darkness. Rather his substance is of the light, valam gomantam, valam govapusham, but he holds the light in himself and denies its conscious manifestation. He has to be broken into fragments in order that the hidden lustres may be liberated. Their escape is expressed by the emergence of the Bright Ones, the herds of the Dawn, from the cavern below in the physical hill and their driving upward by Brihaspati to the heights of our being whither with them and by them we climb. He calls to them with the voice of the superconscient knowledge ; they follow him with the response of the conscious intuition. They give in their course the impulsion to the activities which form the material of the sacrifice and constitute the offerings given to the gods and these also are carried upward till they reach the same divine goal.*

    This self-expressive Soul, Brihaspati, is the Purusha, the Father of all things; it is the universal Divinity; it is the Bull of the herds, the Master and fertilizer of all these luminous energies evolved or involved, active in the day or obscurely working in the night of things, which constitute the becoming or world-existence, bhojanam. To the Purusha under the name of Brihaspati the Rishi would have us dispose in the order of a sacrifice all the materials of our being by sacrificial action in which they are given up to the All-Soul as acceptable oblations offered with adoration and surrender. By the sacrifice we shall become through the grace of this godhead full of heroic energy for the battle of life, rich in the offspring of the soul, masters of the felicities which are attained by divine enlightenment and right action. *

    For the soul’s energy and overcoming force are perfected in the human being who bears in himself and is able to bear firmly this conscious Soul-power brought forward as the leading agency in the nature, who arrives by it at a rapid and joyous movement of the inner activities as did the pristine sages, compasses that harmonious bound and gallop of the steed of Life within and adores always this godhead giving it the first fruits of all results and enjoyments. By that energy

* Sa sushtubha sa r’ikvatiL genera, valam ruroja phaligam raven’s ; Br’ihaspatis usriyfi, havyasudah, kanikradad vavaatir udajat.

** Eva. pitre vi.vadevaya vr’ishn’e, yajnair vidkema namas. havir-bhih, Br’ihaspatis sup raja vlravanto, vayam syamah patayo raySn’am.

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he throws himself upon and masters all that comes to him in the births, the worlds, the planes of consciousness that open upon his perception in the progress of the being. He becomes the king, the Samrat, ruler of his world-environment t

    For such a soul attains to a firmly settled existence in its own proper home, the Truth-consciousness, the infinite totality, and for it at all times Ilea, the highest Word, premier energy of the Truth-consciousness, she who ?s the direct re. veiling vision in knowledge and becomes in that knowledge the spontaneous self – attainment of the Truth of things in action, result and experience,— Ilea grows perpetually in body and richness. To him all creatures of themselves incline, they submit to the Truth in him because it is one with the Truth in themselves. For the conscious Soul-Power that is the universal creator and realise, leads in all his activities. It gives him the guidance of the Truth in his relations with all creatures and therefore he acts upon them with an entire and spontaneous mastery. This is the ideal state of man that the soul-force should lead him, Brihaspati, Brahma, the spiritual light and counselor, and he realising himself as Indra, the royal divinity of action, should govern himself and all his environment in the right of their common Truth. Brahms rajansi Purva eti.*

    For this Brahma, this creative Soul seeks to manifest and increase himself in the royalty of the human nature and he who attains to that royalty of light and power and creates in himself for Brahma that highest human good, finds himself always cherished, fostered, increased by all the divine cosmic powers who work for the supreme consummation. He wins all those possessions of the soul which are necessary for the royalty of the spirit, those that belong to his own plane of consciousness, and those that present themselves to him from other planes of consciousness . Nothing can assail or affect his triumphant progress.+

    Indra and Brihaspati are thus the two divine powers whose fullness in us and conscious possession of the Truth

+ Sa id raja, pratijanyani vicva-, cushmen’a tasthav abhi viryen’a: Br’iho-spatim yah subhritam vibharti, valgayati vandate purvabhajam.

* Sa it ksheti sudhita okasi swe, tasma ila pinvate visvadanlrn ; Tasmai vishah swayam eva namante, yasmin brahma rajani pftrva eti.

•f- Apratlto jayati saw dhanani pratijanyani uta va sajanya; Avasy-ave yo varivah kr’in’oti, brahmani raja tarn avanti devah.

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are the conditions of our perfection. Vamadeva calls on them to drink in this great sacrifice the wine of immortal Ananda, rejoicing in the intoxication of its ecstasies, pouring out abundantly the substance and riches of the spirit. Those outpourings of the superconscient beatitude must enter into the soul-force and there take being perfectly. Thus a felicity will be formed, a governed harmony, replete with all the energies and capacities of the perfected nature which is master of itself and its world.*

    So let Brihaspati and Indra increase in us and that state of right mentality which together they build will be manifested; for that is the first condition. Let them foster the growing thoughts and bring into expression those energies of the mental being which by an enriched and multiple thought become capable of the illumination and rapidity of the Truth-consciousness. The powers that attack the Aryan fighter, would create in him poverties of mind and poverties of the emotive nature, all infelicities. Soul force and mental force-increasing together, destroy all such poverty and insufficiency. Together they bring man to his crowning and his perfect kinghood

" Indra’? cha somara pivatam br’ihaspatis. asmin yajne mandasana vrishan’vasil ;

A vam vahantu indavah svabhuvo, asme rayim sarvaviram ni yach-chhatam.

+ Br’ihaspate Indra vardhatam nah, sacha sa vam sumati bhutu asme.

