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THE ELEMENTARY ROOTS OF LANGUAGE
The elementary roots of language are in sound the vowel or semivowel roots, and in sense those which convey the fundamental idea of being, burdened with the cognate and immediately resultant ideas of the substance that pervades and the motion that bridges the space and time through which being expresses itself, in which it exists and relates its different points to each other. These ideas inherent in knowledge would in a primitive race work themselves out dimly, by a slow process, from the initial expression of immediate feelings, experiences, sensations and needs. But the speakers of the Aryan language were not, according to my theory, entirely primitive and undeveloped. They developed language from the essential force of the sounds they used with some sort of philosophical harmony and rational order. They to some extent arranged language in its development instead of merely allowing it to develop fortuitously its own arrangement. The elementary vowel roots which concern us, are the roots a (a), i (i), u (u) and r (r), the semivowel roots the V and Y families. The modified vowels e and o are in the Aryan languages secondary sounds conjunct of a and i, a and u. The diphthongs ai and au with their Greek variations ei and ou are tertiary modifications of e and o. Another conjunct vowel lr is a survival of a more ancient order of things in which l and r no less than v and y were considered as semivowels or rather as either vowel or consonant according to usage. R as a vowel has survived in the vowel r, l as a separate vowel has perished, but its semivowel value survives in the metrical peculiarity of the Latin tongue of which a faint trace survives in Sanskrit, by which l and r in a conjunct consonant may or may not, at will, effect the quantity of the preceding syllable. I shall consider first the vowel roots. They are four in number, a, i, u and r, and all four of them indicate primarily the idea of being, existence in some elementary aspect or modification suggested by the innate quality or guna of the sound denoting it. A in its short form indicates being in its simplicity without any farther idea of modification or quality, mere or initial being, creative of space; i an intense state of existence, being narrowed, forceful and insistent, tending to a goal, seeking to occupy space; u a wide, extended but not diffused state of existence, being medial and firmly occupant of space; r a vibrant state of existence, pulsing in space, being active about a point, within a limit. The lengthened forms of these vowels add only a greater intensity to the meaning of the original forms, but the lengthening of the a modifies more profoundly. It brings in the sense of space already created and occupied by the diffusion of the simple state of being a diffused or pervasive state of existence. These significances are. I suggest, eternally native to these sounds and consciously or unconsciously determined the use of them in language by Aryan speakers. To follow these developments and modifications it is necessary to take these roots one by one in themselves and in their derivatives. From the persistent evidence of the Sanskrit language it is clear that to the initial idea of existence the Aryans attached, as fundamental circumstances of being, the farther ideas of motion, contact, sound, form and action and there are few root-families in which there are not the six substantial ideas which form the starting-point of all farther development of use and significance. Neither the root a itself nor its lengthened form a occurs as an actual verb in any of the acknowledged Aryan languages, but in the Tamil we find the root a (akiradu as it is described in the Tamil system) in the sense to be and a number of derivative significations. The verbals formed from this verb, aka and ana. are utilised in the language to give a vague adjectival sense to the words to which they are attached or to modify a previous adjectival signification. Incomplete
GOD
Om ityetad aksaram idam sarvam; OM is the syllable, OM is the Universe; all that was, all that is, all that will be is OM. With this pregnant confession of faith Hinduism begins its interpretation of the Universe. Metaphysical systems arise and metaphysical systems fall; Hegel disappears and Kant arrives; Pantheism, Theism. Atheism pursue their interminable round, and there is no finality. Then Science comes and declares the whole vanity, for all is physical and there is nothing metaphysical save in the brain of the dreamer; and yet tho' Science has spoken, still there is no finality. For the soul of man refuses to be dissolved into a force or a procession of sensations or a composite effect created by the action of outward things on the neurons of the brain. It persists in saying "I am"; it persists in demanding an explanation of its existence, and will not be satisfied without an answer. But where is that answer to come from or how is it possible to arrive at any conclusion? The rock on which all metaphysics come to shipwreck is the same unsurpassable barrier before which Science itself becomes a baffled and impotent thing; it is that behind everything, beyond everything, when all knowledge has been acquired, when matter has been pursued into its subtlest unanalysable element, there is always an Inexplicable Something which remains. Metaphysics seeks to tell us What the Universe is and Why it is; in other words to explain the Inexplicable; but the end of this process is inevitably a juggling with words which must repel all clear-minded thinkers. At the end of all metaphysical systems we find an enthroned word which apparelled in the purple of finality professes to explain the Universe, and yet when we look into it, we find that it stands itself in need of explanation, that it is merely a Word which stands for the Inexplicable. Science avoids the difficulty by professing that the ultimate results of its analysis are a sufficient description of the Universe, a sufficient answer to the What, and as to the Why it rests in the great fact of Evolution. Again we find that we have landed ourselves in unexplained words beyond which lies the same region of darkness involved in yet deeper darkness; the tamo tamasa gudham of the Scriptures; Evolution, Force, Kinesis, these are words in which we gather up our observation of certain phenomena; they are the sum of the workings of a nameless, unintelligible Thing, but what that Thing is and why It is, remains an unsolved mystery. Whether it is that the human mind is intrinsically unable to pierce beyond the veil or whether it has the power latent or potential but as yet unevolved, we may at least safely assert that so far man has not been able to understand Finality; he is constitutionally incapable of imagining a Final Cause which his reason when faithfully interrogated will not refuse to accept as Final, will not be forced by its own nature to subject to the query How and Why. There are only two ways of meeting the difficulty; one is to assert that the reason of man as at present constituted is imperfect and by reason of its imperfection unable to grasp Finality which for all that exists; the other is to assert that the reason of man is right and that Finality is inconceivable because it does not exist. The latter is the answer which Hinduism has selected; the human mind cannot arrive at anything final because there is nothing final, for all the universe is OM and OM is Infinite, without beginning