'adhyAtmavidyA' in Synthesis: 15. 'jIvA'-Atoms

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Jiva-Atoms: Subjectively, i.e. Jivas
pp.399-405

AT the outset of this chapter we may note that the aspects of size, (See p.368 supra) specialised with reference to the Jiva, would be 'range or extent of consciousness in all its manifestations, cognition, desire, and action', 'its definiteness or intensity', and its 'calibre or scope generally', These would subdivide into 'broad-mindedness, narrow-mindedness, rationality or common sense', 'vagueness or weakness, clearness or strength, distinctness or firmness', 'long-headedness or far-sightedness, width of interests, depth', etc.

As to specialisations of duration and vibration, it need only be said that the words used in connection with matter in the preceding chapter apply, by ordinary usage, to corresponding features of mind also.

With these brief suggestions, we may pass on to the features more prominently characteristic of the Jiva, as the embodiment of consciousness.

Jiva as Consciousness

The entire nature of consciousness is exhaustively described by and contained in the words: "I-This-Not (Am)". This is the Absolute-Consciousness, the true Chid-ghana, 'compacted Chit', MahA-Samvit, 'Great Consciousness', which, in its transcendence of and absolution from numbers, limitations, and relations, includes all that is governed by numbers, limitations, and relations, and indeed is all.

This Consciousness is the Absolute, and includes both the factors of what is ordinarily distinguished as dvam-dvam, pair, of Chit, 'the Conscious' (corresponding to Pratyag-AtmA) and JaDa, 'the Unconscious' (corresponding to Mula-prakrti). It may not unreasonably be objected, because of this fact, that the word 'Consciousness' is not altogether suitable as an epithet for the Absolute, even with qualificatory adjectives. But it becomes unavoidable, now and again, to describe the Absolute in special terms borrowed from the .triplets of attributes of Pratyag-AtmA and Mulaprakrti, which are the Pen-ultimates of the World- Process, as the Absolute is the very Ultimate and the all.

The nearest approach to the Ultimate is obviously by the Penultimates; hence the necessity of speaking in terms of the latter; and this is why Brahma(n) is described, in Upanishats and other works on Vedanta, now as 'Pure Consciousness' or Shuddha-Chit, again as MahA-Sat or 'Boundless Being', and finally as Ananda-ghana or Ananda-maya, 'composed or compacted of Bliss'; also as the Tamas beyond Tamas, 'the darkness beyond darkness', Shuddha or 'pure' Sattva, and Paro-Rajas, transcending-Rajas. And so, for our present purposes, we have to speak of Brahma(n) as the Absolute-Consciousness, slightly emphasising the Pratyag-Atmic aspect thereof rather than the Mula-prakrtic; but carefully guarding the while against possible misconstruction, by openly stating that fact at the outset.

Three Functions of Mind

In its unique completeness, then, this Absolute-Consciousness includes every possible cognition, every possible desire, every possible action, all at once and for ever; even as it includes all possible objects of cognition, desire, and action, namely qualities, substances, and movements.

But, taken as consisting of successive and separable parts in the pseudo-infinity of World-Process, it appears as broken up into three aspects jnAna-cognition, ichChhA-desire, and kriyA-action. How these three and only three aspects arise in the Jiva, on the collision and coalescence of Self and Not-Self, has been already outlined in chapter IX supra, on Pratyag-AtmA, where the genesis of Sat-Chit-Ananda is explained. To restate:

In Terms of Subject and Object

An ego bound to a non-ego in the bond of the logion is necessarily bound by a triple bond at three points; is in contact with three corresponding points in the non-ego, viz., jnanA-ichChA-kriyA, on the side of the ego, and guNa-dravya-karma, respectively, on that of the non-ego. '1-this-(am) not'--in this fact we see the following:

(1) 'I' and 'this', being placed opposite to each other, are either turning face towards face, or face away from face. The ego cognises, perceives, the non-ego, receives into itself reflection]/i] and imprint of that non-ego (metaphorically as well as literally, as will appear later), or ignores and forgets it. This is (dual or, with a middle state, triple) jnAna.

(2) 'I' tends to move towards or away from 'not-I'. This tendency is desire, corresponding to the affirmation-negation of Shakti. It is (dual or rather triple) ichChA.



The Functions as Consumers

See pp. 165-169 supra. Desire may be said to correspond with Negation in this obvious sense: It consumes its object. It denies to it a separate existence and devours it, swallows, merges its object into the desiring self.

Food is eaten up by the hungry person. Man and woman espouse each other, two becoming one. When an English poet sings, "For each man kills the thing he loves," etc., the thought, though put in an extreme and evil form, is not altogether different. The gems and jewels and fineries that people admire and desire, they put on their persons and make them part of their 'personality'.

The three (psycho-) physical appetites, for food, adornment, sex, are thus 'negation-al' of the separateness of their objects. That which was a separate idam, or etat, 'this', is converted by them into mama, 'mine' (the diluted weaker form of 'I', its 'sphere of influence', its 'aura'), and then into aham, 'I', (Witness, how politico-economic 'spheres of influence', 'protectorates', 'mandates', 'markets', 'trusts', become absorbed).

The three corresponding (physico-) psychical appetites, for honor, wealth, and power, respectively, behave in the same way. Wealth becomes 'my property', power says 'I am the State', the honoured person begins to think 'these, who honour me, are my obedient followers'.

In a somewhat similar sense, knowledge and action also may be said to tend to abolish the separate existence of their objects. To know, to understand, 'another', fully, we must 'get into his (or its) skin', 'see with his eyes', 'feel as he feels', 'put ourselves into his position', 'stand in his shoes'; we must [I]sym-pathise (or em-pathise, as some psycho-analysts say) with him to the extent of identifying him with ourselves.

