{"id":3105,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3105"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:58","slug":"07-15-january-1916-vol-a-philosophical-review-vol-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/arya\/a-philosophical-review-vol-2\/07-15-january-1916-vol-a-philosophical-review-vol-2","title":{"rendered":"-07_15 January 1916.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nThe Life Divine.<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n
\nMIND AND SUPERMIND<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        He discovered that Mind was the
\nBrahman. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n                                                                  
\nTaittiriya Upanishad.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       Indivisible, but as if divided in beings. <\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n       The conception which we have so far been
\nstriving to form is that of the essence only of the supramental life which the
\ndivine soul possesses securely in the being of Sachchidananda, but which the
\nhuman soul has to manifest in this body of Sachchidananda formed here into the
\nmould of a mental and physical living. But so far as we have been able yet to
\nenvisage it, it does not seem to have any necessary connection with life as we
\nknow it, life active between the two terms of our normal existence, the two
\nfirmaments of mind and body. It seems rather to be a state of being, a state of
\nconsciousness, a state of active relation and’ mutual enjoyment such as
\ndisembodied souls might possess and experience in a world without physical
\nforms, a world in which differentiation of souls had been accomplished but not
\ndifferentiation of bodies, a world of active and joyous infinities, not of
\nform-imprisoned spirits. Therefore it might reasonably be doubted whether such a
\ndivine living would be possible with this limitation of bodily form and this
\nlimitation of form-imprisoned mind and form-trammelled force which is what we
\nnow know as existence,
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-321<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n        In fact, we have striven to arrive at
\nsome conception of that supreme infinite being, conscious-force and self-delight
\nof which our world is a creation and our mentality a perverse figure; we have
\ntried to give ourselves an idea of what this divine Maya may be, this
\nTruth-consciousness, this Real-Idea by which the conscious force of the
\ntranscendent and universal Existence conceives, forms and governs the universe,
\norder, cosmos of its self-delight. But we have not studied the connections of
\nthese four great and divine terms with the three others with which our human
\nexperience is alone familiar, \u2014 mind, life , and body. We have not scrutinised
\nthis other and apparently undivine Maya which is the root of all our striving
\nand suffering or seen how precisely it develops out of the divine. And till we
\nhave douse this, till we have woven the missing cords of connection, our world
\nis still unexplained to us and the doubt of a possible unification between that
\nhigher existence arid this lower life still subsists. We know that our world has
\ncome forth from Sachchidananda and subsists in His being ; we conceive that He
\ndwells in it as the Enjoyer and Knower, Lord and Self; we have seen that our
\ndual terms of sensation, mind, force, being can only be representations of His
\ndelight, His conscious force, His divine existence. But it would seem that they
\nare actually so much the opposite of what He really and supernal is that we
\ncannot while dwelling in the cause of these opposites, cannot while contained in
\nthe lower triple term of existence attain to the divine living . We must either
\nexalt this lower being into that higher status or exchange body for that pure
\nexistence , life for that pure condition of conscious-force, sensation and
\nmentality for that pure delight and knowledge which live in the truth of the
\nspiritual reality. And must not this mean that we abandon all earthly or limited
\nmental existence for something which is its opposite \u2014 either for some pure
\nstate of the Atman or else for some world of the Truth of things, if such
\nexists, or other worlds, if such exist, of divine Bliss, divine Energy, divine
\nBeing? In that case the perfection of humanity is elsewhere than
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-322<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nin humanity itself; the summit of its earthly evolution can only be a fine apex
\nof dissolving mentality whence it takes the great leap either into formless
\nbeing or into worlds beyond the reach of embodied Mind.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n         But in reality all that we call
\nundivine can only be an action of the four divine principles themes’. vs., such
\naction of them as was necessary to create this universe of forms-Those forms
\nhover been created not outside but in the divine existence, conscious-force and
\nbliss, not outside but in and as a part of the working of the divine Real-Idea.
\nThere is therefore no reason to suppose that there cannot be any real play of
\nthe higher divine consciousness in a world of forms or that forms and their
\nimmediate supports, mental consciousness, energy of vital force and formal
\nsubstance, must necessarily distort that which they represent. It is possible,
\neven probable that mind, body and life are to be found in their pure forms in
\nthe divine Truth itself, are there in fact as subordinate activities of its
\nconsciousness and part of the complete instrumentation by which the supreme
\nForce always works. Mind, life and body must then be capable of divinity and
\ntheir form and working in that short period out of possibly only one cycle of
\nthe terrestrial evolution which Science reveals to us, need not represent all
\nthe potential workings of these three principles in the living body. They work
\nas they do because they are by some means separated in consciousness from the
\ndivine Truth from which they proceed. Were this separation once abrogated by the
\nexpanding energy of the Divine in humanity, their present functioning might well
\nbe converted, would indeed naturally be converted by a supreme evolution and
\nprogression into that purer working which they have in the Truth-consciousness.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       In that case not only would it be possible
\nto manifest and maintain the divine consciousness in the human mind and body
\nbut, even, that divine consciousness might in the end, increasing its conquests,
\nremould mind, life and body themselves into a more perfect image of its eternal
\nTruth and realise not only in soul but in substance its kingdom of heaven upon
\nearth. The first of these victories, the in-
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-323<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n"eternal, has certainly been achieved in a greater or less degree by some,
\nperhaps by many upon earth; the other, the external, even if never more or less
\nrealised in past are ones as a first type for future cycles and still held in the
\nsubconscious memory of the earth-nature, may yet be intended as a coming
\nvictorious achievement of God in humanity. This earthly life need not be
\nnecessarily and for ever a wheel of h info yours, half-anguished effort;
\nattainment may also <\/span> 1
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       What Mind, Life and Body are in their
\nsupreme sources and who it therefore they must be in the integral completeness
\nof the divine manifestation when informed by the Truth and not cut off from it
\nby the separation and the ignorance in which presently we live,\u2014this then is the
\nproblem that we have next to consider. For there they must have already their
\nperfection towards which we here are growing,\u2014we who are only the first movement
\nof the Mind which is evolving in Matter and not yet liberated from the
\nconditions and effects of that involution of spirit inform, that plunge of Light
\ninto its own shadow by which the darkened material consciousness of physical
\nNature was created. The type of all perfection towards which we grow, the terms
\nof our highest evolution must already be held in the divine Real-Idea ; they
\nmust be there formed and conscious for us to grow towards and into them; for
\nthat pre-existence in the divine knowledge is what our human mentality names and
\nseeks as the Ideal. The Ideal is an eternal Reality which we have not yet
\nrealised in the conditions of our own being, not a non-existent which the
\nEternal Divine has not yet grasped and only we imperfect beings have glimpsed
\nand mean to create.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       Mind, first, the chained and hampered
\nsovereign of our human living. Mind in its essence is a consciousness which
\nmeasures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and
\ncontains them as if each were a separate integer. Even with what exists only as
\nobvious parts and fractions, Mind establishes this fiction of its ordinary
\ncommerce that they are things with which it can
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-324<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\ndeal separately and not merely as aspects of a whole. For even when it knows
\nthat they are not things in themselves, it is obliged to deal with them as if
\nthey were things in themselves ; otherwise it could not subject them to its own
\ncharacteristic activity. It is this essential characteristic of Mind which
\nconditions the workings of all its operative powers, whether conception,
\nperception, sensation or the dealings of creative thought. It conceives,
\nperceives, senses things as if rigidly out from a background or a mass and
\nemploys them as fixed units of the material given to it for creation or
\npossession. All its action and enjoyment deal thus with wholes that form part of
\na greater whole, and these subordinate wholes again are broken up into parts
\nwhich-are also treated as wholes for the particular purposes they serve. Mind
\nmay divide, multiply, add, subtract, but it cannot get beyond the limits of this
\nmathematics. If it goes beyond and tries to conceive a real whole, it loses
\nitself in a foreign element ; it falls from its own firm ground into the ocean
\nof the intangible, into the abysms of the infinite where it can neither
\nperceive, conceive, sense nor deal with its subject for creation and enjoyment.
\nFor if Mind appears sometimes to conceive, to perceive, to sense or to enjoy
\nwith possession the infinite, it is only in seeming and always in a figure of
\nthe infinite. What it does thus vaguely possess is simply a formless Vast and
\nnot the real space less infinite. The moment it tries to deal with that, to
\npossess it, at once the inalienable tendency to delimitation comes in and the
\nMind finds itself again handling images, forms and words. Mind cannot possess
\nthe infinite, it can only suffer it or be possessed by it ; it can only lie
\nblissfully helpless under the luminous shadow of the Real cast down on it from
\nplanes of existence beyond its reach. The possession of the Infinite cannot come
\nexcept by an ascent to those supramental planes, nor the knowledge of it except
\nby an inert submission of Mind to the descending messages of the Truth-conscious
\nReality. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       This essential faculty and the essential
\nlimitation that accompanies it are the truth of Mind and fix its real
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-325<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nnature and action, Swabhava <\/i>and Swadharma <\/i>; here is the mark of
\nthe divine fiat assigning it its office n the complete instrumentation of the
\nsupreme Maya,\u2014 the office determined by that which it is in its very birth from
\nthe eternal self-conception of the Self-existent . That office is to translate
\nalways infinity into the terms of the finite, to measure off, limit, de-piece.
\nActually it does this in our consciousness to the exclusion of all true sense of
\nthe Infinite ; therefore Mind is the nodes of the great Ignorance, because it is
\nthat which originally divides and distributes, and it has even been mistaken for
\nthe cause of the universe and for the whole of the divine Maya. But the divine
\nMaya comprehends Vida as well as Avidya, the Knowledge as well as the
\nIgnorance. For it is obvious that since the finite is only an appearance of the
\nInfinite, a remit of its action, a play of its conception and cannot exist
\nexcept by it, in it, with it as a background, itself form of that stuff and
\naction of that force, there must be an original consciousness which contains and
\nviews both at the same time and is intimately conscious of all the relations of
\nthe one with the other. In that consciousness there is no ignorance because the
\ninfinite is known and the finite is not separated from it as an independent
\nreality; but still there is a subordinate process of delimitation,\u2014otherwise no
\nworld could exist,\u2014a process by which the ever dividing and reuniting
\nconsciousness of Mind, the ever divergent and convergent action of Life and the
\ninfinitely divided and self-aggregating substance of Matter come, all by one
\nprinciple and original act, into phenomenal being. This subordinate process of
\nthe eternal Seer and Thinker, perfectly luminous, perfectly aware of itself,
\nknowing well what He does, conscious of the infinite in the finite which He is
\ncreating, may be called the divine Mind. And it is obvious that it must be a
\nsubordinate and not really a separate working of the Real-Idea, of the
\nSupermind, and must operate through what we have described as the apprehending
\nmovement of the Truth-consciousness.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        That apprehending consciousness, the
\nPrajnana, places, as we have seen, the working of the indivisible All
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-326<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nactive as a process and object of creative knowledge before the consciousness of
\nthe same All originative and cognizant as the possessor and witness of its own
\nworking, \u2014somewhat as a poet views the creations of his own consciousness placed
\nbefore him in it as if they were things other than the creator and his creative
\nforce, yet all the time they are really no more than the play of self-formation
\nof his own being in itself and are indivisible from their creator. Thus Prajnana
\nmakes the fundamental division which leads to all the rest, the division of the
\nPurusha, the conscious soul who knows and sees and by his vision creates and
\nordains, and the Prakriti, the Force-Soul or Nature-Soul which is his knowledge
\nand his vision, his creation and his all-ordaining power. Both are one being,
\none existence and the for is seen and created are multiple forms of that Being
\nwhich are placed by Him as knowledge before Himself as knower, by Himself as
\nForce before Himself as Creator. The last action of this apprehending
\nconsciousness takes place when the Purusha pervading the conscious extension of
\nhis being, present at _ every point of himself as well as in his totality,
\ninhabiting every form, regards the whole as if separately from each of the
\nstandpoints he has taken ; he views anal governs the relations of each soul-form
\nof himself with oilier soul-forms from the standpoint of will and knowledge
\nappropriate to each particular form. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       Thus the elements of division have come
\ninto being. First, the infinity of the One has translated itself into an
\nextension in conceptual Time and Place ; secondly, the omnipresence of the One
\nin that self-conscious extension translates itself into a multiplicity of the
\nconscious soul, the many Purushas of the Sankhya ; thirdly, the multiplicity of
\nsoul-forms has translated itself into a divided habitation of the extended
\nunity. This divided habitation is inevitable the moment these multiple Purushas
\ndo not each inhabit a separate world of its own, do not each possess a separate
\nPrakriti building a separate universe but rather all enjoy the same Prakriti,\u2014
\nas they must do, being only soul lords of the One presiding over the multi-
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-327<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\npie creations of His power,\u2014yet have relations with each other in the one world
