{"id":779,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:21","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=779"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:21","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:21","slug":"62-the-life-divine-a-commentary-on-the-isha-upanishad-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/27-supplement-volume-27\/62-the-life-divine-a-commentary-on-the-isha-upanishad-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","title":{"rendered":"-62_The Life Divine-A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\n"THE LIFE DIVINE" <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA
\nCOMMENTARY ON THE ISHA UPANISHAD<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

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

 <\/span>                      
\n<\/span><\/span>V<\/font><\/span>EDA<\/span><\/b>
\nand Vedanta are the inexhaustible fountains of Indian spirituality. With
\nknowledge or without knowledge every creed in India, each school of philosophy,
\nout- burst of religious life, great or petty, brilliant or obscure, draws its
\nsprings of life from these ancient and ever-flowing waters. Conscious or
\nunwitting each Indian religionist stirs to a vibration that reaches him from
\nthose far off ages. Darshana and Tantra and Purana, Shaivism and Vaishnavism,
\northodoxy or heresy are merely so many imperfect understandings of Vedic truth
\nor misunderstandings of each other; they are eager half- illuminated attempts to
\nbring some ray of that great calm and perfect light into our lives and make of
\nthe stray beam an illumination on our path or a finger laid on the secret and
\ndistant goal of our seeking. Our greatest modern minds are mere tributaries of
\nthe old Rishis. Shankara who seems to us a giant had but a fragment of their
\nKnowledge. Buddha wandered away on a by- path in their universal kingdom. These compositions of un- known antiquity are as the many breasts of the Eternal
\nMother of Knowledge from which our succeeding ages have been fed and the
\nimperishable life in us fostered. The Vedas hold more of that knowledge than the
\nVedanta, hold it more amply, practically and in detail; but they come to us in a
\nlanguage we have ceased to understand, a vocabulary which often, by the change
\nof meaning in ancient terms, misleads most where it seems most easy and
\nfamiliar, a scheme of symbols of which the key has been taken from us. Indians
\ndo not understand the Vedas at all, Europeans have systematised a gross
\nmisunderstanding of them. The old knowledge in the Vedas is to us, therefore, as
\na mere wandering in a dark cavern inaccessible to the common tread. It is in the
\nUpanishads that the stream first emerges into open country. It is there that it
\nis most accessible to us. But even this stream flows through obscure forest and
\ndifficult mountain reaches and we only have it for our use at favourable points
\nwhere the forest
\n  <\/p>\n

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


\nPage-299
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n


\nthins or the mountain opens. It is there that men have built their little
\nartificial cities of metaphysical thought and spiritual practice, in each of
\nwhich the inhabitants pretend to control the whole river. They call their
\ndwelling places Vedanta or Sankhya, Adwaita or Dwaita, Shaivism or Vaishnavism,
\nwith a hundred names besides and boast that theirs is the way and theirs is the
\nknowledge. But in reality each of us can only command a little of the truth of
\nthe Sanatana Dharma because none of us understands more than a little of the
\nUpanishads.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nThey become indeed easier to us as they come nearer to us in <\/span>date
\nand the modernity of their language, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nthe stream more <\/span>accessible
\nas it draws farther away from the original sources and descends more into the
\nplain and the lowlands. But even the secret of these more modern revelations is
\nnot wholly ours and we delude ourselves if we think we have understood them
\nentirely and need not plunge deeper for their meaning. There is much gold in the
\nsands of the bed which no man has thought of dis<\/span>interring.<\/span>
\n        <\/span>The
\nIsha Upanishad is simpler in form and expression than such writings as the
\nChhandogya and Brihadaranyaka which con<\/span>tain
\nin their symbolic expressions, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nto us obscure and meaning- <\/span>less,
\ndisparaged by many as violently bizarre in idea and language and absurd in
\nsubstance, – more of the detail of old Vedic, Knowledge. The diction of the
\nUpanishad is for the most part plain and easy, the ideas expressed in it when
\nnot wrested from their proper sense seem to be profound, yet lucid and straight-
\nforward. Yet even in the Isha the real import of the closing passage is a sealed
\nbook to the commentators, and I am convinced that the failure to understand this
\nculminating strain in the noble progressive harmony of the thought has resulted
\nfor us in a failure to grasp the rear and complete sense of the whole Upanishad.
\nWe understand, more or less clearly, the separate sense of the different Slokas
\nbut their true connection and relation of the thoughts to each other has been
\nalmost entirely missed. We have hold of some of its isolated truths; we have
\nlost the totality of its purport.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nFor the Isha Upanishad is one of the most perfectly worked out, one of
\nthe most finely and compactly stated inspired argu-<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-300<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n


\nments the world possesses, – an argument not in the sense of a train of
\ndisputatious reasoning, logical not in the fashion of an. intellectual passage
\nfrom syllogism to syllogism, but a statement <\/span>of
\ninspired thought each part of which has been perfectly seen by<\/span>
\n<\/span> <\/span>the
\nrevelatory faculty and perfectly stated by inspired expression in itself, in
\nrelation to the others and in its place in the whole. Not only every Sloka but
\nevery word in each Sloka has been perfectly chosen and perfectly placed. There
\nis a consummate harmony in the rhythm of the thought as well as in the rhythm of
\nthe language and the verse. The result is a whole system of knowledge and
\nspiritual experience stated with the utmost brevity, with an epic massiveness
\nand dignity, but yet in itself full and free from omission. We have in this
\nUpanishad no string of incoherent thoughts thrown out at random, no loose
\ntransitions from one class of ideas to another, but a single subject greatly
\ntreated with completeness, with precision, with the inspiration of a poet
\npossessed by divine truth and the skill of a consummate architect of thought and
\nlanguage. The Isha Upanishad is the gospel of a divine life in the world and a
\nstatement of the conditions under which it is possible and the spirit of Its
\nliving. For the Isha at least does not support the Mayavada as is indeed evident
\nfrom the struggle and stress of difficulty in Shankara’s own commentary which
\nreduces its fine thought and admirable expression to incoherence and slipshod
\nclumsiness. The error, however lofty, must be removed in order that the plain
\nand simple Truth may reveal itself. It is a system which still attracts the
\nabstract intellectuality in me and represents to me what I may call an
\nintervening and mediary truth which can never lose its validity. But when it
\nseeks to govern human thought and life, to perpetuate itself on the sole truth
\nof Vedanta, I feel that it is in conflict with the old Vedanta, stultifies the
\nUpanishad and endangers all our highest human activities without giving us the
\nhighest spiritual truth in its place. Even so I would have preferred to leave
\naside all subjective criticism of it in these commentaries. But that is not
\npossible. For it has so possessed men’s ideas about the <\/span>Upanishads
\nthat it has to be cleared<\/span>
\naway <\/span>in
\norder that the true <\/span>sense
\nof this Upanishad at least may shine out from the obscuration.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-301 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

It
\nis this harmonious totality of meaning which it is the sole object of my
\ncommentary to bring to light. It has not been my object to support a particular
\nphilosophy or to read Adwaita or Dwaita or Visishtadwaita into its separate
\nverses and make it useful for metaphysical polemics. I hold firmly the belief
\nthat the truths of the Upanishads were not arrived at by intellectual
\nspeculation, cannot be interpreted by disputation according to the rules of
\nlogic and are misused when they are employed merely as mines and quarries for
\nthe building of metaphysical systems. I hold them to have been arrived at by
\nrevelation and spiritual experience, to be records of things seen, heard and
\nfelt, dŗşţa, śruta, upalabdha, <\/i>in the soul and to
\nstand for their truth not on logic which they transcend but on vision to which
\nthey aspire. These supra-intellectual faculties by which they received the Veda
\nand developed its implications, dŗşţi, śruti <\/i>and smŗti,
\n<\/i>are also the only means by which their thoughts can be perfectly understood.
\n<\/span>What
\nis it that the Upanishad reveals? <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>this
\nis the question I <\/span>have
\nset myself to answer; I am indifferent for what set of warring philosophical
\ndogmas its texts can be made an armoury. Nevertheless, in the course of exegesis
\nI have been compelled to come into conflict with the opinions of the Mayavada.
\nThe collision was inevitable rather than desired, for the Mayavada was the
\nopinion with which I commenced my study of Vedanta.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nIn following this end I have had in view there are a few plain and
\nbinding rules by which I have endeavoured always to be guided. My method does
\nnot allow me to deal with the language of the Upanishad in the spirit of the
\nscholar, – not the pride of the Pandit dealing with words as he chooses, but the
\nhumility of the seeker after truth in the presence of one of its masters is, I
\nhave thought, the proper attitude of the exegete. In the presence of these
\nsacred writings, so unfathomably profound, so infinitely vast in their sense, so
\nsubtly perfect in their language, we must be obedient to the text and not
\npresume to subject it ignorantly to our notions. To follow the plain and simple
\nmeaning of the words has been therefore the first rule of my exegesis. Vidya and
\nAvidya are plain words with a well-ascertained sense; I cannot turn aside from
\nit to interpret them as knowledge of the gods and ignorance. Sambhūti,
\nasambhūti, vināśa <\/i>are words with fixed<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-302<\/p>\n

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

\n

meanings;
\nmy interpretation must arise directly and simply from these meanings. The rhythm
\nand metre of the Upanishads, the balance of the sentences demand their place in
\nthe interpretation; for chandas <\/i>is of primary importance in all Veda; I
\nmust not disturb that rhythm, metre and balance in order to get over a
\nphilosophical difficulty. The anuụţup, <\/i>of the Isha, for
\ninstance, is Vedic in its form and principle and not classical; it demands, that
\nis to say, a stanza of two couplets and admits of sandhi <\/i>in the middle of
\nthe pāda <\/i>but not between two pādas: <\/i>I must not take
\nadvantage of a possibility of sandhi <\/i>between two pādas <\/i>admissible
\nonly, in the classical anu<\/i><\/span>şţ<\/span>up
\n<\/span><\/i>in
\norder to extract from the Upanishad the opposite of its apparent sense. And when
\nthe meaning of a verse is determined, when it stands with- out qualification as
\nan integral part of the teaching, I am not at liberty to read in a gloss of my
\nown "for the ignorant" in order to depreciate or annul the validity of
\nthe doctrine. I am bound by the thoughts of the Sage; I cannot force upon him
\nany ideas <\/span>of my own
\nto govern and override his apparent meaning, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nall
\n<\/span>that
\nI am allowed to do is to explain his evident textual meaning in the light of my
\ninward spiritual experience but I must not use that experience which may be
\nimperfect to contradict the text. <\/p>\n

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

       
\nShankara has permitted himself all these departures from the attitude of
\nsubjection to the text. He has dealt with the Upanishads and with this Upanishad
\nmore than any other as a master of the Sruti and not its servant. He has sought
\nto include it among his grandiose intellectual conquests. But the Sruti cannot
\nbe mastered by the intellect, and although the great Dravidian has enslaved
\nmen’s thoughts about the Sruti to his victorious intellectual polemic, the Sruti
\nitself preserves its inalienable freedom, rising into its secret heights of
\nknowledge and being superior to the clouds and lightnings of the intellect
\nawaiting and admitting only the tread of the spirit, opening itself only to
\nexperience in the soul and vision in the supra-intellectual faculty of ideal
\nknowledge. I trust I shall not be considered as wanting in reverence for the
\ngreatest of Indian philosophers, – in my opinion the greatest of all
\nphilosophers. Nevertheless the greatest have their limitations. In profundity,
\nsubtlety and loftiness Shankara has no equal; he is not so supreme in breadth
\nand<\/span><\/p>\n

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


\nPage-303
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nflexibility of understanding. His was a spirit visited with some marvellous
\nintuitions and realisation, but it would be to limit the capacities of the human
\nsoul to suppose that his intuitions exclude others equally great or that his
\nrealisations are the only or final word of spiritual knowledge. Shankara of the
\ncommentaries on the Upanishad,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>although
\nthe greatest commentaries <\/span>on
\nthem that we have, <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>is
\nnot so great as Shankara of the
\n<\/span>Bhashya
\non the Vedanta Sutras. In the latter he is developing in full freedom his own
\nphilosophy, which even those who disagree with it must recognise as one of the
\nhighest and a most marvellous intellectual achievement; in the former he is
\nattempting to conquer for… enlist an exclusive authority of the Sruti. A
\ncommentary on the Upanishad should be a work of exegesis; Shankara’s is a work
\nof metaphysical philosophy. He does not really approach the Sruti as an exegete;
\nhis intention is not to use the philosophical mind in order to arrive at the
\nright explanation of the old Vedanta but to use explanation of the Vedanta in
\norder to support the right system of philosophy. His main authority is therefore
\nhis own preconceived view of Vedantic truth, – a standard external to the text
\nand in so far illegitimate. Accordingly, he leaves much of the text unexplained
\nbecause it does not either support or conflict with the conclusions which he is
\ninterested in establishing; he gives merely a verbal paraphrase or a
\nconventional scholastic rendering. Where he is interested, he compels the Sruti
\nto agree with him. Without going quite to the same extent of self-will as Madhva, the Dwaita
\ncommentator, who does not hesitate to turn the famous tat
\ntvam asi <\/i>into atat tvam asi, <\/i>"Thou art not <\/i>that, O
\nSwetaketu", he goes far enough and uses a fa~al masterfulness. The Isha
\nespecially, it seems to me, is vitiated by the defects of his method because in
\nthe Isha the clear and apparent meaning of the text conflicts most decisively
\nwith some of his favourite tenets. The great passage on Vidya and Avidya,
\nSambhuti and Asambhuti bristles for him with stumbling-blocks. We find him
\nwalking amid these difficulties with the powerful but uneasy steps of Milton’s
\nangels striding "over the burning made" of their prison house. I for
\nmy part am unwilling to keep to the trace of his footsteps. For, after all, no
\nhuman intellect can be permitted to hold the keys of the Sruti<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-304<\/p>\n

