Cry of the ocean's surges, the long hexameter rolling,
Covers my spirit as tides roll over rapturous shores.
Foam on its tops1 the pentameter curls to its cadenced closing,
Two high waves, then a hush swoons on the ear in its fall.
Horse hooves trampled the crumbling plain with their four-footed gallop.
*
Fiercer griefs you have suffered; to these too God will give ending
*
Him shall not copious eloquence leave nor clearness and order.
1 Or, head.
Suddenly out from the wonderful Last like a woman exulting.
Dawn stepped forth with a smile on her lips, and the glory of morning
Hovered over the hills: sweet grew air with the breezes.
Sweet and keen as a wild swift virgin : the wind walked blithely.
Low was the voice of the leaves as they rustled and talked with the river,
Ganges, the sacred river.1 Down from the northlands crowding.
Touching the steps of the ghauts with the silver tips of their fingers.
Lightly the waters ran and talked to each other of sunshine,
Lightly they laughed. But high on his stake impaled by the roadway
Hung Mandavya the mighty in marble deep meditation,
Sepulchred, dumb; on his either side were the thieves, immobile.
They were dead, made free from cruelty, ceasing from anguish,
And forgetting the thirst. But past them Ganges the mighty.
First of the streams of the earth, our Mother, remembering the ages,
Poured to the sea.
Early at dawn by her ghauts the women of Mithila gathered.
There they filled their gurgling jars, or gilding the Ganges
Bathed in her waters and laughed as they bathed there clamouring, dashing
Dew of her coolness in eyes of each other: the banks called sweetly
Mad with the musical laughter of girls and joy of their crying.
Low melodious cries. As when in a wood on the hillsides
Thousands of bulbuls flitting and calling, eating the wild plums.
Filling the ear with sweetness, carry from treetop to treetop
Vermeil of crest and scarlet of tail and small brown bodies
Flitting and calling, calling and flitting, full of sweet clamour.
Full of the wine of life, even such was the sweetness and clamour:
Women bathing close by the ghauts of the radiant Ganges.
Golden in limb or white or darker than olives when ripest.
Lovely of face or of mood, but all sweet-hearted and happy.
Aryan women. One there seemed of another moulding
Who was aloof from the crowd and the chaos of cheerful faces.
1 The passage which follows seems to be the beginning of a projected recasting of this poem begun in Pondicherry, but never pursued beyond three lines:
Where in a lapse of the hills leaps lightly down with laughter, While with her rustle of raiment upon the spray strewn boulders. Cold in her virgin childhood the river resonant Ganges
She at one side of the stairway slowly like one half-musing
Bathed there, hiding her face in the deep cool bosom of waters.
Losing herself in Ganges, or let its pearl drops dribble
Quietly down through the mystical night of her tresses on gleaming
Shoulders, betwixt her great breasts noble as hills at noontide.
Back to their hurrying home: nor heeded the laughter near her.
Only at times when the clamour grew high, she would look up smiling
Such a slow sweet serious smile as a tender mother
Watching the children at play might smile, forgetting the sorrow
Down in her own still patient heart where the deep tears gathered
Ever unwept, till they turn to a sea of sorrowful pity.
Sing to me. Muse, of the wrath of Achilles Pelidean,
Murderous, bringing a million woes on the men of Achaea;
Many the mighty1 souls whom it drove down headlong to Hades,
Souls of heroes and made of their bodies booty for vultures.
Dogs and all birds; so the will of Zeus was wholly accomplished2
Even from the moment when they two parted in strife and in anger,
Peleus' glorious son and the monarch of men Agamemnon.
Which of the gods was it set them to conflict and quarrel disastrous ?
Leto's son from the seed of Zeus; he wroth with their monarch
Roused in the ranks an evil pest and the peoples perished,
For he insulted Chryses, priest and master of prayer,
Atreus' son, when he came to the swift ships of the Achaeans,
Hoping release for his daughter, bringing a limitless ransom,
While in his hands were the chaplets of great far-hurtling Apollo
Twined on a sceptre of gold and entreated all the Achaeans:
"Atreus' son and all you high-greaved armed Achaeans,
You may the gods grant, they who dwell in your lofty Olympus,
Priam's city to sack and safely to reach your firesides;
Only my child beloved may you loose to me, taking this ransom,
Holding in awe great Zeus' son far-hurtling Apollo."
Then all they there rumoured approval, the other Achaeans,
Dec ling the priest to revere and take that glorious ransom,
But Agamemnon it pleased not; the heart3 of him angered,
Evilly rather he sent him and hard was his word upon him:
"Let me not find thee again, old man, by our ships of the Ocean,
Either lingering now or afterwards ever returning,
Lest the sceptre avail thee not, no nor the great God's chaplets.
Her will I not release; before that age shall o'ertake her
There in our dwelling in Argos far from the land of her fathers
Going about her loom, ascending my couch at nightfall.
Hence with thee, rouse me not safer shalt thou return then homeward."
So he spake and the old man teared him and heeded his bidding.
Voiceless along the shore by the myriad cry of the waters
Slowly he went; but deeply he prayed as he paced to the distance,
Prayed to the Lord Apollo, child of Leto the golden.
1 Or, puissant. 2 Or, so was the will of the Father accomplished. 3 Or, soul.
The perfection of the hexameter is one of the unsolved problems of English prosody. Either the problem is insoluble, the noble rhythm so satisfying in Greek and Latin unsuited to the brief Saxon vocables — or else the secret of a successful measure has not yet been discovered. Even were it found, there are many obstacles in the way of its acceptation. Yet a new metrical movement is felt to be a necessity and half-unconsciously strained after by the modern mind in poetry. If one could be found that, without admitting too wide a license, without breaking down the mould of metre in which poetry by a wise instinct has always sought to restrain herself, yet provided a freer scope and a fuller mould for the more subtle and complex emotions and the vaster conceptions in which we have begun to live, the change might mean a new life and energy for a great literature now too much overburdened and fettered by its past successes and triumphs. The present poem1 is an experiment in this direction. No doubt the definite entry of the hexameter among the ordinary forms of English prosody must wait until it is chosen by a supreme poetical genius or a master rhythmist. But meanwhile something may possibly be done by a careful attempt founded on a clear and definite conception of the difficulties to be solved and a consistent method in their solution.
The poems of Clough and Longfellow are, I think, the only serious essays in the hexameter in English literature. Many have dallied with the problem, from the strange experiments of Spenser to the insufficient but carefully2 reasoned attempts of Matthew Arnold. But it is only by a long and sustained effort like Evangeline or the Bothie that the solution can really come. Longfellow in this connexion2 can be safely neglected, but Clough's work is of a different order. Occasionally he really grappled with his task and for a moment [...].3 But it is Clough's defect that he is unable ordinarily to combine force
1 Sri Aurobindo is doubtless referring to his poem Ahana, first published in 1915 in Ahana and other Poems. [Ed.]
2 Doubtful reading.
3 Manuscript mutilated. two or three words lost.
with harmony. Either he produces verse of a rough energy, like the general type of hexameter used by him in the Bothie, or, as in the pentameter experiments in the Amours de Voyage, the breath of life and power is wanting1 in a harmonious shell of sound. Yet once or twice he has surmounted every difficulty. Especially is there one verse with the right Homeric movement in the Bothie, —
He like a god came leaving his ample Olympian chamber
which gave to my mind the key to the just use of the hexameter.2
1 Doubtful reading.
2 Sri Aurobindo seems to have made this discovery in England. See Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo (1978), p.23: "It was Norman Ferrers . . . who gave to Aurobindo, while at Cambridge, the clue to the discovery of the true quantitative hexameter in English. He was reading out a very Homeric line from Clough and his recitation of it gave Aurobindo the real swing (or lilt) of the metre." [Ed.]
MILFORD accepts (incidentally, with special regard to the word frosty in Clough's line about the Cairngorm1), the rule that two consonants after a short vowel make the short vowel long, even if they are outside the word and come in another word following it. To my mind this rule accepted and generally applied would amount in practice to an absurdity; it would result, not indeed in ordinary verse where quantity by itself has no metrical value, but in any attempt at quantitative metre, in eccentricities like the scansions of Bridges. I shall go on pronouncing they of frosty as short whether it has two consonants after it or only one or none; it remains frosty whether it is a frosty scalp or frosty top or a frosty anything. In no case does the second syllable assume a length of sound equivalent to that of two long vowels. My hexameters are intended to be read naturally as one would read any English sentence; stress is given its full metrical value, long syllables also are given their full metrical value and not flattened out
1 "Found amid granite-dust on the frosty scalp of the Cairn-Gorm", Bothie of Tober-Na-Vuolich, Part I.
frosty as a spondee before scalp; he thinks that it causes it to be intoned in a different way. I don't see how it does that; for my part, I intone it just the same before top as before scalp. The ordinary theory is, I believe, that the sc of scalp acts as a sort of stile (because of the opposition of the two consonants to rapid motion) which you take time to cross, so that ty must be considered as long because of this delay of the voice, while the t of top is merely a line across the path which gives no trouble. I don't see it like that; the delay of motion, such as it is and it is very slight, is not caused by any dwelling on the last syllable of the preceding word, it is in the word scalp itself that the delay is made; one takes longer to pronounce scalp, scalp is a slightly longer sound than top and there is too a slight initial impediment to the voice which is absent in the lighter vocable and this may have an effect for the rhythm of the line but it cannot change the metre; it cannot lengthen the preceding syllable so as to turn a trochee into a spondee. Sanskrit quantitation is irrelevant here (it is the same as Latin or Greek in respect to this rule); but both of us agree that the Classical quantitative conventions are not reproducible in English metre and it is for that reason that we reject Bridges' eccentric scansions. Where we disagree is that I treat stress as equivalent to length and give quantity as well as stress a metrical and not merely a rhythmic value.
This answers also your question as to what Milford means by "fundamental confusion" regarding aridity. He refuses to accept the idea of metrical length. But I am concerned with natural metrical as well as natural vowel (and consonantal) quantities. My theory is that natural length in English depends on the dwelling of the voice giving a high or strong sound value or weight of voice to the syllable; in quantitative verse one has to take account of all such dwelling or weight of the voice, both weight or sharp dwelling by ictus (= stress) and weight by prolongation or long dwelling of the voice (ordinary syllabic length); the two are different, but at any rate for metrical purposes in a quantitative verse can rank as of equal value. I do not say that stress turns a short vowel into a long one, but that it gives a strong sound value (= metrical length) to the syllable it falls upon, even if that syllable has a short vowel and no extra consonants to support it. There is a heavier voice incidence on the first i of aridity than on the second; this incidence 1 call weight; the voice dwells
more on it, sharply, and that dwelling gives it what I call metrical length and equates it to the long syllable, gives it an equal value.
Milford does not take the trouble to understand the details my theory — he ignores the importance I give to modulations and treats cretics and antibacchii and molossi as if they were dactyls, whereas I regard them as only substitutes for dactyls; he ignores my objection to stressing short insignificant words like and, with, but, the — and thinks that I do that everywhere, which would be to ignore my theory. In fact I have scrupulously applied my theory in every detail of my practice. Take for instance
Art thou not | heaven-bound | even as | I with the | earth? Hast thou | ended.1
Here art. is long by natural quantity though unstressed,2 which disproves Milford's criticism that in practice I never put an unstressed long as the first syllable of a dactylic foot or spondee, as I should do by my theory. I don't do it often because normally in English rhythm stress bears the foot — a fact on which I have laid emphasis in my theory as well as in my practice. That is the reason why I condemn the Bridgean disregard of stress in the rhythm, — still whenever it can come in quite naturally, this variation can occasionally be made. It is a question of the relations possible between stress value and unstressed quantitative values in a quantitative metrical system, which is not the same as their relations in accentual or stress verse. My quantitative system, as I have shown at great length, is based on the natural movement of the English tongue, the same in prose and poetry, not on any artificial theory.