Avishtam dhiyo jigr’itam purandhtr, jagatyam aryo vanquisher arata.

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Isha Upanishad

ANALYSIS VII

FOURTH MOVEMENT

Verses 16-16*

THE ORDER OF THE WORLDS.

    To understand entirely the place and function of Surya we must enter a little more profoundly into the Vedic conception of the seven worlds and the principles of consciousness they represent.

    All conscious being is one and indivisible in. itself, but in manifestation it becomes a complex rhythm, a scale of harmonies, a hierarchy of states or movements. For what we call a state is only the organisation of a complex movement. This hierarchy is composed by a descending or involutive and an ascending or evolu tive movement of which Spirit and Matter are the highest and lowest terms.

    Spirit is Sat or pure existence, pure in self-awareness (Chit), pure in self-delight (Ananda). Therefore Spirit can be regarded as a triune basis of all conscious being. There are three terms, but they are really one. For all pure existence is in its essence pure self-conscience and all pure self-conscience is in its essence pure self-delight. At the

* 15. The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight.

16. O Fosterer, O sole Se r, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O Power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light. The Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in thee I behold; the Purusha there and there, He am I.

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same time our consciousness is capable of separating these three by the Idea and the Word and even of creating for itself in its divided or limited movements the sense of their apparent opposites.

    An integral intuition into the nature of conscious being show us that it is indeed one in essence, but also that it is capable of an infinite potential complexity and multiplicity in self-experience. The working of this potential complexity and multiplicity in the One is what we call from our point of view manifestation or creation or world or becoming—(bhuvana, bhavci). What hoot it no world-existence is possible.

    The agent of this becoming is always the self-conscience of the Being. The power by which the self-conscience brings out of itself its potential complexities is termed Tapas, Force or Energy, and, being self-conscious, is obviously of the nature of Will. But not Will as we understand it, something exterior to its object, other than its works, labouring on material outside itself, but Will inherent in the Being, inherent in the becoming, one with the movement of existence,—self-conscious Will that becomes what it sees and knows in itself, Will that is expressed as Force of its own work and formulates itself in the result of its work. By this Will, Tapas or Chit-Shakti, the worlds are created.

THE HIGHER WORLDS.

    All organisation of self-conscient being which takes as its basis the unity of pure existence belongs to the world of the highest creation, parardha,—the worlds of the Spirit.

    We can conceive three principal formations.

    When Tapas or energy of self-conscience dwells upon Sat or pure existence as its basis, the result is Satya loka or world of true existence. The soul in Satya loka is one with all its manifestations by oneness of essence and therefore one in self-conscience and in energy of self-conscience and one also in bliss.

    When Tapas dwells upon active power of Chit as its basis, the result is Tape loka or world of energy of self-conscience. In this energy the soul in Tape loka is one

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    with all manifestations and therefore enjoys oneness also in the totality of their bliss and possesses equally their unity of essence.

    When Tapas dwells upon active Delight of being as its basis, the result is Jana loka, world of creative Delight. The soul in Jana loka is one in delight of being with all manifestation and through that bliss one also in conscious energy and in essence of being.

    All these are states of consciousness in which unity and multiplicity have not yet been separated from each other. All is in all, each in all and all in each, inherently, by the very nature of conscious being and without effort of conception or travail of perception. There is no night, no obscurity. Neither is there properly speaking any dominant action of illuminating Surya. For the whole of consciousness there is self-luminous and needs no light other than itself. The distinct existence of Surya is lost in the oneness of the Lord or Purusha; that luminous oneness is Surya’s most blessed form of all.

THE LOWER CREATION.

    In the lower creation also there are three principles, Matter, Life, and Mind. Sat or pure existence appears there as extended substance or Matter ; "Will or Force appears as Life which is in its nature creative or manifesting Force and that Force is in its nature a self-conscient will involved and obscure in the forms of its creation. It is liberated from the involution and obscurity by delight of being struggling to become conscious of itself in desire and sensation; the result is the emergence of Mind. So at last it appears to us in the ascending or evolu tive movement.

   Wherever there is Matter, Life and Mind are present involved or evolving. So also, Life and Mind have some kind of material form as the condition of their activities. These three appear not as triune, owing to their domination by the dividing principle of Avidya, but as triple.

    In the organisation of consciousness to which we belong, Tapas dwells upon Matter as its basis. Our consciousness is determined by the divisibility of extended

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substance in its apparent forms. This is Bhur loka the material world, the world of formal becoming.

    But we may conceive of a world in which dynamic Life-force with sensation emergent in it is the basis and determines without the gross obstacle of Matter the forms that it shall take. This organisation of consciousness has for its field Bhuvar loka, the worlds of free becoming inform.

    We may conceive also of an organised state of consciousness in which Mind liberates itself from subjection to material sensation and becoming dominant determines its own forms instead of being itself determined by the forms in which it finds itself as a result of life-evolution. This formation is Swar loka or world of free, pure and luminous mentality.

    In these lower worlds consciousness is normally broken up and divided. The light of Surya, the Truth, is imprisoned in the night of the subconscient or appears only reflected in limited centres or with its rays received by those centres and utilised according to their individual nature.

THE INTERMEDIATE WORLD.

