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CHAPTER XXI THE ASCENT OF LIFE Let the path of the soul to the godhead lead up towards the original ocean by the working of the Mind. Rig- Veda The great Delight of things conquering the third law of status affirms and governs all by the soul of universality ; then in his winged and wide ascent he manifests the fourth status and adheres firmly to the ocean that is the fountain of these waters. id . These are three steps of his movement that Vishnu has made, uplifted out of the primal dust, but from beyond ho upholds their lawn. Scan the workings of Vishnu and see from whence he has manifested their laws. That is his highest pace and seat, for that the awakened soul here heaps the fuel and turns it into a blaze of Height, even Vishnu’s supreme status. id.
ARGUMENT.
[The development of Life starts from an original status of division, subconscious will and inert subjection to mechanical forces. This is the type of material existence.—The terms of the second status which we recognise as vitality,
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are death, hunger and conscious desire, sense of limited capacity and the struggle for survival and mastery. This is the basis of the Darwinian conception of Life, the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. But this struggle involves a third status whose preparation is marked by the emergence of the conscious principle of love.—The third status contradicts the others in appearance, but really fulfils them. Life begins with division and aggregation based on the refusal of the atom, the first principle of ego and individuality to accept death and fusion by dissolution. This gives a firm basis for the creation of aggregate forms to be occupied by vital and mental individualities. In the next stage we have the general principle of death and dissolution by which the individual form fuses itself in its elements into other lives. This principle of constant fusion and interchange is the law of Life and extends into vital and mental existence as well as the physical. The two principles of individual persistence and mutual fusion have to be harmonised and this can only be done by the emergence and full development of mind which alone is subtle enough to persist in individual consciousness beyond all fusion and dissolution of forms. Here the union and harmony of the persistent individual and the persistent aggregate life become possible.—Love is the power by which this union and harmony are worked out; for love exists by the persistence of the individual and his conscious acceptance of the necessity and desire of interchange and self-giving. Its growth means the emergence of Mind imposing its law on the material existence, for Mind does not need to devour in order to possess and grow; it increases by giving and confirms itself by fusion with others.— Subconscious will in the atom becomes hunger and conscious desire in the vital being. Love is the transfiguration of desire, a desire of possessing others but also of self-giving; at first subject to hunger and the desire of possession it reveals its own true law by an equal or greater joy in self-giving.— The inert subjection of the will in the atom to the not-self becomes in the vital being the sense of limited capacity and the struggle for possession and mastery. In the third status the not-self is recognised as a greater self and subjection to its law and need freely accepted; at the same time the individual by making the aggregate life and all it has to give his
Page-514 own, fulfils his impulse of possession. This is the Mind’s reconciliation of the two conflicting principles which we find at the root of all existence.—But the true and perfect reconciliation can only come by passing beyond Mind and founding all the operations of life on the essential freedom and unity of the spirit. ]
We have seen that as the divided mortal Mind, parent of .limitation and ignorance and the dualities, is only a dark figure of the
Supermind, of the self-luminous divine Consciousness in its first dealings with the apparent negation of itself from which our cosmos commences, so also Life as it emerges in our material universe, an energy of the dividing Mind subconscious, submerged, imprisoned in Matter, Life as the parent of death, hunger and incapacity is only a dark figure of the divine superconscient Force whose highest terms are immortality, satisfied delight and omnipotence. This relation fixes the nature of that great cosmic procession of which we are a part ; it determines the first, the middle and the ultimate terms of our evolution. The first terms of Life are division, a force-driven subconscient will and the impotence of an inert subjection to the mechanical energies that govern the interchange between the form and its environment. This is the type of the material universe as the physical scientist sees it and which he tries mistakenly to extend to the whole of existence ; it is the conscience of Matter and the accomplished type of material living. But there comes a new equipoise, there intervene a new set of terms which increase in proportion as Life delivers itself out of the form and begins to evolve towards conscious Mind ; for the middle terms of Life are death and mutual devouring, hunger and conscious desire, the sense of limited capacity and the struggle to increase, to conquer and to possess. These three terms are the basis of that status of evolution which the Darwinian theory first made plain to human knowledge.
Page-515 For the phenomenon of death involves in itself a struggle to survive since death is only the negative term in which Life hides from itself and tempts its own positive being to seek for immortality ; the phenomenon of hunger and desire involves a struggle towards a status of satisfaction and security, since desire is only the stimulus by which Life tempts it own positive being to rise out of that negation towards the full possession of the delight of existence ; the phenomenon of limited capacity involves a struggle towards mastery and possession the possession of the self and the conquest of the environment, since limitation and defect are only the negation by which Life tempts its own positive being to seek for the perfection of which it is eternally capable. The struggle for life is not only a struggle to survive, it is also a struggle for possession and perfection ; since only by taking hold of the environment whether more or less, whether by self-adaptation to it or by adapting it to oneself either by accepting and conciliating it or by conquering and changing it, can survival be secured; and equally is it true that only by a greater and greater perfection can a continual permanence, a lasting survival be assured. It is this truth that Darwinism sought to express in the formula of the survival of the fittest.
But as the scientific mind sought to extend the mechanical principle proper to the existence and conscience of Matter to Life, not seeing that a new principle has entered whose very reason of being is to subject to itself the mechanical, so Darwinism sought to extend too largely the aggressive principle of Life, the vital selfishness of the individual, the instinct and process of self-preservation, self-assertion and aggressive living. For these two first states of Life contain in themselves the seeds of a new principle and another state which must increase in proportion as Mind evolves out of matter through the vital formula into its own law; and still more must all things change when as Life evolved upwards towards Mind, so Mind evolves upward towards Supermind and Spirit. Precisely because the struggle for survival, the impulse towards permanence
Page-516 is contradicted by the law of death, the individual life is compelled to secure permanence rather for its species than for itself and this it cannot do without the co-operation of others ; and the principle of co-operation and mutual help, the desire of others, the desire of the wife, the child, the friend and helper, the associated group are the seeds of the principle of love. Let us grant that at first love may only be an extended selfishness and that this aspect of extended selfishness may persist and dominate, as it does still persist and dominate, in higher stages of the evolution: still as mind evolves and more and more finds itself, it comes by the experience of life and love and mutual help to perceive that the individual is only a minor term of being and exists only by the universal. Once this is discovered, as it is inevitably discovered by man the mental being, his destiny is determined; for he has reached the point at which Mind perceives that there is something beyond itself and from that moment his evolution towards that superior something, towards Supermind, towards superman hood is inevitably predetermined.
Therefore Life is predestined by its own nature to a third status, a third set of terms of its self-expression. If we examine this ascent of Life we shall see that the last terms of its evolution, the terms of that which we have called its third status, must necessarily be in appearance the very contradiction and opposite but in fact the very fulfilment and transfiguration of its first conditions. Life starts with the extreme divisions and rigid forms of Matter, and of this rigid division the atom, which is the basis of all material form, is the very type. The atom stands apart from all others even in its union with them, rejects death and dissolution under any ordinary force and is the physical type of the separate ego defining its existence against the principle of fusion in Nature. But unity is as strong a principle in Nature as division; it is indeed the master principle of which division is only a subordinate term and to the principle of unity every divided form must therefore subordinate itself in some fashion or other. There-
Page-517 fore, if Nature for her own ends, in order principally to have a firm basis for her combinations and a fixed seed of forms, allows the atom ordinarily to resist the process of fusion by dissolution, she compels it to sub serve the process of fusion by aggregation ; the atom is the first basis of aggregate unities. When Life reaches its second status, that which we recognise as vitality, the contrary’ phenomenon takes the lead and the physical basis of the vital ego is obliged to consent to dissolution. Its constituents are broken up so that the elements of one life can be used to enter into the elemental formation of other lives. The extent to which this law reigns in Nature has not yet been fully recognised and indeed cannot be until we have a science of mental life and spiritual existence as sound as our present science of physical life and the existence of Matter. Still we can see broadly that not only the elements of our physical body, but those of our subtler vital being, our life-energy, our desire-energy, our powers, strivings, passions enter both during our life and after our death into the life-existence of others. The science of Indian Yoga tells us that we have a vital frame as well as a physical and this too is after death dissolved and lends itself to the constitution of other vital bodies. A similar law governs the mutual relations of our mental life with the mental life of other beings. There is a constant dissolution and reconstruction effected by the shock of mind upon mind with a constant interchange and fusion of elements.
We have then two principles in Life, the will of the separate ego to survive in its distinctness and guard its identity and the compulsion imposed upon it by Nature to fuse itself with others. In the physical world at least she begins with the former impulse, since it is her first and really her most difficult problem to create and maintain any such thing as a survival of individuality in the unity of the infinite. In the atomic life therefore the individual persists as the basis and secures by his aggregation with others the more or less prolonged existence of aggregate
Page-518 forms which shall be the basis of vital and mental individualizations. But as soon as Nature has secured a sufficient firmness in this respect for the safe conduct of her ulterior operations, she reverses the process ; the individual form perishes and the aggregate life profits by the elements of the form that is thus dissolved. This, however, cannot be the last stage ; that can only be reached when the two principles arc harmonised, when the individual is able to persist in the consciousness of his individuality and yet fuse himself with others.
The terms of the problem presuppose the full emergence of Mind; for in vitality without conscious mind there can be no equation, but only a temporary unstable equilibrium ending in the death of the body, the dissolution of the individual and the dispersal of its elements into the universality. The nature of physical Life forbids the idea of an individual form possessing the same inherent power of persistence and therefore of continued individual existence as the atoms of which it is composed. Only a mental being can hope to persist by his power of linking on the past to the future in a stream of continuity which the breaking of the form may break in the physical memory but need not destroy in the mental being itself and which may even by an eventual development bridge over the gap of physical memory created by death and birth of the body. Even as it is, even in the present imperfect development of embodied mind the mental being is conscious in the mass of a past and a future extending beyond the life of the body ; he is conscious of an individual past, of individual lives that have created his and of which he is a development and modified reproduction and of future individual lives which his is creating out of itself ; he is conscious also of an aggregate life past and future through which his own continuity runs as one of its
ibis. This which is evident to physical Science in the terms of heredity, becomes otherwise evident to the developing soul in the terms of persistent personality. The mental being is therefore the
nodes of the persistent individual and the
Page-519 persistent aggregate life ; in him their union and harmony become possible. Love is the type, the power of this new relation and love therefore is the governing principle of the development into the third status of life. The conscious preservation of individuality with the consciously accepted necessity and desire of interchange, self-giving and fusion with other individuals is the principle of love ; for if either is abolished, the working of love ceases whatever may take its place. Fulfilment of love by entire self-immolation, even with an illusion of self-annihilation, is indeed an idea and an impulse in the mental being, but it points to a development beyond this third status of Life. This third status is a condition in which we rise progressively beyond the struggle for life by mutual devouring and the survival of the fittest by that struggle ; for there is more and more a survival by mutual help and a self perfection by mutual adaptation, interchange and fusion. The individuals and the aggregates who develop most the law of love, who harmonies most successfully survival and mutual self-giving, the aggregate increasing the individual and the individual the aggregate, as well as individual increasing individual and aggregate aggregate by mutual interchange, will be the fittest for survival in this tertiary status of the evolution.
