{"id":678,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=678"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:39","slug":"16-commentary-kp-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/12-the-upanishad-volume-12\/16-commentary-kp-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","title":{"rendered":"-16_Commentary KP.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

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

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

\nT<\/span>HE <\/span><\/b>twelve great Upanishads are written round one body of
\nancient knowledge; but they approach it from different sides. Into the great
\nkingdom of the Brahmavidya each enters by its own gates, follows its own path or
\ndetour, aims at its own point of arrival. The Isha Upanishad and the Kena are
\nboth concerned with the same grand problem, the winning of the state of
\nImmortality, the relations of the divine, all-ruling, all-possessing Brahman to
\nthe world and to the human consciousness, the means of passing out of our
\npresent state of divided self, ignorance and suffering into the unity, the
\ntruth, the divine beatitude. As the Isha closes with the aspiration towards the
\nsupreme felicity, so the Kena closes with the definition of Brahman as the
\nDelight and the injunction to worship and seek after That as the Delight.
\nNevertheless there is a variation in the starting-point, even in the standpoint,
\na certain sensible divergence in the attitude. <\/p>\n

\nFor the precise subject of the two Upanishads is not identical. The Isha is
\nconcerned with the whole problem of the world and life and works and the human
\ndestiny in their relation to the supreme truth of the Brahman. It embraces in
\nits brief eighteen verses most of the fundamental problems of Life and scans
\nthem swiftly with the idea of the supreme Self and its becomings, the supreme
\nLord and His workings as the key that shall unlock all gates. The oneness of all
\nexistences is its dominating note. <\/p>\n

\nThe Kena Upanishad approaches a more restricted problem, starts with a more
\nprecise and narrow inquiry. It concerns itself only with the relation of
\nmind-consciousness to Brahman-consciousness and does not stray outside the
\nstrict boundaries of its subject. The material world and the physical life are
\ntaken for granted, they are hardly mentioned. But the material world and the
\nphysical life exist for us only by virtue of our internal self and our internal
\nlife. According as our mental instruments represent to us the external world,
\naccording as our vital force in obedience to the mind deals with its impacts and
\nobjects,, so  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 155<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

will be our outward
\nlife and existence. The world is for us what our mind and senses declare it to
\nbe; life is what our mentality determines that it shall become. The question is
\nasked by the Upanishad, what then are these mental instruments? what is this
\nmental life which uses the external? Are they the last witnesses, the supreme
\nand final power? Is mind all or is this human existence only a veil of something
\ngreater, mightier, more remote and profound than itself? <\/p>\n

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

\nFor given that there is a more real existence than the mental existence, a
\ngreater life than the physical life, it follows that the lower life with its
\nforms, and enjoyments which are all that men here ordinarily worship and pursue,
\ncan no longer be an object of desire for the awakened spirit. He must aspire
\nbeyond; he must free himself from this world of death and mere phenomena to
\nbecome himself in his true state of immortality beyond them. Then alone he
\nreally exists when here in this mortal life itself he can free himself from the
\nmortal consciousness and know and be the immortal and eternal. Otherwise he
\nfeels that he has lost himself, has fallen from his true salvation.  <\/p>\n

\nBut this Brahman-consciousness is not represented by the Upanishad as something
\nquite alien to the mental and physical world, aloof from it and in no way active
\nor concerned with its activities. On the contrary, it is the Lord and ruler of
\nall the   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 156<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

world; the energies
\nof the gods in the mortal consciousness are its energies; when they conquer and
\ngrow great, it is because Brahman has fought and won. This world therefore is an
\ninferior action, a superficial representation of something infinitely greater,
\nmore perfect, more real than itself. <\/p>\n

\nWhat is that something ? It is the All-Bliss which is infinite being and
\nimmortal force. It is that pure and utter bliss and not the desires and
\nenjoyments of this world which men ought to worship and to seek. How to seek it
\nis the one question that matters; to follow after it with all one’s being is the
\nonly truth and the only wisdom.  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 157<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\n2<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

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

\nThe question is, kena,<\/i> by whom or what? In the ancient conception of the
\nuniverse our material existence is formed from the five elemental states of
\nMatter, the ethereal, aerial, fiery, liquid and solid; everything that has to do
\nwith our material existence is called the elemental, adhibhūta.<\/i> In this
\nmaterial there move non-material powers manifesting through the Mind-Force and
\nLife-Force that work upon Matter, and these are called Gods or Devas; everything
\nthat has to do with the working of the non-material in us is called
\nadhidaiva,<\/i> that which pertains to the Gods. But above the non-material
\npowers, containing them, greater than they is the Self or Spirit, ātman,<\/i>
\nand everything that has to do with this highest existence in us is called the
\nspiritual, adhyātma.<\/i> For the purpose of the Upanishads the adhidaiva<\/i>
\nis the subtle in us; it is that which is represented by Mind and Life as opposed
\nto gross Matter; for in Mind and Life we have the characteristic action of the
\nGods. <\/p>\n

\nThe Upanishad is not concerned with the elemental, the adhibhūta<\/i>; it is
\nconcerned with the relation between the subtle existence and the spiritual, the
\nadhidaiva<\/i> and adhyātma.<\/i> But the Mind, the Life, the speech, the
\nsenses are governed by cosmic powers, by Gods, by Indra, Vayu, Agni. Are these
\nsubtle cosmic powers the beginning of existence, the true movers of mind and
\nlife, or is  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 158<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

there some superior
\nunifying force, one in itself behind them all ? <\/p>\n

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

\nThen there is the Life-force, the Prana, that works in our vital being and
\nnervous system. The Upanishad speaks of it as the first or supreme Breath;
\nelsewhere in the sacred writings it is spoken of as the chief Breath or the
\nBreath of the mouth, mukhya, āsanya;<\/i> it is that which carries in it the
\nWord, the creative expression. In the body of man there are said to be five
\nworkings of the life-force called the five Pranas. One specially termed Prana
\nmoves in the upper part of the body and is pre-eminently the breath of life,
\nbecause it brings the universal Life-force into the physical system and gives it
\nthere to be distributed. A second in the lower part of the trunk, termed Apana,
\nis the breath o\u00a3 death; for it gives away the vital force out of the body. A
\nthird, the Samana, regulates the interchange of these two forces at their
\nmeeting-place, equalises them and is the most important agent in maintaining the
\nequilibrium of the vital forces and their functions. A fourth, the Vyana,
\npervasive, distributes the vital energies throughout the body. A fifth, the
\nUdana, moves upward from the body to the crown of the head and is a regular
\nchannel of communication between the physical life and the greater life of the
\nspirit. None of these are the first or supreme Breath, although the Prana most
\nnearly represents it; the Breath to which so much importance is given in the
\nUpanishads, is the pure life-force itself, \u2014 first, because all the others are
\nsecondary to it, born from it and only exist as its special functions. It is
\nimaged in the Veda as the Horse; its various energies are the forces that draw
\nthe chariots of the Gods. The Vedic image is recalled by the choice of the terms
\nemployed in the Upanishad, yukta, <\/i>yoked, praiti,<\/i> goes forward, as
\na horse driven by the charioteer advances in its path. <\/p>\n

\nWho then has yoked this Life-force to the many workings of existence or by what
\npower superior to itself does it move forward   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 159<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

in its paths ? For
\nit is not primal, self-existent or its own agent. We are conscious of a power
\nbehind which guides, drives,
\ncontrols, uses it. <\/p>\n

\nThe force of the vital breath enables us to bring up and speed outward from the
\nbody this speech that we use to express, to throw out into a world of action and
\nnew-creation the willings and thought-formations of the mind. It is propelled by
\nVayu, the life-breath; it is formed by Agni, the secret will-force and fiery
\nshaping energy in the mind and body. But these are the agents. Who or what is
\nthe secret Power that is behind them, the master of the word that men speak, its
\nreal former and the origin of that which expresses itself?  <\/p>\n

\nThe ear hears the sound, the eye sees the form; but hearing and vision are
\nparticular operations of the life-force in us used by the mind in order to put
\nitself into communication with the world in which the mental being dwells and to
\ninterpret it in the forms of sense. The life-force shapes them, the mind uses
\nthem, but something other than the life-force and the mind enables  them to
\nshape and to use their objects and their instruments. What God sets eye and ear
\nto their workings? Not Surya, the God of light, not Ether and his regions; for
\nthese are only conditions of vision and hearing. <\/p>\n

\nThe Gods combine, each bringing his contribution, the operations of the physical
\nworld that we observe as of the mental world that is our means of observation;
\nbut the whole universal action is one, not a sum of fortuitous atoms; it is one,
\narranged in its parts, combined in its multiple functionings by virtue of a
\nsingle conscient existence which can never be constructed or put together
\n(akṛ<\/span>ta)<\/i> but is anterior to all these workings. The
\nGods work only by this Power anterior to themselves, live only by its life,
\nthink only by its thought act only for its purposes. We look into ourselves and
\nall things and become aware of it there, an "I", an "Is", a Self, which is
\nother, firmer, vaster than any separate or individual being. <\/p>\n

\nBut since it is not anything that the mind can make its object or the senses
\nthrow into form for the mind, what then is it \u2014 or who? What absolute Spirit?
\nWhat one, supreme and eternal Godhead? Ko devaḥ.<\/i>  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 160<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 
\n3 <\/span><\/b>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nT<\/span>HE <\/span><\/b>eternal question has been put which turns man’s eyes
\naway from the visible and the outward to that which is utterly within, away from
\nthe little known that he has become to the vast unknown he must yet grow into
\nand be, because that is his Reality and out of all masquerade of phenomenon and
\nbecoming the Real Being must eventually deliver itself. The human soul once
\nseized by this compelling direction can no longer be satisfied with looking
\nforth at mortalities and seemings through those doors of the mind and sense
\nwhich the Self-existent has made to open outward upon a world of forms; it is
\ndriven to gaze inward into a new world of realities.  <\/p>\n

\nHere in the world that man knows, he possesses something which, however
\nimperfect and insecure, he yet values. For he aims at and to some extent he
\nprocures enlarged being, increasing knowledge, more and more joy and
\nsatisfaction and these things are so precious to him that for what he can get of
\nthem he is ready to pay the price of continual suffering from the shock of their
\nopposites. If then he has to abandon what he here pursues and clasps, there must
\nbe a far more powerful attraction drawing him to the Beyond, a secret offer of
\nsomething so great as to be a full reward for all possible renunciation that can
\nbe demanded of him here. This is offered, \u2014 not an enlarged becoming, but
\ninfinite being; not always relative piecings of knowledge mistaken in their hour
\nfor the whole of knowledge, but the possession of our essential consciousness
\nand the flood of its luminous realities; not partial satisfactions, but the<\/i>
\ndelight. In a word, Immortality.  <\/p>\n

\nThe language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that it is no
\nmetaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is
\noffered to the soul that aspires, but rather the absolute of all that is
\npossessed by it here in the relative world of its sojourning. All here in the
\nmental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental
\nis an infinite life, light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed,  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 161<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

is there found; the
\nincomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is not an annullation, but a
\ntransfiguration of all that we are here in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind
\nof this mind, secret Life of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and
\njustifies our limited senses. <\/p>\n

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

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

\nThe answer that is thus given is involved in the very form of the original
\nquestion. The Truth behind Mind, Life, Sense must be that which controls by
\nexceeding it; it is the Lord, the all-possessing Deva. This was the conclusion
\nat which the Isha Upanishad arrived by the synthesis of all existences; the Kena
\narrives at it by the antithesis of one governing self-existence to all this that
\nexists variously by another power of being than   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 162<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

its own. Each
\nfollows its own method for the resolution of all things into the one Reality,
\nbut the conclusion is identical. It is the All-possessing and All-enjoying, who
\nis reached by the renunciation of separate being, separate possession and
\nseparate delight.  <\/p>\n

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

\nPage \u2013 163<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 
\n4<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nT<\/span>HE <\/span><\/b>Upanishad first affirms the existence of this
\nprofounder, vaster, more puissant consciousness behind our mental being. That,
\nit affirms, is Brahman. Mind, Life, Sense, Speech are not the utter Brahman;
\nthey are only inferior modes and external instruments. Brahman-consciousness is
\nour real self and our true existence. <\/p>\n

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

\nNeither is the ego-function our real self. Ego is only a faculty put forward by
\nthe discriminative mind to centralise round itself the experiences of the
\nsense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynch-pin in the wheel which keeps together
\nthe movement. It is no more than an instrument, although it is true that so long
\nas we are limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the nature of
\nthat mentality and the purpose of the instrument to mistake our ego-function for
\nour very self.  <\/p>\n

\nNeither is it the memory that constitutes our real self. Memory is another
\ninstrument, a selective instrument for the practical management of our conscious
\nactivities. The ego-function uses it as a rest and support so as to preserve the
\nsense of continuity without which our mental and vital activities could not be
\norganised for a spacious enjoyment by the individual. But even our mental self
\ncomprises and is influenced in its being by a host of things which are not
\npresent to our memory, are subconscious and hardly grasped at all by our surface
\nexistence. Memory is essential to the continuity of the ego-sense, but it is not
\nthe constituent of the ego-sense, still less of the being. <\/p>\n

\nNeither is moral personality our real self. It is only a changing formation, a
\npliable mould framed and used by our subjective life in order to give some
\nappearance of fixity to the   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 164<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

constantly mutable
\nbecoming which our mental limitations successfully tempt us to call ourselves. \n<\/p>\n

\nNeither is the totality of that mutable conscious becoming, although enriched by
\nall that subconsciously underlies it, our real self. What we become is a fluent
\nmass of life, a stream of experience pouring through time, a flux of Nature upon
\nthe crest of which our mentality rides. What we are is the eternal essence of
\nthat life, the immutable consciousness that bears the experience, the immortal
\nsubstance of Nature and mentality.  <\/p>\n

\nFor behind all and dominating all that we become and experience, there is
\nsomething that originates, uses, determines, enjoys, yet is not changed by its
\norigination, not affected by its instruments, not determined by its
\ndeterminations, not worked upon by its enjoyings. What that is, we cannot know
\nunless we go behind the veil of our mental being which knows only what is
\naffected, what is determined, what is worked upon, what is changed. The mind can
\nonly be aware of that as something which we indefinably are, not as something
\nwhich it definably knows. For, the moment our mentality tries to fix this
\nsomething, it loses itself in the flux and the movement, grasps at parts,
\nfunctions, fictions, appearances which it uses as planks of safety in the welter
\nor tries to cut out a form from the infinite and say, "This is I." In the words
\nof the Veda, "when the mind approaches That and studies it. That vanishes."  <\/p>\n

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

\nBut what differentiates that real from this apparent self? Or \u2014 since we can say
\nno more than we have said already in the way of definition, since we can only
\nindicate that "That" is not what "this" is, but is the mentally inexpressible
\nabsolute of all that is here, \u2014 what is the relation of this phenomenon to that
\nreality? For it is the question of the relation that the Upanishad makes its
\nstarting-point; its opening question assumes that there is a relation and that
\nthe reality originates and governs the phenomenon.  <\/p>\n

\nObviously, Brahman is not a thing subject to our mind,  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 165<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

senses, speech or
\nlife-force; it is no object seen, heard, expressed, sensed, formed by thought,
\nnor any state of body or mind that we become in the changing movement of the
\nlife. But the thought of the Upanishad attempts to awaken deeper echoes from our
\ngulfs than this obvious denial of the mental and sensuous objectivity of the
\nBrahman. It affirms that not only is it not an object of mind or a formation of
\nlife, but it is not even dependent on our mind, life and senses for the exercise
\nof its lordship and activity. It is that which does not think by the mind, does
\nnot live by the life, does not sense by the senses, does not find expression in
\nthe speech, but rather makes these things themselves the object of its superior,
\nall-comprehending, all-knowing consciousness.  <\/p>\n

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

\nThus the Upanishad begins its reply to its own question. It first describes
\nBrahman as Mind of the mind, Sight of the sight, Hearing of the hearing. Speech
\nof the speech. Life of the life. It then takes up each of these expressions and
\nthrows them successively into a more expanded form so as to suggest a more
\ndefinite and ample idea of their meaning, so far as that can be done by words.
\nTo the expression "Mind of the mind" corresponds the expanded phrase "That which
\nthinks not with the mind, that by which the mind is thought" and so on with each
\nof the original descriptive expressions to the closing definition of the Life
\nbehind this life as "That which breathes not with the life-breath, that by which
\nthe life-power is brought forward into its movement".  <\/p>\n

