-13_The Ishavasyopanishad.html

The Ishavasyopanishad

with a commentary in English

to make men live together like brothers—a happy family, loving and helping each other; perhaps it still hopes, though there is little in the state of the modern world to flatter its dreams But that millennium too will not come, not though Christ should descend with all his angels and cut the knot, after banishing the vast majority of mankind to the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, by setting up this united family of mankind with the meagre remnants of the pure and faithful What a mad dream of diseased imaginations that men could be really and everlastingly happy while mankind was everlastingly suffering! How would the everlasting hatred breathing out from the innumerably-peopled furnaces of pain blast & mar with unconquerable smoke of Hell the light & peace of the saints! And how strangely was the slight, but sweet and gracious shadow of Buddhism distorted in the sombre & cruel minds of those fierce Mediterranean races, when they pictured the saints as drawing added bliss from the contemplation of the eternal tortures in which those they had lived with and perhaps loved, were agonizing Divine love, divine pity, the nature of the Buddha, that was the message which India sent to Europe through the lips of Jesus, and this is how the European mind interpreted divine love & divine pity! The fires of Hell aptly and piously anticipated on earth by the fires of Smithfield, the glowing splendours of the Auto-da-fe, the unspeakable reek of agony that steams up thro’ history from the dungeons of the Holy Office—nay, there are wise men who find an apology for these pious torturers; it was divine love after all seeking to save the soul at the cost of the perishable body! But the Aryan spirit of the East, the spirit of Buddha struggles for ever with European barbarism and surely in the end it shall conquer Already Europe does homage to humanity with her lips and in the gateways of her mind; perhaps some day she will do so with her heart also At any rate the millennium of Tertullian is out of date But still it is the Christian ideal, the Syrian interpretation of the truth and not the truth itself, which dominates the best European thought and the Christian ideal is the ideal of the united family    

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THE STUDENT

Surely it is a noble ideal

THE GURU

Very noble and we have it among ourselves in a noble couplet वसुधैव कुटुम्बकं; but everything which implies difference is based upon Avidya and the inevitable fruits of Avidya Have you ever watched a big united family, a joint-family in Bengal especially in days when the Aryan discipline is lost? Behind its outward show of strength and unity, what jarring, what dissensions, what petty malice & hatred, what envy & covetousness! And then finally one day a crash, a war, a case in the law-courts, a separation for ever What the joint-family is on a small scale, that on a big scale is an united nation, Russia or Austria or Germany or the United Kingdom Mankind as an united family would mean in practice mankind as an united nation How much would you gain by it? You would get rid of war,—for a time—of the mangling of men’s bodies by men, but the body though to be respected as the chosen vehicle or the favourite dress of Brahman, is not of the first importance You would not get rid of the much more cruel mangling of the human Self by hatred, greed and strife The Europeans attach too much importance to the body, shrink too much from physical sin and are far too much at their ease with mental sin It is enough for them if a woman abstain from carrying out her desire in action, if a man abstain from physical violence, then is the one chaste, the other self-controlled This if not sheer unAryanism or Mlecchahood is at best the half baked virtue of the semi-Aryanised Be you who are born in the Aryan discipline, however maimed by long bondage, an Aryan indeed, chaste in mind & spirit, & not merely careful in speech & body, gentle in heart & thought and not merely decent in words & actions That is true self-control and real morality No Paradise therefore can exist, no Paradise even if it existed, can last, until that which makes sin and hell is conquered We may never have a Paradise on earth, but if it is ever to come, it will come not when all mankind are as brothers, for brothers jar and hate as much & often more than mere friends or strangers,    

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but when all mankind has realised that it is one Self Nor can that be until mankind has realised that all existence is oneself, for if an united humanity tyrannise over bird & beast & insect, the atmosphere of pain, hatred & fear breathing up from the lower creation will infect & soil the purity of the upper The law of Karma is inexorable, and whatever you deal out to others, even such shall be the effect on yourself, in this life or in another Do you think then that this strange thing will ever come about that mankind in general, will ever come to see in the dog and the vulture, nay, in the snake that bites and the scorpion that stings, their own Self, that they will say unto Death my brother & to Destruction my sister, nay that they will know these things as themself? सर्वभूतेषु चात्मान, the Sruti will not spare you the meanest insect that crawls or the foulest worm that writhes

THE STUDENT

It does not seem possible

THE GURU

It does not; and yet the impossible repeatedly happens At any rate, if you must have an ideal, of the far-off event to which humanity moves, cherish this Distrust all Utopias that seek to destroy sin or scrape away part of the soil in which it grows while preserving intact the very roots of sin, Ahankar born of Ignorance & Desire For once Ahankar is there, likes and dislikes are born, रागद्वेषी the primal couple of dualities, liking for what farthers the satisfaction of desire, dislike for what hinders it, the sense of possession, the sense of loss, attraction, repulsion, charm, repugnance, love, hatred, pity, cruelty, kindness, wrath,—the infinite and eternal procession of the dualities Admit but one pair, and all the others come tumbling in in its wake But the man who sees himself in all creatures, cannot hate; he shrinks from none, he has neither repulsion nor fear. ततो न विजिगुप्सते. Yonder leper whom all men shun—but shall I shun him, who know that from this strange disguise the Brahman looks out with smiling eyes? This foeman who comes with a sword to pierce me through the heart,—I look beyond the sharp threatening sword,  

