{"id":1987,"date":"2013-07-13T01:38:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1987"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:38:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:45","slug":"26-the-life-divine-draft-a-vol-17-isha-upanishad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/17-isha-upanishad\/26-the-life-divine-draft-a-vol-17-isha-upanishad","title":{"rendered":"-26_The Life Divine – Draft A.html"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n The Life Divine <\/font><\/b>
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\n A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad <\/b>
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\n Veda & Vedanta are the inexhaustible fountains of Indian spirituality With knowledge or without knowledge, every creed in India, sect, school of philosophy, outburst of religious life, great or petty, brilliant or obscure, draws its springs of life from these ancient and ever flowing waters Conscious or unwitting each Indian religionist stirs to a vibration that reaches him from those far off ages Darshana and Tantra and Purana, Shaivism & Vaishnavism, orthodoxy & heresy are merely so many imperfect understandings of Vedic truth & misunderstandings of each other; they are eager half-illuminated attempts to bring some ray of that great calm & perfect light into our lives & make of the stray beam an illumination on our path or a finger laid on the secret & distant goal of our seeking Our greatest modern minds are mere tributaries of the old Rishis Shankara, who seems to us a giant, had but a fragment of their knowledge Buddha wandered away on a bypath in their universal kingdom These compositions of an unknown antiquity are as the many breasts of the eternal Mother of Knowledge from which our succeeding ages have been fed & the imperishable life in us fostered The Vedas hold more of that knowledge than the Vedanta, hold it more amply, practically and in detail; but they come to us in a language we have ceased to understand, a vocabulary which often, by the change of meaning to ancient terms, misleads most where it seems most easy & familiar, a scheme of symbols of which the key has been taken from us Indians do not understand the Vedas at all; Europeans have systematised  
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\n a gross misunderstanding of them The old knowledge in the Vedas is to us, therefore, as a river wandering in dark caverns inaccessible to the common tread It is in the Upanishads that the stream first emerges into open country It is there that it is most accessible to us But even this stream flows through obscure forest & difficult mountain reaches and we only have it for our use at favourable points where the forest thins or the mountain opens It is there that men have built their little artificial cities of metaphysical thought and spiritual practice, in each of which the inhabitants pretend to control the whole river They call their dwelling places Vedanta or Sankhya, Adwaita or Dwaita, Shaivism or Vaishnavism, with a hundred names beside and boast that theirs is the way & theirs is the knowledge But, in reality, each of us can only command a little of the truth of the Sanatana Dharma, because none of us understands more than a little of the Upanishads.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThey become, indeed, easier to us as they come nearer to us in date & the modernity of their language\u2014the stream more accessible as it draws farther away from the original sources and descends more into the plain and the lowlands But even the secret of these more modern revelations is not wholly ours and we delude ourselves if we think we have understood them entirely & need not plunge deeper for their meaning There is much gold in the sands of the bed which no man has thought of disinterring.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe Isha Upanishad is simpler in form & expression than such writings as the Chhandogya & Brihad Aranyaka which contain in their symbolic expressions,\u2014to us obscure & meaningless, disparaged by many as violently bizarre in idea & language & absurd in substance,\u2014more of the detail of old Vedic knowledge The diction of the Upanishad is, for the most part, plain & easy; the ideas expressed by it, when they are not wrested from their proper sense, seem to be profound, yet lucid and straightforward Yet even in the Isha the real import of the closing passage is a sealed book to the commentators, and I am convinced that the failure to understand this culminating strain in the noble progressive harmony of the thoughts has  
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\n\tresulted for us in a failure to grasp the real & complete sense of the whole Upanishad We understand, more or less clearly, the separate sense of the different slokas, but their true connection & relation of the thoughts to each other has been almost entirely missed We have hold of some of its isolated truths; we have lost the totality of its purport.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tFor the Isha Upanishad is one of the most perfectly worked out, one of the most finely and compactly stated inspired arguments the world possesses\u2014an argument not in the sense of a train of disputatious reasoning, logical not in the fashion of an intellectual passage from syllogism to syllogism, but a statement of inspired thought each part of which has been perfectly seen by the revelatory faculty & perfectly stated by inspired expression in itself, in relation to the others & to its place in the whole Not only every sloka, but every word in each sloka has been perfectly chosen & perfectly placed There is a consummate harmony in the rhythm of the thought as well as in the rhythm of the language & the verse The result is a whole system of knowledge & spiritual experience stated with the utmost pregnant brevity, with an epic massiveness & dignity, but yet in itself full and free from omission We have in this Upanishad no string of incoherent thoughts thrown out at random, no loose transitions from one class of ideas to another, but a single subject greatly treated, with completeness, with precision, with the inspiration of a poet possessed by divine truth & the skill of a consummate architect of thought & language The Isha Upanishad is the gospel of a divine life in the world and a statement of the conditions under which it is possible and the spirit of its living.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIt is this harmonious totality of meaning which it is the sole object of my commentary to bring to light It has not been my object to support a particular philosophy or to read Adwaita or Dwaita or Visishtadwaita into its separate verses, and make it useful for metaphysical polemics I hold firmly the belief that the truths of the Upanishads were not arrived at by intellectual speculation, cannot be interpreted by disputation according to the rules of logic and are misused when they are employed merely as mines & quarries for the building of metaphysical systems I  
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\n hold them to have been arrived at by revelation & spiritual experience, to be records of things seen, heard & felt, drishta, sruta, upalabdha, in the soul and to stand for their truth not on logic which they transcend but on vision to which they aspire Those supra-intellectual faculties by which they received the Veda & developed its implications, drishti, sruti & smriti, are also the only means by which their thoughts can be perfectly understood What is it that the Upanishad reveals\u2014this is the question I have set myself to answer; I am indifferent for what set of warring philosophical dogmas its texts can be made an armoury.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tNevertheless in the course of exegesis I have been compelled to come into conflict with the opinions of the Mayavada The collision was inevitable rather than desired, for the Mayavada was the opinion with which I commenced my study of Vedanta It is a system which still attracts the abstract intellectuality in me and represents to me what I may call an intervening & mediary truth of realisation which can never lose its validity But when it seeks to govern human thought & life, to perpetuate itself as the sole truth of Vedanta, I feel that it is in conflict with the old Vedanta, stultifies the Upanishad & endangers or sterilises all our highest human activities without giving us the highest spiritual truth in its place Even so I would have preferred to leave aside all negative criticism of it in these commentaries But that is not possible For it has so possessed India’s ideas about the Upanishads that it has to be cleared away in order that the true sense of this Upanishad at least may shine out from the obscuration For the Isha at least does not support the Mayavada as is indeed evident from the struggle & sense of difficulty in Shankara’s own commentary which reduces its fine thought & admirable expression to incoherence & slipshod clumsiness The error, however lofty, must be removed in order that the plain & simple Truth may reveal itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIn following the end I have had in view there are a few plain and binding rules by which I have endeavoured always to be guided My method does not allow me to deal with the language of the Upanishads in the spirit of the scholar,\u2014not the pride of the Pandit dealing with words as he chooses, but the humility of  
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\n\tthe seeker after truth in the presence of one of its masters is, I have thought, the proper attitude of the exegete In the presence of these sacred writings, so unfathomably profound, so infinitely vast in their sense, so subtly perfect in their language, we must be obedient to the text and not presume to subject it ignorantly to our notions To follow the plain & simple meaning of the words has been therefore the first rule of my exegesis Vidya & Avidya are plain words, with a well-ascertained sense; I cannot turn aside from it to interpret them as knowledge of the gods & ignorance Sambhuti, asambhuti, vinasha are words with fixed meanings; my interpretation must arise directly & simply from those meanings The rhythm and metre of the Upanishads, the balance of the sentences demand their place in the interpretation; for chhandas is of primary importance in all Veda,\u2014I must not disturb that rhythm, metre & balance in order to get over a philosophical difficulty The anustup of the Isha, for instance, is Vedic in its form & principle & not classical; it demands, that is to say, a stanza of two couplets and admits of sandhi in the middle of the pada but not between two padas: I must not take advantage of a possibility of sandhi between two padas possible only in the classical anustup in order to extract from the Upanishad the opposite of its apparent sense And when the meaning of a verse is determined, when it stands without qualification as an integral part of the teaching, I am not at liberty to read in a gloss of my own “for the ignorant” in order to depreciate or annul the validity of the doctrine I am bound by the thoughts of the Sage; I cannot force upon him any ideas of my own to govern & override his apparent meaning\u2014all that I am allowed to do, is to explain his evident textual meaning in the light of my inward spiritual experience but I must not use that experience which may be imperfect to contradict the text.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tShankara has permitted himself all these departures from the attitude of subjection to the text He has dealt with the Upanishad, and with this Upanishad more than any other, as a master of the Sruti & not its servant He has sought to include it among his grandiose intellectual conquests But the Sruti cannot be mastered by the intellect, and although the great Dravidian  
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\n has enslaved men’s thoughts about the Sruti to his victorious intellectual polemic, the Sruti itself still preserves its inalienable freedom, rising into its secret heights of knowledge & being superior to the clouds & lightnings of the intellect, awaiting & admitting only the tread of the spirit, opening itself only to experience in the soul & vision in the supra-intellectual faculty of ideal knowledge I trust I shall not be considered as wanting in reverence for the greatest of Indian philosophers,\u2014in my opinion, the greatest of all philosophers Nevertheless the greatest have their limitations In profundity, subtlety & loftiness Shankara has no equal; he is not so supreme in breadth & flexibility of understanding His was a spirit visited with some marvellous intuitions & realisations, but it would be to limit the capacities of the human soul to suppose that his intuitions exclude others equally great or that his realisations are the only or final word of spiritual knowledge Shankara of the Commentaries on the Upanishad,\u2014although the greatest commentaries on them that we have,\u2014is not so great as Shankara of the Bhashya on the Vedanta Sutras In the latter he is developing in full freedom his own philosophy, which even those who disagree with it must recognise as one of humanity’s most marvellous intellectual achievements; in the former he is attempting to conquer for his own system the entire & exclusive authority of the Sruti A commentary on the Upanishads should be a work of exegesis; Shankara’s is a work of metaphysical philosophy He does not really approach the Sruti as an exegete; his intention is not to use the philosophical mind in order to arrive at the right explanation of the old Vedanta, but to use explanation of the Vedanta in order to support the right system of philosophy His main authority is therefore his own preconceived view of Vedantic truth,\u2014a standard external to the text & in so far illegitimate Accordingly he leaves much of the text unexplained, because it does not either support or conflict with the conclusions which he is interested in establishing; he gives merely a verbal paraphrase or a conventional scholastic rendering Where he is interested, he compels the Sruti to agree with him Without going quite to the same extent of self-will  
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\n\tas the Dwaita Commentator who does not hesitate to turn the famous Tat twam asi into Atat twam asi, “Thou art
\nnot <\/i>that, O Swetaketu,” he goes far enough & uses a fatal masterfulness The Isha especially, it seems to me, is vitiated by the defects of his method, because in the Isha the clear & apparent meaning of the text conflicts most decisively with some of his favourite tenets The great passage on Vidya & Avidya, Sambhuti & Asambhuti bristles for him with stumbling blocks We find him walking amid these difficulties with the powerful but uneasy steps of Milton’s angels striding over the burning marl of their prison house I for my part am unwilling to keep to the trace of his footsteps For, after all, no human intellect can be permitted to hold the keys of the Sruti & fix for us our gate of entrance & the paths of our passage The Sruti itself is the only eternal authority on the Sruti.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tI have also held it as a rule of sound interpretation that any apparent incoherence, any want of logical relation & succession of thought in the text must exist in my deficiency of understanding & not in the Seer’s deficiency of thinking This view I base upon my constant experience of the Upanishads; for I have always found in the end that the writers thought clearly & connectedly & with a perfect grasp of their subject & my own haste, ignorance & immaturity of spiritual experience has always been convicted in the end of the sole responsibility for any defect imputed by the presumption of the logical understanding to the revealed Scripture The text has to be studied with a great patience, a great passivity, waiting for experience, waiting for light & then waiting for still more light Insufficient data, haste of conclusions, wilful ramming of one’s own favourite opinions into the text, wilful grasping at an imperfect or unfinished experience, wilful reading of a single narrow truth as the sole meaning of this complex harmony of thought, experience & knowledge which we call the Veda,\u2014these are fruitful sources of error But if a man can make his mind like a blank slate, if he can enter into the condition of bottomless passivity proper to the state of the calm all-embracing Chaitanya Atma, not attempting to fix what the Truth shall be, but allowing Truth to manifest herself  
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\n in his soul, then he will find that it is the nature of the Sruti to reveal perfectly its own message.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tFor ultimately, as I have already insisted, we can know the subject of the Veda only by the soul & its pure faculty of knowledge, not by verbal scholarship, metaphysical reasoning or intellectual discrimination By entering into communion with the soul of the thinker which still broods behind the inspired language, we come to realise what he saw, and what he put into his words, what waits there to make itself known to us By communion with the soul of the Universe which is behind the soul of the thinker & one with it, we get those experiences which illumine & confirm or correct by amplifying our vision of truth in the Sruti And since no man should lightly hope that he has been able always to think, act & know in this supreme method, it is fitting always to bow down in utter self-surrender to the Master of All, the Lord who as the Knower dwells in himself as name & form & offer to him the truth we have found in the Sruti & the error we have imported in it to do both with the truth & the error whatso He wills in His infinite power, love & wisdom for the purpose of His eternal & infinite Lila.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\tChapter I <\/b>
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\n\t\tThe Upanishads have but one subject without a second and yet by the very nature of that subject they take all life & being & knowledge for their portion Their theme is the One who is Many It is an error which the Adwaitins have popularised to suppose that all the aim of the Upanishads is to arrive at the unconditioned Brahman A very cursory examination of their contents reveals a much wider and more complex purpose They strive rather to develop from various standpoints the identity of the One & the Many & the relations of the conditioned to the unconditioned Granting the unconditioned One, they  
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\n\tshow us how this conditioned & manifold existence consists with, stands in and is not really different from the original unity Starting from the multitudinous world they resolve it back into a single transcendental existence, starting back from the transcendental they show us its extension within itself in phenomena Both the multitudinousness & the Unity, the manifestation & the Manifested they establish in the unknowable Absolute of which nothing can be proposed except that in some way different from any existence conceivable to mind or transferable to the symbols of speech, beyond all conception of Time & Space & Circumstance, beyond Personality & Impersonality, beyond Finite & Infinity It Is They seek not only to tell us of the way of withdrawal from life into unconditioned existence, but also of the way to dwell here in the knowledge & bliss of the Supreme They show us the path to heaven & the true joy of the earth Dwelling on the origin of things & the secret of life & movement, they have their parts of science,\u2014their physics, their theory of evolution, their explanation of heredity Proceeding from the human soul to the Universal, they have their minutely scrupulous, subtle & profound system of psychology Asserting the existence of worlds & beings other than those that live within the compass of our waking senses, they have their cosmogony, theogony, philosophy of Nature & of mental & material nature powers The relations of mind to matter & soul to mind, of men to the gods & the illimitable Master Soul to the souls apparently limited in bodies, have all their authority in the Upanishads The philosophical analysis of Sankhya, the practices of Tantra, the worship & devotion of Purana, the love of the formed Divinity & the aspiration to the Formless, the atomic structure of Vaisheshika & the cardinal principles of Yoga,\u2014whatever has been afterwards strong in development & influential on the Indian Mind, finds here its authority & sanction Not the unmanifested & unconditioned alone but the identity of the Transcendental & the phenomenal, their eternal relations, the play of their separation & the might of their union, is the common theme of the Upanishads They are not only for the anchorite but for the householder They do not reject life  
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\n but embrace it to fulfil it They build for mankind a bridge by which we can cross over from the limited to the illimitable, the recurrent & transitory to the persistent & eternal, but by which also we can recross & cross again with delight & without danger that once unfathomable & irremeable abyss They are God’s lamps that illumine the stairs by which we ascend & descend no longer bound but freely & at will the whole scale of existence, finding Him there in His ineffability, concealed in utter luminousness, but also here in the garden of light & shade, manifest in every being.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe Upanishads have therefore a common field of thought, experience & knowledge; but in that field each has its own peculiar corner or province There is nothing vague or ill-connected in their contents, nothing random in their structure Each sets out with a certain definite thought & aim which it progressively develops & brings to a perfect culmination The Aitareya for instance has for its subject the workings of the Self in the world as creator and master of evolution; creation, evolution, birth, heredity, death, our present human development are the matter of its brief & pregnant sentences The Taittiriya takes for its subject the Anandam Brahman, the constitution of the soul in relation to the Infinite Delight in Conscious Being which is God & the reality of existence & reveals the way & the result of its attainment; it develops for us our gospel of eternal Bliss The Kena starting from the present constitution of consciousness in man affirms the universal Brahman & teaches knowledge & self-surrender to Him as the inscrutable Self & the ever-present Master Similarly, the Isha has for its subject the nature of human life & action lived & done in the light of Vedantic knowledge & supreme realisation It is the gospel of a divine life on earth, a consecration of works, the seed & foundation of Karmayoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe Upanishads are works of inspiration, not of reasoning; therefore we shall not find in them the development of thought or the logical connection of the sentences managed on the system of modern writers The principle of our modern writing borrowed from the Greeks, who were the first nation to replace inspiration by intellect, resembles the progress of the serpent over a field,  
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\n\tslow, winding, insinuating, covering perfectly every inch of the ground The literary method of the ancients resembles the steps of a Titan striding from reef to reef over wide & unfathomable waters The modern method instructs the intellect, the ancient illumines the soul In the latter also there is a perfect logical sequence but this logic demands for our understanding & capacity to follow it something of the same illumination which presided at its construction So profoundly characteristic is this difference that the Greek governs even his poetry by the law & style of the logical intellect, the Indian tends to subject even his prose to the law & style of the illuminated vision The Sage of the Isha is an inspired poet writing of God & life in a style of clear, but massive & epic sublimity, lofty & grandiose, but without the European epical tendency to amplitude & period, exceedingly terse, pregnant, compactly decisive,\u2014every word stored with meaning & leaving behind it a thousand solemn echoes These conditions of his method of composition must be taken into full account when we try to interpret his thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe theme which he has to develop arises from the fundamental doctrine of the Vedanta, Sarvam khalu idam Brahma, Verily all this is the Brahman To realise that everything of which we have separate knowledge by the limited & dividing movement of the mind & senses, is limited & separate only in appearance, but in its reality transcends its appearance and is a manifestation, a form in consciousness, an eidolon, a mask of something absolute, transcendental & without limit,\u2014this is the first necessity of true knowledge according to the early thinkers But when we have realised it, when we know that earth is not earth except in form & idea but the Brahman, man is not man except in form & idea but the Brahman, what then? Can we live in the light of that knowledge or must we abandon life to possess it? For it is obvious that all actions are done through mind with its two great instruments of name & form and if we are to look beyond name & form we must transcend mind & ignore its limitations How can we do that & still act & live in this world as men act & live? Can one keep one’s eyes fixed on the transcendent & yet move with any ease or safety in the  
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\n phenomenal? Must we not remove our thoughts from That (Tat) in order to deal with this (sarvam idam),\u2014just as a man cannot walk safely on earth if he keeps his eyes fixed on the heavens, but must constantly be removing his gaze from the lofty object of his contemplation? And another & deeper question arises Is life worth living when we know the Brahman? is there any joy & use in the phenomenal when we know the transcendent, in the recurrent & transient when we know the persistent & eternal, in the apparent when we know the real? Immense is the attraction of the infinite & unlimited, why should we take pleasure in the finite & fleeting? Does not the charm of phenomena disappear with the advent of this supreme knowledge & is it possible to busy ourselves with the phenomenal when its attraction & apparent necessity are removed? Is not persistence in life caused by ignorance and possible only if there is persistence in ignorance? Must we not abandon the world, if we would possess God? forsake Maya if we would become one in the Atman? For who can serve at the same time two masters & such different masters? We know the answer of Shankara, the answer of the later Adwaitin, the Mayavadin; and the answer of most religious minds in India since Buddhism conquered our intellects has not been substantially different To flee the world & seek God, sums up their attitude There have been notable exceptions, but the general trend hardly varies The majority of the pre-Buddhistic Hindus answered the question, if I am not mistaken, in a different sense & attained to a deeper consummation They answered it in the sense of the Isha Upanishad & the Gita; they held divine life in the Brahman here to be a possibility.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe supreme importance of the question is apparent If the theory of the Illusionist is true, life is an inexplicable breach of Truth, an unjustifiable disturbance in the silence & stillness of the Eternal It is a freak to be corrected, a snare to be escaped from, a delusion to be renounced, a mighty cosmic whim & blunder The results upon the nation which produced this tremendous negation, have been prodigious India has become the land of saints & ascetics, but progressively also of a decaying society and an inert, effete & helpless people The indignant  
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\n\tdenunciation of the Vishnu Purana against the certain results to society of the Buddhist heresy has been fulfilled in the fate of our strongly Buddhicised Hindu nation We see increasing upon it through the centuries the doom announced in the grave warnings of the Gita against the consequences of inaction, “utsideyur ime lokah sarirayatrapi akarmanah sankarasya cha karta syam upahanyam imah prajah buddhibhedam janayed ajnanam karmasanginam” etc The religious life of this country has divided itself into two distinct & powerful tendencies, the Hinduism of the withdrawal from life which has organised itself in the monastery & the hermitage and the Hinduism of social life which has resolved itself into a mass of minute ceremony & unintelligent social practice Neither is pure; both are afflicted with sankara, mixture & confusion of dharmas; for the life of the monastery is stricken with the tendency towards a return to the cares & corruptions of life, the life of society sicklied over & rendered impotent by the sense of its own illusion & worthlessness faced with the superiority of the monastic ideal If a man or a nation becomes profoundly convinced that this phenomenal life is an illusion, its aims & tendencies of a moment & its values all false values, you cannot expect either the man or the nation to flourish here, whatever may be gained in Nirvana For the nation any sustained & serious greatness of aim & endeavour becomes impossible To get through the years of life, to maintain the body and propagate the race, since for some unreasonable reason that is demanded of us, but to get done with the business as soon as possible & escape by sannyasa into the unconditioned, this must obviously be the sole preoccupation of man in a society governed by this negative ideal What is chiefly needed by it is an elaborate set of rules, the more minute & rigid the better, which will determine every action of life both social & religious, so as to save men the labour of thought & action & give them the assurance that they are doing only the nityakarma necessary to life in the body or the shastric karma which creates the least bondage for future lives & are not heaping up on themselves the burden of long continued existence in this terrible & inexplicable nightmare of  
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\n the phenomenal world But the attachment to works remains & it tends to satisfy itself by an excessive insistence on the petty field still left to it We see an exclusive preoccupation with a petty money-getting, with the mere maintenance of a family, with the sordid cares of a narrow personal existence The great ideals, the universalising & liberating movements which have continually swept rajasic Europe & revivified it, have been more & more unknown to us in the later history of our country We have had but one world-forgetting impulse & one
\n\tworld-conquering passion,\u2014the impulse of final renunciation & the passion of self-devotion to the Master of all or to a spiritual teacher It is this habit of bhakti that alone has saved us alive; preserving an imperishable core of strength in the midst of our weakness & darkness it has returned upon us from age to age and poured its revivifying stream always through our inert mass and our petrifying society But for all that our great fundamental mistake about life has told heavily; it has cursed our rajasic activity with continual inefficiency and our sattwic tendencies with a perpetual weight of return to tamas Andham tamah pravishanti ye avidyam upasate Tato bhuya iva te tamo ya u vidyayam ratah Both these sentences of gloom have weighed upon us; we have divided ourselves into the exclusive seekers after the unconditioned knowledge & the exclusive lingerers in the phenomenal ignorance We have made the life divine well nigh impossible in the world, possible only in remote hermitage, desolate forest or lonely mountain We have not known the harmony which the early Vedantins practised; we have given ourselves instead to a great negation which, however inspiring and strength giving by its positive side\u2014for it has its strong positive side\u2014to a few exceptional spirits, cannot be grasped by the ordinary soul even when it is accepted by the ordinary intellect, is not man’s swadharma, and must therefore tend only to destroy his strength & delight in life by imposing upon him an effort beyond our average human capacity, from which it sinks back dispirited, weakened and nerveless No nation, not even a chosen race, can with impunity build its life on a fundamental error about the meaning of life We are here to manifest God in  
