HYMNS OF KUTSA ANGIRASA
Mandala I, Sukta 95
1. Day and Night have different forms, but are travellers to one perfect goal; they suckle alternately the divine Child. In our day he becomes the brilliant Sun and is master of the law of his nature; through our night he is visible by the purity of his brightness and the energy of his lustres.
2. Ten powers of the Thought, loving and sleepless goddesses, gave birth to this child of the Maker who is carried very variously and widely. They lead him abroad through the world in a flaming splendour, his keen power of light self-lustrous in all things born
3. There are three births of him that seek to come into being around us, one is in the ocean of the infinite, one is in the heavens, one is in the waters that descend from the heavens. In the supreme region of mind, the eastern direction of earthly beings, he declares the seasons of their sacrifice and ordains them in their succession.
4. Which of you has awakened to the knowledge of this secret thing, that it is the Child who gives birth to his own mothers by the right workings of the law of his nature? Born in the womb of many waters, he comes forth from their lap a vast1 Seer, possessed of the law of his being.
5. Very bright and pleasant he increases in them and is made manifest; in the lap of their crooked windings, he is straight, exalted and self-lustrous. Heaven and earth both had fear of their Maker in his birth; they are driven trembling towards the young lion and woo him to their love.
1 Or mighty
6. They woo him to their love like women and both are full of happiness. The thoughts of the Light come voiceful to him in all their movements like lowing cows and he becomes the master of all judgments and discernings whom men mount with their offerings on the right hand of the altar.
7. Like the creating Sun he lifts up his arms to heaven and terrible in his force adorning both his [ . . . ]2, he labours working into brightness both these fields of his outpouring; he drives upward the shining veil of thought from all that is; he plucks off their new robes from his mothers.
8. When he joins himself in his seat and home to the rays of the Truth and to its streams, when he makes for himself that higher flaming form of his, then as the seer and thinker he delivers into a bright clearness that divine foundation. In our forming of the godheads, it is he that is their union and coming together.
9. The speed of thee encompasses the wideness, the foundation, the far-shining abode of the vast Godhead. O Flame, lit into thy full height guard us with all thy universal self-illuminings, guards invincible.
10. He creates on our desert earth the stream, the moving billow, and by its shining waves of light he ascends to the heavens; he holds all old and lasting things in his bellies and moves in all new births.
11. So, O Flame, increase by the fuel that we heap for thee; and, O purifier, shine wide and opulently that we may possess inspired knowledge. That may the Lords of Harmony and Wideness increase in us, the Mother Infinite and the great ocean and earth and heaven.
2 Illegible word.
Mandala 1. Sukta 96
1. As of old by force he is born and in his very birth infallibly he lays his hands on all seer seeings and wisdoms; the Thought and the heavenly waters bring to perfection this friend of beings. The godheads held the Flame that gives the treasure.
2. By the supreme and original inmost knowledge of the being, the knowledge that does the works of the seer, he brought into being these children of men, the thinkers, and by his wide-shining eye of vision created heaven and its waters. The godheads held the Flame that gives the treasure.
3. Him desire and adore, for he is the first and chief who brings to perfect accomplishment your sacrifice, since he takes all offerings of the Aryan peoples and makes them to shine with light; he is the son of Energy, the bringer of boons, the flood of strength. The godheads held the Flame that gives the treasure.
4. He is Life that swells in the mother of things, the Life god who nurses in its bosom of many blessings, finds the path for the Son of men and discovers the country of Light; protector of the peoples, father of earth and heaven. The godheads held the Flame that gives the treasure.
5. Night and Dawn are working to shape that highest hue of things, different, they suckle one child, they are united equals; between our earth and our heavens are born the widenesses of his golden light. The godheads held the Flame that gives the treasure.
6. He is the foundation of the opulence of the beatitude, the bringer together of its treasures; he is the conscious eye of our sacrifice who accomplishes and perfects the thought in the word of man. The godheads, guarding immortality, held the Flame that gives the treasure.
7. Now and of old he is the seat of all felicities, continent of all that is born and all that is coming into birth, guardian of that which is and the much that becomes, — the godheads held the Flame that gives the treasure.
8. May this giver of treasure extend to us treasure which hastens to its home, and the treasure which is lasting and eternal; he is the giver of treasure and he still gives to us heroic energy of impulsion and lavishes on us long existence.
9. So, O Flame, increase by the fuel that we heap for thee; and, O purifier, shine wide and opulently that we may possess inspired knowledge. That may the Lords of Harmony and Wideness increase in us, the Mother Infinite and the great ocean and earth and heaven.
The First Hymn of the Rig-veda
Mandala 1. Sukta 1
( 1 )
1. Agni I adore, the representative priest of the sacrificial act. the god who is the Adept of the sacrifice, the offerer of the action who disposeth utterly delight.
2. Agni adorable to the seers of old, is adorable always to the new, he beareth here the gods.
3. By Agni one getteth energy and increase also day by day and effective strength of highest forcefulness.
4. O Agni. whatso material action of sacrifice thou encompassest on every side, that verily moveth in the gods.
5. Agni, the offering priest whose might is knowledge, the true, the exceeding rich in inspiration, cometh a god with the gods.
6. That thou, O friend, O Agni, wilt surely effect the weal of the giver, that is the nature and truth of thee, O lord of love.
7. To thee, O Agni, day by day, O dweller in the twilight, we with the discerning mind bring our submission when thy strength is at its height,
8. To thee the ruler of all here below, guardian of Immortality, a high splendour increasing in its home.
9. Therefore do thou be easy of approach to us as a father to his son; be thou strong for our felicity.
(2)
1. Agni I adore, the priest who stands forward for the sacrifice,
the god who acts in the truth of things,1 the giver of the oblation who disposes utterly delight.
2. Agni adored by the ancient seers is adorable still to the new, for he brings here the gods.
3. By Agni one gets day by day energy2 and increase3 victorious and full of force.4
4. O Agni, whatsoever material sacrifice5 thou encompassest with thy being on every side, that goes to the gods.
5. Agni, he that offers the oblation, whose strength is in wisdom,6 the true, the rich in various inspiration,7 comes a god with the gods.
