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CHAPTER
II
Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara — Maya, Prakriti, Shakti
It is there in beings indivisible and as if divided.
Gita.1
Brahman, the Truth, the Knowledge, the Infinite.
Taittiriya Upanishad.2
Know Purusha and Prakriti to be both eternal without beginning.
Gita.3
One must know Maya as Prakriti and the Master of Maya as the
great Lord of all.
Swetaswatara Upanishad.
4
It is the might of the Godhead in the world that turns the wheel
of Brahman. Him one must know, the supreme Lord of all lords,
the supreme Godhead above all godheads. Supreme too is his
Shakti and manifold the natural working of her knowledge and
her force. One Godhead, occult in all beings, the inner Self of
all beings, the all-pervading, absolute without qualities, the
overseer of all actions, the witness, the knower.
Swetaswatara Upanishad.
5
There
is then a supreme Reality eternal, absolute and infinite. Because it is absolute
and infinite, it is in its essence indeterminable. It is indefinable and
inconceivable by finite and defining Mind; it is ineffable by a mind-created
speech; it is describable neither by our negations, neti neti,— for we
cannot limit it by saying it is not this, it is not that, — nor by our
affirmations, for we cannot fix it by saying it is this, it is that, iti iti.
And yet, though in this way unknowable to us, it is not altogether and in every
way unknowable; it is self-evident to itself and, although inexpressible, yet
self-evident to a knowledge by identity of which the spiritual being in us must
be capable; for that spiritual being is in its essence and its original and
intimate reality not other than this Supreme Existence. But although thus
indeterminable to Mind, because of its
1 XIII. 17. 2
II. 1. 3 XIII. 20. 4
IV. 10. 5 VI. 1, 7, 8, 11.
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absoluteness and
infinity, we discover that this Supreme and Eternal Infinite determines itself
to our consciousness in the universe by real and fundamental truths of its being
which are beyond the universe and in it and are the very foundation of its
existence. These truths present themselves to our conceptual cognition as the
fundamental aspects in which we see and experience the omnipresent Reality. In
themselves they are seized directly, not by intellectual understanding but by a
spiritual intuition, a spiritual experience in the very substance of our
consciousness; but they can also be caught at in conception by a large and
plastic idea and can be expressed in some sort by a plastic speech which does
not insist too much on rigid definition or limit the wideness and subtlety of
the idea. In order to express this experience or this idea with any nearness a
language has to be created which is at once intuitively metaphysical and
revealingly poetic, admitting significant and living images as the vehicle of a
close, suggestive and vivid indication,—a language such as we find hammered out
into a subtle and pregnant massiveness in the Veda and the Upanishads. In the
ordinary tongue of metaphysical thought we have to be content with a distant
indication, an approximation by abstractions, which may still be of some service
to our intellect, for it is this kind of speech which suits our method of
logical and rational understanding; but if it is to be of real service, the
intellect must consent to pass out of the bounds of a finite logic and accustom
itself to the logic of the Infinite. On this condition alone, by this way of
seeing and thinking, it ceases to be paradoxical or futile to speak of the
ineffable: but if we insist on applying a finite logic to the Infinite, the
omnipresent Reality will escape us and we shall grasp instead an abstract
shadow, a dead form petrified into speech or a hard incisive graph which speaks
of the Reality but does not express it. Our way of knowing must be appropriate
to that which is to be known; otherwise we achieve only a distant speculation, a
figure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge.
The supreme Truth-aspect which thus
manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence,
self-awareness, self-delight of being; this founds all things and secretly
supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals
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itself again in three terms of its essential nature,—Self, Conscious Being or
Spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more
satisfactory,—Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms
grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness,
are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and
the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is
that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the
same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its
forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its
embrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman,
Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life,
it is said “O Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman”; and, pointing to man and beast
and bird and insect, each separately is identified with the One,—“O Brahman,
thou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect.” Brahman is the
Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the Force that
sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and
animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret
Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could
breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in
correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is
that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in
inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are
passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space
and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is
the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his
dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman;
Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic
Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but
It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal
portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has
become the living being in a world
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of
living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the
Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and
Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his
Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being,
Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious
self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and
omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he
manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements
taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and
select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within
it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our
stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
An absolute, eternal and infinite Self-existence, Self-awareness,
Self-delight of being that secretly supports and pervades the universe
even while it is also beyond it, is, then, the first truth of spiritual
experience. But this truth of being has at once an impersonal and a
personal aspect; it is not only Existence, it is the one Being absolute,
eternal and infinite. As there are three fundamental aspects in which we
meet this Reality,—Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine
Being, or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality,
Brahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara,—so too its power of
Consciousness appears to us in three aspects: it is the self-force of
that consciousness conceptively creative of all things, Maya; it is
Prakriti, Nature or Force made dynamically executive, working out all
things under the witnessing eye of the Conscious Being, the Self or
Spirit; it is the conscious Power of the Divine Being, Shakti, which is
both conceptively creative and dynamically executive of all the divine
workings. These three aspects and their powers base and comprise the
whole of existence and all Nature and, taken together as a single whole,
they reconcile the apparent disparateness and incompatibility of the
supracosmic Transcendence, the cosmic universality and the
separativeness of our individual existence; the Absolute, cosmic Nature
and ourselves are linked in oneness by this triune
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aspect of the one Reality. For taken by itself the existence of the Absolute,
the Supreme Brahman, would be a contradiction of the relative universe and our
own real existence would be incompatible with its sole incommunicable Reality.
But the Brahman is at the same time omnipresent in all relativities; it is the
Absolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the
Absolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives; there is nothing that
is not the omnipresent Reality. In observing the triple aspect and the triple
power we come to see how this is possible.
If we look at this picture of the Self-Existence and its works as a
unitary unlimited whole of vision, it stands together and imposes itself
by its convincing totality: but to the analysis of the logical intellect
it offers an abundance of difficulties, such as all attempts to erect a
logical system out of a perception of an illimitable Existence must
necessarily create; for any such endeavour must either effect
consistency by an arbitrary sectioning of the complex truth of things or
else by its comprehensiveness become logically untenable. For we see
that the Indeterminable determines itself as infinite and finite, the
Immutable admits a constant mutability and endless differences, the One
becomes an innumerable multitude, the Impersonal creates or supports
personality, is itself a Person; the Self has a nature and is yet other
than its nature; Being turns into becoming and yet it is always itself
and other than its becomings; the Universal individualises itself and
the Individual universalises himself; Brahman is at once void of
qualities and capable of infinite qualities, the Lord and Doer of works,
yet a non-doer and a silent witness of the workings of Nature. If we
look carefully at these workings of Nature, once we put aside the veil
of familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things
as natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does
in whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible
magic. The being of the Self-existence and the world that has appeared
in it are, each of them and both together, a suprarational mystery.
