{"id":801,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=801"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:30","slug":"46-the-karmayogin-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\/46-the-karmayogin-a-commentary-on-the-isha-upanishad-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","title":{"rendered":"-46_The Karmayogin- A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nSUPPLEMENT
\nTO <\/font>
\n<\/span>VOLUME 
\n12<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/b>THE UPANISHADS<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n<\/span>Sri Aurobindo wrote a number of
\ncommentaries on Isha Upanishad from different points of view at different
\ntimes. Of the three included here the last two were left incomplete and the
\nfirst begins only with Part II which itself is unfinished.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe first and second commentaries seem to belong to Sri Aurobindo’s Baroda
\nPeriod and the third to the early Pondicherry Period.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

This
\nsupplement is additional to the one already included in Volume 12.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-197<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nTHE
\nKARMAYOGIN<\/b><\/p>\n


\n    A COMMENTARY
\nON THE ISHA UPANISHAD<\/b><\/p>\n


\nPART II
\n<\/b><\/p>\n


\n      KARMAYOGIN
\nTHE IDEAL<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


\nCHAPTER<\/span>
\n<\/b>
\nIV
\n<\/font>
\n<\/b>
\n
\n<\/span>
\nThe Eternal in His Universe<\/font><\/span><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n
\n <\/span>     <\/span>                                 
\n <\/span>
\n<\/span>   <\/i>
\n <\/span>                                                                            
\n <\/span>Isha
\nUpanishad, 4.
\n 
\n <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/span>I.
\nETERNAL TRUTH THE BASIS OF ETHICS<\/span><\/p>\n

"There
\nis the One and It moveth not, yet is It swifter than thought, the Gods could not
\novertake It as It moved in front. While It standeth still, It outstrippeth
\nothers as they run. In It Matariswan ordereth the waters."<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I.
\nTHE ROOT OF ETHICAL IDEALS<\/p>\n

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

E<\/b><\/font><\/span>VERYTHING
\nthat has phenomenal existence, takes its stand on the, Eternal and has reality
\nonly as a reflection in the pure mirror of His infinite existence. This is no
\nless true of the affections of mind and heart and the formations of thought than
\nof the affections of matter and the formations of the physical ether-stuff out
\nof which this material Universe is made. Every ethical ideal and every religious
\nideal must therefore depend for its truth and permanence on its philosophical
\nfoundation; in other words, on the closeness of its fundamental idea to the
\nultimate truth of the Eternal. If the ideal implies a reading of the Eternal
\nwhich is only distantly true and confuses Him with His physical or psychical
\nmanifestations in this world, then it is a relatively false and impermanent
\nideal. Of all the ancient nations the Hindus, for this reason only, attained to
\nthe highest idea and noblest practice of morality. The Greeks confused the
\nEternal with His physical manifestations and realised Him in them on the side of
\nBeauty; beauty therefore was their only law of morality which governed their<\/span><\/p>\n

Page-201<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

civilisation.
\nEthics in their eyes was a matter of taste, balance and proportion; it hinged on
\nthe avoidance of excess in any direction, of excessive virtue no less than of
\nexcessive vice. The fine development of personality under the inspiration of
\nmusic and through the graceful play of intellect was the essential
\ncharacteristic of their education; justice, in the sense of a fine balance
\nbetween one’s obligations to oneself and one’s obligations to others, the ideal
\nof their polity; decorum, the basis of their public morality; the sense of
\nproportion the one law of restraint in their private ethics. Their idea of deity
\nwas confined to the beautiful and brilliant rabble of their Olympus. Hence the
\ncharm and versatility of Greek civilisation; hence also its impermanence as a
\nseparate culture. The Romans also confused the Eternal with His manifestations
\nin physical nature, but they read Him on the side not of beauty but of force
\ngoverned by law; the stern and orderly restraint which governs the Universe, was
\nthe feature in Nature’s economy which ruled their thought. Jupiter was to them
\nthe Governor and great Legislator whose decrees were binding on all; the very
\nmeaning of the word religion which they have left to the European world was
\n"binding back" and indicated as the essence of religion restraint and
\ntying down to things fixed and decreed. Their ethics were full of a lofty
\nstrength and sternness. Discipline stood as the keystone of their system;
\ndiscipline of actions created an inelastic faithfulness to domestic and public
\nduties; discipline of the animal impulses an orderly courage and a cold, hard
\npurity; discipline of the mind a conservative practical type of intellect very
\nfavourable to the creation of a powerful and well-ordered State but not to the
\ndevelopment of a many-sided civilisation. Their type too, though more long-lived
\nthan the Greek, could not last, because of the imperfection of the ideal on
\nwhich it was based. Beauty is not the ultimate Truth of the Eternal but only a
\npartial manifestation of
\nHim in phenomena which is externalised for our enjoyment and possession but not
\nset before us as our standard or aim, and the soul which makes beauty its only
\nend is soon cloyed and sated and fails for want of nourishment and of the growth
\nwhich is impossible without an ever-widening and progressive activity. Power and
\nLaw are not the ultimate Truth of the Eternal but<\/span><\/p>\n

Page-202<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

manifestations
\nof Himself in phenomena which are set within us to develop and around us to
\ncondition our works, but this also is not set before us as our standard or aim.
\nThe soul which follows Power as its whole end must in the long run lose measure
\nand perish from hardness and egoism and that which sees nothing but Law wither
\nfor dryness or fossilise from the cessation of individual expansion. The Chinese
\nseem to have envisaged the Eternal in a higher aspect than these Mediterranean
\nraces; they found Him not in the manifested physical Universe itself, but in its
\norigination and arrangement out of the primal materials from which it arose.
\nHeaven, Akasha or the Eternal in the element of Ether, creates in the womb of
\nEarth or formal Matter which is the final element developed out of Ether, this
\narranged and orderly Universe; – He is therefore the Father, Originator,
\nDisposer and Arranger. Veneration for parents and those who stand in the place
\nof parents. became the governing idea of their ethics; orderly disposition, the
\nnice care of Ceremony, manners, duties, the law of their daily life; origination
\nand organisation the main characteristics of their intellectual activity. The
\npermanence and unconquerable vitality of their civilisation is due to their
\nhaving seized on an interpretation of the Eternal which, though not His ultimate
\ntruth to humanity, is at least close to that truth and a large aspect of it. It
\nis really Himself in his relation to the Universe but not the whole of Himself.
\nBut the ancient Aryans of India raised the veil completely and saw Him as the
\nuniversal Transcendent Self of all things who is at the same time the particular
\npresent Self in each. They reached His singleness aloof from phenomena, they saw
\nHim in everyone of His million manifestations in phenomena, God in Himself, God
\nin man, God in Nature were the "ideas" which their life expressed.
\nTheir civilisation was therefore more many-sided and complete and their ethical
\nand intellectual ideals more perfect and permanent than those of any other
\nnation. They had in full measure the sense of filial duty, the careful
\nregulation of ceremony, manners and duties, the characteristics of origination
\nand organisation which distinguished the Chinese. They had in full measure the
\nRoman discipline, courage, purity, faithfulness to duty, careful conservatism;
\nbut these elements of character and culture which<\/span><\/p>\n

Page-203<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

in the
\nRoman were hard, cold, narrow and without any touch of the spirit in man or the
\nsense of his divine individuality, the Hindus warmed and softened with emotional
\nand spiritual meaning and made broad and elastic by accepting the supreme
\nimportance of the soul’s individual life as overriding and governing the firm
\norganisation of morals and society. They were not purely devoted to the worship
\nand culture of beauty like the Greeks and their art was not perfect, yet they
\nhad the sense of beauty and art in a greater degree than any other ancient
\npeople; unlike the Greeks they had a perfect sense of spiritual beauty and were
\ntherefore able to realise the delight and glory of Nature hundreds of years
\nbefore the sense of it developed in Europe. On the ethical side they had a finer
\njustice than the Greeks, a more noble public decorum, a keener sense of ethical
\nand social balance, but they would not limit the infinite capacities of the
\nsoul; they gave play therefore to personal individuality but restrained and
\nordered its merely lawless ebullitions by the law of the type (caste). In
\naddition to these various elements which they shared with one civilisation or
\nanother, they possessed a higher spiritual ideal, which governed and overrode
\nthe mere ethics. (mores or customary morality) which the other nations had
\ndeveloped. Humanity, pity, chivalry, unselfishness, philanthropy, love of and
\nself- sacrifice for all living things, the sense of the divinity in man, the
\nChristian virtues, the modern virtues were fully developed in India at a time
\nwhen in all the rest of the world they were either non-existent or existent only
\nin the most feeble beginnings. And they were developed because the Aryan Rishis
\nhad been able to discover the truth of the Eternal and give to the nation the
\nvision <\/span>of the Eternal in all things and the feeling of His presence
\nin  <\/span>themselves
\nand in all around them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Page-204<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nCHAPTER
\nI<\/font>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/b>
\n
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\n
\n
\nBrahman<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font>
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>   
\n<\/span>                
\n<\/span>THE
\nfirst four verses of the Upanishad have given the general principle of Karmayoga;
\nthe next four provide its philosophical justification and of these four the
\nfirst two express in a few phrases the Vedantic philosophy of God and Cosmos as
\na necessary preliminary to any formation of a true and permanent ethical ideal.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

   
\n<\/span>            
\n<\/span>The close dependence of ethical ideals on the fundamental philosophy of the
\nEternal and Real to which they go back is a law which the ancient Yogins had
\nwell understood. Therefore the Upanishad when it has to set forth an ethical
\nrule or ethical ideal or intellectual attitude towards life, takes care to
\npreface it with that aspect of the Eternal Reality on which its value and truth
\ndepend. The first principles of Karmayoga arise from the realisation of the
\nEternal as a great and divine Presence which pervades and surrounds all things,
\nso that it is impossible to direct one’s thought, speech or actions to a thing
\nor person without directing them to Him. With the declaration of the Eternal as
\nthe Universal and Omnipresent Lord the Upanishad must, therefore begin. Now it
\nis about to take a step farther and set forth the ideal of the Karmayogin and
\nthe consummation of his Yoga. It preludes the new train of thought by
\nidentifying Isha the Lord with Parabrahman the Eternal and Transcendent Reality.
\nNot only does He surround and sustain as the supreme Will by which and in which
\nalone all things exist, but He is really the immutable and secret Self in all
\nthings which is ultimately Parabrahman. This Isha whose Energy vibrates through
\nthe worlds, is really the motionless and ineffable Tranquillity towards which
\nthe Yogins and the sages strive.<\/p>\n

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

           
\n"There is One and It unmoving is swifter than thought; the gods could not
\nreach It moving in front; standing still, It passes others as they run; ’tis in
\nthis that Matariswan setteth the waters.<\/span><\/p>\n

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


\nPage-205<\/p>\n

<\/font>
\n
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n


\nIt moves, It moveth not; It is far, the same It is near; It is within every one,
\nthe same It is also outside everyone.”<\/p>\n

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

           –
\nThere is only One existence, one Reality in apparent multiplicity. The
\nunimaginable Presence which is manifest in the infinite variety of the Universe,
\nis alone and alone Is. The variety of things is in fact merely the variety of
\nforms which the play or <\/span>energy of the
\nWill only seems, by its rapidity of motion, to create; <\/span>so
\nwhen the blades of an electric fan go whirling with full velocity, round and
\nround, there seem to be not four blades or two, but a whole score; so also, when
\nShiva in His mood begins His wild dance and tosses His arms abroad, He seems to
\nhave not two arms but a million. It is the motion of the play of Will, it is the
\nvelocity of His Energy vibrating on the surface of His own existence which seems
\nto create multiplicity. All creation is motion, all activity is motion. All this
\napparently stable universe is really in a state of multifold motion; everything
\nis whirling with inconceivable rapidity in its own orbit, and even thought which
\nis the swiftest thing we know, cannot keep pace with the velocity of the cosmic
\nstir. And all this motion, all this ever-evolving cosmos and universe is Brahman
\nthe Eternal. The Gods in their swiftest movements, the lords of the mind and
\nsenses cannot reach Him, for He rushes far in front. The eye, the ear, the mind,
\nnothing material can reach or conceive the inconceivable creative activity of
\nthis Will which is Brahman. We try to follow Him pouring as light through the
\nsolar system and lo! while you are striving He is whirling universes into being
\nfar beyond reach of eye or telescope, far beyond the farthest flights of thought
\nitself. <\/span><\/font>
\nतन्मनसो
\nजवीयो<\/font>.<\/font>
\nMaterial senses quail before the thought of the wondrous. stir and stupendous
\nunimaginable activity that the existence of the Universe implies. And yet all
\nthe time He does not really move. All the time He who outstrips all others, is
\nnot running but standing. It is the others, the forms and things His energy has
\nevolved, who are running and because He out- strips them, they think that He too
\nmoves. While we are toiling after Him, He is all the time here, at our side,
\nbefore us, behind us, with us, in us, His presence pervading us like the ether,
\nclothing us like a garment. "Standing still, He outstrips others as they<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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


\nPage-206<\/p>\n

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

\n


\n<\/span>run."
\nIt is our mind and senses that are running, and all this universal motion is the
\nresult of the Avidya to which they are subject; for Avidya by persuading us to
\nimagine ourselves limited, creates the conditions of Time, Space and Causality
\nand confines us in them as in a prisoning wall beyond which our thoughts cannot
\nescape. Brahman in all his creative activity is really standing still in His own
\nbeing outside and inside Time and Space. He is at the same time in the Sun and
\nhere, because neither here nor the Sun are outside Himself; He has not therefore
\nto move any more than a man has to move in order to pass from one thought to
\nanother. But we in order to realise His creative activity have to follow Him
\nfrom the Sun to the Earth and from the Earth to the Sun; and this motion of our
\nlimited consciousness, this sensitory impression of a space covered and a time
\nspent, we cannot dissociate from Brahman and must needs attribute the
\nlimitations of our own thought to Him; just as a man in a railway train has a
\nsensitory impression that everything is rushing past him and the train is still.
\nThe stir of the Cosmos is really the stir of our own minds, and yet even that is
\na mere phenomenon. What we call mind is simply one play of the Will sporting
\nwith the idea of multiplicity which is, in form, the idea of motion. The
\nPurusha, the Real Man in us and in the world, is really unmoving; He is the
\nmotionless and silent spectator of a drama of which He himself is the stage, the
\ntheatre, the scenery, the actors and the acting. He is the poet Shakespeare
\nwatching Desdemona and Othello, Hamlet and the murderous Uncle, Rosalind and
\nJacques and Viola, and all the other hundred multiplicities of himself acting
\nand talking and rejoicing and suffering, all himself and yet not himself, who
\nsits there a silent witness, their Creator who has no part in their actions, and
\nyet without Him not one of them could exist. This is the mystery of the world
\nand its paradox and yet its plain and easy truth.<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

           
\n But what really is this Will which as Purusha watches the motion and the drama
\nand as Prakriti is the motion and the drama? It is the One motionless,
\nunconditioned, inexpressible Parabrahman of whom, being beyond mark and feature,
\nthe Upanishad speaks always as It, while of Isha, the Lord, it speaks as He; for
\nIsha as Purusha is the male or spiritual presence which<\/span><\/p>\n

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


\nPage-207
\n <\/font>
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

generates
\nforms in Prakriti, the female or material Energy. The spiritual entity does not
\nwork, but merely is and has a result; it is the material Energy, the
\nmanifestation of Spirit, which works or ceases from work. Eventually however
\nSpirit and Matter are merely aspects of each other and of something which is
\nbehind both; that something is the motionless, actionless It. This which without
\nmoving is swifter than thought, is It; this which mind and senses cannot reach,
\nfor it moves far in front, is It; this which stands still and yet outstrips
\nothers as they run, is It. Will, Energy, Isha, the play of Prakriti for Purusha,
\nare all merely the manifestation of that unmanifested It. What we envisage as
\nthe unmanifested Brahman is, in His reality to Himself, the unmanifest
\nParabrahman. It is only in His reality to us that He is the manifested Brahman.
\nAnd according as a man comes nearer to the truth of Him or loses himself in Him,
\nso will be his spiritual condition. While we think of Him as Isha, the one in
\ninnumerable aspects, the idea of difference remains though it can be
\nsubordinated to the idea of Oneness; that is the beginning of Yoga. When we
\nrealise Isha as one with Parabrahman, the idea of Oneness has sway and rules;
\nthat is the culmination of Yoga. When we realise Parabrahman Itself, that is the
\ncessation of Yoga; for we depart utterly from Oneness and difference and no
\nlonger envisage the world of phenomena at all; that is Nirvana.<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-208<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\n
\n
\nCHAPTER<\/font><\/span><\/b>
\n II<\/font><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nSpiritual<\/span>
\n<\/span>Evolution
\nin Brahman<\/p>\n

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

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


\n           IT<\/span>
\nIS in this infinitely motioniess, yet infinitely moving Brahman that Matariswan<\/p>\n

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

or
\nPrana, the great Breath of things, the mighty principle of Life, disposes forms
\nand solidities rescuing them out of the undifferentiated state from which the
\nworld arose. To understand these two verses it is necessary to grasp clearly the
\nideas of creation and evolution which the Upanishads seek to formulate. What in
\nEurope is called creation, the Aryan sages preferred to call srsti<\/i>,
\nprojection of a part from the whole, the selection, liberation and development
\nof something that is latent and potentially exists. Creation means the bringing
\ninto existence of something which does not already exist; srsti<\/i> the
\nmanifestation of something which is hidden and unmanifest. The action of
\nPrakriti proceeds upon the principle of selection leading naturally to
\ndevelopment; she selects the limited out of the unlimited, the particular out of
\nthe general, the small portion out of the larger stock. This limited, particular
\nand fractional having by the very nature of limitation a svabhāva<\/i>,
\nan ownbeing or as it is called in English a nature, which differentiates it from
\nothers of its Kind, develops under the law of its nature; that is its svadharma<\/i>,
\nits own law and religion of being, and every separate and particular existence
\nwhether inanimate thing or animal or man or community or nation must follow and
\ndevelop itself under the law of its nature and act according to its own dharma<\/i>.
\nIt cannot follow a nature or accept a dharma <\/i>alien to itself except on
\nperil of deterioration, decay and death. This nature is determined by the
\nbalance in its composition of the three guņas<\/i> or essential qualities
\nof Prakriti, passivity, activity and equipoise, which reveal themselves under
\ndifferent shapes in the animate as well as the inanimate, in the mind as well as
\nin the body. In matter they appear as passive reception, reaction and retention;
\nin human soul as the brutal animal, the active, creative man and the calm,
\nclear-souled god. It must always be
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

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

Page-209<\/span><\/font> <\/span>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

remembered
\nthat Prakriti is no other than Avidya, the great Illusion. She is that
\nimpalpable indeterminable, source of subtle and gross matter, Matter in the
\nabstract, the idea of difference and duality, the impression of Time, Space and
\nCausality. The limited is limited not in reality, but by walls of Avidya which
\nshut it in and give it an impression of existence separate from that of the
\nillimitable, just as a room is shut off from the rest of the house by walls and
\nhas its separate existence and its separate nature, small or large, close or
\nairy, coloured white or coloured blue. Break down the walls and the separate
\nexistence and separate nature disappear; the very idea of a room is lost and
\nthere is nothing left but the house. The sense of limitation and the consequent
\nimpulse towards development and self-enlargement immediately create desire which
\ntakes the form of hunger and so of a reaching after other existences for the
\nsatisfaction of hunger; and from desire and the contact with other existences
\nthere arise the two opposite forces of attraction and repulsion which on the
\nmoral plane are called liking and dislike, love and hatred. Thus the necessity
\nof absorbing mental and aesthetic food for the material of one’s works; this too
\nis hunger. The instinct of self- enlargement shows itself in the physical
\ncraving for the absorption of other existences to strengthen oneself, in the
\nemotional yearning to other beings, in the intellectual eagemessio absorb the
\nminds of others and the aesthetic desire to possess or enjoy the beauty of
\nthings and persons, in the spiritual passion of love and beneficence and all
\nother activity which means the drawing of the self of others into one’s own self
\nand pouring out of oneself on others. Desire is thus the first principle of
\nthings. Under the impulse of attraction and repulsion hunger begins to
\ndifferentiate itself and develop the various senses in order the better to
\nmaster its food and to feel and know the other 
\n<\/span>existences which repel or attract it. So out of the primal consciousness
\nof Will dealing with matter is developed form and organism, vitality, receptive
\nmind, discriminating mind, Egoism. Out of this one method of Prakriti,
\nselection, liberation and development, the whole evolution of the phenomenal
\nworld arises. Creation therefore is not a making of something where nothing
\nexisted, but a selection and new formation out of existing material; not a
\nsudden increase,<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-210<\/span><\/font> <\/span>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

but
\na continual rearrangement and substitution; not an arbitrary manufacture, but an
\norderly development.
\n            The idea of creation as a selection and development from pre-existing material
\nwhich is common to the Upanishads and the Sankhya philosophy, is also the
\nfundamental idea of the modern theory of Evolution. (jatyantarapariņāmah 
\nprakrtyā- pūrāt<\/i>). The theory of Evolution is foreshadowed in
\nthe Veda, but nowhere clearly formulated. In the Aitareya Upanishad we find a
\nluminous hint of the evolution of various animal forms until in the course of
\ndifferentiation by selection the body of man was developed as a perfect temple
\nfor the gods and a satisfactory instrument for sensational, intellectual and
\nspiritual evolution. When the Moondaca<\/i> sums up the process of creation in
\nthe pregnant formula "One seed developed into many forms", it is
\nsimply crystallising the one general idea on which the whole of Indian thought
\ntakes its stand and to which the whole tendency of modern Science returns. The
\nopening of the Brihadaranyakopanishad powerfully foreshadows the theory that
\nhunger and the struggle for life (aśanāyā mrtyuh<\/i>) are the
\nprinciple agents in life- development. But it was not in this aspect of the law
\nof creation that the old Hindu thought interested itself. Modern Science has
\nmade it its business to investigate and master the forces and laws of working of
\nthe physical world; it has sought to know how man as a reasoning animal
\ndeveloped into what he is, how he is affected in detail by the laws or external
\nnature and what is the rule of his thought and action in things physical and
\npsycho- physical whether as an individual or in masses. Outside the limits of
\nthis inquiry it has been sceptical or indifferent. Hindu thought, on the
\ncontrary, has made it its Qusiness to investigate the possibilities of man’s
\nescape from the animal and physical condition, from his subjection to the laws
\nof external nature and from his apparent limitations as a mere creature of
\nsurroundings and sensational impact from outside. Its province has been the
\npsychical and spiritual world. It has not concerned itself minutely with man’s
\nphysical sheath, but rather with what is vital and elemental in the matter of
\nwhich he is made, the law of the workings of the breath and the elemental forces
\nwithin him, the relation of the various parts of his psychical anatomy to each
\nother, and<\/span><\/p>\n