6. That thou, O Agni, wilt surely bring about good for the giver, that is the truth of thee, O lord of love.
7. To thee, O Agni, day by day, in darkness and in light we come in our minds bearing our submission, —
8. To thee, who rulest over all below, guardian of immortality,8 a brilliance increasing in its home.
9. Therefore do thou be easy of approach to us as a father to his child, cleave9 to us for our weal.
1 ऋत्विजम्, ऋतु = Iaw, truth, fixed arrangement, season
2 रयिः motion: so energy, matter, wealth. Cf. Prashna Upanishad
3 पोष. more probably noun than adjective
4 वीर in the Veda means 1. a hero, 2. force, strength. 3. manifest, vigorous, in full force, vi. to open
5 यज्ञमध्वरम्. a passage conclusive showing that adhvara does not mean sacrifice expect by transition from an earlier meaning.
6 कवि one of the passeges which show that कवि, like ऋषि, सूर etc is used of knowledge as well as of the knower. Another possible meaning would be "who is the strength of the seer or the strength of Wisdom.
7 चित्रश्रवस्तमः, श्रवः inspired knowledge, the result of the vijnanamava process of sruti, coming with कवि and सत्य it cannot mean fame.
8 गोपामृतस्य cf राजानो अमृतस्य in a hymn of Kaleshwari Dairghatamasa
9 सचस्य, सच् means 1. to cling. 2. to be strong
(3)
1 Agni I adore, who stands before Yajna, the god that seeth right, the offerer of the oblation, chief disposer of delight
2. Agni. adorable to the former sages, adorable to those of today, he brings here10 in strength the gods.
3. By Agni one getteth delight (or force) and increase too day by day. and widest11 victory (or most manifest or most forceful).
4. O Agni. the Yajna here below whom thou encompassest on every side is that that moveth in the gods (or goeth to the gods).
5. Agni, the Hota, the strong in wisdom, the true, the varied in inspired knowledge, comes a god with the gods.
6. That thou, O beloved, doest good to the giver, O Agni, this is the truth in thee, O lord of love.
7. To thee, O Agni, day by day because thou protectest12 in the dimness, we with the understanding (come) bearing salutation. and thou growest to thy strength.
8. Ruling over things below, O protector of immortality, a splendour increasing in its home.
9. Therefore do thou, O Agni, be accessible to us as a father to his child, cleave to us for our bliss.
10 Or, bears up
11 Or, puissant
12 Sri Aurobindo has questioned this Word.
AN ROOTS
Proceeding always from the basis that the seed sound A is especially significative of vaguely extended being with a point of beginning or station, but no fixed limit, we shall see how this root guna works out in the word-clans and families which belong to this small but important tribe.
Let us take for starting-point the dental and cerebral groups, which will give us, if complete, the five dental roots, at, ath, ad, adh. an and the five cerebral roots, at, ath, ad, adh, an. If we are right in the belief that there is no fundamental difference of quality between dental and cerebral groups, except that the cerebral sound perhaps emphasises and as it were coarsens the sense of the dental, this will appear by our analysis and we can treat the corresponding members of each group as one root, for all practical purposes.
In this duplicated group, let us start with the nasal sound as the lightest and least likely to modfy seriously the original intent of the base vocable A. What does the sound W add to the sense of being contained in the A? N, we shall find, is the especially characteristic sound for substance, but substance in its more subtle rather than its denser forms. AN then will signify, first, substantial being or subtle substance and it will always be capable of the idea of extended existence or expanded substance. If applied to motion it will particularise expansive movement or vaguely continuous movement, possibly, of subtle substance; or, if to force, a large extensive force; or, if to sound, a thick but not sharp far-extending sound; if to contact, extended contact without any strong pressure; to light, heavy substance of light.
We find, actually, AN and its descendants arranged in the group-significances that follow:
1. Being
( 1 ) Vague and general
अन् to live
The words formed from the root in this sense are
अन् soul, being
अननम् verbal noun of अन् in all its senses
अनस् 1. birth 2. living being 3. parent
अना thus, indeed
अनुः 1. a man 2. a proper name
अनो not
अनल 1 . soul 2. the supreme spirit 3. a Vasu
अनिल Vishnu (cf. Isha Upanishad. अनिलममृतम्. divine Life)
अन्य another
आनूकम् in abundance (Vedic)
(2) with idea of substance, mass or extension
अन्नम् food or matter ... ; rice, corn ... ; earth . .. (water)
अनस् rice, boiled food
अनीक 1. group, mass 2. form 3. front, head . . . ; face . . . 4. row, line, column . . .
आनन face, mouth (perhaps 3)1 masses [of] force or use of strength
अनीक battle, army
(3) with idea of expansion tending to motion
अन् to breathe
अनः breath (प्राणः, उदानः. . .)
आनः (mouth) breath, nose
अनिल wind
अनल wind
(4) with the idea of subtleness, predominating slight substance
अनक mean, base
अनोक edge, point
II. Motion
अन् to move, go about
अनस् cart
अन्नम् water
III. Light
अनल fire
अन्नःSun
अनीकम् splendour
IV. Contact
अनु alongside, behind, after, with, near, at, towards, according to
1 I.e. perhaps to he plated In group (3) "with idea of expansion tending to motion" below.
cf. अनुक sloping
अनूच्यम् side-plank
अन्वीप् attainable, friendly
अन्वक्, अन्वन्च्
V. Sound
आनक kettledrum, thunderbolt
If we examine the root AN we find that it starts from the same beginnings. It means to live, to breathe. It has lost the sense of motion possessed by अन् but in revenge it keeps a sense, to sound, which अन् preserves only in its derivative आनक, a kettledrum or thunderbolt. On the other hand the cerebral root has this peculiarity that in all its derivatives it abounds [avoids?] the vaguer or heavier ideas of being and substance and concentrates on the idea of subtlety or paucity which is inherent in the idea of substance as represented by the N sound, but not its chief characteristic. This subordinate idea which is merely a secondary shade in the N guna ; serving to distinguish it from its brother dentals. is here brought out and constitutes the chief connotation of the अण् group.
We note in this relation of the two roots AN and AN certain characteristic features which we shall find to be common features of the process by which language has evolved.
1. The two sounds are originally one, beyond possibility of mistake, and possessed a single stock of basic significances, to live, to breathe, to sound, to move.
2. Differentiated, they both keep the most vital of the significances as a sign of their common origin.
3. The others they share between them, each keeping one or more of the original ideas as a root, but losing it in the derivatives, keeping others in the derivatives and losing them in the root
4. The rarer and less prolific root concentrates in its derivatives on a single shade of meaning, or one or two. and leaves to the family of its richer twin the greater portion of the original property
5. The derivatives always preserve a great number of significances which the parent root has not cared to carry about with it.