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\n\tour mundane existence; our business is to express & formulate in phenomenal activity such truth as we can command about the Eternal; and in order to do that effectively we must answer the riddle set for us of the coexistence of the eternal & the phenomenal\u2014we must harmonise God & Nature on peril of our destruction The European nations have invariably decayed after a few centuries of efflorescence because they have persisted in ignorance, & been obstinate in Avidya We who possess the secret but misunderstand it, have taken two millenniums to decay, but in the end we have decayed & brought ourselves to the verge of actual death & decomposition We can preserve ourselves only by returning to the full & harmonious truth of our religion, truth of Purana & Tantra which we have mistranslated into a collection of fables and of magic formulae, truth of Veda which we have mistranslated into the idea of vacant & pompous ceremonial & the truth of Vedanta which we have mistranslated into the inexplicable explanation, the baffling mystery of an incomprehensible Maya Veda & Vedanta are not only the Bible of hermits or the textbook of metaphysicians, but a gospel of life and a guide to life for the individual, for the nation & for all humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe Isha Upanishad stands first in the order of the Upanishads we should read as of a supreme importance for us & more almost than any of the others, because it sets itself with express purpose to solve that fundamental difficulty of life to which since Buddha & Shankara we have persisted in returning so lofty but so misleading an answer The problem resolves itself into a few primary & fundamental questions Since we have here a great unconditioned unity and a great phenomenal multitudinous manifestation, what is the essential relation between this unity & this manifestation? Given the coexistence & identity of the reality & the phenomenon where is the key to their identity? what is the principle which harmonises them? and wherein lies the purpose & justification of their coexistence & apparent differentiation? The essential relation being known, what is that practical aspect of the relation upon which we can build securely our life here in this world? Is it possible to do the  
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\n ordinary works of our human life upon earth consistently with the higher knowledge or in such a way as to embody in our every action the soul of the divine knowledge & the divine guna? What is that attitude towards God & the world which secures us in such a possibility? Or what the rule of life which we must keep before us to govern our practice and what the practical results that flow from its observance? The present curses of phenomenal life seem always to have been the sorrowful trinity of pain, death & limitation; will these practical results of a Vedantic life include the acceptance of this great burden and this besetting darkness or has mankind even here, even in this body & in this society, an escape from death & sorrow? As human beings what is our aim here or what our hope hereafter? These are the great questions that arise from the obscured soul of man to the Infinite & the conflicting & partial answers to them have eternally perplexed humanity But if they can once be answered, simply, embracingly, satisfyingly\u2014so as to leave no true demand of the God in man upon the world unsatisfied, then the riddle of existence is solved The Isha Upanishad undertakes to answer them all Setting out with a declaration of God’s purpose in manifestation for which the world was made & the golden rule of life by which each man individually can utterly consummate that divine purpose, the mighty Sage to whom as an instrument & channel we owe this wise & noble solution asserts the possibility of human works without sin, grief & stain in the light of the one spiritual attitude that is consistent with the conscious & true knowledge of things & in the strength of the golden rule by which alone a divine life here can be maintained In explaining & justifying these original positions he answers incidentally all the other great human questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe structure of the Upanishad is built up, the harmony of its thought worked out in four successive movements, with the initial verse of each swelling passage linking it in the motion of thought to the strain that precedes Before we proceed to any work of analysis or isolate each note in order to obtain its full value, it will be convenient to have a synthetical understanding of the main ideas that run through the symphony and perceive  
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\n\tsomething of the manner with which they pass into or help each other and build up by their agreement a great and harmonious philosophy of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n II. The First Movement <\/b>
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\n \t“For the Lord all this is a habitation, yea, whatsoever single thing is moving in this universe of motion: by that abandoned thou shouldst enjoy; neither do thou covet any man’s possession Doing verily works in this world thou should wish to live a hundred years, for thus it is with thee & not otherwise; action clingeth not to a man Sunless, truly are those worlds and enveloped in blind gloom whither they passing hence arrive who are hurters of their own souls ” So runs the first movement of the Upanishad.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIn the very beginning the Rishi strikes the master note to which all the rest of the harmony vibrates, lays down the principle of which every Upanishad is an exposition God & the World,\u2014these are the two terms of all our knowledge From their relation we start, to their relation in union or withdrawal from union all our life & activity return When we have known what the world is, when we have exhausted Science & sounded all the fathomless void, we have still to know what God is, & unless we know what God is, we know nothing fundamental about the world Tasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam He being known, all the rest is known Material Philosophy & Science have to admit in the end that because they do not know the Transcendental, therefore they cannot be sure about the phenomenal They can only say that there are these phenomena which represent themselves as acting in these processes to the thought & senses, but whether their appearance is their reality, no man can say The end of all Science is Agnosticism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe Rishi takes these two great terms, God, one, stable & eternal, the world shifting, multitudinous, transient For this great flux of Nature, by which we mean a great cosmic motion & activity, shows us nowhere a centre of knowledge & intelligent control, yet its every movement, denoting law, pointing  
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\n to harmony, speaks of a centre somewhere of knowledge & intelligent control It shows nowhere any definite unity except that of sum and process, yet every little portion of it the more we analyse, cries out more loudly, “There is One & not many ” Every single thing in it is perishable & mutable, yet for ever its ancient & inevitable movements thunder in our ears the chant of the immutable & eternal She is one term, Prakriti, jagati, the ever moving, with every object, small or great, a mere knot of motion, jagat; that which she obeys & worships & of which she speaks to us always & yet seems always by the whirl of her motions in mind & matter to conceal, is the Lord, the Purusha He is that One, Eternal & Immutable; it is He that is the centre of knowledge & eternal control He is Ish, the Lord The relation between the world & its Lord on which the Rishi bids us fix as the one on whose constant & established realisation we can best found the thoughts & activities of the Life Divine, is the relation of the Inhabitant & His inhabitation For habitation by Him it was made, not only as a whole, but every object which it has built up, is building or will build in the whirl & race of its eternal movement, from the god to the worm, from the Sun to the atom & the grain of dust to the constellations & their group, each, small or great, mean or mighty, sweet or sombre, beautiful or repulsive, is his dwelling place & that which dwells in it, is the Lord.1<\/font><\/sup>
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\n We start then with this truth We have seen that the problem of life involves two essential questions; first, the essential relation between the Transcendent & the phenomenal, secondly, that practical aspect of the relation on which we can build securely our life & action in the world The Rishi starts with the practical relation This is the knowledge which we must win, the attitude which having attained we must guard & keep Looking around upon the multitude of objects in the world, we have to see so many houses & in each an inhabitant, one inhabitant only, He
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\n\twho has built also the whole & inhabits the whole, its Lord When we see the infinite ether containing this multitude of suns & solar systems, we are not to forget or ignore what we see but we must look on infinity as a house of manifest being & in it one great infinite indwelling Consciousness, Allah, Shiva, Krishna, Narayana, God When we see around us man & animal & leaf & clod, king & beggar, philosopher & peasant, saint & criminal, we must look on these names & forms as so many houses of being and within each the same great inhabitant, Allah, Shiva, Krishna, Narayana, the Lord Manhood & animality, animation & inanimation, wealth & poverty, wisdom & ignorance, sainthood & criminality are the robes he wears, but the wearer is One In every man I meet, I must recognise the Lord I adore In friend & stranger, in my lover & my slayer, I must see equally, since I also must be He, myself This is the great secret of existence & the condition which we must first satisfy if we wish to live divinely & be divine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThis is, internally, our necessary attitude towards God & the world But to translate an internal attitude into the terms of action, it is our experience that a rule of life is needed The purpose for which a householder builds himself a mansion & dwells in it, can only be one; it is to live & enjoy So it is with the Purusha & Prakriti; their relation is the enjoyment of the one by the other God has made this world in His own being that He may in mind & other principles live phenomenally in phenomena & enjoy this phenomenal existence even while secretly or openly He enjoys also His transcendent existence The Soul or God is, says the Gita, Ishwara, bharta, jnata, anumanta; the Master for whose pleasure Prakriti acts, the Indweller who fills her with his being & supports her actions, the Knower who watches & takes into His cognisance her activities, the anumanta who gives or withholds or after giving withdraws His consent and as He gives, continues or withdraws it, things begin, endure or cease But He is also & preeminently bhokta, her enjoyer For all this is bhogartham\u2014for the sake of enjoyment But in practice we find that we are not Ish, but anish, not master, but slave; not jnata & anumanta, but ajna, not knowing & controlling, but  
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\n ignorant, clouded, struggling for knowledge & mastery; not an immortal enjoyer in delight, but victim of sorrow, death & limitation Limited, we struggle to enlarge ourselves & our scope; unpossessed of our desire, we demand & we strive; unattaining, reacted upon by hostile forces, we are full of sorrow & racked by pain We see others possess & ourselves lack & we struggle to dispossess them and possess in their stead The facts of life as we live it contradict at every turn the sublime dogma of the Vedantist What are we to do? To struggle with God in others & God in the world or live only for God in others & not at all for God in ourselves?<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIn his second line the Rishi utters his golden rule of life which supplies us with the only practical solution of the difficulty To enjoy as we enjoy now is to lift to our lips a cup of mixed honey & poison; to abandon the world is to contradict God’s purpose by avoiding the problem instead of solving it; to sacrifice self to others is a half solution which, by itself, limits the divine lila & stultifies our occupation of the body The fulfilment of self both in our own joy & in the joy of others & in the joy of the whole world is the object of our life How then is the problem to be solved? By that abandoned thou shouldst enjoy; do not thou covet any man’s possession Tena, that, refers back to yat kincha jagat By that you have to enjoy\u2014for the world and all in it is meant for the purpose of enjoyment, it is the means, movement & medium created by the Lord for the purpose, but by that abandoned, by that renounced You have not to cast the world & its objects themselves away from you, for then you defeat your own object It is a deeper, a truer renunciation that is asked of us Everything in the world has to be renounced and yet, through the thing so renounced, tena tyaktena, you have to enjoy, bhunjithah
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\n\tordinary sense of the root is to enjoy, & it is clearly the sense which the Rishi intended; for the collocation of the strongly opposite ideas of tyaga & bhoga can no more be an accident than the significant collocation of jagati & jagat in the preceding lines Nowhere in this Upanishad is there random writing; rather every word is made to carry its entire weight & even run over with fullness of meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIn order to make his meaning perfectly clear the Rishi adds “Do not covet” This then is the renunciation demanded, not the renunciation of the thing itself, but the renunciation of the attachment, the craving, the demand\u2014when that is renounced, then only is enjoyment possible, then only can the bitterness be cast out of the cup & only the pure honey remain For the reason that we are anisha is because we demand He who is Lord & Master, does not struggle & demand; he does not need even to command; for Prakriti knows His will & hastens to obey it If we would live divinely, we must realise the Lord in ourselves, we must have sadharmya with Him & be as He What the Lord wills for His lila in this habitation, Prakriti will bring; what Prakriti brings for our lila, is what the Lord wills That which struggles in us, craves, fights, covets, struggles, weeps, is not the pure Self but the mind,\u2014which, as we shall find, weeps & struggles because ensnared in limitations it does not understand,\u2014not Ish, but jagat, the movement, the whirl, one eddy in the shifting & struggling movement & clash of forces\u2014perfectly guided by Isha, but to our human understandings unguided or ill-guided\u2014which we call Prakriti In this great knowledge & its practice we can become desireless & calm, august, joyous, free from anxiety, pain, grief, sama, udasina, yet full of delight in all that we here in Prakriti,\u2014Purushah Prakritistha,\u2014say, see & do.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tImmediately the great recurring problem presents itself of works and the cessation from works,\u2014the ancient crux which it is so easy to get rid of by a trenchant act of logic, so hard to solve in harmony with the actual facts of existence To the ordinary mind action seems impossible or purposeless without desire; to the logical mind it seems inevitable that the more one penetrates into the supreme calm, the farther one must move  
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\n from all impulse to action,\u2014that pravritti & nivritti, shama & karma are eternally opposed Shankara, therefore, deciding all things by his triumphant & inexorable logic, insists that action is inconsistent with the state divine In practice the seeker after perfection finds that calm, renunciation, joy, peace seem only to be secure when one rests motionlessly established in the impersonal Brahman; freedom of desire is only easy by freedom from activity Does not then enjoyment without demand or craving, does not enjoyment by the thing renounced mean enjoyment of the renunciation & not of the thing itself? Is it not the enjoyment of the eremite, eremite in soul if not in body, the spectator watching the action of the world but himself no part of it, that is alone possible to the desireless mind? And even if it is not the sole possible enjoyment, is it not the superior & preferable? Who that has self-enjoyment in the soul, would condescend to the enjoyment of external objects? Or if he condescended, it is the greater bliss of other worlds that would attract him and not the broken shreds which are all this world’s joys, the hampered fulfilments which are all this world’s actualisation of infinite possibility.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tTo all these ancient questionings the reply of the Upanishad is categorical, explicit, unflinching “Doing verily works here one should wish to live a hundred years; thus it is with thee & it is not otherwise than this; action cleaveth not to a man ” It is not surprising that the great Shankara with his legacy of Buddhist pessimism, his rejection of action, his sense of the nullity of the world, faced by this massive & tremendous asseveration should have put it aside by his favourite device of devoting it to the service of unenlightened minds, although it occurs apparently as an integral portion of the argument & there is not a hint or a trace of its being intended as a contradiction or qualification of the main teaching, although too this interpretation is stultified both by the run of the two lines & by the immediate occurrence of the next verse,\u2014but every incongruity & impossibility is to be accepted rather than suffer such an assertion to stand as the teaching of the Sruti Nor is it surprising that Shankara’s greatest follower, Vidyaranya, feeling perhaps that his master’s dealings  
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\n\twith the text in this commentary were of the most arbitrary & violent, should have preferred to exclude the Isha from his list of authoritative Upanishads But to us, uncommitted to any previous theory, this sloka offers no difficulty but is rather an integral & most illumining step in the development of a great & liberating doctrine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tKurvanneva, says the Rishi, having his eye on the great dispute Thou shalt do works & not abstain from doing them and the works are the works of this material world, those that are to be done iha, here, in this life & body Doing his works in this world a man shall be joyously willing to live the full span of years allowed to the mortal body If he grows weary, if he seeks to abridge it, if he has haste in his soul for the side beyond death, he is not yet an enlightened soul, not yet divine With this great admission the Vedanta can no longer be a mere ascetic gospel Life\u2014full & unabridged in its duration,\u2014full and uncontracted in its activity is accepted, welcomed, consecrated to divine use And the Rishi affirms his reason for acceptance\u2014because so it is with thee & it is not otherwise than this Because in other words this is the law of our being and this is the will of the Eternal No man, as the Gita clearly teaches, can abstain from works, for even the state of withdrawal of the ascetic, even the self-collected existence of the silent Yogin is an act and an act of tremendous effect & profoundest import So long as we are in manifest existence, so long we are in the jagati using, influencing & impressing ourselves on the jagat and we cannot escape from the necessity self-imposed on Himself by God within us And it is so imposed for the reason already stated, because He has made this world for His habitation & as a means for His enjoyment & a thing for His delight\u2014& this his great will & purpose no man can be allowed to frustrate The wise mind, the illumined soul knowing this truth makes no vain attempt to square this circle; he accepts that which God intends fully & frankly and only seeks the best way to fulfil God in this existence which he occupies on the way to another For he knows that bondage and freedom are states of the outer mind, not of the inner spirit; for there is none free & none bound, none panting after liberation  
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\n & none fleeing from bondage, but only the Eternal rejoicing secretly or manifestly in His innumerable habitations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tBut in that case we are eternally bound by the chain of our works, nailed helplessly to the wheel of karma? Not so; for the wheel of karma is an error and the chain of our works is a grand illusion “Action clingeth not to a man ” Bondage is not the result of works, & liberation is not the result of cessation of works Bondage is a state of the mind; liberation is another state of the mind When through the principle of desire in the mind the soul, the Ish, the lord, mixes himself up in the whirl of Prakriti, he sees himself in mental consciousness as if carried forward in the stream of causality; he seems to the mind in him to be bound by the effects of his works; when he relinquishes desire, then he recovers his lordship\u2014which in his higher being he has never lost\u2014and appears to himself what he has always been in reality, free in his being, swarat, samrat It follows then that the way to liberate oneself is not to renounce works but to rise from mind to Supra-mind, from the consciousness of mental being, sambhava, to the consciousness of self-being, swayambhava or asambhuti It is necessary to remember oneself, but it is not necessary to forget phenomena For action is the movement of Prakriti and the chain of action is nothing more terrible or mystic than the relation of cause & effect That chain does not bind the Master; action leaves no stain on the soul The works of the liberated man produce an effect indeed, but on the stream of Prakriti, not on the soul which is above its action and not under it, uses action & is not victimised by it, determines action & is not determined by it But if action in its nature bound the soul, then freedom here would be impossible It does not & cannot; the soul allows mind to mix itself up with its works, buddhir lipyate, but the action does not adhere to the soul, na karma lipyate nare The fear of action is Maya; the impossibility of combining action with calm & renunciation is a false sanskara Nivritti or calm is the eternal state & very nature of the soul, pravritti is in manifestation the eternal state and very nature of Prakriti Their coexistence & harmony is not only possible, but it is the secret of the world obscured only by ignorance in the mind The enemy therefore is  
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\n\tnot action, but ignorance; not works bind us, but works done in the state of ignorance give us the illusion of bondage The idea of separateness, of limitation with its fruit of desire, internal struggle, disappointment, grief, pain,\u2014this alone is our stumbling block Abolish it, see God alone everywhere & all difficulty disappears Nivritti & Pravritti, tyaga & bhoga move harmoniously to the perfect fulfilment of the divine purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThose important enunciations completed, the Sage proceeds to a minor, but not inessential effect of the knowledge he is developing\u2014the life after this one which we have to use here, our progress into worlds beyond The gati, trans-mortal journey or destination of the soul, occupied profoundly the Vedantic mind as it has occupied humanity in all except in its brief periods of entire materialistic this-worldliness As yet the Sage does not proceed to any positive statement; but by a negative movement he indicates the importance of the question Our life here is only one circumstance in our progress\u2014the fundamental circumstance, indeed, since earth is the pratistha or pedestal of our consciousness in manifest being,\u2014but still the fundamental is not the final, the pratistha is not the consummation but only the means to the consummation It is the first step in our journey, the initial movement in the triple stride of Vishnu There is beyond it a second step, from which we constantly return till we are ready here for the third, for the consummation Our future state depends on our fullness at the time of our passage, on our harmonious progress towards divine being That is the hidden thing in us which we have to develop We are to become atmavan, to possess our divine being, to disengage & fulfil our real self Those who fall from this development, who turn aside from it are self-hurters or, to take the full vigorous sense of the word used, self-slayers Not that God in us can be slain, for death of the soul is impossible,\u2014but there may be temporary perdition of the apparent divinity by the murder of its
\n\tself-expression And to this we may arrive either by wilfulness of passion or by intellectual wilfulness Instead of becoming gods, Suras, images of the Most High, the Paratpara Purusha in His effulgent glory, we may become misrepresentations of Him, false  
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\n because distorted images, distorted by imperfection, distorted by onesidedness, Titans, Asuras or else souls unillumined by the sun of Knowledge & if illumined at all then only by false lights which eventually become eclipsed in darkness Our after state will be Asurya, sunless, unillumined To what worlds do we then journey?
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\n The ordinary reading of the first word in the third verse ˘ of the Upanishad, is Asurya, Titanic, but there is a possible  variation Asurya, sunless The substantial sense resulting from both readings is the same, but the colour given will be different The Titans or Asuras of the Veda are souls of mere undisciplined might They are those who found themselves not on light & calm but on asu, the vital force & might which is the basis of all energetic & impetuous feeling & action The self-willed ones, who from temperamental passion wreck themselves by the furious pursuit in desire of a false object or from intellectual passion wreck themselves by the blind pursuit in belief of a false idea, they follow a path because it is their own from Titanical attachment, from an immense though possibly lofty egoism Mole ruit sua They fall by their own mass, they collapse by excess of greatness They need not be ignoble souls, but may even seem sometimes more noble than the gods & their victorious legions When they hack & hew at the god within them, it may be in tremendous devotion to a principle; when they subdue, cloud & torture themselves till they stumble forward into misery & night, till they become demoniac in nature, it may be in furious & hungry insistence on a great aspiration They may be grandiosely mighty like Hiranyakashipu, ostentatiously largehearted like Bali, fiercely self-righteous like the younger Prahlada But they fall whether great or petty, noble or ignoble & in their fall they are thrust down by Vishnu to Patala, to the worlds of delusion & shadow, or of impenetrable gloom, because they have used the heart or intellect to serve passion & ignorance, enslaved the spiritual to the material & vital elements & subordinated the man in them to the Naga, the serpent The Naga is the symbol of the mysterious earthbound force in man Wisest he of the beasts of the field, but still a beast of the field,  
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\n\tnot the winged Garuda revered to be the upbearer of divinity who opens his vans to the sunlight and soars to the highest seat ˘ of Vishnu If we read Asurya we shall then have to translate “Verily it is to the worlds of the Titans, worlds enveloped in blind gloom, that they after passing hence resort who are
\n\tself-slayers ” Otherwise it is the worlds farthest removed from the Sun, our symbol & principle of divine Knowledge There are materialised states of darkness in the conscious being in which they must work out the bewilderment & confusion they have fastened on themselves by an obstinate persistence in self-will & ignorance In either case the intention of the Sage is evident from the later passages of this Upanishad Whether we follow exclusively after Avidya or exclusively after Vidya, we go equally astray, exclusiveness means ignorance, exclusiveness means confusion & division of the indivisible Brahman, & persistence in such error is an obstinacy fatal to the soul in its immediate prospects Temporarily\u2014because eternal perdition is impossible,\u2014it fails to cross successfully over death & enters into trans-mortal darkness Those who accept the unity of the Brahman, who see in Vidya & Avidya only vyavahara, light & shadow reflected in Him for the use of self-expression in phenomena, who live in the knowledge of the One in the Many, embracing like Brahman all being in themselves, rejecting nothing, preferring nothing, bearing everything, effecting everything, infinite in calm by renunciation, infinite in might & bliss by enjoyment, they are men perfected, they are the siddhas Even those who not yet attaining, follow faithfully this law & this ideal journey onwards in the way of their self-fulfilment and are lifted by all-purifying Agni to the regions of the Sun where they possess their perfect oneness & receive their consummate felicity With this warning (for the promise comes afterward) closes the first movement of the Upanishad.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n God then & the world are before us, the Inhabitant to be recognised as the Lord of things even when He appears otherwise &   388<\/i>
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\n His habitation to be regarded merely as a movement set going by Him for phenomenal purposes, a stream of form & action by which He can enjoy His own conditioned being,\u2014God & the world are to be possessed by a pure & infinite enjoyment, Ananda, or bliss which depends on a perfect renunciation not of the world, but of the limited struggle & the ignorant attachment, of the demand & the groping These poor & imperfect movements [are] to be replaced by a mighty calm and a divine satisfaction We are not to renounce works, which do not & cannot stain the soul or bind it, but to be liberated through acceptance of works in a luminous knowledge of their divine use & nature; not mutilation of life is to be our ideal, but fulfilment through life of the intention of the Most High in His phenomenal manifestation If we mutilate life through self-will & ignorance we imprison ourselves after death in worlds of confusion & darkness and here like a ship befogged & astray in dense sea mists are hindered & long delayed in our divine voyage.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n But now farther questions arise Stated by itself & without development or qualification the first line of this great teaching, although fundamental to the practical living of the divine life and the sufficient & right attitude for its fulfilment might yet, like all trenchant assertions, too positively & exclusively taken, lead us into a profound error & misunderstanding God & the World, the Movement & the Dweller in the movement, that is the practical relation between the unconditioned & the phenomenal which we have to accept as the unalterable basis of our rule of right living But this general movement, with the particular knots in it of apparent movement & apparent status which we call formations or objects,\u2014what is it? Movement of Mahat or movement of what nature,\u2014real or unreal? And the inhabitant, is he different from His habitation? If He is different & the habitation is real, what becomes of the universal unity Vedanta teaches and how are we not handed over to duality and a fundamental disparity, if not a fundamental opposition? It is to remove this possible misunderstanding that the Rishi now proceeds to a completer though not yet entirely complete statement of universal existence He has stated the practical relation,  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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