This development is really the increasing predominance of Mind which progressively imposes its own law more and more upon the material existence. For Mind by its greater subtlety does not need to devour in order to assimilate, possess and grow ; rather the more it gives, the more it receives and grows; and the mote it fuses itself into others, the more it fuses others into itself and increases the scope of its being. Physical life exhausts itself by too much giving and ruins itself by too much devouring ; but though Mind in proportion as it leans on the law of Matter suffers the same limitation, yet on the other hand in proportion as it grows into its own law it tends to over-Come this limitation! and in proportion as it overcomes
Page-520 the material limitation giving and receiving become one. For it grows in its upward ascent towards the rule of conscious unity in differentiation which is the divine law of the manifest Sachchidananda. The second term of the original status of life is subconscious will which in the secondary status becomes hunger and conscious desire,—hunger and desire the first seed of conscious mind. The growth into the third status of life by the principle of love does not abolish the law of desire, but rather transforms and fulfils it. Love is in its nature the desire to give oneself to others and to receive others in exchange, it is a commerce between being and being. Physical life does not desire to give itself, it desires only to receive. It is true that it is compelled to give itself, for the life which only receives and does not give, must become barren, wither and perish if indeed such life in its entirety is possible at all here or in any world ; but it is compelled, not willing, it obeys the subconscious impulse of Nature rather than consciously shares in it. Even when love intervenes, the self-giving at first still preserves to a large extent the mechanical character of the subconscious will in the atom. Love itself at first obeys the law of hunger and enjoys the receiving and the exacting from others rather than the giving and surrendering to others which it admits chiefly as a necessary price for the thing that it desires. But here it has not yet attained to its true nature; its true*law is to establish an equal commerce in which the joy of giving is equal to the joy of receiving and tends in the end to become even greater; but that is when it is shooting, beyond itself to attain to the fulfilment of utter unity and has therefore to realise that which seemed to it not-self as an even greater and dearer self than its own individuality. Essentially, the law of love is the impulse to realise and fulfil oneself in others and by others, to be enriched by enriching, to possess and be possessed because without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly.
The inert incapacity of atomic existence
to possess
Page-521 itself, the subjection of the material individual to the not-self belongs to the first status of life. The consciousness of limitation and the struggle to possess, to master both self and the not-self is the type of the secondary status. Here too the development to the third status brings a transformation of the original terms into a fulfilment and a harmony which repeat the terms while seeming to contradict them. There comes about through love a recognition of the not-self as a greater self and therefore a consciously accepted submission to its law and need which fulfils the increasing impulse of aggregate life to absorb the individual ; and there is a possession again by the individual of the life of others as his own and of all that it has to give him as his own which fulfils the opposite impulse of individual possession. Nor can this relation between the individual and the world he lives in be complete or secure unless the same relation is established between individual and individual and between aggregate and aggregate. All the difficult effort of man towards the harmony; ation of freedom by which he possesses himself with love or fraternity in which he gives himself too there and (quality by which he creates a balance of the two opposites, is really an attempt inevitably predetermined in its lyres to solve the original problem of Nature, the very problem of Life itself by the resolution of the conflict between the two opposites which present themselves in the very foundations of Life in Matter. The resolution is attempted by the higher principle of Mind which alone can find the road to the harmony intended.
But if the data with which we have started are correct, the end of the road, the goal itself can only be reached by Mind passing beyond itself into that which is beyond Mind, since of That Mind itself is only an inferior term and an instrument first for descent into form and individuality and secondly for
rescinding into that reality which the for^n embodies and the individuality represents. Therefore the perfect solution of the problem of Life is not likely to be
realist* d by the interchange and accommodations of
love
Page-522 alone or through the law of the mind and the heart alone, It must come by a fourth status of life in which the eternal unity of the many is realised through the spirit and the conscious foundation of all the operations of late are laid no longer in the divisions of body, nor in the passions and hungers of the vitality, nor in the groupings and the harmonies of the mind, nor in a combination of all these, but in the unity and freedom of the Spirit. Page-523 CHAPTER XVII renunciation. If discipline of nil the members of our being by purification and concentration may be described as the right arm of the body of Yoga, renunciation is its left arm. By discipline or positive practice we confirm in ourselves the truth of things, truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of love, truth of works and replace with these the falsehoods that have overgrown and pervert B-d our nature ; by renunciation we seize upon the falsehoods, pluck up their roots and cast them out of our way so that they shall no longer hamper by their persistence, their resistance or their recurrence the happy and harmonious growth of our divine living. Renunciation is an indispensable instrument of our perfection.
How far shall this renunciation go ? what shall be its nature ? and in what way shall it be applied ? There is an established tradition long
favoured by great religious teachings and by men of
profound spiritual experience that renunciation must not only be complete as a discipline but definite and final as an end and that it shall fall nothing short of the renunciation of life itself and of our mundane existence. Many causes have contributed to the growth of this pure, lofty and august
tradition. There is first the pro-founder cause of the radical opposition between the sullied and imperfect nature of life in the world as it now is in
Page-524 the present stage of our human evolution and the nature of spiritual living; and this opposition has led to the entire rejection of world-existence as a lie, an insanity of the soul, a troubled and unhappy dream or at best a flawed, specious and almost worthless good or to its characterisation as a kingdom of the world, the flesh and the devil, and therefore for the divinely led and divinely attracted, soul only a place of ordeal and preparation or at best a play of the All-existence, a game of cross-purposes which He tires of and abandons. A second cause is the soul’s hunger for personal salvation, for" escape into some farther or farthest height of unalloyed bliss and peace untroubled by the labour and the struggle ; or else it is its unwillingness to return from the ecstasy of the divine embrace into the lower field of work and service. But there are other slighter causes incidental to spiritual experience,—strong feeling and practical proof of the great difficulty, which we willingly exaggerate into an impossibility, of combining the life of works and action with spiritual peace and the life of realisation; or else the joy which the mind comes to take in the mere act and state of renunciation,—as it comes indeed to take joy in any thing that it has attained or to which it has inured itself,—and the sense of peace and deliverance which is gained by indifference to the world and to the objects of man’s desire. Lowest causes of all are the weakness that shrinks from the struggle, the disgust and disappointment of the soul baffled by the great cosmic labour, the selfishness that cares not what becomes of those left behind us so long as we personally can be free from the monstrous ever-circling wheel of death and rebirth, the indifference to the cry that rises up from a labouring humanity.
For the sadhaka of an integral Yoga none of these reasons are valid. With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealings; a divine strength and courage and a divine
composite and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be, they are that very nature of the Divine which he would
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take upon himself as a robe of spiritual light and beauty. The revolving of the great wheel bring to him no sense of terror or giddiness; he rises above it in his soul and knows from above their divine law and their divine purpose. The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. He has learned that the joy, the peace and the deliverance are an imperfect crown and no real possession if they do not form a state secure in itself, inalienable to the soul, not dependent on aloofness and inaction but firm in the storm and the race and the battle, unsullied whether by the joy of the world or by its suffering. The ecstasy of the divine embrace will not abandon him because he
obeys the impulse of divine love for God in humanity ; or if it seems to draw back from him for a while, he knows by experience that it is to try and test him still farther so that some imperfection in his own way of meeting it may fall away from him. Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others,—though to God nothing is impossible; for a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. If there is an opposition between
the? spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. If life is an insanity, then there are so many million souls to whom there must be brought the light of divine reason; if a dream, yet is it real within itself to so many dreamers who must be brought either to dream nobler dreams or to awaken; or if a lie, then the truth has to be given to the deluded. Nor, if it be said that only by the luminous example of escape from the world can we help the world, shall we accept that dogma, since the contrary example of great
Avatars is there to show that not only by rejecting the life of the
Page-526 world as it is can we help, but also and more by accepting and uplifting it. And if it is a play of the All-Existence, then we may well consent to play out our part in it with grace and courage, well take delight in the game along with our divine Playmate. But, most of all, the view we have taken of the world forbids the renunciation of world-r existence so long as we can be anything to God and man in their working-out of its purposes. We regard the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the soul, but as a manifestation of the Divine, although as j-et a partial because a progressive and evolutionary manifestation. Therefore for us renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. We seek to realise our unity with God, but for us that realisation involves a complete and absolute recognition of our unity with man and we cannot cut the two asunder. To use Christian language, the Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood; or to use an Indian form of thought, the divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolizes the supreme mystery of existence.
Therefore renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since
our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than
and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all
that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. We shall have no attachment to
our life in the world; if that attachment exists, we must renounce it and
renounce utterly; but neither shall we have any attachment to the escape from the world, to salvation, to the great self-annihilation;
Page-527 if that attachment exists, that also we must renounce and renounce it utterly. Again our renunciation must obviously be an inward renunciation; especially and above all, a renunciation of attachment and the craving of desire in the senses and the heart, of self-will in the thought and action and of egoism in the centre of the consciousness. For these things are the three knots by which we are bound to our lower nature and if we can renounce these utterly, there is nothing else that can bind us. Therefore attachment and desire must be utterly cast out; there is nothing in the world to which we must be attached, not wealth nor poverty, nor joy nor suffering, nor life nor death, nor greatness nor littleness, nor vice nor virtue, nor friend, nor wife, nor children, nor country, nor our work and mission, nor heaven nor earth, nor all that is within them or beyond them. And this does not mean that there is nothing at all that we shall love, nothing in which we shall take delight; for attachment is egoism in love and not love itself, desire is limitation and insecurity in a hunger for pleasure and satisfaction and not the seeking after the divine delight in things. A universal love we must have, calm and yet eternally intense beyond the brief vehemence of the most violent passion; a delight in things rooted in a delight in God that does not adhere to their forms but to that which they conceal in themselves and that embraces the universe without being caught in its meshes.* Self-will in thought and action has, we have already seen, to be quite renounced if we would be perfect in the way of divine works; it has equally to be renounced if we are to be perfect in divine knowledge. This self-will means an egoism in the mind which attaches itself to its preferences, its habits, its past or present formations of thought and view and will because it regards them as itself or its own, weaves around them the delicate threads of "I-ness"
*Nirlipta The divine Ananda in things is nishkama and nirlipta, free from Page-528 and my-ness ‘ and lives in them like a spider in its web. It hates to be disturbed, as a spider hates attack on its web, and feels foreign and unhappy if transplanted to fresh view-points and formations as a spider feels foreign in another web than nibs own. This attachment must be entirely excised from the mind. Not only must we give up the ordinary attitude to the world and life to which the un-awakened mind clings as its natural element; but we must not remain bound in any mental construction of our own or in any intellectual thought-system or arrangement of religious dogmas or logical conclusions; we must not only cut asunder the snare of the mind and the senses, but flee also beyond the snare of the thinker, the snare of the theologian and the church-builder, the meshes of the Word and the bondage of the Idea. All these are within us waiting to wall in the spirit with forms; but we must always go beyond, always renounce the lesser for the greater, the finite for the Infinite; we must be prepared to proceed from illumination to illumination, from experience to experience, from soul-state to soul-state s 3 as to reach the utmost transcendence of the Divine and its utmost universality. Nor must we attach ourselves even to the truths we hold most securely, for they are but forms and expressions of the Ineffable who refuses to limit himself to any form or expression; always we must keep ourselves open to the higher Word from above that does not confine itself to its own sense and the light of the Thought that carries in it its own opposites.
