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SIX The Triple Brahman
PARABRAHMAN is now on the way to phenomenal manifestation; the Absolute Shakespeare of Existence, the infinite Kavi, Thinker and Poet, is, by the mere existence of the eternal creative force Maya, about to shadow forth a world of living realities out of Himself which have yet no independent existence. He becomes phenomenally a Creator, and Container of the Universe, though really He is what He ever was, absolute and unchanged. To understand why and how the Universe appears what it is, we have deliberately to abandon our scientific standpoint of transcendental knowledge and speaking the language of Nescience, represent the Absolute as limiting Itself, the One becoming the Many, the pure ultra-Spiritual unrefining Itself into the mental and material. We are like the modern astrologer who, knowing perfectly well that the earth moves round the sun, must yet persist in speaking of the Sun as moving and standing in this part of the heavens or that other, because he has to do with the relative positions of the Sun and planets with regard to men living on the earth and not with the ultimate astronomical realities. From this point of view we have to begin with a dualism of the thing and its shadow, Purusha and Prakriti, commonly called spirit and matter. Properly speaking, the distinction is illusory, since there is nothing which is exclusively spirit or exclusively matter, nor can the Universe be strictly parcelled out between these; from the point of view of Reality spirit and matter are not different but the same. We may say, if we like, that the entire Universe is matter and spirit does not exist; we may say, if we like that the entire Universe is spirit and matter does not exist. In either case we are merely multiplying words without counsel, ignoring the patent fact visible through the Universe that both spirit and matter exist and are indissolubly welded, Page - 45 precisely because they are simply one thing viewed from two sides. The distinction between them is one of the primary dualisms and a first result of the great Ignorance. Maya works out in name and form as material; Maya works out in the conceiver of name and form as spiritual. Purusha is the great principle or force whose presence is necessary to awake creative energy and send it out working into and on shapes of matter. For this reason Purusha is the name usually applied to the conditioned Brahman in His manifestations; but it is always well to remember that the Primal Existence turned towards manifestation has a double aspect. Male and Female, positive and negative. He is the origin of the birth of things and He is the receptacle of the birth and it is to the Male aspect of Himself that the word Purusha predominatingly applies. The image often applied to these relations is that of the man casting his seed into the woman; his duty is merely to originate the seed and deposit it, but it is the woman's duty to cherish the seed, develop it, bring it forth and start it on its career of manifested life. The seed, says the Upanishad, is the self of the Male, it is spirit, and being cast into the Female, Prakriti, it becomes one with her and therefore does her no hurt; spirit takes the shaping appearance of matter and does not break up the appearances of matter, but develops under their law. The Man and the Woman, universal Adam and Eve, are really one and each is incomplete without the other, barren without the other, inactive without the other. Purusha the Male, God, is that side of the One which gives the impulse toward phenomenal existence; Prakriti the Female, Nature, is that side which is and evolves the material of phenomenal existence; both of them are therefore unborn and eternal. The Male is Purusha, he who lurks in the Wide; the Female is Prakriti, the working of the Male, and sometimes called Rayi, the universal movement emanating from the quiescent Male. Purusha is therefore imaged as the Enjoyer, Prakriti as the enjoyed; Purusha as the Witness, Prakriti as the phenomena he witnesses; Purusha as begetter or father of things, Prakriti as their bearer or mother. And there are many other images the Upanishad employs, Purusha, for instance, symbolising Himself in the Sun, the father of life, and Prakriti in the Earth, the bearer of life. It is necessary Page - 46 thus clearly to define Purusha from the first in order to avoid confusion in endeavouring to grasp the development of Maya as the Upanishads describe it. Parabrahman in the course of evolving phenomena enters into three states or conditions which are called in one passage His three habitations and, by a still more suggestive figure. His three states of dream. The first condition is called avyakta, the state previous to manifestation, in which all things are involved, but in which nothing is expressed or imaged, the state of ideality, undifferentiated but pregnant of differentiation, just as the seed is pregnant of the bark, sap, pith, fibre, leaf, fruit and flower and all else that unites to make the conception of a tree; just as the protoplasm is pregnant of all the extraordinary variations of animal life. It is, in its objective aspect, the seed-state of things. The objective possibility, and indeed necessity of such a condition of the whole Universe, cannot be denied; for this is the invariable method of development which the operations of Nature show to us. Evolution does not mean that out of protoplasm as a material so many organisms have been created or added by an outside power, but that they have been developed out of the protoplasm ; and if developed, they were already there existent and have been manifested by some power dwelling and working in the protoplasm itself. But open up the protoplasm, as you will, you will not find in it the rudiments of the organs and organisms it will