\n\the now states the essential relation It amounts in effect to the fundamental tenet of Vedanta in the Upanishads “Sarvam khalu idam Brahma ” All this, in truth, is the Brahman He says “There is One who unmoving is swifter than mind, neither have the gods reached It for it goes always in front Standing, it outstrips others as they run In It Matariswan sets activity That moves & that does not move; that is far & the same that is verily near; That is within all this, the same that is outside all this ”
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n Not only the stable but the unstable; not only the constant, but the recurrent; not only the Inhabitant but His habitation; not only Purusha but Prakriti It is ekam, not a number [of] different beings, as in the dogma of the Sankhyas, but One being; not two separate categories, the real & the unreal, Brahman & Maya, but only One, the Brahman That which moves not is the Brahman but also that which moves is the Brahman, not merely Maya, not merely a base & ugly dream We know already by the first verse that the innumerable inhabitants of this moving universe are not essentially many, but are one Soul disporting in many bodies or not really disporting but supporting the multiform play of Prakriti; eko achalah sanatanah, in the solemn language of the Gita, one, motionless, without beginning or end He is this man & that woman, yonder ancient leaning on his staff, this blue winged bird, that scarlet winged But now we learn that also the name & form & property, the manhood & the womanhood, the age & the youth, the blueness & the scarlet hue, the staff, the attitude of leaning, the bird, the wing, all is the Brahman The Inhabitant is not different from His habitation.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n \tThis is a difficult point for the ordinary mind to admit intellectually; it is difficult, even for minds not ordinary, really to grasp the intellectual conception, take it into the soul & realise it there in feeling & consciousness Even the greatest materialist in theory regards himself in his feelings as a mind or a soul and is aware of a gulf between himself & the inanimate His opinions contradict his heart’s consciousness In Yoga also one of our first realisations is the separateness of the body by the practical removal of the dehatmabuddhi,\u2014a sensation the psychology of which is not well understood & being misunderstood gives  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

