{"id":116,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=116"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:02","slug":"41-heraclitus-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/41-heraclitus-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-41_Heraclitus.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nHeraclitus<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n 
\n                
\n<\/span>T<\/span><\/b>HE
\nphilosophy and thought of the Greeks is perhaps the most intellectually
\nstimulating, the most fruitful of clarities the world has yet had. Indian
\nphilosophy was intuitive in its beginnings, stimulative rather to the deeper
\nvision of things,<\/span> \u2014 nothing more exalted and profound, more revelatory of the depths and the
\nheights, more powerful to open unending vistas has ever been conceived than the
\ndivine and inspired Word, the mantra <\/i>of Veda and Vedanta. When that
\nphilosophy became intellectual, precise, founded on the human reason, it became
\nalso rigidly logical, enamoured of fixity and system, desirous of a sort of
\ngeometry of thought. The ancient Greek mind had instead a kind of fluid
\nprecision, a flexibly inquiring logic; acuteness and the wide-open eye of the
\nintellect were its leading characteristics and by this power in it it determined
\nthe whole character and field of subsequent European thinking. Nor is any Greek
\nthinker more directly stimulating than the aphoristic philosopher Heraclitus;
\nand yet he keeps and adds to this more modem intellectual stimulativeness
\nsomething of the antique psychic and intuitive vision and word of the older
\nMystics. The trend to rationalism is there, but not yet that fluid clarity of
\nthe reasoning mind which was the creation of the Sophists.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>Professor R. D. Ranade has recently published a small treatise on the
\nphilosophy of Heraclitus. From the paging of the treatise it seems to be an
\nexcerpt, but from what, there is nothing to tell. It is perhaps too much to hope
\nthat it is from a series of essays on philosophers or a history of philosophy by
\nthis perfect writer and scholar. At any rate such a work from such a hand would
\nbe a priceless gain. For Professor Ranade possesses in a superlative degree the
\nrare gift of easy and yet adequate exposition; but he has more than this, for he
\ncan give a fascinating interest to subjects like philology and philosophy which
\nto the ordinary reader seem harsh, dry, difficult and repellent. He joins to a
\nluminous clarity, lucidity, and charm of expression an equal<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-335<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

luminousness
\nand just clarity of presentation and that perfect manner in both, native to the
\nGreek and French language and mind, but rare in the English tongue. In these
\nseventeen pages he has presented the thought of the old enigmatic Ephesian with
\na clearness and sufficiency which leaves us charmed, enlightened and satisfied.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>On one or two difficult points I am inclined to differ with the
\nconclusions he adopts. He rejects positively Pfleiderer\u2019s view of Heraclitus
\nas a mystic, which is certainly exaggerated and, as stated, a misconception; but
\nit seems to me that there is behind that misconception a certain truth.
\nHeraclitus\u2019 abuse of the mysteries of his time is not very conclusive in this
\nrespect; for what he reviles is those aspects of obscure magic, physical
\necstasy, sensual excitement which the Mysteries had put on in some at least of
\ntheir final developments as the process of degeneration increased which made a
\ncentury later even the Eleusinian a butt for the dangerous mockeries of
\nAlcibiades and his companions. His complaint is that the secret rites which the
\npopulace held in ignorant and superstitious reverence \u201cunholily mysticise what
\nare held among men as mysteries.\u201d He rebels against the darkness of the
\nDionysian ecstasy in the approach to the secrets of Nature; but there is a
\nluminous Apollonian as well as an obscure and sometimes dangerous Dionysian
\nmysticism, a Dakshina as well as a Vama Marga of the mystic Tantra. And though
\nno partaker in or supporter of any kind of rites or mummery, Heraclitus still
\nstrikes one as at least an intellectual child of the Mystics and of mysticism,
\nalthough perhaps a rebel son in the house of his mother. He has something of the
\nmystic style, something of the intuitive Apollonian inlook into the secrets of
\nexistence.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Certainly, as Mr. Ranade says, mere aphorism is not mysticism; aphorism
\nand epigram are often enough, perhaps usually a condensed or a pregnant effort
\nof the intellect. But Heraclitus\u2019 style, as Mr. Ranade himself describes it, is
\nnot only aphoristic and epigrammatic but cryptic, and this cryptic character is
\nnot merely the self-willed obscurity of an intellectual thinker affecting an
\nexcessive condensation of his thought or a too closely-packed burden of
\nsuggestiveness. It is enigmatic in the style of the mys-<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-336<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

tics,
\nenigmatic in the manner of their thought which sought to express the riddle of
\nexistence in the very language of the riddle. What for instance is the
\n\u201cever-living Fire\u201d in which he finds the primary and imperishable substance
\nof the universe and identifies it in succession with Zeus and with eternity? or
\nwhat should we understand by \u201cthe thunderbolt which steers all things\u201d? To
\ninterpret this fire as merely a material force of heat and flame or simply a
\nmetaphor for being which is eternal becoming is, it seems to me, to miss the
\ncharacter of Heraclitus\u2019 utterances. It includes both these ideas and
\neverything that connects them. But then we get back at once to the Vedic
\nlanguage and turn of thought; we are reminded of the Vedic Fire which is hymned
\nas the upbuilder of the worlds, the secret Immortal in men and things, the
\nperiphery of the gods, Agni who \u201cbecomes\u201d all around the other immortals,
\nhimself becomes and contains all the gods; we are reminded of the Vedic
\nthunderbolt, that electric Fire, of the Sun who is the true Light, the Eye, the
\nwonderful weapon of the divine pathfinders Mitra and Varuna. It is the same
\ncryptic form of language, the same brief and abundant method of thought even;
\nthough the conceptions are not identical, there is a clear kinship.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The mystical language has always this disadvantage that it readily
\nbecomes obscure, meaningless or even misleading to those who have not the secret
\nand to posterity a riddle. Mr. Ranade tells us that it is impossible to make out
\nwhat Heraclitus meant when he said, \u201cThe gods are mortals, men immortals.\u201d
\nBut is it quite impossible if we do not cut off this thinker from the earlier
\nthought of the mystics? The Vedic Rishi also invokes the Dawn, \u201c0 goddess and
\nhuman\u201d; the gods in the Veda are constantly addressed as \u201cmen\u201d, the same
\nwords are traditionally applied to indicate men and immortals. The immanence of
\nthe immortal principle in man, the descent of the gods into the workings of
\nmortality was almost the fundamental idea of the mystics. Heraclitus, likewise,
\nseems to recognise the inextricable unity of the eternal and the transitory,
\nthat which is for ever and yet seems to exist only in this strife and change
\nwhich is a continual dying. The gods manifest themselves as things that
\ncontinually change and perish; man is in principle an eternal being.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-337<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Heraclitus
\ndoes not really deal in barren antitheses; his method is a statement of
\nantinomies and an adumbrating of their reconciliation in the very terms of
\nopposition. Thus when he says the name of the bow (bio\u2019s) <\/i>is life (bi\u2019os),
\n<\/i>but its work is death, obviously he intends no mere barren play upon words;
\nhe speaks of that principle of war, father of all and king of all, which makes
\ncosmic existence an apparent process of life, but an actual process of death.
\nThe Upanishads seized hold of the same truth when they declared life to be the
\ndominion of King Death, described it as the opposite of immortality and even
\nrelated that all life and existence here were first created by Death for his
\nfood.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Unless we bear in mind this pregnant and symbolic character of
\nHeraclitus\u2019 language we are likely to sterilise his thought by giving it a too
\nliteral sense. Heraclitus praises the \u201cdry soul\u201d as the wisest and best,
\nbut, he says, it is a pleasure and satisfaction to souls to become moist. This
\ninclination of the soul to its natural delight in a sort of wine-drenched laxity
\nmust be discouraged; for Dionysus the wine-god and Hades, the Lord of Death, the
\nLord of the dark underworld, are one and the same deity. Professor Ranade takes
\nthis eulogy of the dry soul as praise of the dry light of reason; he finds in it
\na proof that Heraclitus was a rationalist and not a mystic: yet strangely enough
\nhe takes the parallel and opposite expressions about the moist soul and Dionysus
\nin a quite different and material sense, as an ethical disapprobation of
\nwine-drinking. Surely, it cannot be so; Heraclitus cannot mean by the dry soul
\nthe reason of a sober man and by a moist soul the non-reason or bewildered
\nreason of the drunkard; nor when he says that Hades and Dionysus are the same,
\nis he simply discouraging the drinking of wine as fatal to the health! Evidently
\nhe employs here, as always, a figurative and symbolic language because he has to
\nconvey a deeper thought for which he finds ordinary language too poor and
\nsuperficial.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Heraclitus is using the old language of the Mysteries, though in his own
\nnew way and for his own individual purpose, when he speaks of Hades and Dionysus
\nand the everliving Fire or of the Furies, the succourers of Justice who will
\nfind out the Sun if he oversteps his measure. We miss his sense, if we see in
\nthese names<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-338<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of
\nthe gods only the poorer superficial meanings of the popular mythological
\nreligion. When Heraclitus speaks of the dry or the moist soul, it is of the soul
\nand not the intellect that he is thinking, <\/span>psuch\u00ea <\/i>and
\nnot nous. Psuch<\/i><\/span>\u00ea <\/span><\/i>corresponds
\nroughly to the cetas <\/i><\/span>or citta
\n<\/i>of Indian psychology, nous <\/i>to buddhi; <\/i>the dry soul of the
\nGreek thinker to the purified heart-consciousness, <\/span>\u0161uddhacitta,
\n<\/span><\/i>of the Indian psychologists,
\nwhich in their experience was the first basis for a purified intellect, vi<\/i><\/span>\u0161uddhabuddhi.
\n<\/span><\/i>The moist soul is that which
\nallows itself to be perturbed by the impure wine of sense ecstasy, emotional
\nexcitement, an obscure impulse and inspiration whose source is from a dark
\nunderworld. Dionysus is the god of this wine-born ecstasy, the god of the
\nBacchic mysteries, <\/span>\u2014 of the
\n\u201cwalkers in the night, mages, bacchanals, mystics\u201d: therefore Heraclitus
\nsays that Dionysus and Hades are one. In an opposite sense the ecstatic devotee
\nof the Bhakti path in India reproaches the exclusive seeker by the way of
\nthought- discernment with his \u201cdry knowledge\u201d, using Heraclitus\u2019 epithet,
\nbut with a pejorative and not a laudatory significance.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>To ignore the influence of the mystic thought and its methods of
\nself-expression on the intellectual thinking of the Greeks from Pythagoras to
\nPlato is to falsify the historical procession of the human mind. It was
\nenveloped at first in the symbolic, intuitive, <\/span>esoteric style and
\ndiscipline of the Mystics, \u2014 Vedic and Vedantic seers,
\nOrphic secret teachers, Egyptian priests. From that veil it emerged along the
\npath of a metaphysical philosophy still related to the Mystics by the source of
\nits fundamental ideas, its first aphoristic and cryptic style, its attempt to
\nseize directly upon truth by intellectual vision rather than arrive at it by
\ncareful ratiocination, but nevertheless intellectual in its method and aim. This
\nis the first period of the Darshanas in India, in Greece of the early
\nintellectual thinkers. Afterwards came the full tide of philosophic rationalism,
\nBuddha or the Buddhists and the logical philosophers in India, in Greece the
\nSophists and Socrates with all their splendid progeny; with them the
\nintellectual method did not indeed begin, but came to its own and grew to its
\nfullness. Heraclitus belongs to the transition, not to the noontide of the
\nreason; he is even its most characteristic representative. Hence his cryptic
\nstyle, hence his brief and burdened thought<\/span> and the<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-339
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