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

\n

and
\nfix for us our gate of entrance and the paths of our passage. The Sruti itself
\nis the only eternal authority on the Sruti. I have also held it as a rule of
\nsound interpretation that any apparent incoherence, any want of logical relation
\nand succession of thought in the text must exist by deficiency of understanding
\nand not in the Seer’s deficiency of thinking. This view I base upon my constant
\nexperience of the Upanishads; for I have always found in the end that the
\nwriters thought clearly and connectedly and with a perfect grasp of their
\nsubject; for my own haste, ignorance and immaturity of spiritual experience has
\nal- ways been convicted in the end of the sole responsibility for any defect
\nimputed by the presumption of the logical understanding to the revealed
\nscripture. The text has to be studied with a great patience, a great passivity,
\nwaiting for experience, waiting for light and then waiting for still more light.
\nInsufficient data, haste of conclusions, wilful reading of one’s own favourite
\nopinions into the text, wilful grasping at an imperfect or unfinished
\nexperience, wilful reading of a single narrow truth as the sole meaning of this
\ncomplex harmony of thought, experience and knowledge which we call the Veda,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>these
\nare fruitful sources of error. But if a man can make his mind like a blank
\nslate, if he can enter into the condition of bottomless passivity proper to the
\nstate of the calm all-embracing Chaitanya Atma, not attempting to fix what the
\nTruth shall be but allowing Truth to manifest herself in his soul, he will find
\nthat then it is the nature of the Sruti to reveal perfectly its own message.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nFor ultimately, as I have already insisted, we can know the subject of
\nthe Veda only by the soul and its pure faculty of know- ledge, not by verbal
\nscholarship, metaphysical reasoning or intellectual discrimination. By entering
\ninto communion with the soul of the thinker which still broods behind the
\ninspired language, we come to realise what he saw and what he put into his
\nwords, what waits there to make itself known to us. By communion with the soul
\nof the Universe which is behind the soul of the thinker and one with it, we get
\nthose experiences which illumine and confirm or correct by amplifying our vision
\nof truth in the Sruti. And since no man should lightly hope that he has been
\nable always to think, act and know by the supreme method,<\/span>
\n<\/span>it<\/p>\n

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

<\/p>\n

Page-305
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nis fitting always to bow down in utter self-surrender to the master of All, the
\nLord, who as the Knower dwells in Himself as name and form and offer to him the
\ntruth we have found in the Sruti and the error we have imported in it to do both
\nwith the truth and the error whatever He wills in His infinite power, love and
\nwisdom for the purpose of His eternal and infinite Lila.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-306
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


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

<\/span>The
\nSubject and Plan of the Upanishad
\n<\/span>
\n 
\n <\/span>                                  
\n<\/span><\/span>T<\/span>HE<\/span><\/b>
\nUpanishads have but one subject, without a second, and yet by the very nature of
\nthat subject they take all life and being and knowledge for their portion. Their
\ntheme is the One who is Many. It is an error which the Adwaitins have
\npopularised to suppose that all the aim of the Upanishad is to arrive at the
\nunconditioned Brahman. A very cursory examination of their contents reveals a
\nmuch wider and more complete purpose. They strive rather to develop from various
\nstandpoints the identity of the One and the Many and the relations of the
\nconditioned to the unconditioned. Granting the unconditioned One they show us
\nhow this conditioned and manifold existence consists with, stands in and is not
\nreally different from the original unity. Starting from the multitudinous world
\nthey resolve it back into a single transcendental existence, starting back from
\nthe transcendental they show us its extension within itself as phenomena. Both
\nthe multitudinous world and Unity, the manifestation and the Manifested, they
\nestablish in the unknowable Absolute of which nothing can be proposed except
\nthat in some way different from any existence conceivable to mind or
\ntransferable to the symbols of speech, beyond all conception of Time and Space
\nand Circumstance, beyond Personality and Impersonality, beyond Finite and
\nInfinity, It Is. They seek not only to tell us of the way of withdrawal from
\nlife into unconditioned existence, but also of the way to dwell here in the
\nknowledge and bliss of the Supreme. They show us the path to heaven and the true
\njoy of the earth. Dwelling on the origin of things and the secret of life and
\nmovement, they have their parts of science,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>their
\nphysics, their theory of evolution, their explanation of heredity. Proceeding
\nfrom the human soul to the Universal, they have their minutely scrupulous,
\nsubtle and profound system of psychology. Asserting the existence of
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-307
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nworlds and beings other than those that live within the compass of our waking
\nsenses, they have their cosmogony, theogony, philosophy of Nature and of mental
\nand material nature’s powers. The relations of mind to matter and soul to mind,
\nof men to the gods and the illimitable Master-Soul to the souls apparently
\nlimited in bodies, have all their authority in the Upanishads. The philosophical
\nanalysis of Sankhya, the practices of Tantra, the worship and devotion of Purana, the love of the formed Divinity and the aspiration to the Formless, the
\natomic structure of Vaisheshika and the cardinal principles of Yoga,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>whatever
\nhas been afterwards strong in development and influential on the Indian Mind,
\nfinds here its authority and sanction. Not the unmanifested and unconditioned
\nalone but the identity of the Transcendental and the phenomenal, their eternal
\nrelations, the play of their separation and the might of their union, is the
\ncommon theme of the Upanishads. They are not only for the anchorite but for the
\nhouseholder. They do not reject life but embrace it to fulfil it. They build for
\nmankind a bridge by which they can cross over from the limited to the
\nillimitable, the recurrent and transitory to the persistent and eternal, but by
\nwhich also we can recross and own again with delight and without danger that
\nonce unfathomable and irremeable abyss. They are God’s lamps that illumine the
\nstairs by which we ascend and descend no longer bound but freely and at will the
\nwhole scale of existence, finding Him there in His ineffability, concealed in
\nutter luminousness, but also here in the garden of light and shade, manifest in
\nevery being.
\n        The Upanishads have therefore a common field of thought, experience and
\nknowledge; but in that field each has its own peculiar province or corner. There
\nis nothing vague or ill – connected in their contents, nothing random in their
\nstructure. Each sets out with a certain definite thought and aim which it
\nprogressively develops and brings to a perfect culmination. The Aitereya, for
\ninstance, has for its subject the workings of the Self in the world as creator
\nand master of evolution; creation, evolution, birth, heredity, death; our
\npresent human development are the matter of its brief and pregnant sentences.
\nThe Taittiriya takes for its subject the Ananda in Brahman, the constitution of
\nthe soul in<\/p>\n

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


\n
\nPage-308<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nrelation to the Infinite Delight in Conscious Being which is God and the reality
\nof existence and reveals the way and the result, of its attainment; it develops
\nfor us our gospel of eternal Bliss. The Kena starting from the present
\nconstitution of consciousness in man, affirms the universal Brahman and teaches
\nknowledge and self-surrender to Him as the inscrutable Self and the ever-
\npresent Master. Similarly, the Isha has for its subject the nature of human life
\nand action lived and done in the light of Vedantic knowledge and supreme
\nrealisation. It is the gospel of a Divine life on earth, a consecration of
\nworks, the seed and foundation of Karmayoga.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nThe Upanishads are works of inspiration, not of reasoning; therefore we
\nshall not find in them the development of thought or the logical construction of
\nthe sentences in the Isha managed on the system of modem writers. The principle
\nof our modern writing, borrowed from the Greeks who were the first nation to
\nreplace inspiration by intellect, resembles the progress of the serpent over a
\nfield, slow, winding, insinuating, covering perfectly every inch of the ground.
\nThe literary method of the ancients resembles the steps of a Titan striding from
\nreef to reef over wide and unfathomable waters. The modern method instructs the
\nintellect, the ancient illumines the soul. In the latter also there is a perfect
\nlogical sequence but this logic demands for our understanding and expects it to
\nfollow something of the same illumination which presided at its construction. So
\nprofoundly characteristic is this difference that the Greek governs even his
\npoetry by the law and style of the logical intellect, the Indian tends to
\nsubject even his prose to the law and style of the illuminated vision. The
\nScribe <\/span>(Alternative reading: <\/i>Sage
\n )<\/span><\/span><\/font> of the Isha is an inspired poet writing of God and life in a style of
\nclear but massive and epic sublimity, lofty and grandiose, but without the
\nEuropean tendency to amplitude and period, exceedingly terse, pregnant,
\ncompactly decisive,
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>every
\nword stored with meaning and leaving behind it a thousand solemn echoes. These
\nconditions of his method of composition must be taken into full account when we
\ntry to interpret his thinking. <\/p>\n

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

       
\nThe theme which he has to develop arises from the funda-<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-309<\/p>\n

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

\n

mental
\ndoctrine of the Vedanta, sarvam khalu idam brahma, <\/i>verily, all this is
\nthe Brahman. To realise that everything of which we have separate knowledge by
\nthe limited and dividing movement of the mind and senses, is limited and
\nseparate only in appearance, but in is reality transcends its appearance and is
\na manifestation, a form in consciousness, an eidolon, a mask of <\/span>something
\nabsolute, transcendental and without limit, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nthis is <\/span>the
\nfirst necessity of true knowledge according to the early thinkers. But when we
\nhave realised it, when we know that earth is not earth except in form and idea
\nbut the Brahman, man is not man except in form and idea but the Brahman, what
\nthen? Can we live in the light of that knowledge or must we abandon life to
\npossess it? For it is obvious that all actions are done through mind with its
\ntwo great instruments of name and form and if we are to look beyond name and
\nform we must transcend mind and ignore its limitations. How can we do that and
\nstill act and live in this world as men act and live? Can we keep our eyes fixed
\non the transcendent and yet move with any ease or safety in the phenomenal? Must
\nwe not remove our thoughts from That <\/span>(Tat)
\nin order to deal with this (sarvam idam), <\/i><\/span>–<\/span>
\njust as a man <\/span>cannot
\nwalk safely on earth if he keeps his eyes fixed on the heavens but must
\nconstantly be removing his gaze from the lofty object of his contemplation? And
\nanother and deeper question arises. Is life worth living when we know the
\nBrahman? is there any joy and use in the phenomenal when we know the
\ntranscendent, in the recurrent and transient when we know the persistent and
\neternal, in the apparent when we know the real? Immense is the attraction of the
\ninfinite and unlimited, why should we take pleasure in the finite and fleeting?
\nDoes not the attraction of phenomena disappear with the advent of this supreme
\nknowledge and is it possible to busy ourselves with the phenomenal when its
\nattraction and apparent necessity are removed? Is not persistence in life caused
\nby ignorance and possible only if there is persistence in ignorance? Must we
\nnot abandon the world, if we would possess God? forsake Maya if we would become
\none in the Atman? For who can serve at the same time two masters and such
\ndifferent masters? We know the answer of Shankara, the answer of the later
\nAdwaitin, the Mayavadin; and the answer of
\n  <\/p>\n

