Part Two

Section One

God

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imperfection—and the suffering which is its consequence. He can only either die in his ignorance escaping from an incurable imperfection and suffering by a physical extinction or escape out of it by a spiritual extinction gained through an awakening of the soul to the illusoriness of birth and world and Nature or [ . . . ] & hope to get [out] of it into some other supraterrestrial state of existence. Human life on earth can then never grow into anything fundamentally other, better or more perfect than it is now. The hope that by using our reason and observing or utilising the laws of Nature we can arrive at a perfect life here is futile, for our nature here being itself ignorant and imperfect cannot arrive at anything better than a mitigated imperfection and ignorance. But if there is a means by which we can arrive at a true knowledge of the reality behind things and enter into its Truth and Light and Power then there is no reason why our life here should not become divine and perfect. It is through Yoga that this means can be found and this emergence become possible.

3

A greater existence and consciousness than what we are now or are in our surface being, to which yet we can by certain means raise ourself and become or enter into that,—this is the postulate of all Yoga.

What is this greater consciousness and existence? It is something or someone eternal and infinite, absolute or perfect, in which all is, from which all comes, to which all returns and which is the secret self of all things. All is by its existence, all is conscious by its consciousness, continues to be by its Ananda of being, thinks by its Mind, lives by its life, is a form of its Energy in the Cosmos. But still the existence we live, the consciousness we use, the highest joy of being which we experience, our mind, life, body, force are but a fragmentary phenomenon of or in It. That Eternal is the All, the whole, our greater Self, our completeness, our universe, yet is it more than any universe. If no universe were, it still would be.

This Eternal and Infinite is not only an Eternal of endless Time and Space. For its eternity can be realised not only in   

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the endless progression of the years and aeons but in a single moment of Time, its infinity not only in the boundless extension of space to which we can assign no end or border, but in the most infinitesimal atom of an atom. But beyond the moment and the endless aeons the eternity of the Eternal is timeless and beyond the spatial Infinite and Infinitesimal the infinity of the Infinite is spaceless.

4

All begins from the Divine, from the Eternal, from the Infinite, all abides in it alone and by it alone, all ends or culminates in the divine Eternal and Infinite. This is the first postulate indispensable for our spiritual seeking—for on no other base can we found the highest knowledge and the highest life.

All time moves in the Eternal; all space is spread in the Infinite; all creatures and creations live by that in them which is Divine. This is patently true of an inner spiritual but also proves in the end to be true of this outer space and time. It is known to our inmost being that it lives because it is part of the Divine, but it is true also of the external and phenomenal creature compounded of ignorant Mind, blind life and subconscious Matter.

A secret Self is the Alpha and Omega of this manifested existence; it is also the constant term, the omnipresent x into which all things resolve separately or together and which is their sum, their constituting material and their essence. All here is secretly the Divine, all is the Eternal, all is the Infinite.

But this secret truth of things is contradicted by the world's external appearances, it is denied by all the facts placed before us by our mind and senses, inconsistent with the sorrow and suffering of the world, incompatible with the imperfection of living beings and the unchangeable inconscience of things. What then pushes the mind to affirm it? what compels us to admit a seeing of things which is in conflict with our outer seeing and experience?

For on the surface of our consciousness and all around us there is only the temporal and transient, only [the] confined and finite. What seems largest to us finds its limit, what we dreamed   

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to be enduring comes to an end; even this vast universe with its masses of worlds upon worlds which seemed to stretch into infinity is convicted in the end of being only a boundless finite. Man claiming to be a divine soul and an all-discovering intellect is brought up short by Nature's rude proof of his ignorance and incompetence and exhibits constantly in his thoughts the proneness to self-confident error and in his feelings and acts the petty faultiness, meanness, and darkness or suddenly the abysses of falsehood or foulness or cruelty of his nature. In the management of his world the much that is undivine prevails easily over the little that is divine or they are inextricably mixed together. The ideal fails in practice, religion degenerates quickly into a settled sectarian fanaticism or formality, the triumphant good turns into an organised evil. The Christian doctrine of the fall, the Indian idea of the wandering of the Soul in a cosmic illusion or the sceptic affirmation of an inconscient material Nature producing the freak of consciousness seems often to be the kernel of the whole matter.