difficulty we feel when we try
\nto clarify and entirely rationalise his significances. The ignoring of the
\nMystics, our pristine fathers, purve pitarah, is the great defect of the modem
\naccount of our thought-evolution.<\/p>\n

\nPage-340<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nII<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

What precisely is the key-note of Heraclitus’ thinking, where has he
\nfound his starting-point, or what are the grand lines of his philosophy? For if
\nhis thought is not developed in the severe systematic method of later thinkers,
\nif it does not come down to us in large streams of subtle reasoning and opulent
\nimagery like Plato’s but in detached aphoristic sentences aimed like arrows at
\ntruth, still they are not really scattered philosophical reflections. There is
\nan interrelation, an inter-dependence; they all start logically from his
\nfundamental view of existence itself and go back to it for their constant
\njustification.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>As in Indian, so in Greek philosophy the first question for thought was
\nthe problem of the One and the Many. We see everywhere a multiplicity of things
\nand beings; is it real or only phenomenal or practical, maya, vyavahara? <\/i>Has
\nindividual man, for instance, -the question which concerns us most nearly, – an
\nessential and immortal existence of his own or is he simply a phenomenal and
\ntransient result in the evolution or play of some one original principle,
\nMatter, Mind, Spirit, which is the only real reality of existence? Does unity
\nexist at all and, if so, is it a unity of sum or of primordial principle, a
\nresult or an origin, a oneness of totality or a oneness of nature or a oneness <\/span>of
\nessence, –<\/span> the various
\nstandpoints of Pluralism, of Sankhya, of
\nVedanta? Or if both the One and the Many are real, what are the relations
\nbetween these two eternal principles of being, or are they reconciled in an
\nAbsolute beyond them? These are no barren questions of logic, no battle of
\ncloudy metaphysical abstractions, as the practical and sensational man would
\nhave us contemptuously believe; for on our answer to them depends our conception
\nof God, of existence, of the world and of human life and dsestiny.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Heraclitus, differing in this, as Mr. Ranade reminds us, from Anaximander
\nwho like our Mayavadins denied true reality to the Many and from Empedocles who
\nthought the All to be alternately one and many, believed unity and multiplicity
\nto be<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-341<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

both of them real and coexistent. Existence is then eternally one and
\neternally many,<\/span> –<\/span> even
\nas Ramanuja and Madhwa have concluded, though in a very different spirit and
\nfrom a quite different standpoint. Heraclitus’ view arose from his strong
\nconcrete intuition of things, his acute sense of universal realities; for in our
\nexperience of the cosmos we do find always and inseparably this eternal
\ncoexistence and cannot really escape from it. Every- where our gaze on the Many
\nreveals to us an eternal oneness, no matter what we fix on as the principle of
\nthat oneness; yet is that unity inoperative except by the multiplicity of its
\npowers and forms, nor do we anywhere see it void of or apart from its own
\nmultiplicity. One Matter, but many atoms, plasms, bodies; one Energy, but many
\nForces; one Mind or at least Mind-stuff, but many mental beings; one Spirit, but
\nmany souls. Perhaps periodically this multiplicity goes back, is dissolved into,
\nis swallowed up by the One from which it was originally evolved; but still the
\nfact that it has evolved and got involved again, compels us to suppose a
\npossibility and even a necessity of its renewed evolution: it is not then really
\ndestroyed. The Adwaitin by his Yoga goes back to the One, feels himself merged,
\nbelieves that he has got rid of the Many, proved perhaps their unreality; but it
\nis the achievement of an individual, of one of the Many, and the Many go on
\nexisting in spite of it. The achievement proves only that there is a plane of
\nconsciousness on which the soul can realise and not merely perceive by the
\nintellect the oneness of the Spirit, and it proves nothing else. Therefore, on
\nthis truth of eternal one-ness and eternal multiplicity Heraclitus fixes and
\nanchors himself; <\/span>from his firm
\nacceptance of it, not reasoning it<\/span> away<\/span>
\nbut accept<\/span>ing an its consequences, flows all the rest of his philosophy.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Still, one question remains to be resolved before we can move a step
\nfarther; Since there is an eternal One, what is that? Is it Force, Mind, Matter,
\nSoul? or, since Matter has many principles, is it some one principle of Matter
\nwhich has evolved all the rest or which by some power of its own activity has
\nchanged into all that we see? The old Greek thinkers conceived of cosmic
\nSubstance as possessed of four elements, omitting or not having arrived at the
\nfifth, Ether, in which Indian analysis found the first and original principle.
\nIn seeking the nature of the original sub-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-342<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

stance they fixed then on one or other of these four as the primordial
\nNature, one finding it in Air, another in Water, while Heraclitus, as we have
\nseen, describes or symbolises the source and reality of all things as an
\never-living Fire. "No man or god," he says, "has created the
\nuniverse, but ever there was and is and will be the ever-living Fire." <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

  <\/span>       
\nIn
\nthe Veda, in the early language of the Mystics generally, the names of the
\nelements or primary principles of Substance were used with a clearly symbolic
\nsignificance. The symbol of water is thus used constantly in the Rig Veda. It is
\nsaid that in the beginning was the inconscient Ocean out of which the One was
\nborn by the vastness of His energy; but it is clear from the language of the
\nhymn that no physical ocean is meant, but rather the unformed chaos of
\ninconscient being in which the Divine, the Godhead lay concealed in a darkness
\nenveloped by greater darkness. The seven active principles of existence are
\nsimilarly spoken of as rivers or waters; we hear of the seven rivers, the great
\nwater, the four superior rivers, in a context which shows their symbolic
\nsignificance. We see this image fixed in the Puranic mythus of Vishnu sleeping
\non the serpent Infinite in the milky ocean. But even as early as the Rig Veda,
\nether is the highest symbol of the Infinite, the apeiron <\/i>of the Greeks;
\nwater is that of the same Infinite in its aspect as the original substance; fire
\nis the creative power, the active energy of the Infinite; air, the
\nlife-principle, is spoken of as that which brings down fire out of the ethereal
\nheavens into the earth. Yet these were not merely symbols. The Vedic Mystics
\nheld, it is clear, a close connection and effective parallelism to exist between
\npsychical and physical activities, between the action of Light, for instance,
\nand the phenomena of mental illumination; fire was to them at once the luminous
\ndivine energy, the Seer-Will of the universal Godhead active and creative of the
\nsubstantial forms of the universe, burning secretly in all life.
\n            It is doubtful how far the earlier Greek philosophic thinkers preserved any of
\nthese complex conceptions in their generalisations about the original principle.
\nBut Heraclitus has clearly an idea of something more than a physical substance
\nor energy in his concept of the ever-living Fire. Fire is to him the physical<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-343<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