Next let us scrutinise a little more closely the family of the root AN and see if it can help us to understand in some of its details this ancient process of language.
We see first that the root meaning of A has a tendency to minimise the shade of sense which has been added to it by the addition of the letter, but does not cast it off wholly, अनुः means man . just as आयुः and अयुः means man, the primal idea being that of an existing creature. We get back to this root idea of existence in अन्, soul, being. अनल soul, spirit (cf. anala and anila as names of Vishnu); nevertheles, the trend of the significance is towards physical or substantial existence, अन्. to live. अनस्, birth, living being, the parent or producer of being.
We notice, next, the full sense of the complementary letter N emerging in the words that mean substance, mass, form or front and adding to itself the idea of extension or expansion contained in A in अनीकम्, row, line, column.
Connected with this characteristic significance is the idea of extended contact or proximity in अनु and its derivatives.
We see the idea of force coming in and joining itself to that of extension and mass in अनीकम्, an army, and moving into the idea of motion of force in अनीकम्, a battle.
The idea of motion emerges yet farther in the sense of breathing, but as we can see from other words meaning breath is not divorced from that of expansion. Motion of wind rather is conceived as an expansion in being.
The full idea of motion emerges in अन्. to move and अनस्. a cart. Unfortunately the words arc too few to decide whether motion here still keeps the shade-significance of vague extended motion or whether it has lost it by detrition of sense and gone back to the general sense of motion. If, however, अन् means essentially to go about. then the original shade has been kept and may be the original idea of अनस् the nomad's wain.
We note again that the idea of sound conveyed by अन् is precisely the heavy wide rolling sound of a war drum or of thunder and while the characteristic sense in the idea of light is not so clear, yet it is only fire and the sun which all admits into its family, pcrhaps because both arc preeminently light in a material and in a very tangible substance of fire or heat. Family of अन्नः. sun with अन्नम्. food, earth, is perhaps significant of this persistence of the idea of substantiality.
(अन्नम् is generally derived from अद् to eat, but cf. अनस्. food, rice; it is doubtful whether sandhi was observed originally in the formation of Aryan nouns.)
Finally, we ask ourselves whether we have here all the senses of अन् whether it has not like other roots sacrificed much of its store and given there by a more precise value to those significances which it has kept. We turn to the cognate Greek and Latin languages for a clue.
We find in Latin a brief list of vocables obviously derived from the same root AN.
anima, breath, wind, life, soul anus, the fundament
animus, mind, animal anas, a duck
annus, year anulus, a ring
anus, an old woman
In Greek: —
up. above,upon, over, beyond; apiece, severally; to and fro; during, throughout, among, with, in ... , according to
upwards, above, before
wind. breath, life, mind
perfection , completion, finish
accomplish, effect, complete, fulfil, discharge . . ., consume, expend . . . obtain . . .
Not only the identities, but the points of contact and contrast between the same family in these three different languages contain many points that are suggestive and instructive.
We see first that though the root is the same, nowhere do the form and sense entirely agree. The Greek has kept the form ana, which the Sanskrit has lost, lost the form anu, which Sanskrit has kept. Both are without the form ani, which must, logically, have existed (cf. apa, api and Greek
and
)
Greek has also the form
which corresponds to an Old Aryan ana, and suggests at once a long form anu
(Vedic ?) and anī. In sense
and
differ from anu only by preferring the significance "above" and "before" to that
of "after" and " behind" and by adding a few significances which the Sanskrit
has lost. But in both there is the same idea of extension and contiguity; the
Greek fixes on extension or contact from above upwards or in front, the Sanskrit
on the same idea of extended contact from behind or downwards. The difference is
eloquent
of the real origins and processes of language; for we see that in the vaguer and more general idea the two languages agree; it is in certain precisions that they differ and apply the same idea from opposite standpoints.
Again Greek has
(Old Aryan anama) for wind, breath, life, mind, Latin anima and animus, Sanskrit
preferred originally ani, then threw it aside and kept anila for wind, while it
chose words from other but often kindred roots for the soul or mind (atma etc.).
Did all these words belong to the original stock or were they developed from the
same root separately by the three races? In view of the remarkable similarities
in process of sense, the latter hypothesis is less probable. It is more likely
that Sanskrit has kept nearer to the abundant and superfluous richness of the
early Aryan tongue, while Greek and Latin have disburdened themselves of
unnecessary variations.
We have Sanskrit anas, anasam and Latin anas, anatem, the same word (Latin and Greek t often stand for Sanskrit s), but anas in Sanskrit means birth, living being, parent, in Latin, a duck. What possible connection can there be between the two vocables? Scientific philology shows us that they are identical in form and sense. For we find that in the primitive tongue, the first meaning of words of this kind is always the general idea of living creature, the second, a specific genus of living creature, the third a particular animal. Thus from av, to be, produce, we have avi, which meant originally a living creature, then was narrowed down on one side to the genus bird, the sense which it keeps in Latin avis (Sanskrit avi,2 a bird) and on the other to a four-footed animal; this latter sense was farther narrowed to the particular significance sheep, Latin ovis. Greek
Sanskrit avi. Here we see the same process, anas means a thing born, a living
creature; it keeps that sense in Sanskrit. In Latin it has lapsed like avis to
the narrower idea, bird, and then to the still narrower idea of a particular
kind of bird, duck, for which Sanskrit has kept the generic term hamsa. a
swift mover or flier, originally bird, then narrowed to swan, duck or goose. The
latter word in the Latin form, anser (hansas) has been farther
narrowed to the particular idea, goose, while for swan, it has chosen cygnus
(root kuj.2 to make a shrill or long sound). The intermediate step in the
transition f.rom anas.
1 Doubtful reading
creature, to anus, duck, has been lost; scientific philology restores it and unifies the sister tongues.
We have the Latin anus, the buttocks. Old Aryan ana, which in Sanskrit means mouth or nose. The contrast here becomes ludicrous. Yet il is the same word. Ana means something that strikes the eye by its substance, front, prominence; as always the vague sense comes first: then it is narrowed and expresses different parts of the body. In the same way we see Sanskrit मुखम् face or mouth, becomes Tamil mukku, nose, and Sanskrit naka, nose, becomes Tamil nakku, face [tongue]. So too tala in Sanskrit means bottom, talai in Tamil the head".
