{"id":1531,"date":"2013-07-13T01:35:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1531"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:35:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:30","slug":"01-kena-upanishad-vol-18-kena-and-other-upanishads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/18-kena-and-other-upanishads\/01-kena-upanishad-vol-18-kena-and-other-upanishads","title":{"rendered":"-01_Kena Upanishad.html"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\tPart One <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTranslations and Commentaries
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPublished by Sri Aurobindo
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThese texts were first published between 1909 and 1920. Sri
\nAurobindo later revised most of them. The revised versions are printed here.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, c. 1915\u00ad1918
\n \t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tKena Upanishad <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe Kena Upanishad
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFIRST PART <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1. By whom missioned falls the mind shot to its mark? By
\nwhom yoked moves the first life-breath forward on its paths? By whom impelled is this word that men speak?
\nWhat god set eye and ear to their workings? <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2. That which is hearing of our hearing, mind of our mind,
\nspeech of our speech, that too is life of our life-breath and sight of our sight. The wise are released beyond and they
\npass from this world and become immortal. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3. There sight travels not, nor speech, nor the mind. We know
\nIt not nor can distinguish how one should teach of It: for It is other than the known; It is there above the unknown. It
\nis so we have heard from men of old who declared That to our understanding.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t4. That which is unexpressed by the word, that by which the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 5<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n word is expressed, know That to be the Brahman and not
\nthis which men follow after here. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 5. That which thinks not by the mind,1<\/font><\/sup> that by which the mind
\nis thought, know That to be the Brahman and not this which men follow after here. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \t6. That which sees not with the eye,2<\/font><\/sup> that by which one sees the eye’s seeings, know That to be the Brahman and not this
\nwhich men follow after here. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \t7. That which hears not with the ear,3<\/font><\/sup> that by which the ear’s
\nhearing is heard, know That to be the Brahman and not this which men follow after here. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \t8. That which breathes not with the breath,4<\/font><\/sup> that by which the life-breath is led forward in its paths, know That to be the
\nBrahman and not this which men follow after here. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 1
\nOr, “that which one thinks not with the mind”. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n 2
\nOr, “that which one sees not with the eye”. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n 3
\nOr, “that which one hears not with the ear”. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n 4
\nOr, “that which one breathes not (i.e. smells not) with the breath”. <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 6<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

SECOND PART
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

1. If thou thinkest that thou knowest It well, little indeed dost thou know the form of the Brahman. That of It which is
\nthou, that of It which is in the gods, this thou hast to think out. I think It known. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

2. I think not that I know It well and yet I know that It is not unknown to me. He of us who knows It, knows That; he
\nknows that It is not unknown to him. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

3. He by whom It is not thought out, has the thought of It; he
\nby whom It is thought out, knows It not. It is unknown to the discernment of those who discern of It, by those who
\nseek not to discern of It, It is discerned. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

4. When It is known by perception that reflects It, then one
\nhas the thought of It, for one finds immortality; by the self one finds the force to attain and by the knowledge one finds
\nimmortality. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

5. If here one comes to that knowledge, then one truly is; if here
\none comes not to the knowledge, then great is the perdition. 8<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 7<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n The wise distinguish That in all kinds of becomings and they
\npass forward from this world and become immortal. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n THIRD PART
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 1. The Eternal conquered for the gods and in the victory of the Eternal the gods grew to greatness. They saw, “Ours the
\nvictory, ours the greatness.” <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 2. The Eternal knew their thought and appeared before them; and they knew not what was this mighty Daemon. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 3. They said to Agni, “O thou that knowest all things born, learn of this thing, what may be this mighty Daemon,” and
\nhe said, “So be it.” <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 4. He rushed towards the Eternal and It said to him, “Who art
\nthou?” “I am Agni,” he said, “I am he that knows all things born.” <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 5. “Since such thou art, what is the force in thee?” “Even all this I could burn, all that is upon the earth.” <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 8<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

6. The Eternal set before him a blade of grass; “This burn;”
\nand he made towards it with all his speed, but could not burn it. There he ceased, and turned back; “I could not
\nknow of It, what might be this mighty Daemon.” <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

7. Then they said to Vayu, “O Vayu, this discern, what is this
\nmighty Daemon.” He said, “So be it.” <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

8. He rushed upon That; It said to him, “Who art thou?” “I
\nam Vayu,” he said, “and I am he that expands in the Mother of things.” <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

9. “Since such thou art, what is the force in thee?” “Even all this I can take for myself, all this that is upon the earth.” <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

10. That set before him a blade of grass; “This take.” He went towards it with all his speed and he could not take it. Even
\nthere he ceased, even thence he returned; “I could not discern of That, what is this mighty Daemon.” <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

11. Then they said to Indra, “Master of plenitudes, get thou the knowledge, what is this mighty Daemon.” He said, “So be
\nit.” He rushed upon That. That vanished from before him. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 9<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n 12. He in the same ether came upon the Woman, even upon Her
\nwho shines out in many forms, Uma daughter of the snowy summits. To her he said, “What was this mighty Daemon?” <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n FOURTH PART <\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 1. She said to him, “It is the Eternal. Of the Eternal is this
\nvictory in which ye shall grow to greatness.” Then alone he came to know that this was the Brahman. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \t2. Therefore are these gods as it were beyond all the other gods, even Agni and Vayu and Indra, because they came
\nnearest to the touch of That… 5<\/font><\/sup> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \t3. Therefore is Indra as it were beyond all the other gods because he came nearest to the touch of That, because he first knew that it was the Brahman. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \t4. Now this is the indication of That,\u2014as is this flash of the
\nlightning upon us or as is this falling of the eyelid, so in that which is of the gods. <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n 5 By some mistake of early memorisers or later copyists the rest of the verse has become hopelessly corrupted. It runs, “They he first came to know that it was the Brahman,”
\nwhich is neither fact nor sense nor grammar. The close of the third verse has crept into and replaced the original close of the second.
\n\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 10<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

5. Then in that which is of the Self,\u2014as the motion of this mind seems to attain to That and by it afterwards the will
\nin the thought continually remembers It. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

6. The name of That is “That Delight”; as That Delight one
\nshould follow after It. He who so knows That, towards him verily all existences yearn. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

7. Thou hast said “Speak to me Upanishad”;6<\/font><\/sup> spoken to thee
\nis Upanishad. Of the Eternal verily is the Upanishad that we have spoken. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

8. Of this knowledge austerity and self-conquest and works are the foundation, the Vedas are all its limbs, truth is its
\ndwelling place. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

9. He who knows this knowledge, smites evil away from him
\nand in that vaster world and infinite heaven finds his foundation, yea, he finds his foundation. <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

6 Upanishad means inner knowledge, that which enters into the final Truth and settles in it.
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 11<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

Commentary <\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I <\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

The Subject of the Upanishad <\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

T<\/font>HE TWELVE<\/b> great Upanishads are written round one
\nbody of ancient knowledge; but they approach it from different sides. Into the great kingdom of the Brahmavidya
\neach enters by its own gates, follows its own path or detour, aims at its own point of arrival. The Isha Upanishad and the
\nKena are both concerned with the same grand problem, the winning of the state of Immortality, the relations of the divine,
\nall-ruling, all-possessing Brahman to the world and to the human consciousness, the means of passing out of our present state of
\ndivided self, ignorance and suffering into the unity, the truth, the divine beatitude. As the Isha closes with the aspiration towards the supreme felicity, so the Kena closes with the definition of Brahman as the Delight and the injunction to worship and
\nseek after That as the Delight. Nevertheless there is a variation in the starting-point, even in the standpoint, a certain sensible
\ndivergence in the attitude. <\/p>\n

\n

For the precise subject of the two Upanishads is not identical. The Isha is concerned with the whole problem of the world and life and works and human destiny in their relation to the
\nsupreme truth of the Brahman. It embraces in its brief eighteen verses most of the fundamental problems of Life and scans them
\nswiftly with the idea of the supreme Self and its becomings, the supreme Lord and His workings as the key that shall unlock all
\ngates. The oneness of all existences is its dominating note. <\/p>\n

\n

The Kena Upanishad approaches a more restricted problem, starts with a more precise and narrow inquiry. It concerns itself only with the relation of mind-consciousness to Brahmanconsciousness and does not stray outside the strict boundaries of its subject. The material world and the physical life are taken
\nfor granted, they are hardly mentioned. But the material world and the physical life exist for us only by virtue of our internal <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 15<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

self and our internal life. According as our mental instruments represent to us the external world, according as our vital force
\nin obedience to the mind deals with its impacts and objects, so will be our outward life and existence. The world is for us, not
\nfundamentally but practically at any rate, what our mind and senses declare it to be; life is what our mentality or at least our
\nhalf-mentalised vital being determines that it shall become. The question is asked by the Upanishad, what then are these mental
\ninstruments? what is this mental life which uses the external? Are they the last witnesses, the supreme and final power? Are
\nmind and life and body all or is this human existence only a veil of something greater, mightier, more remote and profound than
\nitself? <\/p>\n

\n

The Upanishad replies that there is such a greater existence
\nbehind, which is to the mind and its instruments, to the lifeforce and its workings what they are to the material world.
\nMatter does not know Mind, Mind knows Matter; it is only when the creature embodied in Matter develops mind, becomes
\nthe mental being that he can know his mental self and know by that self Matter also in its reality to Mind. So also Mind does
\nnot know That which is behind it, That knows Mind; and it is only when the being involved in Mind can deliver out of its
\nappearances his true Self that he can become That, know it as himself and by it know also Mind in its reality to that which
\nis more real than Mind. How to rise beyond the mind and its instruments, enter into himself, attain to the Brahman becomes
\nthen the supreme aim for the mental being, the all-important problem of his existence. <\/p>\n

\n

For given that there is a more real existence than the mental existence, a greater life than the physical life, it follows that the
\nlower life with its forms and enjoyments which are all that men here ordinarily worship and pursue, can no longer be an object of
\ndesire for the awakened spirit. He must aspire beyond; he must free himself from this world of death and mere phenomena to
\nbecome himself in his true state of immortality beyond them. Then alone he really exists when here in this mortal life itself he
\ncan free himself from the mortal consciousness and know and <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 16<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nbe the Immortal and Eternal. Otherwise he feels that he has lost himself, has fallen from his true salvation. <\/p>\n

\n \tBut this Brahman-consciousness is not represented by the Upanishad as something quite alien to the mental and physical
\nworld, aloof from it and in no way active upon it or concerned with its activities. On the contrary, it is the Lord and ruler of all
\nthe world; the energies of the gods in the mortal consciousness are its energies; when they conquer and grow great, it is because
\nBrahman has fought and won. This world therefore is an inferior action, a superficial representation of something infinitely
\ngreater, more perfect, more real than itself. <\/p>\n

\n \tWhat is that something? It is the All-Bliss which is infinite
\nbeing and immortal force. It is that pure and utter bliss and not the desires and enjoyments of this world which men ought to
\nworship and to seek. How to seek it is the one question that matters; to follow after it with all one’s being is the only truth
\nand the only wisdom. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 17<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n II <\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n The Question. What Godhead?<\/i> <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n M<\/font>IND IS<\/b> the principal agent of the lower or phenomenal
\nconsciousness; vital force or the life-breath, speech and the five senses of knowledge are the instruments
\nof the mind. Prana, the life-force in the nervous system, is indeed the one main instrument of our mental consciousness; for it is
\nthat by which the mind receives the contacts of the physical world through the organs of knowledge, sight, hearing, smell,
\ntouch and taste, and reacts upon its object by speech and the other four organs of action; all these senses are dependent upon
\nthe nervous Life-force for their functioning. The Upanishad therefore begins by a query as to the final source or control
\nof the activities of the Mind, Life-Force, Speech, Senses. <\/p>\n

\n The question is, kena<\/i>, by whom or what? In the ancient conception of the universe our material existence is formed from the five elemental states of Matter, the ethereal, aerial, fiery, liquid
\nand solid; everything that has to do with our material existence \u00af<\/i>
\nis called the elemental, adhibhuta<\/i>. In this material there move non-material powers manifesting through the Mind-Force and
\nLife-Force that work upon Matter, and these are called Gods or devas; everything that has to do with the working of the
\nnon-material in us is called adhidaiva<\/i>, that which pertains to the Gods. But above the non-material powers, containing them,
\n\u00af<\/i> greater than they is the Self or Spirit, atman<\/i>, and everything that
\nhas to do with this highest existence in us is called the spiritual, \u00af<\/i>
\nadhyatma<\/i>. For the purpose of the Upanishads the adhidaiva <\/i>is the subtle in us; it is that which is represented by Mind and Life
\nas opposed to gross Matter; for in Mind and Life we have the characteristic action of the Gods. <\/p>\n

\n The Upanishad is not concerned with the elemental, the \u00af<\/i>
\nadhibhuta<\/i>; it is concerned with the relation between the subtle \u00af<\/i>
\nexistence and the spiritual, the adhidaiva <\/i>and adhyatma<\/i>. But the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 18<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nMind, the Life, the speech, the senses are governed by cosmic powers, by Gods, by Indra, Vayu, Agni. Are these subtle cosmic
\npowers the beginning of existence, the true movers of mind and life, or is there some superior unifying force, one in itself behind
\nthem all? <\/p>\n

\n By whom or what is the mind missioned and sent on its
\nerrand so that it falls on its object like an arrow shot by a skilful archer at its predetermined mark, like a messenger, an envoy
\nsent by his master to a fixed place for a fixed object? What is it within us or without us that sends forth the mind on its errand?
\nWhat guides it to its object? <\/p>\n

\n Then there is the Life-force, the Prana, that works in our
\nvital being and nervous system. The Upanishad speaks of it as the first or supreme Breath; elsewhere in the sacred writings it is spoken of as the chief Breath or the Breath of the mouth, mukhya<\/i>, \u00af<\/i>
\nasanya<\/i>; it is that which carries in it the Word, the creative expression. In the body of man there are said to be five workings of
\nthe life-force called the five Pranas. One specially termed Prana moves in the upper part of the body and is preeminently the
\nbreath of life, because it brings the universal Life-force into the physical system and gives it there to be distributed. A second
\nin the lower part of the trunk, termed Apana, is the breath of death; for it gives away the vital force out of the body. A third,
\nthe Samana, regulates the interchange of these two forces at their meeting-place, equalises them and is the most important
\nagent in maintaining the equilibrium of the vital forces and their functions. A fourth, the Vyana, pervasive, distributes the vital
\nenergies throughout the body. A fifth, the Udana, moves upward from the body to the crown of the head and is a regular channel
\nof communication between the physical life and the greater life of the spirit. None of these are the first or supreme Breath, although the Prana most nearly represents it; the Breath to which so much importance is given in the Upanishads, is the pure lifeforce itself,\u2014first, because all the others are secondary to it, born from it and only exist as its special functions. It is imaged
\nin the Veda as the Horse; its various energies are the forces that draw the chariots of the Gods. The Vedic image is recalled <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 19<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

by the choice of the terms employed in the Upanishad, yukta<\/i>, yoked, praiti<\/i>, goes forward, as a horse driven by the charioteer
\nadvances in its path. <\/p>\n

\n

Who then has yoked this Life-force to the many workings
\nof existence or by what power superior to itself does it move forward in its paths? For it is not primal, self-existent or its own
\nagent. We are conscious of a power behind which guides, drives, controls, uses it. <\/p>\n

\n

The force of the vital breath enables us to bring up and speed outward from the body this speech that we use to express, to
\nthrow out into a world of action and new-creation the willings and thought-formations of the mind. It is propelled by Vayu, the
\nlife-breath; it is formed by Agni, the secret will-force and fiery shaping energy in the mind and body. But these are the agents.
\nWho or what is the secret Power that is behind them, the master of the word that men speak, its real former and the origin of
\nthat which expresses itself? <\/p>\n

\n

The ear hears the sound, the eye sees the form; but hearing
\nand vision are particular operations of the life-force in us used by the mind in order to put itself into communication with
\nthe world in which the mental being dwells and to interpret it in the forms of sense. The life-force shapes them, the mind
\nuses them, but something other than the life-force and the mind enables them to shape and to use their objects and their instruments. What God sets eye and ear to their workings? Not Surya, the God of light, not Ether and his regions; for these are only
\nconditions of vision and hearing. The Gods combine, each bringing his contribution, the operations of the physical world that we observe as of the mental world that is our means of observation; but the whole universal
\naction is one, not a sum of fortuitous atoms; it is one, arranged in its parts, combined in its multiple functionings by virtue of a
\nsingle conscient existence which can never be constructed or put together (akrta<\/i>) but is for ever, anterior to all these workings. <\/p>\n

\n

The Gods work only by this Power anterior to themselves, live
\nonly by its life, think only by its thought, act only for its purposes. We look into ourselves and all things and become aware <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 20<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nof it there, an “I”, an “Is”, a Self, which is other, firmer, vaster than any separate or individual being. <\/p>\n

\n But since it is not anything that the mind can make its object or the senses throw into form for the mind, what then is it\u2014or who? What absolute Spirit? What one, supreme and eternal Godhead? Ko devah<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 21<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tIII <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Supramental Godhead <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\tT<\/font>HE ETERNAL<\/b> question has been put which turns man’s
\neyes away from the visible and the outward to that which is utterly within, away from the little known that he has
\nbecome to the vast unknown he is behind these surfaces and must yet grow into and be because that is his Reality and out
\nof all masquerade of phenomenon and becoming the Real Being must eventually deliver itself. The human soul once seized by
\nthis compelling direction can no longer be satisfied with looking forth at mortalities and seemings through those doors of the
\nmind and sense which the Self-existent has made to open outward upon a world of forms; it is driven to gaze inward into a
\nnew world of realities. <\/p>\n