In stress hexameter only dactyls, spondees and trochees doing duty for spondees are counted; but in quantitative verse all feet have to take their natural value and to act as modulations of the dactyl and spondee while both in the opening foot and the body of the line
1 A line from Ahana, a poem by Sri Aurobindo. Sec Collected Poems, SABCL Vol. 5, p. 523. [Ed.]
2 I refuse to put an artificial stress here; if one wrote, "Yes, thou art beautiful, but with a magical terrible beauty", the an is obviously unstressed, though long (creating an initial molossus); in the interrogative inversion it does not acquire any stress by its coming first in the sentence or in the line.
amphibrachii and cretics abound, even molossi come in at times. Opening tribrachs are very frequent in my hexameter
Is he the | first? was there | none then before him? shall none come after?1
Milford seems to think I have stressed the first short syllable in what would be naturally tribrachs and anapaests to make them into dactyls — a thing I abhor. Cf. also in Ahana initial anapaests:
In the hard | reckoning | made by the | grey-robed accountant at | even2
or (two anapaests):
Yet survives | bliss in the | rhythm of our | heart-beats, | yet is there | wonder3
or again:
And we go | stumbling, maddened and thrilled to his dreadful embraces4
or in my poem Ilion:
And the first | Argive fell | slain as he leaped on the Phrygian beaches.5
There are even opening amphibrachs here and there:
Illumi|nations; | trance-seeds of | silence, flowers of musing.6
1 Ahana, Collected Poems, p. 524. 2 Ibid., p. 530. 3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., p. 532. 5 Ilion. Collected Poems, p. 393. 6 Ahana, p. 527.
Note.1 These instances were given by Sri Aurobindo as modulations in his hexameters, the modulations which Mr. Milford seemed to me to have either ignored or scanned differently. I had written also that Mr.
Milford must have missed2 Sri Aurobindo's cretics and antibacchii in lines such as (cretic):
Half yet a|wake in light's | turrets started the scouts of the morning3
or — cretic again:
Victory offered an empty de|light without | guerdon or profit4
or again — cretic:
Universe | flung beyond | universe, law of the stars and their courses.5
I cited some antibacchii also:
Weary of fruitless | toil grows the | transient heart of the mortal6
Earth-shaker | who with his trident releases the coils of the Dragon7
Play-routes of | wisdom and vision and struggle and rapture and sorrow.8
Molossi:
Self-ward, | form-bound, mute, | motionless, slowly inevitably emerges9
1 This note was written by Dilip Kumar Roy, the disciple of Sri Aurobindo to whom this letter was originally addressed. [Ed.]
2 Sri Aurobindo underlined the word "missed" and wrote in the margin of Dilip's typed note: "I think only the Appendix was before him, not other quantitative poems like Ahana," The Appendix referred to is the Appendix to Collected Poems and Plays (1942), which contained the essay "On Quantitative Metre" (see SABCL Vol. 5, pp. 341-87) and also, as illustrations of Sri Aurobindo's theory, several poems, viz. fourteen lyric poems in different quantitative metres (ibid., pp. 7-70) and the opening sections of Ilion, Sri Aurobindo's epic in quantitative hexameters (ibid., pp. 391 ff). [Ed.]
3 Ilion, p. 392. 4 Ibid., p. 395. 5 Ahana, p. 527 6 Ilion. p. 393. 7 Ibid., p. 394. 8 Ahana, p. 526. 9 Ibid., p. 528.
Ever can | pierce where they | dwell and uncover their far-stretching purpose.1
The point I made here was that Mr. Milford was mistaken in his bold assertion that Sri Aurobindo had nowhere in his hexameters used longs in the second or third syllable. In antibacchius the second syllable is long, in cretic the third and in molossus the second as well as the third (in addition to the first long of course, I mean) which surely disproves the above charge.2
More instances can be given of tribrach, anapaest etc. but I hardly think they are needed. Anybody who has taken the trouble to note the variety of modulations in Sri Aurobindo's poems in the quantitative metre will have to agree that he has at least practised what he has preached. I only regretted in my letter to Sri Aurobindo that Mr. Milford has been demonstrably unfair to the poet. But I am sure that the critic will in the end withdraw his pointed charges as having been disproved to the hilt.
This letter of mine with Sri Aurobindo's reply is dated 24th December, 1942.
1 Ilion. p. 399.
2 Sri Aurobindo underlined "charge" and wrote: "!! Charge gives an impression of a personal attack — an impersonal literary criticism only was intended; the point is that it was based on a misapprehension of my theory."[Ed.]
The First Hymn of the Rig-Veda
Mandala I, Sukta 1
Translated into English with an etymological reconstruction of the Old Sanskrit or Aryan tongue in which it was rendered in the Dwapara Yuga and an explanation of the Yogic phenomena and philosophy with which it is mainly concerned.
I
A hymn of praise, welcome and prayer to Agni, Lord of Tejas, composed when the mind of the Yogin Madhuchchhanda was full of sattwic energy and illumination.
1. Agni the brilliant I adore who standeth before the Lord, the god that hath the rapture of the truth, the fighter that fulfilleth utter bliss.
2. Agni adorable to the sages of old, adorable to the new, holds up the gods, with force and might.
3. By Agni one enjoyeth strength, one enjoyeth increase day by day and a mastery full of force.
4. O Agni, the Lord below about whom thou art on every side a flame encompassing came by the gods into this world.
5. Agni the fighter, the strong in wisdom, the true, the manifold, the high of fame, has come to us, a god meeting with gods.
6. O beloved, that to the foe who would destroy thee thou, O Agni, doest good, this is the Truth of thee, O Lord of Love.
7. O Agni, to thee yearning if day by day we embrace thee with our mind and bear the law, then thou growest in mastery
8. To thee the shining one of the gods below who guardest the energy of the nectar and increasest in thy home.
9. Do thou therefore, O Agni, become lavish of thy approach to us as a father to his child; cleave to us for our heavenly bliss.
Linguistic
अग्निम् [agnim]. The word Agnis is composed of the root
अग् [ag], the suffix नि [ni] and the case-ending
स् [s]. The root अग् [ag] occurs in two other words of this hymn,
अंग [anga] and अंगिरः [angirah]. Its most common meaning is love, force or excellence. The original root
अ
[a] of which it is a primary derivative meant existence. The addition of
ग् [g] adds the sense of force or power. To exist in
force or power is अग् [ag] in its initial sense and all
other meanings are derivative or deductive from the initial sense. The sound
न् [n] is added to roots with an adjectival force as in
रत्न [ratna] from रत् [rat],
यज्ञ [yajna] from यज् [yaj]. It
may have adherent to it either अ
[a], इ [i] or उ [u], and
may be pure or preceded by the enclitics अ
[a], इ [i] or उ [u] or
their prolonged forms, आ [ā], ई [ī],
ऊ [ū]. Thus करण [karana],
शयान [sayana], वलिन् [balin],
राजन् [rajan], वरुण [varun],
इष्णु [isnu], विष्णु [visnu] etc.
अग्नि [agni] means one who exists in force or power. Cf.
the Greek
[agan] exceedingly,
[agathos], good, originally meaning strong, powerful, brave. From the same sense
of power, force, excellence comes various senses of
[ago], the Latin ago, lead, drive, act etc. On the other hand the insertion of
the nasal sound between अ
[a] and
ग् [g] gives the sense of love, sweetness,
softness, beauty, as the particular kind of force or excellence implied in the
root.
ईळे [ile]. The root इल् [il], dialectically ईळ् [il], also takes by a slight modification of sound the form ईड़् [id]. It is a primary derivative of the original root इ [i], implying motion towards. The addition of ल् [l] gives the sense of approaching with love and gives rise to the signification adore, worship. It has a strong sense of bhakti, emotional worship.
पुरो हितम [puro hitam]. Two separate words, adverb and participle, "set before". The participle is generally treated as belonging to धा [dha], but it is originally the past verbal adjective of हि [hi]. The sound ह् [h] conveys contact, motion or emission with force. Thus the root ह [ha] is to throw, strike, kill and in its derivatives to leap, dance etc. The root हु [hu] is similarly to attack, fight throw from one, drag away etc. The root हि [hi] means to pierce, penetrate, adhere, be set in and actively to strike away, wear away, impair, with other meanings. From the sense of adherence, we get a deductive sense of fondness, clinging, love, friendliness, the classic significance of the adjective हित [hita].
यज्ञस्य [yajnasya]. This word is of the utmost importance in the Veda. Its subsequent meaning of sacrifice has overclouded the sense of the Scriptures ever since the later half of the Dwapara Yuga; but originally and in the age of Madhuchchhanda, it had no shade of this meaning. It is the root यज् [yaj] with the suffix न् [n], adjectival, as explained under अग्नि [agni]. यज् [yaj] is a primary derivative from the initial root य [ya] which had a sense of control, restraint, persistence, preservation. This we find in its derivatives यम् [yam], to order, control, regulate; यत् [yat], to use force upon, strive, practise; यक्ष् [yaks], the habituative, to keep carefully,from which यक्ष [yaksa], the guardians of wealth, the ganas, hosts of Kuvera; यछ् [yach] , to importune, entreat, supplicate; यच् [yac], to control, to regulate, distribute, give. यज् [yaj] means, to regulate, rule, order, govern. यज्ञ [Yajna] is He who does these things, the Lord, Governor; Master, Provider, Giver, and in the Veda it is applied to the Supreme Being, Parameshwara, who governs the universe as the Master of Nature, the Disposer of its Laws, the Almighty Providence, the Master of the Dharma. It has a similar sense to the word यमः [yamah] applied to the single god of Dhanna, Yama. There is an echo of this use in the Vishnu Purana when it is said that Vishnu is born in the Satya Yuga as Yajna, in the Treta as the Chakravarti Raja, in the Dwapara as Vyasa. In the Satya Yuga mankind is governed by its own pure, perfect and inborn nature spontaneously fulfilling the dharma under the direct inspiration of God within as Yajna, the Lord of the Dharma. In the Treta the Dharma is maintained by the sceptre and the sword guarding the unwritten
law. In the Dwapara the Dharma is supported by codes, Shastras, a regulated and written system.
देवम् [devam]. From the root दिव् [div], conveying the idea of active, rapid or brilliant energy. It means to shine, to play (cf. दिव् [div], to gamble), to be bright, clear, strong, swift or luminous. The Devas are strictly speaking the sattwic and rajasic powers of the suksma worlds, Swar and Bhuvar, who govern or assist the operations of intelligence and energy in man; but it came to be applied to all beings of the other worlds without distinction, even to the tamasic forces, beings and powers who hurt and oppose these very operations. It is in this latter sense that the Persians used it after the teachings of Jarad-drashta (Zaruthrusta, Jarat-karu1) had accustomed them to apply other terms to the beneficent and helpful powers.
ॠत्विजम् [rtvijam]. The word ॠत्विक् [rtvik], like the word पुरोहितम् [puro-hitam], only latterly came to mean a sacrificial priest. It is composed of two words, ॠत् [rt] and विज् [vij]. In Old Sanskrit ॠ[r] and रि [ri] were used interchangeably like ळ [l] and ड़. The root ॠ [r] conveyed the idea of fixity, constancy, ॠत् [rt] or रित् [rit] is the old verbal noun forming the roots ॠत् [rt] and रित् [rit] and conveys the ideas fixity, persistence, constancy, truth, steadfastness, wisdom, धैर्यम् [dhairyam], सत्यम् [satyam]. From the same root is formed ॠषिः [rsih], the root ॠष् [rs] being a habituative form of ॠ [rl and meaning to be constant; wise, true, steadfast, calm and still. It was the old word answering to the धीर [dhira] of the Upanishads. Similarly ॠतम् [rtam] means truth; law etc., ॠतु [rtu] is the fixed period or season, the habitual menstruation etc. The word विज् [vij] is a derivative of the initial root वि [vi], to open, manifest, from which are formed विद् [vid], to see, the root विल् [vil], conveying the idea of publicity, tight etc. common in Tamil and Latin, and विज् [vij], meaning also to see. The ॠत्विज् [rtvij] is the drasta, seer or Rishi, the one who has vision of spiritual truth.
Incomplete
1 Doubtful reading.
Hymns of the Atris
HYMNS TO INDRA, THE DIVINE MIND
THE FIRST HYMN TO INDRA
V 29
1. Three mights has the Fulfiller of aspiration in man's building of the godheads, three luminous strata of the Heavens these uphold, yea, the song of the Thought-gods when they are purified in their discernment is thy illumination, but thou, O God-in-Mind art the thinker and their Seer of the Truth.