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


\nPage-211<\/p>\n

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

\n

the
\nlaw of his thought and action as a spiritual being having on<\/span>e
\nside of itself turned to phenomena and this transient life in society <\/span>and
\nthe world, the other to the single and eternal verity of things.
\n     <\/span><\/p>\n

Speculating
\nand experimenting on these psychical and spiritual relations, the ancient Rishis
\narrived at what they believed to be the fundamental laws respectively of
\nspiritual, psychical and elemental evolution: Spiritually, the beginning of all
\nthings is the Turiya Atman, spirit in its fourth or transcendental state,
\nintellectually unknowable and indefinable, infinite, indivisible, immutable, and
\nsupra-conscious. This Turiya Atman may be imaged as the infinite ocean of spirit
\nwhich evolves in itself spiritual manifestations and workings by that process of
\nlimitation or selection on which all creation or manifestation depends. By this
\nTuriya Atman there is conceived or there is selected out of its infinite
\ncapacity a state of spirit less unknowable and therefore less indefinable, in
\nwhich the conceptions of finity and division pre-exist in a potential state and
\nin which consciousness is self-gathered and as yet inoperative. This state of
\nSpirit is called variously Avyakta, the unmanifestation, or the seed-condition
\nor the condition of absolute sleep, because as yet phenomena and activity are
\nnot manifest but pre-exist gathered together and undeveloped, just as all the
\ninfinite potentialities of organic life upon earth pre-exist gathered together
\nand undeveloped in the protoplasm; just as leaf and twig, trunk and branches,
\nsap and pith and bark, root and flower and fruit pre-exist, gathered together
\nand undeveloped in the seed. The State of Sleep may be envisaged as Eternal Will
\nand Wisdom on the brink of creation, with the predestined evolution of a million
\nuniverses, the development of sun and star and nebula and the shining
\nconstellations and the wheeling orbits of satellite and planet, the formation of
\nmetals and the life of trees, the motions and actions of fish and bird and beast
\nand the infinite spiritual, mental and physical stir and activities of man
\nalready pre-ordained, pre-arranged and pre- existent, before Time was or. Space
\nexisted or Causality began. The Spirit in this state of Sleep is called Prajna,
\nthe Wise One or He who knows and orders things beforehand. The next state of
\nSpirit, evolved out of Prajna, is the pure psychical or Dream-State in which
\nSpirit is in a condition of ceaseless psychical activity<\/p>\n

<\/span> 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-212<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

imagining,
\nwilling, selecting out of the matter with which Prajna provides and creating
\nthought-forms to clothe the abundant variety of its multitudinous imaginations.
\nThe Dream-State is the psychical condition of Spirit and operates in a world of
\nsubtle matter finer and more elastic than gross physical matter and therefore
\nnot subject to the heavy restrictions and slow processes with which the latter
\nis burdened. For this reason while physical workings are fixed, slow and
\nconfined by walls within walls, thought, psychical manifestation and other
\noperations in subtle matter are in comparison volatile, rapid and free, reacting
\nmore elastically against the pressure of Time, Condition and Space. This State
\nof Dream may be envisaged as Eternal Will and Energy in the process of creation,
\nwith the whole activity of the Universe teeming and fructuating within it; it is
\nthat psychical matrix out of which physical form and life are evolved and to
\nwhich in sleep it partially returns so that it may recuperate and drink in a
\nfresh store of psychical energy to support the heavy strain of physical
\nprocesses in gross matter. Spirit in the middle or Dream-State is called Taijasa
\nor Hiranyagarbha, the Shining Embryon. It is Taijasa, Energy of Light and
\nHiranya the Shining because in psychical matter luminous energy is the chief
\ncharacteristic, colour and light predominating over fluid or solid form. It is
\nGarbha, Embryon because out of psychical matter physical life and form are
\nselected and evolved into the final or Waking-State in which Spirit manifests
\nitself as physically visible, audible and sensible form and life, and arrives at
\nlast at an appearance of firm stability and solidity in gross matter. Spirit in
\nthe Waking- State is called Vaiswanor, the Universal Male, He who informs and
\nsupports all forms of energy in this physical universe; for <\/span>it
\nis a root idea of Hindu philosophy that Spirit is the Male which <\/span>casts
\nits seed into Matter and Matter the female Energy which receives the seed and
\nwith it creates and operates. Spirit and Matter are not different entities, but
\nsimply the positive and nega- tive poles in the creative operation of the All-Selfor
\nUniversal which evolves in Itself and out of Itself the endless procession of
\nthings. <\/p>\n

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

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

All
\nthings in the Universe are of one texture and substance and subject to a single
\nlaw; existence is a fundamental unity<\/p>\n

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

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


\nPage-213<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nunder a superficial diversity. Each part of the Universe is there- fore a little
\nUniverse in itself repeating under different conditions and in different forms
\nthe nature and operations of the wider Cosmos. Every individual man must be in
\nlittle what the Cosmos is in large. Like the Cosmos therefore each individual
\nman has been created by the evolution of Spirit from its pure essence through
\nthe three states of Sleep, Dream and Waking. But this evolution has been a
\ndownward evolution; he has descended spiritually from pure Spirit into physical
\nmatter, from self-existent, self- knowing, self-delighting God into the
\nreasoning animal. In other words each new condition of Spirit as it evolved, has
\noverlaid and obscured its predecessor. In the physical condition, which is the
\nultimate term of the downward evolution man realises himself as a body moving
\namong and affected by other bodies and he readily understands, masters and
\nemploys physical organs, physical processes and physical forces, but he finds it
\ndifficult to understand, master or employ psychical organs, psychical processes
\nand psychical forces, – so difficult that he has come to be sceptical of the
\nexistence of the psychical and doubt whether he is a soul at all, whether he is
\nnot merely an animal body with an exceptional brain-evolution. In his present
\nstate any evolution of the psychical force within is attended with extraordinary
\ndisturbances of the physical instruments, such as the development of delusions,
\nhallucinations, eccentricities, mania and disease side by side with the
\ndevelopment of genius or exceptional mental and spiritual powers in family or
\nindividual. Man has not yet discovered his soul; his main energies have been
\ndirected to- wards realising and mastering the physical world in which he moves.
\nIt is indeed, as some are beginning dimly to perceive, the soul within him which
\nhas all along been using the body for its own ends on the physical plane, but
\nthe soul has been working from behind the veil, unrealised and unseen. The
\nWaking-State has overlaid and obscured the Dream-State. When he has mastered, as
\nin the course of evolution he must master, the psychical world within him, man
\nwill find that there is another and deeper self which is overlaid and obscured
\nby the psychical, – the Sleep-world within or as it is called, the causal self.
\nAt present, even when he admits the existence of the soul,<\/span>
\n<\/span>he
\nsees<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n
\nPage-214<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nnothing beyond his psychical self and speaks of soul and spirit as if they were
\nidentical. In reality, there are three spirit-states, spirit, soul and body, the
\nsleep-state, the dream-state and the waking-state. Body has overlaid and
\nobscured soul, soul over- lays and obscures spirit, spirit in its turn obscures
\nand overlays the pure self from which and towards which the circle of evolu<\/span>tion
\nmoves.<\/p>\n

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

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

Creation,
\nthen, has been a downward evolution which has for its object to create a body
\nfit for an upward evolution into the region of pure spirit. It is in this
\ndirection that the future of human evolution lies. When man has mastered the
\nphysical world and its forces, when the earth is his and the fullness there- of,
\nhe must turn his efforts towards mastering the world within himself. Instead of
\nallowing the soul to use the body for its own ends, he must learn to master both
\nsoul and body and use them consciously for the purposes of the spirit, that
\nEternal Will and Wisdom which at present operates in secrecy, veiled with dark-
\nness within darkness and seeming even to be blind and hidden from itself. In the
\nend he will be master of spirit, soul and body, a Jivanmukta using them at will
\nfor cosmic purposes or transcending them to feel his identity with the Self who
\nis pure and absolute existence, consciousness and bliss.<\/p>\n

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

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


\nPage-215<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\nCHAPTER
\nIII<\/font><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n
\nPsychical
\nEvolution<\/b><\/p>\n


\nDOWNWARD
\nTO MATTER<\/b><\/p>\n

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

IN
\nTHEIR inquiry into the spiritual nature of man the ancient thinkers and Yogins
\ndiscovered that he has not only three spiritual states but three bodies or cases
\nof matter corresponding to the spiritual states. This was in accordance with the
\nnature of phenomenal existence as determined by their inquiries. Spirit and
\nmatter, the inner inspiring presence and outward acting substance-energy, are
\nthe two necessary terms of this existence. When phenomena are transcended we
\ncome to a Self independent of Spirit or Matter; but the moment Self descends
\ninto phenomenal existence, it must necessarily create for itself a form or body
\nand a medium in which it manifests and through which it acts. Directly,
\ntherefore, the pure transcendent Self evolves one aspect of itself as a
\ndefinable spiritual condition, it must in the nature of things evolve also a
\nform or body and a medium through and in which Spirit in that condition can
\nmanifest itself. Matter, in other words, evolves coevally and coincidentally
\nwith Spirit. As soon as the Sleep-State appears, Spirit surrounds itself with
\nmatter in that most refined and least palpable condi- tion, to which the name of
\ncausal matter may be given, the material seed state, single and elemental in its
\nnature, from which the material universe is evolved. With the evolution of the
\nDream-State matter also evolves from the causal into the subtle, a condition
\ncompound, divisible and capable of definite form but too fine to be perceived by
\nordinary physical senses. It is only when the Waking-State is evolved that
\nmatter concentrates into that gross physical condition which is all that Science
\nhas hitherto been able to analyse and investigate.<\/p>\n

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

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


\n          
\n<\/span>In man also as in the larger Cosmos each spiritual state lives in and
\nuses its corresponding medium of matter and out of that matter shapes for itself
\nits own body or material case. He has<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-216<\/p>\n

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

\n

t<\/span>herefore
\n<\/span>a
\ncausal body for his Sleep-State or causal self, a subtle
\n<\/span>body <\/span>for
\nhis Dream-State or psychical self and a gross body for h<\/span>is
\nWaking-State or physical self. When he dies, what 
\n<\/span>happens is simply the disintegration of the physical body and the return
\nof the <\/span>Waking
\ninto the Dream-State from which it was originally <\/span>projected.
\nDeath, in the ordinary view, is a delivery from matter; body <\/span>is
\ndestroyed and only spirit or soul remains: but this view <\/span>is
\n<\/span>rejected
\nby Hindu philosophy as an error resulting from con<\/span>fused<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\ninadequate knowledge of man’s psychical nature. The <\/span>Waking-State
\nhaving disappeared into the Dream. State and no longer existing, the physical
\nbody must necessarily disintegrate <\/span>since<\/span>
\n<\/span>it
\nhas no longer a soul to <\/span>not
\nfollow that no body is left. Man goes on existing after death in his Dream-State
\nand moves and acts with his subtle body; <\/span>it
\nis this Dream-State in the subtle body to which the name <\/span>soul
\nor spirit is popularly given. Even the disintegration of the subtle body and the
\nreturn of the Dream-State into the Sleep-State from which it was projected,
\nwould not imply a release from all restrictions of matter; for the causal body
\nwould still remain. It is only when the Sleep-State is also transcended, that
\npheno- menal existence with its necessary duality of Spirit-Matter is left
\nbehind and transcended. Then spirit and body are both dissolved <\/span>into<\/span>
\n<\/span>pure
\nand transcendent  <\/span>self-existence.<\/p>\n

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

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

 <\/p>\n

<\/span>      
\n<\/span>In examining and
\nanalysing these spiritual conditions in their respective bodies the Rishis
\narrived at a theory of psychical evolution contained within and dependent on the
\nspiritual, evolution already described. The basis of psychical as of spiritual
\nexistence is the pure Self called the Paramatman or Supreme Self when it
\nmanifests in the Cosmos and the Jivatman or individual Self when it manifests in
\nman. The Self first manifests as Will or as the Rishis preferred to call it
\nAnanda, Bliss, Delight. Ananda is the pure delight of existence and activity and
\nmay be identified in one of its aspects with the European Will to live, but it
\nhas a double tendency, the Will to be phenomenally and the Will to be
\ntranscendentally, the Will to live and the Will to cease from phenomenal life.
\nIt is also the Will to know and the Will to enjoy<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-217<\/p>\n

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

\n

 <\/span>and
\nin each aspect the double tendency is repeated. The Will to know eternal reality
\nis balanced by the Will to know phenomenal diversity; the Will to absolute
\ndelight by the Will to phenomenal delight. Will must be clearly distinguished
\nfrom volition which is only one of the operations of Will acting in phenomena.
\nThe impacts from the external things upon the mind result in sensations and the
\nreaction of the Will upon these sensations when conveyed to it, take the form of
\ndesires. Volition is simply the impulse of the Will operating through the
\nintelligence to satisfy or curb the desires created in the medium between itself
\nand the mind. But the Will itself is antecedent to mind and intelligence and all
\nthe operations of body, mind and intelligence are ultimately operations of
\nmaterial energy ordained by the Will. Self manifesting as Will or Bliss is,
\nspiritually, the Sleep-State and operates absolutely and directly in the Causal
\nbody as the creative force behind Nature, but indirectly and under limitations
\nin the subtle and gross bodies as the cause of all thought, action and feeling.
\n<\/span><\/font>
\n               
\n<\/span>The
\nnext evolutionary form of Will, put forth by itself from itself as an instrument
\nor operative force in the creation of the worlds, is Buddhi or
\nSupra-intelligence, an energy which is above mind and reason.and acts
\nindependently of any cerebral organ. It is Will acting through the
\nSupra-intelligence that guides the growth of the tree and the formation of the
\nanimal and gives to all things in the Universe the appearance of careful and
\nabundant workmanship and orderly arrangement from which the idea of an Almighty
\nArtificer full of fecund and infinite imaginations has naturally grown up in the
\nhuman mind; but from the point of view of the Vedanta Will and
\nSupra-intelligence are not attributes of an anthropomorphic Deity endowed with a
\ncolossal brain but aspects of a spiritual presence manifesting itself cosmically
\nin phenomenal existence. Will, through Buddhi, creating and operating on
\nphenomena in subtle matter evolves Mind, which in reception of external impacts
\nand impressions evolves sensation; by reaction to impressions received, evolves
\ndesire and activity; by retention of impressions with their reactions evolves
\nmemory; by coordination of impressions and reactions memorised, evolves the
\nsense of individuality; by individual arrangement of impres-
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font>
\n
\nPage-218<\/p>\n

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

\n


\ns<\/span>ions<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nreactions with the aid of memory evolves understand<\/span>ing;
\n<\/span>and
\nby the action of Supra-intelligence on developed mind <\/span>evolves<\/span>
\n<\/span>reason.
\nMind and Supra-intelligence with reason as an <\/span>intermediate
\nlink are, spiritually the Dream-State and operate absolutely and directly in the
\nsubtle body but indirectly, under limitations and as a governing and directing
\nforce in the gross body.<\/p>\n

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


\n            
\n<\/span>So far spirit and soul only have been evolved; the evolution of the Will
\nhas not manifested itself in physical forms. But in Mind Will has evolved a
\ngrand primal sense by which it is able to <\/span>put
\nitself into conscious relations with external objects; before <\/span>the
\ndevelopment of mind It has been operating by methods of self-contained
\nconsciousness through the Supra-intelligence. Mind is in a way the one true and
\nreal sense; it is Mind that sees, Mind that hears, Mind that smells, Mind that
\nfeels, Mind that acts; but for the purposes of varied experience mind evolves
\nfrom itself ten potencies, five potencies of knowledge, sight, hearing, smell,
\ntouch and taste by which the Will receives impressions of external objects and
\nfive potencies of action, grasp, locomotion, utterance, emission and ecstasy by
\nwhich it reacts on what it receives; and for each of these potencies it evolves
\nan instrument of potency or sense-organ, making up the ten indriyas <\/i>with
\nthe  <\/span>Mind, which is alone
\nself-acting and introspective, as the eleventh. So far however the Mind acts
\nwith rapidity and directness under the comparatively light restrictions of
\nsubtle matter in the Dream-State; it is a psychical sense, an instrument of the
\nsoul for knowing and dealing with life in the psychical world of subtle matter.
\nOnly in the physical evolution of gross matter do the sense- organs receive
\ntheir consummate development and become of supreme importance; for Will in the
\nWaking-State acts mainly through them and not directly through the Mind.
\nSoul-evolution precedes physical evolution. This theory directly contradicts
\nthose conclusions of modern Science which make soul an evolution of physical
\nlife and activities, not an all-important and enduring evolution, but merely
\ntheir temporary efflorescence and dependent on them for its existence. Arguing
\nfrom the facts of physical evolution which alone it has studied, and excluding
\nall possibilities outside this limit, Science is justified in coming to
\n <\/p>\n

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


\nPage-219<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

this
\nconclusion, and, as a logical corollary, it is justified in denying the<\/span>
\n<\/span>immortality
\nof the soul. For if psychical activities are merely a later and temporary
\noperation of physical life, and dependent on the physical for their own
\ncontinuance, it follows that when physical life ceases with the arrest of bodily
\noperations by the mysterious agency of death, human personality which is a <\/span>psychical
\nactivity must also come to an end. When the<\/span>
\n<\/span>body
\ndies, the soul dies also; it can no more outlast the body than the flower can
\noutlast the plant on which it grows or a house survive the destruction of its
\nfoundations. Body is the stem, soul the flower; body the foundation, soul a
\nlight and temporary super- structure. To all this Hindu thought gives a direct
\ndenial. It claims to have discovered means of investigating psychical life as
\nthoroughly as Science can investigate physical nature and in the light of its
\ninvestigations it declares that soul exists before body and outlasts it. It is
\nphysical life that is an evolution from psychical, and no more than a later and
\ntemporary operation of psychical activities. Body is the flower, soul the stem;
\nsoul is the foundation, body the fragile and transient superstructure,<\/p>\n

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

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

           
\nFor
\nthe purposes of physical evolution Will evolves a new aspect of itself which is
\ncalled Prana or vital energy. Prana exists in the physical state also, but there
\nit is simple, undifferentiated, gathered up in mind and not acting as a separate
\nagent. Prana in gross matter is an all-pervading energy which subsists wherever
\nthere is physical existence and is the principle agent in maintaining existence
\nand furthering its activities. It is present in what seems inert and inanimate
\nno less than in what is manifestly en- dowed with life. It lives concealed in
\nthe metal and the sod, it begins to emerge in the plant, it reveals itself in
\nthe animal. Prana is the agent of Will in all physical evolution. It is the
\nmainspring of every hunger-impulse and presides over every process of
\nalimentation. It creates life, it fills it with vital needs, desires, longings;
\nit spurs it to the satisfaction of its needs and desires; and it evolves the
\nmeans and superintends and conducts the processes of that satisfaction. In the
\ncourse of evolution it reveals itself with an ever-rounding fulness, vibrates
\nwith an ever- swifter and more complex energy, differentiates and enriches its
\nactivity with a more splendid opulence until the crescendo reaches
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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


\nPage-220<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nits  <\/span>highest note in man. In this,
\nthe noblest type of physical evolution, Prana manifests itself in five distinct
\nvital powers, to which the names, Prana, Samana, Vyana, Apana and Udana have bee<\/span>n
\ngiven by the ancient writers. Prana, the vital force<\/span>
\npar ex<\/i><\/span>cellence<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>has
\nits seat in the upper part of the body and conducts <\/span>all
\nmental operations, the indrawing and the outdrawing of the br<\/span>eath
\nand the induction of food. Samana, seated centrally in<\/span>
\nthe <\/span>body,
\nbalances, equalises and harmonises the vital operations and<\/span>
\n<\/span>is
\nthe agent for the assimilation of food. Vyana pervades the <\/span>whole
\nbody; on it depends the circulation of the blood and the distribution of the
\nessential part of the food eaten and digested throughout the body. Apana,
\nsituated in the lower part of the trunk, presides over the lower functions,
\nespecially over the emission of such parts of the food as are rejected by the
\nbody and over procreation; it is intimately connected with the process of decay
\nand death. Udana is the vital power which connects bodily life with the
\nspiritual element in man. As in the purely vital operations, so also in the
\nmotional and volitional Prana is still the great agent of Will, and conducts
\nsuch operations of
\nMind also as depend on the sense-organs for their instruments. Prana is the
\nregent of the body, ministering to the Mind and rough that great intermediary
\nexecuting the behests of the concealed sovereign of existence, the Will.<\/p>\n

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

           
\nAs
\nPrana is the first term in the physical evolution of the Self, so Anna, Food or
\ngross visible matter is the second term. "I am food that devours the eater
\nof food," says the Taittiriya Upanishad, and no formula could express more
\npregnantly and tersely he fundamental law of all phenomenal activity especially
\non the <\/span>physical<\/span>
\n<\/span>plane.
\nThe fundamental principle of vitality is hunger <\/span>and
\nall gross matter forms the food with which Prana satisfies this, its
\nroot-impulse. Hence the universality of the struggle for life, This hungry Prana
\nfirst needs to build up a body in which it can subsist and in order to do so, it
\ndevours external substances so as to provide itself with the requisite material.
\nThis body once found, it is continually eating up by the ceaselessness of its
\nvital activity and has to repair its own ravages by continually drawing in
\nexternal substances to form fresh material for an ever-wasting and ever-renewing
\nframe. Unable to preserve its body for ever<\/p>\n