\n\tHere in the world that man knows, he possesses something
\nwhich, however imperfect and insecure, he yet values. For he aims at and to some extent he procures enlarged being, increasing knowledge, more and more joy and satisfaction and these things are so precious to him that for what he can get of them
\nhe is ready to pay the price of continual suffering from the shock of their opposites. If then he has to abandon what he here
\npursues and clasps, there must be a far more powerful attraction drawing him to the Beyond, a secret offer of something so great
\nas to be a full reward for all possible renunciation that can be demanded of him here. This is offered,\u2014not an enlarged
\nbecoming, but infinite being; not always relative piecings of knowledge mistaken in their hour for the whole of knowledge,
\nbut the possession of our essential consciousness and the flood of its luminous realities; not partial satisfactions, but
\nthe <\/i>delight.
\nIn a word, Immortality. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that
\nit is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 22<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthe absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there
\nfound; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here
\nin our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our
\nlimited senses. <\/p>\n

\n We renounce ourselves in order to find ourselves; for in
\nthe mental life there is only a seeking, but never an ultimate finding till mind is overpassed. Therefore there is behind all
\nour mentality a perfection of ourselves which appears to us as an antinomy and contrast to what we are. For here we are a
\nconstant becoming; there we possess our eternal being. Here we conceive of ourselves as a changeful consciousness developed
\nand always developing by a hampered effort in the drive of Time; there we are an immutable consciousness of which Time
\nis not the master but the instrument as well as the field of all that it creates and watches. Here we live in an organisation of
\nmortal consciousness which takes the form of a transient world; there we are liberated into the harmonies of an infinite selfseeing which knows all world in the light of the eternal and immortal. The Beyond is our reality; that is our plenitude; that
\nis the absolute satisfaction of our self-existence. It is immortality and it is “That Delight”. <\/p>\n

\n Here in our imprisoned mentality the ego strives to be master and possessor of its inner field and its outer environment,
\nyet cannot hold anything to enjoy it, because it is not possible really to possess what is not-self to us. But there in the freedom
\nof the eternal our self-existence possesses without strife by the sufficient fact that all things are itself. Here is the apparent man,
\nthere the real man, the Purusha: here are gods, there is the Divine: here is the attempt to exist, Life flowering out of an all-devouring
\ndeath, there Existence itself and a dateless immortality. <\/p>\n

\n The answer that is thus given is involved in the very form
\nof the original question. The Truth behind Mind, Life, Sense 24<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 23<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

must be that which controls by exceeding it; it is the Lord, the all-possessing Deva. This was the conclusion at which the Isha
\nUpanishad arrived by the synthesis of all existences; the Kena arrives at it by the antithesis of one governing self-existence to
\nall this that exists variously by another power of being than its own. Each follows its own method for the resolution of all things
\ninto the one Reality, but the conclusion is identical. It is the Allpossessing and All-enjoying, who is reached by the renunciation
\nof separate being, separate possession and separate delight. <\/p>\n

\n

But the Isha addresses itself to the awakened seeker; it
\nbegins therefore with the all-inhabiting Lord, proceeds to the allbecoming Self and returns to the Lord as the Self of the cosmic
\nmovement, because it has to justify works to the seeker of the Uncreated and to institute a divine life founded on the joy of
\nimmortality and on the unified consciousness of the individual made one with the universal. The Kena addresses itself to the
\nsoul still attracted by the external life, not yet wholly awakened nor wholly a seeker; it begins therefore with the Brahman as the
\nSelf beyond Mind and proceeds to the Brahman as the hidden Lord of all our mental and vital activities, because it has to point
\nthis soul upward beyond its apparent and outward existence. But the two opening chapters of the Kena only state less widely
\nfrom this other view-point the Isha’s doctrine of the Self and its becomings; the last two repeat in other terms of thought the
\nIsha’s doctrine of the Lord and His movement. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 24<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

IV <\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

The Eternal Beyond the Mind <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

T<\/font>HE UPANISHAD <\/b>first affirms the existence of this profounder, vaster, more puissant consciousness behind our mental being. That, it affirms, is Brahman. Mind, Life,
\nSense, Speech are not the utter Brahman; they are only inferior modes and external instruments. Brahman-consciousness is our
\nreal self and our true existence. <\/p>\n

\n

Mind and body are not our real self; they are mutable formations or images which we go on constructing in the drive of Time as a result of the mass of our past energies. For although
\nthose energies seem to us to lie dead in the past because their history is behind us, yet are they still existent in their mass and
\nalways active in the present and the future. <\/p>\n

\n

Neither is the ego-function our real self. Ego is only a faculty
\nput forward by the discriminative mind to centralise round itself the experiences of the sense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynchpin in the wheel which keeps together the movement. It is no more than an instrument, although it is true that so long as we
\nare limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the nature of that mentality and the purpose of the instrument to
\nmistake our ego-function for our very self. <\/p>\n

\n

Neither is it the memory that constitutes our real self. Memory is another instrument, a selective instrument for the practical management of our conscious activities. The ego-function uses
\nit as a rest and support so as to preserve the sense of continuity without which our mental and vital activities could not be organised for a spacious enjoyment by the individual. But even our mental self comprises and is influenced in its being by a host of
\nthings which are not present to our memory, are subconscious and hardly grasped at all by our surface existence. Memory is
\nessential to the continuity of the ego-sense, but it is not the constituent of the ego-sense, still less of the being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 25<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

Neither is moral personality our real self. It is only a changing formation, a pliable mould framed and used by our subjective life in order to give some appearance of fixity to the constantly mutable becoming which our mental limitations successfully tempt us to call ourselves. <\/p>\n

\n

Neither is the totality of that mutable conscious becoming,
\nalthough enriched by all that subconsciously underlies it, our real self. What we become is a fluent mass of life, a stream of
\nexperience pouring through time, a flux of Nature upon the crest of which our mentality rides. What we are is the eternal
\nessence of that life, the immutable consciousness that bears the experience, the immortal substance of Nature and mentality. <\/p>\n

\n

For behind all and dominating all that we become and experience, there is something that originates, uses, determines,
\nenjoys, yet is not changed by its origination, not affected by its instruments, not determined by its determinations, not worked
\nupon by its enjoyings. What that is, we cannot know unless we go behind the veil of our mental being which knows only what
\nis affected, what is determined, what is worked upon, what is changed. The mind can only be aware of that as something which
\nwe indefinably are, not as something which it definably knows. For the moment our mentality tries to fix this something, it loses
\nitself in the flux and the movement, grasps at parts, functions, fictions, appearances which it uses as planks of safety in the
\nwelter or tries to cut out a form from the infinite and say “This is I.” In the words of the Veda, “when the mind approaches That
\nand studies it, That vanishes.” <\/p>\n

\n

But behind the Mind is this other or Brahman-consciousness, Mind of our mind, Sense of our senses, Speech of our speech, Life of our life. Arriving at that, we arrive at Self; we
\ncan draw back from mind the image into Brahman the Reality. <\/p>\n

\n

But what differentiates that real from this apparent self? Or\u2014since we can say no more than we have said already in the way of definition, since we can only indicate that “That” is not
\nwhat “this” is, but is the mentally inexpressible absolute of all that is here,\u2014what is the relation of this phenomenon to that
\nreality? For it is the question of the relation that the Upanishad <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 26<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nmakes its starting-point; its opening question assumes that there is a relation and that the reality originates and governs the
\nphenomenon. <\/p>\n

\n Obviously, Brahman is not a thing subject to our mind,
\nsenses, speech or life-force; it is no object seen, heard, expressed, sensed, formed by thought, nor any state of body or mind that we
\nbecome in the changing movement of the life. But the thought of the Upanishad attempts to awaken deeper echoes from our gulfs
\nthan this obvious denial of the mental and sensuous objectivity of the Brahman. It affirms that not only is it not an object
\nof mind or a formation of life, but it is not even dependent on our mind, life and senses for the exercise of its lordship
\nand activity. It is that which does not think by the mind, does not live by the life, does not sense by the senses, does not find
\nexpression in the speech, but rather makes these things themselves the object of its superior, all-comprehending, all-knowing
\nconsciousness. <\/p>\n

\n Brahman thinks out the mind by that which is beyond mind;
\nit sees the sight and hears the hearing by that absolute vision and audition which are not phenomenal and instrumental but direct
\nand inherent; it forms our expressive speech out of its creative word; it speeds out this life we cling to from that eternal movement of its energy which is not parcelled out into forms but has always the freedom of its own inexhaustible infinity. <\/p>\n

\n Thus the Upanishad begins its reply to its own question. It first describes Brahman as Mind of the mind, Sight of the
\nsight, Hearing of the hearing, Speech of the speech, Life of the life. It then takes up each of these expressions and throws them
\nsuccessively into a more expanded form so as to suggest a more definite and ample idea of their meaning, so far as that can be
\ndone by words. To the expression “Mind of the mind” corresponds the expanded phrase “That which thinks not with the
\nmind, that by which mind is thought” and so on with each of the original descriptive expressions to the closing definition of
\nthe Life behind this life as “That which breathes not with the life-breath, that by which the life-power is brought forward into
\nits movement.” 28<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 27<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

And each of these exegetic lines is emphasised by the reiterated admonition, “That Brahman seek to know and not this
\nwhich men follow after here.” Neither Mind, Life, Sense and Speech nor their objects and expressions are the Reality which
\nwe have to know and pursue. True knowledge is of That which forms these instruments for us but is itself independent of their
\nutilities. True possession and enjoyment is of that which, while it creates these objects of our pursuit, itself makes nothing the
\nobject of its pursuit and passion, but is eternally satisfied with all things in the joy of its immortal being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 28<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

V <\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

The Supreme Word <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

T<\/font>HE UPANISHAD, <\/b>reversing the usual order of our logical
\nthought which would put Mind and Sense first or Life first and Speech last as a subordinate function, begins
\nits negative description of Brahman with an explanation of the very striking phrase, Speech of our speech. And we can see
\nthat it means a Speech beyond ours, an absolute expression of which human language is only a shadow and as if an artificial
\ncounterfeit. What idea underlies this phrase of the Upanishad and this precedence given to the faculty of speech? <\/p>\n

\n

Continually, in studying the Upanishads, we have to divest ourselves of modern notions and to realise as closely as possible the associations that lay behind the early Vedantic use of words. We must recollect that in the Vedic system the Word
\nwas the creatrix; by the Word Brahma creates the forms of the universe. Moreover, human speech at its highest merely attempts
\nto recover by revelation and inspiration an absolute expression of Truth which already exists in the Infinite above our mental
\ncomprehension. Equally, then, must that Word be above our power of mental construction. <\/p>\n

\n

All creation is expression by the Word; but the form which is expressed is only a symbol or representation of the thing which
\nis. We see this in human speech which only presents to the mind a mental form of the object; but the object it seeks to express
\nis itself only a form or presentation of another Reality. That reality is Brahman. Brahman expresses by the Word a form or
\npresentation of himself in the objects of sense and consciousness which constitute the universe, just as the human word expresses
\na mental image of those objects. That Word is creative in a deeper and more original sense than human speech and with a
\npower of which the utmost creativeness of human speech can be only a far-off and feeble analogy. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 29<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

The word used here for utterance means literally a raising up to confront the mind. Brahman, says the Upanishad, is that
\nwhich cannot be so raised up before the mind by speech. <\/p>\n

\n

Human speech, as we see, raises up only the presentation of
\na presentation, the mental figure of an object which is itself only a figure of the sole Reality, Brahman. It has indeed a power of
\nnew creation, but even that power only extends to the creation of new mental images, that is to say of adaptive formations
\nbased upon previous mental images. Such a limited power gives no idea of the original creative puissance which the old thinkers
\nattributed to the divine Word. <\/p>\n

\n

If, however, we go a little deeper below the surface, we shall
\narrive at a power in human speech which does give us a remote image of the original creative Word. We know that vibration of
\nsound has the power to create\u2014and to destroy\u2014forms; this is a commonplace of modern Science. Let us suppose that behind
\nall forms there has been a creative vibration of sound. <\/p>\n

\n

Next, let us examine the relation of human speech to sound
\nin general. We see at once that speech is only a particular application of the principle of sound, a vibration made by pressure
\nof the breath in its passage through the throat and mouth. At first, beyond doubt, it must have been formed naturally and
\nspontaneously to express the sensations and emotions created by an object or occurrence and only afterwards seized upon by
\nthe mind to express first the idea of the object and then ideas about the object. The value of speech would therefore seem to
\nbe only representative and not creative. <\/p>\n

\n

But, in fact, speech is creative. It creates forms of emotion,
\nmental images and impulses of action. The ancient Vedic theory and practice extended this creative action of speech by the use
\nof the Mantra. The theory of the Mantra is that it is a word of power born out of the secret depths of our being where it has
\nbeen brooded upon by a deeper consciousness than the mental, framed in the heart and not originally constructed by the intellect, held in the mind, again concentrated on by the waking mental consciousness and then thrown out silently or vocally\u2014the silent word is perhaps held to be more potent than the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 30<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nspoken\u2014precisely for the work of creation. The Mantra can not only create new subjective states in ourselves, alter our psychical
\nbeing, reveal knowledge and faculties we did not before possess, can not only produce similar results in other minds than that
\nof the user, but can produce vibrations in the mental and vital atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the
\nproduction of material forms on the physical plane. <\/p>\n

\n As a matter of fact, even ordinarily, even daily and hourly we
\ndo produce by the word within us thought-vibrations, thoughtforms which result in corresponding vital and physical vibrations, act upon ourselves, act upon others, and end in the indirect creation of actions and of forms in the physical world.
\nMan is constantly acting upon man both by the silent and the spoken word and he so acts and creates though less directly
\nand powerfully even in the rest of Nature. But because we are stupidly engrossed with the external forms and phenomena of
\nthe world and do not trouble to examine its subtle and nonphysical processes, we remain ignorant of all this field of science
\nbehind. <\/p>\n

\n The Vedic use of the Mantra is only a conscious utilisation
\nof this secret power of the word. And if we take the theory that underlies it together with our previous hypothesis of a creative
\nvibration of sound behind every formation, we shall begin to understand the idea of the original creative Word. Let us suppose a
\nconscious use of the vibrations of sound which will produce corresponding forms or changes of form. But Matter is only, in the
\nancient view, the lowest of the planes of existence. Let us realise then that a vibration of sound on the material plane presupposes
\na corresponding vibration on the vital without which it could not have come into play; that again presupposes a corresponding
\noriginative vibration on the mental; the mental presupposes a corresponding originative vibration on the supramental at the
\nvery root of things. But a mental vibration implies thought and perception and a supramental vibration implies a supreme vision
\nand discernment. All vibration of sound on that higher plane is, then, instinct with and expressive of this supreme discernment
\nof a truth in things and is at the same time creative, instinct with 32<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 31<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

a supreme power which casts into forms the truth discerned and eventually, descending from plane to plane, reproduces it in
\nthe physical form or object created in Matter by etheric sound. Thus we see that the theory of creation by the Word which
\nis the absolute expression of the Truth, and the theory of the material creation by sound-vibration in the ether correspond
\nand are two logical poles of the same idea. They both belong to the same ancient Vedic system. <\/p>\n

\n

This, then, is the supreme Word, Speech of our speech. It is vibration of pure Existence, instinct with the perceptive
\nand originative power of infinite and omnipotent consciousness, shaped by the Mind behind mind into the inevitable word of the
\nTruth of things; out of whatever substance on whatever plane, the form or physical expression emerges by its creative agency.
\nThe Supermind using the Word is the creative Logos. <\/p>\n

\n

The Word has its seed-sounds\u2014suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, A U M, and the seed-sounds of the Tantriks\u2014which carry in them the principles of things; it has its forms
\nwhich stand behind the revelatory and inspired speech that comes to man’s supreme faculties, and these compel the forms
\nof things in the universe; it has its rhythms,\u2014for it is no disordered vibration, but moves out into great cosmic measures,\u2014and according to the rhythm is the law, arrangement, harmony, processes of the world it builds. Life itself is a rhythm of God. <\/p>\n

\n

But what is it that is expressed or raised up before the mental consciousness by the Word in the phenomenal world?
\nNot Brahman, but truths, forms and phenomena of Brahman. Brahman is not, cannot be expressed by the Word; he does not
\nuse the word here to express his very self, but is known only to his own self-awareness. And even the truths of himself that stand
\nbehind the forms of cosmic things are in their true reality always self-expressed to his eternal vision in a higher than the mental
\nvibration, a rhythm and voice of themselves that is their own very soul of movement. Speech, a lesser thing, creates, expresses,
\nbut is itself only a creation and expression. Brahman is not expressed by speech, but speech is itself expressed by Brahman.
\nAnd that which expresses speech in us, brings it up out of our <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 32<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nconsciousness with its strivings to raise up the truth of things to our mind, is Brahman himself as the Word, a Thing that is in
\nthe supreme superconscience. That Word, Speech of our speech, is in its essence of Power the Eternal himself and in its supreme
\nmovements a part of his very form and everlasting spiritual body, \u00af<\/i>
\nbrahmano rupam<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\nTherefore it is not the happenings and phenomena of the world that we have to accept finally as our object of pursuit, but
\nThat which brings out from itself the Word by which they were thrown into form for our observation by the consciousness and
\nfor our pursuit by the will. In other words, the supreme Existence that has originated all. <\/p>\n