This is the real significance of the rapport of yoga-samAdhi. (Yogasutra, i.43, and iii.3). We 'understand', to the acute extent of 'feeling', every little pain and pleasure of our body, because we have identified ourselves with it; this is one aspect of the truth indicated in the doctrine of solipsism; this is why mothers 'understand' the pains of their babies. That action subserves the purpose of 'identifying' its object with or 'approximating' to, or subordinating it to the will of the actor, goes without saying, seeing that action arises out of desire. But this feature of knowledge and action is due to their inseparable connection with desire. In the case of 'aversion', 'ignoring' and 'putting away', 'negation' appears in another aspect; abolition of the 'other' is still there, though in another manner.

Primal Libido, Elan Vital, Horme, Appetite, Urge and Surge of Life, Shakti-Desire, KAma, is for Self-Realisation, SyAm, 'May I be'; its next development is Bahu SyAm, 'May I be Much or More; the further and final is Bahu-dhA SyAm, 'May I be Many or Many-formed'.

Samskrta names are

• Loka-eshaNA, desire for 'local habitation and a name', appetite for Self-preservation of physical-self by food, and of psychical-self by honor and glory, name and fame;

• Vitta-eshaNA, for Self-expansion by possessions, adornment, homestead, wealth, property; and

• DAra-suta-(Shakti)-eshaNA, for self-continuation (immortalisation, sempiternalisation) by spouse-and-child and power over them (in the present, as well as in the future, by will and testament).

The first corresponds broadly to jnAna and dharma; the second to kriyA and artha; the third to ichChA and kAma[/b]. All are inter-dependent; indeed, barely possible to distinguish. They are more fully dealt with in Science of Emotions, and Science of Social Organisation (which deals specially with (dharma-artha-kAma). Incidentally, it may be noted that the present work, The Science of Peace, corresponds with JnAna; The Science of Emotions, with IchChA; The Science of Social Organisation, with KriyA; while The Science of Self may be regarded as summation.
(3) The ego actually moves towards or away from, the non-ego, This is (dual or rather triple) kriyA.

All these are but modifications, forms, aspects, or degrees of the main fact of identification or separation between Self and Not-Self.

Fichte seems to have endeavoured to express the same or a similar idea thus: "(1) The ego exhibits itself as limited by the non-ego (i.e., the ego is cognitive); (2) conversely, the ego exhibits the non-ego as limited by the ego (i.e., the ego is active)." (Stirling's Schwegler, p.265.)

Action between Ego and Non-ego

In other words, we may say that there is a mutual action and cognition between the ego and the non-ego: the action of the non-ego upon the ego is the cognition of the non-ego by the ego; and the cognition (if the expression may be used) by the non-ego of the ego is conversely the action of the ego on the non-ego.

When the ego impresses itself on the non-ego, we have action from the standpoint of the ego, and cognition from that of the non-ego.

When the non-ego imprints itself on the ego, we have cognition from the standpoint of the ego, and action from that of the non-ego.

To this it should be added that the condition intermediate between cognition and action, intermediate between the ego's 'being influenced and shaped' by the non-ego, on the one hand, and its 'influencing and shaping' the non-ego, on the other, is desire. The corresponding condition of the non-ego would probably be best described by the word tension. This desire is always hidden, while cognition and action are manifest.

Multifarious Triplets

Multifarious triplets arise under cognition, desire, and action.

(1) 'Waking, sleeping, dreaming'; 'presentation oblivion, representation'; 'knowing, forgetting, recollection'; 'truth, error, illusion'; 'sensation, conception, perception'; 'term, proposition, syllogism'; 'pada, vAkya, mAna'; 'concept or notion, judgment, reasoning'; 'reasonableness or sobriety, fancy, imagination'; 'real or actual, unreal or fanciful , ideal'; 'observation, thought, science'; 'concentration, meditation, attention'; attention, distraction, re-searoh (or rapport, union, yoga-samadhi)', etc.

(2) 'Like, dislike, toleration'; 'love, hate, indifference'; 'partiality, carelessness, justice'; 'desire, emotion, will'; etc.

(3) 'Action, reaction, alternation or balance'; 'activity, indolence, effort' 'restlessness, fatigue, perseverance'; 'act, labour, industry'; 'action, plan, scheme'; 'evolution, involution, revolution'; etc.



The third is a very important triplet, which is but another aspect of and supplementary to the Law of Causality, and explains how the fundamental Unity is being constantly restored in succession also, as causality preserves it in continuity. "Past reason bunted, and, no sooner had, past reason hated." First 'am this', and then '(am) not this', the net result being always the I.
These may be treated of in detail later on.



Pranava-Vada, 3 vols. (1910--1913), gives hundreds of such triads. "Every thing in this world is a trinity completed by the quaternary"; H.P.B., Isis Unvailed, I.508. Dr. James H. Cousins, A Study in Synthesis, (pub. 1934) works oat a number of quartettes in a fresh manner; the work should receive more attention than it seems to have yet received, from students of philosophy generally, and members of the Theosophical Society specially.
In the meanwhile, some observations as to the general relations of subject and object, individuals and the surroundings they live amidst, the more prominent conditions of the life of the World-Process, may be recorded here.

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pp.405-412
Mutual Reflection

It has been said that an ego is literally imprinted with and modelled to the shape of a cognised non-ego, and that cognition by an ego means and is the action of a non-ego upon it. It might be questioned how it is that action, cognition, and even desire, which are the attributes of Self, subject, can ever belong, or be spoken of as belonging, to Not-Self, object; and, conversely, how the capabilities of being acted on, cognised, and desired, which are the attributes of Not-Self, can ever belong, or be spoken of as belonging, to Self.

The answer is this. If we were speaking exclusively of the Universal Self or the pseudo-universal Not-Self, and if it were possible to really separate them, then it would be perfectly correct to say that jnAna-ichChA-kriyA, or rather their root-principles, chit-Ananda-sat, belong exclusively to Self; and gNna-karma-dravya, or rather their root-principles, sattva-rajas-tamas, belong exclusively to Not-Self.