There seems to us to be a reason in things because the processes of the
physical finite are consistent to our view and their law determinable,
but this reason in things, when
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closely examined, seems to stumble at every moment against the irrational or
infrarational and the suprarational: the consistency, the determinability of
process seems to lessen rather than increase as we pass from matter to life and
from life to mentality; if the finite consents to some extent to look as if it
were rational, the infinitesimal refuses to be bound by the same laws and the
infinite is unseizable. As for the action of the universe and its significance,
it escapes us altogether; if Self, God or Spirit there be, his dealings with the
world and us are incomprehensible, offer no clue that we can follow. God and
Nature and even ourselves move in a mysterious way which is only partially and
at points intelligible, but as a whole escapes our comprehension. All the works
of Maya look like the production of a suprarational magical Power which arranges
things according to its wisdom or its phantasy, but a wisdom which is not ours
and a phantasy which baffles our imagination. The Spirit that manifests things
or manifests itself in them so obscurely, looks to our reason like a Magician
and his power or Maya a creative magic: but magic can create illusions or it can
create astounding realities, and we find it difficult to decide which of these
suprarational processes faces us in this universe.
But, in fact, the cause of this impression must necessarily be sought
not in anything illusory or fantastic in the Supreme or the universal
Self-existence, but in our own inability to seize the supreme clue to
its manifold existence or discover the secret plan and pattern of its
action. The Self-existent is the Infinite and its way of being and of
action must be the way of the Infinite, but our consciousness is
limited, our reason built upon things finite: it is irrational to
suppose that a finite consciousness and reason can be a measure of the
Infinite; this smallness cannot judge that Immensity; this poverty bound
to a limited use of its scanty means cannot conceive the opulent
management of those riches; an ignorant half-knowledge cannot follow the
motions of an All-Knowledge. Our reasoning is based upon our experience
of the finite operations of physical Nature, on an incomplete
observation and uncertain understanding of something that acts within
limits; it has organised on that basis certain conceptions which it
seeks to make general and universal, and
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whatever contradicts or departs from these conceptions it regards as irrational,
false or inexplicable. But there are different orders of the reality and the
conceptions, measures, standards suitable to one need not be applicable to
another order. Our physical being is built first upon an aggregate of
infinitesimals, electrons, atoms, molecules, cells; but the law of action of
these infinitesimals does not explain all the physical workings even of the
human body, much less can they cover all the law and process of action of man's
supraphysical parts, his life movements and mind movements and soul movements.
In the body finites have been formed with their own habits, properties,
characteristic ways of action; the body itself is a finite which is not a mere
aggregate of these smaller finites which it uses as parts, organs, constituent
instruments of its operations; it has developed a being and has a general law
which surpasses its dependence upon these elements or constituents. The life and
mind again are supraphysical finites with a different and more subtle mode of
operation of their own, and no dependence on the physical parts for
instrumentation can annul their intrinsic character; there is something more and
other in our vital and mental being and vital and mental forces than the
functioning of a physical body. But, again, each finite is in its reality or has
behind it an Infinite which has built and supports and directs the finite it has
made as its self-figure; so that even the being and law and process of the
finite cannot be totally understood without a knowledge of that which is occult
within or behind it: our finite knowledge, conceptions, standards may be valid
within their limits, but they are incomplete and relative. A law founded upon an
observation of what is divided in Space and Time cannot be confidently applied
to the being and action of the Indivisible; not only it cannot be applied to the
spaceless and timeless Infinite, but it cannot be applied even to a Time
Infinite or a Space Infinite. A law and process binding for our superficial
being need not be binding on what is occult within us. Again, our intellect,
founding itself on reason, finds it difficult to deal with what is infrarational;
life is infrarational and we find that our intellectual reason applying itself
to life is constantly forcing upon it a control, a measure, an artificial
procrustean rule that either succeeds in killing or
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petrifying life or constrains it into rigid forms and conventions that lame and
imprison its capacity or ends by a bungle, a revolt of life, a decay or
disruption of the systems and superstructures built upon it by our intelligence.
An instinct, an intuition is needed which the intellect has not at its command
and does not always listen to when it comes in of itself to help the mental
working. But still more difficult must it be for our reason to understand and
deal with the suprarational; the suprarational is the realm of the spirit, and
in the largeness, subtlety, profundity, complexity of its movement the reason is
lost; here intuition and inner experience alone are the guide, or, if there is
any other, it is that of which intuition is only a sharp edge, an intense
projected ray,—the final enlightenment must come from the suprarational
Truth-Consciousness, from a supramental vision and knowledge.
But the being and action of the Infinite must not be therefore regarded
as if it were a magic void of all reason; there is, on the contrary, a
greater reason in all the operations of the Infinite, but it is not a
mental or intellectual, it is a spiritual and supramental reason: there
is a logic in it, because there are relations and connections infallibly
seen and executed; what is magic to our finite reason is the logic of
the Infinite. It is a greater reason, a greater logic because it is more
vast, subtle, complex in its operations: it comprehends all the data
which our observation fails to seize, it deduces from them results which
neither our deduction nor induction can anticipate, because our
conclusions and inferences have a meagre foundation and are fallible and
brittle. If we observe a happening, we judge and explain it from the
result and from a glimpse of its most external constituents,
circumstances or causes; but each happening is the outcome of a complex
nexus of forces which we do not and cannot observe, because all forces
are to us invisible,—but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision
of the Infinite: some of them are actualities working to produce or
occasion a new actuality, some are possibles that are near to the
pre-existent actuals and in a way included in their aggregate; but there
can intervene always new possibilities that suddenly become dynamic
potentials and add themselves to the nexus, and behind all are
imperatives or an
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imperative which these possibilities are labouring to actualise. Moreover, out
of the same nexus of forces different results are possible; what will come out
of them is determined by a sanction which was no doubt waiting and ready all the
time but seems to come in rapidly to intervene and alter everything, a decisive
divine imperative. All this our reason cannot grasp because it is the instrument
of an ignorance with a very limited vision and a small stock of accumulated and
not always very certain or reliable knowledge and because too it has no means of
direct awareness; for this is the difference between intuition and intellect,
that intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect
action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown
from signs and indications and gathered data. But what is not evident to our
reason and senses, is self-evident to the Infinite Consciousness, and, if there
is a Will of the Infinite, it must be a Will that acts in this full knowledge
and is the perfect spontaneous result of a total self-evidence. It is neither a
hampered evolutionary Force bound by what it has evolved nor an imaginative Will
acting in the void upon a free caprice; it is the truth of the Infinite
affirming itself in the determinations of the finite.
It is evident that such a Consciousness and Will need not act in harmony
with the conclusions of our limited reason or according to a procedure
familiar to it and approved of by our constructed notions or in
subjection to an ethical reason working for a limited and fragmentary
good; it might and does admit things deemed by our reason irrational and
unethical because that was necessary for the final and total Good and
for the working out of a cosmic purpose. What seems to us irrational or
reprehensible in relation to a partial set of facts, motives, desiderata
might be perfectly rational and approvable in relation to a much vaster
motive and totality of data and desiderata. Reason with its partial
vision sets up constructed conclusions which it strives to turn into
general rules of knowledge and action and it compels into its rule by
some mental device or gets rid of what does not suit with it: an
infinite Consciousness would have no such rules, it would have instead
large intrinsic truths governing automatically conclusion and result,
but adapting them differently
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and spontaneously to a different total of circumstances, so that by this
pliability and free adaptation it might seem to the narrower faculty to have no
standards whatever. In the same way, we cannot judge of the principle and
dynamic operation of infinite being by the standards of finite existence,—what
might be impossible for the one would be normal and self-evidently natural
states and motives for the greater freer Reality. It is this that makes the
difference between our fragmentary mind consciousness constructing integers out
of its fractions and an essential and total consciousness, vision and knowledge.