    Between these two creations, linking them together, is the world or organisation of consciousness of which the infinite Truth of things is the foundation. There dominant individualisation no longer usurps the all-pervading soul and the foundation of consciousness is its own vast totality arranging in itself individualised movements which never lose the consciousness of their integrality and total oneness with all others. Multiplicity no longer prevails and divides, but even in the complexity of its movements always refers back to essential unity and its own integral totality . This world is therefore called Maharloka or world of

    The principle of Maharloka is Vijnana, the Idea. But this Vijnana is intuitional Idea, not intellectual conception. The difference is that intellectual conception not only tends towards form, but determines itself in the form of

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with the existence which throws out the form as a symbol of itself and it therefore carries with it always the knowledge of the Truth behind the form. It is in its nature self-conscience of the will of the One, aware always of its totality, starting therefore from the totality of all existence and perceiving directly its contents. Its nature is drishti,

    The face of this Truth is covered as with a brilliant shield, as with a golden lid ; covered, that is to say, from the view of our human consciousness. For we are mental beings and our highest ordinary mental sight is composed of the concepts and percepts of the mind, which are indeed a means of knowledge, rays of the Truth, but not in their nature truth of existence, only truth of form. By them we arrange our knowledge of the appearances of things and try to infer the truth behind. The true knowledge is truth of existence, satyam,

    We can only arrive at the true Truth, if Surya works in us to remove this brilliant formation of concepts fiend percepts and replaces them by the self-vision and all-vision.

    For this it is necessary that the law and action of the Truth should be manifested in us. We must learn to See things as they are, see ourselves as we are. Our present action is one in which self-knowledge and will are divided. We start with a fundamental falsehood, that we have a separate existence from others and we try to know the relations of separate beings in their separateness and act on the knowledge so formed for an individual utility. The law of the Truth would work in us if we saw the totality of our existence containing all others, its forms created by the action of the totality, its powers working in and by the action of the totality. Our internal and external action would then well naturally and directly out of our self-existence, out of the very truth of things and not in obedience to an intermediate principle which is in its nature a falsifying reflection.

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    Nevertheless even in our ordinary action there is the beginning or at least the seed of the Truth which must liberate us. Behind every act and perception there is an intuition, a truth which, if it is continually falsified in the form, yet preserves itself in the essence and works to lead us by increasing light and largeness to truth in the manifestation. Behind all this travail of differentiation and division, there is an insistent unifying tendency which is also continually falsified in the separate result, but yet leads persistently to words our eventual integrality in knowledge, in being and in will.

    Surya is Push an, fosterer or increaser. His work must be to effect this enlargement of the divided self-perception and action of will into the integral will and knowledge. He is sole seer and replacing other forms of knowledge by his unifying vision enables us to arrive finally at oneness. That intuitive vision of the totality, of one in All and Ail in one, becomes the Ordainer of the right law of action in us, the law of the Truth. For Surya is Yama, the Ordainer or Controller who assures the law, the dharma. Thus we arrive at the fullness of action of the illuminer in us, accomplish the entirety of the Truth-Consciousness. We are then able to see that all that is contained in the being 01

&    By the revelation of the vision of Surya the true knowledge is formed. In this formation the Upanishad indicates two successive actions. First, there is an arrangement or marshalling of the rays of Surya, that is to say, the truths concealed behind our concepts and percepts are brought out by separate intuitions of the image and the essence of the image and arranged in their true relations to each other. So we arrive at totalities of intuitive knowledge and can finally go beyond to unity. This is the drawing together of the light of Surya. This double movement is

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necessitated by the constitution of our minds which cannot, like the original Truth-consciousness, start at once from the totality and perceive its contents from within. The mind can hardly conceive unity except as an abstraction, a sum or a void. Therefore it has to be gradually led from its own manner to that which exceeds it. It has to carry out its own characteristic action of arrangement, but with the help and by the operation of the higher faculty, no longer arbitrarily, but following the very action of the Truth of existence itself. Afterwards, by thus gradually correcting the manner of its own characteristic action it can succeed in reversing that characteristic action itself and learn to proceed from the whole to the contents instead of proceeding from " parts "* mistaken for entities to an apparent whole which is still a "part " and still mistaken for an entity.

    Thus by the action of Surya we arrive at that light of the supreme superconscient in which even the intuitive knowledge of the truth of things based upon the total vision passes into the self-luminous self-vision of the one existent, one in all infinite complexities of a self-expert-ance which never loses its unity or its self-luminousness. This is Surya’s goodliest form of all. For it is the supreme Light, the supreme Will, the supreme Delight of existence.

    This is the Lord, the Purusha, the self-conscient Being. When we have this vision, there is the integral self-knowledge, the perfect seeing, expressed in the great cry of the Upanishad, So’ ham. The Purusha there and there, He am I. The Lord manifests Himself in the movements and inhabits many forms, but it is One who inhabits all. This self-conscient being, this real "I" whom the mental being individualised in the form is aware of as his true self—it is He. It is the All; and it is that which transcends the All.

CHAPTER IV

SELF-SURRENDER IN WORKS—THE GITA.

    Life is the field of our Yoga; transformation of ordinary human living into an integral divine Life is its aim ; self-surrender of the ego to the Divine, the All, the Transcendent, is its path ; concentration of the will, the heart, the thought on the Divine and self-consecration to it of the whole being is the beginning of the path.

    The life of the human being as it is ordinarily lived is composed of four elements,—action ; desire and enjoyment; emotion; and thought. The whole sums itself up into a certain internal growth which is the result of these various activities. And this internal growth is the whole meaning and pith of human existence. For this growth of consciousness by action, emotion, thought and enjoyment Man, the mental being, has entered into the body. All the rest is subordinate and auxiliary.