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

\n rise to many errors Hence we have a proneness to regard the inanimate as undivine, the material as gross & even foul and the objective as unreal\u2014as if all this were not merely arrangement & vyavahara, as if the material was not also Atman & spirit, Brahman equally present in clod & man, body & soul, thought & action, as if all were not essentially equal in their divinity, and apparently so diverse merely because of the infinite variation of form & guna! By this cardinal error the intellectual man comes to despise & neglect the body, the religious man to treat the body & often the intellect also as an impediment, praising the heart only, the contemplative spiritual man to aim at casting out both mind & body & banishing from him the very thought & perception of the objective All are ruled or driven by this dim sensation or clear belief that the subjective soul seated within them alone is God, alone the Self, that the objective movement of Spirit seeming to the movement of mind & senses to be outside & apart from us, is not God & is therefore worthless & evil They all insist on a mental attitude to things, an attitude of analysis, separation & logical distinction instead of rising beyond
\n\tmind-limitations & mind-methods to God’s transcendent embracing vision which sees all things & states & is affected & bound by none They all therefore make the essential error of duality, from which eventually every kind of ignorance & confusion arises It is for this reason, to discourage this error that the Sage insists on his ekam in the neuter\u2014not only is He divine, Sa, God regarding Himself subjectively as universal cognisant Personality, but That is divine, Tat, Brahman realising Himself by identity both beyond & in and as all phenomenal existences, at will & coexistently transcendental & phenomenal, conditioned & unconditioned, One in the One & One in the Many.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tBrahman is spoken of here, not as the absolute Parabrahman outside all relation to life & phenomena, for to the unknowable utterness of Parabrahman such phrases as “swifter than the mind” or such ideas as outrunning the gods or going in their front cannot be applied,\u2014It is the Brahman as we see It in Its relation to phenomena, God in the world, conditioned to our awareness in vyavahara, unconditioned to our awareness
\n\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

\nin paramartha, which is the subject of this & the following shloka
\n3<\/font><\/sup> That is the One & sole Existence which, though indeed It does not move, is swifter than the mind & therefore the Gods cannot attain to It because It goes always in front For the mind served by the senses is the instrument which men use to grasp & measure the world & the gods are the presiding powers of all mental & physical functions, but neither the mind nor the senses, neither sensation nor reason can attain to the Brahman It always goes far in front of any swiftest agency by which we can pursue It.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWhat is the precise significance of this imagery? The intention can only be understood if we remember the nature of mental action upon which such enormous stress is here laid and the limitations of that action Mind always starts from a point, the thinker or the object of thought; it works in space or time on particular objects or groups of objects or at most on the sum of all objects known It can only seek to know the movement & process of the world, but of that which is beyond & behind movement & process, what can it know? At most it can feel or be told that He the eternal & ineffable exists Ordinarily, it can only go as far back as itself and say “I, mind, am He; because I think, I am; because I am & think, things are”\u2014propositions which as the expression of a relative & intermediate fact have their validity but are as an universal & ultimate statement untrue But even the movement of God in nature is too vast & swift for the mind to grasp It catches at & seizes petty surrounding eddies or even great masses of movement at a little distance; it seizes, arranges to itself in its own terms of vision & classes them triumphantly as ultimate laws of Nature But who has sailed all these waters or can tell where, if at all, they end? Who shall say that those laws are not byelaws only, or the charter & constitution of a single dependency only or province? Follow
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n3 The following sentence was written in the top margin of the manuscript page Its<\/i> place of insertion was not marked:<\/i>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nOf the Absolute all we can say is “It is not that, it is not that”; it is unknowable in Itself, knowable only in our existence here or in relation to our existence here, not to be characterised by any epithet, description or suggestion  
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n

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

\n God to the utmost confines of observable space,\u2014He is sure to be whirling universes into being far in front Pursue Him into the deepest recesses of experimentable being, there are unguessed universes of consciousness behind to which you have no present access Infinity is only one of His aspects, but the very nature of Infinity is that the mind cannot grasp it, though the reason deduces it Who measured Space? Can any vastest Mind find out when Things began or know when & how they shall end? Nay, there may be near to us universes of another Time, Space & arrangement to which our material dimensions & mind & sense limitations forbid us entrance Even here who has traced out the purpose of creation or systematised the ways of Providence? Of a hundred things that happen immediately around us, can we even in a dozen instances tell more than fragmentarily & at a hazard why the thing has happened, to what end it conduced, or of what ordering of things it was a piece & movement? Yet, as the eye opens to the innermost secret of things, one realises that an infinite Wisdom presides over the smallest happening & eternally links today’s trifling action to the grandiose movement of the centuries\u2014nay, that every thought which passes through our minds however weak, trivial or absurd, has its mark, in the depths of itself its purpose, even its necessity But of all this how much can the gods of mind, reason & sense ascertain? They run, they gallop, they outstrip the arrow, the bullet, the lightning, the meteor, all material swiftnesses, but That though it moves not, travels still in front Yes, even when we think we are in front of Him, have fathomed His ways, classified His laws, understood existence, ascertained & determined the future by the past, suddenly we stumble & come across a new landmark or footprint which shows where That has passed; a touch of His finger surprises us as He speeds past & our theories crumble, our knowledge is turned into foolishness, our enlightenment becomes the laughingstock of better enlightened generations It standing outstrips others as they run, yet all the time, had no need to move Already God was in front of us, as He is behind, above, below, on every side Our latest knowledge will always be a candle burning in the mists of the night; our discoveries  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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

\n\tpebbles picked up on the shore of a boundless ocean Not only can we not know That in all Its absolute, transcendent reality, but we cannot know It in all the vastness of Its phenomenal workings Much we may yet know by the mind, but not all, not more than a corner or a system All that we can do is to seek the boundless Lord of a boundless universe & here & elsewhere to know each habitation and recognise its Inhabitant The dweller is divine, but the house too divine, a temple of God, sukritam, well built, delightful & holy\u2014my God Himself manifested as name & form.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThat stands really & does not run What then is the movement by which He outstrips others or is far in front? The clue is given in the expression swifter than mind It is the mind that runs in us but what is it that runs swifter than mind just as mind runs swifter than any material force? Something of which mind & matter are lower movements,\u2014that which is the essence of the jagati, the essential conscious being of which mind, life & matter are particular currents This conscious-being is That\u2014the sole Reality which assumes so many appearances It does not run, for where should it run when it does not exist in time & space, but time & space exist in the Brahman All things are created in God’s consciousness which has no more to move than a man has to move when he follows a particular train of thought He who was before Time, is still just what He was after Time is finished\u2014drawn back, that is to say, into supratemporal consciousness He has not moved in His being an inch, He has not changed in His being by the shadow of a shadow He is still eko achalah sanatanah, one, motionless, without change or end This side of the Sun or that side of Lyra are to Him one point, or rather no point at all Space is a symbol into which Thought has translated an arrangement in supraspatial Consciousness Time & Causality are not different Therefore it appears that both jagati & jagat are no movement of matter or material force, (that is expressly excluded in the [eighth] verse), nor of mind, (that is expressly excluded here) but of Conscious being in itself, a mysterious activity the essence of which is limitless & absolute Awareness not expressible in language, but translated    
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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

\n in the symbols of our Thought here into a movement in Time, Space & Causality This universal tenet of Vedanta, although not expressly stated, is yet implied in the Rishi’s thought & follows inevitably from his expression He could very well in his age & surroundings take it for granted, but we have to state it explicitly; for, unless it is assumed, the second movement of the Sage’s thought cannot be entirely understood by us It is, indeed, the foundation of all Vedantic thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tIn this Brahman Matariswan sets activity Tasminn apo
\n\tMatariswan dadhati Tasmin, in the containing, stable & fulfilling active Brahman already described; Apas, work or activity (Latin opus), this Vedic word being used in preference to karmani, because karmani expresses individual actions & it is here the general universe-activity of Brahman that is intended, not indeed all Prakriti, but that which is manifest as work productive & creative, the movement of the sun & star, the growth of the tree, the flowing of the waters, the progress of life in all its multitude;
\n\tMatariswan, he that rests in the matrix of things, that is to say Vayu, the motional or first energetic principle of Nature founded in Akasha, the static principle of extension which is the eternal matrix of things, working in it as Prana, the universal life-activity; dadhati,
\n\t() establishes, sets in its place & manages For the root dha has always the idea of arrangement, management, working out of things.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe reason for introducing this final and more limiting idea about the Brahman as the culminating phrase of this shloka, is the Sage’s intention to emphasise the divineness of that particular movement of Prakriti which is the basis of karmani, human action in this mortal life Matariswan is the energy of God in Prakriti which enters into as into a womb or matrix (Matar), is first concealed in,\u2014as a child in the womb\u2014& then emerges out of the static condition of extension, represented to our senses in matter as ether It emerges in the motional principle of expansion & contraction represented to the senses as the gaseous state, especially as breath & as air, called by us therefore Vayu, which by disturbing the even, self-contained vibration (shabda) of the ether, produces vibratory waves (kshobha), generates action &  
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\n

\n\treaction (rajas) on which ether behind is continually
\n\timpressing a tendency to equipoise (sattwa), the failure of which is the
\n\tonly cause of disintegration of movement (death, mrityu, tamoguna) & creates
\n\tcontact (sparsha) which is the basis of mental & material sensation & indeed
\n\tof all relation in phenomenal existence Matariswan, identifying himself with
\n\tVayu, supporting himself on these principles of wave-vibration,
\n\taction-reaction & contact, valid not only in matter but in life & mind,
\n\tusing the other three elementary or fundamental states known to Vedic
\n\tenquiry,\u2014agni (fire), the formatory principle of intension, represented to
\n\tour senses in matter as heat, light & fire, apas or jala (water), the
\n\tmaterialising or outward flowing principle of continuation, represented to
\n\tour senses in matter as sap, seed, rasa, & prithwi (earth), the stabilising
\n\tprinciple of condensation, represented to us in matter as earth, the basis
\n\tof all solids,\u2014Matariswan, deploying existence in settled forms by the
\n\tfivefold (panchabhautic) complex movement of the material Brahman, of
\n\tconscious being as the essential substance of things, reveals himself as
\n\tuniversal life activity, upholder of our vitality, prompter & cause of our
\n\tactions He as Life, is latently active in the utter inanimate, present, but
\n\tunorganised in the metal, organised for life and growth only in the plant,
\n\tfor sense & feeling & thought in the animal creation, for reason &
\n\tillumination & progress to godhead in man, for sempiternal immortality in
\n\tthe gods But who, ultimately, is this Matariswan? Brahman himself, as the
\n\tRigvedic Rishis already knew, manifesting himself in relation to His other
\n\tmovements as the cause, condition & master of vitality.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tLife-action, then, is not indeed the whole action of the
\n\tuniverse; nor is our human life-action, our apas, work, task here, its
\n\tculminatory activity There are more developed beings, superior states, other
\n\tworlds But it is, whether here or in other planets, the central activity of
\n\tthis universe It is of this apparently insignificant pebble, the stone that
\n\tbuilders not Almighty, not All-wise would have rejected, that God has made
\n\tthe keystone of this work of His construction In this the movement of our
\n\tuniverse finds the means for its central purpose, through it fulfils itself,
\n\tin it culminates or from it falls away When God has  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

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

\n fulfilled himself here, under these conditions, with prithivi as his pratistha,
\n\tthen we may pass away finally into other conditions or into the
\n\tunconditioned, but till then, till God here is satisfied, Brahman here
\n\tmanifested, we come here to fulfil him Till then, so it must be with us &
\n\tnot otherwise And this principle is not undivine but divine, not something
\n\tutterly delusive or diabolical, not the kingdom of a lower spirit or an
\n\taberration in knowledge, but God’s movement, mahimanam asya, the manifest
\n\tmight, the apparent extension in Itself of the Brahman Life here is God, the
\n\tmaterials of Life here are God The work is not separate from the worker nor
\n\tthe thought from the thinker All is the play of a divine Unity.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe can now grasp what the Sage intends when he says, Tad ejati tannaijati
\n\tTat or That, the suggestive vague name for the Brahman whether impersonal or
\n\tabove personality or impersonality, moves & That does not move It moves or
\n\tappears to move,\u2014as action of Prakriti & the corresponding knowledge in
\n\tPurusha,\u2014in the conception of Time, Space & Causality; it does not move in
\n\treality, because these are mere symbols, conceptual translations of the
\n\tactual truth, & movement itself is only such a symbol The Habitation is the
\n\tcreation of a formative movement of Prakriti, who is indeed always recurrent
\n\tin her doings because she & her ways are eternal, but also always mutable &
\n\tinconstant because she works in Time, Space & Causality, terms of perception
\n\twhich have no meaning except as measures of movement or progression from one
\n\tmoment to another, one point to another, one state or event to another
\n\tSuccession & therefore change is the fundamental law of God’s ideative &
\n\tformative activity in the terms of these three great symbols But the
\n\tinhabitant is one & constant, because He is beyond Time & Space Surrounded
\n\tapparently by the whirl of Prakriti, to the ignorant tossed about in it, He
\n\tin reality exists both as its continent & creator as well as its informing
\n\tsoul, master & guide That therefore in Itself is unmoving, immutable and
\n\teternal; in Its movement in Itself, Time-movement, Space-movement,
\n\tCondition-movement (although as we shall see governed by durable patterns or
\n\tgeneral processes of conscious being which   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