Anus, an old woman, is the Old Aryan anu, which means in Sanskrit a man. Where is the connection? But anu means life or living; from this sense it can easily come to mean long-lived. This epithet becomes a noun and as a feminine specifies in Latin an old woman. In Sanskrit it has kept its vaguer sense and narrowed it down to the general idea of a man.
(Anu, however, may have meant adult, grown up and then old, like vrddha in Sanskrit.)
We have again annus, a year. In Sanskrit anna means the sun. One may argue that the word for the sun which determines the year has been transferred to the year itself: but this is one of those identifications, captivating to the fancy, which are not really sound.
Incomplete
Chapter 1
God and Nature.
1
The Isha Upanishad opens with a monumental phrase in which, by eight brief and sufficient words, two supreme terms of existence are confronted and set forth in their real and eternal relation. Ish is wedded with Jagati, God with Nature, the Eternal seated sole in all His creations with the ever-shifting Universe and its innumerable whorls and knots of motion, each of them called by us an object, in all of which one Lord is multitudinously the Inhabitant. From the brilliant suns to the rose and the grain of dust, from the God and the Titan in their dark or their luminous worlds to man and the insect that he crushes thoughtlessly under his feet, everything is His temple and mansion. He is. the veiled deity in the temple, the open householder in the mansion and for Him and His enjoyment of the multiplicity and the unity of His being, all were created and they have no other reason for their existence. Isa vasyam idam sarvani yat kinca jagatyam jagat. For habitation by the Lord is all this, everything whatsoever that is moving thing in her that moves.
This relation of divine Inhabitant and objective dwelling-place is the fundamental truth of God and the World for life. It is not indeed the whole truth; nor is it their original relation in the terms of being; it is rather relation in action than in being, for purpose of existence than in nature of existence. This practical relation of the Soul to its world thus selected by the Seer as his starting-point is from the beginning and with the most striking emphasis affirmed as a relation not of coordinate equality or simple interaction but of lordship and freedom on one side, of instrumentality on the other. Soul in supreme command of Nature, God in untrammelled possession of His world, not limited by anything in its nature or His nature, but free and Lord. For. since it is the object of the Upanishad to build up a practical rule of life here in the Brahman rather than a metaphysical philosophy for the satisfaction of the intellect, the Seer of the Upanishad selects inevitably the practical rather than the essential relation of God and the world as the starting-point of his thought, use and subordination rather than identity. The grammatical form
in vasyam expresses a purpose or object which has to be fulfilled, in this instance the object of habitation; the choice of the word isa implies an absolute control and therefore an absolute freedom in that which has formed the object, envisaged the purpose. Nature, then, is not a material shell in which Spirit is bound, nor is Spirit a roving breath of things ensnared to which the object it inspires is a prison-house. The indwelling God is the Lord of His creations and not their servant or prisoner, and as a householder is master of his dwelling-places to enter them and go forth from them at his will or to pull down what he has built up when it ceases to please him or be serviceable to his needs, so the Spirit is free to enter or go forth from Its bodies and has power to build and destroy and rebuild whatsoever It pleases in this universe. The very universe itself It is free to destroy and recreate. God is not bound; He is the entire master of His creations.
The word isa, starting forward at once to meet us in this opening vibration of the Seer's high strain of thought, becomes the master tone of all its rhythms. It is the key to all that follows in the Upani-shad. For not only does it contradict at once all mechanical theories of the Universe and assert the pre-existence, omnipotence, majesty and freedom of the transcendent Soul of things within, but by identifying the Spirit in the universe with the Spirit in all bodies, it asserts what is of equal importance to its gospel of a divine life for humanity, that the soul in man also is master, not really a slave, not bound, not a prisoner, but free — not bound to grief and death and limitation, but the master, the user of grief and death and limitation and free to pass on from them to other and more perfect instruments. If then we seem to be bound, as undoubtedly we do seem, by a fixed nature of our minds and bodies, by the nature of the universe, by the duality of grief and joy, pleasure and pain, by the chain of-cause and effect or by any other chain or tie whatsoever, the seeming is only a seeming and nothing more. It is Maya, illusion of bondage, or it is Lila, a play at being bound. The soul, for its own purposes, may seem to forget its freedom, but even when it forgets, the freedom is there, self-existent, inalienable and, since never lost except in appearance, therefore always recoverable even in that appearance. This is the first truth of Vedanta assumed by the Upanishad in its opening words and from this truth we must start and adhere to it always in our
minds, if we would understand in its right bearing and complete suggestion the Seer's gospel of life:—
That which dwells in the body of things is God. Self and Spirit ; the Spirit is not the subject of its material, but the master; the soul in the body or in Nature is not the prisoner of its dwelling-place, but has moulded the body and its dharmas, fixed Nature and its processes and can remould, manipulate and arrange them according to its power and pleasure.
Idam sarvam yat kinca, the Seer has said, emphasising the generality of idam sarvam by the comprehensive particularity of yat kinca. He brings us at once by this expression to the Adwaitic truth in Vedanta that there is a multitude of objects in the universe, (it may be, even, a multitude of universes), but only one soul of things and not many. Eko'calah sanatanah. The Soul in all this and in each particular form is one, still and sempiternal, one in the multitude of its habitations, still and unshifting in the perpetual movement of Nature, sempiternally the same in this constant ceasing and changing of forms. God sits in the centre of this flux of the universe, eternal, still and immutable. He pervades its oceanic heavings and streamings; therefore it endures. Nature is the multiplicity of God, Spirit is His unity; Nature is His mobility, Spirit is His fixity; Nature is His variation. Spirit is His constant sameness. These truths are not stated at once; the Seer waits for a later verse to arrive at them. In this opening phrase he limits himself to the statement of the unity of God, and the multiplicity and mobility of Nature; for this relation in opposition is all that is immediately necessary to base the rule of divine living which it is his one object in the Upanishad to found upon a right knowledge of God and existence.
