{"id":1555,"date":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","slug":"41-the-philosophy-of-the-upanishads-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\/41-the-philosophy-of-the-upanishads-vol-18-kena-and-other-upanishads","title":{"rendered":"-41_The Philosophy of the Upanishads.html"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Philosophy of the Upanishads <\/font><\/b>
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Chapter I
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Prefatory <\/b>
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The philosophy of the Upanishads is the basis of all Indian religion and morals and to a considerable extent of Hindu politics, legislation and society. Its practical importance to [our] race
\nis therefore immense. But it has also profoundly [affected] the thought of the West in many of the most critical stages of [its] development; at first through Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers, then through Buddhism working into Essene, Gnostic and
\nRoman Christianity and once again in our own times through German metaphysics, Theosophy, and a hundred strange and
\nirregular channels. One can open few books now at all in the latest stream of thought without seeing the old Vedantism busy
\nat its work of moulding and broadening the European mind, sometimes by direct and conscious impact as a force, more
\noften by an unacknowledged and impalpable pressure as an atmosphere. This potent influence [in] modern times of a way
\nof thinking many thousands of years old, is due to [a] singular parallelism between the fundamental positions arrived [at
\nby] ancient Vedantism and modern Science. Science in its [researches] amid matter has stumbled on the basal fact of the
\n[Unity] of all things; the Unity of all things is the rock on which the Upanishads have been built. Evolution has been discovered
\nand [analyzed] by Science; Evolution of a kind is implied at every turn by the Vedanta. Vedantism like Science, [but] after its
\nown fashion, [is] severely conscientious in its logical processes and rigorously experimental; [Vedantism] has mastered physical
\nand psychical laws which Science [is] now beginning to handle.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

But the parallelism is no more than a parallelism, [there is]
\nno real point of contact; for the Hindu or Southern Asiatic mind <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage – 345<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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differs fundamentally in its processes from either [the] Teutonic or the Mediterranean. The former is diffuse and comprehensive;
\nthe latter compact and precise. The Asiatic acquires a [deeper] and truer view of things in their totality, the European a more accurate and practically serviceable conception of their parts. [The] European seizes on an aspect and takes it for the whole; he is [a]
\nfanatic of single ideas and the preacher of the finite: the Asiatic passes at once to the whole and slurs rapidly over the aspects; he
\n[is] eclectic, inveterately flexible and large-minded, the priest of [the Infinite]. The European is an analytical reasoner proceeding
\nfrom observations, the Asiatic a synthetic diviner, leaping to intuitions. Even [when] both analyze, the European prefers to
\ndissect his observations, [the] Asiatic to distinguish his experiences: or when both [synthetize, the] European generalises and
\nclassifies what he has [observed,] the Asiatic masses into broad single truths what he [has seen] within. The one deals as a master
\nwith facts, but halts over [ideas and] having mastered an idea works round it in a circle; the other [masters ideas] unerringly
\n[………] but stumbles among facts and applications. The mind of the European is an Iliad or an Odyssey, fighting rudely but
\nheroically forward, or, full of a rich curiosity, wandering as an accurate and vigorous observer in landlocked seas of thought;
\nthe mind of the Asiatic is a Ramayan or a Mahabharat, a gleaming infinity of splendid and inspiring imaginations and idealisms
\nor else an universe of wide moral aspiration and ever varying and newly-grouped masses of thought. The mind of the Westerner is a Mediterranean full of small and fertile islands, studded with ports to which the owner, a private merchant, eagerly flees
\nwith his merchandise after a little dashing among the billows, and eagerly he disembarks and kisses his dear mother earth;
\nthe mind of the Eastern man is an Ocean, and its voyager an adventurer and discoverer, a Columbus sailing for months over
\nan illimitable Ocean out of reach of land, and his ports of visit are few and far between, nor does he carry in his bottoms much
\nmerchandise you can traffick in; yet he opens for the trader new horizons, new worlds with new markets. By his intuitions and
\ndivinations he helps to widen the circles the European is always <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage – 346<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nobstinately tracing. The European is essentially scientific, artistic and commercial; the Asiatic is essentially a moralist, pietist and
\nphilosopher. Of course the distinction is not rigid or absolute; there is much that is Asiatic in numbers of Europeans, and in
\nparticular races, notably the South Germans, the Celt and the Slav; there is much that is European in numbers of Asiatics,
\nand in particular nations, notably the Arabs and the Japanese. But the fundamental divergence in speculative habits is very
\nnoticeable, for in the things of the mind the South imposes its law on the whole Continent.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n We shall therefore expect to find, as we do find, that Vedantic Evolution and Monism are very different things from Evolution and Monism as European Science understands them. European thought seizes on Evolution as manifested in the outward facts of our little earth and follows it into its details with marvellous minuteness, accuracy and care. The Vedanta slurs
\nover this part of the scheme with a brief acknowledgement, but divines the whole course of Evolution in the Universe and lays
\ndown with confident insight its larger aspects in the inward facts of the soul. In its Monism also Vedanta is far more profound
\nand searching than the European scientific observer, for while the latter is aware only of this gross material world and resolves
\neverything into the monism of gross Matter, the Vedanta, which is perfectly aware that gross matter can all be resolved into a
\nsingle principle, does not pause at this discovery; it has pursued its investigations into two other worlds which surround & interpenetrate ours like two concentric but larger circles, the psychic or dream world of subtle Matter and the spiritual or sleep world
\nof causal Matter, each with its own monistic unity; these three parallel monisms it resolves into a Supreme, Absolute and Transcendent Unity which is alone real and eternal. To the Indian consciousness at least these are no mere speculations; they are
\nconclusions based on the actual experiences and observations of investigators who had themselves entered into these inner and
\nyet wider worlds. The good faith of their observations cannot seriously be doubted and their accuracy can only be impugned
\nwhen Science itself consents to explore the same fields of being <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage – 347<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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whether by the methods hitherto practised in the East or by any other adequate means of its own invention.
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We need not expect in the Upanishads a full statement of the facts on which its more grandiose statements of religious and
\nphilosophic truth are built, nor should we hope to find in them complete or reasoned treatises marshalling in a comprehensive
\nand orderly manner the whole scheme of Vedantic philosophy. That is seldom the way in which the true Asiatic goes to work. He
\nis a poet and a divine <\/i>in the real sense of the word. His peculiar faculty is apparent in the very form of his philosophic books.
\nThe Aphorisms, that peculiarly Indian instrument of thought, by which our philosophers later on packed tons of speculation
\ninto an inch of space, give only the fundamental illuminations on which their philosophy depends. The Exegeses (Karikas<\/i>) of
\nGaudapada and others are often a connected and logical array of concise and pregnant thoughts each carrying its burden of
\nendless suggestion, each starting its own reverberating echo of wider and wider thought; but they are not comprehensive treatises. Nor can such a term be applied to the Commentaries (Bhashyas) of Shankara, Ramanuja and other powerful and
\noriginal minds; they are, rather, forceful excursions into terse and strenuous logic, basing, strengthening, building up, adding
\na wing here and a story there to the cunning and multiform, yet harmonic structure of Indian thought. Nowhere will you find
\nan exhaustive and systematic statement of a whole philosophy interpreting every part of the universe in the terms of a single
\nline of thought. This habit of suggestiveness & reserve in thought leaves the old philosophies still as inspiring and full of intention
\nand potential development as when the glowing divinations and massive spiritual experiences stored in the Upanishads were first
\nannealed & hammered into philosophic form. It is the reason of the Vedanta’s surprising vitality, of the extent to which it enters
\nand the potency with which it governs Indian life, in a way that no European philosophy except recently the Evolutionary
\nhas entered into or governed the life of the West. The European metaphysician has something in him of the pedagogue,
\nsomething indeed of the mechanic, at least of the geometrician; <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage – 348<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nhis philosophies are masterpieces of consistent logic, admirable constructions of a rigid symmetry. But their very perfection militates against the vitality of the truth they set forth; for Life is not built on the lines of consistent logic, Nature does not proceed
\non the principle of a rigid symmetry: even where she seems most formal she loves to assert herself in even the slightest, just
\nperceptible, perhaps hardly perceptible deflection from a strict correspondence. Nothing indeed can live permanently which has
\nnot in itself the potentiality of an unending Evolution; nothing\u2014nothing finite at least\u2014is completely true which is not incomplete. The moment a poem or work of art becomes incapable of fresh interpretation, or a philosophy of fruitful expansion or a
\nspecies of change & variety, it ceases from that moment to be essential to existence and is therefore doomed, sooner or later,
\nto extinction. The logical intellect may rebel against this law and insist passionately on finality in truth,1<\/font><\/sup> but it rebels vainly; for
\nthis is <\/i>the law of all life and all truth.
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\n This is the secret of the Upanishads and their undying fruitfulness. They are, to begin with, inspired poems,\u2014not less so when they are couched in prose form than when they are
\npoured into solemn and far-sounding verse,\u2014grand and rhythmic intuitions where the speakers seem to be conveyors only
\nof informing ideas cast out from a full and complete vision in the eternal guardian Mind of the race. The style in which
\nthey are couched is wonderfully grave, penetrating and mighty, suffused with strange light as if from another world, its rhythms
\nunequalled for fathomless depth of sound and the rolling sea of solemn echoes they leave behind them. Here only in literature have philosophy and poetry at their highest met together and mingled their beings in the unison of a perfect love and
\nunderstanding. For the Upanishads stand, as poetry, with the
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\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n 1 Observe for instance the phenomenon of Theosophy. The Western intellect seizes
\nupon the profound researches of the East into the things behind the veil, the things of the soul & spirit\u2014researches admirably firm in the outline of their results but incomplete
\nin detail\u2014and lo and behold! everything is arranged, classified, manualized, vulgarized, all gaps filled in, finality insisted on and the infinite future with its infinite possibilities
\nand uncertainties audaciously barred out of its heritage. <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

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greatest productions of creative force and harmonic beauty. As philosophy, they have borne the weight of three millenniums
\nof thought and may well suffice for an equal period of future speculation. But exhaustive and balanced exposition is not to
\nbe expected; you must piece together their glowing jewels of thought if you would arrive at the forced symmetry of a system; and perhaps to the end of the world different minds will construct from them a different mosaic. To the systematic intellect this inevitably detracts from their philosophic value, but to the Indian mind, flexible, illimitable, unwilling to recognize
\nany finality in philosophy or religion, it enhances their claim to reverence as Scriptures for the whole world and for all time to
\ncome.
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Chapter II
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Discovery of the Absolute Brahman <\/font><\/b>
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The idea of transcendental Unity, Oneness & Stability behind all
\nthe flux and variety of phenomenal life is the basal idea of the Upanishads: this is the pivot of all Indian metaphysics, the sum
\nand goal of our spiritual experience. To the phenomenal world around us stability and singleness seem at first to be utterly
\nalien; nothing but passes and changes, nothing but has its counterparts, contrasts, harmonised and dissident parts; and all are
\nperpetually shifting and rearranging their relative positions and affections. Yet if one thing is certain, it is that the sum of all this
\nchange and motion is absolutely stable, fixed and unvarying; that all this heterogeneous multitude of animate & inanimate things
\nare fundamentally homogeneous and one. Otherwise nothing could endure, nor could there be any certainty in existence.
\nAnd this unity, stability, unvarying fixity which reason demands & ordinary experience points to, is being ascertained slowly
\nbut surely by the investigations of Science. We can no longer escape from the growing conviction that however the parts may
\nchange and shift and appear to perish, yet the sum and whole remains unchanged, undiminished and imperishable; however
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\nmultitudinous, mutable and mutually irreconcilable forms and compounds may be, yet the grand substratum is one, simple
\nand enduring; death itself is not a reality but a seeming, for what appears to be destruction, is merely transformation and
\na preparation for rebirth. Science may not have appreciated the full import of her own discoveries; she may shrink from
\nan unflinching acceptance of the logical results to which they lead; and certainly she is as yet far from advancing towards the
\ngreat converse truths which they for the present conceal,\u2014for instance the wonderful fact that not only is death a seeming,
\nbut life itself is a seeming, and beyond life and death there lies a condition which is truer and therefore more permanent than
\neither. But though Science dreams not as yet of her goal, her feet are on the road from which there is no turning back,\u2014the road
\nwhich Vedanta on a different plane has already trod before it.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Here then is a great fundamental fact which demands from
\nphilosophy an adequate explanation of itself;\u2014that all variations resolve themselves into an unity; that within the flux of
\nthings and concealed by it is an indefinable, immutable Something, at once the substratum and sum of all, which Time cannot
\ntouch, motion perturb, nor variation increase or diminish; and that this substratum and sum has been from all eternity and
\nwill be for all eternity. A fundamental fact to which all Thought moves, and yet is it not, when narrowly considered, an acute
\nparadox? For how can the sum of infinite variations be a sempiternally fixed amount which has never augmented or decreased
\nand can never augment or decrease? How can that whole be fixed and eternal of which every smallest part is eternally varying
\nand perishing? Given a bewildering whirl of motion, how does the result come to be not merely now or as a result, but from
\nbeginning to end a perfect fixity? Impossible, unless either there be a guiding Power, for which at first sight there seems to be no
\nroom in the sempiternal chain of causation; or unless that sum and substratum be the one reality, imperishable because not conditioned by Time, indivisible because not conditioned by Space, immutable because not conditioned by Causality,\u2014in a word
\nabsolute & transcendent and therefore <\/i>eternal, unalterable and <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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\n

undecaying. Motion and change and death and division would then be merely transitory phenomena, masks and seemings of the
\nOne and Absolute, the as yet undefined and perhaps indefinable It which alone
\nis<\/i>.
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\n

