CHAPTER VI Man in the Universe The Soul of man, a traveller, wanders in this cycle of Brahman, huge, a totality of lives, a totality of states, thinking itself different from the Impeller of the journey. Accepted by Him, it attains its goal of Immortality. Swetaswatara Upanishad.¹ THE progressive revelation of a great, a transcendent, a luminous Reality with the multitudinous relativities of this world that we see and those other worlds that we do not see as means and material, condition and field, this would seem then to be the meaning of the universe,—since meaning and aim it has and is neither a purposeless illusion nor a fortuitous accident. For th

CHAPTER XIII Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness - Force and the Ignorance From the kindled fire of Energy of Consciousness, Truth was born and the Law of Truth; from that the Night, from the Night the flowing ocean of being. Rig Veda.1 SINCE Brahman is in the essentiality of its universal being a unity and a multiplicity aware of each other and in each other and since in its reality it is something beyond the One and the Many, containing both, aware of both, Ignorance can only come about as a subordinate phenomenon by some concentration of consciousness absorbed in a part knowledge or a part

CHAPTER XI The Boundaries of the Ignorance One who thinks there is this world and no other... Katha Upanishad.1 Extended within the Infinite... headless and footless, concealing his two ends.2 Rig Veda.3 He who has the knowledge “I am Brahman” becomes all this that is; but whoever worships another divinity than the One Self and thinks, “Other is he and I am other”, he knows not. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.4 This Self is fourfold,—the Self of Waking who has the outer intelligence and enjoys external things, is its first part; the Self of Dream who has the inner intelligence and enjoys things subtle, is its second part;

CHAPTER III The Two Negations II. THE REFUSAL OF THE ASCETIC All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman and the Self is fourfold. Beyond relation, featureless, unthinkable, in which all is still. Mandukya Upanishad.¹ AND still there is a beyond. For on the other side of the cosmic consciousness there is, attainable to us, a consciousness yet more transcendent,—transcendent not only of the ego, but of the Cosmos itself,—against which the universe seems to stand out like a petty picture against an immeasurable background. That supports the universal activity,—or perhaps only tolerates it; It embraces Li

BOOK ONE OMNIPRESENT REALITY AND THE UNIVERSE CHAPTER I The Human Aspiration She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond, she is the first in the eternal succession of the dawns that are coming, —Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead.... What is her scope when she harmonises with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desires the ancient mornings and fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to come. Kutsa Angirasa—Rig Veda.¹ Threefold are those supreme births of this divine force that is in

BOOK II PART ONE CHAPTER I Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable The Unseen with whom there can be no pragmatic relations, unseizable, featureless, unthinkable, undesignable by name, whose substance is the certitude of One Self, in whom world- existence is stilled, who is all peace and bliss — that is the Self, that is what must be known. Mandukya Upanishad.1 One sees it as a mystery or one speaks of it or hears of it as a mystery, but none knows it. Gita.2 When men seek after the Immutable, the Indeterminable, the Unmanifest, the All-Pervading, the Unthinkable, th

CHAPTER IX Memory, Ego and Self-Experience Here this God, the Mind, in its dream experiences again and again what once was experienced, what has been seen and what has not been seen, what has been heard and what has not been heard; what has been experienced and what has not been experienced, what is and what is not, all it sees, it is all and sees. Prasna Upanishad. 1 To dwell in our true being is liberation; the sense of ego is a fall from the truth of our being. Mahopanishad. 2 One in many births, a single ocean holder of all streams of movement, sees our hearts. Rig Veda. 3 THE direct self-consci

CHAPTER XIV The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil The Lord accepts the sin and the virtue of none; because knowledge is veiled by Ignorance, mortal men are deluded. Gita.1 They live according to another idea of self than the reality, deluded, attached, expressing a falsehood,—as if by an enchantment they see the false as the true. Maitrayani Upanishad.2 They live and move in the Ignorance and go round and round, battered and stumbling, like blind men led by one who is blind. Mundaka Upanishad.3 One whose intelligence has attained to Unity, casts away from him both sin a

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 supramental existence, it does not seem to have any connection or correspondence with life as we know it, life active between the tw