aspect,
\nas it were, of a great burning creative, formative and destructive force, the
\nsum of all whose processes is a constant and unceasing change. The idea of the
\nOne which is eternally becoming Many and the Many which is eternally becoming
\nOne and of that One therefore not so much as stable substance or essence as
\nactive Force, a sort of substantial Will-to-become, is the foundation of
\nHeraclitus’ philosophy.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Nietzsche, whom Mr. Ranade rightly affiliates to Heraclitus, Nietzsche,
\nthe most vivid, concrete and suggestive of modem thinkers, as is Heraclitus
\namong the early Greeks, founded his whole philosophical thought on this
\nconception of existence as a vast Will-to-become and of the world as a play of
\nForce; divine Power was to him the creative Word, the beginning of all things
\nand that to which life aspires. But he affirms Becoming only and excludes Being
\nfrom his view of things; hence his philosophy is in the end unsatisfactory,
\ninsufficient, lopsided; it stimulates, but solves nothing. Heraclitus does not
\nexclude Being from the data of the problem of existence, although he will not
\nmake any opposition or gulf between that and Becoming. By his conception of
\nexistence as at once one and many, he is bound to accept these two aspects of
\nhis ever-living Fire as simultaneously true, true in each other; Being is an
\neternal becoming and yet the Becoming resolves itself into eternal being. All is
\nin flux, for all is change of becoming; we cannot step into the same waters
\ntwice, for it is other and yet other waters that are flowing on. And yet, with
\nhis keen eye on the truth of things, preoccupied though he was with this aspect
\nof existence, he could not help seeing another truth behind it. The waters into
\nwhich we step, are and are not the same; our own existence is an eternity and an
\ninconstant transience; we are and we are not. Heraclitus does not solve the
\ncontradiction; he states it and in his own way tries to give some account of its
\nprocess.
\n            That process he sees as a constant change and a changing back, an exchange and
\nan interchange in a constant whole<\/span>,
\n– <\/span>managed for the rest by a
\nclash of forces, by a creative and determinative strife, "war which is the
\nfather and king of all things." Between Fire as the Being and Fire in the
\nBecoming existence describes a downward and upward movement-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-344<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

pravrtti
\n<\/span><\/i>and nivrtti<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/i>–<\/span> which
\nhas been called the "back-returning road" upon which all travels.
\nThese are the master ideas ‘of the thought of Heraclitus.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-345<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nIII<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

              
\n Two
\napopthegms of Heraclitus give us the starting-point of his whole thinking. They
\nare his saying that it is wisdom to admit that all things are one and his other
\nsaying "One out of all and all out of One." How are we to understand
\nthese two pregnant utterances? Must we read them into each other and conclude
\nthat for Heraclitus the One only exists as resultant of the many even as the
\nmany only exist as a becoming of the One? Mr. Ranade seems to think so; he tells
\nus that this philosophy denies Being and affirms only Becoming, -like Nietzsche,
\nlike the Buddhists. But surely this is to read a little too much into
\nHeraclitus’ theory of perpetual change, to take it too much by itself. If that
\nwas his whole belief, it is difficult to see why he should seek for an original
\nand eternal principle, the ever-living Fire which creates all by its perpetual
\nchanging, governs all by its fiery force of the "thunderbolt",
\nresolves all back into itself by a cyclic conflagration, difficult to account
\nfor his theory of the upward and downward way, difficult to concede what Mr.
\nRanade contends, that Heraclitus did hold the theory of a cosmic conflagration
\nor to imagine what could be the result of such a cosmic catastrophe. To reduce
\nall becoming into Nothing? Surely not; Heraclitus’ thought is at the very
\nantipodes from speculative Nihilism. Into another kind of becoming? Obviously
\nnot, since by an absolute conflagration existing things can only be reduced into
\ntheir eternal principle of being, into Agni, back into the immortal Fire.
\nSomething that is eternal, that is itself eternity, something that is for ever
\none,
\n<\/span>–<\/span> for
\nthe cosmos is eternally one and many and does not by becoming cease to be one,<\/span>
\n–<\/span> something
\nthat is God (Zeus), something that can be imaged as Fire which, if an
\never-active force, is yet a substance or at least a substantial force and not
\nmerely an abstract Will-to-become, – something out of which all cosmic becoming
\narises and into which it returns, what is this but eternal Being?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\nHeraclitus was greatly preoccupied with his idea of eternal<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-346<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

becoming,
\nfor him the one right account of the cosmos, but his cosmos has still an eternal
\nbasis, a unique original principle. That distinguishes his thought radically
\nfrom Nietzsche’s or the Buddhists’. The later Greeks derived from him the idea
\nof the perpetual stream of things, "All things are in flux." The idea
\nof the universe as constant motion and unceasing change was always before him,
\nand yet behind and in it all he saw too a constant principle of determination
\nand even a mysterious principle of identity. Every day, he says, it is a new sun
\nthat rises; yes, but if the sun is always new, exists only by change from moment
\nto moment, like all things in Nature, still it is the same ever-living Fire that
\nrises with each Dawn in the shape of the sun. We can never step again into the
\nsame stream, for ever other and other waters are flowing; and yet, says
\nHeraclitus, "we do and we do not enter into the same waters, we are and we
\nare not." The sense is clear; there is an identity in things, in all
\nexistences, sarvabhutani, <\/i>as well as a constant changing; there is a
\nBeing as well as a Becoming and by that we have an eternal and real existence as
\nwell as a temporary and apparent, are not merely a constant mutation but a
\nconstant identical existence. Zeus exists, a sempiternal active Fire and eternal
\nWord, a One by which all things are unified, all laws and results perpetually
\ndetermined, all measures unalterably maintained. Day and Night are one, Death
\nand Life are one, Youth and Age are one, Good and Evil are one, because that is
\nOne and all these are only its various shapes and appearances.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span><\/span>Heraclitus would not have
\naccepted a purely psychological principle of Self as the origin of things, but
\nin essence he is not very far from the Vedantic position. The Buddhists of the
\nNihilistic school used in their own way the image of the stream and the image of
\nthe fire. They saw, as Heraclitus saw, that nothing in the world is for two
\nmoments the same even in the most insistent continuity of forms. The flame
\nmaintains itself unchanged in appearance, but every moment it is another and not
\nthe same fire; the stream is sustained in its flow by ever new waters. From this
\nthey drew the conclusion that there is no essence of things, nothing
\nself-existent; the apparent becoming is all that we can call existence, behind
\nit there is eternal Nothing, the absolute<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-347<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Void,
\nor perhaps an original Non-Being. Heraclitus saw, on the contrary, that if the
\nform of the flame only exists by a constant change, a constant exchange rather
\nof the susbtance of the wick into the substance of the fiery tongue, yet there
\nmust be a principle of their existence common to them which thus converts itself
\nfrom one form into another;<\/span> \u2014 even
\nif the substance of the flame is always changing, the principle of Fire is
\nalways the same and produces always the same results of energy, maintains always
\nthe same measures.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>   <\/span>    
\nThe
\nUpanishad too describes the cosmos as a universal motion and becoming; it is all
\nthis that is mobile in the mobility, jagaty<\/i><\/span>\u00e3m
\njagat,<\/span> <\/i>\u2014 the very word for
\nuniverse, jagat, <\/i>having the radical sense of motion, so that the whole
\nuniverse, the macrocosm, is one vast principle of motion and therefore of change
\nand instability, while each thing in the universe is in itself a microcosm of
\nthe same motion and instability. Existences are \u201call becomings\u201d; the
\nSelf-existent Atman, Swayambhu, has become all becomings, <\/span>\u00e3tm<\/span>\u00e3
\neva abh<\/span>\u00fbt sarv<\/span>\u00e3ni
\nbh<\/span>\u00fbt<\/span>\u00e3ni.
\n<\/span><\/i>The relation between God and
\nWorld is summed up in the phrase, \u201cIt is He that has moved out everywhere, sa
\nparyag<\/i><\/span>\u00e3t\u201d; <\/span><\/i>He
\nis the Lord, the Seer and Thinker, who becoming everywhere <\/span>\u2014
\nHeraclitus\u2019 Logos, his Zeus, his One out of which come all <\/span>things \u2014
\n\u201chas fixed all things rightly according to their nature from
\nyears sempiternal\u201d, <\/span>\u2014
\nHeraclitus\u2019 \u201cAll things are fixed and determined.\u201d Substitute his Fire for
\nthe Vedantic Atman and there is nothing in the expressions of the Upanishad
\nwhich the Greek thinker would not have accepted as another figure of his own
\nthought. And do not the Upanishads use among other images this very symbol of
\nthe Fire? \u201cAs one Fire has entered into the world and taken shapes according
\nto the various forms in the world,\u201d so the one Being has become all these
\nnames and forms and yet remains the One. Heraclitus tells us precisely the same
\nthing; God is all contraries, \u201cHe takes various shapes just as fire, when it
\nis mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each.\u201d Each one
\nnames Him according to his pleasure, says the Greek seer, and He accepts all
\nnames and yet accepts none, not even the highest name of Zeus. "He consents
\nand yet at the same time does not consent to be called by the<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-348<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