To such a conclusion Indian speculation had turned at a very early period of its conscious strivings\u2014uncertainly at first
\nand with many gropings and blunders. The existence of some Oneness which gives order and stability to the multitudinous
\nstir of the visible world, the Aryan thinkers were from the first disposed to envisage and they sought painfully to arrive
\nat the knowledge of that Oneness in its nature or its essentiality. The living Forces of the Cosmos which they had long
\nworshipped, yet always with a floating but persistent perception of an Unity in their multitude, melted on closer analysis into
\na single concept, a single Force or Presence, one and universal. The question then arose, Was that Force or Presence intelligent
\nor non-intelligent? God or Nature? “He alone” hazarded the Rigveda “knoweth, or perhaps He knoweth not.” Or might it
\nnot be that the Oneness which ties together and governs phenomena and rolls out the evolution of the worlds, is really the
\nthing we call Time<\/i>, since of the three original conditions of phenomenal existence, Time, Space and Causality, Time is a
\nnecessary part of the conception of Causality and can hardly be abstracted from the conception of Space, but neither Space
\nnor Causality seems necessary to the conception of Time? Or if it be not Time, might it not be
\nSwabhava<\/i>, the essential Nature of Things taking various conditions and forms? Or perhaps Chance<\/i>, some blind principle working out an unity and law in
\nthings by infinite experiment,\u2014this too might be possible. Or since from eternal uncertainty eternal certainty cannot come,
\nmight it not be Fate<\/i>, a fixed and unalterable law in things in subjection to which this world evolves itself in a preordained
\nprocession of phenomena from which it cannot deviate? Or perhaps in the original atomic fountain of things certain
\nElements<\/i>
\nmight be discovered which by perpetual and infinite combinations and permutations keep the universe to its workings? But
\nif so, these elements must themselves proceed from something <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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\nwhich imposes on them the law of their being, and what could that be but the
\nWomb<\/i>, the matrix of original and indestructible Matter, the plasm which moulds the universe and out of which it is moulded? And yet in whatever scheme of things the
\nmind might ultimately rest, some room surely must be made for these conscious, thinking and knowing
\nEgos <\/i>of living beings, of
\nwhom knowledge and thought seem to be the essential selves and without whom this world of perceivable and knowable things
\ncould not be perceived and known;\u2014and if not perceived and known, might it not be that without them it could not even
\nexist?
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Such were the gurges of endless speculation in which the
\nold Aryan thinkers, tossed and perplexed, sought for some firm standing-ground, some definite clue which might save them from
\nbeing beaten about like stumbling blind men led by a guide as blind. They sought at first to liberate themselves from the
\ntyranny of appearances by the method which Kapila, the ancient prehistoric Master of Thought, had laid down for mankind,
\nthe method called Sankhya or the law of Enumeration. The method of Kapila consisted in guidance by pure discriminative
\nreason and it took its name from one of its principal rules, the law of enumeration and generalisation. They enumerated first
\nthe immediate Truths-in-Things which they could distinguish or deduce from things obviously phenomenal, and from these by
\ngeneralisation they arrived at a much smaller number of ulterior Truths-in-Things of which the immediate were merely aspects.
\nAnd then having enumerated these ulterior Truths-in-Things, they were able by generalisation to reduce them to a very small
\nnumber of ultimate Truths-in-Things, the Tattwas (literally Thenesses) of the developed Sankhya philosophy. And these Tattwas
\nonce enumerated with some approach to certainty, was it not possible to generalise yet one step farther? The Sankhya did so
\ngeneralise and by this supreme and final generalisation arrived at the very last step on which, in its own unaided strength, it could
\ntake safe footing. This was the great principle of Prakriti, the single eternal indestructible principle and origin of Matter which
\nby perpetual evolution rolls out through aeons and aeons the <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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unending panorama of things.2<\/font><\/sup> And for whose benefit? Surely for those conscious knowing and perceiving Egos, the army of
\nwitnesses, who, each in his private space of reasoning and perceiving Mind partitioned off by an enveloping medium of gross
\nmatter, sit for ever as spectators in the theatre of the Universe! For ever, thought the Sankhyas, since the Egos, though their
\npartitions are being continually broken down and built anew and the spaces occupied never remain permanently identical, yet
\nseem themselves to be no less eternal and indestructible than Prakriti.
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This then was the wide fixed lake of ascertained philosophical knowledge into which the method of Sankhya, pure intellectual reasoning on definite principles, led in the mind of ancient India. Branchings off, artificial canals from the reservoir were
\nnot, indeed, wanting. Some by resolving that army of witnesses into a single Witness, arrived at the dual conception of God and
\nNature, Purusha & Prakriti, Spirit and Matter, Ego and Nonego. Others, more radical, perceived Prakriti as the creation,
\nshadow or aspect of Purusha, so that God alone remained, the spiritual or ideal factor eliminating by inclusion the material
\nor real. Solutions were also attempted on the opposite side; for some eliminated the conscious Egos themselves as mere seemings; not a few seem to have thought that each ego is only a series of successive shocks of consciousness and the persistent sense of
\nidentity no more than an illusion due to the unbroken continuity of the shocks. If these shocks of consciousness are borne in on
\nthe brain from the changes of Prakriti in the multitudinous stir of evolution, then is consciousness one out of the many terms of
\nPrakriti itself, so that Prakriti alone remains as the one reality, the material or real factor eliminating by inclusion the spiritual
\nor ideal. But if we deny, as many did, that Prakriti is an ultimate reality apart from the perceptions of Purushas and yet apply the
\ntheory of a false notion of identity created by successive waves of
\n \t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

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\n

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2 Note that Matter here not only includes gross matter with which Western Science is
\nmainly concerned, but subtle matter, the material in which thought & feeling work, and causal matter in which the fundamental operations of the Will-to-live are conducted.
\n<\/font>
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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\nsensation, we arrive at the impossible & sophistic position of the old Indian Nihilists whose reason by a singular suicide landed
\nitself in Nothingness as the cradle & bourne, nay, the very stuff and reality of all existence. And there was a third direction in
\nwhich thought tended and which led it to the very threshold of Vedanta; for this also was a possible speculation that Prakriti &
\nPurusha might both be quite real & yet not ultimately different aspects or sides of each other and so, after all, of a Oneness
\nhigher than either. But these speculations, plausible or imperfect, logical or sophistic, were yet mere speculations; they had
\nno basis either in observed fact or in reliable experience. Two certainties seemed to have been arrived at, Prakriti was testified
\nto by a close analysis of phenomenal existence; it was the basis of the phenomenal world which without a substratum of original
\nmatter could not be accounted for and without a fundamental oneness and indestructibility in that substratum could not be,
\nwhat observation showed it to be, subject, namely, to fixed laws & evidently invariable in its sum and substance. On the other
\nhand Purushas were testified to by the eternal persistence of the sense of individuality and identity whether during life or
\nafter death3<\/font><\/sup> and by the necessity of a perceiving cause for the activity of Prakriti; they were the receptive and contemplative
\nEgos within the sphere of whose consciousness Prakriti, stirred to creative activity by their presence, performed her long drama
\nof phenomenal Evolution.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But meanwhile the seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future
\nof human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo; even the discovery of the inductive and experimental
\nmethod in Science was not more momentous; for they discovered down to its ultimate processes the method of Yoga and by the
\nmethod of Yoga they rose to three crowning realisations. They
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n 3 Survival of the human personality after death has always been held in India to be
\na proved fact beyond all dispute; the Charvaka denial of it was contemned as mere irrational & wilful folly. Note however that survival after death does not necessarily to
\nthe Indian mind imply immortality, but only raises a presumption in its favour.
\n\t<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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\n

realised first as a fact the existence under the flux and multitudinousness of things of that supreme Unity and immutable Stability which had hitherto been posited only as a necessary theory, an inevitable generalisation. They came to know that It is the one
\nreality and all phenomena merely its seemings and appearances, that It is the true Self of all things and phenomena are merely
\nits clothes and trappings. They learned that It is absolute and transcendent and, because absolute and transcendent, therefore
\neternal, immutable, imminuable and indivisible. And looking back on the past progress of speculation they perceived that this
\nalso was the goal to which pure intellectual reasoning would have led them. For that which is in Time must be born and perish;
\nbut the Unity and Stability of things is eternal and must therefore transcend Time. That which is in Space must increase & diminish, have parts & relations, but the Unity and Stability of things is imminuable, not augmentable, independent of the changefulness
\nof its parts and untouched by the shifting of their relations, and must therefore transcend Space;\u2014and if it transcends Space,
\ncannot really have parts, since Space is the condition of material divisibility; divisibility therefore must be, like death, a seeming
\nand not a reality. Finally that which is subject to Causality, is necessarily subject to Change; but the Unity and Stability of
\nthings is immutable, the same now as it was aeons ago and will be aeons hereafter, and must therefore transcend Causality.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

This then was the first realisation through Yoga, NITYO
\n ‘NITY\u00c2N\u00c2<\/font>M, the One Eternal in many transient.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

At the same time they realised one truth more,\u2014a surprising truth; they found that the transcendent absolute Self of things was also the Self of living beings, the Self too of man,
\nthat highest of the beings living in the material plane on earth. The Purusha or conscious Ego in man which had perplexed and
\nbaffled the Sankhyas, turned out to be precisely the same in his ultimate being as Prakriti the apparently non-conscious source
\nof things; the non-consciousness of Prakriti, like so much else, was proved a seeming and no reality, since behind the inanimate
\nform a conscious Intelligence at work is to the eyes of the Yogin luminously self-evident.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 356<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n This then
\n\t\t\twas the second realisation through Yoga, CH\u00c9<\/font>TANAŞ<\/font>
\n\tCH\u00c9<\/font>TAN\u00c2<\/font>N\u00c2<\/font>M, the One Consciousness in many Consciousnesses. Finally at the base of these two realisations was a third, the
\nmost important of all to our race,\u2014that the Transcendent Self in individual man is as complete
\nbecause identically the same <\/i>as
\nthe Transcendent Self in the Universe; for the Transcendent is indivisible and the sense of separate individuality is only one of
\nthe fundamental seemings on which the manifestation of phenomenal existence perpetually depends. In this way the Absolute
\nwhich would otherwise be beyond knowledge, becomes knowable; and the man who knows his whole Self knows the whole
\nUniverse. This stupendous truth is enshrined to us in the two famous formulae of Vedanta, SO ‘HAM, He am I, and AHAM BRAHM’ ASMI, I am Brahman the Eternal.
\n 
\nBased on these four grand truths, NITYO ‘NITY\u00c2N\u00c2M, CH\u00c9TANAŞ CH\u00c9TAN\u00c2N\u00c2M, SO ‘HAM, AHAM BRAHM’
\n\t\u00c2<\/font>SMI, as upon
\nfour mighty pillars the lofty philosophy of the Upanishads raises its front among the distant stars.
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tChapter III <\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tNature of the Absolute Brahman <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tViewed in the light of these four great illuminations the utterances of the Upanishads arrange themselves and fall into
\na perfect harmony. European scholars like Max Muller have seen in these Scriptures a mass of heterogeneous ideas where
\nthe sublime jostles the childish, the grandiose walks arm-in-arm with the grotesque, the most petty trivialities feel at home with
\nthe rarest and most solemn philosophical intuitions, and they have accordingly declared them to be the babblings of a child
\nhumanity; inspired children, idiots endowed with genius, such to the Western view are the great Rishis of the Aranyaka. But the
\nview is suspect from its very nature. It is not likely that men who handle the ultimate and most difficult intellectual problems with
\nsuch mastery, precision and insight, would babble mere folly in <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 357<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

matters which require the use of much lower faculties. Their utterances in this less exalted sphere may be true or they may be
\nerroneous, but, it may fairly be assumed, they gave them forth with a perfectly clear idea of their bearing and signification.
\nTo an understanding totally unacquainted with the methods by which they are arrived at, many of the established conclusions of
\nmodern Science would seem unutterably grotesque and childish,\u2014the babblings if not of a child humanity, at least of humanity
\nin its dotage; yet only a little accurate knowledge is needed to show that these grotesque trivialities are well-ascertained and
\nirrefragable truths.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

In real truth the Upanishads are in all their parts, allowing
\nfor imaginative language and an occasional element of symbolism, quite rational, consistent and homogeneous. They are not
\nconcerned indeed to create an artificial impression of consistency by ignoring the various aspects of this manifold Universe and
\nreducing all things to a single denomination; for they are not metaphysical treatises aiming at mathematical abstractness or
\ngeometrical precision and consistency. They are a great store of observations and spiritual experiences with conclusions and generalisations from those observations and experiences, set down without any thought of controversial caution or any anxiety
\nto avoid logical contradictions. Yet they have the consistency of all truthful observation and honest experience; they arrange
\nthemselves naturally and without set purpose under one grand universal truth developed into a certain number of wide general
\nlaws within whose general agreement there is room for infinite particular variations and even anomalies. They have in other
\nwords a scientific rather than a logical consistency.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

