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cause the potentiality is infinite. If there were only infinite potentiality without any law of guiding truth and harmonious self-vision, without any predetermining Idea in the very seed of things cast out for evolution, the world could be nothing but a teeming, amorphous, confused uncertainty. But the knowledge that creates, because what it creates or releases are forms and powers of itself, and not things other than itself, possesses in its own being the vision of the truth and law that governs each potentiality; it has intrinsic knowledge of its relation to other potentialities and the harmonies that are possible between them and holds all that in the general determining harmony which the whole rhythmic Idea of a universe must contain in its very birth and self-conception and which must therefore inevitably work out by the interplay of its constituents. It is the source and keeper of Law in the world; for law is nothing arbitrary but merely the expression of a self-nature which is determined by the compelling truth of the real idea that each thing is in its inception. Therefore from the beginning the whole development is predetermined in its self-knowledge and at every moment in its self-working; it is what it must be. at each moment by its own original inherent Truth ; it moves to what it must be at the next still by its own original inherent Truth; it will be at the end that which was contained and intended in its seed.

    This development and progress of the world according to an original truth of its own being implies a succession of Time, a relation in Space and a regulated interaction of related things in Space to which the succession of Time gives the aspect of Causality. Time and Space, according to the metaphysician, have only a conceptual and not a real existence; but since all things and not these only are forms assumed by Conscious-Being in its own consciousness, the distinction is of no great importance. Time and Space are that one Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension, subjectively as Time, objectively as Space. Our mental view of these two categories is determined by the idea of measure which is inherent in the action of the analytical,

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dividing movement of Mind. Time is for the Mind a mobile extension measured out by the succession of the past, present and future in which Mind places itself at a certain standpoint whence it looks before and after. Space is a stable extension measured out by divisibility of substance; at a certain point in that divisible extension Mind places itself and regards the disposition of substance a-round it.

    In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time for its. point of prospect ion, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible extension,—no less subjective than Time. At certain moments we become aware of such an indivisible regard upholding by its immutable self-conscious unity the variations of the universe; but we must not ask how the contents of Time and Space would present themselves there in their transcendent truth; for this our mind cannot conceive; and it is even ready to deny to this Indivisible any possibility of knowing the world in any other way than that of our mind and senses.

    What we have to resale’s and can to a certain extent conceive is the one view and all-comprehending regard by which the Supermind embraces and unifies the successions of Time and the divisions of Space. And first, if there were not this factor of the successions of Time, there would be* no change or progression, a perfect harmony would be perpetually manifest, coeval with other harmonies in a

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sort of eternal moment, not successive to them in the movement from past to future. We have instead the constant succession of a developing harmony in which one strain rises out of another that preceded it and conceals in itself that which it has replaced. Or, if the self-manifestation were to exist without the factor of divisible Space, there would be no mutable relation of forms or in tar shock of forces; all would exist and not be worked out,—a space less self-consciousness purely subjective would contain all things in an infinite subjective grasp as in the mind of a poet or a dreamer but would not distribute itself though all in an indefinite objective self-extension. Or if Time alone were real, its successions would be a pure development in which one strain would rise out of another in a pure spontaneity as in a series of musical sounds or a succession of poetical images. We have instead a harmony worked out by Time in terms of forms and forces that stand related to one another in an all-containing extension.

    Different potentialities are embodied, placed, related in this field of Time and Space, each with its powers and possibilities, fronting other powers and possibilities and as a result the successions of Time become in their appearance to the mind a working out of things by shock and struggle and not a spontaneous succession. In reality, there is a spontaneous working out of things from within and the external shock and struggle are only the superficial aspect of this elaboration. For the inner and inherent law of the one and whole, which is necessarily a harmony, governs the outer and recessive laws of the parts or forms which appear to be in collision; and to the supramental vision this greater and profounder truth of harmony is always present. That which is an apparent discord to the mind because it considers each thing separately in itself, is an element of the general ever-present and ever-developing harmony to the Supermind because it views all things in a multiple unity. Besides, the mind sees only a given time and space and views many possibilities pell-mell as all more or less realisable in that time and space; the divine Supermind

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embrace all the mind’s possibilities and very many more not visible to the mind, but without any error, groping of confusion; for it perceives each potentiality in its proper force, essential necessity, right relation to the others and the time, place and circumstance both of its gradual and. its ultimate realisation. To see things steadily and see them whole is not possible to the mind; but it is the very nature of the transcendent Supermind.

;    This Supermind in its conscious vision not only contains all the forms of itself which its conscious force creates, but it pervades them as an indwelling Presence and a self-revealing Light. It is present, even though concealed, in every form and force of the universe; it is that which determines sovereignty and spontaneously form, force and functioning ; it limits the variations it compels; it gathers, disperses, modifies the energy which it uses; and all this is done in accord with the first laws * that its self-knowledge has fixed in the very birth of the form, at the very starting-point of the force. It is seated within everything as the Lord in the heart of all existences,—he who turns them as on an engine by the power of his Maya t ; it is within them and embraces them as the divine Seer who variously disposed and ordained objects, each rightly according to the thing that it is, from years semidiurnal. **

    Each thing in Nature, therefore, whether animate or inanimate, mentally self-conscious or not self-conscious, is governed in its been and in its operations by an indwelling Vision and Power, to us Subconscient or inconscient because we are not conscious of it, but not inconscient to itself, rather profoundly and universally conscient. Therefore each thing seems to do the works of intelligence, even without possessing intelligence, because it obeys, whether unconsciously as in the plant or half-consciously as in man, the real-idea of the divine Supermind within it. But it is not a mental Intelligence that informs and governs all

* A Vedic expression. The gods act according to the first laws, original and therefore supreme, which are the law of the truth of things.

+ Gita.

* * Isha Upanishad.

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things; it is a self-aware Truth of being in which self-knowledge is inseparable from self-existence; it is this Truth-consciousness which has not to think out things but works them out with knowledge according to the implacable self-vision and the inevitable force of a sole and self-fulfilling Existence. Intelligence thinks out because it is merely a reflecting force of consciousness which does not know, but seeks to know; it follows in Time step by step the working of a knowledge higher than itself, a knowledge that exists always, one and whole, that holds Time in its grasp, that sees past, present and future in a single regard.

    This, then, is the first operative principle of the divine Supermind; it is a cosmic vision which is all-comprehensive, all-pervading, all-inhabiting. Because it comprehends all things in being and static self-awareness, subjective, timeless, space less, therefore it comprehends all things in dynamic knowledge and governs their objective self-embodiment in Space and Time.

    In this consciousness the knower, knowledge and the known are not different entities, but fundamentally one. Our mentality makes a distinction between these three because without distinctions it cannot proceed ; losing its proper means and fundamental law of action it becomes motionless and inactive. Therefore even when I regard myself mentally I have still to make this distinction. I am, as the knower ; what I observe in myself, I regard as the object of my knowledge, myself yet not myself ; knowledge is an operation by which I link the knower to the known. But the artificiality, the purely practical and utilitarian character of this operation is evident ; it is evident that it does not represent the fundamental truth of things. In reality, I the knower am the consciousness which knows; the knowledge is that consciousness, myself, operating ; the known is also myself, a form or movement of the same consciousness. The three arc clearly one existence, one movement, indivisible though seeming to be divided, not distributed between its forms although appearing to distribute itself and to stand separate in each. But this is a knowledge which the mind can arrive at, can reason out,

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can feel, but cannot readily make the practical basis of its intelligent operations. And with regard to objects external to the form of consciousness which I call myself, the difficulty becomes almost insuperable ; even to feel unity there is an abnormal effort and to retain it, to act upon it continually would be a new and foreign action not properly belonging to the Mind. Mind can at most hold it as an understood truth so as to correct and modify by it its own normal activities which are still based upon division, somewhat as we know intellectually that the earth moves round the sun and are able to correct by it but not abolish the artificial and physically practical arrangement by which the senses persist in regarding the sun as in motion round the earth.

    But the Supermind possesses and acts always, fundamentally, on this truth of unity which to the mind is only a secondary or acquired possession and not the very gram of its seeing. Supermind sees the universe and its contents as itself in a single indivisible act of knowledge, an act which is its life, which is the very movement of its self-existence. Therefore this comprehensive divine consciousness in its aspect of Will does not so much guide or govern the development of cosmic life as consummate it in itself by an act of power which is inseparable from the act of knowledge and from the movement of self-existence, is indeed one and the same act. For we have seen that universal force and universal consciousness are one—cosmic force is the operation of cosmic consciousness. So also divine knowledge and divine Will are one ; they are the same fundamental movement or act of existence.

    This indivisibility of the comprehensive Supermind which contains all multiplicity without derogating from its own unity is a truth upon which we have always to insist, if we are to understand the cosmos and get rid of the initial error of our analytic mentality. A tree evolves out of the seed in which it is already contained, the seed out of the tree ; a fixed law, an invariable process reigns in the permanence of the form of manifestation which we call a tree. The mind regards this phenomenon, this birth_?

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life and reproduction of a tree as a thing in itself and on that basis studies, classes and explains it. It explains the tree by the seed, the seed by the tree ; it declares a law of Nature. But it has explained nothing ; it has only analysed and recorded the process of a mystery. Supposing even that it comes to perceive a secret conscious force as the soul, the real being of this form and the rest as merely a settled operation and manifestation of that force, still it tends to regard the form as a separate existence with its separate law of nature and process of development. When the animal emerges with its conscious mentality, this superlative tendency of the Mind induces it to regard itself also as a separate existence, the conscious subject, and other forms as separate objects of its mentality. This useful arrangement, necessary to life and the first basis of all its practice, is accepted by the mind as an actual fact and thence proceeds all the error of the ego.

    But the Supermind works otherwise. The tree and its process would not be what they are, could not indeed exist, if it were a separate existence ; forms are what they are by the force of the cosmic existence, they develop as they do as a result of their relation to it and to all its other manifestations. The separate law of their nature is only an application of the universal law and truth of all Nature ; their particular development is determined by their place in the general development. The tree does not explain the seed, nor the seed the tree ; cosmos explains both and God explains cosmos. The Supermind pervading and inhabiting at once the tree and all objects, lives in this greater knowledge which is indivisible and one though with a modified and not an absolute indivisibility and unity. In this comprehensive knowledge there is no centre of existence, no individual embodied ego such as we see in ourselves; the whole of existence is to its self-aware ness an equable extension.

    In that spacious equality the Being is not divided and distributed; equably self-extended, pervading its extension as One, inhabiting as One the multiplicity of forms it is everywhere at once the single and equal Brahman.

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    For this extension of the Being in Time and Space and this pervasion and indwelling is in intimate relation with the absolute Unity from which it has proceeded, with that absolute Indivisible in which there is no centre or circumference but only the timeless and space less One. That high concentration of unity in the unexpended Brahman must necessarily translate itself in the extension by this equal pervasive concentration, this indivisible comprehension of all things, this universal undistributed immanence, this unity which no play of multiplicity can abrogate or diminish. " Brahman is in all things, all things are in Brahman, all things are Brahman " is the triple formula of the comprehensive Supermind, a single truth of self-manifestation in three aspects which it holds together and inseparably in its self-view as the fundamental knowledge from which it proceeds to the play of the cosmos.

    But what then is the origin of mentality and the organisation of this lower consciousness in the triple terms of Mind, Life and Matter which is our view of the universe ? For since all things that exist must proceed from the action of the all-efficient Supermind, from its operation in the three original terms of Existence, Conscious-Force and Bliss, there must be some faculty of the creative Truth-Consciousness which so operates as to cast them into these new terms, into this inferior trio of mentality, vitality and physical substance. This faculty we find in a secondary power of the creative knowledge, its power-of a projecting, confronting and apprehending consciousness in which knowledge centralists itself and stands back from its works to observe them. And when we speak of centralizations, we mean, as distinguished from the equable concentration of consciousness of which we have hitherto spoken, an unequal concentration in which there is the beginning of self-division.

