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ERRATUM Please read on page 266 Chapter XIII for Chapter XVI CHAPTER XVII. THE DIVINE SOUL . He in whom the self has become all existences and he has the knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who’ sees everywhere oneness. Isha Upanishad.
By the conception we have formed of the Supermind, by its opposition to the mentality on which our human existence is based, we are able not only to form a precise instead of a vague idea of divinity and the divine life, expressions which we are otherwise condemned to use with looseness and as expressive of a large but almost impalpable aspiration,—but also to give these ideas a firm basis of philosophical reasoning, to put them into a clear relation with the humanity and the human life which is all we at present enjoy and to justify our hope and aspiration by the very nature of the world and of our own cosmic antecedents and the inevitable future of our evolution. We begin to grasp intellectually the nature of the Divine and to understand how out of it the world has come. We begin also to perceive how inevitably that which has come out of the Divine must return to the Divine. We may now ask with profit and a chance of clearer reply how we must change and what we must become in order to arrive there in our nature and our life and our relations with others and not only a solitary and ecstatic realisation in the profundities of our being. Certainly, there is still a defect in our premises;
Page-257 for we have so far been striving to define for ourselves what the Divine is in its descent towards limited Nature, whereas what we ourselves actually are is the Divine ascending back out of limited Nature to its own proper divinity. This difference of movement must involve a difference between the life of the gods who have never known the fall and the life of man redeemed, conqueror of the lost godhead and bearing within him the experience and it may be the new riches gathered by him from his acceptance of the utter descent. Nevertheless, there can be no difference of essential characteristics; but only of mould and colouring. We can already ascertain on the basis of the conclusions at which we have arrived the essential nature of the divine life towards which we aspire. What then would be the existence of a divine soul, not descended into the ignorance by the fall of Spirit into Matter and the eclipse of soul by material Nature ? What would be its consciousness, living in the original Truth of things, in the in amenable unity, in the world of its own infinite being, like the Divine Existence itself, but able by the play of the Divine Maya and by the distinction of the comprehending and apprehending Truth-Consciousness to enjoy also difference from God at the same time as unity with Him and to embrace difference and yet oneness with other divine souls in the infinite play of the self-multiplied Identical ?
Obviously, the existence of such a soul would be always self-contained in the conscious play of
Sachchidananda. It would be pure and infinite existence in its being; in its becoming it would be a free play of immortal life unaffected by death and birth and change of body because unclouded by ignorance and not involved in the darkness of our material being. It would be a pure and unlimited consciousness in its energy, poised in an eternal and luminous
tranquillity as its foundation, yet able to play freely with forms of knowledge and forms of conscious power unaffected by the
stumbling of mental error and the misprisions of our striving will because it never departs from the light ‘and truth, never falls from the inherent light
Page-258 and the natural harmony of its divine existence. It would be, finally, a pure and inalienable delight in its eternal self-experience and in Time a free variation of bliss unaffected by our perversions of hatred, discontent and suffering because undivided in being, snaffled by erring self-will, un-perverted by the ignorant stimulus of desire. Its consciousness would not be shut out from any part of the infinite truth; nor limited by any poise or status that it might assume in its relations with others, nor condemned to any loss of self-knowledge by its acceptance of a purely phenomenal individuality and the play of practical differentiation. It would in its self-knowledge live eternally in the presence of the Absolute. To us the Absolute is only an intellectual conception of indefinable existence. The intellect tells us simply that there is a Brahman higher than the highest*, an Unknowable that knows itself in other fashion than that of our knowledge; but the intellect cannot bring us into its presence. The divine soul living in the Truth of things would on the contrary always have the conscious sense of itself as a manifestation of the Absolute. Its immutable existence it would be aware of as the original " self-form " * of that Transcendent,— Sachchidananda; its play of conscious being it would be aware of as manifestation of That in forms of Sachchidananda. In its every state or act of knowledge it would be aware of the Unknowable cognizing itself by a form of variable self-knowledge; in its every state or act of power, will or force aware of the Unknowable; possessing itself by a form of conscious power of being and knowledge ; in its every state or act of delight, joy or love aware of the Unknowable embracing itself by a form of conscious self-enjoyment. This presence of the Absolute would not be with it as an experience occasionally glimpsed or finally arrived at and held with difficulty or as an addition, acquisition or culmination to its ordinary state of being; it would be the very
* Parâtpara.
• Swatupa.
Page-259 foundation of its being both in the unity and the differentiation; it would be present to it in all its knowing, willing, doing, enjoying; it would be absent neither from its timeless self nor from any moment of Time, neither from its space less being nor from any determination of its extended existence, neither from its unconditioned purity beyond all cause and circumstance nor from any relation of circumstance, condition and causality. This constant presence of the Absolute would be the basis of its infinite freedom and delight, ensure its security in the play and provide the root and sap and essence of its divine being.
Moreover such a divine soul would live simultaneously in the two terms of the eternal existence of
Sachchidananda, the two inseparable poles of the self-unfolding of the Absolute which we call the One and the Many. All being does really so live; but to our divided self-awareness there is an incompatibility, a gulf between the two compelling us to live either in the multiplicity exiled from the consciousness of the One or in the unity repellent of the consciousness of the Many. But the divine soul would not be enslaved to this divorce and duality. It would be
away in itself at once of the infinite self-concentration and the infinite self-extension and diffusion. It would be aware simultaneously of the One in its
Unitarian consciousness holding the innumerable multiplicity in itself as if potential, unexpressed and therefore to our mental experience of that state non-existent and of the One in its extended consciousness holding the multiplicity thrown out and active as the play of its own conscious being, will and delight. It would equally be aware of the Many ever drawing down to themselves the One that is the eternal source and reality of their existence and .of the Many ever mounting up attracted to the One that is the eternal culmination and blissful justification of all their play of difference. This vast view of things is the mould of the Truth-Consciousness, the foundation of the large Truth and Right hymned by the Vedic seers; this unity of all these terms of
opposition is the real Adwaita, the supreme comer bending word of the knowledge of the Unknowable.
Page-260 The divine soul will be aware of all variation of being, consciousness, will and delight as the out flowing, the extension, the diffusion of that self-concentrated Unity developing itself not into difference and division but simply into another, an extended form of infinite oneness. It will itself always be cone. nitrated in oneness in the essence of its being, always manifested in variation in the extension of its being. All that takes form in itself will be simply the manifested potentialities of the One, the Word or Name vibrating out of the nameless Silence, the Form realising the formless essence, the active Will or Power proceeding out of the tranquil Force, the ray of self-cognition gleaming out from the sun of timeless self awareness, the wave of becoming rising up into shape of self-conscious existence out of the eternally self-conscious Being, the joy and love welling for ever out of the eternal still Delight. It will be the Absolute biome in its self-unfolding and each relativity in it will be absolute to itself because aware of itself as the Absolute manifested but without that ignorance which excludes other relativities as alien to its being or less complete than itself.
In the extension the divine soul will be aware of the three grades of the supramental existence, not as we are mentally
impelled to regard them, not as grades, but as a triune fact of the self-manifestation of Sachchidananda. It will be able to embrace them in one and the same comprehensive self-realisation,— for a vast comprehensiveness is the foundation of the truth-conscious
Supermind. It will be able divinely to conceive, perceive and sense all things as the Self, its own self, one self of all, Self being, Self becoming, but not divided in its
becoming which have no existence apart from its own self-consciousness. It will be able divinely to conceive, perceive and sense all existences as soul-forms of the One which have each its own being in the One, its own standpoint in the One, its own relations with all the other existences that people the infinite unity, but all dependent on the One, conscious form of Him in His own infinity. It will be able divinely to conceive, perceive and sense all these existences in their in-
Page-261 djviduality, in their separate standpoint living as the individual Divine, each with the One and Supreme dwelling in it and each therefore not altogether a form or eidolon, not really an illusory part of a real whole, a mere foaming wave on the surface of an immobile Ocean,—for these are after all no more than inadequate mental images, —but a whole in the whole, a truth that repeats the infinite Truth, a wave that is all the sea, For these three are aspects of the one existence. The first is based upon that self-knowledge which in our human realisation of the Divine the Upanishad describes as the Self in us becoming all existences ; the second on that which is described as seeing all existences in the Self ; the third on that which is described as seeing the Self in all existences. The Self becoming all existences is the basis, of our oneness with all; the S-’lf containing all existences is the basis of our oneness in difference; the Self inhabiting all is the basis of our individuality in the universal. If the defect of our mentality, if its need of exclusive concentration compels it to dwell on anyone of these aspects of self-knowledge to the exclusion of the others, if a realisation imperfect as well as exclusive moves us always to bring in a human element of error into the very Truth itself and of conflict and mutual negation into the all-comprehending unity, yet to a divine supramental being, by the essential character of the Supermind which is a comprehending oneness and infinite totality, they must present themselves as a triple and indeed a triune realisation*.
If we suppose this soul to take its poise, its centre in the consciousness of the individual Divine living and acting in distinct relation with the ” others," still it will have in the foundation of its consciousness the entire unity from which all emerges and it will have in the background of that consciousness the extended and the modified unity and to any of these it will be capable of returning and of contemplating from them its individuality. In the Veda all these poises are asserted of the gods. In essence the
Page-262 gods are one existence which the sages call by different names; but in their action founded in and proceeding from the large Truth and Right Agni or another is said to be all the other gods, he is the One that becomes all ; at the same time he is said to contain all the gods in himself as the nave of a wheel contains the spokes, he is the One that contains all; and yet as Agni he is described as a separate deity, one who helps all the others, exceeds them in force and knowledge, yet is inferior to them in cosmic position and is employed by them as messenger, priest and worker,—the creator of the world and father, he is yet the son born of our works, he is, that is to say, the original and the manifested indwelling Self or Divine, the One that inhabits all.
All the relations of the divine soul with God or its supreme Self and with its other selves in other forms will be determined by this comprehensive self-knowledge. These relations will be relations of being, of consciousness and knowledge, of will and force, of love and delight. Infinite in their potentiality of variation, they need exclude no possible relation of soul with soul that is compatible with the preservation of the inalienable sense of unity in spite of every phenomenon of difference. Thus in its relations of enjoyment the divine soul will have the delight of all its own experience in itself ; it will have the delight of all its experience of relation with others as with other selves in other forms created for a varied play in the universe ; it will have too the delight of the experiences of its other selves as if they were its own—as indeed they really are. And all this capacity it will have because it will be aware of its own experiences, of its relations with others and of the experiences of others and their relations with itself as all the joy or Ananda of the One, the supreme Self, its own self differentiated, yet still one, by its separate habitation of all these forms comprehended in its own being. Because this unity is the basis of all its experience, it will be free from the discords of our divided consciousness, divided by ignorance and a separatist egoism; all these selves and their relations will play consciously in-
Page-263 to each other’s hands; they will melt into each other as the numberless notes of an eternal harmony. And the same rule will apply to the relations of its being, knowledge, will with the being, knowledge and will of others. For all its experience and delight will be the play of a self-blissful conscious force of being in which by obedience to this truth of unity will cannot be at strife with know ledge’s nor either of them with delight. Nor will the knowledge, will and delight of one soul clash with the knowledge, will and delight of another, because by their awareness of their unity what is clash and strife and discord in our divided being will be there the meeting entwining and mutual interplay of the different notes of one infinite harmony.
In its relations with its supreme Self, with God, the divine soul will have this sense of the oneness of the transcendent and universal Divine with its own being. It will enjoy that oneness of God with itself in its own individuality and with its other selves in the universality. Its relations of knowledge will be the play of the divine omniscience, for God is Knowledge, and what is ignorance with us will be there only the holding back of knowledge in the repose of conscious self-awareness so that certain forms of that self-awareness may be brought forward into activity of Light. Its relations of will be there the play of the divine omnipotence, for God is Force, Will and Power, and what with us is weakness and incapacity will be the holding back of will in tranquil concentrated force so that certain forms of divine conscious-force may realise themselves brought forward into form of Power. Its relations of love and delight will be the play of the divine ecstasy, for God is Love and Delight, and what with us would be denial of love and delight will be the holding back of joy in the still sea of Bliss so that certain forms of divine union and enjoyment may be brought in front in an active
up welling of
vies of the Bliss. So also all its becoming will be formation of the divine being in response to these activities and what is with us cessation, death, annihilation will be only rest, variation or holding back of the joyous Page-264 creative Maya in the eternal being of Sachchidananda. At the same time this oneness will not preclude relations of the divine soul with God, with its supreme Self, founded on the joy of difference separating itself from unity to enjoy that unity otherwise ; it will not annul the possibility of any of those exquisite forms of God-enjoyment which are the highest rapture of the God-lover in his clasp of the Divine.