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

\n\tensure order & recurrence from one state or form to another) That is mobile,
\n\tactive, inconstant & fleeting Sooner or later, all here passes out of our
\n\tview, except the Inhabitant, the eternal Existence-Consciousness, Him we see
\n\tseated for ever On Him in this flux of things we have our sure foundation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThus we have the essential reality of things, we have the practical relation
\n\tof God in Impersonality or Personality as the Inhabitant of His own
\n\tobjective being We have the principle of unity by which the practical
\n\trelation refers back always to the essential & derives from it We have the
\n\tfundamental justification of works briefly indicated in the identity of the
\n\tworking principle with the eternal Reality behind our works But the
\n\tjustification of the harmony of tyaga & bhoga on this basis has now to be
\n\tprepared After stating, therefore, the identity of the eternal who moveth
\n\tnot, with the eternal who moves, of the Timeless, Spaceless, Conditionless,
\n\twith the Timed, Spaced & Conditioned, the Sage proceeds with a consideration
\n\tof the latter only with which our vyavahara or practical life has to deal &
\n\temphasises the unity of all things near & far, subjective & objective That
\n\tis the near, the same That is the far He is near to us in our subjective
\n\texperience, he removes to a distance in the objective where our mind &
\n\tsenses pursue him until they have to cease or return In the subjective also,
\n\the is not only the unknown, but the known, ourselves, that which is seated
\n\tin our hearts, not only the ungrasped, but the grasped, that which we have &
\n\tthat which we seem not to have, that which we have reached or passed or are
\n\tapproaching & that towards which we vaguely or blindly move Nothing should
\n\twe think, feel or observe without saying of it "It is He; it is the Brahman
\n\t" That is within every creature as all the continent of body & mind & what
\n\tis more than mind; That is outside every creature as that in which it moves,
\n\tlives & has its being; not only are our surroundings near or far but that
\n\twhich contains our surroundings, is outside & inside them, alike their
\n\tcontinent & their content, sarvam Brahma For That is the content of all this
\n\tUniverse; That also exceeds & Is apart from every Universe The Pantheism or
\n\tMonism which, unable to rise beyond the unity of attainable   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 397<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n data or manifest appearance, makes God conterminous with the world, is not
\n\tVedanta The Pluralism which makes God merely a sum of realised experiences,
\n\ta growing & diminishing, a fluctuating unknown quantity, X sometimes equal
\n\tto a + b and sometimes equal to a b, is not our conception of the Universe
\n\tThese things are He, but He is not these things To us the world is only a
\n\tminor term in God’s absolute & limitless existence God is not even infinite,
\n\tthough finity & infinity both are He; He is beyond finity & infinity He is
\n\tsarvam Brahma, the All, but he is inexpressibly more than the sarvam To our
\n\thighest conception He is One, but in Himself He is beyond conception Neither
\n\tUnity nor multiplicity can describe Him, for He is not limited by numbers
\n\tUnity is His parabhava, it is His supreme manifestation of being, but it is
\n\tafter all a manifestation, not the utter & unknowable reality <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \tThe object of these two verses which have amplified the idea of monistic
\n\tUnity in the universe, so as to remove any essential opposition between the
\n\tworld movement & the Inhabitant of the movement, is to lead up to the two
\n\tverses that follow,\u2014verses of a still higher importance for the purpose of
\n\tthe Upanishad The Sage has laid down his fundamental positions in the first
\n\tthree verses,\u2014(1) the oneness of all beings in the universe, (2) the harmony
\n\tof renunciation & enjoyment by freedom from desire & demand, (3) the
\n\tnecessity of action for the fulfilment of the one purpose for which the One
\n\tinhabits this multitude of names & forms,\u2014the enjoyment of this phenomenal &
\n\tin its consummation the liberated being The remainder of the Upanishad is
\n\texplanatory & justificatory of these original & fundamental positions In
\n\tthis second movement the object is to establish the possibility of
\n\tabsolutely sorrowless & fearless enjoyment here in this world & in this body
\n\ton the eternal & unassailable foundations of the Vedantic truth, sarvam
\n\tkhalu idam Brahma For from that truth the Seer’s golden rule of life derives
\n\tall its validity & practical effectiveness     <\/p>\n