The self then of every man, every animal and every object, whether animate or inanimate, is God; the soul in us, therefore, is something divine, free and self-aware. If it seems to be anything else, — bound, miserable, darkened, — that is inevitably some illusion, some freak of the divine consciousness at play with its experiences; if this Soul seems to be other than God or Spirit, what seems is only a name and a form or, to keep to the aspect of the truth here envisaged, is only movement of Nature, Jagat, which God has manifested in Himself for the purpose of various enjoyment in various mansions. it is an image, a mask, a shape or eidolon created in the divine movement.
formed by the divine self-awareness, instrumentalised by the divine activity. Therefore He is "this man and yonder woman, a boy and a girl, that old man leaning on his staff, this blue bird and that scarlet-eyed." We have, asserted in the comprehensiveness of the phrase, not only an entire essential omnipresence of God in us and in the world, but a direct and a practical omnipresence, possessing and insistent, not vague, abstract or elusive. The language of the Sruti is trenchant and inexorable. We must exclude no living being because it seems to us weak, mean, noxious or vile, no object because it seems to us inert, useless or nauseous. The hideous crawling worm or snake no less than the beautiful winged bird and the strong or gracious forms of four-footed life, the dull stone and foul mire and evil-smelling gas no less than man, the divine fighter and worker, are motions of the supreme Spirit; they contain in themselves and are in their secret reality the living God. This is the second general truth of Vedanta which arises inevitably from the pregnant verse of the Seer and, always present to him in his brief and concentrated thinking, must also accompany us throughout our pursuit of his sense and doctrine.
God is One; Self, Spirit,Soul is One; even when It presents Itself multitudinously in Its habitations as if It were many souls and so appears in the motion of Nature, Its universality and unity are not abrogated nor infringed. In all there is That which by coming out of Its absorption in form of movement, recovers Its unity. As the soul in man, though seeming to be bound, is always free and can realise its freedom, so, though seeming divided, limited and many, it is always universal, illimitable and one and can realise its universality and unity.
This creature born in a moment of time and bound in an atom of Space, is really in his secret consciousness the universal Spirit who contains the whole universe of things and dwells as the self of all things in these myraid forms of man and bird and beast, tree and earth and stone which my mind regards as outside me and other than myself. In the name of myself God inhabits this form of my being — but it is God that inhabits and the apparent "I" is but a centre of His personality and a knot in the infinite contents of His active world-existence. My ego is a creation of the Jagati in a form of mind; my Self stands behind, possesses and exceeds the universe.
II
This is Spirit in relation to Nature, one in multiplicity, the Lord of nature and process, free in the bound, conscious in the unconscious, inhabitant, master and enjoyer of all forms and movements of life, mind and body. Nature in relation to Spirit is its motion and the result of its motion, jagatyam jagat, phenomenon and everything that exists as phenomenon, universe and everything that constitutes universe. There are two terms in this brief and puissant formula, jagati and jagat. The second, jagat, is particular and multiple and includes whatsoever is separate existence, individual thing or form of motion, yat kinca; the first, jagati, is general and indicates both the resultant sum and the formative principle of all these particular existences, sarvam idam yat kinca. Sarvam idam is Nature regarded objectively as the sum of her creations; jagati is Nature regarded subjectively and essentially as that divine principle, expressed in motion of being and observed by us as force or Energy, which generates all these forms and variations. For Existence in itself is existence in a state of repose or stillness; indeterminate, infinite, inactive, it generates nothing: it is movement of energy in Existence which is active, which determines forms, which generates appearances of finite being and brings about phenomena of Becoming as opposed to fixed truth of Being. Therefore every objective existence in the world and all subjective forms, being forms of Existence in motion, being inconstant, being always mutable and always changing, progressing from a past of change to a future of change, are not truly different beings at all, but becomings of the one and only Being; each is the result of its previous motion, stands by its continued motion and if that motion were pretermitted or its rhythm disturbed, must change, disintegrate or transmute itself into some other form of becoming. Spirit or God is eternal Being, Nature in its sum and principle is the becoming of God and in its particulars a mass of His becomings, real as becomings, falsely valued as beings. The knowledge of the Upanishads takes its stand on this supreme distinction of Being and its Becomings; we find, indeed, in this Upanishad itself, another and more convenient collective term used to express all that is here defined as yat kinca jagatyam jagat, — one which brings us straight to this great distinction.
The soul is Atman,1 Being; everything else is sarvabhutani, all becomings or, literally, all things that have become. This phrase is the common Sanskrit expression for created beings and though often referring in ordinary parlance to animate and self-conscious existences only, yet must in its philosophical sense and especially in the Upanishads, be accepted as inclusive of all existences whether they are or seem animate or inanimate, self-conscious or veiled in consciousness. The tree, flower and stone no less than the animal. heaven and wind and the sun and rain no less than man, invisible gas and force and current no less than the things we can see and feel fall within its all-embracing formula.
God is the only Being and all other existences are only His becomings; the souls informing them are but one Spirit individualised in forms and forces by the play and movement of Its own self-consciousness.
We see, then, whose this energy is and of what this universe is the motion. But already from the little we have said there begins to emerge clearly another truth which in the Upanishad itself the Seer leaves in shadow for the present and only shapes into clear statement in his fourth and eighth couplets; he emphasises in the fourth couplet the unity of Soul and Nature; the stillness and the motion are not separate from each other, not one of them Brahman and the other an illusion, but both of them equally the one sole Existence, which moves and yet is still even in its motion, lad ejati tannaijati, anejad ekam manaso javiyas. In the eighth verse he indicates that Brahman and the Lord2 are not different from each other or from the motion, but are the reality of the motion as the motion itself is the play of the stillness; for to tad ejati, That moves, comes as an echo and response, sa paryagat. He went abroad. Nature is motion of the Spirit, the world is motion of God; but also Nature is Spirit in motion, the world is God at play.
All our inefficient envisagings of the world, all our ignorant questions fall away from this supreme Vedantic conception. We cannot ask ourselves, "Why has God brought about this great flux
1 The scholars hold erroneously that Atman meant first breath, then self: it meant, on the contrary, being from the old root a, to be, still extant in Tamil, and the suffix tman, which expresses substance or substantial embodiment
2 The Mayavadins hold that God is only the first myth of Maya and not the truth of Brahman, the language of the Upanishad shows that this was not the view of the old Vedantic Rishis.