and without end either in Time or in Space. It has indeed been advanced that the human mind can realise only the Finite and not the Infinite, a sorry paradox, for it is truer to say that the only fact which the human mind can realise is Infinity; the Finite it grasps only as a phenomenon, the very conception of which depends on the wider conception of the Infinite. A finite thing, such as a house, we conceive as a limited phenomenon in relation to that which is not the house; limit is only imaginable in relation to something beyond the limit; a final limit to everything is unimaginable whether in Time or Space. Outside the house is the province and outside the limits of the province is the country and outside the limits of the country is the earth and outside the limits of the earth is the Universe and to the Universe we can only imagine limits if we imagine it as surrounded by other Universes, and so the mind of man goes travelling forward and ever forward without reaching an end. Having realised that there is no end the Mind refuses to proceed farther and returns on its traces into the world of phenomena. It is this refusal, this return which is meant when it is stated that the human mind cannot conceive Infinity. And yet what does the statement amount to? Simply to this that there is no end to the Infinite, in other words that the Infinite is infinite, that the boundless has no bound. The human mind works within limits, that is to say, within the Absolute apparently conditioned by phenomena because it is itself the Absolute apparently conditioned by phenomena. This fundamental idea of the Vedanta I shall have occasion to return upon in its proper place; here I follow out the argument so far in order to establish that the working of the human mind within limits does not militate against the undoubted experience that if rigidly interrogated it realises phenomena only as phenomena and the only fact to which it can give assent is the fact of infinity. If therefore we take reason or mental Experience as the final authority, the Hindu proposition demonstrates itself The alternative proposition, like the Roman Curia, calls upon us to put reason out of Court and makes discussion of the question impossible. Although one cannot dogmatically declare it to be untrue, it is certainly contrary to all scientific probability; Hinduism does not deny, but rather asserts that the powers of the human mind can and will enlarge indefinitely, but it believes that this will be by the process of development, not by a radical alteration of its essential nature. To assert that man must believe in finality although he is constitutionally unable to grasp any finality, is to leave the terra firma on which all thought moves and reposes, the collective mental experience of the race affecting and affected by the mental experience of each individual and to launch into the void of dogmatic and irrational belief. Credo quia incredibile est, I believe because it is incomprehensible. We come back therefore to the Hindu confession of faith. OM is the syllable, OM is the Universe; the past, the present and the future, all that was, all that is, all that will be is OM. Likewise all that may exist beyond the bounds of Time, that too is OM. Mark the determination to drive the idea of Infinity to its logical conclusion. All that may exist beyond the bounds of Time, that too is OM. Man can conceive nothing that is neither in the past, present nor future, but if there be such inconceivable thing, it does not by becoming beyond Time place itself beyond OM. That too is OM. In a similar spirit another verse of the Upanishad declares of God. "He moves and He moveth not, He is near and He is far, He is within the Universe and He is outside the Universe." The Universe is all that exists, all that Man can know or conceive and there can be nothing outside it because it has no limits; but if there does exist such inconceivable thing as is beyond illimitable Space, it does not by becoming beyond Space, put itself beyond OM. He is within the Universe and He is outside the Universe. All Hindu Scripture is precise upon this point, our God is not a gigantic polypus, not a term for infinite and Eternal Matter, not a stream of Tendency that makes for righteousness, or for the survival of the fittest, or for the goal of Evolution, whatever that may be. He is the Infinite and the Absolute, and what seems to be finite and conditioned, seems and is not; is phenomenon and not fact. God is the only fact. God is the only reality; God is the One than whom there is no other. He alone exists, all else appears. But of these things later. At present the conclusion which I wish to present is this that there is an Infinite who is the one fact; there is no Final Cause, because Final Cause implies an Effect different from itself and must therefore be finite, but the human mind cannot conceive of anything ultimate and finite; for there is no such thing; it cannot conceive of a beginning to all things because there was no beginning, or an end to all things because there is no end. There is only One Infinite who is without beginning and without End. But if He is Infinite, He must be Unknowable, for knowledge implies limit and division. The human mind as has been said, works within limits; in order to know, we must define and analyse; but definition and analysis imply limits, imply conditions. The Infinite is conceivable to us, but not being measurable, it is also not know-abic. This is the second great philosophical truth on which Hinduism insists. OM tat sat is its formula, OM, That is what Is. "That", the most non-committing expression discoverable in the language, is the one selected to express the idea of the Infinite One. "That is the one thing that is", but what That is and why That is, lies beyond the scope of our knowledge. Again and again the Scriptures asseverate our ultimate ignorance.1
1 The notes which follow were written by Sri Aurobindo at the top of' the last page of this manuscript: Infinite therefore Unknowable. Unknowable therefore Absolute. Prove the Existence of God. Known by Becoming The East and the West and the Upanishads
. . .The MIND of the European is an Iliad or an Odyssey, fighting rudely but heroically forward, or, full of a rich curiosity, wandering as an accurate and vigorous observer in landlocked seas of thought; the mind of the Asiatic is a Ramayan or a Mahabharat, a gleaming infinity of splendid and inspiring imaginations and idealisms or else an universe of wide moral aspiration and ever-varying and newly-grouped masses of thought. The mind of the Westerner is a Mediterranean full of small and fertile islands, studded with ports to which the owner, a private1 merchant, eagerly flees with his merchandise after a little dashing among the billows, and eagerly he embarks and kisses his dear mother earth; the mind of the Eastern man is an Ocean, and its voyager an adventurer and discoverer, a Columbus sailing for months over an illimitable Ocean out of reach of land, and his ports of visit are few and far between, nor does he carry in his bottoms much merchandise you can traffick in; yet he opens for the trader new horizons, new worlds with new markets. By his intuitions and divinations he helps to widen the circles the European is always obstinately tracing. The European is essentially scientific, artistic and commercial; the Asiatic is essentially a moralist, pietist and philosopher. Of course the distinction is not rigid or absolute; there is much that is Asiatic in numbers of Europeans, and in particular races, notably the South Germans, the Celt and the Slav; there is much that is European in numbers of Asiatics, and in particular nations, notably the Arabs and the Japanese. But the fundamental divergence in speculative habits is very noticeable, for in the things of the mind the South imposes its law on the whole Continent. We shall therefore expect to find, as we do find, that Vedantic Evolution and Monism are very different things from Evolution and Monism as European Science understands them. European thought seizes on Evolution as manifested in the outward facts of our little earth and follows it into its details with marvellous minuteness,