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beyond the scowling brow and the eyes of hate, and I recognize the mask of my Self; thereafter I shall neither fear the sword nor hate the bearer O myself who foolishly callest thyself mine enemy, how canst thou be my enemy unless I choose; friend & enemy are but creations of the Mind that myriad-working magician, that great dreamer & artist; and if I will not to regard thee as my enemy, thou canst no more be such than a dream or shadow can, as indeed thy flashing sword is but a dream and thy scowling brow but a shadow But thou wilt divide me with thy sword, thou wilt slay me, pierce me with bullets, torture me with fire, blow me from the mouth of thy cannon? Me thou canst not pierce, for I am unslayable, unpierceable, indivisible, unburnable, immovable Thou canst but tear this dress of me, this foodsheath or multiplied protoplasm which I wear—I am what I was before I will not be angry with thee even, for who would trouble himself to be angry with a child because in its play or little childish wrath it has torn his dress? Perhaps I valued the dress and would not so soon have parted with it; I will try then to save it, if I may, and even punish thee without anger so that thou mayst not tear more dresses; but if I cannot—well, it was but a cloth and another can soon be had from the merchant; nay, have I not already paid the purchase-money? O my judge, thou who sittest pronouncing that I be hanged by the neck till I be dead, because I have broken thy laws perchance to give bread to starving thousands, perchance to help the men of my country whom thou wouldst keep as slaves for thy pleasure—Me wilt thou hang? When thou canst shake the sun from heaven or wrap up the skies like a garment, then shall power be given thee to hang me Who or what is this thou deemest will die by hanging? A bundle of animalculae, no more This outward thou & I are but stage masks; behind them is One who neither slayeth nor is slain Mask called a judge, play thou thy part; I have played mine O son of the ancient Yoga, realise thy Self in all things; fear nothing, loathe nothing; dread none, hate none, but do thy part with strength and courage; so shalt thou be what thou truly art, God in thy victory, God in thy defeat, God in thy very death & torture,—God who will not be defeated & who cannot die    

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Shall God fear any? shall He despair? shall He tremble & shake? Nay ’tis the insects that form thy body & brain which shake & tremble; Thou within them sittest looking with calm eyes at their pain & terror; for they are but shadows that dream of themselves as a reality Realise the Self in all creatures, realise all creatures in the Self; then in the end terror shall flee from thee in terror, pain shall not touch thee, lest itself be tortured by thy touch; death shall not dare to come near to thee lest he be slain

He who discerneth, in whom all creatures have become himSelf, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have sorrow, in whose eyes all things are One That is the realisation of the mighty ideal, the moral and practical result of perfected Vedanta, that in us all things will become ourself There, says the Sruti, in the man whose Self has become all creatures, what delusion can there be or what sorrow, for wherever he looks (अनुपश्यतः), he sees nothing but the great Oneness, nothing but God, nothing but his own Self of love and bliss Delusion (मोह) is the mistaking of the appearance for the reality, bewilderment by the force of Maya “This house that my fathers had was mine and alas, I have lost it ” “This was my wife whom I loved, and she is lost to me for ever ” “Alas, how has my son disappointed me from whom I hoped so much ” “This office for which I hoped and schemed, my rival, the man I hated has got it ” All these are the utterances of delusion and the result of delusion is शोक, sorrow But to one whose Self has become all creatures, there can be no delusion and therefore no sorrow He does not say “I, Devadatta, have lost this house What a calamity!” He says “I, Devadatta, have lost this house, but it has gone to me, Harischandra That is fortunate ” I can lose nothing except to myself Nor shall I weep because my wife is dead & lost, who is not lost at all, but as near to me as ever, since she is still my Self, in my Self, with my Self, as much after death as when her body was underneath my hands I cannot lose my Self My son has disappointed me? He has taken his own way & not mine, but he has not disappointed himSelf  

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who is my Self, he has only disappointed the sheath, the case, the mental cell in which I was imprisoned The vision of the One Self dispels all differences; an infinite calm, an infinite love, an infinite charity, an infinite tolerance, is the very nature of the strong soul that has seen God The sin, the stain, the disease, the foulness of the world cannot pollute his mind nor repel his sympathy; as he stoops to lift the sinner from the dung heap in which he wallows, he does not shrink from the ordure that stains his own hands; his eyes are not bedimmed by tears, when he lifts up the shrieking sufferer out of his pit of pain; he lifts him as a father lifts his child who has tumbled in the mire and is crying; the child chooses to think he is hurt & cries; the father knows he is not really hurt, therefore he does not grieve, but neither does he chide him, rather he lifts him up & soothes the wilful imaginary pain Such a soul has become God, mighty & loving to help and save, not weak to weep and increase the ocean of human tears with his own Buddha did not weep when he saw the suffering of the world; he went forth to save And surely such a soul will not grieve over the buffets the outward world seems to give to his outward self; for how can He grieve who is all this Universe? The pain of his petty personal Self is no more to his consciousness than the pain of a crushed ant to a king as he walks musing in his garden bearing on his shoulders the destiny of nations He cannot feel sorrow for himself even if he would, for he has the sorrow of a whole world to relieve; his own joy is nothing to him, for he has the joy of the whole Universe at his command.

There are two ways of attaining to Jnana, to the Vision One is the way of Insight, the other the way of World-Sight There are two ways of Bhakti, one by devotion to the Self as Lord of all concentrated within you, the other by devotion to the Self as Lord of all extended in the Universe There are two ways of Karma, one by Yoga, quiescence of the sheaths & the ineffable unacting, yet all-enveloping omnipotence of the Self within; the other by quiescence of desire and selfless activity of the sheaths for the wider Self in the Universe For the first you must turn your eyes within instead of without, put from you the pleasures of contact & sense, hush the mind & its organs and rising above    