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\n

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

\n\tThese are the words, words of a rich & moving beauty, in
\n\twhich he discharges this part of his argument "But he who sees all
\n\texistences in the self and the self in all existences, thereafter shrinketh
\n\tnot at all He who knows, in whom all existences have become the self, how
\n\tshall he have grief, how shall he be deluded, who seeth all things as one ".<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe connecting word  <\/span>तु<\/font>
\n\t<\/span>
\n\t(the Greek
\n\t )
\n\tdoes not in Vedic Sanscrit always imply entire opposition, it suggests a new
\n\tcircumstance or suggests an additional fact or a different point of view The
\n\tnew circumstance introduced in this verse is the idea of the Atman The
\n\tknowledge that the impersonal Brahman is all, need not of itself bring peace
\n\t& a joyous activity; for the all includes sorrow, includes death, fear,
\n\tweariness, disgust Matariswan in establishing action, has also established
\n\treaction He has established that inequality between the force acting & the
\n\tforce acted upon, that want of harmony which is the cause of pain, recoil,
\n\tdisintegration, mutual fear & oppression We may recognise that all these are
\n\tone coordinated movement in a single existence, are themselves all one
\n\texistence but how does that help us if in the movement itself there are
\n\tthese inequalities, these discords, these incapacities which impose on us so
\n\tmuch that is painful & sorrowful? We may be calm, resigned, stoical, but how
\n\tcan we be free from pain & sorrow? It is here that Mayavada comes in with
\n\tits great gospel of liberation "All this discord" it says in effect "is not
\n\tBrahman, it is Maya, it is an illusion, a dream, it does not exist in the
\n\tpure Atman That is the unmoving; the movement is a cosmic nightmare
\n\taffecting the mind only Renounce life, take refuge in the pure,
\n\tunconditioned, dreamless Atman, mind will dissolve, the world will vanish
\n\tfrom you as a dream vanishes & with the world its pain, its useless
\n\tstriving, its miserable joys, its ineffugable sorrow " That is an escape,
\n\tbut it is not the escape which the Seer of the Upanishad meditates for us He
\n\tholds to his point "All this is Brahman, the movement no less than the
\n\tmoving " A few may escape by the wicket gates of the Buddhist & the
\n\tMayavadin Not by denial of fundamental Vedantic truth is mankind intended to
\n\tbe saved.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThe worship of a Personal God different from ourselves &  
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\n the world brings with it a better chance of joyful activity
\n\tin the world "God’s will, be it joy or sorrow; God’s will, be it the triumph
\n\tof good or the siege of the evil " This is a great mantra & has mighty
\n\teffects But it does not by itself give a secure abiding place God’s will may
\n\tbring doubt & then there is anguish; may bring loss of the Divine presence,
\n\tseparation from the Beloved & then there is a greater agony The intellectual
\n\tman has the intellect God has given him to satisfy The active man has the
\n\timpulse to work, but at every step is faced with the difficulties of
\n\treligion & ethics He has to slay as a soldier, condemn as a judge, inflict
\n\tpain, inflict anguish, choose between two courses which seem both to be evil
\n\tin their nature or their results Sin enters his heart, or there are
\n\tensnaring spirits of doubt which suggest sin where sin is not, he feels that
\n\the is acting from passion, not from God His body suffers, pain distracts,
\n\this own pain, the pain of others In this maelstrom it is only those whose
\n\thearts are mightier than their intellects & their devotion a part of their
\n\tnature who can overcome all the winds that blow upon them Therefore most
\n\tdevotees withdraw from life or from the greater part of life like the
\n\tMayavadin; those who remain have more resignation than happiness They bear
\n\tthe cross here in the conviction that the aureole awaits them hereafter But
\n\twhere then is that perfect bliss & that perfect activity which the Sage
\n\tpromises us, doing verily our works here in the ordinary life of mankind?
\n\tThe thing can be done on the devotional foundation, but only by a peculiar &
\n\trare temperament aided by God’s special grace & favour We need a wider
\n\tpedestal, a securer foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tHe finds that foundation who sees wheresoever he looks
\n\t(that is the force of anu in anupashyati) only the Atman, only the Self He
\n\twatches the bird flying through the air, but what he is aware of is the Self
\n\twatching the movement of the Self through the Self\u2014air & bird & flight &
\n\twatcher are only name & form, presentations of the one Reality to itself in
\n\titself by itself atmani atmanam atmana He is stung by the scorpion but what
\n\the is aware of is only the touch of the Self on the Self; the scorpion that
\n\tstings is Brahman, the stung is Brahman, the sting is Brahman, the pain is
\n\tBrahman And this he not only  
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\n\tthinks as a metaphysical truth, for mere metaphysical
\n\topinion or intellectual attitude never yet brought salvation to living
\n\tman,\u2014but knows it, feels it & is aware of it utterly with his whole single &
\n\tcomplex knowing existence Body, senses, heart & brain are at one in that
\n\texperience Thus to the soul perfected in this knowledge everything that is,
\n\tseems or is experienced, thinker & thought, action, doer, sufferer, object,
\n\tfield, result, becomes only one reality, Brahman, Self, God and all this
\n\tvariety is only play, only movement of conscious-self in conscious-self That
\n\tmoves, God has His lila, the Self rejoices in its own inner experiences of
\n\titself seen & objectivised There arises in the soul not merely calm,
\n\tresignation, desirelessness, heart’s joy in God’s presence, but with the
\n\tperfect knowledge comes a perfect bliss in the conditioned & the
\n\tunconditioned, in the transcendent & in the phenomenal, in action & in
\n\tresting from action, in Ishwara & in apparent anIshwara, in God’s nearness &
\n\tin God’s remoteness, in what men call joy & what men call pain Grief falls
\n\taway from the soul, pain becomes rapture, doubt & darkness disappear in an
\n\tassured & brilliant luminosity Mukti is fulfilled, the soul is perfectly
\n\tliberated here & in this body ihaiva,\u2014for this & not renunciation of
\n\tphenomenal existence is the true Vedantic moksha This is what is meant by
\n\tall existing things becoming the Self in a man, this is the result which is
\n\tpredicated of such a divine realisation "Whence shall he have grief, how
\n\tshall he be deluded who seeth all things as one?"<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThere are certain stages in the realisation, two of which
\n\tare indicated in these slokas, and although the indication is only a minor &
\n\tincidental movement of the Rishi’s thought, the subject is of sufficient
\n\tpractical importance to be dwelt upon for a little even in this necessarily
\n\trapid examination Brahman, Atman, Ishwara\u2014these are the three great names,
\n\tthe three grand realisations we have here about the Absolute Existence That
\n\texistence, Paratparam Brahma, in its absolute truth (if such an expression
\n\tis admissible where the ideas of truth & falsehood, absolute & relative no
\n\tlonger apply & knowledge itself disappears in an unconceivable &
\n\tunimaginable Identity)\u2014is unknowable by any, even the highest faculty of
\n\tconscious  
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\n mind Arriving at the farthest limits of our existence here
\n\twe may become & do become aware of it as a thing beyond our experience It
\n\tpresents itself to us here as some ultimate shadow of itself which we feel
\n\tsometimes as Sat, sometimes as Asat, sometimes as both Sat & Asat, & then we
\n\tperceive that it is none of these things, but something beyond both
\n\texistence & non-existence which are merely uncertain symbols of it & we end
\n\tby the formula of the Rishis renouncing all vain attempts at knowledge,
\n\tNeti, neti, not this not that We must not go beyond this formula or seek to
\n\texplain & amplify it To describe It by negative epithets is as illegitimate
\n\t& presumptuous as to describe it by positive epithets We can say of Brahman
\n\tthat it is shuddha, pure; we cannot say of the Paratparam that it is shuddha
\n\tHow can we know what It is? We can only say that here It translates itself
\n\tinto an utter purity Neither can we say of It that it is alakshanam, without
\n\tfeature How do we know what It is not? We can only say that we cannot
\n\tdescribe It by any lakshanas, for the features we perceive here are those of
\n\ta movement in which all opposites present themselves as equally true.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tBut here in this manifest universal existence we do
\n\tperceive certain universal states & certain still more fundamental
\n\trealisations which transcend all phenomena & all oppositions & antinomies We
\n\tperceive, for example, a state of Universal Being, the Sad Atman of the
\n\tUpanishads, the goal of the Adwaitins; we perceive a state of Universal
\n\tNon-Being, the Asad Atman of the Upanishads, Sunyam, the goal of the
\n\tMadhyamika Buddhists Then we perceive that both of these are the same thing
\n\tdifferently experienced in the soul It is That which expresses itself in our
\n\texperience of Being & forgetfulness of Being, of Consciousness &
\n\tforgetfulness of Consciousness, of Bliss & forgetfulness of Bliss, of
\n\tSacchidananda conditioned & Sacchidananda unconditioned We call it the
\n\tBrahman, that which extends itself here in space & time & fills its
\n\textension We feel our identity with it & we realise that it is our true Self
\n\t& the true Self of everything in the universe & of the universe both in its
\n\tsum & in its entirety We call it then the Atman, a word which originally
\n\tmeant true Being or true  
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\n\tSubstance We become aware of It as extending itself &
\n\tfilling its extension here for a purpose, the purpose of Ananda, delight in
\n\tVidya, delight in Avidya & governing all things towards that
\n\tpurpose,\u2014self-aware as the One & self-aware as the Many, self-aware as Sat &
\n\tself-aware as Asat This great self-aware transcendent more than universal
\n\texistence we call Sa, Ishwara, "He", God, the Paratpara Purusha, the Higher
\n\tthan the Highest We see therefore that these three names merely try to
\n\texpress in human language certain fundamental conceptions we have here of
\n\tThat which is not perfectly expressible The greatest names, tremendous as is
\n\ttheir power,\u2014how tremendous only those can know who have made the test
\n\twithout flinching\u2014are only symbols,\u2014I will not say shadows, for that is a
\n\tword which may be misunderstood But very great & blissful symbols in which
\n\twe are meant to find a perfect content & satisfaction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThrough these symbols & the realisations which they try
\n\tto represent, we have to work out our divine fulfilment here, & the Rishi
\n\tgives all three of them to us in this Upanishad For all three are supremely
\n\thelpful &, in a way, necessary Until we realise Ishwara, the mighty
\n\tInhabitant, as one with ourself, as the Atman, we find a difficulty in
\n\tidentifying Him with all that Is We fall into these ideas of an extra-Cosmic
\n\tGod which satisfy the early & immature stages of soul development; or we see
\n\ta God who pervades & upholds all existences but has put them forth in His
\n\tbeing as eternally apart from Himself That is a great practical realisation
\n\twith immense results to the soul, the realisation of the Bhakta who rests in
\n\tsome kind of Dualism, but it is not the supreme goal which we are seeking If
\n\twe realise the Ishwara as the Atman, our Self, without realising Him as the
\n\tBrahman we run, unless our souls have first become purified, another peril,
\n\tthe peril of the Asura who misapplies the mighty formula So Aham &
\n\tidentifies God with his own unregenerated ignorant Ego,\u2014extending the
\n\tInhabitant only to some transient circumstances of the movement in which He
\n\tdwells He forgets the other equally important formula, Tat twam asi; he does
\n\tnot realise others as Narayan, does not become one self with all existences,
\n\tforgets that the very idea of his egoistic self is inconsistent  
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\n with the true Adwaita and to extend that in imagination &
\n\tcall it the whole Universe is a caricature of Adwaita It is like the error
\n\tof the unphilosophical Idealist who concludes that the objective Universe
\n\texists only in his individual Mind, forgetting that it exists equally in
\n\tother individual minds & not knowing that in reality there is no individual
\n\tMind, but only one sea of mind with its self-formed solid bed of sanskaras,
\n\twaves of which are constantly flowing through him, rising & breaking there &
\n\tleaving their marks in the sands of his mental, infra-mental & supramental
\n\tbeing Even if we realise all beings as Narayan and one Self, there is a
\n\tdifficulty in realising all things as God & self The Inhabitant is the
\n\tAtman, good\u2014but the name & form? We can realise that God dwells in the stone
\n\tas well as under the stone & around it, but how can the stone be God,\u2014this
\n\tclod, that rusty piece of iron, this clot of filth? With difficulty the mind
\n\tunreleased from dwandwa & sanskaras can believe that God logically must be
\n\tin the piece of filth He has created, but how can He be that filth? The
\n\tseeker can eventually realise God in the criminal who is to be hanged no
\n\tless than in the executioner who hangs him & the saint who has pity for
\n\tboth, in the harlot no less than the Sati, in all of the filth no less than
\n\tin the glorious star that shines in Heaven & the petals of the rose or
\n\tjasmine that intoxicates our soul with its fragrance, but the crime of the
\n\tcriminal, the sin of the harlot, the corporeality of the filth, must not
\n\tthat be kept separate? The sattwic mere lover of virtue, the lover of
\n\tbeauty, the devotee reverently bowing before the throne, must they not
\n\trevolt eternally from such conceptions? We shall see that for certain
\n\tpractical reasons we must in action preserve a kind of separateness,\u2014not
\n\tonly between the criminal & his crime, but between the saint & his
\n\tvirtue,\u2014for this reason the Rishi has fixed on the relation of world of
\n\tMovement & world’s Inhabitant as the basis of his system,\u2014but the
\n\tdistinction must be one of vyavahara only, for practice only & must not
\n\tinterfere with our conception of All as Brahman We must not yield to the
\n\tlimitations of the sattwic mind, the moha or delusions of the sattwic
\n\tahankara For if we yield, we cannot proceed to that greater goal of bliss,
\n\twhich attaining the soul shrinks not at all,  
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\n\thas no delusion, is not touched by any grief Therefore we
\n\tmust realise the Ishwara not only as the true Self of things, but as
\n\tBrahman, that which extends itself here equally in all things, in the
\n\tbeautiful but also in the ugly, in the holy & great but also in that which
\n\twe look on as base & impure Looking on Brahman moving & Brahman unmoving we
\n\thave to say with the Mundaka Upanishad, Tad etat satyam (That yonder is this
\n\there & the Truth), & looking on Ishwara & Brahman moving & unmoving we have
\n\tto say with the same Upanishad, "Purusha evedam sarvam karma tapo brahma
\n\tparamritam " "It is the divine Soul that is all this, even all action and
\n\tall active force and Brahman & the supreme immortality."
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n We have to realise the Self everywhere, but we have also to
\n\tremember always in all our being, to feel always in every fibre of our
\n\texistence that this Self is Brahman & the Lord In the realisation of Atman
\n\tby itself there is this danger that as we human beings stand in the
\n\tsubjective mind, that represents itself to us as our true Self and we are
\n\tfirst in danger of identifying our subjective consciousness which is only
\n\tone movement of Chit, with the Sarva Brahman Even when we go beyond to the
\n\tSad Atman or Pure Existence, we, approaching it necessarily through our
\n\tsubjective being, tend to realise it as pure
\nsubjective<\/i> existence & are in danger of not realising the real & ultimate
\n\tSat which is pure Existence itself beyond subjectivity & objectivity, but
\n\texpressing itself here subjectively because of the Purusha & objectively
\n\tbecause of the Prakriti,\u2014the mingled strain of our subjective-objective
\n\texistence here being the result of the interaction & mutual enjoyment of His
\n\tMale & His Female principle Hence arise the misconceptions of the Idealists,
\n\tIllusionists & Mayavadins If we halt in subjective mind, we see the
\n\tobjective world as a mere dream or vision of our conscious subjective
\n\tactivity That is the dogma of the Idealist, nor can anyone fathom the depths
\n\tof our mental being without passing through this experience If we halt in
\n\tour pure subjective existence, then not only the objective world, but the
\n\tmind & its perceptions seem to be a dream, & the only truth is the
\n\tsubjective Nirguna Brahman aware only of his pure subjective existence When
\n\tthis subjective  
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\n Nirguna Brahman looks out from the truth of himself &
\n\twatches the perceptions of the mind, the great dream of the objective, then
\n\tIt alone as the sakshi seems to be real\u2014but we get rid of the sakshi too &
\n\tretire into the perfect samadhi in which Brahman is aware only of Itself as
\n\tself-existent, self-conscious pure Atman This is the dogma of the Mayavadin
\n\t& no one can fathom all the depths of our subjective being who has not
\n\tpassed through this experience Then comes the Buddhist, who turns upon this
\n\tsakshi, this subjective Atman & says "Thou too art only a dream, for the
\n\tsame thing that tells me thou art, tells me the world is I have no other
\n\tevidence of the existence of Atman than I have of the existence of the world
\n\twithout, as both are equally dreams " And without going farther, he says
\n\twith the Madhyamikas "The truth is the Asat, the Nihil, the universal
\n\tNon-being", or he says with the Buddha\u2014"There is Nirvana of all this
\n\tsubjective & objective; what there is beyond, we need not ask"\u2014so as to say
\n\t"we cannot know", "we need only to know that it releases from all pain &
\n\tgrief & death & all return of egoism " This experience too, if one can have
\n\tit & not be bound by it, is of great use, of a rich fruitfulness to the soul
\n\tHe can hardly gaze out of the manifest towards Parabrahman who has never
\n\tstood face to face with the Asat & launched his soul into the fathomless &
\n\tshoreless Negation But we come back to the truth That which is beyond is
\n\tParabrahman & that which represents Him here as the basis of our existence
\n\tis the absolute existence, neither subjective, nor objective, turned both
\n\ttowards the world & away from it, capable of manifesting everything, capable
\n\tof manifesting nothing, capable of universality, capable of nullity, capable
\n\tof putting forth all antinomies, capable of reconciling them, capable
\n\ttherefore both of cosmos & chaos, which is expressed in the formula OM Tat
\n\tSat But this is no other than the Brahman Is it enough then to realise the
\n\tAtman as the Brahman? Yes, if we realise that the absolute Brahman, who is
\n\trather beyond both Guna & absence of Guna than Nirguna, is also that which
\n\texpresses itself as Guna, extends itself in space & informs its own
\n\textension We must say with the Mandukya, Sarvam hyetad Brahma\u2014Ayam Atma
\n\tBrahma\u2014So’yam atma  
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\n\tchatushpat All this world is Brahman, this Self is
\n\tBrahman, & this Self which is Brahman is fourfold . Fourfold, not only the
\n\tTranscendent Turiya, but also He who sees Himself the gross & sees Himself
\n\tthe subtle & sees His own single & blissful being in the states to which we
\n\thave only access now in the deep trance of sushupti Nor is this enough For
\n\tthe realisation goes still too much towards abstraction, towards remoteness
\n\tIt is necessary to remember that this great Self-Aware Being is the Lord,
\n\tthat He has created & entered into His own movement, with a mighty purpose &
\n\tfor the enjoyment of His own phenomenal being in the worlds Otherwise we
\n\tshall not be so much both spectators & masters of our worlds, but its
\n\tspectators only\u2014& a mere spectator tarries not long at a spectacle, he is
\n\tsoon sated of his inactive joy & withdraws The movement of withdrawal is
\n\tnecessary for a certain number of souls, it is, so effected, a great,
\n\tblissful & supremely satisfied movement, but it is not the purpose for which
\n\tGod is in us here We must realise our true Self as Brahman-Ishwara We must
\n\tbe one with the Ekah sarvabhutantaratma rupam rupam pratirupo bahishcha, the
\n\tone Self within all existences who shapes Himself to form & form & is
\n\toutside all of them, & understand the intention of the Aitareya in its great
\n\topening, Atma va idam eka evagra asit\u2014Sa ikshata\u2014Sa iman lokan asrijata In
\n\tthe beginning this was all the Atman, He alone, He looked & put forth these
\n\tworlds.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tFinally, it is not even enough for the Sage’s purpose
\n\tthat we should realise the Brahman except as the Atman & Ishwara For if we
\n\tdo not realise Brahman as the Self & our Self we shall be in danger of
\n\tlosing the subjective aspect of existence & laying too much stress on That
\n\tas the substratum of our objective existence in which I stand merely as a
\n\tsingle unimportant movement The result is a tamasic, an inert calm, a
\n\ttendency to merge in the jada Prakriti, the apparent unintelligently active
\n\taspect of things which the Europeans call Nature or at the highest a
\n\tresolution of our selves into that substratum of the objective in the
\n\tImpersonal Brahman The denial of the Transcendent Personality, the Paratpara
\n\tPurusha is a strong tendency of the present-day Adwaita "God", say these
\n\tmodern Adwaitins, "is a myth, or at most a  
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\n dream like ourselves Just as there is no I, so there is no
\n\tGod " Under this figure of thought, there lies a philosophical blunder
\n\tPersonality is not necessarily individual Personality, neither is it a
\n\tselection & arrangement of qualities, any more than existence is necessarily
\n\tindividual existence or a selection & arrangement of movements in our being
\n\tPersonality can be & is Universal; this Universal Personality is God in
\n\trelation to our individual experiences Personality also can be & is
\n\tTranscendent, self-existent, beyond individuality & Universality,\u2014this
\n\ttranscendent Personality, a blissful unlimited self-conscious Awareness in
\n\tself-existence is the Paratpara Purusha\u2014adityavarnas tamasah parastat,
\n\tdrawing us like a sun beyond the darkness of ignorance & the darkness of the
\n\tAsat This is He\u2014God universal, but also God transcendent\u2014the Lilamaya
\n\tKrishna who transcends His lila Therefore the Upanishads everywhere insist
\n\tnot upon mere Existence, like the later Adwaitin, but on the sole Existent;
\n\tand they speak continually on the Brahman as the creator, Master, enjoyer of
\n\tthe worlds, by meditating on whom we shall attain to perfect liberation
\n\tNeither Buddha nor Jada Bharata are the true guides & fulfillers of our
\n\tdestiny; it is Yajnavalkya, it is Janaka &, most of all, it is Krishna son
\n\tof Devaki who takes us most surely & entirely into the presence & into the
\n\tbeing of the Eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tAtman, Brahman, Ishwara, on this triune aspect here of
\n\tthe Transcendent depend all our spiritual realisations and as we take one or
\n\tthe other & in its realisation stop a little this side or proceed a little
\n\tto that side, our realisations, our experiences & our creeds & systems will
\n\tvary from each other; & we shall be Buddhists or Adwaitins or Mayavadins or
\n\tDualists, followers of Ramanuja or Madhwa, followers of Christ, of Mahomed,
\n\tof whosoever will give us such light on the Eternal as we are ready to
\n\treceive The Rishi of the Isha wishes us to realise all three, but for the
\n\tsake of divine life in the world to dwell upon Ishwara, but on Ishwara
\n\tneither extracosmic nor different from His creatures but rather in & about
\n\tall beings as their indwelling Self, their containing Brahman and that
\n\tmaterial Brahman also or Prakriti which is the formal continent of the
\n\tindwelling Self and the  
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\n\tformal content of the containing Brahman In this
\n\trealisation there are many stages of progress, many necessary first steps &
\n\tlater approximations; but the Rishi, his work being to throw out brief
\n\tfundamental & important suggestions only & not to fill in details, to
\n\tindicate & illumine, not to educate or instruct, gives us for the present
\n\tonly two of the final realisations which are the most essential for his
\n\tpurpose We shall find, however, that there is more beyond.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tWe are first to realise this one divine Self, (which is
\n\tour<\/i>self also) in all existences and all existences in the Self We have,
\n\ttherefore, in this realisation three terms, Self within, Self without, which
\n\tare the same & invariable samam Brahma, & all existences, of which each
\n\tseparate existence is fundamentally the same, but in generic or individual
\n\tplay & movement different from other genera & individuals All existences\u2014not
\n\tonly animate but inanimate, for sarvabhuteshu does not mean
\n\tsarvapranishu\u2014not only the man, the animal, the insect, but in the tree,
\n\tplant & flower & not only in the tree, plant & flower which have a sort of
\n\tlife, but in the mountain, the metal, the diamond, the pebble which seem not
\n\tto have life, & not only in these bhutas which if they have not an organised
\n\tlife, have at least an organised or a manifest form, but in those which have
\n\tno organised form, or no form at all to the eye or to any sense The wind &
\n\tsea also are He & the gases which constitute the air which moves as wind &
\n\tthe water which flows as the sea He is ether that contains all & He is that
\n\twhich contains the ether.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tSwami Vivekananda in a passage of his works, makes a
\n\tstriking or, as the French say better, a seizing distinction between the
\n\tlocomotive & the worm that it crushes, between the animate which has
\n\tconscious life in it, however weak, & the inanimate which has only in it,
\n\thowever powerful, a blind & undeveloping power But, however useful & true
\n\tthis distinction may be for certain practical purposes, certain vyavahara,
\n\tit is not allowed us by the pure Adwaita of the Upanishads God is not only
\n\tin the worm that is crushed, but in the engine that crushes it\u2014the engine
\n\ttoo & the power of the engine are Brahman and as much Brahman as the life &
\n\tconsciousness in the worm He is samam  
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\n Brahma We have a right to make certain practical
\n\tdistinctions for vyavahara but none to make any essential difference For the
\n\tVedanta is inexorable in its positiveness; as it will not spare us the most
\n\tloathsome worm that crawls but insists that that too is Brahman, so also it
\n\twill not spare us the most inert or sordid speck of matter, but insists that
\n\tthat too is Brahman If we stop short anywhere, we create bheda & lose our
\n\tfull spiritual heritage The seer anupashyati\u2014he follows Prakriti in her
\n\tmovement from the greatest to the most infinitesimal, from the noblest to
\n\tthe meanest & everywhere finds only Brahman, God, the Self Bhuteshu bhuteshu
\n\tvichitya dhirah, says the Kena We must have dhairyam, utter patience, utter
\n\tunderstanding To no weakness, no repugnance, no recoil even of the saint in
\n\tus or the artist & poet in us, much less of our mere nervous & sensational
\n\tparts or of the conventional mind with its fixed associations can we stop to
\n\tlisten, if we would attain Love & hate, joy & grief must not interfere to
\n\twarp our knowledge All, all, all without exception is He . He breathes out
\n\tsweetness upon us in the rose, He touches our cheeks with coolness in the
\n\tWind, He fills with His favouring breath the sails of the sailing-ship that
\n\tcarries our merchandise to its market, He tramples down into the Ocean
\n\tdepths the latest marvel & monstrosity of scientific construction in which
\n\ttravel the great ones of the world or in which our beloved are coming to our
\n\tarms The wrong that is done to us, it is He that does it\u2014and to whom is it
\n\tdone? To Himself The blow that is struck, is of His striking Brahman is the
\n\tstriker, Brahman the instrument, Brahman the stricken The insult that is
\n\tcast on us, it is He that has flung it in our face The disgrace, the defeat,
\n\tthe injustice are of His doing That crime which we abhor, it is Brahman who
\n\thas committed it,\u2014it is our Self’s, our own doing though we do it in another
\n\tbody For the least sin that is committed in the world, each one of us is as
\n\tresponsible as the sinner Our self-righteousness is a Pharisaical error, our
\n\thatred of the sinner & our contempt & loathing convict us of ignorance and
\n\tlimit, not increase our power to rectify or to help The seer, the freed &
\n\tilluminated soul hates none, condemns nothing but loves all and helps all;
\n\the is sarvabhutahite ratah, his occupation  
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\n\t& delight are to do good to all creatures He is the Self
\n\tseeing the Self in all, loving the Self in all, enjoying the Self in all,
\n\thelping the Self in all That is the ethics & morality of the Vedanta.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tFor what is the first result of this universal vision?
\n\tTato na vijugupsate Jugupsa is not merely fear but includes all kinds of
\n\tshrinking, fear, disgust, contempt, loathing in the nerves, hatred in the
\n\theart, shrinking of dislike or reluctance from thing or person or action
\n\tRaga & dwesha being the motives of all our ordinary feeling & action,
\n\tjugupsa expresses that movement of recoil in the system which proceeds from
\n\tdwesha of any kind,\u2014the desire to protect ourselves against or ward off the
\n\tunwelcome thing that presents itself to the mind, nerves or senses We see
\n\ttherefore how wide a field the promise of the Upanishad covers We shall not
\n\thate, fear, loathe, despise or shrink from anything whatsoever which the
\n\tworld can present us It is evident, if this is possible, how all that
\n\tconstitutes real misery will fall from the soul & leave it pure & blissful.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tWe shall not have any contempt, hatred or disgust for any
\n\tperson, nor shall we fear anyone, however powerful or inimical; for in all
\n\twe shall see Narayan, we shall know the Lord, we shall recognise ourself One
\n\tequal regard will fall from us on the tiger & the lamb, the saint & the
\n\tsinner, the tyrant who threatens us and the slave who is subject to our
\n\tlightest caprice Squalor, sin, disease will not conceal from us the god
\n\twithin nor wrath & cruelty from us God’s love working by strange ways under
\n\tgrotesque & fearful masks No sort of foulness or ugliness will repel us An
\n\tuniversal charity, a wide & tolerant love, a calm & blissful impulse of
\n\tbeneficence to all will be the ethical first fruits of our realisation We
\n\tshall make no distinctions, we shall be no respecters of persons We shall
\n\tnot despise the hut of the peasant nor bow down in the courts of the
\n\tprinces, neither shall we have wrath or scorn against the palace &
\n\tpartiality for the cottage All these things will be equal to us The touch of
\n\tthe outcaste will be the same to us as the sprinkling of holy water by the
\n\tBrahmin\u2014for how shall God pollute God? Every human or living body will be to
\n\tus a temple & dwelling place of the most High None shall be to us vile or
\n\tcontemptible And yet  
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\n none shall be too sacred for us, too dear or too inviolable;
\n\tfor it is the house of our Friend & Playmate; nay, it is our own House, for
\n\tthe Lover is not different from the Beloved, & it is a house, jagat not
\n\tsthanu, a thing that can be changed & has to be changed, for which therefore
\n\twe shall have deep love, but no fettering attachment The sword of our enemy
\n\twill have no terrors for us For enmity is a play of the Lord & death & life
\n\tmake up one of His games of hide & seek How shall God slay God? Even as our
\n\tvision deepens, the touch of the sword shall be to us as much the kiss of
\n\tHis Love as the touch from the lips of a lover\u2014one sharp, poignant & fierce,
\n\tthe other soft & wooing but the manner is the only difference For we shall
\n\thave torn aside the grotesque & unreal mask of hatred & seen in the apparent
\n\tfulfilment of enmity & evil, the real fulfilment of love & good By the
\n\tdivination of the heart & the vision of the higher knowledge we shall have
\n\tfound out the way of the Lord in His movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n And because we shall have found out His way & seen
\n\teverywhere Himself, things also will cause no kind of shrinking in us We
\n\tshall exceed the limitations of the senses & the ordinary aesthetic
\n\tfaculties,\u2014we shall have gone beyond the poet & the artist We shall know why
\n\tthe sages have called Him sarvasundara, the All-Beautiful For things
\n\tbeautiful will have a more wonderful, intense, ecstatic beauty to us, but
\n\tthings foul, illshapen & ugly will also be to us beautiful, with a larger,
\n\tmore marvellous, more universal beauty than the artistic We shall exceed the
\n\tlimitations of the mind & heart & conscience; we shall have gone beyond the
\n\tsaint & the moralist For we shall no more be repelled by the sin of the
\n\tsinner than by the dirt on our child who has fallen or wallowed in the mud
\n\tof the roadside We shall know why the Lord has put on the mask of the sinner
\n\t& the perfect purpose that is served by sin & crime in the world’s economy,
\n\t& while knowing that it has to be put aside or transformed into good, we
\n\tshall not be revolted by it, but rather view it with perfect calm & charity
\n\tThis realisation, although it lifts us beyond the ordinary conceptions of
\n\tmorality & conventional ethics, does not incapacitate us for normal action,
\n\tas  
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\n\tit might seem to the thought which holds all action
\n\timpossible except that which proceeds from desire & liking & disliking
\n\tWhatever morality the Vedantist practises will be based on a higher & truer
\n\tground than the ethics of the ordinary man in love, sympathy & oneness For
\n\tan ethics proceeding in its practical action on contempt, dislike or
\n\trepulsion is an immoral or imperfectly moralised ethics which seeks to drive
\n\tout poison by poison & it has always failed & will always fail to eradicate
\n\tsin & evil,\u2014just as the ordinary methods of society have failed to eradicate
\n\tor even diminish crime & vice, because its method & its spirit are ignorant
\n\t& paradoxical Only perfect knowledge & sympathy can give perfect help and
\n\tthese are impossible without oneness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time it is true that the jivanmukta is not
\n\tgoverned by ordinary moral considerations He shrinks from no actions which
\n\tthe divine purpose demands or the divine impulse commands He has no wish to
\n\tkill, but he will not shrink from slaying when it is demanded, for he is
\n\tbound neither by the rajasic ahankara nor by the sattwic; sattwic obstacles
\n\tto slaying are therefore taken from him and his knowledge delivers him both
\n\tfrom the desire to take life which is the evil of hinsa [and] from the
\n\temotional horror of taking life & the nervous fear of taking life which are
\n\tthe rajasic & tamasic basis of outward ahinsa So also with other actions For
\n\tthis morality or dharma is of the soul & does not depend upon the action
\n\twhich is a mere outward symbol of the soul & has different values according
\n\tto the times, the social ideas & environments, the religious creed or the
\n\tactual circumstances To men who are not free a conventional morality is an
\n\tabsolute necessity, for there must be a fixed standard to which they can
\n\tappeal It is as necessary for the ordinary practice of the world as a
\n\tstandard value of coin for the ordinary commerce of a country The coin has
\n\tnot really an immutable value; the pound is not perhaps really worth 15 Rs
\n\tbut fluctuates owing to circumstances; nevertheless to allow a fluctuating
\n\tvalue is to bring a certain amount of confusion, uncertainty & disorder into
\n\tfinance & commerce Therefore the liberated man though he knows the truth
\n\twill not contravene the  
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\n fixed rules of society unless he is impelled by divine
\n\tcommand or unless the divine purpose is moving towards a change in the fixed
\n\tmorality Then, if it is the part given to him, he will act as fearlessly
\n\tagainst social rules as under ordinary circumstances he will adhere firmly
\n\tto the law of the environment in which he dwells For his one care & purpose
\n\twill be to observe the divine purpose & carry out the divine will.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tNeither will events bring to him grief or disappointment,
\n\tfear or disgust with things, because he follows that divine will & purpose
\n\tin himself & in others, in the inner world & the outer, watching everywhere
\n\tthe play of the Self He has divined God’s movement Disgrace & dishonour,
\n\tobloquy & reproach cannot move him He is equal in soul to honour &
\n\tdishonour, respect & insult, mana & apamana, because both come from himself
\n\tto himself & not from another Success & failure are equal to him, since he
\n\tknows that both are equally necessary for the fulfilment of the divine
\n\tintention He will no more quarrel with them than with the cold of winter or
\n\tthe breath of the stormblast They are part of the jagat, part of God’s play,
\n\tof the Self’s action on the Self He acquires a perfect titiksha or power to
\n\tbear; he moves towards more than titiksha, towards an equal & perfect
\n\tenjoyment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tSuch, then, are some of the practical fruits of the
\n\trealisation of God as the Self in all existences & the Brahman containing
\n\tall existences It raises us towards a perfect calm, resignation, peace &
\n\tjoy; a perfect love, charity & beneficence; a perfect courage, boldness &
\n\teffectiveness of action; a divine equality to all men & things & equanimity
\n\ttowards all events & actions And not only perfect, but free We are not bound
\n\tby these things we acquire Our calm does not stay us from even the most
\n\tcolossal activity, for the calm is within us, of the soul & is not an
\n\tactivity in the jagat, in the movement Our resignation is of the soul & does
\n\tnot mean acquiescence in defeat, but acceptance of it as a circumstance in
\n\tthe struggle towards a divine fulfilment; our peace & joy do not prevent us
\n\tfrom understanding & sympathising with the trouble & grief of others; our
\n\tlove does not prevent an outward necessary sternness, our charity a  
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\n\tjust appreciation of men & motives nor does our
\n\tbeneficence hold back the sword when it is necessary that it should
\n\tstrike\u2014for sometimes to strike is the highest beneficence, as those only can
\n\tthoroughly realise who know that God is Rudra as well as Shiva, Chamunda
\n\tKali with the necklace of skulls no less than Durga, the protectress &
\n\tGauri, the wife & mother Our courage does not bind itself by the
\n\tostentations of the fighter, but knows when flight & concealment are
\n\tnecessary, our boldness does not interfere with skill & prudence, nor our
\n\tactivity forbid us to rest & be passive Finally our equality of soul leaves
\n\troom to the other instruments to deal with each thing in the vyavahara
\n\taccording to its various dharma & utility, the law of its being & the law of
\n\tits purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThese are the perfect results of the perfect realisation
\n\tBut in practice it is difficult for these perfect results to be attained or
\n\tfor this perfect realisation to be maintained, unless after we have attained
\n\tto it, we go farther & exceed it In practice we find that there is a flaw,
\n\tsomewhere, which causes us either not perfectly to attain or to slip back
\n\tafter we have attained The reason is that we are still removed by one
\n\tconsiderable step from perfect oneness We have realised oneness of the self
\n\twithin & the self without, of the self in us & the self in all other
\n\texistences But we still regard the jagat, the movement, as not entirely the
\n\tSelf\u2014as movement & play of God, but not itself God, as action of the Lord,
\n\tbut not itself all the Lord expressed to Himself in His own divine awareness
\n\tTherefore when things come to us, when action or event affects us, we have
\n\tto adopt an attitude towards it as something different from ourselves,
\n\tsomething that comes, something that affects us As the result of that
\n\tattitude we have jugupsa We have realised oneness, but by what kind of
\n\trealisation? By seeing,\u2014anupashyati, by action of the seeing faculty in the
\n\tbuddhi or the feeling faculty in the heart\u2014for both these things are vision
\n\tOur realisation is a realisation of identity by attitude, not of absolute
\n\tidentity by nature, realisation through instruments of knowledge, not
\n\tthrough our conscious being in itself Subtle as the distinction may seem, it
\n\tis not really so fine as it appears; it makes a wide difference, it is of
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\n importance in its results For so long as our divine state
\n\tdepends on our attitude, the least failure or deficiency in that attitude
\n\tmeans a waning of the divine state or a defect in its fullness So long as it
\n\trests on a continued act of knowledge in mind & heart, the least
\n\tdiscontinuity or defect of that knowledge means a defect of or a falling
\n\tfrom our divine fullness Only if identity with all existences has become our
\n\twhole nature & being of our being, is the divine state perfected, is its
\n\tpermanent and unbroken enjoyment assured And so complete & exacting is the
\n\toneness of Brahman, so absolute is the law of this Adwaita that if even the
\n\tname & form & the play & the movement are regarded as Brahman’s & not
\n\tthemselves as Brahman, an element of bheda, difference & dissonance, is
\n\tpreserved which tends to prevent this absolute identity of being & preserve
\n\tthe necessity of attitude & the identity only through the instruments of
\n\tknowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tTherefore in his next verse the Rishi gives us a higher &
\n\tcompleter realisation which includes the missing elements & perfects the
\n\tAdwaita "He in whom Self & all existences have become one and perfectly he
\n\tknoweth, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have pain who sees in all
\n\tthings oneness " If we read this verse loosely, we may err by taking it as a
\n\tjustification of that Adwaita which denies the sarvabhutani and affirms only
\n\tthe Atma In that case we shall have not only to translate "All existences
\n\thave become Self", but to suppose that "become" means "disappeared into",
\n\t"blotted themselves out in",\u2014an extension of meaning which is justified by
\n\tnothing, either in the language or in the context It is contradicted by the
\n\timmediately following passage in which the Seer insists on the necessity of
\n\tthe simultaneous view of Vidya & Avidya, while the exclusion of the world &
\n\tits existences can only be effected in the state of sleep or trance and
\n\twould be broken every time the mind returned to the state of waking No such
\n\tbroken & truncated realisation is intended The Mayavada demands that every
\n\ttime we look out on the world & its creatures, we shall say "This is not
\n\tBrahman, it is a dream, a lie"; Adwaita of the Isha demands that looking out
\n\ton the world & its creatures we shall say "This is Brahman,  
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\n\tit is God, it is myself " There is a wide difference
\n\tbetween the two attitudes The one rests a metaphysical & argumentative
\n\tAdwaita on a tremendous essential Dwaita of Satya & Asatya, that which is
\n\ttrue & that which is false; the other rests a practical Adwaita on an
\n\tapparent Dwaita, all being Satyam, eternal Truth, but Truth seen & recurrent
\n\tpresenting itself to Truth seeing & persistent\u2014the sthanu & the jagat, an
\n\tapparent difference of appearance to knowledge, not an actual difference of
\n\tessential reality & unreality Apart from this divergence, the language of
\n\tthe sloka is such as not to admit of the negation sought by the Mayavadin,
\n\tbut to contradict it I have not translated the verse literally yet, but now
\n\tI give the literal translation, "In whom the Self (of him) verily knowing by
\n\tvijnana has become all creatures, there what delusion, what grief, of him
\n\tseeing wherever he looks (anu) oneness " It is evident that the Mayavadin’s
\n\tposition vanishes The words are sarvani bhutani atmaivabhud\u2014not sarvabhutani
\n\tatmaivabhuvan\u2014a singular verb demanding a singular subject Therefore it is
\n\tthe Self that becomes, not the bhutas; and we cannot say that this is the
\n\tattitude of a man still ignorant, ajna, for it is the Self of one who knows
\n\tentirely, has that knowledge which in the Upanishads is called vijnana & who
\n\thas attained to the vision of oneness In him his Self has become all
\n\tcreatures
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\n Let us understand thoroughly the sense of this important
\n\tsloka Yasmin, in whom The soul has become one with all existence, all
\n\texistence it feels to be itself containing the creation & exceeding
\n\tit,\u2014therefore yasmin, not yasya In him his Self, that which he feels to be
\n\this true I has become all creatures Not only does he feel himself or
\n\tperceive himself to be in <\/i>all creatures as the divine presence in
\n\tthem & around them, but he is they,\u2014he is each bhuta The word bhuta means
\n\tthat which has become as opposed to that which eternally is & it includes
\n\ttherefore name & form & play of mind & play of action The last barrier is
\n\tbroken; ahankara, the sense of separate self, utterly disappears & the soul
\n\tis all that it sees or is in any way aware of It is not only the seer in
\n\tall, but it is the seen; not only the Lord, but his habitation, not only Ish
\n\tbut jagat In fact, just  
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\n as the Lord himself, as Brahman itself becomes all things &
\n\tall creatures in itself, just as all creatures are only Brahman’s becomings,
\n\tbhutani, just as Brahman is the ejat and the anejat, the moving & the
\n\tunmoving, God & his world, so is it now with the soul that sees Of it too it
\n\tcan be said Tad ejati tannaijati It moves & it moves not, it is the near &
\n\tthe far, it is within all things & outside all things The man thus liberated
\n\tundergoes a tremendous change of consciousness; he ceases to feel himself as
\n\twithin his body & feels rather his body as within himself & not only his but
\n\tall bodies; he feels himself at the same time in his body & in all bodies
\n\tnot separately like a piece of water in a jar, but as an unity like one
\n\tether undivided in many vessels, & at the same time he feels that they are
\n\tnot in him nor he in them, but that this idea of within & without is merely
\n\ta way of looking, a way of expressing to the mind a truth in itself beyond
\n\texpression by space & time\u2014just as we say "I have this in my mind" when we
\n\tdo not really intend to express any location in space but mean rather "This
\n\tis my mental knowledge as it just now expresses itself " Pashya me yogam
\n\taishwaram For he now feels that these things in which & outside which he
\n\tseems to be are himself, his becomings in the motion of awareness, jagat,
\n\tbhutani This is the first important difference between the preceding
\n\trealisation of knowledge & this fuller realisation of being His self has
\n\tbecome all existences; they & he are all merely becomings of himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tBut if this realisation is only by the heart through love
\n\tor only by the purified reason through intellectual perception, then it is
\n\tnot the realisation which this shloka contemplates For so long as we have
\n\tnot become that which we are realising, realisation is not complete & its
\n\tmoral effects cannot be securely held For what use is it if we merely
\n\tunderstand that all is one when if there is a touch from outside it, the
\n\tbody cries "Something has struck me, I am hurt" or the heart says "Someone
\n\thas injured me, I am in grief" or the vital spirits cry "Someone means ill
\n\tto me, I am in fear"? And if the heart realises, but the reason & other
\n\tinstruments fail, how shall we not, feeling one with the grief of others,
\n\tfail to be crushed by them & overborne? The  
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\n

