Chapter XXV   The Knot of Matter   I cannot travel to the Truth of the luminous Lord by force or by the duality. . . . Who are they that protect the foundation of the falsehood? Who are the guardians of the unreal word?   Then existence was not nor non-existence, the mid-world was not nor the Ether nor what is beyond. What covered all? where was it? in whose refuge? what was that ocean dense and deep? Death was not nor immortality nor the knowledge of day and night. That One lived without breath by his self-law, there was nothing else nor aught beyond it. In the beginning Darkness was

Chapter XX   Death, Desire and Incapacity   In the beginning all was covered by Hunger that is Death; that made for itself Mind so that it might attain to possession of  self. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.1   This is the Power discovered by the mortal that has the multitude of its desires so that it may sustain all things; it takes the taste of all foods and builds a house for the being. Rig Veda.2   IN OUR last chapter we have considered Life from the point of view of the material existence and the appearance and working of the vital principle in Matter an

Chapter XVIII   Mind and Supermind   He discovered that Mind was the Brahman. Taittiriya Upanishad.1    Indivisible, but as if divided in beings. Gita.2   THE CONCEPTION which we have so far been striving to form is that of the essence only of the supramental life which the divine soul possesses securely in the being of Sachchidananda, but which the human soul has to manifest in this body of Sachchidananda formed here into the mould of a mental and physical living. But so far as we have been able yet to envisage this suprament

Chapter XI   Delight of Existence: The Problem   For who could live or breathe if there were not this delight of existence as the ether in which we dwell?   From Delight all these beings are born, by Delight they exist and grow, to Delight they return. Taittiriya Upanishad.1   BUT EVEN if we accept this pure Existence, this Brahman, this Sat as the absolute beginning, end and continent of things and in Brahman an inherent self-consciousness inseparable from its being and throwing itself out as a force of movement of consciousness which is creative of forces,

Chapter XIX   Life   Pranic energy is the life of creatures; for that is said to be the  universal principle of life. Taittiriya Upanishad.1   WE PERCEIVE, then, what Mind is in its divine origin and how it is related to the Truth-consciousness, ―Mind, the highest of the three lower principles which constitute our human existence. It is a special action of the divine consciousness, or rather it is the final strand of its whole creative action. It enables the Purusha to hold apart the relations of different forms and forces of himself to each other; it creates phenomen