But we are now in the domain of the limited and the particular, and are dealing not with abstract Pratyag-AtmA and pseudo-abstract Mula-prakrti, but with limited, separate, selves and not-selves; and it has been amply shown in the last two chapters that a limited self (soul) means a composite of Self and Not-Self, a Jiva-atom, wherein the Jiva-aspect is predominant; while a limited not-self (body) equally means a composite of Self and Not-Self, but a composite in which the atom-aspect is predominant. The consequence of this is that we find both triplets of attributes present in every such composite, although of course one triplet always preponderates over the other, thereby giving rise to the distinction between animate and inanimate.

Radiation, Mental and Material

Thus it comes about that each separate not-self, being ensouled by a self, and therefore being a pseudo-self, assumes, by the connection of identity with the universal Self, the characteristics of the latter; and this assumption takes on the form of a pseudo-infinite endeavour to find, and therefore to spread and impose, itself on everything, everywhere, and al(l)-ways.



The supplement to this fact is that each separate self or soul, being em-bodi-ed by a not-self, endeavours similarly to 'radiate'. 'propagate', 'spread', 'impose upon all others', its own notions, thoughts, ideas, views, knowledg-es, feelings, tastes, interests, likes and dislikes, volition, willings, enterprises, activities.
Hence a pseudo-infinite radiation, by vibration, of each and every not-self, that is to say, of each and every piece or mass whatsoever of Mula-prakrti, out of the pseudo-infinite permutations and combinations of all possible sizes of such pieces or masses, to which it is at all possible to apply the adjectives 'each' and 'every'.

In other words, each and every not-self is endeavouring pseudo-infinitely to reproduce itself and fill infinity with its own form; as is now nearly established even by physical science, in the doctrine of the incessant and endless radiation and mutual registration by all objects of their own and of all others' pictures of all qualities whatsoever, sights, sounds, smells, etc.; and this is the action of the not-selves, upon the selves, which action, in the selves, appears as cognition.



In this fact, with its 'physical' and 'superphysical' implications, i.e., its working in the grosser and subtler planes of matter, may be found the reason why 'every secret must out', some time or other to some one else, if not to the general public, for 'murder' does not always 'out', to even the cleverest police; and also why, while a secret is being kept, for that time it makes the inner body stronger and fuller, whence we have such facts, observations, and injunctions as these: vows of silence make the inner life of the mind richer, promote and strengthen thought, just as restraint of expenditure increases the treasury-balance, or sex-continence enhances vigour of body and mind and intensifies feeling; certain people do not find life worth living unless they have a secret to keep; they revel in mysteriousness; others find pleasure in leading 'double' lives, stolen joys being sweeter to them; the names of the ishta-deva, the worshipped god, the venerated preceptor, the parents, the spouse, the children, in short all those specially near and dear and honoured, must not be lightly taken, for relations with the bearers of those names belong to the life of the heart, and avoidance of levity and flippancy with regard to them strengthens and develops the higher nature and the sUkshma-sharIra.

Another and more obvious psychological reason for avoiding, in unsympathetic company, the mention, with too much unction, of the objects of one's love and devotion, is, that it only too often arouses ridicule, or jealousy, or anger and counter statements of the greater merits of other's; witness, sectarians' quarrels. It has to be remembered that in all these cases the secrecy, the silence, the restraint, are effective for their purpose only up to a certain extent. Carried to excess, they fail and cause harm. They must come to an end, some time, by the metaphysical laws of nature; they should be brought to an end, periodically, wisely, scientifically, for greater good.

It should be noted that, not all secrets, being kept, make the inner body stronger in the healthy and pleasant sense. Sins committed or helplessly suffered by oneself (as by the victims of sex-violence), or even simply seen being committed by others, if kept, weigh upon the soul, oppress it grievously, suffocatingly, often drive it mad.

Such phenomena have been investigated by psycho-analysts with useful (also harmful) results. But even in these cases, the general observation holds true that 'the inner body becomes stronger and fuller'; only, it becomes such, in the painful sense; not the pleasurable. Pain intensifies and prolongs the consciousness. The tongue keeps working round the fibre sticking between the teeth; the mind keeps working round the painful secret sticking between its normal functionings; the emotions concerned are deepened. In case of excess, either of pleasure or pain, disintegration of the body may happen, and does happen; in the case of pain, very frequently.
Infinite Multiplication

This reproduction, it is obvious, takes place literally. When we see an object, the picture of the object is imprinted on our eye, on the retina; that is to say, the retina (or the purpurin, with which, as the latest researches go to show, the retina is covered) takes on, becomes modified into, the very shape of the object seen; and the eye is, in the life of the physical plane, veritably the very ego that sees. In the moment of seeing with the physical eye, it is impossible to say: 'My eye sees and not I.' What is invariably said and meant is:'I see.' The I and the organ of vision are here literally identical for all purposes.

Ego Becomes Organ



स प्राणन्नेव प्राणो नाम भवति, वदन् नाक्, पश्यंश्चक्षु:,
शृणवन् श्रोत्रं, मन्वानो मनः; अस्य एतानि कर्मणामानि ।

sa prANanneva prANo nAma bhavati, vadan nAk, pashyaMshchakShu:,
shRuNavan shrotraM, manvAno manaH; asya etAni karmaNAmAni |
--Brhad-Aranyaka Upanishad, 1.4.7.

"Breathing, It becomes that which is named prANa-breath; speaking, voice; seeing, eye; hearing, ear; mentating, mind; such are Its functional names; functionings of the self are named faculties". In other words, functions create organs; not organs, functions.
It is the same with every other sense. The immediate reason of this is that while, in the converse case, the activity of the apparent not-self is due to its hiding a self within, in this case the shapability, which is cognition, of every self, is due to its hiding within a not-self, a sheath, an upAdhi. As in the one case the not-self strives to achieve infinity in pseudo-infinite reproduction, because of having become identified with a self, and therefore the universal Self; so, in this case, the Self becomes limited and reflective, because of having become identified with a not-self.