To the rigorous logician bound in his narrow prison of verbal reasoning, the Upanishads seem indeed to base themselves on an initial and fundamental inconsistency. There are a number of
\npassages in these Scriptures which dwell with striking emphasis on the unknowableness of the Absolute Brahman. It is distinctly
\nstated that neither mind nor senses can reach the Brahman and that words return baffled from the attempt to describe It; more,\u2014that we do not discern the Absolute and Transcendent in Its
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 358<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\treality, nor can we discriminate the right way or perhaps any way of
\n\t\t\tteaching the reality of It to others; and it is even held, that It
\n\t\t\tcan only be properly characterised in negative language and that to
\n\t\t\tevery challenge for definition the only true answer is 
\n 
\nN\u00c9<\/font>TI N\u00c9<\/font>TI, It is not this, It is not that<\/i>. Brahman is not definable, not describable, not intellectually knowable. And yet in spite of
\nthese passages the Upanishads constantly declare that Brahman is the one true object of knowledge and the whole Scripture is in
\nfact an attempt not perhaps to define, but at least in some sort to characterise and present an idea, and even a detailed idea, of
\nthe Brahman.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The inconsistency is more apparent than real. The Brahman
\nin Its ultimate reality is transcendent, absolute, infinite; but the senses and the intellect, which the senses supply with its material,
\nare finite; speech also is limited by the deficiencies of the intellect; Brahman must therefore in Its very nature be unknowable to
\nthe intellect and beyond the power of speech to describe,\u2014yet only in Its ultimate reality, not in Its aspects or manifestations.
\nThe Agnostic Scientist also believes that there must be some great ultimate Reality unknown and probably unknowable to
\nman (ignoramus et ignorabimus) from which this Universe proceeds and on which all phenomena depend, but his admission
\nof Unknowableness is confined to the ultimate Nature of this supreme Ens and not to its expression or manifestation in the
\nUniverse. The Upanishad, proceeding by a profounder method than material analysis, casts the net of knowledge wider than the
\nmodern Agnostic, yet in the end its attitude is much the same; it differs only in this important respect that it asserts even the
\nultimate Brahman to be although inexpressible in the terms of finite knowledge, yet realisable and attainable.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The first great step to the realisation of the Brahman is by the knowledge of Him as manifested in the phenomenal Universe;
\nfor if there is no reality but Brahman, the phenomenal Universe which is obviously a manifestation of
\nsomething <\/i>permanent and
\neternal, must be a manifestation of Brahman and of nothing else, and if we know it completely, we do to a certain extent and in a
\ncertain way, know Him, not as an Absolute Existence, but under <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 359<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

the conditions of phenomenal manifestation. While, however, European Science seeks only to know the phenomena of gross
\nmatter, the Yogin goes farther. He asserts that he has discovered an universe of subtle matter penetrating and surrounding the
\ngross; this universe to which the spirit withdraws partially and for a brief time in sleep but more entirely and for a longer time
\nthrough the gates of death, is the source whence all psychic processes draw their origin; and the link which connects this
\nuniverse with the gross material world is to be found in the phenomena of life and mind. His assertion is perfectly positive
\nand the Upanishad proceeds on it as on an ascertained and indisputable fact quite beyond the limits of mere guesswork,
\ninference or speculation. But he goes yet farther and declares that there is yet a third universe of causal matter penetrating and
\nsurrounding both the subtle and the gross, and that this universe to which the spirit withdraws in the deepest and most abysmal
\nstates of sleep and trance and also in a remote condition beyond the state of man after death, is the source whence all phenomena
\ntake their rise. If we are to understand the Upanishads we must accept these to us astounding statements, temporarily at least;
\nfor on them the whole scheme of Vedanta is built. Now Brahman manifests Himself in each of these Universes, in the Universe of
\nCausal Matter as the Cause, Self and Inspirer, poetically styled Prajna the Wise One; in the universe of subtle matter as the
\nCreator, Self and Container, styled Hiranyagarbha the Golden Embryo of life and form, and in the universe of gross matter
\nas the Ruler, Guide, Self and Helper, styled Virat the Shining and Mighty One. And in each of these manifestations He can be
\nknown and realised by the spirit of Man.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Granted the truth of these remarkable assertions, what then
\nis the relation between the Supreme Self and man? The position has already been quite definitely taken that the transcendent
\nSelf in man is identically the same as the transcendent Self in the Universe and that this identity is the one great key to the
\nknowledge of the Absolute Brahman. Does not this position rule out of court any such differences between the Absolute
\nand the human Self as is implied in the character of the triple <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 360<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nmanifestation of Brahman? On the one hand completest identity of the Supreme Self and the human is asserted as an ascertained
\n& experienced fact, on the other hand widest difference is asserted as an equally well-ascertained and experienced fact; there
\ncan be no reconciliation between these incompatible statements. Yet are they both facts, answers Vedanta; identity
\nis <\/i>a fact in the
\nreality of things; difference is <\/i>a fact in the appearance of things, the world of phenomena; for phenomena are in their essence
\nnothing but seemings and the difference between the individual Self and the Universal Self is the fundamental seeming which
\nmakes all the rest possible. This difference grows as the manifestation of Brahman proceeds. In the world of gross matter, it
\nis complete; the difference is so acute, that it is impossible for the material sensual being to conceive of the Supreme Soul as
\nhaving any point of contact with his own soul and it is only by a long process of evolution that he arrives at the illumination in
\nwhich some kind of identity becomes to him conceivable. The basal conception for Mind as conditioned by gross matter is
\nDualistic; the knower here must be different from the Known and his whole intellectual development consists in the discovery,
\ndevelopment and perfected use of ever new media and methods of knowledge. Undoubtedly the ultimate knowledge he arrives at
\nbrings him to the fundamental truth of identity between himself and the Supreme Self, but in the sphere of gross phenomena this
\nidentity can never be more than an intellectual conception, it can never be verified by personal realisation. On the other hand
\nit can be felt <\/i>by the supreme sympathy of love and faith, either through love of humanity and of all other fellow-beings or directly through love of God. This feeling of identity is very strong in religions based largely on the sentiment of Love and Faith. I
\nand my Father are One, cried the Founder of Christianity; I and my brother man & my brother beast are One, says Buddhism;
\nSt Francis spoke of Air as his brother and Water as his sister; and the Hindu devotee when he sees a bullock lashed falls down
\nin pain with the mark of the whip on his own body. But the feeling of Oneness remaining only a feeling does not extend
\ninto knowledge and therefore these religions while emotionally <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 361<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

pervaded with the sense of identity, tend in the sphere of intellect to a militant Dualism or to any other but always unMonistic
\nstandpoint. Dualism is therefore no mere delusion; it is a truth, but a phenomenal truth and not the ultimate reality of things.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

As it proceeds in the work of discovering and perfecting methods of knowledge, the individual self finds an entry into the
\nuniverse of subtle phenomena. Here the difference that divides it from the Supreme Self is less acute; for the bonds of matter are
\nlightened and the great agents of division and disparity, Time and Space, diminish in the insistency of their pressure. The individual
\nhere comes to realise a certain unity with the great Whole; he is enlarged and aggrandized into a part of the Universal Self, but
\nthe sense of identity is not complete and cannot be complete. The basal conception for Mind in this subtle Universe is DualoMonistic; the knower is not quite different from the known; he is like and of the same substance but inferior, smaller and
\ndependent; his sense of oneness may amount to similarity and consubstantiality but not to coincidence and perfect identity.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

From the subtle Universe the individual self rises in its evolution until it is able to enter the universe of Causal matter,
\nwhere it stands near to the fountain-head. In this universe media and methods of knowledge begin to disappear, Mind comes into
\nalmost direct relations with its source and the difference between the individual and the Supreme Self is greatly attenuated. Nevertheless there is here too a wall of difference, even though it wears eventually thin as the thinnest paper. The knower is aware that
\nhe is coeval and coexistent with the Supreme Self, he is aware in a sense of omnipresence, for wherever the Supreme Self is,
\nthere also he is; he is, moreover, on the other side of phenomena and can see the Universe at will without him or within him;
\nbut he has still not necessarily realised the Supreme as utterly himself, although the perfect realisation is now for the first time
\nin his grasp. The basal perception for Mind in this Universe is Monism with a difference, but the crowning perception of
\nMonism becomes here possible.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

And when it is no longer only possible but grasped? Then
\nthe individual Self entering into full realisation, ceases in any <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 362<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nsense to be the individual Self, but merges into & becomes again the eternal and absolute Brahman, without parts, unbeginning,
\nundecaying, unchanging. He has passed beyond causality and phenomena and is no longer under the bondage of that which
\nis only by seeming. This is the laya <\/i>or utter absorption of Hinduism, the highest
\nnirvana <\/i>or extinction from phenomena of the
\nUpanishads and of Buddhist metaphysics. It is obviously a state which words fail to describe, since words which are created to
\nexpress relations and have no meaning except when they express relations, cannot deal successfully with a state which is perfectly
\npure, absolute and unrelated; nor is it a condition which the bounded & finite intellect of man on this plane can for a moment
\nenvisage. This unintelligibility of the supreme state is naturally a great stumblingblock to the undisciplined imagination of our
\npresent-day humanity which, being sensuous, emotional and intellectual, inevitably recoils from a bliss in which neither the
\nsenses, emotions nor intellect have any place. Surely, we cry, the extinction or quietude of all these sources & means of sensation
\nand pleasure implies not supreme bliss but absolute nothingness, blank annihilation. “An error”, answers the Vedanta, “a pitiful,
\ngrovelling error! Why is it that the senses cease in that supreme condition? Because the senses were evolved in order to sense
\nexternal being and where externality ceases, they having no action cease to exist. The emotions too are directed outwards and
\nneed another for their joy, they can only survive so long as we are incomplete. The intellect similarly is and works only so long
\nas there is something external to it and ungrasped. But to the Most High there is nothing ungrasped, the Most High depends
\non none for His joy. He has therefore neither emotions nor intellect, nor can he either who merges in and becomes the Most
\nHigh, possess them for a moment after that high consummation. The deprivation of the limited senses in His boundlessness is not
\na loss or an extinction, but must be a fulfilment, a development into Being which rejoices in its own infinity. The disappearance
\nof our broken & transient emotions in His completeness must bring us not into a cold void but rather into illimitable bliss. The
\nculmination of knowledge by the supersession of our divided <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 363<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

& fallible intellect must lead not to utter darkness and blank vacuity but to the luminous ecstasy of an infinite Consciousness.
\nNot the annihilation of Being, but utter fullness of Being is our Nirvana.” And when this ecstatic language is brought to the
\ntouchstone of reason, it must surely be declared just and even unanswerable. For the final absolution of the intellect can only
\nbe at a point where the Knower, Knowledge and the Known become one, Knowledge being there infinite, direct and without
\nmedia. And where there is this infinite and flawless knowledge, there must be, one thinks, infinite and flawless existence and
\nbliss. But by the very conditions of this state, we can only say of it that it is, we cannot define it in words, precisely because we
\ncannot realize it with the intellect. The Self can be realized only with the Self; there is no other instrument of realization.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Granted, it may be said, that such a state is conceivably possible,\u2014as certainly it is, starting from your premises, the
\nonly and inevitable conclusion,\u2014but what proof have we that it exists as a reality? what proof can even your Yoga bring to
\nus that it exists? For when the individual Self becomes identified with the Supreme, its evolution is over and it does not return into
\nphenomena to tell its experiences. The question is a difficult one to handle, partly because language, if it attempts to deal with
\nit at all precisely, must become so abstract and delicate as to be unintelligible, partly because the experiences it involves are so
\nfar off from our present general evolution and attained so rarely that dogmatism or even definite statement appears almost unpardonable. Nevertheless with the use of metaphorical language, or, in St Paul’s words, speaking as a fool, one may venture to
\noutline what there is at all to be said on the subject. The truth then seems to be that there are even in this last or fourth state of
\nthe Self, stages and degrees, as to the number of which experience varies; but for practical purposes we may speak of three, the first
\nwhen we stand at the entrance of the porch and look within; the second when we stand at the inner extremity of the porch and
\nare really face to face with the Eternal; the third when we enter into the Holy of Holies. Be it remembered that the language I
\nam using is the language of metaphor and must not be pressed <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 364<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nwith a savage literalness. Well then, the first stage is well within the possible experience of man and from it man returns to be a
\nJivanmukta, one who lives & is yet released in his inner self from the bondage of phenomenal existence; the second stage once
\nreached, man does not ordinarily return, unless he is a supreme Buddha,\u2014or perhaps as a world Avatar; from the third stage
\nnone returns nor is it attainable in the body. Brahman as realised by the Jivanmukta, seen from the entrance of the porch, is that
\nwhich we usually term Parabrahman, the Supreme Eternal and the subject of the most exalted descriptions of the Vedanta.
\nThere are therefore five conditions of Brahman. Brahman Virat, Master of the Waking Universe; Brahman Hiranyagarbha, of
\nthe Dream Universe; Brahman Prajna or Avyakta of the Trance Universe of Unmanifestation; Parabrahman, the Highest; and
\nthat which is higher than the highest, the Unknowable. Now of the Unknowable it is not profitable to speak, but something
\nof Parabrahman can be made intelligible to the human understanding because\u2014always if the liberal use of loose metaphors
\nis not denied,\u2014it can be partially brought within the domain of speech.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nChapter IV <\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\nSo far the great Transcendent Reality has been viewed from the standpoint of the human spirit as it travels on the upward curve
\nof evolution to culminate in the Supreme. It will now be more convenient to view the Absolute from the other end of the cycle
\nof manifestation where, in a sense, evolution begins and the great Cause of phenomena stands with His face towards the Universe
\nHe will soon create. At first of course there is the Absolute, unconditioned, unmanifested, unimaginable, of Whom nothing
\ncan be predicated except negatives. But as the first step towards manifestation the Absolute\u2014produces, shall we say? let the
\nword serve for want of a better!\u2014produces in Itself a luminous Shadow of Its infinite inconceivable Being,\u2014the image is
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 365<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

trivial and absurd, but one can find none adequate,\u2014which is Parabrahman or if we like so to call Him, God, the Eternal,
\nthe Supreme Spirit, the Seer, Witness, Wisdom, Source, Creator, Ancient of Days. Of Him Vedanta itself can only speak in two
\ngreat trilogies, subjective and objective, Sacchidanandam, Existence, Consciousness, Bliss; Satyam Jnanam Anantam, Truth,
\nKnowledge, Infinity.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