1 Doubtful reading. accuracy and care. The Vedanta slurs over this part of the scheme with a brief acknowledgement, but divines the whole course of Evolution in the Universe and lays down with confident insight its larger aspects in the inward facts of the soul. In its Monism also Vedanta is far more profound and searching than the European scientific observer, for while the latter is aware only of this gross material world and resolves everything into the monism of gross Matter, the Vedanta, which is perfectly aware that gross matter can all be resolved into a single principle, does not pause at this discovery; it has pursued its investigations into two other worlds which surround and interpenetrate ours like two concentric but larger circles, the psychic or dream world of subtle Matter and the spiritual or sleep world of causal Matter, each with its own monistic unity; these three parallel monisms it resolves into a Supreme, Absolute and Transcendent Unity which is alone real and eternal. To the Indian consciousness at least these are no mere speculations; they are conclusions based on the actual experiences and observations of investigators who had themselves entered into these inner and yet wider worlds. The good faith of their observations cannot seriously be doubted and their accuracy can only be impugned when Science itself consents to explore the same fields of being whether by the methods hitherto practised in the East or by any other adequate means of its own invention. We need not expect in the Upanishads a full statement of the facts on which its more grandiose statements of religious and philosophic truth are built, nor should we hope to find in them complete or reasoned treatises marshalling in a comprehensive and orderly manner the whole scheme of Vedantic philosophy. That is seldom the way in which the true Asiatic goes to work. He is a poet and a divine in the real sense of the word. His peculiar faculty is apparent in the very form of his philosophic books. The Aphorisms, that peculiarly Indian instrument of thought, by which our philosophers later on packed tons of speculation into an inch of space, give only the fundamental illuminations on which their philosophy depends. The Exegeses (Karikas) of Gaudapada and others are often a connected and logical array of concise and pregnant thoughts each carrying its burden of endless suggestion, each starting its own reverberating echo of wider and wider thought: but they are not comprehensive treatises. Nor can such a term be applied to the Commentaries (Bhashyas) of Shankara, Ramanuja and other powerful and original minds; they are, rather, forceful excursions into terse and strenuous logic, basing, strengthening, building up, adding a wing here and a story there to the cunning and multiform, yet harmonic structure of Indian thought. Nowhere will you find an exhaustive and systematic statement of a whole philosophy interpreting every part of the universe in the terms of a single line of thought. This habit of suggestiveness and reserve in thought leaves the old philosophies still as inspiring and full of intention and potential development as when the glowing divinations and massive spiritual experiences stored in the Upanishads were first annealed and hammered into philosophic form. It is the reason of the Vedanta's surprising vitality, of the extent to which it enters and the potency with which it governs Indian life, in a way that no European philosophy except recently the Evolutionary has entered into or governed the life of the West. The European metaphysician has something in him of the pedagogue, something indeed of the mechanic, at least of the geometrician; his philosophies are masterpieces of consistent logic, admirable constructions of a rigid symmetry. But their very perfection militates against the vitality of the truth they set forth; for Life is not built on the lines of consistent logic, Nature does not proceed on the principle of a rigid symmetry: even where she seems most formal she loves to assert herself in even the slightest, just perceptible, perhaps hardly perceptible deflection from a strict correspondence. Nothing indeed can live permanently which has not in itself the potentiality of an unending Evolution: nothing nothing finite at least is completely true which is not incomplete. The moment a poem or work of art becomes incapable of fresh interpretation, or a philosophy of fruitful expansion or a species of change and variety, it ceases from that moment to be essential to existence and is therefore doomed, sooner or later, to extinction. The logical intellect may rebel against this law and insist passionately on finality in truth,1 but it rebels
1 Observe for instance the phenomenon of Theosophy. The Western intellect seizes upon the profound researches of the East into the things behind the veil, the things of the soul and spirit, researches admirably firm in the outline of their results but incomplete in detail and lo and behold! everything is arranged, classified, manualized. vulgarized, all gaps filled in. finality insisted on and the infinite future with its infinite possibilities and uncertainties audaciously barred out of its heritage. vainly: for this is the law of all life and all truth. This is the secret of the Upanishads and their undying fruitful-ness. They are, to begin with, inspired poems, not less so when they are couched in prose form than when they are poured into solemn and far-sounding verse, grand and rhythmic intuitions where the speakers seem to be conveyors only of informing ideas cast out from a full and complete vision in the eternal guardian Mind of the race. The style in which they are couched is wonderfully grave, penetrating and mighty, suffused with strange light as if from another world, its rhythms unequalled for fathomless depth of sound and the rolling sea of solemn echoes they leave behind them. Here only in literature have philosophy and poetry at their highest met together and mingled their beings in the unison of a perfect love and understanding. For the Upanishads stand, as poetry, with the greatest productions of creative force and harmonic beauty. As philosophy, they have borne the weight of three millenniums of thought and may well suffice for an equal period of future speculation. But exhaustive and balanced exposition is not to be expected; you must piece together their glowing jewels of thought if you would arrive at the forced symmetry of a system; and perhaps to the end of the world different minds will construct from them a different mosaic. To the systematic intellect this inevitably detracts from their philosophic value, but to the Indian mind, flexible, illimitable, unwilling to recognize any finality in philosophy or religion, it enhances their claim to reverence as Scriptures for the whole world and for all time to come.