of things, this enormous and multitudinous world-movement? what can have been His purpose in it? Or is it a law of His nature and was He under an inner compulsion to create? Who then or what compelled Him?" These questions fall away from the decisive and trenchant solution. isa vasyam jagat. He has no purpose in it except habitation, except delight, an ordered and harmonised delight, therefore there is what we call universe, law. progression, the appearance of a method and a goal; but the order effected feels always its neighbourhood to the grandiose licence of the infinite and the harmony achieved thrills at once with the touch of the Transcendent's impulse to pass out of every rhythm and exceed every harmony. For this is a self-delight which in no way limits or binds Him; He has brought it about and He conducts it in perfect freedom; there is no compulsion on Him and none can compel Him, for He alone exists and Nature is only a play of time-movement in His being, proceeding from Him, contained in Him. governed by Him, not He by it or proceeding from it or coeval with it and therefore capable of being its subject, victim or instrument. Neither is there any inner compulsion limiting Him either as to the nature of the work or its method. The movement of the universe is not the nature of God, nor are its processes the laws of God's beings; for Spirit is absolute and has no fixed or binding nature, God is supreme and transcendent and is not bound by state, law or process, — so free is He, rather, that He is not bound even to His own freedom. The laws of Nature, as we have seen, cannot be laws of being at all, since Nature itself is a becoming; they are processes which regulate the harmonies of becoming, processes which are, in the Vedic image, chandas. rhythms of the movement and not in their own being rigid, inexorable and eternal because self-existent verities; they are results of the tendency to order and harmony, not sempiternal fetters on Existence. Even the most fundamental laws are only modes of activity conceived and chosen by Spirit in the universe. We arrive then at this farther all-important truth :—
Nature is a divine motion of becoming of which Spirit is the origin, substance and control as welt as the inhabitant and enjoyer. Laws of Nature are themselves general movements and developments of becoming and conditions of a particular order, rhythm and harmony of the universe, but not inexorably preexistent or recognisable as the very grain of
existence. The Laws of Evolution are themselves evolutions and progressive creations of the Spirit.
Since Spirit, transcendent and original of the universe, is, the sole existence, the motion of the universe can only take place in the Spirit. Therefore the indwelling of the Spirit in forms is not only a free indwelling rather than an imprisonment, but also it is not the whole or essential truth of this mutual relation of God and Nature; indwelling but not confined like the presence of the ether in the jar, it is symbolical and a figment of divine conception rather than the essential relation of body and spirit. We get the fuller statement of the truth in the fourth couplet of the Upanishad, tad antarasya sar-yasya tad u sarvasyasya bahyatah; That, the inexpressible Reality of things, is within this universe and each thing it contains, but equally it is outside of this universe and each thing that it contains, outside it as continent, outside it as transcendent. The omnipresent Inhabitant of the world is equally its all-embracing continent. If form is the vessel in which Spirit dwells. Spirit is the sphere in which form exists and moves. But, essentially, It transcends form and formation, movement and relation, and even while It is inhabitant and continent, stands apart from what It inhabits and contains, self-existent, self-sufficient, divine and eternally free. Spirit is the cause, world is the effect, but this cause is not bound to this effect. Na ca mam tani karmani nibadhnanti, says the Lord in the Gita; I am not bound by these works that I do, even while I do them. The soul of man, one with God. has the same transcendency and the same freedom.
Spirit contains, dwells in and transcends this body of things. It acts in the world but is not bound by Its actions. The same essential freedom must be true of this soul in the body, even though it may seem to be confined in the body and compelled by Nature's results and its own works. The soul in us has the inherent power not only of becoming in this outward and waking consciousness what it is in reality, the continent of the body which seems to contain it, but of transcending in consciousness all bodily relation and relation with the universe.
From the action of Nature in the Spirit, as from the action of the Spirit in Nature the same formula of freedom emerges. I have, in God and by God, made myself and my world what we now are; I can. in God and by God, change them and make them what I would have them be. I am not the spoil and puppet of Nature and her laws.
but their creator and her master. She accommodates herself to me and pretends to herself and me that she is ruling my whole existence, when she is really following, however late, stumblingly and with feigned reluctance, the motion of my will. Instrument of my actions, she pretends to be the mistress of my being. The identity of the soul and God behind all veils is the Vedantic charter of man's freedom. Science, observing only the movement, seeing fixed process everywhere, is obsessed by what she studies and declares the iron despotism of mechanical Law. Vedanta, studying the Force that makes the movement and its cause, arrives at the perception and experience of Spirit everywhere and declares our eternal and indefeasible freedom. It passes beyond the Law to the Liberty of which the Law itself is the creation and expression.
III
It is not enough, however, to know the inner fact and the outer possibility of our freedom; we must also look at and take into account the apparent actuality of our bondage. The debit side of the human ledger must be taken into the reckoning as well as the credit account. The explanation and seed of this bondage is contained in the formula jagatyam jagat;
for, if our freedom results from the action of Spirit
in Nature and of Nature in Spirit, our bondage results from the action of Nature
on all that she has created and contains. Every mundane existence is jagatyam
jagat, not a separate and independent motion
by itself, but part of and dependent on the universal movement. From this
dependence by inclusion derives the great law that every form of things
engendered in the motional universe shall be subject to the processes of that
particular stream of movement to which it belongs; each individual body subject
to the general processes of matter, each individual life to the general
processes of vitality, each individual mind to the general processes of
mentality, because the individual is only a whorl of motion in the general
motion and its individual variation therefore can only be a speciality of the
general motion and not contradictory of it. The multiplicity of God in the
universe is only a circumstance of His unity and is limited and governed by the
unity ; therefore the animal belongs to its species, the tree, the rock and the
star each to its kind and man to humanity. If machinery
of existence were all, if there were no Spirit in the motion or that Spirit were not Ish, the Master, origin, continent and living transcendence of the motion, this law is of so pressing a nature that the subjection would be absolute, the materialist's reign of iron Law complete, the Buddhist's rigid chain of causation ineffugable. This generality, this pressure of tyrannous insistence is necessary in order that the harmony of the universe may be assured against all disturbing vibrations. It is the bulwark of cosmos against chaos, of the realised actuality against that inconstant and ever-pulsating material of infinite possibility out of which it started, of the finite against the dangerous call and attraction of the Infinite.
The unity of God governs His multiplicity; therefore the more general motion of Nature as representative of or nearest to that unity governs the multiple individual products of the movement. To each motion its law and to each inhabitant of that motion subjection to the law. Therefore Man, being human in Nature, is bound first by Nature, then by his humanity.
But because God is also the transcendence of Nature and Nature moves towards God. therefore, even in Nature itself a principle of freedom and a way of escape have been provided. Avidyaya mrtyum tirtva. For, in reality, the motion of Nature is only the apparent or mechanical cause of our bondage: the real and essential cause arises from the relation of Spirit to Nature. God having descended into Nature. Spirit cast itself out in motion, allows Himself as part of the play to be bewitched by His female energy and seems to accept on Himself in the principle of mind isolated from the higher spiritual principles, her absorption in her work and her forgetfulness of her reality. The soul in mind identifies itself with its form, allows itself apparently to float on the oceanic stream of Nature and envisages itself as carried away by the current. Spirit veils itself from Mind: Ish wraps Himself upon jagat and seems to its own outer consciousness to be jagat. This is the principle of our bondage, the principle of our freedom is to draw back from that absorption and recover our real self-consciousness as the containing, constituting and transcendent Spirit.