    First of all, the Knower holds himself concentrated in knowledge as subject and regards his Force of consciousness as if continually proceeding from him into the form of himself, continually working in it, continually drawing back into himself, continually issuing forth again. From

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this. single act of self-modification proceed all the practical distinctions upon which the relative view and the relative action of the universe is based. A practical distinction has been created between the Knower, Knowledge and the Known, between the Lord, His force and the children and works of the Force, between the Enjoyer, the Enjoyment and the Enjoyed, between the Self, Maya and the becoming of the Self.

    Secondly, this conscious Soul concentrated in knowledge, this Purusha observing and governing the Force that has gone forth from him, his Shakti or Prakriti, repeats himself in every form of himself. He accompanies, as it were, his Force of consciousness into its works and reproduces there the act of self division from which this apprehending consciousness is born. In each form this Soul dwells with his Nature and observes himself in other forms from that artificial and practical centre of consciousness. In all it is the same Soul, the same divine Being; the multiplication of centimes is only a practical act of consciousness intended to institute a play of difference, of mutuality, mutual knowledge, mutual shock of force, mutual enjoyment, a difference based upon essential unity, a unity realise on a practical basis of difference.

    We can speak of this new status of the all-pervading Supermind as a further departure from the Unitarian truth of things and from the indivisible consciousness which constitutes inalienably the unity essential to the existence of the cosmos. We can see that pursued a little farther it may become truly Avidya, the" great Ignorance which starts from multiplicity as the fundamental reality and in order to travel back to real unity has to commence with the false unity of the ego. We can see also that once the individual centre is accepted as the determining standpoint, as the knower, mental sensation, mental intelligence, mental action of will and all their consequences cannot fail to come into being. But also we have to see that so long as the soul acts in the Supermind, Ignorance has not yet begun ; the field of knowledge and action is

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still the truth-consciousness, the basis is still the unity.

    For the Self still regards itself as one in all and all things as be comings in itself and of itself ; the Lord still knows his Force as himself in act and every being as himself in soul and himself in form ; it is still his own being that the Enjoyer enjoys, even though in a multiplicity. The one real change has been an unequal concentration of consciousness and a multiple distribution of force. There 15a practical distinction in consciousness but there is no essential difference of consciousness or true division in its vision of itself. The Truth-consciousness has arrived at a position which prepares oar mentality, bat is not yet that of our mentality. And it is this that we must study in order to seize Mind at its origin, at the point where it makes its great lapse from the high and vast wideness of the Truth-consciousness into the division and the ignorance. Fortunately this apprehending * Truth-consciousness is much more facile to our grasp by its nearness to us, by its foreshadowing of our mental operations than the remoter realisation that we have hitherto been struggling to express in our inadequate language of the intellect. The barrier that has to be crossed is less formidable.

" Prajna an.

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    The Master of the work reveals Himself only when we renounce our egoism of the worker and in proportion as that renunciation becomes more and more complete; and only when that is absolute are we able to live in His absolute presence and can leave our work to throw itself completely and simply in to the mould of His will. There must therefore be gradations in the approach to this perfection as in the progress to all other perfection. We may indeed have suddenly the vision of the full glory, but until the foundation is complete, it is usually a summary and concentrated view and, most often, it is insecurely held. The amplitudes, the infinite contents come afterwards and gradually unroll themselves. And even if the steady vision be there on the summits of our nature, the perfect response of all the lower members can only come by degrees. In all Yoga patience and faith are required; the and ours of the heart and the divine violence’s of the will seeking to take the kingdom of heaven by storm have miserable reactions unless they support themselves upon these humbler and quieter auxiliaries.

    It is necessary to lay stress on this character of all Yogic practice because of the natural impatience of the heart and the mind and the faltering faith of the intellect due to the raja sic nature of man. He demands alwa3′s the fruit of his labour and, if the fruit appears to be denied

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to him or long delayed, he loses faith in the ideal and the guidance; for he judges always by the immediate appearance, that being the nature of the intellectual reason to which he so inordinately, trusts. Nothing is easier for him than to accuse God in his heart when he stumbles and to say " I have trusted to the Highest and I am betrayed into sin and error; I have staked my whole life on an idea which the stern facts of experience contradict. It would have been better to be as other men who walk on the firm ground of normal experience and accept their limitations." In such moments—and they are sometimes long—all the higher experience is forgotten and the soul concentrates itself in its own bitterness. If a man has walked long in the path, the faith of the heart will remain though concealed and take the first opportunity to re-emerge and something higher than either heart or intellect will uphold him even in his stumbling; but even for him such faltering bring a farther retardation and they are exceedingly dangerous for the novice. It is therefore necessary from the beginning to envisage the arduous difficulty of the path we have chosen and to accept the necessity of a faith which to the intellect may seem blind, but is in reality the cool and comforting shadow thrown by a secret light that exceeds the intellect, a hidden knowledge that is not at the mercy of immediate appearances. Persevering, our faith will be justified of its works and will transfigure itself into the self-revelation of that knowledge. Therefore throughout we must adhere to the injunction of the Gita, "Yoga must be applied continually with a heart free from despondency " and repeat always to the doubting intellect the firm promise of the Master " I will surely deliver thee out of all evils; do not grieve."

    We must remember always that the Master of our works respects our nature even when He is transforming it; for through the nature He works always and not by any arbitrary caprice. And this imperfect nature of ours contains the materials of our perfection; therefore it has to be patiently prepared, rearranged, new-molded, transformed, not hacked at and hewed and slain or mutilated.

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    In our errors is contained the substance of a truth which labors to reveal itself; the human intellect cuts out the error and the truth with it; God suffers the error until it is able to arrive at its own truth. Our very sins are the false steps of something that aims not at sin, but at perfection; they are the veils of a quality that has to be transformed and delivered out of this ugly disguise, but not done away with: otherwise, in the perfect providence of things, they would never have been suffered. The Master of our works is neither a blunderer nor an indifferent nor a dallier with the luxury of unneeded evils. He is wiser than our reason, wiser than our virtue. If we fail, it is because He has intended the failure as the right road to a truer success; if we suffer, it is because something has to be prepared in us for a rarer possibility of delight ; if we stumble, it is to learn in the end some secret of a more perfect walking. We must not be in too furious a haste to acquire even peace, purity and perfection, Peace we must have, but not the peace of a devastated nature or a mutilated capacity incapable of unrest because it is incapable of intensity, purity, but not the purity of a void ; perfection, but not the perfection that exists only by confining itself within narrow limits.

    This imperfect nature of ours is egoistic and nothing is more difficult for it than to get rid of egoism while yet adhering to action. It is easiest to kill the ego by renouncing the impulse to act; it is easier to exalt it into self-forget-fullness immersed in an astray of divine love; but for man the most difficult problem is to attain a divine manhood which shall be the ‘pure vessel of a divine action. Step after step has to be firmly taken ; difficulty after difficulty has to be entirely experienced and entirely mastered.

    We have seen that the first step is to consecrate all our works as a sacrifice to the Divine in us and in the world, that the second is to renounce attachment to the fruit of our works—for the only true inevitable and utterly desirable fruit of sacrifice is the one thing needful, the Divine itself, and that being gained all else shall be added,—and that the third is to get rid of the egoism of the worker.

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    But in this last step also there are the gradations of a difficult renunciation.

    The first attitude to be taken is to cease to regard ourselves as the worker and firmly to realise that we are only the instrument. Even so, however, we shall not necessarily be delivered from egoism; for it we diminish or even lose entirely the egoism of the worker, we easily replace it by the egoism of the instrument. The history of the world is full of instances of this egoism. Such a man becomes a leader of men, feels himself full of a power that he knows to be beyond himself, mysterious, unfathomable and sees extraordinary results of his actions. He effects some tremendous destruction that clears the path for humanity or some great construction that becomes its momentary resting-place. He is a scourge or he is a bringer of light and healing. Or the works and effects may be on a lesser scale, may have a limit eel field, but are still attended by the sense of being an instrument. Such beings come easily to believe and declare themselves to be mere instruments in the hand of God or of fate; yet even in the declaration we can see that there is a much intense and more exaggerated egoism than ordinary men have the courage to assert or the strength to house in their thought and action. And if they speak of God, it is to erect an image of Him which is really nothing but a huge shadow of themselves, of their own nature, of their own type of thought and equality and action ; and this is the Master whom they serve.

    Such men are not hallucinated, nor mere megalomanias; they see truer than ordinary men, their souls have advanced a step farther, but they have not arrived-at the plenary vision. And the reason is that they are not directly instruments of the Divine and have not come face to face with the Master, but are used through their fallible and imperfect nature and through that veil, if at all, they see the Divinity. We see them erect the image of the God of a sect, or a national God, or a God of terror and

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through that medium. But since he works through their imperfect nature and yet more intensely than in others, the motive principle of egoism is also more intense than in other men. In real truth, they are rather servants than instruments and servants of a certain divine Quality rather than the absolute Godhead.

    We must learn from these great examples to house the same power, but to live in the light of a clearer knowledge. We must not bring any egoism into the attitude of the instrument, but keep rather this in mind that every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of the Divine and that there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of egoism. Even the difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit whose breath of divine power blowout where it listed, filling today one and to-morrow another with the word or the puissance. We have no merit, for even our apparent merit is the result of a divine election, and it is irrational to pride ourselves on a toil of preparation which is itself merely the result of a divine choice made freely. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The thought in our mind must not be " This is my strength " or even ‘* Behold God’s power in me," but rather ** So God’s power works in this mind and body as otherwise it works in all men and even in the animal, the herb and the metal." By this large view of the one working in all and of the whole world as the equal instrument of a divine action and gradual self-expression the rajasic egoism of the instrument will pass away from us.

    Secondly, we must remember always that the Divine works through our nature and according to our nature, and if that nature is imperfect, the Work also will be imperfect, marred by error, falsehood, moral weaknesses without yet ceasing to be the work of the Divine in us. This perception will keep us safe, if constantly enforced, both from the raja sic egoism which is prone to pride, desire and eagerness and the tama sic egoism which desponds, is

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crushed by the sense of sin and error or refuses the work and the effort from an excessive humility. It is here that the perception of the working of Nature through the three gunas becomes of the utmost use to us, for we cease to attribute cither the virtue and the power or the sin and the weakness to ourselves, but we say in the language of  the Gita " It is the modes of Nature that work in the field of her modes." Calm, untroubled, undated we aid by a sanction more and moiré passive but more and more persistent, complete and irresistible the pressure of the Divine upon us whose aim is to remove our imperfections and purify all the workings of the living instrument.

    The third stage is the removal of this veil of Nature and her modes so that we see the Master of the instrument behind the working and finally in all the working. " Even as I am appointed," runs the Sanskrit verse *’ by Thee, O Hrishikesha, seated in my heart, so I act." This action may be of two kinds, the action of our nature when by her and her illusion of egoism we are " turned as if mounted on a machine," the other, when delivered from all illusions we act spontaneously in the living presence of the original divine Force, our motion one with her motion, our will one with her will, and feel her as the Master manifest in Power and are aware of mind and body as only her working. We perceive no longer merely Nature or the modes of Nature, but become conscious physically, in our nervous being, in our mental movements of a Force other than our limited mind and body and which drives all their motion; we have no longer the sense of ourselves moving, thinking, feeling but of that moving, feeling, thinking in us. This force that we feel is the cosmic Force, which both, material and spiritual Science tell us, alone exists and acts in the cosmos.

    And this force is the Divine in the body of His power, —power of act, power of knowledge, power of enjoyment, power of love. We become conscious always and in everything, in ourselves and in others, of the Master possessing, inhabiting, enjoying this Force that is Himself, and becoming through it all existences and all happenings.

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    We arrive in this way at the divine union through works which we gain otherwise by pure devotion or by pure knowledge.