In order that Self and Not-Self, so entirely opposed to each other, should enter into dealings with each other, it is necessary that each should assume the characteristics of the other, and so, abating their opposition, making a compromise, come nearer to each other. The interchange of substance between nucleus and protoplasm is a good illustration. (Verworn, General Physiology, p.518.) In this fact we see before us the principle of the genesis of upAdhis, sheaths, organisms, and organs of sense and action. The ego becomes (of course, illusorily and apparently, and for the time being) the organ of sense or action, in order to perceive the sense-able or act upon it.

"The AtmA who knows (i.e., who is feeling the stress of the consciousness) 'may I smell this', becomes or is the nose (the organ of smell), for the sake of (experiencing) odour.' (Chhandogya-Upanisha, 8.12.4-5.)

The Why of Organs and Media

Such is the metaphysical significance of the organs of sense and action. They are the very Jiva for the time. The Jiva is identified with them entirely while they are working. For there is no sufficient reason for a distinct and separate third something, an instrument of mediation, not only a relation but a thing, between the only two factors of the World-Process, Self, on the one side, and Not-Self, on the other. [The words 'distinct and separate' should be noted; for if we remove this condition, then we do have a pseudo-infinity of planes or grades of density-subtlety of Matter, each of which may be said to link together a next denser with a next subtler.] That they are at all distinguished as karaNa, 'instruments', is only from the standpoint of the abstract Self.

The metaphysical significance of sense-media, odorous particles, saliva, light, air, ether, etc., is similar.



The NyAya system has a theory that (as in the case of saliva) rays of light, proceeding from the organ of vision to its object, assume the shape of that object, and returning to the eye, produce vision; the modern scientific view is that the rays go from the object to the eye. The Greek philosophers also believed in an "effluvium" or "eidolon', acting as a tertium quid to make possible the approach between the opposed subject and object. We speak of 'bright eyes' and 'dull lacklustre eyes'; feline eyes shine in the dark. That light is a substance amenable to the section of gravitation, has been much discussed by Einstein and others, since deflections of rays from stars were observed during a solar eclipse in May, 1919. A dry tongue or nose cannot taste or smell. Saliva is the overflow of 'self' and the enveloping of a 'not-self' with 'self'; and transforming the 'not-self'into 'self' and absorbing and as-simila-ting it with 'self'; hence salivation is necessary to digestion. The same considerations apply to the other senses and their objects.
Interpenetrating Individualities

The systematic and psychologically consistent names for these media, in Samskrt, whatever their exact nature may be ultimately determined to be, are: prthivI (earth) for the medium of odour, Apas or jalam (water) for taste, tejas or agni (fire) for vision, vAyu (air) for touch, and AkAsha (ether) for sound.

These media are, according to Vedanta, the five pervasive root-elements, tattva-s or mahA-bhUta-s--and not the compounds we live amidst--distinguished and defined radically by their special sensuous and active qualities, which are said to go in pairs; thus, sound and speech with ear and vocal organ belong to Akasha; vision and figure (-and-color-)-formation with eye and hands belong to agni; and so forth.



In the human kingdom, ear as sensor and voice as motor, and eye
as sensor and finger as motor, are best developed; writing, formation
of visible letter-figures is done by the fingers. Ants and some other
kinds of insects seem to communicate by touch and antennae; dogs and
certain moths, by smell.
And their agency, to secure communion between organ and sense-object, is metaphysically necessitated, in order, by the fact of diffusion through space, to give to the sense-object the semblance of the Universal Self, which reaches and includes all and is within the reach of all. This pervasion, which, metaphysically, is pseudo-infinite in extent, is actually reproduced in the fact that each brahm-Anda, 'great-egg', 'egg of the Infinite', world-system or macrocosm, is pervaded by one individuality; just as each piNd-Anda, microcosm, a human organism, is pervaded by one individuality.

Why Ishvaras are Pervasive

The vast masses of the root-elements that serve as the sense-media of the organisms inhabiting our brahm-Anda, for instance, constitute, in their totality, the body of the Ishvara who is the brahm-Anda; the unity of his individuality brings together our senses and sense-objects in these sense-media; while he himself is but as an infinitesimal Jiva in a vaster brahm-Anda, a sidereal system in which our solar system is as a grain of sand in a solar system; and so on pseudo-infinitely.

This is why Ishvaras are also called vi-bhu, 'pervading.' It is only the principle of overlapping individualities, in another view. Later on there may appear more on this point, viz., how communion between two separate things, subject and object, in the way of cognition, desire, and action, is possible, and takes place only because the two are also one, since both of them are part of a higher individuality, a larger subject.



"He who is the Beginning of All, having ideated a Frame, made of five elements, entered into it, and became the Fountain of nara-s. humans, Jivas; therefore he is named Nar-ayana. All this triple world-system is His Body; all the sensors' and motors of all beings are derived from His, are parts of His; His self-consciousness is all Knowledge, His Breath is all Energy-Desire, which creates-maintains-destroys.": pantheism in a fresh aspect. Berkeley also has seen and said that the perceptions of individuals are only participations in the perceptions of the Universal Ego. The name Kavi, Poet, Dramatist, Author, is especially appropriate for BrahmA. The 'perceptions', experiences, sayings, doings, of every character in a drama, are all only 'participations' in the Ideation of the Author; all ideas are parts of the One Universal Ideation.

Great public movements, enthusiasms, panics, are particitions in the ideas, ideals, feelings, views, sentiments of one (or more, but uni-ted) leader (or leaders), with sufficient intensity of will and feeling (tapasyA, divine force, hot and glowing will). Epidemics, Yuga-dharma, KAla-dharma, Time-spirit, Zeit-geist--indicate the same fact.

--Bhagavata, XI.iv.3.4. (for the Samskrta quote see p.412 of the book.)

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pp.412-419
Ever Greater Inwardness

The remarks made in the preceding chapter as to the pseudo-infinite series of involucra of the Jiva, one within another, should be recalled im this connection. Taking the case of vision, for instance, we find as the first step, that the act of seeing means the picturing of the object seen on the retina, which at that stage is for all purposes identical with, and is, the seer.

But analysing further, we find that, in the human being, the act of vision is by no means completed with this picturing on the retina. Vibrations of nerves convey the picture to a further centre in the brain--not yet quite definitely determined, it seems, by physiological investigations. Physical research leaves the matter here for the present.