We have to realise the Self everywhere, but we have also to remember always in all our being, to feel always in every fibre of our existence, that this Self is Brahman and the Lord. In the realisation of Atman by itself there is this danger that as we human beings stand in the subjective mind, that represents itself to us as our true Self and we are first in danger of identifying our subjective consciousness which is only one movement of Chit with the sarva brahman. Even when we go beyond to the Sad Atman or Pure Existence, we, approaching it necessarily through our subjective being, tend to realise it as pure subjective existence and are in danger of not realising the real and ultimate Sat which is pure Existence itself beyond subjectivity and objectivity, but expressing itself here subjectively because of the Purusha and objectively because of the Prakriti, the mingled strain of our subjective-objective existence here being the result of the interaction and mutual enjoyment of His Male and His Female principle. Hence arise the misconceptions of the Idealists, Illusionists and Mayavadins. If we halt in subjective mind, we see the objective world as a mere dream or vision of our conscious subjective activity. That is the dogma of the Idealist, nor can anyone fathom the depths of our mental being without passing through this experience. If we halt in our pure subjective existence then not only the objective world, but the mind and its perceptions seem to be a dream, and the only truth is the subjective Nirguna Brahman aware only of his pure subjective existence. When this subjective Nirguna Brahman looks out from the truth of himself and watches the perceptions of the mind, the great dream of the objective, then It alone as the saksi seems to be real, but we get rid of the saksi too and [retire]1 into the perfect samadhi in which Brahman is aware only of Itself as self-existent, self-conscious pure Atman. This is the dogma of the Mayavadin and no one can fathom
1 Here and below words within square brackets are doubtful, some having been partly or wholly supplied where the manuscript is mutilated. all the depths of our subjective being who has not passed through this experience. Then comes the Buddhist, who turns upon this saksi, this subjective Atman and says, "Thou too art only a dream, for the same thing that tells me thou art, tells me the world is. I have no other evidence of the existence of Atman than I have of the existence of the world [...]1 as both are equally dreams." And without going farther, he says with the Madhyamikas, "The truth is the Asat, the Nihil, the universal [Negation"] or he says with the Buddha, "There is Nirvana of all this subjective [existence] What there is beyond, we need not ask" did he say, "we cannot know [. . .] only to know that it releases from all pain and grief and death, all return of egoism." This experience too, if one can have it and not be bound by it, is of great use, of a rich fruitfulness to the soul. He can hardly gaze out of the manifest towards Parabrahman [who has] never stood face to face with the Asat and launched his soul into the fathomless and shoreless Negation. But we come back to the truth That which is beyond is Parabrahman and that which represents Him here as the basis of our existence is the absolute existence, neither subjective nor objective, turned both towards the world and away from it, capable of manifesting everything, capable of manifesting nothing, capable of universality, capable of nullity, capable of putting forth all,2 which is expressed in the formula OM Tat Sat. But this is no other than the Brahman. Is it enough then to realise the Atman as the Brahman? Yes, if we realise that the absolute Brahman, who is rather beyond both Guna and absence of Guna than Nirguna, is also that which expresses itself as Guna, extends itself in space and informs its own extension. We must say with the Mandukya, sarvam hyetad brahma, ayam atma brahma, so'yam atma catuspat. All this world is Brahman, this Self is Brahman, and this Self which is Brahman is fourfold. Fourfold, not only the Transcendent Turiya, but also He who sees Himself the gross and sees Himself the subtle and sees His own single and blissful being in the states to which we have only access now in the deep trance of susupti. Nor is this enough. For the realisation goes still
1 Here and below ellipsis points within square brackets indicate that one or more words are obliterated or broken off from the manuscript or illegible. 2 The continuation of this clause is unreadable. too much towards abstraction, towards remoteness. It is necessary to remember that this great Self-Aware Being is the Lord, that He has created and entered into His own movement, with a mighty purpose and for the enjoyment of His own phenomenal being in the worlds. Otherwise we shall not be so much both spectators and masters of our worlds, but its spectators only and a mere spectator tarries not long at a spectacle, he is soon sated of his inactive joy and withdraws. The movement of withdrawal is necessary for a certain number of souls, it is, so effected, a great, blissful and supremely satisfied movement, but it is not the purpose for which God is in us here. We must realise our true Self as Brahman-Ishwara. We must be one with the ekah tatha sarvabhutantaratma rupam rupam pratirupo bahisca, the one Self within all existences who shapes Himself to form and form and is outside all of them, and understand the intention of the Aitereya in its great opening, atma va idam eka evagra asit sa iksata sa iman lokan asrjata. In the beginning this was all the Atman, He alone. He looked and put forth these worlds. Finally, it is not even enough for the sage's purpose that we should realise the Brahman except as the Atman and Ishwara. For if we do not realise Brahman as the Self and our Self we shall be in danger of losing the subjective aspect of existence and laying too much stress on That as the substratum of our objective existence in which I stand merely as a single unimportant movement. The result is a tamasic, an inert calm, a tendency to merge in the jada prakrti, the apparent unintelligently active aspect of things which the Europeans call Nature or at the highest a resolution of ourselves into that substratum of the objective in the Impersonal Brahman The denial of the Transcendent Personality, the Paratpara Purusha. is a strong tendency of the present-day Adwaita. "God", say these modern Adwaitins. "is a myth, or at most a dream like ourselves. Just as there is no I, so there is no God." Under this figure of thought, there lies a philosophical blunder. Personality is not necessarily individual Personality, neither is it a selection and arrangement of qualities, any more than existence is necessarily individual existence or a selection and arrangement of movements in our being. Personality can be and is Universal; this Universal Personality is God in relation to our individual experiences. Personality also can be and is Transcendent, self-existent, beyond individuality and Universality, this transcendent Personality, a blissful unlimited self-conscious Awareness in self-existence is the Paratpara Purusha aditya-varnam tamasah parastat drawing us like a star beyond the darkness of ignorance and the darkness of the Asat. This is He God universal, but also God transcendent the Lilamaya Krishna who transcends His lila. Therefore the Upanishads everywhere insist not upon mere Existence, like the later Adwaitin, but on the Sole Existent; and they speak continually of the Brahman as the creator, Master, enjoyer of the worlds, by meditating on whom we shall attain to perfect liberation. Neither Buddha nor Jada Bharata are the true guides and fulfillers of our destiny; it is Yajnavalkya, it is Janaka and, most of all, it is Krishna son of Devaki who takes us most surely and entirely into the presence and into the being of the Eternal. Atman, Brahman, Ishwara, on this triune aspect here of the Transcendent depend all our spiritual realisations and as we take one or the other and in its realisation stop a little this side or proceed a little to that side, our realisations, our experiences and our creeds and systems will vary from each other; and we shall be Buddhists or Adwaitins or Mayavadins or Dualists, followers