    When we behold the Master of our works, it is in four manifestations that we become conscious of Him. First as the Transcendent ; we are aware of One who is beyond all world and all nature and yet possesses the world and its nature and is shaping it into something which as yet it is not. Secondly, as the equal inactive Brahman, the Divine not bound by quality who supports impartially all action and energies which the transcendent Will permits and authorize in the cosmos, and yet by his very passivity and silent presence compels them to travel towards a divine goal and attracts towards the yet unrealised unity. Thirdly, the universal Divine, who is infinite quality and cosmic will and act and universal knowledge and delight, through whom we become one with all existences not only in their essence but in their play of action, see our self in all and all in our self, perceive all thought and feeling as of the one Mind and Hear it, all energy and action as of the one Will in power and no longer stand separate, but lose our active ego in the universal movement, even as by the Quality less we lose our static ego in the universal peace. Fourthly, the Lord who accepts a personal relation with us, is at once one with us as our supreme Self and yet chooses to be different as our Master, Friend, Lover, Teacher, our Father an J Mother, our Playmate in the great world-game who disguises Himself as friend and enemy, helper and opponent and in all relations and in all workings that affect us ; by Him we may see in all the One not merely with philosophic calm, not merely with passive or active submission in our works, but with the ecstasy of divine love and divine de light

    For it is not so much knowledge, not so much work as this thing most intimate to us, yet most obscure which keeps for us wrapped in its passionate veil the deep and blissful secret of the transcendent Godhead.

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    As the Upanishad asserts a speech behind this speech, which is the expressive aspect of the Brahman-consciousness, so it asserts a Mind behind this mind which is its cognitive aspect. And as we asked ourselves what could be the rational basis for the theory of the divine Word superior to our speech, so we have now to ask ourselves what can be the rational basis for this theory of a cognitive faculty or principle superior to Mind. We may say indeed that if we grant a divine Word creative of all things, we must also grant a divine Mind cognitive of the Word and of all that it expresses. But this is not a sufficient foundation; for the theory of the divine Word presents itself only as a rational possibility. A cognition higher than Mind presents itself on the other hand as a necessity which arises from the very nature of Mind itself, a necessity from which we cannot logically escape.

    In the ancient system which admitted the soul’s survival of the body, Mind was the man, in a very profound and radical sense of the phrase. It is not only that the human being is the one reasoning animal upon earth, the thinking race; he is essentially the mental being in a terrestrial body, the Manu. Quite apart from the existence of a soul or self one in all creatures, the body is not even the phenomenal self of man; the physical life also is not himself; both may be dissolved, man will persist. But if the mental being also is dissolved, man as man ceases to be; for this is his centre and the nodes of his organism.

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    On the contrary, according to the theory of a material evolution upheld by modern Science, man is only matter that has developed mind by an increasing sensibility to the shocks of its environment; and matter being the basis of existence there is nothing, except the physical elements, that can survive the dissolution of the body. But this formula is at most the obverse and inferior side of a much larger truth. Matter could not develop Mind if in or behind the force that constitutes physical forms there were not already a principle of Mind striving towards self-manifestation. The will to enlighten and consciously govern the life and the form must have been already existent in that which appears to us inconscient before mind was evolved. For, if there were no such necessity of Mind in Matter, if the stuff of mentality were not there already and the will to mentalist, Mind could not possibly have evolved.

    But in the mere chemical elements which go to constitute material forms or in electricity or in any other purely physical factor, whatever unconscious will or sensation they may be possessed by or possess, we can discover nothing which could explain the emergence of conscious sensation, which could constitute a will towards the evolution of thought or which could impose the necessity of such an evolution on inconscient physical substance. It is not then in the form of Matter itself, but in the Force which is at work in Matter, that we must seek the origin of Mind. That Force must either be itself conscient or contain the grain of mental consciousness inherent in its being and therefore the potentiality and indeed the necessity of its emergence. This imprisoned consciousness, though originally absorbed in the creation first of forms and then of physical relations and reactions between physical forms, must still have held in itself from the beginning, however long kept back and suppressed, a will to the ultimate enlightenment of these relations by the creation of corresponding conscious or mental values. Mind is then a concealed necessity which the Subconscient holds in itself from the commencement of things; it is the thing that

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must emerge once the attractions and repulsions of Matter begin to be established; it is the suppressed secret and cause of the reactions of life in the metal, plant and animal.

    If on the other hand we say that Mind in some such secret and suppressed form is not already existent in Matter, we must then suppose that it exists outside Matter and embraces it or enters into it. We must suppose a mental plane of existence which presses upon the physical and tends to possess it. In that case the mental being would be in its origin an entity which is formed outside the material world; but it prepares in that world bodies which become progressively more and more able to house and express Mind. We :nay image it forming, entering into and possessing the body, breaking into it, as it were,—as the Purusha in the Aitareya Upanishad is said to form the body and then to enter in by breaking open a door in Matter. Man would in this view be a mental being incarnate in the living body who at its dissolution leaves it with full possession of his mentality.

    The two theories are far from being incompatible with each other; they can be viewed as complements forming a single truth. For the involution of Mind, its latency in the material Force of the physical universe and in all its movements does not preclude the existence of a mental world beyond and above the reign of the physical principle. In fact, the emergence of such a latent Mind might well depend upon and would certainly profit by the aid .and pressure of forces from a supra-physical kingdom, a mental plane of existence.

    There are always two possible views of the universe. The one supposes, with modern Science, Matter to be the beginning of things and studies everything as an evolution from Matter; or, if not Matter, then, with the Sankhya philosophy, an indeterminate inconscient active Force or Prakriti of which even mind and reason are operations,—the Conscious Soul, if any exists, being a quite different and, although conscient, yet inactive entity. The other supposes the conscious soul, the Purusha, to be the

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material as well as the cause of the universe and Prakriti to be only its Shakti or the Force of its conscious being which operates upon itself as the material of forms.* The latter is the view of the Upanishads. Certainly if we study the material world only, excluding all evidence of other planes as a dream or a hallucination, if we equally exclude all evidence of operations in mind which exceed the material limitation and study only its ordinary equation with Matter, we must necessarily accept the theory of Matter as the origin and as the indispensable basis and continent. Otherwise, we shall be irresistibly led towards the early Vedantic conclusions.

    However this may be, even from the standpoint of the sole material world Man in the substance of his manhood is a mind occupying and using the life of the body— a mind that is greater than the Matter in which it has emerged. He is the highest expression of the will in the material universe; the Force that has built up the worlds, so far as we are able to judge of its intention from its actual operations as we see them in their present formula upon earth, arrives in him at the thing it was seeking to express. It has brought out the hidden principle of Mind that now operates consciously and intelligently on the life and the body. Man is the satisfaction of the necessity which Nature bore secretly in her from the very commencement of her works; he is the highest possible Name or Numen on this planet; he is the realised terrestrial godhead.

    But all this is true only if we assume that for Nature’s terrestrial activities Mind is the ultimate formula. In reality and when we study more deeply the phenomena of consciousness, the facts of mentality, the secret tendency, aspiration and necessity o man’s own nature, we see that he cannot be the highest term. He is the highest realise here and now; he is not the highest realisable. As there is something below him, so there is something, if even only a possibility, above. As physical Nature concealed a secret

* Cf. for example, the Aitareya Upanishad which shows us the At-man or Self using the Purusha as that in which all the operations of Nature are lorded.

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beyond herself which in him she has released into creation, so he too conceals a secret beyond himself which he in turn must deliver to the light. That is his destiny.

    This must necessarily be so because Mind too is not the first principle of things and therefore cannot be their last possibility. As Matter contained Life in itself, contained it as its own secret necessity and had to be delivered of that birth, and as Life contained Mind in itself, contained it as its own secret necessity and had to be delivered of the birth it held, so Mind too contains in itself that which is beyond itself, contains it as its own secret necessity and presses to be delivered, it also, of this supreme birth.

    What is the rational necessity which forbids us to suppose Mind to be Nature’s last birth and compels us to posit something beyond it of which itself is the indication ? A consideration of the nature and working of mentality supplies us with the answer. For mentality is composed of three principal elements, thought, will and sensation. Sensation may be described as an attempt of divided consciousness to seize upon its object and enjoy it, thought as its r. tempt to seize upon the truth of the object and possess it, will as its attempt to seize upon the potentiality of the object and use it. At least these three things are such an attempt in their essentiality, in their instinct, in their subconscious purpose. But obviously the attempt is imperfect in its conditions and its success ; its very terms indicate a .barrier, a gulf, an incapacity. As Life is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis with Matter, so Mind is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis with Life in Matter. Neither Matter nor Life has jocund anything proper to their own formula which could help to conquer or sufficiently expand its limitations ; they have been compelled each to call in a new principle, Matter to call into itself Life, Life to call into itself Mind. Mind also is not able to find anything proper to its own formula which can conquer or sufficiently expand the limitations imposed upon its workings, Mind also has to call in a new principle beyond itself, freer than itself and more powerful.

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    In other words, Mind does not exhaust the possibility ties of consciousness and therefore cannot be its last and highest expression. Mind tries to arrive at Truth and succeeds only in touching it imperfectly with a veil between ; there must be in the nature of things a faculty or principle which sees the Truth unveiled, an eternal faculty of knowledge which corresponds to the eternal fact of the Truth. There is, says the Veda, such a principle ; it is the Truth-Consciousness which sees the truth directly and is in possession of it spontaneously. Mind labours to effect the will in it and succeeds only in accomplishing partially, with difficulty and insecurely the potentiality at which it works ; there must be a faculty or principle of conscious effective force which corresponds to the unconscious automatic principle of self fulfillment in Nature, and this principle must be sought for in the form of consciousness that exceeds Mind. Mind, finally, aspires to seize and enjoy the essential delight-giving quality, the Rasa of things, but it succeeds only in attaining to it indirectly, holding it in an imperfect grasp and enjoying it externally and fragmentarily ; there must be a principle which can attain directly, hold rightly, enjoy intimately and securely. There is, says the Veda, an eternal Bliss-consciousness which corresponds to the eternal rasa or essential delight-giving quality of all experience and is not limited by the insecure approximations of the sense in Mind.

    If, then, such a deeper principle of consciousness exists, it must be that and not mind which is the original and fundamental intention concealed in Nature and which eventually and somewhere must emerge. But is there any reason for supposing that it must emerge here and in Mind, as Mind has emerged in Life and Life in Matter ? We answer in the affirmative because Mind has in itself, however obscurely, that tendency, that aspiration and, at bottom, that necessity. There is one law from the lowest to the highest. Matter, when we examine it closely, proves to be instinct with the stuff of Life—the vibrations, actions and reactions, attractions and repulsions, contractions and expansions, the tendencies of combination,

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101 martini and growth which are the very substance of life ; but the visible principle of life can only emerge when the necessary material conditions have been prepared which will permit it to organise itself in Matter. So also Life is instinct with the stuff of Mind, abounds with an unconscious * sensation, will, intelligence, but the visible principle of Mind can only emerge when the necessary vital conditions have been prepared which will permit it to organise itself in living Matter. Mind too is instinct with the stuff of Supermind—sympathies, unities, intuitions, emergences of preexistent knowledge, inherent self effective ties of will which disguise themselves in a mental form ; but the visible principle of Supermind can only emerge when the necessary mental conditions are prepared which will permit it to organise itself in man, the mental living creature.

    This necessary preparation is proceeding in human development as the corresponding preparations were developed in the lower stages of the evolution,—with the same gradations, retardations, inequalities ; but still it is more enlightened, increasingly self-conscious, nearer to a conscious sureness. And the very fact that this progress is attended by less carefulness in details, less timidity of error, a less conservative attachment to the step gained gives us the hope and almost the assurance that when the new principle emerges it will not be by the creation of a new and cutie different type which will leave the rest of mankind in the same position to it as are the animals to man, but by the elevation of humanity as a whole to a higher level. For Man, first among Nature’s children, has shown the capacity to change himself by his own effort and the conscious aspiration to transcend.

    These constellations justify to the reason the idea of a Mind beyond our mind, but only as a final evolution out of Matter. The Upanishad, however, enthrones it as the ahead existing creator and ruler of Mind ; it is a secret

* I use the language of the materialist Haeckel in spite of its paradoxical form.

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principle already conscient and not merely contained inconscient in the very stuff of things. But this is the natural conclusion—even apart from spiritual experience —from the nature of the supramental principle. For it is at its highest an eternal knowledge, will, bliss and conscious being and it is more reasonable to conclude that it is eternally conscious, though we are not conscious of it, and the source of the universe, than that it is eternally inconscient and only becomes conscient in Time as a result of the universe. Our in conscience of it is no proof that it is inconscient of us : and yet our incapacity is the only real basis left for the denial of an eternal Mind beyond mind superior to its creations and originative of the cosmos.