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

\n\tlower organs must also consent to the absolute sense of
\n\toneness or no sure and perfect result can be gained How is this to be done?
\n\tBy the force of the vijnana, our ideal self Therefore the Upanishad adds
\n\t"vijanatah", when he knows, not by ordinary knowledge, jnanam, or by
\n\tintellectual knowledge, prajnanam, but by the ideal knowledge, vijanatah.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tWhat is this vijnana? Vedantic commentators have
\n\tidentified it with buddhi; it is, they think, the discriminating intellect
\n\tor the pure reason But in the psychological system of the Veda intellectual
\n\tvichara, reason, even pure reason, is not the highest nor does it lead to
\n\tthe highest results The real buddhi is not in mind at all, but above mind
\n\tFor beyond & behind this intellect, heart, nervous system, body, there is,
\n\tsays the Veda, a level, a sea of being out of which all these descend & here
\n\ttake form, a plane of consciousness in which the soul dwells by the power of
\n\tperfect truth, in a condition of pure existence of knowledge, satyam, pure
\n\tarrangement of its nature in that knowledge, ritam or vratam, pure
\n\tsatisfying wideness in being of that knowledge-nature, brihat This is the
\n\tsoul’s kingdom of heaven, its ideal state, immortality, amritatwam All
\n\tthings here are in the language of [the Vishnu Purana] vijnanavijrimbhitani;
\n\tthey live here in fragments of that wide & mighty truth, but because of
\n\tbheda, because they are broken up & divide truth against truth, they cannot
\n\tenjoy Truth of knowledge, Truth of Nature, Truth of being & bliss, but have
\n\tto strive towards it with much failure, pain & relapse But if man can rise
\n\tin himself to that plane and pour down its knowledge upon the lower system,
\n\tthen the whole system becomes remoulded in the mould of the vijnana Man can
\n\tget himself a new heart, a new mind, a new life, navyam ayu, even a new
\n\tbody, punah kritam This whole system will then consent & be compelled to
\n\tlive in the truth\u2014& that truth to which vijnana itself is the door, is
\n\tBrahman as Sacchidananda All things here will be Sacchidananda This is the
\n\tsecond superiority of this high realisation as this shloka describes it,
\n\tthat it is vijanatah, attained not by intellectual discernment or feeling of
\n\tthe heart or concentration of the mind, not depending therefore on any state
\n\tsuch as sushupti or on any attitude, but  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 419<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n itself determining the attitude, & attained through direct
\n\tideal knowledge with the result of becoming all that is in our being, not
\n\tmerely the mind or thought or feeling, in our very nature The practical
\n\tconsequence will be that body, mind & heart will no longer admit any
\n\tbahyasparsha, but will utterly feel that nothing can come to them, nothing
\n\ttouch them but only Brahman To every touch there will be but one response
\n\tfrom heart & mind & nerve alike\u2014"This is Brahman " Nanyat pashyati, nanyach
\n\tchrinoti They will see nothing else, hear nothing else, smell nothing else,
\n\tfeel nothing else, taste nothing else, but only Brahman Of such a state it
\n\tcan be truly & utterly said, & not merely relatively, not subject to any
\n\tqualification, ekatwam anupashyatah.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThat oneness is the oneness of Sacchidananda, one being,
\n\tone knowledge, one bliss, being that is consciousness, knowledge that is
\n\tidentity, both of them in their essence & reality bliss,\u2014therefore not three
\n\tseparate qualities, but one existence, even though presented to the
\n\tintellect as a trinity, yet always one Whatever therefore is felt, seen,
\n\theard, thought, it will be bliss that is felt, bliss that is seen, bliss
\n\tthat is heard, bliss that is thought\u2014a bliss which is in its essence &
\n\tinseparably existence & knowledge For the intellect we have to use all three
\n\twords, for on the level of our mental action these three are or seem to be
\n\tdivided & different from each other, but to the illumined being of the
\n\tJivanmukta there is no difference, they are one It is ekatwam It is Brahman
\n\tThe highest heights of this realisation are, indeed, not easily attained,
\n\tbut even on its lower levels there is a perfect freedom & an ineffable joy
\n\tSwalpam apyasya dharmasya To these levels, tatra, neither fear, nor grief,
\n\tnor illusion can come Tatra ko mohah kah shoka ekatwam anupashyatah How
\n\tshall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief, to whose eyes wheresoever
\n\tthey turn all things are one? For grief is born of illusion, shoka proceeds
\n\tfrom moha, & the essence of moha is that bewilderment, that stultification
\n\tof the conscious mind by which we forget oneness By forgetting oneness, the
\n\tidea of limitation is fixed on our being; by limitation comes the idea of
\n\tnot being this, not having that; from this idea arises the desire  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