\nAnd each of these exegetic lines is emphasised by the reiterated admonition,
\n"That Brahman seek to know and not this which men follow after here." Neither
\nMind, Life, Sense and Speech nor their objects and expressions are the Reality
\nwhich we have to know and pursue. True knowledge is of That which forms  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 166<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

these instruments
\nfor us but is itself independent of their utilities. True possession and
\nenjoyment is of that which, while it creates these objects of our pursuit,
\nitself makes nothing the object of its pursuit and passion, but is eternally
\nsatisfied with all things in the joy of its immortal being.  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 167<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\n5<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nT<\/span>HE <\/span><\/b>Upanishad, reversing the usual order of our logical
\nthought which would put Mind and Sense first or Life first and Speech last as a
\nsubordinate function, begins its negative description of Brahman with an
\nexplanation of the very striking phrase. Speech of our speech. And we can see
\nthat it means a Speech beyond ours, an absolute expression of which human
\nlanguage is only a shadow and as if an artificial counterfeit. What idea
\nunderlies this phrase of the Upanishad and this precedence given to the faculty
\nof speech ?  <\/p>\n

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

\nAll creation is expression by the Word; but the form which is expressed is only
\na symbol or representation of the  thing which is. We see this in human speech
\nwhich only presents to the mind a mental form of the object; but the object it
\nseeks to express is itself only a form or presentation of another Reality. That
\nreality is Brahman, Brahman expresses by the Word a form or presentation of
\nhimself in the objects of sense and consciousness which constitute the universe,
\njust as the human word expresses a mental image of those objects. That Word is
\ncreative in a deeper and more original sense than human speech and with a power
\nof which the utmost creativeness of human speech can be only a far-off and
\nfeeble analogy.  <\/p>\n

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

\nPage \u2013 168<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

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

\nIf, however, we go a little deeper below the surface, we shall arrive at a power
\nin human speech which does give us a remote image of the original creative Word.
\nWe know that vibration of sound has the power to create \u2014 and to destroy \u2014
\nforms; this is a commonplace of modern Science. Let us suppose that behind all
\nforms there has been a creative vibration of sound. <\/p>\n

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

\nBut, in fact, speech is creative. It creates forms of emotion, mental images and
\nimpulses of action. The ancient Vedic theory and practice extended this creative
\naction of speech by the use of the Mantra. The theory of the Mantra is that it
\nis a word of power born out of the secret depths of our being where it has been
\nbrooded upon by a deeper consciousness than the mental, framed in the heart and
\nnot constructed by the intellect, held in the mind, again concentrated on by the
\nwaking mental consciousness and then thrown out silently or vocally \u2014 the silent
\nword is perhaps held to be more potent than the spoken \u2014 precisely for the work
\nof creation. The Mantra can not only create new subjective states in ourselves,
\nalter our psychical being, reveal knowledge and faculties we did not before
\npossess, can not only produce similar results in other minds than that of the
\nuser, but can produce  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 169<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

vibrations in the
\nmental and vital atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the
\nproduction of material forms
\non the physical plane. <\/p>\n

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

\nThe Vedic use of the Mantra is only a conscious utilisation of this secret power
\nof the word. And if we take the theory that underlies it together with our
\nprevious hypothesis of a creative vibration of sound behind every formation, we
\nshall begin to understand the idea of the original creative Word. Let us suppose
\na conscious use of the vibrations of sound which will produce corresponding
\nforms or changes of form. But Matter is only, in the ancient view, the lowest of
\nthe planes of existence. Let us realise then that a vibration of sound on the
\nmaterial plane pre-supposes a corresponding vibration on the vital without which
\nit could not have come into play; that, again, presupposes a corresponding
\noriginative vibration on the mental; the mental presupposes a corresponding
\noriginative vibration on the supramental at the very root of things. But a
\nmental vibration implies thought and perception and a supramental vibration
\nimplies a supreme vision and discernment. All vibration of sound on that higher
\nplane is, then, instinct with and expressive of this supreme discernment of a
\ntruth in things and is at the same time creative, instinct with a supreme power
\nwhich casts into forms the truth discerned and eventually, descending from plane
\nto plane, reproduces it in the physical form or object created in Matter by
\netheric sound. Thus we see that the theory of creation by the Word which is the
\nabsolute expression of the Truth, and the theory of the material creation by
\nsound-vibration in the ether  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 170<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

correspond and are
\ntwo logical poles of the same idea. They both belong to the same ancient Vedic
\nsystem.  <\/p>\n

\nThis, then, is the supreme Word, Speech of our speech. It is vibration of pure
\nExistence, instinct with the perceptive and originative power of infinite and
\nomnipotent consciousness, shaped by the Mind behind mind into the inevitable
\nword of the Truth of things; out of whatever substance on whatever plane, the
\nform or physical expression emerges by its creative agency. The Supermind using
\nthe Word is the creative Logos. <\/p>\n

\nThe Word has its seed-sounds \u2014 suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, A U
\nM, and the seed-sounds of the Tantriks \u2014 which carry in them the principles of
\nthings; it has its forms which stand behind the revelatory and inspired speech
\nthat comes to man’s supreme faculties, and these compel the forms of things in
\nthe universe; it has its rhythms, \u2014 for it is no disordered vibration, but moves
\nout into great cosmic measures, \u2014and according to the rhythm is the law,
\narrangement, harmony, processes of the world it builds. Life itself is a rhythm
\nof  God. <\/p>\n

\nBut what is it that is expressed or raised up before the consciousness by the
\nWord in the world? Not Brahman, but
\nforms and phenomena of Brahman. Brahman is not, cannot be expressed by the Word;
\nhe does not use the word to express himself, but is known to his own
\nself-awareness and even the truths of himself that stand behind the forms of
\ncosmic things are always self-expressed to his eternal vision. Speech creates,
\nexpresses, but is itself only a creation and expression. Brahman is not
\nexpressed by speech, but speech is itself expressed by Brahman. <\/p>\n

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

\nHuman speech is only a secondary expression and at its highest a shadow of the
\ndivine Word, of the seed-sounds, the satisfying rhythms, the revealing forms of
\nsound that are the   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 171<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

omniscient and
\nomnipotent speech of the eternal Thinker, Harmonist, Creator. The highest
\ninspired speech to which the human mind can attain, the word most unanalysably
\nexpressive of supreme truth, the most puissant syllable or mantra<\/i> can
\nonly be its far-off representation.  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 172<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n


\n6<\/span><\/b>\n<\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

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

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

\nOn the contrary, according to the theory of a material evolution upheld by
\nmodern Science, man is only Matter that has developed mind by an increasing
\nsensibility to the shocks of its environment; and Matter being the basis of
\nexistence, there is nothing, except the physical elements, that can survive the
\ndissolution of the body. But this formula is at most the obverse and inferior
\nside of a much larger truth. Matter could not develop Mind if in or behind the
\nforce that constitutes physical forms there were not already a principle of Mind
\nstriving towards self-manifestation. \n<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 173<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

 The will to
\nenlighten and consciously govern the life and the form must have been already
\nexistent in that which appears to us inconscient before mind was evolved. For,
\nif there were no such necessity of Mind in Matter, if the stuff of mentality
\nwere not there already and the will to mentalise, Mind could not possibly have
\nevolved. <\/p>\n

\nBut in the mere chemical elements which go to constitute material forms or in
\nelectricity or in any other purely physical factor, whatever unconscious will or
\nsensation they may be possessed by or possess, we can discover nothing which
\ncould explain the emergence of conscious sensation, which could constitute a
\nwill towards the evolution of thought or which could impose the necessity of
\nsuch an evolution on inconscient physical substance. It is not then in the form
\nof Matter itself, but in the Force which is at work in Matter, that we must seek
\nthe origin of Mind. That Force must either be itself conscient or contain the
\ngrain of mental consciousness inherent in its being and therefore the
\npotentiality and indeed the necessity of its emergence. This imprisoned
\nconsciousness, though originally absorbed in the creation first of forms and
\nthen of physical relations and reactions between physical forms, must still have
\nheld in itself from the beginning, however long kept back and suppressed, a will
\nto the ultimate enlightenment of these relations by the creation of
\ncorresponding conscious or mental values. Mind is then a concealed necessity
\nwhich the subconscient holds in itself from the commencement of things; it is
\nthe thing that must emerge once the attractions and repulsions of Matter begin
\nto be established; it is the suppressed secret and cause of the reactions of
\nlife in the metal, plant and animal. <\/p>\n

\nIf, on the other hand, we say that Mind in some such secret and suppressed form
\nis not already existent in Matter, we must then suppose that it exists outside
\nMatter and embraces it or enters into it. We must suppose a mental plane of
\nexistence which presses upon the physical and tends to possess it. In that case
\nthe mental being would be in its origin an entity which is formed outside the
\nmaterial world; but it prepares in that world bodies which become progressively
\nmore and more able to house and express Mind. We may image it forming, entering
\ninto and   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 174<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

possessing the
\nbody, breaking into it, as it were, \u2014 as the Purusha in the Aitareya Upanishad
\nis said to form the body and then to enter in by breaking open a door in Matter.
\nMan would in this view be a mental being incarnate in the living body who at its
\ndissolution leaves it with full possession of his mentality.  <\/p>\n

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

\nThere are always two possible views of the universe. The one supposes, with
\nmodern Science, Matter to be the beginning of things and studies everything as
\nan evolution from Matter; or, if not Matter, then, with the Sankhya philosophy,
\nan indeterminate inconscient active Force or Prakriti of which even mind and
\nreason are operations, \u2014 the conscious soul, if any exists, being a quite
\ndifferent and, although conscient, yet inactive entity. The other supposes the
\nconscious soul, the Purusha, to be the material as well as the cause of the
\nuniverse and Prakriti to be only its Shakti or the Force of its conscious being
\nwhich operates upon itself as the material of forms.\u00b9  The latter is the view of
\nthe Upanishads. Certainly, if we study the material world only, excluding all
\nevidence of other planes as a dream or a hallucination, if we equally exclude
\nall evidence of operations in mind which exceed the material limitation and
\nstudy only its ordinary equation with Matter, we must necessarily accept the
\ntheory of Matter as the origin and as the indispensable basis and continent.
\nOtherwise, we shall be irresistibly led towards the early Vedantic conclusions. \n<\/p>\n

\nHowever this may be, even from the standpoint of the sole material world Man in
\nthe substance of his manhood is a mind occupying and using the life of the body
\n\u2014 a mind that is greater <\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\u00b9For
\nexample, the Aitareya Upanishad which shows us the Atman or Self using the
\nPurusha as that in which all the operations of Nature are formed. <\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 175<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

than the Matter in
\nwhich it has emerged. He is the highest expression of the Will in the material
\nuniverse; the Force that has built up the worlds, so far as we are able to judge
\nof its intention from its actual operations as we see them in their present
\nformula upon earth, arrives in him at the thing it was seeking to express. It
\nhas brought out the hidden principle of Mind that now operates consciously and
\nintelligently on the life and the body. Man is the satisfaction of the necessity
\nwhich Nature bore secretly in her from the very commencement of her works; he is
\nthe highest possible Name or Numen on this planet; he is the realised
\nterrestrial godhead.  <\/p>\n

\nBut all this is true only if we assume that for Nature’s terrestrial activities
\nMind is the ultimate formula. In reality and when we study more deeply the
\nphenomena of consciousness, the facts of mentality, the secret tendency,
\naspiration and necessity of man’s own nature, we see that he cannot be the
\nhighest term. He is the highest realised here and now; he is not the highest
\nrealisable. As there is something below him, so there is something, if even only
\na possibility, above. As physical Nature concealed a secret beyond herself which
\nin him she has released into creation, so he too conceals a secret beyond
\nhimself which he in turn must deliver to the light. That is his destiny.  <\/p>\n

\nThis must necessarily be so because Mind too is not the first principle of
\nthings and therefore cannot be their last possibility. As Matter contained Life
\nin itself, contained it as its own secret necessity and had to be delivered of
\nthat birth, and as Life contained Mind in itself, contained it as its own secret
\nnecessity and had to be delivered of the birth it held, so Mind too contains in
\nitself that which is beyond itself, contains it as its own secret necessity and
\npresses to be delivered, it also, of this supreme birth. <\/p>\n

\nWhat is the rational necessity which forbids us to suppose Mind to be Nature’s
\nlast birth and compels us to posit something beyond it of which itself is the
\nindication ? A consideration of the nature and working of mentality supplies us
\nwith the answer. For mentality is composed of three principal elements, thought,
\nwill and sensation. Sensation may be described as an attempt of divided
\nconsciousness to seize upon its object and enjoy it,  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 176<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

thought as its
\nattempt to seize upon the truth of the object and possess it,<\/i> will as its
\nattempt to seize upon the potentiality of the object and use it. At least these
\nthree things are such an attempt in their essentiality, in their instinct, in
\ntheir subconscious purpose. But obviously the attempt is imperfect in its
\nconditions and its success; its very terms indicate a barrier, a gulf, an
\nincapacity. As Life is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis
\nwith Matter, so Mind is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis
\nwith Life in Matter. Neither Matter nor Life has found anything proper to their
\nown formula which could help to conquer or sufficiently expand its limitations;
\nthey have been compelled each to call in a new principle, Matter to call into
\nitself Life, Life to call into itself Mind. Mind also is not able to find
\nanything proper to its own formula which can conquer or sufficiently expand the
\nlimitations imposed upon its workings. Mind also has to call in a new principle
\nbeyond itself, freer than itself and more powerful. <\/p>\n

\nIn other words. Mind does not exhaust the possibilities of consciousness and
\ntherefore cannot be its last and highest  expression. Mind tries to arrive at
\nTruth and succeeds only in touching it imperfectly with a veil between; there
\nmust be in the nature of things a faculty or principle which sees the Truth
\nunveiled, an eternal faculty of knowledge which corresponds to the eternal fact
\nof the Truth. There is, says the Veda, such a principle; it is the
\nTruth-Consciousness which sees the Truth directly and is in possession of it
\nspontaneously. Mind labours to effect the will in it and succeeds only in
\naccomplishing partially, with difficulty and insecurely the potentiality at
\nwhich it works; there must be a faculty or principle of conscious effective
\nforce which corresponds to the unconscious automatic principle of
\nself-fulfilment in Nature, and this principle must be sought for in the form of
\nconsciousness that exceeds Mind. Mind, finally, aspires to seize and enjoy the
\nessential delight-giving quality, the rasa<\/i> of things, but it succeeds
\nonly in attaining to it indirectly, holding it in an imperfect grasp and
\nenjoying it externally and fragmentarily; there must be a principle which can
\nattain directly, hold rightly, enjoy intimately and securely. There is, says the
\nVeda, an eternal Bliss-consciousness which  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 177<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

corresponds to the
\neternal rasa<\/i> or essential delight-giving quality of all experience and is
\nnot limited by the insecure approximations of the sense in Mind. <\/p>\n

\nIf, then, such a deeper principle of consciousness exists, it must be that and
\nnot mind which is the original and fundamental intention concealed in Nature and
\nwhich eventually and somewhere must emerge. But is there any reason for
\nsupposing that it must emerge here and in Mind, as Mind has emerged in Life and
\nLife in Matter ? We answer in the affirmative because Mind has in itself,
\nhowever obscurely, that tendency, that aspiration and, at bottom, that
\nnecessity. There is one law from the lowest to the highest. Matter, when we
\nexamine it closely, proves to be instinct with the stuff of Life \u2014 the
\nvibrations, actions and reactions, attractions and repulsions, contractions and
\nexpansions, the tendencies of combination, formation and growth which are the
\nvery substance of life; but the visible principle of life can only emerge when
\nthe necessary material conditions have been prepared which will permit it to
\norganise itself in Matter. So also. Life is instinct with the stuff of Mind,
\nabounds with an unconscious\u00b9  sensation, will, intelligence, but the visible
\nprinciple of Mind can only emerge when the necessary vital conditions have been
\nprepared which will permit it to organise itself in living Matter. Mind too is
\ninstinct with the stuff of Supermind \u2014 sympathies, unities, intuitions,
\nemergences of pre-existent knowledge, inherent self-effectivities of will which
\ndisguise themselves in a mental form; but the visible principle of Supermind can
\nonly emerge when the necessary mental conditions are prepared which will permit
\nit to organise itself in man, the mental living creature.  <\/p>\n