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

\n
\nPage-310<\/p>\n

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

\n

most
\nreligious minds in India since Buddhism conquered our intellects has not been
\nsubstantially different. To flee the world and seek God sum up their attitude.
\nThere have been notable exceptions but the general trend hardly varies. The
\nmajority of the pre-Buddhistic Hindus answered the question, if I am not
\nmistaken, in a different sense and attained to a deeper consummation. They
\nanswered it in the gloss of the Isha Upanishad and the Gita; they held divine
\nlife in the Brahman here to be a possibility.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>          
\n<\/span>The supreme importance of this question is apparent. If the
\n theory of the Illusionist is true, life is an inexplicable breach of Truth,
\n an unjustifiable disturbance in the silence and stillness of the Eternal. It
\n is a freak to be corrected, a snare to be escaped from, a delusion to be removed,
\n a mighty cosmic whim and blunder. The results upon the nation which produced
\n this tremendous negation have been prodigious. India has become the land of
\n saints and ascetics, but progressively also of a decaying society and an inert
\n people, effete and helpless. The indignant denunciation of the Vishnu Purana
\n against the certain result to society of the Buddhist heresy has been fulfilled
\n in the fate of our strongly Buddhicised Hindu nation. We see increasing upon
\n it through the centuries the doom announced in the grave warnings of the Gita
\n against the consequence of inaction <\/span>
\nउत्सीदेयुरिमे लोका: … शरी्<\/font><\/span>र<\/font><\/span>यात्रापि
\n… अकर्मण: … स<\/font><\/span>ङ<\/font><\/span>करस्य
\nच कर्ता स्याम् उपहन्यामिमा: प्रजा: … (न) बुध्धिभेदं जनयेद् अज्ञानां
\nकर्मसङगिनाम्<\/font><\/span> Utsideyurime lok\u00e3<\/font>b
\n <\/i><\/span>…<\/span>
\n sariray\u00e3<\/font>tr\u00e3<\/font>pi
\n <\/i><\/span>…
\n <\/span>akarmanah<\/span>
\n <\/span><\/i>…<\/span>
\n <\/span>sankarasya
\n ca kart\u00e3<\/font> sy\u00e3<\/font>m
\n upahany\u00e3<\/font>mim\u00e3<\/font>h
\n praj\u00e3<\/font>h <\/span><\/i>…<\/span>
\n (na) buddhibhedam janayed ajn\u00e3n\u00e3<\/font>m karmasarigin\u00e3<\/font>m,
\n <\/i>etc. <\/span><\/p>\n

       
\nThe
\nreligious life of this country has divided itself into two distinct and powerful
\ntendencies, the Hinduism of the withdrawal from life which has organised itself
\nin the monastery and the hermitage and the Hinduism of social life which has
\nresolved itself
\ninto a mass of minute ceremony and unintelligent social practice. Neither is
\npure; both are afflicted with varņa-sankara, <\/i>mixture and confusion
\nof Dharmas; for the life of the monastery is stricken with the tendency towards
\na return to the cares and corruptions of life, the life of society sicklied over
\nand rendered impotent by the sense of its own illusion and worthlessness, faced
\nwith the superiority of the monastic ideal. If a man or a nation becomes
\nprofoundly convinced that this phenomenal life is an illusion, its<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-311<\/p>\n

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

\n

aims
\nand tendencies of a moment and its values all false values, you cannot expect
\neither the society or the nation to flourish here, whatever may be gained in
\nNirvana. For the nation any sustained and serious greatness of aim and
\nendeavour become impossible. To get through the years of life, to maintain the
\nbody and propagate the race, since for some unreasonable reason that is demanded
\nof us, but to get done with the business as soon as possible and escape by
\nSannyasa into the unconditioned,<\/span> –<\/span>
\n this
\nmust obviously be the sole preoccupation of man in a society governed by this
\nnegative ideal. What is chiefly needed by it is an elaborate set of rules, the
\nmore minute and rigid the better, which will determine every action of life both
\nsocial and religious, so as to save men the labour of thought and action and
\ngive them the assurance that they are doing only the nityakarma <\/i>necessary
\nto life in the body or the shastric karma <\/i>which creates the least bondage
\nfor future lives and are not heaping upon themselves the burden of long
\ncontinued existence in this terrible and inexplicable nightmare of the
\nphenomenal world. But the attachment to works remains and it tends to satisfy
\nitself by an excessive insistence on the petty field still left to it. We see
\nan exclusive preoccupation with a petty money-getting, with the mere maintenance of a family, with the sordid cares of a narrow personal existence. The
\ngreat ideals, the universalising and liberating movements which have continually
\nswept rajasic Europe and revivified it, have been more and more unknown to us in
\nthe later history of our country. We have had but one world-forget- ting impulse
\nand one world-conquering passion, – the impulse of final renunciation and the
\npassion of self-devotion to the Master of all or to a spiritual teacher. It is
\nthis habit of Bhakti that alone has saved us alive, preserving an imperishable
\ncore of strength in the midst of our weakness and darkness; it has returned upon
\nus from age to age and poured its revivifying stream always through our inert
\nmass and our petrifying society. But for all that our great fundamental mistake
\nabout life has told heavily; it has cursed our rajasic activity with continual
\n insufficiency and our sattwic tendencies with a perpetual weight of return
\nto Tamas. Andham tamab pravisanti ye .avidy\u00e3<\/font>m
\n up\u00e3<\/font>sate. Tato bhuya iva te
\ntamo ya u vidy\u00e3<\/font>y\u00e3<\/font>m
\n rat\u00e3h<\/font>. <\/i>And both these<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-312
\n<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nsentences of gloom have weighed upon us; we have divided ourselves into the
\nexclusive seekers after the unconditioned knowledge and the exclusive lingerers
\nin the phenomenal ignorance. We have made the life divine well – nigh impossible
\nin the world, possible only in remote hermitage, desolate forest or lonely
\nmountain. We have not known the harmony which the early Vedantins practised; we
\nhave given ourselves instead to a great negation which, however inspiring and
\nstrength-giving by its positive side, – for it has its sure positive side,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>to
\na few exceptional spirits, cannot be grasped by the ordinary soul even when it
\nis accepted by the ordinary intellect, is not man’s Swadharma, and must
\ntherefore tend only to destroy his strength and delight in life by imposing upon
\nhim an effort far beyond an average human capacity from which it sinks back
\ndispirited, weakened and nerve- less. No nation, not even a chosen race, can
\nwith impunity build its life on a fundamental error about the meaning of life.
\nWe are here to manifest God in our mundane existence, our business is to express
\nand formulate in phenomenal activity such truth as we can command about the
\nEternal; and in order to do that we must answer the riddle set for us of the
\nco-existence of the eternal and the phenomenal, – we must harmonise God and
\nNature,<\/span> <\/span>–
\n<\/span>on
\nperil of our destruction. The European nations have invariably decayed after a
\nfew centuries of efflorescence because they have persisted in ignorance and been
\nobstinate in Avidya. We who possess the secret but misunderstand it, have taken
\ntwo millenniums to decay but in the end we have decayed and brought ourselves to
\nthe verge of actual death and decomposition. We can preserve ourselves only by
\nreturning to the full and harmonious truth of our religion, truth of Purana and
\nTantra which we have mistranslated into a collection of fable and of magic
\nformulae, truth of Veda which we have mistranslated into the idea of vacant and
\npompous ceremonial and the truth of Vedanta which we have mistranslated into the
\ninexplicable explanation, the baffling mystery of an incomprehensible Maya. Veda
\nand Vedanta are not only the Bible of hermits or the textbook of metaphysicians
\nbut a gospel of life and a guide to life for the individual, for the nation and
\nfor all humanity.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>The Isha Upanishad stands first in the order of the Upa-<\/p>\n

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


\n
\nPage-313
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nnishads we should read as of a supreme importance for us and more almost than
\nany of the others because it sets itself with express purpose to solve that
\nfundamental difficulty of life to which since Buddha and Shankara we have
\npersisted in returning so lofty but so misleading an answer. The problem
\nresolves itself into a few primary and fundamental questions. Since we have here
\na great unconditioned unity and a great phenomenal multitudinous
\nmanifestation, what is the essential relation between this unity arid this
\nmanifestation? Given the coexistence and identity of the reality and the
\nphenomenon, where is the key to their identity? what is the principle which
\neffectively harmonises them? and wherein lies the purpose and justification of
\ntheir coexistence and apparent differentiation? The essential relation being
\nknown, what is that practical aspect of the relation upon which we can build
\nsecurely our life here in this world? Is it possible to do the ordinary works of
\nour human life upon earth consistently with the higher knowledge or in such a
\nway as to embody the soul of the divine knowledge and the divine Guna in our
\nevery action? What is that attitude towards God and the world which secures us
\nin such a possibility? Or what the rule of life which we must keep before us to
\ngovern our practice and what the practical results that flow from its
\nobservance? The present aims of phenomenal life seem always to have been the
\nsorrowful trinity of pain, death and limitation; will these practical results of
\na Vedantic life include the acceptance of this great burden and this besetting
\ndarkness, or has mankind even here, even in this body and in this society an
\nescape from death and sorrow? As human beings what is our aim here or what our
\nhope hereafter? These are the great questions that arise from the obscure soul
\nof man to the Infinite and the conflicting and partial answers to them have
\neternally perplexed humanity. But if they can once be simply, embracingly,
\nsatisfyingly answered,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\nso <\/span>as
\nto leave no true demand of the God in man upon the world unsatisfied,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>then
\nthe riddle of existence is solved. The Isha Upanishad undertakes to answer them
\nall. Setting out with a declaration of God’s purpose in manifestation for which
\nthe world was made and the golden rule of life by which each man individually
\ncan utterly consummate that divine purpose, this
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-314
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

mighty
\nSage to whom as an instructor we owe this asserts the possibility of human works
\nwithout sin, grief and stain in the light of the one spiritual attitude that is
\nconsistent with their consummation, and true knowledge of things in the
\nstrength of the golden rule by which alone a Divine life here can be maintained.
\nIn explaining and justifying these original positions he answers incidentally
\nall the other great human questions. The structure of the Upanishad is built up, the harmony of its thought worked
\nout in four successive movements, with the initial verses of each swelling
\npassage linking it in the motion of thought to the strain that precedes. Before
\nwe proceed to any work of analysis or isolate each note in order to obtain its
\nfull value, it will be convenient to have a synthetical understanding of the
\nmain ideas that run through the symphony and perceive something of the manner
\nwith which they pass into or help each other and build up by their agreement a
\ngreat and harmonious philosophy of life.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

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

\n
\nII.
\nTHE FIRST MOVEMENT
\n<\/b> <\/p>\n

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

"For
\nthe Lord all this is a habitation, yea, whatever single thing is moving in this
\nuniverse of motion; by that abandoned thou shouldst enjoy; neither do thou covet
\nany man’s possession. Doing verily works in this world thou shouldst wish to
\nlive a hundred years, for thus it is with thee and not otherwise; action
\nclingeth not to a man. Sunless truly are those worlds and enveloped in blind
\ngloom whither they passing hence arrive who are hurters of their own
\nsouls." So runs the first movement of the Upanishad.
\n        In the very beginning the Rishi strikes the master note to which all the
\nrest of the harmony vibrates, lays down the principle of which every Upanishad
\nis an exposition. God and the World
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>these
\nare the two terms of all our knowledge. From their relation we start, to their
\nrelation in union or withdrawal from union all our life and activity return.
\nWhen we have known what the world is, when we have exhausted science and sounded
\nall the fathomless void, we have still to know what<\/span>
\n<\/span>God
\nis, and
\n  
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\n
\n Page-315
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nunless we know what God is, we know nothing fundamental about the world. Tasmin
\nvijnāte sarvam vijnātam. <\/i>He being known, all the rest is known.
\nMaterial Philosophy and Science have to admit in the end that because they do
\nnot know the Transcendental, therefore they cannot be sure about the phenomenal.
\nThey can only say that there are these phenomena which represent themselves as
\nacting in these processes to the thought and senses, but whether their
\nappearance is their reality, no man can say. The end of all Science is
\nAgnosticism.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>The Rishi takes these two great terms, God, one, stable and eternal, the
\nworld shifting, multitudinous, transient. For this great flux of Nature, by
\nwhich we mean a great cosmic motion and activity, shows us nowhere a centre of
\nknowledge and intelligent control, yet its every movement denoting law, pointing
\nto harmony, speaks of a centre somewhere of knowledge and intelligent control.
\nIt shows nowhere any definite unity except that of sum and process, yet every
\nlittle portion of it the more we analyse, cries out more loudly, "There is
\nOne and not many." Every single thing in it is perishable and mutable, yet
\nfor ever its ancient and inevitable movements thunder in our ears the chant of
\nthe immutable and eternal. Prakriti, jagati, <\/i>the ever-moving with <\/span>every
\nobject, small or great a mere knot of motion, jagat, <\/i><\/span>–
\n<\/span>she
\nis one term, that which she obeys<\/span>
\n<\/span>…<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nof which she speaks to us always and yet seems always by the whirl of her
\nmotions in mind and matter to conceal, is the Lord, the Purusha. He is that One,
\nEternal and Immutable; it is He that is the centre of knowledge and eternal
\ncontrol. He is Ish, the Lord. The relation between the world and its Lord on
\nwhich the Rishi bids us fix as <\/span>I<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\none on whose constant and established realisation we can best found the thoughts
\nand activities of the Life Divine is the relation of the Inhabitant and His
\ninhabitation. For habitation by Him it was made, not only as a whole, but every
\nobject which it has built up, is building or will build in the whirl and race of
\nits eternal movement, from the god to the worm, from the sun to the atom and the
\ngrain of dust to the constellations and their group, each, small or great, mean
\nor mighty, sweet or cruel, beautiful or repulsive, is his dwelling-place and
\nthat which dwells in it is the Lord.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  
\n
\n Page-316
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nWe start then with this truth. We have seen that the problem of life involves
\ntwo essential questions; first, the essential relation between the Transcendent
\nand the phenomenal, secondly, that practical aspect of the relation on which we
\ncan build securely our life and action in the world. The Rishi starts with the
\npractical relation. This is the knowledge which we must win, the attitude which
\nhaving attained we must guard and keep. Looking around upon the multitude of
\nobjects in the world, we have to see so many houses and in each an inhabitant,
\none inhabitant only, He who has built it, also the whole and inhabits the whole,
\nits Lord. When we see the infinite ether embracing this multitude of suns and
\nsolar systems, we are not to forget or ignore what we see but we must look on
\ninfinity as a house of manifest being, and in it one great infinite indwelling
\nConsciousness, Allah, Shiva, Krishna, Narayana, God. When we see around us man
\nand animal and leaf and clod, king and beggar, philosopher and peasant, saint
\nand criminal, we rimst look on these names and forms as so many houses of being
\nand within each the same great inhabitant, Allah, Shiva, Krishna, Narayana, the
\nLord. Manhood and animality, animation and inanimation, wealth and poverty,
\nwisdom and ignorance, sainthood and criminality are the robes he wears, but the
\nwearer is One. In every man I meet I must recognise the Lord I adore. In friend
\nand stranger, in my lover and my slayer, I must see equally, since I also must
\nbe He, myself. This is the great secret of existence and the condition which we
\nmust first satisfy if we wish to live divinely and be divine
\n        This is internally our necessary attitude towards God and the world. But
\nto translate an internal attitude into the terms of action, it is our experience
\nthat a rule of life is needed. The purpose for which a householder builds
\nhimself a mansion and dwells in it can only be one; it is to live and enjoy. So
\nit is with the Purusha and Prakriti; their relation is the enjoyment of the one
\nby the other. God has made this world in His own being that He may in mind and
\nother principles live phenomenally in phenomena and enjoy this phenomenal
\nexistence even while secretly or openly He enjoys also His transcendent
\nexistence. The soul or God is Ishwara, says the Gita, bhartā, jnātā,
\nanumantā; <\/i>the Master for whose pleasure Prakriti acts, the Indweller
\nwho fills her with his
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-317<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n