\nof being created by the one Prakriti. The Purusha in each form actively
\nidentifies himself with early ; he delimits himself in that and sets off his
\nother forms against it in his consciousness as containing his other selves which
\nare identical with him in being but different in relation, different in the
\nvarious extent, various range of movement and various view of the one substance,
\nforce, consciousness, delight which each is actually deploying at any given
\nmoment of Time or in any given field of Space. Granted that in the divine
\nExistence, perfectly aware of itself, this is not a binding limitation, not an
\nidentification to which the soul becomes enslaved and which it cannot exceed as
\nwe are enslaved to our sell-identification with the body and unable to exceed
\nthe limitation of our conscious ego, unable to escape from a particular movement
\nof our consciousness in Time determining our particular field in Space ; granted
\nall this, still there is a free identification from moment to moment which only
\nthe inalienable self-knowledge of the divine soul prevents from fixing itself in
\nan apparently rigid chain of successive energies such as that in which our
\nconsciousness seems to be fixed and chained.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       Thus the depicting is already there ; the
\nrelation of form with form as if they were separate beings, of will- of-being
\nwith will-of-being as if they were separate forces, of knowledge-of-being with
\nknowledge-of-being as if they were separate consciousnesses has already been
\nfounded. It is as yet only " as if " ; for the divine soul is not deluded, it is
\naware of all as phenomenon of being and keeps hold of its existence in the
\nreality of being ; it does not forfeit its unity; it uses mind as a subordinate
\naction of the infinite knowledge, a definition of things subordinate to its
\nawareness of infinity, a delimitation dependent on its awareness of essential to
\nutility’\u2014not that apparent and pluralistic totality of sum and collective
\naggregation which is only another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no real
\nlimitation ; the soul uses its defining power for the play of
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-328<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nwell-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        A new factor, a new action of
\nconscious force is therefore needed to create the operation of a helplessly
\nlimited as opposed to a freely limiting mind,\u2014that is to say, of mind subject to
\nits own play and deceived by it as opposed to mind master of its own play and
\nviewing it in its truth, the creature mind as opposed to the divine. That new
\nfactor is Avidya, the self-ignoring faculty which separates the action of mind
\nfrom the action of the super mind that originated and still governs it from
\nbehind the veil. Thus separated, Mind perceives only the particular and not the
\nuniversal, conceives only the particular in an un possessed universal and no
\nlonger both particular and universal as phenomena of the infinite. Thus we have
\nthe limited mind which views every phenomenon as a thing-in-itself, separate
\npart of a whole which again exists separately in a greater whole and so on,
\nenlarging always its aggregates without getting back to the sense of a true
\ninfinity.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        Mind, being an action of the
\nInfinite, depieces as well as aggregates ad infinitum. <\/i>It cuts up being
\ninto wholes, into ever smaller wholes, into atoms and those atoms into primal
\natoms, until it would, if it could, dissolve the primal atom into nothingness.
\nBut it cannot, because behind this dividing action is the saving knowledge of
\nthe supra-mental which knows every whole, every atom to be only a concentration
\nof all-force, of all-consciousness, of all-being into phenomenal forms of
\nitself. The dissolution of the aggregate into an infinite nothingness at which
\nMind seems to arrive, is to the Supermind only the return of the
\nself-concentrating conscious-being out of its phenomenon into its infinite
\nexistence. Whichever way its consciousness proceeds, by the way of infinite
\ndivision or by the way of infinite enlargement, it arrives only at itself, at
\nits own infinite unity and eternal being. And when the action of the mind is
\nconsciously subordinate to this knowledge of the super mind, the truth of the
\nprocess is known to it also and not at all ignored; there is no real division
\nbut only an infinitely multiple concentration into forms of being and into
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-329<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\narrangements of the relation of those forms of being to each other in which
\ndivision is a subordinate appearance of the whole process necessary to their
\nspatial and temporal play. For divide as you will, grit down to the most
\ninfinitesimal atom or form the most monstrous possible aggregate of worlds and
\nsystems, you cannot get by either process to a thing in itself; all are forms of
\na Force which alone is real in itself while the rest are real only as
\nself-imagings of the eternal Force-consciousness. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n     Whence then does the limiting Avidya, the fall of mind
\nfrom Supermind and the consequent idea of real division originally proceed ?
\nexactly from what perversion of the supramental functioning ? It proceeds from
\nthe individualised soul viewing everything from its own standpoint and excluding
\nall others; it proceeds, that is to say, by an exclusive concentration of
\nconsciousness, an exclusive self-identification of the soul with a particular
\ntemporal and spatial action which is only a part of its own play of being; it
\nstarts from the soul’s ignoring the fact that all others are also itself, all
\nother action its own action and all other states of being and consciousness
\nequally its own as well as the action of the one particular moment in Time and
\none particular standing-point in Space and the one particular form it presently
\noccupies. It concentrates on the moment, the field, the form, the movement so as
\nto lose the rest; it has then to recover the rest by linking together the
\nsuccession of moments, the succession of points of Space, the succession of
\nforms in Time and Space, the succession of movements in Time and Space It has
\nthus lost the truth of the indivisibility’ of Time, the indivisibility of Force
\nand Substance. It has lost sight even of the obvious fact that all minds are one
\nMind taking many standpoints, all lives one Life developing many currents of
\nactivity, all body and form one substance of Force and Consciousness
\nconcentrating into many apparent stabilities of force and consciousness; but in
\ntruth all these stabilities are really only a constant whorl of movement
\nrepeating a form while it modifies it; they are nothing more. For the Mind tries
\nto clamp everything into rigidly fixed
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-330<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nforms and unchanging external factors, because otherwise it cannot act, and it
\nthinks it has got what it wants; in reality all is a flux of change and renewal
\nand there is no fixed form and no unchanging external factor. Only the eternal
\nReal-Idea is firm and maintains a certain ordered constancy of the relations in
\nthe flux of things, a constancy which the Mind vainly attempts to imitate by
\nattributing fixity to that which is always inconstant. These truths Mind h is to
\nrediscover; it knows them all the time, but only in the hidden back of its
\nconsciousness, in the secret light of its self-being; and that light is to it a
\ndarkness because it has created the ignorance, because it has lapsed from the
\ndividing into the divided mentality, because it has become involved in its own
\nworkings and in its own creations.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       This ignorance is farther deepened for man
\nby his self-identification with the Lady. To us mind seems to be determined by
\nthe body, because it is preoccupied with that and devoted to the physical
\nworkings which it uses for its conscious superficial action in this gross
\nmaterial world. Employing constantly that operation of the brain and nerves
\nwhich it has developed in the course of its own development in the body, it is
\ntoo absorbed in observing what this physical machinery gives to it to get back
\nfrom it to its own pure workings; those are to it mostly subconscious-Still we
\ncan conceive a mentality which has got beyond the evolutionary necessity of this
\nabsorption and is able to see and even experience itself assuming body after
\nbody and not created separately in each body and ending with it; for it is only
\nthe physical impress of mind on matter, only the corporeal mentality that is so
\ncreated, not the mental being itself. This corporeal mentality is merely our
\nsurface of mind, merely the front which it presents to physical experience.
\nBehind, even in our terrestrial being, there is this other, subconscious to us,
\nwhich knows itself as more than the body and is capable of a more purely mental
\naction. To this we owe immediately all the larger, deeper and more forceful
\naction of our surface physical mind; this, when we become conscious of it or of
\nits impress on us, is
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-331<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nour first idea or our first realisation of the soul.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        But this mentality also, though it
\nmay get free from the error of body, does not get free from the whole error of
\nmind; it is still subject to the original act of ignorance by which the
\nindividualised soul regards everything from its own standpoint and can see the
\ntruth of things only as they present themselves to it from outside or else as
\nthe rise up to its view from its separate temporal and spatial consciousness as
\nthe results of its past experience. It is not conscious of its other selves
\nexcept by the outward indications they give of their existence, indications of
\nphysical speech, action, result of actions or subtler indications of vital
\nimpact and relation. Equally is it ignorant of itself; for it knows of its self
\nonly as a movement in Time and a succession of lives in which it has used its
\nvariously embodied energies. As our physical instrumental mind has the illusion
\nof the body, so this subconscious dynamic mind has the illusion of life. In that
\nit is absorbed and concentrated, by that it is limited, with that it identifies
\nits being. Here we do not yet get back to the meeting-place of mind and
\nSupermind and the point at. which they originally separated.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       But there is still another clearer
\nreflective mentality behind this dynamic which is capable of escaping from this
\nabsorption in life and views itself as assuming life and body in order to image
\nout in active relations of energy that which it perceives in will and thought.
\nIt is the source of the pure thinker in us; it is that which  knows
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>mentality in itself and sees the world not in terms of
\nlife and body but of mind; it is that which, when we get back to it, we
\nsometimes mistake for the pure spirit as we mistake the dynamic mind for the
\nsoul. This higher mind is able to perceive and deal with other souls as other
\nforms of its pure self; it is capable of sensing them by pure mental impact and
\ncommunication and no longer only by nervous impact and physical indication; it
\nconceives too a mental figure of unity; and in its activity and its will it can
\ncreate and possess directly and not only indirectly as in the ordinary physical
\nlife and in other minds and lives as well as its own. But still even this pure
\nmentality does not escape from the ori<\/font><\/span><\/span>ginal
\n<\/font>
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-332<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nerror of mind. For it is still its separate mental self which it makes the
\njudge, witness and centre of the universe and through it alone strives to arrive
\nat its own higher self and reality; all others are "others" grouped to it around
\nitself: and i t has therefore to leave life and mind in order to disappear into
\nthe real unit)’. For there is still the veil created by Avidya between the
\nmental and supra-mental action; an image of the Truth gets through, not the
\nTruth itself.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        It is only when the veil is rent and
\nthe divided mind overpowered, silent and passive to a supramental action that
\nmind itself gets back to the Truth of things. There we find a luminous mentality
\nreflective, obedient and instrumental to the divine Real-Idea. There we perceive
\nwhat the world really is; we know in every way ourselves in others and as
\nothers, others as ourselves and all as the universal and self-multiplied One. We
\nlose the rigidly separate individual standpoint which is the source of all
\nlimitation and error. Still, we perceive also that all that the ignore"
\nacne of
\nMind took for the truth was in fact truth, but truth deflected, mistaken and
\nfalsely conceived. We still perceive the division, the individualising, the
\natomic creation, but we know them and ourselves for what they and we really are.
\nAnd so we perceive that the Mind was really a subordinate action and
\ninstrumentation of the Truth-consciousness. So long as it is not separated in
\nself-experience from the enveloping Master-consciousness and does not try to set
\nup house for itself, so long as it serves passively as an instrumentation and
\ndoes not attempt to possess for its own benefit, Mind fulfils luminously its
\nfunction which is in the Truth to hold forms apart from each other by a
\nphenomenal, a purely formal delimitation of their activity behind which the
\ngoverning universality of the being remains conscious and untouched. It has to
\nreceive the truth of things and distribute it according to the unerring
\nperception of a supreme and universal Eye and Will. It has to uphold an
\nindividualisation of active consciousness, delight, force, substance which
\nderives all its power, reality and joy from an inalienable universality behind.
\nIt has to
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-333<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n"turn the multiplicity of the One into an apparent division by which relations
\nate defined and held off against each other so as to meet again and join. It has
\nto establish the delight of separation and contact in the midst of an eternal
\nunity and in tumescence. It has to enable the One to behave as if He were an
\nindividual dealing with other individuals but always in His own unity, and this
\nis what the world really is. The mind is the final operation of the apprehending
\nTruth-consciousness which makes all this possible, and what we call the
\nIgnorance does not create a new thing and absolute falsehood but only
\nmisrepresents the Truth. The Ignorance is the Mind separated in knowledge from
\nits source of knowledge and giving a false liquidity and a mistaken appearance
\nof opposition and conflict to the harmonious play of the supreme Truth in its
\nuniversal manifestation.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        The fundamental error of the Mind is,
\nthen, this fall from self-knowledge by which the individual soul conceit vs. of
\nits individuality as a separate fact instead of as a form of Oneness and makes
\nitself the centre of its own universe instead of knowing itself as one
\nconcentration of the universal. From that original error all its particular
\nignorance’s and limitations are contingent results. For viewing the flux of
\nthings only as it flows upon and through itself, it makes a limitation of being
\nfrom which proceeds a limitation of consciousness and there lore of knowledge, a
\nlimitation of conscious force and will and therefore of power, a limitation of
\nself-enjoyment and therefore of delight. It is conscious of things and knows
\nthem only as the present themselves to its individuality and therefore it falls
\ninto an ignorance of the rest and thereby into an erroneous conception even of
\nthat which it seems to know : for since all being is interdependent, the
\nknowledge either <\/span> 01
\n