\nThis necessary preparation is proceeding in human development as the
\ncorresponding preparations were developed in the lower stages of the evolution,
\n\u2014 with the same gradations, retardations, inequalities; but still it is more
\nenlightened, increasingly self-conscious, nearer to a conscious sureness. And
\nthe very fact that this progress is attended by less carefulness in details,
\nless timidity of error, a less conservative attachment to the step gained gives
\nus the hope and almost the assurance that when the  <\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n\u00b9I use the language of the
\nmaterialist Haeckel in spite of its paradoxical form. <\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 178<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

new principle
\nemerges it will not be by the creation of a new and quite different type which
\nwill leave the rest of mankind in the same position to it as are the animals to
\nman, but by the elevation of humanity as a whole to a higher level. For Man,
\nfirst among Nature’s children, has shown the capacity to change himself by his
\nown effort and the conscious aspiration to transcend.  <\/p>\n

\nThese considerations justify to the reason the idea of a Mind beyond our mind,
\nbut only as a final evolution out of Matter. The Upanishad, however, enthrones
\nit as the already existing creator and ruler of Mind; it is a secret principle
\nalready conscient and not merely contained inconsciently in the very stuff of
\nthings. But this is the natural conclusion \u2014 even apart from spiritual
\nexperience\u2014from the nature of the supramental principle. For it is at its
\nhighest an eternal knowledge, will, bliss and conscious being and it is more
\nreasonable to conclude that it is eternally conscious, though we are not
\nconscious of it, and the source of the universe, than that it is eternally
\ninconscient and only becomes conscient in Time as a result of the universe. Our
\ninconscience of it is no proof that it is inconscient of us: and yet our
\nincapacity is the only real basis left for the denial of an eternal Mind beyond
\nmind superior to its creations and originative of the cosmos. <\/p>\n

\nAll other foundations for the rejection of this ancient wisdom have disappeared
\nor are disappearing before the increasing light of modern knowledge. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 179<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n7<\/span><\/b> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

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

\nWhen we say, however, that "Mind of mind" is the nature or description of the
\nBrahman-consciousness, we must not forget that the absolute Brahman in itself is
\nunknowable and therefore beyond description. It is unknowable, not because it is
\na void and capable of no description except that of nothingness, nor because,
\nalthough positive in existence, it has no content or quality, but because it is
\nbeyond all things that our knowledge can conceive and because the methods of
\nideation and expression proper to our mentality do not apply to it. It is the
\nabsolute of all things that we know and of each thing that we know and yet
\nnothing nor any sum of things can exhaust or characterise its essential being.
\nFor its manner of being is other than that which we call existence; its unity
\nresists all analysis, its multiple infinities exceed every synthesis. Therefore
\nit is not in its absolute essentiality that it can be described as Mind of the
\nmind, but in its fundamental nature in regard to our mental existence.
\nBrahman-consciousness is the eternal outlook of the Absolute upon the relative.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut even of this outlook we may say that it is beyond the reach of mind and
\nspeech and senses. Yet mind, speech and  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 180<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

senses seem to be
\nour only available means for acquiring and expressing knowledge. Must we not say
\nthen that this Brahman-consciousness also is unknowable and that we can never
\nhope to know it or possess it while in this body? Yet the Upanishad commands us
\nto know <\/i>this Brahman and by knowledge to possess it, \u2014 for the knowledge
\nintended by the words viddhi<\/i>, avedīt<\/i>, is a knowledge that
\ndiscovers and takes possession, \u2014 and it declares later on that it is here, in
\nthis body and on this earth that we must thus possess Brahman in knowledge,
\notherwise great is the perdition. A good deal of confusion has been brought into
\nthe interpretation of this Upanishad by a too trenchant dealing with the
\nsubtlety of its distinctions between the knowability and the unknowability of
\nthe Brahman. We must therefore try to observe exactly what the Upanishad says
\nand especially to seize the whole of its drift by synthetic intuition rather
\nthan cut up its meaning so as to make it subject to our logical mentality.  <\/p>\n

\nThe Upanishad sets out by saying that this Ruler of the mind, senses, speech and
\nlife is Mind of our mind. Life of our life, Sense of our senses, Speech of our
\nspeech; and it then proceeds to explain what it intends by these challenging
\nphrases. But it introduces between the description and the explanation a warning
\nthat neither the description nor the explanation must be pushed beyond their
\nproper limits or understood as more than guide-posts pointing us towards our
\ngoal. For neither Mind, Speech nor Sense can travel to the Brahman; therefore
\nBrahman must be beyond all these things in its very nature, otherwise it would
\nbe attainable by them in their function. The Upanishad, although it is about to
\nteach of the Brahman, yet affirms, "we know not nor can discern how one should
\nteach of it." The two Sanskrit words that are here used, vidmaḥ <\/i>and
\nvijānīmaḥ<\/span><\/i>, seem to indicate the one a general grasp
\nand possession in knowledge, the other a total comprehension in whole and
\ndetail, by synthesis and analysis. The reason of this entire inability is next
\ngiven, "because Brahman is other than the known and is there over the unknown",
\npossessing it and, as it were, presiding over it. The known is all that we grasp
\nand possess by our present mentality; it is all that is not the supreme Brahman
\nbut only form and phenomenon of it to our sense and mental cognition. The
\nunknown   \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 181<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

is that which is
\nbeyond the known and though unknown, is not unknowable if we can enlarge our
\nfaculties or attain to others that we do not yet possess. <\/p>\n

\nYet the Upanishad next proceeds to maintain and explain its first description
\nand to enjoin on us the knowledge of the Brahman which it so describes. This
\ncontradiction is not at once reconciled; it is only in the second chapter that
\nthe difficulty is solved and only in the fourth that the means of knowledge are
\nindicated. The contradiction arises from the nature of know-ledge itself which
\nis a relation between the consciousness that seeks and the consciousness that is
\nsought; where that relation disappears knowledge is replaced by sheer identity.
\nIn what we call existence, the highest knowledge can be no more than the highest
\nrelation between that which seeks and that which is sought, and it consists in a
\nmodified identity through which we may pass beyond knowledge to the absolute
\nidentity. This metaphysical distinction is of importance because it prevents us
\nfrom mistaking any relation in knowledge for the absolute and from becoming so
\nbound by our experience as to lose or miss the fundamental awareness of the
\nabsolute which is beyond all possible description and behind all formulated
\nexperience. But it does not render the highest relation in knowledge, the
\nmodified identity in experience worthless or otiose. On the contrary, it is that
\nwe must aim at as the consummation of our existence in the world. For if we
\npossess it without being limited by it, \u2014 and if we are limited by it we have
\nnot true possession of it, \u2014 then in and through it we shall, even while in this
\nbody, remain in touch with the Absolute. <\/p>\n

\nThe means for the attainment of this highest knowledge is the constant
\npreparation of the mind by the admission into it of a working higher than itself
\nuntil the mind is capable of giving itself up to the supramental action which
\nexceeds it and which will finally replace it. In fact, Mind also has to follow
\nthe law of natural progression which has governed our evolution in this world
\nfrom Matter into Life and Life into Mind. For just as Life-consciousness is
\nbeyond the imprisoned material being and unattainable by it through its own
\ninstruments, so this supramental consciousness is beyond the divided and
\ndividing nature  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 182<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

of Mind and
\nunattainable by it through its own instruments. But as Matter is constantly
\nprepared for the manifestation of Life until Life is able to move in it, possess
\nit, manage in it its own action and reaction, and as Life is constantly prepared
\nfor the manifestation of Mind until Mind is able to use it, enlighten its
\nactions and reactions by higher and higher mental values, so must it be with
\nMind and that which is beyond Mind. <\/p>\n

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

\nThis supreme cognitive principle does not think by the mind. Mind is to it an
\ninferior and secondary action, not its own proper mode. For Mind, based on
\nlimitation and division, can act only from a given centre in the lower and
\nobscured existence; but Supermind is founded on unity and it comprehends and
\npervades ; its action is in the universal and is in conscious communion with a
\ntranscendent source eternal and beyond the formations of the universe. Supermind
\nregards the individual in the universal and does not begin with him or make of
\nhim a separate being. It starts from the Transcendent and sees the universal and
\nindividual as they are in relation to it, as its terms, as its formulas; it does
\nnot start from the individual and universal to arrive at the Transcendent. Mind
\nacquires knowledge and mastery ; it reaches it by a constant mentalising and
\nwilling: Supermind possesses knowledge and mastery; possessing, it throws itself
\nout freely in various willing and knowing. Mind gropes  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 183<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

by divided
\nsensation; it arrives at a sort of oneness through sympathy: Supermind possesses
\nby a free and all-embracing sense; it lives in the unity of which various love
\nand sympathy are only a secondary play of manifestation. Supermind starts from
\nthe  whole and sees in it its parts and properties, it does not build up the
\nknowledge of the whole by an increasing knowledge of the parts and properties;
\nand even the whole is to it only a unity of sum, only a partial and inferior
\nterm of the higher unity of infinite essence.  <\/p>\n

\nWe see, then, that these two cognitive principles start from two opposite poles
\nand act in opposite directions by opposite methods. Yet it is by the higher
\ncognitive that the lower is formed and governed. Mind is thought by that which
\nis beyond Mind; the mentalising consciousness shapes and directs its movement
\naccording to the knowledge and impulse it receives from this  higher Supermind
\nand even the stuff of which it is formed belongs to that Principle. Mentality
\nexists because that which is beyond Mind has conceived an inverse action of
\nitself founded upon its self-concentration on different points in its own being
\nand in different forms of its own being. Supermind fixes these points,  sees how
\nconsciousness must act from them on other forms of itself and in obedience to
\nthe pressure of those other forms, once a particular rhythm or law of universal
\naction is given; it governs the whole action of mentality according to what it
\nthus fixes and sees. Even our ignorance is only the distorted action of a truth
\nprojected from the Supermind and could not exist except as such a distortion;
\nand so likewise all our dualities of knowledge, sensation, emotion, force
\nproceed from that higher vision, obey it and are a secondary and, as one might
\nsay, perverse action of the concealed Supermind itself which governs always this
\nlower action in harmony with its first conception of a located consciousness,
\ndivided indeed and therefore not in possession of its world or itself, but
\nfeeling out towards that possession and towards the unity which, because of the
\nSupermind in us, it instinctively,
\nif obscurely, knows to be its true nature and right. <\/p>\n

\nBut, for this very reason, the feeling out, the attempt at acquisition can only
\nsucceed in proportion as the mental being abandons his characteristic mentality
\nand its limitations in order  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 184<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

to rise beyond to
\nthat Mind of the mind which is his origin and his secret governing principle.
\nHis mentality must admit Supramentality as Life has admitted Mind. So long as he
\nworships, follows after, adheres to all this that he now accepts as the object
\nof his pursuit, to the mind and its aims, to its broken methods, its
\nconstructions of will and opinion and emotion dependent on egoism, division and
\nignorance, he cannot rise beyond this death to that immortality which the
\nUpanishad promises to the seeker  That Brahman we have to know and seek after
\nand not this which men here adore and pursue.  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 185<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n8<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nT<\/span>HE <\/span><\/b>Upanishad is not satisfied with the definition of the
\nBrahman-consciousness as Mind of the mind. Just as it has described it as Speech
\nof the speech, so also it describes it as Eye of the eye. Ear of the ear. Not
\nonly is it an absolute cognition behind the play of expression, but also an
\nabsolute Sense behind the action of the senses. Every part of our being finds
\nits fulfilment in that which is beyond its present forms of functioning and not
\nin those forms themselves.  <\/p>\n

\nThis conception of the all-governing supreme consciousness does not fall in with
\nour ordinary theories about sense and mind and the Brahman. We know of sense
\nonly as an action of the organs through which embodied mind communicates with
\nexternal Matter, and these sense-organs have been separately developed in the
\ncourse of evolution; the senses therefore are not fundamental things, but only
\nsubordinate conveniences and temporary physical functionings of the embodied
\nmind. Brahman, on the other hand, we conceive of by the elimination of all that
\nis not fundamental, by the elimination even of the Mind itself. It is a sort of
\npositive zero, an X <\/i>or unknowable which corresponds to no possible
\nequation of physical or psychological quantities. In essence this may be true;
\nbut we have now to think not of the Unknowable but of its highest manifestation
\nin consciousness; and this we have described as the outlook of the Absolute on
\nthe relative and as that which is the cause and governing power of all that we
\nand the universe are. There in that governing cause there must be something
\nessential and supreme of which all our fundamental functionings here are a
\nrendering in the terms of embodied consciousness. <\/p>\n

\nSense, however, is not or does not appear to be fundamental;  it is only an
\ninstrumentation of Mind using the nervous system. It is not even a pure mental
\nfunctioning, but depends so much upon the currents of the Life-force, upon its
\nelectric energy vibrating up and down the nerves, that in the Upanishads the
\nsenses are called Pranas, powers or functionings of the Life-force. It is  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 186<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

true that Mind
\nturns these nervous impressions when communicated to it into mental values, but
\nthe sense-action itself seems to be rather nervous than mental. In any case
\nthere would, at first sight, appear to be no warrant in reason for attributing a
\nSense of the sense to that which is not embodied, to a supramental consciousness
\nwhich has no need of any such instrumentation.<\/p>\n

\nBut this is not the last word about sense; this is only its outward appearance
\nbehind which we must penetrate. What, not in its functioning, but in its
\nessence, is the thing we call sense ? In its functioning, if we analyse that
\nthoroughly, we see that it is the contact of the mind with an eidolon of Matter,
\n\u2014 whether that eidolon be of a vibration of sound, a light-image of form, a
\nvolley of earth-particles giving the sense of odour, an impression of rasa or
\nsap that gives the sense of taste, or that direct sense of disturbance of our
\nnervous being which we call touch. No doubt, the contact of Matter with Matter
\nis the original cause of these sensations; but it is only the eidolon of Matter,
\nas for instance the image of the form cast upon the eye, with which the mind is
\ndirectly concerned. For the mind operates upon Matter not directly, but through
\nthe Life-force; that is its instrument of communication and the Life-force,
\nbeing in us a nervous energy and not anything material, can seize on Matter only
\nthrough nervous impressions of form, through contactual images, as it were,
\nwhich create corresponding values in the energy-consciousness called in the
\nUpanishads the Prana. Mind takes these up and replies to them with corresponding
\nmental values, mental impressions of form, so that the thing sensed comes to us
\nafter a triple process of translation, first the material eidolon, secondly the
\nnervous or energy-image, third the image reproduced in stuff of mind.  <\/p>\n

\nThis elaborate process is concealed from us by the lightning-like rapidity with
\nwhich it is managed, \u2014 rapidity in our impressions of Time; for in another
\nnotation of Time by a creature differently constituted each part of the
\noperation might be  distinctly sensible. But the triple translation is always
\nthere, because there are really three sheaths of consciousness in us, the
\nmaterial, annakoṣ<\/span>a<\/i>, in which the physical contact
\nand image are received and formed, the vital or nervous, prāṇ<\/span>akoṣ<\/span>a<\/i>,
\nin which there is a nervous contact and formation, the mental, manaḥ<\/span>koṣ<\/span>a<\/i>,
\nin which  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 187<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

there is mental
\ncontact and imaging. We dwell centred in the mental sheath and therefore the
\nexperience of the material world has to come through the other two sheaths
\nbefore it can reach us. <\/p>\n

\nThe foundation of sense, therefore, is contact, and the essential contact is the
\nmental without which there would not be sense at all. The plants for instance,
\nfeels nervously, feels in terms of life-energy, precisely as the human nervous
\nsystem does, and it has precisely the same reactions; but it is only if the
\nplant has rudimentary mind that we can suppose it to be sensible of these
\nnervous or vital impressions and reactions. For then it would feel not only
\nnervously, but in terms of mind. Sense, then, may be described as in its essence
\nmental contact with an object and the mental reproduction of its image. <\/p>\n