    We propose by Yoga nothing less than to leave behind the tardy method of a slow and confused growth by the evolution of Nature, by the pressure of the environment, by education, accident and the unilluminated, half-automatic use of opportunities and to replace it by a rapid, conscious, self-directed evolution which shall carry us straight to the goal. Perhaps it is an error to speak of a goal in a progression which may well be infinite. At any rate we conceive that there is an immediate goal towards which man can progress, the attainment of a new birth, an enlarged and

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illumined consciousness which shall constitute a divine humanity. It is an integral conversion that we propose, not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.

    We propose to replace ego by God, desire and the enjoyment of desire by the pure selfless and desireless delight of being, divided egoistic thought by the total play of a divine illumination in our parts of knowledge, divided egoistic will and action by the total working of a divine Power and a supreme impersonal will in all our doings, egoistic emotions by the universal heart in which all feelings are variations of the twin central principles of divine Joy and Love. This is our definition of a divine humanity. This, and not merely an exaggerated energy of intellect and action, is the type of the superman whom we seek by Yoga to evolve.

    In ordinary human life action is obviously three-fourths or more of existence . It is only the rare thinker, poet, artist who live within and therefore shape themselves more in thought and feeling than in action. Ordinarily, therefore, the consecration of our actions to the Divine, the surrender of our capacities of working and of our sense of being the worker for direct use by the Divine will which is behind them all, by which alone they are possible and which is therefore the true Lord of action, and finally, the transformation of our egoistic life and action into an outpouring, through an unobstructed channel, of the divine Will, Life and Energy become conscious in us and no longer superconscious—this must be the primary and most important part of an integral Yoga.

    Even for those whose first natural movement is consecration, surrender, and transformation of the mind and its knowledge, or consecration, surrender and transformation of the heart and its emotions, the path of Works is necessary if they would have an integral fulfilment. Otherwise, they will not find God and fulfil the Divine in Life, but only in other-life. We may indeed begin with knowledge or emotion solely or both together and leave works for the final movement of the Yoga. But our disadvantage then is that we tend to live too exclusively within and

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afterwards it becomes difficult to apply our gains in the higher Nature. When we seek to add this kingdom also to our conquests, we either find ourselves inapt, too much wedded to a purely subjective activity or else we find that our action follows old accustomed paths, obeys old normal influences and the Truth within is separated by a gulf from the external mechanism. The Light and Power within have come to be self-contained and inapt to express themselves in life or in the ordinary means used by normal humanity. We feel as if we were living in an other world and had no hold upon the Earth. Since we must follow our nature, this is a difficulty which may sometimes have to be accepted if to we are pursue the path at all. Yet the ideal working of the Yoga would be one that was integral in its progress even from the beginning. And in any case it is best to state first that part of it which is of the nature of Karmayoga* so that its necessity may be always before our eyes even when we are farthest from it in our immediate preoccupation.

    The greatest Gospel of works we possess, the most remarkable system of Karmayoga is the Bhagavad Gita. In that famous episode of the Mahabharata we find the great lines of Karmayoga laid down for all time with an incomparable mastery. It is true that the path alone is worked out fully and the fulfilment, the highest secret,!’ hinted only rather than developed ; but for this-reticence there were obvious reasons and, in any case, the fulfilment is always a matter for experience rather than for teaching. For to the mind that has not experience of it, it cannot be described in such a way as to be really understood and for the soul that has passed the portals and stands in the fulfilment, no description is needed. All divine consummations, having to be described in terms which belong properly to the normal experience of man, can only be rightly understood by those who already understand and are

* The Yoga of Works,
+ Rahasyam uttaraam.

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therefore able to give these terms a  changed and transfigured sense. As the Vedic Rishis already declared in the beginning, the words of the supreme wisdom are expressive only to those who are already of the wise. To others they can only give dim hints and intimations.

    What then are the lines laid down by the Gita ? Its principle may be summed up in two great words, unity and equality; its method is acceptance by renunciation and surrender, freedom by subjection to that which is higher than the ego, activity by calm and passivity.

    All things are really the one and indivisible Brahman, seeming to be divided in creatures, but really one and equal in all. We may live in the seeming, we may live in the reality. If we live in the seeming, we are the ego and subject to the modes of Nature, enslaved to appearances, to the dualities, to grief and joy, pain and pleasure, success and failure, good and evil, good fortune and ill fortune. We have only the relative freedom which we call free-will; and that is at bottom illusory since it is the modes of Nature that express themselves through our personal will and determine for of what we shall will and how we shall will it and what object we shall seek. If on the other hand we live in the Reality, we get beyond the ego to our true self, become superior to the modes of Nature and attain a perfect equality of soul by which we realise our true unity with all beings and with That which expresses itself in all beings. This unity and equality is the basis of divine being.

    It is also the true and only freedom possible to man. The only free will in the world is the one divine Will of which Nature is an executrix. Human free-will is real in a sense, but like all things that belong to the modes of Nature, it is only relatively real. The mind riding on a swirl of natural forces, balanced on a poise between several possibilities, inclines to one side or another, settles and has the sense of choosing, but does not see the force behind that has determined its choice, because that is something total and to our eyes indeterminate which works out through a complex variety of particular determinations.