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

\nPage-334<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nthings, ignoring the all-bliss and by defect of will and knowledge unable to
\nmaster its world, must fall into incapacity of possessive delight and therefore
\ninto suffering. Self-ignorance is therefore the root of all the perversity of
\nour existence, and that perversity stands fortified in the self-limitation, the
\negoism which is the form taken by that self-ignorance.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        Yet is all ignorance and all
\nperversity only the distortion of the truth and right of things and not the play
\nof an absolute falsehood. It is the result of Mind viewing things in the
\ndivision it makes, Avidy\u00e2y\u00e2m antare, <\/i>instead of viewing itself and its
\ndivisions as instrumentation and phenomenon of the play of the truth of
\nSachchidananda nice. If it gets back to the truth from which it fell, it bet cuts
\nagain the final actor of the Truth-conscious  in its apprehensive operation
\nand the relations it helps to create in that light and power will be relations
\nof the Truth and not of the perversity. They will be the straight things and not
\nthe crooked, to use the expressive distinction of the Vedic Rishis,\u2014Truths, that
\nis to sa3′, of divine being with its self possessive consciousness, will and
\ndelight moving harmoniously in itself. Now we have rather the warped and zigzag
\nmovement of mind and life, the contortions created by the struggle of the soul
\nonce grown oblivious of its true being to find itself again, to resolve back all
\nerror into the truth which both our truth and our error, our right and our wrong
\nlimit or distort, all incapacity into the strength which both our power and our
\nweakness are a struggle of force to grasp, all suffering into the delight which
\nboth our joy and our pain are a convulsive effort of sensation to realise, all
\ndeath into the immortality to which both our life and our death are a constant
\neffort of being to return.
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n
\n
\nThe Synthesis of Yoga<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n
\nTHE STATUS of knowledge<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n      <\/b>
\n  If the-Self, the Divine both in its own pure-being and in its
\nmanifestation of that being in the world is to be the object of Yogic knowledge,
\nand not at all or not at least directly and for their own sake our ordinary
\nobjects, such as the external appearances of life and matter or the superficial
\npsychology of our thoughts and actions, it is evident that the knowledge for
\nwhich Yoga strives must be different from what men ordinarily understand by the
\nword. We mean ordinarily by knowledge an intellectual appreciation of the facts
\nof life, mind, matter and the laws that govern them, founded upon our
\nsense-perception and upon reasoning from our sense-perceptions and undertaken
\npartly for the pure satisfaction of the intellect, partly for practical
\nefficiency and the added power which knowledge gives in managing our lives and
\nthe lives of others, in utilising for human ends the overt or secret forces of
\nNature and in helping or hurting, in saving and ennobling or in oppressing and
\ndestroying our fellow-men. Yoga, indeed, being commensurate with all life,
\nincludes all these subjects and objects; for there is a Yoga * which can be used
\nfor self-indulgence as well as for self-conquest, for hurting others as well as
\nfor their salvation. But "all life"
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n* Yoga develops power, it develops it even when we do not desire or consciously
\naim at it; and power is always a double-edged weapon which can be used to hurt
\nor destroy as well as to help and save. Be it also noted that all destruction is
\nno; evil. <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nincludes not only life as humanity now leads it but also the higher existence
\nwhich humanity is capable of but does not yet possess and it is this which is
\nthe peculiar and appropriate object of Yogic discipline.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        The higher existence contemplated is
\nnot merely an improved mentality, a greater dynamic energy or a purer moral life
\nand character. Its superiority is not merely in degree but in kind ; it consists
\nin a change not merely of the manner of our being but of its very foundation.
\nYogic knowledge seeks that which is the very basis of all our existence ; it
\ntries to discover and possess, in the words of the Upanishad, that by the right
\nknowledge of which all is rightly known. For it starts from the premises that all
\nthis world visible or sensible to us and all too in it that is not visible is
\nmerely the phenomenal expression of something beyond the mind and the senses.
\nOnly by attaining to that can we know the world aright ; for the knowledge which
\nthe senses and intellectual reasoning from the data of the senses can bring us,
\nis not true knowledge, it is only the science of appearances ; and even
\nappearances cannot be properly known unless we know first the reality of which
\nthey are images. This reality is their self and there is one self of all.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      It is evident that however much we may analyse
\nthe physical and sensible, we cannot by that means arrive at the knowledge of
\nthe Self or of ourselves or of that which we call God. The telescope, the
\nmicroscope, the scalpel, the retort and alembic cannot go beyond the physical,
\nalthough they may arrive at subtler and subtler truths about the physical. If
\nthen we confine ourselves to what the senses and their physical aids reveal to
\nus and refuse from the beginning to admit any other reality or any other means
\nof knowledge, we are obliged to conclude that nothing is real except the
\nphysical and that there is no Self in us or in the universe, no God within and
\nwithout, no ourselves even except this aggregate of brain, nerves and body. But
\nthis we are only obliged to conclude because we have assumed it firmly from the
\nbeginning and there-
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nfore cannot but circle round to our original assumption.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       If, then, there is a Self, a reality not
\nobvious to the senses, it must be by other means than those of physical Science
\nthat it is to be sought and known. The intellect is not that means. Undoubtedly
\nthere are a number of supra-sensuous truths at which the intellect is able to
\narrive, which it is able to perceive and state as intellectual conceptions. The
\nvery idea of Force for instance on which Science so much insists, is a
\nconception, a truth at which the intellect alone can arrive by going beyond its
\ndata ; for we do not sense this universal force but only its results, and the
\nforce itself we infer as a necessary cause of these results. So also the
\nintellect by following a certain line of rigorous analysis can arrive at the
\nintellectual conception and the intellectual conviction of the Self and this
\nconviction can be very real, very luminous, very potent as the beginning of
\nother things. Still, in itself intellectual analysis can only lead to an
\narrangement of clear conceptions, perhaps to a right arrangement of true
\nconceptions; but this is not the knowledge at which Yoga aims. For it is not in
\nitself an effective knowledge. A man may be perfect in it and yet be precisely
\nwhat he was before except in the mere fact of the greater intellectual
\nillumination. The change of our being at which Yoga aims, may not at all take
\nplace.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       It is true that intellectual deliberation
\nand right discrimination are an important part of the Yoga of knowledge ; but
\ntheir object is rather to remove a difficulty than to arrive at the final and
\npositive result of this path. Our ordinary intellectual notions are a
\nstumbling-block in the way of knowledge ; for they are governed by the error of
\nthe senses and they found themselves on the notion that matter and body are the
\nreality, that life and force are the reality, that passion and emotion, thought
\nand sense are the reality ; and with these things we identify ourselves, and
\nbecause we identify ourselves with these things we cannot get back to the real
\nself. Therefore, it is necessary for the seeker of knowledge to remove this
\nstumbling
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nblock and to get right notions about himself and the world ; for how shall we
\npursue by knowledge the real self if we have no notion of what it is and are on
\nthe con tarry burdened with quite opposite ideas to the truth ? Therefore right
\nthought is a necessary preliminary, and once the habit of rated thought is
\nestablished, free from sense-error and desire and old association and
\nintellectual prejudgment, the understanding becomes purified and offers no
\nserious obstacle to the farther process of knowledge. Still, right thought only
\nbecomes effective when in the purified understanding it is followed by other
\noperations, by vision, by experience, by realisation.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       What are these operations ? They are not
\nmere psychological self-analysis and self-observation. Such analysis, such
\nobservation are, like the process of right thought, of immense value and
\npractically indispensable. They may even, if rightly pursued, lead to a right
\nthought of considerable power and affectivity. Like intellectual discrimination
\nby the process of meditative thought they will have an effect of purification;
\nthey will lead to self-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of
\nthe disorders of the soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the
\nunderstanding. Self-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the
\nknowledge of the Leal Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so
\nset the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into
\nthe appearances of things ; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought
\nand stead wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality.
\nTo this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis is
\na great and effective introduction. We can look into the inward of ourselves
\nmore easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because
\nthere, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form
\nand secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is
\nother than their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may
\nreflect or a powerful
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-339<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nconcentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even before it
\nis realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult. * And it is only in
\nourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its becoming
\nand follow the process by which it draws back into sell-being. Therefore the
\nancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first word that directs
\nus towards the <\/i>knowledge. Still, psychological self-knowledge is only the
\nexperience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in
\nits pure being.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n         The status of knowledge, then,
\nwhich Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception or clear discredit
\nstation of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psycholological experience of the
\nmodes of our being. It is a" realisation," in the full sense of the word; :<\/sup>t
\nis the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self, the transcendent
\nand universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility of viewing the
\nmodes of being except in the light of that Self and in their true aspect as its
\nflux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions of our
\nworld-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements,
\ninternal vision, complete internal experience and identity.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       This internal vision, drastic, <\/i>the
\npower so highly valued by the ancient sages, the power which made a man a Rishi
\nor Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a sort of light in the soul by which
\nthings unseen become as evident and real to it\u2014to the soul and not merely to the
\nintellect \u2014as do things seen to the physical eye. In the physical world there
\nare always two forms of knowledge, the direct and the indirect, pratyaksha, <\/i>
\nof that which is present to the eyes, and parish, <\/i>of that which is
\nremote from and beyond our vision. When the object is beyond our vision, we are
\nnecessarily obliged to arrive at an idea of it by inference, imagination,
\nanalogy, by hearing the descriptions
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* In one respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not
\nso tuition hampered by the so. is of the limited ego as in ourselves one
\nobstacle to the realisation of God is therefore removed. <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nof others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of
\nit if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed
\narrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but we
\ndo not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but
\nonly our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with
\nthe eyes,\u2014for no other sense is adequate,\u2014we possess, we realise; it is there
\nsecure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely the
\nsame rule holds good of psychical things and of the Self. We may hear clear and
\nluminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient
\nwritings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other
\navailable means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold
\nfirmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive
\nconcentration; * but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is
\nonly when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of
\nthe mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the
\nawakened mentality, jyotirmaya Brahman, <\/i>and conception gives place to a
\nknowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical
\nobject to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen.
\nAfter that revelation, whatever fading of the light, whatever periods of
\ndarkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once
\nheld. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it
\nis constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with
\nwhich we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden
\nDeity.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        This inner vision is one form of
\npsychological experience; but the inner experience is not confined to that
\nseeing; vision only opens, it does not embrace. Just as the
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* This is the idea of the triple operation of Jnanayoga, \u00e7ravana,
\nmanana, nididhyasana, <\/i>hearing, thinking or neutralizing and fixing in concentration
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\neye, though it is alone adequate to being the first sense of realisation, has to
\ncall in the aid of experience by the touch and other organs of sense before
\nthere is an embracing knowledge, so the vision of the self ought to be completed
\nby an experience of it in all our members. Our whole being ought to demand God
\nand not only our illumined eye of knowledge. For since each principle in us is
\nonly a manifestation of the Self, each can get back to its reality and have the
\nexperience of it. We can have a mental experience of the Self and seize as
\nrealities all those apparently abstract things that to the mind constitute
\nexistence \u2014consciousness, force, delight and their manifold forms and workings:
\nthus the mind is satisfied of God. We can have an emotional experience of the
\nSelf through Love and through emotional delight, love and delight of the Self in
\nus, of the Self in the universal and of the Self in all with whom we have
\nrelations: thus the heart is satisfied of God. We can have an aesthetic
\nexperience of the Self in beauty, a delight-perception and taste of the absolute
\nreality all-beautiful in everything whether created by ourselves or Nature
\nin. its appeal to the aesthetic mind and the senses; thus the sense is satisfied
\nof God. We can have even the vital, nervous experience and practically the
\nphysical sense of the Self in all life and formation and in all workings of
\npowers, forces, energies that operate through us or others or in the world: thus
\nthe life and the body are satisfied of God.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      All this knowledge and experience are primary
\nmeans of arriving at and of possessing identity. It is our self that we see and
\nexperience and therefore vision and experience are incomplete unless they
\nculminate in identity, unless we are able to live in all our being the supreme
\nVedantic knowledge, He am I. We must not only see God and embrace Him, but
\nbecome that Reality. We must become one with the Self in its transcendence of
\nall form and manifestation by the resolution, the sublimation, the escape from
\nitself of ego and all its belongings into That from which they proceed, as well
\nas become the Self in all its manifasted
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nexistences and becoming, one with it in the infinite existence,
\nconsciousness, peace, delight by which it reveals itself in us and one with it
\nin the action, formation, play of self-conception with which it garbs itself in
\nthe world. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      It is difficult for the modern mind to understand
\nhow we can do more than conceive intellectually of the Sell or of God; but it
\nmay borrow some shadow of this vision, experience and becoming from that inner
\nawakening to Nature which a great English poet has made a reality to the
\nEuropean imagination. If we read the poems in which Wordsworth expressed his
\nrealisation of Nature, we may acquire some distant idea of what realising is.
\nFor, first, we see that he had the vision of something in the world which is the
\nvery Self of all things that it contains, a conscious force and presence other
\nthan its forms, yet cause of its forms and manifested in them. We perceive that
\nhe had not only ^the vision of this and the joy and peace and universality which
\nit presence brings, but the very sense of it, mental, aesthetic, vital,
\nphysical; not only this sense and vision of it in its own being but in the
\nnearest flower and simplest man and the immobile rock; and, finally, that he
\neven occasionally attained to that unity, that becoming the object of his
\nmeditation, one phase of which is powerfully and profoundly expressed in the
\npoem " A slumber did my spirit seal," where he describes himself as become one
\nin his being with earth, " rolled round in its diurnal course with stocks and
\nstones and trees." Exalt this realisation to a profounder Self than physical
\nNature and we have the elements of the Yogic knowledge. But all this experience
\nis only the vestibule to that suprasensuous, supramental realisation of the
\nTranscendent who is beyond all His aspects, and the final summit of knowledge
\ncan only be attained by entering into the superconscient and there merging all
\nother experience into a supernal unity with the Ineffable. That is the
\nculmination of all divine knowing; that also is the source of all divine delight
\nand divine living.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       That status of knowledge is then the aim of
\nthis path
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nand indeed of all paths when pursued to their end, to which intellectual
\ndiscrimination and conception and all concentration and psychological
\nself-knowledge and all seeking by the heart through love and by the senses
\nthrough beauty and Dry the will through power and works and by the soul through
\npeace and joy are only keys, avenues, first approaches and beginnings of the as
\nant which we have to use and to follow till .the wide and infinite levels are
\nattained and the divine doors swing open into the infinite Light.
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n
\n
\nThe Kena Upanishad<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

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

\n        Mind was called by Indian
\npsychologists the eleventh and ranks as the supreme sense. In the ancient
\narrangement of the senses, five of knowledge and five of action, it was the
\nsixth of the organs of knowledge and at the same time the sixth of the organs of
\naction. It is a commonplace of psychology that the effective functioning of the
\nsenses of knowledge is inoperative without the assistance of the mind; the eye
\nmay see, the ear may hear, all the senses may act, but it the mind pays no
\nattention, the man has not heard, seen, felt, touched or tasted. Similarly,
\naccording to psychology, the organs of action act only by the force of the mind
\noperating as will or, physiologically, by the reactive nervous force from the
\nbrain which must be according to materialistic notions the true self and essence
\nof all will. In any case, the senses or all senses, if there are other than the
\nten,\u2014according to a text in the Upanishad there should be at least fourteen,
\nseven and seven,\u2014 all senses appear to be only organisations, functionings,
\ninstrumentations of the mind-consciousness, devices which it has formed in the
\ncourse of its evolution in living Matter.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