\nAll these things we observe and reason of in terms of this embodiment of mind in
\nMatter; for these sheaths or koṣ<\/span>as<\/i> are
\nformations in a more and more subtle substance reposing on gross Matter as their
\nbase. Let us imagine that there is a mental world in which Mind and not Matter
\nis the base. There sense would be quite a different thing in its operation. It
\nwould feel mentally an image in Mind and throw it out into form in more and more
\ngross substance; and whatever physical formations there might already be in that
\nworld would respond rapidly to the Mind and obey its modifying suggestions. Mind
\nwould be masterful, creative, originative, not as with us either obedient to
\nMatter and merely reproductive or else in struggle with it and
\nonly with difficulty able to modify a material predetermined and dully reluctant
\nto its touch. It would be, subject to whatever supramental power might be above
\nit, master of a ductile and easily responsive material. But still Sense would be
\nthere, because contact in mental consciousness and formation of images would
\nstill be part of the law of being. <\/p>\n

\nMind, in fact, or active consciousness generally has four necessary functions
\nwhich are indispensable to it wherever and however it may act and of which the
\nUpanishads speak in the four terms, vij\u00f1ana<\/i>, praj\u00f1āna<\/i>, samj\u00f1āna
\n<\/i>and āj\u00f1āna<\/i>. Vijnana is the original comprehensive consciousness which
\nholds an image of things in its essence, totality and parts and properties; it
\nis the original, spontaneous, true and complete view of it which belongs  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 188<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

properly to the
\nsupermind and of which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the
\ncomprehensive intellect. Prajnana is the consciousness which holds an image of
\nthings before it as an object with which it has to enter into relations and to
\npossess by apprehension and analytic and synthetic cognition. Sanjnana is the
\ncontact of consciousness with an image of things by which there is a sensible
\npossession of it in its substance; if Prajnana can be described as the outgoing
\nof apprehensive consciousness to possess its object in conscious energy, to know
\nit, Sanjnana can be described as the in bringing movement of apprehensive
\nconsciousness which draws the object placed before it back to itself so as to
\npossess it in conscious substance, to feel it. Ajnana is the operation by which
\nconsciousness dwells on an image of things so as to govern and possess it in
\npower. These four, therefore, are the basis of all conscious action.  <\/p>\n

\nAs our human psychology is constituted, we begin with Sanjnana, the sense of an
\nobject in its image; the apprehension of it in knowledge follows. Afterwards we
\ntry to arrive at the comprehension of it in knowledge and the possession of it
\nin power. There are secret operations in us, in our subconscient and
\nsuperconscient selves, which precede this action, but of these we are not aware
\nin our surface being and therefore for us they do not exist. If we knew of them,
\nour whole conscious functioning would be changed. As it is what happens is a
\nrapid process by which we sense an image and have of it an apprehensive percept
\nand concept, and a slower process of the intellect by which we try to comprehend
\nand possess it. The former process is the natural action of the mind which has
\nentirely developed in us;  the latter is an acquired action, an action of the
\nintellect and the intelligent will which represent in Mind an attempt of the
\nmental being to do what can only be done with perfect spontaneity and mastery by
\nsomething higher than Mind. The intellect and intelligent will form a bridge by
\nwhich the mental being is trying to establish a conscious connection with the
\nsupramental and to prepare the embodied soul for the descent into it of a
\nsupramental action. Therefore the first process is easy, spontaneous, rapid,
\nperfect; the second slow, laboured, imperfect. In proportion as the intellectual
\naction becomes associated with and dominated   \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 189<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

by a rudimentary
\nsupramental action, \u2014 and it is this which constitutes the phenomenon of genius,
\n\u2014 the second process also becomes more and more easy, spontaneous, rapid and
\nperfect.  <\/p>\n

\nIf we suppose a supreme consciousness, master of the world, which really
\nconducts behind the veil all the operations the mental gods attribute to
\nthemselves, it will be obvious that that consciousness will be the entire Knower
\nand Lord. The basis of its action or government of the world will be the
\nperfect, original and all-possessing Vijnana and Ajnana. It will comprehend all
\nthings in its energy of conscious knowledge, control all things in its energy of
\nconscious power. These energies will be the spontaneous inherent action of its
\nconscious being creative and possessive of the forms of the universe. What part
\nthen will be left for the apprehensive consciousness and the sense? They will be
\nnot independent functions, but subordinate operations involved in the action of
\nthe comprehensive consciousness itself. In fact, all four there will be one
\nrapid movement. If we had all these four, acting in us with the unified rapidity
\nwith which the Prajnana and Sanjnana act, we should then have in our notation of
\nTime some inadequate image of the unity of the supreme action of the supreme
\nenergy. <\/p>\n

\nIf we consider, we shall see that this must be so. The supreme consciousness
\nmust not only comprehend and possess in its conscious being the images of things
\nwhich it creates as its self-expression, but it must place them before it \u2014
\nalways in its own being, not externally \u2014 and have a certain relation with them
\nby the two terms of apprehensive consciousness. Otherwise the universe would not
\ntake the form that it has for us; for we only reflect in the terms of our
\norganisation the movements of the supreme Energy. But by the very fact that the
\nimages of things are there held in front of an apprehending consciousness within
\nthe comprehending conscious being and not externalised as our individual mind
\nexternalises them, the supreme Mind and supreme Sense will be something quite
\ndifferent from our mentality and our forms of sensation. They will be terms of
\nan entire knowledge and self-possession and not terms of an ignorance and
\nlimitation which strives to know and possess.  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 190<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\nIn its essential and general term our sense must reflect and be the creation of
\nthis supreme Sense. But the Upanishad speaks of a Sight behind our sight and a
\nHearing behind our hearing, not in general terms of a Sense behind our sense.
\nCertainly eye and ear are only taken as typical of the senses, and are chosen
\nbecause they are the highest and subtlest of them all. But still the
\ndifferentiation of sense which forms part of our mentality is evidently held to
\ncorrespond with a differentiation of some kind in the supreme Sense. How is this
\npossible? It is what we have next to unravel by examining the nature and source
\nof the functioning of the senses in ourselves, \u2014 their source in our mentality
\nand not merely their functioning in the actual terms of our life-energy and our
\nbody. What is it in Mind that is fundamental to sight and hearing? Why do we see
\nand hear and not simply sense with the mind? <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 191<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n9<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nM<\/span>IND <\/span><\/b>was called by Indian psychologists the eleventh and
\nranks as the supreme sense. In the ancient arrangement of the senses, five of
\nknowledge and five of action, it was the sixth of the organs of knowledge and at
\nthe same time the sixth of the organs of action. It is a common-place of
\npsychology that the effective functioning of the senses of knowledge is
\ninoperative without the assistance of the mind; the eye may see, the ear may
\nhear, all the senses may act, but if the mind pays no attention, the man has not
\nheard, seen, felt, touched or tasted. Similarly, according to psychology, the
\norgans of action act only by the force of the mind operating as will or,
\nphysiologically, by the reactive nervous force from the brain which must be
\naccording to materialistic notions the true self and essence of all will. In any
\ncase, the senses or all senses, if there are other than the ten, \u2014 according to
\na text in the Upanishad there should be at least fourteen, seven and seven, \u2014
\nall senses appear to be only organisations, functionings, instrumentations of
\nthe mind-consciousness, devices which it has formed in the course of its
\nevolution in living Matter.  <\/p>\n

\nModern psychology has extended our knowledge and has admitted us to a truth
\nwhich the ancients already knew but expressed in other language. We know now or
\nwe rediscover the truth that the conscious operation of mind is only a surface
\naction. There is a much vaster and more potent subconscious mind which loses
\nnothing of what the senses bring to it; it keeps all its wealth in an
\ninexhaustible store of memory, aksị<\/span>tam śravaḥ<\/span><\/i>.
\nThe surface mind may pay no attention, still the sub-conscious mind attends,
\nreceives, treasures up with an infallible accuracy. The illiterate servant-girl
\nhears daily her master reciting Hebrew in his study; the surface mind pays no
\nattention to the unintelligible gibberish, but the subconscious mind hears,
\nremembers and, when in an abnormal condition it comes up to the surface,
\nreproduces those learned recitations with a portentous accuracy which the most
\ncorrect and retentive scholar might   \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 192<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

envy. The man or
\nmind has not heard because he did not attend;  the greater man or mind within
\nhas heard because he always attends, or rather sub-tends, with an infinite
\ncapacity. So too a man put under an anaesthetic and operated upon has felt
\nnothing; 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 feeling. <\/p>\n

\nSimilarly we know that a large part of our physical action is instinctive and
\ndirected not by the surface but by the subconscious mind. And we know now that
\nit is a mind that acts and not merely an ignorant nervous reaction from the
\nbrute physical brain. The subconscious mind in the catering insect knows the
\nanatomy of the beetle it intends to immobilise and make food for its young and
\nit directs the sting accordingly, as unerringly as the most skilful surgeon,
\nprovided the mere limited surface mind with its groping and faltering nervous
\naction does not get in the way and falsify the inner knowledge or the inner
\nwill-force. <\/p>\n

\nThese examples point us to truths which western psychology, hampered by past
\nignorance posing as scientific orthodoxy, still ignores or refuses to
\nacknowledge. The Upanishads declare that the Mind in us is infinite; it knows
\nnot only what has been seen but what has not been seen, not only what has been
\nheard but what has not been heard, not only what has been discriminated by the
\nthought but what has not been discriminated by the thought. Let us say, then, in
\nthe tongue of our modern knowledge that the surface man in us is limited by his
\nphysical experiences ; he knows only what his nervous life in the body brings to
\nhis embodied mind; and even of those bringings he knows, he can retain and
\nutilise only so much as his surface mind-sense attends to and consciously
\nremembers; but there is a larger subliminal consciousness within him which is
\nnot thus limited. That consciousness senses what has not been sensed by the
\nsurface mind and its organs and knows what the surface mind has not learned by
\nits 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  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 193<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

physical body
\ninhibited by the anaesthetic and therefore non-existent; that in the illiterate
\nservant-girl heard and retained accurately the words of an unknown language and
\ncould, as Yogic experience knows, by a higher action of itself understand those
\nsuperficially unintelligible sounds. <\/p>\n

\nTo return to the Vedantic words we have been using, there is a vaster action of
\nthe Sanjnana which is not limited by the action of the physical sense-organs; it
\nwas this which sensed perfectly and made its own through the ear the words of
\nthe unknown language, through the touch the movements of the unfelt surgeon’s
\nknife, through the sense-mind or sixth sense the exact location of the centres
\nof locomotion in the beetle. There is also associated with it a corresponding
\nvaster action of Prajnana, Ajnana and Vijnana not limited by the smaller
\napprehensive and comprehensive faculties of the external mind. It is this vaster
\nPrajnana which perceived the proper relation of the words to each other, of the
\nmovement of the knife to the unfelt suffering of the nerves and of the
\nsuccessive relation in space of the articulations in the beetle’s body. Such
\nperception was inherent in the right reproduction of the words, the right
\nnarration of the sufferings, the right successive action of the sting. The
\nAjnana or Knowledge-Will originating all these actions was also vaster, not
\nlimited by the faltering force that governs the operations directed by the
\nsurface mind. And although in these examples the action of the vaster Vijnana is
\nnot so apparent, yet it was evidently there working through them and ensuring
\ntheir co-ordination.  <\/p>\n

\nBut at present it is with the Sanjnana that we are concerned. Here we should
\nnote, first of all, that there is an action of the sense-mind which is superior
\nto the particular action of the senses and is aware of things even without
\nimaging them in forms of sight, sound, contact, but which also as a sort of
\nsubordinate operation, subordinate but necessary to completeness of
\npresentation, does image in these forms. This is evident in psychical phenomena.
\nThose who have carried the study and experimentation of them to a certain
\nextent, have found that we can sense things known only to the minds of others,
\nthings that exist only at a great distance, things that belong to another plane
\nthan the terrestrial but have here their effects; we can both sense them in  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 194<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

their images and
\nalso feel, as it were, all that they are without any definite image proper to
\nthe five senses.  <\/p>\n

\nThis shows, in the first place, that sight and the other senses are not mere
\nresults of the development of our physical organs in the terrestrial evolution.
\nMind, subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these
\nphysical organs in order to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing,
\netc. on the physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they are
\ninherent capacities and not dependent on the circumstance of terrestrial
\nevolution and they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear,
\nskin, palate. Supposing that there are psychical senses which act through a
\npsychical body, and we thus explain these psychical phenomena, still that action
\nalso is only an organisation of the inherent functioning of the essential sense,
\nthe Sanjnana, which in itself can operate without bodily organs. This essential
\nsense is the original capacity of consciousness to feel in itself all that
\nconsciousness has formed and to feel it in all the essential properties and
\noperations of that which has form, whether represented materially by vibration
\nof sound or images of light or any other physical symbol. <\/p>\n

\nThe trend of knowledge leads more and more to the conclusion that not only are
\nthe properties of form, even the most obvious such as colour, light, etc. merely
\noperations of Force, but form itself is only an operation of Force. This Force
\nagain proves to be self-power of conscious-being\u00b9 in a state of energy and
\nactivity. Practically, therefore, all form is only an operation of consciousness
\nimpressing itself with presentations of its own workings. We see colour because
\nthat is the presentation which consciousness makes to itself of one of its own
\noperations; but colour is only an operation of Force working in the form of
\nLight, and Light again is only a movement, that is to say an operation of Force.
\nThe question is what is essential to this operation of Force taking on itself
\nthe presentation of form? For it is this that must determine the working of
\nSanjnana or Sense on whatever plane it may operate.  <\/p>\n

\nEverything begins with vibration or movement, the original <\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\u00b9devātmaśaktim
\nsvagun<\/span>̣<\/span>air<\/span><\/i> nigūd<\/i><\/span>̣<\/span>hām<\/span><\/i>,
\nself-power of the divine Existent hidden by its own modes. Shwetashwatara
\nUpanishad. <\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 195<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

kṣ<\/span>obha<\/i>
\nor disturbance. If there is no movement of the conscious being, it can only know
\nits own pure static existence. Without vibration\u00b9 or movement of being in
\nconsciousness there can be no act of knowledge and therefore no sense; without
\nvibration or movement of being in force there can be no object of sense.
\nMovement of conscious being as knowledge becoming sensible of itself as movement
\nof force, in other words the knowledge separating itself from its own working to
\nwatch that and take it into itself again by feeling, \u2014 this is the basis of
\nuniversal Sanjnana. This is true both of our internal and external operations. I
\nbecome anger by a vibration of conscious force acting as nervous emotion and I
\nfeel the anger that I have become by another movement of conscious force acting
\nas light of knowledge. I am conscious of my body because I have myself become
\nthe body; that same force of conscious being which has made this form of itself,
\nthis presentation of its workings knows it in that form, in that presentation. I
\ncan know nothing except what I myself am;  if I know others, it is because they
\nalso are myself, because my self has assumed these apparently alien
\npresentations as well as that which is nearest to my own mental centre. All
\nsensation, all action of sense is thus the same in essence whether external or
\ninternal, physical or psychical.  <\/p>\n

\nBut this vibration of conscious being is presented to itself by various forms of
\nsense which answer to the successive operations of movement in its assumption of
\nform. For first we have intensity of vibration creating regular rhythm which is
\nthe basis or constituent of all creative formation; secondly, contact or
\nintermiscence of the movements of conscious being which constitute the rhythm;
\nthirdly, definition of the grouping of movements which are in contact, their
\nshape; fourthly, the constant welling up of the essential force to support in
\nits continuity the movement that has been thus defined; fifthly, the actual
\nenforcement and compression of the force in its own movement which maintains the
\nform that has been assumed. In Matter these five constituent operations are said
\nby the Sankhyas to represent themselves as five elemental conditions of
\nsubstance, the etheric, atmospheric, <\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\u00b9The
\nterm is used not because it is entirely adequate or accurate, no physical term
\ncan be, but because it is most suggestive of the original outgoing of
\nconsciousness to seek itself. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 196<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

igneous, liquid and
\nsolid; and the rhythm of vibration is seen by them as śabda<\/i>, sound, the
\nbasis of hearing, the intermiscence as contact, the basis of touch, the
\ndefinition as shape, the basis of sight, the upflow of force as rasa<\/i>,
\nsap, the basis of taste, and the discharge of the atomic compression as
\ngandha<\/i>, odour, the basis of smell. It is true that this is only predicated
\nof pure or subtle Matter; the physical matter of our world being a mixed
\noperation of force, these five elemental states are not found there separately
\nexcept in a very modified form. But all these are only the physical workings or
\nsymbols. Essentially all formation, to the most subtle and most beyond our
\nsenses such as form of mind, form of character, form of soul, amount when
\nscrutinised to this fivefold operation of conscious-force in movement. <\/p>\n