But the centre of all resistance is egoism and this we must pursue into every covert and disguise and drag it out and slay it; for its disguises are endless and it will cling to every shred of possible self-concealment. Altruism and indifference are often its most effective disguises; so draped, it will riot boldly in the very face of the divine spies who are
missioned to hunt it out. Here the formula of the supreme knowledge comes to our help;" we have nothing to do in our essential standpoint with these distinctions, for there is no I nor thou, but only one divine Self equal in all
Page-529 embodiments, equal in the individual and the group, and to realise that, to express that, to serve that, to fulfil that is all that matters. Self-satisfaction and altruism, enjoyment and difference are not the essential thing. If the realisation, fulfilment, service of the one Self demands from us an action that seems to others self-service or self-assertion to the egoistic sense or seems egoistic enjoyment and self-indulgence, that action we must do; we must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. The influence of the environment works often with great subtlety; we prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within; we are impelled to drape ourselves in the vow of poverty, or in the garb of service, or in outward proofs of indifference and renunciation and a spotless sainthood because that is what tradition and opinion demand of us and so we can make best an impression on our environment. But all this is vanity and delusion. We may be called upon to assume these things, for that may be the uniform of our service; but equally it may not. The eye of man outside matters nothing ; the eye within is all.
We see in the teaching of the Gita how subtle a thing is the freedom from egoism which is demanded. Arjuna is driven to fight by the egoism of strength, the egoism of the Kshatriya; he is turned from the battle by the contrary egoism of weakness, the shrinking, the spirit of disgust, the false pity that overcomes the mind, the nervous being and the senses,—not that divine compassion which strengthens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. But this weakness comes garbed as renunciation, as virtue: " Better the life of the
beggar than to taste these blood-stained enjoyments; I desire not the rule of all the earth, no, nor the kingdom of the gods." How foolish of the Teacher, we might say, not to confirm this mood, to lose this sublime chance of adding one more great soul to the army of Sannyasins, one more shining example before the world of a holy renunciation. But the Guide sees otherwise, the Guide who
Page-530 is not to be deceived by words; "This is weakness and delusion and egoism that speak in thee. Behold the Self, open thy eyes to the knowledge, purify thy soul of egoism." And afterwards ? " Fight, conquer, enjoy a wealthy kingdom." Or to take another example from ancient Indian tradition. It was egoism, it would seem, that drove Rama, the Avatara, to raise an army and destroy a nation in order to recover his wife from the King of Lunka. But would it have been a lesser egoism to diaper hirers If in indifference and misusing the formal terms of the knowledge to say, " I have no wife, no enemy, no desire; these are illusions of the senses; let me cultivate the Brahman-knowledge and let Ravenna do what he will with the daughter of Janaka". The criterion is within, as the Gita insists. It is to have the soul free from craving and attachment, but free from the attachment to inaction as well as from the egoistic impulse to action, free from attachment to the forms of virtue as well as from the attraction to sin. It is to be rid of " I-ness " and my-ness " so as to live in the one Self and act in the one Self ; to reject the egoism of refusing to work through the individual centre of the universal Being as well as the egoism of serving the individual mind and life and body to the exclusion of others. To live in the Self is not to dwell for one self’ alone in the Infinite immersed and oblivious of all things in that ocean of impersonal self-delight; but it is to live as the Self and in the Self equal in this embodiment and all embodiments and beyond all embodiments. This is the integral knowledge.
It will be seen that the scope we give to
the idea of renunciation is different from the meaning currently attached to it.
Currently its meaning is self-denial, inhibition of pleasure, rejection of the
objects of pleasure. Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man,
because his heart is ignorantly attached; inhibition of pleasure is necessary
because his sense is caught and clogged in the mud-honey of sensuous satisfactions; rejection of the objects of pleasure is imposed because the mind fixes on
the object and will not leave it to go beyond it and
Page-531 within itself. If the mind of man were not thus ignorant, attached, bound even in its restless inconstancy, deluded by the forms of things, renunciation would not have been needed; the soul could have travelled on the path of delight, from the lesser to the greater, from joy to diviner joy. At present that is not practicable. It must give up from within everything to which it is attached in order that it may gain that which they are in their reality. The external renunciation is not the essential, but even that is necessary for a time, indispensable in many things and sometimes useful in all ; we may even say that a complete external renunciation is a stage through which the soul must pass at some period of its progress,—though always it should be without those self-willed violence’s and fierce self torturing which are an offence to the Divine seated within us. But in the end this renunciation or self-denial is always an instrument and the period for its use passes. The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us because what the soul enjoys is no longer the object as an object but the Divine which it expresses ; the inhibition of pleasure is no longer needed when the soul no longer seeks pleasure but possesses the delight of the Divine in all things equally without the need of a personal or physical possession of the thing itself; self-denial loses its field when the soul no longer claims anything, but obeys consciously the- will of the one Self in ail beings. It is then that we are freed from the Law and released into the liberty of the Spirit.
We must be prepared to leave behind on the path not only that which we
stigmatize as evil, but that which seems to us to be good, yet is not the one good. There are things which were beneficial, helpful, which seemed perhaps at can time the one thing desirable, and yet once their work is done, once they are attained, they become obstacles and even hostile forces when we are called to advance beyond them. There are desirable states of the soul which it is dangerous to rest in after they have been mastered, because then we do not march on to the wider
Page-532 kingdoms of God beyond. Even divine realisation must not be clung to, if they are not the divine realisation in its utter essentiality and completeness. We must rest at nothing less than the All, nothing short of the utter transcendence. And if we can thus be free in the spirit, we shall find out all the wonder of God’s workings ; we shall find that in inwardly renouncing everything we have lost nothing. " By all this abandoned thou shalt come to enjoy the All." For everything is kept for us and restored to us but with a wonderful change and transfiguration into the All-Good and the All-Beautiful, the All-Light and the All-Delight of Him who is for ever pure and infinite and the mystery and the miracle that ceases not through the ages, Page-533 COMMENTARY XII Before we can proceed to the problem how, being what we are and the Brahman being what it is, we can effect the transition from the status of mind, life and senses proper to man over to the status proper to the supreme Consciousness which is master of mind, life and senses, another and prior question arises. The Upanishad does not state it explicitly, but implies and answers it with the strongest emphasis on the solution and the subtlest variety in its repetition of the apparent paradox that is presented.
The Master-Consciousness of the Brahman is that for which we have to abandon this lesser status of the mere creature subject to the movement of Nature in the cosmos; but after all this Master-Consciousness, however high and great a thing it may be, has a relation to the universe and the cosmic movement ; it cannot be the utter Absolute, Brahman superior to all relativities. This Conscious-Being who originates, supports and governs our mind, life, senses is the Lord ; but where there is no universe of relativities! there can be no Lord, for there is no movement to transcend and govern. Is not then this Lord, as one might say in a later language, not so much the creator of Maya as himself a creation of Maya? Do not both Lord and cosmos
Page-534 disappear when we go beyond all cosmos ? And is it not beyond all cosmos that the only true reality exists ? Is it not this only true reality and not the Mind of our mind, the Sense of our sense, the Life of our life, the Word behind our speech, which we have to know and possess ? As we must go behind all effects to the Cause, must we not equally go beyond the Cause to that in which neither cause nor effects exist ? Is not even the immortality spoken of in the Veda and Upanishads a petty thing to be over passed and abandoned ? and should we not reach towards the utter Ineffable where mortality and immortality cease to have any meaning ? The Upanishad does not put to itself the question in this form and language which only became possible when Nihilistic Buddhism and Vedantic Illusionism had passed over the face of our thought and modified philosophical speech and concepts. But it knows of the ineffable Absolute which is the utter reality and absoluteness of the Lord even as the Lord is the absolute of all that is in the cosmos. Of That it proceeds to speak in the only way in which it can be spoken of by the human mind. Its answer to the problem is that That is precisely the Unknowable * of which no relations can be affirmed t and about which therefore our intellect must for ever be silent. The injunction to know the utterly Unknowable would be without any sense or practical meaning. Not that That is a Nail, a pure Negative, but it cannot either be described by any of the positives of which our mind, speech or perception is capable, nor even can it be indicated by any of them. It is only a little that we know ; it is only in the terms of the little that we can put the forms of our knowledge. Even when we go beyond to the real form of the Brahman which is not this universe, we can only indicate, we cannot really describe. If then we think we have known it perfectly, we betray our ignorance ; we
* ‘ Ajneyam atarkyam. †Avyavahâryam. Page-535 show that we know very little indeed, not even the little that we can put into the forms of knowledge. For the universe is the little, the divided, the parcelling out of existence and consciousness in which we know and express things by fragments, and we can never really cage in our intellectual and verbal fictions that infinite totality. Yet it is through the principles manifested in the universe that we have to arrive at That, through the life, the mind and that knowledge which grasps’ at the fundamental Ideas that are like doors concealing behind them the Brahman and yet seeming to reveal Him. Much less, then, if we can only thus know the Master-Consciousness which is the form of the Brahman, can we pretend to know its utter ineffable reality which is beyond all knowledge. But if this were all, there would be no hope for the soul and a resigned Agnosticism would be the last word of wisdom. The truth is that though thus beyond our mentality and our knowledge, the Supreme does give Himself to both knowledge and mentality in the way proper to each and by following that way we can arrive at Him, but only on condition that we do not take our mental sing by the .mind and our knowing by the higher thought for the full knowledge and rest in that with a satisfied possession.