But what will be the conditions in which and by which this nature of the life of the divine soul will realise itself ? All experience in relation proceeds through certain forces of being formulating themselves by an instrumentation to which we give the name of
properties, qualities, activities, faculties. As, for instance, Mind throws itself into various forms of mind-power such as
judgment, observation, memory, sympathy, etc., so must the Truth-consciousness or Supermind effect the relations of soul with soul by forces, faculties,
functioning’s proper to supramental being; otherwise there would be no play of differentiation. What these
functioning’s are, we shall see when we come to consider the psychological conditions of the divine Life; at present we are only considering its metaphysical foundations, its essential nature and principles. Suffice it at present to observe that the absence or abolition of separatist egoism and of effective division in consciousness is the one essential condition of the divine life, and therefore their presence in us is that which constitutes our mortality and our fall from the Divine. This is our "original sin", or rather let us say with a true.: philosophy, the necessary condition for the great plunge into the Ignorance which is the soul’s adventure in the world and from which was born our
suffering and aspiring humanity.
Page-265 CHAPTER. XVI. the object of knowledge.
By our analysis of the path of Karma yoga we have been able to map out in its broad lines and essential stages the movement by which the soul, liberated from desire and egoism, can become free in the Divine. There
allocation of the Divine, the Lord, the supreme Self through works, the union with the Divine by works and in works, the power to live in the presence of That and in its being and no longer in the ego is the goal to which by this path we ascend. And it is evident that by this path we can arrive also at the supreme knowledge which is the fruit of the Yoga of knowledge and the supreme love and ecstasy which is the fruit of the Yoga of devotion. Nevertheless, the particular form of the knowledge at which we shall first
arrive by the path of works is that of the Self as the supreme, transcendent and universal Purusha holding and conditioning the works of Nature in the individual life and soul; and the
particular form of devotion proper to this path is that offered to the Lord as the Master of the world and its works, the devotion of self-surrender, self-dedication, sacrifice of all our being and activities to the Divine. The whole knowledge and the whole ecstasy, not limited by any form, can be added and must come to us, if we seek them, once we stand in the presence and live in the being of the Lord and sup
came Soul. But they come more directly, with a more spontaneous and integral fullness by the special self-discipline and the peculiar methods which be-
Page-266 long to the other two branches of the triune path. To these paths, successively, we must now direct our attention. We have chosen the Karma yoga as our starting-point because for the great majority Of men at the present day this is the direction in which the awakening soul most naturally turns. Action and life are nearer to human aspiration today and occupy a larger part in the mentality of the race than either abstract thought or absorbing religious faith. Nevertheless, knowledge and devotion are the real dominant strain in the nature of many even of those who are led by their ideals or the atmosphere in which they live to place the highest value on work done for God or humanity; and f< r these knowledge or devotion and not works is the true starting-point. Our nature much more than our education or acquired ideals is the real sign-post; by following the path it indicates we arrive more swiftly and surely at the goal. As, then, we have studied in its principles, chief movements and broad results the Yoga of works, so now we should study the Yoga of knowledge,—not in its well-known forms and conventional terms, but always in the active principles that underlie them, and not towards the dissolution of our world-existence which is the sole aim recognised by the Janna yoga long current in India, but as part of the integral Yoga which recognise the Lord no less than the pure quiescent Self, God in the world no less than the world-transcending Ineffable and accepts therefore the divine Play on the basis of the divine Repose, the divine Action that is supported by the divine Quiescence, the Word that is the self-expression of the Silence.
We must therefore try to go down from the first to the root of the whole matter. When we speak of a Yoga of knowledge, we imply that there is an object of knowledge to which men ordinarily do not turn the eye of the mind but to which we wish to attach ourselves, that there is a state of knowledge with regard to that object which is other than our
ordinary consciousness of ideas and forms and things, and that there are means
and faculties of knowledge by which we can arrive at that state and possess that
object,—means and faculties which though they must necessarily
Page-267 start from our ordinary instruments of knowledge yet must as necessarily go beyond them if the supra-sensuous and supramental object we seek is to be attained. We must therefore determine first, as strictly as we can, that object of knowledge, that state of knowledge and those means and faculties of knowledge which we contemplate; for according to our determination of them will be the aim and process of our Yoga.
And, first of all, we must state concisely what are this object, this state and this means as they are prescribed by the established system or systems of the Yoga of knowledge still current in the East, so that there may be no confusion or misunderstanding, since we ourselves propose while using the same name yet to depart from the severe rigidity of the traditional line of walking. These, systems, whatever their other differences, all proceed on the principle that there is a pure transcendent state of non-cosmic existence or a non-existence which alone is the object of knowledge and that all cosmic existence or all that we call existence is a state of ignorance; even its highest and most blissful conditions are a supreme ignorance and therefore to be severely renounced by the seeker of the absolute Truth. This supreme quiescent Sell or this absolute
Nail is the object of knowledge. The state of knowledge to be attained is Nirvana, an extinction of ego, an extinction of mental, vital and physical activity and a supreme illumined quiescence and pure bliss of impersonal
tranquility. The means is meditation, concentration, loss of the mind in its object. Action is permissible in the first stages in order to purify the seeker, to make him morally and temperamentally a fit vessel for the knowledge, and this action must either be confined to the performance of the rites of worship and the prescribed duties of life rigorously ordained by the Hindu
Shastra or, as in the Buddhistic discipline, must be guided along the eightfold path to the supreme practice of the works of compassion which lead towards the practical annihilation of self in the good of others. But in the end, in the severe and pure
Janna yoga, action must be abandoned for quiescence; it may prepare, but it
Page-268 cannot give salvation; continued adherence to it is incompatible with, may be an insuperable obstacle to the attainment of the goal. For it would seem obvious that the state of supreme quiescence, being the very opposite of action, cannot be attained by those who persist in works. Similarly devotion, love, worship are disciplines for the unripe soul, are the methods of ignorance. For they are offered to something other, higher and greater than ourselves; but in the supreme knowledge there is no such thing, there being only one self or no self at all and therefore either no one to do the worship and offer the love and devotion or no one to receive it. Thought alone remains, thought that finally through its own quiescence in knowledge brings about the quiescence of the whole being.
Such in its fundamental principles is the standpoint of the pure Janna yoga, and we can see that it comes by the intellect, the thinker in us separating himself from all the
rest
of what we are phenomenally, from the heart, the body, the lie ,the senses to arrive at his own exclusive
fulfilment in that which is beyond himself. The truth which underlies and justifies this attitude is that all the activities and formations of our being are really the conscious developments of an essential Being which is beyond its own developments and mutations, in its essence immutable and there
fire superior to all activities, and that in the hierarchy of our psychological functions the thought is nearest to this Self in its aspect of the knower who regards all activities but is superior to them all. The heart and other functions are, essentially, active functions which turn always towards action, though they also may arrive automatically at a certain quiescence by fullness of satisfaction in their activities or else by a reverse process of exhaustion through perpetual dissatisfaction. But the thought, though an active function, is more capable of arriving at quiescence by its own conscious choice and will, by the illumined intellectual perception of this Self which is higher than all our activities. Besides, we being mental beings and thought our highest or at least our most Constant, normal and effective means for enlightening our Page-269 mentality, the functions of thought, meditation, contemplation, the dwelling of the mind on its object, are indispensable aids to our realisation of that which we* pursue and may’ even claim to be the leaders of our journey. But this is only one side of the question. In reality, thought is only the scout and pioneer; the real leader of our journey, the captain of our march, the first and most ancient priest of our sacrifice is the Will,—not that wish of the heart or that preference of the mind to which we give the name, but that dominant and often veiled force of our being which really determines our orientation and of which the intellect and the heart are more or less blind and automatic servants and instruments. The Self, it is true, is superior to all activities and not bound by any of them, but equally is it true that all activities proceed from the Self and are determined by it, arc the operations of its own force of conscious being and not of something other than the Self. In these activities the Self express s a conscious Will which seeks to fulfil its own being, a Will that is one with its Knowledge of its self and of that which it seeks to express; and of this the will in us, the dominant force of our being, is the individual form, more nearly in communication with the Supreme because profounder than the surface activities of our thought. We must know then what that will is in the universe and in ourselves, before we can accept the way and culmination of pure Janna yoga as the sole or even as the highest way and aim for the seeker,
The thought ought not to follow only its own exclusive satisfaction; for it is here as the guide, up to a certain point, of the heart, the life and the other members and has to see not only what is its own ultimate satisfaction but whether there is not an ultimate satisfaction intended also for these other members. If the object of the Supreme Will in the universe was merely a descent into the activity of the ignorance operated by the mind as instrument through se
nation and an ascent into the quiescence of knowledge equally operated by the mind through thought, then this exclusive path of abstract thought would
Page-270 be justified. But the chances are that there is an aim less aimless, a truth of the world more large and complex than this simplistic and trenchant view of things allows us to envisage. If the thought, instead of following its own abstractive tendency, turns to consider that the heart, life and even the body are also forms of the divine conscious-being, may also be means by which the soul returns to or at least is meant to enjoy its recovered complete self-awareness, then it may find that the object of the Supreme Will is a culmination in which the whole being is intended to receive, its divine satisfaction. The whole question is whether we are to proceed to self-knowledge by a process of elimination, whether we are to reject successively the body, the life, the senses, the heart, the thought in order to merge into the quiescent Self or whether we are intended to arrive by whatever means at an integral self-fulfilment, the only thing eliminated being the ignorance itself, the falsity of the being which figures as the ego, the falsity of the life which figures as mere corporeal existence and vital caving, the falsity of the senses with their subjection to material shows and to dual sensations, the falsity of the heart with its desires and its dual emotions, the falsity of the thought with its exclusions of the Truth of things and its limited and exclusive concentrations. If an integral self-fulfilment is intended, then there must be some culmination for the experiences of the heart which will justify its instinct of love, joy, devotion and worship, for the senses which will justify their pursuit of divine beauty and good in the forms of things, for the life which will justify its pursuit of works, no less than for the thought in its tendency towards abstract knowledge. There is something supreme in which all these transcend themselves and meet and find their own absolutes, not something utterly other than themselves from which they are all cast away.
This, at least, is the standpoint we have taken, and it is the whole sense of what we have called the integral Yoga. In applying or adapting the Yoga of knowledge to this integral view and to a synthetic process, we must
Page-271 therefore restate in other and larger terms than those of the pure Janna yoga the abject of our knowledge and the status of knowledge to which we aspire, and we must consider more amply the means and faculties which we intend to use. The object of knowledge is the One, the Divine, alike in its relations to our individual self and to the universe and in its transcendence of both these terms. The poise our view of the true knowledge takes is this that neither the world nor the individual are what they seem to be ; the report which our mind and our senses give us so long as they are unenlightened by a faculty of knowledge higher than themselves, is a false report. At the same time what the world and the individual seem to be are a figure of what they of ally are and through that figure we have to arrive at the reality. Equally, the report of the mind and the senses, however mistaken, is a basis from which we have to proceed. We have to correct the values they give, first by the action of the pure intellect enlightening and setting right the conclusions of the sense-mind and physical intellect, secondly, by the knowledge which exceeds all intellect and brings to us the true light in which the abstract terms of the pure reason are converted into the actuality of spiritual experience and the concrete vision of the soul. When that is done, we find that the ignorance of the mind and the senses and all the. apparent futilities of human life were not an otiose blunder and useless excursion of the conscious being, but a rough ground for the self-expression of that Being, a material foundation for its self-unfolding and self-possessing in the terms of the universe. In relation to the individual that Reality is our own true and supreme self. Knowledge seeks to arrive at that true self and therefore rejects misleading appearances. It declares that the body is not our self but a form : the experience of Matter and the physical nerves and brain as the foundation and truth of all things which is the basis of materialism, is a delusion because it mistakes a form of consciousness for the essence of being. Matter and the Page-272 physical nerves and brain are simply the foundation for an action of a vital force which serves to connect the Self with the form of its works, and the material movements are merely a physical notation by which the soul represents its perceptions and makes them effective in the terms of Matter ; they are a language, a notation, a hieroglyphic, a system of symbols, not themselves the deep and true sense of things. Neither is vitality, the energy which plays in the body, nerves and brain, our Self; it is only a form. The experience of a life-force instrumentalising Matter as the foundation, source and true sum of things which is the basis of vitalism, is also a delusion because it takes something outward for the essence. Life-force is simply the dynamism action of a consciousness which exceeds it and that consciousness only becomes valid to us when we arrive at the higher term of Mind,—Mind which is only apparently a creation of Life, but is really the ulterior sense and secret of Life itself ; for Mind is the expression not of Life-, but of that of which Life itself is a less luminous expression. But our mentality also is not our Self ; it is a form. The experience of mind as the creator of forms and things and of these forms and things as only existing in the Mind which is the basis of idealism, is also a delusion because this also does not arrive at the essence of being, but only at a form of being. Mind is only the play of a conscious existence which is not limited by mentality but exceeds it. Thus Knowledge arrives at the conception and realisation of a pure existence, seaware, self-blissful, unconditioned by mind and life and body which is the original and essential nature of our existence. This is our own supreme Self.