\nAll these operations, then, the Sanjnana or essential sense must be able to
\nseize, to make its own by that union in knowledge of knower and object which is
\npeculiar to itself. Its sense of the rhythm or intensity of the vibrations which
\ncontain in themselves all the meaning of the form, will be the basis of the
\nessential hearing of which our apprehension of physical sound or the spoken word
\nis only the most outward result; so also its sense of the contact or
\nintermiscence of conscious force with conscious force must be the basis of the
\nessential touch; its sense of the definition or form of force must be the basis
\nof the essential sight; its sense of the upflow of essential being in the form,
\nthat which is the secret of its self-delight, must be the basis of the essential
\ntaste; its sense of the compression of force and the self-discharge of its
\nessence of being must be the basis of the essential inhalation grossly
\nrepresented in physical substance by the sense of smell. On whatever plane, to
\nwhatever kind of formation these essentialities of sense will apply themselves
\nand on each they will seek an appropriate organisation, an appropriate
\nfunctioning. <\/p>\n

\nThis various sense will, it is obvious, be in the highest consciousness a
\ncomplex unity, just as we have seen that there the various operation of
\nknowledge is also a complex unity. Even if we examine the physical senses, say,
\nthe sense of hearing, if we observe how the underlying mind receives their
\naction, we shall   \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 197<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

see that in their
\nessence all the senses are in each other. That mind is not only aware of the
\nvibration which we call sound; it is aware also of the contact and interchange
\nbetween the force in the sound and the nervous force in us with which that
\ninter-mixes ; it is aware of the definition or form of the sound and of the
\ncomplex contacts or relations which make up the sound;  it is aware of the
\nessence or outwelling conscious force which constitutes and maintains the sound
\nand prolongs its vibrations in our nervous being; it is aware of our own nervous
\ninhalation of the vibratory discharge proceeding from the compression of force
\nwhich makes, so to speak, the solidity of the sound. All these sensations enter
\ninto the sensitive reception and joy of music which is the highest physical form
\nof this operation of force, \u2014they constitute our physical sensitiveness to it
\nand the joy of our nervous being 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.  <\/p>\n

\nIf we consider these things thus subtly in the light of our own deeper
\npsychology and pursue them beyond the physical appearances by which they are
\ncovered, we shall get to some intellectual conception of the sense behind our
\nsenses or rather the Sense of our senses, the Sight of our sight and the Hearing
\nof our hearing. The Brahman-consciousness of which the Upanishad speaks is not
\nthe Absolute withdrawn into itself, but that Absolute in its outlook on the
\nrelative; it is the Lord, the Master-Soul, the governing Transcendent and All,
\nHe who constitutes and controls the action of the gods on the different planes
\nof our being. Since it constitutes them, all our workings can be no more than
\npsychical and physical results and representations of something essential proper
\nto its supreme creative outlook, our sense a shadow of the divine Sense, our
\nsight of the divine Sight, our hearing of the divine Hearing. Nor is that divine
\nSight and  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\n     
\nPage \u2013 198<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

Hearing limited to
\nthings physical, but extend themselves to all forms and operations of conscious
\nbeing.  <\/p>\n

\nThe supreme Consciousness does not depend on what we call sight and hearing for
\nits own essential seeing and audition. It operates by a supreme Sense, creative
\nand comprehensive, of which our physical and psychical sight and hearing are
\nexternal results and partial operations. Neither is it ignorant of these, nor
\nexcludes them; for since it constitutes and controls, it must be aware of them
\nbut from a supreme plane, pararm dhāma<\/i>, which includes all in its view;
\nfor its original action is that highest movement of Vishnu which, the Veda tells
\nus, the seers behold like an eye extended in heaven. It is that by which the
\nsoul sees its seeings and hears its hearings; but all sense only assumes its
\ntrue value and attains to its absolute, its immortal reality when we cease to
\npursue the satisfactions of the mere external and physical senses and go beyond
\neven the psychical being to this spiritual or essential which is the source and
\nfountain, the knower, constituent and true valuer of all the rest. <\/p>\n

\nThis spiritual sense of things, secret and superconscient in us; alone gives
\ntheir being, worth and reality to the psychical and physical sense; in
\nthemselves they have none. When we attain to it, these inferior operations are,
\nas it were, taken up into it and the whole world and everything in it changes to
\nus and takes on a different and a non-material value. That Master-consciousness
\nin us senses our sensations of objects, sees our seeings, hears our hearings no
\nlonger for the benefit of the senses and their desires, but with the embrace of
\nthe self-existent Bliss which has no cause, beginning or end, eternal in its own
\nimmortality. <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 199<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n10<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

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

\nThe English word life does duty for many very different shades of meaning; but
\nthe word Prana familiar in the Upanishad and in the language of Yoga is
\nrestricted to the life-force whether viewed in itself or in its functionings.
\nThe popular sense of Prana was indeed the breath drawn into and thrown out from
\nthe lungs and so, in its most material and common sense, the life or the
\nlife-breath ; but this is not the philosophic significance of the word as it is
\nused in the Upanishads. The Prana of the Upanishads is the life-energy itself
\nwhich was supposed to occupy and act in the body with a fivefold movement, each
\nwith its characteristic name and each quite as necessary to the functioning of
\nthe life of the body as the act of respiration. Respiration in fact is only one
\naction of the chief movement of the life-energy, the first of the five, \u2014 the
\naction which is most normally necessary and vital to the maintenance and
\ndistribution of the energy in the physical frame, but which can yet be suspended
\nwithout the life being necessarily destroyed.  <\/p>\n

\nThe existence of a vital force or life-energy has been doubted by western
\nScience, because that Science concerns itself only with the most external
\noperations of Nature and has as yet no true knowledge of anything except the
\nphysical and outward. This Prana, this life-force is not physical in itself; it
\nis not material energy, but rather a different principle supporting Matter and
\ninvolved in it. It supports and occupies all forms and without it no physical
\nform could have come into being or could remain in  <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 200<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

being. It acts in
\nall material forces such as electricity and is nearest to self-manifestation in
\nthose that are nearest to pure force; no material force could exist or act
\nwithout it, for from it they derive their energy and movement and they are its
\nvehicles. But all material aspects are only field and form of the Prana which is
\nin itself a pure energy, their cause and not their result. It cannot therefore
\nbe detected by any physical analysis; physical analysis can only resolve for us
\nthe combinations of those material happenings which are its results and the
\nexternal signs and symbols of its presence and operation. <\/p>\n

\nHow then do we become aware of its existence ? By that purification of our mind
\nand body and that subtilisation of our means of sensation and knowledge which
\nbecome possible through Yoga. We become capable of analysis other than the
\nresolution of forms into their gross physical elements and are able to
\ndistinguish the operations of the pure mental principle from those of the
\nmaterial and both of these from the vital or dynamic which forms a link between
\nthem and supports them both. We are then able to distinguish the movements of
\nthe Pranic currents not only in the physical body which is all that we are
\nnormally aware of, but in that subtle frame of our being which Yoga detects
\nunderlying and sustaining the physical. This is ordinarily done by the process
\nof Pranayama, the government and control of the respiration. By Pranayama the
\nHathayogin is able to control, suspend and transcend the ordinary fixed
\noperation of the Pranic energy which is all that Nature needs for the normal
\nfunctioning of the body and of the physical life and mind, and he becomes aware
\nof the channels in which that energy distributes itself in all its workings and
\nis therefore able to do things with his body which seem miraculous to the
\nignorant, just as the physical scientist by his knowledge of the workings of
\nmaterial forces is able to do things with them which would seem to us magic if
\ntheir law and process were not divulged. For all the workings of life in the
\nphysical form are governed by the Prana and not only those which are normal and
\nconstant and those which, being always potential, can be easily brought forward
\nand set in action, but those which are of a more remote potentiality and seem to
\nour average experience difficult or impossible. <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 201<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\nBut the Frame energy supports not only the operations of our physical life, but
\nalso those of the mind in the living body. Therefore by the control of the
\nPranic energy it is not only possible to control our physical and vital
\nfunctionings and to transcend their ordinary operation, but to control also the
\nworkings of the mind and to transcend its ordinary operations. The human mind in
\nfact depends always on the Pranic force which links it with the body through
\nwhich it manifests itself, and it is able to deploy its own force only in
\nproportion as it can make that energy available for its own uses and subservient
\nto its own purposes. In proportion, therefore, as the Yogin gets back to the
\ncontrol of the Prana, and by the direction of its batteries opens up those
\nnervous centres (Chakras) in which it is now sluggish or only partially
\noperative, he is able to manifest powers of mind, sense and consciousness which
\ntranscend our ordinary experience. The so-called occult powers of Yoga are such
\nfaculties which thus open up of themselves as the Yogin advances in the control
\nof the Pranic force and, purifying the channels of its movement, opens up
\ncommunication between the consciousness of his subtle, subliminal being and the
\nconsciousness of his gross, physical and superficial existence.  <\/p>\n

\nThus the Prana is vital or nervous force which bears the operations of mind and
\nbody, is yoked by them as it were like a horse to a chariot and driven by the
\nmind along the paths on which it wishes to travel to the goal of its desire.
\nTherefore it is described in this Upanishad as yoked and moving forward and
\nagain as being led forward, the images recalling the Vedic symbol of the Horse
\nby which the Pranic force is constantly designated in the Rig-veda. It is in
\nfact that which does all the action of the world in obedience to conscious or
\nsubconscious mind and in the conditions of material force and material form.
\nWhile the mind is that movement of Nature in us which represents in the mould of
\nour material and phenomenal existence and within the triple term of the
\nIgnorance the knowledge aspect of the Brahman, the consciousness of the knower,
\nand body is that which similarly represents the being of the existent in the
\nmask of phenomenally divisible substance, so Prana or life-energy represents in
\nthe flux of phenomenal things the force, the active dynamis of the Lord  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 202<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

who controls and
\nenjoys the manifestation of His own being. It is a universal energy present in
\nevery atom and particle of the universe, and active in every stirring and
\ncurrent of the constant flux and interchange which constitutes the world.  <\/p>\n

\nBut just as mind is only an inferior movement of the supreme Conscious-Being and
\nabove mind there is a divine and infinite principle of consciousness, will and
\nknowledge which controls the ignorant action of mind, and it is by this superior
\nprinciple and not by mind that Brahman cognises His own being whether in itself
\nor in its manifestation, so also it must be with this Life-force. The
\ncharacteristics of the life-force as it manifests itself in us are desire,
\nhunger, an enjoyment which devours the object enjoyed and a movement and
\nactivity which gropes after possession and seeks to pervade, embrace, take into
\nitself the object of its desire.\u00b9 It is not in this breath of desire and mortal
\nenjoyment that the true life can consist or the highest divine energy act, any
\nmore than the supreme knowledge can think in the terms of ignorant, groping,
\nlimited and divided mind. As the movements of mind are merely representations in
\nthe terms of the duality and the ignorance, reflections of a supreme
\nconsciousness and knowledge, so the movements of this life-force can only be
\nsimilar representations of a supreme energy expressing a higher and  truer
\nexistence possessed of that consciousness and knowledge and therefore free from
\ndesire, hunger, transient enjoyment and hampered activity. What is desire here
\nmust there be self-existent Love; what is hunger here must there be desireless
\nsatisfaction; what is here enjoyment must there be self-existent delight; what
\nis here a groping action, must be there self-possessing energy,\u2014 such must be
\nthe Life of our life by which this inferior action is sustained and led to its
\ngoal. Brahman does not breathe with the breath, does not live by this Life-force
\nand its dual terms of
\nbirth and death. <\/p>\n

\nWhat then is this Life of our life ? It is the supreme Energy\u00b2 which is nothing
\nbut the infinite force in action of the supreme <\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\u00b9All
\nthese significances are intended by the Vedic Rishis in their use of the word
\naśva<\/i>, Horse, for the prāna<\/i><\/span>̣<\/span><\/i>,
\nthe root being capable of all of them as we see from the words āśā<\/i>, hope;
\naśanā<\/i>, hunger; aś<\/i>, to eat; aś<\/i>, to enjoy; āśu<\/i>, swift;
\naś<\/i>, to move, attain, pervade, etc. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b2Tapas
\nor Chit-ShaktL <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 203<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

conscious Being in
\nHis own illumined self. The Self-existent is luminously aware of Himself and
\nfull of His own delight; and that self-awareness is a timeless self-possession
\nwhich in action reveals itself as a force of infinite consciousness omnipotent
\nas well as omniscient; for it exists between two poles, one of eternal stillness
\nand pure identity, the other of eternal energy and identity of All with itself,
\nthe stillness eternally supporting the energy. That is the true existence, the
\nLife from which our life proceeds; that is the immortality, while what we cling
\nto as life is "hunger that is death". Therefore the object of the wise must be
\nto pass in their illumined consciousness beyond the false and phenomenal terms
\nof life and death to this immortality. <\/p>\n

\nYet is this Life-force, however inferior its workings, instinct with the being,
\nwill, light of that which it represents, of that which transcends it; by That it
\nis "led forward" on its paths to a goal which its own existence implies by the
\nvery imperfection of its movements and renderings. This death called life is not
\nonly a dark figure of that light, but it is the passage by which we pass through
\ntransmutation of our being from the death-sleep of Matter into the spirit’s
\ninfinite immortality.  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 204<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n11<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

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

\nThe Upanishad does not assert the unreality, but only the incompleteness and
\ninferiority of our present existence. All that we follow after here is an
\nimperfect representation, a broken and divided functioning of what is eternally
\nin an absolute perfection on that higher plane of existence. This mind of ours
\nunpossessed of its object, groping, purblind, besieged by error and incapacity,
\nits action founded on an external vision of things, is only the shadow thrown by
\na superconscient Knowledge which possesses, creates and securely uses the truth
\nof things because nothing is external to it, nothing is other than itself,
\nnothing is divided or at war within its all-comprehensive self-awareness. That
\nis the Mind of our mind. Our speech, limited, mechanical, imperfectly
\ninterpretative of the outsides of things, restricted by the narrow circle of the
\nmind, based on the appearances of sense is only the far-off and feeble response,
\nthe ignorant vibration returned to a creative and revelatory Word which has
\nbuilt up all the forms which our mind and speech seek to comprehend and express.
\nOur sense, a movement in stuff of consciousness vibratory to outward impacts,
\nattempting imperfectly to grasp them by laboured and separately converging
\nreactions, is only the faulty image of a supreme Sense which at once, fully,
\nharmoniously unites itself with and enjoys all that the supreme Mind and <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 205<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

Speech create in
\nthe self-joyous activity of the divine and infinite existence. Our life, a
\nbreath of force and movement and possession attached to a form of mind and body
\nand restricted by the form, limited in its force, hampered in its movement,
\nbesieged in its possession and therefore a thing of discords at war with itself
\nand its environment, hungering and unsatisfied, moving inconstantly from object
\nto object and unable to embrace and retain their multiplicity, devouring its
\nobjects of enjoyment and therefore transient in its enjoyments is only a broken
\nmovement of the one, undivided, infinite Life which is all-possessing and ever
\nsatisfied because in all it enjoys its eternal self unimprisoned by the
\ndivisions of Space, unoccupied by the moments of Time, undeluded by the
\nsuccessions of Cause and Circumstance. <\/p>\n