The way is to use our mind rightly for such knowledge as is open to its highest, purified capacity. We have to know the form of the Brahman, the Master-Consciousness of the Lord through and yet beyond the universe in which we live. But first we must put aside what is mere form and phenomenon in the universe; for that has nothing to do with the form of the Brahman, the body of the Self, since it is not His form, but only His most external mask. Our
fist step therefore must be to get behind the forms of Matter, the forms of Life, the forms of Mind and go back to that which is essential, most real, nearest to actual entity. And when we have gone on thus eliminating, thus analysing all forms into the fundamental entities of the cosmos, we shall find that these fundamental entities are really
Page-536 only two, ourselves and the gods. The gods of the Upanishad have been supposed to be a figure for the senses, but although they act in the senses, they are yet much more than that. They represent the divine power in its great and fundamental cosmic functionings whether in man or in mind and life and matter in general; they are not the functionings themselves but something of the Divine which is essential to their operation and its immediate possessor and cause. They are, as we see from other Upanishads, positive self-representations of the Brahman leading to good, joy, light, love, immortality as against all that is a dark negation of these things. And it is necessarily in the mind, life, senses, and speech of man that the battle reaches its height and approaches to its full-meaning. The gods seek to lead these to good and light; the Titans, sons of darkness, seek to pierce them with ignorance and evil.* Behind the gods is the Master-Consciousness of which they are the positive cosmic self-representations. The other entity which represents the Brahman in the cosmos is the self of the living and thinking creature, man. This self also is not an external mask; it is not form of the mind or form of the life or form of the body. It is something that supports these and makes them possible, something that can say positively like the gods, ” I am " and not only " I seem ". We have then to Scrutinize these two entities and see what they are in relation to each other and to the Brahman; or, as the Upanishad puts it, " That of it which is thou, that of it which is in the gods, this is what thy mind has to resolve." Well, but what then of the Brahman is myself? and what of the Brahman is in the Gods? The answer is evident. I am a representation in the cosmos, but for all purposes of the cosmos a real representation of the Self; and the gods are a representation in the cosmos,—a real representation since without them
* Chhandogya and Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Page-537 the cosmos could not continue,—of the Lord. The one supreme Self is the essentiality of all these individual existences; the one supreme Lord is the Godhead in the gods. The Self and the Lord are one Brahman, whom we can realise through our self and realise through that which is essential in the cosmic movement. Just as our self constitutes our mind, body, life, senses, so that Self constitutes all mind, body, life, senses; it is the origin and essentiality of things. Just as the gods govern, supported by our self, the cosmos of our individual being, the action of our mind, senses and life, so the Lord governs as Mind of the mind, Sense of the sense. Life of the life, supporting His active divinity by His silent essential self-being, all cosmos and all form of being. As we have gone behind the forms of the cosmos to that which is essential in their being and movement and found our self and the gods, so we have to go behind our self and the gods and find the one supreme Self and the one supreme Godhead. Then we can say, " I think that I know." But at once we have to qualify our assertion. I think not that I know perfectly, for that is impossible in the terms of our instruments of knowledge. I do not think for a moment that I can know the Unknowable, that that can be put into the forms through which I must arrive at the Self and Lord; but at the same time I am no longer in ignorance, I know the Brahman in the only way in which I can know Him, in His self-revelation to me in terms not beyond the grasp of my psychology, manifest as the Self and the Lord. The mystery of existence is revealed in a way that utterly satisfies my being because it enables me first to comprehend it through these figures as far as it can be comprehended by me and, secondly, to enter into, to live in, to be one in law and being with and even to merge myself in the Brahman.
If we fancy that we have grasped, the Brahman by the mind and in that delusion fix down our knowledge of Him to the terms our mentality has found, then our knowledge is no knowledge; it is the little knowledge that turns
Page-538 to falsehood. So too those who try to fix Him into our notion of the fundamental ideas in which we discern Him by the thought that rises above ordinary mental perception, have no real discernment of the Brahman, since they take certain idea-symbols for the Reality. On the other hand if we recognise that our mental perceptions are simply so many clues by which we can rise beyond mental perception and if we use these idea-symbols and the arrangement of them which our thought makes in order to go beyond the symbol to that reality, then we have rightly used mind and the higher discernment for their supreme purpose. Mind and the higher discernment are satisfied of the Brahman even in being exceeded by Him. The mind can only reflect in a sort of supreme understanding and awakening the form, the image of the supreme as He shows Himself to our mentality. Through this reflection we find, we know ;the purpose of knowledge is accomplished, for we find immortality, we enter into the law, the being, the beatitude of the Brahman-consciousness. By sell-realisation of Brahman as our self we find the force, the divine energy which lifts us beyond the limitation, weakness, darkness, sorrow, all-pervading death of our mortal existence ; by the knowledge of the one Brahman in all beings and in all the various movement of the cosmos we attain beyond these things to the infinity, the omnipotent being, the omniscient light, the pure beatitude of that divine existence.
This great achievement must be done here in this mortal world, in this limited body ; for if we do it, we arrive at our true existence and are no longer bound down to our phenomenal becoming ; but if here we find it not, great is the loss and perdition ; for we remain continually immersed in the phenomenal life of the mind and body and do not rise above it into the true supramental existence. Nor, if we miss it here, will death give it to us by our passage to another and less difficult world. Only those who use their awakened and enlightened thought to distinguish and discover that One and Immortal in all existences, Page-539 the all-originating self, the all-inhabiting Lord, can make the real passage which transcends life and death, can pass out of this mortal status, can press beyond and rise upward into a world-transcending immortality.
This, then, and no other is the means to be
seized on and be goal to be reached. * There is no other path for the great
journey." The Self and the Lord are that indeterminable, unknowable, ineffable
Para Brahman and when we seek rather that which is indeterminable and unknowable
to us, it is still the Self and the Lord always that we find, though by an
attempt which is not the straight and possible road intended for the embodied
soul seeking here to accomplish its true existence.* They are the
self-manifested Reality which so places itself before man as the object of his
highest aspiration and the fulfilment of all his activities.
Page-540 THE TWELFTH HYMN TO AGNI A HYMN OF MAN’S ASPIRATION TO THE TRUTH [The Rishi invokes this flame of the Divine Force, this vast Lord of the superconscient Truth, this Truth Conscious One, to accept thought and word into himself, become truth-conscient in man and cleave out the many streams of the Truth. Not by mere force of effort nor under the law of the duality can the Truth be attained, but by the Truth itself. But there are not only powers of this Force that battle with the falsehood and guard and conquer, there are others also who have helped so far in the march, but who would keep to the foundation of the falsehood because they cling to the present self-expression of man and refuse to advance beyond it; these in their self-will speak the word of crookedness to the Truth-seeker. By the sacrifice and by submission in the sacrifice man, the ever-advancing pilgrim, brings near to him his wide dwelling-place beyond, the seat and home of the Truth. ]
To Will, master of sacrifice, the Mighty One, the vast lord and diffuser of the Truth I bring forward my thought as an offering and it is as the clarified butter of the sacrifice purified in the mouth
Page-541 of the flame ; my word 1 I bring forward that goes to meet its lord. 2. 2. O conscious seer of the Truth, the Truth alone perceive in my consciousness ; cleave out 3 many flowing streams of the Truth. Not by force, nor by the duality can I achieve the journey nor attain to the Truth of the shining Worker, the fertilising Lord. 3. By what thought in me, O Will, shalt thou seeking the Truth by the Truth become the impeller to knowledge of a new word ? The godhead who guards the times and seasons 5 of the Truth, knows all in me, but him I know not, the lord of that all-possessing felicity. 4. Who are they, O Will, that are thy binders of the Enemy ? who are the shining ones, the guardians, the seekers after possession and conquest ? Who, O Will, protect the foundations of the falsehood ? who are the keepers of a present 6 word ? 6. These are comrades of thine, O Will, who
1. To turn thought and word into form and expression of the superconscient Truth which is hidden beyond the division and duality of the mental and physical existence was the central idea of the Vedic discipline and the foundation of its mysteries. 2. 6. Or, false word. In either case it means the old falsehood as opposed to the "new word" of the Truth of which Agni has to create the knowledge. Page-542 have gone astray from thee ; benignant were they, they have become malignant. These do violence to themselves by their words speaking crooked things to the seeker after straightness. 6. But he, O Will, who desires with submission thy sacrifice, guards the truth of the shining Worker, the Fertiliser. 7 To him may there come that wide habitation 8 in which all is perfected, even that which is left 9 for man the pilgrim to accomplish in his forward journeying.
7. " The shining Bull or Male." but the latter word means also the former, fertiliser or diffuser of abundance and sometimes the strong and abundant, the former seems to bear also the sense of active or moving. 8. The plane of the superconscient Truth or world of Swar beyond mental Heaven and physical earth in which all is accomplished that here we strive after; it is described as the world habitation and the wide and fear-free pasture of the shining cows. 9. This world is sometimes described as what is left or the excess; it is the additional field of being beyond this triplicate of mind, life and body which constitute our normal stale of existence. Page-543 A HYMN OF AFFIRMATION OF THE DIVINE WILL [The Rishi declares the power of the Word affirming the Divine Will who attains to the touch of heaven for man. That Will affirmed in us by the word becomes the priest of our sacrifice and the winner in us of the divine riches and of the energy that conquers. This godhead contains all the others in its being as the nave of a wheel contains the spokes and therefore brings us all the varied wealth of the spiritual felicity.] 1. Chanting the word that illumines we call to thee, chanting the word that illumines we kindle thee, O Will, chanting the word that illumines for our increase. 2. To-day we seize with the mind the affirmation all-effective, the hymn of the Will, of the godhead that seeks for us our divine substance, 8. May the Will accept with love our words, he who is here as the priest in men ; may he offer the sacrifice to the divine people. 4. Very wide and vast art thou, O Will, the priest of our offering desirable and beloved ; by thee men extend wide the form of their sacrifice. 5. Thee, once rightly affirmed, the illumined increase, O Will, so that thou conquers utterly the plenitude ; therefore do thou lavish on us a complete hero-energy.
1, The divine riches which are the object of the sacrifice. Page-544 6. O Will, as the nave of a wheel contains the spokes, so thou contains in thy being all the gods; thou shalt bring to us a varied joy of those riches. A HYMN OF THE FINDER OF LIGHT AND TRUTH [The Rishi declares Agni as the Priest of the sacrifice, the slayer of the powers of Darkness, the finder of the world of the Sun of Truth, of his radiant herds and of his luminous waters; he is the seer in us who is increased by the clarities of right thought and speech. ] 1. Awaken the Flame by the word that affirms him, kindle high the Immortal ; let him place our offerings in the godheads. 2. Him in their pilgrim sacrifices mortal men desire and adore, the divine, the immortal, who is strongest for sacrifice in the human creature. 3. Him, the godhead, man’s continuous generations adore with the ladle l dripping with the clarities ; the Will they adore that he may bear their offering. 4. Born, the Flame shines out slaying the Destroyers, 2 yea he smites the Darkness with the Light
1. This ladle is the constantly lifted movement of man’s aspiration towards the Truth and the Godhead. 2. The Titans, dividers of our unity and completeness of being and sons of the Mother of Division, who are powers of the nether cave and the darkness. Page-545 and he finds the shining Herds 3 5. The Will serve and seek, the object of our adoration, the Seer with his surface of the clarities ; may he come, may he hearken to my call. 6. The Will men increase by the offering of their clarities, they increase the universal doer of their works by their hymns of affirmation which place a-right the thought, which find the revealing word.