    All other foundations for the rejection of this ancient wisdom have disappeared or are disappearing before the increasing light of modern knowledge.

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    The name of this flaming godhead, Agni, derives from a root whose quality of significance is a preeminent force or intensity whether in state, action, sensation or movement; but the qualities of this essential significance vary. It means a burning brightness, whence its use for fire; it means movement and especially a curving or serpentine movement; it means strength and force, beauty and splendors, leading and preeminence; it developed also certain emotional values which have perished in Sanscrit, but remain in Greek, angry passion on one side, on the other delight and love.

    The Vedic deity Agni is the first of the Powers, the pristine and preeminent, that have issued from the vast and secret Godhead. By conscious force of the Godhead the worlds have been created and are governed from within by that hidden and inner Control; Agni is the form, the fire, the forceful heat and flaming will of this Divinity. As a flaming Force of knowledge he descends to build up the worlds and seated within them, a secret deity, initiates movement and action. This divine Conscious Force contains all the other godheads in itself as the nave of a wheel contains its spokes. All puissance of action, strength in the being, beauty of form, splendour of light and know-

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ledge, glory and greatness are the manifestation of Agni. And when he is entirely delivered and fulfilled out of the envelope of the world’s Crookedness’s, this deity of flame and force is revealed as the solar godhead of love and harmony and light, Mitra, who leads men towards the Truth.

    But in the Vedic cosmos Agni appears first as a front of divine Force compact of burning heat and light which forms, assails, enters into, envelops, devours, rebuilds all things in Matter. He is no random fire; his is a flame of force instinct with the light of divine knowledge. Agni is the seer-\ ill in the universe unerring in all its works. Whatever he does in his passion and power is guided by the light of the silent Truth within him. He is a truth-conscious soul, a seer, a priest and a worker,—the immortal worker in man. His mission is to purify all that he works upon and to raise up the soul struggling in Nature from obscurity to the light, from the strife and the suffering to love and joy, from the heat and the labour to the peace and the bliss. He is. then, the Will, the Knowledge-Force of the Devin; secret inhabitant of Matter and its forms, visible and beloved guest of man, it is he that guards the law of the Truth of things in the apparent aberrations and confusions of the world. The other gods awake with the Dawn, but Agni wakes also in the Night; he keeps his divine vision even in the. darkness where there is neither moon nor star; the flame of the divine will and knowledge is visible even in the densest obscenity’ of inconscient or half-conscient things. The infallible worker is there even when we see nowhere the conscious light of the guiding mind.

    No sacrifice is possible without Agni. He is at once the flame on the altar and the priest of the oblation. When man, awakened from his night, wills to offer his inner and outer activities to the gods of a truer and higher existence and so to arise out of mortality into the far-off immortality, his goal and his desire, it is this lime of upward aspiring Force and Will that he must kindle; into this fire he must cast the sacrifice. For it is this that offers to the gods and brings down in return all spiritual

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riches,—the divine waters, the light, the strength, the ram of heaven. This calls, this carries the gods to the house of the sacrifice. Agni is the priest man puts in front as his spiritual representative (purohita),  a Will, a Force greater, higher, more infallible than his own doing for him the works of the sacrifice, purifying the materials of the oblation, offering them to the gods whom it has summoned to the divine ritual, determining the right order and season of its works, conducting the progress the march of the sacrificial development. These and other various functions of the symbolic priesthood, represented in the outward sacrifice by different officiating priests, are discharged by the single Agni.

    Agni is the leader of the sacrifice and protects it in the great journey against the powers of darkness. The knowledge and purpose o^r this divine Puissance can be entirely trusted; he is the friend and lover of the soul and will not betray it to evil gods. Even for the man sitting far off in the night, enveloped by the darkness of the human ignorance, this flame is a light which, when it is perfectly kindled and in proportion as it mounts higher and higher, enlarges itself into the vast light of the Truth. Flaming upward to heaven to meet the divine Dawn, it rises through the vital or nervous mid-world and through our mental skies and enters at last the Paradise of Light, its own supreme home above where joyous for ever in the eternal Truth that is the foundation of the sempiternal Bliss the shining Immortals sit in their celestial sessions and drink the wine of the infinite beatitude.

    It is true that here the light is concealed. Agni, like other gods, figures here as a child of the universal parents, Heaven and Earth, Mind and Body, Soul and material Nature. This earth holds him concealed in her own materiality and does not release him for the conscious works of the Father. She hides him in all her growths, her plants, herbs, trees—the forms full of her heats, the objects that keep for the soul its delights. But at last she shall yield him up; she is the lower tinder, the mental being is the upper tinder; by the pressure of the upper on

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the lower the flame of Agni shall be born. But it is by pressure, by a sort of churning that he is born. Therefore he is called the Son of Force.

    Even when Agni emerges, he is outwardly obscure in his workings. He becomes, first, not a pure Will, though really he is always pure, but a vital Will, the desire of the Life in us, a smoke-obscured flame, son of our Crookedness’s, a Beast grazing in its pasture, a force of devouring desire that feeds upon earth’s growths, tears and ravages all upon which its feeds and leaves a black and charred line to mark its path where there was the joy and glory of earth’s woodlands. But in all this there is a work of purification, which becomes conscious for the man of sacrifice. Agni destroys and purifies. His very hunger and desire, infinite in its scope, prepares the establishment of a higher universal order. The smoke of his passion is overcome and this vital Will, this burning desire in the Life becomes the Steed that carries us up to the highest levels,— the white Steed that gallops in the front of the Dawns.

    Delivered from his smoke-enveloped activity he burns high in our skies, scales the ether of the pure mind and mounts upon the back of heaven. There on that rarer level its god That Apathy takes this high-flaming force and forges it into a weapon of sharpness that shall destroy all evil and ignorance. This Seer-Will becomes the guardian of the illuminations of knowledge—herds of the Sun that graze in the pastures of life secure from the Sons of division and darkness, protected by the warrior force of the Will that knows. He attains the immortality and maintains unhurt its law of truth and joy in the human creature. In the end we overpass all Crookedness’s of falsehood and error, emerge from the low and broken and devious ground to the straight path and the high and open levels. Will and Knowledge become one ; every impulse of the perfected soul becomes conscious of the essential truth of its own sail being, every act fulfils it consciently, joyously, victoriously. Such is the godhead to which the Vedic Fire exalts the Aryan who does the sacrifice. The Immortal conquers in the mortal and by his sacrifice.

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Man, the thinker, fighter, toiler, becomes a sear, self-ruler and king over Nature.

    The Veda speaks of this divine Flame in a series of splendid and opulent images. He is the rapturous priest of the sacrifice, the God-Will intoxicated with its own delight, the young sage, the sleepless envoy,-the ever-wakeful flame in the house, the master of our gated dwelling-place, the beloved guest, the lord in the creature, the seer of the flaming tresses, the divine child, the pure and virgin God, the invincible warrior, the leader on the path who marches in front of the human peoples, the immortal in mortals, the worker established in man by the gods, the unobstructed in knowledge, the infinite in being, the vast and flaming sun of the Truth, the sustainer of the sacrifice and discerner of its steps, the divine perception, the light, the vision, the firm foundation. Throughout the Veda it is in the hymns which celebrate this strong and brilliant deity that we find those which are the most splendid in poetic coloring, profound in psychological suggestion and sublime in their mystic intoxication. It is as if his own flame and cry and light had seized with a burning ecstasy on the imagination of his poets.

    Amid this crowd of poetical images there are some of a symbolic character which describe the many births of the divine Flame. They are recounted with an extraordinary verity. Sometimes he is the child of Heaven, the Father—Mind or Soul—and of Faith the Mother—Body or material Nature ; sometimes he is the flame born from these two tenders ; sometimes Heaven and Earth are called his two mothers, when the figure is more explicitly symbolic of the pure mental and psychical and the physical consciousness. He is also hymned as the child of the seven Mothers—for his complete birth is a result of the manifestation of seven principles which constitute our conscious existence—three spiritual of the infinite, three temporal of the finite, and one intermediate—and which are, respectively, the foundation of the seven worlds. Like other gods, he is said to be born of the Truth; the Truth is at once his birthplace and his home, Sometime it is

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said that the Seven Beloved brought him into birth for the Lord ; and here the symbol seems to carry back his source to that other principle of pure Bliss which is the original cause of creation. He has one form of the solar light and flame, another heavenly in the mind, a third which dwells in the rivers. Night and Dawn are delivered of him, the Knowledge and the Ignorance suckle alternately the divine Child in their successive occupation of our heavens. And yet again it is Matariçwan, Master of Life, who has planted him for the gods secret in the growths of earth, secret in her creatures, man, animal, and plant, secret in the mighty Waters. These Waters are the seven rivers of the luminous world that descend from heaven when Indra, the God-Mind, has slain the enveloping Python ; they descend full of the light and the heavenly abundance, instinct with the clarity and the sweetness, the sweet milk and the butter and the honey. Agnes’s birth here from these fostering Cows, these Mothers of Plenty, is the greatest of his terrestrial births ; fostered by them as the swift Mares of Life he grows at once to his divine greatness, fills all the planes with his vast and shining limbs and terms their kingdoms in the soul of man into the image of a divine Truth.

    The variety and flexible use of these images—they are sometimes employed in a rapid succession in the same hymn—belongs to a period of conscious symbolism in which the image has not hardened and crystallized into the myth but is constantly a figure and a parable whose sense still lives and is still plastic in the originating imagination.

    The actual legends about Agni, the developed parables as distinct from the less elaborate figure, are rare or non-existent—in remarkable contrast with the wealth of myth which crowds about the names of Inert and the Açwins. He participates in the legendary actions of Indra, the Python-slaying, the loco very of the herds, the slaying of the Dasyus ; his own activity is Universal but hi spite of his supreme greatness or perhaps because of it he seeks no separate end and claims no primacy over the

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other gods. Ho is content to be a worker for man and the helpful deities. He is the doer of the great Aryan work and the pure and sublime mediator between earth and heaven. Disinterested, sleepless, invincible this divine Will-force works in the world as an universal Soul of power housed in all beings, Agni Vaiswanara, the greatest, most powerful, most brilliant and most impersonal of all the cosmic Deities.

    The name, Agni, is translated here Power, Strength, Will, the God-will, or the Flame according to the context. The names of the Rishis are also given, wherever necessary, their significant value, as in the first hymn Gavisthira which means the Steadfast in the Light or the general name Atri. Atri means either the Eater or the Traveler; Agni himself is the Atri as he is also the Angiras; out of a devouring desire, experience and enjoyment of the forms of the world he advances to the liberated truth and delight of the soul in the possession of its infinite existence.

    [The Rishi hymns the awakening of Agni the Divine Force to conscious action in the coming of the Dawn. Agni rises towards the luminous Paradise, his goal, feeding on the works of the Discernment which distributes the gilts and activities of the sacrifice, becomes a pure energy leading our days and ascends to the Vastness and the

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Truth. By the Truth he fashions anew our two firmaments, the physical and mental consciousness. This is the golden Affirmation of him in our heavens. ]

1. Strength is awake by kindling of the peoples and he fronts the Dawn that comes to him as the Cow that fosters ; like mightiness that rush upward to their expanding his lustres advancing mount towards the heavenly level.

2. The Priest of our oblation has awakened for sacrifice to the gods; with right mentality in him Strength stands up exalted in our mornings ; he is entirely kindled, red-flushing the mass of him is seen; a great godhead has been delivered out of the darkness.

3. When he has uncoiled the long cord of his hosts, Strength shines pure by the pure herd of the radiances.

4. The minds of men who grow in the godhead move entirely towards the flame of Will even as all their seeing converge in the Sun that illumines.

1. The Cows of the Dawn. Dakshina the goddess of divine discernment, is here a form of the Dawn herself.

2. That is to say, instead of the groping thoughts of other men, their mentality tends to convert itself into a luminous 11 time of Will that is knowledge and all their thoughts become a blaze of direct vision, the rays of the Sun of Truth. -j. Day and Night,—the latter the state of Ignorance that belongs to our material Nature, the former the state of illumined Knowledge that belongs to the divine Mind of which our mentality is a pale and dulled reflection.