SACCHIDANANDAM<\/font>. The Supreme is Pure Being, Absolute
\nExistence, SAT. He is Existence because He alone Is<\/i>, there being nothing else which has any ultimate reality or any being independent of His self-manifestation. And He is Absolute <\/i>Existence because since He alone is and nothing else exists in reality, He
\nmust necessarily exist by Himself, in Himself and to Himself. There can be no cause for His existence, nor object to His existence; nor can there be any increase or diminution in Him, since increase can only come by addition from something external and
\ndiminution by loss to something external, and there is nothing external to Brahman. He cannot change in any way, for then
\nHe would be subject to Time and Causality; nor have parts, for then He would be subject to the law of Space. He is beyond
\nthe conceptions of Space, Time and Causality which He creates phenomenally as the conditions of manifestation but which
\ncannot condition their Source. Parabrahman, then, is Absolute Existence.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The Supreme is also Pure Awareness, Absolute Consciousness, CHIT. We must be on our guard against confusing the
\nultimate consciousness of Brahman with our own modes of thought and knowledge, or calling Him in any but avowedly
\nmetaphorical language the Universal Omniscient Mind and by such other terminology; Mind, Thought, Knowledge, Omniscience, Partial Science, Nescience are merely modes in which Consciousness figures under various conditions and in various
\nreceptacles. But the Pure Consciousness of the Brahman is a conception which transcends our modes of thinking. Philosophy
\nhas done well to point out that consciousness is in its essence purely subjective. We are not conscious of external objects; we
\nare only conscious of certain perceptions and impressions in our <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 366<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nbrains which by the separate or concurrent operation of our senses we are able to externalise into name and form; and in
\nthe very nature of things and to the end of Time we cannot be conscious of anything except these impressions & perceptions.
\nThe fact is indubitable, though Materialism and Idealism explain it in diametrically opposite directions. We shall eventually know
\nthat this condition is imperative precisely because consciousness is <\/i>the fundamental thing from which all phenomenal existence
\nproceeds, so much so that all phenomena have been called by a bold metaphor distortions or corruptions (vikaras<\/i>) of the absolute consciousness. Monistic philosophers tell us however that the true explanation is not corruption but illation (adhyaropa<\/i>),
\nfirst of the idea of not-self into the Self, and of externality into the internal, and then of fresh and ever more complex forms
\nby the method of Evolution. These metaphysical explanations it is necessary indeed to grasp, but even when we have mastered
\ntheir delicate distinctions, refined upon refinement and brought ourselves to the verge of infinite ideas, there at least we must
\npause; we are moored to our brains and cannot in this body cut the rope in order to spread our sails over the illimitable ocean.
\nIt is enough if we satisfy ourselves with some dim realisation of the fact that all sentience is ultimately self-sentience.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The Upanishads tell us that Brahman is not a blind universal Force working by its very nature mechanically, nor even an unconscious Cause of Force; He is conscious or rather is Himself Consciousness, CHIT, as well as SAT. It necessarily follows that
\nSAT and CHIT are really the same; Existence is Consciousness and cannot be separated from Consciousness. Phenomenally we
\nmay choose to regard existence as proceeding from sentience or culminating in it or being in and by it; but culmination is
\nonly a return to a concealed source, an efflorescence already concealed in the seed, so that from all these three standpoints
\nsentience is eventually the condition of existence; they are only three different aspects of the mental necessity which forbids
\nus to imagine the great Is as essentially unaware that He Is. We may of course choose to believe that things are the other
\nway about, that existence proceeds from insentience through <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 367<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

sentience back again to insentience. Sentience is then merely a form of insentience, a delusion or temporary corruption (vikara<\/i>)
\nof the eternal and insentient. In this case Sentience, Intelligence, Mind, Thought and Knowledge, all are Maya and either insentient Matter or Nothingness the only eternal reality. But the Nihilist’s negation of existence is a mere reductio ad absurdum
\nof all thought and reason, a metaphysical harakiri <\/i>by which Philosophy rips up her own bowels with her own weapons.
\nThe Materialist’s conclusion of eternal insentient Matter seems to stand on firmer ground; for we have certainly the observed
\nfact that evolution seems to start from inanimate Matter, and consciousness presents itself in Matter as a thing that appears
\nfor a short time only to disappear, a phenomenon or temporary seeming. To this argument also Vedanta can marshal a battalion
\nof replies. The assertion of eternally insentient Matter (Prakriti<\/i>) without any permanently sentient reality (Purusha<\/i>) is, to begin
\nwith, a paradox far more startling than the Monistic paradox of Maya and lands us in a conclusion mentally inconceivable. Nor
\nis the materialistic conclusion indisputably proved by observed facts; rather facts seem to lead us to a quite different conclusion,
\nsince the existence of anything really insentient behind which there is no concealed Sentience is an assumption (for we cannot
\neven positively say that inanimate things are absolutely inanimate,) and the one fact we surely and indisputably know is our
\nown sentience and animation. In the workings of inanimate Matter we everywhere see the operations of Intelligence operating
\nby means and adapting means to an end and the intelligent use of means by an unconscious entity is a thing paradoxical in itself
\nand unsupported by an atom of proof; indeed the wider knowledge of the Universe attainable to Yoga actually does reveal such
\na Universal Intelligence everywhere at work.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Brahman, then, is Consciousness, and this once conceded, it
\nfollows that He must be in His transcendental reality Absolute Consciousness. His Consciousness is from itself and of itself like
\nHis existence, because there is nothing separate and other than Him; not only so but it does not consist in the knowledge of one
\npart of Himself by another, or of His parts by His whole, since <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 368<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nHis transcendental existence is one and simple, without parts. His consciousness therefore does not proceed by the same laws
\nas our consciousness, does not proceed by differentiating subject from object, knower from known, but simply
\nis<\/i>, by its own right
\nof pure and unqualified existence, eternally and illimitably, in a way impure and qualified existences cannot conceive.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The Supreme is, finally, Pure Ecstasy, Absolute Bliss, ANANDA. Now just as SAT and CHIT are the same, so are SAT and
\n CHIT not different from ANANDA; just as Existence is Consciousness and cannot be separated from Consciousness, so Conscious
\nExistence is Bliss and cannot be separated from Bliss. I think we feel this even in the very finite existence and cramped consciousness of life on the material plane. Conscious existence at least cannot endure without pleasure; even in the most miserable sentient being there must be pleasure in existence though it appear small as a grain of mustard seed; blank absolute misery
\nentails suicide and annihilation as its necessary and immediate consequence. The will to live,\u2014the desire of conscious existence
\nand the instinct of self-preservation,\u2014is no mere teleological arrangement of Nature with a particular end before it, but is
\nfundamental and independent of end or object; it is merely a body and form to that pleasure of existence which is essential
\nand eternal; and it cannot be forced to give way to anything but that will to live
\nmore <\/i>fully and widely which is the source
\non one side of all personal ambition and aspiration, on the other of all love, self-sacrifice and self-conquest. Even suicide
\nis merely a frenzied revolt against limitation, a revolt not the less significant because it is without knowledge. The pleasure of
\nexistence can consent to merge only in the greater pleasure of a widened existence, and religion, the aspiration towards God,
\nis simply the fulfilment of this eternal elemental force, its desire to merge its separate & limited joy in the sheer bliss of infinite
\nexistence. The Will to live individually embodies the pleasure of individual existence which is the outer phenomenal self of all
\ncreatures; but the will to live infinitely can only proceed straight from the transcendent, ultimate Spirit in us which is our real Self;
\nand it is this that availeth towards immortality. Brahman, then, <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 369<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

being infinity of conscious existence, is also infinite bliss. And the bliss of Brahman is necessarily absolute both in its nature and as
\nto its object. Any mixture or coexistence with pain would imply a cause of pain either the same or other than the cause of bliss,
\nwith the immediate admission of division, struggle, opposition, of something inharmonious and self-annulling in Brahman; but
\ndivision and opposition which depend upon relation cannot exist in the unrelated Absolute. Pain is, properly considered, the
\nresult of limitation. When the desires and impulses are limited in their satisfaction or the matter, physical or mental, on which
\nthey act is checked, pressed inward, divided or pulled apart by something alien to itself, then only can pain arise. Where there
\nis no limitation, there can be no pain. The Bliss of Brahman is therefore absolute in its nature.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

It is no less absolute with regard to its object; for the subject and object are the same. It is inherent in His own existence
\nand consciousness and cannot possibly have any cause within or without Him who alone Is and Is without parts or division.
\nSome would have us believe that a self-existent bliss is impossible; bliss, like pain, needs an object or cause different from
\nthe subject and therefore depends on limitation. Yet even in this material or waking world any considerable and deep experience
\nwill show us that there is a pleasure which is independent of surroundings and does not rely for its sustenance on temporary
\nor external objects. The pleasure that depends on others is turbid, precarious and marred by the certainty of diminution and
\nloss; it is only as one withdraws deeper and deeper into oneself that one comes nearer and nearer to the peace that passeth
\nunderstanding. An equally significant fact is to be found in the phenomena of satiety; of which this is the governing law that
\nthe less limited and the more subjective the field of pleasure, the farther is it removed from the reach of satiety and disgust. The
\nbody is rapidly sated with pleasure; the emotions, less limited and more subjective, can take in a much deeper draught of
\njoy; the mind, still wider and more capable of internality, has a yet profounder gulp and untiring faculty of assimilation; the
\npleasures of the intellect and higher understanding, where we <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 370<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nmove in a very rare and wide atmosphere, seldom pall and, even then, soon repair themselves; while the infinite spirit, the acme
\nof our subjectiveness, knows not any disgust of spiritual ecstasy and will be content with nothing short of infinity in its bliss. The
\nlogical culmination of this ascending series is the transcendent and absolute Parabrahman whose bliss is endless, self-existent
\nand pure.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n This then is the Trinity of the Upanishads, Absolute Existence; which is therefore <\/i>Absolute Consciousness; which is therefore Absolute Bliss.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n And then the second Trinity SATYAM JNANAM ANANTAM. This Trinity is not different from the first but merely its objective
\nexpression. Brahman is Satyam<\/i>, Truth or Reality because Truth or Reality is merely the subjective idea of existence viewed objectively. Only that which fundamentally exists is real and true, and Brahman being absolute existence is also absolute truth
\nand reality. All other things are only relatively real, not indeed false in every sense since they are appearances of a Reality, but
\nimpermanent and therefore not in themselves ultimately true.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Brahman is also JN\u00c2<\/font>NAM, Knowledge; for Knowledge is merely the subjective idea of consciousness viewed objectively.
\n\t\t\tThe word Jn\u00e2<\/font>na <\/i>as a philosophic term has an especial connotation. It is distinguished from samjn\u00e2<\/font>na <\/i>which is awareness by
\n\t\t\tcontact; from \u00e2<\/font>jn\u00e2<\/font>na
\n\t<\/i>which is perception by
\n\treceptive and central Will and implies a command from the brain; from prajn\u00e2<\/font>na<\/i>
\n\twhich is Wisdom, teleological will or knowledge with a purpose; and from vijn\u00e2<\/font>na <\/i>or knowledge by discrimination. Jn\u00e2<\/font>na<\/i>
\nis knowledge direct and without the use of a medium. Brahman
\nis absolute Jnana<\/i>, direct & self-existent, without beginning, middle or end, in which the Knower is also the Knowledge and the
\nKnown.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Finally, Brahman is ANANTAM, Endlessness, including all
\nkinds of Infinity. His Infinity is of course involved in His absolute existence and consciousness, but it arises directly from His absolute bliss, since bliss, as we have seen, consists objectively in the absence of limitation. Infinity therefore is merely the subjective
\nidea of bliss viewed objectively. It may be otherwise expressed by <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 371<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

the word Freedom or by the word Immortality. All phenomenal things are bound by laws and limitations imposed by the triple
\nidea of Time, Space and Causality; in Brahman alone there is absolute Freedom; for He has no beginning, middle or end in
\nTime or Space nor, being immutable, in Causality. Regarded from the point of view of Time, Brahman is Eternity or Immortality, regarded from the point of view of Space He is Infinity or Universality, regarded from the point of view of Causality He
\nis absolute Freedom. In one word He is ANANTAM, Endlessness, Absence of Limitation.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Chapter V <\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Maya: the Principle of Phenomenal
\n<\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