But metaphysic deduces, as an inference from the inseparable 'conjunction of dravya-guNa-karma, that, whatever that brain-centre might be ultimately decided to be, it will be found that just as the vibrations and particles of the outer visible object, transmitted through the 'ether', (or whatever other element may finally be determined to be the medium of light, and however it may be named, the Samskrt name being tejas, as said before), make a picture of that object on the retina, so the retinal picture, which has now in turn become 'the outer visible object' to the more-inward-receded Jiva, is transmitted in still more minute particles, by nerve-vibrations, to a corresponding subtler organ or brain-centre which is now masquerading as the seer in place of the eye, in the present condition of organisms. And further research will show the process repeated preudo-infinitely inwards, taking the sheath into subtler, and ever subtler planes of matter.

Meaning of 'I' and 'Mine'

But while this series of sheaths, one within another, is theoretically pseudo-infinite, in practice and as a matter of fact--if we take any organism, in any one cycle of space and time--we shall necessarily find that it consists of only a limited and countable number of such sheaths, with one unanalysable core; the very filmiest of films it may be, but unanalysable any further, for the time being; and in that cycle, this core represents, and for all purposes is, the very self ot the Jiva.

From another and higher standpoint, embracing a wider cycle of space and time, that film will also be analysable, and be seen to be not the innermost core but only an outer sheath, hiding within itself another core, which will then be irreducible. Evidence of this we find even physically, in comparing the earliest available unicellular organisms of our terrene life and evolution, with the latest most complex ones.

In the human being, the brain with its centres takes the place of Self, and is the main seat of consciousness (from the standpoint of physiology), but is hedged round and overlaid with numbers of other parts of the body, nerves, ganglia, senses, etc., through which only it can be reached.

Of 'My Eyes', 'My Ears'

In the unicellular organism the nucleus is probably the centre of consciousness, {Verworn, General Physiology, p.508.} and is, as it were, all the brain, the sense organs, etc., in one; in its case, the Jiva has not yet learnt to make the distinction--involved in the expressions, 'my eyes', 'my ears'--between the Jiva (identified with the brain as centre of consciousness) and its sense-instruments; and hence it has got no centre of consciousness, which may be separate from sense-instruments. But when the consciousness begins to make such distinction, the nucleus at once resolves into a subtler core (apparently, but not yet positively determined to be, the nucleolus) with different parts wrapping it round; and under the continuing stress of the individualised consciousness, there appears the progressive development and differentiation of functions and instruments which is called evolution.

'My Brain', 'My Soul'

It should be noted here that the expression 'my brain' has not the same significance as 'my eyes' and 'my hands'. {The ashvattha-tree, with its roots above and its branches below,spoken of in the Bhagavad-Glta, xv.1, probably means the nervous system of man, also, besides other things; brain above, nerves below.}

Of course it has a certain meaning, but the consciousness of my brain being distinct and different from me is by no means so definite, full, and clear in the ordinary man, as is the consciousness of the eyes and the hands being thus different and distinct. The expression gains fuller and fuller significance as the 'I' retieats further and further inwards, and is able to separate itself more and more actually from the physical body.

'My clothes' has a much fuller and clearer meaning than 'my bands and feet'; 'my hands and feet' has a much clearer and fuller meaning than 'my brain'. 'My sUkshma sharIra', 'my kArana sharIra', 'my soul', are practically (but not theoretically) meaningless in the mouths [of people who have never succeeded, by means of yoga, in separating them from the outer physical body. To advanced souls, who have succeeded in doing so, 'my brain' has a meaning as definite as 'my shirt'.



See The Mahatma Letters, p.259. Master K.H. has gone into [B]samAdhi-trance, for three months (in 1882) in search of "supreme knowledge". Master M. has promised to him to carry on his theosophical work and correspondence with Sinnett and Hume. In the course of a letter to the former, Master M. says: "I may as well occupy a few minutes of my time to write to you in the best English I find lying idle in my friend's brain; where also I find in the cells of memory, the phosphorescent thought of a short letter, to be sent by himself." Master M. says that his own knowledge of English is not so good as Master K.H.'s; but the reader can scarcely think so; of course the style is very different.
Long-Circuit Self-Realisation

This development of the complex from the simple, this opening up of separated individual consciousness through layer into inner layer, this gradual growth of nerve within nerve and instrument within instrument, this definition of body within body, this multiplication of the means to the simple ends or rather the one end, this 'long-circuiting' of the satisfaction of the elemental appetites of life or rather of the one appetite of Self-realisation constitutes the evolution of the individual, from the standpoint of limited cycles.



'Long-circuiting' is a very significant word, coined in 'the science and art' of electricity. The whole World-Process is a long-circuiting of the simple Relation between I and Not-I. Commentaries and critical expositions and illustrations are the long-circuiting of the meaning of aphorisms and maxims.

To take a fanciful illustration: it is as if we should, to increase the power and range and minuteness of our vision, first put on a pair of spectacles, then add a telescope, and over that a miscroscope, and so on indefinitely. In this imaginary illustration the additions are outwards. In evolution, by deliberate yoga, on the nivrtti-mArga, 're-turn or re-ascent into Spirit', they would be inwards, a retreating within into subtler and subtler planes of matter; on the pravrtti-mArga, descent into Matter, they would be outwards too, each self taking on denser and denser veils of matter to enjoy the experiences of a greater and greater (seeming) definition of itself--'I (am) this, I (am) this'.

From the standpoint of the Absolute, on the other hand, all cycles and all evolution, all functions, all instruments, and all functionings and actual workings of them, on all possible planes of matter, are ever completely present in the transcendent consciousness: "I--This Not--(am)".

Thus we come back again and again to the fact of an endless series of plane within plane of matter, all permeated and pervaded by the consciousness in its triple aspect of jnAna ichChA, kriyA. "Veil upon veil will lift, but there must be veil upon veil behind."