3. The Herds and the Waters are the two principal images of the Veda; the former are the trooping Rays of the divine Sun, herds of the luminous Consciousness; the waters are the out pouting of the luminous movement and impulse of the divine or supramental existence. 4?. Swar, the world of divine solar light to which we have to ascend and which is revealed by the release of the luminous herds from the nether cave and the consequent uprising of the divine Sun. Page-546 A HYMN OF THE DIVINE UPHOLDER AND CONQUEROR [The Rishi hymns the Divine Will as the Seer and the Mighty One, the upholder of the Bliss and the Truth, by which men attain to the supreme-seated godheads. He breaks leonine through an army of opposes, sees and confirms for man all the possible births and manifestations of the soul, forms in him the secret superconscient plane and by knowledge delivers him into that vast beatitude. ] 1. To the Seer and Ordained who is the object of knowledge I bring the offering of the Word, to the glorious and victorious, to the pristine and supreme. He is the Mighty One accomplished in joy who goes forward to the clarities, the strength that is holder of the bliss and holder of the substance. 2. By the Truth they uphold the Truth that holds all, in the power of the Sacrifice, in the supreme ether, even they who by the godheads born in them travel to the godheads unborn, to the Powers who are seated for ever in the Law that upholds the heavens. 3. Putting evil away from them they create wide-extended forms and embodiments of the soul that are a vast birth and indestructible manifestation for this first and supreme godhead ; new-born he shall break through armies that join like converging floods ; they stand encompassing him like hunters who ending an angry lion.
4. Thou art even as a mother when in thy wideness thou bearest in thy arms birth after birth,
Page-547 to the firm foundation and to the vision. When thou holdest in thee and enjoys manifestation after manifestation, thou moves abroad with thy self in many different forms.
5. May our plenitude possess the furthest limit of thy might, O godhead, where in its wideness and all-yielding abundance it upholds the bliss. Thou art he that forms and upholds in himself that secret abode to which we move; by thy awakening of him into knowledge thou hast rescued the enjoyer of things for a vast beatitude.
Page-548 THE CONQUEST OF TRUTH SILENCE 1 And, first, ordinarily be silent. 2 For the ignorant there is no better rule than silence and if he knew its advantage he would not be ignorrant. 3 The seeker ought to avoid any preference of himself to another; he should efface pride and arrogance from his heart, arm himself with patience and endurance and follow the law of silence so that he may keep himself from vain words. 4 My brothers, when you accost each other, two things alone are fitting, instructive words or a grave silence. 2 —It is far more useful to commune with oneself than 6 with others.—The word echoes more profoundly in thyself than from the mouth of others. If thou canst listen for it in silence, thou shalt hear it at ‘once.— 7 Before the soul can understand and remember it must be united to Him who speaks by His silence, as to the mind of the potter the form on which the clay is modelled. 8 The eyes of our mentality are incapable as yet of contemplating the incorruptible and incomprehensible
J) Epithets el-icon._ 4) Buddhist Scripture. — 3) Demophilus. — 0)
Angelius Silosius I. 299.— 7) Book of Golden Precepts.— 8)
Hermes : The Key Page-549 Beauty…Thou shalt see it when thou hast nothing to say concerning it; for knowledge, for contemplation are silence, are the sinking to rest of all sensation. 9 So long as a man cries aloud, O Allah, O Allah, be sure he has not yet found his Allah; for whoever has 10 found Him becomes calm and full of peace.—It is God within who hushes the tongue of prayer by a sublimer thought. A voice speaks to us in the depths of the heart, " I am, my child, and by me are and subsist thy body and the luminous world. I am, all things are in me and all that is mine is thine." 11 When one considers the clamorous emptiness of the world, words of so little sense, actions of so little merit, one loves to reflect on the great reign of silence. The noble silent men scattered here and there each in his province silently thinking and silently acting of whom no morning paper makes mention, these 12 are the salt of the earth.—Real action is done in moments of silence. 13 The ancients might well make of silence a god, for it is the element of all divinity’, of all infinity, of all transcendent greatness, at once the source and the 14 ocean in which all begins and ends.—Silence, the great empire of silence, loftier than the stars, profounder than the kingdom of Death ! It alone
( Ramakrishna—-12) Emerson. – 13) Carlyle. — 11) id.— Page-550 CHAPTER XVII THE HOUND OF HEAVEN.
There yet remain two constant features of the Angiras legend with regard to which we have to acquire a little farther light in order to master entirely this Vedic conception of the Truth and the discovery of the illuminations of the Dawn by the primeval Fathers; we have to fix the identity of Sarama and the exact function of the Panis, two problems of Vedic interpretation which are very closely related to each other. That Sarama is some power of the Light and probably of the Dawn is very clear ; for once we know that the struggle between Indra and the original Aryan seers on the one hand and the sons of the Cave on the other is no strange deformation of primitive Indian history but a symbolic struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness, Sarama who leads in the search for the radiant herds and discovers both the path and the secret hold in the mountain must be a forerunner of the dawn of Truth in the human mind. And if we ask ourselves what power among the truth-finding faculties it is that thus discovers out of the darkness of the unknown in our being the truth that is hidden in it, we at once think of the intuition. For Sarama is not Saraswati, she is not the inspiration, even though the names are similar. Saraswati gives the full flood of the knowledge; she is or awakens the great stream, maho arnah, and illumines with plenitude all the thoughts, vicvâ
dhiyo vi râjati. Saraswati
Page-551 possesses and is the flood of the Truth; Sarama is the traveller and seeker on its path who does not herself possess but rather finds that which is lost. Neither is she the plenary word of the revelation, the Teacher of man like the goddess Ilea ; for even when what she seeks is found, she does not take possession but only gives the message to the seers and their divine helpers who have still to fight for the possession of the light that has been discovered. Let us see, however, what the Veda itself says of Sara-ma. There is a verse in 1.1 04.5 which does not mention her name, nor is the hymn itself about the Angirases or Panis, yet the line describes accurately enough the part attributed to her in the Veda :—" When this guide became visible, she went, knowing, towards the seat that is as if the home of the Dasyu," prati yat syâ nithâ adarshi dasyure, oke na acchâ sadanam jânatî gât. These are the two essential characteristics of Sarama ; the knowledge comes to her beforehand, before vision, springs up instinctively at the least indication and with that knowledge she guides the rest of the faculties and divine powers that seek. And she leads to that seat, saran am, the home of the Destroyers, which is at the other pole of existence to the seat of the Truth, sadanam r’itasya, in the cave or secret place of darkness, guhâyam, just as the home of the gods is in the cave or secrecy of light. In other words, she is a power descended from the superconscient Truth which leads us to the light that is hidden in ourselves, in the subconscient. All these characteristics apply exactly to the intuition.
Sarama is mentioned by name only in a few hymns of the Veda, and invariably in connection with the achievement of the Angirases or the winning of the highest planes of existence. The most important of these hymns is the Sukta of the Atris we have already had to take note of in our scrutiny of the Navagwa and Daçagwa Angirases, V.45. The first three verses summarise the great achievement. " Severing the hill of heaven by the words he found them, yea, the radiant ones of the arriving Dawn went abroad; he uncovered those that were in the pen, Swat rose up ; a god opened the human doors, The Sun attain-
Page-552 ed widely to strength and glory ; the Mother of the Cows (the Dawn), knowing, came from the wideness ; the rivers became rushing floods, floods that cleft (their channel), heaven was made firm like a well-shaped pillar. To this word the contents of the pregnant hill (came forth) for the supreme birth of the Great Ones (the rivers or, less probably, the dawns) ; the hill parted asunder, heaven was perfected (or, accomplished itself) ; they lodged (upon earth) and distributed the largeness." It is of Indra and the Angirases that the Rishi is speaking, as the rest of the hymn shows and as is indeed evident from the expressions used ; for these are the usual formulas of the Anginas my thus and repeat the exact expressions that are constantly used in the hymns of the delivery of the Dawn, the Cows and the Sun. We know already what they mean. The hill of our already formed triple existence which rises into heaven at its summit is rent asunder by Indra and the hidden illuminations go abroad ; Swar, the higher heaven of the superconscient, is manifested by the upward streaming of the brilliant herds. The sun of Truth diffuses all the strength and glory of its light, the inner Dawn comes from the luminous wideness instinct with knowledge,—jânitî gât, the same phrase that is used of her who leads to the house of the Dasyus in 1.104.5 ; and of Sarama in III.31.6, —the rivers of the Truth, representing the outflow of its being and its movement (r’itasya preshâ) descend in their rushing streams and make a channel here for their waters; heaven, the mental being, is perfected and made firm like a well-shaped pillar to support the vast Truth of the higher or immortal life that is now made manifest and the largeness of that Truth is lodged here in all the physical being. The delivery of the pregnant contents of the hill, parvatasya garbhah, the illuminati ones constituting the seven-headed thought, r’itasya dhîtih, which come forth in answer to the inspired word, leads to the supreme birth of the seven great rivers who constitute the substance of the Truth put into active movement, r’itasya preshâ.
Then after the invocation of Indra and Agni by the ‘words of perfect speech that are loved of the gods
" Page-553 for by those words the Maruts * perform the sacrifices as seers who by their sect knowledge do well the sacrificial work, ukthebhir hi shma kavayah suyajnâ…maruto yajanti— the Rishi next puts into the mouth of men an exhortation and mutual encouragement to do even as the Fathers and attain the same divine results. " Come now, to-day let us become perfected in thought, let us destroy suffering and unease, let us embrace the higher good," eto nu adya sudhyo bhavâma, pra duchchhunâ minavâma â varîyah; "far from us let us put always all hostile things ( all the things that attack and divide, dveshânsi ); let us go forward towards the Master of the sacrifice. Come, let us create the Thought, O friends,( obviously, the seven-headed Angiras-thought ), which is the Mother (Aditi or the Dawn) and removes the screening pen of the Cow." The significance is clear enough; it is in such passages’ as these that the inner sense of the Veda half disengages itself from the veil of the symbol. Then the Rishi speaks of the great and ancient example which men are called upon to repeat, the example of the Angirases, the achievement of Sarama. "Here the stone was set in motion whereby the Navagwas chanted the hymn for the ten months, Sarama going to the Truth found the cows, the Angiras made all things true. When in the dawning of this vast One ( Usha representing the infinite Aditi, mâtâ gavâm aditer anîkam ) all the Angirases came together with the cows (or rather, perhaps by the illuminations represented in the symbol of the cows or Rays ); there was the fountain of these ( illuminations) in the supreme world; by the path of the Truth Sarama found the cows." Here we see that it is through the movement of Sarama going straight to the Truth by the path of the Truth, that the seven seers, representing the seven-headed or seven-rayed thought of Ayasya and Brihaspati, find all the concealed illuminations and by force of these illuminations they all come together, as we have been already told by Vasishtha, in the level wideness, samâne urve, from which the Dawn has descended with the knowledge (ûrvam jagnatî gât, v. 2.)