\n

\nexhaustible store of memory, akshitram \u00e7ravah. <\/i>The surface mind may pay no
\nattention, still the subconscious mind attends, receives, treasures up with an
\ninfallible accuracy. The illiterate servant-girl hears daily her master reciting
\nHebrew in his study; the surface mind pays no attention to the unintelligible
\ngibberish, but the subconscious mind hears, remembers and, when in an abnormal
\ncondition it comes up to the surface, reproduces those learned recitations with
\na portentous accuracy which the most correct and retentive scholar might envy.
\nThe man or mind has not heard because he did not attend; the greater man or mind
\nwithin has heard because he always attends, or rather sub-tends, with an
\ninfinite capacity. So too a man put under an anaesthetic and operated upon has
\nfelt nothing; but release his subconscious mind by hypnosis and he will relate
\naccurately every detail of the operation and its appropriate sufferings; for the
\nstupor of the physical sense-organ could not prevent the larger mind within from
\nobserving and leering. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       Similarly we know that a large part of our
\nphysical action is instinctive and directed not by the surface but by the
\nsubconscious mind. And we know now that it is a mind that acts and not merely an
\nignorant nervous reaction from the brute physical brain. The subconscious mind
\nin the catering insect knows the anatomy of the beetle it intends to immobilise
\nand make food for its young and it directs the sting accordingly, as unerringly
\nas the most skilful surgeon, provided the mere limited surface mind with its
\ngroping and faltering nervous action does not get in the way and falsify the
\ninner knowledge or the inner will-force.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      These examples point us to truths which western
\npsychology, hampered by past ignorance posing as scientific orthodoxy;- still
\nignores or refuses to acknowledge. The Upanishads declare that the Mind in us is
\ninfinite; it knows not only what has been seen but what has not been seen, not
\nonly what has been heard but what has not been heard, not only what has been
\ndiscriminated by the thought but what has not been discriminated by the thought.
\nLet us
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nsay, then, in the tongue of our modern knowledge that the surface man in us is
\nlimited by his physical experiences! he knows only what his nervous life in the
\nbody brings to his embodied mind; and even of those bringing he knows, he can
\nretain and utilise only so much as his surface mind-sense attends to and
\nconsciously remembers; but there is a larger subliminal consciousness within him
\nwhich is not thus limited. That consciousness senses what has not been sensed by
\nthe surface mind and its organs and knows what the surface mind has not learned
\nby its acquisitive thought. That in the insect knows the anatomy of its victim;
\nthat in the man outwardly insensible not only feels and remembers the action of
\nthe surgeon’s knife, but knows the appropriate reactions of suffering which were
\nin the physical body inhibited by the anesthetic and therefore non-existent;
\nthat in the illiterate servant-girl heard and retained accurately the words of
\nan unknown language and could, as Yogic experience knows, by a higher action of
\nitself understand those superficially unintelligible sounds.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      To return to the Vedantic words we have been
\nusing, there is a vaster action of the Sanjnana <\/i>which is not limited by
\nthe action of the physical sense-organs; it was this which sensed perfectly and
\nmade its own through the ear the words of the unknown language, through the
\ntouch the movements of the unfelt surgeon’s knife, through the sense-mind or
\nsixth sense the exact location of the centres of locomotion in the beetle. There
\nis also associated with it a corresponding vaster action of Prajnana, Ajnana and
\nVim* nana not limited by the smaller apprehensive and comprehensive faculties
\nof the external mind. It is this vaster Prajnana which perceived the proper
\nrelation of the words to each other, of the movement of the knife to the unfelt
\nsuffering of the nerves and of the successive relation in space of the
\narticulations in the beetle’s body. Such perception was inherent in the right
\nreproduction of the words, the right narration of the sufferings, the right
\nsuccessive action of the sting. The Ajnana or Knowledge-Will originating all
\nthese actions was also vaster, hot limited by
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-347<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nthe faltering force that governs the operations directed by the surface mind.
\nAnd although in these examples the action of the vaster Vijnana is not so
\napparent, yet it was evidently there working through them and ensuring their
\ncoordination.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      But at present it is with the Sanjnana that we
\nare concerned. Here we should note, first of all, that there is an action of the
\nsense-mind which is superior to the particular action of the senses and is aware
\nof things even without imaging them in forms of sight, sound, contact, but which
\nalso as a sort of subordinate operation, subordinate but necessary to
\ncompleteness of presentation, does image in these forms. This is evident in
\npsychical phenomena. Those who have carried the study and experimentation of
\nthem to a certain extend, have found that we can sense things known only to the
\nminds of others, things that exist only at a great distance, things that belong
\nto another plane than the terrestrial but have here their effects; we can both
\nsense them in their images and also feel, as it were, all that they are without
\nany definite image proper to the five senses.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n     This shows, in the first place, that sight and the
\nother senses are not mere results of the development of our physical organs in
\nthe terrestrial evolution. Mind, subconscious in all Matter and evolving in
\nMatter, has developed these physical organs in order to apply its inherent
\ncapacities of sight, hearing etc, on the physical plane by physical means for a
\nphysical life; but they are inherent capacities and not dependent on the
\ncircumstance of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the use
\nof the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that there are psychical
\nsenses which act through a psychical body and we thus explain these psychical
\nphenomena, still that action also is only an organisation of the inherent
\nfunctioning of the essential sense, the Sanjnana, which in itself can operate
\nwithout bodily organs. This essential sense is the original capacity of
\nconsciousness to feel in itself all that consciousness has formed and to feel it
\nin all the essential properties and operations of that which has form,
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nwhether represented materially by vibration of sound or images of light or any
\nother physical symbol.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       The trend of knowledge leads more and more
\nto the conclusion that not only are the properties of form, even the most
\nobvious such as colour, light etc, merely operations of Force, but form itself
\nis only an operation of Force. This Force again proves to be self-power of
\nconscious-being* in a state of energy and activity. Practically, therefore, all
\nform is only an operation of consciousness impressing itself with presentations
\nof its own workings. We see colour because that is the presentation which
\nconsciousness makes to itself of one of its own operations; but colour is only
\nan operation of Force working in the form of Light, and Light again is only a
\nmovement, that is to say an operation of Force. The question is what is
\nessential to this operation of Force taking on itself the presentation of form?
\nFor it is this that must determine the working of Sanjnana or Sense on whatever
\nplane it may operate.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      Everything begins with vibration or movement, the
\noriginal kshobha <\/i>or disturbance. If there is no movement of the conscious
\nbeing, it can only know its own pitied static existence. Without vibration * or
\nmovement of being in consciousness there can be no act of knowledge and
\ntherefore no sense; without vibration or movement of being in force there can be
\nno object of sense. Movement of conscious being as knowledge becoming sensible
\nof itself as movement of force, in other words the knowledge separating itself
\nfrom its own working to watch that and take it into itself again by
\nfeeling,\u2014this is the basis of universal Sanjnana. This is true both of our
\ninternal and external operations. I become anger b)’ a vibration of conscious
\nforce acting as nervous emotion and I feel the anger that I have become by
\nanother movement of conscious force acting as light of knowledge. I am conscious
\nof my body
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* Devatm askakti m s’vagun<\/font>\u00e2ir  nig\u00fbdham;. <\/font> <\/i>
\nself-power of the divine
\nExistent hidden by its own modes. Sweta\u00e7vatara Upanishad.<\/i>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

\n

\nbecause I have myself become the body; that same force of conscious being which
\nhas made this form of itself, this presentation of its workings knows it in that
\nform, in that presentation. I can know nothing except what I myself am; if I
\nknow others, it is because they also are myself, because my self has assumed
\nthese apparently alien presentations as well as that which his nearest to my own
\nmental centre. All sensation, all action of sense is thus the same in essence
\nwhether external, or internal, physical or ps5’chical.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        But this vibration of conscious being
\nis presented to itself by various forms of sense which answer to the successive
\noperations of movement in its assumption of form. For first we have intensity of
\nvibe. ation creating regular rhythm which is the basis or constituent of all
\ncreative formation; secondly, contact or in tumescence of the movements of
\nconscious being which constitute the rhythm ; thirdly, definition of the
\ngrouping of movements which are in contact, their shape; fourthly, the constant
\nwelling up of the essential force to support in its continuity the movement that
\nhas been thus denned; fifthly, the actual enforcement and compression of the
\nforce in its own movement which maintains the form that has been assumed. In
\nMatter these five constituent operations are said by the Sankhya to represent
\nthemselves as five elemental conditions of substance, the etheric, atmospheric,
\nigneous, liquid and solid; and the rhythm of vibration is seen by them as \u00e7abda,
\n<\/i>sound, the basis of hearing, the in tumescence as contact, the basis
\nof touch, the definition as shape, the basis of sight, the up flow of force as
\nrasa, <\/i>sap, the basis of taste, and the discharge of the atomic compression
\nas Gandha, <\/i>odour, the basis of smell. It is true that this is only
\npredicated of pure or subtle matter; the physical matter of our world being a
\nmixed operation of force, these five elemental states are not found there
\nseparately except in a very modified form. But all these are only the physical
\nworkings or symbols. Essentially all formation, to the most subtle and most
\nbeyond our senses such as form of mind, form of character, form of soul, amount
\nwhen scrutiniest
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n to this five-fold operation of conscious-force in movement.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       All these operations, then, the Sanjnana or
\nessential sense must be able to seize, to make its own by that union in
\nknowledge of knower and object which is peculiar to itself. Its sense of the
\nrhythm or intensity of the vibrations which contain in themselves all the
\nmeaning of the form, will be the basis of the essential hearing of which our
\napprehension of physical sound or the spoken word is only the most outward
\nresult; so also its sense of the contact or in tumescence of conscious force
\nwith conscious force must be the basis of the essential touch ; its sense of the
\ndefinition or form of force must be the basis of the essential sight ; its
\nsense" of the up flow of essential being in the form, that which is the secret
\nof its self-delight, must be the basis of the essential taste; its sense of the
\ncompression of force and the self-discharge of its essence of being must be the
\nbasis of the essential inhalation grossly represented in physical substance by
\nthe sense of smell. On whatever plane, to whatever kind of formation these
\nessentialities of sense will apply themselves and on each they will seek an
\nappropriate organisation, an appropriate functioning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n      This various sense will, it is obvious, be in the
\nhighest consciousness a complex unity, just as we have seen that there the
\nvarious operation of knowledge is also a complex unity. Even if we examine the
\nphysical senses, say, the sense of hearing, if we observe how the underlying
\nmind receives their action, we sail see that in their essence all the senses are
\nin each other. That mind is not only aware of the vibration which we call sound
\n; it is aware also of the contact and interchange between the force in the sound
\nand the nervous force in us with which that intermixes; it is aware of the
\ndefinition or form of the sound and of the complex contacts or relations which
\nmake up the sound; it is aware of the essence or out wailing conscious force
\nwhich constitutes and maintains the sound and prolongs its vibrations in our
\nnervous being ; it is a-ware of our own nervous inhalation of the vibratory
\ndischarge proceeding from the compression of force which