Let us see now how these pseudo-infinite planes of matter can be co-ordinated and brought into organic unity with each other. Co-ordinated in fact they must be; for the etats, 'this-es'--separate in their pseudo-infinity though they are by very constitution are not and cannot be mutually entirely oblivious and independent, when the thread of the One Self runs through them all, and strings them together like beads.

Mathematics and Metaphysics

Different planes of matter, though separate from, and, from one standpoint, independent of, each other to such an extent that they may even seem to violate the axioms of geometry, cannot escape these axioms altogether. As usual, we have disorder as well as order, negation as well as affirmation, defiance of law and yet submission thereto, here as well as elsewhere.

Consciousness appears to transcend mathematical laws; but it is only the Universal Consciousness of Pratyag-AtmA that can at all be said to do so, and this too only when it is considered as a whole, comprehending and at the same time negating the whole of Mula-prakrti.



It is only in respect of this one Supreme 'self-contradictory' fact that Metaphysics transcends, is beyond, Mathematics. But this one fact has important consequences and corollaries, which, for practical purposes, connect metaphysics more nearly, as it were, with the psychological, ethical, logical, and biological sciences, than with mathematics and the physico-chemical sciences; though, strictly, metaphysics, as repeatedly said, is equally connected with all sciences and coordinates them all. Mathematics deals with space, time, energy-motion, taking its start from certain purely metaphysical notions, as pointed out before. Metaphysics deals with these as well as with their Abolition, their Opposite, the Infinite Here, the Eternal Now, the utterly Motionless Self, full of Perfect Rest and unshakeable Peace,
Otherwise, it itself is the source and the embodiment of that unity, uniformity, regularity in diversity, the fact or brief description of which uniformity is called a law, and which appears when Self is intermingled with Mulaprakrti (as it always is), under the changeless stress of Absolute-Consciousness, Brahma.

Limited individual consciousnesses are inseparably connected with limited 'this-es'; hence they can never actually transcend those laws. That they appear to do so from some standpoints, is due to their identity with Pratyag-AtmA.

The world of the lower astral plane, whose normal inhabitants are said to be yakshas, gandharvas, kinnaras, nAgas, kUshmandas, gnomes, undines, fairies, and such other nature-spirits, with bodies made of the same or similar 'stuff', 'mind-stuff', as our grosser dreams and mental images, may seem literally to 'occupy the same space' as the physical world, whose normal inhabitants are humans, animals, plants, minerals, etc. But this is not really so. The facts available point to the conclusion that as soon as the human develops the body and the instruments which enable him to begin to live consciously in the astral world as he does in the physical, he sees that the two worlds, at the most, interpenetrate, as sand and water, or water and air, and do not actually and literally occupy the same space. In other words, planes of matter, that appear utterly disconnected from the standpoint of individual consciousnesses limited to each plane, become only grades of density of matter from the standpoint of a consciousness that includes all of them.

[saidevo]

pp.419-426
Meaning of Law: Triple World: Why Triple

This thought may now be expanded as follows:

The simile used above, of thread and beads, illustrates the fact of order amidst disorder, and also covers another fact which is essential in the work of co-ordination. In the chaplet, each bead touches but two others, one on each side, and not more than two; and so too we find that SamsAra, World-Process, is triple, tribhuvanam, trai-lokyam, whenever and wherever we take it.

This fact, that it is always a triple world, whenever and wherever we take it, gives the method of the co-ordination; for each factor of each such triplet is also concurrently connected with two other triplets; and as this connection extends pseudo-infinitely, it results that all possible planes are ringed together always.

Thus taking the three planes of our world-system, viz., sthUla, sUkshma, and kAraNa (roughly corresponding to physical, astro-mental, and causal, of theosophical literature) and naming them F, G, and H, we should find, on research, that F is simultaneously connected with three triplets, D E F, E F G, and F G H; so G with E F G, F G H and G H I; so H with F G H, G H I and H I J; and taking any of these triplets, say H I J, the mutual relation of these three would be found to be the same as that of F G H; that is to say, to a Jiva to whom J represented the physical, I would represent the astro-mental, and H the kAraNa plane. And this series of triplets extends endlessly before D and after J.

Before passing on to the reason of this state of things, it may be well to note that the interpretation of tribhuvanam, 'triple world', or 'three worlds', advanced here, is not exactly what is commonly understood by the word, just as the inmost meaning of the sacred word, AUM, is not what is commonly given. Yet there is no conflict or inconsistency between the two interpretations.

Why Analogy

On the contrary, the other interpretations all follow necessarily from the inmost one. Students wonder now and then how it is that resemblances occur in different departments of nature; and when it is said that one and the same statement may be interpreted in many ways, each correct and each applying to one class and one department of phenomena, sober people generally suspect some sleight-of-hand.

As a fact, a statement of a true principle of nature, concerning one of the Ultimates, or rather, strictly speaking, Penultimates, naturally applies to all the different series of phenomena derived from and constantly embodying those penultimates; and the wonder may as well be, how there is difference between part and part of nature, as how there is resemblance. MUla-prakrti explains the difference; Pratyag-AtmA, the resemblance.



The Unity of Self as Omni-present, is the reason, the cause, of whatever uni-formity, similarity, analogy, we find anywhere and everywhere. It is the real reason for the certainty felt in induction, otherwise utterly fallible. 'Once, therefore always'; 'as in one place, so in all places.'

The older NyAya-Vaisheshika gives the reason of vyApti-graha', 'ap-prehen-sion of pervasiveness', i.e., 'inductive generalisation', as being pratyaksha, 'direct perception' of jAti , 'genus', together with vyakti, 'the particular', because of sama-vAya; 'co-inherence', inseparability, of 'particular' or 'singular' or 'individual' and 'general' or 'universal'. The new NyAya calls the same fact or process, by the name of praty-Asatti.