name
\nof Zeus.\u201d So too said Indian Dirghatamas of old in his long hymn of the divine
\nMysteries in the Rig Veda, \u201cOne, existent the sages call by many names.\u201d
\nThough He assumes all these forms, says the Upanishad, He has no form that the
\nvision can seize, He whose name is a mighty splendour. We see again how close
\nare the thoughts of the Greek and very often even his expressions and images to
\nthe sense and style of the Vedic and Vedantic sages. <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/span>    
\nWe
\nmust put each of Heraclitus\u2019 apopthegms into its right place if we would
\nunderstand his thought. \u201cIt is wise to admit that all things are one,\u201d \u2014
\nnot merely, be it noted, that they came from oneness and will go back to
\noneness, but that they are one, now and always,<\/span> \u2014 all
\nis, was and ever will be the ever-living Fire. All seems to our experience to be
\nmany, an eternal becoming of manifold existences; where is there in it any
\nprinciple of eternal identity? True, says Heraclitus, so it seems; but wisdom
\nlooks beyond and does see the identity of all things; Night and Day, Life and
\nDeath, the good and the evil, all are one, the eternal, the identical; those who
\nsee only a difference in objects, do not know the truth of the objects they
\nobserve. \u201cHesiod did not know day and night; for it is the One,\u201d \u2014 esti
\ngar hen, asti hi ekam. <\/i>Now, an eternal and identical which all things are,
\nis precisely what we mean by Being; it is precisely what is denied by those who
\nsee only Becoming. The Nihilistic Buddhists (<\/span>Buddha
\nhimself remained silent on this question; his goal of Nirvana was a negation of
\nphenomenal existence, but not necessarily a denial of any kind of existence<\/span>)
\ninsisted that there were only so many ideas, vij<\/i><\/span>\u00f1\u00e3n<\/span>\u00e3ni,
\n<\/span><\/i>and impermanent forms which
\nwere but the combination of parts and elements: no oneness, no identity
\nanywhere; get beyond ideas and forms, you get to self-extinction, to the Void,
\nto Nothing. Yet one must posit a principle of unity somewhere, if not at the
\nbase or in the secret being of things, yet in their action. The Buddhists had to
\nposit their universal principle of Karma which, when you think of it, comes
\nafter all to a universal energy as the cause of the world, a creator and
\npreserver of unchanging measures. Nietzsche denied Being, but had to speak of a
\nuniversal Will-to-be; which again, when you come to think of it, seems to be no
\nmore than a translation of the Upanishadic tapo brahma, <\/i>\u201cWill-Energy is<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-349<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Brahman.\u201d
\nThe later Sankhya denied the unity of conscious existences, but asserted the
\nunity of Nature, Prakriti, which is again at once the original principle and
\nsubstance of things and the creative energy, the phusis <\/i>of the Greeks. It
\nis indeed wise to agree that all things are one; for vision drives at that, the
\nsoul and the heart reach out to that, thought comes circling round to it in the
\nvery act of denial<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/span>    
\nHeraclitus
\nsaw what all must see who look at the world with any attention, that there is
\nsomething in all this motion and change and differentiation which insists on
\nstability, which goes back to sameness, which assures unity, which triumphs into
\neternity. It has always the same measures; it is, was and ever will be. We are
\nthe same in spite of all our differences; we start from the same origin, proceed
\nby the same universal laws, live, differ and strive in the bosom of an eternal
\noneness, are seeking always for that which binds all beings together and makes
\nall things one. Each sees it in his own way, lays stress on this or that aspect
\nof it, loses sight of or diminishes other aspects, gives it therefore a
\ndifferent name <\/span> <\/span>\u2014
\neven as Heraclitus, attracted by its aspect of creative and destructive Force,
\ngave it the name of Fire. But when he generalises, he puts it widely enough; it
\nis the One that <\/span>is All, it is the All that is One, \u2014 Zeus, eternity,
\nthe Fire. He could have said with the
\nUpanishad, \u201cAll this is the Brahman\u201d, sarvam khalu idam brahma, <\/i>though
\nhe could not have gone on and said, \u201cThis Self is the Brahman\u201d, but would
\nhave declared rather of Agni what a Vedantic formula says of Vayu, tvam
\npratyaksam brahm<\/i><\/span>\u00e3si, <\/span><\/i>Thou
\nart manifest Brahman.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>But
\nwe may admit the One in different ways. The Adwaitins affirmed the One, the
\nBeing, but put away \u201call things\u201d as Maya, or they recognised the immanence
\nof the Being in these becomings which are yet not-Self, not That. Vaishnava
\nphilosophy saw existence as eternally one in the Being, God, eternally many by
\nHis nature or conscious-energy in the souls who He becomes or who exist in her.
\nIn Greece also Anaximander denied the multiple reality of the Becoming.
\nEmpedocles affirmed that the All is eternally one and many; all is one which
\nbecomes many and then again goes back to oneness. But Heraclitus will not so cut
\nthe knot of the riddle. \u201cNo,\u201d he says in effect, \u201cI hold to<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-350<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

my
\nidea of the eternal oneness of all things; never do they cease to be one. It is
\nall my ever-living Fire that takes various shapes and names, changes itself into
\nall that is and yet remains itself, not at all by any illusion or mere
\nappearance of becoming, but with a severe and positive reality.\u201d All things
\nthen are in their reality and substance and law and reason of their being the
\nOne; the One in its shapes, values, changings becomes really all things. It
\nchanges and is yet immutable: for it does not increase or diminish, nor does it
\nlose for a moment its eternal nature and identity which is that of the
\never-living Fire. Many values which reduce themselves to the same standard and
\njudge of all values; many forces which go back to the same unalterable energy;
\nmany becomings which both represent and amount to one identical Being.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here
\nHeraclitus brings in his formula of \u201cOne out of all and all out of One\u201d,
\nwhich is his account of the process of the cosmos just as his formula \u201cAll
\nthings are one\u201d is his account of the eternal truth of the cosmos. One, he
\nsays, in the process of the cosmos is always becoming all things from moment to
\nmoment, hence the eternal flux of things; but all things also are eternally
\ngoing back to their principle of oneness; hence the unity of the cosmos, the
\nsameness behind the flux of becoming, the stability of measures, the
\nconservation of energy in all changes. This he explains farther by his theory of
\nchange as in its character a constant exchange. But is there then no end to this
\nsimultaneous upward and downward motion of things? As the downward has so far
\nprevailed as to create the cosmos, will not the up- ward too prevail so as to
\ndissolve it back into the ever-living <\/span>Fire?
\nHere we come to the question whether Heraclitus did or <\/span>did
\nnot hold the theory of a periodic conflagration or pralaya.<\/i> \u201cFire will
\ncome on all things and judge and convict them.\u201d If he held it, then we have
\nagain another striking coincidence of Heraclitus\u2019 thought with our familiar
\nIndian notions, the periodic pralaya, <\/i>the Puranic conflagration of the
\nworld by the appearance of the twelve suns, the Vedantic theory of the eternal
\ncycles of manifestation and withdrawal from manifestation. In fact, both the
\nlines of thought are essentially the same and had to arrive inevitably at the
\nsame conclusions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-351<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
IV<\/b><\/font><\/h5>\n
\nHeraclitus<\/font><\/b>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n                
\n H<\/b>ERACLITUS\u2019
\naccount of the cosmos is an evolution and involution out of his one eternal
\nprinciple of Fire, <\/span>\u2014 at once
\nthe one substance and the one force,<\/span> \u2014 which
\nhe expresses in his figurative language as the upward and downward road. \u201cThe
\nroad up and down,\u201d he says, \u201cis one and the same.\u201d Out of Fire, the
\nradiant and energetic principle, air, water and earth proceed,<\/span> \u2014 that
\nis the procession of energy on its downward road; there is equally in the very
\ntension of this process a force of potential return which would lead things
\nbackward to their source in the reverse order. In the balance of these two
\nupward and downward forces resides the whole cosmic action; everything is a
\npoise of contrary energies. The movement of life IS like the back-returning of
\nthe bow, to which he compares it, an energy of traction and tension restraining
\nan energy of release, every force of action compensated by a corresponding force
\nof reaction. By the resistance of one to the other all the harmonies of
\nexistence are created.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>   <\/span>    
\nWe
\nhave the same idea of an evolution of successive conditions of energy out of a
\nprimal substance-force in the Indian theory of Sankhya. There indeed the system
\nproposed is more complete and satisfying. It starts with the original or root
\nenergy, m<\/i><\/span>\u00fbla-prakrti,
\n<\/span><\/i>which as the first
\nsubstance, pradh<\/i><\/span>\u00e3na, <\/span><\/i>evolves
\nby development and change into five successive principles. Ether, not fire, is
\nthe first principle, ignored by the Greeks, but rediscovered by modern Science;
\n(<\/span>Now again
\nrejected, though that does Dot seem to be indubitable or final)<\/span>
\nthere follow air, fire, the igneous, radiant and electric energy, water, earth,
\nthe fluid and solid. The Sankhya, like Anaximenes, puts Air first of the four
\nprinciples admitted by the Greeks, though it does not like him make it the
\noriginal substance, and it thus differs from the order of Heraclitus. But it
\ngives to the principle of fire the function of creating all forms,<\/span> \u2014 as
\nAgni in the Veda is the great builder of the worlds,<\/span> \u2014 and
\nhere at least it meets his thought; for it is as the energetic principle behind
\nall formation and mutation that<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-352<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Heraclitus
\nmust have chosen Fire as his symbol and material representative of the One. We
\nmay remember in this connection how far modern Science has gone to justify these
\nold thinkers by the importance it gives to electricity and radio-active forces<\/span>
\n\u2014 Heraclitus\u2019 fire and thunderbolt,
\nthe Indian triple Agni<\/span>  <\/span>\u2014 in
\nthe formation of atoms and in the transmutation of energy. <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/span>    
\nBut
\nthe Greeks failed to go forward to that final discrimination which India
\nattributed to Kapila, the supreme analytical thinker,<\/span> \u2014 the
\ndiscrimination between Prakriti and her cosmic principles, her twenty-four
\ntattwas forming the subjective and objective aspects of Nature, and between
\nPrakriti and Purusha, Conscious-Soul and Nature-Energy. Therefore while in the
\nSankhya ether, fire and the rest are only principles of the objective evolution
\nof Prakriti, evolutionary aspects of the original phusis, <\/i>the early
\nGreeks could not get back beyond these aspects of Nature to the idea of a pure
\nenergy, nor could they at all ac- count for her subjective side. The Fire of
\nHeraclitus has to do duty at once for the original substance of all Matter and
\nfor God and Eternity. This preoccupation with Nature-Energy and the failure to
\nfathom its relations with Soul has persisted in modern scientific thought, and
\nwe find there too ‘the same attempt to identify some primary principle of
\nNature, ether or electricity, with the original Force. <\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 
\n However
\nthat may be, the theory of the creation of the world by some kind of
\nevolutionary change out of the original substance or energy, by parin<\/i><\/span>\u00e3ma,
\n<\/span><\/i>is common to the early Greek
\nand the Indian systems, however they may differ about the nature of the original
\nphusis. <\/i>The distinction of Heraclitus among the early Greek sages is his
\nconception of the upward and downward road, one and the same in the descent and
\nthe return. It corresponds to the Indian idea of nivrtti <\/i>and pravrtti,
\n<\/i>the double <\/span>movement of the Soul and Nature, \u2014 pravrtti, <\/i>the
\nmoving out and forward, nivrtti, <\/i>the
\nmoving back and in. The Indian thinkers were preoccupied with this double
\nprinciple so far as it touches the action of the individual soul entering into
\nthe procession of Nature and drawing back from it; but still they saw a similar,
\na periodic movement forward and back of Nature itself which leads to an
\never-repeated cycle of creation and dissolution;<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-353<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