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 the dualities become One in yourself, आत्मतुष्टिरात्मारामः. Is this too difficult for thee? Does thy mind fail thee, the anguish of thy coverings still conceal the immortal Spirit within? Dash the tears from thine eyes; though they be tears of blood, still persist in wiping them away as they ooze out and look out on the Universe That is thy self, that is Brahman Realise all this Cosmic Stir, this rolling of the suns, this light, this life, this ceaseless activity It is thou thyself that art stirring through all this Universe, thou art this Sun and this moon and these Constellations The Ocean rolls in thee, the storm blows in thee, the hills stand firm in thee If thou wert not, these things would not be Canst thou grieve over the miseries of this little speck in the Brahman, this little insect-sheath, of whose miseries thou art the maker and thou canst be the ender? Is the vision too great for thee? Look round thee then, limit the vision there These men & women and living things that are round thee, their numberless joys & sorrows, amongst which what are thine? they are all thy Self and they are all in Thee Thou art their Creator, Disposer & Destroyer Thou canst break them if thou wilt and thou canst rescue them from their griefs and miseries if thou wilt, for power infinite is within thee Thou wilt not be the Asura to injure thyself in others? Be then the Deva to help thy Self in others Learn the sorrows of those who live near thee and remove them; thou wilt soon feel what a joy has been so long lost to thee, a joy in which thy own sorrows grow like an unsubstantial mist Wrestle with mighty wrongdoers, succour the oppressed, free the slave and the bound and thou shalt soon know something of the joy that is more than any pleasure, thou shalt soon be initiated into the bliss of the One who is in all Even in death thou shalt know that ecstasy and rejoice in the blood as it flows from thee

THE STUDENT

These ideals are too high Where is the strength to follow them and the way to find that strength?

THE GURU

The strength is in yourself and the way to find that strength  

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has been laid down from the times of old But accept that ideal first or you will have no spur to help you over the obstacles in the way

THE STUDENT

But how many will accept the ideal, when there are so many easier ideals to give them strength & comfort?

THE GURU

But are those ideals true? Delusions may give you strength & comfort for a while, but after all they break down & leave you tumbling through Chaos Truth alone is a sure & everlasting rock of rest, an unfailing spear of strength The whole universe rests upon Truth, on the Is, not on the Is Not To be comfortable in delusion is the nature of man in his tamasic covering of gross matter-stuff; it is the business of philosophy & religion to dispel his delusion & force him to face the truth

THE STUDENT

But many wise men are of the opinions that these smaller ideals are the truth, not religion and philosophy which are a delusion

THE GURU

Tell me one of these newborn truths that profess to dispel the knowledge that is without end & without beginning; for you know more of the science of the West than I

THE STUDENT

There is the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number, which has something finite, certain and attainable about it—nothing metaphysical, nothing abstract

THE GURU

We have heard something about it in this country, a system of morality by arithmetic called utilitarianism which would have man pass his life with a pair of scales in his hand weighing good  

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& evil It did good in its time, but it was not true, and could not last

THE STUDENT

In what is it not true?

THE GURU

It is not true, because it is not in human nature; no human being ever made or ever will make an arithmetical calculation of the pain & pleasure to result from an action and the numbers of the people diversely affected by them, before doing the action This sort of ethical algebra, this system of moral accounts needs a different planet for its development; a qualified accountant has yet to be born on the human plane You cannot assess pleasure & pain, good and evil in so many ounces & pounds; human feelings, abstract emotions are elusive and variable from moment to moment Utilitarianism with all its appearance of extreme practicality and definiteness, is really empty of any definite truth and impotent to give any sound and helpful guidance; it is in itself as barren of light as of inspiration, a creed arid, dry and lifeless, and what is worse, false Whatever it has of value, it has copied or rather caricatured from altruism It gives us standards of weight & measure which are utterly impossible to fix; and it fails to provide any philosophical justification for self-sacrifice nor any ardent inspiration towards it Utilitarian hedonism—is not that the phrase—suggests, I think, that by doing good to others, we really provide a rarer and deeper pleasure for ourselves than any purely self-limited gratification can give us Most true—and a truth we needed not to learn from either hedonist or utilitarian The Buddhists knew it 2000 years ago and the Aryans of India practised it before that; the whole life of Srikrishna was a busy working for the good of others, of his friends, his country and the world, and Srikrishna never knew grief or pain But there are three kinds of pleasure to be had from charity and beneficence; there is the satisfaction of vanity, the vanity of hearing oneself praised, the vanity of feeling “How very good I am ” This, I think, is at the bottom  

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of much charity in India and more in Europe, and it is here that hedonism comes most into play, but it is a poor spring and will break down under any strain; it may lead to charity but never to self-sacrifice Then there is the joy of having done a good work and brought oneself nearer to heaven which used to be and perhaps still is the most common incentive to beneficence in Aryaland.. That is a more powerful spring, but it is narrow and does not reach the true self; its best value is that it is helpful towards purification Then there are the natures born for love & unselfishness who in the mere joy of helping others, of suffering for others, of seeing the joy return to tear-worn faces & pain-dimmed eyes, feel the bliss that comes from the upsurging of God within To these hedonism is as vanity and the babbling of children The hedonistic element in utilitarianism is an imperfect & blundering effort to grope for a great truth which it has neither been able to grasp itself nor set forth with scientific accuracy That truth is found only in the clear & luminous teaching of the Vedanta; it is this, that the compound result we call man is a compound result and not the single simple homogeneous being our senses would believe; he is composed of several elements, corporeal, vital, mental, intellectual and essential; and his true self is none of these heterogeneous factors of the element the Self lives in, but something beyond & transcendent Pain & pleasure, good & evil are therefore not permanent and definite entities; the former are a heterogeneous conglomeration, sometimes a warring agglomeration of the feelings & impulses belonging to the various husks in which the true Self is wrapped Good & evil are relative & depend on the standpoint we take with reference to the true locality of Self in this little cosmos of man; if we locate that Self low down our “good” will be a poor thing, of the earth, earthy, little distinguishable from evil; if we locate it in its true place, our good will be as high, vast & pure as the heavens All pain & pleasure, all good & evil have their birth, their existence and their end in the Self It follows therefore that even the highest love & altruism are bounded by the Self Altruism is not the sacrifice of self to others, but the sacrifice of our false self to our true Self, which unless we are Yogins we    