Max Muller, in his Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, has recognised that the very important category of sama-vAya "is one peculiar to Indian philosophy", and "though this relationship is known in non-Indian philosophies, it has not received a name of its own, though such a term might have proved very useful in several controversies. The relation between thought and word" (vAg arthau) "for instance, is SamavAya, inseparableness. ... There is SamavAya between threads and cloth, father and son, two halves and a whole, cause and effect, substance and qualities, the two being interdependent and inseparable"; (see pages referred to, against the word 'SamavAya' in the Index to Max Muller's book).


The law of analogy, 'as above so below', sama-darshitA, 'same-sightedness', 'same-seeing-ness', is capable of a far wider and truer application than is now charily given to it; and it provides the reason of the existence of allegories and parables, in which there is as much literal fact as metaphor.

Because of this universal applicability of basic laws, tri-bhuvanam, 'triple world', when it means only three different but interconnected worlds or planes of matter, according to the ordinary explanation of the word, means something which is the necessary result of the metaphysical triplicity of all the life of united Jlva and atom, i.e., of the Jiva-atom. In this metaphysical triplicity, which is the inmost meaning of tri-bhuvanam, lies the reason for the state of things described in the preceding paragraph.

Core, Sheath, Nexus

Everywhere we find the world and the things of the world divided into an inner and an outer, a core and a sheath, and a third something, a principle, a relation, rather than a fact or factor, binding and holding these two together. This is due to the very constitution of the Absolute as shown in the Logion, viz., an inner Self, an outer Not-Self, and the third something, the affirmative-negative Shakti, which ties the two together indissolubly, and yet is not a third strictly, but only a repetition of the positivity, the being, of Self, and of the negativity, the nothingness, of Not-Self.

So we find, in the department of consciousness taken by itself, an outer or real world, and an inner or ideal world, and a third something, the abstract consciousness, or self-consciousness, or apperception, or pure and abstract reason, as it has been variously named, holding the two together.

This pure or abstract reason is the embodiment and source, as said before, of all abstract laws and principles, which are but forms of this Self-Consciousness in its relations to the objects by means of which it may be realising itself at the time.

Buddhic Web of Life

'I see this book before me'--this consciousness is a consciousness of the 'real', the 'outer', world.

'I remember the book, in memory; I have thoughts about it, i.e., I call up mental pictures of the book in relation to other things, its author, country, press, people, in which and by whom it was printed, published, and criticised; of other books on the same subject which have been written in other times and places; of the whole history of the gradual growth of learning on the subject treated of in the book, and the causes thereof, etc.,'--these are facts of the inner, the ideal world.

Lastly there is the consciousness (corresponding to the Absolute) which joins together and connects, in my own self, these two sets of facts, those belonging to the 'Me' and those to the 'Not-me', and weaves them into the one process of my life. That the thread of Self through the beads of Not-Self is, or appears as, buddhi, laws, principles, apperception, self-consciousness, etc., may become clearer if the matter is considered thus:

• 'I know and wish and act, and I know that I know and wish and act'--this is self-consciousness.'



Or, better, 'I am aware that I know and wish and act', for to say I 'know' instead of 'am aware', seems to make the element of knowledge or cognition more essential to Self-Consciousness than the elements of desire and conation or action, which is against fact. Samskrta words corresponding to apperception, etc., are anu-vyavasAya, pratyay-AnupashyatA, buddhi-bodha, nija-bodha, AtmA-nubhava, sAkshitA, upa-drashtri-tA, etc.


• 'I am aware also that I knew and wished and acted before, and shall know and wish and act afterwards, in the same way, when the circumstances are the same'--this is the same self-consciousness modified into reason, ratio-cination, ratio-nality, perception of the ratio, relation, of sameness, of similarity, amongst not-selves, because of the persistence and sameness, through past, present, and future, of Self.

• 'Such an experience, knowledge, desire, or action, is always followed by such another'--this is the same self-consciousness modified into and stated as a law, a principle.

Why Outer World and Inner World

How and why does this state of things come about? Why is there an outer world and inner world? How does this distinction between the ideal and the real, ideas and realities, arise at all, and what is the distinction between them precisely?



Self has been regarded above as linking up (by containing within itself, both) the ideal and the real, inner and outer, within and without, i.e., mental and material.

A simpler and perhaps practically more useful way is to say that 'mind' is the link between Self or Spirit and Not-Self or Matter. In Mind, both are present; and all the Interplay of Spirit and Matter, 'past, present, and future', is present in Mind. The present is, is existent; the past was; but is not; the future will be, but is not.

The present is the only real; it emphatically is. What we see around us, what we are, at any given moment, carries with it an intense convincingness of actuality, factness, reality, existence. Yet the passing of a year, a day, even a simple catastrophic moment, abolishes all that intense reality, and converts it into a dream of the past; and that too a more or less quickly fading dream!

From the metaphysical standpoint, therefore, the present is the only and the most un-real; because obviously evanescent, moment by moment. From that standpoint, past and future may be said to be far more real, or even the only real, because permanently present in the Supra-Conscious of God's Memory.

To that Memory, all the Procession and Panorama of the whole Universe of all possible and actual stars and systems, is an Eternal Now. Thus, what is real from the empirical standpoint, becomes un-real, or Ideal, from the metaphysical or transcendental standpoint; and vice versa.

The finite passing moment is most intensely real to the finitised or individualised Jiva; the in-finite contents of Mahat-Buddhi, Supra-Consciousness, Universal Mind, are the most intensely real to the Infinite Self. The Jiva grips the Finite with one hand, and embraces the In-Finite with the other whence arises the assurance of 'personal immortality', jIvan-mukti; feet on earth, head among stars; nest in tree, flight in empyrean; some mechanical occupation, even so-called 'drudgery', for livelihood of body, and poetry, science, art, yoga-siddhis, religion-philosophy, for livelihood of soul.


Continuity in Discreteness

For answer we have to refer back to the principle which is always turning up on every side under every complication of phenomena, when that complication is sifted. Pratyag-AtmA is the unbroken continuity of the One. MUla-prakrti, on the other hand, is the utterly discontinuous brokenness and separateness of the many. The two have nothing in common with each other; in fact they are ever and at every point entirely opposed to each other. Yet they are violently brought together into inviolable relation by the might of the Absolute-SvabhAva, the Changeless Nature of the Absolute.