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Partial itself, the mind rides on a part of the machine, unaware of nine-tenths of its motor agencies in Time and environment, of its past preparation and future drift and because it rides thinks that it is directing the machine. In a sense it is, because that clear inclination of the mind which we call our will, that firm settlement of the inclination which presents itself to us as a deliberate choice is one of Nature’s most powerful determinants,—though by no means the sole. But there is something behind nod that settles the trend of the inclination and that determines the will. It is a certain total Truth in Nature; and what determines this total Truth is the perception of right relation of the various necessities of the movement by the divine Will that expresses itself in the universality of things. This is what is meant by the Gita when it speaks of the Lord within the heart of all existences who turns all creatures as if mounted on a machine, by the illusion of Nature.

    For this divine will is not alien, but intimate to us, it is in ourselves, it is our higher self. Only it is not our conscious will, since it rejects often enough what our conscious will accepts and accepts what bur conscious will rejects. For the one knows all, the other only a little part of things. Our will is conscious in the mind; the divine Will is superconscious, because it is supra-mental. If we can surrender our conscious will so that it becomes one with the divine, then we shall attain to the divine freedom and no longer live in that which is ignorant, relative and therefore illusory.

    The distinction between Nature and the Lord of Nature, between the Ishwara or luminous divine Will and the executive modes and forces of the universe has to be clearly grasped if we would understand the practical philosophy of the Gita.

    Nature is executive Force, mechanical, unintelligent, though all her works are instinct with an absolute intelligence; not master, though she is full of a Power which has an infinite mastery and therefore exactly fulfils her work; not enjoying but enjoyed and bearing in herself the burden of all enjoyments. She is that which works out; within

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her is that which knows. This is the fundamental distil notion between Prakriti and Purusha, Nature-soul and Conscious-soul. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, mastery and delight of the Purusha within her, but can participate in them only by subjection and reflection. Purusha knows and is still, containing the action of Prakriti within his knowledge and enjoying it. He gives the sanction to Prakritis works and she works out what is sanctioned. Purusha himself does not .act, but maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express what he perceives in his knowledge.

    Soul may identify itself with Purusha or with Prakriti. If it identifies itself with Prakriti, it is not master, enjoyer, knower, but only reflects the modes and workings of Prakriti. It enters into that subjection and mechanical working which is characteristic of her. By entire immersion in Prakriti the soul becomes inconscient or subconscient, asleep in her forms as in the earth and the metal or almost asleep as in the plant. It is subject to tamas, the mode of inertia and obscurity. Emerging into its nature of consciousness it becomes more and more subject to rajas, the mode of action and passion impelled by conscious desire and instinct. Emerging yet farther, it attains to sattwa, the mode of light, of knowledge and relative freedom or mastery leading to the sense of satisfaction and happiness. We see that there is here an ascension towards the true character of the Purusha, free, master, knower and enjoyer. But these are all relative modes intermixed with each other; their interaction determines the works and experiences of the egoistic consciousness.

    The sign of the immersion of soul in Prakriti is the limitation in the ego and its stamp is inequality of soul and the varied reaction to the touches of

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her modes, equal-minded to all her dualities and therefore capable of being free, master, knower and full of the unalloyed delight of its own being. It continues to express itself in action but "without being involved and bound by the action. Its actions have no consequence to it, but only a consequence in Prakriti. The whole movement becomes to it only as if a rising and falling of waves that make no difference to its own fathomless peace, delight and universal equality.’*

    These are the conditions of our effort and they point to a certain ideal which may be thus expressed :—

    To live in God and not in the ego, that is to say to live not in the egoistic consciousness, but in the consciousness of the All-Soul and the Transcendent.

    To be perfectly equal in all happenings and to all beings seeing them as one with one self and one with the Divine, seeing God in all, Seeing oneself in all.

    To act in God and not in the ego, not choosing action by reference to personal needs and standards, but allowing action to happen and develop under the impulsion and guidance of the divine Will, action not dominated by desire and instinct and illusive mental free-will, but evolving in self-knowledge and self-delight and conscious subjection of the natural man to the divine self that transcends and guides the nature.

    But by what practical steps of self-discipline can we arrive at this consummation ?

    Since the elimination of the egoistic consciousness and the egoistic activity is the key to the consummation we seek, and action is the knot we seek first to loose, we

* It is not indispensable for the Karmayoga to accept implicitly all the philosophy of the Gita. We may regard it, if we like, as a statement of psychological experience useful as a practical basis for the Yoga; here it is perfectly valid and in entire consonance with the highest experience. For this reason I have thought it well to state it here, as far as possible in the language of modern thought, omitting all that belongs to metaphysics rather than to psychology.

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must aim at the loosening of the knot where it is centrally tied. There are two knots of our bondage to egoistic or divided Nature, desire and ego-sense,—desire in the emotions and instincts, egoisms in the mind. These then are the two powers of Ignorance that we have to eliminate.

    In the field of action desire sums itself up in the desire for the fruit. It may be an internal fruit of pleasure, satisfaction of the egoistic emotions, success of our higher ideas, hopes, ambitions; it may be an external fruit, wealth, honour, victory, good fortune. All these are the lures by which egoism holds us and deludes with the idea of freedom and mastery while really we are harnessed and guided by some gross or subtle, noble or ignoble form of the Desire that drives the world. Therefore the first rule of action laid down by the Gita is to do the work that should be done without desire for the fruit.

    A simple rule in appearance, yet how difficult to carry out with an absolute sincerity and a liberating entirety! For the most part we use the principle very partially if at all, as a sort of counterpoise to the normal principle of desire, to mitigate the extreme action of the latter, and are satisfied if we arrive at a modified and disciplined egoism. We give this partial discipline various names and forms,—the sense of duty, opposition of principle to desire, stoical fortitude, resignation, submission to God’s will. But it is not these things that the Gita intends. It aims at something absolute, unmitigated, uncompromising which will change the whole poise of the soul.