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


\n
\nPage-221<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nunder the exhausting stress of its own activity, it has to procreate fresh forms
\nwhich will continue vital activity and for the purpose concentrates itself in a
\npart of its material which it throws out of itself to lead a similar but
\nindependent life even after the parent form decays. To satisfy its hunger it is
\never evolving fresh means and new potencies for mastery and seizure of its food.
\nDissatisfied with the poor sustenance a stationary existence can supply, it
\ndevelops the power and evolves various means of locomotion. To perceive its food
\nmore and more thoroughly and rapidly it develops the five senses and evolves the
\norgans of perception through which they can act. To deal successfully with the
\nfood perceived, it develops the five potencies of action and evolves the active
\norgans which enable them to work. As a centre of all this sensational and
\nactional activity it evolves the central mind-organ in the brain and as channels
\nof communication between the central and the outer organs it develops a great
\nnerve-system centred in seven plexuses, through which it moves with a ceaseless
\nstir and activity, satisfying hunger, satisfying lust, satisfying desire. At the
\nbase of all is the impulse of Life to survive, to prolong itself for the
\npurposes of the Will to live of which it is the creature and the servant. Prana
\nand Anna, Vitality and Physical form are, spiritually, the Waking-State and
\noperate entirely in gross matter, – the last term of that downward evolution
\nwhich is the descent of Spirit from its original purity of absolute existence
\ninto the impurity and multiplicity of matter.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

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

<\/font>
\n
\nPage-222<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER  <\/span>IV<\/font><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPsychical<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/font>
\nEvolution<\/font>
\n <\/font>
\n <\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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

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


\nUPWARD
\nTO SELF<\/p>\n

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

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

 <\/p>\n

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

                         
\n<\/span>IN THIS downward psychical evolution, as the downward spiritual
\nevolution, each succeeding and newly evolved state of the original Self obscures
\nand overlays that which preceded it, until the last state of the Self appears to
\nbe an inert brute <\/span>and
\ninanimate condition of gross physical matter, devoid of <\/span>e,
\nmental consciousness or spiritual possibilities. From this state inert and
\nlifeless matter the upward evolution starts and, as in our spiritual evolution
\nthe course set down for us is to recover, from a firm footing in the
\nWaking-State mastery over the obscured and latent Dream and Sleep-States and so
\nreturn into the p<\/span>resence<\/span>
\n<\/span>of
\nthat pure and unimaginable Self from whom the pro<\/span>cess<\/span>
\n<\/span>of
\nour evolution began, so in our psychical evolution we ha<\/span>ve
\nto recover out of the inertia of gross physical materiality Life, Mind,
\nSupra-Intelligence, Will until we know our infinite eternal Self who is one with
\nthe Supreme Self of the Universe.
\n           
\n<\/span>With inanimate matter the world began, says evolutionary
\nScience; but in inanimate matter there is no evidence of life or d or spirit, no
\napparent possibility of the evolution of animate conscious existence. In this
\ninanimate world at some unknown
\nperiod, by some unknown means, perhaps from some unknown source, a mysterious
\nthing called Life entered or began to stir and It this mighty evolution we have
\ndiscovered became in a moment possible. Grant one infinitesimal seed of life and
\neverything else becomes possible, but life itself we cannot explain nor can we
\ndiscover as yet how it came originally into being. We can only suppose that life
\nis some chemical process or develops from some chemical process we shall
\nultimately discover. Even what life is, h<\/span>as
\nnot been satisfactorily settled. The term is sometimes rigidly<\/span>,
\nconfined to animal life, – surely a crude and unscientific limitation, since the
\npeculiarities of animal life, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nconsciousness and organic growth, <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>exist
\nquite as evidently in the highest forms<\/p>\n

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

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


\nPage-223<\/p>\n

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

\n

of
\nplant-life as in the animalcule or the jelly-fish. Or if we confine life to
\norganic growth, we do so arbitrarily, for recent discoveries have shown the
\nbeginning of one element of vital activity, the one which forms the very basis
\nof consciousness, viz., <\/span>reception
\nof and reaction to outward impressions and the phenomena of vigour and
\nexhaustion, in a substance so apparently inanimate as metal. So obscure is the
\nwhole subject that many are inclined to regard life as a divine mystery,
\nbreathed by God into the world or introduced, as if it were a sort of psychical
\nmeteoric dust, from some other planet. Upanishadic philosophy accounts for the
\nappearance of Life in a more calm and rational manner. Life, it would say, is in
\na sense a divine mystery but no more and no less so than the existence of
\ninanimate matter. God<\/span>
\n<\/span>did
\nnot breathe it from outside into an inert and created body, neither did it drift
\nhither from some mystic and superior planet. Nor did it come into sudden being
\nby some fortuitous chemical  <\/span>process
\nwhich marked off suddenly all existences into two rigidly distinct classes,
\nanimate and inanimate, organic and inorganic. All such ideas are, when carefully
\nexamined, irrational and inconsistent with the unity and harmonious development
\nof the world under fixed and invariable laws. Life is evolved naturally and not
\nmysteriously out of matter itself, because it is already latent and pre-existent
\nin matter. Prana is involved in Anna, matter cannot exist without latent life,
\nand the first step in evolution is the liberation of the latent life out of the
\nheavy obscuration of matter in its grossest and densest forms. This evolution is
\neffected by the three Gunas, the triple principle of reception, retention and
\nreaction to outward impacts; as fresh forms of matter are evolved in which the
\npower of retaining impacts received in the shape of impressions becomes more and
\nmore declared, consciousness slowly and laboriously develops; as the power of
\nreacting on external objects becomes more pronounced and varied, organic
\nlife-growth begins its marvellous career; and the two, helping and enriching
\neach other, evolve complete, well-organised and richly-endowed Life.
\n           
\n<\/span>Prana receives its perfect development in animal life and when man, the
\nhighest term of animal life, has been reached, there is no farther need for its
\ndevelopment. The true evolution of Man<\/p>\n

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

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

\n
\nPage-224<\/p>\n

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

\n

therefore
\nlies not in the farther development of vitality, but in <\/span>the complete and
\ntriumphant liberation of mind out of the over<\/span>laying<\/span>
\n<\/span>obscuration
\nof the vital energies. Just as Prana is involved <\/span>in<\/span>
\n<\/span>Anna<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nhas to be evolved out of it, so Mind is involved in Prana and has to be evolved
\nout of it. The moment Life begins <\/span>to
\nliberate itself from the obscuration of gross matter, the first <\/span>step<\/span>
\n<\/span>has
\nbeen taken towards the evolution of Mind. We see the <\/span>gradual
\ndevelopment of Mind in animal evolution; the highest animal forms below man seem
\nto possess not only memory and individuality, but a considerable degree of
\nunderstanding and even the rudiments of reason. In man the development is much
\nmore rapid and triumphant, but it is by no means, as yet, complete or perfect.
\nPrana still to an immense extent obscures Mind, the gross body dominates the
\nsubtle. Mind is dominated by the instruments which Prana has created for it; the
\nbody, the nerve system, the sense-organs, the brain hamper and hinder its
\noperations even more than they help them; for the mind is bound with in <\/span>the
\nnarrow circle of their activity and limited by their deficiencies<\/span>.
\nThe continual stir of the vital energies in the brain and throughout the whole
\nsystem, disturb the Mind, the continual siege of external impressions distract
\nit, the insistent urgency of
\nthe <\/span>senses
\ntowards the external world impede the turning of the e<\/span>nergies
\ninward; calm and purity, concentration and introspection are rendered so
\ndifficult that the majority of men do not a<\/span>ttempt<\/span>
\n<\/span>them
\nor only compass them spasmodically and imperfectly<\/span>.
\nAny powerful and unusual development of mind, in its i<\/span>ntellectual<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nspiritual tendencies, is apt to be resented by the v<\/span>ital
\npart of man and to impair or seriously disturb his vital energies and physical
\nhealth. Along with the intellectual development of the race, there has been a
\nmarked deterioration of vital v<\/span>igour<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nsoundness and of the bodily organs. Moral and spiri<\/span>tual
\ndevelopment is continually at war with the needs of our phys<\/span>ical
\nlife, our hungers, desires, lusts, longings and the insistent ur<\/span>gency<\/span>
\n<\/span>of
\nthe instincts of self-preservation and self-gratification. I<\/span>t
\nis therefore towards the conquest and control of Prana and the free development
\nof Mind that the energies of man ought in future to be directed. He must arrive
\nat some arrangement of his social and individual life which while satisfying the
\nlegitimate<\/p>\n

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

\nPage-225<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

demands
\nof his body and his vital impulses; will admit of the extreme, and unhampered
\nperfection of his intellectual, moral and spiritual being. He must discover and
\npractise some method of maintaining the harmony and soundness of the vital and
\nbodily<\/span>,<\/span>
\n<\/span>instruments
\nand processes without for a moment allowing the care for them to restrict the
\nwidest possible range, the most bold and powerful exercise and the most intense
\nand fiery energisms of which the higher principle in his being is capable. He
\nmust learn how to transcend the limitations and errors of the physical senses
\nand train his mind to act even in the physical body with the rapidity,
\ndirectness and unlimited range proper to a psychical organ whose function is to
\noperate in subtle as well as in gross matter. To see where the physical eye is
\nblind, to hear where the physical ear is deaf, to feel where the physical sense
\nis callous, to understand thoughts unexpressed, are legitimate functions of the
\nmind; but they must be exercised, not as a rare power or in moments of supreme
\nexcitation, but as a regular and consciously- willed operation, the processes of
\nwhich have been mastered and known. Reason, at present fallible, imperfect and
\nenslaved to desire and prejudice, must be trained into its highest possibilities
\nof clarity, sanity and calm energy. The Mind must be tranquillised and purified
\nby control of the senses and the five Pranas, and trained to turn itself wholly
\ninward, excluding at will all outward impressions, so that Man may become master
\nof the inner world no less than of the outer, a conscious soul using the body
\nand no longer a body governed by a self-concealing and self-guiding psychical
\nentity. We think we have done wonders in the way of mental evolution; in reality
\nwe have made no more than a feeble beginning. The infinite possibilities of that
\nevolution still lie unexplored in front.<\/p>\n

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

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

               
\n<\/span>As Mind is involved in Prana, so is Supra-Intelligence involved and
\nlatent in all the operations of Mind. With the evolution of the Mind, some
\nrudimentary beginnings have been unconsciously made towards the liberation of
\nthis higher and far grander force. As the mental development foreshadowed above
\nproceeds to its goal, man will begin to evolve and realise himself as a mighty
\nand infinite Intelligence, not limited by sense-perception or the laborious and
\nclumsy processes of the reason, but<\/p>\n

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

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


\nPage-226<\/p>\n

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

\n

ca<\/span>pable<\/span>
\nof intuitive and infinite perception. And when the evolutio<\/span>n
\nof Mind is complete and the evolution of Supra-Intelligence proceeds,<\/span>
\nthe liberation of the Will involved in its operations will le<\/span>ad
\nman to the highest evolution of all when he realises himself as<\/span>
\na potent and scient Will, master of creation and not its slave, whose infinite
\ndelight in its own existence is lifted far beyond <\/span>the
\nthraldom of pain and pleasure and uses them with as unalloyed <\/span>a
\npleasure<\/span> as the poet
\nwhen he weaves joy and sorrow, delight and <\/span>lain
\nand love and fear and horror into one perfect and pleasura<\/span>ble<\/span>
\nmasterpiece or the painter when he mixes his colours and bl<\/span>ends<\/span>
\nlight and shade to create a wedded harmony of form and <\/span>hue.
\nThis state of unfettered Will and infinite Delight once<\/span>
\nrea<\/span>lised, he cannot
\nfail to know his real Self, absolute and calm,
\nomnipotent and pure, the eternal Brahman in whom this evolution 
\n<\/span>has its root and resting-place.<\/p>\n

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

\nPage-227<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\nCHAPTER
\nVII<\/font>
\n<\/font>
\n
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nElemental
\nEvolution<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

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

             
\n<\/span><\/font>T<\/b><\/font><\/span>HE
\nevolution of the Cosmos has not<\/span>
\n only
\n<\/span>spiritual
\nand psychical aspects; it has also from the moment of its inception a material
\nelement. Spirit exists from the beginning and was before any beginning, infinite
\nand sempiternal; but Matter also is an eternal entity. In the Parabrahman, the
\nabsolute inconceivable Self, Spirit and Matter are one and undifferentiated, but
\nthe moment evolution begins Spirit and Matter manifest equally and coevally. We
\nhave seen that the first spiritual evolution from the pure self-existent Atman
\nis Prajna of the Sleep-State, Eternal Wisdom, a supporting spiritual presence
\nwhich contains in itself the whole course of cosmic evolution even as a single
\nseed contains in itself the complete banyan-tree with all its gigantic progeny.
\nWe have seen that corresponding to this Eternal Wisdom, there is a first psychic
\nevolution, Ananda or Will, an inspiring psychical force in man and the Cosmos
\nwhich makes all the workings of Nature possible. Spirit however, even when
\noperating as Will, is not a working force in the sense that it itself carries on
\nthe operations of Nature; it is an inspiring, impelling force, whose function is
\nto set in motion a powerful material energy of the Self; and it is this material
\nenergy which under the inspiration of Will and at the bidding of Prajna sets
\nabout the evolution of the Cosmos. Self in its dealing with the Cosmos is a dual
\nentity, underlying spiritual presence and superficially active material energy,
\nor as they are called in the terminology of the <\/span>Sankhya
\nphilosophy<\/span>, 
\n<\/span><\/span>Purusha
\nand Prakriti; – Purusha, that <\/span>which
\nlies concealed in the Vast of universal existence, Prakriti, active or operative
\nenergy thrown forward from <\/i>the concealed spiritual source. The whole of
\nevolution, spiritual, psychical, material, is the result of Purusha and Prakriti
\nacting upon each other; the three evolutions are really one, coincident and
\ncoeval, because throughout it is one Reality that is manifesting and not three.
\nIt is Self manifesting as spirit, Self manifesting as soul,<\/p>\n

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

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

\n
\nPage-228<\/p>\n

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

\n

If
\nmanifesting as matter or body. These three manifestations are coincident in Time
\nand Space and each condition of phenomena is a triple state with Spirit and
\nMatter for its extreme terms and Soul for its middle. In the evolution of the
\nspirit-states Purusha determines itself so as to inform and support the
\nprogressive manifestations of Self as soul and body; in the evolution the
\npsychic states Prakriti worked on by Purusha creates for the manifestations of
\nSelf as spirit psychic sheaths or coverings which will at the same time inform
\nand support the manifestation of Self as matter; in the evolution of the causal,
\nsubtle and gross bodies Prakriti shapes itself so as to create the material out
\nof which the psychical coverings of Self as spirit may be made
\nand the medium in which the Self as soul may operate. The three evolutions are
\ndependent on each other, and that it is really one entity and not three which is
\nevolving, is shown by the fact that while in the first stage of the downward
\nevolution and the last f the upward Matter seems so refined as to appear
\nidentical with Spirit, in the last of the downward and first of the upward
\nSpirit seems so densified as to appear identical with Matter. This possibility
\nof evolution from and involution into each other would not be conceivable if
\nthey were not in essence one entity; and we lay legitimately deduce from the
\noneness of such diverse phenomena that they are <\/i>no more than phenomena,
\nmerely apparent changes in one unchanging reality.<\/p>\n

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


\n                   
\n<\/span>In the first stage of evolution Matter appears as an aspect or shadow <\/span>of
\nSpirit, and like Spirit it is infinite, unanalysable, un<\/span>differentiated.
\nJust as Spirit then has only three positive attributes, infinite and undefinable
\nexistence, consciousness and bliss, so original Matter has only three positive
\nattributes, infinite and u<\/span>ndefinable
\nTime, Space and Causality<\/span>
\n<\/span>–
\nor, as Hindu thought <\/span>phrases
\nit,<\/span> Condition. For
\nthe essence of Condition being change fro<\/span>m
\none state to another, and each change standing in the relation of cause or
\norigin to the one that follows it, Condition and causality become convertible
\nterms. From this indefinable noumenal condition of Prakriti, the Self forms for
\nits uses matter in
\ni<\/span>ts<\/span>
\n<\/span>most<\/span>
\nrefined and simple form, undifferentiated and undeveloped, but pregnant with the
\nwhole of material evolution. The causal state is called by the Sankhyas Pradhana,
\nthe first state or<\/p>\n

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

\nPage-229<\/p>\n

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

\n

arrangement
\nof matter and its essential principle. The relation of Spirit and Matter in this
\ncausal seed-state is admirably expressed in the Puranic image of Vishnu, the
\neternal Purusha, asleep on the waveless causal ocean with the endless coils of
\nthe snake Ananta, the 1nfinite,<\/span>
\n<\/span>for
\nhis couch. The sea of causal matter is then motionless and it is only when
\nVishnu awakes, the snake Ananta stirs and the first ever-widening ripples are
\ncreated on the surface of the waters that the actual evolution of matter has
\nbegun. The first ripple or vibration in causal matter creates a new and
\nexceedingly fine and pervasive condition of matter called Akasha or Ether; more
\ncomplex motion evolves out of Ether a somewhat <\/span>inetnser
\ncondition which is called Vayu, Air; and so by<\/span>
\n ever
\n<\/span>more
\ncomplex motion with increasing intensity of condition for result, yet three
\nother matter-states are successively developed, Agni or Fire, Apah or Water and
\nPrithvi or Earth. These are the five tanmātras <\/i>or subtle elements of
\nSankhya philosophy by the combination of which subtle forms in subtle matter are
\nbuilt.<\/p>\n

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

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


\n        <\/span>Here
\nit is necessary to enter a caution against possible misunderstandings to which
\nthe peculiar nomenclature used by the Rishis and the common rendering of tanmātra
\n<\/i>and bhūta <\/i>by the English word elements may very easily give
\nrise. When we speak of elements in English in a scientific sense, we always
\nimply elemental substances, <\/i>those substances which when analysed by
\nchemical processes, cannot be resolved into substances simpler than themselves.
\nBut when Hindu philosophy speaks of the five elements, it is not dealing with
\nsubstances at all but with elemental states or conditions of matter, which are
\nnot perceptible or analysable by chemical inquiry but underlie substances and
\nforms as basic principles of material formation. The old thinkers accepted the
\natomic theory of the formation of objects and substances but they did not care
\nto carry the theory farther and inquire by what particular combinations of atoms
\nthis or that substance came into being or by what variations and developments in
\ndetail bodies animate or inanimate came to be what they are. This did not seem
\nto them to be an inquiry of the first importance; they were content with laying
\ndown some main principles of material evolution and there they left the matter.
\nBut they were anxious to resolve not substances into their original atoms<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-230<\/p>\n

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

\n

but
\nmatter into its original condition and discover its relations to the psychical
\nand spiritual life of man. They saw that perpetual motion involving
\nperpetual change was the fundamental characte<\/span>ristic
\nof matter and that each new motion was attended by a new condition which stood
\nto the immediately preceding condition in the relation of effect to cause or at
\nleast of a new birth to the matrix in which it had been enembryoed. Behind the
\nsolid condition of matter, they found a condition less dense which was t the
\nbasis of all fluid forms; behind the fluid condition another still less dense
\nwhich was at the basis of all igneous or luminous forms behind
\nthe igneous, yet another and finer which was at th<\/span>e
\nbasis of all aerial or gaseous forms; and last of all one finest and most
\npervasive condition of all which they called Akasha or Ether. Ether was they
\nfound, the primary substance out of which all
\nthis visible Universe is evolved and beyond ether they w<\/span>ere
\nunable to go without matter losing all the characteristics associated
\nwith it in the physical world and lapsing into a quite <\/span>different
\nsubstance of which the forms and motions were much more
\nvague,<\/span> subtle,
\nelastic and volatile than any of which the p<\/span>hysical
\nworld is aware. This new world of matter they called subtle<\/span> matter
\nand analysed the subtle as they had analysed the <\/span>gross<\/span> until
\nby a similar procession from denser to subtler they came<\/span> to
\na<\/span> finest<\/span> condition
\nof all which they described as subtle <\/span>ether.<\/span> Out
\nof this subtle ether a whole world of subtle forms and <\/span>energies
\nare evolved which constitute psychical existence. Beyond subtle<\/span> ether
\nmatter lost its subtle characteristics and lapsed into <\/span>a
\nnew kind which they could not analyse but which seemed to be the matrix out of
\nwhich all material evolution proceeded. This they
\ntermed causal matter.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>In the course of this analysis they could not help perceiving that
\nconsciousness in each world of matter assumed a different form<\/span> and
\nacted in a different way corresponding to the charac<\/span>teristics
\nof the matter in which it moved. In its operations in <\/span>gross
\nmatter
\nthe forms it assumed were more firm, solid and <\/span>durable<\/span> but
\nat the same time more slow, difficult and hampered, f, just as are the motions
\nand acts of a man in his waking state<\/span>
\nas compared<\/span><\/font>
\nwith what he does in his dreams. In its operations in subtle matter the form and
\nconsciousness assumed were freer<\/p>\n