of Ramanuja or Madhwa, followers of Christ, of Mahomed, of whosoever will give us such light on the Eternal as we are ready to receive. The Rishi of the Isha wishes us to realise all three, but for the sake of divine life in the world to dwell upon Ishwara, but on Ishwara neither extracosmic nor different from His creatures but rather in and about all beings as their indwelling Self, their containing Brahman and that material Brahman also or Prakriti which is the formal continent of the indwelling Self and the formal content of the containing Brahman. On this realisation there are many stages of progress, many necessary first steps and later approximations; but the Rishi, his work being to throw out brief fundamental and important suggestions only and not to fill in details, to indicate and illumine, not to educate or instruct, gives us for the present only two of the final realisations which are the most essential for his purpose. We shall find, however, that there is more beyond. We are first to realise this one divine Self (which is ourself also) in all existences and all existences in the Self. We have, therefore, in this realisation three terms, Self within, Self without, which are the same and invariable samam brahma, and all separate existences, each of which separate existence is fundamentally the same, but in generic or individual play and movement different from other genera and individuals. All existences not only animate but inanimate, for sarvabhutesu does not mean sarvapranisu not only the man, the animal, the insect, but in the tree, plant and flower and not only in the tree, plant and flower, which have a sort of life, but in the mountain, the metal, the diamond, the pebble which seem not to have life and not only in these bhutas, which if they have not an organised life, have at least an organised or a manifest form, but in those which have no organised form, or no form at all to the eye or to any sense. The wind and sea also are He and the gases which constitute the air which moves as wind and the water which flows as the sea. He is ether that contains all and He is that which contains the ether. Swami Vivekananda in a passage of his works, makes a striking or, as the French say better, a seizing distinction between the locomotive and the worm that it crushes, between the animate which has conscious life in it, however weak, and the inanimate which has only in it, however powerful, a blind and undeveloping power. But, however useful and true this distinction may be for certain practical purposes, certain vyavahara, it is not allowed us by the pure Adwaita of the Upanishads. God is not only in the worm that is crushed, but in the engine that crushes it the engine too and the power of the engine are Brahman and as much Brahman as the life and consciousness in the worm. He is samam brahma. We have a right to make certain practical distinctions for vyavahara, but none to make any essential difference. For the Vedanta is inexorable in its positiveness: as it will not spare us the most loathsome worm that crawls but insists that that too is Brahman, so also it will not spare us the most inert or sordid speck of Matter, but insists that that too is Brahman. If we stop short anywhere, we create bheda and lose our full spiritual heritage. The seer anupasyati he follows Prakriti in her movement from the greatest to the most infinitesimal, from the noblest to the meanest and everywhere finds only Brahman. God, the Self. Bhutesu bhutesu vicitya dhirah, says the Kena. We must have dhairyam, utter patience, utter understanding. To no weakness, no repugnance, no recoil even of the saint in us or the artist and poet in us. much less of our mere nervous and sensational parts or of the conventional mind with its fixed associations can we stop to listen, if we would attain. Love and hate, joy and grief must not interfere to warp our knowledge. All, all, all without exception is He. He breathes out sweetness upon us in the rose, He touches our cheeks with coolness in the Wind, He fills with His favouring breath the sails of the sailing-ship that carries our merchandise to its market, He tramples down into the Ocean Depths the latest marvel and monstrosity of scientific construction in which travel the great ones of the world or in which our beloved are coming to our arms. The wrong that is done to us, it is He that does it and to whom is it done? To Himself. The blow that is struck, is of His striking. Brahman is the striker, Brahman the instrument, Brahman the stricken. The insult that is cast on us, it is He that has flung it in our face. The disgrace, the defeat, the injustice are of His doing. That crime which we abhor, it is Brahman who has committed it, it is our Self's, our own doing though we do it in another body. For the least sin that is committed in the world, each one of us is as responsible as the sinner. Our self-righteousness is a Pharisaical error, our hatred of the sinner and our contempt and loathing convict us of ignorance, and limit, not increase our power to rectify or to help. The seer, the freed and illuminated soul hates none, condemns nothing, but loves all and helps all; he is sarvabhutahite ratah, his occupation and delight are to do good to all creatures. He is the Self, seeing the Self in all, loving the Self in all, enjoying the Self in all, helping the Self in all. That is the ethics and morality of the Vedanta. For what is the first result of this universal vision? Tato na vijugupsate. Jugupsa is not merely fear, but includes all kinds of shrinking, fear, disgust, contempt, loathing in the nerves, hatred in the heart, shrinking of dislike or reluctance from thing or person or action. Raga and dvesa being the motives of all our ordinary feeling and action, jugupsa expresses that movement of recoil in the system which proceeds from dvesa of any kind, the desire to protect ourselves against or ward off the unwelcome thing that presents itself to the mind, nerves or senses. We see therefore how wide a field the promise of the Upanishad covers. We shall not hate, fear, loathe, despise or shrink from anything whatsoever which the world can present us. It is evident, if this is possible, how all that constitutes real misery will fall from the soul and leave it pure and blissful. We shall not have any contempt, hatred or disgust for any person, nor shall we fear anyone, however powerful or inimical; for in all we shall see Narayana, we shall know the Lord, we shall recognise ourself. One equal regard will fall from us on the tiger and the lamb, the saint and the sinner, the tyrant who threatens us and the slave who is subject to our lightest caprice. Squalor, sin, disease will not conceal from us the God within nor wrath and cruelty from us God's love working by strange ways under grotesque and fearful masks. No sort of foulness or ugliness will repel us. An universal charity, a wide and tolerant love, a calm and blissful impulse of beneficence to all will be the ethical first-fruits of our realisation. We shall make no distinctions, we shall be no respecters of persons. We shall not despise the hut of the peasant nor bow down in the courts of the princes, neither shall we have wrath or scorn against the palace and partiality for the cottage. All these things will be equal to us. The touch of the outcaste will be the same to us as the sprinkling of holy water by the Brahmin for how shall God pollute God? Every human or living body will be to us a temple and dwelling place of the most High. None shall be to us vile or contemptible. And yet none shall be too sacred for us, too dear or too inviolable: for it is the house of our Friend and Playmate; nay, it is our own House, for the Lover is not different from the Beloved, and it is a house, jagat, not sthanu, a thing that can be changed and has to be changed, for which therefore we shall have deep love, but no fettering attachment. The sword of our enemy will have no terror for us. For enmity is a play of the Lord and death and life make up one of His games of hide and seek. How shall God slay God? Even as our vision deepens, the touch of the sword shall be to us as much the kiss of His Love as the touch from the lips of a lover one sharp, poignant and fierce, the other soft and wooing, but the manner is the