It is not indeed possible, so long as we are compelled to use reason as our main
support, for it to abdicate altogether in favour of an undeveloped or half-organised
intuition; but it is imperative on us in a consideration of the Infinite and its
being and action to enforce on our reason an utmost plasticity and open it to an
awareness of the larger states and possibilities of that which we are striving
to consider. It will not do to apply our limited and limiting conclusions to
That which is illimitable. If we concentrate only on one aspect and treat it as
the whole, we illustrate the story of the blind men and the elephant; each of
the blind inquirers touched a different part and concluded that the whole animal
was some object resembling the part of which he had had the touch. An experience
of some one aspect of the Infinite is valid in itself; but we cannot generalise
from it that the Infinite is that alone, nor would it be safe to view the rest
of the Infinite in the terms of that aspect and exclude all other viewpoints of
spiritual experience. The Infinite is at once an essentiality, a boundless
totality and a multitude; all these have to be known in order to know truly the
Infinite. To see the parts alone and the totality not at all or only as a sum of
the parts is a knowledge, but also at the same time an ignorance; to see the
totality alone and ignore the parts is also a knowledge and at the same time an
ignorance, for a part may be greater than the whole because it belongs to the
transcendence; to see the essence alone because it takes us back straight
towards the transcendence and negate the totality and the parts is a penultimate
knowledge, but here too there is a capital ignorance. A whole knowledge must be
there and the reason must become plastic enough to look
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at
all sides, all aspects and seek through them for that in which they are one.
Thus too, if we see only the aspect of Self, we may concentrate on its
static silence and miss the dynamic truth of the Infinite; if we see
only the Ishwara, we may seize the dynamic truth but miss the eternal
status and the infinite silence, become aware of only dynamic being,
dynamic consciousness, dynamic delight of being, but miss the pure
existence, pure consciousness, pure bliss of being. If we concentrate on
Purusha-Prakriti alone, we may see only the dichotomy of Soul and
Nature, Spirit and Matter, and miss their unity. In considering the
action of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who
thought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of the
elephant-driver to budge from the narrow path and was taken up by the
elephant's trunk and removed out of the way; “You are no doubt the
Brahman,” said the master to his bewildered disciple, “but why did you
not obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of the elephant
Brahman?” We must not commit the mistake of emphasising one side of the
Truth and concluding from it or acting upon it to the exclusion of all
other sides and aspects of the Infinite. The realisation “I am That” is
true, but we cannot safely proceed on it unless we realise also that all
is That; our self-existence is a fact, but we must also be aware of
other selves, of the same Self in other beings and of That which exceeds
both own-self and other-self. The Infinite is one in a multiplicity and
its action is only seizable by a supreme Reason which regards all and
acts as a one-awareness that observes itself in difference and respects
its own differences, so that each thing and each being has its form of
essential being and its form of dynamic nature, svar\=upa, svadharma,
and all are respected in the total working. The knowledge and action of
the Infinite is one in an unbound variability: it would be from the
point of view of the infinite Truth equally an error to insist either on
a sameness of action in all circumstances or on a diversity of action
without any unifying truth and harmony behind the diversity. In our own
principle of conduct, if we sought to act in this greater Truth, it
would be equally an error to insist on our self alone or to insist on
other selves alone; it is the Self of all on which we have to found
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a
unity of action and a total, infinitely plastic yet harmonious diversity of
action; for that is the nature of the working of the Infinite.
If we look from this viewpoint of a larger more plastic reason, taking
account of the logic of the Infinite, at the difficulties which meet our
intelligence when it tries to conceive the absolute and omnipresent
Reality, we shall see that the whole difficulty is verbal and conceptual
and not real. Our intelligence looks at its concept of the Absolute and
sees that it must be indeterminable and at the same time it sees a world
of determinations which emanates from the Absolute and exists in it,—for
it can emanate from nowhere else and can exist nowhere else; it is
further baffled by the affirmation, also hardly disputable on the
premisses, that all these determinates are nothing else than this very
indeterminable Absolute. But the contradiction disappears when we
understand that the indeterminability is not in its true sense negative,
not an imposition of incapacity on the Infinite, but positive, a freedom
within itself from limitation by its own determinations and necessarily
a freedom from all external determination by anything not itself, since
there is no real possibility of such a not-self coming into existence.
The Infinite is illimitably free, free to determine itself infinitely,
free from all restraining effect of its own creations. In fact the
Infinite does not create, it manifests what is in itself, in its own
essence of reality; it is itself that essence of all reality and all
realities are powers of that one Reality. The Absolute neither creates
nor is created,—in the current sense of making or being made; we can
speak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and
movement what it already is in substance and status. Yet we have to
emphasise its indeterminability in that special and positive sense, not
as a negation but as an indispensable condition of its free infinite
self-determination, because without that the Reality would be a fixed
eternal determinate or else an indeterminate fixed and bound to a sum of
possibilities of determination inherent within it. Its freedom from all
limitation, from any binding by its own creation cannot be itself turned
into a limitation, an absolute incapacity, a denial of all freedom of
self-determination; it is this that would be a contradiction, it would
be an attempt to define
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and limit by negation the infinite and illimitable. Into the central fact of the
two sides of the nature of the Absolute, the essential and the self-creative or
dynamic, no real contradiction enters; it is only a pure infinite essence that
can formulate itself in infinite ways. One statement is complementary to the
other, there is no mutual cancellation, no incompatibility; it is only the dual
statement of a single inescapable fact by human reason in human language.
The same conciliation occurs everywhere, when we look with a straight
and accurate look on the truth of the Reality. In our experience of it
we become aware of an Infinite essentially free from all limitation by
qualities, properties, features; on the other hand, we are aware of an
Infinite teeming with innumerable qualities, properties, features. Here
again the statement of illimitable freedom is positive, not negative; it
does not negate what we see, but on the contrary provides the
indispensable condition for it, it makes possible a free and infinite
self-expression in quality and feature. A quality is the character of a
power of conscious being; or we may say that the consciousness of being
expressing what is in it makes the power it brings out recognisable by a
native stamp on it which we call quality or character. Courage as a
quality is such a power of being, it is a certain character of my
consciousness expressing a formulated force of my being, bringing out or
creating a definite kind of force of my nature in action. So too the
power of a drug to cure is its property, a special force of being native
to the herb or mineral from which it is produced, and this speciality is
determined by the Real-Idea concealed in the involved consciousness
which dwells in the plant or mineral; the idea brings out in it what was
there at the root of its manifestation and has now come out thus
empowered as the force of its being. All qualities, properties, features
are such powers of conscious being thus put forth from itself by the
Absolute; It has everything within It, It has the free power to put all
forth 1; yet we cannot define the
Absolute as a quality of courage or a power of healing, we cannot even
say that these are a characteristic feature of the Absolute, nor can we
make up a
1The word for creation in Sanskrit means a loosing or putting forth of
what is in the being.