2. When the Thought-gods sang the hymn of his illumination and its strains pursued the movement of his ecstasies, for he had drunk of the wine of our delight, then he took up his lightning, then he slew the Python, then he released the mighty Waters to their flowing.
3. O ye Strong Moves, O singers of my soul-thought, let the Puissant One drink of this my wine that I have pressed out perfectly; for this is the food of the offering that finds for man the radiances; of that when he had drunk, God-in-Mind slew the Python.
4. More vastly he supported heaven of mind and earth of body and his wide-yawning extension became a terror to the Beast ; he forced him to draw in l the expression of his sinuosities and smote down the Son of Division as he hissed against him.
5. Then all the gods gave to thee by their will-in-works, O lord of the plenitudes, their draught of the wine of ecstasy; the brilliant-hued horses of the Sun of Truth as they galloped in front for the white-shining soul thou madest to mount upon the higher levels.
1 Or, away.
6. When the Lord of our plenitudes severs at one blow with his thunderbolt all the ninety and nine coils of the Serpent, then the Thought-powers sing to him a song of illumination in the seat of our session and with the Word of the triple rhythm they press against our heavenly barrier.
7. God-in-Will, a friendly Flame, made ready for his friend three hundred mighty bulls of the vastness; God-in-Mind drank from the three lakes of man all together the Wine pressed out by him. that he might slay the Enfolder.
8. When the Lord of the plenitude had devoured the flesh of the three hundred vastnesses, when he had drunk up the three lakes of the immortalizing wine, then all the gods called to the Doer of works, the Bringer of substance for the God-in-Mind so that he slew the Python.
9. When Ushana, soul of desire and thou together sped to thy home, O God-in-Mind, borne by forceful and speeding swiftnesses, conquering here thou didst go in one chariot with Kutsa, the embracer of knowledge and with the gods; thou didst conquer the Strength that destroys.
10. One wheel of the illumining Sun thou hadst smitten away for the embracer of knowledge, the other thou madest to move forward towards the supreme good. Thou hast crushed with thy stroke the mouthless Dividers who mar our self-expression, thou hast cloven them asunder in the gated city.
11. The affirmations of the Manifester of Light increased thee and thou madest subject to the Son of Knowledge the demon of the evil satisfactions; the Extender in the straightness made thee his comrade, — thou didst perfect his ripenesses and thou drankest of his delight.
12. They of the nine radiances when they have pressed out the Wine and they of the ten illumined in them God-in-Mind by their hymnings; they accomplish the work, they uncover
even that vastness of the Light over which there is a lid.
13. How shall I with knowledge serve the mightinesses that thou hast done, O Lord of plenitude? yea, and these new works also that thou wouldst do, O brilliant Strength, we would bring out by speech in the comings to us of the knowledge.
14. All these many things thou hast done, O Lord-in-Mind, and even in thy birth wast unassailable in thy puissance; and now the deeds thou wouldst do in thy violence, O hurler of the thunder-flash, there is none that shall prevent, nor any hedger-in of that energy.
15. O Power-in-Mind, cleave to these thoughts of my soul even while I shape them into form, they are the new thoughts that we have shaped for thee, O thou flashing Force. I, desiring substance, accomplished in thought, perfected in works, have fashioned them for thee as happy robes well made and as a chariot.
THE SECOND HYMN TO INDRA
V. 30
1. Where is that hero-strength? Who has seen God-in-Mind moving with his bright-pair in his happy chariot? for he desires the soul that has pressed out the wine of delight and to him the lord of lightnings, to whom uses the manifold call, comes with increase to his dwelling-place.
2. I saw far-off his world which keeps the solar light, even the intensity of his seat who is the Establisher of things; then I desired and went forth to seek. I asked of others and they said to me: "When we souls of men awake, then may we possess God-in-Mind."
3. Nay, let us declare now in this pressing-out of the Wine, all
the things that thou hast done, even all that thou cleavest to in us; let him that knoweth not, come by the knowledge and let him that knows hear it in his soul. Lo, the lord of the plenitudes who comes driving with all his armies!
4. In thy birth, O Indra, thou makest firm the mind and goest forth to war one against many; and thou hast opened the very Rock to light by thy flashing strength and thou hast found the wideness of the radiances, the shining herds.
5. When beyond in the highest supreme thou tookst thy birth bearing thy Name of inspiration, from that moment the gods had awe of the Puissant One; he conquered all these waters that had the Divider for their lord.
6. For thee these Thought-Powers chant their hymn of illumination and they press out the food of delight. God-in-Mind prevailed against the Serpent that lies coiling against the waters; by his own creations of knowledge he overcame the weaver of illusions.
7. At thy birth thou didst scatter utterly the hurters, the divider, — in thy high desire thou slewest him with light, O lord of the plenitudes, when thou sentest rolling the head of Namuchi the destroyer, desiring a path for man's journey.
8. Then indeed thou madest me the comrade of thy battle, when thou didst crush the head of Namuchi the destroyer — and thou setst in action thy thunderstone that comes to us from thy luminous world and madest heaven and earth like two wheels1 for the Thought-gods.
9. The Destroyer made of women the weapons of his warfare and what shall his strengthless armies do to me? Between both the two streams of this being God-in-Mind was manifested; then he moved forth to battle with the Destroyer.
1 Or, wheel
10. Here the luminous mothers moved and came together, for they were roaming hither and thither divorced from their offspring; God-in-Mind by his acts of puissance made them firmly to cohere when perfect outpourings of the wine of delight had filled him with their ecstasy.
11. When the wine-pourings set streaming by the Tawny One had made him drunken with their ecstasy, the Bull roared aloud in his dwelling-places; God-in-Mind, the render-open of our cities, drank of this and gave back the shining cows, the radiant herds.
12. O God-Will, a happy work was this that thy ruddy powers did who gave unto us the four thousands of the shining kine; and we took from the hands of the strongest of Active Souls, from the Discerner of the Movement, the fullnesses that he extended unto us.
13. O God-Will, thy ruddy powers gave me perfect form and released me to my Home with the thousands of thy cattle; for the intense juices of the wine had intoxicated the God-Mind in the dawning of the Night that circumscribes.
14. Out broke into dawn the Night that circumscribes, because of the Discerner of the Movement, the King of his ruddy powers. Like a horse driven swiftly in its gallop, the Ruddy One conquered his fourfold thousands.
15. Four times a thousand of the luminous cattle we have taken from thy ruddy powers, O God-Will; and this heated clarity that was for the intensifying of our strength, — of the thunder-stone is its heat, — that too let us take, O minds illumined.
THE THIRD HYMN TO INDRA
V. 31
1. God-in-Mind maketh him a steep descent for the chariot
of his action when he stands upon it, lord of the plenitudes, in its movement towards fullness; as a keeper of the kine1 with the troops of his cattle, so he extends wide his herds of vision;2 unhurt, supreme, he moves towards his victory.
2. Forward race, O master of thy shining steeds! let not thy delight turn away from us, O thou of the golden prosperity; cleave unto us! There is nought in the world more rich in substance than thou, O God-in-Mind; even to our life-powers, steeds that have no mate, thou givest a mother for their offspnng.
3. When by force he arose and was born as force, God-in-Mind gave his dire lion to all his powers; the good milkers that were shut up in their prison he goaded forth and he opened out by the Light the enveloping darkness.
4. Subtle souls of men fashioned a chariot for thy steed, the Framer of things shaped thy shining thunderbolt, O thou of the manifold calling; the chanters of the soul-thought greatened the God-Mind by their hymns of illumination, increased him that he might slay the Python.
5. When to thee, the Bull of the diffusion, the Lords of the diffusion sang the illumining hymn and the pressing stones chanted it and the Mother Infinite, of one mind with these, then the wheels that bear no chariot and no horses draw them but God-in-Mind drives came rolling against the Destroyers.
6. Thy former deeds I will speak forth and the new ones that thou hast done, O Lord of the plenitudes, in that thou, O holder of the Force, bearest in their wide extension our earth and heavens, conquering for man the waters bright with the rich distribution of our being.
7. And that too now is thy doing, O achiever of works, O illumined
1 Or, herds. 2 Or, his luminous herds
thinker, that thou, slaying the Serpent, containest here the energy; and thou hast seized on all the knowings of the evil Strength and hast cloven away the destroyers in thy forward movement.
8. Thou madest the waters to play for Yadu and for Turvasu, — kine of a good milking, — and didst bear them to their other shore. Thou borest on Kutsa, embracer of knowledge, in his fierce driving against the foe when in ye two Ushana and the gods rejoiced together.
9. O God-in-Mind and O embracer of knowledge, borne on in your car may the powers of your movement bring you to our ear of inspiration; do ye dispel Night from the waters and from the seat of the soul's session and remove her darknesses from the heart of man so that he shall enjoy his plenitudes.
10. The horses that the Breath of Life has yoked are yoked well, this Seer, too, desiring his increase, is in motion upon the path; here all the Thought-gods are thy companions; and our soul-thoughts, O God, increase thy energy.
11. And may the car too of the illumining Sun in the circumscribing Night rise supreme and gallop upon the upper levels; for his white-shining Steed brings the wheel of his action and sets it to its complete movement; placing it in front he shall win for us the whole Will to the work.
12. Lo, O ye peoples, God-in-Mind has come to us for the vision and desires for his comrade the man who has pressed out the wine of the ecstasy; the pressing stone lifts up its voice and is brought towards the altar and there are priests of the journeying sacrifice who keep its swiftness in action.
13. They who would desire, now let them desire; but they are mortals, O Immortal! let not their march and labour lead them into evil. Take thy delight in the doers of the sacrifice
and confirm thy energy in them, the peoples among whom may we be counted.
THE FOURTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 32
1. Thou hast rent open the fountain, thou hast released the doors that were sealed; thou, thou hast set to their play the floods that were in bondage; O God-in-Mind, when thou openedst the vast hill, thou hast loosed wide the streams, thou hast hurled down the Titan destroyer.
2. The fountains that were kept sealed, the successions of the Truth thou hast made a rushing speed, thou hast milked the teat of the Hill, O hurler of the thunder-flash. O fierce and strong! O Power-in-Mind! thou hast smitten the Python that lay coiled in front against them and established thy strength in us.
3. Against that other mighty Beast also thou hast hurled forth thy stroke in all thy strengths, O God-in-Mind; for when thou deemedst thyself alone and without any opposer, lo, from him that was slain another was born mightier than he!
4. Him too, as he drew intoxication from the self-nature of these peoples, a Son of the Mist, who increases mightily in his march towards the Night, Sushna's evil strength that is the flame and light of the Titan Divider, — him too the Bringer-forth of the abundance, the hurler of the thunders, smote with his thunderbolt.
5. He too was settled deep within in the workings of the will of this mortal; but though he showed no vital part, yet this god found out his mortal centre; therefore, O warrior strength, when he warred against thee in the bringing forward of the rapture, him thou didst cast into the house of darkness.
6. Him as he lay thus coiled in a knot against thee and increasing in the sunless darkness, him too the Bull, the Power-in-Mind, intoxicated with the distillings of the wine, forced to uncoil himself and slew him.
7. When God-in-Mind lifted up his stroke, force irresistible, against the mighty Titan, when he crushed him in his advancing of the thunderbolt he made him the lowest thing of every creature born.
8. From him too as he lay against the nether ocean drinking up the wine of sweetness, a denial of force, a mighty dungeon, God-in-Mind wrested his gains; he cleft asunder with his mighty stroke the footless eater in our gated dwelling, the spoiler of our self-expression.
9. Who shall hedge in his force and his heroic strength? Alone, irresistible he brings to us our possessions; yea, and even these two Goddesses hasten forward now in fear pursued by this rapidity of the God-Mind and his mightiness.
10. And for him the goddess, self-disposing Nature, hastens forward and she is a path for the God-Mind and like a woman that desires she obeys him in her labour; and when by these goddesses he joins all his energy to the working, the worlds that are our dwelling-place bow down and obey his self-ordering puissance.