\nThis superconscient Existence, one, conscious of itself, conscious both of its
\neternal peace and its omniscient and omni- potent force is also conscious of our
\ncosmic existence which it holds in itself, inspires secretly and omnipotently
\ngoverns. It is the Lord of the Isha Upanishad who inhabits all the creations of
\nHis Force, all form of movement in the ever mobile principle of cosmos. It is
\nour self and that of which and by which we are constituted in all our being and
\nactivities, the Brahman. The mortal life is a dual representation of That with
\ntwo conflicting elements in it, negative and positive. Its negative elements of
\ndeath, suffering, incapacity, strife, division, limitation are a dark figure
\nwhich conceal and serve the development of that which its positive elements
\ncannot yet achieve, \u2014 immortality hiding itself from life in the figure of
\ndeath, delight hiding itself from pleasure in the figure of suffering, infinite
\nforce hiding itself from finite effort in the figure of incapacity, fusion of
\nlove hiding itself from desire in the figure of strife, unity hiding itself from
\nacquisition in the figure of division, infinity hiding itself from growth in the
\nfigure of limitation. The positive elements suggest what the Brahman is, but
\nnever are what the Brahman is, although their victory, the victory of the gods,
\nis always the victory of the Brahman over its own self-negations, always the
\nself-affirmation of His vastness against the denials of the dark and limiting
\nfigure of things. Still, it is not this vastness merely, but the absolute
\ninfinity which is Brahman itself. And therefore within this dual figure of
\nthings   \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 206<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

we
\ncannot attain to our self, our Highest; we have to transcend in order to attain.
\nOur pursuit of the positive elements of this existence, our worship of the gods
\nof the mind, life, sense is only a preparatory to the real travail of the soul,
\nand we must leave this lower Brahman and know that Higher if we are to fulfil
\nourselves. We pursue, for instance, our mental growth, we become mental beings
\nfull of an accomplished thought-power and thought-acquisition, dhīrāḥ<\/span><\/i>,
\nin order that we may by thought of mind go beyond mind itself to the Eternal.
\nFor always the life of mind and senses is the jurisdiction of death and
\nlimitation; beyond is the immortality. <\/p>\n

\nThe wise, therefore, the souls seated and accomplished in luminous thought-power
\nput away from them the dualities of our mind, life and senses and go forward
\nfrom this world; they go beyond to the unity and the immortality. The word used
\nfor going forward is that which expresses the passage of death; it is also that
\nwhich the Upanishad uses for the forward movement of the Life-force yoked to the
\ncar of embodied mind and sense on the paths of life. And in this coincidence we
\ncan find a double and most pregnant suggestion. <\/p>\n

\nIt is not by abandoning life on earth in order to pursue immortality on other
\nmore favourable planes of existence that the great achievement becomes possible.
\nIt is here, ihaiva<\/i>, in this mortal life and body that immortality must be
\nwon, here in this lower Brahman and by this embodied soul that the Higher must
\nbe known and possessed. "If here one find it not, great is the perdition." This
\nLife-force in us is led forward by the attraction of the supreme Life on its
\npath of constant acquisition through types of the Brahman until it reaches a
\npoint where it has to go entirely forward, to go across out of the mortal life,
\nthe mortal vision of things to some Beyond. So long as death is not entirely
\nconquered, this going beyond is represented in the terms of death and by a
\npassing into other worlds where death is not present, where a type of
\nimmortality is tasted corresponding to that which we have found here in our
\nsoul-experience; but the attraction of death and limitation is not overpassed
\nbecause they still conceal something of immortality and infinity which we have
\nnot yet achieved; therefore there is a necessity of return, an insistent <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 207<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

utility of farther
\nlife in the mortal body which we do not overcome until we have passed beyond all
\ntypes to the very being of the Infinite, One and Immortal. <\/p>\n

\nThe worlds of which the Upanishad speaks are essentially soul-conditions and not
\ngeographical divisions of the cosmos. This material universe is itself only
\nexistence as we see it when the soul dwells on the plane of material movement
\nand experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore all
\nthe framework of things in which it moves by the life and which it embraces by
\nthe consciousness is determined by the principle of infinite division and
\naggregation proper to Matter, to substance of form. This becomes then its world
\nor vision of things. And to whatever soul-condition it climbs, its vision of
\nthings will change and correspond to that condition, and in that framework it
\nwill move in its living and embrace it in its consciousness. These are the
\nworlds of the ancient tradition.  <\/p>\n

\nBut the soul that has entirely realised immortality passes beyond all worlds and
\nis free from frameworks. It enters into the being of the Lord; like this supreme
\nsuperconscient Self and Brahman, it is not subdued to life and death. It is no
\nlonger subject to the necessity of entering into the cycle of rebirth, of
\ntravelling continually between the imprisoning dualities of death and birth,
\naffirmation and negation; for it has transcended name and form. This victory,
\nthis supreme immortality it must achieve here as an embodied soul in the mortal
\nframework of things. Afterwards, like the Brahman, it transcends and embraces
\nthe cosmic existence without being subject to it. Personal freedom, personal
\nfulfilment is then achieved by the liberation of the soul from imprisonment in
\nthe form of this changing personality and by its ascent to the One that is the
\nAll. If afterwards there is any assumption of the figure of mortality, it is an
\nassumption and not a subjection, a help brought to the world and not a help to
\nbe derived from it, a descent of the ensouled superconscient existence not from
\nany personal necessity, but from the universal need in the cosmic labour for
\nthose yet unfree and unfulfilled to be helped and strengthened by the force that
\nhas already described the path up to the goal in its experience and achieved
\nunder the same conditions the Work and the Sacrifice.  <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 208<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t12 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t <\/p>\n

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

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

\nThe Upanishad does not put to itself the question in this form and language
\nwhich only became possible when Nihilistic Buddhism and Vedantic Illusionism had
\npassed over the face   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 209<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

of our thought and
\nmodified philosophical speech and concepts. But it knows of the ineffable
\nAbsolute which is the utter reality and absoluteness of the Lord even as the
\nLord is the absolute of all that is in the cosmos. Of That it proceeds to speak
\nin the only way in which it can be spoken of by the human mind.  <\/p>\n

\nIts answer to the problem is that That is precisely the Unknowable\u00b9 of which no
\nrelations can be affirmed\u00b2 and about which therefore our intellect must for ever
\nbe silent. The injunction to know the utterly Unknowable would be without any
\nsense or practical meaning. Not that That is a Nihil, a pure Negative, but it
\ncannot either be described by any of the positives of which our mind, speech or
\nperception is capable, nor even can it be indicated by any of them. It is only a
\nlittle that we know; it is only in the terms of the little that we can put the
\nforms of our knowledge. Even when we go beyond to the real form of the Brahman
\nwhich is not this universe, we can only indicate, we cannot really describe. If
\nthen we think we have known it perfectly, we betray our ignorance; we show that
\nwe know very little indeed, not even the little that we can put into the forms
\nof knowledge. For the universe is the little, the divided, the parcelling out of
\nexistence and consciousness in which we know and express things by fragments,
\nand we can never really cage in our intellectual and verbal fictions that
\ninfinite totality. Yet it is through the principles manifested in the universe
\nthat we have to arrive at That, through the life, the mind and that knowledge
\nwhich grasps at the fundamental Ideas that are like doors concealing behind them
\nthe Brahman and yet seeming to reveal Him. <\/p>\n

\nMuch less, then, if we can only thus know the Master-Consciousness which is the
\nform of the Brahman, can we pretend to know its utter ineffable reality which is
\nbeyond all knowledge. But if this were all, there would be no hope for the soul
\nand a resigned Agnosticism would be the last word of wisdom. The truth is that
\nthough thus beyond our mentality and our knowledge, the Supreme does give
\nHimself to both knowledge and mentality in the way proper to each and by
\nfollowing that way we can arrive at Him, but only on condition that we do not
\ntake our mentalising by the mind and our knowing by the higher  <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n 
\n<\/font>\u00b9aj\u00f1eyam atarkyam.<\/i>    \u00b2avyavahāryam.<\/i>
\n<\/span> 
\n<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 210<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

thought for the
\nfull knowledge and rest in that with a satisfied possession. <\/p>\n

\nThe way is to use our mind rightly for such knowledge as is open to its highest,
\npurified capacity. We have to know the form of the Brahman, the
\nMaster-Consciousness of the Lord through and yet beyond the universe in which we
\nlive. But first we must put aside what is mere form and phenomenon in the
\nuniverse;  for that has nothing to do with the form of the Brahman, the body of
\nthe Self, since it is not His form, but only His most external mask. Our first
\nstep therefore must be to get behind the forms of Matter, the forms of Life, the
\nforms of Mind and go back to that which is essential, most real, nearest to
\nactual entity. And when we have gone on thus eliminating, thus analysing all
\nforms into the fundamental entities of the cosmos, we shall find that these
\nfundamental entities are really only two, ourselves and the gods. <\/p>\n

\nThe gods of the Upanishad have been supposed to be a figure for the senses, but
\nalthough they act in the senses, they are yet much more than that. They
\nrepresent the divine power in its great and fundamental cosmic functionings
\nwhether in man or in mind and life and Matter in general; they are not the
\nfunctionings themselves but something of the Divine which is essential to their
\noperation and its immediate possessor and cause. They are, as we see from other
\nUpanishads, positive self-representations of the Brahman leading to good, joy,
\nlight, love, immortality as against all that is a dark negation of these things.
\nAnd it is necessarily in the mind, life, senses and speech of man that the
\nbattle reaches its height and approaches to its full meaning. The gods seek to
\nlead these to good and light; the Titans, sons of darkness, seek to pierce them
\nwith ignorance and evil.\u00b9 Behind the gods is the Master-Consciousness of which
\nthey are the positive cosmic self-representations. <\/p>\n

\nThe other entity which represents the Brahman in the cosmos is the self of the
\nliving and thinking creature, man. This self also is not an external mask; it is
\nnot form of the mind or form of the life or form of the body. <\/b>It is
\nsomething that supports these and makes them possible, something that can say
\npositively like the <\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n\u00b9Chhandogya<\/i> and
\nBrihadaranyaka Upanishads.<\/i> <\/span> 
\n<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 211<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

gods, "I am" and
\nnot only "I seem". We have then to scrutinise these two entities and see what
\nthey are in relation to each other and to the Brahman; or, as the Upanishad puts
\nit, "That of it which is thou, that of it which is in the gods, this<\/i> is
\nwhat thy mind has to resolve." Well, but what then of the Brahman is myself? and
\nwhat of the Brahman is in the Gods ? The answer is evident. I am a
\nrepresentation in the cosmos, but for all purposes of the cosmos a real
\nrepresentation of the Self; and the gods are a representation in the cosmos, \u2014 a
\nreal representation since without them the cosmos could not continue, \u2014 of the
\nLord. The one supreme Self is the essentiality of all these individual
\nexistences; the one supreme Lord is the Godhead in the gods. <\/p>\n

\nThe Self and the Lord are one Brahman, whom we can realise through our self and
\nrealise through that which is essential in the cosmic movement. Just as our self
\nconstitutes our mind, body, life, senses, so that Self constitutes all mind,
\nbody, life, senses; it is the origin and essentiality of things. Just as the
\ngods govern, supported by our self, the cosmos of our individual being, the
\naction of our mind, senses and life, so the Lord governs as Mind of the mind,
\nSense of the sense. Life of the life, supporting His active divinity by His
\nsilent essential self-being, all cosmos and all form of being. As we have gone
\nbehind the forms of the cosmos to that which is essential in their being and
\nmovement and found our self and the gods, so we have to go behind our self and
\nthe gods and find the one supreme Self and the one supreme Godhead. Then we can
\nsay, "I think that I know." <\/p>\n

\nBut at once we have to qualify our assertion. I think not that I know perfectly,
\nfor that is impossible in the terms of our instruments of knowledge. I do not
\nthink for a moment that I can know the Unknowable, that That can be put into the
\nforms through which I must arrive at the Self and Lord; but at the same time I
\nam no longer in ignorance, I know the Brahman in the only way in which I can
\nknow Him, in His self-revelation to me in terms not beyond the grasp of my
\npsychology, manifest as the Self and the Lord. The mystery of existence is
\nrevealed in a way that utterly satisfies my being because it enables me first to
\ncomprehend it through these figures as far as it can be comprehended by me and,
\nsecondly, to enter into, to live in, to be one in law and  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 212<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

being with and even
\nto merge myself in the Brahman. If we fancy that we have grasped the Brahman by
\nthe mind and in that delusion fix down our knowledge of Him to the terms our
\nmentality has found, then our knowledge is no knowledge ; it is the little
\nknowledge that turns to falsehood. So, too, those who try to fix Him into our
\nnotion of the fundamental ideas in which we discern Him by the thought that
\nrises above ordinary mental perception, have no real discernment of the Brahman,
\nsince they take certain idea-symbols for the Reality. On the other hand, if we
\nrecognise that our mental perceptions are simply so many clues by which we can
\nrise beyond mental perception and if we use these idea-symbols and the
\narrangement of them which our thought makes in order to go beyond the symbol to
\nthat reality, then we have rightly used mind and the higher discernment for
\ntheir supreme purpose. Mind and the higher discernment are satisfied of the
\nBrahman even in being exceeded by Him. <\/p>\n

\nThe mind can only reflect in a sort of supreme understanding and awakening the
\nform, the image of the Supreme as He shows Himself to our mentality. Through
\nthis reflection we find, we know; the purpose of knowledge is accomplished, for 
\nwe find immortality, we enter into the law, the being, the beatitude of the
\nBrahman-consciousness. By self-realisation of Brahman as our self we find the
\nforce, the divine energy which lifts us beyond the limitation, weakness,
\ndarkness, sorrow, all-pervading death of our mortal existence; by the knowledge
\nof the one Brahman in all beings and in all the various movement of the cosmos
\nwe attain beyond these things to the infinity, the omnipotent being, the
\nomniscient light, the pure beatitude of that divine existence.  <\/p>\n

\nThis great achievement must be done here in this mortal world, in this limited
\nbody; for if w  do it, we arrive at our true existence and are no longer bound
\ndown to our phenomenal becoming; but if here we find it not, great is the loss
\nand perdition; for we remain continually immersed in the phenomenal life of the
\nmind and body and do not rise above it into the true supramental existence. Nor,
\nif we miss it here, will death give it to us by our passage to another and less
\ndifficult world. Only those who use their awakened and enlightened thought to
\ndistinguish   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 213<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

and discover that
\nOne and Immortal in all existences, the all-originating self, the all-inhabiting
\nLord, can make the real passage which transcends life and death, can pass out of
\nthis mortal status, can press beyond and rise upward into a world-transcending
\nimmortality. <\/p>\n

\nThis, then, and no other is the means to be seized on and the goal to be
\nreached. "There is no other path for the great journey." The Self and the Lord
\nare that indeterminable, unknowable, ineffable Parabrahman and when we seek
\nrather that which is indeterminable and unknowable to us, it is still the Self
\nand the Lord always that we find, though by an attempt which is not the straight
\nand possible road intended for the embodied soul seeking here to accomplish its
\ntrue existence.\u00b9 They are the self-manifested Reality which so places itself
\nbefore man as the object of his highest aspiration and the fulfilment of all his
\nactivities. <\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n\u00b9Gita. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 214<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n13 <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nF<\/span>ROM <\/span><\/b>its assertion of the relative knowableness of the
\nunknowable Brahman and the justification of the soul’s ‘aspiration towards that
\nwhich is beyond its present capacity and status the Upanishad turns to the
\nquestion of the means by which that high-reaching aspiration can put itself into
\nrelation with the object of its search. How is the veil to be penetrated and the
\nsubject consciousness of man to enter into the master-consciousness of the Lord?
\nWhat bridge is there over this gulf? Knowledge has already been pointed out as
\nthe supreme means open to us, a knowledge which begins by a sort of reflection
\nof the true existence in the awakened mental understanding. But Mind is one of
\nthe gods; the Light behind it is indeed the greatest of the gods, Indra. Then,
\nan awakening of all the gods through their greatest to the essence of that which
\nthey<\/i> are, the one Godhead which they represent. By the mentality opening
\nitself to the Mind of our mind, the sense and speech also will open themselves
\nto the Sense of our sense and to the Word behind our speech and the life to the
\nLife of our life. The Upanishad proceeds to develop this consequence of its
\ncentral suggestion by a striking parable or apologue. <\/p>\n

\nThe gods, the powers that affirm the Good, the Light, the Joy and Beauty, the
\nStrength and Mastery have found themselves victorious in their eternal battle
\nwith the powers that deny. It is Brahman that has stood behind the gods and
\nconquered for them; the Master of all who guides all has thrown His deciding
\nwill into the balance, put down His darkened children and exalted the children
\nof Light. In this victory of the Master of all, the gods are conscious of a
\nmighty development of themselves, a splendid efflorescence of their greatness in
\nman, their joy, their light, their glory, their power and pleasure. But their
\nvision is as yet sealed to their own deeper truth; they know of themselves, they
\nknow not the Eternal; they know the godheads, they do not know God. Therefore
\nthey see the victory as their own, the greatness as their own. This opulent
\nefflorescence of the gods and  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 215<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

uplifting of their
\ngreatness and light is the advance of man to his ordinary ideal of a perfectly
\nenlightened mentality, a strong and sane vitality, a well-ordered body and
\nsenses, a harmonious, rich, active and happy life, the Hellenic ideal which the
\nmodern world holds to be our ultimate potentiality. When such an efflorescence
\ntakes place whether in the individual or the kind, the gods in man grow
\nluminous, strong, happy; they feel they have conquered the world and they
\nproceed to divide it among themselves and enjoy it. <\/p>\n