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sum of qualities and say “that is the Absolute”. But neither can we speak of the
Absolute as a pure blank incapable of manifesting these things; on the contrary,
all capacity is there, the powers of all qualities and characters are there
inherent within it. The mind is in a difficulty because it has to say, “The
Absolute or Infinite is none of these things, these things are not the Absolute
or Infinite” and at the same time it has to say, “The Absolute is all these
things, they are not something else than That, for That is the sole existence
and the all-existence.” Here it is evident that it is an undue finiteness of
thought conception and verbal expression which creates the difficulty, but there
is in reality none; for it would be evidently absurd to say that the Absolute is
courage or curing-power, or to say that courage and curing-power are the
Absolute, but it would be equally absurd to deny the capacity of the Absolute to
put forth courage or curing-power as self-expressions in its manifestation. When
the logic of the finite fails us, we have to see with a direct and unbound
vision what is behind in the logic of the Infinite. We can then realise that the
Infinite is infinite in quality, feature, power, but that no sum of qualities,
features, powers can describe the Infinite.
We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit,
the Being is One; the Transcendental is one, the Cosmic is one: but we see also
that beings are many and each has a self, a spirit, a like yet different nature.
And since the spirit and essence of things is one, we are obliged to admit that
all these many must be that One, and it follows that the One is or has become
many; but how can the limited or relative be the Absolute and how can man or
beast or bird be the Divine Being? But in erecting this apparent contradiction
the mind makes a double error. It is thinking in the terms of the mathematical
finite unit which is sole in limitation, the one which is less than two and can
become two only by division and fragmentation or by addition and multiplication;
but this is an infinite Oneness, it is the essential and infinite Oneness which
can contain the hundred and the thousand and the million and billion and
trillion. Whatever astronomic or more than astronomic figures you heap and
multiply, they cannot overpass or exceed that Oneness; for, in the language of
the Upanishad, it moves not, yet is always far in front when you would
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pursue and seize it. It can be said of it that it would not be the infinite
Oneness if it were not capable of an infinite multiplicity; but that does not
mean that the One is plural or can be limited or described as the sum of the
Many: on the contrary, it can be the infinite Many because it exceeds all
limitation or description by multiplicity and exceeds at the same time all
limitation by finite conceptual oneness. Pluralism is an error because, though
there is the spiritual plurality, the many souls are dependent and
interdependent existences; their sum also is not the One nor is it the cosmic
totality; they depend on the One and exist by its Oneness: yet the plurality is
not unreal, it is the One Soul that dwells as the individual in these many souls
and they are eternal in the One and by the one Eternal. This is difficult for
the mental reason which makes an opposition between the Infinite and the finite
and associates finiteness with plurality and infinity with oneness; but in the
logic of the Infinite there is no such opposition and the eternity of the Many
in the One is a thing that is perfectly natural and possible.
Again, we see that there is an infinite pure status and
immobile silence of the Spirit; we see too that there is a boundless movement of
the Spirit, a power, a dynamic spiritual all-containing self-extension of the
Infinite. Our conceptions foist upon this perception, in itself valid and
accurate, an opposition between the silence and status and the dynamis and
movement, but to the reason and the logic of the Infinite there can be no such
opposition. A solely silent and static Infinite, an Infinite without an infinite
power and dynamis and energy is inadmissible except as the perception of an
aspect; a powerless Absolute, an impotent Spirit is unthinkable: an infinite
energy must be the dynamis of the Infinite, an all-power must be the potency of
the Absolute, an illimitable force must be the force of the Spirit. But the
silence, the status are the basis of the movement, an eternal immobility is the
necessary condition, field, essence even, of the infinite mobility, a stable
being is the condition and foundation of the vast action of the Force of being.
It is when we arrive at something of this silence, stability, immobility that we
can base on it a force and energy which in our superficial restless state would
be inconceivable. The opposition we make is mental and
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conceptual; in reality, the silence of the Spirit and the dynamis of the Spirit
are complementary truths and inseparable. The immutable silent Spirit may hold
its infinite energy silent and immobile within it, for it is not bound by its
own forces, is not their subject or instrument, but it does possess them, does
release them, is capable of an eternal and infinite action, does not weary or
need to stop, and yet all the time its silent immobility inherent in its action
and movement is not for a moment shaken or disturbed or altered by its action
and movement; the witness silence of the Spirit is there in the very grain of
all the voices and workings of Nature. These things may be difficult for us to
understand because our own surface finite capacity in either direction is
limited and our conceptions are based on our limitations; but it should be easy
to see that these relative and finite conceptions do not apply to the Absolute
and Infinite.
Our conception of the Infinite is formlessness, but everywhere we see
form and forms surrounding us and it can be and is affirmed of the
Divine Being that he is at once Form and the Formless. For here too the
apparent contradiction does not correspond to a real opposition; the
Formless is not a negation of the power of formation, but the condition
for the Infinite's free formation: for otherwise there would be a single
Form or only a fixity or sum of possible forms in a finite universe. The
formlessness is the character of the spiritual essence, the
spirit-substance of the Reality; all finite realities are powers, forms,
self-shapings of that substance: the Divine is formless and nameless,
but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible names and
shapes of being. Forms are manifestations, not arbitrary inventions out
of nothing; for line and colour, mass and design which are the
essentials of form carry always in them a significance, are, it might be
said, secret values and significances of an unseen reality made visible;
it is for that reason that figure, line, hue, mass, composition can
embody what would be otherwise unseen, can convey what would be
otherwise occult to the sense. Form may be said to be the innate body,
the inevitable self-revelation of the formless, and this is true not
only of external shapes, but of the unseen formations of mind and life
which we seize only by our thought and those sensible forms of which
only
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the subtle grasp of the inner consciousness can become aware. Name in its deeper
sense is not the word by which we describe the object, but the total of power,
quality, character of the reality which a form of things embodies and which we
try to sum up by a designating sound, a knowable name, Nomen. Nomen in
this sense, we might say, is
Numen; the secret Names of the Gods are their power, quality, character
of being caught up by the consciousness and made conceivable. The Infinite is
nameless, but in that namelessness all possible names, Numens of the gods, the
names and forms of all realities, are already envisaged and prefigured, because
they are there latent and inherent in the All-Existence.
It becomes clear from these considerations that the co-existence of the
Infinite and the finite, which is the very nature of universal being, is
not a juxtaposition or mutual inclusion of two opposites, but as natural
and inevitable as the relation of the principle of Light and Fire with
the suns. The finite is a frontal aspect and a self-determination of the
Infinite; no finite can exist in itself and by itself, it exists by the
Infinite and because it is of one essence with the Infinite. For by the
Infinite we do not mean solely an illimitable self-extension in Space
and Time, but something that is also spaceless and timeless, a
self-existent Indefinable and Illimitable which can express itself in
the infinitesimal as well as in the vast, in a second of time, in a
point of space, in a passing circumstance. The finite is looked upon as
a division of the Indivisible, but there is no such thing: for this
division is only apparent; there is a demarcation, but no real
separation is possible. When we see with the inner vision and sense and
not with the physical eye a tree or other object, what we become aware
of is an infinite one Reality constituting the tree or object, pervading
its every atom and molecule, forming them out of itself, building the
whole nature, process of becoming, operation of indwelling energy; all
of these are itself, are this infinite, this Reality: we see it
extending indivisibly and uniting all objects so that none is really
separate from it or quite separate from other objects. “It stands,” says
the Gita, “undivided in beings and yet as if divided.” Thus each object
is that Infinite and one in essential being with all other objects that
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are also forms and names, — powers, numens, — of the Infinite.