Spirit, absorbed in the motion anil process of Nature, appears to be hound by the process of bacoming as if it were law of being; it is therefore said to be bound by Karma that is to say by the chain of
particular cause and effect, the natural chain of active energy and its results. But by drawing back upon itself and ceasing to identify itself with its form, it can get rid of this appearance and recover its lordship and freedom. Incidentally, the soul of Man by drawing more and more towards God. becomes more and more Ish and can more and more control the processes of becoming in himself and in others, in the subjective and in the objective, in the mental and in the material world.
The final conclusion of freedom and power in the world is of the last importance for our immediate purpose. Merely to draw back from all identification with form is to draw away towards the Stillness, the Infinity and the cessation of all this divine play of motion. Ever since Buddhism conquered Vedic India and assured the definite enthronement of the ideal of Sannyasa in opposition to the ideal of Tyaga, this consummation has been constantly praised and held up before us in this country as the highest ideal of man and his only path to salvation. But even if for the few this goal be admitted, yet for the majority of men it must still and always remain God's ultimate purpose in them to realise Him manifest in the world, — since that is His purpose in manifestation, — and not only and exclusively unmanifest in His transcendental stillness. It must be possible then to find God as freedom and immortality in the world and not only aloof from the world. There must be a way of escape provided in Nature itself out of our bondage to Nature. Man must be able to find in Nature itself and in his humanity a way of escape into divinity and freedom from Nature, avidyaya mrtyum tirtva. This would not be possible if God and Nature, Brahman and the Universe, were two hostile and incompatible entities, the one real and the other false or non-existent. But Spirit and Universe, God and Nature are one Brahman; therefore there must always be a point at which the two meet; their apparent divergence in consciousness must be somewhere corrected in consciousness, Nature must at some point become God and the apparently material Universe stand revealed as Spirit.
In the profound analysis of the human soul built by the ancient Vedantic thinkers upon the most penetrating self-observation and the most daring and far-reaching psychological experiments, this point off escape, this bridge of reconciliation was discovered in the two supramental principles, Ideal Consciousness and Bliss Consciousness, both of them disengaged from the confusions of the mind involved
in matter.3 Just as modern Scientists, not satisfied with the ordinary processes and utilities of Nature, not satisfied with the observation of her surface forces and daily activities, penetrated farther, analysed, probed, discovered hidden forces and extraordinary activities, not satisfied with Nature's obvious use of wind as a locomotive force, found and harnessed the unutilised propulsive energy of steam; not satisfied with observing the power of electricity in the glare and leap of the thunderflash, disengaged and used it for the lighting of our houses and thoroughfares, for the driving of our engines and printing presses, for the alleviation of disease or for the judicial murder of our fellow creatures, so the old Vedantic Yogins, not satisfied with observing the surface activities and ordinary processes of our subjective Nature, penetrated farther, analysed, probed, discovered hidden forces and extraordinary activities by which our whole active mentality could be manipulated and rearranged as one manipulates a machine or rearranges a set of levers; pressing yet farther towards the boundaries of existence they discovered whence this energy proceeded and whitherward this stir and movement tended and worked. They found beyond the manifest and obvious triple bond of body, life and mind, two secret states and powers of consciousness which supported them in their works — beyond this limited, groping and striving mind and life which only fumble after right knowledge and labour after the right use of power and even attaining them can possess and wield them only as indirect and second
3 The following passage seems to have been written in connection with the paragraph beginning with this sentence, but was not finally worked into the text :
In our observation of the workings of law and freedom in cosmic Nature we cannot fail to be struck by the principle of gradated and progressive freedom by which she climbs up from an apparent rigidity or law to an apparent elasticity of freedom. We observe that matter inert or informed only by an inert principle or motion is the field of rigid law and of fixed process. We observe next that in proportion as life develops in matter, the principle of variation of flexible adaptability, even of instinctive of unconscious self-adaptation manifests and increases in her working. We observer that in proportion as mind develops in living matter this variation, this flexibility and self-adaptation grow into a conscious struggle with and partial domination of the life and matter in which mind operates, From this we arrive easily at certain large corollaries.
(1) Mind, life and matter are. in all probability, one essence, but not one principle They are three different principles of Nature, each with its separate rhythm. principle of process and mode of working.
hand agents, they discovered a principle of ideal consciousness, vijnana, which saw Truth face to face and unerringly, looking on the sun with unshaded eyes, and a principle of all-blissful power and being which possessed in itself, by the very right of its eternal existence and inalienable nature, right joy, right awareness and right action as the very self-atmosphere of its manifestation in the universe. Above this inferior trilogy of matter, life and mind (Annam, Prana, Manas), there is a superior trilogy of Infinite Being, Force and Bliss (Sat, Chit, Ananda) accessible to us and working on us inhabitants of the lower spheres from the symbol of divine beatific consciousness, the Anandatattwa, as its throne of world-rule, the home and fortress of the divine Master, and employing as its distributing and arranging minister the truth-seeing ideal mind to feed, supply and compel the activities of the lower being. They saw, then, being arranged in seven stairs, seven worlds, seven streams of world movement, seven bodies of things, seven states of consciousness which inform and contain the bodies. They saw this material consciousness and this material world as the lowest stair, the least in plenitude and power and joy of these seven divine rivers. Man they saw as a soul dwelling in matter, deriving his activities from mind and holding them in mind but going back in the roots of his being to the divine trilogy. Earth, in the language of their thought, was the footing and pedestal of the human unit, but the heavens of Ananda concealed the secret and ungrasped crown of his world-existence. This conception of the
(2) Consciousness is the principle of freedom, form is the principle of law; the necessity of dealing with the rigidity of form and its processes is the cause of the limitations of the freedom inherent in consciousness.
(3) Consciousness and life evolve out of matter; they must then have been all the time inherent and involved in matter.
(4) Life itself seems to be an operation of involved consciousness working itself out of the imprisonment in matter. It is therefore conceivable that matter itself may be only a form of involved consciousness.