\nBut such is not the full intention of Brahman in the universe or in the
\ncreature. The greatness of the gods is His own victory and greatness, but it is
\nonly given in order that man may grow nearer to the point at which his faculties
\nwill be strong enough to go beyond themselves and realise the Transcendent.
\nTherefore Brahman manifests Himself before the exultant gods in their
\nwell-ordered world and puts to them by His silence the heart-shaking, the
\nworld-shaking question, "If ye are all, then what am I? for see, I am and I am
\nhere." Though He manifests. He does not reveal Himself, but is seen and felt by
\nthem as a vague and tremendous presence, the Yaksha, the Daemon, the Spirit, the
\nunknown Power, the Terrible beyond good and evil for whom good and evil are
\ninstruments towards His final self-expression. Then there is alarm and confusion
\nin the divine assembly; they feel a demand and a menace, on the side of the evil
\nthe possibility of monstrous and appalling powers yet unknown and unmastered
\nwhich may wreck the fair world they have built, upheave and shatter to pieces
\nthe brilliant harmony of the intellect, the aesthetic mind, the moral nature,
\nthe vital desires, the body and senses which they have with such labour
\nestablished, on the side of the good the demand of things unknown which are
\nbeyond all these and therefore are equally a menace, since the little which is
\nrealised cannot stand against the much that is unrealised, cannot shut out the
\nvast, the infinite that presses against the fragile walls we have erected to
\ndefine and shelter our limited being and pleasure. Brahman presents itself to
\nthem as the Unknown; the gods knew not what was this Daemon. <\/p>\n

\nTherefore Agni first arises at their bidding to discover its nature, limits,
\nidentity. The gods of the Upanishad differ in one  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 216<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

all-important
\nrespect from the gods of the Rig-veda; for the latter are not only powers of the
\nOne, but conscious of their source and true identity; they know the Brahman,
\nthey dwell in the supreme Godhead, their origin, home and proper plane is the
\nsuperconscient Truth. It is true they manifest themselves in man in the form of
\nhuman faculties and assume the appearance of human limitations, manifest
\nthemselves in the lower cosmos and assume the mould of its cosmic operations;
\nbut this is only their lesser and lower movement and beyond it they are for ever
\nthe One, the Transcendent and Wonderful, the Master of Force and Delight and
\nKnowledge and Being. But in the Upanishads the Brahman idea has grown and cast
\ndown the gods from this high pre-eminence so that they appear only in their
\nlesser human and cosmic workings. Much of their other Vedic aspects they keep.
\nHere the three gods Indra, Vayu, Agni represent the cosmic Divine on each of its
\nthree planes, Indra on the mental, Vayu on the vital, Agni on the material. In
\nthat order, therefore, beginning from the material. they approach the Brahman.\n<\/p>\n

\nAgni is the heat and flame of the conscious force in Matter which has built up
\nthe universe; it is he who has made life and mind possible and developed them in
\nthe material universe where he is the greatest deity. Especially he is the
\nprimary impeller of speech of which Vayu is the medium and Indra the lord. This
\nheat of conscious force in Matter is Agni Jata-vedas, the knower of all births;
\nof all things born, of every cosmic phenomenon he knows the law, the process,
\nthe limit, the relation. If then it is some mighty Birth of the cosmos that
\nstands before them, some new indeterminate developed in the cosmic struggle and
\nprocess, who shall know him, determine his limits, strength, potentialities if
\nnot Agni Jatavedas ? <\/p>\n

\nFull of confidence he rushes towards the object of his search and is met by the
\nchallenge, "Who art thou ? What is the force in thee?" His name is Agni
\nJatavedas, the Power that is at the basis of all birth and process in the
\nmaterial universe and embraces and knows their workings and the force in him is
\nthis that all that is thus born, he as the flame of Time and Death can devour.
\nAll things are his food which he assimilates and turns into material of new
\nbirth and formation. But this all-devourer  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 217<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

cannot devour with
\nall his force a fragile blade of grass so long as it has behind it the power of
\nthe Eternal. Agni is compelled to return, not having discovered. One thing only
\nis settled that this Daemon is no Birth of the material cosmos, no transient
\nthing that is subject to the flame and breath of Time; it is too great for Agni.\n<\/p>\n

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

\nThere is the same confident advance upon the object, the same formidable
\nchallenge, "Who art thou? What is the force in thee ?" This is Vayu Matarishwan
\nand the power in him is this that he, the Life, can take all things in his
\nstride and growth and seize on them for his mastery and enjoyment. But even the
\nveriest frailest trifle he cannot seize and master so long as it is protected
\nagainst him by the shield of the Omnipotent. Vayu too returns, not having
\ndiscovered. One thing only is settled that this is no form or force of cosmic
\nLife which operates within the limits of the all-grasping vital impulse; it is
\ntoo great for Vayu. <\/p>\n

\nIndra next arises, the Puissant, the Opulent. Indra is the power of the Mind;
\nthe senses which the Life uses for enjoyment, are operations of Indra which he
\nconducts for knowledge and all things that Agni has upbuilt and supports and
\ndestroys in the universe are Indra’s field and the subject of his functioning.
\nIf then this unknown Existence is something that the senses can grasp or, if it
\nis something that the mind can envisage, Indra shall know it and make it part of
\nhis opulent possessions. But it is nothing that the senses can grasp or the mind
\nenvisage, for as soon as Indra approaches it, it vanishes. The mind can only
\nenvisage what is limited by Time and Space and this Brahman is that which, as
\nthe Rig-veda has said, is neither today nor  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 218<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

tomorrow and though
\nit moves and can be approached in the conscious being of all conscious
\nexistences, yet when the mind tries to approach it and study it in itself, it
\nvanishes from the view of the mind. The Omnipresent cannot be seized by the
\nsenses, the Omniscient cannot be known by the mentality. <\/p>\n

\nBut Indra does not turn back from the quest like Agni and Vayu; he pursues his
\nway through the highest ether of the pure mentality and there he approaches the
\nWoman, the many-shining, Uma Haimavati; from her he learns that this Daemon is
\nthe Brahman by whom alone the gods of mind and life and body conquer and affirm
\nthemselves, and in whom alone they are great. Uma is the supreme Nature from
\nwhom the whole cosmic action takes its birth; she is the pure summit and highest
\npower of the One who here shines out in many forms. From this supreme Nature
\nwhich is also the supreme Consciousness the gods must learn their own truth;
\nthey must proceed by reflecting it in themselves instead of limiting themselves
\nto their own lower movement. For she has the knowledge and consciousness of the
\nOne, while the lower nature of mind, life and body can only envisage the many.
\nAlthough therefore Indra, Vayu and Agni are the greatest of the gods, the first
\ncoming to know the existence of the Brahman, the others approaching and feeling
\nthe touch of it, yet it is only by coming into contact with the supreme
\nconsciousness and reflecting its nature and by the elimination of the vital,
\nmental, physical egoism so that their whole function shall be to reflect the One
\nand Supreme that Brahman can be known by the gods in us and possessed. The
\nconscious force that supports our embodied life must become simply and purely a
\nreflector of that supreme Consciousness and Power of which its highest ordinary
\naction is only a twilight figure; the Life must become a passively potent
\nreflection and pure image of that supreme Life which is greater than all our
\nutmost actual and potential vitality; the Mind must resign itself to be no more
\nthan a faithful mirror of the image of the superconscient Existence. By this
\nconscious surrender of mind, life and senses to the Master of our senses, life
\nand mind who alone really governs their action, by this turning of the cosmic
\nexistence into a passive reflection of the eternal being and a faithful
\nreproductor of the nature of the Eternal we  <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 219<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

may hope to know
\nand through knowledge to rise into that which is superconscient to us; we shall
\nenter into the Silence that is master of an eternal, infinite, free and
\nall-blissful activity. <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 220<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n14 <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nT<\/span>HE <\/span><\/b>means of the knowledge of Brahman are, we have seen,
\nto get back behind the forms of the universe to that which is essential in the
\ncosmos, \u2014 and that which is essential is twofold, the gods in Nature and the
\nself in the individual, \u2014 and then to get behind these to the Beyond which they
\nrepresent. The practical relation of the gods to Brahman in this process of
\ndivine knowledge has been already determined. The cosmic functionings through
\nwhich the gods act, mind, life, speech, senses, body, must become aware of
\nsomething beyond them which governs them, by which they are and move, by whose
\nforce they evolve, enlarge themselves and arrive at power and joy and capacity;
\nto that they must turn from their ordinary operations; leaving these, leaving
\nthe false idea of independent action and self-ordering which is an egoism of
\nmind and life and sense they must become consciously passive to the power, light
\nand joy of something which is beyond themselves. What happens then is that this
\ndivine Unnameable reflects Himself openly in the gods. His light takes
\npossession of the thinking mind. His power and joy of the life. His light and
\nrapture of the emotional mind and the senses. Something of the supreme image of
\nBrahman falls upon the world-nature and changes it into divine nature. <\/p>\n

\nAll this is not done by a sudden miracle. It comes by flashes, revelations,
\nsudden touches and glimpses; there is as if a leap of the lightning of
\nrevelation flaming out from those heavens for a moment and then returning into
\nits secret source; as if the lifting of the eyelid of an inner vision and its
\nfalling again because the eye cannot look long and steadily on the utter light.
\nThe repetition of these touches and visitings from the Beyond fixes the gods in
\ntheir upward gaze and expectation, constant repetition fixes them in a constant
\npassivity; not moving out any longer to grasp at the forms of the universe mind,
\nlife and senses will more and more be fixed in the memory, in the understanding,
\nin the joy of the touch and vision of that transcendent glory which they have   \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 221<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

now resolved to
\nmake their sole object; to that only they will learn to respond and not to the
\ntouches of outward things. The silence which has fallen on them and which is now
\ntheir foundation and status will become their knowledge of the eternal silence
\nwhich is Brahman; the response of their functioning to a supernal light, power,
\njoy will become their knowledge of the eternal activity which is Brahman. Other
\nstatus, other response and activity they will not know. The mind will know
\nnothing but the Brahman, think of nothing but the Brahman, the Life will move
\nto, embrace, enjoy nothing but the Brahman, the eye will see, the ear hear, the
\nother senses sense nothing but the Brahman.  <\/p>\n

\nBut is then a complete oblivion of the external the goal? Must the mind and
\nsenses recede inward and fall into an un- ending trance and the life be for ever
\nstilled ? This is possible, if the soul so wills, but it is not inevitable and
\nindispensable. The Mind is cosmic, one in all the universe; so too are the Life,
\nand the Sense, so too is Matter of the body; and when they exist in and for the
\nBrahman only, they will not only know this but will sense, feel and live in that
\nuniversal unity. Therefore to whatever thing they turn which to the individual
\nsense and mind and life seems now external to them, there also it is not the
\nform of things which they will know, think of, sense, embrace and enjoy, but
\nalways and only the Brahman. Moreover, the external will cease to exist for
\nthem, because nothing will be external but all things internal to us, even the
\nwhole world and all that is in it. For the limit of ego, the wall of
\nindividuality will break; the individual Mind will cease to know itself as
\nindividual, it will be conscious only of universal Mind one everywhere in which
\nindividuals are only knots of the one mentality; so the individual life will
\nlose its sense of separateness and live only in and as the one life in which all
\nindividuals are simply whirls of the indivisible flood of Pranic activity; the
\nvery body and senses will be no longer conscious of a separated existence, but
\nthe real body which the man will feel himself to be physically will be the whole
\nEarth and the whole universe and the whole indivisible form of things
\nwheresoever existent, and the senses also will be converted to this principle of
\nsensation so that even in what we call the external, the eye will see Brahman
\nonly in every sight, the ear will hear Brahman only in   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 222<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

every sound, the
\ninner and outer body will feel Brahman only in every touch and the touch itself
\nas if internal in the greater body. The soul whose gods are thus converted to
\nthis supreme law and religion, will realise in the cosmos itself and in all its
\nmultiplicity the truth of the One besides whom there is no other or second.
\nMoreover, becoming one with the formless and infinite, it will exceed the
\nuniverse itself and see all the worlds not as external, not even as commensurate
\nwith itself, but as if within it. <\/p>\n

\nAnd in fact, in the higher realisation it will not be Mind, Life, Sense of which
\neven the mind, life and sense themselves will be originally aware, but rather
\nthat which constitutes them. By this process of constant visiting and divine
\ntouch and influence the Mind of the mind, that is to say, the superconscient
\nKnowledge will take possession of the mental understanding and begin to turn all
\nits vision and thinking into luminous stuff and vibration of light of the
\nSupermind. So too the sense will be changed by the visitings of the Sense behind
\nthe sense and the whole sense-view of the universe itself will be altered so
\nthat the vital, mental and supramental will become visible to the sense with the
\nphysical only as their last, outermost and smallest result. So too the Life will
\nbecome a conscious movement of the infinite Conscious-Force; it will be
\nimpersonal, unlimited by any particular acts and enjoyment, unbound to their
\nresults, untroubled by the dualities or the touch of sin and suffering,
\ngrandiose, boundless, immortal. The material world itself will become for these
\ngods a figure of the infinite, luminous and blissful Superconscient  <\/p>\n

\nThis will be the transfiguration of the gods, but what of the self? For we have
\nseen that there are two fundamental entities, the gods and the self, and the
\nself in us is greater than the cosmic Powers, its Godward destination more vital
\nto our perfection and self-fulfilment than any transfiguration of these lesser
\ndeities. Therefore not only must the gods find their one Godhead and resolve
\nthemselves into it; that is to say, not only must the cosmic principles working
\nin us resolve themselves into the working of the One, the Principle of all
\nprinciples, so that they shall become only a unified existence and single action
\nof That in spite of all play of differentiation, but also and with a more
\nfundamental necessity the self in us which supports the action of the gods must  \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 223<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

find and enter into
\nthe one Self of all individual existences, the indivisible Spirit to whom all
\nsouls are no more than dark or luminous centres of its consciousness. <\/p>\n

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

\nWhat then happens to the gods and the cosmos and all that the Lord develops in
\nHis being? Does it not all disappear? Is not the transfiguration of the gods
\neven a mere secondary state through which we pass towards that culmination and
\nwhich drops away from us as soon as we reach it? And with the disappearance of
\nthe gods and the cosmos does not the Lord too, the Master-Consciousness,
\ndisappear so that nothing is left but the one pure indeterminate Existence
\nself-blissful in an eternal inaction and non-creation? Such was the conclusion
\nof the later Vedanta in its extreme monistic form and such was the sense which
\nit tried to read into all the Upanishads; but it must be recognised that in the
\nlanguage whether of the Isha or the Kena Upanishad there is absolutely nothing,
\nnot even a shade or a nuance pointing to it. If we want to find it there, we
\nhave to put it in by force, for the actual language used favours instead the \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 224<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

conclusion of other
\nVedantic systems, which considered the goal to be the eternal joy of the soul in
\na Brahmaloka or world of the Brahman in which it is one with the infinite
\nexistence and yet in a sense still a soul able to enjoy differentiation in the
\noneness. <\/p>\n

\nIn the next verse we have the culmination of the teaching of the Upanishad, the
\nresult of the great transcendence which it has been setting forth and afterwards
\nthe description of the immortality to which the souls of knowledge attain when
\nthey pass beyond the mortal status. It declares that Brahman is in its nature
\n"That Delight", tad vanam.<\/i> "Vana" is the Vedic word for delight or
\ndelightful, and "tad vanam"<\/i> means therefore the transcendent Delight, the
\nall-blissful Ananda of which the Taittiriya Upanishad speaks as the highest
\nBrahman from which all existences are born, by which all existences live and
\nincrease and into which all existences arrive in their passing out of death and
\nbirth. It is as this transcendent Delight that the Brahman must be worshipped
\nand sought. <\/b>It is this beatitude therefore which is meant by the
\nimmortality of the Upanishads. And what will be the result of knowing and
\npossessing Brahman as the supreme Ananda? It is that towards the knower and
\npossessor of the Brahman is directed the desire of all creatures. In other
\nwords, he becomes a centre of the divine Delight shedding it on all the world
\nand attracting all to it as to a fountain of joy and love and self-fulfilment in
\nthe universe. <\/p>\n