And yet if we go deep enough into ourselves, we strike against something valid that proves to be a veiled divine element which affirms its immortality, Soul. If we go beyond our embodied mind and senses we break suddenly into something permanent that feels itself to be eternal and infinite, that cannot see itself as anything else and we also cannot conceive of it as anything else, an infinite Self, an eternal Spirit. Moreover in our most secret essence we are convinced of perfection or of perfectibility—perfection in our deepest spiritual being, perfectibility in our nature; we have the instinct and intuition of the Divine.

Even to Time and Space our mind cannot fix or conceive a beginning or an end; it cannot conceive a first bound or a last, a primary or ultimate moment without at once looking beyond it. If we see the imperfection of things, the very idea implies a potentiality of a perfection by comparison with which they are imperfect, and this potentiality points to a beyond Mind and beyond Sense which is the integrally and permanently perfect. Every relative supposes an absolute.

For a long time we have been asked not to believe in these   

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things, to put our trust only in the measuring rods of science and its calculations and crucibles, to accept only what is materially ascertainable and measurable. But these measurements are those of something that is limited—how can we ascertain by it whether there is or is not the Illimitable? The instruments by which we question Nature in order to find out what is ascertainable have been proved to give only the results which are already contained in the question or in the questioner. Science gives us the measures and process of things within the physical limit, but it has failed [to] tell us what things are, their final origin or their reason of existence.

In all this questing by one end or the other we cannot get beyond ourselves and it is better then to look into the inner side of ourselves,—why should we limit ourselves only to our responses to an outer evidence? Let us explore ourselves and not only our sense or perception of what is around us. And in ourselves let us look not only at our surfaces but at the inner and the inmost of our being and nature.

This self-knowledge pursued far enough shows us a deeper than the surface mind and a deeper than the physical sense, a profounder than the outward life. It shows us also a Beyond-Mind and Beyond-Sense, a Beyond-Life; the limited passes into [the] illimitable. If there were not this capacity of research, we would have to be content with an unsatisfied agnosticism; but the means is there by which we can know ourselves and this Alpha and X and Omega of things or if not absolutely It at any rate its status and its dynamis, the law of its being and the law of its nature quite as deeply and more deeply than Science can show us the law and process of the physical universe.

For the moment let us affirm only this result that this spiritual search and knowledge leads us beyond the phenomenon which apparently contradicts it to that which beyond the phenomenon brings us to the Divine Eternal and Infinite.

5

The rooted and fundamental conception of Vedanta is that there exists somewhere, could we but find it, available to experience   

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or self-revelation, if denied to intellectual research, a single truth comprehensive & universal in the light of which the whole of existence would stand revealed and explained both in its nature and its end. This universal existence, for all its multitude of objects and its diversity of faces, is one in substance and origin; and there is an unknown quantity, X or Brahman to which it can be reduced, for from that it started and in & by that it still exists.

6

Brahman is that which was before the beginning and will be after the end of things. In the beginning, says the Upanishad, Self was, Being was or Non-Being was; that saw world-creation in itself or from that Non-Being or eternal Being temporal existence was born. What prevents the timeless Eternal from conceiving Time in himself and ceasing from the conception? But the very idea supposes time[.]

7

One says "In the beginning was the Self, the Spirit, God, the Eternal." But there was never a beginning, for the Eternal and its works are always and for ever.

"In the beginning" is a phrase that has no meaning unless we speak of sections of existence, sections of it in Time, sections of it in Space, sections of it in substance; for these have a beginning and an end. Existence in itself has no end even as it never had a beginning.

It is not of pure existence only that this [can be said], existence in its essence without any expressive motion or feature, but of existence with all it contains and reveals in its depths as on its surface. For pure existence is only a state of being and not being in its whole truth and integral significance.

