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SIX
The Triple
Brahman
PARABRAHMAN
is now on the way to phenomenal manifestation; the
Absolute Shakespeare of Existence, the infinite Kavi, Thinker and Poet, is, by
the mere existence of the eternal creative force Maya, about to shadow forth a
world of living realities out of Himself which have yet no independent
existence. He becomes phenomenally a Creator, and Container of the Universe,
though really He is what He ever was, absolute and unchanged. To understand why
and how the Universe appears what it is, we have deliberately to abandon our
scientific standpoint of transcendental knowledge and speaking the language of
Nescience, represent the Absolute as limiting Itself, the One becoming the Many,
the pure ultra-Spiritual unrefining Itself into the mental and material. We are
like the modern astrologer who, knowing perfectly well that the earth moves
round the sun, must yet persist in speaking of the Sun as moving and standing in
this part of the heavens or that other, because he has to do with the relative
positions of the Sun and planets with regard to men living on the earth and not
with the ultimate astronomical realities.
From this point of view we have to begin with a dualism of
the thing and its shadow, Purusha and Prakriti, commonly called spirit and
matter. Properly speaking, the distinction is illusory, since there is nothing
which is exclusively spirit or exclusively matter, nor can the Universe be
strictly parcelled out between these; from the point of view of Reality spirit
and matter are not different but the same. We may say, if we like, that the
entire Universe is matter and spirit does not exist; we may say, if we like that
the entire Universe is spirit and matter does not exist. In either case we are
merely multiplying words without counsel, ignoring the patent fact visible
through the Universe that both spirit and matter exist and are indissolubly
welded,
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precisely because they are simply one thing viewed from two
sides. The distinction between them is one of the primary dualisms and a first
result of the great Ignorance. Maya works out in name and form as material; Maya
works out in the conceiver of name and form as spiritual. Purusha is the great
principle or force whose presence is necessary to awake creative energy and send
it out working into and on shapes of matter. For this reason Purusha is the name
usually applied to the conditioned Brahman in His manifestations; but it is
always well to remember that the Primal Existence turned towards manifestation
has a double aspect. Male and Female, positive and negative. He is the origin of
the birth of things and He is the receptacle of the birth and it is to the Male
aspect of Himself that the word Purusha predominatingly applies. The image often
applied to these relations is that of the man casting his seed into the woman;
his duty is merely to originate the seed and deposit it, but it is the woman's
duty to cherish the seed, develop it, bring it forth and start it on its career
of manifested life. The seed, says the Upanishad, is the self of the Male, it is
spirit, and being cast into the Female, Prakriti, it becomes one with her and
therefore does her no hurt; spirit takes the shaping appearance of matter and
does not break up the appearances of matter, but develops under their law. The
Man and the Woman, universal Adam and Eve, are really one and each is incomplete
without the other, barren without the other, inactive without the other. Purusha
the Male, God, is that side of the One which gives the impulse toward phenomenal
existence; Prakriti the Female, Nature, is that side which is and evolves the
material of phenomenal existence; both of them are therefore unborn and eternal.
The Male is Purusha, he who lurks in the Wide; the Female is Prakriti, the
working of the Male, and sometimes called Rayi, the universal movement emanating
from the quiescent Male. Purusha is therefore imaged as the Enjoyer, Prakriti as
the enjoyed; Purusha as the Witness, Prakriti as the phenomena he witnesses;
Purusha as begetter or father of things, Prakriti as their bearer or
mother. And there are many other images the Upanishad employs, Purusha, for
instance, symbolising Himself in the Sun, the father of life, and Prakriti in
the Earth, the bearer of life. It is necessary
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thus clearly to define Purusha from the first in order to
avoid confusion in endeavouring to grasp the development of Maya as the
Upanishads describe it.
Parabrahman in the course of evolving phenomena enters into
three states or conditions which are called in one passage His three habitations
and, by a still more suggestive figure. His three states of dream. The first
condition is called avyakta, the state previous to manifestation, in
which all things are involved, but in which nothing is expressed or imaged, the
state of ideality, undifferentiated but pregnant of differentiation, just as the
seed is pregnant of the bark, sap, pith, fibre, leaf, fruit and flower and all
else that unites to make the conception of a tree; just as the protoplasm is
pregnant of all the extraordinary variations of animal life. It is, in its
objective aspect, the seed-state of things. The objective possibility, and
indeed necessity of such a condition of the whole Universe, cannot be denied;
for this is the invariable method of development which the operations of Nature
show to us. Evolution does not mean that out of protoplasm as a material so many
organisms have been created or added by an outside power, but that they have
been developed out of the protoplasm ; and if developed, they were already there
existent and have been manifested by some power dwelling and working in the
protoplasm itself. But open up the protoplasm, as you will, you will not find in
it the rudiments of the organs and organisms it will hereafter develop. So also
though the protoplasm and everything else is evolved out of ether, yet no
symptoms of them would yield themselves up to an analytical research into ether.