11. Of thee my soul learns in its inspiration that thou art the lord of existence. One, thou art five in thy worlds of birth and thou art born in a victorious movement in their creatures. All the voices of my aspiration lay hands upon their strong impeller, day and night they call upon the Puissant.
12. As such verily do I learn of thee that it is thou movest us according to the order of the truth and givest his plenitudes to his sages. What can the gods of our soul-thoughts, thy companions,
seize of thee who in1 thee, O Power-in-Mind, set in us their desire?
THE FIFTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 33
1. Limited in my strength, I seek to hold vastly in my thought the gods for that other vast and true strength which is the God-Mind; for he is the warrior in this struggle and affirmed awakes in knowledge in the creature to right mentality for this human being so that man wins the plenitudes.
2. Therefore do thou, O God-Mind, O Bull of the herds, by constant thought with the words of illumination attain to the yoking of thy brilliant swiftnesses; for thou upholdest, O lord of plenitudes, the thoughts that follow thee aright according to thy pleasure in them and thou cleavest faithfully to men who wage the noble war.
3. No longer, O God-Mind, thou who movest to the knowledge, are there in us those powers of thine that remained unyoked to thy car because we found not the inspired word; now mount upon thy chariot, now hold the lightning in thy hands, for now thou hast perfect steeds, for now thou governest, O divine, thy reins of light.
4. When, O God-Mind, thou hast a multitude of thy words of self-expression, then warring thou createst from them the mother of Light in her abundant pastures; yea, the Bull of the herds has cloven in his battles the very Name of the destroyer for the Sun of the illumined truth that he may mount his own dwelling-place.
5. We are they, O God-Mind, who are the souls that generate
1 Or. towards.
thy force and we thy chariot-warriors driving to thy onset; may there come to us, O Strength of the Dragon, the Fighter and delightful Enjoyer to whom we call in the bringings of our oblation.
6. For the energy in thee, O God-Mind, desires satisfaction of delight and, immortal, as in a dance thou fulfillest thy divine strengths. So do thou become in us wealth of thy substance and give a pervading felicity; I would affirm the gift of the conqueror of many riches, the noble fighter.
7. Thus, O God-Mind, protect us by thy increasings; protect the doers of the works, the speakers of the word, O Hero in the battle; fill thyself with a delightful wine of sweetness well-pressed out that shall give us the very touch of the skin in thy conquest of the plenitudes.
8. And may the ten white swiftnesses of the golden-hued seer, the son of the many-seeing, the scatterer of the dividers, bear me with delight; may I abide by the workings of will of the Son of the dweller on the Mountain.
9. And may those red ones of the Son of him whose steeds are the powers of life bear me also, they that have the fullnesses of the will-force in the lavishing of the knowledge. The Mover of things gives me his thousands; he illumines the force of the fighter as if for increasing the fullness of his body.
10. And may those well-loved steeds, shining and straining forward, of the King of Sound, the son of the Lord of Feature come to me in the greatness of bliss of the all-embracing seer even as the shining herds that I have gained crowd to their pen.
THE SIXTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 34
1. Infinite, indestructible is the Nature that belongeth to the world of Light and to the Achiever of works it comes, to him whom none was ever born to smite. For him press the wine, for him prepare the food, set expandingly your abundance before him who manifoldly affirmed is the upholder of the inspired word.
2. He has filled his belly with the wine of your delight, the lord of plenitudes has become drunk with the rapture of that honeyed food; as the soul of desire he of the mighty stroke wields his weapon of the thousand flaming points to slay the Beast.
3. For whosoever presses out for him the wine in the clear heat of the light or in the heat of the abundance, he, oh he, becomes a soul of light; farther and farther the Puissant bears the extending limits of his being and makes it luminous in its formation; for this is the lord of plenitudes who is the comrade of the seer.
4. When he has slain the father of a man or his mother or his brother, he flees not from him, no, he comes to all that that man has laboured out and he is the doer in him of his labour; it is he that creates in him his substance and he flees not away from the sin.
5. Not with the five nor with the ten does he desire to ascend, nor does he cleave to the evil one who gives not the wine, even though he flourish and increase; he conquers him or he slays in his impetuous movement and he gives to the seeker of the godheads for his portion the pen full of the luminous herds.
6. Grasping firmly his discus he hews asunder our foe in the
shock of the battle, he turns from him who gives not the wine, but its giver he increases; the God-Mind is terrible, he is the tamer of every opponent, he is the Aryan fighter and brings into subjection the Destroyer.
7. Yea, he drives away the enjoyment of that miser Trafficker, he robs him of it and apportions to the giver of sacrifice that wealth full of powers. Every creature who angers the strength of the Puissant is held back by manifold obstacles and his path is painful and rugged.
8. When Two perfected in wealth and universal in force are found by God-Mind, the master of plenitude in the fullness of the luminous herds; creating light he makes a third his helper and his impetuous movement with his fighters releases upward the luminous multitude.
9. O God-Will, I praise the Slayer of the foe, the winner of the thousandfold riches, the son of the Dweller in the flame, let that Aryan fighter obtain the highest vision of the fight; for him let the heavenly waters come together and nourish, in him let there dwell a forceful and blazing warrior strength.
THE SEVENTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 35
1. Bring us, O God-Mind, that will in works which is most effective for our increase, for it prevails in the fields of our labour, and conquers in their plenitudes and the foe cannot pierce it.
2. The increasing birth of thee bring to us perfectly which thy tour nations are, and that which are thy three, O Hero in the battle, and that which is of all the five.
3. Yea, we call to us the supremely desirable birth of thee in
thy utter strength of plenty; for the gods of the Life are created in us and by them thou art born as the rushing speed of the Bull of the abundance and breakest through thy opponent.
4. Thou art the Bull of plenty and thou art born to give us the joy of our riches, for thy force rains abundance; violent is thy mind and a self-might of battle and thy prowess strikes out continually, O Puissant.
5. God-Mind, wielder of the thunderbolt, will of a hundred works, lord of luminous force, rush with all thy chariots upon the Mortal who makes himself our enemy.
6. Thee the peoples who have made clear the seat of sacrifice call for the winning of the plenitude, because utter is thy abundance, fierce thy energy, and first and supreme art thou in the multitude of thy thinkings.
7. Advance, O Puissant, the chariot invulnerable that goes in our front and goes at our side in our battles conquering for us plenitude of possession after possession.
8. Come to us in our battle, O God-Mind, advance our chariot by the power of thy many-thoughted goddess; may we hold in thought in our heavens, O lord of luminous strength, the inspired knowledge that is the supreme good, may our minds realise in its heavens the word of divine affirmation.
THE EIGHTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 36
1. May the God-Mind come to us, he who awakes in us to knowledge of our treasures to give of the giving of his felicities; like a bull that seeks its delight but has wandered in the desert thirsting and desiring, so let him drink of the wine of delight that we have pressed out for him.
2. O hero of the battles, O driver of thy luminous coursers, let the Wine of our delight mount thy devouring jaws as if on to the high level of the mountain; to thee let the horses of our life gallop, may we all have intoxication in our words, O thou of the manifold calling.
3. O thou called manifoldly by men, my mind is like a wheel that travels on the paths, but shakes and trembles in my fear that I may not have power to mentalise thee, O wielder of the lightnings; therefore utterly may thy adorer enriched with thy many riches affirm thee in his chariot, O thou who ever increasest, master of plenitudes.
4. O God-Mind, thy adorer is a pressing stone of the wine that lifts up its voice to thee seeking possession of thy Vast; extend with thy left hand thy felicities, with thy right hand extend them, driver of bright coursers, lord of plenitudes, let not thy delight in us pass away from thee.
5. Let Heaven rain its abundance to increase thee, the lord of abundance; diffuser of the rain of heaven art thou and the horses also that bear thee; as the bull of that plenty come in thy chariot of the abundance, O strong-jawed drinker; thy will is for the works of abundance, thou art lord of these rains, O hurler of the thunder-flash, confirm us in the bringing of the plenty.
6. The red coursers of his plenitude he of the plenitude directs and they cleave to the hundred-fold riches of the triple state; to the Youth whose chariot is the voice of the knowledge may the worlds and their people bow down and the gods of the Life obey him to do his works.
THE NINTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 37
I. He labours by the light of the Sun of Truth, casting the oblation,
bright with the surface of the clarities, moving perfectly the dawns break forth inviolable for him who has said, "Let us press out the wine of immortality for the Puissant."
2. He has kindled the Flame and he conquers, he has extended wide the scat of his sacrifice, he has set the pressing stone to its labour and has pressed out the wine and he adores. When his pressing stones cry aloud with the voice of their swift impulsion, then by his oblation the priest of pilgrim sacrifice travels to that ocean.
3. Lo the Bride, who comes to him desiring her lord, he weds her, a vast queen of swift impulsions; his chariot becomes a voice of knowledge and a thunder of proclamation; and it sets moving around it the many thousands of the plenitude.
4. He is a king and untroubled in whom the God-Mind drinks an intense Wine with the light for its companion; and he charges with his fighters and slays the powers that conceal and possesses the worlds for his habitation, full of felicity, increasing the Name.
5. He increases in his secure having and he conquers in his getting, for him the human path and the divine meet in one and both are conquered. He becomes dear to the Lord of the Light, dear to the Lord of the Flame who presses out the Wine and gives it to the Puissant.
THE TENTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 38
1. O Puissant, O lord of thy hundred workings, vast is thy felicity, wide-diffused are its riches; O universal doer of works perfect in warrior-force, make large now our luminousnesses.
2. O God-in-Mind, O shining Strength, when thou holdest
that in thee an impulsion, a thing of inspiration, far it extends itself, O hue of gold, far is the range of its inspired hearing and falsehood cannot pierce it.
3. Lo thy aggressive strengths, O thou of the thunderbolt, that attain to perceptive vision and are themselves the rain of thy bounty, both thou and they are godheads who enter into possession of our being; ye rule our heavens and ye rule this material movement.
4. Yea and this also ye rule that is some other discerning force of thine, O slayer of the Coverer. To us bring that divine power of man that for us thou shalt become the mind of the godhead.
5. Now by these thy enterings in, O God-in-Mind, lord of the hundred powers of will, may we abide in thy peace and bliss, perfectly guarded, O lord of a hundred workings; may we abide, O Warrior, with thee for our strong protector.
THE ELEVENTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 39
1. O God-Mind, thou of the rich1 lights, thou of the thunderbolt, that which is thy rain of bounty and the felicity of thy giving bring to us with both hands full, O finder of our substance.
2. O God-Mind bring to us the supremely desirable thing which thou dost mentalise, that which dwells in the light of heaven; so may we have knowledge of thee that thou mayst give to us, nor stint the satisfaction of our longing.2
3. By mentality of thee which lavishes, which increases wealth of thy felicity, which is large, which is inspired in knowledge,
1 Or, varied. 2 Or, stintest not in
by that thou rendest out even from fortified enclosures the plenitude for our possessing.
4. To him who is richest of all the lords of riches and king over all who labour at the work, I direct my love in the words to the Puissant, that I may express him by his many energies.
5. To him the word of revealed wisdom, for the God-Mind the speech of our utterance, the speech of our self-expression; for him who bears the thought of our soul the Eaters of things increase their Words, yea, they make them a bright gladness.
THE TWELFTH HYMN TO INDRA
V. 40
1. Come to us, Lord of the Wine of delight, drink it when it has been pressed out by the pressing stones; come with those that rain the abundance, O Bull of the abundance who slayest utterly the Coverer.
2. Strong for the abundance is the stone of the pressing, strong in the abundance is the rapture, strong in the abundance this wine that has been pressed; come with those that rain the abundance, O Bull of the abundance who slayest utterly the Coverer.
3. I strong in the abundance call the Bull of the abundance, O wielder of the thunderbolt, with the varied light of thy expandings; come with those that rain the abundance, 0 Bull of the abundance who slayest utterly the Coverer.
4. He is the Bull, a wielder of lightnings, who goes straight in his force and breaks through and overcomes,1 puissant, king, drinker of the wine, slayer of the coverer; yoking his two
1 Or, overcomes our wounders.
shining steeds may the Puissant come down to us and grow drunk with the Wine in the noonday offering.