only difference. For we shall have torn aside the grotesque and unreal mask of hatred and seen in the apparent fulfilment of enmity and evil, the real fulfilment of love and good. By the divination of the heart and the vision of the higher knowledge we shall have found out the way of the Lord in His movement. And because we shall have found out His way and seen every- where Himself, things also will cause no kind of shrinking in us. We shall exceed the limitations of the senses and the ordinary aesthetic faculties, we shall have gone beyond the poet and the artist. We shall know why the sages have called Him sarvasundara, the All-Beautiful. For things beautiful will have a more wonderful, intense, ecstatic beauty to us, but things foul, ill-shapen and ugly will also be to us beautiful with a larger, more marvellous, more universal beauty than the artistic. We shall exceed the limitations of the mind and heart and conscience; we shall have gone beyond the saint and the moralist. For we shall no more be repelled by the sin of the sinner than by the dirt on our child who has fallen or wallowed in the mud of the roadside. We shall know why the Lord has put on the mask of the sinner and the perfect purpose that is served by sin and crime in the world's economy, and while knowing that it has to be put aside or transformed into good, we shall not be revolted by it, but rather view it with perfect calm and charity. This realisation does not, although it lifts us beyond the ordinary conceptions of morality and conventional ethics, incapacitate us for normal action, as it might seem to the thought which holds all action impossible except that which proceeds from desire and liking and disliking. Whatever morality the Vedantist practises will be based on a higher and truer ground than the ethics of the ordinary man in love, sympathy and oneness. For an ethics proceeding in its practical action on contempt, dislike or repulsion is an immoral or imperfectly moralised ethics which seeks to drive out poison by poison and it has always failed and will always fail to eradicate sin and evil, just as the ordinary methods of society have failed to eradicate or even diminish crime and vice, because its method and its spirit are ignorant and paradoxical. Only perfect knowledge and sympathy can give perfect help and these are impossible without oneness. At the same time it is true that the jivanmukta is not governed by ordinary moral considerations. He shrinks from no actions which the divine purpose demands or the divine impulse commands. He has no wish to kill, but he will not shrink from slaying when it is demanded, for he is bound neither by the rajasic ahahkara nor by the sattwic; sattwic obstacles to slaying are therefore taken from him and his knowledge delivers him both from the desire to take life, which is the evil of himsa, and from the emotional horror of taking life and the nervous fear of taking life, which are the rajasic and tamasic bases of outward ahimsa. So also with other actions. For this morality or dharma is of the soul and does not depend upon the action which is a mere outward symbol of the soul and has different values according to the times, the social ideas and environments, the religious creed or the actual circumstances. To men who are not free a conventional morality is an absolute necessity, for there must be a fixed standard to which they can appeal. It is as necessary for the ordinary practice of the world as a standard value of coin for the ordinary commerce of a country. The coin has not really an immutable value; the pound is not perhaps really worth 15 rupees, but fluctuates owing to circumstances: nevertheless to allow a fluctuating value is to bring a certain amount of confusion, incertainty and disorder into finance and commerce. Therefore the liberated man though he knows the truth will not contravene the fixed rules of society unless he is impelled by divine command or unless the divine purpose is moving towards a change in the fixed morality. Then, if it is the part given to him, he will act as fearlessly against social rules as under ordinary circumstances he will adhere firmly to the law of the environment in which he dwells. For his one care and purpose will be to observe the divine purpose and carry out the divine will. Neither will events bring to him grief or disappointment, fear or disgust with things, because he follows that divine will and purpose in himself and in others, in the inner world and the outer, watching everywhere the play of the Self. He has divined God's movement. Disgrace and dishonour, obloquy and reproach cannot move him. He is equal in soul to honour and dishonour, respect and insult. mana and apamana. because both come from himself to himself and not from another. Success and failure are equal to him. since he knows that both are equally necessary for the fulfilment of the divine intention. He will no more quarrel with them than with the cold of winter or the breath of the storm-blast. They are part of the jagat, part of God's play, of the Self's action on the Self. He acquires a perfect titiksa or power to bear; he moves towards more than titiksa, towards an equal and perfect enjoyment. Such, then, are some of the practical fruits of the realisation of God as the Self in all existences and the Brahman containing all existences. It raises us towards a perfect calm, resignation, peace and joy; a perfect love, charity and beneficence; a perfect courage, boldness and effectiveness of action; a divine equality to all men and things and equanimity towards all events and actions. And not only perfect, but free. We are not bound by these things we acquire. Our calm does not stay us from even the most colossal activity, for the calm is within us, of the soul, and is not an activity in the jagat, in the movement. Our resignation is of the soul and does not mean acquiescence in defeat, but acceptance of it as a circumstance in the struggle towards a divine fulfilment; our peace and joy do not prevent us from understanding and sympathy with the trouble and grief of others; our love does not prevent an outward necessary sternness, our charity a just appreciation of men and motives ; nor does our beneficence hold back the sword when it is necessary that it should strike for sometimes to strike is the highest beneficence, as those only can thoroughly realise who know that God is Rudra as well as Shiva, Chamunda Kali with the necklace of skulls no less than Durga, the protectress, and Gauri. the wife and mother. Our courage does not bind itself by the ostentations of the fighter, but knows when flight and concealment are necessary, our boldness does not interfere with skill and prudence, nor our activity forbid us to rest and be passive. Finally our equality of soul leaves room to the other instruments to deal with each thing in the vyavahara according to its various dharma and utility, the law of its being and the law of its purpose. These are the perfect results of the perfect realisation. But in practice it is difficult for these perfect results to be attained or for this perfect realisation to be maintained, unless after we have attained to it, we go farther and exceed it. In practice we find that there is a flaw, somewhere, which causes us either not perfectly to attain or to slip back after we have attained. The reason is that we are still removed by one considerable step from perfect oneness. We have realised oneness of the self within and the self without, of the self in us and the self in all other existences. But we still regard the jagat, the movement, as not entirely the Self as movement and play of God, but not itself God, as action of the Lord, but not itself all the Lord expressed to Himself in His own divine awareness. Therefore when things come to us, when action or event affects us. we have to adopt an attitude towards it as something different from ourselves, something that comes, something that affects us. As the result of that attitude we have jugupsa. We have realised oneness, but by what kind of realisation? By seeing, anupasyati, by action of the seeing faculty in the buddhi or the feeling faculty in the heart for both these things are vision. Our realisation is a realisation of identity by attitude, not of absolute identity by