This incoercible unity in all divisions and diversities is the
mathematics of the Infinite, indicated in a verse of the Upanishads, —
“This is the complete and That is the complete; subtract the complete
from the complete, the complete is the remainder.” For so too it may be
said of the infinite self-multiplication of the Reality that all things
are that self-multiplication; the One becomes Many, but all these Many
are That which was already and is always itself and in becoming the Many
remains the One. There is no division of the One by the appearance of
the finite, for it is the one Infinite that appears to us as the many
finite: the creation adds nothing to the Infinite; it remains after
creation what it was before. The Infinite is not a sum of things, it is
That which is all things and more. If this logic of the Infinite
contradicts the conceptions of our finite reason, it is because it
exceeds it and does not base itself on the data of the limited
phenomenon, but embraces the Reality and sees the truth of all phenomena
in the truth of the Reality; it does not see them as separate beings,
movements, names, forms, things; for that they cannot be, since they
could be that only if they were phenomena in the Void, things without a
common basis or essence, fundamentally unconnected, connected only by
coexistence and pragmatic relation, not realities which exist by their
root of unity and, so far as they can be considered independent, are
secured in their independence of outer or inner figure and movement only
by their perpetual dependence on their parent Infinite, their secret
identity with the one Identical. The Identical is their root, their
cause of form, the one power of their varying powers, their constituting
substance.
The Identical to our notions is the Immutable; it is ever the same
through eternity, for if it is or becomes subject to mutation or if it
admits of differences, it ceases to be identical; but what we see
everywhere is an infinitely variable fundamental oneness which seems the
very principle of Nature. The basic Force is one, but it manifests from
itself innumerable forces; the basic substance is one, but it develops
many different substances and millions of unlike objects; mind is one
but differentiates itself into many mental states, mind-formations,
thoughts,
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perceptions differing from each other and entering into harmony or into
conflict; life is one, but the forms of life are unlike and innumerable;
humanity is one in nature, but there are different race types and every
individual man is himself and in some way unlike others; Nature insists on
tracing lines of difference on the leaves of one tree; she drives
differentiation so far that it has been found that the lines on one man's thumb
are different from the lines of every other man's thumb so that he can be
identified by that differentiation alone, — yet fundamentally all men are alike
and there is no essential difference. Oneness or sameness is everywhere,
differentiation is everywhere; the indwelling Reality has built the universe on
the principle of the development of one seed into a million different fashions.
But this again is the logic of the Infinite; because the essence of the Reality
is immutably the same, it can assume securely these innumerable differences of
form and character and movement, for even if they were multiplied a trillionfold,
that would not affect the underlying immutability of the eternal Identical.
Because the Self and Spirit in things and beings is one everywhere, therefore
Nature can afford this luxury of infinite differentiation: if there were not
this secure basis which brings it about that nothing changes yet all changes,
all her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration
and chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations
together. The immutability of the Identical does not consist in a monotone of
changeless sameness incapable of variation; it consists in an unchangeableness
of being which is capable of endless formation of being, but which no
differentiation can destroy or impair or minimise. The Self becomes insect and
bird and beast and man, but it is always the same Self through these mutations
because it is the One who manifests himself infinitely in endless diversity. Our
surface reason is prone to conclude that the diversity may be unreal, an
appearance only, but if we look a little deeper we shall see that a real
diversity brings out the real Unity, shows it as it were in its utmost capacity,
reveals all that it can be and is in itself, delivers from its whiteness of hue
the many tones of colour that are fused together there; Oneness finds itself
infinitely in what seems to us to be a falling
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away from its oneness, but is really an inexhaustible diverse display of unity.
This is the miracle, the Maya of the universe, yet perfectly logical, natural
and a matter of course to the self-vision and self-experience of the Infinite.
For the Maya of Brahman is at once the magic and the
logic of an infinitely variable Oneness; if, indeed, there were only a rigid
monotone of limited oneness and sameness, there would be no place for reason and
logic, for logic consists in the right perception of relations: the highest work
of reason is to find the one substance, the one law, the cementing latent
reality connecting and unifying the many, the different, the discordant and
disparate. All universal existence moves between these two terms, a
diversification of the One, a unification of the many and diverse, and that must
be because the One and the Many are fundamental aspects of the Infinite. For
what the divine Self-knowledge and All-knowledge brings out in its manifestation
must be a truth of its being and the play of that truth is its Lila.
This, then, is the logic of the way of universal being
of Brahman and the basic working of the reason, the infinite intelligence of
Maya. As with the being of Brahman, so with its consciousness, Maya: it is not
bound to a finite restriction of itself or to one state or law of its action; it
can be many things simultaneously, have many co-ordinated movements which to the
finite reason may seem contradictory; it is one but innumerably manifold,
infinitely plastic, inexhaustibly adaptable. Maya is the supreme and universal
consciousness and force of the Eternal and Infinite and, being by its very
nature unbound and illimitable, it can put forth many states of consciousness at
a time, many dispositions of its Force, without ceasing to be the same
consciousness-force for ever. It is at once transcendental, universal and
individual; it is the supreme supracosmic Being that is aware of itself as
All-Being, as the Cosmic Self, as the Consciousness-Force of cosmic Nature, and
at the same time experiences itself as the individual being and consciousness in
all existences. The individual consciousness can see itself as limited and
separate, but can also put off its limitations and know itself as universal and
again as transcendent of the universe; this is because there is in all these
states or positions or underlying them
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the same triune consciousness in a triple status. There is then no difficulty in
the One thus seeing or experiencing itself triply, whether from above in the
Transcendent Existence or from between in the Cosmic Self or from below in the
individual conscious being. All that is necessary for this to be accepted as
natural and logical is to admit that there can be different real statuses of
consciousness of the One Being, and that cannot be impossible for an Existence
which is free and infinite and cannot be tied to a single condition; a free
power of self-variation must be natural to a consciousness that is infinite. If
the possibility of a manifold status of consciousness is admitted, no limit can
be put to the ways of its variation of status, provided the One is aware of
itself simultaneously in all of them; for the One and Infinite must be thus
universally conscious. The only difficulty, which a further consideration may
solve, is to understand the connections between a status of limited or
constructed consciousness like ours, a status of ignorance, and the infinite
self-knowledge and all-knowledge.
A second possibility of the Infinite Consciousness that must be
admitted is its power of self-limitation or secondary self-formation
into a subordinate movement within the integral illimitable
consciousness and knowledge; for that is a necessary consequence of the
power of self-determination of the Infinite. Each self-determination of
the self-being must have its own awareness of its self-truth and its
self-nature; or, if we prefer so to put it, the Being in that
determination must be so self-aware. Spiritual individuality means that
each individual self or spirit is a centre of self-vision and
all-vision; the circumference, — the boundless circumference, as we may
say, — of this vision may be the same for all, but the centre may be
different, — not located as in a spatial point in a spatial circle, but
a psychological centre related with others through a co-existence of the
diversely conscious Many in the universal being. Each being in a world
will see the same world, but see it from its own self-being according to
its own way of self-nature: for each will manifest its own truth of the
Infinite, its own way of self-determination and of meeting the cosmic
determinations; its vision by the law of unity in variety will no doubt
be
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fundamentally the same as that of others, but it will still develop its own
differentiation, — as we see all human beings conscious in the one human way of
the same cosmic things, yet always with an individual difference. This
self-limitation would be, not fundamental, but an individual specialisation of a
common universality or totality; the spiritual individual would act from his own
centre of the one Truth and according to his self-nature, but on a common basis
and not with any blindness to other-self and other-nature. It would be
consciousness limiting its action with full knowledge, not a movement of
ignorance. But apart from this individualising self-limitation, there must also
be in the consciousness of the Infinite a power of cosmic limitation; it must be
able to limit its action so as to base a given world or universe and to keep it
in its own order, harmony, self-building: for the creation of a universe
necessitates a special determination of the Infinite Consciousness to preside
over that world and a holding back of all that is not needed for that movement.