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

\n\tto be this, to have that; by the disappointment of desire
\n\tcomes disappointment, dislike of that which disappoints, hatred & anger
\n\tagainst that which withholds, fear of that which gives contrary
\n\texperience\u2014the whole brood of earthly ills Moha shouts "Here is one I love,
\n\tshe is dying"; "Here is one who will kill me, I am terrified"; "Here is a
\n\ttouch too strong for me to bear, it is pain " "This is virtue, that is sin;
\n\tif I do not gain one I am lost, if I fall into the other I shall suffer by
\n\tGod’s wrath & judgment This is fair, that is foul This is sweet, that is
\n\tbitter This I have not which another has, I must have it, even if it be
\n\tdepriving him of his possession " But he who sees oneness sees only
\n\tSacchidananda, only bliss that is conscious being Just as the mind that has
\n\ttaught itself to see only matter everywhere, says even of mind & soul, even
\n\tof itself, It is not mind, it is not soul, it is matter, just as it sees
\n\teverywhere only the play of matter upon matter, in matter, by matter, so the
\n\tliberated soul says of body & nerve & mind, It is not mind, it is not body,
\n\tit is not nerve, it is Brahman, it is conscious existence that is bliss and
\n\tso he sees everywhere this bliss only & the play of bliss upon bliss, in
\n\tbliss, by bliss Ananda is the term through which he reconciles himself with
\n\tthe world Into delight his soul is delivered, by delight he supports in
\n\thimself the great world movement & dwells in it, in delight he is for ever
\n\tone with, yet plays with God.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\tThe second movement of the Upanishad is finished In his
\n\tfirst movement the Rishi advanced four propositions,\u2014that the purpose of our
\n\texistence is the fulfilment of God in the world, realising that the Lord &
\n\this movement alone exist, He is the only inhabitant, His movement the only
\n\tcause of the forms in which He inhabits; secondly that the golden rule of
\n\tlife is to enjoy all God’s movement or God in all his movement but only
\n\tafter the renunciation of demand & desire, for only so can it all be
\n\tenjoyed; thirdly, that life & action in this world are intended, must be
\n\tmaintained & do not interfere with divine freedom  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 421<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n & bliss; fourthly, that any self-marring movement leads only
\n\tto confusion & darkness here & beyond & not to our divine realisation In
\n\torder to lay down on a firm basis his justification of these teachings, he
\n\tshows us first that God & the world are one, both are Brahman & therefore
\n\tthe world also is our divine Self compassing by a certain divine power
\n\tmovement of action & phenomenon in its still unmoving Self & without parting
\n\twith its superiority to the movement, on this basis he shows us that
\n\texistence & bliss not only can be made one, but if we realise this one
\n\tBrahman who is our divine Self & God (antar asya sarvasya), all existence
\n\tmust necessarily become bliss & cannot be anything else; grief & fear &
\n\tdislike & delusion have no farther place in us It is to this realisation we
\n\tshall arrive by realising God as we give up desire, renounce everything to
\n\tHim and enjoy the world in Him & by Him, as His movement, as His enjoyment
\n\tFor we shall then realise that all beings are one with ourself, the
\n\trenunciation of desire will become possible and we shall not shrink from
\n\tanything in life, because we shall know that it is God & his movement
\n\tFinally, the high & complete realisation will be ours in which the very
\n\tcause of desire & demand will disappear & all will be utterly the Self, God,
\n\tBrahman, Sacchidananda.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \tA question may arise It is true then that enjoyment of
\n\tall things here in oneness is possible; that renunciation of desire &
\n\tself-surrender are the way & the realisation of the Lord in all forms &
\n\tmovements & self-surrender to him the method,\u2014involving also action
\n\taccording to His will, enjoyment according to His will But when the final
\n\trealisation is accomplished, when oneness is utterly attained, then what
\n\tfarther need of enjoyment & action? The goal is realised, let the method be
\n\tabandoned Why keep the distinction of God & the world, why act any more in  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 422<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\tthe world when the purpose of action is accomplished? It
\n\tmay still be possible, it is not necessary; it is not even desirable Lose
\n\tyourself in Sacchidananda, if not the impersonal unconditioned Brahman Is it
\n\tnot that in which the vision of oneness logically culminates? Therefore not
\n\tonly the golden rule of conduct has to be justified, but the teaching of a
\n\tliberated activity has to be justified It is this to which the Sage next
\n\tproceeds He is about to establish the foundations of action in the liberated
\n\tsoul, to show the purpose of the One & the Many,\u2014to reconcile Vidya & Avidya
\n\tin God’s supreme & blissful unity The eighth verse is the introductory &
\n\tfundamental verse of this movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 423<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n [1] <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n [Bracketed and struck through in the manuscript See the
\n\tfootnote on page 378 <\/i>]
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \tFrom the choice of terms in this opening line certain
\n\tintellectual consequences arise which we have to accept if we wish to
\n\tunderstand the teaching of the Upanishad First, the Personality of God & His
\n\tunity Not only is the impersonal God one Brahman without a second, but the
\n\tPersonal God is one without a second There is no other person besides God in
\n\tthe universe Whatever different masks He may wear, from house to house of
\n\tHis habitation, it is always He The disguises may be utterly concealing He
\n\tmay manifest as Brahma & Vishnu, Surya & Agni or as the Yaksha & the
\n\tPishacha; he may dwell here as the man or dwell here as the animal; he may
\n\tshine out as the saint or lust in Himself as the criminal; but all these are
\n\tHe
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n [2] <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n [Written on a separate sheet of the manuscript See the
\n\tfootnote<\/i> on page 378 <\/i>]
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \tThe world & God What is the world? It is jagati, says the
\n\tRishi, she who is constantly moving The essence of the world is not Space
\n\tnor Time nor Circumstance which we call Causality\u2014its essence is motion Not
\n\tonly so, but every single force & object in it is of the same nature, it is
\n\ta jagat, a knot of habitual motion The ancient Hindus knew that the earth
\n\tmoves & therefore the earth also was designated in ancient times by a number
\n\tof words meaning motion of which jagati itself is one\u2014ga, go, jagati, ila
\n\tThey knew of the physical movement of the universe They would not have
\n\trejected the scientific hypothesis which sees in every object a mass &
\n\tarrangement, a sort of cosmos of anus,  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 424<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\tatoms in constant movement with regard to [each] other
\n\tBut the movement here contemplated is not, as we see in the fifth verse, tad
\n\tejati & the eighth verse, sa paryagat, movement of matter, but of divine
\n\tbeing & conscious force of which matter is only an appearance But for the
\n\tpresent, the Rishi is content to envisage the world as a world of motion &
\n\tmultitude In essence the kshobha or formative movement called active
\n\tPrakriti, in universality it is this force ordering & arranging its objects
\n\tby motion, jagati; in detail it is a multitude of single objects, forces,
\n\tideas, sensations etc, all in their nature motion of this moving universe,
\n\tjagat, the apparently motionless stone no less than the ever circling &
\n\trotating earth In this motion, in the objects, forces, sensations created by
\n\tit He dwells who is its Lord
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n [3] <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n [Written in the top margin of two pages of the manuscript
\n\tPoint<\/i> of insertion not marked See the footnote on page 380 <\/i>]
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \tMoreover we must realise the Lord in others as one with
\n\tHim in ourselves Then we shall not need to covet any man’s possessions "Do
\n\tnot covet" says the Sage "the possession of any man whomsoever " Dhanam
\n\tmeans any kind of possession whatever, not only material wealth\u2014neither the
\n\tglory of the king, nor the wealth of the merchant, nor the temperament of
\n\tthe sage, nor the strength of elephants, nor the swiftness of eagles For
\n\twhom are we envying, whose goods are we coveting? Ourselves, our own goods
\n\tIf we realise divine unity, we can enjoy them as perfectly in another’s
\n\texperience as in our own Moreover, being divine in power ourselves we can
\n\tget them whenever our supreme self wills without anyone else in the world
\n\tbeing the poorer for our gain There must be no demand, no coveting Not when
\n\tor if the mind wills, but when or if He wills  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 425<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n [4]<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n [Written separately; point of insertion not marked See
\n\tthe footnote on page 380 <\/i>]
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \tPractically, therefore, the renunciation demanded of us
\n\tis the renunciation by the lower unreal & incomplete self, mind, senses,
\n\tvitality, intellect, will, egoism of all that they are & seek to our real,
\n\tcomplete & transcendental Self, the Lord And that renunciation we make not
\n\tby substituting another demand, the demand to be rid of all these things &
\n\treleased from the fulfilment of His cosmic purpose, but in order the better
\n\tto fulfil His purpose & enjoy Him utterly in His movement, in all experience
\n\t& all action that He in us & through us is manifesting & perfecting For that
\n\twhich we have to enjoy is not only Ish but jagat,\u2014for as we shall see both
\n\tare one Brahman & by enjoying Him entirely we must come to enjoy all His
\n\tmovement, since He is here as the Lord of his own movement For this reason
\n\tthe word Ish has been selected as the fundamental relation of God to
\n\tourselves & the world\u2014the master of all our existence to whom we renounce,
\n\tthe Lord who for his purposes has made & governs the world\u2014for in this
\n\trelation of "Lord" he is inseparable from His movement It is a relation that
\n\tdepends on the existence & play of the world of which He is the ruler &
\n\tmaster Envisaging the ruler, we envisage that which he rules, the habitation
\n\tfor the sake of the inhabitant indeed, but still the habitation We get
\n\ttherefore in this first verse of the Upanishad the foundations of the great
\n\tprinciple of activity with renunciation with which the teaching of the Gita
\n\tbegins & the still greater principle of atmasamarpana or entire surrender to
\n\tGod, the uttamam rahasyam with which it culminates We get the reason &
\n\tspirit of the command to Arjuna from which all the moral teaching of the
\n\tGita starts & to which it returns, jitva shatrun bhunkshva rajyam
\n\tsamriddham, the command of activity, the command of enjoyment\u2014but activity
\n\tfor God only, yajnartham, without ahankara, enjoyment in God only, mayi
\n\tsannyasya, without desire or attachment, neither demanding what He does not
\n\ttake  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 426<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\tfor Himself in us, nor rejecting what He is here to
\n\tenjoy, whether the enjoyment be of victory or defeat, of the patched loin
\n\tcloth of the beggar or the imperial crown
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n [5]<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n [Written in a different notebook; beginning lost or point
\n\tof insertion unknown Related thematically to Draft A of "The Life<\/i>
\n\tDivine" <\/i>]
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n \t[…..] existence, lies the justification of all that is
\n\tsaid in the scriptures of the liberated & perfected soul He who would be
\n\tfree in this world, must be detached from it, though belonging to it, above
\n\tit though in it, above it in his inward conscious self-being, though in it
\n\tin his outward action of Nature He must combine with a blissful enjoyment of
\n\tall things in the world, a joyous indifference to all things in the world He
\n\tmust be not un-mundane but supramundane, not inhuman but superhuman In all
\n\this acts he must have in his soul the loud laughter, the attahasyam, of Kali
\n\tHe must love with that inner laughter, slay with that laughter, save with
\n\tthat laughter, himself perish or reign, take joy or take torture with that
\n\tsecret & divine laughter For he knows that the whole world is but a divine
\n\tplay of the eternal Child-God Srikrishna with Himself in the playground of
\n\tHis self-existence All this he cannot have unless in the roots of his
\n\tconscious being he feels not concealed or subliminal, but manifest & always
\n\tpresent to him, the Bright, Calm, Unconcerned, Unbound, Unrelated Divine
\n\tExistence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tThis Pure Existence is not only an impersonal state of
\n\tdivine being, it is God Himself in His pure personality For in all the
\n\tdivine manifestation, there is always this double aspect of Personality &
\n\tImpersonality God Impersonal manifests Himself, both in the universe &
\n\ttranscendent of the Universe, transcending it as infinite pure Existence,
\n\tinfinite pure Consciousness, infinite pure Delight, the triune
\n\tSachchidananda of our Scriptures, entering world existence He manifests in
\n\tit all this quality of existence, variation of Consciousness, multiplicity
\n\tof  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 427<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n delight which with its changes, perversities & apparent
\n\tself-contradiction makes up the marvellous web of the world But He is also,
\n\ttranscending existence, the infinite Pure Existent, the infinite Pure
\n\tConscious, the infinite Pure Blissful,\u2014not anyone, no person or individual,
\n\tfor He alone is, but still neither a mere abstraction or state of Being
\n\tEntering into world existence, He is All-being, God, Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna,
\n\tKali, Allah, the Mighty One, the Humble, the Loving, the Merciful, the
\n\tRuthless These things are aspects of Himself to His own consciousness Just
\n\tas Sacchidananda is Triune,\u2014not three, but One,\u2014for when we enter deep into
\n\tthe Trinity we find only Unity since Existence is Consciousness & nothing
\n\tbut Consciousness, & Consciousness is Delight & nothing but Delight, so the
\n\tPersonal & Impersonal God are Biune, not two, but one, since when we enter
\n\tinto the depths of this Biune, we find only Unity, Existence nothing but the
\n\tExistent, the Existent nothing but Existence The distinction between them is
\n\ta necessary convention or arrangement of His truth for world manifestation;
\n\tit does not amount to a difference The metaphysician fixes his concentration
\n\tof Will in Knowledge only on the Impersonal & pursuing it through the world
\n\t& beyond, he affirms the Impersonal God but tends to deny the Personal The
\n\tdevotee, fixing his concentration on the Personal & pursuing it through the
\n\tworld & beyond, affirms the Personal God but tends to deny or ignore the
\n\tImpersonal Both affirmations are true, both denials are false Neither is one
\n\tgreater than the other, the Impersonal than the Personal, just as in the
\n\tPersonal, Shiva is not greater than Vishnu, nor Vishnu than Shiva, nor the
\n\tAll-Being than Krishna or Kali Such exaggerated distinctions are the errors
\n\tof partial or selective Yoga fastening on aspects & ignoring the true being
\n\tof God in His self-manifestation We must accept, for our perfection’s sake,
\n\tthe multitude of His aspects & even of His divine impersonations, but we
\n\tmust not make them an excuse for breaking up the inalienable unity of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 428<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Life Divine   A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad   [Draft A]   Foreword   Veda & Vedanta are the inexhaustible fountains of Indian…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-17-isha-upanishad","wpcat-43-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987","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=1987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}