    The test it lays down is an absolute equality of the mind and the soul to all results’ and reactions. If good fortune and ill-fortune, respect and insult, reputation and obloquy, victory and defeat, pleasant event and sorrowful event leave us not only unshaken, but untouched, free in the emotions, free in the nervous reactions, free in the mental view, then we have the absolute liberation to which the Gita points us, but not otherwise. The least reaction is a proof that the discipline is imperfect and that some part of us accepts ignorance and bondage as its law and clings to it. Our self conquest is only partially accomplished.

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    There are certain semblances of an equal mind which must not be mistaken for the equality which the Gita teaches. There is an equality of pride, an equality of hardness and indifference, an equality of disappointed resignation. These are in their nature egoistic. There is also the equality of the stoic, the equality of devout or sage resignation, the equality of a soul aloof from the world. These can at most be phases or preparations for the true and absolute self-existent equality.

    For, certainly, so great a result cannot be arrived at immediately. We have first to learn to bear the shocks of the world with the central part of our being untouched, separating the soul within from the outer workings of our nature and then extending the peace and steadfastness of the detached soul to its instruments. In this process we may take the help of many minor standpoints, a certain stoicism, a certain calm philosophy, a certain religious exaltation. But in the end we discard them to arrive at the entire equality of a perfect self-existent peace within and a total unassailable self-existent delight.

    But how then shall we continue to act at all ? For ordinarily the human being acts because he has a desire or feels a need, a need of riches, honours, personal satisfaction of body or mind, power, pleasure, or at least of making his ideas or his will or his country or his gods prevail in the world. If none of these desires nor any other must be the spring of our actions, it would seem as if all incentive or motive-power being removed action itself must necessarily cease. The Gita replies with its third great principle ; all action must be done as a sacrifice to the Divine. This is indeed its master idea by which it effects the synthesis of knowledge, works and love.

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BOOK II

THE DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST OF THE DIVINE IN ONESELF.

I

THE CONQUEST OF TRUTH

THE SPIRIT OF SYNTHESIS. *

1-2. To think is to move in the Infinite.— Wouldst thou penetrate the infinite ? Advance, then, on all sides in the finite.

3 There is one height of truth and there are those who approach from all sides, as many sides as there are radii in a circle, that is to say, by routes of an infinite variety. Let us work, then, with all our strength to arrive at this light of Truth which unites us all.—

4 All is truth for the intellect and reason.

5 As the musician knows how to tune his lyre, so the wise man knows how to set his mind in tune with all

6 minds.—If faith and incredulity offered themselves together to him, he would receive them with an equal willingness, let them but open to him the door through

7 which he must pass to his goal.—One must receive the

8 Truth from where sever it may come.—Accept what is good even from the babbling of an idiot or the prattle

9 of a child as they extract gold from a stone.— Seek the Truth, though you must go to China to find it.—

I o When they tell thee that thou must not search every-

* 1) Lacordaire.—2) Goethe.—3) Tolstoi—4) Hermes.—6) Demo phi-lus.—6)Farid-uddin-attar—7) Maimonides. — 8; Mahabharata__9 Mohammed.— 10) Tolstoi.—St. Paul.—12) Vivekananda.—13 Heraclitus. —14) Giordano Bruno.—16 lamplights. —16) Giordano Bruno.

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where for truth, believe them not. Those who speak thus are thy most formidable enemies—and Truth’s.

11 Examine all things and hold fast that which is

12 good.—Behind each particular idea there is a general idea, an absolute principle. Know that and you know

13 all.—Contraries harmonise with each other; the finest

14 harmony springs from things that are unlike.—Whoever would enter into the mysteries of Nature must incessantly explore the opposite extremes of things

15 and discover the point where they unite.—The more we rise towards the summit, towards the identity, both through the form and in the essence, and the more we turn away from particular things towards the whole, the more do we find the unity that abides for ever, and behold it as supreme, dominant, com-

16 prehensile of diversity and multiplicity.—The more our reason adopts the ways and processes of this sovereign Reason which is at once that which knows and that which is known, the better are we enabled to understand the totality of things. Whosoever sees and possesses this unity, possesses all; whoever has been unable to reach this unity, has grasped nothing.

1 There is a stain worse than all stains, the stain of ignorance. Purify yourselves of that stain, O disciples, and be free from soil.

2 The plague of ignorance overflows all the earth.

3 Men and women live in the world without yet having any idea either of the visible world or the invisible.—

4 Man is like an ignorant spectator of a drama played on the stage.

5 The ignorant is a child.

"* 1. Dhammapada 243.—2) Hermes II.—3) Farid-ud-din-attar.— 4) Bhagavat Purana.— 5) Laws of Manu. II. 193.—6) Chinese Proverb._. 7) Patanjali, Aphorisms II. 4.—8) Hermes, " The Key"__9) Chinese Pro-verb–10) Majjhima Nikaya.—11) Bhagavad Gita IV. 3.—12) id. 36.— 13) Epistle to Diognetus. – 14) Samiyttsa Nikaya__16) ibid.—16) John VIII. 32.—17) Hermes’ On the Rebirth"—18) Cicero, " Academy" II. 13.—19)11 Corinthians XIII. 8.—20) Imitation of Christ 1.3.7.—21) Hermes.—22) id.