In relation to the universe the Reality is
Brahman. All the general terms to which we can reduce the universe, Force and
Matter, Name and Form, Purusha and Prakriti, are still not entirely that which the universe really is. As all that we are is only play and form of the supreme Self unconditioned by mind and life and body, so the universe is only play and form of a supreme Existence which is unconditioned by force and matter, unconditioned by name and form, unconditioned by the fundamental distinction of
Page-273 Purusha and Prakriti. And then we perceive and realise that our supreme Self and the supreme Existence which has become the universe are one self and one existence. The individual is simply one expression of the universal Being; finding his own supreme Self he finds that his own real self is not his personality, his individuality, but is this universal Being. But since this supreme Existence is not conditioned by the individual or by the universe, Knowledge eliminates these two forms and arrives at the conception of something utterly Transcendent which is unnameable and unknowable by the speech and the mind, a sheer Absolute. That Absolute we cannot call personal or impersonal, for it is beyond personality and beyond impersonality ; nor One nor Many, for it is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity ; nor ascribe to it either quality nor absence of quality, for it is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited either by quality less void, but is rather capable of infinite quality. It is that which manifests itself as the supreme impersonal Self and the individual soul, as the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha, the All. But it is not merely an intellectual conception at which knowledge arrives ; although That is unknowable to the mind, yet as through our individual being and through the names and forms of the universe we arrive at the realisation of the self that is Brahman, so by the realisation of the self we come to a certain realisation also of this utter Absolute of which our true self is the essential form in our consciousness (swarupa).
This is the last, the eternal knowledge beyond which human thought cannot go. Our minds may deal with it intellectually on various lines, may build upon it what philosophies we please, may limit it, modify, overstress this side of the truth,
under stress that other, deduce from it erroneous deductions or partial corollaries ; but our intellectual variations and imperfect statements make no difference to the ultimate fact that if we push thought and experience to the end, this is the knowledge at which we
Page-274 must arrive and it is only by ignoring, denying or limiting the complete experience of the soul that we can put away from us this eternal truth. We can take nothing away from it and add nothing essential to it, the attempt to do so only creates a hiatus or a perversion. The object of the Yoga of knowledge can therefore be nothing else than this eternal Reality, Self, Brahman and Transcendent that dwells over and in all, manifest in the individual and in the universe. It matters not what knowledge we pursue, self-knowledge or knowledge of the universe, to this, unless we choose to stop short on the path, we must come at last. The one question that remains is what will be the practical result of pursuing the path of knowledge to the end. Three obvious possibilities present themselves ; either to lose all individuality and all world-existence in the unknown and unknowable, which seems to be what is meant by the extreme Buddhist conception of Nirvana, or to lose personality in the quiescent impersonal Self and equally to desist from world-existence, or to accept world-existence even as Brahman, as the Self, as the Transcendent accepts world-existence, with the same divine Will in us made conscious and put in possession of itself so that it may embrace with freedom and help with mastery the divine upward movement in the individual and the universe. This third possibility is the consummation we have thought out accepted as the one appropriate object of an integral Yoga.
It is evident that the culmination of the path of knowledge need not necessarily entail extinction of our world-existence since That to which we assimilate ourselves and into which we enter has always the complete and ultimate knowledge and yet supports by it its play in the world. Neither need we assume that our world-existence ends because by attaining to knowledge its object or consummation is fulfilled and therefore there is nothing more afterwards; for what we gain at first is only self-realisation by the individual in the essence of his being and there will still remain the self-fulfilment of Brahman in the manifestation by the individual in himself and by his
Page-275 presence, example and action in others and in the universe at large,—the work which the Great Ones remain to do. That self-fulfilment cannot be worked out so long as we remain in the egoistic consciousness ; for that consciousness can only be a field of preparation, it can consummate nothing. The self-fulfilment of Brahman in the manifestation is only possible on the foundation of the Brahman-consciousness and therefore through the acceptance of life by the liberated soul, the Jivanmukta.
Therefore the object of knowledge for us is really double. We aim at the realisation of the Self pure and essential, but also at the realisation of the Self through knowledge in the manifestation ; of Brahman in itself, but also of Brahman in the universe ; of the Transcendent which cannot be expressed, but also of its unfolding in the individual and in the all. This is the integral knowledge and we shall accept it in its integrality, knowing that every where and in all conditions all is One and that it is only the mind which for the convenience of its own thinking and aspiring seeks to cut a line of division in the eternal unity. The liberated knower living and acting in the world does not forfeit that unity, is not false to his knowledge, for the Supreme is here manifest in the world no less than in the most utter and ineffable self-extinction.
Page-276 VII The Upanishad is not satisfied with the definition of the Brahman-consciousness as Mind of the mind. Just as it has described it as Speech of the speech, so also it describes it as Eye of the eye, ear of the Ear. Not only is it an absolute cognition behind the play of expression, but also an absolute Sense behind the action of the senses. Every part of our being finds its fulfilment in that which is beyond its present forms of functioning and not in those forms themselves.
This conception of the all-governing supreme consciousness does not fall in with our ordinary theories about sense and mind and the Brahman. We know of sense only as an action of the organ- through which embodied mind communicates with external Matter, and these sense-organs have been separately developed in the course of evolution; the senses therefore are not fundamental things, but only subordinate conveniences and temporary physical
functioning’s of the embodied Mind. Brahman, on the other hand, we conceive of by the elimination of all that is not fun. damental, by the elimination even of the Mind itself. It is a sort of positive zero, an
x or unknowable which corresponds to no possible equation of physical or psychological quantities. In essence this may be true; but we have now to think not of the Unknowable but of its highest manifestation in consciousness; and this we have described as the outlook of the Absolute on the relative and as that which is the cause and governing power of all that we and the universe are. There in that governing cause Page-277 there must be something essential and supreme of which all our fundamental functioning’s here are a rendering in the terms of embodied consciousness. Sense, however, is not or does not appear to be fundamental; it is only an instrumentation of Mind using the nervous system. It is not even a pure mental functioning, but depends so much upon the currents of the Life-force, upon its-electric energy vibrating up and down the nerves, that in the Upanishads the senses are called Pranks, powers or functioning’s of the Life-force. It is true that Mind turns these nervous impressions when communicated to it into mental values, but the sense-action itself seems to be rather nervous than mental. In any case there would, at first sight, appear to be no warrant in reason for attributing a Sense of the sense to that which is not embodied, to a supramental consciousness which has no need of any such instrumentation.
But this is not the last word about sense; this is only its outward appearance behind which we must penetrate. What, not in its functioning, but in its essence, is the thing we call sense? In its functioning,! f we analyse that thoroughly, we see that it is the contact of the mind with an eidolon of Matter,—whether that eidolon be of a vibration of sound, a light-image of form, a volley of earth-particles giving the sense of
odour, an impression of rasa or sap that gives the sense of taste, or that direct sense of disturbance of our nervous being which we call touch. No doubt, the contact of Matter with Matter is the original cause of these sensations; but it is only the eidolon of Matter, as for instance the image of the form cast upon the eye, with which the mind is directly concerned. For the mind operates upon Matter not directly, but through the Life-force; that is its instrument of communication and the Life-force, being in us a nervous energy and not anything material, can seize on Matter only through nervous impressions of form, through
contractual images, as it were, which create corresponding values in the energy-consciousness called in the Upanishads the Prana. Mind takes these up and replies to them with corresponding mental values, mental impressions! of
Page-278 form, so that the thing sensed comes to us after a triple process of translation, first the material eidolon, secondly the nervous or energy-image, third the image reproduced in stuff of mind. This elaborate process is concealed from us by the lightning-like rapidity with which it is managed,—rapidity in our impressions of Time; for in another notation of Time by a creature differently constituted each part of the operation might be distinctly sensible. But the triple translation is always there, because there are really three sheaths of consciousness in us, the material, annakosha, in which the physical contact and image are received and formed, the vital or nervous, pranakosha, in which there is a nervous contact and formation, the mental, manahkosha, in which there is mental contact and imaging. We dwell centered in the mental sheath and therefore the experience of the material world has to come through the other two sheaths before it can reach us. The foundation of sense, therefore, is contact, and the essential contact is the mental without which there would not be sense at all. The plant, for instance, feels nervously, feels in terms of life-energy, precisely as the human nervous system does, and it has precisely the same reactions ; but it is only if the plant has rudimentary mind that we can suppose it to be sensible of these nervous or vital impressions and reactions. For then it would feel not only nervously, but in terms of mind. Sense, then, may be described as in its essence mental contact with an object and the mental reproduction of its image.
All these things we observe and reason of in terms of this embodiment of mind in Matter; for these sheaths or koshas are formations in a more and more subtle substance reposing on gross Matter as their base. Let us imagine that there is a mental world in which Mind and not Matter is the base. There sense would be quite a different thing in its operation. It would feel mentally an image in Mind and throw it out into form in more and more gross substance; and whatever physical formations there might already be in that world would respond rapidly to the Mind
Page-279 edifying suggestions. Mind would be masterful, creative, originative, not as with us either obedient to Matter and merely reproductive or else in struggle with it and only with difficulty able to modify a material predetermined and dully reluctant to its touch. It would be, subject to whatever supramental power might be above it, master of a ductile and easily responsive material. But still Sense would be there, because contact in mental consciousness and formation of images would still be part of the law of being. Mind, in fact, or active consciousness generally has four necessary functions which are indispensable to it where-ever and however it may act and of which the Upanishads speak in the four terms, Vijnâna, prâjnana, sanjnâna and âjnâna. Vijnana is the original comprehensive consciousness which holds an image of things in its essence, totality and parts and properties; it is the original, spontaneous, true and complete view of it which belongs properly to the Supermind and of which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the comprehensive intellect. Prajna na is the consciousness which holds an image of things before it as an object with which it has to enter into relations and to possess by apprehension and analytic and synthetic cognition. Sanjnâna is the contact of consciousness with an image of things by which there is a sensible possession of it in its substance; if prdjnâna can be described as the outgoing of apprehensive consciousness to possess its object in conscious energy, to know it, sanjnâna can be described as the in bringing movement of apprehensive consciousness which draws the object placed before it back to itself so as to possess it in conscious substance, to feel it. Ajnâna is the operation by which consciousness dwells on an image of things so as to govern and possess it in power. These four, therefore, are the basis of all conscious action.
As our human psychology is constituted, we begin with sanjnâna, the sense of an object in its image; the apprehension of it in knowledge follows. Afterwards we try to arrive at the comprehension of it in knowledge and the possession of it in power. There are secret operations in us,
Page-280 in our Subconscient and superconscient selves, which pre-cede this action, but of these we are not aware in our surface being and therefore for us they do not exist. If we knew of them, our whole conscious functioning would be changed. As it is what happens is a rapid process by which we sense an image and have of it an apprehensive percept and concept, and a slower process of the intellect by which we try to comprehend and possess it. The former process is the natural action of the mind which has entirely developed in us; the latter is an acquired action, an action of the Intel lest and the intelligent will which represent in Mind an attempt of the mental being to do what can only be done with perfect spontaneity and mastery by something higher than Mind. The intellect and intelligent will form a bridge by which the mental being is trying to establish a conscious connection with the supramental and to prepare the embodied soul for the descent into it of a supramental action. Therefore the first process is easy, spontaneous, rapid, perfect ; the second slow, laboured, imperfect. In proportion as the intellectual action becomes associated with and dominated by a rudimentary supramental action,—and it is this which constitutes the phenomenon of genius,—the second process also becomes more and more easy, spontaneous, rapid and perfect.