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5 Yea, he is born victorious in the front of the days, a ruddy worker established in the established delights of things ; upholding in house after house the seven ecstasies Strength has taken his seat as the Priest of the offering mighty for sacrifice.

6. Strength has taken his seat as the Priest of the offering mighty for sacrifice in the lap of the Mother and in that rapturous other world,  5 young and a seer, standing out in his multitudes, possessed of the Truth, the upholder of those that do the work ; and also in between he is kindled.

7. Men seek with their obeisance’s of submission this illumined Strength that achieves our perfection in the progressing sacrifices and is the priest of their oblation, because he shapes in the power of the Truth both firmaments of our being. Him they press into brightness by the clarity,6 the eternal steed of life’s plenitude.

8. Bright, he is rubbed bright, expressed by the seer, domiciled in his own home 7 and our beneficent guest. The bull of the thousand horns, because thou hast that force, 8 O Strength, thou precedes in thy puissance all others.

4. To each principle of our nature there corresponds a certain divine ecstasy and on each plane, in each body or house, Agni establishes these ecstasies. 5. The mother is Earth, our physical being ; the other world is the supramental existence; the vital and emotional being is the world in between. Agni manifests in all of these simultaneously.

6. The clarified butter, yield of the Cow of Light and symbol of the rich clarity that comes to the mind visited by the Light. 7. That is to say, having taken his place on the plane of the Truth which is his own proper home.

8. The force of the Truth, the perfect energy that Le-longs to this perfect knowledge.

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9. At once, O Strength, thou out stripes all others, in whomsoever thou art manifested in all the glory of thy beauty, desirable, full of body, extended in light, the beloved guest of the human peoples .

10. To thee, O Strength, O youngest vigour, all the worlds and their peoples bring from near and bring from afar their offering. Awake in a man’s knowledge to that right mindedness of his happiest state. A vastness, O Strength, is the great and blissful peace of thee.

11. Mount today with the lords of the sacrifice, O luminous Will, thy luminous complete car! Thou who knowest the wide middle world 9 in all its paths, bring hither the gods to eat of our oblation.

12. To the Seer, to the Intelligence we have uttered today the word of our adoration, to the Bull that fertilizes the herds ; the Steadfast in the Light by his surrender rises in the flame of Will as in the heavens to a golden Affirmation manifesting a vastness.

9. The vital or nervous plane is just above our material earth; through it the gods come to commune with man, but it is a confused wideness and its paths are many but intricate and tangled.

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The Secret of the Veda.

CHAPTER XI

    We must now pursue this image of the Cow which we are using as a key to the sense of the Veda, into the striking Vedic parable or legend of the Angirasa Rishis, on the whole the most important of all the Vedic myths.

    The Vedic hymns, whatever else they may be, are throughout an invocation to certain "Aryan" gods, friends and helpers of man, for ends which are held by the singers, —or seers, as they call themselves( kavi, r’ishi, vipra), to be supremely desirable ( vara, vâra ). These desirable ends, these boons of the gods are summed up in the words rayi, râdhas, which may mean physically wealth or prosperity, and psychologically a felicity or enjoyment which consists in the abundance of certain forms of spiritual wealth. Man contributes as his share of the joint effort the work of the sacrifice, the Word, the Soma Wine and the Ghrita or clarified butter. The Gods are born in the sacrifice, they increase by the Word, the Wine and the Ghr’ita and in that strength and in the ecstasy and intoxication of the Wine they accomplish the aims of the sacrifice. The chief elements of the wealth thus acquired are the Cow and the Horse; but there are also others, hiran’ya, gold, viral, men or heroes, ratha, chariots, praja or apatya, offspring. The very means of the sacrifice, the fire, the Soma, the Ghrita, are supplied by the Gods and they attend the sacrifice as its priests, purifiers, upholders, heroes of its warfare,—for there are those who hate the sacrifice and the Word, attack the sacrifice and tear or withhold from him the coveted wealth. The chief conditions of the prosperity so ardently desired are the rising of the

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Dawn and the Sun and the downpour of the rain of heaven and of the seven rivers,—physical or mystic,—called in the Veda tire Mighty Ones of heaven. But even this prosperity, this fullness of cows, horses, gold, men, chariots, offspring, is not a final end in itself; all this is a means towards the opening up of the other worlds, the winning of Swar, the ascent to the solar heavens, the attainment by the path of the Truth to the- Light and to the heavenly Bliss where the mortal arrives at Immortality.

    Such is the undoubted substance of the Veda. The ritual and mythological sense which has been given to it from very ancient times is well known and need not be particularises; in sum, it is the performance of sacrificial worship as the chief duty of man with view to the enjoyment .of wealth here and heaven hereafter. We know also the modern view of the matter in which the Veda is a worship of the personified sun, moon, stars, dawn, wind, rain, fire, sky, rivers and other deities of Nature, the propitiation of these gods by sacrifice, the winning and holding of wealth in this life, chiefly from human and Dravidian enemies and against hostile demons and mortal plunderers, and after death man’s attainment to the Paradise of the gods. We now find, that however valid these ideas may have been for the vulgar, they were not the inner sense of the Veda to the seers, the illumined minds ( kavi, vipra )of the Vedic age. For them these material objects were symbols of the immaterial; the cows were the radiances or illuminations of a divine Dawn, the horses and chariots were symbols of force and movement, gold was light, the shining wealth of a divine Sun—the true light, r’itam jyotih; both the wealth acquired by the sacrifice and the sacrifice itself in all their details symbolized man’s effort and his means towards a greater end, the acquisition of immortality. The aspiration of the Vedic seer was the enrichment and expansion of man’s being, the birth and the formation of the godheads in his life-sacrifice, the increase of the Force, Truth, Light, Joy of which they are the powers until through the enlarged and ever-opening worlds of his being the soul of man rises, sees the divine doors (devir dvârah) swing open to his call and enters into the supreme felicity of a divine existence beyond heaven and earth. This ascent is the parable of the Angirasa Rishis.

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    All the gods are conquerors and givers of the Cow, the Horse and the divine riches, but it is especially the great deity Indra who is the hero and fighter in this warfare and who wins for man the Light and the Force. Therefore Indra is constantly addressed as the Master of the herds, gomati; he is even imaged as himself the cow and the horse; he is the good milkier whom the Rishi wishes to milk and what he yields are perfect forms and ultimate thoughts; he is Vrishabha, the Bull of the herds; his is the wealth of cows and horses which man covets. It is even said in VI. 28 S. " O people these that are the cows, they are Indra; it is Indra I desire with my heart and with my mind." This identification of the cows and Indra is important and we shall have to return to it, when we deal with Madhuchchandas’ hymns to that deity.

    But ordinarily the Rishis image the acquisition of this wealth as a conquest effected against certain powers, the Dasyus, sometimes represented as possessing the coveted riches which have to be ravished from them by violence, sometimes as stealing them from the Aryan who has then to discover and recover the lost wealth by the aid of the gods. The Dasyus who withhold or steal the cows are called the Panis, a word which seems originally to have meant doers, dealers or traffickers; but this significance is sometimes coloured by its further sense of " misers." Their chief is Vala, a demon whose name signifies probably the circumscriber or "enclose," as Vritra means the opponent, obstructer or enfolding coverer. It is easy to suggest, as do the scholars who would read as much primitive history as possible into the Veda, that the Panis are the Dravidians and Vala is their chief or god. But this sense can only be upheld in isolated passages; in many hymns it is incompatible with the actual words of the Rishis and turns into a jumble of gaudy nonsense their images and figures. We have seen something of this incompatibility already; it will become clearer to us as we examine more closely the my thus of the lost cows.

    Vala dwells in a lair, a hole ( bile ) in the mountains; Indra and the Angirasa Rishis have to pursue him there and force him to give up his wealth; for he is Vala of the cows, velum go man tarn. The Panis also are represented as concealing the stolen herds in a cave of the mountain which is" call-

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ed their concealing prison, vavra, or the pen of the cows, vraja, or sometimes in a significant phrase, gavyam urban, literally the cowry wideness or in the other sense of go "the luminous wideness," the vast wealth of the shining herds. To recover this lost wealth the sacrifice has to be performed ; the Angirasas or else Brihaspati and the Angirasas have to chant the true word, the mantra; Sarama the heavenly hound has to find out the cows in the cave of the Panis; Indra strong with the Soma wine and the Angirasas, the seers, his companions, have to follow the track, enter the cave or violently break open the strong places of the hill, defeat the Panis and drive upward the delivered herds.

    Let us, first, take note of certain features which ought not to be overlooked when we seek to determine the interpretation of this parable or this myth. In the first place the legend, however precise in its images, is not yet in the Veda a simple mythological tradition, but is used with a certain freedom and fluidity which betrays the significant image behind the sacred tradition. Often it is stripped of the mythological aspect and applied to the personal need or aspiration of the singer. For it is an action of which Indra is always capable; although he has done it once for all in the type by means of the Angirasas, yet he repeats the type continually even in the present, he is constantly the seeker of the cows, gaveshan’a,

    Sometimes we have simply the fact of the stolen cows and the recovery by Indra without any reference to Sarama or the Angirasas or the Panis. But it is not always Indra who recovers the herds. We have for instance a hymn to Agni, the second of the fifth Mandala, a hymn of the Atris, in which the singer applies the image of the stolen cows to himself in a language which clearly betrays its symbolism. Agni, long repressed in her womb by mother Earth who is unwilling to give him to the father Heaven, held and concealed in her so long as she is compressed into limited form (peshi,) at length comes to birth when she becomes great and vast (mahishi) The birth of Agni is associated with a manifestation or vision of luminous herds. "I beheld afar in a field one shaping his weapons who was golden-tusked and pure-bright of hue; I give to him the Amrita ( the immortal essence, Soma) in separate parts; what shall they do to me who have not

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Indra and have not the word ? I beheld in the field as it were a happy herd ranging continuously, many, shining; they seized them not, for he was born ; even those ( cows ) that were old, become young again." But if these Dasyus who have not Indra, nor the word, are at present powerless to seize on the luminous herds, it was otherwise before this bright and formidable godhead was born. " Who were they that divorced my strength ( maryakam; my host of men, my heroes, viral ) from the cows? for they (my men) had no warrior and protector of the kina. Let those who took them from me, release them; he knows and comes driving to us the cattle."

    What, we may fairly ask, are these shining herds, these cows who were old and become young again ? Certainly, they are not physical herds, nor is it any earthly field by the Yamuna or the Jhelum that is the scene of this splendid vision of the golden-tusked warrior god and the herds of the shining cattle. They are the herds either of the physical or of the divine Dawn and the language suits ill with the former interpretation; this mystical vision is surely a figure of the divine illumination. They are radiances that were stolen by the powers of darkness and are now divinely recovered not by the god of the physical fire, but by the flaming Force which was concealed in the littleness of the material existence and is now liberated into the clarities of an illumined mental action.

    Indra is not, then, the only god who can break up the tenebrous cave and restore the lost radiances. There are other deities to whom various hymns make the attribution of this great victory. Usha is one of them, the divine Dawn, mother of these herds. " True with the gods who are true, great with the gods who are great, sacrificial godhead with the gods sacrificial, she breaks open the strong places, she gives of the shining herds; the cows low towards the Dawn!" Agni is another; sometimes he wars by himself as we have already seen, sometimes along with Indra—" Yet we warred over the cows, O Indra, O Agni" ( II. 60. 2.)—or, again, with Soma, —" O Agni and Soma, that heroic might of yours was made conscient when ye robbed the Pain of the cows" (I. 98. 3. ) Soma in another passage is associated in this victory with Indra;" This god born by force stayed, with Indra as his

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comrade, the Pani " and performed all the exploits of the gods warring against the Dasyus ( VI. 44. 22 ). The Açwins also are credited with the same achievement in VI. 62. 1., " Ye two open the doors of the strong pen full of the kina " and again in I. 112. 18, " O Angiras, (the twin Açwins are sometimes unified in a single appellation ), ye two take delight by the mind and enter first in the opening of the stream of the cows," where the sense is evidently the liberated, out flowing stream or sea of the Light.