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6 Ignorance is the night of the spirit, but a night with-

7 out stars or moon.—Ignorance is the field in which all other difficulties grow.

8-g The evil of the soul is ignorance.—Ignorance is al

I o most always on the point of doing evil.—With ignorance are born all the passions, with the destruction of ignorance the passions also are destroyed.

11 There is in this world no purification like know-

12 ledge.—Even though thou shouldst be of all sinners the most sinful, yet by the raft of knowledge thou

13 shalt cross utterly beyond all evil.—Fill then your heart with this knowledge and seek for the sources of life in the words dictated by Truth itself.

14 There is a ceremony which is called the baptism of the purification. It is celebrated with solemnity and pomp, but it is not the true purification. I will teach you that noble baptism which leads to deliverance.—

15 It is not by the water in which they plunge that men become pure but he becomes pure who follows the

16 path of the Truth.— And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

17 Behold, my son, the plenitude of the good which follows the appearance of the Truth, for envy removes far from us and by the truth the good arrives with life and light and there no longer remain in us any executioners or darkness; all withdraw vanquished,

18 But most men, I know not why, love better to deceive themselves and fight obstinately for an opinion which is to their taste than to seek without obduracy

19 the truth—We have no power against the truth, we have power only for the truth.

20 Happy are they whom Truth herself instructs not by words and figures but by showing herself as she is.

21 —Truth is the perfect matter nor circumscribed by the body, the good bare, evident, unalterable, august, im-

22 mutable.—Regard as true only the eternal and the just.

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    His is surely a bounded soul who has never felt the brooding wings of a Fate overshadow the world, never looked beyond the circle of persons, collectivities and forces, never been conscious of the still thought or the assured movement of a Presence in things determining their march. On the other hand it is the sign of a defect in the thought or a void of courage and clearness in the temperament to be overwhelmed by Fate or hidden Presence and reduced to a discouraged acquiescence,—as if the Power in things nullified or rendered superfluous and abortive the same Power in myself. Fate and free-will are only two movements of one indivisible energy. My will is the first instrument of my Fate, Fate a Will that manifests itself in the irresistible subconscious intention of the world.

    All error like all evil is born of a division in the indivisible. Because God has a myriad aspects, mind breaks up His unity; it creates a violent opposition and vain attempt at mutual exclusion in the united family of the Ideas and Powers that are convergent busy with the universe. Thus our thought erects a mysterious Fate or an equally mysterious free-will and insists that this or that must be but both shall not subsist together. It is a false and unreal quarrel. I have a will, that is plain; but it is not true that it is free in the sense of being a thing apart in the world determining itself and its actions and fruits as if it alone existed or as if it could at all shape itself except as visible crest and form of an invisible wave. Even the wave is more than itself; for that too has be-

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hind it the tramp of the whole measureless ocean of Force and Time. On the other hand there is no incalculable Fate, no blind cruel and ineluctable Necessity against which the wings of the soul must dash themselves in vain as if it were a bird snared by a monstrous Fowler in a dim-lit and fantastic cage.

    All times and nations have felt or played with the idea of Fate. The Greeks were pursued by the thought of a mysterious and ineffable Necessity presiding over the divine caprices of the gods. The Mahomedan sits calm and inert under the yoke of Kismet. The Hindu speaks of Karma and the writing on the forehead when he would console himself for calamity or failure or excuse himself from perseverance and masculine effort. And all these notions are akin in the general imprecision of the idea they shadow forth and the vague twilight in which they are content to leave its ulterior significance. Modern Science has brought in an equally formless and arbitrary predestination of Law of Nature and Heredity to contradict the idea of responsibility in a free, willing and acting soul. Where there is no soul, there can be no freedom. Nature works out her original law in man ; our fathers and mothers with all that they carried in them are a second vital predestination, the dead generations impose themselves on the living ; pressure of environment comes in as a third Fate to take from us the little chance of liberty we might still have snatched out of this infinite coiling of forces. The triple Moiré of the Greeks have been re-enthroned with other masks and new names. We believe once more in a tremendous weaving of our fate, but by the measured dance of immense material Powers. It is the old gods again, but stripped of intelligence and the chance of human sympathy, inexorable because they are conscious neither of themselves nor of us.

    It is doubtful whether belief in Fate or free-will makes much difference to a man’s action, but it certainly matters a great deal to his temperament and inner being; for it puts its stamp on the cast of his soul. The man who makes belief in Fate an excuse for quiescence, would find

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some other pretext if this were lacking. His idea is only a decorous garment for his mood ; it clothes his indolence and quiescence in a specious robe of light or drapes it with a noble mantle of dignity. But when his will clutches at an object or action, we do not find him pursuing it with a less strenuous resolution or, it may be, a less childish impatience or obstinacy than the freest believer in free will. It is not our intellectual ideas that govern our action, but our nature and temperament,—not dhi,* but mati or even manyu, or, as the Greeks would have said, thumps and not nous.