\nHuman speech is only a secondary expression and at its highest a shadow of the divine Word, of the seed-sounds, the
\nsatisfying rhythms, the revealing forms of sound that are the omniscient and omnipotent speech of the eternal Thinker, Harmonist, Creator. The highest inspired speech to which the human mind can attain, the word most unanalysably expressive of
\nsupreme truth, the most puissant syllable or mantra can only be its far-off representation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 33<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n The Necessity of Supermind <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n A<\/font>S THE <\/b>Upanishad asserts a speech behind this speech,
\nwhich is the expressive aspect of the Brahman-consciousness, so it asserts a Mind behind this mind which is its
\ncognitive aspect. And as we asked ourselves what could be the rational basis for the theory of the divine Word superior to
\nour speech, so we have now to ask ourselves what can be the rational basis for this theory of a cognitive faculty or principle
\nsuperior to Mind. We may say indeed that if we grant a divine Word creative of all things, we must also grant a divine Mind
\ncognitive of the Word and of all that it expresses. But this is not a sufficient foundation; for the theory of the divine Word presents
\nitself only as a rational possibility. A cognition higher than Mind presents itself on the other hand as a necessity which arises from
\nthe very nature of Mind itself, a necessity from which we cannot logically escape.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n In the ancient system which admitted the soul’s survival of the body, Mind was the man, in a very profound and radical
\nsense of the phrase. It is not only that the human being is the one reasoning animal upon earth, the thinking race; he is essentially
\nthe mental being in a terrestrial body, the manu<\/i>. Quite apart from the existence of a soul or self one in all creatures, the body
\nis not even the phenomenal self of man; the physical life also is not himself; both may be dissolved, man will persist. But if the
\nmental being also is dissolved, man as man ceases to be; for this is his centre and the nodus of his organism.
\n \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n On the contrary, according to the theory of a material evolution upheld by modern Science, man is only matter that has
\ndeveloped mind by an increasing sensibility to the shocks of its environment; and matter being the basis of existence there is
\nnothing, except the physical elements, that can survive the dissolution of the body. But this formula is at most the obverse and
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 34<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\ninferior side of a much larger truth. Matter could not develop Mind if in or behind the force that constitutes physical forms
\nthere were not already a principle of Mind striving towards self-manifestation. The will to enlighten and consciously govern the
\nlife and the form must have been already existent in that which appears to us inconscient; it must have been there before mind
\nwas evolved. For, if there were no such necessity of Mind in Matter, if the stuff of mentality were not there already and the
\nwill to mentalise, Mind could not possibly have come into being out of inconscient substance.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut in the mere chemical elements which go to constitute material forms or in electricity or in any other purely physical factor, whatever unconscious will or sensation they may be possessed by or possess, we can discover nothing which could
\nexplain the emergence of conscious sensation, which could constitute a will towards the evolution of thought or which could
\nimpose the necessity of such an evolution on inconscient physical substance. It is not then in the form of Matter itself, but in the
\nForce which is at work in Matter, that we must seek the origin of Mind. That Force must either be itself conscient or contain the
\ngrain of mental consciousness inherent in its being and therefore the potentiality and indeed the necessity of its emergence.
\nThis imprisoned consciousness, though originally absorbed in the creation first of forms and then of physical relations and
\nreactions between physical forms, must still have held in itself from the beginning, however long kept back and suppressed,
\na will to the ultimate enlightenment of these relations by the creation of corresponding conscious or mental values. Mind
\nis then a concealed necessity which the subconscient holds in itself from the commencement of things; it is the thing that must
\nemerge once the attractions and repulsions of Matter begin to be established; it is the suppressed secret and cause of the reactions
\nof life in the metal, plant and animal.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIf on the other hand we say that Mind in some such secret
\nand suppressed form is not already existent in Matter, we must then suppose that it exists outside Matter and embraces it or
\nenters into it. We must suppose a mental plane of existence 36<\/i> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 35<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

which presses upon the physical and tends to possess it. In that case the mental being would be in its origin an entity which
\nis formed outside the material world; but it prepares in that world bodies which become progressively more and more able
\nto house and express Mind. We may image it forming, entering into and possessing the body, breaking into it, as it were,\u2014as
\nthe Purusha in the Aitareya Upanishad is said to form the body and then to enter in by breaking open a door in Matter. Man
\nwould in this view be a mental being incarnate in the living body who at its dissolution leaves it with full possession of his
\nmentality.
\n \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The two theories are far from being incompatible with each
\nother; they can be viewed as complements forming a single truth. For the involution of Mind, its latency in the material Force of
\nthe physical universe and in all its movements does not preclude the existence of a mental world beyond and above the reign of
\nthe physical principle. In fact, the emergence of such a latent Mind might well depend upon and would certainly profit by
\nthe aid and pressure of forces from a supra-physical kingdom, a mental plane of existence.
\n \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

There are always two possible views of the universe. The one supposes, with modern Science, Matter to be the beginning
\nof things and studies everything as an evolution from Matter; or, if not Matter, then, with the Sankhya philosophy, an indeterminate inconscient active Force or Prakriti of which even mind and reason are mechanical operations,\u2014the Conscious Soul, if
\nany exists, being a quite different and, although conscient, yet inactive entity. The other supposes the conscious soul, the Purusha, to be the material as well as the cause of the universe and Prakriti to be only its Shakti or the Force of its conscious being
\nwhich operates upon itself as the material of forms.1<\/font><\/sup> The latter is the view of the Upanishads. Certainly if we study the material
\nworld only, excluding all evidence of other planes as a dream or a hallucination, if we equally exclude all evidence of operations
\n \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

1 Cf. for example, the Aitareya Upanishad which shows us the Atman or Self using the Purusha as that in which all the operations of Nature are formed.
\n<\/font>
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 36<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nin mind which exceed the material limitation and study only its ordinary equation with Matter, we must necessarily accept the
\ntheory of Matter as the origin and as the indispensable basis and continent. Otherwise, we shall be irresistibly led towards
\nthe early Vedantic conclusions.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n However this may be, even from the standpoint of the sole
\nmaterial world Man in the substance of his manhood is a mind occupying and using the life of the body\u2014a mind that is greater
\nthan the Matter in which it has emerged. He is the highest present expression of the will in the material universe; the Force that has
\nbuilt up the worlds, so far as we are able to judge of its intention from its actual operations as we see them in their present
\nformula upon earth, arrives in him at the thing it was seeking to express. It has brought out the hidden principle of Mind that
\nnow operates consciously and intelligently on the life and the body. Man is the satisfaction of the necessity which Nature bore
\nsecretly in her from the very commencement of her works; he is the highest possible Name or Numen on this planet; he is the realised terrestrial godhead.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But all this is true only if we assume that for Nature’s terrestrial activities Mind is the ultimate formula. In reality and when we study more deeply the phenomena of consciousness,
\nthe facts of mentality, the secret tendency, aspiration and necessity of man’s own nature, we see that he cannot be the highest
\nterm. He is the highest realised here and now; he is not the highest realisable. As there is something below him, so there is
\nsomething, if even only a possibility, above. As physical Nature concealed a secret beyond herself which in him she has released
\ninto creation, so he too conceals a secret beyond himself which he in turn must deliver to the light. That is his destiny.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n This must necessarily be so because Mind too is not the first principle of things and therefore cannot be their last possibility.
\nAs Matter contained Life in itself, contained it as its own secret necessity and had to be delivered of that birth, and as Life contained Mind in itself, contained it as its own secret necessity and had to be delivered of the birth it held, so Mind too contains
\nin itself that which is beyond itself, contains it as its own secret <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 37<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

necessity and presses to be delivered, it also, of this supreme birth.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

What is the rational necessity which forbids us to suppose Mind to be Nature’s last birth and compels us to posit something
\nbeyond it of which itself is the indication? A consideration of the nature and working of mentality supplies us with the answer.
\nFor mentality is composed of three principal elements, thought, will and sensation. Sensation may be described as an attempt
\nof divided consciousness to seize upon its object and enjoy it, thought as its attempt to seize upon the truth of the object and
\npossess it, will as its attempt to seize upon the potentiality of the object and use it. At least these three things are such an attempt in
\ntheir essentiality, in their instinct, in their subconscious purpose. But obviously the attempt is imperfect in its conditions and its
\nsuccess; its very terms indicate a barrier, a gulf, an incapacity. As Life is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis
\nwith Matter, so Mind is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis with Life in Matter. Neither Matter nor Life has
\nfound anything proper to their own formula which could help to conquer or sufficiently expand its limitations; they have been
\ncompelled each to call in a new principle, Matter to call into itself Life, Life to call into itself Mind. Mind also is not able to
\nfind anything proper to its own formula which can conquer or sufficiently expand the limitations imposed upon its workings;
\nMind also has to call in a new principle beyond itself, freer than itself and more powerful.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

In other words, Mind does not exhaust the possibilities of consciousness and therefore cannot be its last and highest expression. Mind tries to arrive at Truth and succeeds only in touching it imperfectly with a veil between; there must be in the nature of
\nthings a faculty or principle which sees the Truth unveiled, an eternal faculty of knowledge which corresponds to the eternal
\nfact of the Truth. There is, says the Veda, such a principle; it is the Truth-Consciousness which sees the truth directly and is in
\npossession of it spontaneously. Mind labours to effect the will in it and succeeds only in accomplishing partially, with difficulty
\nand insecurely the potentiality at which it works; there must be <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 38<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\na faculty or principle of conscious effective force which corresponds to the unconscious automatic principle of self-fulfilment
\nin Nature, and this principle must be sought for in the form of consciousness that exceeds Mind. Mind, finally, aspires to seize
\nand enjoy the essential delight-giving quality, the rasa <\/i>of things, but it succeeds only in attaining to it indirectly, holding it in
\nan imperfect grasp and enjoying it externally and fragmentarily; there must be a principle which can attain directly, hold rightly,
\nenjoy intimately and securely. There is, says the Veda, an eternal Bliss-consciousness which corresponds to the eternal
\nrasa <\/i>or essential delight-giving quality of all experience and is not limited by the insecure approximations of the sense in Mind.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n If, then, such a deeper principle of consciousness exists, it must be that and not mind which is the original and fundamental
\nintention concealed in Nature and which eventually and somewhere must emerge. But is there any reason for supposing that
\nit must emerge here and in Mind, as Mind has emerged in Life and Life in Matter? We answer in the affirmative because Mind
\nhas in itself, however obscurely, that tendency, that aspiration and, at bottom, that necessity. There is one law from the lowest
\nto the highest. Matter, when we examine it closely, proves to be instinct with the stuff of Life\u2014the vibrations, actions and
\nreactions, attractions and repulsions, contractions and expansions, the tendencies of combination, formation and growth, the
\nseekings and responses which are the very substance of life; but the visible principle of life can only emerge when the necessary
\nmaterial conditions have been prepared which will permit it to organise itself in Matter. So also Life is instinct with the stuff
\nof Mind, abounds with an unconscious2<\/font><\/sup> sensation, will, intelligence, but the visible principle of Mind can only emerge when
\nthe necessary vital conditions have been prepared which will permit it to organise itself in living Matter. Mind too is instinct
\nwith the stuff of supermind\u2014sympathies, unities, intuitions, emergences of preexistent knowledge, instincts, imperative lights
\nand movements, inherent self-effectivities of will which disguise
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n 2 I use the language of the materialist Haeckel in spite of its paradoxical form.
\n\t<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 39<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

themselves in a mental form; but the visible principle of supermind can only emerge when the necessary mental conditions
\nare prepared which will permit it to organise itself in man, the mental living creature.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This necessary preparation is proceeding in human development as the corresponding preparations were developed in the
\nlower stages of the evolution,\u2014with the same gradations, retardations, inequalities; but still it is more enlightened, increasingly
\nself-conscious, nearer to a conscious sureness. And the very fact that this progress is attended by less absorption in the detail,
\nless timidity of error, a less conservative attachment to the step gained suggests as much as it contradicts the hope and almost
\nthe assurance that when the new principle emerges it will not be by the creation of a new and quite different type which,
\nseparated after its creation, will leave the rest of mankind in the same position to it as are the animals to man, but, if not
\nby the elevation of humanity as a whole to a higher level, yet by an opening of the greater possibility to all of the race who
\nhave the will to rise. For Man, first among Nature’s children, has shown the capacity to change himself by his own effort and
\nthe conscious aspiration to transcend.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

These considerations justify to the reason the idea of a Mind
\nbeyond our mind, but only as a final evolution out of Matter. The Upanishad, however, enthrones it as the already existing creator
\nand ruler of Mind; it is a secret principle already conscient and not merely contained inconsciently in the very stuff of things.
\nBut this is the natural conclusion\u2014even apart from spiritual experience\u2014from the nature of the supramental principle. For
\nit is at its highest an eternal knowledge, will, bliss and conscious being and it is more reasonable to conclude that it is eternally
\nconscious, though we are not conscious of it, and the source of the universe, than that it is eternally inconscient and only
\nbecomes conscient in Time as a result of the universe. Our inconscience of it is no proof that it is inconscient of us: and
\nyet our own incapacity is the only real basis left for the denial of an eternal Mind beyond mind superior to its creations and
\noriginative of the cosmos. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 40<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

All other foundations for the rejection of this ancient wisdom have disappeared or are disappearing before the increasing light of modern knowledge.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 41<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Mind and Supermind <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

W<\/font>E ARRIVE<\/b> then at this affirmation of an all-cognitive
\nPrinciple superior to Mind and exceeding it in nature, scope and capacity. For the Upanishad affirms a Mind
\nbeyond mind as the result of intuition and spiritual experience and its existence is equally a necessary conclusion from the facts
\nof the cosmic evolution. What then is this Mind beyond mind? how does it function? or by what means shall we arrive at the
\nknowledge of it or possess it?
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The Upanishad asserts about this supreme cognitive principle, first, that it is beyond the reach of mind and the senses; secondly, that it does not itself think with the mind; thirdly,
\nthat it is that by which mind itself is thought or mentalised; fourthly, that it is the very nature or description of the
\nBrahman-consciousness. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

When we say, however, that “Mind of mind” is the nature or
\ndescription of the Brahman-consciousness, we must not forget that the absolute Brahman in itself is held to be unknowable
\nand therefore beyond description. It is unknowable, not because it is a void and capable of no description except that
\nof nothingness, nor because, although positive in existence, it has no content or quality, but because it is beyond all things
\nthat our present instruments of knowledge can conceive and because the methods of ideation and expression proper to our
\nmentality do not apply to it. It is the absolute of all things that we know and of each thing that we know and yet nothing
\nnor any sum of things can exhaust or characterise its essential being. For its manner of being is other than that which we
\ncall existence; its unity resists all analysis, its multiple infinities exceed every synthesis. Therefore it is not in its absolute
\nessentiality that it can be described as Mind of the mind, but in its fundamental nature in regard to our mental existence.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 42<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBrahman-consciousness is the eternal outlook of the Absolute upon the relative.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut even of this outlook we may say that it is beyond the reach of mind and speech and senses. Yet mind, speech and
\nsenses seem to be our only available means for acquiring and expressing knowledge. Must we not say then that this
\nBrahman-consciousness also is unknowable and that we can never hope to know it or possess it while in this body? Yet the Upanishad commands us to know <\/i>this Brahman and by knowledge to possess it
\n  <\/i>\u2014for the knowledge intended by the words viddhi<\/i>, avedī<\/font>t<\/i>, is a knowledge that discovers and takes possession,\u2014and it declares
\nlater on that it is here, in this body and on this earth that we must thus possess Brahman in knowledge, otherwise great is
\nthe perdition. A good deal of confusion has been brought into the interpretation of this Upanishad by a too trenchant dealing
\nwith the subtlety of its distinctions between the knowability and the unknowability of the Brahman. We must therefore try to
\nobserve exactly what the Upanishad says and especially to seize the whole of its drift by synthetic intuition rather than cut up its
\nmeaning so as to make it subject to our logical mentality. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Upanishad sets out by saying that this Ruler of the
\nmind, senses, speech and life is Mind of our mind, Life of our life, Sense of our senses, Speech of our speech; and it then proceeds
\nto explain what it intends by these challenging phrases. But it introduces between the description and the explanation a warning
\nthat neither the description nor the explanation must be pushed beyond their proper limits or understood as more than guideposts pointing us towards our goal. For neither Mind, Speech nor Sense can travel to the Brahman; therefore Brahman must be
\nbeyond all these things in its very nature, otherwise it would be attainable by them in their function. The Upanishad, although
\nit is about to teach of the Brahman, yet affirms, “we know It not, we cannot distinguish how one should teach of It.” The two Sanskrit words that are here used,
\nvidmah <\/i>and
\nvijānīmah<\/i>, seem <\/p>\n

to indicate the one a general grasp and possession in knowledge,
\nthe other a total and exact comprehension in whole and detail, by synthesis and analysis. The reason of this entire inability
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 43<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

is next given, “because Brahman is other than the known and It is there over the unknown,” possessing it and, as it were,
\npresiding over it. The known is all that we grasp and possess by our present mentality; it is all that is not the supreme Brahman
\nbut only form and phenomenon of it to our sense and mental cognition. The unknown is that which is beyond the known
\nand though unknown is not unknowable if we can enlarge our faculties or attain to others that we do not yet possess.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Yet the Upanishad next proceeds to maintain and explain its first description and to enjoin on us the knowledge of the
\nBrahman which it so describes. This contradiction is not at once reconciled; it is only in the second chapter that the difficulty
\nis solved and only in the fourth that the means of knowledge are indicated. The contradiction arises from the nature of our
\nknowledge itself which is a relation between the consciousness that seeks and the consciousness that is sought; where that relation disappears, knowledge is replaced by sheer identity. In what we call existence, the highest knowledge can be no more than
\nthe highest relation between that which seeks and that which is sought, and it consists in a modified identity through which
\nwe may pass beyond knowledge to the absolute identity. This metaphysical distinction is of importance because it prevents
\nus from mistaking any relation in knowledge for the absolute and from becoming so bound by our experience as to lose or
\nmiss the fundamental awareness of the absolute which is beyond all possible description and behind all formulated experience.
\nBut it does not render the highest relation in our knowledge, the modified identity in experience worthless or otiose. On the
\ncontrary, it is that we must aim at as the consummation of our existence in the world. For if we possess it without being limited
\nby it,\u2014and if we are limited by it we have not true possession of it,\u2014then in and through it we shall, even while in this body,
\nremain in touch with the Absolute.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The means for the attainment of this highest knowledge
\nis the constant preparation of the mind by the admission into it of a working higher than itself until the mind is capable of
\ngiving itself up to the supramental action which exceeds it and<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 44<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nwhich will finally replace it. In fact, Mind also has to follow the law of natural progression which has governed our evolution in
\nthis world from matter into life and life into mind. For just as life-consciousness is beyond the imprisoned material being and
\nunattainable by it through its own instruments, just as mind-consciousness is beyond the first inconscient movements of life,
\nso too this supramental consciousness is beyond the divided and dividing nature of Mind and unattainable by it through its
\nown instruments. But as Matter is constantly prepared for the manifestation of Life until Life is able to move in it, possess it,
\nmanage in it its own action and reaction, and as Life is constantly prepared for the manifestation of Mind until Mind is able to use
\nit, enlighten its actions and reactions by higher and higher mental values, so must it be with Mind and that which is beyond Mind.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n And all this progression is possible because these things are only different formations of one being and one consciousness.
\nLife only reveals in Matter that which is involved in Matter, that which is the secret meaning and essence of Matter. It reveals, as
\nit were, to material existence its own soul, its own end. So too Mind reveals in Life all that Life means, all that it obscurely is in
\nessence but cannot realise because it is absorbed in its own practical motion and its own characteristic form. So also Supermind
\nmust intervene to reveal Mind to itself, to liberate it from its absorption in its own practical motion and characteristic form
\nand enable the mental being to realise that which is the hidden secret of all its formal practice and action. Thus shall man come
\nto the knowledge of that which rules within him and missions his mind to its mark, sends forth his speech, impels the life-force
\nin its paths and sets his senses to their workings.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n This supreme cognitive Principle does not think by the mind.
\nMind is to it an inferior and secondary action, not its own proper mode. For Mind, based on limitation and division, can
\nact only from a given centre in the lower and obscured existence; but Supermind is founded on unity and it comprehends and
\npervades; its action is in the universal and is in conscious communion with a transcendent source eternal and beyond the formations of the universe. Supermind regards the individual in the
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 45<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

universal and does not begin with him or make of him a separate being. It starts from the Transcendent and sees the universal and
\nindividual as they are in relation to it, as its terms, as its formulas; it does not start from the individual and universal to arrive at the
\nTranscendent. Mind acquires knowledge and mastery; it reaches it by a constant mentalising and willing: Supermind possesses
\nknowledge and mastery; possessing, it throws itself out freely in various willing and knowing. Mind gropes by divided sensation;
\nit arrives at a sort of oneness through sympathy: Supermind possesses by a free and all-embracing sense; it lives in the unity
\nof which various love and sympathy are only a secondary play of manifestation. Supermind starts from the whole and sees in it its
\nparts and properties, it does not build up the knowledge of the whole by an increasing knowledge of the parts and properties;
\nand even the whole is to it only a unity of sum, only a partial and inferior term of the higher unity of infinite essence.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