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

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


\nPage-231<\/p>\n

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

\n


\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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

and
\nmore rapid, but more volatile, elastic and swiftly mutable, as are the motions
\nand acts of a man in a dreaming state compared to the activities of his waking
\ncondition. To consciousness acting on gross matter they gave therefore the name
\nof the Waking- State, to consciousness acting on subtle matter the name of the
\nDream-State. In causal matter they found that consciousness took the shape
\nmerely of the pure sense of blissful existence; they could discover no other
\ndistinguishing sensation. This therefore they called the Sleep-State. They
\nfarther discovered that the various faculties and functions of man belonged
\nproperly some to one, some to another of the three states of consciousness and
\nits corresponding state of matter. His vital and physical functions operated
\nonly in gross matter, and they determined accordingly that his physical life was
\nthe result of consciousness working in the Waking-State on gross matter. His
\nmental and intuitional processes were found to operate freely and perfectly in
\nsubtle matter, but in gross matter with a hampered and imperfect activity; they
\nconsidered therefore that man’s mental life belonged properly to the Dream-State
\nand only worked indirectly and under serious limitations in the Waking-State.
\nThey determined accordingly that mental life must be the result of consciousness
\nworking in the Dream-State on subtle matter. There remained the fundamental
\nenergy of consciousness, Will-to-be or shaping Delight of existence this, they
\nperceived, was free and pure in causal matter, put to work if consciously, yet
\nthrough a medium and under limitations in subtle matter, in hampered and half
\neffectual fashion when the subtle self acted through the gross, and
\nsubconsciously only in gross matter. They considered therefore that man’s causal
\nfaculty or spiritual life belonged properly to the Sleep-State and worked
\nindirectly and through less and less easy mediums in the Dream and
\nWaking-States; and accordingly determined that it must be the result of
\nConsciousness working in the Sleep-State on causal matter. The whole of creation
\namounted therefore to a natural outcome from the mutual relations of Spirit and
\nMatter; these two they regarded as two terms, <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>call
\nthem forces, energies, substances, or what you will,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>of
\nphenomenal existence; and psychical life only as one result of their
\ninteraction. They refused however to accept any dualism<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-232<\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/span> 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

in
\ntheir cosmogony and, as has been pointed out, regarded Spirit and Matter as
\nessentially one; and their difference as no more than <\/span>an
\napparent duality in one real entity. This one entity is not a<\/span>nalysable
\nor intellectually knowable, yet it is alone the real, immuta<\/span>ble<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nsempiternal Self of things.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>It
\nwill be clear even from this brief and condensed statement the Vedic analysis of
\nexistence that the elements of the Upa<\/span>nishad<\/span>
\n<\/span>are
\nnot the elementary substances of modern chemistry but<\/span>
\nfive general states of matter to which all its actual or substantial manifestations belong. It will also be clear that the names <\/span>if
\nthe<\/span> five <\/span>elements
\nhave a conventional, not a literal value, but <\/span>may
\nbe as well to indicate why these particular names have been <\/span>chosen.
\nThe first and original state of subtle matter is the
\np<\/span>ure ethereal of
\nwhich the main characteristics are extreme
\ntenuity and pervasiveness and the one sensible property, sound.
\nSound, according to the Vedic inquirers, is the first evolved property of
\nmaterial substance; it precedes form and has the power <\/span>both
\nto create it and to destroy it. Looking around them <\/span>in<\/span>
\nthe physical universe for a substance with these characteristics<\/span>,
\n<\/span>they<\/span>
\n<\/span>found
\nit in Akasha or Vyoma (sky), implying not our terrestri<\/span>al
\natmosphere but that which is both beyond it and pervades it<\/span>,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\nfine pervasive connecting substance in which, as it were, the<\/span>
\nwhole universe floats. They therefore gave this name, Akasha to the ethereal
\ncondition of matter.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>The next matter-condition evolved from Ether and moving in it, was the
\npure aerial or gaseous. Here to pervasiveness was <\/span>added<\/span>
\n<\/span>a
\nnew potency of sensible and varied motion bringing with<\/span>,
\nas increased complexity of motion necessarily must do, increas<\/span>ed<\/span>
\n<\/span>differentiation
\nand complexity of substance. All the variety <\/span>and
\nevolutions of gaseous matter with their peculiar activities, <\/span>functions<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\ncombinations have this second state or power of <\/span>matter<\/span>
\n<\/span>as
\ntheir substratum; it is the basis also of that universal P<\/span>rana<\/span>
\n<\/span>or
\nvital energy, starting from action, retention and reaction <\/span>and
\nculminating in organised consciousness, which we have seen <\/span>to
\nbe so all-important an agent in the Vedic theory of the Cosmos. <\/span>In
\nthis second power of matter a new property of material substance is evolved, touch or contact, which was not fully devel<\/span>oped<\/span>
\n<\/span>in
\npure ether owing to its extreme tenuity and primarily<\/p>\n

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

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

\n
\nPage-233<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

simplicity
\nof substance. Seeking for a physical substance gaseous in nature, sensible by
\nsound and contact, but without form and characterised chiefly by varied motion
\nand an imperfect pervasiveness, the Rishis found it in Vayu, Wind or Air. Vayu
\ntherefore is the conventional term for the second condition of matter.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>Evolved out of the pure gaseous state and moving in it is the third or
\npure igneous condition of matter, which is also called Tejah, light and heat
\nenergy. In the igneous stage pervasiveness becomes still less subtle, sensible
\nmotion no longer the paramount characteristic, but energy, especially formative
\nenergy attains full development and creation and destruction, formation and
\nnew-formation are at last in readiness. In addition to sound and contact matter
\nhas now evolved a third property, form, which could not be developed in pure Air
\nowing to its insufficient density and the elusive vagueness and volatility of
\ngaseous manifestations. The third power of matter is at the basis of all
\nphenomena of light and heat and Prana by its aid so develops that birth and
\ngrowth now become possible; for light and heat are the necessary conditions of
\nanimate life-development and in their absence we have the phenomenon of death or
\ninert and inanimate existence: when the energy of light and heat departs from a
\nman, says the Upanishad, then it is that Prana, the vital energy, retires into
\nmind, his subtle or psychical part, and withdraws from the physical frame. The
\nphysical substance which seemed to the Rishis to typify the igneous state was
\nFire; for it is sensible by sound, contact and form and, less pervasive than
\nair, is distinguished by the utmost energy of light and heat. Fire therefore is
\nthe conventional or symbolic name of the third power of matter.
\n<\/span>
\n       
\n<\/span>Next upon the igneous state follows the liquid or fluid, less pervasive,
\nless freely motional or energetic, and distinguishingly marked by a kind of
\ncompromise between fixity and volatility. In this state matter evolves a fourth
\nproperty, taste. The liquid state is the substratum of all fluid forms and
\nactivities, and in its comparative fixity life-development finds its first
\npossibility of a sufficiently stable medium. All life is gathered out of
\n"the waters" and depends on the fluid principle within it for its very
\nsustenance. Water as the most typical fluid, half volatile, half<\/p>\n

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

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


\nPage-234<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

fixed,
\nperceptible by sound, contact, form and taste, has given a
\nsymbolic <\/span>name
\nto the fourth condition of matter.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>The solid state is the last to develop in this progression from <\/span>tenuity<\/span>
\n<\/span>to
\ndensity, for in this state pervasiveness reaches its lowest expression and
\nfixity predominates. It is the substratum of <\/span>solid
\nforms and bodies and the last necessity for the development of life; for it
\nprovides life with a fixed form or body in which
\ncan endure and work itself out and which it can develop into organism. The last
\nnew property of matter evolved in the solid state <\/span>is
\nodour; and since earth is the typical solid substance, <\/span>containing
\nall the five properties sound, contact, form, taste, and smell, Earth is the
\nconventional name selected for the fifth and final power of matter.
\n        <\/span>These five elemental states are only to be found in their purity and with
\ntheir characteristic qualities distinct and unblended
\n<\/span>in
\nthe world of subtle matter. The five elemental states <\/span>of
\ngross <\/span>matter
\nare impure; they are formed out of subtle matter <\/span>by
\nthe combination of the five subtle elements in certain fixed proportions, that
\none being given the characteristic name of ether, air, fire, water, or earth in
\nwhich the subtle ethereal, gaseous, igneous, fluid or solid element prevails
\noverwhelmingly over the others. Even the last and subtlest condition to which
\ngross <\/span>matter<\/span>
\n<\/span>can
\nbe reduced is not a final term; when realised into its<\/span>
\n<\/span>constituents,<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\nlast term of gross matter disintegrates and <\/span>matter<\/span>
\n<\/span>reaches
\na stage at which many of the most urgent and in- <\/span>exorable<\/span>
\n<\/span>laws
\nof physics no longer operate. It is at this point <\/span>where<\/span>
\n<\/span>chemical
\nanalysis and reasoning can no longer follow Nature into her recesses that the
\nHindu system of Yoga by getting behind the five Pranas or gross vital breaths
\nthrough which Life manifests in gross physical matter, is able to take up the
\npursuit and investigate the secrets of psychic existence in a subtler and freer
\nworld.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-235<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER
\nVIII
\n<\/font>
\n<\/b>
\n
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nMatariswan
\nand the Waters<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

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

                       
\n<\/font><\/b><\/span>W<\/font>E ARE<\/b> now in a position to consider what may be the precise meaning of
\nthe Upanishad when it says that in It Matariswan ordereth the waters. Shankara
\ntakes āpah <\/i>in a somewhat unusual and peculiar sense and interprets,
\n"Air orders or arranges actions"; in other words, all the activity in
\nthe Cosmos is dependent upon the aerial or gaseous element in matter which
\nenters into and supports all objects and, as Prana, differentiates and
\ndetermines their proper functions. Prana, as we have seen, is the great vital
\nenergy breathing and circulating through all existence whose activity is the
\nprincipal instrument of Will in the evolution of the Universe and whose
\nmediation is necessary for all the operations of mind and body in gross matter.
\nIn psychic life also Prana is inherent in mind and supports those activities of
\nsubtle matter which are necessary for psychic existence. The intimate connection
\nbetween Prana and vital activity may be best illustrated in its most obvious and
\nfundamental function in the living organism, the regulation of breathing. So
\nimportant is this function that Breath and Prana are generally identified; the
\nusual signification of the word Prana is, indeed, breath and the five
\ndifferentiated vital energies supporting the human frame are called the five
\nbreaths. So important is it, that even the searching analysis of modern science
\nhas not been able to get behind it and it is held as an incontrovertible fact
\nthat the maintenance of respiration is necessary to the maintenance of life. In
\nreality, this is not so. Ordinarily, of course, the regular inhalation of oxygen
\ninto the system and exhalation of corrupted breath out of it, is so necessary to
\nthe body that an abrupt interruption of the process, if continued for two
\nminutes will result in death by suffocation. 
\n<\/span>But this is merely due to a persistent vital habit of the body. It needs
\nonly a careful training in the regulation of the breath to master this habit and
\nmake respiration subservient to the will. Anyone who has for a long time
\npractised this art of. breath-<\/p>\n

<\/span> 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-236
\n<\/span>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

\n

regulation or
\nPranayama can suspend inhalation and exhalation <\/span>nr
\nmany<\/span> minutes
\nand some not only for minutes but for hours to<\/span>gether
\nwithout injury to the system or the suspension of bodily life;
\nfor internal respiration and the continuance of the vital activities within
\nthe body still maintain the functions necessary to life<\/span>.<\/span> Even<\/span> the
\ninternal respiration may be stopped and the vital <\/span>activities
\nentirely
\nsuspended without subjecting the body to the process of death and
\ndisintegration. The body may be kept intact for<\/span>
\n days,<\/span> months
\nand years while all the functions of breath and vit<\/span>ality
\nare suspended, until the Will in its psychical sheaths chooses<\/span> to
\nresume its interrupted communications with the world <\/span>if
\ngross matter
\nand recommence physical life at the precise point <\/span>which
\n<\/span>it
\nwas discontinued. And this is possible because Pra<\/span>na, 
\n<\/span>the vital energy, instead of being allowed to circulate through the
\nsystem under the necessary conditions of organic
\nphysical activity, can be gathered up into the mind-organ and from there
\nin its simple undifferentiated form support and hold together the physical case.
\n        But if respiration is not necessary to the maintenance of life,
\nit certainly is necessary to the maintenance of activity. The first condition of
\nPranayama is the suspension of conscious physical activity and the perfect
\nstillness of the body, which is the primary object of the various āsanas or rigidly set positions of the body assumed by the Yogin as a necessary
\npreliminary in the practice
\nof
\nhis
\nscience. In the first stages of Yoga the subconscious activity<\/span>
\nof the body continues due to the life of the cells; in the later stages when
\ninternal respiration and vital activities are suspended, even this ceases, and
\nthe life of the body becomes like that of the
\nstone<\/span> or
\nany other inert object. It is held together and exists by
\nth<\/span>e presence of Prana
\nin its primary state, the only connection of
\nWill with the physical frame being the will to subsist physically. This is the
\nfirst outstanding fact of Yoga which proves that Prana 
\n<\/span>is the basis of all physical activity; the partial or complete quiescence
\nof Prana brings with it the partial or complete quiescence of<\/span> physical<\/span> activity,
\nthe resumption of its functions by Prana is i<\/span>nevitably
\nattended by the resumption of physical activity. The second<\/span> outstanding
\nfact is the peculiar effect of Pranayama and Y<\/span>oga
\non mental activity. The first condition of Yogic exercises <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Page-237<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

is,
\nas has been said, the stillness of the body, which implies the suspension of the
\nfive indriyas <\/i>or potencies of action, grasp, locomotion, utterance,
\nemission and physical ecstasy. It is a significant fact that the habit of
\nsuspending these indriyas <\/i>is attended by an extraordinary activity of the
\nfive indriyas <\/i>of knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, and
\nan immense heightening of mental power and energy. In its higher stages this
\nincrease of power intensifies into clairvoyance, clairaudience, the power of
\nreading other minds, and knowing actions distant in space and, time, conscious
\ntelepathy and other psychical powers. The reason for this development is to be
\nfound in the habit of gather- ing Prana or vitality into the mind-organ.
\nOrdinarily the psychical life is overlaid and hampered by the physical life, the
\nactivity of Prana in the physical body. As soon as this activity becomes even
\npartially quiescent, the gross physical obstruction of Anna and Prana is
\nrarefied and mind becomes more self-luminous, shining out through the clouds
\nthat concealed it; vital energy is not only placed mainly at the service of the
\nmind as in the concentration of the poet and the thinker, but is so much
\nsubtilised by the effect of Pranayama that the mind can operate far more
\nvigorously and rapidly than in ordinary conditions. For mind operates freely and
\nnaturally in subtle matter only and the subtler the matter, the freer the
\nworkings of the mind. At an intenser stage of Yogic exercise all the vital
\nfunctions are stilled and Prana entirely withdrawn from bodily functions into
\nmind which can then retire into the subtle world and operate with perfect
\nfreedom and detachment from physical matter. Here again we see that just as
\nPrana, differentiated and working physically, was the basis of all physical
\nactivity, so Prana, intermediate and working psycho-physically is at the basis
\nof all mental activity, and Prana, pure and working psychically is at the basis
\nof all psychical activity.<\/p>\n

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

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


\n            
\n<\/span>The third outstanding fact of Yoga is that while in its earlier processes
\nit stimulates mental activity, in its later stages it over- passes mental
\nactivity. At first the mind drawn inward from active reactions to external
\nimpacts, is able to perfect its passive reactions or power of reception and its
\ninternal reactions or powers of retention and combination. Next it is drawn
\ninward from<\/p>\n

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

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

\nPage-238<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

external
\nphenomena altogether and becomes aware of the internal processes and finally
\nsucceeds in concentrating entirely within itself. This is followed by the entire
\nquieting of the subtle or psychical <\/i><\/span>or
\nsense-potencies followed by the entire quiescence <\/span>mind
\nitself. The reception of psychical impacts and the ions of subtle thought-matter
\nare suspended; mind concentrate on a single thought and finally thought it self
\nis surmounted and the Supra-Intelligence is potent, free and active. It is at
\nthis that Yoga develops powers which are so unlimited as to appear like omnipotence. The true
\nYogin, however, does not
\nlinger in this stage which is still within the confines of psychical existence,
\nbut withdraws the ill beyond Supra-Intelligence entirely into itself. The moment
\nthe Will passes out of subtle matter, activity ceases. Will has then three
\ncourses open to it; either to realise itself as the eternal Sakshi or witness
\nand behold the vision of the Universe as a phenomenon within itself which it but
\n<\/i><\/span>does<\/span>
\n<\/span>not
\nenact; <\/span><\/i>or
\nto disappear into the Sunya Brahman, Supreme<\/span>
\nNothingness, the great Void of unconscious mere existence with which the
\nParabrahman is veiled; or to return into elf and, liberated from even the vision
\nof phenomena, exist own infinity of pure consciousness and supreme bliss. If we
\nfollow <\/i>Prana through this process of Yogic liberation, we shall find that
\nPrana ends where activity ceases. For Prana is a material entity arising out of
\nthe aerial state of subtle matter and as soon as that state is overpassed, Prana
\nis impossible. Throughout
\nthere is this close identification of Prana with activity. It may well be said,
\ntherefore, that Matariswan is that which arranges actions.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>Matariswan is the philosophical expression for Vayu, the aerial
\nprinciple. It means that which moves in the mother or matrix and the word
\nimplies the three main characteristics of the aerial element. It is evolved
\ndirectly out of ether, the common matrix, which is therefore its own mother and
\nultimately the mother of all elements, forces, substances, objects; its
\npredominant characteristic is motion, and this characteristic of motion operates
\nin the matrix, ether. Moving in ether, developing, com- bing, it creates the
\nsubstances out of which sun and nebula and planet are made; it evolves fire and
\nwater and atmosphere,<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-239<\/p>\n

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

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

\n


\nearth, stone and metal, plant, fish, bird and beast. Moving in ether, acting and
\nfunctioning through its energy Prana, it determines the nature, motions, powers,
\nactivities of all those infinite forms which it has created. By the combinations
\nand operations of this aerial element the sun is built up, fire is struck forth,
\nclouds are formed, a molten globe cools and solidifies into earth. By the energy
\nof the aerial element the sun gives light and heat, fire burns, clouds give
\nrain, earth revolves. Not only all animate, but all inanimate existence owes its
\nlife and various activity to Matariswan and its energy, Prana.
\n        <\/span>But it owes not only its life and activity, but the very materials out of
\nwhich it is made. Here lies the insufficiency of Shankara’s interpretation. The
\nword āpah <\/i>naturally and usually signifies "waters", and it
\nis a law of interpretation .not lightly to be set aside that when the natural
\nand usual meaning of a word gives a satisfactory or even a possible and not
\nunsuitable sense, it should be preferred to an artificial and unusual meaning.
\nIn this case "waters" may have two meanings one of which gives a sense
\npossible and not unsuitable, the other a sense even more satisfactory than
\nShankara’s interpretation. By waters may be indicated the various fluid forms
\nwhich are evolved by the fluid element, and, involved in the solid, sustain
\norganic life; for the word āpah <\/i>is commonly used to indicate the
\nfourth element of matter. Prana, the vital energy, may be said so to dispose
\nthese "waters" as to originate, sustain and develop all solidities and
\nall forms of organic life. But this would be a narrow interpretation out of
\nharmony with the vast sweep and significance of this verse which sums up the
\nsupreme Entity in its aspects as the stable substratum of cosmic existence, the
\nmighty sum of cosmic motion and energy and the infinite continent of cosmic
\nenergy. It is better therefore to take āpah <\/i>in the sense of the
\noriginal ocean of cosmic matter, a figure which is so common as to have become a
\ncommon place of Hindu thought. In It, in Brahman, Matariswan, the aerial element
\ntook and disposed the infinite supply of causal matter so as to provide the
\nsubstance, evolve the forms and co- ordinate the activities of this vast and
\ncomplex universe.<\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-240<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER  
\n <\/span>IX<\/p>\n

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

\n
\n <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nSprit
\nand Matter<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

                <\/span><\/span>
\n<\/span>B<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/font>UT
\nMatariswan does not conduct these numb<\/span>er
\nless cosmic operations vast and minute by virtue of its own intrinsic and
\nunborrowed power. Otherwise we might well ask if there is a material substance
\nwhich provides all the wherewithal necessary for the evolution of this Universe
\nand a
\nmaterial energy by whose existence all the operations implied <\/span>evolution<\/span>
\n<\/span>can
\nbe<\/span> <\/span>explained,
\nthen the whole Universe can u<\/span>nderstood
\nas a development out of eternal Matter with its properties substance and energy,
\nand no second term of
\nexistence other than Matter need be brought into account for the evolution of
\nConsciousness. But the Upanishad emphatically negatives the material origination
\nof things by stating that it Brahman, the Supreme Entity, that Matariswan orders
\nthe waters. By this, as Shankara points out, it is meant that <\/span>so
\nlong<\/span> <\/span>as
\nthe Supreme Self is there, can the activity of<\/span>
\nMatariswan be conceived as possible. As ether, the matrix, is continent and
\ncondition of Matariswan and his works, so is
\nBrahman the continent and condition of ether and its evolution.
\nMatariswan is born out of ether and works in ether, but ether is itself only <\/span>an
\nintermediate evolution; in reality, Matariswan is born<\/span>
\nout of Brahman the Self and works in Brahman the Self.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>The materialistic theory of cosmic origins has a great superficial
\nplausibility of its own and it is popular with scientists because analytical
\nScience knows thoroughly the evolutions of matter and does not know thoroughly
\nthe evolutions of soul and
\n<\/span>spirit<\/span>
\nis therefore inevitably led to explain what it knows imperfe<\/span>ctly
\nor not at all by what it does know and understand. The materialistic tendency is
\nimmensely assisted by the universal interdependence of Spirit, Soul and Matter.
\nEvery spiritual and
\nphysical <\/span>activity
\ninvolves a material operation and this Science <\/span>has<\/span>
\n<\/span>clearly
\nseen. It is natural therefore for the Scientist to argue <\/span>that
\nthe material operation is the cause of the spiritual and psy-<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-241<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

chical
\nactivity, nay, that the material operation is the activity and spirit and soul
\ndo not exist, but are essentially matter. It is equally true that every material
\noperation involves a spiritual and psychical activity, but this Science has not
\nyet seen. When therefore idealistic philosophies argue in precisely the opposite
\nsense and urge that the spiritual activity is the cause of the material
\noperation, nay, that the spiritual activity is the material operation and matter
\ndoes not exist but is essentially spirit, it is natural for Science to brush
\naside the argument as metaphysical, mystical and irrational. I argue from the
\nfirm basis of well-tested certainties, thinks the Scientist, my opponent from
\nmere ideas the truth of which cannot be demonstrated by definite evidence or
\nactual experiment.
\n        <\/span>All Hindu philosophies, however, not only the
\nVedantic, 
\n<\/span>but Sankhya and Buddhism agree in rejecting the materialistic reading of
\nthe Universe and oppose to the well-tested certainties of Science certainties as
\nwell-tested of their own. Hindu thought has its own analysis of the Universe
\narrived at by processes and experiments in which its faith is as assured and
\nunshakeable as the confidence of the scientist in his modern methods of analysis
\nand observation. To a certain extent Hindu philosophy goes hand in hand with the
\nmaterialistic. Prakriti or Nature, an original energy manifesting as substance
\nis the origin, the material and the agent of evolution. This original energy is
\nnot Prana, the vital energy, for Prana is not original but a later evolution,
\narising out of the aerial condition of matter and subsequent in time to the
\nethereal; there must therefore have been a previous energy which evolved ether
\nout of causal matter. To this original Matter Sankhya gives the name of
\nPrakriti, while Vedanta and Buddhism, admitting the term Prakriti, prefer to
\ncall it Maya. But Prakriti is not in itself sufficient to explain the origin of
\nthe universe; another force is required which will account for the activity of
\nPrakriti in Pradhana or original substance. This force is Purusha or Spirit. It
\nis the presence of Purusha and Prakriti together, says Sankhya, that can alone
\naccount for cosmic evolution. Vedanta agrees and emphasises what Sankhya briefly
\nassumes, – that Purusha and Prakriti are themselves merely aspects, obverse and
\nreverse sides, of a single Supreme entity or<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-242<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

self
\nof things, Buddhism, still more trenchant, does away with reali<\/span>ty
\nof Purusha and Prakriti altogether and regards Cosmic <\/span>Evolution
\nas a cosmic illusion.
\n        <\/span>The
\nnecessity
\nfor positing another force than Prakriti arises
\nfrom th<\/span>e<\/span> very
\nnature of Prakriti and its operations. The fundamental
\n<\/span>characteristic of
\nPrakriti as soon as it manifests is eternal,
\n–<\/span> motion without
\nbeginning, without end, without limit cessation or respite. Its cosmic stir is
\nlike an eternally troubled ocean, a ceaseless rush, foam and clamour of 
\n<\/span>perpetual restlessness, infinite activity. And the rapidity, the
\nvariability, the unimaginably complex coincidence and simultaneousness of
\ndifferent rates and forms of motion in the same material, in the same limits of
\nspace and time; are such as to baffel realisation. We can only realise it in
\nsections by picking the web of Nature to pieces and regarding as separable and
\nself-sufficient what<\/span> are
\nreally simultaneous and coincident motions. The fi<\/span>rst
\nresult of this infinite complexity of motion is an infinite mutability. Wherever
\nwe turn our eyes there is something evolving and developing, something decaying
\nand disintegrating.
\nNothing at this moment is precisely what it was the moment before; every ripple
\nin the sea of Time means a disturbance however sm<\/span>all
\nin the coincident sea of Space, a change however infinitesimal in the condition
\nof the largest or most apparently stable
\nparts
\nof<\/span> Nature
\nas well as of the minutest or most volatile. Causality,<\/span> infinite
\nand without beginning or end, cannot cease from its per<\/span>petuity
\nof persistent action, its infinite progression of effects which are the causes
\nof other effects, causes which are the
\nof other causes; it is an endless chain, moving through and Time, working in
\nSubstance, forged by an eternal and indefinable Energy. And this eternal motion
\nand mutability means inevitably an infinite multiplicity. Every inch of Space is
\nthronged with an infinite variety of animate and inanimate existences, countless
\nin number, multitudinous in kind, myriadly various in motion and action. An
\ninfinite multiplicity of motions
\nmake
\nup<\/span> the
\nworld, creating endless variety of substance, from function<\/span>;
\nan infinite multiplicity of change is the condition of its activity, Remove this
\neternal motion, eternal mutability, at multiplicity from the idea of Prakriti
\nand we arrive at
\n 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-243<\/p>\n