If we suppose a supreme consciousness, master of the world, which really conducts behind the veil all the operations the mental gods attribute to themselves, it will be obvious that that consciousness will be the entire Knower and Lord. The basis of its action or government of the world will be the perfect, original and all-possessing
Vijnana and Ajnâna. It will comprehend all things in, its energy of
conscious power. These energies will be the spontaneous inherent action of its conscious being creative and possessive of the forms of the universe. What part then will be left for the apprehensive consciousness and the sense ? They will be not independent functions, but subordinate operations involved in the action of the comprehensive consciousness itself. In fact, all four there will be one Page-281 rapid movement. If we had all these four acting in us with the unified rapidity with which the prdjnâna and sanjnâna act, we should then have in our notation of Time some inadequate image of the unity of the supreme action of the supreme energy. If we consider, we shall see that this must be so. The supreme consciousness must not only comprehend and possess in its conscious being the images of things which it creates as its self-expression, but it must place them before it— always in its own being, not externally—and have a certain relation with them by the two terms of apprehensive consciousness. Otherwise the universe would not take the form that it has for us ; for we only reflect in the terms of our organisation the movements of the supreme Energy. But by the very fact that the images of things are there held in front of an apprehending consciousness within the comprehending conscious being and not externalised as our individual mind externalizes them, the supreme Mind and supreme Sense will be something quite different from our mentality and our forms of sensation. They will be terms of an entire knowledge and self-possession and not terms of an ignorance and limitation which strives to know and possess.
In its essential and general term our sense must reflect and be the creation of this supreme Sense. But the Upanishad speaks of a Sight behind our sight and a Hearing behind our hearing, not in general terms of a Sense behind our sense. Certainly eye and ear are only taken as typical of the senses, and are chosen because they are the highest and subtlest of them all. But still the differentiation of sense which forms part of our mentality is evidently held to correspond with a differentiation of some kind in the supreme Sense. How is this possible ? It is what we have next to unravel by examining the nature and source of the functioning of the senses in ourselves,—their source in our mentality and not merely their functioning in the actual terms of our life-energy and our body. What is it in Mind that is fundamental to sight and hearing? Why do we see and hear and not simply sense with the mind ?
Page-282 THE FOURTH HYMN TO AGNI THE DIVINE WILD, PRIEST, WARRIOR AND LEADER OF OUR JOURNEY. [The Rishi hymns the Divine Force that knows all the successive births of the soul on its ascending planes of existence and as priest of his upward and onward-journeying sacrifice gives him the purity, the power, the knowledge, the increasing riches, the faculty of new formation and spiritual productiveness by which the mortal grows into immortality. It destroys the enemy, the assailants, the powers of evil, enriches the soul with all they try to withhold, gives the triple peace and the triple fulfilment of the mental, vital and physical being and, labouring in the light of the supramental Truth, leads beyond, creating in us the world of immortal felicity. ] 1. Strength, master over the lords of substance, towards thee I direct my delight in the march of my sacrifices. O King, by thee, increasing thy plenitudes, may we conquer our plenty and overcome the embattled assaults of mortal powers. 2. Strength uniting that bears the oblation is the Father of us, he in us pervades in being and is extended in light and is perfect in vision. Kindle altogether thy strengths of impulsion that belong perfectly to the Master in our dwelling,
1. Agni is here the supreme Will dwelling in us, Father and Lord of our being; he is to act is us entirely by the divine will and knowledge. Page-283 gather thy inspirations of knowledge and turn them towards us. 3. Will that is the Seer and Lord of the creature in the human peoples, that is pure and purifies, with his surface of the mind’s clarities, Will omniscient hold in you as the priest of your oblations, for this is he that wins for you your desirable boons in the godheads. 4. Becoming of one heart with the goddess of Truth-vision, 2 labouring by the rays of the Sun of Light, cleave to us with love, O Strength : accept in heart thy fuel in us, O Knower of the Births, and bring to us the gods that they may eat of our offering. 5. Domiciled in our gated dwelling, the Guest loved and accepted, come to this our sacrifice in all thy knowledge ; all these energies slay that set themselves to attack us and bring to us their enjoyments who make themselves our enemies. 6. Chase from us with thy blow the Divider, make a free space for thane own body ! When, O Son of Force, thou art carrying the gods over to their goal, 4 protect us in the plenitude of our possession, O Strength, O mightiest Deity. 7. May we order aright for thee our sacrifice by our words and by our offerings, O Will that purifies, O happy flame of purity ; in us pervade a felicity of all desirable boons, in us confirm all substance of our riches.
2. Ha. 3. All hostile energies that attack the soul of man possess certain riches which he needs and has to wrest from them in order to arrive at his perfect plenitude. 4. The divine powers in us are carried to their goal in the Truth and Bliss by the force of the Divine Will working in man. Page-284 8. O Will, O Son of Force who dwells in the three worlds 5 of our session, cleave in heart to our sacrifice, cleave to our oblation. May we become perfect in our works in the godheads; protect us by thy peace triple-armoured. 6 9. O Knower of the Births, bear us over every difficult crossing, yea, over all stumblings into evil as in a ship that travels over the waters. O Will, expressed by us with our obeisance of submission as the Eater of things, awake in us, be the fosterer of our embodying. 10. I meditate on thee with a heart that does the Work and, mortal, I call to the Immortal. O Will, O Knower of the Births, confirm victory in us; by the children of my works may I enjoy immortality. 1.1. O Knower of the Births, the man perfect in his works for whom thou createst that other blissful world, 8 reaches a felicity that is peopled happily with his life’s swiftnesses, his herds of Light, the children of his soul, the armies of his energy. 9
5. Mental, vital, physical, the lower "births" all the knowledge of which the Divine Will, knower of our Births, possesses and through which it has to lead the ascending sacrifice to the supramental. 6. The peace, joy and full satisfaction in the mental, vital and physical being. 7. Not only the physical body, but the vital and mental sheaths, all the embodied states or forms of the soul.
8. The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting. 9. The constant Vedic symbols of the Horse, Cow, Son, Hero. The sons or children are the new soul-formations which constitute the divine Personality, the new births within us. The heroes are the mental and moral energies which resist the assaults of ignorance, division, evil and falsehood. The vital powers are the motive forces that bear us on our journey and are therefore symbolised by the Horse. The herds are the illuminations that come to us from the supramental Truth, herding rays of the sun of Light. Page-285 A HYMN OF THE SUMMONING OF THE GODS. [The hymn calls to the sacrifice by the summons of the divine Flame the principal godheads. Each is described or invoked in that capacity and functioning in which he is needed and helpful to the perfection of the soul and its divine growth and attaining. ] 1. To the Will that knowest all the births, to the Flame highly kindled, purely luminous offer a poignant clarity. 2. This is he that expresses the powers of the gods, the untameable who speeds on its way this our sacrifice, this is the seer who comes with the wine of sweetness in his hands. 3. O Strength, we have sought thee with our adoration, bring hither the God-Mind 1 bright and dear in his happy chariot 2 for our increasing. 4. Widely spread thyself, 3 softly, thickly covering; towards thee lighten the voices of our illumination. Be white and bright in us that we may conquer. 6. Swing open, O ye Doors divine, * and give
1. Indra 2. The plural is used to indicate the manifold movement of the Divine Mind in its completeness. 3. This verse is addressed to Indra, the Power of divine Mind, through whom comes the illumination of the supramental Truth; by the advancing chariots of this giver of Light we conquer our divine possessions. 4. Man’s sacrifice is his labour and aspiration God-wards and is represented as travelling through the opening doors of the concealed heavenly realms, kingdoms conquered in succession by the expanding soul. Page-286 us easy passage for our expanding; farther, farther lead and fill full our sacrifice. 6. Darkness and Dawn 5 we desire, two mighty Mothers of the Truth, fairly fronting us, increasers of our spacious being. 7. And O ye divine Priests of our humanity, O worshipped Twain, approach on the paths of the Life-breath to this our sacrifice. 8. She of the vision of knowledge, she of its flowing inspiration, she of its vastness, three goddesses who give birth to the Bliss, they who stumble not, 7 may they take their seats at the altar strewn of the sacrifice. 9. O’ Fashioner of things, beneficent hither come to us; pervade of all in thy being, in thy nourishing of all and with thyself, 8 in sacrifice after sacrifice foster our ascension. 10. O Master of Delight, 9 to that goal 10 where thou knowest the secret Names of the gods, thither lead our offerings.
5. Night and Day, symbols of the alternation of the divine and human consciousness in us. The Night of our ordinary consciousness holds and prepares all that the Dawn brings out into conscious being. 6. Ilea, Saraswati, Mahi; their names are translated in order to give the idea of their functions. 7. Or, who are not assailed, cannot be attacked by the ignorance and darkness, cause of our suffering. 7. Twashtri. 8. The Divine as the Fashioner of things pervades all that He fashions both with His immutable self-existence and with that mutable becoming of Himself in things by which the soul seems to grow and increase and take on new forms. By the former He is the indwelling Lord and Maker, by the latter He is the material of his own works. 9. Soma. 10. The Ananda, the state of divine Beatitude in which all the powers of our being are revealed in their perfect godhead, here secret and hidden from us. Page-287 11. Swathe to the Will and to the Lord of Wide-ness, 11. Varuna. 12. The Maruts, nervous or vital forces of our being which attain to conscious expression in the thought, singers of the hymn to Indra, the God-mind. 13. That is, let all in us that we offer to the divine Life be turned into the self-light and self-force of the divine Nature.
11. Varuna. 12. The Maruts, nervous or vital forces of our being which attain to conscious expression in the thought, singers of the hymn to Indra, the God-mind. 13. That is, let all in us that we offer to the divine Life be turned into the self-light and self-force of the divine Nature. Page-288 THE CONQUEST OF THE TRUTH LOOK WITHIN THINGS Look within things. 2 Let us attach ourselves to a solid good, to a good that shines within and not externally. Let us devote 3 all our efforts to its discovery.—Attach thyself to the sense of-things and not to their form. The sense is the essential, the form is only an encumbrance. 4 Seeing many things, yet thou observes not; open- 5 ing the ears ye hear not.—Eye and ear are poor witnesses for man, if his inner life has not been made 6 fine.—Thence comes it that the saint occupies himself with his inner being and not with the objects of his 7 eyes.—How canst thou seize by the senses that which is neither solid nor liquid …that which is conceived on- 8 ly in power and energy?—Empty for the fool are all the points of Space. 9 So long as the mind stops at the observation of multiple detail?, it does not enter into the general field 10 of true knowledge.— When the mind has been trained on its object, it transforms itself to the image of that which it scrutinizes and enters into the full comprehension
1) Marcus Anralius.— 2) Seneca.— 3) Farid-ud-din-attar : Mantic otter.— 4) Isaiah XLII.20. — 5) Heraclitus.— 6) Lao-Tse. — 7) Hermes: On Rebirth.— 8) Hindu Saying.— 9) patanjali: Aphorisms. i 49 — 10) id. I. 41- Page-289 11 of what it finds therein contained. —There is nothing however small, however vile it be, that does not contain mind. *** 12 In each thing there is a door to knowledge and in 13 each atom is seen the trace of the sun.— In the interior of each atom that thou shalt cleave thou shalt 14 find imprisoned a sun.—In each atom thou shalt see the All, thou shalt contemplate millions of secrets as 15 luminous as the sun.—When one discovers the enigma of a single atom, one can see the mystery of all creation, that within us as well as that without.—In 16 this immense ocean the world is an atom and the atom a world. 17 If thou understand, what seems invisible to most 18 shall be to thee very apparent.—If we raise our selves for a moment by aesthetic contemplation above the heavy terrestrial atmosphere, we are then beings bless- 19 ed over all.—That is why the incorporeal eye should be raised to contemplate not the figure, not the body, not the appearance, but that which is calm, tram quill, solid, immutable. 20 We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not 21 seen are eternal.—There is a natural body and there 22 is a spiritual body.—There is a supreme state Unmanifest beyond this Nature and eternal which perishes not when all creatures perish; it is Unmanifest and immutable and the supreme goal. 23 Three worlds; the world of desire, the world of form 24 and the world of the formless.—Yes, my brother, if we
11) Giordano Bruno.— 12) Baha-ullah: Kitab-al-ikon. — 13) Ahmed Half: Mystic Odes— 14) Farid-ud-din-attar. — 15) Mohy-ud-din-ar. abi: Treatise on Unity.— 16) Farid-ud-din-attar.— 17) Hermes.— 18) Schopenhauer.— 19) Hermes.— 20) II. Corinthians. IV. 18— 21) I Corinthians XV. 44.—22) Bhagavad-Gita VIII. 18.- 2S) Sanyi.ita Ni-kaya.— 24) Baha-ullah: The seven, Valley*.— Page-290 think of each world, we shall find there a hundred thousand wonderful sciences. One of these worlds is Sleep. What problems it contains ! what wisdom is there con- 25 ceiled how many worlds it includes!—For the waking there is only one common world…During sleep 26 each turns towards his own particular world.—My heart within instructs me also in the night seasons.