 
\n being
\nand supports her actions, the Knower who watches and takes into His cognisance
\nher activities, the anumantā <\/i>who gives or withholds or after giving
\nwithdraws His consent and as He gives, continues or withdraws it, things begin,
\nendure or cease. But He is also pre-eminently bhoktā, <\/i>her enjoyer.
\nFor all this is bhogārtham <\/i>– for the sake of enjoyment. But in
\npractice we find that we are not Ish but anīś, <\/i>not master but
\nslave; not jnātā <\/i>and anumantā <\/i>but ajna, <\/i>not
\nknowing and controlling but ignorant, clouded, struggling for knowledge and
\nmastery, not an immortal enjoyer in delight but victim of sorrow, death and
\nlimitation. Limited, we struggle to enlarge ourselves and our scope; unpossessed
\nof our desire, we demand and we strive; unattaining, reacted upon by hostile
\nforces, we are full of sorrow and racked by pain. We see others possess and
\nourselves lack and we struggle to dispossess them and possess in their stead.
\nThe facts of life contradict at every turn the sublime dogma of the Vedantist.
\nWhat are we to do? To struggle with God in others and God in the world or live
\nonly for God in others and not at all for God in ourselves. <\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>In his second line the Rishi
\nutters his golden rule of life which supplies us with the only practical
\nsolution of the difficulty. To enjoy as we enjoy now is to lift to our lips a
\ncup of mixed honey and poison; to abandon the world is to contradict God’s
\npurpose by avoiding the problem instead of solving it; to sacrifice self to
\nothers is a half solution which, by itself, limits the divine lilā <\/i>and
\nstultifies our occupation of the body. The fulfilment of self both in our own
\njoy and in the joy of others and in the joy of the whole world is the object of
\nour life. How then is the problem to be solved? "By that abandoned thou
\nshouldst enjoy, do not thou covet any man’s possession." Tena, <\/i>that,
\nrefers back to yat kinca jagat. <\/i>Everything in the world has to be
\nrenounced and yet through the thing so renounced you have to
\n<\/span>enjoy,
\nbhunjithah. <\/i>*
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t*
\nAdditional note, place of insertion in MS. not indicated:<\/i>
\n    Shankara
\ntranslates "possess", not "enjoy". Essentially this makes no
\ndifference, for possession implies enjoyment. But the ordinary sense of the root
\nis to enjoy, and it is clearly the sense
\n which
\nthe Rishi intended, – for the strong collocation of the ideas of tyāga <\/i>and
\nbhoga <\/i>can no more be an accident than the significant collocation of jagati
\n<\/i>and jagat <\/i>in the preceding lines. Nowhere in this Upanishad is there
\nrandom writing,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>rather
\nevery word is made to carry its entire weight and even run over with fullness of
\nmeaning.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\n* Additional note, place of insertion in MS. not indicated:<\/i>
\n        <\/span>Dhanam means any kind of possession whatever, not only material wealth,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>neither
\nthe glory of the king, nor the wealth of the merchant, nor the temperament of
\nthe sages nor the strength of elephants, nor the swiftness of eagles. For whom
\nare we envying, whose goods are we coveting? Verily, our own goods. If we
\nrealise divine unity, we can enjoy them as perfectly in another’s experience as
\nin our own.\u00b9<\/font>… <\/span>
\n <\/span> Moreover we must
\nrealise the Lord in others as one with Him in ourselves. Then we should not need
\nto covet any man’s possessions. "Do not covet," says the Sage,
\n"the possession of any man whomsoever."<\/span> <\/p>\n

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


\n
\n\u00b9<\/font>
\nHere three lines are unreadable.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-318
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

By
\nthat you have to enjoy, for the world and all in it is meant for the purpose of
\nenjoyment. It is the means, movement and medium created by the Lord for the
\npurpose, but by that abandoned, by that renounced. You have not to cast the
\nworld and its objects themselves away from you, for then you defeat your own
\nobject. It is a deeper, a truer renunciation that is asked of us. In order to
\nmake his meaning perfectly clear the Rishi adds "Do not covet". * This
\nthen is the renunciation demanded, not the renunciation of the thing itself but
\nthe renunciation of the attachment, the craving, the demand, – when that is
\nrenounced, then only is enjoyment possible, then only can the bitterness be cast
\nout of the cup and only the pure honey remain. For the reason that we are anīś
\n<\/i>is because we demand. He who is Lord and Master does not struggle and
\ndemand; he does not need even to command: for Prakriti knows His will and
\nhastens to obey it, If we would live divinely, we must realise the Lord in
\nourselves, we must have sadharmya <\/i>with Him and be as He. What the Lord
\nwills for His līlā <\/i>in this habitation, Prakriti will bring;
\nwhat Prakriti brings,
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-319
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

for
\nour līlā, <\/i>is what the Lord wills. That which struggles in us,
\ncraves, fights, covets, struggles; weeps, is not the pure Self but the mind, –
\nwhich as we shall find weeps and struggles because ensnared in limitations it
\ndoes not understand,<\/span> <\/span>–
\nnot Ish, but jagat, <\/i><\/span>the
\nmovement, the whirl, one eddy in the shifting and struggling movement and clash
\nof forces which we call Prakriti. In this great knowledge and its practice we
\ncan become desireless and <\/span>calm,
\naugust, joyous, free from anxiety, pain, grief,<\/span>
\nsama, <\/i><\/span>udāsīna,
\n<\/span><\/i>yet
\nfull of delight in all that we have in Prakriti,- puruşah prakrtisthah, <\/i>say,
\nsee and do. *
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t*
\nAdditional note, place of insertion in MS. not indicated:<\/p>\n

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

       
\nPractically,
\ntherefore, the renunciation demanded of us is the renunciation by the lower,
\nunreal and incomplete self, mind, senses, vitality, intellect, will, egoism of
\nall that they are and seek to our real, complete and transcendental self, the
\nLord. And that renunciation we make sure by substituting another demand, the
\ndemand to be rid of all these things and released from the fulfilment of His
\ncosmic purpose, but in order the better to fulfil His purpose and enjoy Him
\nutterly in His movement, in all experience and all action that He in us and
\nthrough us is manifesting and perfecting. For that which we have to enjoy is not
\nonly Isha but jagat,<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>for
\nas we shall see both are one Brahman and by enjoying Him entirely we come to
\nenjoy all His movement, since He is here as the Lord of His own movement. For
\nthis reason the word Isha has been selected as the fundamental relation of God
\nto ourselves and the world,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\nmaster of all creation and His own universe, the Lord who for His purposes has
\nmade and governs the world, – for in this relation of Lord He is inseparable
\nfrom His movement. It is a relation that depends on the existence and play of
\nthe world of which He is the ruler and master. Envisaging the ruler, we envisage
\nthat which He rules, the habitation for the sake of the inhabitant, indeed, but
\nstill the habitation. We get therefore in this, first verse of the Upanishad the
\nfoundations of the great principle of activity with renunciation with which the
\nteaching of the Gita begins and the still greater principle of ātmasamarpaņa
\n<\/i>or entire surrender to God, the uttamam rahasyam, <\/i>with which it
\nculminates. We get
\n the
\nreason and spirit of the command to Arjuna from which all the moral teaching of
\nthe Gita starts and to which it returns,
\n<\/span>jitvā
\n<\/span>śatrūn<\/span>
\nbhu\u00f1kşva rājyam samŗddham, <\/span><\/i>the
\ncommand of activity, the command of enjoyment, <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>but
\nactivity for God only, <\/span>yaj\u00f1ārtham,
\n<\/span><\/i>without ahankāra,
\n<\/i>enjoyment in God only, mayi sannyasya, <\/i>without desire or attachment,
\nneither demanding <\/span>what<\/span>
\n<\/span>He
\ndoes not like for Himself in us nor rejecting what He <\/span>is
\nhere to enjoy, whether the enjoyment be of victory or defeat, 
\n<\/span><\/span>of
\nthe patched loin cloth of the beggar or the emperor’s <\/span>imperial
\ncrown.
\n  <\/p>\n

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

\nPage-320
\n <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Even <\/span>those
\nwho not yet attaining follow faithfully this law <\/span>and
\nthis ideal, who live in the knowledge of the One ill the Many, embracing like
\nBrahman all being in themselves, rejecting nothing, preferring nothing, bearing
\neverything, effecting every<\/span>thing,
\ninfinite in calm by renunciation, infinite in might and bliss by enjoyment, they
\nare men perfected, they are the siddhas.<\/p>\n

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

        
\n<\/span>Immediately the great recurring problem presents itself of works
\n<\/span>and
\nthe cessation from works, – the ancient crux which it <\/span>is
\nso easy to get rid of by a trenchant act of logic, so hard to solve in harmony
\nwith the actual facts of existence. To the ordinary mind action seems impossible
\nand purposeless without desire, to the logical mind it seems inevitable that the
\nmore one penetrates into the supreme calm the farther one must move from all
\nimpulse to action, – that pravŗtti <\/i>and nivŗtti, śama <\/i>and
\nkarma <\/i>are eternally opposed. Shankara, therefore, deciding all things by
\nthe triumphant and inexorable logic insists that action is inconsistent with the
\nstate divine. In practice the seeker after perfection finds that calm,
\nrenunciation, joy, peace, seem only to be secure when one rests motionlessly
\nestablished in the impersonal Brahman; freedom of desire is only easy by freedom
\nfrom activity. <\/span>Does<\/span>
\n<\/span>not
\nthen enjoyment without demand or craving, involve en<\/span>joyment
\nseated, inactive, accepting whatever, true [?] enjoyment by the thing 
\n<\/span>renounced mean enjoyment of the renunciation not of the thing itself? Is
\nit not the enjoyment of the eremite, eremite in <\/span>soul
\nif not in body, the spectator watching the action of the world <\/span>but
\nhimself no part of it, that is alone possible to the desireless mind? And even
\nif it is not the sole possible enjoyment, is it not
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

the
\nsuperior and preferable? Who that has self-enjoyment in the soul would
\ncondescend to the enjoyment of external objects? Or if he condescended it is the
\ngreater bliss of other worlds that would attract him and not the broken shreds
\nwhich are all this world’s joys, the hampered fulfilments which are all this
\nworld’s actualisation of infinite possibility.
\n        To all these ancient questions the reply of the Upanishad is categorical,
\nexplicit, unflinching. "Doing verily works here one should wish to live a
\nhundred years; thus it is with thee and it is not otherwise than this: action
\ncleaveth not to a man:" It is not surprising that the great Shankara with
\nhis legacy of Buddhistic pessimism, his rejection of action, his sense of the
\nnullity of the world, faced by this massive and tremendous asseveration should
\nhave put it aside by his favourite device of devoting it to the service of
\nunenlightened minds although it occurs apparently as an integral portion of the
\nargument and there is not a hint or a trace of its being intended as a
\ncontradiction or qualification of the main teaching, although too this
\ninterpretation is stultified both by the run of the two lines and by the
\nimmediate occurrence of the next verse, – but every incongruity and
\nimpossibility is to be accepted rather than suffer such an assertion to stand as
\nthe teaching of the Sruti. Nor is it surprising that Shankara’s greatest
\nfollower Vedaranya, feeling perhaps that his master’s dealings with the text in
\nthe commentary were of the most arbitrary and violent, should have preferred to
\nexclude the Isha from his
\n<\/span>list
\nof authoritative Upanishads <\/span>…<\/span>
\n<\/span>uncommitted
\nto any previous <\/span>theory,
\nthe Sloka offers no difficulty but is rather an integral and most illuminating
\nstep in the development of a great and liberating doctrine.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nKurvanneva, says the Rishi, having his eye on the great dispute: Thou
\nshalt do works and not abstain from doing them and the works are the works of
\nthis material world, those that are to be done iha, <\/i>here, in this life
\nand body. Doing his works in this world a man shall be joyously willing to live
\nthe full span of years allowed to the mortal body. If he grows weary, if he
\nseeks to abridge it, if he has haste in his soul for the side beyond death, he
\nis not yet an enlightened soul, not yet divine. With this great admission the
\nVedanta can no longer be a mere ascetic<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-322<\/p>\n