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can best see in others True love is not the love of others but the love of our Self; for we cannot possibly love what is not ourself If we love what is not ourself, it must be as a result of  contact; but we cannot love by स्पर्श, by mere contact; because contact is temporary in its nature and in its results, and cannot give rise to a permanent feeling such as love Yajnavalkya well said, “We desire the wife, not for the sake of the wife but for the sake of the Self ” Only if we mistake things for the Self which are not the true Self, we shall, as a result, mistake things for love which are not real love If we mistake the food-husk for Self, we shall desire the wife for corporeal gratification; if we mistake the vital emotion-husk for Self we shall desire the wife for emotional gratification; if we mistake the mind husk for the self we shall desire the wife for aesthetic gratification & the pleasurable sense of her presence, her voice, looks etc about the house; if we mistake the intellect husk for the self, we shall desire the wife for her qualities & virtues, her capacities & mental gifts, for the gratification of the understanding If we see the Self, in the bliss Sheath, where the element of error reaches the vanishing point, we shall then desire the wife for the gratification of the true Self, the bliss of the sense of Union, of becoming One And if we have seen & understood our true Self without husk or covering, we shall not desire her at all, because we shall possess her, we shall know that she is already our Self and therefore not to be desired in her sheaths, since She is already possessed It follows that the more inward the sheath with which we confuse the Self, the purer the pleasure, the more exalted the conception of Good, until in the real naked Self we rise beyond good & evil because we have no longer any need of good or any temptation to evil Emotional pleasure is higher than corporeal, aesthetic than emotional, intellectual than aesthetic, ethical than intellectual, spiritual than ethical This is the whole truth and the whole philosophy of ethics; all else is practical arrangement and balancing of forces, economising of energies for the purposes of social stability or some other important but impermanent end.

Utilitarianism gets a partial & confused view of the truth and being unable properly to correlate it, groping about for some  

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law, some standard and principle of order, thinks it has found it in utility But what utility? I, this perfected animal, with desires, thoughts, sensations and a pressing need for their gratification, can very well understand what is personal utility; utility for this vital, sensational, conceptual me My utility is to get as much sensual, emotional & intellectual gratification as I may out of life consistent with my own ease & safety; if utility is to be my standard of ethics, that is my ethics But when you ask me in the name of utility & rationalism to sacrifice these things for some higher or wider utility, for others, for the greater number, for society, I no longer follow you So much as is necessary to keep up government, law & order and a good police, I can understand, for these things are necessary to my safety & comfort; society has given me these & I must see to & pay for their maintenance by myself & others That is businesslike, both utilitarian & rational But beyond this society has not any claim on me; society exists for me, not I for society If then I have to sacrifice what I perhaps most deeply cherish for society, my life, my goods, my domestic peace, my use for society ceases; I regard society then as a fraudulent depositor who wishes to draw from my ethical bank more than he has deposited So might argue the average man who is neither immoral nor deeply moral but only respectable; and utilitarianism can give him no satisfactory answer

Moreover, if I have other instincts than those of the respectable citizen, and ability to carry them out, why should I refrain? What holds me? If I can earn a huge fortune rapidly by some safe form of swindling, by gambling, by speculation or by the merciless methods of the American capitalist, why should I refrain? The charge of anti-social conduct; but that has no terrors for an egotist of strong character; he knows well that he can hush the disapproval of society under a shower of gold coin Morality with the vital sensational man becomes in an utilitarian age merely the fear of social or legal punishment, and strong men do not fear; nor unless their acts shake the social framework will an utilitarian society care to condemn them, for they are breaking no powerful sanctions, outraging no deep-rooted sentiments—utilitarianism deliberately parts company  

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with sentiment and except force & fear it has no sanctions to replace those of religion & ancient prejudice which it has destroyed It is useless to tell these people that they will find a deeper & truer bliss in good moral conduct and altruism than in their present selfish and anti-social career Where is the proof or even the philosophic justification of what these philosophers allege? Their own experience? That is not valid for the average sensational man; his deepest pleasure is necessarily vital and sensational; it is only valid for the men who make the statement, they being the intellectual self with an ethical training that has survived from a dead Christianity In order for it to be true of the sensational man, he must cease to be sensational, he must undergo a process of spiritual regeneration to which utilitarian philosophy cannot give him either the key or even the motive-impulse For in the mouth of the utilitarian, this statement of the deeper & truer bliss, is a piece of secondhand knowledge; not his own earning, but part of that store of ethical coin rifled by rationalism from the coffers of Christianity on which European civilisation is precariously living at the present day One trembles to think of the day when that coin shall be exhausted—already we see some signs of growing moral vulgarity, coarseness, almost savagery in the European mind, which, if it increases, if the open worship of brutal force & unscrupulous strength which is rampant in politics & in commerce taint, as it must eventually do, the deeper heart of society, may lead to an orgy of the vital & sensational impulses such as has not been since the worst days of the Roman Empire

THE STUDENT

But Lecky has proved that the moral improvement of Europe was due entirely to the rise of rationalism

THE GURU

My son, there is one great capacity of the learned & cultured mind both in Europe & Asia which one should admire without imitating—it is the capacity of dextrous juggling with words If you choose to give an extension of meaning to a particular  

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word, a meaning it cannot & ought not to have, you can easily build on it a very glittering edifice of theory, which will charm the eye until someone comes by with a more effective word more effectively extended in meaning and knocks down the old house to build a newer & more glittering mansion Thus the old eternal truths are overlaid by trashy superstructures until some day some salutary earthquake swallows up the building & builders & reveals the old truth which no change or chance can injure Amid the giddy round of ever shifting theories Europe gives us, there are only two fundamental truths, often misapplied, but nevertheless true in the sphere of phenomena,—Evolution, which is taught in different ways by our Sankhya & Vedanta, and the Law of Invariable Causality, which is implied in our theories of Kal & Karma These receive & hold fast to,—for it is by working them out not always well, but always suggestively that Europe has made her real contribution to the eternal store of knowledge But in their isms and schisms trust not—they contain scant grain of truth hidden in a very bushelful of error