And even this state, although it appears to the quiescent mind featureless, motionless, concentrated in bare uniqueness, is still not empty or without feature,—it contains enveloped in itself all truth of feature, all power of motion, all that ever was, is or shall be manifested in this or any universe.   

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But the supreme divine Being is beyond any distinction of pure existence and phenomenal existence, feature or no feature, form or no form, being or non-being, manifestation and the unmanifest—for these are distinctions, separate states, opposite ideas to the mind, separate experiences to the Soul on the mental level, manomaya purusha. But the Supreme is beyond Mind and has no need for these divisions and contradictions of its nature.

Ekamevadvitiyam: One Without a Second

8

All existence is existence of the one Eternal and Infinite. Ekamevadvitiyam,—there is one without a second and there can be nothing else at any time or anywhere.

Even existence in Time is that, even the finite is that; for the finite is only a circumstance of the Infinite and Time is only a phase of Eternity. What we call undivine is that, for it is only a disguise of the omnipresent Divinity.

9

All existence is the existence of the one Divine Eternal and Infinite, there is and can be nothing else; not only the infinite is that but the finite, not only the timeless but Time and all that is in Time, not only the Impersonal but the Person, quality and number and that which [is] beyond quality and number; the Formless and form, the individual no less than the cosmic and supracosmic, matter and life and mind as well as the spirit, the relative and the absolute. All is that: ekam evadvitiyam.

All that is is reality of the Real; there is no need to invent an eternal illusive principle of Maya to account for world existence. The idea that the Supreme Reality is incapable of self-manifestation and that its only power is a power of self-delusion is a last desperate refuge of the human Mind and Reason trying to escape from a difficulty which is of its own creation, its own   

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self-imposed illusion or Maya and does not exist for the true and perfect supramental consciousness of the luminous Spirit.

There is no incompatibility between the Eternal and existence in Time. Time and the Timeless are the same Eternity in a self-contained status and a self-developing movement. The Timeless is eternal and knows itself in an everlasting present; Time too is eternal and is known in an indivisible movement of past, present and future. It is our consciousness poising itself in the mobile moment that gives us the impression of a divided Time, of consciousness moving from moment to moment, losing its past, gaining its future, connecting the three only by an act of memory which binds the is to the was and the to be. In the eternal Consciousness the past still exists and extends through the present into the future. To suppose that the Timeless is debarred by its timelessness from throwing itself out in a movement of Time and that Time therefore and all in time is an illusion or to suppose that Time alone exists and we are its temporal creations is to impose the ignorance and limitation of our little surface consciousness on the Divine Eternal. In reality we ourselves below our surface are the timeless developing in movement our existence in eternal Time.

10

One sole Reality constitutes all the infinite, the One, the Divine, the Eternal and Infinite—there is That alone and no other existence. Ekamevadvitiyam.

Infinite, but the finite existence is also that one being, that infinite Being; it has no separate reality: Eternal, but the temporal is nothing more than a movement of that Eternity, Time has no independent self-sustenance: Divine, but all that seems undivine is a disguise of the Divinity, it is no creation out of some unaccountable Opposite.

The Divine Reality is unconfined by form or quality; but form and quality also are his, infinite quality, innumerable figure, vessel of that earth, coin of that gold, colour inherent in that transcendent whiteness. All is the divine Eternal and Infinite.

Impersonal and Personal are not contrary appearances or   

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even dual aspects nor is the Person our convenient imagination of an ever impersonal Entity, but rather both are for ever the One.

All is the Divine, even that which is undivine. There is no not self; all this is the eternal Self; all this universe and every other universe is the Time existence of the timeless Spirit.

11

There is one sole reality and there can be no other, the One, the Divine, the Eternal and Infinite. Ekam evadvitiyam brahma.