    On the other hand a great man of action will often seize on the idea of Fate to divinise to himself the mighty energy that he feels driving him on the path of world-altering deeds. He is like a shell discharged from some dim Titanic howitzer planted in concealment far behind this first line of trenches which we see thrown out, by Life into the material world; or he is like a planet sped out from Nature’s hands with its store of primal energy sufficient for its given time, its fixed service to the world-life, its settled orbit round a distant and sovereign Light. He expresses in the idea of Fate his living and constant sense of the energy which has cast him down here whether to break like some Vedic Maruts the world’s firm and established things or to cut through mountains a path down which new rivers of human destiny can pour. Like Indra or Bhagavat he precedes; the throng of the divine waters follow. His movement decides their course ; here Indus shall flow, there Ganges pace yellow and leonine to the sea. Therefore we find that the greatest men of action the world has known were believers in Fate or in a divine Will. Caesar, Mahomet, Napoleon, what more colossal workers has our past than these ? The superman believes more readily in Destiny, feels more vitally conscious of God than the average human mind.

     * These are terms of Vedic psychology. Dhi is the intellect; mati the general mentality; manyu, the temperament and emotive mind.

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    A saying of Napoleon’s is pregnant of the true truth of this matter. Questioned why, since he talked continually of fate, he thought it worth while to be always thinking and planning, he answered with just reason, " Because it is still Fate who wills that I should plan." This is the truth. There is Will or Force in the world that determines the result of my actions as part of the great whole ; there is Will in me that determines, concealed by my thought and personal choice, the part that I shall take in determining the whole. It is this that my mind seizes on and calls my will. But I and mine are masks. It is All-existence that gives me my reality ; it is the All-will and All-knowledge that, while I calculate, works in me for its own incalculable purpose.

    For this very reason I am right in laying stress on my free-will. If a Necessity governs even the gods, yet is my will a daughter of Necessity with a right in the mansion of her mother ; or even it is a face of the divine Necessity that in many forms plays with the world. If Kismet is the will of God, yet is that will active in my present moment and not only in the hour of my birth or of the birth of the world. If my past actions determine my present, my immediate action also determines the moment that shall be and is not utterly put off by a tardy mechanism to belated effects in a far-off life. If Law of nature and heredity and environment are powerful, yet do they depend on the individual for the use to which they shall be turned.

    The fruit of my actions belongs not to me, but to God and the world ; my action belongs to God and myself. There I have a right. Or rather it belongs to God in myself ; the right is His, but I enjoy it. The Will that works in me is the indivisible All which only seems to separate itself from itself in my body and personality, as the whole sea throws itself upon a particular coast in a particular surge of waves. The All and the I are at play of hide and seek with each other in a corner of an infinite universe.

    I may play entirely at cross-purposes with the All-

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Will in me. That is when I lend my will-power to be a servant of the nervous part of my mind which, ignorant and passionate, adores itself, openly or under many pretences, as its own god. It is this in me, this egoist, this hungered that feels upon it in the heavy hand of Fate the oppression of a tyrant or the resistance of a blind and unintelligent power. For always absorbed in its own need and view-point it helps the All by that friction and opposition which are so essential to the mechanism of the world. Therefore it misunderstands the firm Teacher and His stern, yet loving compulsion in things and must progress by self-will and struggle and suffering because it cannot yet learn to progress by obedience. But also I may, by an intuition in my nature, an aspiration in my heart and a reason in my mind, put myself at the service of some strong ideal, some intelligent Force that serves God with or without knowledge of Him. Then is my will a true will; it does its share, it leaves its quota, it returns to its Master with its talent used or increased. And to a certain extent it is free ; for a great liberty is this, to be delivered from the Animal and the Rakshasa in ourselves, free to choose the right or be chosen by it.

    But how different a thing would it be if I could persuade my ego to break and emerge from the mould in which it has taken refuge from its divine Pursuer ! The great antinomy would then be abrogated and not simply mitigated. My free-will would become God-will and Fate put off her mask. By consenting to be the mere slave of God and consciously but one instrument of That which is not bound by its instruments, I should know a freedom which sings on the harps of heaven, but which no speech of man can utter ; I should be washed and rolled in the waves of pure puissance and pure ecstasy, the immeasurable and unfathomable ecstasy of all-being and all-life and all-force. I should see Fate illumined melting into Will and Will glorified passing into God.

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THE GOAL.

When we have passed beyond knowing, then we shall have knowledge. Reason was the helper ; Reason is the bar.

When we have passed beyond willing, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper ; Effort is the bar.

When we have passed beyond enjoying, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.

When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper ; Ego is the bar.

When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper ; the Animal is the bar.

Transform reason into ordered intuition ; let all thy self be light. This is thy goal.

Transform effort into an easy and sovereign overflowing of the soul-strength ; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.

Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy ; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal.

Transform the divided individual into the world-personality ; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.

Transform the Animal into the Driver of the herds ; lat all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal.

***

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    What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is’ the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.

    Impossibility is only a sum of greater unrealized possibles. It veils an advanced stage and a yet unaccomplished journey.

    If thou wouldst have humanity advance, buffet all preconceived ideas. Thought thus smitten awakes and becomes creative. Otherwise it rests in a mechanical repetition and mistakes that for its right activity.

    To rotate on its own axis is not the one movement for the human soul. There is also its wheeling round the Sun of an inexhaustible illumination.

    Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation ; all real act is a thought manifested . The material world exists because an Idea began to play in divine self-consciousness.

    Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming ; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man’s unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.

    Not to go on for ever repeating what man has already done is our work, but to arrive at new realisations and undreamed-of masteries. Time and soul and world are given us for our field, vision and hope and creative imagination stand for our prompters, will and thought and labour are our all-effective instruments.

   What is there new that we have yet to accomplish ? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing ; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving ; Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and indifference ; Power, for as yet we have only accomplished weak-

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ness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying ; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association.

    In a word, godhead ; to remake ourselves in the divine image.

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