nature, realisation through instruments of knowledge, not through our conscious being in itself. Subtle as the distinction may seem, it is not really so fine as it appears; it makes a wide difference, it is of first rate importance in its results. For so long as our divine state depends on our attitude, the least failure or deficiency in that attitude means a waning of the divine state or a defect in its fullness. So long as it rests on a continued act of knowledge in mind and heart, the least discontinuity or defect of that knowledge means a defect of or a falling from our divine fullness. Only if identity with all existences has become our whole nature and being of our being, is the divine state perfected, is it permanent and unbroken enjoyment assured. And so complete and exacting is the oneness of Brahman, so absolute is the law of this Adwaita that if even the name and form and the play and the movement are regarded as Brahman's and not themselves as Brahman, an element of bheda, difference and dissonance, is preserved which tends to prevent this absolute identity of being and preserve the necessity of attitude and the identity only through the instruments of knowledge. Therefore in his next verse the Rishi gives us a higher and completer realisation which includes the missing elements and perfects the Adwaita. "He in whom Self and all existences have become one and perfectly he knoweth, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have pain who sees in all things oneness." If we read this verse loosely, we may err by taking it as a justification of that Adwaita which denies the sarvabhutani and affirms only the Atma. In that case we shall have not only to translate "All existences having become Self", but to suppose that "become" means "disappeared into", "blotted themselves out in", an extension of meaning which is justified by nothing either in the language or in the context. It is contradicted by the immediately following passage in which the Seer insists on the necessity of the simultaneous view of Vidya and Avidya, while the exclusion of the world and its existences can only be effected in the state of sleep or trance and would be broken every time the mind returned to the state of waking. No such broken and truncated realisation is intended. The Mayavada demands that every time we look out on the world and its creatures, we shall say, "This is not Brahman, it is a dream, a lie"; Adwaita of the Isha demands that looking out on the world and its creatures we shall say. "This is Brahman, it is God, it is myself." There is a wide difference between the two attitudes. The one rests a metaphysical and argumentative Adwaita on a tremendous essential Dwaita of satya and asatya, that which is true and that which is false; the other rests a practical Adwaita on an apparent Dwaita, all being Satyam, eternal Truth, but Truth seen and recurrent presenting itself to Truth seeing and persistent the sthanu and the jagat, an apparent difference of appearance to knowledge, not an actual difference and unreality of essential reality. Apart from this divergence, the language of the sloka is such as not to admit of the negation sought by the Mayavadin, but to contradict it. I have not translated the verse literally yet, but now I give the literal translation: "In whom the Self verily (of him) knowing by vijnana has become all creatures, there what delusion, what grief, of him seeing wherever he looks (anu) oneness." It is evident that the Mayavadin's position vanishes. The words are sarvani bhutani atmaivabhut not sarvabhutani at-niaivdbhuvan a singular verb demanding a singular subject. Therefore it is the Self that becomes, not the bhutas; and we cannot say that this is the attitude of a man still ignorant, ajna, for it is the Self of one who knows entirely, has that knowledge which in the Upanishads is called vijnana and who has attained to the vision of oneness. In him his Self has become all creature. Let us understand thoroughly the sense of this important sloka. Yasmin, in whom. The soul has become one with all existences, all existence it feels to be itself containing the creation and exceeding it, therefore yasmin, not yasya. In him his Self, that which he feels to be his true I has become all creatures. Not only does he feel himself or perceive himself to be in all creatures as the divine presence in them and around them, but he is they, he is each bhuta. The word bhuta means that which has become as opposed to thai which eternally is and it includes therefore name and form and play of mind and play of action. The last barrier is broken; ahankara, the sense of separate self, utterly disappears and the soul is all that it sees or is in any way aware of. It is not only the seer in all, but it is the seen; not only the Lord, but his habitation, not only is but jagat. In fact, just as the Lord himself, as Brahman itself becomes all things and all creatures in itself, just as all creatures are only Brahman's becomings, bhutani, just as Brahman is the ejat and the anejat, the moving and the unmoving, God and his world, so is it now with the soul that sees. Of it too it can be said, tad ejati tannaijati. It moves and it moves not. it is the near and the far, it is within all things and outside all things. The man thus liberated undergoes a tremendous change of consciousness; he ceases to feel himself as within his body and feels rather his body as within himself and not only his but all bodies; he feels himself at the same time in his body and in all bodies, not separately like a piece of water in a jar, but as an unity like one ether undivided in many vessels, and at the same time he feels that they are not in him nor he in them, but that this idea of within and without is merely a way of looking, a way of expressing to the mind a truth in itself beyond expression by space and timejust as we say, "I have this in my mind." when we do not really intend to express any location in space but mean rather. "This is my mental knowledge as it just now expresses itself." Pasya me yogamaisvaram. For he now feels that these things in which and outside which he seems to be. are himself, his becomings in the motion of awareness, jagat, bhutani. This is the first important difference between the preceding realisation of knowledge and this fuller realisation of being. His self has become all existences; they and he are all merely becomings of himself. But if this realisation is only by the heart through love or only by the purified reason through intellectual perception, then it is not the realisation which this sloka contemplates. For so long as we have not become that which we are realising, realisation is not complete and its moral effects cannot be securely held. For what use is it if we merely understand that all are one when if there is a touch from outside it, the body cries, "Something has struck me, I am hurt" or the heart says, "Someone has injured me, I am in grief" or the vital spirits cry, "Someone means ill to me, I am in fear"? And if the heart realises, but the reason and other instruments fail. how shall we not, feeling one with the grief of others, fail to be crushed by them and overborne? The lower organs must also consent to the absolute sense of oneness or no sure and perfect result can be gained. How is this to be done? By the force of the vijnana, our ideal self. Therefore the Upanishad adds vijanatah, when he knows, not by ordinary knowledge, jnanam, or by intellectual knowledge, prajnanam, but by the ideal knowledge, vijanatah. What is this vijnana? Vedantic commentators have identified it with buddhi: it is, they think, the discriminating intellect or the pure reason. But in the psychological system of the Veda intellectual vicara, reason, even pure reason, is not the highest, nor does it lead to the highest results. The real buddhi is not in mind at all, but above mind. For beyond and behind this intellect, heart, nervous system, body, there is, says the Veda, a level, a sea of being out of which all these descend and here take form, a plane of consciousness in which the soul dwells by the power of perfect Truth, in a condition of pure existence of knowledge, satyam, pure arrangement of its nature in that knowledge, rtam or vratam, pure satisfying wideness in being of that