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

\n


\ngospel Life, <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>full
\nand unabridged in its duration,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>fun
\nand <\/span>uncontracted
\nin its activity is accepted, welcomed, consecrated to divine use. And the Rishi
\naffirms his reason for the acceptance,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>because
\nso it is with thee and it is not otherwise than <\/span>this.
\nBecause in other words this is the law of our being and this is the will of the
\nEternal. No man, as the Gita clearly teaches, can abstain from works, for even
\nthe state of withdrawal of the ascetic, even the self-collected existence of the
\nsilent Yogin is an act and an act of tremendous effect and profoundest import.
\nAs long as we are in manifest existence, so long we are in the jagatī <\/i>using,
\ninfluencing and impressing ourselves on the jagat, <\/i>and we cannot escape
\nfrom the necessity self-imposed on Himself by God within us. And it is so
\nimposed for the reason already stated because He has made this world for His
\nhabitation and as a means for His enjoyment and a thing for His delight,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nthis His great Will and purpose no man can be allowed to frustrate. The wise
\nmind, the illumined soul knowing this truth makes no vain attempt 10 square this
\ncircle; he accepts that which God intends fully and frankly and only seeks the
\nbest way to fulfil God in this existence which he occupies on the way to
\nanother. For he knows that bondage and freedom are states of the outer mind, not
\nof the inner spirit; for there is none free and none bound, none panting after
\nliberation and none fleeing from bon<\/span>dage
\n<\/span>but
\nonly the Eternal rejoicing secretly or manifestly in <\/span>His
\ninnumerable habitations.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nBut in that case we are eternally bound by the chain of our works, nailed
\nhelplessly to the wheel of Karma? Not so; for the wheel of Karma is an error and
\nthe chain of our works is a grand illusion. "Action clingeth not to a
\nman." Bondage is not the result of works, and liberation is not the result
\nof cessation of works. Bondage is a state of the mind; liberation is another
\nstate of the mind. When through the principle of desire in the mind, the soul,
\nthe Ish, the Lord, mixes Himself up in the whirl of Prakriti, he sees himself in
\nmental consciousness as if carried forward in the stream of causality; he seems
\nto the mind in him to be bound by the effects of his works; when he relinquishes
\n<\/span>desire, then he
\nrecovers his lordship, <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>which
\nin the higher being he has never lost, – and appears, to himself what he has
\nalways<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-323<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nbeen in reality, free in his being, svarāt, samrat. <\/i>It follows then
\nthat the way to liberate oneself is not to renounce works but to rise from mind
\nto supra-mind, from the consciousness of mental being, sambhava, <\/i>to the
\nconsciousness of self-being, svayambhava <\/i>or asambhūti. <\/i>It is
\nnecessary to remember oneself but it is not necessary to forget phenomena. For
\naction is the movement of Prakriti and the chain of action is nothing more
\nterrible or mystic than the relation of cause and effect. That chain does not
\nbind the Master; action becomes no stain on the soul. The works of the liberated
\nman produce an effect, indeed, but on the stream of Prakriti, not on the soul
\nwhich is above its action and not under it, uses action- and is not victimised
\nby it, determines action and is not determined by it. But if action in its
\nnature bound the soul, then freedom here would be impossible. It does not and
\ncan- not; the soul allows mind to mix itself up with its works, buddhir
\nlipyate, <\/i>but the action does not adhere to the soul, na karma lipyate
\nnare. <\/i>The fear of action is Maya; the impossibility of combining action with
\ncalm and renunciation is a false samskāra. <\/i>Nivritti or calm is the
\neternal state and very nature of the soul, Pravritti is -in manifestation, the
\neternal state and very nature of
\nPrakriti. Their coexistence and harmony is not only possible <\/i>but it is
\nthe secret of the world obscured only by ignorance in the mind. The enemy
\ntherefore is not action but ignorance; not works bind us but works done in the
\nstate of ignorance give us the illusion of bondage. The idea of separateness of
\nlimitation with its fruit of desire, internal struggle, disappointment, grief,
\npain, – this alone is our stumbling-block. Abolish it, see God alone everywhere
\nand all difficulty disappears. Nivritti and Pravritti, tyāga <\/i>and bhoga
\n<\/i>move harmoniously to the perfect fulfilment of the divine purpose.
\n        These important enunciations completed, the Sage proceeds to a minor but
\nnot inessential effect of the knowledge he is developing, – the life after this
\none which we have to use here, our progress into worlds beyond. The gati, <\/i>trans-mortal
\njourney or destination of the soul, occupied profoundly the Vedantic mind as it
\nhas occupied humanity at all times except in its brief periods of entire
\nmaterialistic this-worldliness. As yet the Sage does not proceed to any positive
\nstatement, but by a negative movement<\/p>\n

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


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

\n

he
\nindicates the importance of the question. Our life here is only one circumstance
\nin our progress,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\nfundamental circumstance, indeed, since earth is the Pratistha or pedestal of
\nour consciousness in material being,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>but
\nstill the fundamental is not the final, the Pratistha is not the consummation
\nbut only the means to the consummation. It is the first step in our journey, the
\ninitial movement in the triple stride of Vishnu. There is beyond it a second
\nstep from which we constantly return till we are ready here for the third, for
\nthe consummation. Our future state depends on our fullness at the time of our
\npassage, on our harmonious progress towards divine being. That is the hidden
\nthing in us which <\/span>.<\/span>
\n<\/span>we
\nhave to develop. We are to become ātmavān, <\/i>to possess our <\/span>divine
\nbeing, to disengage and fulfil our real self. Those who fall from this
\ndevelopment, who turn aside from it are self-hurters or to take the full
\nvigorous sense of the word used, self-slayers. Not that God in us can be slain,
\nfor death of the soul is impossible, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nbut there may be temporary perdition of the apparent divine <\/span>by
\nthe murder of its self-expression and to this we may arrive either by wilfulness
\nof passion or by intellectual wilfulness. Instead of becoming gods, suras, <\/i>images
\nof the Most High, the Paratpara Purusha in His effulgent glory, we may become
\nmisrepresentations of Him, false because distorted images, distorted by
\nimperfection, distorted by one-sidedness, Titans, Asuras or else souls
\nunillumined by the- sun of Knowledge and if illumined at all then only by false
\nlights which eventually become eclipsed in darkness. Our after-state will be
\nAsurya, sunless, unillumined. To what worlds do we then journey?<\/p>\n

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

       
\nThe ordinary reading of the first word in the third verse of the
\nUpanishad, is asurya, <\/i>Titanic, but there is a possible variation asūrya,
\n<\/i>sunless and the substantial sense resulting from both readings is the same,
\nbut the colour given will be different. The Titans or Asuras of the Veda are
\nsouls of mere indisciplined might. They are those who found themselves not on
\nlight and calm but on asu, <\/i>the vital force and might which is the basis
\nof all energetic and impetuous feeling and action. The self-willed ones, who
\nfrom temperamental passion reck themselves by the furious pursuit in desire of a
\nfalse object or from intellectual passion reck themselves by the blind pursuit
\nin belief of a false<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span>
\nPage-325<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nidea, they follow a path because it is its own from Titanical attachment, from
\nan immense though possibly lofty egoism. Mole ruit sua. <\/i>They fall by
\ntheir own mass, they collapse by excess of greatness. They need not be ignoble
\nsouls, but may even seem sometimes more noble than the gods and their victorious
\nlegions. When they hack and hew at the god within them, it may be in tremendous
\ndevotion to a principle, when they cloud and torture themselves till they
\nstumble forward into misery and night; when they become demoniac in nature, it
\nmay be in furious and hungry insistence on a great aspiration. They may be
\ngrandiosely mighty like Hiranyakashipu, ostentatiously large- hearted like Bali,
\nfiercely self-righteous like the younger Prahlada, but they fall whether great
\nor petty, noble or ignoble, and in their fall they are thrust down by Vishnu to
\nPatala, to the worlds of delusion and shadow, or of impenetrable gloom, because
\nthey have used the heart or intellect to serve passion and ignorance, enslaved
\nthe spiritual to the material and vital elements and subordinated the man in
\nthem to the Naga, the serpent. The Naga is the symbol of the mysterious
\nearth-bound force in man. Wisest he of the beasts of the field, but still a
\nbeast of the field, not the winged Garuda revered to be the upbearer of
\ndivinity, who opens his vans to the sunlight and soars to the highest seat of
\nVishnu. If we read asurya <\/i>we shall then have to translate 
\n<\/span>"Verily it is to the worlds of the Titans, worlds enveloped in blind
\ngloom that they after passing hence resort who are self-slayers." Otherwise
\nit is the worlds farthest removed from the Sun, our symbol and principle of
\ndivine Knowledge. There are materialised states of darkness in the conscious
\nbeing in which they must work out the bewilderment and confusion they have
\nfastened on themselves by an obstinate persistence in self-will and ignorance.
\nIn either case the intention of the Sage is evident from the later passages of
\nthis Upanishad. Whether We follow exclusively after Avidya or exclusively after
\nVidya we go equally astray, exclusiveness means ignorance, exclusiveness means
\nconfusion, division of the indivisible Brahman, and persistence in such error is
\nan obstinacy fatal to the, soul in its immediate prospects. Temporarily, –
\nbecause eternal perdition is impossible, – it fails to cross successfully over
\ndeath and enters into trans-mortal dark-<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-326<\/p>\n

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

\n

ness.
\nBut those who accept the unity of the Brahman, Who see in Vidya and Avidya only vyavahara,
\n<\/i>light and shadow reflected in Him for the use of self-expression in
\nphenomena, journey onwards in the way of their self-fulfilment and are lifted by
\nall- purifying Agni to the regions of the Sun where they possess their perfect
\noneness and receive their consummate felicity. With this warning (for the
\npromise comes afterward) closes the first movement of the Upanishad.<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


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

\n

\n
\nIII<\/b><\/p>\n

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

God
\nthen and the world are before us, the Inhabitant to be recognised as the Lord of
\nthings even when He appears other- wise and His habitation to be regarded merely
\nas a movement set going by Him for phenomenal purposes, for a stream of form and
\naction by which He can enjoy His own conditioned being, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nGod and the world are to be possessed by a pure and infinite <\/span>enjoyment,
\nAnanda, or bliss which depends on a perfect renunciation not of the world, but
\nof the limited struggle and the <\/span>ignorant
\nattachment, of the demand and the groping. <\/span>–<\/span>
\nThese <\/span>[are?]
\nimperfect movements to be replaced by a mighty calm and a divine satisfaction.
\nWe are not to renounce works, which do not and cannot stain the soul or bind it,
\nbut to be liberated through acceptance of works in a luminous knowledge of their
\ndivine use and nature; not mutilation of life is to be our ideal but fulfilment
\nthrough life of the intention of the Most High in His phenomenal manifestation.
\nIf we mutilate life through self- will and ignorance, we imprison ourselves
\nafter death in worlds of confusion and darkness and here like a ship befogged
\nand astray in a dense sea of mists are hindered and long-delayed in our divine
\nvoyage.
\n        But now further questions arise. Stated by itself and without development
\nor qualification, the first line of this great teaching, although fundamental to
\nthe practical living of the divine life and the sufficient and right attitude
\nfor its fulfilment, might yet like all trenchant assertions, too positively and
\nexclusively taken, lead us into a profound error and misunderstanding.<\/p>\n