* The though fattening powers of the life as will appear hear. after Page-554 or, as it is here expressed, in the dawning of this vast One, that is to say, in the infinite consciousness. There, as Vasistha has said, they, united, agree in knowledge and do not strive together, sangatâsah sam Jânata na yatante mithas te, that is to say, the seven become as one, as is indicated in another hymn; they become the one seven-mouthed Angiras, an image corresponding to that of the seven-headed thought, and it is this single unified Angiras who makes all things true as the result of Samara’s discovery (inverse 7 ). The harmonised, united perfected Seer-Will corrects all falsehood and crookedness and turns all thought, life, action into terms of the Truth. In this hymn also the action of Sarama is precisely that of the Intuition which goes straight to the Truth by the straight path of the Truth and not through the crooked paths of doubt and error and which delivers the Truth out of the veil of darkness and false appearances; it is through the illuminations discovered by her that the Seer-mind can attain to the complete revelation of the Truth. The rest of the hymn speaks of the rising of the seven-horsed Sun towards his " field which spreads wide for him at the end of the long journey," the attainment of the swift Bird to the Soma and of the young Seer to that field of the luminous cows, the Sun’s ascent to the " luminous Ocean," its crossing over it " like a ship guided by the thinkers " and the descent upon man of the waters of that ocean in response to their call. In those waters the sevenfold thought of the Angiras is established by the human seer. If we remember that the Sun represents the light of the super-conscient or truth-conscious knowledge and the luminous ocean the realms of the superconscient with their thrice seven seats of the Mother Aditi, the sense of these symbolic expressions * will not be difficult to understand. It is the highest attainment of the supreme goal which follows upon the complete achievement of the Angirases, their
" It is in this sense that we can easily understand many now obscure expressions of the Veda, eg VIII. 68. 9 ‘* May we conquer by thy aid in our battles the great wealth in the waters and the Sun, apsu shrine mahat dhanam. Page-555 united ascent to the plane of the Truth, just as that achievement follows upon the discovery of the herds by Sarama. Another hymn of great importance in this connection is the thirty-first of the third Mandala, by Viçwamitra. " Agni (the Divine Force) is born quivering with his flame of the offering for sacrifice to the great Sons of the Shining One (the Deva, Rudra ); great is the child of them, a vast birth; there is a great movement of the Driver of the shining steeds (Indra, the Divine Mind) by the sacrifices. The conquering (dawns) cleave to him in his struggle, they deliver by knowledge a great light out of the darkness; knowing the Dawns rise up to him, Indra has become the one lord of the luminous cows. The cows who were in the strong place ( of the Panis ) the thinkers clove out; by the mind the seven seers set them moving forward (or upwards towards the supreme ), they found the entire path ( goal or field of travel ) of the Truth; knowing those (supreme seats of the Truth ) Indra by the obeisance entered into them," vîl’au satîr abhi dhîrâ atrindan, prâchâ ahinvan manasâ sapta viprâh; viçvâm avindan pathyâm r’itasya, prajânann it tâ namasâ viveça. This is, as usual, the great birth, the great light, the great divine movement of the Truth-knowledge, with the finding of the goal and the entry of the gods and the sears into the supreme planes above. Next we have the part of Sarama in this work. " When Sarama found the broken place of the hill, he ( or perhaps she, Sarama ) made continuous the great and supreme goal. She* the fair-footed, led him to the front of the imperishable ones (the unslayable cows of the Dawn); first she went, knowing, towards their cry." It is again the Intuition that leads; knowing, she speeds at once and in front of all towards the voice of the concealed illuminations, towards the place where the hill so firmly formed and impervious in appearance (vîl’u, dr’idha) is broken and can admit the seekers.
The rest of the hymn continues to describe the achievement of the Angirases and Indra. "He went, the greatest seer of them all, doing them friendship; the pregnant hill sent
forth its contents for the doer of perfect works.
Page-556 in the strength of manhood he with the young (Angirases) seeking plenitude of riches attained possession, then singing the hymn of light he became at once the Angiras. Becoming in our front the form and measure of each existing thing, he knows all the births, he slays Çushna;" that is to say, the Divine Mind assumes a form answering to each existing thing in the world and reveals its true divine image and meaning and slays the false force that distorts knowledge and action. "Seeker of the cows, traveller to the seat of heaven, singing the hymns, he, the Friend, delivers his friends out of all defect ( of right self-expression ). With a mind that sought the Light (the cows) they entered their seats by the illumining words, making the path towards Immortality (ni gavyatâ manasâ sedur arkair kr’in’-vânâso amr’itatvâya gâtum). This is that large seat of theirs, the Truth by which they took possession of the months ( the ten months of the Daçagwas ). Harmonised in vision ( or, perfectly seeing ) they rejoiced in their own ("abode, Swar ) milking out the milk of the ancient seed ( of things ). Their cry ( of the Word ) heated all the earth and heaven (created, that is to say, the burning clarity, gharma, taptam ghr’itam, which is the yield of the solar cows ); they established in that which was born a firm abiding and in the cows the heroes (that is, the battling force was established in the light of the knowledge).
" Indra, the Vritra slayer, by those who were born (the sons of the sacrifice ), by the offerings, by the hymns of illumination released upward the shining ones; the wide and delightful Cow ( the cow Aditi, the vast and blissful higher consciousness ) bringing for him the sweet food, the honey mixed with the ghr’ita, yielded it as her milk. For this Father also ( for Heaven ) they fashioned the vast and shining abode-, doers of perfect works, they had the entire vision of it. Wide-upholding by their support the Parents ( Heaven and Earth ) they sat in that high world and embraced all its ecstasy. When for the cleaving away ( of evil and falsehood ) the vast Thought holds him immediately increasing in his pervasion of earth and heaven, —then for Indra in whom ore the equal and faultless words,
Page-557 there are all irresistible energies. He has found the great, manifold and blissful Field ( the wide field of the cows, Swar ); and he has sent forth together all the moving herd for his friends. Indra shining out by the human souls ( the Angirases) has brought into being, together, the Sun, the Dawn, the Path and the Flame." And in the remaining verses the same figures continue, with an intervention of the famous image of the rain which has been so much misunderstood. "The Ancient-born I make new that I may conquer. Do thou remove our many un-divine hurters and set Swar for our possessing." The purifying rains are extended before us (in the shape of the waters ); take us over to the state of bliss that is the other shore of them. Warring in thy chariot protect us from the foe; soon, soon make us conquerors of the Cows. The Vri-tra-slayer, the Master of the Cows, showed ( to men ) the cows; he has entered with his shining laws ( or lustres ) within those who are black ( void of light, like the Panis ); showing the truths ( the cows of truth ) by the Truth he has opened all his own doors," pra sûnr’ita diçamâna r’itena duraç cha viçvâ avr’in’od apa svâh; that is to say, he opens the doors of his own world, Swar, after breaking open by his entry into our darkness ( antar Krishnan gât ) the " human doors " kept closed by the Panis.
Such is this remarkable hymn, the bulk of which I have translated because it both brings into striking relief the mystic and entirely psychological character of the Vedic poetry and by so doing sets out vividly the nature of the imagery in the midst of which Sarama figures. The other references to Sarama in the Rig Veda do not add anything essential to the conception. We have a brief allusion in IV. 16. 8, " When thou didst tear the waters out of the hill, Sarama became manifest before thee ; so do thou as our leader tear out much wealth for us, breaking the pens, hymned by the Angirases." It is the intuition manifesting before the Divine Mind as its forerunner when there is the emergence of the waters, the streaming movements of the Truth that break out of the hill in which they were confined by Vritra ( verse 7 ); and it is by means of
Page-558 the Intuition that this godhead becomes our leader to the rescue of the Light and the conquest of the much wealth hidden within in the rock behind the fortress gates of the Panis.
We find another allusion to Sarama in a hymn by Paraçara Çaktya, 1.72. This is one of the Suktas which most clearly reveal the sense of the Vedic imagery, like most indeed of the hymns of Para? are, a very luminous poet who loves always to throwback something more than a corner of the mystic’s veil. It is brief and I shall translate it in full. " He has created, within, the seer-knowings of the eternal Disposer of things, holding in his hand many powers (powers of the divine Purushas, naryâ purû-ne); Agni creating together all immortalities becomes the master of the (divine) riches. All the immortals, they who are not limited (by ignorance), desiring, found him in us as if the Calf (of the cow Aditi) existing everywhere; labouring, travelling to the Seat, holding the Thought they attained in the supreme seat to the shining (glory) of Agni. O Agni, when through the three years (three symbolic seasons or periods corresponding perhaps to the passage through the three mental heavens) they, pure, had served thee, the pure one, with the ghr’ita,
they held the sacrificial names and set moving (to the supreme heaven) forms
well born. They had knowledge of the vast heaven and earth and bore them
forward, they the sons of Rudra, the lords of the sacrifice ; the mortal awoke
to vision and found Agni standing in the seat supreme. Knowing perfectly (or in
harmony) they kneeled down to him; they with their wives (the female energies of
the gods) bowed down to him who is worthy of obeisance; purifying themselves
(or, perhaps, exceeding the limits of heaven and earth) they created their own
(their proper or divine) forms, guarded in the gaze, each friend, of the Friend.
In thee the gods of the sacrifice found the thrice seven secret seats hidden
within ; they, being of one heart, protect by them the immortality. Guard thou
the herds that stand and that which moves. O Agni, having knowledge of all
manifestations (or births,) in the worlds (or, knowing all the Page-559 knowledge of the peoples) establish thy forces, continuous, for life. Knowing, within, the paths of the journeying of the gods thou becamest their sleepless messenger and the bearer of the offerings. The seven mighty ones of heaven (the rivers) placing aright the thought, knowing the Truth, discerned the doors of the felicity ; Sarama found the fastness, the wideness of the cows whereby now the human creature enjoys (the supreme riches). They who entered upon all things that bear right issue, made the path to Immortality; by the great ones and by the greatness earth stood wide; the mother Aditi with her sons came for the upholding. The Immortals planted in him the shining glory, when they made the two eyes of heaven (identical probably with the two ‘vision-powers of the Sun, the two horses of Indra) ; rivers, as it were, flow down released ; the shining ones (the cows) who were here below knew, O Agni."
So runs this hymn of Para; are, translated with the utmost possible literalness
even at the cost of some uncouthness in the English. It is clear at the very first glance that it is throughout a hymn of knowledge, of the Truth, of a divine Flame which is hardly distinguishable from the supreme Deity, of immortality, of the ascent of the gods, the divine powers, by the sacrifice to their godhead, to their supreme names, to their proper forms, to the shining glory of the supreme state with its
three seven seats of the Godhead. Such an ascent can have no other meaning than the ascent of the divine powers in man out of their ordinary cosmic appearances to the shining Truth beyond, as indeed
Paraçara himself tells us that by this action of the gods mortal man awakens to the knowledge and finds Agni standing in the supreme seat and goal; vidan marto nemadhitâ chikitvân, agnim pade parame tas-thivânsam. What is Sarama doing in such a hymn if she is not a power of the Truth, if her cows are not the rays of a divine dawn of illumination ? What have the cows of old warring tribes and the sanguinary Squabbles of our Aryan and Dravidian ancestors over their mutual plundering and cattle-lifting to do with this luminous apocalypse
Page-560 of the immortality and the godhead ? Or what are these rivers that think and know the Truth and discover the hidden doors? Or must we still say that these were the rivers of the Punjab dammed up by drought or by the Dravidians and Sarama a mythological figure for an Aryan embassy or else only the physical Dawn ?