(5) Mind is a principle of mental self-conscious sensation, action-comprehension, reaction, attraction-repulsion rising into a luminosity (prakasa) we call knowledge, of which thought is only the partial system or formula . In Life we notice in the plant and metal a vital sensation, action-comprehension, reaction, attraction-repulsion, essentially the same as the mental but expressed in a different system of values, values of involved consciousness. In Matter we do not observe sensation, hut we do observe the other common activities of Nature. Experimental Yogic psychists assert that matter does also receive and store blind sensations and that
sevenfold form of our being and of world-being helps to constitute the very kernel of the doctrine in the Upanishads. It is the key to their sense in many passages where there is no direct mention or precise reference to any of its seven terms. It is because we miss these clues that so much in these scriptures comes to our mind as a mystery or even as a vague and confused extravagance of disordered mysticism.
In the septuple system of our Scriptures every individual body obeys the laws of matter, every life the processes of vitality, every mind the processes of mentality, every ideal being the processes of ideality and every free soul the processes of Beatitude. The seven worlds are indeed different kingdoms, each with its own nations and creatures, prajah, bhutani. But since God is always one, each separate motion contains in itself the presence and potentiality of all the others; moreover, since it contains the potentiality, it is irresistably led to develop under its own conditions that which it contains. For this reason Matter in the world tends to manifest Life, Life in Matter to rise into Mind, Mind in vitalised body to be released into Pure Idea, Pure Idea in matter-housed Mind to be consummated in divine Beatitude. The pervading law, therefore, which confines each species to the rule of its kind is only one general rhythm of the movement: it is crossed by a higher upward and liberating movement which leads the becoming we now are to strive for development towards that other, freer and larger scale of becoming which is immediately above it.
the mind of man can discover records of past events in material objects and convert them into values of knowledge. Science even goes so far as to assert that all sensations are an activity of matter and are stored in the brain and can always be turned by memory under some stimulus into values of knowledge. We may say therefore that the essence of consciousness is at least present in matter, but it only organises itself by evolution, through life in mind.
We cannot assert that the present state of consciousness [. . . ],* consciousness of limited freedom and derived knowledge in man, is the last possible evolution of consciousness. It is at least possible that an entirely free consciousness bringing with it a spontaneous instead [of a] derived knowledge and an entirely free mastery instead of a partially free manipulation of mind, life and matter is concealed in Nature and its unveiling is the final goal of her evolution.
If such a free consciousness exists, there must be a principle in Nature superior to mind as mind is superior to life and matter and this can be nothing else than the Vedic principle called vijnana.
* Illegible words.
This fresh rule of Nature, then, appears and constitutes the rule of our freedom as the other was the rule of our servitude.
The principle, "To each motion its law and to each inhabitant of the motion subjection to the law" is crossed and corrected by this other principle, "Each motion contains a tendency towards the motion above it and to each type of becoming, therefore, there comes in the progress of time the impulse to strain beyond the mould it has realised to that which is higher than itself."
In this complex arrangement of Nature where is man's exact position? He is a mental being housed in a vitalised body and he tends through pure idea towards divine beatitude. Now just as matter informed with life, no longer obeys the processes of matter only, but, even while it affects life-processes, is also affected by them and finds its complete liberation in the conquest of matter by life, just as mind in a life-body is affected, limited and hampered by vital and bodily processes, but still governs them and would find its own liberation and theirs in the perfect conquest of life and matter by mind, so, since this mental being is really a soul imprisoned in mind, its perfect liberation comes by rising out of the mould of mind through pure idea into beatitude; escaping into beatitude, this mental existence is able to liberate the whole lower system of being by renewing every part of it in the mould and subjecting every part of it to the process of that which we have now become. The mould and process of Ananda is freedom. God, bliss, immortality, universality, and these, therefore, are the
This free consciousness, entire mastery, must be a power of cosmic Nature and cannot be acquired by the individual except by breaking down the habits of consciousness and exceeding the fixed processes by which the individual action is separated and differentiated from cosmic action.
The ultimate evolution must therefore lie** in the openness** of the individual for cosmic or infinite consciousness-being not limited by individual ego-sense, the workings of free infinite cosmic force, not limited by individual will; possessing entire freedom, knowledge and mastery it must be in its nature an infinite joy and bliss in Oneself and in all the cosmic workings which enter into our experience. The highest state of Nature and goal of evolution must be infinite Sachchidananda.
So much we can reasonably infer from the facts of the cosmos as we see them; we then arrive at the Vedanta results without starting from Vedanta: but if we accept the Vedantic premise that all world is only a formation and operation of consciousness, these inferences become inevitable conclusions.
** Doubtful reading
laws of being, the dharmas. the sum of a divine beatific existence which we put on by rising out of mental ego into infinite Ananda. The motion of pure Idea, vijnana, is the door of our escape in Avidya; for it is the kingdom within us of Truth and Illumination, domain, in the Vedic symbol, of the god of the Sun, the prophetic Apollo, the burning and enlightening Surya. Sa no dhiyah pracodayat.
The base of our being is in Matter, its knot is in mentality, its escape into divine Bliss. Our aim as human beings must be to rise through the pure Idea into divine bliss and there freed from mental egoism and vital and material limitations spiritualise and beatify our whole existence from the base to the summit.
We are a double birth, God the Spirit, God in Nature, Ish and Jagat. In Nature we are bound in our consciousness, because we are there a whorl of its motion, a wave in its sea; in Spirit we are free, for there we are a part of nothing, but one with the indivisible Spirit. But this double is really biune. God, unbound by His divisibility, unbound by His indivisibility, weds the One to the Many in the play of His consciousness, in His ineffable beatitude. There God and Nature meet, Vidya and Avidya embrace each other, our real freedom governs and uses consciously our apparent bondage, the bliss of Transcendence joins hands with the bliss of manifestation, God shows Himself in humanity and man realises himself as divine.
The joy of that reconciliation dwells in the Immortality to which the Vedanta is our guide and its starting-point is the recognition by mind of the one Lord in all bodies, the one Spiritual Being in all becomings, atmanam sarvabhutesu. Since it is the all-blissful Lord who dwells within and Nature is for His habitation and enjoyment, then a state of Nature which is a state of bondage, sorrow-pursued, death-besieged, wrestling with limitations, is convicted of being only a temporary mask and a divinely willed starting-point for the Energy confined in the triple bonds of mortal Mind, Life and Matter to work out its own immortal freedom. The object of life is self-liberation, the only aim of human existence consistent with the dignity and fullness of our being is the escape through Nature to God, out of grief, bondage and death into joy, freedom and immortality. Avidyaya mrtyum tirtva vidyayamrtam asnute.