We see, then, that these two cognitive Principles start from two opposite poles and act in opposite directions by opposite
\nmethods. Yet it is by the higher cognitive that the lower is formed and governed. Mind is thought by that which is beyond Mind;
\nthe mentalising consciousness shapes and directs its movement according to the knowledge and impulse it receives from this
\nhigher Supermind and even the stuff of which it is formed belongs to that Principle. Mentality exists because that which is
\nbeyond Mind has conceived an inverse action of itself working in a thinner, poorer, darker, less powerful substance of conscious being and founded upon its self-concentration on different points in its own being and in different forms of its own being.
\nSupermind fixes these points, sees how consciousness must act from them on other forms of itself and in obedience to the pressure of those other forms, once a particular rhythm or law of universal action is given; it governs the whole action of mentality
\naccording to what it thus fixes and sees. Even our ignorance is only the distorted action of a truth projected from the Supermind
\nand could not exist except as such a distortion; and so likewise all our dualities of knowledge, sensation, emotion, force proceed
\nfrom that higher vision, obey it and are a secondary and, as one<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 46<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nmight say, perverse action of the concealed Supermind itself which governs always this lower action in harmony with its
\nfirst conception of a located consciousness, divided indeed and therefore not in possession of its world or itself, but feeling out
\ntowards that possession and towards the unity which, because of the Supermind in us, it instinctively, if obscurely, knows to be
\nits true nature and right.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n \tBut, for this very reason, the feeling out, the attempt at
\nacquisition can only succeed in proportion as the mental being abandons his characteristic mentality and its limitations in order
\nto rise beyond to that Mind of the mind which is his origin and his secret governing principle. His mentality must admit Supramentality as Life has admitted Mind. So long as he worships, follows after, adheres to all this that he now accepts as the object
\nof his pursuit, to the mind and its aims, to its broken methods, its constructions of will and opinion and emotion dependent
\non egoism, division and ignorance, he cannot rise beyond this death to that immortality which the Upanishad promises to the
\nseeker. That Brahman we have to know and seek after and not this which men here adore and pursue.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 47<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n The Supreme Sense <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n T<\/font>HE UPANISHAD<\/b> is not satisfied with the definition of
\nthe Brahman-consciousness as Mind of the mind. Just as it has described it as Speech of the speech, so also it
\ndescribes it as Eye of the eye, Ear of the ear. Not only is it an absolute cognition behind the play of expression, but also an
\nabsolute Sense behind the action of the senses. Every part of our being finds its fulfilment in that which is beyond its present
\nforms of functioning and not in those forms themselves.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n This conception of the all-governing supreme consciousness
\ndoes not fall in with our ordinary theories about sense and mind and the Brahman. We know of sense only as an action of
\nthe organs through which embodied mind communicates with external Matter, and these sense-organs have been separately
\ndeveloped in the course of evolution; the senses therefore are not fundamental things, but only subordinate conveniences and temporary physical functionings of the embodied Mind. Brahman, on the other hand, we conceive of by the elimination of all that
\nis not fundamental, by the elimination even of the Mind itself. It is a sort of positive zero, an
\nx <\/i>or unknowable which corresponds
\nto no possible equation of physical or psychological quantities. In essence this may or may not be true; but we have now to
\nthink not of the Unknowable but of its highest manifestation in consciousness; and this we have described as the outlook
\nof the Absolute on the relative and as that which is the cause and governing power of all that we and the universe are. There
\nin that governing cause there must be something essential and supreme of which all our fundamental functionings here are a
\nrendering in the terms of embodied consciousness.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Sense, however, is not or does not appear to be fundamental;
\nit is only an instrumentation of Mind using the nervous system. It is not even a pure mental functioning, but depends so much upon
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 48<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nthe currents of the Life-force, upon its electric energy vibrating up and down the nerves, that in the Upanishads the senses are
\ncalled Pranas, powers or functionings of the Life-force. It is true that Mind turns these nervous impressions when communicated
\nto it into mental values, but the sense-action itself seems to be rather nervous than mental. In any case there would, at first
\nsight, appear to be no warrant in reason for attributing a Sense of the sense to that which is not embodied, to a supramental
\nconsciousness which has no need of any such instrumentation.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut this is not the last word about sense; this is only its
\noutward appearance behind which we must penetrate. What, not in its functioning, but in its essence, is the thing we call
\nsense? In its functioning, if we analyse that thoroughly, we see that it is the contact of the mind with an eidolon of Matter,\u2014whether that eidolon be of a vibration of sound, a light-image of form, a volley of earth-particles giving the sense of odour,
\nan impression of rasa <\/i>or sap that gives the sense of taste, or that direct sense of disturbance of our nervous being which we
\ncall touch. No doubt, the contact of Matter with Matter is the original cause of these sensations; but it is only the eidolon of
\nMatter, as for instance the image of the form cast upon the eye, with which the mind is directly concerned. For the mind operates
\nupon Matter not directly, but through the Life-force; that is its instrument of communication and the Life-force, being in us a
\nnervous energy and not anything material, can seize on Matter only through nervous impressions of form, through contactual
\nimages, as it were, which create corresponding values in the energy-consciousness called in the Upanishads the Prana. Mind
\ntakes these up and replies to them with corresponding mental values, mental impressions of form, so that the thing sensed
\ncomes to us after a triple process of translation, first the material eidolon, secondly the nervous or energy-image, third the image
\nreproduced in stuff of mind.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis elaborate process is concealed from us by the
\nlightning-like rapidity with which it is managed,\u2014rapidity in our impressions of Time; for in another notation of Time by a
\ncreature differently constituted each part of the operation might <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 49<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

be distinctly sensible. But the triple translation is always there, because there are really three sheaths of consciousness in us, the
\nmaterial, annakosa<\/i>, in which the physical contact and image <\/p>\n

are received and formed, the vital and nervous, prānakosa<\/i>, in <\/p>\n

which there is a nervous contact and formation, the mental,
\nmanahkosa<\/i>, in which there is mental contact and imaging. We dwell centred in the mental sheath and therefore the experience of the material world has to come through the other two sheaths
\nbefore it can reach us.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The foundation of sense, therefore, is contact, and the essential contact is the mental without which there would not be sense at all. The plant, for instance, feels nervously, feels in terms
\nof life-energy, precisely as the human nervous system does, and it has precisely the same reactions; but it is only if the plant has
\nrudimentary mind that we can suppose it to be, as we understand the word, sensible of these nervous or vital impressions and
\nreactions. For then it would feel not only nervously, but in terms of mind. Sense, then, may be described as in its essence mental
\ncontact with an object and the mental reproduction of its image.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

All these things we observe and reason of in terms of this
\nembodiment of mind in Matter; for these sheaths or kosas <\/i>are <\/p>\n

formations in a more and more subtle substance reposing on gross Matter as their base. Let us imagine that there is a mental
\nworld in which Mind and not Matter is the base. There sense would be quite a different thing in its operation. It would feel
\nmentally an image in Mind and throw it out into form in more and more gross substance; and whatever physical formations
\nthere might already be in that world would respond rapidly to the Mind and obey its modifying suggestions. Mind would be
\nmasterful, creative, originative, not as with us either obedient to Matter and merely reproductive or else in struggle with it and
\nonly with difficulty able to modify a material predetermined and dully reluctant to its touch. It would be, subject to whatever
\nsupramental power might be above it, master of a ductile and easily responsive material. But still Sense would be there, because
\ncontact in mental consciousness and formation of images would still be part of the law of being.
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 50<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nMind, in fact, or active consciousness generally has four necessary functions which are indispensable to it wherever and
\nhowever it may act and of which the Upanishads speak in the four terms, vij\u00f1ā<\/font>na<\/i>,
\npraj\u00f1āna<\/i>, samj\u00f1āna <\/i>and aj\u00f1āna<\/i>.
\nVij\u00f1ā<\/font>na <\/i>is the original comprehensive consciousness which holds an image
\nof things at once in its essence, its totality and its parts and properties; it is the original, spontaneous, true and complete
\nview of it which belongs properly to the supermind and of which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the
\n  comprehensive intellect. Prajnana <\/i>is the consciousness which
\nholds an image of things before it as an object with which it has to enter into relations and to possess by apprehension and
\n   <\/i> a combined analytic and synthetic cognition. Samj\u00f1āna <\/i>is the
\ncontact of consciousness with an image of things by which there  is a sensible possession of it in its substance; if
\npraj\u00f1āna <\/i>can be described as the outgoing of apprehensive consciousness to
\n   <\/i> possess its object in conscious energy, to know it,
\nsamj\u00f1āna<\/i>
\ncan be described as the inbringing movement of apprehensive consciousness which draws the object placed before it back to
\n  \t   <\/i> itself so as to possess it in conscious substance, to feel it.
\nAj\u00f1āna<\/i>
\nis the operation by which consciousness dwells on an image of things so as to hold, govern and possess it in power. These four,
\ntherefore, are the basis of all conscious action.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAs our human psychology is constituted, we begin with
\n   <\/i> samj\u00f1āna<\/i>, the sense of an object in its image; the apprehension
\nof it in knowledge follows. Afterwards we try to arrive at the comprehension of it in knowledge and the possession of it in
\npower. There are secret operations in us, in our subconscient and superconscient selves, which precede this action, but of these we
\nare not aware in our surface being and therefore for us they do not exist. If we knew of them, our whole conscious functioning
\nwould be changed. As it is what happens is a rapid process by which we sense an image and have of it an apprehensive percept
\nand concept, and a slower process of the intellect by which we try to comprehend and possess it. The former process is the natural
\naction of the mind which has entirely developed in us; the latter is an acquired action, an action of the intellect and the intelligent
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 51<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

will which represent in Mind an attempt of the mental being to do what can only be done with perfect spontaneity and mastery
\nby something higher than Mind. The intellect and intelligent will form a bridge by which the mental being is trying to establish a
\nconscious connection with the supramental and to prepare the embodied soul for the descent into it of a supramental action.
\nTherefore the first process is comparatively easy, spontaneous, rapid, perfect; the second slow, laboured, imperfect. In proportion as the intellectual action becomes associated with and dominated by a rudimentary supramental action,\u2014and it is
\nthis which constitutes the phenomenon of genius,\u2014the second process also becomes more and more easy, spontaneous, rapid
\nand perfect.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

If we suppose a supreme consciousness, master of the world,
\nwhich really conducts behind the veil all the operations the mental gods attribute to themselves, it will be obvious that that
\nconsciousness will be the entire Knower and Lord. The basis of its action or government of the world will be the perfect,
\n      <\/i> original and all-possessing vij\u00f1ā<\/font>na <\/i>and
\naj\u00f1āna<\/i>. It will comprehend all things in its energy of conscious knowledge, control all
\nthings in its energy of conscious power. These energies will be the spontaneous inherent action of its conscious being creative
\nand possessive of the forms of the universe. What part then will be left for the apprehensive consciousness and the sense? They
\nwill be not independent functions, but subordinate operations involved in the action of the comprehensive consciousness itself.
\nIn fact, all four there will be one rapid movement. If we had all these four acting in us with the unified rapidity with which
\n     <\/i> the praj\u00f1āna <\/i>and samj\u00f1āna <\/i>act, we should then have in our notation of Time some inadequate image of the unity of the
\nsupreme action of the supreme energy.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

If we consider, we shall see that this must be so. The supreme
\nconsciousness must not only comprehend and possess in its conscious being the images of things which it creates as its
\nself-expression, but it must place them before it\u2014always in its own being, not externally\u2014and have a certain relation with them
\nby the two terms of apprehensive consciousness. Otherwise the <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 52<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nuniverse would not take the form that it has for us; for we only reflect in the terms of our organisation the movements of
\nthe supreme Energy. But by the very fact that the images of things are there held in front of an apprehending consciousness
\nwithin the comprehending conscious being and not externalised as our individual mind externalises them, the supreme Mind
\nand supreme Sense will be something quite different from our mentality and our forms of sensation. They will be terms of
\nan entire knowledge and self-possession and not terms of an ignorance and limitation which strives to know and possess.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n \tIn its essential and general term our sense must reflect and be the creation of this supreme Sense. But the Upanishad speaks
\nof a Sight behind our sight and a Hearing behind our hearing, not in general terms of a Sense behind our sense. Certainly eye
\nand ear are only taken as typical of the senses, and are chosen because they are the highest and subtlest of them all. But still
\nthe differentiation of sense which forms part of our mentality is evidently held to correspond with a differentiation of some
\nkind in the supreme Sense. How is this possible? It is what we have next to unravel by examining the nature and source of the
\nfunctioning of the separate senses in ourselves,\u2014their source in our mentality and not merely their functioning in the actual
\nterms of our life-energy and our body. What is it in Mind that is fundamental to sight and hearing? Why do we see and hear and
\nnot simply sense with the mind?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 53<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n Sense of Our Senses <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n M<\/font>IND WAS<\/b> called by Indian psychologists the eleventh
\nand ranks as the supreme sense. In the ancient arrangement of the senses, five of knowledge and five of
\naction, it was the sixth of the organs of knowledge and at the same time the sixth of the organs of action. It is a commonplace
\nof psychology that the effective functioning of the senses of knowledge is inoperative without the assistance of the mind; the
\neye may see, the ear may hear, all the senses may act, but if the mind pays no attention, the man has not heard, seen, felt,
\ntouched or tasted. Similarly, according to psychology, the organs of action act only by the force of the mind operating as will
\nor, physiologically, by the reactive nervous force from the brain which must be according to materialistic notions the true self and
\nessence of all will. In any case, the senses or all senses, if there are other than the ten,\u2014according to a text in the Upanishad
\nthere should be at least fourteen, seven and seven,\u2014all senses appear to be only organisations, functionings, instrumentations
\nof the mind-consciousness, devices which it has formed in the course of its evolution in living Matter.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Modern psychology has extended our knowledge and has admitted us to a truth which the ancients already knew but
\nexpressed in other language. We know now or we rediscover the truth that the conscious operation of mind is only a surface action. There is a much vaster and more potent subconscious mind which loses nothing of what the senses bring to it; it keeps all its <\/p>\n

wealth in an inexhaustible store of memory, aksitam śravah<\/i>. The <\/p>\n

surface mind may pay no attention, still the subconscious mind
\nattends, receives, treasures up with an infallible accuracy. The illiterate servant-girl hears daily her master reciting Hebrew in
\nhis study; the surface mind pays no attention to the unintelligible gibberish, but the subconscious mind hears, remembers and,
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 54<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nwhen in an abnormal condition it comes up to the surface, reproduces those learned recitations with a portentous accuracy which
\nthe most correct and retentive scholar might envy. The man or mind has not heard because he did not attend; the greater man
\nor mind within has heard because he always attends, or rather sub-tends, with an infinite capacity. So too a man put under
\nan anaesthetic and operated upon has felt nothing; but release his subconscious mind by hypnosis and he will relate accurately
\nevery detail of the operation and its appropriate sufferings; for the stupor of the physical sense-organ could not prevent the
\nlarger mind within from observing and feeling.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Similarly we know that a large part of our physical action
\nis instinctive and directed not by the surface but by the subconscious mind. And we know now that it is a mind that acts and
\nnot merely an ignorant nervous reaction from the brute physical brain. The subconscious mind in the catering insect knows the
\nanatomy of the victim it intends to immobilise and make food for its young and it directs the sting accordingly, as unerringly as
\nthe most skilful surgeon, provided the more limited surface mind with its groping and faltering nervous action does not get in the
\nway and falsify the inner knowledge or the inner will-force.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n These examples point us to truths which western psychology, hampered by past ignorance posing as scientific orthodoxy, still ignores or refuses to acknowledge. The Upanishads declare
\nthat the Mind in us is infinite; it knows not only what has been seen but what has not been seen, not only what has been heard
\nbut what has not been heard, not only what has been discriminated by the thought but what has not been discriminated by the
\nthought. Let us say, then, in the tongue of our modern knowledge that the surface man in us is limited by his physical experiences;
\nhe knows only what his nervous life in the body brings to his embodied mind; and even of those bringings he knows, he can
\nretain and utilise only so much as his surface mind-sense attends to and consciously remembers; but there is a larger subliminal consciousness within him which is not thus limited. That consciousness senses what has not been sensed by the surface
\nmind and its organs and knows what the surface mind has not <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 55<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

learned by its acquisitive thought. That in the insect knows the anatomy of its victim; that in the man outwardly insensible not
\nonly feels and remembers the action of the surgeon’s knife, but knows the appropriate reactions of suffering which were in the
\nphysical body inhibited by the anaesthetic and therefore nonexistent; that in the illiterate servant-girl heard and retained
\naccurately the words of an unknown language and could, as Yogic experience knows, by a higher action of itself understand
\nthose superficially unintelligible sounds.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