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

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Brahman then, let us suppose, has projected in Itself this luminous Shadow of Itself and has in the act (speaking always in the language of finite beings with its perpetual taint of Time,
\nSpace & Causality) begun to envisage Itself and consider Its essentialities in the light of attributes. He who is Existence,
\nConsciousness, Bliss envisages Himself as existent, conscious, blissful. From that moment phenomenal manifestation becomes
\ninevitable; the Unqualified chooses to regard Himself as qualified. Once this fundamental condition is granted, everything else
\nfollows by the rigorous logic of evolution; it is the one postulate which Vedanta demands. For this postulate once granted, we
\ncan see how the Absolute when it projects in itself this luminous Shadow called the Parabrahman, prepares the way for and as
\nit were necessitates the evolution of this manifest world,\u2014by bringing into play the great fundamental principle of Maya or Illusion. Under the play of that one principle translating itself into motion, the great transformation spoken of by the Upanishad
\nbecomes possible,\u2014the One becomes the Many.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

(But this one fundamental postulate is not easily conceded.
\nThe question which will at once spring up armed and gigantic in <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 372<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthe European mind is the teleological objection, Why? All action implies a purpose; with what purpose did Brahman regard Himself as qualified? All Evolution is prompted by a desire, implies development, moves to an intelligible goal. What did Brahman
\nwho, being Absolute, is self-sufficing, desire, of what development did He stand in need or to what goal does He move? This is,
\nfrom the teleological standpoint, the great crux of any theory of the Universe which tries to start from an essential and original
\nUnity; a gulf is left which the intellect finds it impossible to bridge. Certain philosophies do indeed attempt to bridge it by a
\nteleological explanation. The Absolute One, it is argued, passes through the cycle of manifestation, because He then returns
\nto His original unity enriched <\/i>with a new store of experiences and impressions, richer in love, richer in knowledge, richer in
\ndeed. It is truly amazing that any minds should be found which can seriously flatter themselves with the serene illusion that this
\nis philosophy. Anything more unphilosophical, more vicious in reasoning cannot be imagined. When the Veda, speaking not of
\nthe Absolute but of Brahman Hiranyagarbha, says that He was alone and grew afraid of His loneliness, it passes, as a daring poetical fancy; and this too might pass as a poetical fancy, but not as serious reasoning. It is no more than an unreasoning recoil from
\nthe European idea of absolute, impersonal Unity as a blank and empty Negation. To avoid this appalling conclusion, an Unity is
\nimagined which can be at the same time, not phenomenally but in its ultimate reality, manifold, teeming with myriad memories.
\nIt is difficult to understand the precise argumentation of the idea, whether the One when He has reentered His unity, preserves His
\nexperiences in detail or in the mass, say, as a pulp or essence. But at any rate several radical incoherences are in its conception. The
\nAbsolute is imaged as a thing incomplete and awaking to a sense of Its incompleteness which It proceeds in a business-like way to
\nremedy; subject therefore to Desire and subject also to Time in which It is now contained! As to the source whence these new
\nimpressions are derived which complete the incompleteness of Brahman, that is a still greater mystery. If it was out of Himself,
\nthen it was latent in Him, already existing unknown to Himself. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 373<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

One therefore presumes He produced in Himself, since there was no other place to produce them from, things which had no
\nexistence previously but now are; that which was not, became; out of nothing, something arose. This is not philosophy but
\ntheology; not reasoning, but faith. As faith it might pass; that God is omnipotent and can therefore literally create something
\nout of nothing, is a dogma which one is at liberty to believe or reject, but it is outside the sphere of reasoning.)
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

There seems at first to be a fatal objection to the concession of this postulate; it seems really to evade the fundamental question of the problem of Existence or merely carry the beginning of the problem two steps farther back. For the great crux of
\nthe Universe is precisely the difficulty of understanding How and Why the One became Many, and we do not get rid of
\nthe difficulty by saying that it proceeds from the Unqualified willing to regard Himself as qualified. Even if the question How
\nwere satisfactorily met by the theory of Maya, the Why of the whole process remains. The goal of Evolution may have been
\ndetermined,\u2014it is, let us concede, the return of the Infinite upon Itself through the cycle of manifestation; but the beginning of
\nEvolution is not accounted for, its utility is not made manifest. Why did the Absolute turn His face towards Evolution? There
\nseems to be no possible answer to this inquiry; it is impossible to suggest any teleological reason why the Unqualified should
\nwill to look on Himself as qualified and so set the wheel of Evolution rolling,\u2014at any rate any reason which would not be
\nhopelessly at variance with the essential meaning of Absoluteness; and it is only an unphilosophic or imperfectly philosophic
\nmind which can imagine that it has succeeded in the attempt. But the impossibility does not vitiate the theory of Maya; for the
\nVedantist parries this question of the Why with an unanswerable retort. The question itself, he says, as directed to the Brahman,
\nis inadmissible and an impertinence. He, being Absolute, is in His very nature beyond Causality on which all ideas of need,
\nutility, purpose depend, and to suppose purpose in Him is to question His transcendent and absolute nature: That which is
\nbeyond causality, has no need to act on a purpose. To catechise <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 374<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthe Mighty Infinite as to why It chose to veil Its infinity in Maya, or to insist that the Universe shall choose between being utilitarian or not being at all, is absurd; it betrays a want of perfect intellectual lucidity. The question Why simply cannot arise.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But even when the question of utility is set aside, the intelligibility of the process is not established. The Unqualified willing
\nto regard Himself as qualified is, you say, His Maya. But what is the nature of the process, intellectual or volitional, and how can
\nan intellectual or volitional process be consistently attributed to the Absolute?\u2014on this head at least one expects intellectual
\nsatisfaction. But the Vedantist strenuously denies the legitimacy of the expectation. If the “Will to regard” were put forward as
\na literal statement of a definable fact and its terms as philosophically precise, then the expectation would be justifiable. But the
\nterms are avowedly poetical and therefore logically inadequate; they were merely intended to present the fact of Maya to the
\nintellect in the imperfect and totally inadequate manner which is alone possible to finite speech and thought in dealing with the
\ninfinite. No intellectual or volitional process as we conceive will and intellect has really taken place. What then has happened?
\nWhat is Maya? How came it into existence?
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The Vedanta answers this question with its usual uncompromising candour and imperturbable clearness of thought;\u2014we cannot tell, it says, for we do not and cannot know; at least we
\ncannot intelligibly define; and this for the simple reason that the birth of Maya, if it had any birth, took place on the other side
\nof phenomena, before the origin of Time, Space and Causality; and is therefore not cognizable by the intellect which can only
\nthink in terms of Time, Space and Causality. A little reflection will show that the existence of Maya is necessarily involved even
\nin the casting of the luminous shadow called Parabrahman. A thing so far removed in the dark backward and abysm before
\nTime, a state, force or process (call it what we will) operating directly in the Absolute Who is but cannot be thought of, may
\nbe perceived as a fact, but cannot be explained or defined. We say therefore that Maya is a thing
\nanirdeshyam<\/i>, impossible to
\ndefine, of which we cannot say that it is,\u2014for it is Illusion,\u2014 <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 375<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

and we cannot say that it is not,\u2014for it is the Mother of the Universe; we can only infer that it is a something inherent in the
\nbeing of Brahman and must therefore be not born but eternal, not in Time, but out of Time. So much arises from our premises;
\nmore it would be dishonest to pretend to know.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Still Maya is no mere assumption or its existence unprovable! Vedanta is prepared to prove that Maya is; prepared to show what <\/i>it is, not ultimately but as involved in Parabrahman
\nand manifested in the Universe; prepared to describe how <\/i>it set about the work of Evolution, prepared to present Maya in terms
\nof the intellect as a perfectly possible explanation of the entire order of the Universe; prepared even to contend that it is the
\nonly explanation perfectly consistent with the nature of being and the recognized bases of scientific and philosophical truth.
\nIt is only not prepared to represent the ultimate infinite nature and origin of Maya in precise terms comprehensible to finite
\nmind; for to attempt philosophical impossibilities constitutes an intellectual pastime in which the Vedantist is too much attached
\nto clear thinking to indulge.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

What then is Maya? It is, intellectually envisaged, a subjective necessity involved in the very nature of Parabrahman. We have seen that Parabrahman is visible to us in the form
\nof three subjective conceptions with three corresponding objective conceptions, which are the essentialities of His being. But
\nParabrahman is the Brahman as envisaged by the individual self in the act of returning to its source; Brahman externalized by
\nHis own will in the form of Maya is looking at Himself with the curtains of Maya half-lifted but not yet quite thrown back.
\nThe forms of Maya have disappeared, but the essentiality stands behind the returning Self at the entrance of the porch, and it is
\nonly when he reaches the inner end of the porch that he passes utterly out of the control of Maya. And the essentiality of Maya
\nis to resolve Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which are really one, into three, the Unity appearing as a Trinity and the single
\nEssentiality immediately breaking up into manifold properties or attributes. The Absolute Brahman at the inner entrance is the
\nbright triune Parabrahman, absolute also, but cognizable; at the <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 376<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthreshold of the porch He is Parabrahman envisaging Maya, and the next step carries Him into Maya, where Duality begins, Purusha differentiates from Prakriti, Spirit from Matter, Force from Energy, Ego from Non-Ego; and as the descent into phenomena
\ndeepens, single Purusha differentiates itself into multitudinous receptacles, single Prakriti into innumerable forms. This is the
\nlaw of Maya.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But the first step, speaking in the terms of pure intellect, is
\nthe envisaging of the Essentiality as possessing Its three subjective and three objective properties,\u2014Existence; Consciousness;
\nBliss: Truth; Knowledge; Infinity. The moment this happens, by inevitable necessity, the opposite attributes, Nothingness,
\n\tNon-Sentience, Pain, present themselves as inseparable shadows of the three substances, and with them come the objective triad,
\nFalsehood, Ignorance, Limitation; Limitation necessitates Divisibility, Divisibility necessitates Time and Space; Time and Space
\nnecessitate Causality; Causality, the source from which definite phenomena arise, necessitates Change. All the fundamental laws
\nof Duality have sprung into being, necessitated in a moment by the appearance of Saguna Brahman, the Unqualified Infinite
\nbecome Qualified. They do not really or ultimately exist, because they are inconsistent with the absolute nature of Parabrahman,
\nfor even in the sphere of phenomena we can rise to the truth that annihilation is an illusion and only form is destroyed;
\nnothingness is an impossibility, and the Eternal cannot perish; nor can He become non-sentient in whose being sentience and
\nnon-sentience are one; nor can He feel pain who is infinite and without limitation. Yet these things, which we know cannot
\nexist, must be conceived and therefore have phenomenally an existence and a reality in impermanence. For this is the paradox
\nof Maya and her works that we cannot say they exist, because they are in reality impossible, and we cannot say they do not exist, because we must conceive them subjectively and, knowledge being now turned outward, envisage them objectively.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Surely this is to land ourselves in a metaphysical morass! But the key of the tangle is always in our hands;\u2014it is to
\nremember that Parabrahman is Himself only the aspect of the <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 377<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

indefinable Absolute who is beyond Science and Nescience, Existence and Non-existence, Limitation and Infinity, and His sixfold
\nattributes are not really six but one, not really attributes of Brahman, but in their unity Brahman Himself. It is only when we
\nconceive of them as attributes that we are driven to regard Annihilation, Non-sentience and Limitation and their correspondings
\nsubjective or objective, as realities. But we are driven so to conceive them by something datelessly inherent in the infinite
\nWill to live, in Brahman Himself. To leave for a moment the difficult language of metaphysics which on this dizzy verge of
\ninfinity, eludes and bewilders our giddy understanding and to use the trenchant symbolic style of the Upanishads, Parabrahman
\nis the luminous shadow of the Absolute projected in Itself by Itself, and Maya is similarly the dark shadow projected by the
\nAbsolute in Parabrahman; both are real because eternal, but sheer reality is neither the light nor the darkness but the
\nThing-in-itself which they not merely like phenomena represent, but which in an inexplicable way they are. This, then, is Maya in its
\nsubjective relation to Parabrahman. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