    Brihaspati is more frequently the hero of this victory. " Brihaspati, coming first into birth from the great Light in the supreme ether, seven-mouthed, multiply-born, seven-rayed, dispelled the dark nesses; he with his host that possess the Stubh and the Rik broke Vala into pieces by his cry. Shouting Brihaspati drove upwards the bright herds that speed the offering and they lowed in reply," (IV. 50.). And again in VI. 73. 1 and 3, " Brihaspati who is the hill-breaker, the first-born, the Angirasa…Brihaspati conquered the treasures (vasuni), great pens this god won full of the kina." The Maruts also, singers of the Rik like Brihaspati, are associate’s, though less directly in this divine action. " He whom ye foster, O Maruts, shall break open the pen " (VI. 68.8.), and elsewhere we hear of the cows of the Maruts (I. 38.1.) Pushan, the Increaser, a form of the sun-god is also invoked for the pursuit and recovery of the stolen cattle, (VI. 54) ; " Let Pushan follow after our kine, let him protect our war-steeds…Pushan, go thou after the kina…Let him drive back to us that which was lost." Even Saraswati becomes a slayer of the Panis. And in Madhuchchandas’ hymn (I. 11. 5.) we have this striking image, " O lord of the thunderbolt, thou didst uncover the hole of Vala of the cows ; the gods, unfearing, entered speeding (or putting forth their force) into thee."

    Is there a definite sense in these variations which will bind them together into a single coherent idea or is it at random that the Rishis invoke now this and now the other deity in the search and war for their lost cattle ? If we will consent to take the ideas of the Veda as a whole instead of bewildering ourselves in the play of separate detail, we shall find a very simple and sufficient answer. This matter of the lost herds ‘is only part of a whole system of connected symbols

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and images. They are recovered by the sacrifice and the fiery god Agni is the flame, the power and the priest of that sacrifice ;—by the Word, and Brihaspati is the father of the Word, the Maruts its singers or Brahmas, brahmâno marutah,  Saraswati its inspiration ;—by the Wine, and Soma is the god of the Wine and the Açwins its seekers, finders, givers, drinkers. The herds are the herds of Light and the Light comes by the Dawn and by the sun of whom Pushan is a form. Finally, Indra is the head of all these gods, lord of the light, king of the luminous heaven called Swar,—he is, we say, the luminous or divine Mind , into him all the gods, enter and take part in his unveiling of the hide light. We see therefore that there is a perfect appropriateness in the attribution of one and the same victory to these different deities and in Madhuchchandas’ image of the gods entering into Indra for the stroke against Vala. Nothing has been done at random or in obedience to a confused fluidity of ideas. The Veda is perfect and beautiful in its coherence and its unity.

    Moreover, the conquest of the Light is only part of the great action of the Vedic sacrifice. The gods have to win by it all the boons ( viçvâ vara ) which are necessary for the conquest of immortality and the emergence of the hidden illuminations is only one of these. Force, the Horse, is as necessary as Light, the Cow; not only must Vala be reached and the light won from his jealous grasp, but Vritra must be slain and the waters released; the emergence of the shining herds means the rising of the Dawn and the Sun; that again is incomplete without the sacrifice, the fire, the wine. All these things are different members of one action, sometimes mentioned separately, sometimes in groups, sometimes together as if in a single action, a grand total conquest. And the result of their possession is the revelation of the vast Truth and the conquest of Swar, the luminous world, called frequently the wide other world, urum u lokam or simply m’ lokam. We must grasp this unity first if we are to understand the separate introduction of these symbols in the various passages of the Rig Veda.

    Thus in VI. 73 which has already been cited, we find a brief hymn of three verses in which these symbols are briefly put together in their unity; it might almost be described as

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one of the mnemonic hymns of the Veda which serve to keep in mind the unity of its sense and its symbolism. "He who is the hill-breaker, first-born, possessed of the truth, Brihaspati, the Angirasa, the giver of the oblation, pervade of the two worlds, dweller in the heat and light ( of the sun ), our father, roars aloud as the Bull to the two firmaments. Brihaspati who for man the voyager has fashioned that other world in the -calling of the gods, slaying the Vritra-forces breaks open the cities, conquering foes and overpowering unfired in his battles. Brihaspati conquers for him the treasures, great pens this god wins full of the kine, seeking the conquest of the world of Sitar, unassailable; Brihaspati slays the Foe by the hymns of illumination ( arkaih ) We see at once the unity of this many-sided symbolism.

    Another passage more mystic in its language brings in the idea of the dawn and the restoration or new-birth of light in the sun which are not expressly mentioned in the brief hymn to Brihaspati. It is in the praise of Soma of which the opening phrase has already been cited, VI. 44. 22; "This god born by force stayed with Indra as his comrade the Pani; he it was wrested from his own unless father (the divided being) his weapons of war and his forms of knowledge ( m&y&h ), he it was made the Dawns glorious in their lord, he it was created in the Sun the Light within, he it was found the triple principle ( of immortality ) in heaven in its regions of splendour (the three worlds of Swar ) and in the tripartite worlds the hidden immortality ( this is the giving of the Amrita in separate parts alluded to in the Atris’ hymn to Agni, the threefold offering of the Soma given on the three levels, trishu sânushu, body, life and mind ); he it was supported widely heaven and earth, he it was fashioned the car with the seven rays; he it was held by his force the ripe yield (of the madhu or ghr’ita) in the cows, even the fountain of the ten movements." It certainly seems astonishing to me that so many acute and eager minds should have read such hymns as these without realising that they are the sacred poems of symbolists and mystics, not of Nature-worshipping barbarians or of rude Aryan invaders warring with the civilised and Vedantic Dravidians.

    Let us now pass rapidly through certain other passages in which there is a more scattered collocation of these symbols.

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First, we find that in this image of the cavern-pen. in the hill, as else where, the Cow and Horse go together. We have been Pushan called upon to seek for the cows and protect the horses. The two forms of the Aryan’s wealth always at the mercy of marauders ? But let us see. " So in thy ecstasy of the Soma thou didst break open, O hero ( Indra ), the pen of the Cow and the Horse, like a city" ( VIII 32. 5.)" That which thou holdest, O Indra, the cow and the Horse and the imperishable enjoyment, confirm that in the sacrifice and not in the Pani ; he who lies in the slumber, doing not the work and seeking not the gods, let him perish by his own impulsions; thereafter confirm perpetually ( in us ) the wealth that must increase", (VIII. 97-2. and 3 ). In another hymn the Panis are said to withhold the wealth of cows and horses. Always they are powers who receive the coveted wealth but do not use it, preferring to slumber, avoiding the divine action ( vrata ), and they are powers who must perish or be conquered before the wealth can be securely possessed by the sacrifice. And always the Cow and the Horse represent a concealed and imprisoned wealth which has to be uncovered and released by a divine puissance.

    With the conquest of the shining herds is also associated the conquest or the birth or illumination of the Dawn and the Sun, but this is a point whose significance we shall have to consider in another chapter. And associated with the Herds, the Dawn and the Sun are the Waters; for the slaying of Vritra with the release of the waters and the defeat of Vala with the release of the herds are two companion and not unconnected myths. In certain passages even, as in I. 32. 4, the slaying of Vritra is represented as the preliminary to the birth of the Sun, the Dawn and Heaven, and in others the opening of the Hill to the flowing of the Waters. For the general connection we may note the following passages: VII. 90. 4, " The Dawns broke forth perfect in their shining and unhurt; meditating they ( the Angirasas ) found the wide Light; they who desire opened the wideness of the cows and the waters for them flowed forth from heaven"; I. 72. 8, "By right thought the seven Mighty Ones of heaven (the seven rivers ) knew the truth and knew the doors of

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bliss; Sarama found the strong wideness of the cows and by that the human creature enjoys;" I. 100. 18, of Indra and the Maruts " He with his shining companions won the field, won the Sun, won the waters;" V. 14. 4, of Agni, "Agni, born, shone out slaying the Dasyus, by the Light the Darkness; he found the cows, the waters and Swar" VI. 60. 2, of Indra and Agni, " Ye two warred over the cows, the waters, Swar, the dawns that were ravished; O Indra, O Agni, thou unites (to us ) the regions, Swar, the brilliant dawns, the waters and the cows;" I. 32. 12, of Indra, "O hero, thou didst conquer the cow, thou didst conquer the Soma; thou didst loose forth to their flowing the seven rivers."

    In the last passage we see Soma coupled with the cows among the conquests of Indra. Usually the Soma intoxication is the strength in which Indra conquers the cows; e. g. III. 43. 7, the Soma "in the intoxication of which thou didst open up the Cowpens;" II. 15. 8, "He, hymned by the Angirasas, broke Vala and hurled apart the strong places of the hill; he severed their artificial obstructions; these things Indra did in the intoxication of the Soma." Sometimes, however, the working is reversed and it is the Light that brings the bliss of the Soma wine or they come together as in I. 62. 5, "Hymned by the Angirasas, O achiever of works, thou didst open the dawns with ( or by ) the Sun and with ( or by ) the cows the Soma."

    Agni is also, like the Soma, an indispensable element of the sacrifice and therefore we find Agni too included in these formulas of association, as in VII. 99. 4. "Ye made that wide other world for (as the goal of) the sacrifice, bringing into being the Sun and the Dawn and Agni," and we have the same formula in III. 31 with the addition of the Path and in VII. 44. 3 with the addition of the cow.

    From these examples it will appear how closely the different symbols and parables of the Veda are connected with each other and we shall therefore miss" the true road of interpretation if we treat the legend of the Angirasas and the Panis as an isolated my thus which we can interpret at our pleasure without careful regard to its setting in the general thought of the Veda and the light that that general thought casts upon the figured language in which the legend is recounted.

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The Eternal Wisdom.

THE CONQUEST OF THE TRUTH

TO UNDERSTAND THE UNREALITY OF THE EGO.

1 Life is a journey in the darkness of the night.

2 What is human life ? A bubble on a torrent produced by the rain, which dances and balances itself gaily on the waves, full of new life. And suddenly it bursts and disappears leaving no trace to mark hereafter the place that for a few moments it had occupied.

3 Dewdrops fall on the large leaves of a lotus, they remain there trembling for a brief moment and then glide one this way and one another way and disap-

4 pear. Such is life.—Life is no more than a drop of water which shines upon a flower and even as it sparkles, glides away and disappears, and all our actions are no more than clouds reflected in a dew-drop ; they are dreams that pass and disappear with

5 the dreamer.—If we dreamed every night the same thing, it would affect us as much as the objects which we see every day.

6 The world is a dream and resembles a flower in bloom which shakes out to all its sides its pollen and

7 then no longer is.—The world is but a dream that passes and neither happiness nor sorrow are endur-

1) Panchatantra.—2) Zeisho Aisuho.—3) Sojo Hengo.—4) Hideyoshi.— 5)Pascal.—C) Minamoto Sanemoto.—7) Firdausi; "Shah-Namah,"

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8- ing.—And in this world, always a work of Illusion, men whose intelligence is troubled by desire, greed, envy and error, are rolled through different states

9 with the idea that these states are real.—Men direct their gaze upon fugitive appearances and the transitory brilliance of this world of the senses and they lend no attention to the immutable Reality which remains unknown to them.

* * *

10 Thou hast demanded of me what is this phantasmagoria of things here around us. To tell thee the whole truth of this matter would take too long ; it is a fantastic image which issues from a vast ocean-and then into that vast ocean it returns.

11 The tranquil lake reflects in the polished mirror of its waters heaven and the trees and the glittering stars; approach now and see how the image is changed ; in place of heaven and the stars it is thyself that thou serest, for it was thy soul that created the heaven and the stars reflected in the mirror of the lake. Learn that all things seem to be in the soul which reflects them, but they are not the truth and the essence of the eternal reality. That essence is the Spirit which forms all things.

12 Everything is but a shadow cast by the mind.

13 All things, simply by reason of our confused subjectivity, appear in the forms pf individualization. If we could raise ourselves above our confused subjectivity, the signs of individuality would disappear and there

14 would be no trace of a world of objects.—We can thus recognise that all phenomena of the world are only the illusory manifestations of the mind and have

15 no reality proper to themselves.—Thus Space exists only in relation to our particularising conscious-

16 ness.–Space is only a mode of particularization and

8) Bhagavata Purana.—9) Tadeka Shingen.—10) Omar Khayyam– 11) Anon.—12) A  waghosha.—13) id. —14.) id.—15) id.—16) Id.