THE STUDENT

Still it seems to me that Lecky is not altogether wrong

THE GURU

On the contrary he is entirely right,—if we consent to lump together all enlightenment without regard to its nature & source, as rationalism; that the moral improvement of Europe was due to increasing enlightenment is entirely true, for Knowledge, by which I mean not the schoolmaster’s satchelful of information or even the learning of the Universities, but Jnana, the perception & realisation of truth, is the eternal enemy and slayer of sin; for sin is descended of ignorance through her child, egoism It is true that the so-called Christian ages in Europe were times of sin and darkness; Europe had accepted Christ only to crucify him afresh; she had entombed him alive with his pure & gracious teaching and over that living tomb she had built a thing called the Church What we know as Christendom was a  

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strange mixture of Roman corruption, German barbarism and fragments of ancient culture all bathed in the pale light that flowed upward from the enhaloed brows of the entombed and crucified Christ The great spiritual hoard he had opened to the West was kept locked up and unavailable except to individuals whose souls were too bright to be swallowed up in the general darkness All knowledge was under taboo, not because there was any natural conflict between Religion & Science, but because there was natural & irreconcilable antipathy between the obscurantism of political ecclesiastics & resurgent knowledge Again Asia came to the rescue of Europe and from the liberal civilisation of the Arabs, Science was reborn into her mediaeval night, and the light of Science, persecuted & tortured, struggled up until the darkness was overpowered & wounded to death The intellectual history of Europe has outwardly been a struggle between Science & the Church, with which has been confounded the Christian religion which the Church professed with its lips & attempted to strangle with its hands; inwardly it was the ancient struggle between Deva and Asura, sattwa & tamas Now Religion is sattwic with a natural impulse towards light, it cannot be tamasic, it can have no dealings with the enemies of the Devas; and if something calling itself religion, attempts to suppress light, you may be sure it is not religion but an impostor masquerading in her name Consider what were the ideas under which as under a banner, the modern spirit overthrew the mediaeval Titan; the final uprush of those ideas we see in the French revolution The motto of the Revolution we know, liberty, equality & fraternity; the spirit it professed but could not attain we know, humanity In liberty the union of the individual moral liberty of Christianity with the civic liberty of Greece; in equality, the democratic spiritual equality of Christianity applied to society; fraternity, the aspiration to universal brotherhood, which is the peculiar and distinguishing idea of Christianity; in humanity, the Buddhistic spirit of mercy, pity, love, of which Europe knew nothing till Christianity breathed it forth over the Mediterranean and with greater purity over Ireland, mingled with the sense of the divinity in man, borrowed from India through the old Gnostics  

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& Platonists, these are the ideas which still profoundly influence Europe, many of which Scientific materialism has been obliged to borrow or tolerate, none of which it has as yet availed entirely to root out Rationalism did not create these ideas, but found and adopted them Rationalism is the spirit which subjects all beliefs & opinions to the test of logic from observed facts, it is indeed the intellectual sheath, mostly the lower or merely logical half of the intellectual sheath attempting to establish itself as the Self This is what we call Science and the scientific spirit Wherever it has been able to work in the light of pure dry intellect, not distorted by irruptions of the lower selves in the shape of interest, vanity, passions, prejudices, it has produced invaluable results; in the sphere therefore of the passionless observation, classification and correlation of facts we may follow Science without distrust or fear of stumbling; but whenever it tries to theorize from what it has observed about human nature, human affairs & spiritual development, Science is always tumbling into the pits of the lower selves; in attempting to range things above the material level under the law of the material self, it is trying to walk upon water, to float upon air; it is doing something essentially unscientific Still more is this the case when it deals with the higher things of the spirit in the same terms; its theories then become so amazingly paradoxical, one stands astonished at the wilful blindness to facts to which prejudice & prepossession can lead the trained observers of facts Follow them not there, there are the blind leading the blind who go round and round battering themselves like a blind bird at night against the same eternal walls and never seeing the window open to it for its escape

THE STUDENT

But you have said that Evolution is an eternal truth On the basis of Evolution the scientists have discovered a moral sanction, which does replace the old religious sanctions, the paramount claim of the race upon the individual

THE GURU

What race? The English or German or Russian or the great  

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Anglo-Saxon race, which it appears is to inherit the world, God’s Englishmen and, we must now add, God’s Americans—or is it the whole white race? To whom must the individual bow his head as the head & front of Evolution?

THE STUDENT

I mean the whole human race The individual is ephemeral, the species endures, the genus lasts almost for ever On this basis your duty to yourself, your duty to society, your duty to your country, your duty to mankind, all fall into a beautifully ranged, orderly & symmetrical arrangement All morality is shown to be a historical inevitable evolution, and you have only to recognise it and farther that evolution by falling into its track instead of going backward on the track

THE GURU

And getting called atavistic and degenerate and other terrible names? Still I should like to be better satisfied as to the basis of this symmetrical and inevitable arrangement; for if I were convinced that I am an ephemeral animal, I should like to enjoy myself during my day like other ephemeral animals and cannot see why I should trouble myself about the eternal future; & even tho’ science should hurl the most formidable polysyllables in its vocabulary at me, I do not know that I should greatly care, and I think Messrs Rockefeller & Jay Gould & millions more were or are in hearty agreement with me You say the genus is eternal? But I believe this is not the teaching of Science As I understand it, man is only an animal, a particular sort of monkey which developed suddenly for some inexplicable reason & shot forward 10,000 miles ahead of every animal yet born upon earth If this is so, there is no reason why some other animal, say, some particular kind of ant, should not suddenly for some inexplicable reason develop & shoot forward 100,000 miles ahead and make as short work of man as man made of the mammoth Or in some other way the human race will certainly be replaced Now what good is it to the mammoth whose bones science has recently disinterred, that a race has developed which  

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can disinter him and dissertate in numerous polysyllables upon his remains? And if a scientific mammoth in his days had placed before him this prospect and bid him give up in the interest of the mammoth race, his unsocial & selfish ways, would that have seemed even to the most reasonable tusker a sufficient motive for his self-sacrifice? Where would his benefit in the affair come in?