The One is at the same time the All, for it exists in all, all exists by it, it is all. Whatever be [the] plane of being, whatever be the cosmos, whatever be the individual, the truth of its existence is the same; that it or he is the One; for there is and can be no other. The Transcendent is the Divine, the universal is the Divine, the individual is the Divine; all are the one Reality.

Not only what we see as the Infinite, but the finite also is that One Existence; it has no separate and independent reality. Not only the Eternal [is] that, but the temporal also, for the temporal is only a circumstance of the Eternal apart from which Time has no self-existence. Not only what we see as Divine is that, but the undivine is no more than a disguise of the one Divinity, it is no creation out of an unaccountable Opposite.

12

All existence is one; it is existence of the One Being, divine, infinite, eternal, absolute.

What we see as the Many, is the multiplicity of the One. All these apparently separate persons and objects are also the one existence; they are beings of the One Being. For That is their one self; in their spiritual essence they are That, even in the play and form of their being they are That; they are personalities of the one Person, they are manifestations of the one Existence, they are so many realities of the only Real. In no way are they separate and independent from It, but in every way live by It, are of It, can be nothing else. All forces are powers of the one Force,   

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the sole Power of the One Being; there is no other force than his. All objects are formations of the one Existence; there is nothing that exists in itself and apart from That, nothing that is of an individual essence other than the one Essence of the universe.

What we see as finite is not other than the Infinite. All is in the Infinite, all exists by the Infinite, all is of the stuff of the Infinite. No object or person could come into being or remain in being by its own finite and individual power; none exists by its own limited substance and essence other than the substance and essence of all others; all are at bottom indissolubly one. There is effective determination, definition, demarcation, diverse formation in the universe but no essential separation or division. A tree is separate as an object or phenomenon, but it is not a separate existence divided from all around it; there is a one-existence and a one-energy that has taken form of tree, constitutes every atom, molecule, fibre of it, pervades and is its whole structure of being and this existence, this energy not only abides in all of it and flows through all of it but extends everywhere around and is, constitutes, energises all other objects in the cosmos. Each finite is in fact the Infinite; all apparently separate or divided existence is only a front of the Indivisible.

All that we see as temporal is not other than the Eternal. The form of that which is in Time is or appears to be evanescent, but the self, the substance, the being that takes shape in that form is eternal and is one self, one substance, one being with all that is, all that was, all that shall be. But even the form is in itself eternal and not temporal, but it exists for ever in possibility, in power, in consciousness in the Eternal. Form is manifested and withdrawn from manifestation; it may be manifested by immediate apparition or it may be manifested by construction and withdrawn from manifestation by destruction or disaggregation, but in either case it exists beforehand in the consciousness and being of the Eternal. If it did not so pre-exist in power and possibility, it could not be created in actuality. For the actual proceeds from the possible and the possible is always a possibility of the truth of the Eternal.   

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13

All existence of whatever nature is existence of the One Divine, the Eternal and Infinite.

For not only the Infinite is that existence, but the finite also; not only the existence of the One, but the existence of the Many, not only the existence of the Unmanifest, but the existence of the manifested universe and of all actual or possible universes, not only the Impersonal, but the Personal, not only the Pure Existence, Consciousness, Bliss of Sachchidananda but all forms of existence or consciousness blissful or unblissful, not only the existence of the Absolute but the existence of all that is relative. There is nothing that is not the existence of the One Divine, the Eternal and Infinite. Ekam evadvitiyam.

14

There is one Being, infinite, eternal and divine, the sole Reality. All is the [ ], there is nothing else in the universe or outside the universe. Ekam evadvitiyam.

This eternity is not of Time; the eternity of Time is an extension in movement of the Timeless.

This infinity is not of Space; the infinity of Space is an extension in self of this spaceless Infinite.

15

All existence is the existence of the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine, the Ineffable—existence in Time no less than existence in Eternity, existence in the finite no less than existence in the Infinite, of the Many no less than of the One, of the Personal no less than of the Impersonal, of the individual and the cosmos no less than of the supercosmic, of the relative no less than of the Absolute. Ekam evadvitiyam Brahma.