5. When the Titan that hath the light of the luminous heavens pierces thee, O illumining Sun, with his darkness, the worlds in their thinking are as one bewildered who knoweth not the field in which he dwelleth.1
6. O God-Mind, thereafter when thou didst hurl down from it as they moved over the mental heaven the formations of knowledge (illusion) of that Titan Light, the Eater of things found by the fourth Word the Sun of Truth that had been hidden in a darkness given up to a false working.
7. Lo, here am I thine and in him I dwell; violated by me through fear or passion let him not cast me out from him! Thou art the Lord of Love who gives us the felicity of the Truth; him and the King of Wideness, let these two here foster me.
8. Priest of the Word, setting the stones to their work, serving the gods with active obedience, learning2 from them, the Eater of things has set the eye of the Sun of Truth in his heavens and hid away the illusions of the Titan Light.
9. The Sun that was smitten with darkness by the Light of his own world became undivine, the Eaters of things have sought out and discovered; others could not find him.
1 Or, can find not the field. The four verses which follow have been taken from another version, as the translation used up to this point was left incomplete.
2 Or, receiving.
A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad
(Continued from the issue of April 1977)
Chapter II
SALVATION THROUGH WORKS
I.
THE LAW of spiritual abandonment in preference to mere physical abandonment, is the solution enounced by Srikrishna, the greatest Of all teachers, for a deep and vexed problem which has troubled the Hindu consciousness from ancient times. There are, as we know, three means of salvation; salvation by knowledge, the central position in Buddhism; salvation by faith and love, the central position in Christianity; salvation by faith and works, the central position in Mahomedanism. In Hinduism, the Sanatanadharma, all these three paths are equally accepted. But in all three the peculiar and central religious experience of Hinduism, — the reality and eternity of the Self, the transience and unreality of all else, — is insisted upon as the guiding principle and indispensable idea. This is the bridge which carries you over to immortality; this is the gate of salvation. The Jnanamargin envisages only one reality, the Brahman, and by turning away from all that is phenomenal and seeking the One reality in himself, enters into the being of the Eternal. The Bhakta envisages only two realities, God and himself, and by the ecstatic union of himself with God through love and adoration, enters into the pure and unmixed presence of the Eternal. The Karmamargin envisages three realities which are one; the Eternal in Itself, pure and without a second, the Eternal as a Transcendent Will or Force manifesting Himself phenomenally but not really in cosmic work, and the Eternal in the Jivatman, manifesting Himself similarly in individual work in a finite body; and he too, by abandoning desire and laying his works upon God, attains likeness to the Eternal and through that gate enters into identity with the Eternal. In one thing all these agree, the transience and unreality of phenomenal existence. But if phenomenal existence is unreal, of what use is it to remain in the world? Let us abandon house and wealth and wife and friends and children;
let us flee from them to the solitude of mountain and forest and escape as soon as possible by knowledge and meditation from the world of phenomena. Such was the cry that arose in India before and after the days of Buddha, when the power of the Jnanamarga was the strongest on the Hindu consciousness. The language of the Bhakta is not very different; "Let us leave the things of the world," he cries, "let us forget all else and think and speak only of the name of Hari." Both have insisted that works and the world are a snare and a bondage from which it is best to flee. The Karmayogin alone has set himself against the current and tried to stand in the midmost of the cosmic stir, in the very surge and flux of phenomena without being washed away in the tide. Few, he has said, who remain in the world, can be above the world and live in communion with the Eternal; but few also who flee to the mountains, really attain Him, and few of those who spend their days in crying Lord, Lord, are accepted by Him to whom they cry. It is always the many who are called, the few who are chosen. And if Janaka could remain in the world and be ever with God in the full luxury, power and splendour of the life of a great king, if Rama and Srikrishna lived in the world and did the works of the world, yet were God, who shall say that salvation cannot be attained in the midst of actions, nay, even through the instrumentality of actions? To this dispute the answer of Srikrishna is the one solution. To abandon desire in the spirit is the one thing needful; if one fail to do this, it is vain for him to practise Yoga in mountain or forest solitude, it is vain to sing the name of Hari and cry Lord, Lord, from morn to night, it is vain to hope for safety by "doing one's duty in the world". The man unpurified of desire, whatever way he follows, will not find salvation. But if he can purify his spirit of desire, then whether on solitary mountain and in tiger-haunted forest, or in Brindavan the beautiful, or in the king's court, the trader's shop or the hut of the peasant, salvation is already in his grasp. For the condition of salvation is to leave the lower unreal self and turn to the real Self; and the stain and brand of the lower self is desire. Get rid of desire and the doors of the Eternal stand wide open for your soul to enter in. The way of the Sannyasin who leaves the world and devotes all himself to jnana or Bhakti, is a good way, and there is none better; but the way of the Tyagin who lives among sense-objects and in the whirl of action without cherishing
the first or yielding to the rush of the second, is the right way for the Karmayogin. This is what the Upanishad with great emphasis proceeds to establish as the second rule of conduct for the Karmamargin.
"Do, verily, thy deeds in this world and wish to live thy hundred years, for thus to thee and there is no other way than this, action cleaveth not to a man."
A hundred years is the full span of a man's natural life when he observes all the laws of his nature and keeps his body and mind pure by the use of pure food, by pure ways of living, by purity of thought and by self-restraint in the satisfaction of his desires. The term is ordinarily diminished by heedlessness, sin, contamination or the effects of our past action in other lives; it may, on the other hand, be increased to hundreds of years by Yoga. But the Karmayogin will neither desire to increase his term of life nor to diminish it. To increase his term of life would show a desire for and clinging to phenomenal existence quite inconsistent with that abandonment of desire which we have seen to be the fundamental law of Karmayoga. A few great Yogis have prolonged their lives without personal desire, merely to help the world by their presence or example. These are exceptional cases which the ordinary Karmamargin need not keep in view. On the other hand we must not turn our backs on life; we must not fling it from us untimely or even long for an early release from our body, but willingly fill out our term and even be most ready to prolong it to the full period of man's ordinary existence so that we may go on doing our deeds in this world. Mark the emphasis laid on the word
"doing", by adding to it the particle
the
force of which is to exclude any other action, state, person or thing than the one expressed by the word to which it is attached. Verily we must do our deeds in this world and not avoid doing them. There is no need to flee to the mountains in order to find God. He is not a hill-man or a serpent that we should seek for Him only in cave and on summit; nor a deer or tiger that the forest only can harbour Him. He is here, in you and around you; He is in these men and women whom you see daily, with whom you talk and pass your life. In the roar of the city you can find Him and in the quiet of the village. He is there. You may go to the mountains for a while, if the din of life
1 Kurvan. 2 Eva: verily
deafens you and you wish to seek solitude to meditate; for to the Karmayogin also Jnana is necessary and solitude is the nurse of knowledge. You may sit by the Ganges or the Narmada near some quiet temple or in some sacred Ashram to adore the Lord; for to the Karmayogin also Bhakti is necessary, and places like these which are saturated with the Bhakti of great saints and impassioned God-lovers best feed and strengthen the impulse of adoration in the soul. But if Karmayoga be your path, you must come back and live again in the stir of the world. In no case flee to solitude and inaction as a coward and weakling, — not in the hope of finding God, but because you think you can by this means escape from the miseries and misfortunes of your life which you are too weak to face. It is not the weak and the coward who can climb up to God, but the strong and brave alone. Every individual Jivatman must become the perfect Kshatriya before he can become the Brahmin. For there is a caste of the soul which is truer and deeper than that of the body. Through four soul-stages a man must pass before he can be perfect; first, as a Sudra, by service and obedience to tame the brute in his being; then as a Vaishya to satisfy within the law of morality the lower man in him and evolve the higher man by getting the first taste of delight in well-doing to others than himself and his; then, as the Kshatriya, to be trained in those first qualities without which the pursuit of the Eternal is impossible, courage, strength, unconquerable tenacity and self-devotion to a great task; last, as the Brahmin, so to purify body and mind and nature that he may see the Eternal reflected in himself as in an unsoiled mirror. Having once seen God, man can have no farther object in life than to reach and possess Him. Now the Karmayogin is a soul that is already firmly established in the Kshatriya stage and is rising from it through an easily attained Brahminhood straight and swift to God. If he loses hold of his courage and heroism, he loses his footing on the very standing-ground from which he is to heighten himself in his spiritual stature until his hand can reach up to and touch the Eternal. Let his footing be lost and what can he do but fall?
II. VAIRAGYA
Disgust with the world, the shrinking from the phenomenal life and the desire to escape from it to the Eternal, is called, in our
terminology, vairagya. Vairagya is the turning of the soul to its salvation; but we must be on our guard against the false shows and imitations of it to which our minds are subject. "I am continually battered with the siege of sorrows and miseries; I cannot cope with the world; let me therefore get away from the world, put on the saffron robe and be at peace from anxiety and grief"; that is not the language of real vairagya. Just as you recognize a genuine article from the imitation by its trademark, so there is a mark by which you recognize the true Sannyasin. Not weariness of the phenomenal world by itself, but this world-weariness accompanied by a thirst for the Eternal, that is the real vairagya. The thirst for the Eternal is the trademark; look for it always and see that it is the real trademark, not an imperfect and fraudulent reproduction. The saffron robe nowadays covers a great deal of selfishness, a great deal of idleness, a great deal of hypocrisy. It is not the robe which is the trademark, but the longing for the Eternal. Nor is it the talk and the outward action which is the trademark, for that may be a mere imitation. Look in the eyes, watch the slighter, less observed habits, wait for a light on the face; then you will find the trademark. Apply the same test to yourself. When you think you have vairagya, ask yourself, "Is this mere weariness and disgust, a weak fainting of the soul, or can I detect in it even in a slight degree an awakening of the Self and a desire for that which is not transient but eternal, not bound to sin and chequered with sorrow, but pure and free?" If after severe self-examination, you can detect this desire in yourself, know that your salvation has begun.
There are many kinds of vairagya, some true, some false. There is one vairagya, deep, intense and energetic, when the strong man having tasted the sweets of the world finds that there is in them no permanent and abiding sweetness; they are not the true and immortal joy which his true and immortal Self demands, so he turns from them to something in his being which is deeper and holier, the joy of the inexhaustible and imperishable spirit within. Then there is the vairagya, false or transient, of the hypocrite or weakling, who has lusted and panted and thirsted for the world's sweets, but has been pushed and hustled from the board by Fate or by stronger men than himself, and seeks in the outward life of the Sannyasin a slothful and thornless road to honour and ease and the satisfaction of greed,
or else would use Yoga and Sannyasa as the drunkard uses his bottle or the slave of opium his pill or his daily draught. Not for such ignoble purposes were these great things meant by the Rishis who disclosed them to the world. Beware of such weakness. क्लैब्यं मा स्म गमः पार्थ नैतत्त्वय्युपपद्यते3 . Truly is such base weakness unworthy of one who is no other than Brahman, the Eternal, the Creator, Protector and Destroyer of worlds. But on the other hand there is a true vairagya of sorrow and disappointment; sometimes men have tried in their ignorance for ignoble things and failed, not from weakness but because these things were not in their nature, were unfit for them and below their true greatness and high destiny. The sorrow and disappointment were necessary to open their eyes to their true selves; then they seek solitude, meditation and Samadhi, not as a dram to drown their sorrow and yet unsated longing, but because their yearning is no longer for unworthy things but for the love of God or the knowledge of the Eternal. Sometimes great spirits enter the way of the Sannyasin, because in the solitude alone with the Eternal they can best develop their divine strength (Brahmatej) to use it for divine purposes. Once attained they pour it in a stream of divine knowledge or divine love over the world; such were Shankaracharya and Ramakrishna. Sometimes it is ]the sorrows and miseries of the world that find them in ease and felicity and drive them out, as Buddha and Christ were driven out, to seek light for the ignorant and help for sufferers in the depths of their own being. True Sannyasins are the greatest of all workers, because they have the most unalloyed and inexhaustible strength and are the mightiest in God to do the works of God.