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

\n

something
\nwe cannot recognise, an inactive energy, an immate<\/span>rial
\nsubstance. Without motion, Time, Space, Causality, as<\/span>
\n<\/span>things
\nin themselves, cease to be. We are face to face with blank void and nothingness
\n– or else, since this is unimaginable and impossible, we must suppose something
\nwhich cannot cease to be, an absolute Infinity undivided by Space or Time, an
\nabsolute Immutability unconditioned by cause and effect, an absolute Stillness
\nunaffected by the illusive mobilities of Energy, an absolute Spirit ultimately
\nreal behind the phenomenon of substance.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>If we do not accept this transcendental reality, we must suppose that an
\neternal Prakriti with eternal motion, mutability, <\/span>multiplicity
\nas its characteristics is the alpha and omega of<\/span>
\nexis<\/span>tence.
\nBut a consideration of the Universe does not justify our resting secure in that
\nhypothesis. In this eternal motion there is something perpetually stable, in
\nthis eternal mutability a sum and reality which is immutable; in this eternal
\nmultiplicity an initial, persistent and final Unity. Eternal motion in itself
\nwould lead to nothing but eternal chaos and confusion. We know that the Cosmos
\nis made up of an infinite number of motions simultaneously occupying the same
\nSpace and simultaneously existent in the same substance; but the result is not
\nclash or confusion, but harmony. In other words, the condition of this unending
\nmotion is an eternal stability. Everywhere we see a variety of motions resulting
\nin a harmonious balance, in the orbits of the revolving planets round the moving
\nsun woven into one solar system we have a striking instance out of myriads of
\nthis law which governs every object and every organism. There is therefore not
\nonly the mobile Prakriti, but something else which is eternally stable.
\n        Eternal mutability, likewise, can lead to nothing but eternal unrest and
\ndisorder. What is it that imposes an unchanging law of persistence and orderly
\ndevelopment on this mass of infinitely shifting, unquiet and impermanent parts
\nand combines into one harmony this confused strife of changing and interchanging
\nphenomena? In its details the universe is restlessly mutable, momentarily
\nchanging, in its broad masses it is more fixed and permanent, in its sum it is immutable. The class is less mutable and
\nim-<\/p>\n

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

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

\nPage-244<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\npermanent than the man, the community than the class, the race than the
\ncommunity, mankind than the race; and so it is with existences. The parts
\nchange, the whole persists. And it is well known that while matter goes through
\ninfinite changes of from, its sum never changes; unincreasing it develops,
\nundiminishing it disintegrates. But not only is the sum of things immutable, the
\nlaws of their development are immutable; phenomena vary but the law governing
\nthem remains the same, and for this reason <\/span>that
\nthe nature of things is immutable. Whatever the vari<\/span>ety
\nof forms, the thing in itself preserves its characteristics and remains <\/span>unchanged.
\nElectricity works in various shapes and in <\/span>many
\nactivities, but it is always electricity preserving its true characteristics
\nwhatever work it may do or whatever body it may <\/span>wear<\/span>
\n<\/span>and
\nalways<\/span> <\/span>working
\nand changing under the fixed laws of its<\/span>
\nbeing<\/span> which <\/span>cannot
\nchange. Electricity again is only one form <\/span>and
\nfunction of the igneous element which takes many forms, but in all of them
\npreserves its true characteristics and its own law of work. We see therefore
\nthat the parts are impermanent, th<\/span>e<\/span>
\n<\/span>whole
\npermanent; forms of things change, the reality is immu<\/span>table.
\nThe condition of this unending mutability and imperm<\/span>anence<\/span>
\n<\/span>is
\nan eternal immutability and permanence. There is ther<\/span>efore
\nnot only this mutable Prakriti, but something else lich is eternally immutable.
\n        <\/span>The apparent multiplicity of the Universe is equally deceptive. For the
\nvery condition of this infinite multiplicity is a persistent Unity which
\nprecedes it and towards which it moves. There 
\n<\/span>are
\n<\/span>many<\/span>
\n<\/span>substances,
\nbut they are all evolutions from one <\/span>substance;
\none seed disposes itself in many forms. There are <\/span>any<\/span>
\nlaws <\/span>governing
\nthe workings of that substance in its evolutio<\/span>n
\nbut <\/span>they<\/span>
\n<\/span>resolve
\nthemselves into one law to which all existenc<\/span>e
\nis subject. As substances and forms develop, there seem to be many <\/span>things
\nwith many natures, but they go back into one thi<\/span>ng
\nwith one nature. There are many forms of electricity, but all resolve themselves
\ninto the one substance electricity; there are many <\/span>forms
\nof the igneous element, of which electricity is o<\/span>ne,
\nbut they all resolve themselves into one igneous element; <\/span>there<\/span>
\n<\/span>are<\/span>
\n<\/span>many
\nelements beside the igneous, but they all resolve <\/span>themselves<\/span>
\n<\/span>into
\none causal and universal substance. This is the<\/p>\n

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

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


\n Page-245<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

bottom
\nfact of the universe; all complexities and varieties resolve themselves into a
\nprecedent simplicity, and all simplicities into an original Unity. There is,
\ntherefore not only this ever-multiplying Prakriti, but something else which is
\neternally One. In this mobile, mutable, multitudinous Prakriti, there is then a
\nper<\/span>sistent
\nelement which is stable, immutable and one. We<\/span>
\n<\/span>have
\narrived again at that One infinitely Immutable, Immobile Sum and Reality of
\nThings which is Parabrahman.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>Materialistic Analysis insists, however, that the
\neternal unity, immutability and immobility supporting and making possible the
\neternal multiplicity, mutability and motion are themselves characteristics of
\nEternal Matter. They are the two opposing <\/span> <\/span>lines
\nof force whose action and reaction preserve the equibalance of cosmic existence,
\nbut the eternal reality in which they act is not spiritual but material. For
\nmaterial energy working in material substance is quite enough to explain all the
\nevolutions of Nature and these in themselves make Eternal Matter. Hindu thought,
\nhowever, has always been unable to accept this conclusion because its analysis
\nof cosmic existence has convinced it that substance and energy are not things in
\nthemselves, but merely phenomena. Substance increases with density until it
\nreaches its highest expression in solid physical matter; but as it is analysed
\nand resolved nearer and nearer to its origin, its density becomes less and less,
\nits tenuity increases, it becomes more and more unsubstantial, until, on the
\nfarther brink of causal matter, it disappears into something which is not
\nsubstance. Moreover, when examined it appears that substance is really another
\nterm for energy; the conditions of density and tenuity which constitute material
\nsubstance, correspond with the conditions of motional intensity and vagueness
\nwhich constitute material energy. As, therefore, matter is resolved nearer and
\nnearer<\/span>,
\n<\/span>to
\nits origins, energy, like substance, becomes less and less intense, its
\nvagueness increases until it comes to a standstill or rather dissipates in
\nsomething which is not energy. The conclusion is irresistible that substance and
\nenergy are merely a single phenomenon with a double aspect, and that in the
\norigin of things this phenomenon, to which we may give the name of Matter, does
\nnot exist. The question remains, into what do substance<\/p>\n

<\/span> 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-246<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

and
\nenergy <\/span>disappear?
\nout of what were they born? We are confr<\/span>onted<\/span>
\n<\/span>again
\nwith the necessity of choosing between the unimaginable<\/span>
\nimpossibility of blank void and nothingness, for which we have no warrant in
\nreason or experience, or the One, immut<\/span>able,
\nImmobile, Infinite and Eternal Reality which is Parabr<\/span>ahman.
\nThis Supreme Entity is not Matter, we have seen. But it may be argued that it
\ncannot be certainly called Spirit, since <\/span>it
\nis so absolute an entity as to be indefinable except by neg<\/span>atives.
\nVedanta concedes this caution, asserting only that Parabrahman <\/span>is
\nnot a negative entity, but an eternal and positive Rea<\/span>lity,
\ndefined by negatives simply because it is not expressible to the finite
\nintellect, and containing in itself the unity of Spirit Matter, which is neither
\nmaterial nor spiritual.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>One argument remains open to material analysis. Granted Parabrahman <\/span>as
\nthe reality of things, yet phenomenal existence it self<\/span>
\n<\/span>is
\npurely material and there is no need to call in the assistance of any<\/span>
\nother and different entity. For material energy in material substance is
\nsufficient to explain all phenomena. Hindu thought holds, however, that it is
\nnot sufficient to explain the late phenomena of Consciousness. At the beginning
\nof material evolution Matter is in itself inanimate, consciousness, to all
\nappearance, non-existent. How and whence then did it ear? By the interaction of
\nthe three guņas <\/i>inherent in Prakriti reception, reaction, retention.
\nBut the interaction of the three guņas <\/i>did not create Consciousness,
\nthey only liberated it from dense obscuration of gross matter. For if
\nconsciousness were involved in Matter, it could never be evolved from it. For be
\nevolved from matter as an entirely new birth, it must be eith<\/span>er
\nsome already existent material substance in a new form<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u2013
\nsay, <\/span>some kind of gas
\nor electricity, or it must be a new substance formed by the union of two or more substances, just as <\/span>w<\/span>ater
\nis formed out of hydrogen and oxygen. No such gas or electricity has been
\ndiscovered, no such new substance exists. Indeed<\/span>
\n<\/span>the
\nevolution of a mighty, reasoning, aspiring, conqu<\/span>ering,
\nirrepressible Consciousness, capable of something like omnipotence and
\nomniscience, out of mere material gases and chemical substance is a paradox so
\nhardy, so colossally and impossibly<\/span>
\n<\/span>audacious
\nthat mankind has rightly refused to accept<\/p>\n

<\/span> 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-247<\/p>\n

 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

it
\neven when advanced with the prestige of Science and her triumphant analysis and
\nthe almost irresistible authority of her ablest exponents to support the
\nabsurdity. Christian theology was <\/span>inconsistent
\nenough when it degraded man to the dust as a<\/span>
\nworm <\/span>and
\nclod, yet declared him capable of divinity by the easy process of belief in an
\nirrational dogma; but the materialistic paradox, which lodges no hidden angel in
\nthe flesh, is even more <\/span>startling,
\nmore naked, more inexorably irrational. Man,<\/span>
\nsays <\/span>materialistic
\nScience, is an utterly insignificant unit in the universe; the infinitesimal
\ncreature of a day, he lives his short span of life and is then decomposed into
\nthe gases out of which he was made. He derives his mind, body and moral nature
\nfrom his brother the chimpanzee and his father the gorilla. In his organism he
\nis merely a mass of animalculae which belong individually to the lowest stage
\nof animal life; but by combining into a republic with the cells of the brain as
\na sort of despotic senate or council, these undeveloped forms of life have been
\nable to master the world. What has not this republic of animalculae, this Rome
\nof protoplasms, been able to effect? It has analysed the elements; it has
\nweighed the suns and measured the orbits of the stars; it has written the dramas
\nof Shakespeare, the epics of Valmikie and Homer and Vyasa, the philosophies of
\nKant and Shankara; it -has harnessed the forces of Nature to do its bidding; it
\nhas understood existence and grasped the conception of infinity. There is
\nsomething fascinatingly romantic and interesting in the conception and it is not
\nsurprising that the human intellect should have been captured for a while by its
\ncheerful audacity. But how long can unreason prevail? Even if we regard man as a
\nlimited being and take what the race has done for the utmost measure of what the
\nindividual can do, the disproportion between the results achieved and the means
\nsupplied by this theory is too great to be overlooked. It was inevitable that
\n.the religions formerly crushed down and almost smothered by the discoveries of
\nScience,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\neven those creeds most philosophically insufficient <\/span>and
\ncrude,<\/span> <\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>should
\nbe raising their heads and showing an <\/span>unexpected
\nvitality. Science prevailed for a time over religion by exposing the
\nirrationalities and prejudices which had over- grown and incrusted spiritual
\ntruth. But when it sought to re-<\/p>\n

<\/span> 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-248<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

place
\nthem
\nby a more astounding irrationality than any religion 
\n<\/span>had been guilty of and began to contract its own hard crust of .as and
\nprejudices, it exposed itself to an inevitable reaction. Mankind for a time
\nbelieved because it was incredible at the biding of the theologians who ruled
\nreason out of court; the experiment is not likely to be repeated for long on the
\nauthority of scientists who profess to make reason their judge.
\n        <\/span>If
\nit be still contended that, however paradoxical, consciousness is the result of
\nimpressions and vibrations in the brain, or consciousness is merely a material
\nenergy manifested at a particular intensity of ethereal vibration, like light or
\nsound, the answer is that consciousness operates more powerfully when rain is
\nquiescent and unimpressed from without and survives cellular decomposition, and
\nthat when energy is quiescent and
\n<\/span>r<\/span>
\ndissolved into its origin, consciousness abides. To the Hindu mind this is an
\ninsuperable obstacle to the acceptance of material origin of consciousness. From
\nits long acquaintance Yoga and the results of Yoga, it has learned that
\nconscious Will in the human body can not only override the laws of gross
\nphysical matter and come appreciably nearer, within its sphere, to omnipotence
\nand omniscience, but that this conscious Will can impose absolute quietude on
\nand detach itself from the animalcule <\/span>republic
\nwhich is erroneously supposed to originate and con<\/span>tain
\nit and that it does, as a habitual law of Nature, survive the disintegration of
\nthe body. These two facts are fatal to the materialistic theory and, so long as
\nthe practice of Yoga subsists in India, the Hindu mind will never accept
\nmaterialism. For they show that, although undeniably consciousness is evolved
\nout of gross matter, it can only be because it was involved into gross matter by
\na previous downward evolution; it is not being created, it is being merely
\nliberated from its prison. Neither consciousness be taken as a function of
\nsubtle matter; for just as it can exist apart from and survives the
\ndisintegration of gross body, so also it can exist apart from and survives the
\ndisintegration of its subtle body. Before subtle matter evolves, consciousness
\npre-exists in causal matter; and after subtle matter dissolves, consciousness
\nsurvives in causal matter. And, since matter at the stage of causality neither
\nfunctions nor evolves,
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Page-249<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

consciousness is not
\na function or evolution of causal matter, but other and different from it. It is
\nclear therefore that from the first appearance of matter, consciousness operates
\ncoevally with it, but is not dependent on it for its origin.<\/p>\n

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

\n
\nPage-250<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER
\nX<\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> 
\n<\/span>
\n                     
\n<\/span><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/span><\/font>
\nO<\/b><\/span><\/font>RIGINAL<\/span>
\nconsciousness,
\nas distinct from Matter, is termed Spirit. Spirit must never be confused with
\nthe apparent manifestations of it, which are merely the action and reaction of
\nMatter and Spirit on each other. The characteristics of true Spirit can be
\ndetermined by distinguishing what is essential, characteristic and permanent in
\nconsciousness throughout all its stages from what is merely condition, form or <\/span>function
\nof consciousness affected by the medium in which it is<\/span> working.
\nThere are three such characteristics which appear rudimentarily the moment
\nconsciousness itself appears, and seem more and more pronounced as liberated
\nSpirit develops to its highest self-expression. The first of the trio is the
\nimpulse of existence, the will to preserve self, to survive and be, not merely
\ntemporarily but unendingly. Showing itself at first physically in the instinct
\nof self-preservation and the instinct of self-reproduction, it develops
\npsychically in the desire to outlast death and become "immortal" by
\nwhatever way, by a book, a song, a picture, a statue, a discovery, an invention,
\nan immortal act or remembered career no less than by psychical persistence of
\npersonality after the death of the body, and it culminates spiritually in the
\nWill to surmount both death and life and persist eternally and transcendentally.
\nThe second characteristic of consciousness is’ the capacity of knowledge or
\nawareness, the Will to know. Showing itself at first physically in sensation and
\nresponse to external objects, it develops psychically in personality with
\nmemory, its basis, and understanding, reason and intuition its superstructure,
\nand culminates spiritually in self-knowledge and the awareness of one’s own
\neternal and unabridged reality. The third characteristic of consciousness is the
\nemotion of pleasure in existence, primarily in one’s own, sympathetically in all
\nexistence, the Will to enjoy. This is the most powerful and fundamental of
\nemotions,<\/span> –<\/span>
\nso
\npowerful as to per<\/span>sistently
\noutlast all the pain and struggle which the hampered existence of Spirit in
\nMatter brings to the personality. Showing<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-251<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

itself
\nphysically at first in mere sense-pleasure and the clinging to life, it develops
\npsychically in the emotions of love and joy, and culminates spiritually in the
\ndelight of our psychical personality in contact with or entering into the
\nimpersonal existence of our real and infinite Self. These three characteristics
\nconstitute the conception of Spirit, which by throwing its will-to-be, its power
\nof awareness and its delight in existence into the medium of Matter sets
\nevolution going. This is what Sankhya philosophy means when it says that Purusha
\nimparts activity to Prakriti by its mere presence or propinquity without thereby
\nbecoming itself active. Spirit remains what it essentially is, pure existence,
\nconsciousness and delight; it is Prakriti that vibrating to the touch of this
\nconscious delight in existence, begins to act, to move, change and evolve. The
\nlimitations of consciousness, the phenomena of consciousness are merely
\nphenomenal results of the vibrations of Prakriti in Consciousness and not
\nchanges in Spirit itself. Purusha is the eternally immutable, immobile and
\nsingly real condition of universal Evolution; Prakriti in action is its eternal
\nmotion, mutability, multiplicity.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>Sankhya does not go beyond this conclusion which it finds sufficient for
\nits purposes; it considers Purusha and Prakriti to be both ultimate eternal
\nentities in the Supreme Reality and their propinquity a satisfactory explanation
\nof the Universe. Vedic philosophy, going deeper, was driven both by
\nphilosophical reasoning and the ultimate experience of Yoga to the conception of
\nthe one Supreme Entity transcending the distinction between Spirit and Matter,
\nPurusha. and Prakriti, which are merely its noumenal self-expressions. Nor could
\nVedanta be satisfied with mere propinquity as a sufficient explanation of the
\nmanner in which immutability, stability and unity continually interpenetrate,
\nsurround and govern the infinite motion, mutability and multiplicity of Matter,
\nstill less of the manner in which Purusha identifies itself with the merely
\nphenomenal changes of conscious- ness. But if Spirit informs, conditions and
\ngoverns Matter, just as energy informs, conditions and governs substance, it
\nwould be possible for it to impress its own nature on the motions of Prakriti at
\nevery point of its evolutions without itself moving and<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-252<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

acting.
\nAnd if Spirit and Matter are not entirely different and separate entities but
\nvarious expressions of a single supreme Ens, Matter a noumenon of apparent Self
\nphenomenally evolving as substance and energy, Spirit, a sense of Its real self
\nsupporting and therefore pervading and conditioning phenomena, it is then not
\nonly possible but inevitable that Spirit should be so constantly and closely
\naware of the perpetual activity of Matter as to attribute that activity to
\nitself. In this interpretation of the Universe Vedanta consummated its analysis.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>Time, Space, Condition reposing in the sense of actual Infinity and
\nImmutability, – this is Prakriti, Origin-of-Matter working in Spirit; and all
\nphilosophic analysis of existence must inevitably culminate in this noumenon;
\nfor without it the Universe as it is, cannot be conceived; it is the very
\ncondition of thought and knowledge; it is the ultimate fact of cosmic existence.
\nThe triune noumenon of Time, Space, Condition or, in one word, Prakriti,
\nimmediately generates the noumenon of motion characterised by change and
\nrelation of parts and we have at once motion, mutability, multiplicity operating
\nin the Infinite and Immutable. The triune noumenon of motion, mutability,
\nmultiplicity or in one word, Energy generates the noumenon of substance moving,
\nchanging, relatively shifting in the Infinity and Immutability of Spirit. The
\nnoumenon of energy-substance constitutes Pradhana, original matter, and nothing
\nfarther is needed for the evolution of the cosmos. Prakriti with its evolution
\nPradhana is the material cause of the Universe; the presence of Spirit
\ncontaining, supporting and pervading Prakriti and its evolutions is the
\nefficient cause of the Universe.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>Noumenon leads naturally to phenomenon. Consciousness and Existence in
\nthe Eternal Self being one, every noumenon of Consciousness must translate
\nitself into an existence of which the Consciousness is aware. The conception of
\nTime, Space, Condi- tion creates the appearance of Time, Space, Condition by
\nthat fundamental power of Consciousness which shows itself physically as
\nformation, psychically as imagination and spiritually as Avidya, the power of
\nconceiving what is not-Self. The conception of motion creates the appearance of
\nenergy at work. The<\/p>\n