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

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

\n

\n

\nmakes, so to speak, the solidity of the sound. All these sensations enter into
\nthe sensitive reception and joy of music which is the highest physical form of
\nthis operation of force,\u2014they constitute our physical sensitiveness to it and
\nthe joy of our nervous Lying in it ; diminish one of them and the joy and the
\nsensitiveness are to that extent dulled. Much more must there be this complex
\nunity in a higher than the physical consciousness and most of all must there be
\nunity in the highest. But the essential sense must be capable also of seizing
\nthe secret essence of all conscious being in action, in itself and not only
\nthrough the results of the operation; its appreciation of these results can be
\nnothing more than itself an outcome of this deeper sense which it has of the
\nThing behind its appearances.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       If we consider these things thus subtly in
\nthe light of our own deeper psychology and pursue them beyond the physical
\nappearances by which they are covered, we shall get to some intellectual
\nconception of the sense behind our senses or rather the Sense of our senses, the
\nSight of our sight and the Hearing of our hearing. The Brahman-consciousness of
\nwhich the Upanishad speaks is not the Absolute withdrawn into itself, but that
\nAbsolute in its outlook on the relative; it is the Lord, the Master-Soul, the
\ngoverning Transcendent and All, He who constitutes and controls the action of
\nthe gods on the diff rent planes of our being. Since it constitutes them, all
\nour workings can be no more than psychical and physical results and
\nrepresentations of something essential proper to its supreme creative outlook,
\nour sense a shadow of the divine Sense our sight of the divine Sight, our
\nhearing of the divine Hearing. Nor is that divine sight and hearing limited to
\nthings physical, but extend themselves to all forms and operations of conscious
\nbeing.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      The supreme Consciousness does not depend on what
\nwe call sight and hearing for its own essential seeing and audition. It operates
\nby a supreme Sense, creative and comprehensive, of which our physical and
\npsychical sight and hearing are external results and partial operations. Neither
\nis it ignorant of these, nor excludes them ; for
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nsince it constitutes and controls, it must be aware of them but from a supreme
\nplane, param, dhama, <\/i>which includes all in its view; for its original
\naction is that highest movement of Vishnu which, the Veda, tells us, the seers
\nbehold like an eye extended in heaven. It is that by which the soul sees its
\nseeing and hears its hearings ; but all sense only assumes its true value and
\nattains to its absolute, its immortal reality when we cease to pursue the
\nsatisfactions of the mere external and physical senses and go beyond even the
\npsychical being to this spiritual or essential which is the source and fountain,
\nthe knower, constituent and true valour of all the rest. <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       This spiritual sense of things, secret and
\nsuperconscient in us, alone gives their being, worth and reality to the
\npsychical and physical sense; in themselves they have none. When we attain to
\nit, these inferior operations are as it were taken up into it and the whole
\nworld and everything in it changes to us and takes on a different and a
\nnon-material value. That Master-consciousness  in us senses our sensations of
\nobjects, sees our seeing, hears our hearings no longer for the benefit of the
\nsenses and their desires, but with the embrace of the self-existent Bliss which
\nhas no cause, beginning or end, eternal in its own immortality.
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n
\nThe Hymns of the Atris <\/a> <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE SIXTH HYMN TO AGNI<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE GALLOPING FLAME-POWERS OF THE JOURNEY<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       [The flames of Agni the divine Will, home
\nand meeting-place of all our increasing and advancing Lila powers, are imaged as
\ngalloping on our human journey to the supreme good. Divine Will creates in us
\nthe divine strength of impulsion, an illumined and undeceiving force and flame
\ndescribed as the steed of the plenitude, which brings us that good and carries
\nus to that goal. His flames are coursers on the path who increase by the
\nsacrifice; they hasten uninterruptedly, and race always more swiftly; they bring
\nin the penned-up illuminations of the hidden knowledge. Their entire force and
\nrapidity are accorded when the divine Strength is filled and satisfied with the
\nsacrificial offerings. ]
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       1. On Strength I meditate who is the
\ndweller in substance and to him as their home go our fostering herds, to him as
\ntheir home our swift war-steeds, I to him as their home our powers of the
\nplenitude.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nBeing to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nof the impulsion. <\/i>2
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1. The Horse is the symbol of Force in the Veda, especially of vital lore. It is
\nvariously the Arvat or war-steed in the battle and the Vainer, the steed of the
\njourney which brings us in the plenty of our spiritual wealth. 2. The power that
\nenables us to make the journey through the night of per being to the divine
\nLight. <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n        2. He is that Strength who is the
\ndweller in substance ; him I express in whom come together 3 our fostering
\nherds, in whom meet our swiftly galloping war-steeds, in whom our luminous seers
\nthat come to perfect birth in us.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                   
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                  
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       3. Will, the universal toiler, gives to the
\ncreature his steed of the plenitude, Will gives that which comes into entire
\nbeing in us for the felicity and, satisfied, it journeys to the desirable good.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                  
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      4. That fire of thee we kindle O God, O Flame,
\nluminous, nagging, when that more effective force of thy labour blazes in our
\nheavens.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                               
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      5. Will, master of the pure-bright flame,
\nthane
\nis the offering cast by the illumining word ; bearer of the oblation, to thee it
\nis cast, O master of the creature, achiever of works, perfect in delight.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n               
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                             
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      6. Those are thy flames that in these thy other
\nflames nourish and advance every desirable good ; they, they race! they, they
\nrun ! they drive on in their impulsions without a break.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                             
\nof the impulsion-<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n3. All our growing powers of force and knowledge move towards the manifestation
\nof the divine Knowledge-Force and in it combine and are harmonised.
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n        7. Those are thy fiery rays, O Will,
\nsteeds of the plenitude, and they increase into the largeness and with
\ntrampling of their hooves they bring in the pens of the luminous kine. 4?
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                    
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                                   
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n         8. Bring, O Will, to those who
\naffirm thee new strengths of impulsion that find aright their dwelling-place
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                   
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                                   
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n         9. Both 6 ladles of the running
\nrichness thou approaches to thy mouth, O perfect in delight ; Mayst thou in our
\nspeaking utterly fill thyself, O master of shining strength.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n                                    
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                                        
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n         10. So by our words and our
\nsacrifices they without any break drive and control the Strength. May he
\nestablish in us an utter energy V and that swift galloping force. 8
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                      
\nBring to those who affirm thee thy force <\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n                                                        
\nof the impulsion.<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n4. The illuminations of the divine Truth penned up in the cavern of the
\nSubconscient by the lords of sense-action. 5. That is, they take us to our home
\nin the world of Truth, the superconscient phone, own home of Agni, in which all
\nthese impulsions advancing find their rest and dwelling-place. It is reached by
\nan ascent from plane to plane opened in succession by the power of the divine
\nillumining Word. 6. Perhaps, the divine and the human delight. <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n
\n
\nTHE SEVENTH HYMN TO AGNI<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE DIVINE WILL, DESIRER, ENJOYER, PROGRESSIVE <\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nFROM THE ANIMAL TO BLISS AND KNOWLEDGE<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n       <\/b>[Agni is hymned as the divine Force
\nthat brings the bliss and the ray of the truth into the human being and light
\ninto the night of our darkness. He leads men in their labour to his own infinite
\nlevels; he enjoys and tears up the objects of earthly enjoyment, but all his
\nmultitude of desires are for the building of an universality, an all-embracing
\nenjoyment in the divine home of the human being. He is the animal moving as the
\nenjoyer by the progressive movement of Nature, as with an axe through the
\nforest, to the achievement and the bliss. This passionate, emotional, animal
\nbeing of man is given by him to be purified into the peace and bliss; in it he
\nestablishes a divine light and knowledge and the awakened state of the soul. ]
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      1. O comrades, in you an absolute force of
\nimpulsion and an utter affirming for the Strength that lavishes all his
\nabundance on the worlds of our dwelling 1, for the master of Force, for the son
\nof Energy.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      2. Whosesoever man’s soul comes to the utter
\nmeeting with him, it becomes full of delight in its dwelling-place. Even they
\nwho are adepts in the strength continue to kindle the flame of him and all
\ncreatures born work to bring him to perfect birth.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n       1. Or, on the dwellers in the world.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n       3. When wholly we possess and enjoy our
\nstrengths of impulsion, wholly all that men offer as a sacrifice, then I receive the ray
\nof the Turfs in its illumination and shining energy. 2<\/span><\/p>\n

\n      4. Verily he creates the light of perception even
\nfor one who sits far off in the night, when himself undeceiving the purifier
\ncompresses the lords 3, of the woodland of delight.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      5. When in his circling men cast the sweat 4, of their toil as an offering on the paths, then they ascend to him where he sits self-joyous 5 like climbers who arrive upon large levels. 6<\/span><\/p>\n

\n      6. Him shall mortal man come to know as the
\ngodhead who has this multitude of his desires that
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n      2. Or, "of the light, the luminous force, the
\ntruth." <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n     3. Vanaspat\u00een, <\/i>in its double sense, the trees,
\nthe lords of the forest, growths of the earth, our material existence, and lords
\nof delight. Soma, producer of the immortalising wine, is the typical
\nVanaspat\u00een. <\/i>4. An equivoque on the double sense of the word, sweat and the
\nrich droppings of the food-offering. 5. Or, self-victorious.     
\n6. These are the wide free infinite planes of existence founded on the Truth,
\nthe open levels opposed elsewhere to the uneven Crookednesses which shut in men
\nlimiting their vision and obstructing their journey. 7. The home of man, the
\nhigher divine world of his existence which is being formed by the gods in his
\nbeing through the sacrifice. This home is the complete Beatitude into which all
\nhuman desires and enjoying have to be transformed and lose themselves.
\nTherefore Agni, the purifier, devours all the forms of material existence and
\nenjoyment in order to reduce them to their divine equivalent. 8. The material
\nexistence not watered by the streams or rivers which descend from the
\nsuperconscient Bliss and Truth, <\/font>
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nhe may establish in us the all ; for he reaches forward to the sweet taste of
\nall foods and he builds a home for this human being.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       7. Yea, he teareth to pieces this desert 8
\nin which we dwell as the Animal that teareth its food; the beard of this Beast
\nis of the golden light, his fang is a purity and the force in him is not
\nafflicted by his heats.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       8. Pure indeed is he for whom as for the
\neater of things there is the flowing progression by Nature  <\/b>9, as by an axe, and with a happy travail she, his Mother, brought him forth that he may accomplish her works and taste of the enjoyment.
\n10<\/span><\/p>\n

\n       9. O strength, O presser out on us of the
\nrunning richness, when thou fondest one who is a glad peace 11 for the establishing of thy works, in such mortals illumination establish and inspired knowledge and the conscious soul. <\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n      9. Again an equivoque on the double sense of
\nsvadhiti, <\/i>an axe or other cleaving instrument and the self-ordering power
\nof Nature, Swadha. The image is of the progress of the divine Force through the
\nforests of the material existence as with an axe. But the axe is the natural
\nself-arranging progression of Nature, the World-Energy, the Mother from whom
\nthis divine Force, son of Energy, is born. 10. The divine enjoyment, bhaga, <\/i>
\ntypified by the, god Bhaga, the Enjoyer in the power of the Truth. 11. \u00c7ualm <\/i>
\nand \u00e7arma <\/i>in the Veda express the idea of peace and joy, the joy that
\ncomes of the accomplished labour, garn, <\/i>or work of the sacrifice: the
\ntoil of the battle and the journey find their rest, a foundation of beatitude is
\nacquired which is already free from the pain of strife and effort.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n        10. For to this end born in the material existence receive as thy gift the emotional mind and the animal being 12. Yea, O Will, may the eater of things overpower the Dividers 13 who minister not to his fullness; these souls that rush upon him with their impulsions may he overcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n12. Literally, passion-mind and the animal; but the word page <\/i>may also
\nmean, as it does oftenest in the Veda, the symbolic Cow of light; in that case
\nthe sense will be the emotional mind and the illumined mind. But the first
\nrendering agrees better with the general sense of the hymn and with its previous
\nuse of the word. 13. The Dasyus who hack and cut up the growth and unity of the
\nsoul and seek to assail and destroy its divine strength, joy and knowledge. They
\nare powers of Darkness, the sons of D\u00e2nu or Diti the divided being.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n
\n
\nThe Eternal Wisdom<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE CONQUEST OF TRUTH<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE MASTERY OF THE MIND<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n1 They had attained to the supreme perfection of be-
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n2 ing completely masters of their thought.\u2014Be master of thy thoughts, O
\nthru who wrestles for perfection.\u2014<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n3 Be master of thy soul, O seeker of the eternal truths,
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n4 if thou wouldst attain the goal.\u2014The soul not being mistress of itself, one
\nlooks but sees not, listens but hears not.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n5 The self is master of the self; what other master can it have? The sage who
\nhas made himself master of
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n6 himself, rends his bonds and breaks his chains.\u2014The self is master of itself,
\nwhat other master can it have? A self well controlled is a master difficult to
\nprocure.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n7 To be master of one’s mind ! how difficult that is ! it has been compared, not
\nwithout reason, to a mad
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n8 monkey.\u2014The mind is difficult to restrain, light, running whither it pleases;
\nto control it is a helpful thing;
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n9 controlled, it secures happiness.\u2014The mind is restless, violent, powerful,
\nobstinate; its control seems to me as difficult a task as to control the wind,
\nto Just as the fly settles now on an unclean sore and now on the sweetmeats of
\nfeed to the gods, so a worldly man’s thoughts stop for a moment on religious
\nsubjects and the next stray into the pleasures of luxury
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1) The Lotus of Bliss.\u2014 2) Book of Golden Precepts.\u2014 3) id.\u2014  4) Tseng-tsen-ta-hio VII. 2.\u2014 5) Udanavarga.\u2014 6) Dhan mapada. 160. \u2014 7) Vivekananda.\u2014
\n<\/font> 8) <\/font> <\/span>
\nDhammapada. <\/font>
\n86.-\u2014 9) <\/font><\/span>Bhagavad Gita VI. 84.\u2014
\n<\/font>
\n10) <\/font> <\/i><\/span>Ramakrishna.\u2014(11) id.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