The Eternal is in his very truth of being Existence, Consciousness and Bliss of existence. These three are a trinity and inseparable—they are not three but one; it is only in a certain play of the Manifestation that they can be distinguished and   

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separated from each other or turned phenomenally into their opposites. What appears to us as Nonexistence (Asat, Nihil or Sunya) is only an existence other than the existence of which we are aware. What appears to us as Inconscience is only a veiled or involved consciousness or else a consciousness to which our mind or sense has no access. What affects us as pain or suffering is only Ananda turned against itself, a distorted and tortured Bliss of existence. These contradictions are real in the Ignorance and because of the Ignorance, but to the true consciousness they are only phenomenal and superficial, not true truths of being.

Non-Being, Being and the Absolute

16

Nothing can arise from Nothing. Asat, nothingness, is a creation of our mind; where it cannot see or conceive, where its object is something beyond its grasp, too much beyond to give even the sense of a vague intangible, then it cries out "Here there is nothing." Out of its own incapacity it has created the conception of a Zero. But what in truth is this zero? It is an incalculable Infinite.

Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision's limited range.

For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.

God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light. Jnanam chaitanyam jyotir Brahma.

*

Of all that we know we know only the outside; even when we imagine that we have intimately seized the innermost thing, we have touched only an inner external. It is still a sheath of the covering, only it is a second or third or even a seventh sheath, not the most outward and visible.   

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It is the same when we think we know God or have possession of our highest inmost Self or have entered intimately into the inmost and supreme Spirit. What we know and possess is power or some powers of God, an aspect or appearance or formulation of the Self; what we have entered into is only one wideness or one depth of the Spirit.

This is because we know and possess by the mind or even what is below the mind, and when we find ourselves most spiritual, it is the mind spiritualised that conceives of itself as spirit. Imagining that we have left mind behind us, we take it with us into its own spiritual realms and cover with it the Supramental Mystery. The result is something to us wonderful and intense; but compared with That Intensity and Wonder, it is something thin and inadequate.

17

All existence,—as the mind and sense know existence,—is manifestation of an Eternal and Infinite which is to the mind and sense unknowable but not unknowable to its own self-awareness.

Whatever the manifestation spiritual or material or other may be, it has behind it something that is beyond itself, and even if we reached the highest possible heights of manifested existence there would be still beyond that even an Unmanifested from which it came.

The Unmanifested Supreme is beyond all definition and description by mind or speech; no definition the mind can make, affirmative or negative, can be at all expressive of it or adequate.

To the Mind this Unmanifest can present itself as a Self, a supreme Nihil (Tao or Sunya), a featureless Absolute, an Indeterminate, a blissful Nirvana of manifested existence, a Non-Being out of which Being came or a Being of Silence out of which a world-illusion came. But all these are mental formulas expressing the mind's approach to it, not That itself; impressions which fall from That upon the receiving consciousness, not the true essence or nature (swarupa) of the Eternal and Infinite. Even the words Eternal and Infinite are only symbolic expressions   

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through which the mind feels without grasping some vague impression of this Supreme. If we say of it neti neti, this can mean nothing except that nothing in the world or beyond it of which the mind can take cognisance is the Supreme in Its entirety or Its essence.

If we say of it iti iti, this can mean at the most that what we see of it in the world or beyond is some indication of something that is there beyond and by travelling through all these indications to their absolutes we may get a step or two nearer to the Absolute of all absolutes, the Supreme. Both formulas have a truth in them, but neither touches the secret truth of the Supreme.

18

The Origin and eternal Supporter of all existence, as of all that seems to ignorant Mind to be non-existence, is a supreme infinite and absolute. This Infinite is an essential, not, except in manifestation, a mobile temporal or extended spatial infinite; this Absolute is an expressibly positive, not a merely negating absolute—not excluding, but containing all relatives; for in it they find their own eternal and stable truth behind their present temporary and fluctuating appearance.