25) Heracles .— 26) Psalms. XV I. 7 Page-291 Human thought in the generality of men is no more than a rough and crude acceptance of unexamined ideas; it is a sleepy sentry and allows anything to pass the gates which seems to it decently garbed or wears a plausible appearance or can mumble anything that resembles some familiar password. Especially is this so in subtle matters, those remote from the concrete facts of our physical life and environment. Even men who will reason carefully and acutely in ordinary matters and there consider vigilance against error an intellectual or a practical duty, are yet content with the most careless stumbling when they get upon higher and more difficult ground. Where precision and subtle thinking are most needed, there they are most impatient of it and averse to the labour demanded of them. Men can manage fine thought about palpable things, but to think subtly about the subtle is too great a strain on the grossness of our intellects; so we are content with making a dab at the truth, like the painter who threw his brush at his picture when be could not get the effect that he desired. We mistake the smudge that results for the perfect form of a verity.
It is not surprising then that men should be content to think crudely about such a matter as rebirth. Those who accept it, take it usually ready made, either as a cut and dried theory or a crude dogma. The soul is reborn in a new body,—that vague and almost meaningless assertion is for them sufficient. But what is the soul and what can possibly be meant by the rebirth of a soul ? Well, it means
Page-292 reincarnation ; the soul, whatever that may be, had got out of one case of flesh and is now getting into another case of flesh. It sounds simple,—let us say, like the Jinn of the Arabian tale expanding out of and again compressing himself into his bottle or perhaps as a pillow is lugged out of one pillow-case and thrust into another. Or the soul fashions itself a body in the mother’s womb and then occupies it, or else, let us say, puts off one robe of flesh and then puts on another. But what is it that thus "leaves" one body and " enters " into another ? Is it another, a psychic body and subtle form, that enters into the gross corporeal form,—the Purusha perhaps o( the ancient image, no bigger than a man’s thumb, or is it something in itself formless and impalpable that incarnates in the sense of becoming or assuming to the senses a palpable shape of bone and flesh ?
In the ordinary, the vulgar conception there is no birth of a soul at all, but only the birth of a new body into the world occupied by an old personality unchanged from that which once left some now discarded physical frame. It is John Robinson who has gone out of the form of flesh he once occupied ; it is John Robinson who tomorrow or some centuries hence will re-incarnate in another form of
flesh and resume the course of his terrestrial experiences with another name and in another environment. Achilles, let us say, is .reborn as Alexander, the son of Philip, a Macedonian, conqueror not of Hector but of Darius, with a wider scope, with larger destinies ; but it is still Achilles, it is the same personality that is reborn, only the bodily circumstances are different. It is this survival of the identical personality that attracts the
European mind today in the theory of reincarnation. For it is the extinction or dissolution of the personality, of this mental, nervous and physical composite which I call myself that is hard to bear for the man
enamoured of life, and it is the promise of its survival and physical reappearance that is the great lure. The one objection that really stands in the way of its acceptance is the obvious non-survival of memory. Memory is the man, says the modern psychologist, and
Page-293 what is the use of the survival of my personality, if I do not remember my past, if I am not aware of being the same person still and always? What is the utility ? Where is the enjoyment ?
The old Indian thinkers,—I am not speaking of the popular belief which was crude enough and thought not at all about the matter,—-the old Buddhistic and
Vedantic thinkers surveyed the whole field from a very different standpoint. They were not attached to the survival of the personality ; they did not give to that survival the high name of immortality ; they saw that personality being what it is, a constantly changing composite, the survival of an identical personality was a non-sense, a contradiction in terms. They perceived indeed that there is a continuity and they sought to discover what determines this continuity and whether the sense of identity which enters into it is an illusion or the representation of a fact, of a real truth, and, if the latter, then what that truth may be. The Buddhist denied any real
identity. There is, he said, no self, no person ; there is simply a continuous stream of energy in action like the continuous flowing of a river or the continuous burning of a flame. It is this continuity which creates in the mind the false sense of identity. I am not now the same person that I was a year ago, not even the same person that I was a moment ago, any more than the water flowing past yonder ghaut is the same water that flowed past it a few seconds ago ; it is the persistence of the flow in the same channel that preserves the false appearance of identity.
Obvious , then, there is no soul that reincarnates, but only Karma that persists in flowing continuously down the same channel. It is Karma that incarnates ; Karma creates the form of a constantly changing mentality and physical bodies that are, we may presume, the result of that changing composite of ideas and sensations which I call myself. The identical " I " is not, never was, never will be.
Practically, so long as the error of personality persists, this docs not make much difference and I can say in the language of ignorance that I am reborn in a new body ; practically, I have to proceed Page-294 on the basis of that trios. But there is this important point gained that it is all an error and an error which can cease ; the composite can be broken up for good without any fresh formation, the flame can be extinguished, the channel which called itself a liver destroyed. And then there is non-being, there is cessation, there is the release of the error from itself.
The Vedantist comes to a different conclusion; he admits an identical, a self, a persistent immutable reality,— but other than my personality, other than this composite which I call myself. In the Katha Upanishad the question is raised in a very instructive fashion quite apposite to the subject we have in hand. Nachiketas, sent by his father to the world of Death, thus questions
Yuma, the lord of that world : Of the man who has gone forward, who has passed away from us, some say that he is and others " this he is not " ; which then is eight ? what is the truth of the great passage ? Such is the form of the question and at first sight it seems simply to raise the
problem of immortality in the European sense of the word, the survival of the identical personality. But that is not what Nachiketas asks. He has already taken as the second of three boons offered to him by Yama the knowledge
of the sacred Flame by which man crosses over hunger and thirst, leaves sorrow and tear
for behind him and dwells in heaven securely rejoicing. Immortality in that sense he takes for granted as, already standing in that
father world, he must surely do. The knowledge he asks for involves the deeper, finer problem, of which Yama affirms that even the gods debated this of old and it is not easy to know, for subtle is the law of it; something survives that appears to be the same person, that descends into hell, that ascends into heaven, that returns upon the
earth with a now
body)’, but is it really the same person that thus survives ? Can we really say of the man " He
styli is," or must we not rather say " This he no longer is " ? Yama too in his answer speaks not at all of the survival of death, and he only
gives a verse or two to a bare description of that constant rebirth which all serious thinkers admitted as a Page-295 universally acknowledged truth. What he speaks of is the Self, the real Man, the Lord of all these changing appearances ; without the knowledge of that Self the survival of the personality is not immortal life but a constant passing from death to death ; he only who goes beyond personality to the real Person becomes the Immortal. Till then a man seems indeed to be born again and again by the force of his knowledge -and works, name succeeds to name, form gives place to form, but there is no immortality. Such then is the real question put and answered so divergently by the Buddhist and the Vedantic. There is a constant reforming of personality in new bodies, but this personality is a mutable creation of force at its work streaming forward in Time and never for a moment the same, and the ego-sense that makes us cling to the life of the body and b eleven readily that it is the same idea and form, that it is John Robinson who is reborn as Sidi Hussein, is a citation of the mentality. Achilles was not reborn as Alexander, but the stream of force in its works which created the momentarily changing mind and body of Achilles flowed on and created the momentarily changing mind and body of Alexander. Still, said the ancient Vedanta, there is yet something beyond this force in action, Master of it, one who makes it create for him new names and forms, and that is the Self, the Purusha, the Man, the Real Person. The ego-sense is only its distorted image reflected in the flowing stream of embodied mentality.
Is it then the Self that incarnates and reincarnates? But the Sell is imperishable, immutable, unborn, undying. The Self is not born and does not exist in the body; rather the body is
born and exists in the Self. For the Self is one everywhere,—in all bodies, we say, but leally it is not confined and
parcelled out in different bodies except as the all-constituting ether seems to be formed into different objects and is in a sense in them. Rather. ail these bodies are in the Self; but that also is a figment of space-conception, and rather these bodies are only symbols and figures of itself
cheated by it in its own consciousness. Even what we
Page-296 call the individual soul is greater than its body and not less, more subtle than it and therefore not confined by its grossness. At death it docs not leave its form, but casts it off, so that a great departing Soul can say of this death in vigorous phrase, " I have spat out the body." What then is it that we feel to inhabit the physical frame ? What is it that the Soul draws out from the body when it casts off this partial physical robe which enveloped not it, but part of its members? What is it whose issuing out gives this wrench, this swift struggle and pain of parting, creates this sense of violent divorce? The answer does not help us much. It is the subtle or psychical frame which is tied to the physical by the heart-strings, by the cords of life-force, of nervous energy which have been woven into every physical fiber. This the Lord of the body draws out and the violent snapping or the rapid or tardy loosening of the life-chords, the exit of the connecting force constitutes the pain of death and its difficulty.
Let us then change the form of the quested and ask rather what it is that reflects and accepts the mutable personality, since the Self is immutable? We have in fact an immutable Self, a real Person, lord of this ever changing personality which, again, assumes ever-changing bodies, but the real Self knows itself always as above the mutation, watches and enjoys it, but is not involved in it. Through what does it enjoy the changes and feel them to be its own, even while knowing itself to be unaffected by them? The mind and ego-sense* are only inferior instruments; there must be some more essential form of itself which the Real Man puts forth, puts in front of itself, as it were, and at the back of the
changing to support and mirror them without being actually changed by them. This more essential form is the mental being or mental person which the Upanishads speak of as the mental leader of the life and body, manomayah prâna-sharîra-neta. It is that which maintains the ego-sense as a function in the mind and enables us to have the firm conception of continuous identity in Time as opposed to the timeless identity of the Self.
Page-297 The changing personality is not this mental person; it is a composite of various stuff of Nature, a formation of Prakriti and is not at all the Purusha. And it is a very complex composite with many layers; there is a layer of physical, a layer of nervous, a layer of mental, even a final stratum of supramental personality; and within these layers themselves there-are strata within each stratum. The analysis of the successive couches of the earth is a simple matter compared with the analysis of this wonderful creation we call the personality. The mental being in resuming bodily life forms a new personality for its new terrestrial existence; it takes material from the common matter-stuff, life-stuff, mind-stuff of the physical world and during earthly life it is constantly absorbing fresh material, throwing out what is used up, changing its bodily, nervous and mental tissues. But this is all surface work; behind is the foundation of past experience held back from the physical memory so that the superficial consciousness may not be troubled or interfered with by the conscious burden of the past but may concentrate on the work immediately in hand. Still that foundation of past experience is the bedrock of personality; and it is more than that. It is our real fund on which we can always draw even apart from our present superficial commerce with our suit rounding. That commerce adds to our gains, modifies the foundation for a subsequent existence.
Moreover, all this is, again, on he surface. It is only a small part of
ourselves which lives and acts in the energies of our earthly existence. As behind the physical universe there are worlds of which ours is only a last
result, so also within us there are worlds of our self-existence which throw out
this external form of our being. The sub-conscient, the superconscient are oceans from which and to which this river flows. Therefore to speak of ourselves as a soul reincarnating is to give altogether too simple an appearance to the miracle of our existence; it puts into too ready and too gross a formula the magic of the supreme Magician. There is not a
definite psychic entity getting into a new case of flesh; there is a metempsychosis, a rein. Page-298 soiling, a rebirth of new psychic personality as well as a birth of a new body. And behind is the Person, the unchanging entity, the Master who manipulates this complex material, the Artifice of this wondrous artifice.