\n11 and lust.\u2014So long as the mentality is inconstant and inconsequent, it is
\nworthless, though one have a
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n12 good teacher and the company of holy men.\u2014On his mind vacillating, mobile,
\ndifficult to hold in, difficult to master the intelligent man should impose the
\nsame straightness as an arrow-maker gives to an arrow.\u2014
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n13 Abandoning without exception all desires born of the will, controlling by the
\nmind the senses in all directions, a man should gradually cease from mental
\naction by the force of an understanding held in the grasp of a constant will; he
\nshould fix his mind in the self and think of nothing at all, and whenever the
\nrestless and mobile mentality ranges forth he should draw it back from whatever
\ndirection it takes and bring it again under control in the self alone: for when
\nthe mind has thus been quieted, there comes to man the
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n14 highest peace.\u2014The wise man should rein in intently this mental action like a
\nchariot drawn by untrained horses.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n15 A half-attention prepares the way for fresh errors, fresh illusions and
\nallows the old to increase. Prevent by a sustained attend’ on the birth of new
\nerrors and destroy the old.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n16 Under all circumstances be vigilant.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n17 Let us watch over our thoughts.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n18 A bad thought is the most dangerous of thieves._
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n19 Let not worldly thoughts and anxieties trouble your
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n22 the inferior worlds.\u2014When the disciple considering an idea sees rise in him
\nbad or unhealthy thoughts, thoughts of covetousness, hatred or error, he should
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n12) Dhammapada-33.\u2014 13) Bhagavad Girl a. VI. 24-26.\u2014 14) Sweat;-
\nwater
\nUpanishad.\u2014 IE) Majjhima Nikaya.\u2014 16) Baha-ullah._ 17) Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king.\u2014
\n18) Buddhist scriptures from the Chinese._ 19) Ramakrishna.\u2014 20) Confucius. \u2014
\n21) Antoine the Healer: Revelations.\u2014 22) Mahayana; the Book of the Faith.
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\neither turn his mind away from that idea or concentrate it upon a or concentrate
\nit upon a healthy thought, or else examine the fatal nature of the idea, or analyse it and decompose it into its different elements, or, making appeal to all his strength and applying the greatest energy, suppress it from his mind; thus are removed and disappear these bad and unhealthy ideas and the mind becomes firm, calm, unified, full of vigour.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n23 By dominating the senses one increases the intelligence.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n*  *  *
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n24 The mind is a clear and polished mirror and our continual duty is to keep
\nit pure and never allow dust to <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n25 accumulate upon it.\u2014When a mirror is covered with dust it cannot reflect
\nimages; it can only do so when it is clear of stain. So is it with beings. If
\ntheir minds are not pure of soil, the Absolute cannot reveal itself in them. But
\nif they free themselves from soil, then of itself it will be revealed.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n26 Action like inaction may find its place in thee; if thy body is in movement,
\nlet thy mind be calm, let
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n27 thy soul be as limpid as a mountain lake.\u2014When water is still, it reflects
\nobjects like
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n28 heaven and all existences.\u2014Even as the troubled surface of rolling waters
\ncannot properly reflect the full moon, but only gives broken images of it, so
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n29 The .Eternal is seen when the mind is at rest. When the sea of the mind is
\ntroubled by the winds of desire, it cannot1<\/sup> reflect the Eternal and
\nall divine vision is impossible.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n23) Mahabharata.\u2014 24) Hindu Saying.\u2014 26) A, waghosha a\u2014 26) Book of Golden
\nPrecepts.\u2014 a7<\/sup>) Chwang-tse \u2014 28) Ramakrishna.\u2014 <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n29) <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n
\n
\nThe Secret of the Veda<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n
\nTHE SEVEN-HEADED THOUGHT, SWAR AND THE DA\u00c7AGWAS<\/b>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n        <\/b> The language of the
\nhymns establishes, then, a double aspect for the Angiras Rishis. One belongs to
\nthe external garb of the Veda ; it weaves together its naturalistic imagery of
\nthe Sun, the Flame, the Dawn, the Cow, the Horse, the Wine, the sacrificial Hymn
\n; the other extricates from that imagery the internal sense. The Angirasas are
\nsons of the Flame, lustres of the Dawn, givers and drinkers of the Wine, singers
\nof the Hymn, eternal youths and heroes who wrest for us the Sun, the Cows, the
\nHorses and all treasures from the grasp of the sons of darkness. But they are
\nalso seers of the Truth, finders and speakers of the word of the Truth and by
\nthe power of the Truth they win for us the wide world of Light and Immortality
\nwhich is described in the Veda as the Vast, the True, the Right and as the own
\nhome of" this Flame of which they are the children. This physical imagery and
\nthese psychological indications are closely interwoven and they cannot be
\nseparated from each other. Therefore we are obliged by ordinary common sense to
\nconclude that the Flame of which the Right and the Truth is the own home is
\nitself a Flame of that Right and Truth, that the Light which is won by the Truth
\nand by the force of true thought is not merely a physical light, the cows which
\nSarama finds on the path of the Truth not merely physical herds, the Horses not
\nmerely the wealth of the Dravidians conquered by invading Aryan tribes, nor even
\nmerely images of the physical
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nDawn, its light and its swiftly moving rays and the darkness of which the Panis
\nand Vritra are the defenders not merely the darkness of the Indian or the Arctic
\nnight. We have even been able to hazard a reasonable hypothesis by which we can
\ndisentangle the real sense of this imagery and discover the true godhead of
\nthese shining gods and these divine, luminous sages.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       The Angiras Rishis are at once divine and
\nhuman seers. This double character is not in itself an extraordinary feature or
\npeculiar in the Veda to these sages. The Vedic gods also have a double action ;
\ndivine and pre-existent in themselves, they are. human in their working upon the
\nmortal plane when they grow in man to the great ascension. This has been
\nstrikingly expressed in the allocution to Usha, the Dawn, " goddess human in
\nmortals ", devi martyeshu m\u00e2nushi. <\/i>But in the imagery of the. Angiras
\nRishis this double character is farther complicated by the tradition which makes
\nthem the human fathers, discoverers of the Light, the Path and the Goal. We must
\nsee how this complication affects our theory of the Vedic creed and the Vedic
\nsymbolism.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      The Angiras Rishis are ordinarily described as
\nseven in number : they are sapta vipr\u00e2h, <\/i>the seven sages who have come
\ndown to use the Puranic tradition* and are enthroned by Indian astronomy in
\nthe constellation of the Great Bear. But they are also described as Navagwas and
\nDa\u00e7agwas, and if in VI. 22 we are told of the ancient fathers, the seven seers
\nwho were Navagwas, p\u00fbrve pitaro navagv\u00e2h sapta vipr\u00e2so, <\/i>yet in III. 39. 5
\nwe have mention of two different classes, Navagwas, and Da\u00e7agwas, the latter ten
\nin number, the former presumably, though it is not expressly stated, nine.
\nSakh\u00e2 ha yatra sakhibhir navagvair, abhijnv\u00e2 satvabhir g\u00e2 anugman; satyam tad
\nindro da\u00e7abhir da\u00e7agvair, s\u00fbryam viveda tamasi ksh\u00eeyantam ; " <\/i>where, a
\nfriend with his friends the Navagwas, following the cows Indra with the ten
\nDa\u00e7<\/i>agwas found that truth, even the Sun dwelling
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n     " Not that the names given them by the
\nPurina need be
\nthose which the Vedic tradition would have given. <\/font>
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nin the darkness ." On the other hand we have in IV.51 a collective description
\nof the Angiras seven-faced or seven mouthed, nine-rayed, ten-rayed, navagve
\nangire da\u00e7agve sapt\u00e2sye. <\/i>In X. 108.2
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       Tradition asserts the separate existence of
\ntwo classes of Angiras Rishis, the one Navagwas who sacrificed for nine months,
\nthe other Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas whose sessions of sacrifice endured for ten. According to
\nthis interpretation we must take Navagwas and Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas as " nine-cowed” and "
\nten-cowed", each cow representing collectively the thirty Dawns which constitute
\none month of the sacrificial year. But there is at least one passage of the
\nRig-Veda which on its surface is in direct conflict with the traditional
\ninterpretation. For in the seventh verse of V. 45 and again in the eleventh we
\nare told that it was the Navagwas, not the Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas, who sacrificed or chanted
\nthe hymn for ten months. This seventh verse runs, An\u00fbnod atra hastayuto
\nadrir, archan yena da\u00e7am\u00e2so navagv\u00e2h ; r’itam yati saram\u00e2 g\u00e2 avindad, vi\u00e7vani
\nsaty\u00e2 angir\u00e2\u00e7 cak\u00e2ra, <\/i>" Here cried ( or, moved ) the stone impelled by the
\nhand, whereby the Navagwas chanted for ten months the hymn ; Sarama travelling
\nto the Truth found the cows; all things the Angiras made true." And in verse 11
\nwe have the assertion repeated; Dhiyam vo apsu dadhishe svarsh\u00e2m, yay\u00e2taran
\nda\u00e7o m\u00e2sa navagvah; ay\u00e2 dhiy\u00e2 sy\u00e2ma devagop\u00e2, ay\u00e2 dhiy\u00e2 tutury\u00e2ma ati anhah. <\/i>"I hold for you in the waters (i.e. <\/i>the seven- Rivers ) the thought that
\nwins possession of heaven * (this is once more the seven headed thought born
\nfrom the Truth and found by Ayasya ), by which the Navagwas <\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n       * Sayana takes it to mean, " I recite the
\nhymn for water " i.e. <\/i>in order to get rain ; the case however is the
\nlocative plural, and dadhishe <\/i>means 14<\/sup> I place or hold " Or,
\nwith the psychological sense, " think" or "hold in thought, meditate."
\n
\nDhishan\u00e2 <\/i>like dh\u00ee <\/i>means thought; dhiyam dadhishe <\/i>would thus
\nmean " I think or meditate the thought."
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\npassed through the ten months ; by this thought may we have the gods for
\nprotectors, by this thought may we pass through beyond the evil ". The statement
\nis explicit. Sayana indeed makes a faint-hearted attempt to take da\u00e7a m\u00e2so <\/i>in v. 7, ten months, as if it were an epithet da\u00e7a-m\u00e2so, <\/i>the ten-month
\nones *. e. <\/i>the Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas; but he offers this improbable rendering only as
\nan alternatives and abandons it in the eleventh rik.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       Must we then suppose that the poet of this
\nhymn had forgotten the tradition and was confusing the Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas and Navagwas ?
\nSuch a supposition is inadmissible. The difficulty arises because we suppose the
\nNavagwas and Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas to have been in the minds of the Vedic Rishis two
\ndifferent classes of Angiras Rishis; rather these seem to have been two
\ndifferent powers of Angiras hood and in that case the Navagwas themselves might
\nwell become Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas by extending the period of the sacrifice to ten months
\ninstead of nine. The expression in the hymn, da\u00e7a m\u00e2so ataran, <\/i>indicates
\nthat there was some difficulty in getting throwing the full period of ten
\nmonths. It is during this period apparently that the sons of darkness had the
\npower to assail the sacrifice ; for it is indicated that it is only by the
\nconfirming of the thought which conquers Swar, the solar world, that the Rishis
\nare able to get through the ten months, but this thought once found they become
\nassured of the protection of the gods and pass beyond the assault of the evil,
\nthe harms of the Panis and Vritra. This Swar-conquering thought is certainly
\nthe same as that seven-headed thought which was born from the Truth and
\ndiscovered by Ayasya the companion of the Navagwas; for by it, we are told,
\nAyasya becoming universal, embracing the births in all the worlds, brought into
\nbeing a fourth world or fourfold world, which must be the supramental beyond the
\nthree lower sessions, Dyaus, Antariksha and Prohibit, that which, according to
\nKanwa son of Ghora, men reach by crossing beyond the two Rodasi after killing
\nVritra. This fourth world must be therefore Swar. The seven-headed thought of
\nAyasya enables him to become vi\u00e7vajanya, <\/i>which means probably that he
\noccupies or possesses
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nall the worlds or births of the soul, and to manifest or give being to a
\ncertain fourth world (Swar), tur\u00eeyam svij janayad vi\u00e7vajanya <\/i>; and the
\nthought established in the seven rivers which enables the Navagwa Rishis to pass
\nthough the ten months, is also svarsh\u00e2, <\/i>that which brings about the
\npossession of Swar. The two are evidently the same. Must we not then conclude
\nthat it is the addition of Ayasya to the Navagwas which raises the nine Navagwas
\nto the number of ten and enables them by his discovery of the seven-headed
\nSwar-conquering thought to prolong their nine-months’ sacrifice through the
\ntenth month? Thus they become the ten Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas. We may note in this connection
\nthat the intoxication of the Soma by which Indra manifests or increases the
\nMight of Swar (Svarnara) <\/i>is described as ten-rayed and illuminating
\n(da\u00e7agvam vepayantam.)<\/i>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        This conclusion is entirely confirmed
\nby the passage in III.39.5 which we have already cited. For there we find that
\nit is with the help of the Navagwas that Indra pursues the trace of the lost
\nkine, but it is only with the aid of the ten Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas that he is able to bring
\nthe pursuit to a successful issue and find that Truth, satyam tat, <\/i>the
\nSun that was lying in the darkness. In other words, it is when the nine-months’
\nsacrifice is prolonged through the tenth, it is when the Navagwas become the ten
\nDa\u00e7<\/i>agwas by the seven-headed thought of Ayasya, the tenth Rishi, that the Sun is
\nfound and the luminous world of Swar is disclosed and conquered. This conquest
\nof Swar is the aim of the sacrifice and the great work accomplished by the
\nAngiras Rishis.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       But what is meant by the figure of the
\nmonths ? for it now becomes clear that it is a figure, a parable ; the year is
\nsymbolic, the months are symbolic. * It is in the revolution of the year that
\nthe recovery of the lost Sun and the lost cows is effected, for we have the
\nexplicit statement in X.62.2, r’iten\u00e2 bhindan parivatsare valam, <\/i>" by
\nthe truth, in the revolution of the year, they broke<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n       * Observe that in the
\nPurina’s the Yugas,
\nmoments, months, etc. are all symbolic and it is stated that the body of man is
\nthe year. <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nVala," or, as Sayana interprets it, "by sacrifice lasting for a year." This
\npassage certainly goes far to support the Arctic theory, for it speaks of a
\nyearly and not a daily return of the Sun. But we are not concerned with the
\nexternal figure, nor does its validity in any way affect our own <\/sub>
\ntheory; for it may very well be that the striking Arctic experience of the long
\nnight, the annual sunrise and the continuous dawns was made by the Mystics the
\nfigure of the spiritual night and its difficult illumination. But that this idea
\nof Time, of the months and years is used as a symbol seems to be clear from
\nother passages of the Veda, notably from Gritsamada’s hymn to Brihaspati, 11.24.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n         In this hymn Brihaspati is
\ndescribed driving up the cows, breaking Vala by the divine word brahman\u00e2, <\/i>concealing the darkkness and making Swar visible. The first result is the breaking
\nopen by force of the well which has the rock for its face and whose streams are
\nof the honey, madhu, <\/i>the Soma sweetness, a\u00e7m\u00e2syam avatam madhudh\u00e2ram. <\/i>This well of honey covered by the rock must be the Ananda or divine
\nbeatitude of the supreme three fold world of bliss, the Satya, Tapas and Jana
\nworlds of the Puranic system based upon the three supreme principles, Sat,
\nChit-Tapas and Ananda ; their base is Swar of the Veda, Maher of the Upanishads
\nand Puranas, the world of Truth. * These four together make the fourfold fourth
\nworld and are described in the Rig Veda as the four supreme and secret seats,
\nthe source of the " four upper rivers." Sometimes, however, this upper world
\nseems to be divided into two, Swar the base, Mayas or the divine beatitude the
\nsummit, so that there are five worlds or births of the ascending soul. The three
\nother rivers are the three lower powers of being, supply the principles of the
\nthree lower worlds.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n        * In the Upanishads and Puranas there
\nis no distinction between Swar and Dyaus; therefore a fount name had o be fecund
\nfor the world of Truth, and this is the Maher dl8ccvercd according to the
\nTaittiriya Upanishad by the Rishi Mahachamasya as the fourth vyahriti, the
\nother three being Swar, Bhuvar and 1 Lure, i e. Dyaus, Astatines and Prithivi of
\nthe Veda. <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\n
\n    <\/b>    This secret well of honey is drunk
\nby all those who are able to see Swar and they pour out its billowing fountain
\nof sweetness in manifold streams together, tarn eva vi\u00e7ve papire svardri\u00e7o
\nbahu s\u00e2kam sisichur utsam udrin’am. <\/i>These many streams poured out together
\nare the seven rivers poured down the bill by Indra after slaying Vritra, the
\nrivers or streams of the Truth, r’itasya dh\u00e2r\u00e2h ; <\/i>and they represent, according to our theory, the seven principles of conscious being in their divine fulfilment in the Truth and Bliss. This is why the seven-headed thought,\u2014 that is to say, the knowledge of the divine existence with its seven heads or powers, the seven-rayed knowledge of
\nBrihaspati, saptagum, <\/i>has to be confirmed .or held in thought in the waters, the seven rivers, that is to say the seven forms of divine consciousness arc to be held in the seven forms or movements of divine being ; dhiyam vo apsu
\ndadhishe svarsham, <\/i>I hold the Swar conquering thought in the waters.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n       That the making visible of the eyes of the
\nSwar-jeers, svardri\u00e7ah, <\/i>and their drinking of the honeyed well and the outpouring of the divine waters amounts to the revelation of new worlds or new states of existence is clearly told us in the next verse, II. 24. 5 , san\u00e2
\nt\u00e2 k\u00e2 chid bhuvan\u00e2 bhav\u00eetv\u00e2, m\u00e2dbhih saradbhih duro varanta vah; ayatant\u00e2 charato anyad anyad
\nid, y\u00e2 chak\u00e2ra vayun\u00e2 brahmanaspatih <\/i>"certain eternal world Ids (states of existence) are these which have to come into being, their doors are shut * to you (or, opened) by the months and the years ; without effort one (world) moves in the other, and it is these that
\nBrahmanaspati i has made manifest to knowledge." These are the four (or two) eternal worlds hidden in the guha, <\/i>the secret, unmanifest or superconscient parts of being which although in themselves eternally present states of existence
\n(san\u00e2 bhuvan\u00e2) <\/i>are for us non-existent and in<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* Sayana says varanta is <\/i>here * opened," which is quite possible, but vr’i <\/i>means ordinarily it shut, close up, cover, especially when applied to the doors of the hill whence flow the rivers and the cows come forth; Vritra is the closer of the doors. Vi vr’i <\/i>and apa vr’i <\/i>mean to open. Nevertheless, if the word means hero to open, that only makes
\nfor case all the stronger.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\n