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


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

\n


\nGod and the World, the Movement and the Dweller in the Movement, that is the
\npractical relation between the unconditioned and the phenomenal which we have to
\naccept as the inalterable basis of our rule of right living. But this general
\nmovement, with the particular knots in it of apparent movement and appa<\/span>rent
\nstatus which we call formations or objects, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nwhat is it? <\/span>Movement
\nof Mahat or movement of what nature,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\nreal or un<\/span>real?
\nAnd the -inhabitant, is He different from His habitation? If He is different and
\nthe habitation is real, what becomes of the universal unity Vedanta teaches and
\nhow are we not handed over to duality and a fundamental disparity, if not a
\nfundamental opposition? It is to remove this possible misunderstanding that the
\nRishi now proceeds to a completer though not yet entirely complete statement of
\nuniversal existence. He has stated the practical relation, he now states the
\nessential relation. It amounts in effect to the fundamental tenet of Vedanta in
\nthe Upanishads: sarvam khalu idam brahma. <\/i>All this, in truth, is the
\nBrahman. He says, "There is One who unmoving is swifter than mind, neither
\nhave the gods reached It for it goes always in front. Standing, it outstrips
\nothers as they run. In it Matariswan establishes activity. That moves and that
\ndoes not move, that is far and the same that is verily near; That is within all
\nthis, the same that is outside all this."
\n        Not only the stable but the unstable; not only the constant, but the
\nrecurrent; not only the Inhabitant but His habitation; not only Purusha but
\nPrakriti. It is ekam, <\/i>not a number [of] different beings, as in the dogma
\nof the Sankhyas, but One being, not two separate categories, the real and the
\nunreal, Brahman and Maya, but only One, the Brahman. That which moves not is the
\nBrahman but also that which moves is the Brahman, not merely Maya, not merely a
\nbase and ugly dream. We know already by the first verse that the innumerable
\ninhabitants of this moving universe are not essentially many, but are One Soul
\ndisporting in many bodies or not really disporting but supporting the multiform
\nplay of Prakriti; ekah, acalah, sanātanah, <\/i>in the solemn language of
\nthe Gita, one, motionless, without beginning or end. He is this man and that
\nwoman, yonder ancient leaning on his staff, this blue-winged bird, that
\nscarlet-winged. But now we
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

learn
\nthat also the name and form and property, the manhood and the womanhood, the age
\nand the youth, the blueness and the scarlet hue, the staff, the attitude of
\nleaning, the bird, the wing, all is the Brahman. The Inhabitant is not different
\nfrom His habitation.
\n        This is a difficult point for the ordinary mind to grasp intellectually;
\nit is difficult even for minds not ordinary, really to grasp the intellectual
\nconception, and take it into the soul and realise it there in feeling and
\nconsciousness. Even the greatest materialist in theory regards himself in his
\nfeelings as a mind or a soul and is aware of a gulf between himself and the
\ninanimate. His opinions contradict his heart’s consciousness. In Yoga also
\none-of our first realisations is the separateness of the body, by the practical
\nremoval of the dehātma-buddhi, <\/i>– a sensation the psychology of which
\nis not well understood and being misunderstood gives rise to many errors. Hence
\nwe have a proneness to regard the inanimate as undivine, the material as gross
\nand even foul and the objective as unreal, – as if all this were not merely
\narrangement and vyavahāra, <\/i>as if the material was not also Atman and
\nspirit, Brahman equally present in clod and man, body
\n<\/span>and
\nsoul, thought and action, as if all were not essentially <\/span>equal
\nin their divinity, and apparently so diverse merely because of the infinite
\nvariation of form and Guna! By this cardinal error the intellectual man comes to
\ndespise and neglect the body, the religious man to treat the body and often the
\nintellect also as an impediment, praising the heart only, the spiritual
\ncontemplative man to aim at casting out both mind and body and banishing from
\nhim the very thought and perception of the objective. All are ruled or driven by
\nthis dim sensation or clear belief that the subjective soul seated within them
\nalone is God, alone the Self, that the objective movement of Spirit seems to the
\nmovement of mind and senses to ‘be outside and apart from us is not God, and is
\ntherefore worthless and evil. They all make the essential error of duality from
\nwhich eventually every knot of ignorance and confusion arises. They all insist
\non a mental attitude to things, an attitude of analysis, separation and logical
\ndistinction instead of rising beyond mind-limitations and mind- methods to the
\ntranscendent. It is for this reason, to disengage
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


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

\n


\nthis error that the Sage insists on his ekam, <\/i>in the neuter,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\nnot
\n<\/span>only
\nis He divine Sa, God regarding Himself subjectively as universal cognisant
\nPersonality, but That is divine Tat, Brahman realising Himself by identity both
\nbeyond and in and as all phenomenal existences, at will and coexistently
\ntranscendental and phenomenal, conditioned and unconditioned, One in the One and
\nOne in the many.
\n        <\/span>Brahman is spoken of here, not as the Absolute Para- Brahman outside all
\nrelation to life and phenomena, for to the unknowable utterness of Para-Brahman
\nsuch phrases as "swifter than the mind" or "outrunning the
\ngods" or "going in their front" cannot be applied, – It is the
\nBrahman as we see It in Its relation to phenomena, God in the world, conditioned
\nto our awareness in vyavahāra, <\/i>unconditioned to our awareness in paramārtha,
\n<\/i>which is the subject of this and the following Sloka. * That is the One and
\nsole Existence which, though indeed It does not move, is swifter than the mind
\nand therefore the Gods cannot attain to It because It goes always in front. For
\nthe mind served by the senses is the instrument which men use to grasp and
\nmeasure the world and the Gods are the presiding powers of all mental and
\nphysical functions, but neither the mind nor the senses, neither sensation nor
\nreason can attain to the Brahman. It always goes far in front of any swiftest
\nagency by which we can pursue it.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nWhat is the precise significance of this imagery? The intention can only
\nbe understood if we remember the nature of mental action upon which such
\nenormous stress is here laid and the limitations of that action. Mind always
\nstarts from a point, the thinker or the object of thought; it works in space or
\ntime on particular objects or groups of objects or at most on the <\/span>…
\nof <\/span>all objects known.
\nIt can only seek to know the movement and process of the world, but of that
\nwhich is beyond and behind<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

*
\nAdditional passage, place of insertion in MS. not indicated:<\/p>\n

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

       
\nOf
\nthe Absolute all we can say is: "It is not that, it is not that," it
\nis unknowable in Itself, knowable only in our existence here, or in relation to
\nour existence here, not to be characterised by any epithet, description or
\nsuggestion.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/span>
\n Page-330
\n  <\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nmovement and process, what can it know? At most it can feel or be told that He
\nexists, He is eternal and ineffable. Ordinarily, it can only go as far back as
\nitself and say, "I, mind, am He; because I think, I am; because I am and
\nthink, things are",<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\n<\/span>propositions
\nwhich as the expression of a relative and inter- mediate fact have their
\nvalidity but are as an universal and ultimate statement untrue. But even the
\nmovement of God in nature is too vast and swift for the mind to grasp. It
\ncatches at and grasps at petty surrounding eddies or even great masses of
\nmovements at a little distance; it seizes, arranges to itself in its own terms
\nof vision and classes them triumphantly as ultimate laws<\/span>
\n<\/span>of
\nNature. But who has sailed all these waters or can tell <\/span>where,
\nif at all, they end? Who shall say that those laws are not bye-laws only, or the
\ncharter and constitution of a single dependency only or province? Follow God to
\nthe utmost confines of observable space,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\nHe is sure to be whirling universes into being <\/span>far
\nin front. Pursue Him into the deepest experimentable recesses of being, there
\nare unguessed universes of consciousness behind to which you have no present
\naccess. Infinity is only one of His aspects but the very nature of Infinity is
\nthat the mind cannot grasp it, though the reason deduces it. Who measured Space?
\nCan any vastest Mind find out when Things began or know when and how they shall
\nend? Nay, there may be near to us universes of another Time, Space and
\narrangement to which our material dimensions and mind and sense limitations
\nforbid us an entrance. Even here who has traced out the purpose of creation or
\nsystematised the ways of Providence? Of a hundred things that happen immediately
\naround us, can we even in a dozen instances tell more than fragmentarily and at
\na hazard why the thing has happened, to what end it endured, of what ordering of
\nthings it was a piece and movement? Yet, as <\/i>the eye opens to the inner-
\nmost secret of things, one realises that an infinite Wisdom presides over the
\nsmallest happening and eternally links today’s <\/span>trifling
\naction to the grandiose movement of the centuries,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\n<\/span>nay,
\nthat every thought which passes through our minds however weak, trivial or
\nabsurd, has its mark, in the depths of itself its purpose, even its necessity.
\nBut of all this how much can the gods of mind, reason and sense ascertain? They
\nrun, they gallop,
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>Page-331
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nthey outstrip the arrow, the bullet, the lightning, the meteor, all material
\nswiftnesses, but That though it moves not, travels still in front. Yes, even
\nwhen we think we are in front of Him, have followed His ways, classified His
\nlaws, understood existence, ascertained and determined the future by the past,
\nsuddenly we stumble and come across a new landmark or footprint which shows
\nwhere That has passed; a touch of His finger surprises us as He speeds past and
\nour theories crumble, our knowledge is turned into foolishness, our
\nenlightenment becomes the laughing- stock of better enlightened generations. It,
\nstanding, outstrips others as they run. Yet, all the time, He had no need to
\nmove. Already God was in front of us, as He is behind, above, below, on every
\nside. Our latest knowledge will always be a candle burning in the mists of the
\nnight, our discoveries pebbles picked up on the shore of a boundless ocean. Not
\nonly can we not know That in all Its absolute, transcendent reality, but we
\ncannot know It in all the vastness of Its phenomenal workings. Much we may yet
\nknow by the mind, but not all, not more than a corner or a system. All that we
\ncan do is to seek the boundless Lord of a boundless Universe and here and
\nelsewhere to know each habitation and recognise its Inhabitant. The dweller is
\ndivine, but the house too divine, a temple of God, sukrtam, <\/i>well-built,
\ndelightful and <\/span>holy, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nthe God Himself manifested as name and form.
\n        <\/span>That
\nstands really and does not run. What then is the movement by which He outstrips
\notl1ers or is far in front? The clue is given in the expression "swifter
\nthan mind". It is the mind that runs in us but what is it that runs swifter
\nthan mind, just as mind runs swifter than any material force? Something of which
\nmind and matter are lower movements, – that which is the essence of the jagatī,
\n<\/i>is the essential conscious being of which mind, life and matter are
\nparticular currents. This conscious being is That, <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\nsole Reality which assumes so many appearances. It does not run, for where
\nshould it run when it does not exist in time and space, but time and space exist
\nin the Brahman. All things are created in God’s consciousness which has no more
\nto move than a man has to move when he follows a particular train of thought. He
\nwho was before Time is still just what He was after Time is <\/span>finished,
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\ndrawn back, that is to say, into supratemporal con-
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


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

\n

sciousness.<\/span>
\n<\/span>He
\nhas not moved in His being an inch, He has not <\/span>changed
\nin His being by the shadow of a shadow. He is still ekah, acalah, sanātanah),
\n<\/i>one, motionless, without change or end. This side of the Sun or that side of
\nLyra are to Him one point or rather no point at all. Space is a symbol into
\nwhich Thought has translated an arrangement in supraspatial Consciousness. Time
\nand Causality are not different. Therefore it appears that both jagatī <\/i>and
\njagat <\/i>are no movement of matter or material force, (that is expressly
\nexcluded in the First verse) nor of mind (that is expressly excluded here) but
\nof<\/span> <\/span>…<\/span>
\n<\/span>conscious
\nbeing in itself, a mysterious activity the essence of which is limitless and
\nabsolute Awareness, not expressible in language, but translated in the symbols
\nof our Thought here into a movement in Time, Space and Causality. This universal
\ntenet of Vedanta, although not expressly stated, is yet implied in the Rishi’s
\nthought and follows inevitably from his expression. He could very well in his
\nage and surroundings take it for granted, but we have to state <\/span>it
\nexplicitly, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nfor unless it is assumed, the second movement <\/span>of
\nthe Sage’s thought cannot be entirely understood by us. It is, indeed, the
\nfoundation of all Vedantic thinking.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nWe can now grasp what the Sage intends when he says, tad ejati
\ntannaijati. <\/i>Tad or That, the suggestive vague name for the Brahman, whether
\nimpersonal or above personality or impersonality, moves and That does not move.
\nIt moves or appears to move,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\nas action of Prakriti and the corresponding Knowledge <\/span>in
\nPurusha,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>in
\nthe conception of Time, Space and Causality; it does not move in reality,
\nbecause these are mere symbols, conceptual translations of the actual truth, and
\nmovement itself is only such a symbol. The Habitation is the creation of a
\nformative movement of Prakriti, who is indeed always recurrent in her doings
\nbecause she and her ways are eternal, but also always mutable and inconstant
\nbecause she works in Time, Space and Causality, terms of perception which have
\nno meaning except as measures of movement or progression from one moment to
\nanother, one point to another, one state or event to another. Succession and
\ntherefore change is the fundamental law of God’s ideative and formative activity
\nin the terms of these three great symbols. But the Inhabitant is one and
\nconstant, because
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-333<\/p>\n