To return to the Vedantic words we have been using, there
\nis a vaster action of the Sanjnana which is not limited by the action of the physical sense-organs; it was this which sensed
\nperfectly and made its own through the ear the words of the unknown language, through the touch the movements of the
\nunfelt surgeon’s knife, through the sense-mind or sixth sense the exact location of the centres of locomotion in the victim insect.
\nThere is also associated with it a corresponding vaster action of Prajnana,
\nAj\u00f1āna and Vijnana not limited by the smaller apprehensive and comprehensive faculties of the external mind. It is this vaster Prajnana which perceived the proper relation of the
\nwords to each other, of the movement of the knife to the unfelt suffering of the nerves and of the successive relation in space
\nof the articulations in the insect’s body. Such perception was inherent in the right reproduction of the words, the right narration of the sufferings, the right successive action of the sting. The
\nAj\u00f1āna or Knowledge-Will originating all these actions was
\nalso vaster, not limited by the faltering force that governs the operations directed by the surface mind. And although in these
\nexamples the action of the vaster Vijnana is not so apparent, yet it was evidently there working through them and ensuring their
\ncoordination. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But at present it is with the Sanjnana that we are concerned.
\nHere we should note, first of all, that there is an action of the sense-mind which is superior to the particular action of the
\nsenses and is aware of things even without imaging them in forms of sight, sound, contact, but which also as a sort of subordinate operation, subordinate but necessary to completeness
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 56<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nof presentation, does image in these forms. This is evident in psychical phenomena. Those who have carried the study and
\nexperimentation of them to a certain extent, have found that we can sense things known only to the minds of others, things
\nthat exist only at a great distance, things that belong to another plane than the terrestrial but have here their effects; we can both
\nsense them in their images and also feel, as it were, all that they are without any definite image proper to the five senses.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n This shows, in the first place, that sight and the other senses are not mere results of the development of our physical organs
\nin the terrestrial evolution. Mind, subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in
\norder to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing etc., on the physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they
\nare inherent capacities and not dependent on the circumstance of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the
\nuse of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that there are psychical senses which act through a psychical body and we thus
\nexplain these psychical phenomena, still that action also is only an organisation of the inherent functioning of the essential sense,
\nthe Sanjnana, which in itself can operate without bodily organs. This essential sense is the original capacity of consciousness to
\nfeel in itself all that consciousness has formed and to feel it in all the essential properties and operations of that which has form,
\nwhether represented materially by vibration of sound or images of light or any other physical symbol.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The trend of knowledge leads more and more to the conclusion that not only are the properties of form, even the most
\nobvious such as colour, light etc., merely operations of Force, but form itself is only an operation of Force. This Force again
\nproves to be self-power of conscious-being1<\/font><\/sup> in a state of energy and activity. Practically, therefore, all form is only an operation
\nof consciousness impressing itself with presentations of its own workings. We see colour because that is the presentation which
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n 1 Devātmaśaktim svagunair nigūdhām<\/i>, self-power of the divine Existent hidden by its <\/p>\n

own modes. Swetaswatara Upanishad. <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 57<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

consciousness makes to itself of one of its own operations; but colour is only an operation of Force working in the form of
\nLight, and Light again is only a movement, that is to say an operation of Force. The question is what is essential to this
\noperation of Force taking on itself the presentation of form? For it is this that must determine the working of Sanjnana or Sense
\non whatever plane it may operate.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Everything begins with vibration or movement, the original
\nksobha <\/i>or disturbance. If there is no movement of the conscious <\/p>\n

being, it can only know its own pure static existence. Without vibration2<\/font><\/sup> or movement of being in consciousness there can be
\nno act of knowledge and therefore no sense; without vibration or movement of being in force there can be no object of sense.
\nMovement of conscious being as knowledge becoming sensible of itself as movement of force, in other words the knowledge
\nseparating itself from its own working to watch that and take it into itself again by feeling,\u2014this is the basis of universal Sanjnana. This is true both of our internal and external operations. I become anger by a vibration of conscious force acting as nervous
\nemotion and I feel the anger that I have become by another movement of conscious force acting as light of knowledge. I am
\nconscious of my body because I have myself become the body; that same force of conscious being which has made this form of
\nitself, this presentation of its workings, knows it in that form, in that presentation. I can know nothing except what I myself am;
\nif I know others, it is because they also are myself, because my self has assumed these apparently alien presentations as well as
\nthat which is nearest to my own mental centre. All sensation, all action of sense is thus the same in essence whether external or
\ninternal, physical or psychical.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But this vibration of conscious being is presented to itself by various forms of sense which answer to the successive operations of movement in its assumption of form. For first
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

2 The term is used not because it is entirely adequate or accurate, no physical term can be, but because it is most suggestive of the original outgoing of consciousness to seek
\nitself. <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 58<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nwe have intensity of vibration creating regular rhythm which is the basis or constituent of all creative formation; secondly,
\ncontact or intermiscence of the movements of conscious being which constitute the rhythm; thirdly, definition of the grouping
\nof movements which are in contact, their shape; fourthly, the constant welling up of the essential force to support in its continuity
\n\tthe movement that has been thus defined; fifthly, the actual enforcement and
\n\tcompression of the force in its own movement which maintains the form that
\n\thas been assumed. In Matter these five constituent operations are said by
\n\tthe Sankhyas to represent themselves as five elemental conditions of
\n\tsubstance, the etheric, atmospheric, igneous, liquid and solid; and the
\n\trhythm of vibration is seen by them as sabda<\/i>, sound, the basis of hearing,
\nthe intermiscence as contact, the basis of touch, the definition as shape, the basis of sight, the upflow of force as
\nrasa<\/i>, sap, the basis
\nof taste, and the discharge of the atomic compression as gandha<\/i>, odour, the basis of smell. It is true that this is only predicated
\nof pure or subtle matter; the physical matter of our world being a mixed operation of force, these five elemental states are not
\nfound there separately except in a very modified form. But all these are only the physical workings or symbols. Essentially
\nall formation, to the most subtle and most beyond our senses such as form of mind, form of character, form of soul, amount
\nwhen scrutinised to this five-fold operation of conscious-force in movement.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n All these operations, then, the Sanjnana or essential sense must be able to seize, to make its own by that union in knowledge of knower and object which is peculiar to itself. Its sense of the rhythm or intensity of the vibrations which contain in
\nthemselves all the meaning of the form, will be the basis of the essential hearing of which our apprehension of physical sound
\nor the spoken word is only the most outward result; so also its sense of the contact or intermiscence of conscious force with
\nconscious force must be the basis of the essential touch; its sense of the definition or form of force must be the basis of the essential
\nsight; its sense of the upflow of essential being in the form, that which is the secret of its self-delight, must be the basis of the
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 59<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

essential taste; its sense of the compression of force and the self-discharge of its essence of being must be the basis of the
\nessential inhalation grossly represented in physical substance by the sense of smell. On whatever plane, to whatever kind of formation these essentialities of sense will apply themselves and on each they will seek an appropriate organisation, an appropriate
\nfunctioning.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This various sense will, it is obvious, be in the highest consciousness a complex unity, just as we have seen that there the various operation of knowledge is also a complex unity. Even if
\nwe examine the physical senses, say, the sense of hearing, if we observe how the underlying mind receives their action, we shall
\nsee that in their essence all the senses are in each other. That mind is not only aware of the vibration which we call sound;
\nit is aware also of the contact and interchange between the force in the sound and the nervous force in us with which that
\nintermixes; it is aware of the definition or form of the sound and of the complex contacts or relations which make up the form;
\nit is aware of the essence or outwelling conscious force which constitutes and maintains the sound and prolongs its vibrations
\nin our nervous being; it is aware of our own nervous inhalation of the vibratory discharge proceeding from the compression of
\nforce which makes, so to speak, the solidity of the sound. All these sensations enter into the sensitive reception and joy of
\nmusic which is the highest physical form of this operation of force,\u2014they constitute our physical sensitiveness to it and the
\njoy of our nervous being in it; diminish one of them and the joy and the sensitiveness are to that extent dulled. Much more
\nmust there be this complex unity in a higher than the physical consciousness and most of all must there be unity in the highest. But the essential sense must be capable also of seizing the secret essence of all conscious being in action, in itself and not
\nonly through the results of the operation; its appreciation of these results can be nothing more than itself an outcome of this
\ndeeper sense which it has of the essence of the Thing behind its appearances.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

If we consider these things thus subtly in the light of our
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 60<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nown deeper psychology and pursue them beyond the physical appearances by which they are covered, we shall get to some
\nintellectual conception of the sense behind our senses or rather the Sense of our senses, the Sight of our sight and the Hearing
\nof our hearing. The Brahman-consciousness of which the Upanishad speaks is not the Absolute withdrawn into itself, but that
\nAbsolute in its outlook on the relative; it is the Lord, the Master-Soul, the governing Transcendent and All, He who constitutes
\nand controls the action of the gods on the different planes of our being. Since it constitutes them, all our workings can be no
\nmore than psychical and physical results and representations of something essential proper to its supreme creative outlook, our
\nsense a shadow of the divine Sense, our sight of the divine Sight, our hearing of the divine Hearing. Nor are that divine sight and
\nhearing limited to things physical, but extend themselves to all forms and operations of conscious being.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The supreme Consciousness does not depend on what we call sight and hearing for its own essential seeing and audition.
\nIt operates by a supreme Sense, creative and comprehensive, of which our physical and psychical sight and hearing are external
\nresults and partial operations. Neither is it ignorant of these, nor excludes them; for since it constitutes and controls, it must be
\n˙<\/i>   <\/i> aware of them but from a supreme plane, param dhama<\/i>, which includes all in its view; for its original action is that highest
\nmovement of Vishnu which, the Veda tells us, the seers behold like an eye extended in heaven. It is that by which the soul sees
\nits seeings and hears its hearings; but all sense only assumes its true value and attains to its absolute, its immortal reality
\nwhen we cease to pursue the satisfactions of the mere external and physical senses and go beyond even the psychical being to
\nthis spiritual or essential which is the source and fountain, the knower, constituent and true valuer of all the rest.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n This spiritual sense of things, secret and superconscient in us, alone gives their being, worth and reality to the psychical and
\nphysical sense; in themselves they have none. When we attain to it, these inferior operations are as it were taken up into it and the
\nwhole world and everything in it changes to us and takes on a <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 61<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

different and a non-material value. That Master-consciousness in us senses our sensations of objects, sees our seeings, hears
\nour hearings no longer for the benefit of the senses and their desires, but with the embrace of the self-existent Bliss which has
\nno cause, beginning or end, eternal in its own immortality.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 62<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

The Superlife \u2014 Life of Our Life <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

B<\/font>UT THE<\/b> Brahman-consciousness is not only Mind of our
\nmind, Speech of our speech, Sense of our sense; it is also Life of our life. In other words, it is a supreme and universal energy of existence of which our own material life and its sustaining energy are only an inferior result, a physical symbol,
\nan external and limited functioning. That which governs our existence and its functionings, does not live and act by them,
\nbut is their superior cause and the supra-vital principle out of which they are formed and by which they are controlled.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The English word life does duty for many very different shades of meaning; but the word Prana familiar in the Upanishad
\nand in the language of Yoga is restricted to the life-force whether viewed in itself or in its functionings. The popular significance
\nof Prana was indeed the breath drawn into and thrown out from the lungs and so, in its most material and common sense, the life
\nor the life-breath; but this is not the philosophic significance of the word as it is used in the Upanishads. The Prana of the Upanishads is the life-energy itself which was supposed to occupy and act in the body with a fivefold movement, each with its characteristic name and each quite as necessary to the functioning of the life of the body as the act of respiration. Respiration in fact
\nis only one action of the chief movement of the life-energy, the first of the five,\u2014the action which is most normally necessary
\nand vital to the maintenance and distribution of the energy in the physical frame, but which can yet be suspended without the
\nlife being necessarily destroyed.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The existence of a vital force or life-energy has been doubted
\nby western Science, because that Science concerns itself only with the most external operations of Nature and has as yet no true
\nknowledge of anything except the physical and outward. This Prana, this life-force is not physical in itself; it is not material
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 63<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

energy, but rather a different principle supporting Matter and involved in it. It supports and occupies all forms and without it
\nno physical form could have come into being or could remain in being. It acts in all material forces such as electricity and
\nis nearest to self-manifestation in those that are nearest to pure force; material forces could not exist or act without it, for from it
\nthey derive their energy and movement and they are its vehicles. But all material aspects are only field and form of the Prana
\nwhich is in itself a pure energy, their cause and not their result. It cannot therefore be detected by any physical analysis; physical analysis can only resolve for us the combinations of those material happenings which are its results and the external signs
\nand symbols of its presence and operation.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

How then do we become aware of its existence? By that
\npurification of our mind and body and that subtilisation of our means of sensation and knowledge which become possible
\nthrough Yoga. We become capable of analysis other than the resolution of forms into their gross physical elements and are
\nable to distinguish the operations of the pure mental principle from those of the material and both of these from the vital or
\ndynamic which forms a link between them and supports them both. We are then able to distinguish the movements of the
\nPranic currents not only in the physical body which is all that we are normally aware of, but in that subtle frame of our being
\nwhich Yoga detects underlying and sustaining the physical. This is ordinarily done by the process of Pranayama, the government
\nand control of the respiration. By Pranayama the Hathayogin is able to control, suspend and transcend the ordinary fixed
\noperation of the Pranic energy which is all that Nature needs for the normal functioning of the body and of the physical life
\nand mind, and he becomes aware of the channels in which that energy distributes itself in all its workings and is therefore able to
\ndo things with his body which seem miraculous to the ignorant, just as the physical scientist by his knowledge of the workings
\nof material forces is able to do things with them which would seem to us magic if their law and process were not divulged.
\nFor all the workings of life in the physical form are governed <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 64<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nby the Prana and not only those which are normal and constant and those which, being always potential, can be easily brought
\nforward and set in action, but those which are of a more remote potentiality and seem to our average experience difficult
\nor impossible.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut the Pranic energy supports not only the operations of
\nour physical life, but also those of the mind in the living body. Therefore by the control of the Pranic energy it is not only
\npossible to control our physical and vital functionings and to transcend their ordinary operation, but to control also the workings of the mind and to transcend its ordinary operations. The human mind in fact depends always on the pranic force which
\nlinks it with the body through which it manifests itself, and it is able to deploy its own force only in proportion as it can make
\nthat energy available for its own uses and subservient to its own purposes. In proportion, therefore, as the Yogin gets back to the
\ncontrol of the Prana, and by the direction of its batteries opens up those nervous centres (cakras<\/i>) in which it is now sluggish
\nor only partially operative, he is able to manifest powers of mind, sense and consciousness which transcend our ordinary
\nexperience. The so-called occult powers of Yoga are such faculties which thus open up of themselves as the Yogin advances
\nin the control of the Pranic force and, purifying the channels of its movement, establishes an increasing communication between the consciousness of his subtle subliminal being and the consciousness of his gross physical and superficial existence.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThus the Prana is vital or nervous force which bears the operations of mind and body, is yoked by them as it were like
\na horse to a chariot and driven by the mind along the paths on which it wishes to travel to the goal of its desire. Therefore it is
\ndescribed in this Upanishad as yoked and moving forward and again as being led forward, the images recalling the Vedic symbol
\nof the Horse by which the pranic force is constantly designated in the Rig Veda. It is in fact that which does all the action of the
\nworld in obedience to conscious or subconscious mind and in the conditions of material force and material form. While the mind
\nis that movement of Nature in us which represents in the mould <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 65<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of our material and phenomenal existence and within the triple term of the Ignorance the knowledge aspect of the Brahman, the
\nconsciousness of the knower, and body is that which similarly represents the being of the existent in the mask of phenomenally
\ndivisible substance, so Prana or life-energy represents in the flux of phenomenal things the force, the active dynamis of the Lord
\nwho controls and enjoys the manifestation of His own being.1<\/font><\/sup> It is a universal energy present in every atom and particle of the
\nuniverse and active in every stirring and current of the constant flux and interchange which constitutes the world.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But just as mind is only an inferior movement of the supreme Conscious-Being and above mind there is a divine and infinite
\nprinciple of consciousness, will and knowledge which controls the ignorant action of mind, and it is by this superior principle
\nand not by mind that Brahman cognises His own being whether in itself or in its manifestation, so also it must be with this
\nLife-force. The characteristics of the life-force as it manifests itself in us are desire, hunger, an enjoyment which devours the object
\nenjoyed and a sensational movement and activity of response which gropes after possession and seeks to pervade, embrace,
\ntake into itself the object of its desire.2<\/font><\/sup> It is not in this breath of desire and mortal enjoyment that the true life can consist or the
\nhighest, divine energy act, any more than the supreme knowledge can think in the terms of ignorant, groping, limited and divided
\nmind. As the movements of mind are merely representations in the terms of the duality and the ignorance, reflections of a
\nsupreme consciousness and knowledge, so the movements of this life-force can only be similar representations of a supreme
\nenergy expressing a higher and truer existence possessed of that consciousness and knowledge and therefore free from desire,
\nhunger, transient enjoyment and hampered activity. What is desire here must there be self-existent Will or Love; what is hunger
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