they
\nheld the idea of a periodic pralaya. <\/i>Heraclitus\u2019 theory would seem to
\ndemand a similar conclusion. Otherwise we must sup- pose that the downward
\ntendency, once in action, has always the upper hand over the upward or that
\ncosmos is eternally proceeding out of the original substance and eternally
\nreturning to it, but never actually returns. The Many are then eternal not only
\nin power of manifestation, but in actual fact of manifestation.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>It is possible that Heraclitus may so have thought, but it is not the
\nlogical conclusion of his theory; it contradicts the evident suggestion of his
\nmetaphor about the road which implies a starting-point and a point of return;
\nand we have too the distinct statement of the Stoics that he believed in the
\ntheory of conflagration, <\/span>\u2014 an
\nassertion which they are hardly likely to have made if this were not generally
\naccepted as his teaching. The modern arguments against enumerated by Mr. Ranade
\nare founded upon misconceptions. Heraclitus\u2019 affirmation is not simply that
\nthe One is always Many, the Many always One, but in his own words, \u201cout of all
\nthe One and out of One all.\u201d Plato\u2019s phrasing of the thought, \u201cthe reality
\nis both many and one and in its division it is always being brought together,\u201d
\nstates the same idea in different language. It means a constant current and
\nbackcurrent of change, the upward and downward road, and we may suppose that as
\nthe One by downward change becomes completely the All in the descending process,
\nyet remains eternally the one ever-living Fire, so the All by upward change may
\nresort completely to the One and yet essentially exist, since it can again
\nreturn into various being by the repetition of the downward movement. All
\ndifficulty disappears if we remember that what is implied is a process of
\nevolution and involution, <\/span>\u2014 so
\ntoo the Indian word for creation, srsti, <\/i>means a release or bringing
\nforth of what is held in, latent,<\/span> \u2014 and
\nthat the conflagration destroys existing forms, but not the principle of
\nmultiplicity. There will be then no inconsistency at all in Heraclitus’ theory
\nof a periodic conflagration; it is rather, that being the highest expression of
\nchange, the complete logic of his system.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-354<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nV<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n <\/b>
\n<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/span>If
\nit is the law of Change that determines the evolution and involution of the one
\ndownward and upward road, the same law prevails all along the path, through all
\nits steps and returns, in all the million transactions of the wayside. There is
\nevery- where the law of exchange and interchange, amoib<\/i><\/span>\u00ea.
\n<\/span><\/i>The unity and the
\nmultiplicity have at every moment this active relation to each other. The One is
\nconstantly exchanging itself for the many; that gold has been given, you have
\ninstead these commodities, but in fact they are only so much value of the gold.
\nThe many are constantly exchanging themselves for the One; these commodities are
\ngiven, disappear, are destroyed, we say, but in their place there is the gold,
\nthe original substance-energy to the value of the commodities. You see the sun
\nand you think it is the same sun always, but really it is a new sun that rises
\neach day; for it is the Fire’s constant giving of itself in exchange for the
\nelemental commodities that compose the sun which preserves its form, its energy,
\nits movement, all its measures. Science shows us that this is true of all
\nthings, of the human body, for instance; it is always the same, but it preserves
\nits apparent identity only by a constant change. There is a constant
\ndestruction, yet there is no destruction. Energy distributes itself, but never
\nreally dissipates itself; change and unalterable conservation of energy in the
\nchange are the law, not destruction. If this world of multiplicity is destroyed
\nin the end by Fire, yet there is no end and it is not destroyed, but only
\nexchanged for the Fire. Moreover, there is exchange between all these becomings
\nwhich are only so many active values of the Being, commodities that are a fixed
\nvalue and measure of the universal gold. Fire takes of its substance from one
\nform and gives to another, changes one apparent value of its substance into
\nanother apparent value, but the substance-energy remains the same and the new
\nvalue is the equivalent of the old, <\/span>\u2014 as
\nwhen it turns fuel into smoke and cinders and ashes. Modern Science with a more
\naccurate knowledge of what actually happens in this change, yet confirms
\nHeraclitus\u2019 conclusion. It is the law of the conservation of energy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-355<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Practically,
\nthe active secret of life is there; all life physical or mental or merely
\ndynamic maintains itself by constant change and interchange. Still,
\nHeraclitus\u2019 account is so far not altogether satisfactory. The measure, the
\nvalue of the energy exchanged remains unaltered even when the form is altered,
\nbut why should also the cosmic commodities we have for the universal gold be
\nfixed and in a way unchanging? What is the explanation, how comes about this
\neternity of principles and elements and kinds of combination and this
\npersistence and recurrence of the same forms which we observe in the cosmos? Why
\nin this constant cosmic flux should everything after all remain the same? Why
\nshould the sun, though always new, be yet for all practical purposes the same
\nsun? Why should the stream be, as Heraclitus himself admits, the same stream
\nalthough it is ever other and other waters that are flowing? It was in this
\nconnection that Plato brought in his eternal, ideal plane of fixed ideas, by
\nwhich he seems to have meant at once an originating real-idea and an original
\nideal schema for all things. An idealistic philosophy of the Indian type might
\nsay that this force, the Shakti which you call Fire, is a consciousness which
\npreserves by its energy its original scheme of ideas and corresponding forms of
\nthings. But Heraclitus gives us another account, not quite satisfactory, yet
\nprofound and full of suggestive truth; it is contained in his striking phrases
\nabout war and justice and tension and the Furies pursuing the transgressor of
\nmeasures. He is the first thinker to see the world entirely in the terms of
\nPower.<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>What is the nature of this exchange? It is strife, eris, <\/i>it is
\nwar, polemos<\/i>! <\/i>What is the rule and result of the war? It is
\njustice. How acts that justice? By a just tension and compensation of forces
\nwhich produce the harmony of things and therefore, we presume, their stability.
\n\u201cWar is the father of all and the king of all\u201d; \u201cAll things becoming
\naccording to strife\u201d; \u201cTo know that strife is justice\u201d; these are his
\nmaster apopthegms in this matter. At first we do not see why exchange should be
\nstrife; it would seem rather to be commerce. Strife there is, but why should
\nthere not also be peaceful and willing interchange? Heraclitus will have none of
\nit; no peace! he would agree with the modern Teuton that commerce itself is a
\ndepartment of War. It is true there is a com-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-356<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