In phenomena Maya becomes objectivised in a hundred elusive forms, amid whose complex variety we long strive vainly to find the one supreme clue. The old thinkers long followed
\nvarious of the main threads, but none led them to the mysterious starting point of her motions. “Then” says the Svetasvatara
\n“they followed after concentration of Yoga and saw the Might of the Spirit of the Lord hidden deep in the modes of working of
\nits own nature;” Devatmashakti<\/i>, the Energy of the Divine Self, Parabrahman, is Maya; and it is in another passage stated to
\nhave two sides, obverse & reverse, Vidya and Avidya, Science and Nescience. Nescience eternally tends to envelop Science,
\nScience eternally tends to displace Nescience. Avidya or Nescience is Parabrahman’s power of creating illusions or images,
\nthings which seem but are not in themselves; Vidya or Science is His power of shaking off His own imaginations and returning
\nupon His real and eternal Self. The action and reaction of these two great Energies doing work upon each other is the secret of
\nUniversal activity. The power of Nescience is evident on every <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 378<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nplane of existence; for the whole Universe is a series of images. The sun rises up in the morning, mounts into the cusp of the
\nblue Heavens and descends at evening trailing behind it clouds of glory as it disappears. Who could doubt this irrefragable,
\noverwhelmingly evidenced fact? Every day, through myriads of years, the eyes of millions of men all over the world have
\nborne concurrent and unvarying testimony to the truth of these splendid voyagings. Than such universal ocular testimony, what
\nevidence can be more conclusive? Yet it all turns out to be an image created by Nescience in the field of vision. Science comes
\n& undeterred by prison & the stake tells us that the sun never voyages through our heavens, is indeed millions of miles from
\nour heavens, and it is we who move round the Sun, not the Sun round us. Nay those Heavens themselves, the blue firmament
\ninto which poetry and religion have read so much beauty and wonder, is itself only an
\nimage<\/i>, in which Nescience represents
\nour atmosphere to us in the field of vision. The light too which streams upon us from our Sun and seems to us to fill Space turns
\nout to be no more than an image. Science now freely permitted to multiply her amazing paradoxes, forces us at last to believe
\nthat it is only motion of matter affecting us at a certain pitch of vibration with that particular impression on the brain. And
\nso she goes on resolving all things into mere images of the great cosmic ether which alone is. Of such unsubstantialities is this
\nmarvellous fabric of visible things created! Nay, it would even appear that the more unsubstantial a thing seems, the nearer
\nit is to ultimate reality. This, which Science proves, says the Vedantist, is precisely what is meant by Maya.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Never dream, however, that Science will end here and that we have come to the last of her unveilings. She will yet go on
\nand tell us that the cosmic ether itself is only an image, that this universe of sensible things and things inferable from sense
\nis only a selection of translations from a far vaster universe of forms built out of subtler matter than our senses can either show
\nor imply to us. And when she has entered into that subtler world with fit instruments of observation and analysis, that too she will
\nrelentlessly resolve into mere images of the subtler ether out of <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 379<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

which it is born. Behind that subtler universe also there looms a profounder and vaster, but simpler state of existence where there
\nis only the undetermined universality of things as yet involved in their causes. Here Science must come to her latest dealings
\nwith matter and show us that this indeterminate universality of things is after all only an image of something in our own
\nself. Meanwhile with that very self she is busy, continually and potently trying to persuade us that all which we believe to be
\nourselves, all in which our Nescience would have us contentedly dwell, is mere imagery and form. The animal in us insists that
\nthis body is the real Self and the satisfaction of its needs our primal duty; but Science (of whom Prof. Haeckel’s Riddle of
\nthe Universe is not the concluding utterance) bids us beware of identifying our Self with a mere mass of primitive animal forms
\nassociated together by an aggregating nucleus of vital impulses; this surely is not the reality of Shakespeare & Newton, Buddha
\n& St Francis! Then in those vital impulses we seek the bedrock of our being. But these too Science resolves into a delusion or image
\ncreated by Nescience; for in reality these vital impulses have no existence by themselves but are merely the link established between that material aggregation of animal forms and something within us which we call Mind. Mind too she will not permit us
\nlong to mistake for anything more than an image created by the interaction of sensations and response to sensations between the
\nmaterial aggregation of the body and something that governs and informs the material system. This governing power in its
\naction upon mind reveals itself in the discriminating, selecting, ordering and purposeful entity called by Vedanta the Buddhi,
\nof which reason is only one aspect, intellect only one image. Buddhi also turns out eventually to be no entity, only an image,
\nand Science must end by showing us that body, vitality, mind, buddhi are all images of what Philosophy calls Ananda, the
\npleasure of existence or Will to live; and she reveals to us at last that although this Will divides itself into innumerable forms
\nwhich represent themselves as individual selves, yet all these are images of one great Cosmic Will to live, just as all material forms
\nare merely images of one great undifferentiated Universality of <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 380<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\ncosmic matter, causal ether, if we so choose to describe it. That Will is Purusha, that Universality is Prakriti; and both are but
\nimages of Parabrahman.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n So, very briefly and inadequately stated in some of its main
\nprinciples, runs the Vedantic theory of Maya, for which analytic Science is, without quite knowing it, multiplying a stupendous
\nmass of evidence. Every fresh certainty which this Science adds, swells the mass, and it is only where she is incomplete and
\ntherefore should be agnostic, that Vedanta finds no assistance from her analysis. The completion of Science means the final
\nconquest over Nescience and the unveiling of Maya.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

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

\n
\n Maya; the Energy of the Absolute <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n Maya then is the fundamental fact in the Universe, her dualistic
\nsystem of balanced pairs of opposites is a necessity of intellectual conception; but the possibility of her existence as an
\ninherent energy in the Absolute, outside phenomena, has yet to be established. So long as Science is incomplete and Yoga
\na secret discipline for the few, the insistent questions of the metaphysician can never be ignored, nor his method grow obsolete. The confident and even arrogant attempt of experimental Science to monopolise the kingdom of Mind, to the exclusion
\nof the metaphysical and all other methods, was a rash and premature aggression,\u2014rash because premature; successful at first
\nits victorious usurping onrush is beginning to stagger and fail, even to lose hold on positions once thought to be permanently
\nsecured. The slow resurgence of metaphysics has already begun. Certainly, no metaphysic can be admissible which does not
\ntake count of the standards and undoubted results of Science; but until experimental analysis has solved the whole mystery
\nof the Universe, not by speculation through logic (a method stolen from metaphysics with which Science has no business)
\nbut by experimental proof and hypotheses checked & confirmed by experimental proof, leaving no phenomenon unaccounted
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 381<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

for and no fact ignored,\u2014until then metaphysics must reign where analytic experiment leaves a void. Vedanta, though it
\nbases itself chiefly on the subjective experimental methods of Yoga and admits no metaphysical hypothesis as valid which
\nis not in agreement with its results, is yet willing to submit its own conclusions to the tests of metaphysical logic. The Vedantic
\nYogin shrinks at present, because of certain moral scruples, from divulging his arcana to the crowd, but he recognises that so long
\nas he refuses, he has no right to evade the inquisition of the metaphysical logician. Atharvan & Svetasvatara having spoken,
\nShankara and Ramanuja must be allowed their arena of verbal discussion.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The metaphysical question involved turns upon the nature of Avidya, Nescience, and its possibility in Parabrahman who
\nis, after all, absolute,\u2014Absolute Consciousness and therefore Absolute Knowledge. It is not sound to say that Parabrahman
\nenvisaging Maya, becomes <\/i>capable of Avidya; for envisagement of Maya is simply a metaphorical expression for Avidya itself.
\nNeither can the Vedantist take refuge in the theologian’s evasion of reason by an appeal to lawless Omnipotence, to the Credo
\nquia Impossibile. The Eternal is undoubtedly in His own nature free and unlimited, but, as undoubtedly, He has deliberately
\nbound Himself in His relation to phenomena by certain fundamental principles; He has willed that certain things shall not and
\ncannot be, and to use a human parallel He is like a King who having promulgated a certain code is as much bound by his own
\nlaws as the meanest subject, or like a poet whose imaginations in themselves free, are limited by laws the moment they begin
\nto take shape. We may say, theoretically, that God being Omnipotent can create something out of nothing, but so long as
\nno single clear instance can be given of a something created out of nothing, the rule of ex nihilo nihil fit remains an universal
\nand fundamental law and to suppose that God has based the Universe on a violation of a fundamental law of the Universe,
\nis to kick Reason out of the house and slam the door against her return. Similarly, if the coexistence of Avidya with Vidya
\nin the same field and as it were interpenetrating each other, is <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 382<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nagainst the Law, it does by that very fact become impossible and the theory of Maya will then be proved an error; no appeal to
\nOmnipotence will save it.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n The objection to Avidya may be stated thus that Absolute
\nKnowledge cannot at the same time not know, cannot imagine a thing to be real which is not real; for such imagination involves
\nan element of self-deception, and self-deception is not possible in the Absolute. But is it really a law of consciousness\u2014for
\nthere lies the point\u2014that things can in no sense be at the same time real and unreal, that you cannot by any possibility imagine
\nthings to be real which at the same time <\/i>you know perfectly well to be unreal? The dualist objector may contend that this
\nimpossibility is a law of consciousness. The Vedantin replies at once, Negatur, your statement is refuted by a host of examples;
\nit is inconsistent with universal experience. The most utter and avowed unrealities can be and are firmly imagined as realities,
\nseen as realities, sensed as realities, conceived as realities without the mind for a moment admitting that they are indeed real. The
\nmirage of the desert we know after a time to be unreal, but even then we see & firmly image it as a reality, admire the green
\nbeauty of those trees and pant for the cool shining delight of those waters. We see dreams and dreams are unrealities, and yet
\nsome of them at least are at the same time not positive unrealities, for they image, and sometimes very exactly, events which have
\nhappened, are happening or will happen in the future. We see the juggler throw a rope in the air, climb up it, kill the boy who
\nhas preceded him and throw down his bleeding limbs piecemeal on the earth; every detail and circumstance of the unreal event
\ncorresponding to the event as it would have been, were it real; we do not imagine it to be unreal while it lasts, and we cannot
\nso imagine it; for the visualisation is too clear & consistent, the feelings it awakes in us are too vivid, and yet all the time we
\nperfectly well know that no such thing is happening. Instances of this sort are not easily numbered.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But these are distant, unimmediate things, and for some of them the evidence may not be considered ample. Let us come
\nnearer to our daily life. We see a stone and we note its properties <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 383<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

of solidity and immobility, nor can we by any persuasion be induced to imagine it as anything else but solid and immobile; and
\nwe are right, for it is both: and yet we know that its immobility and solidity are not real, that it is, and to a vision sensible of the
\ninfinitesimal would appear, a world of the most active motion, of myriads of atoms
\nwith spaces between them<\/i>. Again, if there
\nis one thing that is real to me, it is this, that I am vertical and upright, whatever the people at the Antipodes may be and that I
\nwalk in all directions horizontally along the earth; and yet alas! I know that I am in reality not vertical but nearer the horizontal,
\nwalking often vertically up and down the earth, like a fly on the wall. I know it perfectly, yet if I were constantly to translate my
\nknowledge into imagination, a padded room in Bedlam would soon be the only place for me. This is indeed the singular and
\namazing law of our consciousness that it is perfectly capable of holding two contradictory conceptions at the same time and
\nwith equal strength. We accept the knowledge which Science places at our disposal, but we perpetually act upon the images
\nwhich Nescience creates. I know that the sun does not rise or set, does not move round the earth, does not sail through the
\nheavens marking the time of day as it proceeds, but in my daily life I act precisely on the supposition that this unreality really
\nhappens; I hourly and momently conceive it and firmly image it as real and sometimes regulate on it my every movement. The
\neternal belligerents, Science and Nescience, have come in this matter of the sun’s motion, as in so many others, to a working
\ncompromise. To me as an untrammelled Will to live who by the subtle intellectual part of me, can wander through Eternity
\nand place myself as a spectator in the centre of the sun or even outside the material Universe the better to observe its motions,
\nthe phenomenon of the earth’s movement round the sun is the reality, and even Nescience consents that I shall work on it as an
\nacknowledged fact in the operations of pure intellect; but to me as a trammelled body unable to leave the earth and bound down
\nin my daily life to the ministry of my senses, the phenomenon of the sun’s movement round the earth is the reality and to
\ntranslate my intellectual knowledge into the stuff of my daily <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 384<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nimaginations would be intolerably inconvenient; it would take my secure resting-place, the earth, from under my feet and make
\nhavoc of my life in sensation; even Science therefore consents that I shall work on the evidence of my senses as an acknowledged fact in my material life of earth-bounded existence. In this duplicity of standpoint we see as in a glass darkly some image
\nof the manner in which the Absolute wills to be phenomenally conditioned; at once knows perfectly what is, yet chooses to
\nimage what is not, having infinite Science, yet makes room for self-limiting Nescience. It is not necessary to labour the point,
\nor to range through all scientific knowledge for instances; in the light of modern knowledge the objection to the coexistence of
\nVidya & Avidya cannot stand; it is a perpetual fact in the daily economy of Consciousness.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Yes, it may be argued, but this does not establish it as anything more than a possibility in regard to the Absolute. A state of
\nthings true throughout the range of phenomenal existence, may cease to operate at the point where phenomena themselves cease.
\nThe possibility, however, once granted, Vedanta is entitled to put forward Maya as the one successful explanation yet advanced
\nof this manifold existence; first, because Maya does explain the whole of existence metaphysically and is at the same time
\nan universal, scientifically observable fact ranging through the whole Universe and fundamentally present in every operation of
\nConsciousness; secondly, because it does transcend phenomena as well as inform them, it has its absolute as well as its conditioned state and is therefore not only possible in the Absolute but must be the Absolute Himself in manifestation; and thirdly,
\nbecause no other possible explanation can logically contain both<\/i> the truth of sheer transcendent Absoluteness of the Brahman and
\nthe palpable, imperative existence of the phenomenal Universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n 4 Illogical theories, theories which part company with reason,
\ntheories which, instead of basing themselves in observed laws,<\/font>4<\/font><\/sup> Of course I am not prepared, in these limits, to develop the final argument; that
\nwould imply a detailed examination of all metaphysical systems, which would be in itself the labour of a lifetime.
\n\t<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 385<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

take their stand in the void, may be had in plenty. Maya is no theory but a fact; no mere result of logic or speculation,
\nbut of careful observation, and yet unassailable by logic and unsurpassable by speculation.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