1 The three are the reverse aspects of Chit, Sat and Chit-Tapas.
\n<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

2 All these significances are intended by the Vedic Rishis in
\ntheir use of the word Ashwa, Horse, for the Prana, the root being capable of all
\nof them as we see from the words āśā<\/i>, hope; a<\/i><\/font>ś<\/font><\/i>an<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>, hunger; as<\/i>, to eat; a<\/i><\/font>ś<\/font><\/i>, to enjoy;
\n<\/font>āś<\/font><\/i>u<\/i>, swift; a<\/i><\/font>ś<\/font><\/i>, to move, attain,
\npervade, etc. <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t Page – 66<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nhere must there be desireless satisfaction; what is here enjoyment must there be self-existent delight; what is here a groping action
\nand response, must be there self-possessing and all-possessing energy,\u2014such must be the Life of our life by which this inferior
\naction is sustained and led to its goal. Brahman does not breathe with the breath, does not live by this Life-force and its dual terms
\nof birth and death.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n \tWhat then is this Life of our life? It is the supreme Energy3<\/font><\/sup>
\nwhich is nothing but the infinite force in action of the supreme conscious Being in His own illumined self. The Self-existent is
\nluminously aware of Himself and full of His own delight; and that self-awareness is a timeless self-possession which in action
\nreveals itself as a force of infinite consciousness omnipotent as well as omniscient; for it exists between two poles, one of eternal stillness and pure identity, the other of eternal energy and identity of All with itself, the stillness eternally supporting the
\nenergy. That is the true existence, the Life from which our life proceeds; that is the immortality, while what we cling to as life
\nis “hunger that is death”. Therefore the object of the wise must be to pass in their illumined consciousness beyond the false and
\nphenomenal terms of life and death to this immortality.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n \tYet is this Life-force, however inferior its workings, instinct
\nwith the being, will, light of that which it represents, of that which transcends it; by That it is “led forward” on its paths to
\na goal which its own existence implies by the very imperfection of its movements and renderings. This death called life is not
\nonly a dark figure of that light, but it is the passage by which we pass through transmutation of our being from the death-sleep
\nof Matter into the spirit’s infinite immortality.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n \t <\/p>\n

\n \t
\n \t3 Tapas or Chit-Shakti.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 67<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n The Great Transition <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n T<\/font>HE THOUGHT<\/b> of the Upanishad, as expressed in its first
\nchapter in the brief and pregnant sentences of the Upanishadic style, amounts then to this result that the life of the
\nmind, senses, vital activities in which we dwell is not the whole or the chief part of our existence, not the highest, not self-existent,
\nnot master of itself. It is an outer fringe, a lower result, an inferior working of something beyond; a superconscient Existence has
\ndeveloped, supports and governs this partial and fragmentary, this incomplete and unsatisfying consciousness and activity of
\nthe mind, life and senses. To rise out of this external and surface consciousness towards and into that superconscient is our
\nprogress, our goal, our destiny of completeness and satisfaction.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The Upanishad does not assert the unreality, but only the
\nincompleteness and inferiority of our present existence. All that we follow after here is an imperfect representation, a broken and
\ndivided functioning of what is eternally in an absolute perfection on that higher plane of existence. This mind of ours unpossessed of its object, groping, purblind, besieged by error and incapacity, its action founded on an external vision of things, is
\nonly the shadow thrown by a superconscient Knowledge which possesses, creates and securely uses the truth of things because
\nnothing is external to it, nothing is other than itself, nothing is divided or at war within its all-comprehensive self-awareness.
\nThat is the Mind of our mind. Our speech, limited, mechanical, imperfectly interpretative of the outsides of things, restricted by
\nthe narrow circle of the mind, based on the appearances of sense is only the far-off and feeble response, the ignorant vibration
\nreturned to a creative and revelatory Word which has built up all the forms which our mind and speech seek to comprehend
\nand express. Our sense, a movement in stuff of consciousness vibratory to outward impacts, attempting imperfectly to grasp
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 68<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nthem by laboured and separately converging reactions, is only the faulty image of a supreme Sense which at once, fully, harmoniously unites itself with and enjoys all that the supreme Mind and Speech create in the self-joyous activity of the divine and
\ninfinite existence. Our life, a breath of force and movement and possession attached to a form of mind and body and restricted
\nby the form, limited in its force, hampered in its movement, besieged in its possession and therefore a thing of discords at war
\nwith itself and its environment, hungering and unsatisfied, moving inconstantly from object to object and unable to embrace and
\nretain their multiplicity, devouring its objects of enjoyment and therefore transient in its enjoyments, is only a broken movement
\nof the one, undivided, infinite Life which is all-possessing and ever satisfied because in all it enjoys its eternal self unimprisoned
\nby the divisions of space, unoccupied by the moments of Time, undeluded by the successions of Cause and Circumstance.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis superconscient Existence, one, conscious of itself, conscious both of its eternal peace and its omniscient and omnipotent force, is also conscious of our cosmic existence which it holds in itself, inspires secretly and omnipotently governs. It is
\nthe Lord of the Isha Upanishad who inhabits all the creations of His Force, all form of movement in the ever mobile principle
\nof cosmos. It is our self and that of which and by which we are constituted in all our being and activities, the Brahman. The
\nmortal life is a dual representation of That with two conflicting elements in it, negative and positive. Its negative elements
\nof death, suffering, incapacity, strife, division, limitation are a dark figure which conceal and serve the development of that
\nwhich its positive elements cannot yet achieve,\u2014immortality hiding itself from life in the figure of death, delight hiding itself
\nfrom pleasure in the figure of suffering, infinite force hiding itself from finite effort in the figure of incapacity, fusion of love
\nhiding itself from desire in the figure of strife, unity hiding itself from acquisition in the figure of division, infinity hiding itself
\nfrom growth in the figure of limitation. The positive elements suggest what the Brahman is, but never are what the Brahman
\nis, although their victory, the victory of the gods, is always the <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 69<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

victory of the Brahman over its own self-negations, always the self-affirmation of His vastness against the denials of the dark
\nand limiting figure of things. Still, it is not this vastness merely, but the absolute infinity which is Brahman itself. And therefore
\nwithin this dual figure of things we cannot attain to our self, our Highest; we have to transcend in order to attain. Our pursuit
\nof the positive elements of this existence, our worship of the gods of the mind, life, sense is only a preparatory to the real
\ntravail of the soul, and we must leave this lower Brahman and know that Higher if we are to fulfil ourselves. We pursue, for
\ninstance, our mental growth, we become mental beings full of an <\/p>\n

accomplished thought-power and thought-acquisition, dhirah<\/i>, in order that we may by thought of mind go beyond mind itself
\nto the Eternal. For always the life of mind and senses is the jurisdiction of death and limitation; beyond is the immortality.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The wise, therefore, the souls seated and accomplished in luminous thought-power put away from them the dualities of
\nour mind, life and senses and go forward from this world; they go beyond to the unity and the immortality. The word used for
\ngoing forward is that which expresses the passage of death; it is also that which the Upanishad uses for the forward movement
\nof the Life-force yoked to the car of embodied mind and sense on the paths of life. And in this coincidence we can find a double
\nand most pregnant suggestion.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

It is not by abandoning life on earth in order to pursue
\nimmortality on other more favourable planes of existence that the great achievement becomes possible. It is here,
\nihaiva<\/i>, in this
\nmortal life and body that immortality must be won, here in this lower Brahman and by this embodied soul that the Higher must
\nbe known and possessed. “If here one find it not, great is the perdition.” This life-force in us is led forward by the attraction
\nof the supreme Life on its path of constant acquisition through types of the Brahman until it reaches a point where it has to
\ngo entirely forward, to go across out of the mortal life, the mortal vision of things to some Beyond. So long as death is
\nnot entirely conquered, this going beyond is represented in the terms of death and by a passing into other worlds where death is
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 70<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nnot present, where a type of immortality is tasted corresponding to that which we have found here in our soul-experience; but
\nthe attraction of death and limitation is not overpassed because they still conceal something of immortality and infinity which
\nwe have not yet achieved; therefore there is a necessity of return, an insistent utility of farther life in the mortal body which we
\ndo not overcome until we have passed beyond all types to the very being of the Infinite, One and Immortal.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The worlds of which the Upanishad speaks are essentially soul-conditions and not geographical divisions of the cosmos.
\nThis material universe is itself only existence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and
\nwhich it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter,
\nto substance of form. This becomes then its world or vision of things. And to whatever soul-condition it climbs, its vision of
\nthings will change from the material vision and correspond to that other condition, and in that other framework it will move
\nin its living and embrace it in its consciousness. These are the worlds of the ancient tradition.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But the soul that has entirely realised immortality passes beyond all worlds and is free from frameworks. It enters into
\nthe being of the Lord; like this supreme superconscient Self and Brahman, it is not subdued to life and death. It is no longer
\nsubject to the necessity of entering into the cycle of rebirth, of travelling continually between the imprisoning dualities of death
\nand birth, affirmation and negation; for it has transcended name and form. This victory, this supreme immortality it must achieve
\nhere as an embodied soul in the mortal framework of things. Afterwards, like the Brahman, it transcends and yet embraces the
\ncosmic existence without being subject to it. Personal freedom, personal fulfilment is then achieved by the liberation of the soul
\nfrom imprisonment in the form of this changing personality and by its ascent to the One that is the All. If afterwards there is any
\nassumption of the figure of mortality, it is an assumption and <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 71<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

not a subjection, a help brought to the world and not a help to be derived from it, a descent of the ensouled superconscient
\nexistence not from any personal necessity, but from the universal need in the cosmic labour for those yet unfree and unfulfilled
\nto be helped and strengthened by the force that has already described the path up to the goal in its experience and achieved
\nunder the same conditions the Work and the Sacrifice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 72<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Mind and the Brahman <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

B<\/font>EFORE<\/b> we can proceed to the problem how, being what
\nwe are and the Brahman being what it is, we can effect the transition from the status of mind, life and senses proper
\nto man over to the status proper to the supreme Consciousness which is master of mind, life and senses, another and prior question arises. The Upanishad does not state it explicitly, but implies and answers it with the strongest emphasis on the solution and
\nthe subtlest variety in its repetition of the apparent paradox that is presented.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The Master-Consciousness of the Brahman is that for which we have to abandon this lesser status of the mere creature subject
\nto the movement of Nature in the cosmos; but after all this Master-Consciousness, however high and great a thing it may
\nbe, has a relation to the universe and the cosmic movement; it cannot be the utter Absolute, Brahman superior to all relativities.
\nThis Conscious-Being who originates, supports and governs our mind, life, senses is the Lord; but where there is no universe of
\nrelativities, there can be no Lord, for there is no movement to transcend and govern. Is not then this Lord, as one might say
\nin a later language, not so much the creator of Maya as himself a creation of Maya? Do not both Lord and cosmos disappear
\nwhen we go beyond all cosmos? And is it not beyond all cosmos that the only true reality exists? Is it not this only true reality and
\nnot the Mind of our mind, the Sense of our sense, the Life of our life, the Word behind our speech, which we have to know and
\npossess? As we must go behind all effects to the Cause, must we not equally go beyond the Cause to that in which neither
\ncause nor effects exist? Is not even the immortality spoken of in the Veda and Upanishads a petty thing to be overpassed and
\nabandoned? and should we not reach towards the utter Ineffable where mortality and immortality cease to have any meaning?
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 73<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The Upanishad does not put to itself the question in this form and language which only became possible when Nihilistic
\nBuddhism and Vedantic Illusionism had passed over the face of our thought and modified philosophical speech and concepts.
\nBut it knows of the ineffable Absolute which is the utter reality and absoluteness of the Lord even as the Lord is the absolute
\nof all that is in the cosmos. Of That it proceeds to speak in the only way in which it can be spoken of by the human mind.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Its answer to the problem is that That is precisely the Unknowable1<\/font><\/sup> of which no relations can be affirmed2<\/font><\/sup> and about
\nwhich therefore our intellect must for ever be silent. The injunction to know the utterly Unknowable would be without
\nany sense or practical meaning. Not that That is a Nihil, a pure Negative, but it cannot either be described by any of the positives
\nof which our mind, speech or perception is capable, nor even can it be indicated by any of them. It is only a little that we know; it
\nis only in the terms of the little that we can put the mental forms of our knowledge. Even when we go beyond to the real form of
\nthe Brahman which is not this universe, we can only indicate, we cannot really describe. If then we think we have known it
\nperfectly, we betray our ignorance; we show that we know very little indeed, not even the little that we can put into the forms of
\nour knowledge. For the universe seen as our mind sees it is the little, the divided, the parcelling out of existence and consciousness in which we know and express things by fragments, and we can never really cage in our intellectual and verbal fictions that
\ninfinite totality. Yet it is through the principles manifested in the universe that we have to arrive at That, through the life, through
\nthe mind and through that highest mental knowledge which grasps at the fundamental Ideas that are like doors concealing
\nbehind them the Brahman and yet seeming to reveal Him.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Much less, then, if we can only thus know the
\nMaster-Consciousness which is the form of the Brahman, can we pretend to know its utter ineffable reality which is beyond all knowledge.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

1 Aj\u00f1eyam atarkyam.<\/i>  <\/i>
\n<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

2 Avyavah<\/i><\/font>ā<\/font><\/i>ryam.<\/i>   <\/i> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 74<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut if this were all, there would be no hope for the soul and a resigned Agnosticism would be the last word of wisdom. The
\ntruth is that though thus beyond our mentality and our highest ideative knowledge, the Supreme does give Himself both to this
\nknowledge and to our mentality in the way proper to each and by following that way we can arrive at Him, but only on condition that we do not take our mentalising by the mind and our knowing by the higher thought for the full knowledge and rest
\nin that with a satisfied possession.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The way is to use our mind rightly for such knowledge as is
\nopen to its highest, purified capacity. We have to know the form of the Brahman, the Master-Consciousness of the Lord through
\nand yet beyond the universe in which we live. But first we must put aside what is mere form and phenomenon in the universe;
\nfor that has nothing to do with the form of the Brahman, the body of the Self, since it is not His form, but only His most
\nexternal mask. Our first step therefore must be to get behind the forms of Matter, the forms of Life, the forms of Mind and go
\nback to that which is essential, most real, nearest to actual entity. And when we have gone on thus eliminating, thus analysing all
\nforms into the fundamental entities of the cosmos, we shall find that these fundamental entities are really only two, ourselves
\nand the gods.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The gods of the Upanishad have been supposed to be a
\nfigure for the senses, but although they act in the senses, they are yet much more than that. They represent the divine power
\nin its great and fundamental cosmic functionings whether in man or in mind and life and matter in general; they are not
\nthe functionings themselves but something of the Divine which is essential to their operation and its immediate possessor and
\ncause. They are, as we see from other Upanishads, positive self-representations of the Brahman leading to good, joy, light, love,
\nimmortality as against all that is a dark negation of these things. And it is necessarily in the mind, life, senses, and speech of man
\nthat the battle here reaches its height and approaches to its full meaning. The gods seek to lead these to good and light; the
\nTitans, sons of darkness, seek to pierce them with ignorance <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 75<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

and evil.3<\/font><\/sup> Behind the gods is the Master-Consciousness of which they are the positive cosmic self-representations.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The other entity which represents the Brahman in the cosmos is the self of the living and thinking creature, man. This
\nself also is not an external mask; it is not form of the mind or form of the life or form of the body. It is something that
\nsupports these and makes them possible, something that can say positively like the gods, “I am” and not only “I seem”. We have
\nthen to scrutinise these two entities and see what they are in relation to each other and to the Brahman; or, as the Upanishad
\nputs it, “That of it which is thou, that of it which is in the gods, this
\n<\/i>is what thy mind has to resolve.” Well, but what
\nthen of the Brahman is myself? and what of the Brahman is in the Gods? The answer is evident. I am a representation in the
\ncosmos, but for all purposes of the cosmos a real representation of the Self; and the gods are a representation in the cosmos\u2014a real representation since without them the cosmos could not continue\u2014of the Lord. The one supreme Self is the essentiality
\nof all these individual existences; the one supreme Lord is the Godhead in the gods.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The Self and the Lord are one Brahman, whom we can realise through our self and realise through that which is essential in the cosmic movement. Just as our self constitutes our mind, body, life, senses, so that Self constitutes all mind,
\nbody, life, senses; it is the origin and essentiality of things. Just as the gods govern, supported by our self, the cosmos of our
\nindividual being, the action of our mind, senses and life, so the Lord governs as Mind of the mind, Sense of the sense, Life of
\nthe life, supporting His active divinity by His silent essential self-being, all cosmos and all form of being. As we have gone behind
\nthe forms of the cosmos to that which is essential in their being and movement and found our self and the gods, so we have to
\ngo behind our self and the gods and find the one supreme Self and the one supreme Godhead. Then we can say, “I think that I
\nknow.” <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