hereafter develop. So also though the protoplasm and everything else is evolved out of ether, yet no symptoms of them would yield themselves up to an analytical research into ether. The organs and organisms are in the protoplasm, the leaf, flower, fruit in the seed and all forms in the ether from which they evolve, in an undifferentiated condition and therefore defy the method of analysis which is confined to the discovery of differences. This is the state called involution. So also ether itself, gross or subtle, and all that evolves from ether is involved in Avyakta; they are present but they can never be discovered there because there they are undifferentiated. Plato's world of ideas is a confused attempt to arrive at this condition of things, confused because it unites two incompatible things, the conditions of Avyakta and those of the next state presided over by Hiranyagarbha. Page - 47 The question then arises, what is the subjective aspect of Parabrahman in the state of Avyakta? The organs and organisms are evolved out of protoplasm and forms out of ether by a power which resides and works in them, and that power must be intelligent consciousness unmanifested; must, because it is obviously a power that can plan, arrange and suit means to ends; must because otherwise the law of subtler involving grosser cannot obtain. If matter is all, then from the point of view of matter, the gross is more real because more palpable than the subtle and unreality cannot develop reality; it is intelligent consciousness and nothing else we know of that not only has the power of containing at one and the same time the gross and the subtle, but does consistently proceed in its method of creation or evolution from vagueness to precision, from no form to form and from simple form to complex form. If the discoveries of Science mean anything and are not a chaos, an illusion or a chimera, they can only mean the existence of an intelligent consciousness present and working in all things. Parabrahman therefore is present subjectively even in the condition of Avyakta no less than in the other conditions as intelligent consciousness and therefore as bliss. For the rest, we are driven to the use of metaphors, and since metaphors must be used, one will do as well as another, for none can be entirely applicable. Let us then image Avyakta as an egg, the golden egg of the Puranas full of the waters of undifferentiated existence and divided into two halves, the upper or luminous half filled with the upper waters of subjective ideation, the lower or tenebrous half with the lower waters of objective ideation. In the upper half Purusha is concealed as the final cause of things; it is there that is formed the idea of undifferentiated, eternal, infinite, universal Spirit. In the lower half he is concealed as Prakriti, the material cause of things; it is there that is formed the idea of undifferentiated, eternal, infinite, universal matter, with the implications Time, Space and Causality involved in its infinity. It is represented mythologically by Vishnu on the causal Ocean sitting on the hood of Ananta, the infinite snake whose endless folds are Time, and are also Space and are also Causality, these three being fundamentally one, — a Trinity. In the upper Page - 48 half Parabrahman is still utterly Himself, but with a Janus face, one side contemplating the Absolute Reality which He is, the other envisaging Maya, looking on the endless procession of her works not yet as a reality, but as a phantasmagoria. In the lower half if we may use a daring metaphor, Parabrahman forgets Himself. He is subjectively in the state corresponding to utter sleep or trance from which when a man awakes he can only realise that he was and that he was in a state of bliss resulting from the complete absence of limitation; that he was conscious in that state, follows from his realisation of blissful existence, but the consciousness is not a part of his realisation. This concealment of Consciousness is a characteristic of the seed-state of things and it is what is meant by saying that when Parabrahman enters into matter as Prakriti, He forgets Himself. Of such a condition, the realisations of consciousness do not return to us, we can have no particular information. The Yogin passes through it on his way to the Eternal, but he hastens to this goal and does not linger in it; not only so, but absorption in this stage is greatly dreaded except as a temporary necessity; for if the soul finally leaves the body in that condition, it must recommence the cycle of evolution all over again; for it has identified itself with the seed-state of things and must follow the nature of Avyakta which is to start on the motions of Evolution by the regular order of universal manifestation. This absorption is called the prakṛti laya or absorption in Prakriti. The Yogin can enter into this state of complete Nescience or Avidya and remain there for centuries, but if by any chance his body is preserved and he returns to it, he brings nothing back to the store of our knowledge on this side of Avyakta. Parabrahman in the state of Avyakta Purusha is known as prajna, the Master of prajna. Eternal Wisdom or Providence, for it is He that orders and marshals before Himself, like a great poet planning a wonderful masterpiece in his mind, the eternal laws of existence and the unending procession of the worlds. Vidya and Avidya are here perfectly balanced, the former still and quiescent though comprehensive, the latter not yet at active work, waiting for the command, "Let there be darkness." And then the veil of darkness, Vidya seems to be in Page - 49 abeyance, and from the disturbance of the balance results inequality; then out of the darkness Eternal Wisdom streams forth to its task of creation and Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Child, is born.... Page - 50 |