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

\n

He
\nis beyond Time and Space, surrounded apparently by the whirl of Prakriti, to the
\nignorant tossed about in it, He in reality exists both as its continent and
\ncreator as well as its informing soul, master and guide. That therefore in
\nItself is unmoving, immutable and eternal, in Its movement in<\/span>
\n<\/span>…
\nTime-movement, <\/span>Space-movement,
\nCausation-movement (although as we shall see ordered and governed by durable
\npatterns or general processes of being) continues, which ensures recurrence,
\nThat is yet mobile, active, inconstant and fleeting from one state or form to
\nanother. All here passes out of our view, sooner or later, except the
\nInhabitant, the eternal Existence-Consciousness, Him we see seated for ever. On
\nHim in the flux of things we have our sure foundation. <\/p>\n

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

       
\nIn this Brahman Matariswan sets activity. <\/span>Tasmin
\napo mātarisvā dadhāti. <\/span>Tasmin,
\n<\/span><\/i>in
\nthe containing stable and fulfilling <\/span>active
\nBrahman already described.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Apas<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>is work of 
\n<\/span>activity <\/span>(Latin:
\nopus), <\/i>the Vedic word being used in preference to karmāņi <\/i>because
\nkarmāņi <\/i>expresses individual actions and it is here the general
\nuniverse-activity of Brahman that is intended, not indeed all Prakriti but that
\nwhich is manifest as work, productive and creative, the movement of the sun and
\nstar, the growth of the tree, the flowing of the waters, the progress of life in
\nall its multitude; Matariswan, he that rests in the matrix of things, that is to
\nsay, Vayu, the motional or first energetic principle of Nature founded in ākāśa,
\n<\/i>the static principle of extension which is the eternal matrix of things,
\nworking in it as Prana, the universal life-activity, dadhāti, <\/i>(Gr. tithēsi)
\n<\/i>establishes, sets in its place and manages. For the root dhā <\/i>has
\nalways the idea of arrangement, management, working out of things.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nThe reason for introducing this final and more limiting idea about the
\nBrahman as the culminating phrase of this Sloka, is the Sage’s intention to
\nemphasise the divineness of that particular movement of Prakriti which is the
\nbasis of karmāņi, <\/i>human action in the mortal life. Matariswan
\nis the energy of God in Prakriti which enters into, as into a womb or matrix (mātar),
\n<\/i>is first concealed in, – as a child in the womb (Ma) and then emerges out of
\nthe static condition of extension, represented to our senses in matter as ether.
\nIt emerges in the motional prin-<\/p>\n

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

 
\n<\/span>
\nPage-334<\/p>\n

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

\n

ciple
\nof expansion and c<\/font>ontraction represented to the senses as the gaseous state,
\nspecially called by us therefore Vayu, which by disturbing the even
\nself-contained vibration (śabda) <\/i>of the ether, produces vibratory
\nwaves (kşobha), <\/i>generates action and re- action (rajas) <\/i>on
\nwhich the ether behind is continually impressing a tendency to equipoise (sattva),
\n<\/i>the failure of which is the only cause of disintegration of movement (death,
\nmŗtyu, tamoguņa) <\/i>and creates contact (sparśa) <\/i>which
\nis the basis of mental and material sensation and indeed of all relation in
\nphenomenal existence. Matariswan, identifying himself with Vayu, supporting
\nhimself on these principles of wave-vibration, action-reaction and contact,
\nruled not only in matter but in life and mind, using the other three elementary
\nor fundamental states known to Vedic enquiry, – agni <\/i>(fire), the
\nformatory principle of intension, represented to our senses in matter as heat,
\nlight and fire, apas <\/i>or jala <\/i>(water), the materialising or outward
\nflowing principle of continuation, represented to our senses in matter as sap,
\nseed, Rasa, and pŗthvī <\/i>(earth), the stabilising principle of
\ncondensation, represented to us in matter as earth, the basis of all solids, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nMatariswan, deploying in existence in settled forms by the <\/span>fivefold
\n(pā\u00f1cabhautika) <\/i>complex movement of the material Brahman, of
\nconscious being as the essential substance of things, reveals himself as
\nuniversal life-activity, upholder of our vitality, prompter and cause of our
\nactions. He is life, is latently active in the inanimate,<\/span>
\n<\/span>…<\/span>
\n<\/span>but
\nunorganised in the metal, organised for life and growth only in the plant, for
\nsense and feeling and thought in the animal creation, for reason and
\nillumination and progress to godhead in man, and for eternal immortality in the
\ngods. But who ultimately is this Matariswan? Brahman himself as the Rig Vedic
\nRishis already knew, manifesting himself in relation to the other movements as
\nthe cause, condition and master of vitality, as breath and as air.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nLife-action, then, is not indeed the whole action of the universe; nor is
\nour human life-action, our apas, <\/i>work, task here its culminatory
\nactivity. There are more developed beings, superrior states, other worlds. But
\nit is, whether here or in other planets, the central activity of this universe.
\nIt is of this apparently insignificant pebble, the stone that builders not
\nAlmighty, not<\/p>\n

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


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

\n

All-wise
\nwould have rejected, God has made the keystone of this work of His construction.
\nIn this the movement of our universe finds the means for its central purpose,
\nthrough it fulfils itself, in it culminates or from it falls away. When God has
\nfulfilled him- self here under these conditions with Pŗthvī <\/i>as
\nhis pratişthā, <\/i>then we may pass away finally into other
\nconditions or into the unconditioned, but till then, till God here is satisfied,
\nBrahman here manifested, we come here to fulfil him. Till then, so it must be
\nwith us and not otherwise. And this principle is not undivine but divine, not
\nsomething utterly delusive or diabolical, not the kingdom of a lower spirit or
\nan aberration in knowledge, but God’s movement, mahimānam asya, <\/i>the
\nmanifest might, the apparent extension in Itself of the Brahman. Life here is
\nGod, the materials of Life here are God. The work is not separate from the
\nworker, nor the thought from the thinker. All is the play of a divine Unity.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>Thus we have the essential reality of things, we have the practical
\nrelation of God in Impersonality or Personality as the Inhabitant of His own
\nobjective being. We have the principle of unity by which the practical relation
\nrefers back always to the essential and derives from it. We have the fundamental
\njustification of works briefly indicated in the identity of the working
\nprinciple with the eternal Reality behind our works. But the justification of
\nthe harmony of tyāga <\/i>and bhoga <\/i>on this basis has now to be
\nprepared. After stating, therefore, the identity of the eternal who moveth not,
\nwith the eternal who moves, of the Timeless, Spaceless, Conditionless, with the
\nTimed, Spaced, Conditioned, the Sage proceeds with a consideration of the latter
\nonly with which our vyavahaāra <\/i>or practical life has to deal and
\nemphasises the unity of all things near and far, subjective and objective. That
\nis the near, the same That is the far. He is near to us in our subjective
\nexperience, He moves to a distance in the objective where our mind and senses
\npursue him until they have to cease or return. In the subjective also, he is not
\nonly the unknown, but the known, ourselves, that which is seated in our hearts;
\nnot only the ungrasped, but the grasped, that which we have and that which we
\nseem not to have, that which we have reached or passed or are approaching and
\nthat towards which<\/p>\n

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


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

\n


\nwe vaguely or blindly move. Nothing should we think, feel or observe without
\nsaying of it, "It is He, it is the Brahman." That is within every
\ncreature as all the continent of body and mind and which is more than mind; That
\nis outside every creature and That in which it moves, lives and has its being;
\nnot only are our surroundings near or far but that which contains our
\nsurroundings is outside and inside them, alike their continent and their
\ncontent: sarvam brahma. <\/i>For That is the content of all this Universe;
\nThat also exceeds and is apart from every Universe. The Pantheism or Monism
\nwhich unable to rise beyond the unity of attainable data or manifest appearance,
\nmakes God conterminous with the world, is not Vedanta. The Pluralism which makes
\nGod merely a sum of realised experiences, a growing and diminishing, a
\nfluctuating unknown quantity, X, sometimes <\/span>equal
\nto a + b and sometimes equal to a <\/span>–<\/span>
\nb, is not our con<\/span>ception
\nof the Universe. These things are He, but He is not these things. To us the
\nworld is only a minor term in God’s absolute and limitless existence. God is not
\neven infinite, though finite and infinite both are He; He is beyond finite and
\ninfinity. He is <\/span>sarvam
\n<\/span>brahma,
\n<\/span><\/i>the
\nAll, but He is inexpressibly more than the <\/span>sarvam.
\n<\/span><\/i>To our highest
\nconception He is One, but in Himself He is beyond conception. Neither Unity nor
\nmultiplicity can describe Him, for He is not limited by numbers. Unity is His <\/span>parabhava,<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>it
\nis His supreme manifestation of being, but it is after <\/span>all
\na manifestation, not the utter and unknowable reality.<\/p>\n

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


\n <\/span><\/p>\n

IV
\n <\/b><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

The
\nobject of these two verses which have amplified the idea of monistic Unity in
\nthe universe, so as to remove any essential opposition between the world
\nmovement and the Inhabitant of the movement, is to lead up to the two verses
\nthat follow, verses of a still higher importance for the purpose of the
\nUpanishad. The Sage has laid down his fundamental positions in the first three
\nverses, – (1) the oneness of all beings in the universe, (2) the harmony of
\nrenunciation and enjoyment by freedom from desire and demand, (3) the necessity
\nof action for the fulfillment
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


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

\n


\nof the one purpose for which the One inhabits this multitude of his names and
\nforms,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\nenjoyment of this phenomenal and in its consummation the liberated being. The
\nremainder of the Upanishad is explanatory and justificatory of these original
\nand fundamental positions. In this second movement the object is to establish
\nthe possibility of absolutely sorrowless and fearless enjoyment here in this
\nworld and in this body on the eternal <\/span>and
\nunassailable foundations of the Vedantic truth,<\/span>
\nsarvam <\/i><\/span>khalu
\nidam brahma. <\/span><\/i>For
\nfrom that truth the Seer’s golden rule of life derives all its validity and
\npractical effectiveness.
\n        Therefore are the words, words of a rich and moving beauty in which he
\ndischarges this part of his argument. "But he who sees all existences in
\nthe self and the self in all existences, thereafter shrinketh not at all. He who
\nknows, in whom all existences have become the self, how shall he have grief, how
\nshall he be deluded, who seeth all things as one." <\/p>\n

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

 <\/span>          
\n<\/span>The connecting word (the Greek de) <\/i>does not in Vedic Sanskrit
\nalways imply entire opposition, it suggests a new circumstance suggesting an
\nadditional fact or a different point of view. The new circumstance introduced in
\nthis verse is the idea of the Atman. The knowledge that the impersonal Brahman
\nis all, need not of itself bring peace and a joyous activity; for the all
\nincludes sorrow, includes death, fear, weariness, disgust. Matariswan in
\nestablishing action, has also established reaction. He has established that
\nunequally between the force in activity and the force acted upon, that want of
\nharmony which is the cause of pain, recoil, disintegration, mutual fear and
\noppression. We may recognise that all these are one coordinated movement in a
\nsingle existence, are themselves all one existence, but how does that help us if
\nin the movement itself there are these inequalities, these discords, these
\nincapacities which impose on us so much that is painful and sorrowful. We may be
\ncalm, resigned, stoical, but how can we be free from pain and sorrow? It is here
\nthat Mayavada comes in with its great gospel of liberation. "All this
\ndiscord," it says in effect, "is not Brahman, it is Maya, it is an
\nillusion, a dream, it does not exist in the pure Atman. That is the unmoving;
\nthe movement is a cosmic nightmare affecting the mind only. Renounce life, take
\nrefuge in the pure, uncondi-<\/span><\/p>\n