THE STUDENT

It is not precisely a question of personal benefit; it is a question of inevitable law You would be setting yourself against the inevitable law

THE GURU

Verily? and what do I care, if my opposition to the inevitable brings me no harm, but rather content & prosperity in my day? After my death nothing can injure me, if I am but clay

THE STUDENT

The individual may be immoral, but morality progresses inevitably

THE GURU

Truly? I do not think the present state of Europe favourable to that conception Why, we had thought that Science would make the cultured nations dominate & people the earth And we find them stationary or absolutely retrograding in population, degenerating in nerve & hardiness, losing in the true imperial qualities We had thought that sacking of cities, massacre, torture & foul rape were blotted by civilisation from the methods of war The enlightened peoples of Europe march into China and there takes place an orgy of filth & blood & cold delight in agony which all but the most loathsome savages would shrink from in disgust Is that the inevitable moral advance or Red Indian savagery improved upon? We had thought that with increasing education & intellectuality must come increasing chastity or at least refinement In a great American city the police sweeps the brothels and gathers in its net hundreds of educated, cultured,  

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gracious & stately women who had carried their education, beauty and culture there Is that the inevitable moral advance, or rather the days of Messalina returned? These are not isolated phenomena but could be multiplied infinitely Europe is following in the footsteps of ancient Rome

THE STUDENT

There are these periods of retrogression Evolution advances in a curve, not in a straight line

THE GURU

And mark that these retrogressions are most inevitable when the world, abandoning religion, plunges into philosophic materialism Not immediately do they come; while the spirit of the old religion still survives the death of its body, the nations seem perhaps to gain in strength & power; but very soon the posthumous force is exhausted All the old nations perished because in the pride of intellect they abandoned their dharma, their religion India, China still live What was the force that enabled India beaten down & trampled by mailed fist & iron hoof ever to survive immortally, ever to resist, ever to crush down the conqueror of the hour at last beneath her gigantic foot, ever to raise her mighty head again to the stars? It is because she never lost hold of religion, never gave up her faith in the spirit Therefore the promise of Srikrishna ever holds good; therefore the Adyashakti, the mighty Chandi, ever descends when the people turn to her and tramples the Asura to pieces Times change and a new kind of outer power rules over India in place of the Asuras of the East But woe to India if she cast from her her eternal dharma The fate of the old nations shall then overtake her, her name shall be cast out from the list of nations and her peoples become a memory and a legend upon the earth Let her keep true to her Self, and the Atmashakti, the eternal Force of the Self shall again strengthen & raise her Modern Science has engaged itself deeply in two cardinal errors; it has built out of the Law of Causation a new and more inexorable fate than Greek or Hindu or Arab ever imagined Engrossed  

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with this predestination, Science has come to believe that the human will is a mere servant, nay, a mere creation of eternal inanimate forces Science is mistaken & unless it widen its view it may easily be convinced of its mistake in a very ugly fashion before long The Will is mightier than any law, fate or force The Will is eternal, omnipotent, it has created the law of causation and governs it; it has made the laws of matter and it can override them; it is itself all the forces which seem to govern and bind it There is no compulsion on the human will to evolve towards progression; if it chooses to regress, back it will go and all the world reeling and shrieking with it into barbarism and chaos; if it chooses to go forward, no force can stop it The other mistake Science has made, it borrows from Christianity; it is that action and emotion can be directed towards beings distinct from oneself; all action and emotion are for the self, in the self But if Science teaches men to regard themselves as distinct and purely corporeal beings, with no connection with others except such as may be created by physical contact and the communication of the senses, it is obvious that the human Will under the obsession of this belief, will inevitably shape its action & thought in accordance passing over the more shadowy moral generalities of evolutionary theorists or play with them only as intellectual marbles And that spells in the end a colossal selfishness, an increasing sensuality, lust of power, riches, comfort & dominion, a monstrous & egoistic brutality like that of a hundred-armed Titan wielding all the arms of the Gods in those hundred hands If man believes himself to be an animal he will act like an animal & exalt the animal impulse into his guide That Europe does not approach more swiftly to this condition is due to the obstinate refusal of Jnana, Religion, true enlightenment, maimed & wounded tho’ it be, to perish and make an end; it will not allow the human Will to believe that it is no more than nerve & flesh & body, animal & transitory It persists & takes a hundred forms to elude the pursuit of materialistic Science, calling upon the Eternal Mother to come down and save; and surely before long she shall come All bases of morality which do not go back to the original divine    

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and sempiternal nature of man, must be erroneous and fleeting Not from the instincts & customs of the ape & savage did the glories of religion & virtue arise,—they are the perennial light of the concealed godhead revealing themselves ever with clearer lines, with floods of more beautiful rainbow lustre, to culminate at last in the pure white light of the supreme realisation, when all creatures have become our Self and our Self realises its own Unity.

The Upanishad having posited this Unity which is at once the justification of all religion & morality and the culmination in which religion & morality disappear into something higher than either, proceeds again to sum up and describe the Eternal under this new light In the fourth verse He has been described only as the mighty Force which creates & surrounds all this universe; He is now to be described as the mighty Unity which in its unmanifestation is the source of all existence and in its manifestation governs these innumerable worlds.