Whatever be the precise nature of the vairagya or its immediate and exciting cause, if the thirst for the Eternal mingle in it, know that it is real vairagya and the necessary impulse towards your salvation. You must pass through this stage if you are to reach the Eternal at all. For if you do not get weary of the phenomenal, your mind cannot turn to the Eternal; the attraction of the phenomenal keeps your eyes turned downward and not upward, outward and not inward. Welcome therefore the first inrush of vairagya into your life, but remember it is a first stage on the road, not the goal. Swami
3 Klaibyam ma sma gamah partha naitat tvayyupapadyate: Fall not from the virility of the fighter and the hero, O Partha! it is not fitting in thee. (Gita 2.3)
Bhaskarananda was driven into Sannyasa by a keen and overmastering disgust of life in the world, but when he had attained mukti, the state of his mind so changed that if his wife had been living, he would have lived with her in the world as one in the world; an idea shocking to priestly and learned orthodoxy, but natural to the Jivanmukta. Sri Ramakrishna, when he had attained identity with the Lord, could not indeed return to the world as a householder or bear the touch of worldly things, — for he was the incarnation of utter Bhakti, — but he took as much delight in the Eternal manifested in phenomena and especially in man as in the pure actionless Brahman with whom he became one in Samadhi. The Karmamargin must pass through the condition of vairagya, but he will not abide in it. Or to speak more accurately he will retain the spiritual element in it and reject the physical. The spiritual element of vairagya is the turning away from the selfish desire for phenomenal objects and actions; the physical element is the fear of and shrinking from the objects and actions themselves. The retention of the spiritual element is necessary to all Yogins; the retention of the physical element, though often a sign of great physical purity and saintliness, is not essential to salvation.
Do not be shaken by the high authority of many who say that to leave the world is necessary to the seeker after Brahman and that salvation cannot come by works. For we have a greater authority than any to set against them, the teaching of Srikrishna himself. He tells Sanjaya in the Mahabharata4 that as between the gospel of action and the gospel of inaction, it is the former that is to his mind and the latter strikes him as the idle talk of a weakling. So too, in the Gita, while laying stress on Jnana and Bhakti, he will by no means banish Karma nor relegate it to an inferior place; the most significant portion of the Gita is its eulogy of Karmayoga and inspired exposition of its nature and principles. Jnana, of course, is indispensable; Jnana is first and best. Works without knowledge will not save a man but only plunge him deeper and deeper into bondage. The Upanishad, before it speaks of the necessity of works, takes care first to insist that you must realise the presence of the Lord enveloping this universe and each object that it contains. When you
4 Udyogaparva, 29 6,8.
have got this Jnana that all is the One Brahman and your actions are but the dramatic illusions unrolled by Prakriti for the delight of the Purusha, you will then be able to do works without desire or illusion, abandoning the world that you may enjoy it, as the Upanishad tells you, or as Srikrishna advises, giving up all hankering for the fruits of your work. You will devote all your actions to the Lord; not to the lower false self, which feels pleasure and pain in the results of your actions, but to the Brahman in you which works
5
for the keeping together of the peoples, so that instead of the un-instructed multitudes being bewildered and led astray by your inactivity, the world may be rather helped, strengthened and maintained by the godlike character of your works. And your works must be godlike if they are done without desire or attachment to their fruits. For this is how God works. The world is His lila,
His play and sport, not a purposeful stir and struggle out of which He is to
gain something and be benefited. The great empire in which you glory and think,
it is to be eternal, is to Him no more than the house of sand which a child has
built in his play. He has made it and He will break it, and, one day, it will be
as if it had never been. The very Sun and its glorious wheeling planets are but
momentary toys in His hands. Once they were not, now they are, a day will come
and they will no longer be. Yet while He works on these things, He works like
the boy when he is building his castle of sand, as if the work were to be
permanent and for all time.
"And yet these actions bind Me not, Dhananjaya, for I sit as one unconcerned and I have no attachment to these My works." Actions performed after renunciation, actions devoted to God, these only do not cling to a man nor bind him in their invisible chains, but rather fall from him as water from the wings of a swan. They cannot bind him because he is free from the woven net of causality. Cause and effect exist only in the idea of duality which has its root in Avidya; the Yogin when he has renounced desire and experienced unity, rises above Avidya and her children, and bondage has no farther
5 Lokasamgrahartham.
6 Na ca mam tani karmani nibadhnanti dhananjayo, udasinavadasinam asaktam tesu karmasu. (Gita 9.9)
meaning for him. This is the goal of the Karmayogin as of all Yoga, but the path for him is through spiritual vairagya, the renunciation of desire, not through physical separation from the objects of desire. This the Upanishad emphasizes in the second line of the verse. "Thus to thee; and there is no other way than this, action clingeth not to a man."
This is conclusive and
beyond appeal.
III. ONE ROAD AND NOT THREE
"There is no other way than this." By this expression it is not intended that Karmayoga is the only path of salvation for all men, but that the renunciation of desire is essential to salvation; every Yogin, be he Jnani, Bhakta, or Karmi, must devote whatever work he may be doing to the Eternal. To the Karmayogin indeed this path is the only possible way; for it is the svabhava or nature of a man which decides the way he shall take. If a born Jnani becomes the disciple of a great Bhakta, however submissively he may accept his Master's teachings, however largely he may infuse his Jnana with Bhakti, yet eventually it is the way of Jnana he must take and no other. For that is his svabhava or nature, his dharma or the law of his being. If the Brahmin predominates in him, he will be drawn into Jnana; if the Kshatriya, into works; if the Sudra or Vaisya, the child or woman, to Bhakti. If he is born saint or Avatar, he will harmonize all three, but still with one predominant over the others and striking the main note of his life and teaching. It is always the predominance of one or other, not its unmixed control, which decides the path; for as with the Karmayogin, the devotion of works to God brings inevitably the love of God, and love gives knowledge, so it is with the Bhakta; the love of God will of itself direct all his works to God and bring him straight to knowledge. So it is even with the Jnani; the knowledge of the Brahman means delight in Him, and that is Bhakti; and this love and knowledge cannot let him live to himself but will make him live to Brahman, and that is divine Karma. The three paths are really one, but the Jnani takes the right hand, the Bhakta the left hand and the Karmayogin walks
7 Evam tvayi nanvathetosti na karma lipyate nare
in the middle; while on the way each prefers his own choice as best and thinks the others inferior, but when they reach the goal, they find that none was inferior or superior, but it was one road they were following which only seemed to be three.
The Jnani and Bhakta shrink from the idea of Karma as a means of salvation. Unillumined Karma is such a stumbling block in the path of the seeker that they can hardly regard even illumined and desireless Karma as anything but a subordinate discipline whose only value is to prepare a man for Bhakti or Jnana. They will not easily concede that Karma can be by itself a direct and sufficient road to Brahman. So Shankaracharya disparages Karma, and Shankaracharya's is an authority which no man can dare to belittle. Nevertheless even the greatest are conditioned by their nature, by the times they work in and by the kind of work they have come to do. In the age that Shankara lived in, it was right that Jnana should be exalted at the expense of works. The great living force with which he had to deal, was not the heresies of later Buddhism, Buddhism decayed and senescent, but the triumphant Karmakanda which made the faithful performance of Vedic ceremonies the one path and heaven the highest goal. In his continual anxiety to prove that these ceremonies could not be the path, he bent the bow as far as he could in the other direction and left the impression that works could not be the path to salvation at all. Had he laid stress on Karma as one of the ways to salvation, the people would not have understood him; they would have thought that they had one more authority for their belief in rites and ceremonies as all-sufficient for salvation. These things must be remembered when we find Shankara and Ramanuja and Madhava differing so widely from each other in their interpretation of the Upanishad. It was necessary that the Scripture should be interpreted by Shankara wholly in the light of Adwaita, the Monistic conception of the Eternal, so that the Monistic idea might receive its definite and consummate philosophical expression; for a similar reason it was necessary that Madhava should interpret them wholly in the light of the Dwaita or dualistic conception and that Ramanuja should find a reconciliation in Visishtadwaita, a modified Monism. All these conceptions of the Eternal have their own truth and their own usefulness to the soul in its effort to reach Him. But the Upanishad is not concerned only with the ultimate reality of the Brahman to
Himself, but also with His reality in His universe and His reality to the Jivatman or individual self. It is therefore sometimes Adwaitic, sometimes Dwaitic, sometimes Visishtadwaitic, and we should have the courage now to leave the paths which the mighty dead have trod out for us, discharge from our mild all preconceived philosophies and ask only, "What does the Upanishad actually say?" Never mind whether the interpretation arrived at seems to be self-contradictory to the logician or incoherent to the metaphysical reasoner; it will be enough if it is true in the experience of the seeker after God. For the Eternal is infinite and cannot be cabined within the narrow limits of a logical formula.
IV. THE DENIAL OF SALVATION BY WORKS
What is it, after all, to which the denial of salvation by works amounts, when looked at not from the standpoint of logic only but of actual spiritual experience? Some people when they talk of Karma or works, think only of rites and ceremonies, Vedic, Puranic or Tantric. That kind of works, certainly, does not bring us to salvation. They may give success and great joy, power and splendour in this world. Or they may lead to enjoyment after death in Paradise; but Paradise is not salvation; it is a temporary joyous condition of the soul, the pleasure of which ceases when the cause is exhausted. Or these rites may lead to the conscious possession and use of occult powers, latent in ordinary men, by which you may help or harm others; but the possession of occult powers cannot be an assistance, it is indeed often a hindrance to salvation. Or rites and ceremonies may purify and prepare the mind and fit it for starting on one of the paths to salvation. This indeed is their only helpfulness for the true aim of our existence. They are no more than an infant or preparatory class in the school of Brahmavidya.
It is evident again that works done with desire, works done without knowledge and not devoted to God, cannot lead to salvation, but only to continued bondage. Works prompted by desire, lead only to the fulfilment of desire; nor do they disappear in that consummation. For all work that we do, has, besides its effect on ourselves, infinite effects on others and on the general course of phenomena; these in their turn become causes and produce fresh effects; so the ripple
continues widening till we lose sight of it in the distance of futurity. For all the effects of our action we are responsible and by each new thing we do, we are entering into so many debts which we must discharge before we can be released from the obligation of phenomenal existence. Existence in phenomena may be imaged as a debtor's prison in which the soul is detained by a million creditors not one of whom will forgive one farthing of his claims. But those claims we can never discharge; each sum we get to pay off our old creditors, we can only procure by entering into fresh debts which put us at the mercy of new and equally implacable claimants. Nature, the great judge and gaoler, is ever giving fresh decrees against us, for her law is inexorable and will not admit of remission or indulgence. We can obtain our release only by escaping from her jurisdiction into the divine sanctuary where the slave of Nature, by his very entry, becomes free and her master.
But the works of the Karmayogin are works done with knowledge and without desire. These certainly cannot prevent release or lead to fresh debt and fresh bondage. For bondage is the result of desire and ignorance and disappears with desire and ignorance. Desire and ignorance are indeed the boundaries of Nature's jurisdiction and once we have left them behind, we have passed out of her kingdom; we have taken sanctuary from her pursuit and are freemen released from the action of her laws. To deny the innocence of works without desire would be to deny reason, to deny Sruti, to deny facts. For Janaka and others did works, Srikrishna did works, but none will say that either the avatara or the jivanmukta were bound by his works; for their Karma was done with knowledge and without desire. Works without desire, then, cannot prevent salvation or lead to fresh bondage.
It may be argued, however, that if they do not prevent salvation, neither do they help towards salvation. The works of the Bhakta or Jnani do not bind him because he has attained the Eternal and by the strength of that attainment becomes free from desire and ignorance; but works done before attainment can be nothing but means of bondage; only the pursuit of God-knowledge and the worship and adoration of God, to which the name of works does not properly apply, are free from responsibility. But this reasoning too is not consistent with divine teaching, with experience or with reason. For divine teaching distinctly tells us that works done after abandonment
of the world and devoted to God only, do lead to salvation. We know also that a single action done without desire and devoted to the Lord, gives us strength for fresh actions of the same kind, and the persistent repetition of such works must form the habit of desirelessness and self-devotion to Him, which then become our nature and atmosphere. We have already seen that desirelessness necessarily takes us outside the jurisdiction of Nature, and when we are outside the jurisdiction of Nature, where can we be if not in the presence of the Eternal? Nor can self-devotion to the Lord be reasonably said not to lead to the Lord; for where else can it lead? It is clear therefore that works without desire not only do not prevent salvation but are a mighty help towards salvation.