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

 
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Page-253<\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

conception
\nof motion-intensity as substance creates the appearance of Matter worked upon.
\nAll Matter is phenomenal; all evolution the result of Avidya. Spirit is not
\nphenomenal, but owing to its continual immanency in Matter, attributes
\nphenomenal
\nexistence to itself, so creating the phenomenon of soul or spirit working in
\nmatter. Thus Cosmos originates.<\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>It will be seen that in this explanation of the Universe Spirit is taken
\nas nearer to the Supreme Reality of things than Matter; it is not absolutely the
\nreal Self of things, but it is the noumenon or sense of the real Self persisting
\nthroughout all the obscurations of Avidya. This view is triply necessitated by
\nthe truths of elemental, psychical and spiritual evolution. When we consider the
\nrelations of Spirit to elemental Matter, we see that as the obscuration of
\nMatter thickens, Spirit becomes more and more concealed until, in gross
\ninanimate Matter, it is utterly covered in; but as the obscuration of Matter
\nlessens, Spirit is more and more liberated until in the origin of things Matter
\nseems a mere appearance in the reality of Spirit. It is therefore through Spirit
\nand not through Matter that we are likely to get nearest to the Supreme Reality.
\nSo too, when we study our psychical evolution and follow Consciousness in its
\nprogressive liberation until it becomes Will in causal matter, we find it
\ncharacterised in this last stage, by the Will to be, the Will to know, the Will
\nto enjoy; and when we get behind Will and Matter to our pure unconditioned Self,
\nwe still envisage Consciousness as pure existence, awareness and bliss. But our
\npure unconditioned Self is, we have seen, the Reality of Things unaffected by
\nPrakriti or its phenomena. We may therefore safely conclude that so far as the
\nSupreme Reality can be positively envisaged by us in its purity, it is envisaged
\nas existence, awareness, bliss,<\/span>
\n<\/span>–<\/span>
\n<\/span>in
\nterms of Spirit and not of Matter. Lastly when we analyse the evolution of
\nPurusha in its three states, we find that it consists in the reflection of
\nPrakriti as if by the Spirit. Spirit follows Prakriti through her three stages
\nof material evolution, informing and sustaining them and mirrors their changes
\nin itself as the changes of the sky may be mirrored in a clear and motionless
\npool; but the changes of the sky are not changes in the water. Purusha is
\nimmutable, immo-<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span>Page-254<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

bile
\nand One, just as the Supreme Reality is immutable, immobile and One. Purusha or
\nSpirit is therefore the noumenon of the true Self, Prakriti the noumenon of
\nnot-Self or apparent Self. It is in this true Self of Parabrahman that the
\nevolutions of apparent Self take place. In It Matariswan ordereth the waters.<\/p>\n

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

\n
\nPage-255<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n
\n
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/b>
\n
\n<\/span>
\n                              <\/span>
\n<\/span>L<\/font>ONG<\/span><\/b>
\nand difficult to follow as has been this account of the Nature of Things
\naccording to Vedic philosophy, it was necessary so that we might understand
\nminutely and comprehensively the meaning of these two verses, which in the
\nsecond chapter of this book we could only adumbrate. The verses describe
\nParabrahman in Its truth with respect to the Cosmos, not in the absolute reality
\nwhich is Its truth in Itself, but at the same time they indicate that it is the
\nabsolute and real Self of things which manifests in the Cosmos and not any
\nOther, for there is no Other. It is anejad ekam, <\/i>the One who moveth not.
\nThe root ejŗ, <\/i>as Shankara points out, means to shake or vibrate, and
\nthe reference is obviously to those vibrations of Prakriti on the tranquil
\nsurface of Self which are the beginning and cause of matter and its evolutions.
\nBut the Self does not vibrate and is not affected by the vibrations of Prakriti,
\neven when It is supporting the Cosmos and seems to be moving in it. Throughout
\nit remains the One and is not broken up into multiplicity; even when by its
\nimmanence in many forms it seems to be many. These opening words of the first
\nverse identify the One Immutable Immobile Infinity called Self or Spirit in the
\nCosmos with the Supreme Entity, Parabrahman.
\n        This Supreme Entity which, as Self or
\nSpirit, is immobile and One, is yet, without moving, swifter than thought.
\nSwiftness implies motion; but the motion of Spirit in Cosmos is the illusory
\nmotion we see in the landscape as it whirls swiftly past the quiet watcher in
\nthe railway-carriage. The individual Self in Man is the watcher in the train,
\nthe train is Prakriti, the landscape the Universal Self in the Cosmos. The
\nwatcher is not moving, the landscape is not moving; it is the train which is
\nmoving and carries the sitter with it. In this second phrase of the verse the
\nParabrahman is identified with the Supreme Will in the Cosmos which without
\nlifting a finger or stirring a foot creates and encompasses the Universe. This
\nSupreme Will is simply Self or Spirit envisaging itself as the immanent Cause
\nand<\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-256<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

Director
\nof cosmical evolution in matter. The Will does not move but causes and
\nconditions the infinitely complex cosmic motions; the Will does not act, but
\ncauses and determines actions; the Will does not divide or multiply itself, but
\nplays with the multiplicity of cosmic forms and energies and impresses or
\nmirrors itself in each. Being essentially the Self, it is, like the Self, One
\nand Immobile, but as seen in the moving Cosmos, pervading, in- forming and
\ngoverning it, It is, even in its motionlessness, swifter than thought. <\/p>\n

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

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

       
\n<\/span>The Gods could not reach It going in front. In the terminology of the
\nUpanishads the Gods are the Potencies of the Universe which govern the Mind and
\nthe Senses in the microcosm Man and the Elements and their manifestations in the
\nmacrocosm Universe. Brahman, the One, precedes all these multiple potencies; It
\nexisted before they came into being and is there- fore beyond their grasp. The
\nrapid and stupendous effects of Will, omnipotent and omniscient, are such that
\nthe Mind, Sight, Hearing, all the senses together cannot comprehend their
\norigination; limited and finite, they cannot grasp that which transcends limit.
\nTo the finite intelligence, reasoning within prescribed limits, it appears that
\nthere is no Will in action; all that happens and becomes is the inevitable
\nworking of material cause and effect or of the Elements combining and working on
\neach other. But Will is the cause of Causation and the disposer of Effect; Will
\npreceded and dictated the workings of the Elements and arranged their
\ncombinations beforehand. This is He that from years sempiternal hath ordered
\nperfectly all things. But the mind and senses cannot come near to and apprehend
\nthe nature of the Will or realise the how of its workings, because the mind and
\nthe senses can only understand what is done through their instrumentality or
\nwithin the elemental medium to which they are limited and confined. They can
\nanalyse the physical forces of Nature and formulate the laws under which they
\nwork; they can dissect thought and sentiment and classify the mental functions
\nand the law of reasoning. But Brahman, the Will, they cannot reach and analyse;
\nfor He does not work through them, nor does He act in phenomena. He has arranged
\nthe motions of Prakriti beforehand, from years sempiternal; He has mapped<\/span>
\n<\/span>out
\nthe law <\/span>\n\t\t<\/p>\n


\nPage-257<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

of
\nthose motions before ever they began to stir; and He now abides concealed in
\nthem, not acting but simply by His presence necessitating that the Law shall be
\nobserved and His dispositions  <\/span>followed.
\nWill creates effects, outside Time, Space and Condition in a way the Mind cannot
\ncomprehend, by icchā <\/i>or Wish, in other words, by Itself. Will by
\nWill necessitates phenomena in Itself, ātmanyātmanā. <\/i>But
\nwhen Prakriti translates Will into phenomena in the terms of Time, Space,
\nCausality, she does it under limitations and by limited instruments. The
\npreordainment was immediate, unhindered and perfect, but the carrying out seems
\nto be slow, imperfect and the result of ceaseless effort and struggle, a web of
\nfailures, incomplete realisations and transient successes, a maze of forces
\nacting and reacting on each other, helping, hindering and repulsing and always
\nwith a partial and mechanical or only half-intelligent action. Somehow a result
\nis worked out, progress is made, but nowhere is there any finality or
\ncompleteness, nowhere the repose of consummation. This incompleteness is an
\nillusion created by the nature of finite consciousness. The Mind and the Senses,
\nthrough whom we become aware of the workings of the Universe, are themselves
\nlimited and imperfect; functioning only under limits and with effort they cannot
\nenvisage the work accomplished except in parts and with a restricted, disturbed
\nand broken vision. To see life steadily and see it whole is only permitted to a
\nPerfect and Infinite Consciousness standing outside Time, Space and Conditions.
\nTo such a divine Vision the working out of preordainment may present itself as a
\nperfect immediate and unhindered consummation. God said "Let there be
\nLight" and straightway there was Light; and when the Light came into being,
\nGod saw that it was good. But to the imperfect finite consciousness Light seems
\nin its inception to have come into being by a slow material evolution completed
\nby a fortuitous shock of forces; in its operation to be lavished with a prodigal
\nwastefulness since only a small part is used for the purposes of life; in its
\npresentation to be conveyed to a blinking and limited vision, hampered by
\nobstacles and chequered with darkness. Limitation, imperfection, progression and
\nretrogression are inseparable from phenomenal work, phenomenal intelligence,
\nphenomenal pleasure and satisfaction. To<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-258<\/p>\n

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

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

\n

Brahman
\nthe Will who measures all Time in a moment, covers all Space with one stride,
\nembraces the whole chain of causation in one glance, there is no limitation,
\nimperfectition, progression, or retrogression. He looks upon his work as a whole
\nand sees that it is good. But the Gods cannot reach to His completeness, even
\nthough they toil after it; for ever He out turns their pursuit, moving far in
\nfront.<\/p>\n

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

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

        
\n<\/span>Brahman, standing still, overtakes and passes the others as they run.
\nWhile the Mind and Senses press onward through Time, look before and after and
\nsee sections of the past and dim apparitions of the future from the standpoint
\nof their moment in the present, the Will from its position beyond the beginning
\nof the past speeds beyond them into the future and to the end of things. It has
\nin that moment apprehended, decided and accomplished in Itself all that is to be
\nand leaves the mind and senses to toil after It and work out the preordained
\nideas and forms left impressed on the mould of that future which to It already
\nexists. It does this standing still, because to the Will Past, Present and
\nFuture are but one moment and It lives in all of them simultaneously; they do
\nnot contain Brahman but are contained in Him. The Mind and Senses hasten through
\nSpace, measuring the distance between star and star; but the Will passes them,
\ntraverses Space from one end to the other, knows it as a Whole and creates in
\nItself all its forms present, past and future; it leaves the Mind and Senses to
\ngather slowly, toilfully and by parts the single comprehensive knowledge It
\nacquired without any process and to experience under the law of Time the
\nimmediately complete Universe It has perfected without any labour. It does this
\nalso standing still, for to Brahman here and there do not exist; all is here,
\nsince He is not in Space, but Space is in Him. While the Mind and Senses run in
\nthe winding and twisted line of causation, the Will from the beginning of the
\nchain passes them and has in a moment formed and surveyed it to its very end; It
\nleaves them to count out the chain link by link by the imperfect aid of reason,
\npiecing what is past to what is to come, and to trace out by the slow and
\nendless process of work generating work and life generating life the complete
\nand single Evolution which is already a predestined and therefore an
\naccomplished fact. This<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-
\n259
\n<\/font>  <\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n


\ntoo It does standing still; for to Brahman there is no succession of cause and
\neffect, since cause and effect exist simultaneously in the Will; cause does not
\nprecede Him nor effect follow, but are both embraced in the single and mere
\nexistence of Himself as Will.
\n        In It
\nMatariswan ordereth the waters. We have here Brahman in a thh:d relation to
\nCosmos. Brahman is the stable and immutable Unity which is immanent in the
\nCosmos as its real self of existence, awareness and bliss and which supports all
\nphenomenal objects and forces as their omnipresent substratum of reality.
\nSecondly, Brahman, this immobile Unity, is also, as Will, that which stands
\nstill and is yet swifter than mind and the potencies of mind; for Will, the
\nOrdainer, Disposer and Cause, traverses all Time, Space and Causation, without
\nmotion,’ by the mere fact of being. Lastly, Brahman, this Self and omnipresent
\nLord of things, is also that which contains all evolution, and determines every
\nobject and force evolved by Prana out of original matter. Brahman is Vaiswan
\nor, the Waking-Self, in whom is contained and by whom exists all this evolution
\nof physical world; Brahman is Taijasa, the Dream-Self, in whom is contained and
\nby whom exists all the psychical evolution from which the physical draws its
\nmaterial; Brahman is Prajna, the Sleep-Self, in whom all evolution, psychical
\nand physical is for ever self-existent and preordained; Brahman is the Turiya
\nAtman in whom and by whom Prajna- Taijasa- Vaiswanor are. He pervades the Cosmos
\nand contains the Cosmos, as ether pervades the earth and contains the earth,
\nand not only the Cosmos as a whole but every particular object and force in the
\nCosmos. This tree ‘is pervaded and surrounded by the Divine Presence, – not, be it clearly
\nunderstood, by a part of It but by Brahman one and indivisible. The presence of
\nGod is as complete in one small flower as in the whole measureless Universe.
\nSo also the Spirit in man is not a fragment of Deity, but the Eternal Himself in
\nHis imminuable majesty. The Self in me is not merely a brother to the Self in
\nyou or of one kind with it but is completely and utterly yourself; for there is
\nno you or I, but one Eternal Immutable in many names and forms, One Reality in
\nmany transient and perishable frames.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-260<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

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

It moves, It moveth not; It is
\nfar, the same 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

It is near; It is
\nwithin all this, the same It is 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

outside all.
\n <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n


\n        T<\/font>HIS <\/b>second verse only brings out more emphatically what is implied in
\nthe first or presents the same truth from a slightly different standpoint.
\nBrahman moves or vibrates, and Brahman does not move or vibrate. As the One
\nImmutable and Immobile, He does not move, but He moves as mobile and multiple
\nPrakriti. When it is said that Brahman is One and Unmoving, it is not meant that
\nthe mobile and multiple element in the Universe is other than Brahman; the Gods
\nwho cannot reach Brahman, whom He precedes and outstrips, are yet appearances of
\nHimself; Matariswan and the Waters, whom He contains, are also of His substance.
\nPurusha alone is not Brahman, Prakriti also is Brahman; for He is not only the
\nefficient cause of His Cosmos, but its material Cause’ as well. It is true that
\nthe motion and multiplicity of Prakriti are phenomenal and superficial, the
\nstability and immutability of Purusha fundamental and real; but the phenomenal
\nhas a truth and existence of its own and is not utterly unreal. To take the
\nsuggestive human parallel, Shakespeare in himself is one and immutable, in his
\ncreations he is mutable and many; the personages of his dramas and their words
\nand actions are not Shakespeare in the ultimate truth of himself, yet they are
\nnot other than Shakespeare; for they live in him, by him and are of his
\nsubstance. It is easy to say they are unreal, but they have a reality of their
\nown; they are true psychical images and live as phenomena in the consciousness
\nof Shakespeare though not as separate and independent entities. So also the
\nmultiple Cosmos has a true phenomenal existence and reality in the Brahman,
\nthough no separate existence as independent entities. The tree and the river are
\nnot real as tree and river, but they are real as images, eidolons of the
\nBrahman. In Himself He is calm, quiescent and unmoved, in them He moves and
\nenergises.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nIt is far and It is at the same time near. Physically near and<\/p>\n

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

 
\n <\/font>Page-261
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n


\nfar; the Sun and the distant constellations and Orion and Aldebaran and Lyra and
\nwhatever utmost star glitters on the outermost mesh of this network of suns and
\nsystems, all that is Brahman; and equally this earth which is our
\ndwelling-place, and this country which is our mother and nurse, and this village
\nor city in which we live and do business, and this house which shelters us, and
\nthese trees and tanks which were part of our childhood, and the faces we
\nfamiliarly know and the voices we daily hear, all in which we habitually live
\nand move, all this is Brahman. Emotionally near and far; for our love and our
\nhatred, and what we love and hate, things forgotten and things remembered,
\nthings we cherish until death and things we put from us with loathing, friend
\nand enemy, injurer and injured, our work and the daily web of our fears and
\nhopes and longings, this is Brahman; and that which is so far from us that it
\ncannot stir a single emotion or create a ripple of sensation in the mind,
\nwhether because it is remote in the distance of Time or hidden in the distance
\nof Space or lost to the blindness of indifference, that too is Brahman.
\nIntellectually near and far; for the unknown and the little known, that which is
\ntoo vast or too small for us to perceive, or which our most powerful instruments
\ncannot bring near to us or our keenest reasonings analyse or our widest
\ncomprehension embrace, that is Brahman; all we daily perceive and note, the
\nmyriad forms that Science analyses, the delight of the eye and ear and taste and
\nsmell and touch, this is Brahman; and the subjective world in ourselves which is
\nnearest to us of all, thought and memory and sensation and feeling, volitions
\nand aspirations and desires, these too are Brahman. Spiritually near and far;
\nfor the Omniscient and Omnipotent Cause and Ruler who creates universes with the
\nin-drawing of its breath and destroys universes with its out-throwing, beside
\nwhom we feel ourselves to be too vile and weak and feeble to partake even infi-
\nnitesimally of His divine nature, that is Brahman; the ineffable and
\nunimaginable Spirit whom our senses cannot perceive, nor our minds comprehend,
\nnor our reason touch, that is Brahman; and our own Self who eternally enthroned
\nin the cavern-heart of our being, smiling at our pleasures and pains, mighty in
\nour strength, as mighty in our weakness, pure in our virtues, un-<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-262
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nstained by our sins, no less omniscient and omnipotent than Isha, no less calm,
\nimmutable and ineffable than the Supreme Being,<\/span> –<\/span>
\nthis our Self too is Brahman. The
\nKarmayogin who has realised it, must hold all existence divine, all life a
\nsacrament, all thought and action a self-dedication to the Eternal.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>It is within all this, It too is without all. Brahman is within the whole
\nUniverse; every object however inanimate, every form of life however vile, is
\nbrim-full with the presence of God. The heathen who worships stocks and stones
\nhas come nearer to the truth of things, than the enlightened professor of
\n"rational" religion who declares God to be omnipresent and yet in the
\nnext breath pronounces the objects in which He is present to be void of anything
\nthat can command religious reverence. There is no error in "idolatry";
\nthe error is in the mind of the idolater who worships the stone as stone and the
\nstock as stock, thinking that is God, and forgets or does not realise that it is
\nthe Divine Presence in them which is alone worship-worthy. The stock or the
\nstone is not God, for it is only an eidolon, a symbol of His presence; but the
\nworship of it as a symbol is not superstitious or degrading; it is true and
\nennobling. Every ceremony which reminds us of the presence of the Eternal in the
\ntransient, is, if performed with a religious mind, a spiritual help and assists
\nin the purification of consciousness from the obscuration of the senses. To the
\nordinary intelligence, however, the idea of Brahman’s omnipresence, if pushed
\nhome, becomes a stumbling- block. How can that which is inert, senseless and
\nhelpless be full of that which is divine and almighty? Is it not a sacrilege to
\nsee Him in what is vile and repulsive? Is it not a blasphemy to envisage Him in
\nthe vicious and the criminal? Hence the popular Manicheanism which pervades
\nevery religion; hence the persistent idea of a twofold creative power, God and
\ndevil, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Allah and Iblis, the one responsible for all that is
\ngood, the other for all that is evil. This kind of spiritual and intellectual
\nweakness loves to see God in everything good and pleasant and beautiful, but
\nignores Him in what is evil, ugly or displeasing. But it is an imperfect
\nreligion which thus yields to the domination of the mind and senses and allows
\nthem to determine what is or is not God. Good is a mask and evil<\/span> is
\na<\/p>\n

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


\n
\nPage-263
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

mask;
\nboth are eidola, valid for the purposes of life in phenomena, but when we seek
\nthat which is beyond phenomena, we must resolutely remove the mask and see only
\nthe face of God behind it. To the Karmayogin there should be nothing common or
\nunclean. There is nothing from which he has the right to shrink; there is none
\nwhom he can dare to loathe. For God is within us all; as the Self pure, calm and
\neternal, and as the Antaryamin or Watcher within, the Knower with all thought,
\naction and existence for His field of observation, the Will behind every
\nmovement, every emotion, every deed, the Enjoyer whose presence makes the pain
\nand pleasure of the world. Mind, Life and all our subjective consciousness and
\nthe elements of our personal existence and activity, depend on His presence for
\nthe motive-force of their existence. And He is not only within us, but within
\nall that is. What we value within ourselves, we must not belittle in others;
\nwhat we cherish within ourselves, we must not hurt in others; what we love in
\nourselves, we must not hate in others. For that which is within us, is the
\nDivine Presence, and that which is in others, is the same Divine Presence. To
\nremember this is worth all the moral teachings and ethical doctrines in the
\nworld. Vedanta has been declared by those who have not chosen to understand it,
\na non-moral or even immoral philosophy. But the central truth of Vedanta enfolds
\nin a single phrase all the highest ethics of the world. Courage, magnanimity,
\npurity, justice, charity, mercy, beneficence, loving kindness, forgiveness,
\ntolerance, all the highest demands that the most exalted ethical teacher can
\nmake on humanity are contained in that single doctrine; and find in it their one
\nadequate philosophical justification and sole natural basis.<\/p>\n

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

       
\n<\/span>That is not only within all this, It is also outside all. We have already
\nseen that Brahman is outside all in the sense of containing the Universe and not
\nonly pervading but surrounding every object with His presence. He is also
\noutside in the sense that He is apart from it and other than it. He is not
\nconfined in Time, Space and Condition, but is quite above and outside Time,
\nSpace and Condition: Cosmos is within Him only as the shadow of a cloud is in
\nthe water; He is in Cosmos only as the water is in the shadow and causes and
\ncontains the shadow; but He is not the
\n  <\/p>\n