merce,
\ngold for commodities, commodities for gold, but the commerce itself and all its
\ncircumstances are governed by a forceful, more, a violent compulsion of the
\nuniversal Fire. That is what he means by the Furies pursuing the sun; \u201cfor
\nfear of Him,\u201d says the Upanishad, \u201cthe wind blows… and death runs.\u201d And
\nbetween all beings there is a constant trial of strength; by that warfare they
\ncome into being, by that their measures are maintained. We see that he is right;
\nhe has caught the initial aspect of cosmic Nature. Everything here is a clash of
\nforces and by that clash and struggle and clinging and wrestling things not only
\ncome into being, but are maintained in being. Karma? Laws? But different laws
\nmeet and compete and by their tension the balance of the world is maintained.
\nKarma? It is the forcible justice of an eternal compelling Power and it is the
\nFuries pursuing us if we transgress our measures.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>War, contends Heraclitus, is not mere injustice, chaotic violence; it is
\njustice, although a violent justice, the only kind possible. Again, from that
\npoint of view, we see that he is right. By the energy expended and its value
\nshall the fruits be determined, and where two forces meet, expenditure of energy
\nmeans a trial of strength. Shall not then the rewards be to the strong according
\nto his strength and to the weak according to his weakness? So it is at least in
\nthe world, the primal law, although subject to the help of the weak by the
\nstrong which need not after all be an injustice or a violation of measures, in
\nspite of Nietzsche and Heraclitus. And is there not after all sometimes a
\ntremendous strength behind weakness, the very strength of the pressure on the
\noppressed which brings its terrible reaction, the back return of the bow, Zeus,
\nthe eternal Fire, observing his measures?<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Not only between being and being, force and force is there war, but
\nwithin each there is an eternal opposition, a tension of contraries, and it is
\nthis tension which creates the balance necessary to harmony. Harmony then there
\nis, for cosmos itself is in its result a harmony; but it is so because in its
\nprocess it is war, tension, opposition, a balance of eternal contraries. Real
\npeace there cannot be, unless by peace you mean a stable tension, a balance of
\npower between hostile forces, a sort of mutual neutralisation of excesses. Peace
\ncannot create, cannot maintain any-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-357<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

thing,
\nand Homer’s prayer that war might perish from among Gods and men is a monstrous
\nabsurdity, for that would mean the end of the world. A periodic end there may
\nbe, not by peace or reconciliation, but by conflagration, by an attack of Fire, to
\np<\/i><\/span>\u00fbr epelthon, <\/span><\/i>a
\nfiery judgment and conviction. Force created the world, Force is the world,
\nForce by its violence maintains the <\/span>world, Force shall end the world, \u2014
\nand eternally re-create it.<\/p>\n

\nPage-358<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nVI<\/b><\/font><\/h5>\n

\n <\/p>\n

Heraclitus
\nis the first and the most consistent teacher of the law of relativity; it is the
\nlogical result of his primary philosophical concepts. Since all is one in its
\nbeing and many in its becoming, it follows that everything must be one in its
\nessence. Night and day, life and death, good and evil can only be different
\naspects of the same absolute reality. Life and death are in fact one, and we may
\nsay from different points of view that all death is only a process and change of
\nlife or that all life is only an activity of death. Really both are one energy
\nwhose activity presents to us a duality of aspects. From one point of view we
\nare not, for our existence is only a constant mutation of energy; from another
\nwe are, because the being in us is always the same and sustains our secret
\nidentity. So too, we can only speak of a thing as good or evil, just or unjust,
\nbeautiful or ugly from a purely relative point of view, because we adopt a
\nparticular standpoint or have in view some practical end or temporarily valid
\nrelation. He gives the example of \u201cthe sea, water purest and impurest\u201d,
\ntheir fine element to the fish, abominable and undrinkable to man. And does not
\nthis apply to all things?<\/span> \u2014
\nthey <\/span>are the same always in
\nreality and assume their qualities and properties because of our standing-point
\nin the universe of becoming, the nature of our seeing and the texture of our
\nminds. All things circle back to the eternal unity and in their beginning and
\nend are the same; it is only in the arc of becoming that they vary in themselves
\nand from each other, and there they have no absoluteness to each other. Night
\nand day are the same; it is only the nature of our vision and our standing-point
\non the earth and our relations of earth and sun that create the difference. What
\nis day to us, is to others night. <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Because of this insistence on the relativity of good and evil, Heraclitus
\nis thought to have enunciated some kind of supermoralism; but it is well to see
\ncarefully to what this supermoralism of Heraclitus really amounts. Heraclitus
\ndoes not deny the existence of an absolute; but for him the absolute is to be
\nfound in the One, in the Divine,<\/span> \u2014 not
\nthe gods, but the one supreme<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-359<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Divinity,
\nthe Fire. It has been objected that he attributes relativity to God, because he
\nsays that the first principle is willing and yet not willing to be caned by the
\nname of Zeus. But surely this is to misunderstand him altogether. The name Zeus
\nexpresses only the relative human idea of the Godhead; therefore while God
\naccepts the name, He is not bound or limited by it. All our concepts of Him are
\npartial and relative; \u201cHe is named according to the pleasure of each.\u201d This
\nis nothing more nor less than the truth proclaimed by the Vedas, \u201cOne existent
\nthe sages call by many names.\u201d Brahman is willing to be called Vishnu, and yet
\nhe is not willing, because he is also Brahma and Maheshwara and all the gods and
\nthe world and all principles and all that is, and yet not any of these things, neti
\nneti. <\/i>As men approach him, so he accepts them. But the One to Heraclitus as
\nto the Vedantin is absolute. <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>This is quite clear from all his sayings; day and night, good and evil
\nare one, because they are the One in their essence and in the One the
\ndistinctions we make between them disappear. There is a Word, a Reason in all
\nthings, a Logos, and that Reason is one; only’ men by the relativeness of their
\nmentality turn it each into his personal thought and way of looking at things
\nand live according to this variable relativity. It follows that there is an
\nabsolute, a divine way of looking at things. \u201cTo God all things are good and
\njust, but men hold some things to be good, others unjust.\u201d There is then an
\nabsolute good, an absolute beauty, an absolute justice of which all things are
\nthe relative expression. There is a divine order in the world; each thing
\nfulfils its nature according to its place in the order and in its place and
\nsymmetry in the one Reason of things is good, just and beautiful precisely
\nbecause it fulfils that Reason according to the eternal measures. To take an
\nexample, the world war may be regarded as an evil by some, a sheer horror of
\ncarnage, to others because of the new possibilities it opens to mankind, it may
\nseem a good. It is at once good and evil. But that is the relative view; in its
\nentirety, in its fulfilment in each and all of its circumstances of a divine
\npurpose, a divine justice, a divine force executing itself in the large reason
\nof things, it is from the absolute point of view good and just <\/span>\u2014
\nto God, not to man.<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-360<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\n   
\n<\/span>Does it follow that the relative viewpoint has no validity at all? Not
\nfor a moment. On the contrary, it must be the expression, proper to each
\nmentality according to the necessity of its nature and standpoint, of the divine
\nLaw. Heraclitus says that plainly; \u201cFed are all human laws by one, the
\ndivine.\u201d That sentence ought to be quite sufficient to protect Heraclitus
\nagainst the charge of antinomianism. True, no human law is the absolute
\nexpression of the divine justice, but it draws its validity, its sanction from
\nthat and is valid for its purpose, in its place, in its proper time, has its
\nrelative necessity. Even though men\u2019s notions of good and justice vary in the
\nmutations of the becoming, yet human good and justice persist in the stream of
\nthings, preserve a measure. Heraclitus admits relative standards, but as a
\nthinker he is obliged to go beyond them. All is at once one and many, an
\nabsolute and a relative, and all the relations of the many are relativities, yet
\nare fed by, go back to, persist by that in them which is absolute.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-361<\/span><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nVII<\/font><\/b><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

 The
\nideas of Heraclitus on which I have so far laid stress, are general,
\nphilosophical, metaphysical; they glance at those first truths of existence, dev<\/i><\/span>\u00e3n<\/span>\u00e3m
\npratham<\/span>\u00e3 vrat<\/span>\u00e3ni,
\n(<\/span><\/i>The first
\nlaws of working of the Gods.)<\/span>
\nfor which philosophy first seeks because they are the key to all other truths.
\nBut what is their practical effect on human life and aspiration? For that is in
\nthe end the real value of philosophy for man, to give him light on the nature of
\nhis being, the principles of his psychology, his relations with the world and
\nwith God, the fixed lines or the great possibilities of his des<\/span>tiny. It
\nis the weakness of most European philosophy \u2014 not the ancient
\n<\/span>\u2014 that it lives too much in
\nthe clouds and seeks after pure metaphysical truth too exclusively for its own
\nsake; therefore it has been a little barren because much too indirect in its
\nbearing on life. It is the great distinction of Nietzsche among later European
\nthinkers to have brought back something of the old dynamism and practical force
\ninto philosophy, although in the stress of this tendency he may have neglected
\nunduly the dialectical and metaphysical side of philosophical thinking. No
\ndoubt, in seeking Truth we must seek it for its own sake first and not start
\nwith any preconceived practical aim and prepossession which would distort our
\ndisinterested view of things; but when Truth has been found, its bearing on life
\nbecomes of capital importance and is the solid justification of the labour spent
\nin our research. Indian philosophy has always understood its double function; it
\nhas sought the Truth not only as an intellectual plea- sure or the natural
\ndharma of the reason, but in order to know how man may live by the Truth or
\nstrive after it; hence its intimate influence on the religion, the social ideas,
\nthe daily life of the people, its immense dynamic power on the mind and actions
\nof Indian humanity. The Greek thinkers, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics
\nand Epicureans, had also this practical aim and dynamic force, but it acted only
\non the cultured few. That was because Greek philosophy, losing its ancient
\naffiliation to the<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-362<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mystics, separated itself from
\nthe popular religion; but as ordinarily Philosophy alone can give light to
\nReligion, and save it from crudeness, ignorance and superstition, so Religion
\nalone can give, except for a few, spiritual passion and effective power to
\nPhilosophy and save it from becoming unsubstantial, abstract and sterile. It is
\na misfortune for both when the divine sisters part company.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>           
\n<\/span>But when we seek e among Heraclitus\u2019 sayings for the human application
\nof his great fundamental thoughts, we are disappointed. He gives us little
\ndirect guidance and on the whole leaves us to draw our own profit from the
\npacked opulence of his first ideas. What may be called his aristocratic view of
\nlife, we might regard possibly as a moral result of his philosophical conception
\nof Power as the nature of the original principle. He tells us that the many are
\nbad, the few good and that one is to him equal to thousands, if he be the best.
\nPower of knowledge, power of character, \u2014 character, he says, is man’s divine
\nforce, \u2014 power and excellence generally are the things that prevail in human
\nlife and are supremely valuable, and these things in their high and pure degree
\nare rare among men, they are the difficult attainment of the few. From that,
\ntrue enough so far as it goes, we might deduce a social and political
\nphilosophy. But the democrat might well answer that if there is an eminent and
\nconcentrated virtue, knowledge and force in the one or the few, so too there is
\na diffused virtue, knowledge and force in the many which acting collectively may
\noutweigh and exceed isolated or rare excellences. If the king, the sage, the
\nbest are Vishnu himself, as old Indian thought also affirmed, to a degree to
\nwhich the ordinary man, pr<\/i><\/span>\u00e3krto
\njan<\/span>\u00e3h, <\/span><\/i>cannot
\npretend, so also are \u201cthe five\u201d, the group, the people. The Divine is samasti
\n<\/i>as well as vyasti, <\/i>manifested in the collectivity as well as in the
\nindividual, and the justice on which Heraclitus insists demands that both should
\nhave their effect and their value; they depend indeed and draw on each other for
\nthe effectuation of their excellencies.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>Other sayings of Heraclitus are interesting enough, as when <\/span>he
\naffirms the divine element in human laws, \u2014 and that is also a
\nprofound and fruitful sentence. His views on the popular religion are
\ninteresting, but move on the surface and do not carry<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-363<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