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


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

\n

tioned, dreamless Atman, mind will dissolve, the world will vanish from you as a
\ndream vanishes and with the world its pain, its useless striving, its miserable
\njoys, its ineffugable sorrow." That is an escape but it is not the escape
\nwhich the Seer of the Upanishad meditates for us. He holds to his point.
\n"All this is Brahman,- the movement no less than the moving." A few
\nmay escape by the wicket gates of the Buddhist and the Mayavadin. Not by denial
\nof fundamental Vendantic truth is mankind intended to be saved.
\n        The worship of a Personal God different from ourselves and the world brings with
\nit a better chance of joyful activity in the world. "God’s will, be it joy
\nor sorrow; God’s will, be it the triumph of good or the siege of the evil.
\n"This is a great Mantra and has mighty effects but it does not by itself
\ngive a secure abiding place. God’s will may bring doubt and then there is
\nanguish; may bring loss of the Divine presence, separation from the Beloved and
\nthen there. is a greater agony. The intellectual man has the intellect God has
\ngiven him to satisfy. The active man has the impulse to work, but at every step
\nis faced with the difficulties of religion and ethics. He has to slay as a
\nsoldier, condemn as a judge, inflict pain, inflict anguish, choose between two
\ncourses which seem both to be evil in their nature or their results. Sin enters
\nhis heart, or there are ensnaring spirits of doubt which suggest sin where sin
\nis not, he feels that he is acting from passion not from God. His body suffers,
\npain distracts, his own pain, the pain of others. In this maelstrom it is only
\nthose whose hearts are mightier than their intellects, and their devotion a part
\nof their nature who can overcome all the winds that blow upon them. Therefore
\nmost devotees withdraw from life or from the greater part of life like the
\nMayavadin; those who remain have more resignation than happiness. They bear the
\ncross here in the conviction that the aureole awaits them hereafter. But where
\nthen is that perfect bliss and that perfect activity which the Sage promises us,
\ndoing verily our works here in the ordinary life of mankind? The thing can be
\ndone on the devotional foundation, but only by a peculiar and rare temperament
\naided by God’s special grace and favour. We need a wider pedestal, a securer
\nfoundation.
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-339<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nHe finds that foundation who sees wheresoever he looks (that is the force of anu
\n<\/i>in anupaśyati,) <\/i>only the Atman, only the Self– He watches the
\nbird flying through the air but what he is aware of is the, Self watching the
\nmovement of the Self through the Self,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>air
\nand bird and flight and watcher are only name and form, presentations of the one
\nReality to itself in itself by itself ātmani ātmanam ātmanā.
\n<\/i>He is stung by the scorpion, but what he is aware of is only the touch of
\nthe Self on the Self, the scorpion that stings is Brahman, that stinging is
\nBrahman, the sting is Brahman, the pain is Brahman. And this he not only thinks
\nas a metaphysical truth, for mere metaphysical opinion or intellectual attitude
\nnever yet brought salvation to living man,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>but
\nknows it, feels it and is aware of it utterly with his whole single and complex
\nKnowing existence. Body, senses, heart and brain are at one in that experience.
\nThus to the soul perfected in this knowledge everything that is, seems or is
\nexperienced, thinker and thought, action, doer, sufferer, object, field, result,
\nbecomes only one reality, Brahman, Self, God and all this variety is only play,
\nonly movement of conscious-self in conscious-self. That moves, God has his līlā.
\n<\/i>The Self rejoices in its own inner experiences of itself seen and
\nobjectivised. There exists in the soul not merely calm, resignation,
\ndesirelessness, heart’s joy in God’s presence but with the perfect knowledge
\ncomes a perfect bliss in the conditioned and the unconditioned, in the
\ntranscendent and in the phenomenal, in action and in resting from action, in iśvara
\n<\/i>and in apparent anīśvara, <\/i>in God’s nearness and in God’s
\nremoteness, in what men call joy and what men call pain. Grief falls away from
\nthe soul, pain becomes rapture, doubt and darkness disappear in an assured and
\nbrilliant luminosity. Bhakti is fulfilled, the soul perfected is liberated here
\nand in this body, ihaiva,<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>for
\nthis and not renunciation of phenomenal existence is the true Vedantic mokşa.
\n<\/i>This is what is meant by all existing things becoming the Self in a man,
\nthis is the result which is predicated of such a divine realisation.
\n"Whence shall he have grief, how shall he be deluded, who seeth all things
\nas one?" 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

       
\nThere are certain stages in the realisation, two of which are
\nindicated in these slokas <\/i>and although the indication is only a minor and
\nincidental movement of the Rishi’s thought, this
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


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

\n


\ns<\/span>ubject<\/span>
\n<\/span>is
\nof sufficient practical importance to be dwelt upon for <\/span>a
\nlittle even in this necessarily rapid examination. Brahman, <\/span>Atman,
\nIshvara,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>these
\nare the three great names, the three <\/span>grand<\/span>
\n<\/span>realisations
\nwe have here about the Absolute Existence. <\/span>That existence, parātparam brahma, <\/i>in its absolute truth (if such an
\nexpression is admissible where the ideas of truth and falsehood, <\/span>absolute
\nand relative, no longer apply and knowledge itself <\/span>disappears
\nin an unconceivable and unimaginable Identity) is unknowable by any, even the
\nhighest faculty of conscious mind. Arriving at the farthest limits of our
\nexistence here we may <\/span>become<\/span>
\n<\/span>aware
\nof it as a thing beyond our experience. It presents<\/span>
\nitself to us here as some ultimate shadow of itself which we feel sometimes as
\nSat, sometimes as Asat, sometimes as both Sat and Asat, and then we perceive
\nthat it is none of these things but something beyond both existence and
\nnon-existence which are necessarily uncertain symbols of it and we end by the
\nformula of the Rishis renouncing all vain attempts at knowledge, Neti, Neti; not
\nthis, not that. We must not go beyond this two-word formula or seek to explain
\nand amplify it. To describe It by negative <\/span>epithets
\nis as illegitimate and presumptuous as to describe <\/span>by
\npositive epithets. We can say of Brahman that it is śuddha, <\/i><\/span>pure;<\/span>
\n<\/span>we
\ncannot say of the Paratparam that it is śuddha. <\/i>How can we know what
\nIt is? We can only say that here It translates itself into an utter purity.
\nNeither can we say of It that it is alakşaņam, <\/i>without feature.
\nHow do we know what It is not? We can only say that we cannot describe It by any
\nlakşaņas, <\/i>for the features we perceive here are those of a
\nmovement in which all opposites present themselves as equally true.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nBut here in this manifest universal existence we do perceive certain
\nuniversal states and certain still more fundamental realisations which transcend
\nall phenomena and all oppositions and antinomies. We perceive, for example, a
\nstate of Universal Being, the Sad Atman of the Upanishads, the goal of the
\nAdwaitins; we perceive a state of the Universal Non-Being, the Asad Atman of the
\nUpanishads, Sunyam, the goal of the Madhyamika Buddhists. Then we perceive that
\nboth of these are the same thing differently experienced in the soul. It is that
\nwhich expresses<\/span> <\/span>itself
\nin our experience of Being and forgetfulness of<\/p>\n

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


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

\n

Being,
\nof Consciousness and forgetfulness of Consciousness, of Bliss and forgetfulness
\nof Bliss, of Sachchidananda conditioned and Sachchidananda unconditioned. We
\ncall it the Brahman, that which extends itself here hi space and time and fins
\nits extension. We feel our identity with it and we realise that it is our true
\nSelf and the true Self of everything in the universe and of the universe both in
\nits division and in its entirety. We call it then the Atman, a word which
\noriginally meant true Being or true Substance. We become aware of It as
\nextending itself and filling its extension here for a purpose, the purpose of
\nAnanda, delight in Vidya, delight in Avidya, and governing all things towards
\nthat purpose, – self-aware as the One and self-aware as the Many, self-aware as
\nSat and self-aware as Asat. This great self-aware Transcendent, more than
\nuniversal existence, we call Sa, Ishwara, He, God, the Paratpara Purusha, the
\nHigher than the Highest. We see therefore that these three names merely try to
\nexpress in human language certain fundamental conceptions we have here of That
\nwhich is not perfectly expressible. The greatest names, tremendous as is their
\npower, – how tremendous only those can know who have made the test without
\nflinching,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>are
\nonly symbols, I will not say shadows, for that is a word which may be
\nmisunderstood. But very great and blissful symbols in which we are meant to find
\na perfect content and satisfaction and the realisation which they try to
\nrepresent.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nBut through these symbols we have to work out the divine fulfilment here,
\nand the Rishi gives all three of them to us in this Upanishad. For all three are
\nsupremely helpful and, in a way, necessary. Until we realise Ishwara, the mighty
\nInhabitant, as on~ with ourself, as the Atman, we find a difficulty in
\nidentifying Him with all that Is. We fall into these ideas of an extra-cosmic
\nGod which satisfy the early and immature stages of soul-development; or we see
\na God who pervades and upholds all existences but has put them forth in His
\nbeing as eternally apart from Himself. That is a great practical realisation
\nwith immense results to the soul, the realisation of the Bhakta who rests in
\nsome kind of Dualism, but it is not the supreme goal or truth we are seeking. If
\nwe realise the Ishwara as the Atman, inner Self, without realising Him as the
\nBrahman, we run another peril, unless
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

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


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

\n

our
\nsouls have first become purified, the peril of the Asura who misapplies the
\nmighty formula So Aham and identifies God with his own unregenerated ignorant
\nego, – extending the Inhabitant <\/span>only
\n<\/span>to
\nsome transient circumstances of the movement in which <\/span>He
\ndwells. He forgets the other equally important formula, <\/span>tat
\ntvam asi; <\/span><\/i>he
\ndoes not realise others as Narayana, does not be<\/span>come
\none self with all existences, forgets that the very idea of his egoistic self is
\ninconsistent with the true Adwaita and to extend that in imagination and call it
\nthe whole Universe is a caricature of Adwaita. It is like the error of the
\nunphilosophical Idealist who concludes that the objective Universe exists only
\nin his individual mind, forgetting that it exists equally in other individual
\nminds, not knowing that in reality there is no individual mind but only one sea
\nof mind with its self-formed solid bed <\/span>of<\/span>
\nsamskāras, <\/i><\/span>waves
\nof which are constantly flowing through <\/span>him,
\nrising and breaking there and leaving their marks on the sands of his mental,
\ninfra-mental and supra-mental being. Even if we realise all beings as Narayana
\nand one self, there is a difficulty in realising all things as God and Self. The
\ninhabitant is the Atman, good,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>but
\nthe name and form? We can realise that <\/span>God
\ndwells in the stone as well as under the stone and around it, <\/span>but
\nhow can the<\/span> <\/span>\/<\/span>
\n<\/span>stone
\nbe God,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>this
\nclod, that rusty piece of <\/span>iron,
\nthis clot of filth? With difficulty the mind unreleased from <\/span>dvandva
\n<\/span><\/i>and samskāras
\n<\/i><\/span>can
\nbelieve that God logically must be, is <\/span>in
\nthe piece of filth He has created, but how can He be that filth? The seeker can
\neventually realise God in the criminal who is to be hanged no less than in the
\nexecutioner who hangs him, and \\ the saint who has pity for both, in the harlot
\nno less than the Sati, in all of the filth no less than in the glorious star
\nthat shines in the Heaven, and the petals of the rose or jasmine flower that
\nintoxicates our soul with its fragrance, but the crime of the criminal, the sin
\nof the harlot, the corporeality of the filth, must not that be kept separate?
\nThe sattwic man, the lover of virtue, the lover of beauty, the devotee
\nreverently bowing before the throne, must they not revolt strongly, from such
\nconceptions? We shall see that for certain practical reasons we must maintain
\nand preserve a kind of separateness, – not only between the criminal and his
\ncrime but between the saint and his virtue,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

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


\nPage-343<\/p>\n

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

\n

and
\nfor this reason the Rishi has fixed on the relation of world of Movement and
\nworld’s Inhabitant as the basis of his system, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nbut the distinction must be one of vyavahāra <\/i>only, for practice <\/span>only,
\nand must not interfere with our conception of All as Brahman. We must not
\nyield to the limitations of the sattwic mind, the moha <\/i>or delusions of
\nthe sattwic ahainkāra. <\/i>For if we yield, we cannot proceed to that
\ngreater goal of bliss, where attaining mind shrinks not at all, has no delusion,
\nis not touched by any grief. Therefore we must realise the Ishwara not only as
\nthe true Self of things but as Brahman, that which extends itself here equally
\nin all things, in the beautiful but also in the ugly, in the holy and great but
\nalso in that which we look on as base and impure. Looking on Brahman moving and
\nBrahman unmoving we have to say with the Mundaka Upanishad tad etat sat yam <\/i>(That
\nyonder is this here and the Truth) -and in Ishwara and Brahman moving and
\nunmoving we have to say with the same<\/span>.<\/span>
\nUpanishad, pursha evedam sarvam karma tapo brahma parām<\/i><\/span>rtam:
\n<\/span><\/i>It
\nis the divine Soul that is all this, even all action and all active force and
\nBrahman and the supreme immortality.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nWe have to realise the Self everywhere, but we have also to remember
\nalways in all our being, to feel always in every fibre of our existence that the
\nSelf is Brahman and the Lord. In the realisation of Atman by itself there is
\nthis danger that as we human beings stand in the subjective mind, that
\nrepresents itself to us as our true Self and we are first in danger of
\nidentifying our subjective consciousness which is only one movement of Chit with
\nthe sarvam brahma. <\/i>Even when we go beyond to the Sad Atman or pure
\nExistence we, approaching it necessarily through our subjective being, tend to
\nrealise it as pure subjective existence, are in danger of not realising the real
\nand ultimate Sat which is pure Existence itself beyond subjectivity and
\nobjectivity but expressing itself here subjectively because of the Purusha and
\nobjectively because of the Prakriti,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\nthe mingled strain of our <\/span>subjective-objective
\nexistence here being the result of the interaction and mutual enjoyment of His
\nMale and His Female principle.
\n<\/span> 
\n <\/p>\n

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

(Incomplete)<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-344<\/p>\n

<\/font>
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