\nthe future ; they have to be brought into being, created. Therefore the
\nVeda
\nsometimes speaks of Swar being made visible, as here (vyachakshayat svah,) <\/i>
\nor discovered and taken possession of, avidat, asanat, <\/i>sometimes of its
\nbeing created or made (bh\u00fb, kr’i.) <\/i>These secret eternal worlds have been
\nclosed to us, says the Rishi, by the movement of Time, by the months and years ;
\ntherefore naturally they have to be discovered, revealed, conquered, created in
\nus by the movement of Time, yet in a sense against it. This development in an
\ninner or paychological Time is, it seems to me, that which is symbolised by
\nthe sacrificial year and by the ten months that have to be spent before the
\nrevealing hymn of the soul (brahma) <\/i>is able to discover the seven-headed,
\nheaven-conquering thought which finally carries us beyond the harms of Vritra
\nand the Panis.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        We get the connection of the rives
\nand the worlds very clearly in 1.62. where India is described as breaking the
\nhill by the aid of the Navagwas and breaking’ Vala by the aid of the Da\u00e7<\/i>agwas.
\nHymned by the Angiras Rishis India opens up the darkness by the Dawn and the Sun
\nand the Cows, he spreads out the high plateau of the earthly hill into wideness
\nand upholds the higher world of heaven. For the result of the opening up of the
\nhigher planes of consciousness is to increase the wideness of the physical, to
\nraise the height of the mental. " This, indeed " says the Rishi Nodal, is his
\nmightiest work, the fairest achievement of the achiever " dasmasya ch\u00e2rutamam asti dansah, <\/i>"that the four upper rivers streaming honey nourish the
\ntwo worlds of the crookedness," upahvare yad upar\u00e2 apinvan madhvam’aso nadya\u00e7
\nchatasrah. <\/i>This is again the honey-streaming well pouring down its many
\nstreams together ; the four higher rivers of the divine being, divine conscious
\nforce, divine delight, divine truth nourishing the two worlds of the mind and
\nbody into which they descend with their floods of sweetness. These two, the
\nRodasi, are normally worlds of crookedness, that is to say of the falsehood,\u2014the
\nr’itam <\/i>or Truth being the straight, the anr’itam <\/i>or Falsehood the
\ncrooked,\u2014because they are exposed to the harms of the undivine powers, Vritra
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-371<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nand Panis, sons of darkness and division. The Rishi then proceeds to define the
\nresult of the work of Ayasya, which is to reveal the true eternal and unified
\nform of earth and heaven. " In their twofold (divine and human ?) Ayasya
\nuncovered by his hymns the two, eternal and in one net ; perfectly achieving he
\nupheld earth and heaven in the highest ether (of the revealed superconscient,
\npara-mam gudham) <\/i>as the Enjoyer his two wives." The soul’s enjoyment of its
\ndivinised mental and bodily existence in the eternal joy of the spirited being
\ncould not be more clearly and beautifully imaged.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       These ideas and many of the expressions are
\nthe same as those of the hymn of Gritsamada. Nodha says of the Night and Dawn, the dark physical and the illumined mental consciousness that they new-born (punarbhav\u00e2) <\/i>about heaven and earth move into each other with their own proper movements, svebhir evair …charanto any\u00e2ny\u00e2, <\/i>in the eternal friendship that is worked out by the high achievement of their son who thus upholds them, sanemi sakhyam svapasyam\u00e2nah, s\u00fbnur dadh\u00e2ra
\n\u00e7avas\u00e2 sadans\u00e2h. <\/i>In
\nGritsamada hymn as in Nodha’s the Angirasas attain to Swar,\u2014the Truth from which they originally came, the own home " of all divine Purushas,\u2014by the attainment of the truth and by the detection of the falsehood. "They who travel towards the goal and attain that treasure of the Panis, the supreme treasure hidden in the secret cave, they, having the knowledge and perceiving the falsehoods, rise up again thither whence they came and enter into that world. Possessed of the truth, beholding the falsehoods they? <\/sub>seers, rise up again into the great path,"
\nmahas pathah, <\/i>the path-of the Truth, or the great and wide realm, Mahas of the Upanishads.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      We begin now to unravel the knot of the Vedic imagery. Brihaspati is the seven-rayed Thinker, saptaguh, saptara\u00e7mih, <\/i>he is the seven-faced or seven-mouthed Angiras, born in many forms, sapt\u00e2syas tuvij\u00e2tah, <\/i>nine-rayed, ten-rayed. The
\nsuavity mouths are the seven Angirasas who repeat the divine word (brahma) <\/i>which comes from the seat of the Truth, Swar, and of which he is the lord (brahman ‘aspatih.)<\/i>

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

\nPage-372<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n
\nEach also corresponds to one of the seven rays of
\nBrihaspati; therefore they are the seven seers, sapta viprdh, sapta r’ishayah, <\/i>
\nwho severally personify these seven rays of the knowledge. These rays are,
\nagain, the seven brilliant horses of the sun, sapta haritah, <\/i>and their
\nfull union constitutes the seven-headed Thought of Ayasya by which the lost sun
\nof Truth is recovered. That thought again is established in the seven rivers,
\nthe seven principles of being divine and human, the totality of which founds the
\nperfect spiritual existence. The winning of these seven rivers of our being
\nwithheld by Vritra and these seven rays withheld by Vala, the possession of our
\ncomplete divine consciousness delivered from all falsehood by the free descent
\nof the truth, gives us the secure possession of the world of Swar and the
\nenjoyment of mental and physical being lifted into the godhead above darkness,
\nfalsehood and death by the in-streaming of our divine elements. This victory is
\nwon in twelve periods of the upward journey, represented by the revolution of
\nthe twelve months of the sacrificial year, the periods corresponding to the
\nsuccessive dawns of a wider and wider truth, until the tenth secures the
\nvictory. What may be the precise significance of the nine ia3’s and the ten, is
\na more difficult question which we are not yet in a position to solve ; but the
\nlight we already have is sufficient to illuminate all the main imagery of the
\nRig Veda.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       The symbolism of the Veda depends upon the
\nimage of the life of man as a sacrifice, a journey and a battle. The ancient
\nMystics took for their theme the spiritual life of man, but, in order both to
\nmake it concrete to themselves and to veil its secrets from the unfit, they
\nexpressed it in poetical images drawn fro 11 the outward life of their age. That life was largely an existence of herdsmen and tillers of the soil for the mass of the people varied by the wars and migrations of the clans under their kings, and in all this activity the worship of the gods by sacrifice had become the most
\nsalon and magnificent element, the knot of all the rest. For by the sacrifice were won the rain which fertilised the soil, the herds of cattle and horses

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

\nPage-373<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nnecessary for their existence in peace and war, the wealth of gold, land
\n(kshetra), <\/i>retainers, fighting-men which constituted greatness and
\nlordship, the victory in the battle, safety in the journey by land and water
\nwhich was so difficult and dangerous in those times of poor means of
\ncommunication and loosely organised inter-tribal existence. All the principal
\nfeatures of that outward life which they saw around them the mystic poets took
\nand turned into significant images of the inner life. The life of man is
\nrepresented as a sacrifice to the gods, a journey sometimes figured as a
\ncrossing of dangerous waters, sometimes as an ascent from level to level of the
\nhill of being, and, thirdly, as a battle against hostile nations. Bu! these
\nthree images are not kept separate. The sacrifice is all a journey ; indeed the
\nsacrifice itself is described as travelling, as journeying to a divine goal ;
\nand the journey and the sacrifice are both continually spoken of as a battle
\nagainst the dark powers.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n         The legend of the Angirasas
\ntakes up and combines all these three essential features of the Vedic imagery.
\nThe Angirases are pilgrims of the light. The phrase nakshantah <\/i>or
\nabhinakshantah <\/i>is constantly used to describe their characteristic action.
\nThey are those who travel towards the goal and attain to the highest,
\nabhinakshanto abhi ye tam \u00e2na\u00e7ur nidhim paramam <\/i>(11.24. 6). Their action is
\ninvoked for carrying forward the life of man farther towards its goal,
\nsahasras\u00e2ve pra tiranta \u00e2yuh <\/i>(III. 53. 7). But this journey, if principally
\nof the nature of a quest, the quest of the hidden light, becomes also by the
\nopposition of the powers of darkness an expedition and a battle. The Angirasas
\nare heroes and fighters of that battle, goshu yodhah. <\/i>Indra marches with
\nthem saran’ yubhih, <\/i>as travellers on the path, sakhibhih, <\/i>
\ncomrades, r’itvabhih <\/i>and kavibhih, <\/i>seers and singers of the sacred
\nshe. not, but also satvabhih, <\/i>fighters in the battle. They are frequently
\nspoken of by the appellation nr’i <\/i>or v\u00eera. <\/i>as when Indra is said
\nto win the luminous herds asmakebhih nr’ibhih, <\/i>*’ by our men ".
\nStrengthened by them he conquers in the journey and reaches the goal, nakshad
\nd\u00e2bham taturim. <\/i>This journey or march pro-
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-374<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\ncedes along the posh discovered by Same, the hound of heaven, the path of the
\nTruth, r’itasya pantha, <\/i>the great path, mafias pathah, <\/i>which leads
\nto the realms of the Truth. It is also the sacrificial journey; for its stages
\ncorrespond to the periods of the sacrifice of the Navagwas and it is effected by
\nthe force of the Soma-wine and the sacred Word.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n        The drinking of the Soma-wine as the
\nmeans of strength, victory and attainment is one of the pervading figures of the
\nVeda. India and the A\u00e7wins are the great Soma-drinkers, but all the gods have
\ntheir share of the immortalising draught. The Angirases also conquer in the
\nstrength of the Soma. Sarama threatens the Panis with the coming of Ayasya and
\nthe Navagwa Angirases in the keen intensity of their Soma rapture, eha gamann
\nr’ishayah soma\u00e7it\u00e2 ay\u00e2syo angiraso navagv\u00e2h. <\/i>It is the great force by which
\nmen have the power to follow the path of the Truth. "That rapture of the Soma we
\ndesire by which thou, O India, didst make to thrive the Might of Swar (or the
\nSwar-soul, svarnaram<\/i>), that rapture ten-rayed and making alight of
\nknowledge (da\u00e7agvam vepayantam) <\/i>by which thou didst foster the ocean;
\nthat Soma-intoxication by which thou didst drive forward the great waters ( the
\nseven rivers ) like chariots to the r sea,\u2014 that we desire that we may travel on
\nthe path of the truth", panth\u00e2m r’itasya y\u00e2tave tarn \u00eemahe. <\/i>It is in the
\npower of the Soma that the hill is broken open, the sons of darkness overthrown.
\nThis Soma-wine is the sweetness that comes flowing from the streams of the upper
\nhidden world, it is that which flows in the seven waters, it is that with which
\nthe ghr’ita, <\/i>the clarified butter of the. mystic sacrifice, is instinct;
\nit is the honeyed wave which rises out of the ocean of life. Such images can
\nhave only one meaning; it is the divine delight hidden in all existence which,
\nonce manifest, supports all life’s crowning activities and is the force that
\nfinally immortalizes the mortal, the amr’itam, <\/i>ambrosia of the gods.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      But it is especially the Word that the Angirases
\npossess; their seer hood is their most distinguishing characteristic. They are
\nbr\u00e2hman\u00e2so pitarah somy\u00e2sah…r’it\u00e2vr’idhah<\/i>
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-375<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n(VI. 75. 10;, the fathers who are full of the Soma and have the word and are
\ntherefore increasers of the Truth. Indra in order to impel them on the path
\njoins himself to the chanted expressions of their thought and gives fullness and
\nforce to the words of their soul, angiras\u00e2m uchath\u00e2 jujush-v\u00e2n brahma
\nt\u00fbtod g\u00e2tum is Hunan <\/i>(II. 20. 5 ). It is when enriched in light and force of
\nthought by the Angirases that Indra completes his victorious journey and reaches
\nthe goal on the mountain; " In him our primal fathers, the seven seers, the
\nNavagwas, increase their plenty, him victorious on his march and breaking
\nthrough (to the goal), standing on the mountain, inviolate in speech, most
\nluminous-forceful by his thinking," nakshad d\u00e2bham taturim par-v\u00e2testh\u00e2m,
\nadroghav\u00e2cham matibhih \u00e7avistham. <\/i>It is by singing the Rik, the hymn of
\nillumination, that they find the solar illuminations in the cave of our being,
\narchanto gd avindan. <\/i>It is by the stubh, <\/i>the all-supporting rhythm of
\nthe hymn of the seven seers, by the vibrating voice of the Navagwas that Indra
\nbecomes full of the power of Swar, svaren’a svarydh <\/i>and by the cry of the
\nDacagwas that he rends Vala in pieces ( I. 62. 4). For this cry is the voice of
\nthe higher heaven, the thunder that cries in the lightning-flash of Indra, and
\nthe advance of the Angirases on their path is the forward movement of this cry
\nof the heavens, pro, brahm\u00e2no angiraso nakshantah, pra krandanur nabhanyas-ya
\nvetu <\/i>(VII. 42. 1. ); the voice of Brihaspati the Angirasa discovering the
\nsun and the Dawn and the Cow and the light of the Word is the thunder of Heaven,
\nbr’ihaspatir ushasam suryam gdm, arkam viveda svanayann iva dyauh. <\/i>It is by
\nthe satyamantr\u00e2, <\/i>the true thought expressed in the rhythm of the truth,
\nthat the hidden light is found and the Dawn brought to birth, gudham jyotih
\npitaro avindan, satyamantr\u00e2 ajanayann ush\u00e2sam. <\/i>For these are the Angirases
\nwho speak a.rgh.t,itth\u00e2-vadadbhih angirobhih <\/i>(VI.18.5.), masters of the
\nRay who place perfectly their thought, sv\u00e2-dh\u00eebhir r’ikvabhih <\/i>(VI. 32.
\n2.); they are the sons of heaven, heroes of the Mighty Lord who speak the truth
\nand think the straightness and therefore they are able to hold the seat of
\nillumined knowledge, to mentalise the supreme a-
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-376<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nbode of the sacrifice, r’itam \u00e7ansanta r’iju d\u00eedh\u00e2na divas putr\u00e2so \u00e2surasya
\nvir\u00e2h; vipram padam angiraso dadh\u00e2n\u00e2, yajnasya dh\u00e2ma prathamam mananta <\/i>(
\nX. 67. 1 )
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       It is impossible that such expressions
\nshould convey nothing more than the recovery of stolen cows from Dravidian
\ncave-dwellers by some Aryan seers led by a god and his dog or else the return of
\nthe Dawn after the darkness of the night. The wonders of the Arctic dawn
\nthemselves are insufficient to explain the association of images and the
\npersistent stress on the idea of the Word, the Thought, the Truth, the journey
\nand the conquest of the falsehood which meets us always in these hymns. Only the
\ntheory we are enouncing, a theory not brought in from outside but arising
\nstraight from the language and the suggestions of the hymns themselves, can
\nunite this varied imagery and bring an easy lucidity and coherence into this
\napparent tangle of incongruities. In fact, once the central idea is grasped and
\nthe mentality of the Vedic Rishis and the principle of their symbolism are
\nunderstood, no incongruity and no disorder remain. There is a fixed system of
\nsymbols which, except in some of the later hymns, does not admit of any
\nimportant variations and in the light of which the inner sense of the Veda
\neverywhere yields itself up readily enough. There is indeed a certain restricted
\nfreedom in the combination of the symbols, as in those of any fixed poetical
\nimagery,\u2014for instance, the sacred poems of the Vaishnavas but the substance of
\nthought behind is constant, coherent and does not vary.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-377<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n
\n
\nThe Ideal of Human Unity<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/a>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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