The organs and organisms are in the protoplasm, the leaf, flower, fruit in the
seed and all forms in the ether from which they evolve, in an undifferentiated
condition and therefore defy the method of analysis which is confined to the
discovery of differences. This is the state called involution. So also ether
itself, gross or subtle, and all that evolves from ether is involved in Avyakta;
they are present but they can never be discovered there because there they are
undifferentiated. Plato's world of ideas is a confused attempt to arrive at this
condition of things, confused because it unites two incompatible things, the
conditions of Avyakta and those of the next state presided over by
Hiranyagarbha.
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The question then arises, what is the subjective aspect of
Parabrahman in the state of Avyakta? The organs and organisms are evolved out of
protoplasm and forms out of ether by a power which resides and works in them,
and that power must be intelligent consciousness unmanifested; must,
because it is obviously a power that can plan, arrange and suit means to ends;
must because otherwise the law of subtler involving grosser cannot
obtain. If matter is all, then from the point of view of matter, the gross is
more real because more palpable than the subtle and unreality cannot develop
reality; it is intelligent consciousness and nothing else we know of that not
only has the power of containing at one and the same time the gross and the
subtle, but does consistently proceed in its method of creation or evolution
from vagueness to precision, from no form to form and from simple form to
complex form. If the discoveries of Science mean anything and are not a chaos,
an illusion or a chimera, they can only mean the existence of an intelligent
consciousness present and working in all things. Parabrahman therefore is
present subjectively even in the condition of Avyakta no less than in the other
conditions as intelligent consciousness and therefore as bliss.
For the rest, we are driven to the use of metaphors, and
since metaphors must be used, one will do as well as another, for none can be
entirely applicable. Let us then image Avyakta as an egg, the golden egg of the
Puranas full of the waters of undifferentiated existence and divided into two
halves, the upper or luminous half filled with the upper waters of subjective
ideation, the lower or tenebrous half with the lower waters of objective
ideation. In the upper half Purusha is concealed as the final cause of things;
it is there that is formed the idea of undifferentiated, eternal, infinite,
universal Spirit. In the lower half he is concealed as Prakriti, the material
cause of things; it is there that is formed the idea of undifferentiated,
eternal, infinite, universal matter, with the implications Time, Space and
Causality involved in its infinity. It is represented mythologically by Vishnu
on the causal Ocean sitting on the hood of Ananta, the infinite snake whose
endless folds are Time, and are also Space and are also Causality, these three
being fundamentally one, — a Trinity. In the upper
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half Parabrahman is still utterly Himself, but with a Janus
face, one side contemplating the Absolute Reality which He is, the other
envisaging Maya, looking on the endless procession of her works not yet as a
reality, but as a phantasmagoria. In the lower half if we may use a daring
metaphor, Parabrahman forgets Himself. He is subjectively in the state
corresponding to utter sleep or trance from which when a man awakes he can only
realise that he was and that he was in a state of bliss resulting from the
complete absence of limitation; that he was conscious in that state, follows
from his realisation of blissful existence, but the consciousness is not a part
of his realisation. This concealment of Consciousness is a characteristic of the
seed-state of things and it is what is meant by saying that when Parabrahman
enters into matter as Prakriti, He forgets Himself.
Of such a condition, the realisations of consciousness do not
return to us, we can have no particular information. The Yogin passes through it
on his way to the Eternal, but he hastens to this goal and does not linger in
it; not only so, but absorption in this stage is greatly dreaded except as a
temporary necessity; for if the soul finally leaves the body in that condition,
it must recommence the cycle of evolution all over again; for it has identified
itself with the seed-state of things and must follow the nature of Avyakta which
is to start on the motions of Evolution by the regular order of universal
manifestation. This absorption is called the prakṛti laya or absorption
in Prakriti. The Yogin can enter into this state of complete Nescience or Avidya
and remain there for centuries, but if by any chance his body is preserved and
he returns to it, he brings nothing back to the store of our knowledge on this
side of Avyakta.
Parabrahman in the state of Avyakta Purusha is known as
prajna, the Master of prajna. Eternal Wisdom or Providence, for it is
He that orders and marshals before Himself, like a great poet planning a
wonderful masterpiece in his mind, the eternal laws of existence and the
unending procession of the worlds. Vidya and Avidya are here perfectly balanced,
the former still and quiescent though comprehensive, the latter not yet at
active work, waiting for the command, "Let there be darkness." And then the veil
of darkness, Vidya seems to be in
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abeyance, and from the disturbance of the balance results
inequality; then out of the darkness Eternal Wisdom streams forth to its task of
creation and Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Child, is born....
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