\nThis is the culmination of the teaching of the Upanishad; there was a demand for
\nthe secret teaching that enters into the ultimate truth, the Upanishad, and in
\nresponse this doctrine has been given. It has been uttered, the Upanishad of the
\nBrahman, the hidden ultimate truth of the supreme Existence; its beginning was
\nthe search for the Lord, Master of mind, life, speech and senses in whom is the
\nabsolute of mind, the absolute of life, the absolute of speech and senses and
\nits close is the finding of Him as the transcendent Beatitude and the elevation
\nof the soul that finds and possesses it into a living centre of that Delight
\ntowards which all creatures in the universe shall turn as to a fountain of its
\necstasies. <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 225<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\nThe Upanishad closes with two verses which seem to review and characterise the
\nwhole work in the manner of the ancient writings when they have drawn to their
\nclose; This Upanishad or gospel of the inmost Truth of things has for its
\nfoundation, it is said, the practice of self-mastery, action and the subdual of
\nthe sense-life to the power of the Spirit. In other words, life and works are to
\nbe used as a means of arriving out of the state of subjection proper to the soul
\nin the ignorance into a state of mastery which brings it nearer to the absolute
\nself-mastery and all-mastery of the supreme Soul seated in the knowledge. The
\nVedas, that is to say, the utterances of the inspired seers and the truths they
\nhold, are described as all the limbs of the Upanishad; in other words, all the
\nconvergent lines and aspects, all the necessary elements of this great practice,
\nthis profound psychological self-training and spiritual aspiration are set forth
\nin these great Scriptures, channels of supreme knowledge and indicators of a
\nsupreme discipline. Truth is its home; and this Truth is not merely intellectual
\nverity, \u2014 for that is not the sense of the word in the Vedic writings, \u2014 but
\nman’s ultimate human state of true being, true consciousness, right knowledge,
\nright works, right joy of existence, all indeed that is contrary to the
\nfalsehood of egoism and ignorance. It is by these means, by using works and
\nself-discipline for mastery of oneself and for the generation of spiritual
\nenergy, by fathoming in all its parts the knowledge and repeating the high
\nexample of the great Vedic seers and by living in the Truth that one becomes
\ncapable of the great ascent which the Upanishad opens to us.  <\/p>\n

\nThe goal of the ascent is the world of the true and vast existence of which the
\nVeda speaks as the Truth that is the final goal and home of man. It is described
\nhere as the greater infinite heavenly world, (Swargaloka \u2014 Swarloka of the
\nVeda), which is not the lesser Swarga of the Puranas or the lesser Brahmaloka of
\nthe Mundaka Upanishad, its world of the sun’s rays to which the soul arrives by
\nworks of virtue and piety, but falls from them by the exhaustion of their merit;
\nit is the higher Swarga or Brahman-world of the Katha which is beyond the dual
\nsymbols of birth and death, the higher Brahman-worlds of the Mundaka which the
\nsoul enters by knowledge and renunciation <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 226<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

It is therefore a
\nstate not belonging to the Ignorance, but to Knowledge. It is, in fact, the
\ninfinite existence and beatitude of the soul in the being of the all-blissful
\nexistence; it is too the higher status, the light of the Mind beyond the mind,
\nthe joy and eternal mastery of the Life beyond the life, the riches of the Sense
\nbeyond the senses. And the soul finds in it not only its own largeness but finds
\nand possesses the infinity of the One and it has firm foundation in that
\nimmortal state because there a supreme Silence and eternal Peace are the secure
\nfoundation of eternal Knowledge and absolute Joy.  <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 227<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n15 <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nW<\/span>E HAVE <\/span><\/b>now completed our review of this Upanishad; we
\nhave considered minutely the bearings of its successive "utterances and striven
\nto make as precise as we can to the intelligence the sense of the puissant
\nphrases in which it gives us its leading clues to that which can never be
\nentirely expressed by human speech. We have some idea of what it means by that
\nBrahman, by the Mind of mind, the Life of life, the Sense of sense, the Speech
\nof speech, by the opposition of ourselves and the gods, by the Unknowable who is
\nyet not utterly unknowable to us, by the transcendence of the mortal state and
\nthe conquest of immortality. <\/p>\n

\nFundamentally its teaching reposes on the assertion of three states of
\nexistence, the human and mortal, the Brahman-consciousness which is the absolute
\nof our relativities, and the utter Absolute, which is unknowable. The first is
\nin a sense a false status of misrepresentation because it is a continual term of
\napparent opposites and balancings where the truth of things is a secret unity;
\nwe have here a bright or positive figure and a dark or negative figure and both
\nare figures, neither the Truth; still in that we now live and through that we
\nhave to move to the Beyond. The second is the Lord of all this dual action who
\nis beyond it; He is the truth of Brahman and not in any way a falsehood or
\nmisrepresentation, but the truth of it as attained by us in our eternal
\nsupramental being; in Him are the absolutes of all that here we experience in
\npartial figures. The Unknowable is beyond our grasp because though it is the
\nsame Reality, yet it exceeds even our highest term of eternal being and is
\nbeyond Existence and Non-existence; it is therefore to the Brahman, the Lord who
\nhas a relation to what we are that we must direct our search if we would attain
\nbeyond what temporarily seems to what eternally is. <\/p>\n

\nThe attainment of the Brahman is our escape from the mortal status into
\nImmortality, by which we understand not the survival of death, but the finding
\nof our true self of eternal being and  <\/p>\n

\n
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\n
<\/div>\n

bliss beyond the
\ndual symbols of birth and death. By immortality we mean the absolute life of the
\nsoul as opposed to the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes
\nby birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the mere mental
\nbeing who dwells in the world subjected helplessly to this law of death and
\nbirth or seems at least by his ignorance to be subjected to this and to other
\nlaws of the lower Nature. To know and possess its true nature, free, absolute,
\nmaster of itself and its embodiments is the soul’s means of transcendence, and
\nto know and possess this is to know and possess the Brahman. It is also to rise
\nout of mortal world into immortal world, out of world of bondage into world of
\nlargeness, out of finite world into infinite world. It is to ascend out of
\nearthly joy and sorrow into a transcendent Beatitude. <\/p>\n

\nThis must be done by the abandonment of our attachment to the figure of things
\nin the mortal world. We must put from us its death and dualities if we would
\ncompass the unity and immortality. Therefore it follows that we must cease to
\nmake the goods .of this world or even its right, light and beauty our object of
\npursuit; we must go beyond these to a supreme Good, a transcendent Truth, Light
\nand Beauty in which the opposite figures of what we call evil disappear. But
\nstill, being in this world, it is only through something in this world itself
\nthat we can transcend it; it is through its figures that we must find the
\nabsolute. Therefore, we scrutinise them and perceive that there are first these
\nforms of mind, life, speech and sense, all of them figures and imperfect
\nsuggestions, and then behind them the cosmic principles through which the One
\nacts. It is to these cosmic principles that we must proceed and turn them from
\ntheir ordinary aim and movement in the world to find their own supreme aim and
\nabsolute movement in their own one Godhead, the Lord, the Brahman; they must be
\ndrawn to leave the workings of ordinary mind and find the superconscient Mind,
\nto leave the workings of ordinary speech and sense and find the supramental
\nSense and original Word, to leave the apparent workings of mundane Life and find
\nthe transcendent Life. <\/p>\n

\nBesides the gods, there is our self, the spirit within who supports all this
\naction of the gods. Our spirit too must turn from <\/p>\n

\n
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\n
<\/div>\n

its absorption in
\nits figure of itself as it sees it involved in the movement of individual life,
\nmind, body and subject to it and must direct its gaze upward to its own supreme
\nSelf who is beyond all this movement and master of it all. Therefore the mind
\nmust indeed become passive to the divine Mind, the sense to the divine Sense,
\nthe life to the divine Life and by receptivity to constant touches and visitings
\nof the highest be transfigured into a reflection of these transcendences; but
\nalso the individual self must through the mind’s aspiration upwards, through
\nupliftings of itself beyond, through constant memory of the supreme Reality in
\nwhich during these divine moments it has lived, ascend finally into that Bliss
\nand Power and Light.  <\/p>\n

\nBut this will not necessarily mean the immersion into an all-oblivious Being
\neternally absorbed in His own inactive self-existence. For the mind, sense, life
\ngoing beyond their individual formations find that they are only one centre of
\nthe sole Mind, Life, Form of things and therefore they find Brahman in that also
\nand not only in an individual transcendence; they bring down the vision’ of the
\nsuperconscient into that also and not only into their own individual workings.
\nThe mind of the individual escapes from its limits and becomes the one universal
\nmind, his life the one universal life, his bodily sense the sense of the whole
\nuniverse and even more as his own indivisible Brahman-body. He perceives the
\nuniverse in himself and he perceives also his self in all existences and knows
\nit to be the one, the omnipresent, the single-multiple all-inhabiting Lord and
\nReality. Without this realisation he has not fulfilled the conditions of
\nimmortality. Therefore it is said that what the sages seek is to distinguish and
\nsee the Brahman in all existences; by that discovery, realisation and possession
\nof Him everywhere and in all they attain to their immortal existence. <\/p>\n

\nStill although the victory of the gods, that is to say, the progressive
\nperfection of the mind, life, body in the positive terms of good, right, joy,
\nknowledge, power is recognised as a victory of the Brahman and the necessity of
\nusing life and human works in the world as a means of preparation and
\nself-mastery is admitted, yet a final passing away into the infinite heavenly
\nworld or status of the Brahman-consciousness is held out as the goal.   \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
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\n
<\/div>\n

And this would seem
\nto imply a rejection of the life of the cosmos. Well then may we ask, we the
\nmodem humanity more and more conscious of the inner warning of that which
\ncreated us, be it Nature or God, that there is a work for the race, a divine
\npurpose in its creation which exceeds the salvation of the individual soul,
\nbecause the universal is more real than the individual, we who feel more and
\nmore, in the language of the Koran, that the Lord did not create heaven and
\nearth in a jest, that Brahman did not begin dreaming this world-dream in a
\nmoment of aberration and delirium, \u2014 well may we ask whether this gospel of
\nindividual salvation is all the message even of this purer, earlier, more
\ncatholic Vedanta. If so, then Vedanta at its best is a gospel for the saint, the
\nascetic, the monk, the solitary, but it has not a message which the widening
\nconsciousness of the world can joyfully accept as the word for which it was
\nwaiting. For there is evidently something vital that has escaped it, a profound
\nword of the riddle of existence from which it has turned its eyes or which it
\nwas unable or thought it not worth while to solve. <\/p>\n

\nNow certainly there is an emphasis in the Upanishads increasing steadily as time
\ngoes on into an over-emphasis, on the salvation of the individual, on his
\nrejection of the lower cosmic life. This note increases in them as they become
\nlater in date, it swells afterwards into the rejection of all cosmic life
\nwhatever and that becomes finally in later Hinduism almost the one dominant and
\nall-challenging cry. It does not exist in the earlier Vedic revelation where
\nindividual salvation is regarded as a means towards a great cosmic victory, the
\neventual conquest of heaven and earth by the superconscient Truth and Bliss, and
\nthose who have achieved the victory in the past are the conscious helpers of
\ntheir yet battling posterity. If this earlier note is missing in the Upanishads,
\nthen, \u2014 for great as are these Scriptures, luminous, profound, sublime in their
\nunsurpassed truth, beauty and power, yet it is only the ignorant soul that will
\nmake itself the slave of a book, \u2014 then in using them as an aid to knowledge we
\nmust insistently call back that earlier missing note, we must seek elsewhere a
\nsolution for the word of the riddle that has been ignored. The Upanishad alone
\nof extant scriptures gives us without veil or stinting, with plenitude and a
\nnoble catholicity the truth of the  <\/p>\n

\n
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\n
<\/div>\n

Brahman; its aid to
\nhumanity is therefore indispensable. Only, where anything essential is missing,
\nwe must go beyond the Upanishads to seek it, \u2014 as for instance, when we add to
\nits emphasis on divine knowledge the indispensable ardent emphasis of the later
\nteachings upon divine love and the high emphasis of the Veda upon divine works. \n<\/p>\n

\nThe Vedic gospel of a supreme victory in heaven and on earth for the divine in
\nman, the Christian gospel of a kingdom of God and divine city upon earth, the
\nPuranic idea of progressing Avataras ending in the kingdom of the perfect and
\nthe restoration of the Golden Age, not only contain behind their forms a
\nprofound truth, but they are necessary to the religious sense in mankind.
\nWithout it the teaching of the vanity of human life and of a passionate fleeing
\nand renunciation can only be powerful in passing epochs or else on the few
\nstrong souls in each age that are really capable of these things. The rest of
\nhumanity will either reject the creed which makes that its foundation or ignore
\nit in practice while professing it in precept or else must sink under the weight
\nof its own impotence and the sense of the illusion of life or of the curse of
\nGod upon the world as mediaeval Christendom sank into ignorance and obscurantism
\nor later India into stagnant torpor and the pettiness of a life of aimless
\negoism. The promise for the individual is well, but the promise for the race is
\nalso needed. Our father Heaven must remain bright with the hope of deliverance,
\nbut also our mother Earth must not feel  herself for ever accursed. <\/p>\n

\nIt was necessary at one time to insist even exclusively on the idea of
\nindividual salvation so that the sense of a Beyond might be driven into man’s
\nmentality, as it was necessary at one time to insist on a heaven of joys for the
\nvirtuous and pious so that man might be drawn by that shining bait towards the
\npractice of religion and the suppression of his unbridled animality. But as the
\nlures of earth have to be conquered, so also have the lures of heaven. The lure
\nof a pleasant Paradise of the rewards of virtue has been rejected by man; the
\nUpanishads belittled it ages ago in India and it is now no longer dominant in
\nthe mind of the people; the similar lure in popular Christianity and popular
\nIslam has no meaning for the conscience of modern humanity.  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
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\n
<\/div>\n

The lure of a
\nrelease from birth and death and withdrawal from the cosmic labour must also be
\nrejected, as it was rejected by Mahayanist Buddhism which held compassion and
\nhelpfulness to be greater than Nirvana. As the virtues we practise must be done
\nwithout demand of earthly or heavenly reward, so the salvation we seek must be
\npurely internal and impersonal; it must be the release from egoism, the union
\nwith the Divine, the realisation of our universality as well as our
\ntranscendence, and no salvation should be valued which takes us away from the
\nlove of God in humanity and the help we can give to the world. If need be, it
\nmust be taught, "Better hell with the rest of our suffering brothers than a
\nsolitary salvation." <\/p>\n

\nFortunately, there is no need to go to such lengths and deny one side of the
\ntruth in order to establish another. The Upanishad itself suggests the door of
\nescape from any over-emphasis in its own statement of the truth. For the man who
\nknows and possesses the supreme Brahman as the transcendent Beatitude becomes a
\ncentre of that delight to which all his fellows shall come, a well from which
\nthey can draw the divine waters. Here is the clue that we need. The connection
\nwith the universe is preserved for the one reason which supremely justifies that
\nconnection ; it must subsist not from the desire of personal earthly joy as with
\nthose who are still bound, but for help to all creatures. Two then are the
\nobjects of the high-reaching soul, to attain the Supreme and to be for ever for
\nthe good of all the world, \u2014 even as Brahman Himself; whether here or elsewhere,
\ndoes not essentially matter; still where the struggle is thickest, there should
\nbe the hero of the spirit, that is surely the highest choice of the son of
\nImmortality; the earth calls most, because it has most need of him, to the soul
\nthat has become one with the universe. <\/p>\n

\nAnd the nature of the highest good that can be done is also indicated, \u2014 though
\nother lower forms of help are not therefore excluded. To assist in the lesser
\nvictories of the gods which must prepare the supreme victory of the Brahman may
\nwell be and must be in some way or other a part of our task; but the greatest
\nhelpfulness of all is this, to be a human centre of the Light, the Glory, the
\nBliss, the Strength, the Knowledge of the Divine  \n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 233<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

Existence through
\nwhom it shall communicate itself lavishly to other men and attract by its magnet
\nof delight their souls to that which is the Highest. <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 234<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY 1 THE twelve great Upanishads are written round one body of ancient knowledge; but they approach it from different sides. Into the great kingdom…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","wpcat-14-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","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=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}