us
\nvery far even on the surface. He rejects with a violent contempt the current
\ndegradation of the old mystic formulas and turns from them to the true
\nmysteries, those of Nature and of our being, that Nature which, as he says,
\nloves to be hidden, is full of mysteries, ever occult. It is a sign that the
\nlore of the early Mystics had been lost, the spiritual sense had departed out of
\ntheir symbols, even as in Vedic India, but there took place in Greece no new and
\npowerful movement which could, as in India, replace them by new symbols, new and
\nmore philosophic restatements of their hidden truths, new disciplines, schools
\nof Yoga. Attempts, such as that of Pythagoras, were made; but Greece at large
\nfollowed the turn given by Heraclitus, developed the cult of the reason and left
\nthe remnants of the old occult religion to become a solemn superstition and a
\nconventional pomp.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Doubly interesting is his condemnation of animal sacrifice; it is, he
\nsays, a vain attempt at purification by defilement of oneself with blood, as if
\nwe were to cleanse mud-stained feet with mud. Here we see the same trend of
\nrevolt against an ancient and universal religious practice as that which
\ndestroyed in India the sacrificial system of the Vedic religion,<\/span> –<\/span>
\nalthough Buddha’s great impulse of
\ncompassion was absent from the mind of Heraclitus: pity could never have become
\na powerful motive among the old Mediterranean races. But the language of
\nHeraclitus shows us that the ancient system of sacrifice in Greece and in India
\nwas not a mere barbaric propitiation of savage deities, as modern inquiry has
\nfalsely concluded; it had a psychological significance, purification of the soul
\nas well as propitiation of higher and helpful powers, and was therefore in all
\nprobability mystic and symbolical; for purification was, as we know, one of the
\nmaster ideas of the ancient Mysteries. In India of the Gita, in the development
\nof Judaism by the prophets and by Jesus, while the old physical symbols were
\ndiscouraged and especially the blood-rite, the psychological idea of sacrifice
\nwas saved, emphasised and equipped with subtler symbols, such as the Christian
\nEucharist and the offerings of the devout in the Shaiva or Vaishnava temples.
\nBut Greece with its rational bent and its insufficient religious sense was
\nunable to save its religion; it tended towards that sharp division between
\nphilosophy and<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-364<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

science
\non one side and religion on the other which has been so peculiar a
\ncharacteristic of the European mind. Here, too, Heraclitus was, as in so many
\nother directions, a forerunner, an indicator of the natural bent of occidental
\nthought.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Equally striking is his condemnation of idol-worship, one of the earliest
\nin human history,<\/span> –<\/span> "he
\nwho prays to an image is chattering to a stone wall." The intolerant
\nviolence of this protestant rationalism and positivism makes Heraclitus again a
\nprecursor of a whole movement of the human mind. It is not indeed a religious
\nprotest such as that of Mahomed against the naturalistic, Pagan and idolatrous
\npolytheism of the Arabs or of the Protestants against the aesthetic and
\nemotional saint-worship of the Catholic Church, its Mariolatry and use of images
\nand elaborate ritual; its motive is philosophic, rational, psychological.
\nHeraclitus was not indeed a pure rationalist. He believes in the Gods, but as
\npsychological presences, cosmic powers, and he is too impatient of the grossness
\nof the physical image, its hold on the senses, its obscuration of the
\npsychological significance of the godheads to see that it is not to the stone,
\nbut to the divine person figured in the stone that the prayer is offered. It is
\nnoticeable that in his conception of the gods he is kin to the old Vedic seers,
\nthough not at all a religious mystic in his temperament. The Vedic religion
\nseems to have excluded physical images and it was the protestant movements of
\nJainism and Buddhism which either introduced or at least popularised and made
\ngeneral the worship of images in India. Here, too, Heraclitus prepares the way
\nfor the destruction of the old religion, the reign of pure philosophy and reason
\nand the void which was filled up by Christianity; for man cannot live by reason
\nalone. When it was too late, some attempt was made to re-spiritualise the old
\nreligion, and there was the remarkable effort of Julian and Libanius to set up a
\nregenerated Paganism against triumphant Christianity; but the attempt was too
\nunsubstantial, too purely philosophic, empty of the dynamic power of the
\nreligious spirit. Europe had killed its old creeds beyond revival and had to
\nturn for its religion to Asia.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Thus, for the general life of man Heraclitus has nothing to give us
\nbeyond his hint of an aristocratic principle in society<\/span> and<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-365<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

politics,<\/span> –<\/span> and
\nwe may note that this aristocratic bent was very strong in almost all the
\nsubsequent Greek philosophers. In religion his influence tended to the
\ndestruction of the old creed without effectively putting anything more profound
\nin its place; though not himself a pure rationalist, he prepared the way for
\nphilosophic rationalism. But even without religion philosophy by itself can give
\nus at least some light on the spiritual destiny of man, some hope of the
\ninfinite, some ideal perfection after which we can strive. Plato who was
\ninfluenced by Heraclitus, tried to do this for us; his thought sought after God,
\ntried to seize the ideal, had its hope of a perfect human society. We know how
\nthe Neo-platonists developed his ideas under the influence of the East and how
\nthey affected Christianity. The Stoics, still more directly the intellectual
\ndescendants of Heraclitus, arrived at very remarkable and fruitful ideas of
\nhuman possibility and a powerful psychological discipline, – as we should say in
\nIndia, a Yoga,<\/span> –<\/span> by which they hoped to
\nrealise their ideal. But what has Heraclitus himself to give us? Nothing
\ndirectly; we have to <\/i>gather for ourselves whatever we can from his first
\nprinciples and his cryptic sentences.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Heraclitus was regarded in ancient times as a pessimistic thinker and we
\nhave one or two sayings of his from which we can, if we like, deduce the old
\nvain gospel of the vanity of things. Time, he says, is playing draughts like a
\nchild, amusing itself with counters, building castles on the sea-shore only to
\nthrow them down again. If that is the last word, then all human effort and
\naspiration are vain. But on what primary philosophical conception does this
\ndiscouraging sentence depend? Everything turns on that; for in itself this is no
\nmore than an assertion of a self- evident fact, the mutability of things and the
\nrecurrent transiency of forms. But if the principles which express themselves in
\nforms are eternal or if there is a Spirit in things which finds its account in
\nthe mutations and evolutions of Time and if that Spirit dwells in the human
\nbeing as the immortal and infinite power of his soul, then no conclusion of the
\nvanity of the world or the vanity of human existence arises. If indeed the
\noriginal and eternal principle of Fire is a purely physical substance or force,
\nthen, truly, since all the great play and effort of consciousness in us must
\nsink and<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-366<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