This is the starting-point from which we have to proceed in considering the problem of rebirth. To view ourselves as such and such a personality getting into a new case
flesh: is to stumble about in the ignorance, to confirm the error of the material mind and the senses. The body is a convenience, the personality is a constant formation for whose development action and experience are the instruments; but the Self by whose will and for whose delight all this is, is other than the body; other than the action and experience, other than the personality which they develop. To ignore it is to ignore the whole secret of our being. Page-299 CHAPTER XIII THE ANGIRAS RISH1S The name Angiras occurs in the Veda in two different forms, Angiras and Angiras, although the latter is the more common; we have also the patronynic Angirasa applied more than once to the god Brihaspati. In later times Angiras, like Bhrigu and other seers, was regarded as one of the original sages, progenitors of clans of Rishis who went by their names, the Angirasas, Atris, Bhargavas. In the Veda also there are these families of Knishes, the Atris, Bhrigus, Kanwas etc. In one of the hymns of the Atris the discovery of Agni, the sacred fire, is attributed to the Angiras Rishis, but in another to the Bhrigus.* Frequently the seven original Anginas Rishis are described as the human fathers, pitaro manushyâh, who discovered the Light made the ;un to shine and ascended to the heaven of the Truth. In some of the hymns of the tenth Mandate they are associated as the Pitris or Manes with Yama, a deity who only comes into prominence in the later Suktas; they take their seats with the gods on the barhis, the sacred grass, and have their share in the sacrifice. If this were all, the explanation of the part taken by the Angiras Rishis in the finding of the Cows, would be simple and superficial enough; they would be the Ancestors, the founders of the Vedic religion, partially deified
* Very possibly the Angiras Rishis are the flame-powers of Ague find the Bhrigus the solar powers of Surya, Page-300 by their descendants and continually associated with the gods whether in the winning back of the I^awn and the Sun out of the long Arctic night or in the conquest of the Light and the Truth. But this is not all, the Vedic myth has profounder aspects. In the first place, the Angirasas are not merely the deified human fathers, they are also brought before us as heavenly seers, sons of the gods, sons of heaven and heroes or powers of the Asura, the mighty Lord, divas putrâso asuryasya virâh, an expression which, their number being seven, reminds us strongly, though perhaps only fortuitously, of the seven Angels of Ahura Mazda in the kindred Iranian mythology. Moreover there are passages in which they seem to become purely symbolical, powers and sons of Agni the original Angiras, forces of the symbolic Light and Flame, and even to coalesce into a single seven-mouthed Angiras with his nine and his ten rays of the Light, navagve angire daçagve saptâsye, on and by whom the Dawn breaks out with all h r joy and opulence. Arid yet all these three presentations seem to be of the same Angirasas, their characteristics and their action being otherwise identical.
Two entire by opposite explanations can be given of the double character of these seers, divine and human. They may have been originally human sages deified by their descendants and in the apotheosis given a divine parentage and a divine function; or they may have been originally demigods, powers of the Light and Flame, who became humanised as the fathers of the race and the discoverers of its wisdom. Both of these processes are recognisable in early mythology. In the Greek legend, for instance, Castor and Polydeuces and their sister Helen are human beings, though children of Zeus, and only deified after their death, but the probability is that originally all three were gods,—Castor and Polydeuces, the twins, riders of the horse, saviours of sailors on the ocean being almost certainly identical with the Vedic Açwins, the Horsemen, as their name signifies, riders in the wonderful chariot, twins also, saviours of Bhujyu from the ocean, terriers over the great waters, brothers of the Dawn, and
Page-301 Helen very possibly the Dawn their sister or even identical with Sarama, the hound of heaven, who is, like Dakshina, a power, almost a figure of the Dawn. But in either case there has been a farther development by which these gods or demigods have become invested with psychological functions, perhaps by the same process which in the Greek religion converted Athene, the Dawn, into the goddess of knowledge and Apollo, the sun, into the divine singer and seer, lord of the prophetic and poetic inspiration.
In the Veda it is possible that another tendency has been at work,—the persistent and all-pervading habit of symbolism dominant in the minds of these ancient Mystics. Everything, their own names, the names of Kings and
sacrifices, the ordinary circumstances of their lives were turned into symbols and covers for their secret meaning. Just as they used the ambiguity of the word go,
which means both ray and cow, so as to make the concrete figure of the cow, the chief form of their pastoral wealth, a cover for its hidden sense of the inner light which was the chief element in the spiritual wealth they coveted from the gods, so also they would use their own names, Gotama "most full of light", Gavisthira "the steadfast in light" to hide a broad and general sense for their thought beneath what seemed a personal claim or desire. Thus too they used the experiences external and internal whether of themselves or of other Rishis. If there is any truth in the old legend of
Çunaçepa bound as a victim on the altar of sacrifice, it is yet quite certain, as we shall see, that in the
Rig-Veda the occurrence or the legend is used as a symbol of the human soul bound by the triple cord of sin and released from it by the divine power of Agni, Surya, Varuna. So also Rishis like Kutsa, Kanwa, Uçanas Kavya have become types and symbols of certain spiritual experiences and victories and placed in that capacity side by side with the gods. It is not surprising, then, that in this mystic symbolism the seven Angiras Rishis should have become divine powers and living forces of the spiritual life without losing altogether their traditional or historic human character. We will leave, however, these conjectures and
Page-302 speculations aside and examine instead the part played by these three elements or aspects of their personality in the figure of the cows and the recovery of the Sun and the Dawn out of the darkness. We note first that the word Angiras is used in the Veda as an epithet, often in connection with the image of the Dawn and the Cows. Secondly, it occurs as a name of Agni, while India is said to become Angiras and Brihaspati is called Angiras and Angirasa, obviously not as a mere decorative or my the logical appellation but with a special significance and an allusion to the psychological or other sense attached to the word. Even the Açwins are addressed collectively as Angiras. It is therefore clear that the word Angiras is used in the Veda not merely as a name of a certain family of Rishis, but with a distinct meaning inherent in the word. It is probable also that even when used as a name it is still with a clear recognition of the inherent meaning of the name; it is probable even that names in the Veda are generally, if not always, used with a certain stress on their significance, especially the names of gods, sages and kings. The word Indra is generally used as a name, yet we have such significant glimpses of the Vedic method as the description Usha indratamâ angirastamâ, ‘ most-Indra," " most Angiras ", and of the Panis as anindrâh, " not-Indra ", expressions which evidently are meant to convey the possession or absence of the qualities, powers or functionings represented by Indra and the Angiras. We have then to see what may be this meaning and what light it sheds on the nature or functions of the Angiras Rishis. The word is akin to the name Agni; for \x is derived from a root and which is only a nasalised form of as, the root of Agni. These roots seem to convey intrinsically the sense of preeminent or forceful state, feeling, movement, action, light *, and it is this last sense of a brilliant or burn-
* For slate we have ogre, first, top and Greek again, excessively ; for feeling, Greek agape love, and possibly Sanskrit angina, a woman ; for movement and action several words in Sanskrit and in Greek and Latin. Page-303
ing- light that gives us Agni, fire, agnati, fire, angâra, a burning coal and angiras, which must have meant flaming, glowing. Both in the Veda and the tradition of the Brahmanas the Angirasas are in their origin closely connected with Agni. In the Brahrnanas it is said that Agni is the fire and the Angirasas the burning coals, angârâ; but in the Veda itself the indication seems rather to be that they are the flames or lustres of Agni. In X. 62, a hymn to the Angiras Rishis, it is said of them that they are sons of Agni and have been born about him in different forms all about heaven, and in the next clause it is added, speaking of them collectively in the ‘singular; navagvo nu dacagvo angirastamah sachâ deveshu manhate, nine-rayed, ten-rayed, most "Angiras", this Angiras clan becomes together full of plenty with or in the gods; aided by Indra they set free the pen of cows and horses, they give to the sacrifice the mystic eight-eared kine and thereby create in the gods gravas, the divine hearing or inspiration of the Truth. It is fairly evident that the Angiras Rishis are here the radiant luster’s of the divine Agni which are born in heaven, therefore of the divine Flame and not of any physical fire; they become equipped with the nine rays of the Light and the ten, become most angiras, that is to say most full of the blazing radian e of Agni, the divine flame, and are therefore able to release the imprisoned Light and Force and create the supramental knowledge.
Even if this interpretation of the symbolism is not accepted, yet that there is a symbolism must be admitted. These
Angirasas are not human sacrifices, but sons of Agni born in heaven, although their action is precisely that of the human
Angirasas, the fathers, pitaro mannshyâh; they are born with different forms, virûpâsah, and all this can only mean that they are various forms of the power of Agni. The question is of what Agni; the sacrificial flame, the element of fire generally or that other sacred flame -which is
described as " the priest with the seer-will " or " who does the work of the seer, the true, the rich in varied light of inspiration,"
agnir hotâ kavikratuh satyaç chitraçravastamah ? If it is the element of fire, then
Page-304 the blazing lustre they represent must be that of the Sun, the fire of Agni radiating out as the solar rays and in association with Indra the sky creating the Dawn. There can be no other physical interpretation consistent with the details and circumstances of the Angiras myth. But this explanation does not at all account for the farther description of the Angiras Rishis as seers, as singers of the hymn, powers of Brihaspati as well as of the Sun and Dawn. There is another passage of the Veda (VI.6.3) in which the identity of these divine Angirasas with the flaming luster’s of Agni is clearly and unmistakably revealed. " Wide ever5′where, O pure-shining Agni, range driven by the wind thy pure shining luster’s (bhâmâsah) ; forcefully overpowering the heavenly Nine-rayed ones (divyâ naagvâh) enjoy the woods * (vanâ vanante, significantly conveying the covert sense, "enjoying the objects of enjoyment") breaking them up violently. O thou of the pure light, they bright and pure assail t (or overcome) all the earth, thy are thy horses galloping in ail directions. Then thy roaming shines widely vast directing their journey to the higher level of the Various-coloured (the cow, Prince, mother of the Maruts.) Then doubly (in earth and heaven?) thy tongue leaps forward like the lightning loosed of the Bull that wars for the cows." Sayana tries to avoid the obvious identification of the Rishis with the flames by giving navagva the sense of "new-born rays", but obviously divyâ navagvâh here and the sons of Agni (in X. 62) born in heaven who are navagva are the same and cannot possibly be different; and the identification is confirmed, if any confirmation were needed, by the statement that in this ranging of Agni constituted by the action of the Navagwas his tongue takes the appearance of the thunderbolt of Indra, the Bull who wars for the cows, loosed from his hand and leaping forward, undoubtedly to assail the powers of darkness in the hill of heaven ; for the march of Agni and
* The logs of the sacrificial fire, according to Sayana. + Shave the hair of the earth , according to Sayana.
Page-305 the Navagwas is here described as ascending the hill (sânu pr’içnch) after ranging over the earth. We have evidently here a symbolism of the Flame and the Light, the divine flames devouring the earth and then becoming the lightning of heaven and the lustre of the solar Powers ; for Agni in the Veda is the light of the sun and the lightning as well as the flame found in the waters and shining on the earth. The Angiras Rishis being powers of Agni shade this manifold function. The divine flame kindled by the sacrifice supplies also to Indra the material of the lightning, the weapon, the heavenly stone, svaryam agamid, by which he destroys the powers of darkness and wins the cows, the solar illuminations.
Agni, the father of the Angirasas, is not only the fount and origin of these divine frame , he is also described in the Veda as himself the first, that is to say the supreme and original Angiras, prathamo angirâh. What do the Vedic poets wish us to understand by this description ? We can best understand by a glance at some of the passages in which this epithet is applied to the bright and flaming deity. In the first place it is twice associated with another fixed epithet of Agni, the Son of Force or of Energy, sahasah sûnuh
ûrjo napât. Thus in VIII.60.2. he is addressed " O Angiras, Son of Force," sahasah sûno angirah, and in VIII. 84.4. " O Agni Angiras, Son of ‘Energy,"
agne angira ûrjo napât. And in V. 11.6. it is said " Thee, O Agni, the
Angirasas found established in the secret place (guha
hit am) lying in wood and wood (vane vane) " or, if we accept the indication of a covert sense we have already noted in the phrase
vanâ
vananti, "in each object of enjoyment. So art thou born by being pressed (mathyamâno,) a mighty force ; thee they call the Son of Force, O Angiras, sa jâyase saho mahat
twâm âhuh sahasas putram angiras." It is hardly doubtful, then, that this idea of force is an essential element in the Vedic conception of the Angiras and it is, as we have seen, part of the meaning of the word. Force in status, action, movement, light, feeling is the inherent quality of the roots
ag and ang from which we have agni and angirah. Force but also, in these words, Light. Agni, the
Page-306 sacred flame, is the burning force of Light ; the Angirasas also are burning powers of the Light.