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


\nPage-264
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Cosmos in His nature or in His
\nsubstance any more than the water is in nature or substance the shadow. The
\nCosmos exists in Him phenomenally and as a transient appearance, just as the
\nshadow exists phenomenally in the water and after a time passes away. But there
\nis this difference that the appearance in the water is the shadow of something
\nelse cast from outside, but the Cosmos is a shadow or eidolon of Himself created
\nby Brahman in His own being. The materialistic Pantheism so natural to the
\nsense-dominated intelligence of the West, is not Vedanta. God is not, in nature
\nor substance, His Universe; but the Universe is He phenomenally and as a
\nmanifestation. Spirit- Matter is Brahman, but Brahman is not Spirit-Matter. This
\ndistinction must be carefully kept in mind or the doctrine of entire dentity
\nbetween Brahman and the Self of Things, may lead to disastrously false
\nconclusions. The truth that Brahman is in all this, must be carefully balanced
\nby the truth that Brahman is outside it all. <\/p>\n

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

       
\nYet to the Karmayogin the negative side of this dual truth is only
\nnecessary as a safeguard against error and confusion; it is the positive side
\nwhich must be his inspiration. In its light the whole world becomes a holy place
\nand all cause of fear or grief or hatred disappear, all reason for selfishness,
\ngrasping, greed and lust are eliminated, all excuses for ignoble desire or
\nignoble action are taken away. In their stead he receives the mightiest stimulus
\nto self-purification and self-knowledge, which will lead him to the liberation
\nof the divine in himself, to that sub dual of the bodily and vital impulses
\nwhich disciplines the body into the triune strength of purity, abstemiousness
\nand quietude; to courage, magnanimity, justice, truth, the four elements of
\nstrength; and mercy, charity, love, beneficence, the four elements of sweetness,
\nmaking that harmony of perfect sweetness and strength which is perfect
\ncharacter, to a mind, pure of passion and disturbance and prepared against the
\ndelusions of sense and the limitations of intellect, such a mind as is alone
\ncapable of self-knowledge. In this disciplined body, a perfect heart and a pure
\nmind he will have erected a fitting temple for the Eternal within him in which
\nhe can offer the worship of works to the Lord and of selflessness to the Self
\nand the Eternal. For by that worship he will become himself the Lord and find
\nrelease from
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-265
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nphenomenal life into the undisturbed
\ntranquillity of the Spirit. The dictum, Theos ou kestin alla gignetai, <\/i>God
\nis <\/i>not but is becoming, has been used to express the imperfect evolution
\nof the cosmos but is better applied to the present spiritual progress of
\nhumanity. In the race that progress is still rudimentary but each man has that
\nwithin him which is empowered to fulfil his evolution and even in this life
\nbecome, no longer an animal, or a mind, a heart, an intellect, but the supreme
\nand highest of all things<\/span> –<\/span>
\nHimself.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-266
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nBOOK
\nTHREE
\n<\/font>
\n<\/p>\n

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

CHAPTER 
\n<\/span>I<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

But
\nhe who sees all creatures in his very 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Self and the Self in all creatures,
\nthereafter 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

shrinketh not away in loathing. He who 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

discerneth, in whom all
\ncreatures have become 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Himself, how shall he be deluded, whence 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

shall he have
\nsorrow in whose eyes all are 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

one?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

        I<\/font>N
\n<\/span><\/b>these two stanzas the
\nUpanishad formulates the ethical ideal of the Karmayogin. It has set forth as
\nits interpretation of life the universality of the Brahman as the sole reality
\nand true Self of things; all things exist only in Him and He abides in all as
\nthe Self. Every creature is His eidolon or manifestation and every body His
\ntemple and dwelling-place. From Him all things began, in Him they develop and
\nmature themselves, to Him they must in their nature strive to return. The mutual
\nrelations of all beings to each other may be summed up in the single phrase,
\n"One Self in all creatures, all creatures in one Self"; for He is both
\nwithin all and contains all. But this Self exists in each creature not partially
\nor fragmentarily but in Its indivisible completeness. Therefore the Self in one
\ncreature is precisely the same as the Self in another, not merely kin by origin
\nas in the Christian theology, not merely of the same kind and nature as in the
\nSankhya teaching, but absolutely identical. The sense of personal separation in
\nspace and substance and difference in nature has been illusorily brought about
\nby the play of Prakriti, the noumenon of false self, on the one eternal Reality,
\ncreating an illusion of multiplicity and mutability. Self identifies itself with
\nthe phenomena of the evolved universe; habitually feeling the play of the three
\nGunas, the principles of material reception, reaction and retention, on the
\nbody, the vital impulses, the mind, the intellect, the supra-intelligence, it
\nmistakes the continuity of conscious impressions for the real self, forgetting
\nthat these are merely aspects of consciousness<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-267
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nin relation to matter and not the true and eternal reality of consciousness. But
\nthe end of evolution is to liberate the permanent from the impermanent, the
\nspiritual from the material, the Self from its bondage to the three Gunas and
\nthe false conceptions which that bondage creates. This liberation or release
\nmust therefore be the final aim of religion and ethics, otherwise religion and
\nethics will be out of harmony with the truth of things and therefore false or
\nimperfect. Religion and ethics must train the individual self in a man to
\ndiscover its universality, to see himself in all creatures and all creatures in
\nhimself, and the ideal or ethically perfect man is the one who has attained to
\nthis vision and observes it habitually in his thoughts and actions as the one
\nlaw of his life.
\n        In order to realise this vision, it has been found by experience that a
\nman must attain freedom from the lower impulses which identify the body and the
\nvital impulses with Self; he must practise cleanliness and purity in mind, body
\nand speech, abstinence from gross gratifications and freedom from the domination
\nof passions and desires; indifference to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, fatigue and
\nother affections from external influences. In other words he must be completely
\nmaster of his own body. The Christian virtue of purity, the Pagan virtue of
\nendurance, lie therefore at the very root of Vedantic morality.
\n        To
\nsee oneself in others is impossible without completely identifying oneself with
\nothers; a perfect sympathy is essential and perfect sympathy brings with it
\nperfect love, perfect charity and forgiveness, perfect pity for sin and
\nsuffering, perfect tolerance, a universal benevolence with its counterpart in
\naction universal beneficence. The Jivanmukta, the Rishi, the sage must be, by
\ntheir very nature, sarvabhūtahite ratāh, <\/i>men who make it their
\nbusiness and pleasure to do good to all creatures, not only all
\n<\/span>men, but
\nall creatures, –<\/span> the widest
\npossible ideal of universal charity and
\nbeneficence. To do as one would be done by, to love your enemies and those who
\nhate you, to return good for evil are the first ethical inferences from the
\nVedantic teaching; they were fully expressed in their highest and noblest form
\nby Buddhism five hundred years before they received a passionately emotional and
\nlyrical phrasing in Judea, and were put widely into<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-268<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

practice
\nin India more than two thousand years before Christian Europe took even slightly
\nto heart what it had so long been professing with its lips. And not only perfect
\nlove and beneficence but perfect justice with its necessary counterpart in
\naction, honest dealing and faithful discharge of duty are the natural outcome of
\nthe Vedantic teaching. For if we see ourself in others, we shall not only be
\nwilling but delighted to yield them all that is due to them, and must shrink
\nfrom wronging or doing hurt to them as naturally as we would shrink from doing
\nhurt to ourselves. The debts we owe to parents, family, friends, the caste, the
\ncommunity, the nation we shall discharge not as an irksome obligation, but as
\na personal pleasure. The Christian virtue of charity, the Pagan virtue of
\njustice are the very sap and life of Vedantic morality.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nSeeing the Self in all creatures, implies seeing the Lord every- where.
\nThe ideal man of Vedanta will accept pain as readily as pleasure, hatred, wrong
\ninsult and injustice as composedly as love, honour and kindness, death as
\ncourageously as life. For in all things he will see the mighty Will which
\ngoverns the Universe and which wills not only his own good and pleasure and
\nsuccess, but the good and pleasure and success of others equally with his own;
\nwhich decrees that his own good and the good of others shall be worked out not
\nonly by his victories and joys, but by his defeats and sufferings. He will not
\nbe terrified by the menace of misfortune or the blows dealt him by man or
\nnature, nor even by his own sins and failures, but walk straight forward in the
\nimplicit faith that the Supreme Will is guiding his steps aright and that even
\nhis stumblings are necessary in order to reach the goal. If his Yoga is perfect,
\nhis faith and resignation will also be perfectly calm and strong; for he will
\nthen fully realise that the Supreme Will is his own Will. Whatever happens to
\nme, it is I that am its cause and true doer and not my friend or enemy who is
\nmerely the agent of my own Karma. But the faith and resignation of the
\nKarmayogin will not be a passive and weak submission. If he sees God in his
\nsufferings and overthrow, he will also see God in his resistance to injustice
\nand evil, a resistance dictated not by selfishness and passion, but undertaken
\nfor the sake of right and truth and the maintenance of that moral order on which
\nthe<\/p>\n

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


\n 
\n Page-269<\/p>\n

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

\n


\nstability of life and the happiness of the peoples depend. And his resistance
\nlike all his actions will be marked by a perfect fearlessness, a godlike
\ncourage. For when a man sees God in all things and himself in all beings, it is
\nimpossible for him to fear. What is it that can cause him terror? Not danger or
\ndefeat, not death or torture, not hatred or ingratitude, not the worse death of
\nhumiliation and the fiercer torture of shame and disgrace. Not the apparent
\nwrath of God Himself; for what is God but his own Self in the Cosmos? There is
\nnothing that he can fear. The Christian virtue of faith and resignation, the
\nPagan virtue of courage are the strong stem and support of Vedic morality.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nThe ignorant censure of Vedanta as an immoral doctrine because it
\nconfuses the limits between good and evil, or rejects the one necessary motive
\nto action and virtue, proceeds from un- willingness or inability to understand
\nthe fine truth and harmony of its teachings. Vedanta does indeed teach that
\nvirtue and vice, good and evil are relative terms, things phenomenal and not
\nreal; it does ask the seeker to recognise the Supreme Will in what is evil no
\nless than in what is good; but it also shows how the progression of the soul
\nrises out of the evil into the good and out of the good into that which is
\nhigher than good and evil. Vedanta does reject the lower self of desire as a
\nmotive to action and virtue, but it replaces it by the far more powerful
\nstimulus of selflessness which is only the rising to our higher and truer
\nSelf. It does declare phenomenal life to be an illusion and a bondage, but it
\nlays down the practice of courage, strength, purity, truth and beneficence as
\nthe first step towards liberation from that bondage, and it demands a far higher
\nstandard of perfection in these qualities than any other creed or system of
\nethics. What to many moralists is the highest effort of feeble human nature is
\nto Vedanta only the first imperfect manifestation of the divine Self in
\nhumanity. Vedanta embraces, harmonises and yet overtops and exceeds all other
\nmoralities; as Vedic religion is the eternal and universal religion, so is Vedic
\nethics the eternal and universal morality. Eşa dharmah sanātanah.<\/p>\n

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


\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n Page-270<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nCHAPTER  
\n<\/span>II<\/p>\n

<\/span>Ethics in Primitive Society<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/span>                      
\n<\/span><\/span>EVERY<\/span><\/b>
\nsystem of ethics must have a sanction to validate its scheme of morals and an
\naim which will provide man the stimulus he needs, if he is to surmount his
\nanti-ethical instincts and either subdue them or eradicate. Man is not a purely
\nethical being; he has immoral and non-moral impulses which are primarily
\nstronger than his ethical tendencies. To check the former, to liberate,
\nstrengthen and train the latter is the first object of all practical ethics
\nreligious or non-religious. The first requisite to this end is a true knowledge
\nof human nature and its psychology; for if an ethical system is psychologically
\nuntrue, if it is seriously mistaken in its view of human nature or fails to
\ndiscern and reach his highest and noblest instincts, it will either be
\nineffective or possibly even do as much harm as good to the moral growth of
\nhumanity. But even a psychologically sound morality will not command general
\nassent in practice unless there is a sanction behind it which the reason or the
\nprejudices of mankind will accept as sufficiently strong to make a necessity of
\nobedience. Armed with such a sanction it will influence the thoughts and the
\nthoughts the actions of the race, but even then it will be only a repressive and
\ndisciplinary influence; to be an active stimulus or a powerful moral lever it
\nmust be able to set in our front an aim which will enlist strong natural forces
\non the side of virtue or an ideal which will appeal to instincts deep-seated and
\npersistent in universal humanity.
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

       
\nIn its origin it is more than probable that morality was a social growth
\nand limited to communal habits and communal necessities. The aim set before the
\nindividual was the continued privilege of abiding in the community and enjoying
\nthe all-important advantages of security, assistance and social life which
\nmembership of the community could alone provide. The sanction was again a
\ncommunal sanction; the custom-code of the<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-271<\/p>\n

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

\n


\ntribe or community commanded assent and obedience precisely because it was the
\ntribe and community that commanded and could enforce them with severe social
\npunishments, death, ostracism, excommunication. This origin of ethics from the
\ncustoms of the tribe, themselves originating from the fundamental necessities of
\nself-preservation, is warranted by the facts of sociology as rendered by modern
\ninvestigation. It agrees also with the view of nature and evolution held by the
\nVedic inquirers. For if we consider the history of communities and nations so
\nfar as we know them, we shall find that it consists so far in a progression from
\nthe society to the individual in society, from a basis of Tamas to an outgrowth
\nof Rajas in the tamasic basis; while Sattwa perfected in a few individuals is,
\nas a social force, not yet emancipated.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nWe have seen that Prakriti or nature in all its operations works through
\nthree inherent guņas <\/i>or qualities which repeat themselves in all
\nstages and forms of her multifold activity; they are present as much in psychic
\nand spiritual evolution as in the physical; and so all important are they that
\nall activity of any kind whatsoever, all life, mental, vital, physical are said
\nto be merely the natural operation of the three guņas <\/i>interacting
\nupon each other. These three guņas <\/i>are called in the Sankhya
\nterminology sattva, rajas, tamas; <\/i>comprehension, activity, passivity, or
\nas they manifest in physical substance, retention, active reaction and passive
\nreception. None of these guņas <\/i>can exist or act by themselves; the
\nactivity of each involves the activity of the other two; but according as one or
\nthe other predominates,an action, a state of things, a substance, a character,
\nis called tamasic, rajasic, or sattwic. In the early stages of upward evolution
\nTamas predominates, in the medial Rajas, in the final Sattwa. In the early
\nevolution of man it is inevitable, therefore, that the obscuration of Tamas
\nshould be very heavy and that the characteristic of passive receptivity to
\noutside surroundings should be markedly predominant. Early man is active only
\nunder the pressure of hunger, or when moved by the primitive impulses of sense
\nand vitality and the needs of self-preservation. His senses are keen and his
\npower of activity great because keen senses and a strong hardy agile body are
\nnecessary to self-<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-272<\/p>\n

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

\n

preservation but in the absence of
\nnecessity or stimulus he is profoundly indolent, even inert. His sensibility,
\nphysical or mental, is small, for sensibility depends on and increases with
\nRajas, the power of reaction, and this power is in the savage comparatively
\nundeveloped. His emotional reactions are also weak and primitive; in their
\npredominantly physical character and in the helpless spontaneousness of their
\nresponse to impressions they reveal the domination of tamasic passivity. The
\ncentres of individuality, a characteristically sattwo-rajasic function, are too
\nweak as yet to control, regulate and rationalise the response. Hence the
\nemotional nature shows itself on one side in a childishly unruly gratification
\nof the pleasure of pleasant impressions,<\/span> –<\/span>
\nthe
\nsavage is easily mastered by gluttony and drunkenness but also capable of
\nchildlike worship and doglike fidelity when brought into close contact with a
\nhigher nature; on the other, it is manifested in a brutally violent response to
\nunpleasant impressions. Anger is the primitive reaction to an unpleasant impact
\nwhich is not unfamiliar, fear the primitive reaction to an unpleasant impact
\nwhich is new and surprising. The savage is therefore prone to childish terror in
\npresence of the unknown, to ferocious anger and vindictive cruelty when his
\nhatred is aroused by injury or the presence of what, though not unfamiliar in
\nform, is alien and therefore hateful in its features. The habit of
\nself-indulgence in anger by an organisation of great passivity and low physical
\nand mental sensibility creates the characteristic of a quiet un- impassioned
\ncruelty, – the savage is, as a rule, calmly cruel. The Red-Indian’s stoicism,
\nimpassivity, immobility, quiet endurance of pain are merely the inertia of the
\ntamasic mind and body systematised and become part of his tribal morality. But
\nthe height of passivity is reached in his intellectual organisation of which the
\nonly strong reaction is the primitive mental response to outside impressions,
\ncuriosity. This curiosity is different from the desire to know, for it consists
\nin a childish amused wonder and a desire merely to repeat the experience, not to
\nlearn from it. Such curiosity is at the root of the practice of torture; for the
\nprimitive mind finds a never-failing delight in the physical response evoked by
\nintense and violent pain. This pleasure in crude physical, moral, aesthetic or
\nintellectual reactions because of their <\/p>\n

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


\nPage-273<\/p>\n

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

\n

 raw intensity and violence is a sure sign of the undeveloped tamasic mind and is
\nstill common enough in the most civilised communities. Originality and
\nindependence of mind and character spring from a strong rajasic development and
\nare therefore un- known to the savage who is the creature and slave of his
\nenvironments. By far the most powerful and insistent of these environments is
\nthe community in which he lives and which is necessary to him at every turn for
\nhis security and his self-gratification. His passive mentality therefore not
\nonly accepts but welcomes the rigid control by the community; it receives the
\nhereditary custom- law of the tribe as an inviolable natural law, and has too
\nweak an individuality to react against it or to desire change and progress. The
\nprimitive community is therefore stationary; the individual exists in it not as
\nan individual, but as an undetachable fragment of the whole. The social
\norganisation, even at its best, is in type and level on a par with that of the
\nbee- hive and the ant- <\/span>hill.<\/span><\/p>\n

   <\/span>    
\n<\/span>The tamasic state of
\nsociety reaches its highest development when the community, entirely outgrowing
\nthe attractions of the nomadic instinct, settles down to a fixed habitation for
\ncenturies <\/span>and adds to its original reason for existence, –<\/span>
\ncommunal self- preservation, –<\/span>
\nthe more fruitful impulse towards communal accumulation.
\nIt has then the necessary conditions for progress from the tamasic stage to the
\nsub-tamasic in which the individual.first begins to emerge although he is still
\nsubordinated to the community and lives chiefly for the general advantage, not
\nfor his own. The settled state of society and the expansion of the community
\nwhich a more prosperous and stable life brings with it, involve an increasing
\ncomplexity of the social organisation. Specialisation of function becomes
\npronounced, for the larger needs of the community demand an increasing division
\nof labour. Rank and private property begin to emerge; inequality has begun. The
\nmore various activities, the more varied experience, the less primitive range.
\nof desires and the need of a wider know- ledge of things and men create a
\ngreater mental alertness and increased mental differentiation. This in its turn
\nmeans the growth of individuality. Personality, we have seen, has memory for its
\nbasis and is determined by memory; individuality or
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-274
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n


\ndifference of personality is originally
\ncreated by difference in the nature and range of the impressions experienced and
\nretained by the mind, which naturally results in different habits of <\/i>emotional
\nand mental reaction. The fundamental self in all men is the same, the action of
\nexternal Prakriti in its broad masses is the same all over the world; therefore
\nhuman personality is necessarily the same in its general nature wherever we meet
\nit. Difference in personality arises purely from difference in the range of
\nmental and emotional experience, from the different distribution of various
\nkinds of experience, and from differently developed habits or ways of reaction
\nto impressions received. For character is nothing but habit; and habit is
\nnothing but an operation of memory. The mind remembers that it received this
\nparticular impact before and reacted on it in this particular way and it repeats
\nthe familiar experience. The repetition becomes a habit of the mind ingrained in
\nthe personality and so a permanent characteristic. Difference of experience thus
\ncreates difference of personality, and difference of experience depends on
\ndifference in life, pursuits, occupations. So long as life is bounded by the
\ndesires of alimentation, self-preservation and self-reproduction, there can be
\nno real individuality within the species, for the processes required and the
\nexperiences involved in these functions are practically the same for each member
\nof the species. Even the gratification of primitive sensuous desires does not
\ninvolve anything more than minute and unnoticeable differences. Hence one savage
\nvery much resembles any other savage just as one animal of a species very much
\nresembles another of the same species, and one savage community differs from
\nanother only as one animal sub-species differs from a kindred sub-species. It is
\nonly when desires and needs’ multiply, that difference of life and occupation
\ncan bring difference of experience and develop individuality. The increasing
\ncomplexity of the community means the growth of individuality and the liberation
\nof Rajas in human psychology.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

        
\n<\/span>Rajas is the principle of activity and increases with the intensity and
\nrapidity of the reactions of Will upon external things; it is not content like
\nTamas with passively receiving impressions and obeying its environments, but
\nsiezes on the impressions<\/span> and 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-275
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nstrives ever to turn them to the
\nservice of the individual personality, to master its environments and use them
\nfor its own enjoyment. Everything which it experiences, it utilises for the
\npleasure and pain of the individuality. The rajasic man is the creator, the
\nworker, the man of industry, enterprise, invention, originality, the lover of
\nnovelty, progress and reform. The growth of Rajas therefore necessarily meant
\nthe inception of a great problem for society. In the tamasic and sub-tamasic
\nstates man developed the all-important faculty of conservatism, reverence for
\nthe past, fidelity to the communal inheritance, subordination of the interests
\nand passions of the particular, be it class or individual, to the stability and
\nsafety of the whole. But here was a new element likely to disturb and upset the
\nold state of things. The rajasic individuality was not likely to accept the
\ntraditional sanction, the communal aim as a satisfying aim and a binding
\nsanction. The more and more he developed, the more and more strongly it would
\ncrave for the satisfaction of its expanding individual desires, ideas,
\nactivities with less and less regard to the paramount importance of social
\nstability. How should society deal with this element? From that single
\ndifficulty arose the whole sociological problem involving difficulties of
\nethics, legislation and politics which after so many thousands of years mankind
\nhas not solved to its permanent satisfaction.
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-276<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


