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

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

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

CHAPTER XVIII Mind and Supermind He discovered that Mind was the Brahman. Taittiriya Upanishad.¹ Indivisible, but as if divided in beings. Gita.² THE conception which we have so far been striving to form is that of the essence only of the supramental life which the divine soul possesses securely in the being of Sachchidananda, but which the human soul has to manifest in this body of Sachchidananda formed here into the mould of a mental and physical living. But so far as we have been able yet to envisage this supramental existence, it does not seem to have any connection or correspondence with life as we know it, life active between the tw

CHAPTER III The Eternal and the Individual He and I. Isha Upanishad.1 It is an eternal portion of Me that has become the living being in a world of living beings.... The eye of knowledge sees the Lord abiding in the body and enjoying and going forth from it. Gita 2 Two birds beautiful of wing, friends and comrades, cling to a common tree, and one eats the sweet fruit, the other regards him and eats not.... Where winged souls cry the discoveries of know- ledge over their portion of immortality, there the Lord of all, the Guardian of the World took possession of me, he the Wise, me the ignorant. Rig Veda.3 T

CHAPTER XXIII The Double Soul in Man The Purusha, the inner Self, no larger than the size of a man'sthumb. Katha Upanishad.¹ Swetaswatara Upanishad.² He who knows this Self who is the eater of the honey of existenceand the lord of what is and shall be, has thenceforward noshrinking. Katha Upanishad.³ Whence shall he have grief, how shall he be deluded who seeseverywhere the Oneness? Isha Upanishad.4 He who has found the bliss of the Eternal has no fear from any quarter. Taittiriya Upanishad.5 The first status of Life we found to be characterised by a dumb inconscient drive or urge, a force of some involved will in

CHAPTER XXII The Problem of Life This it is that is called the universal Life. Taittiriya Upanishad.¹ The Lord is seated in the heart of all beings turning all beings mounted upon a machine by his Maya. Gita.² He who knows the Truth, the Knowledge, the Infinity that is Brahman shall enjoy with the all-wise Brahman all objects of desire. Taittiriya Upanishad.³ LIFE is, we have seen, the putting forth, under certain cosmic circumstances, of a Conscious-Force which is in its own nature infinite, absolute, untrammelled, inalienably possessed of its own unity and bliss, the Conscious-Force of Sachchidananda. The centra

CHAPTER X Conscious Force They beheld the self-force of the Divine Being deep hidden by its own conscious modes of working. Swetaswatara Upanishad.¹ This is he that is awake in those who sleep. Katha Upanishad. ² ALL phenomenal existence resolves itself into Force, into a movement of energy that assumes more or less material, more or less gross or subtle forms for self-presentation to its own experience. In the ancient images by which human thought attempted to make this origin and law of being intelligible and real to itself, this infinite existence of Force was figured as a sea, initially at rest and therefore free from forms, but the

CHAPTER XXI The Ascent of Life Let the path of the Word lead to the godheads, towards the Waters by the working of the Mind....¹ O Flame, thou goest to the ocean of Heaven, towards the gods; thou makest to meet together the godheads of the planes, the waters that are in the realm of light above the sun and the waters that abide below.² The Lord of Delight conquers the third status; he maintains and governs according to the Soul of universality; like a hawk, a kite he settles on the vessel and uplifts it, a finder of the Light he manifests the fourth status and cleaves to the ocean that is the billowing of those waters.³