knowledge-nature, brhat. This is the soul's kingdom of heaven, its ideal state, immortality, amrtatvam. All things here are, in the language of vijnana, vijrmbhitani; they live here in fragments of that wide and mighty truth, but because of bheda, because they are broken up and divide truth against truth, they cannot enjoy Truth of knowledge, Truth of Nature, Truth of being and bliss, but have to strive towards it with much failure, pain and relapse. But if man can rise in himself to that plane and pour down its knowledge upon the lower system, then the whole system becomes remoulded in the mould of the vijnana. Man can get himself a new heart, a new mind, a new life, navyam ayu, even a new body, punah krtam. This whole system will then consent and be compelled to live in the truth and that truth to which vijnana itself is the door, is Brahman as Sachchidananda. All things here will be Sachchid-ananda. This is the second superiority of this high realisation as this sloka describes it, that it is vijanatah. attained not by intellectual discernment or feeling of the heart or concentration of the mind, not depending therefore on any state such as susupti or on any attitude, but itself determining the attitude, and attained through direct ideal knowledge with the result of becoming all that is in our being. not merely in mind or thought or feeling, in our very nature. The practical consequence will be that body, mind and heart will no longer admit any bahyasparsa, but will utterly feel that nothing can come to them, nothing touch them but only Brahman. To every touch there will be but one response from heart and mind and nerve alike "This is Brahman." Nanyat pasyati, nanyacchrnoti. They will see nothing else, hear nothing else, smell nothing else, feel nothing else, taste nothing else, but only Brahman. Of such a state it can be truly and utterly stated, and not merely relatively, not subject to any qualification, ekatvam anupasyatah. That oneness is the oneness of Sachchidananda. one being, one knowledge, one bliss, being that is consciousness, knowledge that is identity, both of them in their essence and reality bliss, therefore not three separate qualities, but one existence, even though presented to the intellect as a trinity, yet always one. Whatever therefore is felt, seen, heard, thought, it will be bliss that is felt, bliss that is seen, bliss that is heard, bliss that is thought a bliss which is in its essence and inseparably existence and knowledge. For the intellect we have to use all three words, for on the level of our mental action these three are or seem to be divided and different from each other, but to the illumined being of the jivanmukta there is no difference, they are one. It is ekatvam. It is Brahman. The highest heights of this realisation are, indeed, not easily attained, but even on its lower levels, there is a perfect freedom and an ineffable joy. Svalpam apyasya dharmasya. To these levels, tatra. neither fear, nor grief, nor illusion can come. Tatra ko mohah, kah soka, ekatvam anupasyatah. How-shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief, to whose eyes wheresoever they turn all things are one? For grief is born of illusion, soka proceeds from moha, and the essence of moha is that bewilderment, that stultification of the conscious mind by which we forget oneness. By forgetting oneness, the idea of limitation is fixed in our being; by limitation comes the idea of [not being this], not having that, from this idea arises [the desire] to be this, to have that; by the disappointment of desire comes dislike of that which disappoints, hatred and anger against that which withholds, fear of that which gives contrary experience the whole brood of earthly ills. Moha shouts, "Here is one I love, she is dying"; "Here is one who will kill me, I am terrified"; "Here is a touch too strong for me to bear. it is pain." "This is virtue, that is sin; if I do not gain one I am lost, if I fall into the other I shall suffer by God's wrath and judgment." "This is fair, that is foul. This is sweet, that is bitter. This I have not which another has, I must have it, even if it be depriving him of his possession." But he who sees oneness sees only Sachchidananda, only bliss that is conscious being. Just as the [. . .] who has taught itself to see only matter everywhere, says even of mind and soul, even of itself, It is not mind, it is not soul, it is matter, just as it sees everywhere only the play of matter upon matter, in matter, by matter, so the liberated soul says of body and nerve and mind, It is not mind, it is not body, it is not nerve, it is Brahman, it is conscious existence that is bliss and so he sees everywhere this bliss only and the play of bliss upon bliss, in bliss, by bliss. Ananda is the term through which he reconciles himself with the world. Into delight his soul is delivered, by delight he supports in himself the great world-movement and dwells in it, in delight he is for ever one with, yet plays with God. The second movement of the Upanishad is finished. In his first movement the Rishi advanced four propositions, that the purpose of our existence is the fulfilment of God in the world, realising that the Lord and His movement alone exist, He is the only inhabitant. His movement the only cause of the forms in which He inhabits; secondly, that the golden rule of life is to enjoy all God's movement or God in all His movement, but only after the renunciation of demand and desire, for only so can it all be enjoyed; thirdly, that life and action in this world are intended, must be maintained and do not interfere with divine freedom and bliss; fourthly, that any self-marring movement leads only to confusion and darkness here and beyond and not to our divine realisation. In order to lay down on a firm basis his justification of these teachings, he shows us first that God and the world are one, both are Brahman and therefore the world also is our divine Self [compelled] by a certain divine power, movement of action and phenomenon in its [ ... ] Self and without [parting] with its [ . . . ] to the movement. On this basis he shows us that existence and bliss not only can be made one, but if we realise this one Brahman who is our divine Self, and God ([...] antarasya [sarvasya]), all existence must necessarily [become one and] cannot be anything else; grief and fear and dislike and delusion have no [farther place. . . . This is the] realisation we shall arrive at by realising God [ . . . ] we give up desire, renounce everything to Him and enjoy the world in Him and by Him, as His movement, as His enjoyment. For we shall then realise that all beings are one with ourself, the renunciation of desire will become possible and we shall not shrink from anything in life, because we shall know that it is God and His movement. Finally, the high and complete realisation will be ours in which the very cause of desire and demand will disappear and all will be utterly the Self, God. Brahman, Sachchidananda.
Chapter V
A question may arise. It is true then that enjoyment of all things here in oneness is possible; that renunciation of desire and self-surrender are the way and the realisation of the Lord in all forms and movements and self-surrender to him the method. involving also action according to His will, enjoyment according to His will. But when the final realisation is accomplished, when oneness is utterly attained, then what farther need of enjoyment and action? The goal is realised, let the method be abandoned. Why keep the distinction of God and the world, why act any more in the world when the purpose of action is accomplished? It may still be possible, it is not necessary; it is not even desirable. Lose yourself in Sachchidananda, if not the impersonal unconditioned Brahman. Is it not that in which the vision of oneness logically culminates? Therefore not only the golden rule of conduct has to be justified, but the teaching of a liberated activity has to be justified. It is this to which the Sage next proceeds. He is about to establish the foundations of action in the liberated soul, to show the purpose of the One and the Many, to reconcile vidya and avidya in God's supreme and blissful unity. The eighth verse is the introductory and fundamental verse of this movement. Incomplete |