3 Chhandogya and Brihadaranyaka Upanishads. <\/font>
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 76<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nBut at once we have to qualify our assertion. I think not that I know perfectly, for that is impossible in the terms of our
\ninstruments of knowledge. I do not think for a moment that I know the Unknowable, that that can be put into the forms
\nthrough which I must arrive at the Self and Lord; but at the same time I am no longer in ignorance, I know the Brahman in
\nthe only way in which I can know Him, in His self-revelation to me in terms not beyond the grasp of my psychology, manifest
\nas the Self and the Lord. The mystery of existence is revealed in a way that utterly satisfies my being because it enables me
\nfirst to comprehend it through these figures as far as it can be comprehended by me and, secondly, to enter into, to live in, to
\nbe one in law and being with and even to merge myself in the Brahman.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIf we fancy that we have grasped the Brahman by the mind and in that delusion fix down our knowledge of Him to the terms
\nour mentality has found, then our knowledge is no knowledge; it is the little knowledge that turns to falsehood. So too those who
\ntry to fix Him into our notion of the fundamental ideas in which we discern Him by the thought that rises above ordinary mental
\nperception, have no real discernment of the Brahman, since they take certain idea-symbols for the Reality. On the other hand if
\nwe recognise that our mental perceptions are simply so many clues by which we can rise beyond mental perception and if
\nwe use these fundamental idea-symbols and the arrangement of them which our uttermost thought makes in order to go beyond
\nthe symbol to that reality, then we have rightly used mind and the higher discernment for their supreme purpose. Mind and the
\nhigher discernment are satisfied of the Brahman even in being exceeded by Him.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe mind can only reflect in a sort of supreme understanding and experience the form, the image of the supreme as He shows
\nHimself to our mentality. Through this reflection we find, we know; the purpose of knowledge is accomplished, for we find
\nimmortality, we enter into the law, the being, the beatitude of the Brahman-consciousness. By self-realisation of Brahman as our
\nself we find the force, the divine energy which lifts us beyond <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 77<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

the limitation, weakness, darkness, sorrow, all-pervading death of our mortal existence; by the knowledge of the one Brahman
\nin all beings and in all the various movement of the cosmos we attain beyond these things to the infinity, the omnipotent being,
\nthe omniscient light, the pure beatitude of that divine existence.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This great achievement must be done here in this mortal
\nworld, in this limited body; for if we do it, we arrive at our true existence and are no longer bound down to our phenomenal
\nbecoming. But if here we find it not, great is the loss and perdition; for we remain continually immersed in the phenomenal
\nlife of the mind and body and do not rise above it into the true supramental existence. Nor, if we miss it here, will death give it
\nto us by our passage to another and less difficult world. Only those who use their awakened self and enlightened powers to
\ndistinguish and discover that One and Immortal in all existences, the all-originating self, the all-inhabiting Lord, can make the
\nreal passage which transcends life and death, can pass out of this mortal status, can press beyond and rise upward into a
\nworld-transcending immortality.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This, then, and no other is the means to be seized on and
\nthe goal to be reached. “There is no other path for the great journey.” The Self and the Lord are that indeterminable, unknowable, ineffable Parabrahman and when we seek rather that which is indeterminable and unknowable to us, it is still the Self
\nand the Lord always that we find, though by an attempt which is not the straight and possible road intended for the embodied
\nsoul seeking here to accomplish its true existence.4 They are the self-manifested Reality which so places itself before man as
\nthe object of his highest aspiration and the fulfilment of all his activities.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

4 Gita. <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 78<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

The Parable of the Gods <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

F<\/font>ROM<\/b> its assertion of the relative knowableness of the
\nunknowable Brahman and the justification of the soul’s aspiration towards that which is beyond its present capacity
\nand status the Upanishad turns to the question of the means by which that high-reaching aspiration can put itself into relation
\nwith the object of its search. How is the veil to be penetrated and the subject consciousness of man to enter into the
\nmaster-consciousness of the Lord? What bridge is there over this gulf? Knowledge has already been pointed out as the supreme means
\nopen to us, a knowledge which begins by a sort of reflection of the true existence in the awakened mental understanding. But
\nMind is one of the gods; the Light behind it is indeed the greatest of the gods, Indra. Then, an awakening of all the gods through
\ntheir greatest to the essence of that which they are, the one Godhead which they represent. By the mentality opening itself
\nto the Mind of our mind, the sense and speech also will open themselves to the Sense of our sense and to the Word behind
\nour speech and the life to the Life of our life. The Upanishad proceeds to develop this consequence of its central suggestion
\nby a striking parable or apologue. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The gods, the powers that affirm the Good, the Light, the
\nJoy and Beauty, the Strength and Mastery have found themselves victorious in their eternal battle with the powers that deny. It
\nis Brahman that has stood behind the gods and conquered for them; the Master of all who guides all has thrown His deciding
\nwill into the balance, put down his darkened children and exalted the children of Light. In this victory of the Master of all
\nthe gods are conscious of a mighty development of themselves, a splendid efflorescence of their greatness in man, their joy, their
\nlight, their glory, their power and pleasure. But their vision is as yet sealed to their own deeper truth; they know of themselves,
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 79<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

they know not the Eternal; they know the godheads, they do not know God. Therefore they see the victory as their own,
\nthe greatness as their own. This opulent efflorescence of the gods and uplifting of their greatness and light is the advance of
\nman to his ordinary ideal of a perfectly enlightened mentality, a strong and sane vitality, a well-ordered body and senses, a
\nharmonious, rich, active and happy life, the Hellenic ideal which the modern world holds to be our ultimate potentiality. When
\nsuch an efflorescence takes place whether in the individual or the kind, the gods in man grow luminous, strong, happy; they
\nfeel they have conquered the world and they proceed to divide it among themselves and enjoy it.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But such is not the full intention of Brahman in the universe or in the creature. The greatness of the gods is His own victory
\nand greatness, but it is only given in order that man may grow nearer to the point at which his faculties will be strong enough to
\ngo beyond themselves and realise the Transcendent. Therefore Brahman manifests Himself before the exultant gods in their
\nwell-ordered world and puts to them by His silence the heart-shaking, the world-shaking question, “If ye are all, then what am
\nI? for see, I am and I am here.” Though He manifests, He does not reveal Himself, but is seen and felt by them as a vague and
\ntremendous presence, the Yaksha, the Daemon, the Spirit, the unknown Power, the Terrible beyond good and evil for whom
\ngood and evil are instruments towards His final self-expression. Then there is alarm and confusion in the divine assembly; they
\nfeel a demand and a menace; on the side of the evil the possibility of monstrous and appalling powers yet unknown and unmastered which may wreck the fair world they have built, upheave and shatter to pieces the brilliant harmony of the intellect, the
\naesthetic mind, the moral nature, the vital desires, the body and senses which they have with such labour established; on
\nthe side of the good the demand of things unknown which are beyond all these and therefore are equally a menace, since the
\nlittle which is realised cannot stand against the much that is unrealised, cannot shut out the vast, the infinite that presses
\nagainst the fragile walls we have erected to define and shelter <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 80<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nour limited being and pleasure. Brahman presents itself to them as the Unknown; the gods knew not what was this Daemon.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Therefore Agni first arises at their bidding to discover its nature, limits, identity. The gods of the Upanishad differ in one
\nall-important respect from the gods of the Rig Veda; for the latter are not only powers of the One, but conscious of their
\nsource and true identity; they know the Brahman, they dwell in the supreme Godhead, their origin, home and proper plane is
\nthe superconscient Truth. It is true they manifest themselves in man in the form of human faculties and assume the appearance
\nof human limitations, manifest themselves in the lower cosmos and assume the mould of its cosmic operations; but this is only
\ntheir lesser and lower movement and beyond it they are for ever the One, the Transcendent and Wonderful, the Master of Force
\nand Delight and Knowledge and Being. But in the Upanishads the Brahman idea has grown and cast down the gods from this
\nhigh preeminence so that they appear only in their lesser human and cosmic workings. Much of their other Vedic aspects they
\nkeep. Here the three gods Indra, Vayu, Agni represent the cosmic Divine on each of its three planes, Indra on the mental, Vayu on
\nthe vital, Agni on the material. In that order, therefore, beginning from the material they approach the Brahman.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Agni is the heat and flame of the conscious force in Matter which has built up the universe; it is he who has made life and
\nmind possible and developed them in the material universe where he is the greatest deity. Especially he is the primary impeller of
\nspeech of which Vayu is the medium and Indra the lord. This heat of conscious force in Matter is Agni Jatavedas, the knower
\nof all births: of all things born, of every cosmic phenomenon he knows the law, the process, the limit, the relation. If then
\nit is some mighty Birth of the cosmos that stands before them, some new indeterminate developed in the cosmic struggle and
\nprocess, who shall know him, determine his limits, strength, potentialities if not Agni Jatavedas?
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Full of confidence he rushes towards the object of his search and is met by the challenge “Who art thou? What is the force in
\nthee?” His name is Agni Jatavedas, the Power that is at the basis <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 81<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of all birth and process in the material universe and embraces and knows their workings and the force in him is this that all that
\nis thus born, he as the flame of Time and Death can devour. All things are his food which he assimilates and turns into material
\nof new birth and formation. But this all-devourer cannot devour with all his force a fragile blade of grass so long as it has behind
\nit the power of the Eternal. Agni is compelled to return, not having discovered. One thing only is settled that this Daemon
\nis no Birth of the material cosmos, no transient thing that is subject to the flame and breath of Time; it is too great for Agni.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Another god rises to the call. It is Vayu Matarishwan, the great Life-Principle, he who moves, breathes, expands infinitely
\nin the mother element. All things in the universe are the movement of this mighty Life; it is he who has brought Agni and
\nplaced him secretly in all existence; for him the worlds have been upbuilded that Life may move in them, that it may act,
\nthat it may riot and enjoy. If this Daemon be no birth of Matter, but some stupendous Life-force active whether in the depths or
\non the heights of being, who shall know it, who shall seize it in his universal expansion if not Vayu Matarishwan?
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

There is the same confident advance upon the object, the same formidable challenge “Who art thou? What is the force in
\nthee?” This is Vayu Matarishwan and the power in him is this that he, the Life, can take all things in his stride and growth and
\nseize on them for his mastery and enjoyment. But even the veriest frailest trifle he cannot seize and master so long as it is protected
\nagainst him by the shield of the Omnipotent. Vayu too returns, not having discovered. One thing only is settled that this is no
\nform or force of cosmic Life which operates within the limits of the all-grasping vital impulse; it is too great for Vayu.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Indra next arises, the Puissant, the Opulent. Indra is the power of the Mind; the senses which the Life uses for enjoyment,
\nare operations of Indra which he conducts for knowledge and all things that Agni has upbuilt and supports and destroys in
\nthe universe are Indra’s field and the subject of his functioning. If then this unknown Existence is something that the senses can
\ngrasp or, if it is something that the mind can envisage, Indra <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 82<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nshall know it and make it part of his opulent possessions. But it is nothing that the senses can grasp or the mind envisage, for
\nas soon as Indra approaches it, it vanishes. The mind can only envisage what is limited by Time and Space and this Brahman
\nis that which, as the Rig Veda has said, is neither today nor tomorrow and though it moves and can be approached in the
\nconscious being of all conscious existences, yet when the mind tries to approach it and study it in itself, it vanishes from the
\nview of the mind. The Omnipresent cannot be seized by the senses, the Omniscient cannot be known by the mentality.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But Indra does not turn back from the quest like Agni and Vayu; he pursues his way through the highest ether of the
\npure mentality and there he approaches the Woman, the many-shining, Uma Haimavati; from her he learns that this Daemon
\nis the Brahman by whom alone the gods of mind and life and body conquer and affirm themselves, and in whom alone they
\nare great. Uma is the supreme Nature from whom the whole cosmic action takes its birth; she is the pure summit and highest
\npower of the One who here shines out in many forms. From this supreme Nature which is also the supreme Consciousness the
\ngods must learn their own truth; they must proceed by reflecting it in themselves instead of limiting themselves to their own lower
\nmovement. For she has the knowledge and consciousness of the One, while the lower nature of mind, life and body can only
\nenvisage the many. Although therefore Indra, Vayu and Agni are the greatest of the gods, the first coming to know the existence
\nof the Brahman, the others approaching and feeling the touch of it, yet it is only by entering into contact with the supreme
\nconsciousness and reflecting its nature and by the elimination of the vital, mental, physical egoism so that their whole function
\nshall be to reflect the One and Supreme that Brahman can be known by the gods in us and possessed. The conscious force
\nthat supports our embodied life must become simply and purely a reflector of that supreme Consciousness and Power of which
\nits highest ordinary action is only a twilight figure; the Life must become a passively potent reflection and pure image of that
\nsupreme Life which is greater than all our utmost actual and <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 83<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

potential vitality; the Mind must resign itself to be no more than a faithful mirror of the image of the superconscient Existence. By
\nthis conscious surrender of mind, life and senses to the Master of our senses, life and mind who alone really governs their action,
\nby this turning of the cosmic existence into a passive reflection of the eternal being and a faithful reproductor of the nature of the
\nEternal we may hope to know and through knowledge to rise into that which is superconscient to us; we shall enter into the
\nSilence that is master of an eternal, infinite, free and all-blissful activity.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 84<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

The Transfiguration of the Self
\n<\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

and the Gods <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

T<\/font>HE MEANS<\/b> of the knowledge of Brahman are, we have seen, to get back behind the forms of the universe to
\nthat which is essential in the cosmos\u2014and that which is essential is twofold, the gods in Nature and the self in the
\nindividual,\u2014and then to get behind these to the Beyond which they represent. The practical relation of the gods to Brahman in
\nthis process of divine knowledge has been already determined. The cosmic functionings through which the gods act, mind, life,
\nspeech, senses, body, must become aware of something beyond them which governs them, by which they are and move, by
\nwhose force they evolve, enlarge themselves and arrive at power and joy and capacity; to that they must turn from their ordinary
\noperations; leaving these, leaving the false idea of independent action and self-ordering which is an egoism of mind and life
\nand sense they must become consciously passive to the power, light and joy of something which is beyond themselves. What
\nhappens then is that this divine Unnameable reflects Himself openly in the gods. His light takes possession of the thinking
\nmind, His power and joy of the life, His light and rapture of the emotional mind and the senses. Something of the supreme
\nimage of Brahman falls upon the world-nature and changes it into divine nature.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

All this is not done by a sudden miracle. It comes by flashes, revelations, sudden touches and glimpses; there is as if a leap of
\nthe lightning of revelation flaming out from those heavens for a moment and then returning into its secret source; as if the lifting
\nof the eyelid of an inner vision and its falling again because the eye cannot look long and steadily on the utter light. The repetition of these touches and visitings from the Beyond fixes the
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 85<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

gods in their upward gaze and expectation, constant repetition fixes them in a constant passivity; not moving out any longer to
\ngrasp at the forms of the universe mind, life and senses will more and more be fixed in the memory, in the understanding, in the
\njoy of the touch and vision of that transcendent glory which they have now resolved to make their sole object; to that only they
\nwill learn to respond and not to the touches of outward things. The silence which has fallen on them and which is now their
\nfoundation and status will become their knowledge of the eternal silence which is Brahman; the response of their functioning to
\na supernal light, power, joy will become their knowledge of the eternal activity which is Brahman. Other status, other response
\nand activity they will not know. The mind will know nothing but the Brahman, think of nothing but the Brahman, the Life
\nwill move to, embrace, enjoy nothing but the Brahman, the eye will see, the ear hear, the other senses sense nothing but the
\nBrahman.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But is then a complete oblivion of the external the goal?
\nMust the mind and senses recede inward and fall into an unending trance and the life be for ever stilled? This is possible, if the
\nsoul so wills, but it is not inevitable and indispensable. The Mind is cosmic, one in all the universe; so too are the Life, and the
\nSense, so too is Matter of the body; and when they exist in and for the Brahman only, they will not only know this but will sense,
\nfeel and live in that universal unity. Therefore to whatever thing they turn which to the individual sense and mind and life seems
\nnow external to them, there also it is not the mere form of things which they will know, think of, sense, embrace and enjoy, but
\nalways and only the Brahman. Moreover, the external will cease to exist for them, because nothing will be external but all things
\ninternal to us, even the whole world and all that is in it. For the limit of ego, the wall of individuality will break; the individual
\nMind will cease to know itself as individual, it will be conscious only of universal Mind one everywhere in which individuals are
\nonly knots of the one mentality; so the individual life will lose its sense of separateness and live only in and as the one life in which
\nall individuals are simply whirls of the indivisible flood of pranic <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 86<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nactivity; the very body and senses will be no longer conscious of a separated existence, but the real body which the man will feel
\nhimself to be physically will be the whole Earth and the whole universe and the whole indivisible form of things wheresoever
\nexistent, and the senses also will be converted to this principle of sensation so that even in what we call the external, the eye
\nwill see Brahman only in every sight, the ear will hear Brahman only in every sound, the inner and outer body will feel Brahman
\nonly in every touch and the touch itself as if internal in the greater body. The soul whose gods are thus converted to this
\nsupreme law and religion, will realise in the cosmos itself and in all its multiplicity the truth of the One besides whom there is no
\nother or second. Moreover, becoming one with the formless and infinite, it will exceed the universe itself and see all the worlds
\nnot as external, not even as commensurate with itself, but as if within it.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAnd in fact, in the higher realisation it will not be Mind, Life, Sense of which even the mind, life and sense themselves will be
\noriginally aware, but rather that which constitutes them. By this process of constant visiting and divine touch and influence the
\nMind of the mind, that is to say, the superconscient Knowledge will take possession of the mental understanding and begin to
\nturn all its vision and thinking into luminous stuff and vibration of light of the Supermind. So too the sense will be changed
\nby the visitings of the Sense behind the sense and the whole sense-view of the universe itself will be altered so that the vital,
\nmental and supramental will become visible to the senses with the physical only as their last, outermost and smallest result.
\nSo too the Life will become a superlife, a conscious movement of the infinite Conscious-Force; it will be impersonal, unlimited
\nby any particular acts and enjoyment, unbound to their results, untroubled by the dualities or the touch of sin and suffering,
\ngrandiose, boundless, immortal. The material world itself will become for these gods a figure of the infinite, luminous and
\nblissful Superconscient.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis will be the transfiguration of the gods, but what of the
\nself? For we have seen that there are two fundamental entities, <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 87<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

the gods and the self, and the self in us is greater than the cosmic Powers, its God-ward destination more vital to our perfection
\nand self-fulfilment than any transfiguration of these lesser deities. Therefore not only must the gods find their one Godhead and
\nresolve themselves into it; that is to say, not only must the cosmic principles working in us resolve themselves into the working of
\nthe One, the Principle of all principles, so that they shall become only a unified existence and single action of That in spite of all
\nplay of differentiation, but also and with a more fundamental necessity the self in us which supports the action of the gods
\nmust find and enter into the one Self of all individual existences, the indivisible Spirit to whom all souls are no more than dark
\nor luminous centres of its consciousness.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This the self of man, since it is the essentiality of a mental
\nbeing, will do through the mind. In the gods the transfiguration is effected by the Superconscient itself visiting their substance
\nand opening their vision with its flashes until it has transformed them; but the mind is capable of another action which is only
\napparently movement of mind, but really the movement of the self towards its own reality. The mind seems to go to That, to
\nattain to it; it is lifted out of itself into something beyond and, although it falls back, still by the mind the will of knowledge
\nin the mental thought continually and at last continuously remembers that into which it has entered. On this the Self through
\nthe mind seizes and repeatedly dwells and so doing it is finally caught up into it and at last able to dwell securely in that transcendence. It transcends the mind, it transcends its own mental individualisation of the being, that which it now knows as itself;
\nit ascends and takes foundation in the Self of all and in the status of self-joyous infinity which is the supreme manifestation of the
\nSelf. This is the transcendent immortality, this is the spiritual existence which the Upanishads declare to be the goal of man
\nand by which we pass out of the mortal state into the heaven of the Spirit.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