This is He that went round, the brightness, unbodied, unscarred, without sinews, pure, untouched by sin; He is the Seer, the Thinker, the Selfborn that pervadeth; He from years sempiternal hath ordered perfectly all things

The verse begins by repeating a position already taken, of the Lord surrounding all things as a robe surrounds its wearer, creating all things by the appearance of motion, which is however an appearance, a phenomenon and not a reality of the Eternal “This is He that went round ” In other words the whirl of motion which the manifested Eternal set at work created the worlds; he poured forth from himself as Prajna the Eternal Wisdom and entered & encompassed each thing as he created it But who is this He? In answering this question the Sruti immediately reverts  

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to the neuter gender, because it has to go back to the luminous Parabrahman who is beyond the idea of sex or characteristic He the Creator of the Worlds is in reality That Brightness, the luminous shadow of the Unknowable of which we can only speak in negatives That has not a body or form, form being created by Him and therefore this side of Him; He has no scars or imperfections, but is one faultless & perfect light; He has no sinews or muscles; i.e. He is that side of matter and creation is produced from him not by physical means or physical strength & skill, but by the mere flowing forth of his Shakti or Will Finally He is not only that side of Matter, but He is that side of Mind also, for He is pure and untouched by evil It is mind that creates impurity & evil, by desire which produces duality; but the Eternal is not subject to desire What is evil or Sin? It is merely the preference of the more gross to the more subtle, of tamas to rajas and of rajas to sattwa; it operates therefore in the sphere of the gunas and the Eternal being above the gunas cannot be touched by Sin Having established the identity of the Lord who creates & rules, with the pure luminous Parabrahman, who is neither lord nor subject, the Sruti describes the Lord in his capacity of the All-wise Governor; he is the Seer & Poet, who by his illumined inspirations creates as Hiranyagarbha the whole world in His own infinite Mind, He is the Thinker, Prajna, the Wise One, from whose essential mass of equipoised consciousness all existence and its laws draw their perennial strength and being and flow forth to their works, and He is also that which flows forth, Virat, the pervading spirit which enters into all things and encompasses In all these capacities He is selfborn; for He is Prajna who came forth by His own strength from the luminous Parabrahman & is Parabrahman, He is Hiranyagarbha who comes forth by His own strength from Prajna & is Prajna; He is Virat who comes forth by His own strength from Hiranyagarbha & is Hiranyagarbha He is the Self born out of the Self by the Self In other words all these are merely names of the One Spirit in different aspects or states of universal & infinite consciousness Why then is the Lord spoken of, unlike Parabrahman, in the masculine gender? Because he is now considered in His    

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capacity as the great ruler & ordainer, not in His capacity as the source from which all things flow As the source, substratum & container of things He is the Trinity, Prajna-Hiranyagarbha-Virat, in whom the Male & Female, Spirit & Matter, the Soul & its Shakti are still one & undivided He is therefore best spoken of in the neuter But when we see Him as the Ruler & Ordainer, the Manifested Brahman dealing with a world of phenomena already created, then division has taken place, the Shakti has gone forth to its works, and the great male Trinity, Brahma-Vishnu-Maheshwara, filled with the force of that Shakti are creating, preserving & destroying the countless worlds and the innumerable myriads of their inhabiting forms Both these Trinities are in reality one Trinity, it is only the point of view that makes the difference From this standpoint the Sruti goes on then to describe the Lord He is kavi, the great seer & poet in the true sense of the word poet; the kavi is he who divines things luminously & distinctly by sheer intuition and whose divinations become, by their own overflow, creations Paramatman as Sat-Brahma-Hiranyagarbha has this divine quality of poethood,—which men call the power of creation and it is therefore that his Shakti is described as Saraswati Then the Lord is described as manishi, the Thinker It is the thought of the Lord that is the basis or substratum of all this creation; it is therefore that the inanimate object forms faultlessly, that the tree grows unerringly, that the animal acts with infallible instinct towards his dominant needs, that the star moves in its course & the mountain holds to its base All the creations of the great Kavi would be inconstant in their relations and clash & collide till they destroyed each other if there were not this imperative Wisdom, with stability & equipoise as its characteristic, underlying all things & keeping them to their places, actions & nature This Wisdom, be it noted, is the very nature of things; it is no deliberate invention, no thing of afterthoughts, adjustments & alterations, but unchangeable & the essential basis of existence from the beginning Whatever form it take, of gravitation, or of attraction and repulsion, or of evolution, it is an eternal presence & the very nature of the world, प्रज्ञान ब्रह्म. This power of divine instinctive thought is  

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one capacity of Paramatman as Chit-Mahadev-Prajna (Tamas, Sthanu) His other capacity is that of destruction, for He is the Spirit of immobility to whom the deep sleep of perfect unconditioned thought is the culmination (Chit) and if it were not for the activity of the Kavi in the Eternal, if the Thinker in Him were to blot out the Poet, all this pulsating world of phenomena would be stilled & resolve by inaction into the womb of undetermined condensed existence Then again He is paribhu, He who exists all round, the great pervading Bliss of existence (Ananda) For the works of the Poet even though upheld by the Thinker, could not last, if it were not that the bliss of existence [is] poured through all created things like a stream of heavenly nectar & makes life, being, their first imperative need This is that Will to Live of the German philosopher, which because like all Europeans, he could see Truth only in one of her limbs and not as a divine whole, gave so pessimistic a note to his thought All things are supported & eternalized by this Bliss, for it is the unchanging & eternal Paramatman Manifesting as the will to live finitely, it must be broadened into the will to live infinitely in order to fulfil itself & recover its own deepest & essential nature We will first to live as individuals, then to live in the family, then to live in the tribe or clan, then to live in the race or nation, then to live in mankind, then to live in the Universe, then to live in God, the one Eternal; this is the natural evolution of humanity & its course is determined by the very nature of the Self Science the Apara Vidya traces for us the course & byelaws of evolution, but it is only the Para Vidya that bases it for us, gives us its reason, source, law & culmination This Bliss is the capacity of Vishnu-Virat who is Ananda By his very existence in all beings the Lord preserves & saves Remember that, though you cry out to the Heavens for help in your misery, it is not the blue sky that hears, it is nothing outside you that comes to save, but He within you alone can protect Art thou oppressed, O man, by ogre & giant, by fiend & foeman? Seek His mighty Shakti, Bhavani Mahishamardini, in yourself and She will externalize armed with sword & trident to crush the triumphing Asura This is the law & the gospel The Poet, the Thinker, the Pervading    

