Chapter VIII   The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge     This secret Self in all beings is not apparent, but it is seen by means of the supreme reason, the subtle, by those who have the subtle vision. Katha Upanishad.1   BUT WHAT then is the working of this Sachchidananda in the world and by what process of things are the relations between itself and the ego which figures it first formed, then led to their consummation? For on those relations and on the process they follow depend the whole philosophy and practice of a divine life for man. We arrive

Chapter XVI   The Triple Status of Supermind     My self is that which supports all beings and constitutes their existence. . . . I am the self which abides within all beings. Gita.1   Three powers of Light uphold three luminous worlds divine. Rig Veda.2     BEFORE we pass to this easier understanding of the world we inhabit from the standpoint of an apprehending Truth-consciousness which sees things as would an individual soul freed from the limitations of mentality and admitted to participate in the action of the Divine

Chapter XXVIII   Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya    There is a Permanent, a Truth hidden by a Truth where the Sun unyokes his horses. The ten hundreds (of his rays) came together —That One. I saw the most glorious of the Forms of the Gods. Rig Veda.1   The face of Truth is hidden by a golden lid; that remove, O Fostering Sun, for the Law of the Truth, for sight. O Sun, O sole Seer, marshal thy rays, gather them together, —let me see of thee thy happiest form of all; that Conscious Being everywhere, He am I. Isha Upanishad.2   The Truth, the Right, the Vast

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

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

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

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