In the same way the putting forth of an independent action of some power like
Mind, Life or Matter must have as its support a similar principle of
self-limitation. It cannot be said that such a movement must be impossible for
the Infinite, because it is illimitable; on the contrary, this must be one of
its many powers, for its powers too are illimitable: but this also, like other
self-determinations, other finite buildings, would not be a separation or a real
division, for all the Infinite Consciousness would be around and behind it and
supporting it and the special movement itself would be intrinsically aware not
only of itself, but, in essence, of all that was behind it. This would be so,
inevitably, in the integral consciousness of the Infinite: but we can suppose
also that an intrinsic though not an active awareness of this kind, demarcating
itself, yet indivisible, might be there too in the total self-consciousness of
the movement of the Finite. This much cosmic or individual conscious
self-limitation would evidently be possible to the Infinite and can be accepted
by a larger reason as one of its spiritual possibilities; but so far, on this
basis, any division or ignorant separation or binding and blinding limitation
such as is apparent in our own consciousness would be unaccountable.
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But a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted,
its power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which
self-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all
would then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner
consciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state
which we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, —although most of what
we call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient,
something that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited
level of awareness. This self-absorption, this trance of infinity is again, no
longer luminously but darkly, the state which we call the Inconscient; for the
being of the Infinite is there though by its appearance of inconscience it seems
to us rather to be an infinite non-being: a self-oblivious intrinsic
consciousness and force are there in that apparent non-being, for by the energy
of the Inconscient an ordered world is created; it is created in a trance of
self-absorption, the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness
as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the
Infinite. If we take a step further and admit that a special or a restricted and
partial action of self-absorption is possible to the Infinite, an action not
always of its infinity concentrated limitlessly in itself, but confined to a
special status or to an individual or cosmic self-determination, we have then
the explanation of the concentrated condition or status by which it becomes
aware separately of one aspect of its being. There can then be a fundamental
double status such as that of the Nirguna standing back from the Saguna and
absorbed in its own purity and immobility, while the rest is held back behind a
veil and not admitted within that special status. In the same way we could
account for the status of consciousness aware of one field of being or one
movement of it, while the awareness of all the rest would be held behind and
veiled or, as it were, cut off by a waking trance of dynamic concentration from
the specialised or limited awareness occupied only with its own field or
movement. The totality of the infinite consciousness would be there, not
abolished, recoverable, but not evidently active, active only by implication, by
inherence or by the instrumentality of
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the limited awareness, not in its own manifest power and presence. It will be
evident that all these three powers can be accepted as possible to the dynamics
of the Infinite Consciousness, and it is by considering the many ways in which
they can work that we may get a clue to the operations of Maya.
This throws light incidentally on the opposition made by our
minds between pure consciousness, pure existence, pure bliss and the abundant
activity, the manifold application, the endless vicissitudes of being,
consciousness and delight of being that take place in the universe. In the state
of pure consciousness and pure being we are aware of that only, simple,
immutable, self-existent, without form or object, and we feel that to be alone
true and real. In the other or dynamic state we feel its dynamism to be
perfectly true and natural and are even capable of thinking that no such
experience as that of pure consciousness is possible. Yet it is now evident that
to the Infinite Consciousness both the static and the dynamic are possible;
these are two of its statuses and both can be present simultaneously in the
universal awareness, the one witnessing the other and supporting it or not
looking at it and yet automatically supporting it; or the silence and status may
be there penetrating the activity or throwing it up like an ocean immobile below
throwing up a mobility of waves on its surface. This is also the reason why it
is possible for us in certain conditions of our being to be aware of several
different states of consciousness at the same time. There is a state of being
experienced in Yoga in which we become a double consciousness, one on the
surface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy
and all kinds of reactions, the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the
surface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence or, it may be, acting
upon its agitation to quiet, enlarge, transform it. So too we can rise to a
consciousness above and observe the various parts of our being, inner and outer,
mental, vital and physical and the subconscient below all, and act upon one or
other or the whole from that higher status. It is possible also to go down from
that height or from any height into any of these lower states and take its
limited light or its obscurity as our place of working while the rest that we
are is either temporarily put
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away or put behind or else kept as a field of reference from which we can get
support, sanction or light and influence or as a status into which we can ascend
or recede and from it observe the inferior movements. Or we can plunge into
trance, get within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are
excluded; or we can go beyond even this inner awareness and lose ourselves in
some deeper other consciousness or some high superconscience. There is also a
pervading equal consciousness into which we can enter and see all ourselves with
one enveloping glance or omnipresent awareness one and indivisible. All this
which looks strange and abnormal or may seem fantastic to the surface reason
acquainted only with our normal status of limited ignorance and its movements
divided from our inner higher and total reality, becomes easily intelligible and
admissible in the light of the larger reason and logic of the Infinite or by the
admission of the greater illimitable powers of the Self, the Spirit in us which
is of one essence with the Infinite.
Brahman the Reality is the self-existent Absolute and Maya is the
Consciousness and Force of this self-existence; but with regard to the
universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic
Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and
at the same time individual-universal in each being; Maya can then be
seen as the self-power, Atma-Shakti, of the Atman. It is true that when
we first become aware of this aspect, it is usually in a silence of the
whole being or at the least in a silence within which draws back or
stands away from the surface action; this Self is then felt as a status
in silence, an immobile immutable being, self-existent, pervading the
whole universe, omnipresent in all, but not dynamic or active, aloof
from the ever mobile energy of Maya. In the same way we can become aware
of it as the Purusha, separate from Prakriti, the Conscious Being
standing back from the activities of Nature. But this is an exclusive
concentration which limits itself to a spiritual status and puts away
from it all activity in order to realise the freedom of Brahman the
self-existent Reality from all limitation by its own action and
manifestation: it is an essential realisation, but not the total
realisation. For we can see that the Conscious-Power, the Shakti that
acts and
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creates, is not other than the Maya or all-knowledge of Brahman; it is the Power
of the Self; Prakriti is the working of the Purusha, Conscious Being active by
its own Nature: the duality then of Soul and World-Energy, silent Self and the
creative Power of the Spirit, is not really something dual and separate, it is
biune. As we cannot separate Fire and the power of Fire, it has been said, so we
cannot separate the Divine Reality and its Consciousness-Force, Chit-Shakti.
This first realisation of Self as something intensely silent and purely static
is not the whole truth of it, there can also be a realisation of Self in its
power, Self as the condition of world-activity and world-existence. However, the
Self is a fundamental aspect of Brahman, but with a certain stress on its
impersonality; therefore the Power of the Self has the appearance of a Force
that acts automatically with the Self sustaining it, witness and support and
originator and enjoyer of its activities but not involved in them for a moment.
As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal,
unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form
of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from
above, adhyaksa; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and
pure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the
individual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has
this greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast
universality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a
sheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The
Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once
individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is
the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality,
a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which
it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but
constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings
in Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the
Self. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in
the universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To
realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.