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17 has no real self-existence.—All the modes of relative existence of our phenomenal world are simply created

18 by particular is action in the troubled mind.—Although all things in their metaphysical origin proceed from the soul one and truly free from ail particularization, nevertheless by reason of non-illumination there is produced a subjective mind which becomes conscious of an external world.

* * *

19 The senses and the mind seek to convince thee, so vain are they, that they are the end of all things. The senses and the mind are only instruments and playthings. Behind the feelings and the thoughts, my brother, there dwells a more puissant master, an unknown sage ; it is called the Self.

20 It is on the blindness of ignorance that is founded the working which affirms the ego.

21 How vain and unreal, when I reflect, becomes this ego which I call mine! Yet a little time and behold ! it is dispersed to all the winds and dissolution has effaced it.

22 The egoist sacrifices everything to his " I," dupe of an error which makes him take his personality for something real and durable and the world of phenomena for a solid entity. Thus life under this form of unbridled individualism is void of all moral character.

2j The thought of the ego occupies only the man of unsound understanding, the sage recognise that it has no foundation; he examines the world rationally and concludes that all formations of existence are vain and hasten towards dissolution ; alone the Law remains eternal. When man by his efforts has acquire-

24 ed this knowledge he contemplates the truth.—It is thus that by the study of principles is produced this

17,’-id—18, id.—19) Nietzsche : Zarathustra.— 20) Sanyutta Nike.— 21) Mikado Sliuyaku.—22) Schopenhauer.—23) Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king__ 24) Sankhya Karikal.

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science which consists in saying, " I am not that ; this is not mine ; this is not myself,"—a science definitive, pure from all kind of doubt, a science absolute and unique.

25 The body, the sensations, the perception, the respective differentiations and the mental consciousness

26 are not the self.—The body is the name of a succession of changes ; it is with the body as with a river in which you see the same form, but the waves change every moment and other and new waves take the

27 place of those that preceded them.—The body is like a bubbling on the surface of water ; sensation is like its form ; perception resembles a mirage ; con-

28 sciousness is like a hallucination.— Regard incessantly this body as the bespangled chariot of a king ; it gladdens the simpleton but not the wise, dazzles the fool but not the sage.

29 Rely on nothing that thy senses perceive; all that thou seest, hearest, feeblest; is like a deceiving dream.

30 Terrestrial things are not the truth, but semblances of truth.

26) Vivekananda.— 28) Udanavarga.—29) Minima to Sanemoto.— 30)Her-mes.

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REVIEW

SOUTH INDIAN BRONZES *

    The discovery of Oriental Art by the aesthetic mind of Europe is one of the most significant intellectual phenomena. of the times. It is one element of a general change which has been coming more and more rapidly over the mentality of the human race and promises to culminate in the century to which we belong. This change began with the discovery of Eastern thought and the revolt of Europe against the limitations of the Greece-Roman and the Christian ideals which had for some centuries united in an uneasy combination to give a new form to her mentality and type of life. The change, whose real nature could not be distinguished so long as the field was occupied by the battle between Science and Religion, now more and more reveals itself as an attempt of humanity to recover its lost soul. Long overlaid by the life of the intellect and the vital desires, distorted and blinded by a devout religious obscurantism the soul in humanity seems at last to be resurgent and insurgent. The desire to live, think, act, create from a greater depth in oneself, to know the Unknown, to express with sincerity all that is expressible of the Infinite, this is the trend of humanity’s future. A philosophy, a literature, an Art, a society which shall correspond to that which is deepest and highest in man

* By O. c. Gangly. Published by the Indian Society of Oriental Arts, Calcutta. Sold by Thacker, Spink and Co. Calcutta, and I ascend c’ *3, Great Russell Street, London. ’

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and realise something more than the satisfaction of the senses, the desire of the vital parts, and the expediencies and efficiencies recognised by the intellect without ex-eluding these necessary elements, these are the things humanity is turning to seek, though in the midst of a chaotic groping, uncertainty and confusion.

    At such a juncture the value of Eastern Thought and Eastern Art to. the world is altogether incalculable. For their greatness is that they have never yet fallen away from the ancient truth, the truth of the Soul ; they have not gone out of the Father’s house to live on the husks of the sense and the life and the body ; they have always seen in the mind and body only instruments for the expression of that which is deeper and greater than its instruments. Even intellect and emotion had for them only a secondary value. Not to imitate Nature but to reveal that which she has hidden, to find significative forms which shall embody for us what her too obvious and familiar symbols conceal, has been the aim of the greatest Art, the Art of prehistoric antiquely and of those countries and ages whose culture has been faithful to the original truth of the Spirit. Greek culture, on the other hand, deviated on a path which led away from this truth to the obvious and external reality of the senses. The Greeks sought to use the forms of Nature as they saw and observed it, slightly idealised, a little uplifted, with a reproduction of her best achievement and not, like modem realism, of her deformities and failures ; and though they at first used this form to express an ideal-, it was bound in the end to turn to the simple service of the intellect and the senses. Medieval Art attempted to return to a deeper motive ; but great as were its achievements, they dwelt in a certain dim obscurity, an unlimited mystery which contrasts strongly with the light of deeper knowledge that informs the artistic work of the East. We have now throughout the world a search, an attempt on various lines to discover some principle of significant form in Art which shall escape from the obvious and external and combine delight with profundity, the power of a more searching

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knowledge with the depth of suggestion, emotion, and ecstasy which are the very breath of aesthetic creation. The search has led to many extravagances and cannot be said to have been as yet successful, but it may be regarded as a sure sign and precursor of a new and greater age of human achievement.

    The Oriental art recognised in Europe has been principally that of Ch’ an and Japan. It is only recently that the aesthetic mind of the West has begun to open to the greatness of Indian creation in this field or at least to those elements of it which are most characteristic and Dear the stamp of the ancient spiritual greatness. Indian Architecture has indeed been always admired, but chiefly in the productions of the Indo Saracen school which in spite of their extraordinary delicacy and beauty have not the old-world greatness and power of the best Hindu, Jain and Buddhistic work. But Indian sculpture and painting have till recently been scouted as barbarous and inartistic, and for this reason, that they have, more than any other-Oriental work, deliberately remained in the extreme of the ancient symbolic conception of the plastic Arts and therefore most entirely offended the rational and imitative eye which is Europe’s inheritance from the Hellene. It is a curious sign of the gulf between the two conceptions that an European writer will almost always fix for praise precisely on those Indian sculptures which are farthest away from the Indian tradition,—as for instance the somewhat vulgar productions of the Gandhara or bastard ‘"

    Recently, however, the efforts of Mr. Havell and the work of the new school of Indian artists have brought about or at least commenced something like a revolution in the aesthetic standpoint of Western critics. Competent minds have turned their attention to Indian work and assigned it a high place in the artistic creation of the East and even the average European writer has been partly compelled to understand that Indian statuary and Indian painting have

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canons of their own and cannot be judged either by a Hellenistic or a realistic standard. More salutary’ still, the mind of the educated Indian has received a useful shock and may perhaps now be lifted out of the hideous banality of unaesthetic taste into which it had fallen. Whatever benefits the laudable and well-meaning efforts of English educationists may have bestowed on this country, it is certain that; aided by the inrush of the vulgar, the mechanical and the commonplace from the commercial West, they have succeeded in entirely vulgarizing the mind and the soul of the Indian people. Its innate and instinctive artistic taste has disappeared; the eye and the aesthetic sense have not been so much corrupted as killed. What more flagrant sign of this debacle could there be than the fact that all educated India hailed the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, an incompetent imitation of the worst European styles, as the glory of a new dawn and that hideous and glaring reproductions of them still adorn its dwell-lings ? A rebirth of Indian taste supporting a new Indian Art which shall inspire itself with the old spirit while seeking for fresh forms is now, however, possible and it is certainly a great desideratum for the future. For nothing can be more helpful towards the discovery of that which we are now vaguely seeking, a new Art which shall no longer labour to imitate Nature bur strive rather to find fresh significant forms for the expression of the Self.

    It is necessary to this end that the wealth of their ancient Art should be brought before the eyes o’ the people, and it is gratifying to find that an increasing amount of pioneer work is being done in this respect, although still all "too scanty. The book before us, Mr. O. C. Gingili’s South Indian Bronzes, must rank as one of the best of them all. Southern India, less ravaged than the North by the invader and the Vandal and profiting by the historic displacement of the centre of Indian culture southward, teems with artistic treasures. Mr. Ganglia’s book gives us, in an opulent collection of nearly a hundred fine plates preceded by five chapters of letterpress, one side of the artistic work of the South,—its bronzes chiefly representing

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the gods and devotees of the Saiva religion,— for the  Saiva religion has been as productive of sublime and suggestive work in the plastic arts as ha5 been the Vaishnavism all over India of great, profound and passionate poetry. This book is a sumptuous production and almost as perfect as any work of the kind can be in the present state of our knowledge.

    There are certain minor defects which we feel bound to point out to the author. The work abounds with useful quotations from unprinted Sanskrit works on the rules and conventions of the sculptural Art, works attributed to Agastya and others; but their value is somewhat lessened by the chaotic system of transliteration which Mr. Gangoly has adopted. He is writing for all India and Europe as well; why then adopt the Bengali solecism which neglects the distinction between the b and the v of the Sanskrit alphabet or that still more ugly and irrational freak by which some in Bengal insist 011 substituting for the aspirate bh the English v? Even in these errors the writer is not consistent; he represents the Sanskrit v sometimes by b and sometimes by v, and bh indifferently by v, vh or bh. Such vagaries are disconcerting and offend against the sense of order and accuracy. It is always difficult to read Sanskrit in the Roman alphabet which is entirely unsuited to that language, but tins kind of system or want of system turns the difficulty almost into an impossibly. fit. We hope that in the important works which he promises us on Pal lava Sculpture and South Indian Sculptures Mr. Gangoly will remedy this imperfection of detail.

    The first chapter of the letterpress deals with the legendary origins of South Indian art. It is interesting and valuable, but there are some startlingly confident statements against which our critical sense protests. For instance, "it is beyond doubt that the two divisions of the country indicated by the Vindhya ranges were occupied by people essentially different in blood and temperament." Surely the important theories which hold the whole Indian race to be Dravidian in blood or, without assigning either an " Aryan " or " non-Aryan " origin, believe

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it to be homogeneous omitting some islander types on the southern coast and the Mongoloid races of the Himalaya,—cannot be so lightly dismissed. The question is full of doubt and obscurity. The one thing that seems fairly established is that there were at least two types of culture in ancient India, the "Aryan" occupying the Punjab and Northern and Central India, Afghanistan and perhaps Persia and distinguished in its cult by the symbols of the Sun, the Fire and the Soma sacrifice, and the un-Aryan occupying the East, South and West, the nature of which it is quite impossible to restore fro a the scattered hints which are all we possess

    Again we are astonished to observe that Mr.. Gangoly seems to accept the traditional attribution of the so-called Agastya Shastras to the Vedic Rishi of that name. The quotations from these books arc in classical Sanskrit of a fairly modern type, certainly later than the pre-Christian era though Mr. Gangoly on quite insufficient grounds puts them before Buddha. It is impossible to believe that they are the work of the Rishi, husband of Lopamudra, who composed the great body of hymns in an archaic tongue that close the first Mandala of the Rig Veda. Nor can we accept the astonishing identification of the Puranic Prajapati, Kashyapa, progenitor of creatures, with the father of the Canada who founded the Vaisheshika philosophy. It distresses us to see Indian inquirers with their great opportunities simply following in the path of certain European scholars, accepting and adding to their unstable fantasies, their huge superstructures founded on weak and scattered evidence and their imaginative " history’" of our prehistoric ages. There is better and sounder work to be done and Indians can do it admirably as Mr. Gangoly him-self has shown in this book; for the rest of the work where he has not to indulge in these obiter dicta, is admirable and flawless. There is a sobriety and reserve, a solidity of statement and a sort of sparing exhaustiveness which make it quite the best work of the kind we have yet come across. The chapters on the Shilpashastra and the review of the distribution of Saivaite and other work in Southern

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India are extremely interesting and well-written and the last brief chapter of criticism is perfect both in what it says and what it refrains from saying.