The Supreme is knowable to itself but unknowable to mind, inexpressible by words, because mind can grasp and words coined by the mind can express only limited, relative and divided things. Mind gets only misleading inadequate indefinite impressions or too definite reflective ideas of things too much beyond itself. Even here in its own field it grasps not things in themselves, but processes and phenomena, significant aspects, constructions and figures. But the Supreme is to its own absolute consciousness for ever self-known and self-aware, as also to supramental gnosis it is intimately known and knowable.

This Infinite and Eternal is the supreme Self of all, the supreme Source, Spirit and Person of all, the supreme Lord of all; there is nothing beyond it, nothing outside it. A million universes for ever persist or for ever recur because they are substantial expressions and manifestations of the supreme Infinite and Eternal.   

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19

All is existence. Non-existence is a fiction of the mind; for we describe as non-existent all that has never been within the range of our limited consciousness or is not in that range at the moment or was there once but has gone beyond it.

20

Being is not Parabrahman nor is Non-Being Parabrahman; these are only affirmative & negative terms in which Consciousness envisages its self-existence.

Parabrahman is beyond Knowledge because Knowledge cannot comprehend that which comprehends it & is anterior to itself.

The beginning of Wisdom is to renounce the attempt to know the Unknowable.

Nevertheless vast shadows of the Unknowable are reflected in Knowledge & to these infinities we give names, the Absolute, the Relative, Being, Non-Being, Consciousness, Force, Bliss, God, Self, the Personal, the Impersonal, Krishna, Shiva, Brahman.

Each thing in the universe is All in the Universe and also That which is beyond the universe,—what Knowledge sees of it is only the face that the All presents in some play of Its infinite consciousness. We are our own Knowledge & all that is unknown to our Knowledge.

What matters in the universe is the play of the All in Itself & its ultimate self-fulfilment in Knowledge, Bliss & Being.

There is an individual self-fulfilment, a collective, a cosmic & an extra-cosmic. We may move towards any of these ultimate affirmations, but he who accepts them all & harmonises them, is the highest human expression of Parabrahman. He is the Avatar or the divine Unit.

21

All being is the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine; there is nothing beyond the Eternal and Infinite, neither is there anything else   

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anywhere whether in existence or in non-existence.

All being ranges between the Manifestation and the Non-Manifestation. These are the two poles of the Infinite.

T Non-Manifestation is not a Non-Existence. Non-Existence is a term created by the mind and has no absolute significance; there is no such thing as an absolute Nihil or Zero. It is agreed even by the philosophies of the Nihil, Tao or Zero (Sunya) that the Non-Existence of which they speak is a Nought in which all is and from which all comes. Tao, Nihil or Zero is not different from the Absolute or the Supreme Brahman of Vedanta; it is only another way of describing or naming it. The Supreme is an Existence beyond what we know of our existence and therefore only it can seem to our mind as a Zero, a Nihil, a Non-Existence. There is nothing there of what we know as existence, for though all is in Tao, yet all is there in a way of which our mind can have no conception or experience, therefore to the mind it has no reality and brings no concept of existence.

The manifestation in the Ignorance, that in which we live, has also been described as Asat, a non-existence, because it is not real, eternal, infinite, divine; it must therefore be an illusion, since only That exists and nothing else. But even Illusionism agrees that the manifested world is not without reality,—it is practically real, but not eternal. Moreover manifestation even if illusory in this sense, has no end or beginning in itself, but only to the soul that withdraws from it. It goes on existing eternally to other souls, it goes on existing to the Eternal. It is in the eternal consciousness that it exists, though apart from that consciousness it has no existence. Moreover the stuff of which it is made is not nothingness or void, but the Eternal itself which manifests it from itself and out of its own substance cast into form and force. It is therefore not a real Nihil, but a limited and constantly renewed, recurrent or mutable existence.

It is therefore permissible to say that all being ranges between Manifestation and Non-Manifestation, for both are degrees of existence, the one rising towards the Absolute, the other in appearance, but in appearance only, determined and relative.  

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