But of what light ? physical or figurative ? We must not imagine that the Vedic poets were crude and savage intellects incapable of the obvious figure, common to all languages, which makes the physical light a figure of the mental and spiritual, of knowledge, of an inner illumination. The Veda speaks expressly of " luminous sages," dyumato viprâh and the word
sûri, a seer, is associated with Surya, the sun, by etymology and must originally have meant luminous. In 1.31.1 it is said of this god of the Flame, *’ Thou, O Agni,
west the first Angiras, the seer and auspicious friend, a god, of the gods; in the law of thy working the Maruts with their shining spears were born, seers who do the work by the knowledge." Clearly, then, in the conception of Agni Angiras there are two ideas, knowledge and action ; the luminous Agni and the luminous Maruts are by their light seers of the knowledge,
Rishi, kavi ; and by the light of knowledge the forceful Maruts do the work because they are born or manifested in the characteristic working (vrata) of Agni. For Agni himself has been described to us as having the seer-will, kavikratuh, the force of action which works according to the inspired or supramental knowledge (gravas) , for it is that knowledge and not intellectuality which is meant by the word kavi. What then is this great force , Agni Angiras, saho mahat, but the flaming force of the divine consciousness with its two twin qualities of
Light and Power working in perfect harmony,—even as the Maruts are described, kavayo
vidmanâ apasah, seers working by the knowledge? We have had reason to conclude that Usha is the divine Dawn and not merely the physical, that her cows or rays of the Dawn and the Sun are the illuminations of the dawning divine consciousness and that therefore the Sun is the
Illumine in the sense of the Lord of Knowledge and that Swar, the solar world beyond heaven and earth, is the world of the divine Truth and Bliss, in a word, that Light in the Veda is the symbol of knowledge, of the illumination of the divine Truth. We now begin to have
Page-307 reason for concluding that the. Flame, which is only another aspect of Light, is the Vedic symbol for the Force of the divine consciousness, of the supramental Truth. In another passage, VI.11.3. we have mention of the " seer most illumined of the Angirasas, " vepistho angira-sâm viprah, where the reference is not at all clear. Sayana, ignoring the collocation vepistho viprah which at once fixes the sense-of Vasishtha as equivalent to most vipra, most a seer , most illumined, supposes that Bharadwaja, the rationale Rishi of the hymn, is here praising himself as the " greatest praise " of the gods ; but this is a doubtful suggestion. Here it is Agni who is the hota, the priest; it is he who is sacrificing to the gods, to his own embodiment, tanvam tav’a svâm, to the Maruts, Mitra, Varuna, Heaven and Earth. " For in thee " says the hymn "the thought even though full of riches desires still the gods, the (divine) births, for the singer of the hymn that he may sacrifice to them, when the sage, the most luminous of the Angirasas, utters the rhythm of sweetness in the sacrifice." It would almost seem that Agni himself is the sage , the most luminous of the Angirasas. On the other hand, the description seems to be more appropriate to Brihaspati. For Brihaspati is also an Angirasa and one who becomes the Angiras. He is, as we have seen, closely associated with the Angiras Rishis in the winning of the luminous cattle and he is so associated as Brahmanaspati, as the Master of the sacred or inspired word (brahmas) ; for by his cry Vala is split to pieces and the cows answer lowing with desire to his call. As powers of Agni these Rishis are like him kavikratuh ; they possess the divine Light, they act by it with the divine force ; they are not only Rishis, but heroes of the Vedic war, divas putrâso asurasyavîrâh (III.53.7.) sons of heaven, heroes of the Mighty Lord, they are, as described in VI.75.9, "the Fathers who dwell in the sweetness (the world of bliss ), who establish the wide birth, moving in the difficult places, possessed of force, profound, * with their bright host and their
* Cf. the description in V. 62 of the Angirasas* as sons of Agni, different in form, but all profound in knowledge, gambhîravepasah.
Page-308 strength of arrows, invincible, heroes in their being, wide over comers of the banded foes ": but also, they are, as the next verse describes them, brâhmanâsah pitarah somyâsah, that is, they have the divine word and the inspired knowledge it carries with it. * This divine word is the satya mantra, it is the thought by whose truth the Angirasas bring the Dawn to birth and make the lost Sun to rise in the heavens. This word is also called the arka, a vocable which means both hymn and light and is sometimes used of the sun. It is therefore the word of illumination, the word which expresses the truth of which the Sun is the lord, and its emergence from the secret seat of the Truth is associated with the outpouring by the Sun of its herded radiances ; so we read in VII.36 The Angiras, therefore, is not only an Agni-power, he is also a Brihaspati-power. Brihaspati is called more than once the Angirasa, as in VI .73.1 . you adribhit prath-amajâ r’itâva br’ihaspatir ângiraso havishmân, "Brihaspati, breaker of the hill ( the cave of the Panis ), the first-born who has the Truth, the Angirasa, he of the oblation." And in X. 43.7 we have* still more significant description of Brihaspati as the Angirasa ; pra saptagum r’itadhîtim sumedhâm br’ihaspalim tnatir acchd jigdti yaw dngiraso namasd upasadyah. " The thought goes towards Brihaspati the seven-rayed, the truth-thinking, the perfect intelligence, who is the Angirasa, to be approached with obeisance." In II. 23. 18, also, Brihaspati is addressed as Angiras in connection with the release of the cows and the release of the
* This seems to be the sense of the word Brahmanas in the Veda. It certainly does not moan Brahmans by caste or priests by profession ; the Fathers hero are warriors as well as segos. The four castes are only mentioned in the Rig Veda undue, in that profound but lute composition, the 1 Page-309 waters ; " For the glory of thee the hill parted asunder when thou didst release upward the pen of the cows ; with Indra for ally thou didst force out, O Brihaspati, the fiord of the waters which was environed by the darkness." We may note in passing how closely the release of the waters, which is the subject of the Vritra legend, is associated with the release of the cows which is the subject of the legend of the Angiras Rishis and the Panis and that both Vritra and the Panis are powers of the darkness. The cows are the light of the Truth, the true illumining sun, satiate tad … suryam ; the waters released from the environing darkness of Vritra are called sometimes the streams of the Truth, r’itasya dhârah and sometimes svarvatîr apah, the waters of Swar, the luminous solar world. We see then that the Angiras is in the first place a power of Agni the seer-will; he is the seer who works by the light, by the knowledge; he is a flame of the puissance of Agni, the great force that is born into the world to be the priest of the sacrifice and the leader of the journey, the puissance which the gods are said by Vamadeva ( IV.1 ) to establish here as the Immortal in mortals, the energy that does the great work ( arati ). In the second place, he is a power or at least has the power of Brihaspati, the truth-thinking and seven-rayed , whose seven rays of the light hold that truth which he thinks ( r’itadhitim ) and whose seven mouths repeat the word that expresses the truth, the god of whom it is said ( IV.50. 4), ** Brihaspati coming first to birth out of the great Light in the highest heaven, born in many forms, seven-mouthed, seven-rayed (saptâsyah saptarashmih), by his cry dispelled the darkness ; he by his host with the Rik and the Stubh ( the hymn of illumination and the rhythm that affirms the gods) broke Vala by his cry. " It cannot be doubted that by this host or troop of Brihaspati (sushubhâ ri’kvatâ gan’ena) are meant the Angirasa Rishis who by the true mantra help in the great victory.
Indra is also described as becoming an Angiras or as becoming possessed of the Angiras quality. " May he become most Angiras with the Angirasas, being the Bull with
Page-310 bulls ( the bull is the male power or Purusha, nr’i, with regard to the Rays and the Waters who are the cows, gâvah, dhenavah), the Friend with friends, the possessor of the Rik with those who have the Rik (r’igmîbhir r’igmî), with those who make the journey (gâtubhih, the souls that advance on the path towards the Vast and True) the greatest; may Indra become associated with the Maruts (marutvan) for our thriving" The epithets here ( I. 100. 4) are all the proper epithets of the Angiras Rishis and Indra is supposed to take upon himself the qualities or relations that constitute Angiras hood. So in III. 31-*7" Most illumined in knowledge (vipratamah, answering to the vepistho angira-sdm viprah of VII.11.3), becoming a friend ( sashaying, the Angirasas are friends or comrades in the great battle ) he went (agach-chad, upon the path, of, gdlubhih, discovered by Sarama ); the hill sped forth its pregnant contents (garbham) for the doer of the good work; strong in manhood with the young (maryo yuvabhih, the youth also giving the idea of imaging, undeceiving force ) he sought fullness of riches and won possession ( sasâna makhasyan); so at once, chanting the hymn ( archan ), he became an Angiras." This Indra who assumes all the qualities of the Angiras is, we must remember, the Lord of Swar, the wide world of the Sun or the Truth, and descends to us with his two shining horses, hair, which are called in one passage sûryasya ketû, the sun’s two powers of perception or of vision in knowledge, in order to war with the sons of darkness and aid the great journey. If we have been right in all that we have concluded with regard to the esoteric sense of the Veda, Indra must be the Power (indra, the Puissant, * the powerful lord) of the divine Mind born in man and there increasing by the Word and the Soma to his full divinity. This growth continues by the winning and growth of the Light, till Indra reveals himself fully as the lord of all the luminous herds which he sees by the * eye of the sun", the divine Mind master of all the illuminations of knowledge.
* But also perhaps "shining," of Indu, the moon ; ina, glorious. the sun ; inch, to kindle. Page-311 Indra in becoming the Angiras, becomes Marutvan, possessed of or companioned by the Maruts, and these Maruts, luminous and violent gods of the storm and the lightning, uniting in themselves the vehement power of Vayu, the Wind, the Breath, the Lord of Life and the force of Agni, the Seer-Will, are therefore seers who do the work by the knowledge, kavayo vidmand apasah, as well as battling forces who by the power of the heavenly Breath and the heavenly lightning overthrow the established things, the artificial obstructions, kritrimâni rodhânsi, in which the sons of Darkness have entrenched themselves, and aid Indra to overcome Vritra and the Dasyus. They seem to be in the esoteric Veda the Life-Powers that support by their nervous or vital energies the action of the thought in the attempt of the mortal consciousness to grow or expand itself into the immortality of the Truth and Bliss. Ii any case, they also are described in VI. 49.11 as acting with the qualities of the Angiras (angirasvdt,) " O young and seers and powers of the sacrifice, Maruts, come uttering the word to the high place (or desirable plane of earth or the hill, adhi sanu pr’içneh, which is probably the sense of varasyâm) , powers increasing, rightly moving (on the path, getup) like the Angiras, * give joy even to that which is not illumined (achitram, that which has not received the varied light of the dawn, the night of our ordinary darkness)." We see here the same characteristics of the Angiras action, the eternal youth and force of Agni (agne yavistha), the possession and utterance of the Word, the seer-hood, the doing of the work of sacrifice, the right movement on the great path which leads as we shall see to the world of the Truth, to the vast and luminous bliss. The Maruts are even said to be (X. 78) as it were " Angirasas with their Sama hymns, they who take all forms," viçvarûpâ angiraso na sâmabhih.
* It is to be noted that Sayana here hazards the idea that Angiras means the moving rays (from art to move) or the Angirasa Rishis. If the great, scholar had been able to pursue with greater con-rage his ideas to their logical conclusion, he would have anticipated the modern theory in its most essential point*. Page-312 All this action and movement ate made possible by the coming of Usha, the Dawn. Usha also is described as angirastamâ and in addition as indratamâ. The power of Agni, the Angiras power, manifests itself also in the lightning of Indra and in the rays of the Dawn. Two passages may be cited which throw light on this aspect of the Angiras force. The first is VII. 79.3." The Dawns make their rays to shine out in the extremities of heaven, they labour like men who are set to a work. Thy rays set fleeing the darkness, they extend the Light as if the sun were extending its two arms. Usha has become (or, come into being) most full of Indra power (indratamâ), opulent in riches and has given birth to the inspirations of knowledge for our happy going (or for good and bliss,) the goddess, daughter of Heaven, most full of Angiras hood (angirastamâ), orders her riches for the doer of good works." The riches in which Usha is opulent cannot be anything else than the riches of the Light and the Power of the Truth ; full of indra power, the power of the divine illumined mind, she gives the inspirations of that mind (cravânsi) which lead us towards the Bliss, and by the flaming radiant Angiras-power in her she bestows and arranges her treasures for those who do aright the great work and thus move rightly on the path, itthâ nakshanto angirasvat.
The second passage is in VII.75.