dissolve into that, there can be no permanent spiritual value in our
\nbeing, much less in our works. But we have seen that Heraclitus’ Fire cannot be
\na purely physical or inconscient principle. Does he then mean that all our
\nexistence is merely a continual changeable Becoming, a play or Lila with no
\npurpose in it except the playing and no end except the conviction of the vanity
\nof all cosmic activity by its relapse into the indistinguishable unity of the
\noriginal principle or substance? For even if that principle, the One to which
\nthe many return, be not merely physical or not really physical at all, but
\nspiritual, we may still, like the Maya-vadins, affirm the vanity of the world
\nand of our human existence, precisely because the one is not eternal and the
\nother has no eventual aim except its own self-abolition after the conviction of
\nthe vanity and unreality of all its temporal interests and purposes. Is the
\nconviction of the world by the one absolute Fire such a conviction of the vanity
\nof all the temporal and relative values of the Many?<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>That is one sense in which we can understand the thought of Heraclitus.
\nHis idea of all things as born of war and existing by strife might, if it stood
\nby itself, lead us to adopt, even if he himself did not clearly arrive at that
\nconclusion. For if all is a continual struggle of forces, its best aspect only a
\nviolent justice and the highest harmony only a tension of opposites without any
\nhope of a divine reconciliation, its end a conviction and destruction by eternal
\nFire, all our ideal hopes and aspirations are out of place; they have no
\nfoundation in the truth of things. But there is another side to the thought of
\nHeraclitus. He says indeed that all things come into being "according to
\nstrife", by the clash of forces, are governed by the determining justice of
\nwar. He says farther that all is utterly determined, fated. But what then
\ndetermines? The justice of a clash of forces is not fate; forces in conflict
\ndetermine indeed, but from moment to moment, according to a constantly changing
\nbalance always modifiable by the arising of new forces. If there is
\npredetermination, an inevitable fate in things, then there must be some power
\nbehind the conflict which determines them, fixes their measures. What is that
\npower? Heraclitus tells us; all indeed comes into being according to strife, but
\nalso all things come into being  <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-367<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

according to Reason, kat erin <\/i>but also kata ton logon. <\/i>What
\nis this Logos? It is not an inconscient reason in things, for his Fire is not
\nmerely an inconscient force, it is Zeus and eternity. Fire, Zeus is Force, but
\nit is also an Intelligence; let us say then that it is an intelligent Force
\nwhich is the origin and master of things. Nor can this Logos be identical in its
\nnature with the human reason; for that is an individual and therefore relative
\nand partial judgment and intelligence which can only seize on relative truth,
\nnot on the true truth of things, but the Logos is one and universal, an absolute
\nreason therefore combining and managing all the relativities of the many. Was
\nnot then Philo justified in deducing from this idea of an intelligent Force
\noriginating and governing the world, Zeus and Fire, his interpretation of the
\nLogos as "the divine dynamic, the energy and the self- revelation of
\nGod"? Heraclitus might not so have phrased it, might not have seen all that
\nhis thought contained, but it does contain this sense when his different sayings
\nare fathomed and put together in their consequences.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>We get very near the Indian conception of Brahman, the cause,<\/span> v<\/span>
\norigin and substance of all things, an
\nabsolute Existence whose nature is consciousness (Chit) manifesting itself as
\nForce (Tapas, Shakti) and moving in the world of his own being as the Seer and
\nThinker, kavirmanisi, <\/i>an immanent Knowledge-Will in all, vijnanamaya
\npurusa, <\/i>who is the Lord or Godhead, isa, isvara, deva, <\/i>and has
\nordained all things according to their nature <\/span>from years sempiternal, –<\/span> Heraclitus’ "measures" which the Sun is
\nforced to observe, his "things are utterly determined." This
\nKnowledge-Will is the Logos. The Stoics spoke of it as a seed Logos, spermatikos,
\n<\/i>reproduced in conscious beings as a number of seed Logoi; and this at once
\nreminds us of the Vedantic prajna-purusa, <\/i>the supreme Intelligence who is
\nthe Lord and dwells in the sleep-state holding all things in a seed of dense
\nconsciousness which works out through the perceptions of the subtle Purusha, the
\nmental Being. Vijnana is indeed a conscious- ness which sees things, not as the
\nhuman reason sees them in parts and pieces, in separated and aggregated
\nrelations, but in the originl reason of their existence and law of their
\nexistence, their primal and total truth; therefore it is the seed Logos, the
\norigina-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-368<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

tive and determinant
\nconscious force working as supreme Intelligence and Will. The Vedic seer called
\nit the Truth-Consciousness and believed that men also could become
\ntruth-conscious, enter into the divine Reason and Will and by the Truth become
\nimmortals, anthropoi athanatoi.<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Does the thought of Heraclitus admit of any such hope as the Vedic seers
\nheld and hymned with so triumphant a confidence? or does it even give ground for
\nany aspiration to some kind of a divine supermanhood such as his disciples the
\nStoics so sternly laboured for or as that of which Nietzsche, the modern
\nHeraclitus, drew a too crude and violent figure? His saying that man is kindled
\nand extinguished as light disappears into night, is commonplace and discouraging
\nenough. But this may after all be only true of the apparent man. Is it possible
\nfor man in his becoming to raise his present fixed measures? to elevate his
\nmental, relative, individual reason into direct communion with or direct
\nparticipation in the divine and absolute reason? to inspire and raise the values
\nof his human force to the higher values of the divine force? to become aware
\nlike the gods of an absolute good and an absolute beauty? to lift this mortal to
\nthe nature of immortality? Against his melancholy image of human transiency we
\nhave that remarkable and cryptic sentence, "the gods are mortals, men
\nimmortals," which, taken literally, might mean that the gods are powers
\nthat perish and replace each other and the soul of man alone is immortal, but
\nmust at least mean that there is in man behind his outward transiency an
\nimmortal spirit. We have too his saying, "thou canst not find the limits of
\nthe soul," and we have the profoundest of all Heraclitus’ utterances,
\n"the kingdom is of the child." If man is in his real being an infinite
\nand immortal spirit, there is surely no reason why he should not awaken to his
\nimmortality, arise towards the consciousness of the universal, one and absolute,
\nlive in a higher self-realisation. "I have sought for myself," says
\nHeraclitus; and what was it that he found?
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

        
\n<\/span>But there is one great gap and defect whether in his knowledge of things
\nor his knowledge of the self of man. We see in how many directions the deep
\ndivining eye of Heraclitus anticipated the largest and profoundest
\ngeneralisations of Science<\/span> and<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-369<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Philosophy and how even his more superficial thoughts indicate later
\npowerful tendencies of the occidental mind, how too some of his ideas influenced
\nsuch profound and fruitful thinkers as Plato, the Stoics, the Neo-Platonists.
\nBut in his defect also he is a forerunner; it illustrates the great deficiency
\nof later European thought, such of it at least as has not been profoundly
\ninfluenced by Asiatic religions or Asiatic mysticism. I have tried to show how
\noften his thought touches and is almost identical with the Vedic and Vedantic.
\nBut his knowledge of the truth of things stopped with the vision of the
\nuniversal reason and the universal force; he seems to have summed up the
\nprinciple of things in these two first terms, the aspect of consciousness, the
\naspect of power, a supreme intelligence and a supreme energy. The eye of Indian
\nthought saw a third aspect of the Self and of Brahman; besides the universal
\nconsciousness active in divine knowledge, besides the universal force active in
\ndivine will, it saw the universal delight active in divine love and joy.
\nEuropean thought, following the line of Heraclitus’ thinking, has fixed itself
\non reason and on force and made them the principles towards whose perfection our
\nbeing has to aspire. Force is the first aspect of the world, war, the clash of
\nenergies; the second aspect, reason, emerges out of the appearance of force in
\nwhich it is at first hidden and reveals itself as a certain justice, a certain
\nharmony, a certain determining intelligence and reason in things; the third
\naspect is a deeper secret behind these two, universal delight, love, beauty
\nwhich taking up the other two can establish something higher than justice,
\nbetter than harmony, truer than reason, <\/span>–<\/span> unity and bliss, the
\necstasy of our fulfilled existence. Of this last secret power Western thought
\nhas only seen two lower aspects, pleasure and aesthetic beauty; it has missed
\nthe spiritual beauty and the spiritual delight. For that reason Europe has never
\nbeen able to develop a powerful religion of its own; it has been obliged to turn
\nto Asia. Science takes possession of the measures and utilities of Force;
\nrational philosophy pursues reason to its last subtleties; but inspired
\nphilosophy and religion can seize hold of the highest secret, uttamam
\nrahasyam.<\/i>
\n            <\/span>Heraclitus might have
\nseen it if he had carried his vision a little farther. Force by itself can only
\nproduce a balance of forces,<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-370<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

the strife that is justice; in that strife there takes place a constant
\nexchange and, once this need of exchange is seen, there arises the possibility
\nof modifying and replacing war by reason as the determinant principle of the
\nexchange. This is the second effort of man, of which Heraclitus did not clearly
\nsee the possibility. From exchange we can rise to the highest possible idea of
\ninter- change, a mutual dependency of self-giving as the hidden secret of life;
\nfrom that can grow the power of Love replacing strife and exceeding the cold
\nbalance of reason. There is the gate of the divine ecstasy. Heraclitus could not
\nsee it, and yet his one saying about the kingdom of the child touches, almost
\nreaches the heart of the secret. For this kingdom is evidently spiritual, it is
\nthe crown, the mastery to which the perfected man arrives; and the perfect man
\nis a divine child! He is the soul which awakens to the divine play, accepts it
\nwithout fear or reserve, gives itself up in a spiritual purity to the Divine,
\nallows the careful and troubled force of man to be freed from care and grief and
\nbecome the joyous play of the divine Will, his relative and stumbling reason to
\nbe replaced by that divine knowledge which to the Greek, the rational man, is
\nfoolishness, and the laborious pleasure-seeking of the bound mentality to lose
\nitself in the spontaneity of the divine Ananda; "for of such is the kingdom
\nof heaven." The Paramhansa, the liberated man, is in his soul b<\/i><\/span>\u00e3lavat, <\/span><\/i>even as if a
\nchild.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-371<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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