What then happens to the gods and the cosmos and all that the Lord develops in His being? Does it not all disappear? Is
\nnot the transfiguration of the gods even a mere secondary state <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 88<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nthrough which we pass towards that culmination and which drops away from us as soon as we reach it? And with the disappearance of the gods and the cosmos does not the Lord too, the Master-Consciousness, disappear so that nothing is left but
\nthe one pure indeterminate Existence self-blissful in an eternal inaction and non-creation? Such was the conclusion of the later
\nVedanta in its extreme monistic form and such was the sense which it tried to read into all the Upanishads; but it must be
\nrecognised that in the language whether of the Isha or the Kena Upanishad there is absolutely nothing, not even a shade or a
\nnuance pointing to it. If we want to find it there, we have to put it in by force; for the actual language used favours instead the
\nconclusion of other Vedantic systems, which considered the goal to be the eternal joy of the soul in a Brahmaloka or world of the
\nBrahman in which it is one with the infinite existence and yet in a sense still a soul able to enjoy differentiation in the oneness.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n In the next verse we have the culmination of the teaching of the Upanishad, the result of the great transcendence which
\nit has been setting forth and afterwards the description of the immortality to which the souls of knowledge attain when they
\npass beyond the mortal status. It declares that Brahman is in its nature “That Delight”, Tadvanam. “Vana” is the Vedic word
\nfor delight or delightful, and “Tadvanam” means therefore the transcendent Delight, the all-blissful Ananda of which the Taittiriya Upanishad speaks as the highest Brahman from which all existences are born, by which all existences live and increase
\nand into which all existences arrive in their passing out of death and birth. It is as this transcendent Delight that the Brahman
\nmust be worshipped and sought. It is this beatitude therefore which is meant by the immortality of the Upanishads. And what
\nwill be the result of knowing and possessing Brahman as the supreme Ananda? It is that towards the knower and possessor
\nof the Brahman is directed the desire of all creatures. In other words, he becomes a centre of the divine Delight shedding it on
\nall the world and attracting all to it as to a fountain of joy and love and self-fulfilment in the universe.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n This is the culmination of the teaching of the Upanishad;
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 89<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

there was a demand for the secret teaching that enters into the ultimate truth, for the “Upanishad”, and in response this doctrine has been given. It has been uttered, the Upanishad of the Brahman, the hidden ultimate truth of the supreme Existence;
\nits beginning was the search for the Lord, Master of mind, life, speech and senses in whom is the absolute of mind, the absolute
\nof life, the absolute of speech and senses and its close is the finding of Him as the transcendent Beatitude and the elevation
\nof the soul that finds and possesses it into a living centre of that Delight towards which all creatures in the universe shall turn as
\nto a fountain of its ecstasies.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

*
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

**
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

The Upanishad closes with two verses which seem to review
\nand characterise the whole work in the manner of the ancient writings when they have drawn to their close. This Upanishad
\nor gospel of the inmost Truth of things has for its foundation, it is said, the practice of self-mastery, action and the subdual
\nof the sense-life to the power of the Spirit. In other words, life and works are to be used as a means of arriving out of the state
\nof subjection proper to the soul in the ignorance into a state of mastery which brings it nearer to the absolute self-mastery
\nand all-mastery of the supreme Soul seated in the knowledge. The Vedas, that is to say, the utterances of the inspired seers
\nand the truths they hold, are described as all the limbs of the Upanishad; in other words, all the convergent lines and aspects,
\nall the necessary elements of this great practice, this profound psychological self-training and spiritual aspiration are set forth
\nin these great Scriptures, channels of supreme knowledge and indicators of a supreme discipline. Truth is its home; and this
\nTruth is not merely intellectual verity,\u2014for that is not the sense of the word in the Vedic writings,\u2014but man’s ultimate human
\nstate of true being, true consciousness, right knowledge, right works, right joy of existence, all indeed that is contrary to the
\nfalsehood of egoism and ignorance. It is by these means, by
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 90<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

using works and self-discipline for mastery of oneself and for
\nthe generation of spiritual energy, by fathoming in all its parts the knowledge and repeating the high example of the great Vedic
\nseers and by living in the Truth that one becomes capable of the great ascent which the Upanishad opens to us.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The goal of the ascent is the world of the true and vast existence of which the Veda speaks as the Truth that is the final
\ngoal and home of man. It is described here as the greater infinite heavenly world, (Swargaloka, Swarloka of the Veda), which is
\nnot the lesser Swarga of the Puranas or the lesser Brahmaloka of the Mundaka Upanishad, its world of the sun’s rays to which the
\nsoul arrives by works of virtue and piety, but falls from them by the exhaustion of their merit; it is the higher Swarga or
\nBrahman-world
\nof the Katha which is beyond the dual symbols of birth and death, the higher
\nBrahman-worlds of the Mundaka which the soul enters by knowledge and
\nrenunciation. It is therefore a state not belonging to the Ignorance, but to
\nKnowledge. It is, in fact, the infinite existence and beatitude of the soul in
\nthe being of the all-blissful existence; it is too the higher status, the light
\nof the Mind beyond the mind, the joy and eternal mastery of the Life beyond the
\nlife, the riches of the Sense beyond the senses. And the soul finds in it not
\nonly its own largeness but finds too and possesses the infinity of the One and
\nit has firm foundation in that immortal state because there a supreme Silence
\nand eternal Peace are the secure foundation of eternal Knowledge and absolute
\nJoy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 91<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

A Last Word <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

W<\/font>E HAVE<\/b> now completed our review of this Upanishad; we have considered minutely the bearings of its successive utterances and striven to make as precise
\nas we can to the intelligence the sense of the puissant phrases in which it gives us its leading clues to that which can never be
\nentirely expressed by human speech. We have some idea of what it means by that Brahman, by the Mind of mind, the Life of
\nlife, the Sense of sense, the Speech of speech, by the opposition of ourselves and the gods, by the Unknowable who is yet not
\nutterly unknowable to us, by the transcendence of the mortal state and the conquest of immortality.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Fundamentally its teaching reposes on the assertion of three states of existence, the human and mortal, the
\nBrahman-consciousness which is the absolute of our relativities, and the utter Absolute which is unknowable. The first is in a sense a
\nfalse status of misrepresentation because it is a continual term of apparent opposites and balancings where the truth of things
\nis a secret unity; we have here a bright or positive figure and a dark or negative figure and both are figures, neither the Truth;
\nstill in that we now live and through that we have to move to the Beyond. The second is the Lord of all this dual action who
\nis beyond it; He is the truth of Brahman and not in any way a falsehood or misrepresentation, but the truth of it as attained by
\nus in our eternal supramental being; in Him are the absolutes of all that here we experience in partial figures. The Unknowable
\nis beyond our grasp because though it is the same Reality, yet it exceeds even our highest term of eternal being and is beyond
\nExistence and Non-existence; it is therefore to the Brahman, the Lord who has a relation to what we are that we must direct our
\nsearch if we would attain beyond what temporarily seems to what eternally is.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 92<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe attainment of the Brahman is our escape from the mortal status into Immortality, by which we understand not the
\nsurvival of death, but the finding of our true self of eternal being and bliss beyond the dual symbols of birth and death. By
\nimmortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by
\nbirth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly
\nto this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature. To
\nknow and possess its true nature, free, absolute, master of itself and its embodiments is the soul’s means of transcendence, and
\nto know and possess this is to know and possess the Brahman. It is also to rise out of mortal world into immortal world, out
\nof world of bondage into world of largeness, out of finite world into infinite world. It is to ascend out of earthly joy and sorrow
\ninto a transcendent Beatitude.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis must be done by the abandonment of our attachment
\nto the figure of things in the mortal world. We must put from us its death and dualities if we would compass the unity and
\nimmortality. Therefore it follows that we must cease to make the goods of this world or even its right, light and beauty our
\nobject of pursuit; we must go beyond these to a supreme Good, a transcendent Truth, Light and Beauty in which the opposite
\nfigures of what we call evil disappear. But still, being in this world, it is only through something in this world itself that
\nwe can transcend it; it is through its figures that we must find the absolute. Therefore, we scrutinise them and perceive that
\nthere are first these forms of mind, life, speech and sense, all of them figures and imperfect suggestions, and then behind them
\nthe cosmic principles through which the One acts. It is to these cosmic principles that we must proceed and turn them from
\ntheir ordinary aim and movement in the world to find their own supreme aim and absolute movement in their own one Godhead, the Lord, the Brahman; they must be drawn to leave the workings of ordinary mind and find the superconscient Mind,
\nto leave the workings of ordinary speech and sense and find the <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 93<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

supra-mental Sense and original Word, to leave the apparent workings of mundane Life and find the transcendent Life.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Besides the gods, there is our self, the spirit within who supports all this action of the gods. Our spirit too must turn
\nfrom its absorption in its figure of itself as it sees it involved in the movement of individual life, mind, body and subject to it
\nand must direct its gaze upward to its own supreme Self who is beyond all this movement and master of it all. Therefore the
\nmind must indeed become passive to the divine Mind, the sense to the divine Sense, the life to the divine Life and by receptivity to
\nconstant touches and visitings of the highest be transfigured into a reflection of these transcendences; but also the individual self
\nmust through the mind’s aspiration upwards, through upliftings of itself beyond, through constant memory of the supreme Reality in which during these divine moments it has lived, ascend finally into that Bliss and Power and Light.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But this will not necessarily mean the immersion into an all-oblivious Being eternally absorbed in His own inactive
\nself-existence. For the mind, sense, life going beyond their individual formations find that they are only one centre of the sole Mind,
\nLife, Form of things and therefore they find Brahman in that also and not only in an individual transcendence; they bring down
\nthe vision of the superconscient into that also and not only into their own individual workings. The mind of the individual
\nescapes from its limits and becomes the one universal mind, his life the one universal life, his bodily sense the sense of the whole
\nuniverse and even more as his own indivisible Brahman-body. He perceives the universe in himself and he perceives also his self
\nin all existences and knows it to be the one, the omnipresent, the single-multiple all-inhabiting Lord and Reality. Without this
\nrealisation he has not fulfilled the conditions of immortality. Therefore it is said that what the sages seek is to distinguish and
\nsee the Brahman in all existences; by that discovery, realisation and possession of Him everywhere and in all they attain to their
\nimmortal existence. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Still although the victory of the gods, that is to say, the
\nprogressive perfection of the mind, life, body in the positive <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 94<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nterms of good, right, joy, knowledge, power is recognised as a victory of the Brahman and the necessity of using life and human
\nworks in the world as a means of preparation and self-mastery is admitted, yet a final passing away into the infinite heavenly
\nworld or status of the Brahman-consciousness is held out as the goal. And this would seem to imply a rejection of the life of the
\ncosmos. Well then may we ask, we the modern humanity more and more conscious of the inner warning of that which created
\nus, be it Nature or God, that there is a work for the race, a divine purpose in its creation which exceeds the salvation of the
\nindividual soul, because the universal is as real or even more real than the individual, we who feel more and more, in the
\nlanguage of the Koran, that the Lord did not create heaven and earth in a jest, that Brahman did not begin dreaming this
\nworld-dream in a moment of aberration and delirium,\u2014well may we ask whether this gospel of individual salvation is all the
\nmessage even of this purer, earlier, more catholic Vedanta. If so, then Vedanta at its best is a gospel for the saint, the ascetic, the
\nmonk, the solitary, but it has not a message which the widening consciousness of the world can joyfully accept as the word for
\nwhich it was waiting. For there is evidently something vital that has escaped it, a profound word of the riddle of existence from
\nwhich it has turned its eyes or which it was unable or thought it not worth while to solve.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Now certainly there is an emphasis in the Upanishads increasing steadily as time goes on into an over-emphasis, on the
\nsalvation of the individual, on his rejection of the lower cosmic life. This note increases in them as they become later in date, it
\nswells afterwards into the rejection of all cosmic life whatever and that becomes finally in later Hinduism almost the one dominant and all-challenging cry. It does not exist in the earlier Vedic revelation where individual salvation is regarded as a means
\ntowards a great cosmic victory, the eventual conquest of heaven and earth by the superconscient Truth and Bliss and those who
\nhave achieved the victory in the past are the conscious helpers of their yet battling posterity. If this earlier note is missing in the
\nUpanishads, then,\u2014for great as are these Scriptures, luminous, <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 95<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

profound, sublime in their unsurpassed truth, beauty and power, yet it is only the ignorant soul that will make itself the slave
\nof a book,\u2014then in using them as an aid to knowledge we must insistently call back that earlier missing note, we must
\nseek elsewhere a solution for the word of the riddle that has been ignored. The Upanishad alone of extant scriptures gives us
\nwithout veil or stinting, with plenitude and a noble catholicity the truth of the Brahman; its aid to humanity is therefore indispensable. Only, where anything essential is missing, we must go beyond the Upanishads to seek it,\u2014as for instance when
\nwe add to its emphasis on divine knowledge the indispensable ardent emphasis of the later teachings upon divine love and the
\nhigh emphasis of the Veda upon divine works.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The Vedic gospel of a supreme victory in heaven and on
\nearth for the divine in man, the Christian gospel of a kingdom of God and divine city upon earth, the Puranic idea of progressing Avataras ending in the kingdom of the perfect and the restoration of the golden Age, not only contain behind their forms a
\nprofound truth, but they are necessary to the religious sense in mankind. Without it the teaching of the vanity of human life and
\nof a passionate fleeing and renunciation can only be powerful in passing epochs or else on the few strong souls in each age
\nthat are really capable of these things. The rest of humanity will either reject the creed which makes that its foundation or
\nignore it in practice while professing it in precept or else must sink under the weight of its own impotence and the sense of
\nthe illusion of life or of the curse of God upon the world as mediaeval Christendom sank into ignorance and obscurantism
\nor later India into stagnant torpor and the pettiness of a life of aimless egoism. The promise for the individual is well but the
\npromise for the race is also needed. Our father Heaven must remain bright with the hope of deliverance, but also our mother
\nEarth must not feel herself for ever accursed.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

It was necessary at one time to insist even exclusively on the
\nidea of individual salvation so that the sense of a Beyond might be driven into man’s mentality, as it was necessary at one time
\nto insist on a heaven of joys for the virtuous and pious so that <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 96<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nman might be drawn by that shining bait towards the practice of religion and the suppression of his unbridled animality. But
\nas the lures of earth have to be conquered, so also have the lures of heaven. The lure of a pleasant Paradise of the rewards of
\nvirtue has been rejected by man; the Upanishads belittled it ages ago in India and it is now no longer dominant in the mind of
\nthe people; the similar lure in popular Christianity and popular Islam has no meaning for the conscience of modern humanity.
\nThe lure of a release from birth and death and withdrawal from the cosmic labour must also be rejected, as it was rejected by
\nMahayanist Buddhism which held compassion and helpfulness to be greater than Nirvana. As the virtues we practise must be
\ndone without demand of earthly or heavenly reward, so the salvation we seek must be purely internal and impersonal; it
\nmust be the release from egoism, the union with the Divine, the realisation of our universality as well as our transcendence, and
\nno salvation should be valued which takes us away from the love of God in his manifestation and the help we can give to the
\nworld. If need be, it must be taught for a time, “Better this hell with our other suffering selves than a solitary salvation.”
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Fortunately, there is no need to go to such lengths and deny one side of the truth in order to establish another. The
\nUpanishad itself suggests the door of escape from any overemphasis in its own statement of the truth. For the man who
\nknows and possesses the supreme Brahman as the transcendent Beatitude becomes a centre of that delight to which all his fellows shall come, a well from which they can draw the divine waters. Here is the clue that we need. The connection with the
\nuniverse is preserved for the one reason which supremely justifies that connection; it must subsist not from the desire of personal
\nearthly joy, as with those who are still bound, but for help to all creatures. Two then are the objects of the high-reaching soul,
\nto attain the Supreme and to be for ever for the good of all the world,\u2014even as Brahman Himself; whether here or elsewhere,
\ndoes not essentially matter. Still where the struggle is thickest, there should be the hero of the spirit, that is surely the highest
\nchoice of the son of Immortality; the earth calls most, because it <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 97<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

has most need of him, to the soul that has become one with the universe.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

And the nature of the highest good that can be done is also indicated,\u2014though other lower forms of help are not therefore
\nexcluded. To assist in the lesser victories of the gods which must prepare the supreme victory of the Brahman may well be and
\nmust be in some way or other a part of our task; but the greatest helpfulness of all is this, to be a human centre of the Light,
\nthe Glory, the Bliss, the Strength, the Knowledge of the Divine Existence, one through whom it shall communicate itself lavishly
\nto other men and attract by its magnet of delight their souls to that which is the Highest.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 98<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part One   Translations and Commentaries Published by Sri Aurobindo These texts were first published between 1909 and 1920. Sri Aurobindo later revised most of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-18-kena-and-other-upanishads","wpcat-35-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}