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

<\/span><\/b>Social
\nEvolution <\/font>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/font>
\n
\n <\/span>                      
\n<\/span><\/span>I<\/font>N THE<\/span><\/b>
\nearly stages of the sub-tamasic state the question was not so acute, for
\ndifferentiation in the society was not at first very complex; it proceeded upon
\nbroad lines, and as soon as it took definite form, usually as a result of
\nintermixture with alien elements, it developed classes or castes, the priest,
\nthe warrior, the people,<\/span> –<\/span>
\nmerchant, tiller or artisan, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nand the thrall or servant. Character
\ndeveloped at first more on these broad lines than by individual irregularities,
\nin types rather than in persons; for each kind of life, each broad line of
\npursuits and occupations would naturally mean the same general range of
\nexperience and the same habits of reaction to external impressions and so evolve
\nbroad developments of character falling into caste-types, within whose general
\npredominance personal idiosyncrasy would be at first comparatively ill-developed
\nand of minor importance. The priest-type would develop favourably in the
\ndirection of purity, learning, intellectual ability <\/span>and
\nacuteness, unfavourably in the direction of jealous exclusive<\/span>ness,
\nspiritual and intellectual pride, a tendency to trade on the general ignorance.
\nThe warrior type would evolve courage, honour, governing power as its qualities,
\narrogance, violence and ruthless ambition as its defects. The earning class
\nwould develop on the one side honesty, industry and enterprise, on the other
\ndesire of gain. Obedience and fidelity would be the virtues of the thrall.
\nSociety accommodating itself to the altered circumstances modified its single
\nand rigid social morality and admitted the validity of the newly-formed habits
\nof mind and action as within the caste to which it properly belonged. Thus arose
\nthe ethical phenomenon of caste morality. Outside the limits of the caste ethics
\nthe general social code remained in full force. As the life of the individual in
\nthe community expanded in extent and became more varied and complex in content,
\nthe<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-277<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nsocial custom-code also became more
\ncomplex in its details and wider in its comprehensiveness, in its attempt, to
\npursue him into every detail of his life and control not only his broad lines of
\nlife but his particular actions, allowing no distinction between private and
\npublic life. Its nature had not changed; it was as rigid and inexorable in its
\ndemands, as intolerant of individual originality and independence; its sanctions
\nwere unaltered, the ancestral tradition of the community and the fear of social
\npunishments, death, ostracism, excommunication or other penalties which if less
\ndrastic were yet sufficiently formidable. The object to be fulfilled was still
\npredominantly the same, the satisfaction of communal demands as the price of
\ncommunal <\/span>privileges.
\n        <\/span><\/span>In this attempt society
\ncould not permanently succeed and had either to abandon it or to call in the aid
\nof other forces and stronger sanctions. The community grew into the nation;
\nsocial divisions became more intricately complex, the priest-class breaking up
\ninto schools, the warriors into clans, the people into guilds and professions;
\nthe organisation was growing too vast in size, too intricate in detail. Class
\nbegan to push its individual claims against class, individuals began to question
\nthe old sanctions or doubt the sacredness of tradition. In small villages the
\nold tyranny of society might be possible, in great towns it must necessarily
\nbecome increasingly lax and ineffective. Above all, as the individual’s mental
\nlife became enriched and vigorous, society found itself baffled by an
\ninsurmountable difficulty; it could control his outward acts by its rigour, but
\nit could not ultimately control his mental and spiritual life, yet this inner
\nlife, psychical and spiritual, tended irresistibly to master and mould outer
\nphysical actions. No sanction by which society could enforce its decrees, is of
\nany ultimate utility against the victorious advance of the individual life
\npressing forward in its irresistible demand for progress and freedom. Society
\nmay command the homage of conformance in speech and act to its fixed and
\nconventional ideals; it may control a man’s bodily organs; it has no
\njurisdiction over his heart and mind or only so much as he chooses to allow it.
\nBut speech and act cannot long remain divorced from the heart and mind without
\naffecting the soundness of society itself by a<\/p>\n

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


\n 
\n Page-278
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\ndry rot of hypocrisy and falseness; the end of which is either the decay and
\ndeath of the community or a purifying revolt. Society can save itself only by
\nconceding within limits the claim for individual freedom; outside those limits
\nit must persuade or compel him to conformity by influencing his mind and heart,
\nnot by direct coercion of his words and acts.
\n        In the later stages of the sub-tamasic social period we find that society
\nhas to a less or greater extent contracted its demands on the individual. Over
\nhis inner life and a certain part of his conduct, it exercises no other coercive
\ninfluence than that of social disapproval expressed but not enacted; over
\nanother part of his conduct it exercises the right of enacting that disapproval
\nin the shape of ostracism or excommunication; but that part of his life which
\nmost strongly concerns the community, it still insists on regulating by the
\ninfliction or menace of social penalties more or less severe. Social disapproval
\nunenacted is, however, an ineffective control over mind and spirit. Society
\ntherefore, by no means content to leave the inner life of the individual free
\nfrom the demands of its moral code, since any such abdication of its rule would
\nlead, it instinctively felt, to moral anarchy, sought to eliminate the
\nindividual intellect and imagination by the more radical process of education.
\nIts view of life and its unwritten code of customs, manners, traditions had
\nalways been naturally accepted as sacrosanct, now the individual was consciously
\nhabituated and trained from his childhood to retain this impression of venerable
\nand inviolable sanctity. Social morality was no longer unwritten but gathered
\ninto codes and systems of life associated either with the names of the primitive
\nmakers of the nation or with the deified or half-deified historic individuals
\nwho first harmonised and perfected the traditionary ideals and routine of life
\nand expressed the consciousness of the race in their political or ethico-legal
\nsystems. Such were Lycurgus, Confucius, Menes, Manu. For in those days
\nindividual greatness and perfection commanded a sacred reverence from the
\nindividual consciousness, because in each man, it was to this greatness and
\nperfection that individuality, impelled to achieve its complete eman- cipation,
\nwas painfully striving forward. Thus in the sub-tamasic state even at its
\nhighest development the social code retained<\/span> its
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-279
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

sacrosanct
\ncharacter in the new form of a consciously cherished and worshipped national
\ntradition; and the repositories of that tradition became the dominant class of
\nthe community, whether an oligarchy as in Sparta and early republican Rome or a
\ntheocracy as in Egypt. For in order to control not only the heart and
\nimagination but the deepest self in the individual society called in the aid of
\na spiritual force rapidly growing in its midst, the<\/span> power
\nof religion. In some communities, it strove even to give the religious sanction
\nto all its own ideas, traditions, demands, sanctions.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nIn the older races and nations, Mongolian, Dravidic, Mediterranean, the sub-tamasic stage of social culture was of long duration and has left its
\nimpress in the only civilisations which have survived unbroken from that period,
\nthe Indian and Chinese. In the younger races, Aryan and Semitic, the development
\nof the individual was far more rapid and urgent and left no time for the
\npeculiarities of the later sub-tamasic period to crystallise and endure. Their
\nevolution passed quickly into the rajaso-tamasic or even into the rajasic stage.
\nIn the rajasic state the individual forces himself into predominance and gets
\nthat emancipation and free play for his personality which his evolution demands,
\nwhile the society degenerates into a mere frame for a mass of individuals.
\nSocial morality, once so rigid and compelling, dissolves into a loose bundle of
\nsuperstitions and prejudices; tradition is broken into pieces by the desire for
\nprogress and novelty and free play of mind. The individual is governed in his
\nconduct not by social sanctions or religious obligations and ideals, but by his
\npersonal idiosyncrasy and the stress of his own ideas, desires, passions,
\ncapacities and ambitions, which clamantly demand satisfaction. Individual
\noriginality being given free rein, there is an immense outburst of genius,
\ntalent, origination, invention or of splendid personal force and activity.
\nPeriods such as the revolutionary epoch in France when the rajasic element gets
\nfree play and communities like the Ionian democracies of which Athens was the
\nhead and type, are not only the most interesting from their fascinating
\nabundance of stir, passion, incident, brilliance of varied personality, but also
\namong the most fruitful and useful to humanity. In such periods, in the brief <\/p>\n


\nPage-280<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

history
\nof such communities the work of centuries is done in a few years or in a few
\ndecades and future ages are fertilised from the seeds of a single epoch. But the
\nhistory of rajasic communities is necessarily brief, the course of rajasic
\nperiods is soon run. Rajas has in itself no principle of endurance; if it is to
\nwork steadily and enduringly, it must either be weighted down by a heavy load of
\nTamas or sustained and uplifted by a great strength of Sattwa. But Sattwa as a
\nsocial force has not yet liberated itself; it operates on society through a
\nchosen and select few and is only rudimentary as yet in the many. For the
\npreservation of a people Tamas is absolutely necessary; a mass of blind
\nconservatism, intolerance of innovations, prejudice, superstition, even gross
\nstupidity are elements essential to the safety of society. The Athenian thinkers
\nthemselves dimly realised this, hence their dislike to the mobile spirit of old
\ndemocracy and their instinctive preference for the Spartan constitution in spite
\nof its rigid, unprogressive and unintellectual character. They felt the
\ntransience and insecurity of the splendid and brilliant life of Athens.
\nPolitically the predominance of the individual was dangerous to the state and
\nthe evil might be checked but could not be mended by occasional resort to
\nostracism; the excessively free and varied play of intellect turned out a
\ncorrodent which too rapidly eat away the old beliefs and left the people without
\nany fixed beliefs at all: the old prejudices, predilections, superstitions were
\nexposed to too rapid a tide of progress: for a time they acted as some feeble
\ncheck on the individual, but when the merciless questioning of Socrates and his
\nfollowers crumbled them to pieces, nothing was left for society to live by.
\nReason, justice and enlightened virtue which Socrates and his successors
\noffered as a substitute, could not take their place because the world was not,
\nnor is it yet sattwic enough for society to subsist entirely or mainly by the
\nstrength of reason, justice and enlightenment. The history of Athens may be
\nsummed up from the Vedic standpoint as Rajas too rapidly developed destroying
\nTamas and in its turn leading to a too rapid development of Sattwa; till by an
\nexcess of the critical and judging faculty of Sattwa, the creative activity of
\nRajas was decomposed and came to an end. As a result the Athenian social
\norganism lost its vitality, fell a prey to stronger organisms and perished.<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\n Page-281
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nThose communities have a better chance of survival which linger in the
\nrajaso-tamasic stage. For that is a social period when the claims of the
\nindividual are being constantly balanced and adjusted in a manner which strongly
\nresembles the replacement in the physical organism of waste tissue by sound, bad
\nblood by good, corrupted breath by fresh inhalations; the individual is given
\nlegitimate scope, but those irreducible demands of society which are necessary
\nto its conservation, are thoroughly enforced; progress is constantly made, but
\nthe past and its traditions are, as far as is consistent with progress,
\njealously preserved and cherished. England with its rapid alternations of
\nprogress safe- guarded by conservatism and conservatism vivified by progress is
\nan excellent example of the rajaso-tamasic community. The English race is
\npre-eminently rajaso-tamasic; tamasic by its irrational clinging to what it
\npossesses not because it is inherently good or satisfying but simply because it
\nis there, because it is part of its past and its national traditions; tamasic by
\nits habit of changing not in obedience to any inner voice of ethical aspiration
\nor sense of intellectual fitness but in answer to the pressure of environment;
\nbut rajasic by the open field it gives to individual character and energy,
\nrajasic by its reliance on the conflicts and final balance of passions and
\ninterests as the main agents of progress and conservation political and
\nsocial. Japan with her periods of splendid and magnificently fruitful progress
\nand activity when she is absorbing new thoughts and new knowledge, followed by
\nperiods of calm and beautiful conservation in which she thoroughly assimilates
\nwhat she has absorbed and suits it <\/span>to
\nher system, <\/span>–<\/span>
\nJapan with the unlimited energy and personality <\/span>of
\nher individuals finely subservient to the life of the nation is an instance of a
\nfundamentally rajaso-tamasic nation which has acquired by its assimilation of
\nIndian and Chinese civilisation the immortalising strength of Sattwa.
\n        Sattwa is present indeed in all communities as a natural force, for without it
\nnothing could exist; but as a conscious governing strength, it exists only in
\nIndia and China. Sattwa is physically the principle of retention which instead
\nof merely reacting to impressions retains them as part of its inner life; it is
\ntherefore the natural force which most helps consciousness to develop. As<\/p>\n

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


\n
\nPage-282
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n


\nRajoguna is the basic principle of desire, so Sattwaguna is the basic principle
\nof knowledge. It is Sattwa that forms memory and evolves judgment. Morally it
\nshows itself as selfless sympathy, intellectually as disinterested enlightenment
\nand dispassionate wisdom, spiritually as a calm self-possessing peacefulness as
\nfar removed from the dull tamasic inertia as from the restless turbidity of
\nRajas. The growth of Sattwa in a community will show itself by the growing
\npredominance of these characteristics. The community will be more peaceful and
\nunaggressive than the ordinary rajasic race or nation, it will present a more
\ncalm and unbroken record of culture and enlightenment, it will record its
\nlife-history not in wars and invasions, not in conquests and defeats, not by the
\nmeasure of the births and deaths of kings and the downfall of dynasties but by
\nspiritual and intellectual evolutions and revolutions. The history of tamasic
\nnations is a record of material impacts thrown out from the organism or suffered
\nby it; its life is measured by the duration of dynasties or outward forms of
\ngovernment. The history of rajasic nations is a bundle of biographies; the
\nindividual predominates. The history of sattwic nations would be the story of
\nthe universal human self in its advance to knowledge and godhead. Most of all,
\nthe sattwic leaven will show itself in an attempt to order society not to suit
\nmaterial requirements or in obedience to outward environments or under the
\npressure of inward passions and interests, but in accordance with a high
\nspiritual and intellectual ideal applied to life. And until Sattwa is fully
\nevolved, the community will try to preserve all the useful forces and
\ninstitutions gathered by the past social evolution, neither destroying them
\nnor leaving them intact but harmonising and humanising them by the infusion of a
\nhigher ideal and vivifying them from time to time by a fresh review in the light
\nof new experience and wider knowledge. The sattwic nation will avoid the dead
\nconservatism of tamasic communities, it will avoid the restless progress of
\nrajasic nations; it will endeavour to arrive at a living and healthy stability,
\nhigh, calm and peaceful, in which man may pursue undisturbed his nobler destiny.
\n        `<\/span>The true sattwic community in which life shall be naturally regulated by
\ncalm wisdom, enlightenment and universal sym-
\n <\/span> <\/p>\n

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


\nPage-283
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

pathy, or in the Aryan tradition of the
\nSattwayuga, the Golden Age, exists only
\nas an Utopia. We have not evolved even the rajaso-sattwic community in which the
\nlicentious play of individual activity and originality will be restrained not by
\nthe heavy brake of tamasic indolence, ignorance and prejudice, but by the
\npatient and tolerant control and guidance of the spirit of true science,
\nsympathy and wisdom. The farthest advance made by human evolution is the sub-rajaso-tamasic
\nstage in which Sattwa partially evolved tries to dominate its companions. Of
\nthis kind of community China, India and more recently Japan are the only known
\ninstances. In China the tamasic element is very strong; the passionate
\nconservatism of the race, the aggregativeness of the Chinese character which
\nseems unable to live to itself and needs a guild, an organisation or some sort
\nof collective existence to support it, the low physical and emotional
\nsensibility which permits the survival of a barbarous and senselessly cruel
\nsystem of punishment, are striking evidences of prevalent Tamas. The rajasic
\nelement is weaker but evident enough in the religious, intellectual and, in one
\nsense, political liberty allowed to the individual by and in the union of
\nMongolian industry and inventiveness with the democratic individualism which
\nallows every man the chance his individual capacity and energy deserve. Sattwa
\nfinds its place in the high place immemorially assigned to wisdom, learning, and
\nculture and in the noble and perfect Buddhist-Confucian system of ethics and
\nideal of life which regulates Chinese politics, society and individual life. In
\nIndia on the other hand, as we shall perceive, we have an unique and remarkable
\ninstance of sattwic, rajasic, tamasic influences acting upon the community in
\nalmost equal degree and working at high pres- sure side by side; tamasic
\nconstraint and conservatism governs the arrangement of daily life, rajasic
\nliberty, progress and originality brilliantly abound in the affairs of the mind
\nand spirit, a high sattwic ideal and spirit dominate the national temperament,
\nhumanise and vivify all its life, social polity, institutions and re- turn
\nalmost periodically in a fresh wave of life and strength, to save the community
\nwhen it appears doomed to decay and oblivion.<\/p>\n

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

 <\/span>          
\n<\/span>From Sattwa springs the characteristic indestructibility
\n  <\/p>\n

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


\nPage-284
\n <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nwhich Chinese and Indian society, alone of historic civilisations, have evinced
\nunder the pressure of the ages, and the shocks of repeated, even incessant
\nnational disaster. Sattwa is the principle of conservation. The passive tamasic
\norganism perishes by decay of its unrepaired tissues or disintegrates under the
\nshock of outward forces against which it has not sufficient elasticity to react.
\nThe restless rajasic organism dies by exhaustion of its too rapidly expended
\nvitality and vigour. But the sattwic spirit in the rajaso-tamasic body is the
\nnectar of the gods which makes for immortality. China and India have suffered
\nmuch for their pre- mature evolution of the sattwic element; they have
\nrepeatedly undergone defeat and subjugation by the more restless and aggressive
\ncommunities of the world, while Japan by keeping its rajasic energy intact has
\nvictoriously repelled the aggressor. At present both these great countries are
\nunder temporary obscuration, they seem to be overweighted with Tamas and passing
\nthrough a process of disintegration and decay. In India especially long
\ncontinuation of foreign subjection, a condition abhorred by Nature and accursed
\nby Heaven, has brought about disastrous deterioration. Conquering Europe on the
\nother hand, for the first time flooded with Sattwa as a distinct social
\ninfluence by the liberating outburst of the French Revolution, has moved
\nforward. The Sattwa impulse of the 18th century, though sorely abused and
\npressed into the service of rajasic selfishness and tamasic materialism, has yet
\nbeen so powerful an agent to humanise and illuminate that it has given the
\nworld’s lead to the European. But these two great Oriental civilisations are not
\nlikely to perish; always they have conquered their conquerors, asserted their
\nfree individuality and resumed their just place in the forefront of the nations,
\nnor is the future likely to differ materially from the past. So long as the
\nsattwic ideal is not renounced, it is always there to renew itself in extremity
\nand to save. Pre-eminently sattwic is the Universal Self in man which if
\nrealised and held fast to answers unfailingly the call for help and, incarnating
\nin its full season brings with it light, strength and healing. "For the
\ndeliverance of the good and the destruction of the evil doers, for the
\nrestoration of righteousness, I am born from<\/span>
\n<\/span>age
\nto age."<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nPage-285<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\n
\nCHAPTER<\/span>
\n<\/span>IV
\n<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/span>
\n
\nThe
\nPlace of Religion in Ethics<\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/span>                           
\n<\/span><\/span>I<\/font>F
\nTHE<\/span><\/b>
\nview of human development as set forth in the last two chapters is correct, we
\nshall have to part with several notions long cherished by humanity. One of these
\nis the pristine perfection of man and his degradation from his perfect state by
\nfalling into the domination of sin; God made man perfect but man by his own
\nfault brought sin and death into the world. This Semitic tradition, passed from
\nJudaism into Christianity and less prominently into Mahomedanism, became for a
\nlong time part and parcel of the fixed beliefs of half humanity. Yet it is
\ndoubtful whether the original legend which enshrined and prolonged this
\ntradition, quite bears the interpretation which has been put on it. If rightly
\nunderstood, it supports rather than conflicts with the theory of trigunic
\ndevelopment. The legend does not state that man was unfailingly virtuous by
\nchoice, but that he was innocent because he did not yet know good and evil.
\nInnocence of this kind is possible only in the primitive state of man and the
\ndescription of man as naked and unashamed shows that it is precisely the
\nprimitive state of society before arts and civilisation were developed, to which
\nthe legend alludes. Man was then innocent, because being unable to distinguish
\nbetween good and evil he could not choose evil of free choice and therefore had
\nno sense of sin and no more responsibility for his actions than the pure animal.
\nHis fall from the state of innocence was the result of the growth of rajasic
\nindividuality in his mind which led him to assert his own will and desires and
\ndisobey the law imposed on him by an external Power. In this first stage of his
\nevolution he is not guided by a law within himself, but by prohibitions which
\nhis environment imposes on him without his either understanding or caring to
\nunderstand the reason for their imposition. Certain things are forbidden to him,
\nand it is as much a necessity<\/span>
\n<\/span>for
\nhim
\n<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-286<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\nto refrain from them as to refrain from putting his hand in the fire lest he
\nshould be burned; all others are allowed to him and he does them freely without
\nquestioning whether, apart from their legality, they are bad or good. Sin comes
\nby disobedience and disobedience by the assertion of an inner standard as
\nagainst the external standard hitherto obeyed; but it is still a standard not of
\nright and wrong, but of licit and illicit. "What I desire, what my
\nindividual nature demands, should be allowed me," reasons the rajasic man;
\nthe struggle is between an external negation and an internal assertion, not
\nbetween two conflicting internal assertions. But once the former begins, the
\nlatter must in time follow; the physical conflict must create its psychical
\ncounterpart. From the opposition of punished and unpunished evolves the
\nopposition of licit and illicit; from the opposition of licit and illicit
\nevolves the opposition of right and wrong. Originally the sanction which
\npunishes or spares, allows or disallows, approves or disapproves, is external
\nand social; society is the individual’s judge. Finally, in the higher stage of
\nevolution, the sanction is internal and individual; the individual is his own
\njudge. The indulgence of individual desire in disobedience to a general law is
\nthe origin of sin.
\n        <\/span>With the rejection of this theory of an originally perfect humanity, the
\ntradition of an infallible inner conscience which reflects a divinely-ordained
\ncanon of absolute right and wrong must be also rejected. If morality is a
\ngrowth, the moral sense is also a growth and conscience is nothing more than the
\nactivity of the moral sense, the individual as judge of his own actions. If
\nconscience be a divine and infallible judge, it must be the same in all men; but
\nwe know perfectly well that it is not. The conscience of the Red-Indian finds
\nnothing immoral in murder and torture; the conscience of the modern civilised
\nman vehemently condemns them. Even in the same man conscience is an un- certain
\nand capricious quantity changing and deciding inconsistently under the influence
\nof time, place and circumstances. The conscience of one age or country varies
\nfrom the conscience of another age or country. It is therefore contrary to all
\nexperience to assert the divinity or infallibility of conscience. A man must be
\nguided ordinarily by his moral sense, not because it is infal-<\/p>\n

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


\nPage-287<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

lible
\nor perfect, but because moral growth depends upon development from within and to
\nthis end the independent use of the "inner monitor", when once
\nevolved, is the first necessity.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-288
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUPPLEMENT TO VOLUME  12  THE UPANISHADS   Sri Aurobindo wrote a number of commentaries on Isha Upanishad from different points of view at different times….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-27-supplement-volume-27","wpcat-16-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}