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Presence, these three are the Swayambhu, the eternal Selfborn who is born by HimSelf out of HimSelf into HimSelf The Gods are not different from each other, for they are all one God, & there is no other This is He who has ordered from eternal years perfectly all things याथातथ्यतः, each duly as it should be & must be because of its own nature, for the nature of a thing is its origin, its law, its destiny, its end; and harmony with its nature is its perfection All this mighty universe where various things acting according to their various natures harmonise & melt into a perfect unity, all this wonderful Kingdom of a single Law in its manifold aspects He has ordered, व्यदघात, he has arranged diversely; he has set each thing in its own place, working in its own orbit & according to its own overmastering & inexorable nature All this He has done from years eternal, not in time, not at a particular date & season, but eternally, before Time was The Law did not spring into being, but was, is & for ever shall be The forms of objects, it is true, vary in Time, but the law of their nature is of eternal origin In the act you do today, you are obeying a Law which has existed during the whole of eternity Try to realise it, and you will see Time & Space vanishing into Infinity, you will hear the boom of the eternal waters & the great voice crying for ever on the waters “Tapas, tapas”, and feel yourself in the presence of the One unchangeable & eternal God Maya & her works have no ending, because they had no beginning, but the soul of Man can rise above Maya and her works & stand over her & free from her watching her as her master for whose joy she labours unto all eternity For verily Man is God and as by his own Will he has cast himself into the illusory bonds of the Enchantress, so by His own will He can shake off the bonds & rule her The play of the Soul with the Maya is the play of the lover & his beloved, one feigning to be the slave of the other, rejoicing in her favour or weeping at her feet in her anger, and now resuming his rightful role of lord & master, yea, turning away from her at will to a fairer & more wonderful face; and now Krishna wears the blue dress & shining jewels, and now Radha the yellow cloth & fragrant garlands of the green wood and the brilliant feather of the peacock; for He  

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is She, and She is He; they are only playing at difference, for in real truth they have been and are one to all Eternity

THE STUDENT

Here then the first part of the Upanishad seems to be ended and some very obscure & disconnected utterances follow

THE GURU

The utterances of the Upanishad are never disconnected, but the connection is usually beneath the surface, not openly declared by explicit statement or grammatical construction The Upanishad has said that the Eternal has arranged all objects of the Universe perfectly from years eternal Maya therefore is eternal, Avidya is eternal The question will at once be put, what then of Vidya & Avidya? the Eternal and the Transient? the Is & the Seems to Be? If Avidya is eternal, let us rejoice in her wonders & glories & never strive to escape from her bonds But if Vidya alone be eternal, then is Avidya a curse and a bondage, what have we to do with it, but shake it off with disgust as soon as possible? These are the extremes of the Materialist and Nihilist, the Charvak & the Sunyavadin; but the Vedanta gives its sanction to neither The Unconditioned Brahman is, but of the Conditioned also we cannot say that He is not and the Conditioned Brahman is what we call Maya Brahman is eternal & Maya therefore is eternal; but the Conditioned Brahman obviously rests on the Unconditioned and cannot be except in Him As are the reverse & obverse of a coin, so are the Conditioned and Unconditioned, and the aspirant to Knowledge must know both and not one only or he will know but little indeed of the true nature of the Eternal

THE STUDENT

The followers of Adwaita will call this rank heresy Maya is illusion, unreality and is slain by knowledge, it cannot therefore be eternal

THE GURU

You cannot slay Maya; you can only slay Moha, the illusion  

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of Maya; her you can only conquer and put her under your feet You remember that Shankara after conquering Ubhayabharati, made her living body his asan of meditation; that is the symbol of the Yogi and the wonderful twofold Maya of the Eternal He has conquered her & put her beneath him, but it is still upon her that his asan is based even when he is unconscious of Her and in union with the Eternal If this were not so, then the whole of phenomena would cease the moment a man becomes a Buddha and enters into Nirvana; for He & the Eternal are One If Parabrahman therefore were limited either to Vidya or Avidya, obviously Avidya would cease the moment Vidya began and the salvation of one Jivatma would bring about the end of the world for all; just as the Christians say that the crucifixion of Christ saved the world But this is not so The power of Shakti of Brahman is twofold & simultaneous; He is able to exercise Vidya & Avidya at the same moment; he eternally realises His own transcendental nature; and at the very same time He realises this wonderful universe of His imagination He is like a great poet who shadows forth a world of his own creation made in himself and of himself and yet knows that He is different from it & independent of it . It is for this reason only that the salvation of a particular Jivatman does not bring the world to an end Nor does Shankara really say anything different; for he does not assert that Maya is unreal; he says it is a mysterious something of which you cannot say that it is and yet you cannot say that it is not This indeed is the only description that the finite mind can make of this mysterious Shakti of the Illimitable, Unconditioned, Unknowable Brahman Maya in its forms may be unreal & transitory but Maya in its essence as a Shakti of the Eternal, must itself be eternal, from of old & for ever.

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