    Mr. Gangoli’s collection of plates, 94 in number illustrate Southern work in bronze in all its tinge. It opens with a fine Kalasanhara and a number of Dancing Shivas, the characteristic image of the Saivaite art, and contains a great variety of figures; there are among them some beautiful images of famous Saivaite bhaktas. A few examples of Vaishnava art are also given. In a collection so ample and so representative it is obvious that there must be a good deal of work which falls considerably below the best, but the general impression is that of a mass of powerful, striking and inspired creations. And throughout there is that dominant note which distinguishes Indian art from any other whether of the Occident or of the Orient. All characteristic Oriental art indeed seeks to go beyond the emotions and the senses; a Japanese landscape of snow and hill is as much an image of the soul as a Buddha or a flame-haired spirit of the thunderbolt. Nature will not see herself there as in a mirror, but rather herself transformed into something wonderfully not herself which is yet her own deeper reality. But still there is a difference, and it seems to lie in this that other Oriental art, even though it goes beyond the external, usually remains in the cosmic, in the limits of Prakriti, but here there is a perpetual reaching behold into something absolute, infinite, supernatural, the very ecstasy of the Divine. Even in work not of the best finish or most living inspiration there is this touch which vies it a greatness beyond its actual achievement; rarely indeed does the statuary fall into mere technique or descend entirely into the: physical and external.

    It is this tendency, as the author well explains, which causes and in a sense justifies the recoil and incomprehension of the average Occidental mind; for it comes to Art with a demand for the satisfaction of the senses, the human emotions, the imagination moving among familiar things. It does not ask for a god or for a symbol of the be.

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yond, but for a human figure admirably done with fidelity to Nature and the suggestion of some feeling or idea well within the normal range of human experience. The Indian artist deliberately ignores all these demands. His technique is perfect enough; he uses sculptural line with a consummate mastery, often with an incomparable charm, grace and tenderness. The rhythm and movement of his figures have a life and power and perfection which we prefer to the more intellectual and less intuitive symmetries and groupings of the European styles. But these bodies are not, when we look close at them, bronze representations of human flesh and human life, but forms of divine life, embodiments of the gods. The human type is exceeded, and if sometimes one more subtly and psychically beautiful replaces it, at others all mere physical beauty is contemptuously disregarded.

    What these artists strive always to express is the soul and those pure and absolute states of the mind and heart in which the soul manifests its essential being void of all that is petty, transient, disturbed and restless. In their human figures it is almost always devotion that is manifested; for this in the Shaiva and Vaishnava religions is the pure state of the soul turned towards God. The power of the artist is extraordinary. Not only the face, the eyes, the pose but the whole body and every curve and every detail aid in the effect and seem to be concentrated into the essence of absolute adoration, submission, ecstasy, love, tenderness which is the Indian idea of bhaktas.

    The reason becomes evident when_ we study the images of the gods. These deities are far removed indeed from the Greek and the Christian conceptions ; they do not live in the world at all, but in themselves, in the infinite. The form is, as it were, a wave in which the whole

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ocean of being expresses itself. The significance varies; sometimes it is unfathomable thought, sometimes the self-restraint of infinite power, sometimes the self-contained oceanic surge of divine life and energy, sometimes the absolute immortal ecstasy. But always one has to look not at the form, but through and into it to see that which has seized and informed it. The appeal of this art is in fact to the human soul for communion with the divine Soul and not merely to the understanding, the imagination and the sensuous eye. It is a sacred and hieratic art, expressive of the profound thought of Indian philosophy and the deep passion of Indian worship. It seeks to render to the soul that can feel and the eye that can see the extreme values of the suprasensuous.

    And yet there is a certain difference one notes which distinguishes most of these southern bronzes from the sublime and majestic stone sculptures of the earlier periods. It is the note of lyrism in the form, the motive of life, grace, rhythm. To use the terms of Indian philosophy, most art expresses the play of Prakriti ; Buddhistic art in its most characteristic forms expresses the absolute repose of the Purusha; Hindu art tends to combine the Purusha and Prakriti in one image. But in the earlier stone sculptures it is the sublime repose, tranquil power, majestic concentration of the Deity which the whole image principally represents even in poses expressive of violent movement the movement is self-contained, subordinated to the repose. We find the same motive in some of these bronzes, notably in the wonderful majestically self-possessed thought and power of the Kalasamhara image of Shiva (Plate I) ; but for the most part it is life and rhythm that predominate in the form even when there is no actual suggestion of movement. This is the motive of the Natarajan, the Dancing Shiva, which seems to us to strike the dominant note of this art ; the self-absorbed concentration, the motionless peace and joy are within, outside is the whole mad bliss of the cosmic "movement. But even other figures that stand or sit seem often to represent only pauses of the dance ; often the thought

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and. repose are concentrated in the head and face, the body is quick with potential movement. This art seems to us to reflect in bronze the lyrical outburst of the Saivaite and Vaishnava devotional literature while the older sculpture had the inspiration of the spiritual epos of the Buddha or else reflects in stone the sublimity of the Upanishads. The aim of a renascent Indian Art must be to recover the essence of these great motives and to add the freedom and variety of the soul’s self-expression in the coming age when man’s search after the Infinite need no longer be restricted to given types or led along one or two great paths, but may at last be suffered to answer with a joyous flexibility the many-sided call of the secret Mystery behind Life to its children.

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The Ideal of Human Unity.

II

    The whole process of Nature depends on a balancing and a constant tendency to harmony between two poles of life, the individual whom the whole or aggregate nourishes and the aggregate which the individual helps to constitute. Human life forms no exception to the rule. Therefore the perfection of human life must involve in itself the unaccomplished harmony between these two poles of our existence, the individual and the social aggregate. The perfect society will be that which most entirely favors the perfection of the individual; the perfection of the individual will be incomplete if it does not help towards the perfect state of the social aggregate to which he belongs and eventually to that of the largest possible human aggregate, the whole of a united humanity.

    For the gradual process of Nature introduces a complication which prevents the individual from standing in a pure and direct relation to the totality of mankind. Between himself and it there erect themselves partly as aids, partly as barriers to the final unity the lesser aggregates which it has been necessary to form in the progressive stages of human culture. For the obstacles of Space, the difficulties of organisation and the limitations of the human heart and brain have necessitated the formation first of small, then of larger and yet larger aggregates so that he may be gradually trained by a progressive approach to universality. The family, the commune, the clan, or tribe, the class, the city state or congeries of tribes, the nation, the empire are so many staid in this progress and constant enlargement. If the smaller aggregates were destroyed as soon as the larger are successfully formed, this graduation would result in no complexity ; but Nature does not follow this course. She seldom destroys entirely the types she has once made or only destroys

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that for which there is no longer any utility ; the rest she keeps in order to serve her need or her passion for variety, richness, multifamily and only effaces the dividing lines or modifies the characteristics and relations sufficiently to allow of the larger unity she is creating. Therefore at every step humanity is confronted with various problems which arise not only from the difficulty of accord between the individual and the aggregate but between the smaller integralities and that which now enspheres them all.

    History has preserved for us scattered instances of this travail, instances of failure and success which are full of instruction. We see the struggle towards the aggregation of tribes among the Semitic nations, Jew and Arab, surmounted in the one after a scission into two kingdoms which remained a permanent source of weakness to the Jewish nation, overcome only temporarily in the other by the sudden unifying force of Islam. We see the failure of clan life to combine into an organised national existence in the Celtic races, a failure entire in Ireland and Scotland and only surmounted through the crushing out of clan life by a foreign rule and culture, overcome only at the last moment in Wales. We see the failure of the city states and small regional peoples to fuse themselves in the history of Greece, the signal success of a similar struggle of Nature in the, development of Roman Italy. The whole past of India for the last two thousand years and more has been the attempt, unavailing in spite of many approximations to success, to overcome the centrifugal tendency of an extraordinary number and variety of disparate elements, the family, the commune, the clan, the caste, the small regional state or people, the large linguistic unit, the religious community, the nation within the nation. We may perhaps say that here Nature tried an experiment of unparalleled complexity and potential richness accumulating all possible difficulties in order to arrive at the most opulent result. But in the end the problem proved insoluble or, at least, was not solved and Nature had to resort to her usual deus ex machine

    But even when the nation is sufficiently organised,— the largest unit yet successfully developed by Nature,—entire unity is not always achieved. If no other element of discord remain, yet the conflict of classes is always possible. And the phenomenon leads us to another rule of this gradual development of Nature in human life which

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we shall find of very considerable importance when we come to the question of a realisable human unity. The perfection of the individual in a perfected society or eventually in a perfected humanity—understanding perfection always in a relative and progressive sense—is the inevitable aim of Nature. But the progress of all the individuals in a society does not proceed pair passu, with an equal and equable march. Some advance, others remain stationary—absolutely or relatively,—others fall back. Consequently, the emergence of a dominant class is inevitable within the aggregate itself, just as between the aggregates the emergence of dominant nations is inevitable. That class will predominate which develops most perfectly the type Nature needs at the time for her progress or, it may be, for her retrogression. If she demands power and strength of character, a dominant aristocracy emerges; if knowledge and science, a dominant literary or savant class; it practical ability, ingenuity, economy and efficient organisation, a dominant bourgeoisie or Vaishnava class, usually with the lawyer at the head; if diffusion of general well-being and organisation of toil, then even the domination of an artisan class is not impossible.

    But this phenomenon, whether of dominant classes or dominant nations, can never be more than a temporary necessity; for the final aim of Nature in. human life cannot be the exploitation of the many by the few or even of the few by the many, can never be the perfection of some at the cost of the submergence and subjection of the bulk of humanity; these can only be transient devices. Therefore we see that such dominations bear always in them the seed of their own destruction. They must pass either by the ejection or destruction of the exploiting element or else by a fusion and equalisation. We see in Europe and America that the dominant Brahmin and the dominant Kshatriya have been either abolished or are on the point of subsidence into equality with the general mass. Two rigidly separate classes alone remain, the dominant propertied class and the laborer, and all the most significant movements of the day have for their purpose the abolition of this last superiority. In this persistent tendency Europe has obeyed one great law of Nature’s progressive march, her trend towards a final equality. Absolute equality, indeed, may not be possible, as indeed absolute uniformity is both impossible and utterly undesirable ; but a fundamental equality which will render the play of difference inoffensive is essential to any true perfectibility of the human race.

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    Therefore, the prelate counsel for a dominant minority is always to recognise in good time the right hour for its abdication and for the imparting of its ideals, qualities, culture, experience to the rest of the aggregate or to as much of it as is prepared for that progress. Where this is done, the social aggregate advances normally and without disruption or serious wound or malady ; otherwise a disordered progress is imposed upon it, for Nature will not suffer human egoism to baffle for ever her fixed intention and necessity. Where the dominant classes successfully avoid her demand upon them, the worst of destinies is likely to overtake the social aggregate,— as in India where the final refusal of the Brahmin and Kshatriya class to call up the bulk of the nation so far as possible to their level, their fixing of an unbridgeable gulf of superiority between themselves and the rest of society has been a main cause of eventual decline and degeneracy. For where her aims are frustrated, Nature inevitably withdraws her force from the offending unit till she has brought in and used other and external means to reduce the obstacle to a nullity.

    But even if the unity within is made as perfect as social, administrative and cultural machinery can make it, the question of the individual still remains. For these social units or aggregates are not like the human body in which the component cells are capable of no separate life apart from the aggregate. The human individual tends to exist in himself and to exceed the limits of the family, the clan, the class, the nation; and, even, that self-sufficiency on one side, that universality on the other are the essential elements of his perfection. Therefore, just as the systems of social aggregation which depend on the domination of a class or classes over others, must change or dissolve, so the social aggregates which stand in the way of this perfection of the individual and seek to coerce him within their limited mould and into the rigidity of a narrow culture or petty class or national interest, must find their term and their day of change or destruction under the irresistible impulsion of progressing Nature.

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