One of the most remarkable manifestations of Avidya in human consciousness, presenting in its nature and laws of working
\na close analogy to its parent is the power of imagination,\u2014the power of bodying forth images which may either be reabsorbed
\ninto the individual consciousness which gave them forth or outlast it. Of the latter kind poetical creation is a salient example. At
\na certain time in a certain country one named Shakespeare created a new world by the force of his Avidya, his faculty of imagining what is not. That world is as real and unreal today as it was when Shakespeare created it or in more accurate Vedantic language asrijata<\/i>, loosed it forth from the causal world within him. Within the limits of that world Iago is real to Othello, Othello
\nto Desdemona, and all are real to any and every consciousness which can for a time abstract itself from this world [of] its
\nself-created surroundings and enter the world of Shakespeare. We are aware of them, observe them, grow in knowledge about them,
\nsee them act, hear them speak, feel for their griefs and sorrows; and even when we return to our own world, they do not always
\nleave us, but sometimes come with us and influence our actions. The astonishing power of poetical creation towards moulding
\nlife and history, has not yet been sufficiently observed; yet it was after all Achilles, the swift-footed son of Peleus, who thundered
\nthrough Asia at the head of his legions, dragged Batis at his chariot-wheels and hurled the Iranian to his fall,\u2014Achilles, the
\nson of Peleus, who never lived except as an image,\u2014nay, does not omniscient learning tell us, that even his creator never lived,
\nor was only a haphazard assortment of poets who somehow got themselves collectively nicknamed Homer! Yet these images,
\nwhich we envisage as real and confess by our words, thoughts, feelings, and sometimes even by our actions to be real, are, all
\nthe time and we know them perfectly well to be as mythical as the dream, the mirage and the juggler on his rope. There is no
\nOthello, no Iago, no Desdemona but all these are merely varieties <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 386<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nof name & form, not of Shakespeare, but in which Shakespeare is immanent and which still exist merely because Shakespeare is
\nimmanent in them. Nevertheless he who best succeeds in imaging forth these children of illusion, this strange harmonic Maya, is
\never adjudged by us to be the best poet, Creator or Maker, even though others may link words more sweetly together or
\ndovetail incidents more deftly. The parallel between this work of imagination and the creation of phenomena and no less between the relation of the author to his creatures and the relation of the Conditioned Brahman to His creatures is astonishingly
\nclose in most of their details no less than in their general nature. Observe for instance that in all that multitude of figures vicious
\n& virtuous, wise and foolish, he their creator who gave them forth, their Self and reality without whom they cannot exist, is
\nunaffected by their crimes and virtues, irresponsible and free. The Lord [sentence left incomplete<\/i>]
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n What then? Is this analogy anything more than poetic fancy, or is not after all, the whole idea of Brahman and Maya itself
\na mere poetic fancy? Perhaps, but not more fanciful or unreal, in that case, than the Universe itself and its motions; for the
\nprinciple & working of the two are identical.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Let us ask ourselves, what it is that has happened when a
\ngreat work of creation takes place and how it is that Shakespeare’s creatures are still living to us, now that Shakespeare
\nhimself is dead and turned to clay. Singular indeed that Shakespeare’s creations should be immortal and Shakespeare himself a
\nmere shortlived conglomeration of protoplasmic cells! We notice first that Shakespeare’s dramatic creatures are only a selection
\nor anthology from among the teeming images which peopled that wonderful mind; there were thousands of pictures in that
\ngallery which were never produced for the admiration of the ages. This is a truth to which every creator whether he use stone
\nor colour or words for his thought-symbols will bear emphatic testimony. There was therefore a subtler and vaster world in
\nShakespeare than the world we know him to have bodied forth into tangible material of literature. Secondly we note that all
\nthese imaginations already existed in Shakespeare unmanifested <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 387<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

and unformed before they took shape and body; for certainly they did not come from outside. Shakespeare took his materials
\nfrom this legend or that play, this chronicle or that history? His framework possibly, but not his creations; Hamlet did not
\ncome from the legend or the play, nor Cassius or King Henry from the history or the chronicle. No, Shakespeare contained in
\nhimself all his creatures, and therefore transcended & exceeded them; he was and is more than they or even than their sum and
\ntotal; for they are merely limited manifestations of him under the conditions of time & space, and he would have been the
\nsame Shakespeare, even if we had not a scene or a line of him to know him by; only the world of imagination would have
\nremained latent in him instead of manifest, avyakta <\/i>instead of vyakta<\/i>. Once manifest, his creatures are preserved immortally,
\nnot by print or manuscript, for the Veda has survived thousands of years without print or manuscript,\u2014but, by words, shall we
\nsay? no, for words or sounds are only the physical substance, the atoms out of which their shapes are built, and can be entirely
\nrearranged,\u2014by translation, for example\u2014without our losing Othello and Desdemona, just as the indwelling soul can take
\na new body without being necessarily changed by the transmigration. Othello and Desdemona are embodied in sounds or
\nwords, but thought is their finer and immortal substance. It is the subtler world of thought in Shakespeare from which they have
\nbeen selected and bodied forth in sounds, and into the world of thought they originally proceeded from a reservoir of life deeper
\nthan thought itself, from an ocean of being which our analysis has not yet fathomed.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Now, let us translate these facts into the conceptions of Vedanta. Parabrahman self-limited in the name and form of
\nShakespeare, dwells deepest in him invisible to consciousness, as the unmanifest world of that something more elemental
\nthan thought (may it not be causal, elemental Will?), in which Shakespeare’s imaginations lie as yet unformed and undifferentiated; then he comes to a surface of consciousness visible to Shakespeare as the inwardly manifest world of subtle matter or
\nthought in which those imaginations take subtle thought-shapes <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 388<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n& throng; finally, he rises to a surface of consciousness visible to others besides Shakespeare as the outwardly manifest world,
\nmanifest in sound, in which a select number of these imaginations are revealed to universal view. These mighty images live
\nimmortally in our minds because Parabrahman in Shakespeare is the same as Parabrahman in ourselves; and because Shakespeare’s thought is, therefore, water of the same etheric ocean as that which flows through our brains. Thought, in fact, is one,
\nalthough to be revealed to us, it has to be bodied forth and take separate shapes in sound forms which we are accustomed to
\nperceive and understand. Brahman-Brahma as Thought Creative in Shakespeare brings them forth, Brahman-Vishnu as Thought
\nPreservative in us maintains them, Brahman-Rudra as Thought Destructive or Oblivion will one day destroy them; but in all
\nthese operations Brahman is one, Thought is one, even as all the Oceans are one. Shakespeare’s world is in every way a parable
\nof ours. There is, however, a distinction\u2014Shakespeare could not body forth his images into forms palpable in gross matter
\neither because, as other religions believe, that power is denied to man, [or] because, as Vedantism suggests, mankind has not
\nrisen as yet to that pitch of creative force.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n There is one class of phenomena however in which this
\ndefect of identity between individual Imagination and universal Avidya seems to be filled up. The mind can create under
\ncertain circumstances images surviving its own dissolution or departure, which do take some kind of form in gross matter or
\nat least matter palpable to the gross senses. For the phenomena of apparition there is an accumulating mass of evidence. Orthodox Science prefers to ignore the evidence, declines to believe that a prima facie case has been made out for investigation and
\nshuts the gate on farther knowledge with a triple polysyllabic key, mysticism, coincidence, hallucination. Nevertheless, investigated or not, the phenomena persist in occurring! Hauntings, for example, for which there are only scattered indications in
\nEurope, are in India, owing to the more strenuous psychical force and more subtle psychical sensitiveness of our physical
\norganisation, fairly common. In these hauntings we have a signal <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 389<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

instance of the triumph of imagination. In the majority of cases they are images created by dying or doomed men in their agony
\nwhich survive the creator, some of them visible, some audible, some both visible and audible, and in rare cases in an unearthly,
\ninsufficient, but by no means inefficient manner, palpable. The process of their creation is in essence the same as attends the
\ncreation of poetry or the creation of the world; it is tapas <\/i>or tapasya<\/i>,\u2014not penance as English scholars will strangely insist
\non translating it, but HEAT, a tremendous concentration of will, which sets the whole being in a flame, masses all the faculties
\nin closed ranks and hurls them furiously on a single objective. By tapas
\n<\/i>the world was created; by tapas<\/i>, says the Moondaca,
\ncreative Brahman is piled up, chiyate<\/i>, gathered & intensified; by tapas
\n<\/i>the rush of inspiration is effected. This tapas <\/i>may
\nbe on the material plane associated with purpose or entirely dissociated from purpose. In the case of intense horror or grief,
\nfierce agony or terrible excitement on the verge of death it is totally dissociated from any material purpose, it is what would
\nbe ordinarily called involuntary, but it receives from its origin an intensity so unparalleled as to create living images of itself
\nwhich remain & act long after the source has been dissolved or stilled by death. Such is the ultimate power of imagination,
\nthough at present it cannot be fully used on the material plane except in a random, fortuitous and totally unpurposed manner.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In the manner of its working, then, Imagination is a carefully executed replica of Avidya; and if other marks of her essential
\nidentity with Avidya are needed, they can be found. Both are, for instance, preponderatingly purposeless. The workings of imagination are often totally dissociated, on the material plane at least, from any intelligible purpose and though it is quite possible
\nthat the latent part of our consciousness which works below the surface, may have sometimes a purpose of which the superficial
\npart is not aware, yet in the most ordinary workings of Imagination, an absolute purposelessness is surely evident. Certainly,
\nif not purposelessness there is colossal waste. A few hundreds of images were selected from Shakespeare’s mind for a definite artistic purpose, but the thousands that never found verbal
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 390<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

expression, many of them with as splendid potentialities as those
\nwhich did materialize in Hamlet and Macbeth seem to have risen & perished without any useful purpose. The same wastefulness is
\nshown by Nature in her works; how many millions of lives does she not shower forth that a few may be selected for the purposes
\nof evolution! Yet when she chooses to work economically and with set purpose, she like Imagination can become a scrupulous
\nmiser of effort and show herself possessed of a magical swiftness and sureness in shaping the means to the end. Neither Nature
\nnor Imagination, therefore, can be supposed to be blind, random energies proceeding from an ungoverned force and teleological
\nonly by accident. Their operations are obviously guided by an Intelligence as perfectly capable, when it so wills, of purposing,
\nplanning, fitting its means to its ends, economising its materials and labour as any intelligent and careful workman in these days
\nof science and method. We need therefore some explanation why this great universal Intelligence should not be, as a careful
\nworkman, always, not occasionally, economical of its materials and labour. Is not the truth this that Nature is not universally
\nand in all her works teleological, that purpose is only one minor part of existence more concentrated than most and therefore
\nmore intense and triumphant, while for the greater part of her universal operation we must find another explanation than the
\nteleological? or rather [one that] will at once contain and exceed the teleological? If it had only been Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Edison, Beethoven, Napoleon, Schopenhauer, the creators in poetry, art, science, music, life or thought, who possessed
\nimagination, we might then have found an use for their unused imaginations in the greater preparatory richness they gave to
\nthe soil from which a few exquisite flowers were to spring. The explanation might not be a good one, little more indeed than
\na poetical fancy, but it could have passed for want of a better. But every human being possesses the divine faculty, more or less
\ndeveloped; every mind is a teeming world of imaginations; and indeed, imagination for imagination the opium-smoker’s is more
\nvivid, fertile and gorgeous than Shakespeare’s. Yet hardly in one case out of a thousand are these imaginations of use to the world
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 391<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

or anything but a practical hindrance or at best a purposeless pastime to the dreamer. Imagination is a fundamental energy of
\nconsciousness, and this marvellous, indomitable energy works on without caring whether she is put to use or misuse or no
\nuse at all; she exists merely for the sake of delight in her own existence. Here I think we touch bottom. Imagination is outside purpose, sometimes above, sometimes below it, sometimes united with it, because she is an inherent energy not of some
\ngreat teleological Master-Workman, but of Ananda, the Bliss of existence or Will to live, and beyond this delight in existence
\nshe has no reason for being. In the same way Maya, the infinite creative energy which peoples the phenomenal Universe, is really
\nsome force inherent in the infinite Will to be; and it is for this reason that her operations seem so wasteful from the standpoint
\nof utilitarian economy; for she cares nothing about utilitarianism or economy and is only obeying her fundamental impulse
\ntowards phenomenal existence, consciousness, and the pleasure of conscious existence. So far as she has a purpose, it is this, and
\nall the teleologic element in Nature has simply this end, to find more perfect surroundings or more exquisite means or wider
\nopportunities or a grander gust and scope for the pleasure of conscious phenomenal existence. Yet the deepest bliss is after all
\nthat which she left and to which she will return, not the broken and pain-bounded bliss of finite life, but the perfect and infinite
\nBliss of transcendent undivided and illimitable consciousness. She seeks for a while to find perfect bliss by finite means and in
\nfinite things, the heaven of the socialist or anarchist, the heaven of the artist, the heaven of knowledge, the heaven of thought,
\nor a heaven in some other world; but one day she realises that great truth, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” and to
\nthat after all she returns. This <\/i>is Maya.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