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The Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and
lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature. As the aspect of Self is in
its essential character transcendental even when involved and identified with
its universal and individual becomings, so the Purusha aspect is
characteristically universal-individual and intimately connected with Nature
even when separated from her. For this conscious Spirit while retaining its
impersonality and eternity, its universality, puts on at the same time a more
personal aspect;1 it is the
impersonal-personal being in Nature from whom it is not altogether detached, for
it is always coupled with her: Nature acts for the Purusha and by its sanction,
for its will and pleasure; the Conscious Being imparts its consciousness to the
Energy we call Nature, receives in that consciousness her workings as in a
mirror, accepts the forms which she, the executive cosmic Force, creates and
imposes on it, gives or withdraws its sanction from her movements. The
experience of Purusha-Prakriti, the Spirit or Conscious Being in its relations
to Nature, is of immense pragmatic importance; for on these relations the whole
play of the consciousness depends in the embodied being. If the Purusha in us is
passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a
constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental,
vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its
formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance.
If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from
Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom; for it becomes detached,
and it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all
independence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to
accept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can
choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from
her works and withdraw easily into the Self's spiritual silence, or we can
reject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and
from there re-create our
1 The Sankhya philosophy stresses this personal aspect, makes the Purusha
many, plural, and assigns universality to Nature; in this view each soul is an
independent existence although all souls experience a common universal Nature.
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existence. The Purusha can cease to be subject, anisa, and become lord of
its nature,
Isvara.
In the philosophy of the Sankhyas we find developed most thoroughly the
metaphysical idea of Purusha-Prakriti. These two are eternally separate
entities, but in relation to each other. Prakriti is Nature-power, an
executive Power, it is Energy apart from Consciousness; for
Consciousness belongs to the Purusha, Prakriti without Purusha is inert,
mechanical, inconscient. Prakriti develops as its formal self and basis
of action primal Matter and in it manifests life and sense and mind and
intelligence; but intelligence too, since it is part of Nature and its
product in primal Matter, is also inert, mechanical, inconscient, — a
conception which sheds a certain light on the order and perfectly
related workings of the Inconscient in the material universe: it is the
light of the soul, the Spirit, that is imparted to the mechanical
workings of sense-mind and intelligence, they become conscious by its
consciousness, even as they become active only by the assent of the
spirit. The Purusha becomes free by drawing back from Prakriti; it
becomes master of her by refusing to be involved in Matter. Nature acts
by three principles, modes or qualities of its stuff and its action,
which in us become the fundamental modes of our psychological and
physical substance and its workings, the principle of inertia, the
principle of kinesis and the principle of balance, light and harmony:
when these are in unequal motion, her action takes place; when they fall
into equilibrium she passes into quiescence. Purusha, conscious being,
is plural, not one and single, while Nature is one: it would seem to
follow that whatever principle of oneness we find in existence belongs
to Nature, but each soul is independent and unique, sole to itself and
separate whether in its enjoyment of Nature or its liberation from
Nature. All these positions of the Sankhya we find to be perfectly valid
in experience when we come into direct inner contact with the realities
of individual soul and universal Nature; but they are pragmatic truths
and we are not bound to accept them as the whole or the fundamental
truth either of self or of Nature. Prakriti presents itself as an
inconscient Energy in the material world, but, as the scale of
consciousness rises, she reveals herself more and more as a conscious
force and we
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perceive that even her inconscience concealed a secret consciousness; so too
conscious being is many in its individual souls, but in its self we can
experience it as one in all and one in its own essential existence. Moreover,
the experience of soul and Nature as dual is true, but the experience of their
unity has also its validity. If Nature or Energy is able to impose its forms and
workings on Being, it can only be because it is Nature or Energy of Being and so
the Being can accept them as its own; if the Being can become lord of Nature, it
must be because it is its own Nature which it has passively watched doing its
work, but can control and master; even in its passivity its consent is necessary
to the action of Prakriti and this relation shows sufficiently that the two are
not alien to each other. The duality is a position taken up, a double status
accepted for the operations of the self-manifestation of the being; but there is
no eternal and fundamental separateness and dualism of Being and its
Consciousness-Force, of the Soul and Nature.
It is the Reality, the Self, that takes the position of the Conscious
Being regarding and accepting or ruling the works of its own Nature. An
apparent duality is created in order that there may be a free action of
Nature working itself out with the support of the Spirit and again a
free and masterful action of the Spirit controlling and working out
Nature. This duality is also necessary that the Spirit may be at any
time at liberty to draw back from any formation of its Nature and
dissolve all formation or accept or enforce a new or a higher formation.
These are very evident possibilities of the Spirit in its dealings with
its own Force and they can be observed and verified in our own
experience; they are logical results of the powers of the Infinite
Consciousness, powers which we have seen to be native to its infinity.
The Purusha aspect and the Prakriti aspect go always together and
whatever status Nature or Consciousness-Force in action assumes,
manifests or develops, there is a corresponding status of the Spirit. In
its supreme status the Spirit is the supreme Conscious Being,
Purushottama, and the Consciousness-Force is his supreme Nature,
Para-Prakriti. In each status of the gradations of Nature, the Spirit
takes a poise of its being proper to that gradation; in Mind-Nature it
becomes the mental being,
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in
Life-Nature it becomes the vital being, in nature of Matter it becomes the
physical being, in Supermind it becomes the Being of Knowledge; in the supreme
spiritual status it becomes the Being of Bliss and pure Existence. In us, in the
embodied individual, it stands behind all as the psychic Entity, the inner Self
supporting the other formulations of our consciousness and spiritual existence.
The Purusha, individual in us, is cosmic in the cosmos, transcendent in the
transcendence: the identity with the Self is apparent, but it is the Self in its
pure impersonal-personal status of a Spirit in things and beings, — impersonal
because undifferentiated by personal quality, personal because it presides over
the individualisations of self in each individual, — which deals with the works
of its Consciousness-Force, its executive force of self-nature, in whatever
poise is necessary for that purpose.
But it is evident that whatever the posture taken or relation formed in
any individual nodus of Purusha-Prakriti, the Being is in a fundamental
cosmic relation lord or ruler of its nature: for even when it allows
Nature to have its own way with it, its consent is necessary to support
her workings. This comes out in its fullest revelation in the third
aspect of the Reality, the Divine Being who is the master and creator of
the universe. Here the supreme Person, the Being in its transcendental
and cosmic consciousness and force, comes to the front, omnipotent,
omniscient, the controller of all energies, the Conscious in all that is
conscient or inconscient, the Inhabitant of all souls and minds and
hearts and bodies, the Ruler or Overruler of all works, the Enjoyer of
all delight, the Creator who has built all things in his own being, the
All-Person of whom all beings are personalities, the Power from whom are
all powers, the Self, the Spirit in all, by his being the Father of all
that is, in his Consciousness-Force the Divine Mother, the Friend of all
creatures, the All-blissful and All-beautiful of whom beauty and joy are
the revelation, the All-Beloved and All-Lover. In a certain sense, so
seen and understood, this becomes the most comprehensive of the aspects
of the Reality, since here all are united in a single formulation; for
the Ishwara is supracosmic as well as intracosmic; He is that which
exceeds and inhabits and supports all individuality; He is
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the supreme and universal Brahman, the Absolute, the supreme Self, the supreme
Purusha.