It may still be argued that works without desire help only because they lead to devotion and knowledge and there their function ceases; they bring the soul to a certain stage but do not carry it direct to God. It is therefore devotion and knowledge, Bhakti and Jnana, which alone bring us to God. As soon as either of these takes him by the hand, Karma must leave him, just as rites and ceremonies must leave him, and its function is therefore not essentially higher than that of rites and ceremonies. But if this were good reasoning, the Karmayogin might equally well say that Bhakti leads to knowledge and the devotion of one's works to the Lord; therefore knowledge and works without desire bring a man to the Eternal and Bhakti is only a preliminary means; or that Jnana leads to adoration of the Eternal and devotion to all one does to him, therefore Bhakti and and works without desire alone bring the soul direct to God and Jnana is only a preliminary means. Or if it is said that works must cease at a certain stage while Bhakti and Jnana do not cease, this too is inconsistent with experience. For Janaka and others did works after they attained the Eternal and while they were in the body, did not cease from works. It cannot even be said that works though they need not necessarily cease after the attainment of the Eternal, yet need not continue. Particular works need not continue; rites and ceremonies need not continue; the life of the householder need not continue. But work continues so long as the body gross or subtle continues; for both the gross body and the subtle body, both the physical case and the soul-case are always part of Prakriti, and whatever is Prakriti, must do work. The Gita says this plainly
न हि कश्चित् क्षणमपि जातु तिष्ठत्यकर्मकृत् |
कार्यते ह्यवशः कर्म सर्वः प्रकृतिजैर्गुणैः ||8
"For no man verily remaineth even for a moment without doing works, for all are helplessly made to do work by the moods to which Nature has given birth." And again सदृशं चेष्टते स्वस्याः प्रकृतेर्ज्ञानवानपि.9 "Even the Jnani moveth and doeth after the semblance of his own nature; for created things follow after their nature and what can forcing it do?" A man works according to his nature and cannot help doing work; but he can choose to what he shall direct his works, whether to his lower self or his higher, whether to desire or to God. The man who leaves the world behind him and sits on a mountain-top or in an Ashram, has not therefore got rid of works. If nothing else he has to maintain his body, to eat, to walk, to move his limbs, to sit in asana and meditate; all this is work. And not only his body works; his mind is far more active than his body. If he is not released from desire, his work will bind him and bear fruit in relation to himself and others. Even if he is released from desire, his body and mind are not free from Karma until he is able to get rid of them finally, and that will not be till his prarabdha karma has worked itself out and the debts he has written against his name are wiped off. Even the greatest Yogi by his mere bodily presence in the world, is pouring out a stream of spiritual force on all sides; this action does not bind him, it is true, yet it is work and work which exercises a stupendous influence on others. He is सर्वभूतहितरतः10 busy doing good to all creatures by his very nature, even though he does not lift a finger or move a step. He too with regard to his .body, gross and subtle, is अवशः11 he must let the gunas, the moods of Nature work. He may control that work, for he is no longer the slave of Prakriti, but he cannot stop it except by finally leaving his body and mind through Yoga with the Eternal. Work therefore does not cease any more than Bhakti or Jnana.
Shankara indeed says that when we have got Jnana, we necessarily cease to do works, for Jnana makes us one with the Eternal who is
8 Na hi kascit ksanamapi jatu tisthatyakarmakrt. karyate hyavasah karma sarvah prakrtijair gunaih. (Gita 3.5)
9 Sadrsam cestate svasyah prakrter jnanavanapi. (Gita 3.33)
10 Sarvabhutahitaratah.
11 Avasah: helpless.
actionless,अकर्ता12 Yet Janaka knew the Eternal and did works; Srikrishna was the Eternal and did works. For Brahman the Eternal, is both कर्ता13 and अकर्ता;14 He works and He does not work. As Sachchidananda, He is above works, but He is also above knowledge and above devotion. When the Jivatman becomes Sachchidananda, devotion is lost in Ananda or absolute bliss, knowledge is lost in Chit or absolute Consciousness, works are lost in Sat or absolute Existence. But as Isha or Shakti, He does works by which He is not bound and the Jivatman also when he is made one with Isha or Shakti .. continues to do works without being bound.
Works therefore do not cease in the body, nor do they cease after we have left the body except by union with the actionless Sachchidananda or laya in the Unknowable Brahman, where Jnana and Bhakti also are swallowed up in unfathomable being. Even of the Unknowable Parabrahman too it cannot be said that It is actionless; It is neither कर्ता15 nor अकर्ता16 It is neli, neti, not this, not that, unexplicable and inexpressible in terms of speech and mind. We need not therefore fear that works without desire will not lead us straight to the Eternal; we need not think that we must give up works in order that we may develop the love of God or attain the knowledge of God.
V. MUKTI AND THE JIVANMUKTA
The ideal of the Karmayogin is the Jivanmukta, the self who has attained salvation but instead of immediately passing out of phenomenal existence, remains in it, free from its bondage. There are three kinds of salvation which are relative and partial; salokya or constant companionship with the Lord, sadrsya, or permanent resemblance to Him in one's nature and actions, and sayujya or constant union of the individual self with the Eternal. It is supposed by some schools that entire salvation consists in laya or absorption into the Eternal, in other words entire self-removal from phenomena and entrance into the utter being of the unconditioned and unknowable Parabrahman. Such laya is not possible in the body, but can only begin,
12 Akarta. 13Karta.
14 See footnote 12.
15 See footnote 13.
16 See footnote 12.
adehanipatat, as soon as the Self throws away all its bodies and reenters into its absolute existence. It is not indeed the mere mechanical change of death that brings about this result, but the will of the Self to throw aside all its bodies and, never returning to them, pass rather out of that state of consciousness in the Eternal in which He looks upon Himself as a Will or Force. This, however, is an extreme attitude. Complete self-identification with the Eternal, such as we find in the Jivanmukta, is complete mukti; for the Jivanmukta can at will withdraw himself in Samadhi into the being of Sachchidananda, who is actionless and turned away from phenomena; and can at will look again towards phenomena, dealing with them as their Lord who puts them to work without being touched by their stir and motion. For the Jivanmukta laya, absorption into the Unknowable, can be accomplished at his will; but he does not will it.
The reason for his not willing this utter departure brings us to the very essence of Mukti. Why do men hanker after complete absorption into the unphenomenal? why do they flee from Karma and dread lest it should interfere with their salvation? Because they feel that phenomenal life and works are a bondage and they desire to be free and not bound. This state of mind can only last so long as the seeker is the mumuksu, the self desirous of freedom, but when he is actually mukta, the free self, the terror of Maya and her works cannot abide with him. Mukti, which we have to render in English by salvation, means really release. But release from what bondage, salvation from what tyranny? From the bondage of Maya, from the tyranny of Avidya which will have us believe that we are finite, mortal and bound, who are not finite, but infinite, not mortal, but deathless and immutable, not bound, but always free. The moment you have realised that Avidya is illusion and there is nothing but the Eternal, and never was anything but the Eternal and never will be anything but the Eternal, the moment you have not merely intellectually grasped the idea but come to have habitual experience of the fact, from that moment you will know that you are not bound, never were bound and never will be bound. Avidya consists precisely in this that the Jivatman thinks there is something else than the Eternal which can throw him into bondage and that he himself is something else than the Eternal and can be bound. When the Jivatman shakes off these illusory impressions of Avidya, he realises that there is
nothing but Brahman the Eternal who is in His very nature nityamukta, from ever and for ever free. He can therefore have no fear of Karma nor shrink from it lest it should bind him. for he knows that the feeling of bondage is itself an illusion. He will be ready not only to do his deeds in this world and live out his hundred years, but to be reborn as Srikrishna himself has promised to be reborn again and again and as other Avatars have promised to be reborn. For however often he may enter into phenomenal life, he has no farther terror of Maya and her bondage. Once free, always free.
Even if he does not will to be reborn, he will be careful not to leave the world of phenomena until his prarabdha karma is worked out. There are certain debts standing against his name in the ledger of Nature and these he will first absolve. Of course the Jivanmukta is not legally bound by his debts to Nature, for all the promissory notes he has executed in her name have been burned up in the fire of Mukti. He is now free and lord, the master of Prakriti, not its slave. But the Prakriti attached to this Jivatman has created, while in the illusion of bondage, causes which must be allowed to work out their effects; otherwise the chain of causation is snapped and a disturbance is brought about in the economy of Nature, उत्सीदेयुरिमे लोकाः17 In order therefore to maintain the law of the world unimpaired, the livanmukta remains amid works like a prisoner on parole, not bound by the fetters of Prakriti, but detained by his own will until the time appointed for his captivity shall have elapsed.
The Jivanmukta is the ideal of the Karmayogin and though he may not reach his ideal in this life or the next, still he must always strive to model himself upon it. Do therefore your deeds in this world and wish to live your hundred years. You should be willing to live your allotted term of life not for the sake of long living, but because the real you in the body is Brahman who by the force of His own Shakti is playing for Himself and by Himself this dramatic lila of creation, preservation and destruction. He is Isha, the Lord, Creator, Preserver and Destroyer; and you also in the field of your own Prakriti are the lord, creator, preserver and destroyer. You are He; only for your own amusement you have imagined yourself limited to a particular body for the purposes of the play, just as an actor imagines
17 Utsideyur ime lokah: these peoples would sink to destruction. (Gita 3.24)
himself to be Dushyanta, Rama or Ravana. The actor has lost himself in the play and for a moment thinks that he is what he is acting; he has forgotten that he is really not Dushyanta or Rama, but Devadatta who has played and will yet play a hundred parts besides. When he shakes off this illusion and remembers that he is Devadatta, he does not therefore walk off the stage and by refusing to act. break up the play, but goes on playing his best till the proper time comes for him to leave the stage. The object of this phenomenal world is creation and it is our business, while we are in the body, to create. Only, so long as we forget our true Self, we create like servants under the compulsion of Prakriti and are slaves and bound by her actions which we falsely imagine to be our own. But when we know and experience our true Self, then we are masters of Prakriti and not bound by her creations. Our Self becomes the Sakshi, the silent spectator of the actions of our Nature which she models in the way she thinks would best please it. So are we at once spectator and actor; and yet because we know the whole to be merely an illusion of apparent action, because we know that Rama is not really killing Ravana, nor Ravana being killed, for Ravana lives as much after the supposed death as before, so are we neither spectator nor actor, but the Self only and all we see nothing but visions of the Self. The Karmamargin therefore will not try or wish to abandon actions while he is in this world, but only the desire for their fruits; neither will he try or wish to leave his life in this world before its appointed end. The man who violently breaks the thread of his life before it is spun out. will obtain a result the very opposite to what he desires. The Karmamargin aims at being a Jivanmukta, he will not cherish within himself the spirit of the suicide.
VI. SUICIDE AND THE OTHER WORLD
In the early days of spiritualism in America, there were many who were so charmed by the glowing description of the other world published by spiritualists that they committed suicide in order to reach it. It would almost seem as if in the old days when the pursuit of the Eternal dominated the mind of the race and disgust of the transitory was common, there were many who rather than live out their hundred years preferred a self-willed exit from the world of phenomena. To
these the Upanishad addresses a solemn warning, "Godless verily
are those worlds and with blind gloom enveloped, thither they depart when they
have passed away, whatso folk are slayers of self." One has to be peculiarly
careful in rendering the exact words of the Upanishad, because Shankara gives a
quite unexpected and out-ofthe-way interpretation of the verse. He does not
accept आत्महनः18 self-slayers, in the sense of
suicides, the natural and ordinary meaning, but
understands it to signify slayers of the eternal Self within them. Since this is a startlingly unnatural and paradoxical sense, for the Self neither slays nor is slain, he farther interprets his
interpretation in a figurative sense. To kill the Self
means merely to cast the Self under the delusion of
ignorance which leads to birth and rebirth: the Self is
in a way killed because it is made to disappear into the
darkness of Maya. Farther लोकाः19 has always
the sense of worlds as in गोलोक,
ब्रह्मलोक, द्युलोक,20 but Shankara forces it to mean births, for example birth as a man, birth as a beast, birth as a God. Then there is a third and equally violent departure from the common and understood use of words; असुर्या21
or आसुराः22 would mean ordinarily Asuric of the Daityas in opposition to Daivic of the Devas; Shankara takes आसुराः23 as Rajasic and
applicable to birth in the form of men, beasts and even
of gods in opposition to दैव24 which is pure Sattwic and applicable only to Parabrahman. He thus gets the verse to mean, "Rajasic verily are those births and enveloped with blind darkness to which those depart when they pass away, whoso are slayers of the Self." All those who put themselves under the yoke of Ignorance, lose hold of their true Self and are
born as men, beasts or gods, instead of returning to the pure existence of
Parabrahman.