One hymn in the tenth Mandala is devoted entirely to this " embassy " of Sarama, it is the colloquy of Sarama and the Panis ; but it adds nothing essential to what we already know about her and its chief importance lies in the help it gives us in forming our conception of the masters of the cavern treasure. We may note, however, that neither in this hymn, nor in the others we have noticed is there the least indication of the figure of the divine hound which was attributed to Sarama in a possibly later development of the Vedic imagery. It is surely the shining fair-footed goddess by whom the Panis are attracted and whom they desire as their sister,—not as a dog to guard their cattle, but as one who will share in the possession of their riches. The image of the hound of heaven is, however, exceedingly apt and striking and was bound to develop out of the legend. In one of the earlier hymns we have mention indeed of a son for whom Sarama " got food " according to an ancient interpretation which accounts for the phrase by a story that the hound Sarama demanded food for her offspring in the sacrifice as a condition of her search for the lost cows. But this is obviously an explanatory invention which finds no place in the Rig Veda itself. The Veda says "In the sacrifice" or, as it more probably means, " in the seeking of India and the Angirases (for the cows) Sarama discovered a foundation for the Son," vidat saramâ tanayâya dhâsim; for such is the more likely sense here of the word dhâsim. The son is in all probability the son born of the
sacrifice", a constant element in the Vedic imagery and not the dog-race born of Sarama. We have similar phrases in the Veda as in 1
Page-561 covered Swar ", where the subject is evidently the same but the son has nothing to do with any brood of puppies.
The two Sârameya dogs, messengers of Yama, are mentioned in a late hymn in the tenth Mandala, but without any reference to Sarama as their mother. This occurs in the famous "funeral" hymn X. 14, and it is worth while noting the real character of Yama and his two dogs in the Rig Veda. In the later ideas Yama is the god of Death and has his own special world; but in the Rig Veda he seems to have been originally a form of the Sun,—even as late as the Isha Upanishad we find the name used as an appellation of the Sun,—and then one of the twin children of the wide-shining Lord of Truth. He is the guardian of the dharma, the law of the Truth,
satyadharma, which is a condition of immortality, and therefore himself the guardian of immortality. His world is Swar, the world of immortality,
amrita loke akshite, where, as we are told in IX. 113, is the indestructible Light, where Swar is established,
Yalta jyotir ajasram, yasmin loke svar hi (am. The hymn X, 14 is indeed not a hymn of Death so much as a hymn of Life and Immortality. Yama and the ancient Fathers have discovered the path to that world which is a pasture of the Cows whence the enemy cannot bear away the radiant herds, yamo no gâtum prathamo viveda, naishâ gavyûtir apabhartavâ u, yatra nah purve pitarah pareyuh. The soul of the heaven-ascending mortal is bidden to "outrun the two four-eyed
varicoloured Sararneya dogs on the good (or effective) path." Of that path to heaven they are the four-eyed guardians, protecting man on the road by their divine vision,
yâ te çvânau yama rak’shitârau chaturakshâu pathirak* slid nri’chakshasau and Yama is asked to give them as an escort to the soul on its way. These dogs are " wide-move. ing, not easily satisfied" and range as the messengers of the Lord of the Law among men. And the hymn prays *’ May they (the dogs) give us back bliss here in the unhappy (world) so that we may look upon the Sun." We are still in the order of the old Vedic ideas, the Light and the Bliss and the Immortality, and these Sarameya dogs have the essential characteristics of Sarama, the vision; the wide-ranging Page-562
movement, the power to travel on the path by which the goal is reached. Sarama leads to the wideness of the cows; these dogs protect the soul on its journey to the inviolable pasture, the field (kshetra) of the luminous and imperishable herds. Sarama brings us to the truth, to the sun-vision which is the way to the bliss; these dogs bring the weal to man in this world of suffering so that he shall have the vision of the Sun. Whether Sarama figures as the fair-footed goddess speeding on the path or the heavenly hound, mother of these wide-ranging guardians of the path, the idea is the same, a power of the Truth that seeks and discovers, that finds by a divine faculty of insight the hidden Light and the denied Immortality. But it is to this seeking and finding that her function is limited.
Page-563 VIII If the. building up of a composite nation in the British Isles was from the beginning a foregone conclusion, a geographical and economical necessity only delayed in its entire completion by the most violent and perverse errors of statesmanship, the same cannot be said of the swifter but still gradual and almost unconscious process by which the Colonial Empire of Great Britain has been evolving to a point at which it can become a real unity. It was not so long ego that the eventual separation of the Colonies and the evolution of Australia and Canada at least into young independent nations was considered the inevitable end of the colonial empire, its one logical and hardly regrettable conclusion.
There were sound reasons for this mental attitude. The geographical necessity of union was entirely absent ; on the
contrary the distance created a positive mental separation, and each colony having a separate physical body seemed predestined on the lines on which human evolution was then running, to become a separate nationality. The economical interests of the mother-country and the colonies were disparate, aloof from each other, often. opposite as was shown by the adoption by the latter of protection as against the British free-trade policy. Their sole political interest in the empire was the safety given by the British fleet and army against foreign invasion, and they did not share and took no direct interest in the government of
Page-564 the Empire or the shaping of its destinies. Psychologically, the sole tie was a frail memory of origin and a tepid sentiment which might easily evaporate and which was com-bated by a definite separatist sentiment and the natural inclination of strongly marked human groupings to make for themselves an independent life and racial type. The race-origin varied, in Australia British, in South Africa predominantly Dutch, in Canada half French, half English ; but in all three countries habits of life, political tendencies, a new type of character and temperament and a culture, if it can be so called, were being developed which were as the poles asunder from the old British culture, temperament, habits of life and social and political tendencies. On the other hand the mother-country derived no tangible political, military or economical advantage from these offshoots, only the prestige which the possession of an Empire in itself could give her. On both sides therefore all the circumstances pointed to an eventual peaceful separation which would leave England only the pride of having been the mother of so many new nations.
Owing to the drawing together of the world by physical Science, the resulting tendency towards larger aggregates, changed political world-conditions and the profound political, economical and social changes towards which Great Britain has been moving, all the conditions now are altered and it is easy to see that the fusion of the Colonial Empire into a great federated nation or something that can plausibly go by that name is practically inevitable. There are difficulties in the way,—economical difficulties, to begin with ; for, as we have seen, geographical separation does tend towards a divergence, often an opposition of economical interests and an imperial Zollverein, natural enough between the states of the German Empire or a Central European Confederation such as is now being planned by one side in the great war would be an artificial creation as between widely separated countries and would need constant vigilance and tender handling ; yet, at the same time, political unity tends to demand economical union ns its natural concomitant and seems to itself hard-
Page-565 by complete without it. Political and other difficulties also there are which might become manifest if the practical process of unification were rashly and unwisely handled ; but none of these need be insuperable or even a real stumbling-block. The race difficulty which was at one time serious and menacing in South Africa and is not yet eliminated, need not be more formidable than in Canada ; for in both countries there is the English element which, whether a majority or minority, can by friendly union or fusion attach the foreign element to the Empire. Nor is there any such powerful outside attraction or clash of formed cultures or incompatible temperaments as makes so difficult the real union of Austro-Hungary. All that is needed is that England should continue to handle the problem with a right instinct and not commit anything like her fatal American blunder or the mistake she committed but fortunately receded from in South Africa. She has to keep it always in mind that her possible destiny is not that of a dominant country compelling all the parts of her dominions to uniformity with her or to perpetual subordination, but that of the centre of a great confederation of States and nations coalescing by her attraction into a new supra-national unity. Here the first condition is that she must scrupulously respect the free internal life and will, the social, cultural, economical tendencies of the colonies while giving them an equal part with herself in the management of the great common questions of the empire. She herself can be nothing more in the future of such a new type of aggregate than a political and cultural centre, the clamp or nodes of the union. Given this orientation of the governing mind in England nothing short of some unforeseen cataclysm can prevent the formation of an empire-unit in which Home Rule with a loose British suzerainty will be replaced by Federation with Home Rule as its basis.
But the problem becomes much more difficult when the question of the other two great constituent parts of the Empire arises, Egypt and India,—so difficult that the first temptation of the political mind, supported as it will be by a hundred prejudices and existing interests, will be
Page-566 naturally to leave the problem alone and create a federated Colonial Empire with these two great countries as subject dependencies. It is obvious that such a solution if arrived at cannot last and, if obstinately persisted in, will lead to the most undesirable results, if not to eventual disaster. The renascence of India is as inevitable as the rising of tomorrow’s sun and the renascence of a great nation" of three hundred millions with so peculiar a temperament, such unique traditions and ideas of life, so powerful an intelligence and so great a mass of potential energies cannot but be one of the most formidable phenomena of the modern world. It is evident that the new federated empire-unit cannot afford to put itself in permanent antagonism to this renascent nation of three hundred millions and that the short-sighted statesmanship of those servants of to-day and its interests who would stave off the inevitable future as long as possible cannot be allowed to prevail. This has indeed been recognised in principle; the difficulty will be in the handling of the problems that will arise when the practical solution of the Indian question can no longer be put off.
The nature of the difficulties in the way of a practical union between such different aggregates is obvious enough. There is first that geographical
separateness which has always made India a country and a nation apart even when it was unable to realise its political unity and was receiving by invasion and mutual communication of cultures the full shock of the
civilisation around it. There is the mere mass of its population of three hundred millions whose fusion in any sort with the rest of the nations of the empire will be a far other matter than the fusion of the comparatively insignificant
populations of Australia, Canada and South Africa. There is the salient line of demarcation by race, colour and temperament between the European and the Asiatic; there is the age-long past, the absolute divergence of origins, indelible associations, inherent tendencies which forbid any possibility of the line of demarcation being effaced or minimised by India’s acceptance of an
entirely or predominantly English or European cubature.
Page-567 All these difficulties need not necessarily mean the insolubility of the problem; on the contrary we know that no difficulty can be presented to the human mind which the human mind, if it will, cannot solve. We assume that in this case there will be both the will and the necessary wisdom; that British statesmanship will commit no irreparable error, that from the minor errors which it cannot fail to commit in the handling of such a problem, it will retreat in time as has been its temperament and habit in the past, and that, accordingly, a little sooner or a little later some kind of psychological unity will be created between these two widely disparate aggregates of the human race.
The question remains under what conditions this is possible and of what nature the unity will be. It is clear that the governing race must apply with a far greater scrupulosity and firm resolution the principle it has already applied elsewhere with such success and the departure from which has always after a certain stage been so detrimental to its own wider interests. It must allow, respect and even favour actively the free and separate evolution of India subject to the unity of the empire. So long as India does not entirely govern itself, her interests must take a first place in the mind of those who do govern her, and when she has self-government, it must be of a kind which will not hamper her in her care of her own interests. She must not for example, be forced into an imperial
Wolverine which under present conditions would be disastrous to her economical future until or unless those conditions are changed by a resolute policy of stimulating and encouraging her industrial development even though that will necessarily be prejudicial to many existing commercial interests within the empire. No effort must be made to impose English culture or conditions upon her growing life or make them a sine qua non for her recognition among the free peoples of the Empire and no effort of her own to depend and develop her own culture and characteristic development must be interfered with or opposed. Her dignity, sentiments, national aspirations must be increasingly recognised in practice as well as in principle. Given
tubes
Page-568 conditions all her political and economical interests and the care for her own untroubled growth will bind her to the empire and time will be given for the rest, for the more subtle and difficult part of the process of unification to fulfil itself more or less rapidly. The unity created can never take the form of a Indo-British nation ; that is a figment of the imagination, a chimera which it will never to do to hunt to the detriment of the real possibilities. The possibilities are, first, a firm political unity secured by common interests, secondly, a sound commercial interchange and mutual industrial helpfulness on healthy lines ; thirdly, a new cultural relation of the two most important sections of humanity, Europe and Asia, in which they could exchange all that is great and valuable in either as equal members of one human household; and finally, it may be hoped, in place of the common past association of political and economical development and military glory which have chiefly helped in building: up the nation-unit, the greater glory of association and close partnership in the building of a new, rich and various culture for the life of a nobler humanity. Such, surely, should be the type of the supra-national unit which is the possible next step in the progressive aggregation of humanity.