\n         The problem of the unification
\nof mankind resolves itself into two distinct difficulties ; first, whether the
\ncollective egoisms already created in the nature evolution of humanity can at
\nthis time be so modified or abolished that even an external unity in some
\neffective form can now in the present stage of our moral and social progress be
\nsecurely established ; secondly, whether, even if any such external unity can be
\nestablished, it will not be at the price of crushing both the free life of the
\nindividual and the free play of the various collective units already crated in
\nwhich there is a real and active life and substituting a State organisation
\nwhich will mach anise human existence. And apart from these two uncertainties,
\nthere is a third question whether a really living unity can be achieved by the
\nmere economical, political, administrative unification, whether it ought not to
\nbe preceded by at least the strong beginnings of a moral and spiritual oneness.
\nIt is the first question that we shall now consider.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       At the present stage of human progress the
\nnation is the leally living collective unit of humanity. Empires exist, but they
\nareas yet only political and not real units; they have no life from within and
\nowe their continuance to a force imposed on’ their constituent elements or else
\nto a political convenience felt or acquiesced in by the constituents and
\nfavoured by the world outside. Austria is the standing example of such an empire
\n; it was anal to some extent still is a political convenience favoured by the
\nworld outside, acquiesced in until recently by its constituent elements and
\nmaintained by the force of the central Germanic element in canted in the
\nHapsburg dynasty with the active aid of its Magyar partner. If
\n

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

\nPage-378<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nto acquiesce and arc drawn more powerfully by a centrifugal for cue, as- is now
\nactually the case, if at the same time the world outside ceases to favour the
\ncombination, then force alone remains as the one agent of an artificial unity.
\nThere is indeed a new political convenience which the existence of Austria
\nserves, but that is the convenience of the Germanic idea which makes it an
\ninconvenience to the rest of Europe and deprives it of the acquiescence of
\nimportant constituent elements which are drawn towards other combinations
\noutside the Austrian formula. From that moment the existence of the Austrian
\nempire is in jeopardy and depends, not on any inner necessity, but first on the
\npower of the imperial form of unity is singularly conspicuous and its conditions, as it were, exaggerated, still those conditions are the same for all Empires which arc not at the same
\nthe national units. It was not so long ago that most political thinkers perceived at least the strong possibility of an automatic dissolution of the British Empire by the self-detachment of the colonies, in spite of the close links of race, language and origin that should have bound them to the mother country. This was because the political convenience of imperial unity, though enjoyed by the colonies, was not sufficiently appreciated by them and, on the other hand, there was no living principle of national unity, the Australian and Canadian regarding themselves as belonging to new separate nations rather than as limbs of an extended British nationality. Things are now changed in both respects and the British Empire proportionately stronger.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n       Nevertheless, why should this distinction
\nbe made of the political and the real unit ? It must be made because it is of
\nthe greatest utility to a true and profound political science and involves the
\nmost important consequences. Supposing an empire like Austria, a non-national
\nempire, to be broken up as it threatens to break, it will perish for good ;
\nthere will be no innate tendency to recover the outward unity, because there is
\nno real unity, only a politically manufactured aggregation. On the other hand a
\nreal national unity broken up by circumstances will always preserve a tendency
\nto recover and reassert its oneness. The Greek Empire has gone the way of all
\nempires, but the Greek nation after many centuries of political non-
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-379<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nexistence again possesses its separate body, because it has preserved its
\nseparate ego and therefore really existed under the covering cuie of the Turk.
\nSo has it been with all the races under the Turkish yoke, because that powerful
\nsuzerainty, stern as it was in many respects, never attempted to obliterate
\ntheir national characteristics or substitute an Ottoman nationality. And these
\nnations have revived and are naturally attempting to reconstitute themselves in
\nthe measure in which they have preserved their real national sense ; the Serbian
\nnational idea attempts to recover all territory in which the Serb exists or
\npredominates ; Grace’ cue attempts to reconstitute herself in her mainland,
\nislands and Asiatic colonies, but cannot now reconstitute the old Greece
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       So strong is this truth of a real unity,
\nthat even nations which have never legalised an outward unification, to which
\nFate and circumstance and their own selves have been adverse, which have been
\nfull of centrifugal forces and easily over powered by foreign intrusions, have
\nyet always developed centripetal force as well and arrive inevitably at
\norganised oneness. Ancient Greece clung to her separatist tendencies, turn
\nself-sufficient city or regional states, her little mutually repellent
\nautonomies, but the centripetal force was always there manifested in leagues,
\nassociations of States, suzerainties Ike the Spartan and Athenian, and finally
\nrealised itself, first, imperfectly and temporarily by the Macedonian virile,
\nthen, by a strange enough development, through the evolution of the Eastern
\nRoman world into a Greek and Byzantine Empire. So also, we have seen in our own
\nday Germany, constantly disunited since ancient times, develop at last to
\nportentous issues its innate sense of oneness formidably embodied in the Empire of the Hohenzollerns. Nor sound it at all be surprising to those who study the
\nworkings of forces and not merely the trend of outward circumstances, if one
\nresult of the present war, near or more remote, were to be the fusion of the one
\nGermanic element still left outside, the Austro-German, into the Germanic
\nwhole,\u2014although possibly in some other embodiment than a Hohenzollern empire or
\na Prussian hegemony. in both these historic instances, as in so many others, the
\nunification of Saxon England, mediaeval France, the formation of the United
\nStates of America, it was a real unity, a psychologically
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-380<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\ndistinct unit which, first, tended ignorantly by the subconscious necessity of
\nits Deign and afterwards with a sudden or gradual awakening to the sense of
\npolitical oneness, towards an inevitable external unification. It is a distinct
\ngroup-soul which is driven by onward necessity and uses out wade circumstances
\nto constitute for itself an organised body.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      But the most striking example in history is the
\nevolution of India. Nowhere else have, the centrifugal forces been so strong,
\nnumerous, complex, obstinate ; the mere time taken by the evolution has been
\nprodigious ; the disastrous vicissitudes through which it has had to work itself
\nout have been appalling ; and y t through all the inevitable tendency has worked
\nconstantly’, pertinacious, with the dull, obscure, indomitable, relentless
\nobstinacy of Nature when she is opposed in her instinctive purposes by man, and
\nfinally, after a struggle enduring through millenniums, has triumphed. And, as
\nusually happens when she is thus opposed by her own mental and human material,
\nit is the most adverse circumstances which the subconscious worker has turned
\ninto her most successful instruments. The beginnings of the centripetal tendency
\nin India go back to the earliest times of which we have recode and are typified
\nin the ideal of the Sam rat or Chakravarti Raja and the military and political
\nuse of the A\u00e7wamedha sacrifice. The two great national epics might almost have
\nbeen written to illustrate it, for the one recounts the establishment of the
\nunifying dharmarajya <\/i>or imperial reign of justice, the other starts with
\nan idealised description of such a rule pictured as existing in the ancient and
\nsacred past of the country. And the political history of India is that of a
\nsuccession of empires indigenous and foreign, each of them destroyed by
\ncentrifugal forces, but each of them bringing the centripetal tendency nearer to
\nits triumphant emergence. And it is a significant circumstance that the more
\nforeign the rule, the greater has been its force for the unification of the
\nsubject people. This is always a sure sign that the essential nation-unit is are
\nday there and that there is an indissoluble national vitality necessitating the
\ninevitable emergence of the organised nation. In this instance we see that the
\nconversion of the psychological unity on which nationhood is based into the
\nexternal organised unity by which it perfectly realises itself, has taken a
\nperiod of more than two thousand years and
\n

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

\nPage-381<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\neven the most persistent incapacity for union in the people, not even the most
\ndisintegrating shocks from outside have prevailed against the obstinate
\nsubconscious necessity. And this is only the extreme illustration of a general
\nlaw.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n       It will be useful to dwell a little upon
\nthis aid lent by foreign rule to the process of nation-making and see how it
\nworks. History abounds with illustrations. But in some cases the phenomenon of
\nforeign domination is momentary and imperfect, in others long-enduring and
\ncomplete, in others often repeated in various forms; in some instances the
\nforeign element is rejected, its use once-over, in others it is absorbed, in
\nothers accepted with more or less assimilation for a longer or briefer period as
\na ruling caste. The principle is the same, but worked variously, as always, by
\nNature according to the needs of the particular case. There is no modern nation
\nin Europe except the Swedish which has not had to pass through a phase more or
\nless prolonged, more or less complete, of foreign domination in order to realise
\nits nationality. In Russia and England it was the domination of a foreign
\nconjuring race which rapidly became a ruling caste and was in the end
\nassimilated and absorbed, in Spain the succession of the Roman, Goth and Moor,
\nin Italy the over lordship of the Austrian, in the But in all cases the long
\nsuzerainty of the Turk, in Germany the transient yoke of Napoleon. But in all
\ncases the essential has been a shock or a pressure which would either waken a
\nloose psychological unity to the necessity of organising itself from within or
\nwould crush out, dispirit or deprive of power, vitality and reality the more
\nobstinate factors of disunion. In some cases even an entire change of name,
\nculture and civilisation has been necessary, as well as a more or less profound
\nmodification of the race. Notably has this been so in the formation of French
\nnationality. The ancient Gallic nation, in spite of or perhaps because of their
\nDruidic civilisation and early greatness, were more incapable of organising a
\nfirm political unity than even the ancient Greeks or the old Indian kingdoms and
\nrepublics. It needed the Roman rule and Latin culture, the superimposition of a
\nTeutonic ruling caste and finally the shock of the temporary and partial English
\nconquest to found the unequalled unity of modern France. Yet though, name,
\ncivilisation and all else seem to have changed, the French nation of today is
\nstill and has always remained the old Gallic nation, with its Basque, Gaelic and
\nAmerican elements modified by the French and Latin admixture,
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-382<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n
\n      <\/b> Thus the nation is a persistent
\npsychological unit which Nature has been developing throughout the world in the
\nmost various forms and educating into physical and political unity. The
\npolitical unity is not the essential; it may not yet be realised, but the nation
\npersists and moves inevitably towards its realisation; it may be destroyed, but
\nthe nation persists and travails and suffers but refuses to be annihilated. In
\nformer times the nation was not always a real and vital unit, the tribe, the
\nclan, the commune, the leg ional people were the living groups Therefore those
\nunities which in the attempt at national evolution deployed these living groups
\nwithout arriving at a vital nationhood, disappeared once the artificial or
\npolitical unit was
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n      And then the question arises whether the empire
\nis not precisely that destined unit in course of evolution. The mere fact that
\nat present not the empire, but the nation is the vital unity can be no bar to a
\nfuture reversal of the relations. Obviously, in order that they may be reversed
\nthe empire must cease to be a mere political and become rather a psychological
\nentity. But there have been instances in the evolution of the nation in which
\nthe political unity preceded and became a basis for the psychological as in the
\nunion of Scotch, English and Welsh to form the British nation. There is
\ntherefore no insurmountable reason
\n
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-383<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\nwhy a similar evolution should not take place and the imperial unity be
\nsubstituted for the national. Nature has long been in travail of the imperial
\ngrouping, long casting about to give it a greater force of permanence, and the
\nemergence of the conscious imperial ideal all over the earth and its attempts,
\nthough still rude, violent and blundering, to substitute itself for the
\nnational, may not irrationally be taken as the precursory sign of one 01
\n

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

\nPage-384<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The Life Divine. CHAPTER XVIII MIND AND SUPERMIND         He discovered that Mind was the Brahman.                                                                     Taittiriya Upanishad.        Indivisible, but as if…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-philosophical-review-vol-2","wpcat-61-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3105","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=3105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}