"Dawn, heaven born, has opened up (the veil of darkness) by the Truth and she comes making manifest the vastness (mahimânam) ,she has drawn away the veil of harms and of darkness (druhas
tamah) and all that is unloved ; most full of Angiras-hood she manifests the paths (of the great journey.) Today, O Dawn, awake for us for the journey to the vast bliss (mahe suvitâya), extend (thy riches) for a vast state of enjoyment, confirm in us a wealth of varied brightness (chitram) full of inspired knowledge (
çravasyum) , in us mortals O human and divine. These are the lustres of the visible Dawn which have come varied-bright (chitrah) and immortal ; bringing to birth the divine workings they diffuse themselves, filling those of the mid-region," janayanto daivyani vratâni,
âpr’inanto antarikshâ vyasthuh. Again we have the Angiras power associated with the journey, the revelation of its Page-313 paths by the removal of the darkness and the bringing of the radiances of the Dawn; the Panis represent the harms (druhah, hurts or those who hurt) done to man by the evil powers, the darkness is their cave; the journey is that which leads to the divine happiness and the state of immortal bliss by means of our growing wealth of light and power and knowledge ; the immortal lustres of the Dawn which give birth in man to the heavenly workings and fill with them the workings of the mid-regions between earth and heaven, that is to say, the functioning of those vital planes governed by Vayu which link our physical and pure mental being, may well be the Angiras powers. For they too gain and maintain the truth by maintaining unhurt the divine workings (amardhanto daivyâ vratdni.) This is indeed their function, to bring the divine Dawn into mortal nature so that the visible goddess pouring out her riches may be there, at once divine and human, devi martyeshu mânushi, the goddess human in mortals. Page-314 IV What, after all, is this State idea, this idea of the organised community to which the individual has to be immolated? Theoretically it is the subordination of the individual to the good of all that is demanded; practically it is his subordination to a collective egoism, political, military, economic which seeks to satisfy certain collective aims and ambitions shaped and imposed on the great mass of the individuals by a smaller or larger number of ruling persons who are supposed in some way to represent the community. It is immaterial whether these belong to a governing class or emerge, as in modern States, from the mass partly by force of character, but much more by force of circumstances; nor does it make an essential difference that their aims and ideals are imposed more by the hypnotism of verbal persuasion than by overt and actual force. In either case there is no guarantee that this ruling class or ruling body represents the best mind of the nation or its noblest aims or its highest instincts. Nothing of the kind can be asserted of the modern politician in any part of the world: he does not represent the soul of a people or its aspirations; what he does usually represent is all the average pettiness, selfishness, egoism, self-deception that is about him and these he represents well enough as well as a great real of mental incompetence and moral conventionality, timidity and pretence. Great issues often come to him for decision, but he does not deal with them greatly; high words and noble ideas are on his lips, but they become rapidly the clap-trap of a party. The disease and falsehood of modern political life is patent in every country of the world and only the hypnotized acquiescence even of the intellectual classes in the great organised sham, the acquiescence that men yield to every thing that is habitual and makes the present atmosphere of their lives, cloaks and prolongs the malady. Yet it is by such minds that the good of all has to be decided, to such hands that it has to be entrusted, to such an agency calling itself the State that the individual is being more and more called upon to give up the government of his activities. As a matter of fact it is by no means the good of all that is thus secured, but a great deal of organised blundering and evil with a certain amount of good which makes for real progress, because Nature moves forward always in the midst of all stumblings and secures her aims in the end as often in spite of as by means of man’s imperfect mentality.
But even if the gravening instrument were better constituted and of a higher mental and moral character, even,
Page-315 if someway could be found to do what the ancient civilizations by their enforcement of certain high ‘ ideals and disciplines tried to do with their ruling classes, still the State would not be what the State idea pretends that it is. Theoretically, it is the collective wisdom and force of the community made available and organised for the general good; practically, it is so much of the intellect and power available in the community as the particular machinery of State organisation will allow to come to the surface, which uses that machinery but is also caught in it and hampered by it and hampered as well by the large amount of folly and selfish weakness that comes up in the same wave. Doubtless, this is the best that can be under the circumstances and Nature, as always, utilises it for the best; but things would be much worse if there were not a field left for a less trammelled indri visual effort doing what the State cannot do, deploying and using the sincerity, energy, idealism of the best individuals to attempt that which the State has not the wisdom or courage to attempt, getting that done which a collective conservatism and imbecility would either leave undone or actively suppress and oppose. It is this which is the really effective agent of collective progress. The State sometimes comes in to aid it and then, if its aid does not mean undue control, it serves a positively useful end; as often it stands in the way and then serves either as a brake upon progress or supplies the necessary amount of organised opposition and friction always needed to give greater energy and a more complete shape to the new thing which is in process of formation. But what we are now tending towards is such an increase of organised State-power and such a huge, irresistible and complex State activity as will either eliminate free individual effort altogether or leave it dwarfed and cowed into helplessness. The necessary corrective, to the defects, limitations and inefficiency of the State machine will disappear.
The organised State is neither the best mind of the nation nor it is even the sum of the communal energies. It leaves out of its organised action, suppresses or unduly depresses the working force and thinking mind of important minorities, often of those which represent that which is best in the present and that which is developing for the future. It is a collective egoism much inferior to the best of which the community is capable. What that egoism is in its relation to other collective egoisms, we know and its ugliness is now being forced upon the vision and the conscience of mankind. The individual has usually something at least of a soul, and the deficiencies of the soul he makes
Page-316 up for by a system of morality and an ethical sense, and the deficiencies of these again by the fear of social opnion or, failing that, a liar of the communal law which he has ordinarily either to obey or at least to circumvent; and even the difficulty of circumventing is a check on all except the most violent or the most skilful. But the State is an entity which with the greatest amount of power is the least hampered by internal- scruples or external checks. It has no soul or only a rudimentary one. It is a military, political and economic being, but only in a slight and undeveloped degree an intellectual and ethical; and unfortunately the chief use it makes of its undeveloped intellect is to blunt by fictions, catchwords and recently by State philosophies its ill-developed ethical conscience. Man within the community is now at least a half-civilized being; but his international existence is still primitive. Until recently the organised nation in its relations with other nations was only a huge beast of prey with appetites which sometimes slept when gorged or discouraged by events, but wire always its chief reason for existence. Self-protection and self-expansion by the devouring of others were its dharma. At the present day there is no essential improvement; there is only a greater difficulty in devouring. A "sacred egoism" is still tie ideal of nations and therefore there is neither any true and enlightened consciousness of human opinion to restrain the predatory State nor any effective international law. There is only the fear of defeat and the fear, recentl3′, of a disastrous economical disorganization; but experience alter experience has shown that these checks are really ineffective. In its inner life this huge State egoism was once little better than in its outer relations *. Brutal, capacious, cunning, oppressive, intolerant office action, free speech and opinion, even of freedom of conscience in religion, it preyed upon individuals and classes within as upon weaker nations outside. Only the necessity of keeping alive and rich and strong in a rough sort of way the community on which it lived, made its action partially and crudely beneficent. In modern times there has been much improvement in spite of deterioration in certain directions. The State now feels the necessity of justifying its existence by organising the general economic and animal wellbeing of the community and even of all individuals. It is beginning to see the necessity also of assuring the intellectual and, indirectly,
* I am speaking of (lie intermediate ago between ancient times and modem. In ancient times the Is are Page-317 the moral development of the whole community. This attempt of the State to grow into an intellectual and moral being is one of the most interesting phenomena of modern civilisation; even the necessity of intellectualizing and moralising it in its external relations is being enforced upon the conscience of mankind by the present European catastrophe. But the claim of the State to absorb all free individual activities, a claim which it increasingly makes as it grows more clearly conscious of its new ideals and its possibilities, is, to say the least of it, premature and, if satisfied, will surely end in a check to human progress, a comfortably organised stagnancy such as overtook the Greco Roman world after the establishment of the Roman Empire. The call of the State to the individual to immolate himself on its altar, to give up his free activities into an organised collective activity is therefore something quite different from the demand of our highest ideals. It amounts to the giving up of the present form of individual egoism into another, collective form of itself, larger, but not superior, rather in many ways inferior to the best individual egoism. The altruistic ideal, the discipline of self-sacrifice, the need of a growing solidarity with our fellows, of a growing collective soul in humanity remain; but the loss of self in the State i-j not the thing that these high ideals mean, nor is it by any means the way to their fulfilment. Man must learn not to suppress and mutilate, but to fulfil himself in the fulfilment of mankind even as he must learn not to mutilate or destroy, but to complete his ego by expanding it out of its limitations and losing it in something greater which it now tries to represent. But the deglutition of the free individual by a huge State machine is quite another consummation. The State is a convenience, and a rather clumsy convenience, for our common development; it ought never to be made an end in itself. The second claim of the State idea that this supremacy and universal activity of the organised State machine is the best means of human progress, is also an exaggeration and a fiction. Man lives by the community, he needs it to develop himself individually as well as collectively. But is it true that a State-governed action is the most capable of developing the individual perfectly as well as of serving the common ends of the community ? It is not true. What is true is that it is capable of providing the co-operative action of the individuals in the community with necessary conveniences, of removing from it disabilities and obstacles which would otherwise interfere with its working. Here the real utility Page-318 of the State ceases. The non-recognition of the possibilities of human co-operation was the weakness of English individualism; the turning of an utility for co-operative action into an excuse for rigid control by the State is the weakness of the Teutonic idea of collectivism. When the State attempts to take up the control of the co-operative ruction of the community, it condemns itself to create a monstrous machinery which will end by crushing out the freedom, initiative and various growth of the human being. The State is bound to act crudely and in the mass; it is incapable of that tree, harmonious and intelligently or instinctively varied action which is proper to organic growth. For the State is not an organism; it is a machinery, and it works like a machine, without tact, taste, delicacy, intuition. It tries to manufacture, where what humanity is here to do is to create. We see this in State-governed education. It is right and necessary that education should be provided for all and in providing for it the State is eminently useful; but when it controls the education, it turns it into a routine, a mechanical system in which individual initiative, individual growth, true development as opposed to a routine instruction become impossible. The State tends always to uniformity, because uniformity is easy to it, natural variation impossible to its essentially mechanical nature; but uniformity is death, not life. A national culture, a national religion, a national education may still be useful things provided they do nut interfere with the growth of human solidarity on the one side and individual freedom of thought and conscience and development on the other; they give form to .the communal soul and help it to add its quota to the sum of human advancement ; but a State education, a State religion, a State culture are unnatural violence’s. And the same rule holds good in different ways and to a different extent in other directions of our communal activity.
The business of the State, so long as it continues to be a necessary element in human life and growth, is to provide all possible facilities for co-operative action, to remove obstacles, to prevent all really harmful waste and friction,—a certain amount of waste arid friction is necessary and useful to all natural action,—and, removing avoidable injustice, to secure for every individual a just and equal chance of self-development and satisfaction to the extent of his powers and in the line of his nature. To this extent the aim in modern socialism is right and good. But all unnecessary interference with the freedom of man’s growth is to that extent harmful. Even co-operative action is injurious if, instead of seeking the good of all compatibly
Page-319 with the necessities of individual growth—and without individual growth there can be no real and permanent good of all,—it immolates the individual to’ a communal egoism and prevents so much free room and initiative as is necessary for the flowering of a more perfectly developed humanity. So long as Immunity is not full-grown, so long as it needs to grow and is capable of a greater perfectibility, there can be no static good of all; nor can there be any progressive good of an independent of the growth of the individuals composing the all. All collectivist ideals which seek unduly to subordinate the individual, really envisage a static condition, whether it be a present status or one it soon hopes to establish, after which all attempt at s riots change would be regarded as an offence of inpatient individualism against the peace, just routine and security of the happily established communal order. Always it is the individual who progresses and compels the rest to progress; the instinct of the collectivity is to stand still in its established order. Progress, growth, realisation of wider being gives his greatest sense of happiness to the individual ; status, secure ease to the collectivity. And so it must be so Ion,,; as the latter is more a physical and economic entity than a self-conscious collective soul.
It is therefore quite improbable that in the present conditions of the race a healthy unity of mankind can be brought * about
by State machinery, whether it be by a grouping of powerful and organised States enjoying carefully regulated and legalised relations with each other or by the substitution of a single world-State for the present half-chaotic, half-ordered comity of nations,—be the form of that world-State a single empire like the Roman or a federated unity. Such an external or administrative unity may be intended in the near future of mankind in order to accustom the race to the idea of a common life, to its habit, to its possibility, but it cannot be really healthy, durable or beneficial over all the line of human destiny unless something b? developed more profound, internal and real. Otherwise the experience of the ancient world will be repeated on a larger scale and in other circumstances and the new experiment will break down and give place to a new reconstructive age of confusion and anarchy. Perhaps this-experience also is necessary for mankind; yet it ought to be possible for us now to avoid it by subordinating mechanical means to our true development through a
moralized and even a spiritualised humanity. Page-320 |