It is evident that this next step would have no reason or value except as a stage which would make possible by practical demonstration and the creation of new habits of sentiment, mental attitude and common life the unity of the whole human race in a single family. The mere creation of a big empire-unit would be a vulgar and even reactionary phenomenon if it had not this greater issue beyond it. The mere construction of a
multicoloured Indo-British Gentian Colonial unity arrayed in amour of battle and divided by commercial, political and military egoism from other
hoofer unities Russian, French, German, American, would be a retrogression, not an advance. If at all, therefore, this kind of development is intended—for we have only’ taken the instance of the British Empire as the best example of a possible new typo,—then it must be
Page-569
as such a half-way house and with this ideal before us, that it can be accepted by the lovers of humanity who are not bound by the limitations of the old local patriotism of nation against nation. Always provided that the political and administrative means are those which are to lead us to the unity of the human race,—for on that doubtful hypothesis we are at present proceeding.
Page-570 The progress of humanity proceeds by a series of imaginations which the will in the race turns into accomplished facts and a train of illusions which contain each of them an inevitable truth. The truth is there in the secret Will and Knowledge that are conducting our affairs for us and it reflects itself in the soul of mankind; the illusion is in the shape we give to that reflection, the veil of arbitrary fixations of time, place and circumstance which that deceptive organ of knowledge, the human intellect, weaves over the face of the Truth. Human imaginations are often fulfilled to the letter; our illusions on the contrary find the truth behind them realised most unexpectedly, at a time, in ways, under circumstances far other than those we had fixed for the-»i.
Man’s illusions are of all sorts and kinds, some of them petty though not unimportant,—for nothing in the world is unimportant,—others vast and grandiose. The greatest of them all are those which cluster round the hope of a perfected society, a perfected race, a terrestrial millennium. Each new idea religious or social which takes possession of the epoch and seizes on large masses of man, is in turn to be the instrument of these high
realisation; each in turn betrays the hope which gave it its force to conquer.
And the reason is plain enough to whosoever chooses to see; it is that no change
of ideas or of the intellectual outlook upon life, no belief in God or Avatar or
prophet, no victorious science or liberating philosophy, no social scheme or
system, no sort of machinery internal or external can really bring about the
great desire implanted in the race, true Page-571 though that desire is in itself and the index of the goal to which we are being led. Because man is himself not a machine nor a device, but a being and a most complex one at that, therefore he cannot be saved by machinery; only by an .entire change which shall affect all the members of his being can he be liberated from his discords and imperfections. One of the illusions incidental to this great hope is the expectation of the passing of war. This grand event in human progress is always being confidently expected and since we are how all scientific minds and rational beings, we no longer expect it by a divine intervention, but assign sound physical and economical reasons for the faith that is in us. The first form taken by this new gospel was the expectation and the prophecy that the extension of commerce would be the extinction of war. Commercialism was the natural enemy of militarism and would drive it from the face of the earth. The growing and universal lust of gold and the habit of comfort and the necessities of increased production and intricate interchange would crush out the lust of power and dominion and glory and battle. Gold-hunger or commodity-hunger would drive out earth-hunger, the dharma of the Vanishes would set its foot on the dharma of the Kshetra and give it its painless quietus. The ironic reply of the gods has not been long in coming. Actually this very reign of commercialism, this increase of production and interchange, this desired for commodities and markets and this piling up of a huge burden of unnecessary necessities has been the cause of half T the wars that have since afflicted the human race. And now we see militarism and commercialism united in a loving clasp, coalescing into a sacred biome duality of national life and patriotic aspiration and causing and driving by their force the most irrational, the most-monstrous and merely cataclysmic, the hugest war of modern and indeed of all historic times.
Another illusion was that the growth of democracy would mean the growth of pacifism and the end of war. It was
fondly through that wars are in their nature dynastic Page-572 and aristocratic; greedy kings and martial nobles driven by earth-hunger and battle-hunger, diplomatists playing at chess with the lives of men and the fortunes of nations, these were the guilty causes of war who dive the unfortunate peoples to the battle-field like sheep to the shambles. These proletariats, mere food for powder, who had no interest, no desire, no battle-hunger driving them to armed conflict, had only to become instructed and dominant to embrace each other and all the world in a free and fraternal amity. Man refuses to learn from that history of whose lessons the wise prate to us; otherwise the story of old democracies ought to have been enough to prevent this particular illusion. In any case the answer of the gods has been, here too, sufficiently ironic. If kings and diplomatists are still often the movies of war, none more ready than the modern democracy to make itself their enthusiastic and noisy accomplice, and we see even the modern spectacle of governments and diplomats hanging back in affright or doubt from the yawning and clamorous abyss while angry shouting peoples impel them to the verge. Bewildered pacifists who still cling to their principles and illusions, find themselves howled down by the people and, what is piquant enough, by their own recent comrades and leaders. The socialist, the syndicalism, the internationalist of yesterday stands forward as a banner-bearer in the great mutual massacre and his voice is the loudest to cheer on the dogs of war.
Another recent illusion was the power of Courts of Arbitration and Concerts of Europe to
prevent war. There again the course that events immediately took was sufficiently ironic; for the institution of the great Court of international arbitration was followed up by a series of little and great wars which led by an inexorable logical chain to the long-dreaded European conflict and the monarch who had first conceived the idea, was also this first to unsheathe his sword in a conflict dictated on both sides by the most unrighteous greed and aggression. In fact this series of wars, whether fought in Northern or Southern Africa, in Manchuria or the Balkans, were marked most prominently by
Page-573 the spirit which disregards cynically that very idea of inherent and existing rights, that balance of law and equity upon which alone arbitration can be founded. As for the Concert of Europe, it seems far enough from us now, almost antediluvian in its antiquity,—as it belongs indeed to the age before the deluge; but we can remember well enough what an unmusical and discordant concert it was, what a series of fumbling and blunderings and how its diplomacy led us fatally to the inevitable event against which it struggled. Now it is suggested by many to substitute a United States of Europe for the defunct Concert and for the poor helpless Hague tribunal an effective Court of international Law with force behind it to impose its decisions. But so long as men go on believing in the sovereign power of machinery, it is not likely that the gods either will cease from their studied irony.
There have been other speculations and reasoning; ingenious minds have searched for a firmer and more rational ground of faith. The first of these was propounded in a book by a Russian writer which had an enormous success in its day but has now passed into the silence. Science was to bring war to an end by making it physically impossible. It was mathematically proved that with modern weapons two equal armies would fight each other to a standstill, attack would become impossible except by numbers thrice those of the
Defence and war therefore would bring no military decision but only an in fructuous upheaval and disturbance of the organised life of the nations. When the Russo-Japanese war almost immediately proved that attack and victory were still possible and the battle-fury of man superior to the fury of his death-dealing engines, another book was published, called by a title which has turned into a jest upon the writer, the Great Illusion, to prove that the idea of a commercial advantage to be gained by war and conquest was an illusion and that as soon as this was understood and the sole benefit of peaceful interchange realised, the peoples would abandon a method of settlement now chiefly undertaken from motives of commercial expansion, yet whose
disastrous result was only to Page-574 disorganise fatally the commercial prosperity it sought to serve. The present war came as the immediate answer of the gods to this sober and rational proposition. It has been fought for conquest and commercial expansion and it is proposed, even when it has been fought out on the field, to follow it up by a commercial struggle between the belligerent nations.
The men who wrote these books were capable thinkers but they ignored the one thing that matters, human nature. The present war has justified to a certain extent the Russian writer though by developments he did not foresee; scientific warfare has brought military movement to a standstill and baffled the strategist and the tactician, it has rendered decisive victory impossible except by overwhelming numbers or an overwhelming weight of artillery. But this has not made war impossible, it has only changed its character; it has at the most replaced the war of military decisions by that of military and financial exhaustion aided by the grim weapon of famine. The English writer on the other hand erred by isolating the economic motive as the one factor that weighed; he ignored the human lust of dominion which, carried into the terms of commercialism, means the undisputed control of markets and the exploitation of helpless populations. Again, when we rely upon the disturbance of organised national and international life as a preventive of war, we forget the boundless power of self-adaptation which man possesses; that power has been shown strikingly enough in the skill and ease with-which the organisation and finance of peace were replaced in the present crisis by the organisation and finance of war. And when we rely upon Science to make war impossible, we forget that the progress of Science means a series of surprises and that it means also a constant effort of human ingenuity to overcome impossibilities and find fresh means of satisfying our ideas, desires and instincts. Science may well make war of the present type with shot and shell and mines and battleships an impossibility and yet develop or leave in their place other and simpler means which may bring back the type of ancient warfare.
Page-575 So long as war does not become psychologically impossible, it will remain or, if banished for a while, return. War itself, it is hoped, will end war ; the expense, the horror, the butchery, the disturbance of tranquil life, the whole confused sanguinary madness of the thing has reached or will reach such colossal proportions that the human race will fling the monstrosity behind it in weariness and disgust. But weariness and disgust, horror and pity, even the opening of the eyes to reason by the practical fact of the waste of human life and energy and the harm and extravagance are not permanent factors ; they last only while the lesson is fresh. Afterwards, there is forgetfulness ; human nature recuperates itself and recover* the instincts that were temporarily dominated. A long peace, even a certain organisation of peace may conceivably result ‘it so long as the heart of man remains what it is, the peace will come to an end, the organisation will break down tinder the stress of human passions. War is no longer, perhaps, a biological necessity, but it is still a psychological necessity ; what is within us, must manifest itself outside.
Meanwhile it is well that every false hope and confident prediction should be answered as soon as may well be by the irony of the gods , for only so can we be driven to the perception of the real remedy. Only when man has developed not merely a fellow-feeling with all men, but a dominant sense of unity and commonalty, only when he is aware of them not merely as brothers,—that is a fragile bond,—but as parts of himself, only when he has learned to live not in his separate personal and communal ego-sense, but in a larger universal consciousness can the phenomenon of war, with whatever weapons, pass out of his life without the possibility of return. Meanwhile that he should struggle even by illusions towards that end, is an excellent sign ; for it shows that the truth behind the illusion is pressing towards the hour when it may become manifest as reality. Page-576 |