One metaphysical test remains to be satisfied before we can
\nbe sure that Avidya and Vidya, the outcurve and incurve of Maya, go back to something eternally existent in the Absolute
\nand are not created by phenomenal causes. If inherent in the Absolute, Maya must culminate in conceptions that are themselves absolute, infinite and unconditioned. Vidya tapers off into
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 392<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\ninfinity in the conceptions, SAT<\/font> or Pure Existence,
\nCHIT<\/font> or Pure Consciousness, ANANDA<\/font> or Pure Bliss; Avidya rises at her apex
\ninto ASAT<\/font>, Nothingness, ACHETANAM<\/font>, Non-sentience,
\nNIRANANDAM<\/font>, Blisslessness or Misery. Nothingness & Non-sentience are
\ncertainly absolute conceptions, infinite and unconditioned; but the third term of the negative Trinity gives us pause. Absolute
\npain, blank infinite unconditioned and unrelieved Misery is a conception which Reason shies at and Consciousness refuses,
\nviolently refuses to admit as a possibility. A cypher if you like to make metaphysical calculations with, but by itself sheer nought,
\nnowhere discoverable as existing or capable of existence. Yet if infinite misery could be, it would in the very act of being merge
\ninto Nothingness, it would lose its name in the very moment of becoming absolute. As a metaphysical conception we may
\nthen admit Absolute Blisslessness as a valid third term of the negative Trinity, not as a real or possible state, for no one of the
\nthree is a real or possible state. The unreality comes home to us most in the third term, just as reality comes home to us most
\nin the third term of the positive Trinity, because Bliss and its negative blisslessness appeal to us on the material plane vividly
\nand sensibly; the others touch us more indirectly, on the psychic & causal planes. Yet the Nothingness of nothingness is taught
\nus by Science, and the unreality of non-sentience will become clear when the nature of sentience is better understood.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n It will be said that the escape from pleasure as well as pain is after all the common goal of Buddhism & Vedanta. True, escape
\nfrom limited pleasure which involves pain, escape from pain which is nothing but the limitation of pleasure. Both really seek
\nabsolute absence of limitation which is not a negative condition, but a positive, infinity and its unspeakable, unmixed bliss; their
\nescape from individuality does not lead them into nothingness, but into infinite existence, their escape from sensation does not
\npurpose the annihilation of sentience but pure absolute consciousness as its goal. Not
\n\tASAD ACHETANAM NIRANANDAM<\/font>, but
\nSACCHIDANANDAM<\/font> is the great Reality to which Jivatman rises to envisage, the
\n\tTAT<\/font> or sole Thing-in-itself to whom by the force
\nof Vidya he tends ever to return. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 393<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

<\/p>\n

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

\n

<\/p>\n

The Triple Brahman <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Parabrahman is now on the way to phenomenal manifestation; the Absolute Shakespeare of Existence, the infinite
\nKavi<\/i>, Thinker
\n& Poet, is, by the mere existence of the eternal creative force Maya, about to shadow forth a world of living realities out of
\nHimself which have yet no independent existence. He becomes phenomenally a Creator & Container of the Universe, though
\nreally He is what He ever was, absolute and unchanged. To understand why and how the Universe appears what it is, we
\nhave deliberately to abandon our scientific standpoint of transcendental knowledge and speaking the language of Nescience,
\nrepresent the Absolute as limiting Itself, the One becoming the Many, the pure ultra-Spiritual unrefining Itself into the mental
\nand material. We are like the modern astrologer who, knowing perfectly well that the earth moves round the sun, must yet
\npersist in speaking of the Sun as moving and standing in this part of the heavens or that other, because he has to do with
\nthe relative positions <\/i>of the Sun and planets with regard to men living in the earth and not with the ultimate astronomical
\nrealities.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

From this point of view we have to begin with a dualism of
\nthe thing and its shadow, Purusha & Prakriti, commonly called spirit and matter. Properly speaking, the distinction is illusory,
\nsince there is nothing which is exclusively spirit or exclusively matter, nor can the Universe be strictly parcelled out between
\nthese; from the point of view of Reality spirit and matter are not different but the same. We may say, if we like, that the entire
\nUniverse is matter and spirit does not exist; we may say, if we like, that the entire Universe is spirit and matter does not exist.
\nIn either case we are merely multiplying words without counsel, ignoring the patent fact visible throughout the Universe that both
\nspirit and matter exist and are indissolubly welded, precisely because they are simply one thing viewed from two sides. The
\ndistinction between them is one of the primary dualisms and a <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 394<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nfirst result of the great Ignorance. Maya works out in name and form as material; Maya works out in the conceiver of name and
\nform as spiritual. Purusha is the great principle or force whose presence is necessary to awake creative energy and send it out
\nworking into and on shapes of matter. For this reason Purusha is the name usually applied to the Conditioned Brahman in His
\nmanifestations; but it is always well to remember that the Primal Existence turned towards manifestation has a double aspect,
\nMale and Female, positive and negative; He is the origin of the birth of things and He is the receptacle of the birth and it is to the
\nMale aspect of Himself that the word Purusha predominatingly applies. The image often applied to these relations is that of
\nthe man casting his seed into the woman; his duty is merely to originate the seed and deposit it, but it is the woman’s duty to
\ncherish the seed, develop it, bring it forth and start it on its career of manifested life. The seed, says the Upanishad, is the self of
\nthe Male, it is spirit, and being cast into the Female, Prakriti, it becomes one with her and therefore does her no hurt; spirit takes
\nthe shaping appearance of matter and does not break up the appearances of matter, but develops under their law. The Man and
\nthe Woman, universal Adam and Eve, are really one and each is incomplete without the other, barren without the other, inactive
\nwithout the other. Purusha the Male, God, is that side of the One which gives the impulse towards phenomenal existence; Prakriti
\nthe Female, Nature, is that side which is and evolves the material of phenomenal existence; both of them are therefore unborn &
\neternal. The Male is Purusha, he who lurks in the Wide; the Female is Prakriti, the working of the Male, and sometimes called
\nRayi, the universal movement emanating from the quiescent Male. Purusha is therefore imaged as the Enjoyer, Prakriti as the
\nenjoyed; Purusha as the Witness, Prakriti as the phenomena he witnesses; Purusha as the
\ngetter <\/i>or father of things, Prakriti as
\ntheir bearer <\/i>or mother. And there are many other images the Upanishad employs, Purusha, for instance, symbolising Himself
\nin the Sun, the father of life, and Prakriti in the Earth, the bearer of life. It is necessary thus clearly to define Purusha from the
\nfirst in order to avoid confusion in endeavouring to grasp the <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 395<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

development of Maya as the Upanishads describe it.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Parabrahman in the course of evolving phenomena enters
\ninto three states or conditions which are called in one passage his three habitations and, by a still more suggestive figure, his
\nthree states of dream. The first condition is called avyakta<\/i>, the state previous to manifestation, in which all things are involved,
\nbut in which nothing is expressed or imaged, the state of ideality, undifferentiated but pregnant of differentiation, just as the seed
\nis pregnant of the bark, sap, pith, fibre, leaf, fruit and flower and all else that unites to make the conception of a tree; just as the
\nprotoplasm is pregnant of all the extraordinary variations of animal life. It is, in its objective aspect, the seed-state of things. The
\nobjective possibility, and indeed necessity of such a condition of the whole Universe, cannot be denied; for this is the invariable
\nmethod of development which the operations of Nature show to us. Evolution does not mean that out of protoplasm as a material
\nso many organisms have been created or added by an outside power, but that they have been developed out of the protoplasm;
\nand if developed, they were already there existent, and have been manifested by some power dwelling and working in the protoplasm itself. But open up the protoplasm, as you will, you will not find in it the rudiments of the organs and organisms it will
\nhereafter develop. So also though the protoplasm and everything else is evolved out of ether, yet no symptom of them would yield
\nthemselves up to an analytical research into ether. The organs and organisms are in the protoplasm, the leaf, flower, fruit in
\nthe seed and all forms in the ether from which they evolve, in an undifferentiated condition and therefore defy the method of
\nanalysis which is confined to the discovery of differences. This is the state called involution. So also ether itself, gross or subtle,
\nand all that evolves from ether is involved in Avyakta; they are present but they can never be discovered there because there
\n[they] are undifferentiated. Plato’s world of ideas is a confused attempt to arrive at this condition of things, confused because it
\nunites two incompatible things, the conditions of Avyakta and those of the next state presided over by Hiranyagarbha.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

The question then arises, what is the subjective aspect of
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 396<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nParabrahman in the state of Avyakta? The organs and organisms are evolved out of protoplasm and forms out of ether by a power
\nwhich resides and works in them, and that power must be intelligent consciousness unmanifested;
\nmust<\/i>, because it is obviously
\na power that can plan, arrange and suit means to ends; must<\/i> because otherwise the law of subtler involving grosser cannot
\nobtain. If matter is all, then from the point of view of matter, the gross is more real because more palpable than the subtle and
\nunreality cannot develop reality; it is intelligent consciousness and nothing else we know of that not only has the power of
\ncontaining at one and the same time the gross & the subtle, but does consistently proceed in its method of creation or evolution
\nfrom vagueness to precision, from no-form to form and from simple form to complex form. If the discoveries of Science mean
\nanything and are not a chaos, an illusion or a chimaera, they can only mean the existence of an intelligent consciousness present
\nand working in all things. Parabrahman therefore is present subjectively even in the condition of Avyakta no less than in
\nthe other conditions as intelligent consciousness and therefore as bliss.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n For the rest, we are driven to the use of metaphors, and since metaphors must be used, one will do as well as another,
\nfor none can be entirely applicable. Let us then image Avyakta as an egg, the golden egg of the Puranas, full of the waters
\nof undifferentiated existence and divided into two halves, the upper or luminous half filled with the upper waters of subjective
\nideation, the lower or tenebrous half with the lower waters of objective ideation. In the upper half Purusha is concealed as
\nthe final cause of things; it is there that is formed the idea of undifferentiated, eternal, infinite, universal Spirit. In the lower
\nhalf he is concealed as Prakriti, the material cause of things; it is there that is formed the idea of undifferentiated, eternal,
\ninfinite, universal matter, with the implications Time, Space and Causality involved in its infinity. It is represented mythologically
\nby Vishnu on the causal Ocean sitting on the hood of Ananta, the infinite snake whose endless folds are Time, and are also
\nSpace and are also Causality, these three being fundamentally <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 397<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

one,\u2014a Trinity. In the upper half Parabrahman is still utterly Himself, but with a Janus face, one side contemplating the Absolute Reality which He is<\/i>, the other envisaging Maya, looking on the endless procession of her works not yet as a reality, but
\nas a phantasmagoria. In the lower half, if we may use a daring metaphor, Parabrahman forgets Himself. He is subjectively in
\nthe state corresponding to utter sleep or trance from which when a man awakes he can only realise that he was and that
\nhe was in a state of bliss resulting from the complete absence of limitation; that he was conscious in that state, follows from his
\nrealisation of blissful existence, but the consciousness is not a part of his realisation. This concealment of Consciousness is a
\ncharacteristic of the seed-state of things and it is what is meant by saying that when Parabrahman enters into matter as Prakriti,
\nHe forgets Himself.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Of such a condition, the realisations of consciousness do not
\nreturn to us, we can have no particular information. The Yogin passes through it on his way to the Eternal, but he hastens to
\nthis goal and does not linger in it; not only so, but absorption in this stage is greatly dreaded except as a temporary necessity;
\nfor if the soul finally leaves the body in that condition, it must recommence the cycle of evolution all over again; for it has
\nidentified itself with the seed state of things and must follow the nature of Avyakta which is to start on the motions of Evolution
\nby the regular order of universal manifestation. This absorption is called the Prakriti laya or absorption in Prakriti. The Yogin
\ncan enter into this state of complete Nescience or Avidya and remain there for centuries, but if by any chance his body is
\npreserved and he returns to it, he brings nothing back to the store of our knowledge on this side of Avyakta.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

Parabrahman in the state of Avyakta Purusha is known as
\n Prajna, the Master of Prajna, Eternal Wisdom or Providence, for
\nit is here that He orders and marshals before Himself like a great poet planning a wonderful masterpiece in his mind, the eternal
\nlaws of existence and the unending procession of the worlds. Vidya and Avidya are here perfectly balanced, the former still
\nand quiescent though comprehensive, the latter not yet at active <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 398<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nwork, waiting for the command, Let there be darkness. And then the veil of darkness, Vidya seems to be in abeyance, and from
\nthe disturbance of the balance results inequality; then out of the darkness Eternal Wisdom streams forth to its task of creation
\nand Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Child, is born.
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 399<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Philosophy of the Upanishads   Chapter I   Prefatory   The philosophy of the Upanishads is the basis of all Indian religion and morals…<\/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-1555","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\/1555","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=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}