The objections to this interpretation
are many and fatal. The rendering of आत्महनः25
substitutes a strained and unparallelled interpretation for the common and
straightforward sense of the word. The word लोकः26
cannot mean a particular kind of birth but either a world
or the people in the world; and in these senses it is always used both in the Sruti and elsewhere. We say स्वर्गलोक,
द्युलोक, मर्त्यलोक,
18 Atmahanah. 19. Lokah.
20 Goloka, brahmaloka. dyuloka: the world of the ray-cows (the Vaishnava heaven of eternal beauty and bliss), the world of the Brahman, the world of heaven.
21 Asuryah: sunless. 22 Asurah: of the titans (asuras), Asuric. 23 See footnote 22.
24 Daiva: of the gods (devas), divine. 25. Atmahanah 26. Lokah
इहलोक, परलोक;27 we do not say कीटलोक, पशुलोक, पक्षिलोक.28 We say indeed मनुष्यलोक,29 but it means the world of men and never birth as a man. The word असुर्याः30 may very well mean Rajasic but not in the way Shankara applies to it; for असुर्या लोकाः31 cannot signify the births of beasts, men, gods as opposed to the divine birth of Parabrahman, who is above birth and above condition. Moreover, Daivic and Asuric are always opposed terms referring to the gods and Titans, precisely as Titanic and Olympian are opposed terms in English. For instance in the Gita
मोघाशा मोघकर्माणो मोघज्ञाना विचेतसः |
राक्षसीमासुरी चैव प्रकृति मोहिनी श्रिताः ||
महात्मानस्तु मां पार्थ दैवी प्रकृतिमाश्रिताः |
भजन्त्यनन्यमनसो ज्ञात्वा भूतादिमव्ययम् ||32
In this passage Asuric and Rakshasic natures are rajasic nature as of the Titans and tamasic nature as of the Rakshasa; daivic nature implies sattwic nature as of the Gods. Such is always the sense wherever the terms are opposed in Sanskrit literature. It may be urged, in addition, that the expression ये के33 loses its strong limiting force if it is applied to all beings but the very few who have found salvation. There are other fta ws besides the straining of word-senses. The verse as rendered by Shankara does not logically develop from what went before and the fault of incoherence is imported into the Upanishad which, if taken in its straightforward sense, we rather find to be strietly logical in its structure and very orderly in the development of its thought. On the other hand, the plain rendering of the words of the Upanishad in their received and ordinary sense gives a simple
27 Svargaloka, dyuloka, martyaloka, ihaloka, paraloka: the heavently world, the world of heaven, the world of mortals, this world, the other world.
28 Ktlaloka. pasu/oka. paksiloka: insect-world, animal-world, bird-world.
29 Manusyaloka. 30 Asuryah 31 Asurya lokah: sunless worlds
32 Moghasa moghakarmano moghajnana vicetasah
Raksasimasurim caiva prakrtim mohinim sritah.
Mahatmanastu mam partha daivim prakrtimasritah,
Bhajantyananyamanaso jnatva bhutadimavyayam
All their hope, action, knowledge are vain things; they dwell in the Rakshasic and Asuric nature which deludes the will and the intelligence. The great-souled, O Partha, who dwell in the divine nature know Me as the Imperishable from whom all existences originate and so knowing they turn to Me with a sole and entire love (Gita 9.12-13)
33 Ye ke : they...who
and clear meaning which is both highly appropriate in itself and develops
naturally from what has gone before, Shankara's rendering involves so many and
considerable faults that even his authority cannot oblige us to accept it. We
will therefore take the verse in its plain sense: it is a warning to those who
imagine that by the self-wiled shortening of their days upon earth they can
escape from the obligation of phenomenal existence.
The Asuric or godless worlds to which the suicide
is condemned, are the worlds of deep darkness and suffering at the other pole
from the world of the gods, the world of light and joy which is the reward of
virtuous deeds. Patala under the earth, Hell under Patala, these are Asuric
worlds: Swarga on the mountain-tops of existence in the bright sunshine is a
world of the gods. All this is of course mythology and metaphor, but the Asuric
worlds are a reality; they are the worlds of gloom and suffering in the nether
depths of our own being. A world is not a place with hills, trees and stones,
but a condition of the Jivatman, all the rest being only circumstances and
details of a dream. The Sruti speaks of the Spirit's taka in the next world,
अमुष्मिन लोके लोकः,34 where the word is used
in its essential meaning of the spirit's state or condition and again in its
figurative meaning of the world corresponding to its condition. The apparent
surroundings, the sum of sensible images and appearances into which the spirit
under the influence of Illusion materializes its mental state, makes the world
in which it lives. Martyalaka is not essentially this Earth we men live in, for
there may be other abodes of mortal beings, but the condition of mortality in
the gross body ; Swargaloka is the condition of bliss in the subtle body ;
Naraka, Hell, the condition of misery in the subtle body; Brahmaloka the
condition of abiding with God in the causal body. Just as the Jivatman like a
dreamer sees the Earth and all it contains when it is in the condition of
mortality and regards itself as in a particular region with hills, trees,
rivers, plains, so when it is in a condition of complete tamas in the subtle
body, it believes itself to be in a place surrounded by thick darkness, a place
of misery unspeakable. This world of darkness is imaged as under the earth on
the side turned away from the sun; because earth is our mortal condition and
this world is a state lower than
34 Amusmin loke lokah: condition in that world.
our mortal condition; it is a world of thick darkness because the light created by the splendour of the Eternal in the consciousness of the Jivatman is entirely eclipsed with the extreme thickening of the veil of Maya which intercepts from us the full glory of His lustre. Hell, Patala, Earth, Paradise, the Lunar and Solar Worlds, Goloka, Brahmaloka, - these are all imagery and dreams, since they are all in the Jivatman itself and exist outside it only as pictures and figures: still while we are dreamers, let us speak in the language and think the thoughts of dream.
This then is the Asuric world. When a man dies in great pain or in great grief or in fierce agitation of mind and his last thoughts are full of fear, rage, pain or horror, then the Jivatman in the Sukshmasharira is unable to shake off these impressions from his mind for years, perhaps for centuries. So it is with the suicide; he sinks into this condition because of the feelings of disgust, impatience and pain or rage and fear which govern his last moments; for suicide is not the passionless and divine departure at his appointed time of the Yogin centred in samadhi, but a passionate and disgustful departure ; and where there is disturbance or bitterness of the soul in its departure, there can be no tranquillity and sweetness in the state to which it departs. This is the law of death; death is a moment of intense concentration when the departing spirit gathers up the impressions of its mortal life as a host gathers provender for its journey, and whatever impressions are dominant at the moment, govern its condition afterwards.
यं यं वापि स्मरन्भावं त्यजत्यन्ते कलेवरम् |
तं तमेवैति कौन्तेय सदा तद्भावभावितः ||35
"Or indeed whatever (collective) impressions of mind one remembering leaveth his
body at the last, to that state and no other it goeth, o son of Kunti, and is
continually under the impress of those impressions." Hence the importance, even
apart from Mukti, of living a clean and noble life and dying a calm and strong
death. For if the ideas and impressions then uppermost are such as to associate
the self with this gross body and the vital functions or the base, vile and
35 Yam yam vapi smaran bhavam tyajatyante kalevaram.
tam tam evaiti kaunteva sada tad bhavabhavitah. (Gita 8.6)
low desires of the mind, then the soul remains long in a tamasic condition of darkness and suffering which we call Patala or in its acute forms Hell. If the ideas and impressions uppermost are such as to associate the self with the higher desires of the mind, then the soul passes quickly to a rajasic condition of light and pleasure which we call Swarga, Behesta or Paradise and from which it will return to the state of mortality in the body. If the ideas and impressions uppermost are such as to associate the self with the higher understanding and bliss of the Self, the soul passes quickly to a condition of highest bliss which we call variously Kailasa. Vaikuntha, Goloka or Brahmaloka, from which it does not return in this aeon of the universe. But if we have learned to identify for ever the self with the Self, then before death we become the Eternal and after death we shall not be other. There are three states of Maya, tamasic illusion, rajasic illusion, sattwic illusion, and each in succession we must surmount before we reach utterly that which is no illusion but the one eternal truth and, leaving our body in the state of Samadhi, rise into the unrevealed and imperishable bliss of which the Lord has said, "That is my highest seat of all."
VII. RETROSPECT
The Isha Upanishad logically falls into four portions, the first of which is comprised in the three verses we have already explained. It lays down for us those first principles of Karmayoga which must govern the mental state and actions of the Karmamargin in his upward progress to his ideal. In the next five verses we shall find the Upanishad enunciating the final goal of the Karmamargin and the ideal state of his mind and emotional part when his Yoga is perfected and he becomes a Yogin in very truth, the Siddha or perfected man and no longer the Sadhaka or seeker after perfection.
While he is still a seeker, his mind must be governed by the idea of the Eternal as the mighty Lord and Ruler who pervades and encompasses the Universe. He must see him in all and around all, informing each object and encompassing it. On all that he sees, he must throw the halo of that presence; around all creatures and things, he must perceive the nimbus and the light.
His mind being thus governed by the idea of the divine omnipresence,
he must not and cannot covet or desire, for possessing the Lord, what is it that he does not possess? what is it he needs to covet or desire? He cannot wish to injure or deprive others of their wealth, for who are others? are they other than himself? The Karmamargin must strive to abandon desire and make selflessness the law of his life and action. Seeing God in others, he will naturally love them and seek to serve them. By abnegation of desire he will find the sublime satisfaction the divinity in him demands and by the abandonment of the world in spirit, he will enjoy the whole world as his kingdom with a deep untroubled delight instead of embracing a few limited possessions with a chequered and transient pleasure.
Whatever others may do, the Karmamargin must not remove himself from the held of action and give up work in the world; he is not called upon to abandon the objects of enjoyment, but to possess them with a heart purified of longing and passion. In this spirit he must do his work in this world and not flee from the struggle. Neither must he shrink from life as a bondage. He must realise that there is no bondage to him who is full of God, for God is free and not bound. He must therefore be ready to live out his life and work out his work calmly and without desire, seeking only through his life and actions to get nearer to Him who is the Lord of life and Master of all actions.
Least of all will he allow disgust of life and work so to master him as to make him seek release by shortening his days upon earth. For the suicide does not escape from phenomenal being in this world but passes into a far darker and more terrible prison of Maya than any that earthly existence can devise for the soul.
If his nature can expand to the greatness of this discipline, if his eyes can avail never to lose sight of God, if he can envisage the godhead in his fellowmen, if he can empty his soul of its lust and longing, if he can feel all the glory and joy and beauty of the world passion-lessly and disinterestedly as his own, if he can do his works in the world however humble or however mighty not for himself but for God in man and God in the world, if he can slay the sense of egoism in his works and feel them to be not his own but the Lord's, if he can put from him alike the coward's shrinking from death and the coward's longing for death, suffering neither the lust of long life nor impatience of its vanities and vexations, but live out his full term bravely, modestly,
selflessly and greatly, then indeed he becomes the Karmayogin who lives ever close to the Eternal and Almighty Presence, moving freely in the course of God, admitted hourly to His presence and growing always liker and liker in his spiritual image to the purity, majesty, might and beauty of the Lord. To love God in His world and approach God in himself is the discipline of the Karmayogin; to embrace all created things in his heart and divinely become God in his spirit, is his goal and ideal.