1 But, very clearly, this is not the personal
God of popular religions, a being limited by his qualities, individual and
separate from all others; for all such personal gods are only limited
representations or names and divine personalities of the one Ishwara. Neither is
this the Saguna Brahman active and possessed of qualities, for that is only one
side of the being of the Ishwara; the Nirguna immobile and without qualities is
another aspect of His existence. Ishwara is Brahman the Reality, Self, Spirit,
revealed as possessor, enjoyer of his own self-existence, creator of the
universe and one with it, Pantheos, and yet superior to it, the Eternal, the
Infinite, the Ineffable, the Divine Transcendence.
The sharp opposition made between personality and impersonality by our
mental way of thinking is a creation of the mind based on the
appearances of the material world; for here in terrestrial existence the
Inconscient from which everything takes its origin appears as something
entirely impersonal; Nature, the inconscient Energy, is entirely
impersonal in her manifest essence and dealings; all Forces wear this
mask of impersonality, all qualities and powers, Love and Delight and
Consciousness itself, have this aspect. Personality makes its apparition
as a creation of consciousness in an impersonal world; it is a
limitation by a restricted formation of powers, qualities, habitual
forces of the nature-action, an imprisonment in a limited circle of
self-experience which we have to transcend,—to lose personality is
necessary if we are to gain universality, still more necessary if we are
to rise into the Transcendence. But what we thus call personality is
only a formation of superficial consciousness; behind it is the Person
who takes on various personalities, who can have at the same time many
personalities but is himself one, real, eternal. If we look at things
from a larger point of view, we might say that what is impersonal is
only a power of the Person: existence itself has no meaning without an
Existent, consciousness has no standing-place if there is none who is
conscious, delight is useless and invalid without an enjoyer, love can
have no foundation or fulfilment if there is no lover, all-power must be
otiose if
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there is not an Almighty. For what we mean by Person is conscious being; even if
this emerges here as a term or product of the Inconscient, it is not that in
reality: for it is the Inconscient itself that is a term of the secret
Consciousness; what emerges is greater than that in which it emerges, as Mind is
greater than Matter, Soul than Mind; Spirit, most secret of all, the supreme
emergence, the last revelation, is the greatest of all, and Spirit is the
Purusha, the All-Person, the omnipresent Conscious Being. It is the mind's
ignorance of this true Person in us, its confusion of person with our experience
of ego and limited personality, the misleading phenomenon of the emergence of
limited consciousness and personality in an inconscient existence that have made
us create an opposition between these two aspects of the Reality, but in truth
there is no opposition. An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme
reality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, — an
infinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all
personality, — is the reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic
Self, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the
same Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is the reality
and meaning of individual existence.
If we admit the Divine Being, the supreme Person and All-Person as the
Ishwara, a difficulty arises in understanding his rule or government of
world-existence, because we immediately transfer to him our mental
conception of a human ruler; we picture him as acting by the mind and
mental will in an omnipotent arbitrary fashion upon a world on which he
imposes his mental conceptions as laws, and we conceive of his will as a
free caprice of his personality. But there is no need for the Divine
Being to act by an arbitrary will or idea as an omnipotent yet ignorant
human being, — if such an omnipotence were possible, — might do: for he
is not limited by mind; he has an all-consciousness in which he is aware
of the truth of all things and aware of his own all-wisdom working them
out according to the truth that is in them, their significance, their
possibility or necessity, the imperative selfness of their nature. The
Divine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by
laws
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and processes because they are the expression of the truth of things, — not
their mechanical, mathematical or other outward truth alone, but the spiritual
reality of what they are, what they have become and have yet to become, what
they have it within themselves to realise. He is himself present in the working,
but he also exceeds and can overrule it; for on one side Nature works according
to her limited complex of formulas and is informed and supported in their
execution by the Divine Presence, but on the other side there is an overseeing,
a higher working and determination, even an intervention, free but not
arbitrary, often appearing to us magical and miraculous because it proceeds and
acts upon Nature from a divine Supernature: Nature here is a limited expression
of that Supernature and open to intervention or mutation by its light, its
force, its influence. The mechanical, mathematical, automatic law of things is a
fact, but within it there is a spiritual law of consciousness at work which
gives to the mechanical steps of Nature's forces an inner turn and value, a
significant rightness and a secretly conscious necessity, and above it there is
a spiritual freedom that knows and acts in the supreme and universal truth of
the Spirit. Our view of the divine government of the world or of the secret of
its action is either incurably anthropomorphic or else incurably mechanical;
both the anthropomorphism and mechanism have their elements of truth, but they
are only a side, an aspect, and the real truth is that the world is governed by
the One in all and over all who is infinite in his consciousness and it is
according to the law and logic of an infinite consciousness that we ought to
understand the significance and building and movement of the universe.
If we regard this aspect of the one Reality and put it in close
connection with the other aspects, we can get a complete view of the
relation between the eternal Self-Existence and the dynamics of the
Consciousness-Force by which it manifests the universe. If we place
ourselves in a silent Self-existence immobile, static, inactive, it will
appear that a conceptive Consciousness-Force, Maya, able to effectuate
all its conceptions, a dynamic consort of the Self of silence, is doing
everything; it takes its stand on the fixed unmoving eternal status and
casts the spiritual substance of being into all manner of forms and
movements to
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which its passivity consents or in which it takes its impartial pleasure, its
immobile delight of creative and mobile existence. Whether this be a real or an
illusory existence, that must be its substance and significance. Consciousness
is at play with Being, Force of Nature does what it wills with Existence and
makes it the stuff of her creations, but secretly the consent of the Being must
be there at every step to make this possible. There is an evident truth in this
perception of things; it is what we see happening everywhere in us and around
us; it is a truth of the universe and must answer to a fundamental truth-aspect
of the Absolute. But when we step back from the outer dynamic appearances of
things, not into a witness Silence, but into an inner dynamic participating
experience of the Spirit, we find that this Consciousness-Force, Maya, Shakti,
is itself the power of the Being, the Self-Existent, the Ishwara. The Being is
lord of her and of all things, we see him doing everything in his own
sovereignty as the creator and ruler of his own manifestation; or, if he stands
back and allows freedom of action to the forces of Nature and her creatures, his
sovereignty is still innate in the permission, at every step his tacit sanction,
“Let it be so”, tathastu, is there implicit; for otherwise nothing could
be done or happen. Being and its Consciousness-Force, Spirit and Nature cannot
be fundamentally dual: what Nature does, is really done by the Spirit. This too
is a truth that becomes evident when we go behind the veil and feel the presence
of a living Reality which is everything and determines everything, is the
All-powerful and the All-ruler; this too is a fundamental truth-aspect of the
Absolute.
Again, if we remain absorbed in the Silence, the creative Consciousness
and her works disappear into the Silence; Nature and the creation for us
cease to exist or be real. On the other hand, if we look exclusively at
the Being in its aspect of the sole-existent Person and Ruler, the Power
or Shakti by which he does all things disappears into his uniqueness or
becomes an attribute of His cosmic personality; the absolute monarchy of
the one Being becomes our perception of the universe. Both these
experiences create many difficulties for the mind due to its
non-perception of the reality of the Self-Power whether in
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quiescence or in action, or to a too exclusively negative experience of the
Self, or to the too anthropomorphic character our conceptions attach to the
Supreme Being as Ruler. It is evident th |