The reconciliation of these warring principles, each equally invincible, necessitates the further principle of 'continuity in discreteness', whereby each discrete thing is in turn a thread of continuity to even more minutely discreted things and lower subdivisions; and, conversely, each thread of continuity is in turn a discrete and subdivisional item in a higher thread of continuity--and this endlessly.

This principle applies to the constitution of a so-called atom as also of solar systems, which include smaller systems and form part of larger ones in a series that is endless either way; and it underlies the continuously overlapping series of individuals within individuals which make up the Jiva-half of the World-Process.

This same principle, applied to the psychic half of SamsAra, that is to say to consciousness; and even there to the cognitional element specially (in connection with which it is most manifest); explains why there should be two worlds to consciousness, an ideal and a real, memory and sensation, and a third something holding the two together. The application may become clear if we endeavour to understand in a little more detail what is the significance of memory and other allied psychological processes, and how and why they come into existence.

[saidevo]

pp.426-433
The Absolute, an Eternal Sensation

The Absolute may be correctly described as an eternal sensation in which the Universal Self, in one single act of consciousness senses the non-existence of Not-Self; that is to say, of all possible pseudo-infinite not-selves in all the three divisions of time--past, present, and future; of space--length, breadth, and depth; of motion--approach, recess, and rhythmic vibration.

Now each separate individual Jiva or self, out of the whole mass of pseudo-infinite Jivas or selves, (the totality of which is unified in and by Pratyag-AtmA) must also necessarily reproduce in itself this one single act of consciousness, this truly unique sensation, this all-embracing, all-exhausting experience, by reason of its identity with the universal Self; yet it is impossible also for it to do so, because ot its limitedness. The reconciliation of these opposed necessities gives rise to the ideal world in which we can 'look before and after' simultaneously (comparatively only), as distinguished from the real world in which we can have only one sensation at a time (again only comparatively), successively.

Meaning of Memory

Thus, to begin with, the individual self requires two acts of consciousness to sense the non-existence of a single not-self. It cannot compass this in one act, like the universal Self. It must first sense the existence, and then sense the non-existence of that not-self.

In the second place, it has to deal with pseudo-infinite notselves; it can sense them all only in, so to say, twice pseudo-infinite acts of consciousness, which means, in other words, in endless acts of consciousness, extending through endless time, endless space, endless motion.

Confining ourselves for the moment to the case of one self dealing with one not-self, we see that that self first senses and asserts the existence of that not-self (as identical with itself), and secondly senses and asserts the non-existence of that 'same' not-self (as non-identical with itself). The word 'same' here embodies what we know as 'memory'. The imposition of continuity on an ever-changing not-self by a self, in consequence and by virtue of its own continuity, is memory of that not-self.

Putting the matter in another form, while all the possible past, present, and future of the World-Process is completely and simultaneously present in the consciousness of Pratyag-AtmA, it unfolds, as a mAyAvic or illusive appearance of procession, only gradually and in succession, in the actual life of the individual; and the constant participation of the individual self, in the omniscience latent and ever-present in Pratyag-AtmA, constitutes the inner ideal world of so-called sub-consciousness or supra-consciousness, mahat or mAhan-AtmA or buddhi, whence arise memory and expectation and derivative mental processes.



स्मरणं तु आत्मनॊ ज्ञ-स्वाभाव्यात् ।

"Recollection (is possible) because of the all-knowing nature of the Self." Compare Ward's views as to memory-continuum ( Art. 'Psychology', Enc. Brit., llth Ed.)

smaraNaM tu AtmanO j~ja-svAbhAvyAt |


Meaning of the 'Present'

Consider, in this connection, the fact that, even in ordinary usage, the word 'present' never means an imaginary point of time, dividing, as with a razor, the past from the present, but always a period, 'a slab or chunk of time', so to say; thus, 'at the present time', 'at present', 'in this present life', 'the present circumstances', etc. [See p.316 supra, and, The Secret Doctrine I.110,116 (Adyar edn.)]

So, 'the past', the 'future', also, ordinarily, in common usage, mean more or less definite periods, 'blocks or pieces' of time, ages, epochs; thus: 'the future of this nation', 'the past of that person'.

Pratyag-AtmA and Individual

The above statement is, however, not complete by itself.

Firstly: if the separate self can freely participate in the omniscience of Pratyag-AtmA, how is it that our recollection and our prevision are so very limited, so very erroneous? Not one in a million can remember or forecast any facts behind and beyond this present birth; and even the facts of the present life are but very imperfectly remembered and pre-vised.

The answer to this is that while, metaphysically, this continuity of memory and expectation in the individual self is derived from the consciousness of Pratyag-AtmA, practically and actually it is derived from the consciousness of the individual of the next higher order,



See pp.347-348 supra, for the significance of the expression, 'the next higher individual'. Also Bh&gavata, XI.iv.4, yasyeMdriyaustunumRutA-mubharyedriyANi, p.325 supra.


the Ishvara as SUtrAtmA, just as in the case of the connecting unity of sense-media; whence limitations. And as to the positive errors and forgettings within those limitations, they are due to the general causes which make knowledge and ignorance, recollection and forgetfulness, truth and error, possible, nay, necessary, in the World-Process at large; these causes have been indicated above (pp.404-405) in dealing with the sub-divisions of cognition.

The Possible and the Actual

Secondly (and this is more relevant to our present purpose), there is the difference between the possibility of participation and actual participation. As soon as there is a positive act of memory, or positive act of prevision or expectation, it becomes distinct from the possibility of such recollection and prevision.



Buddhi and Manas; Total (Collective or Universal and sub-supra-), Un-Conscious and Conscious (with its degrees of pro-, fore-, co-Conscious etc.); Avyaktam or Unmanifest and Vyaktam or Manifest; Abstract and Concrete; General and Special; Universal and Particular; all these pairs indicate aspects ot the same Fact.


One, piece, so to say, of the latent has become patent, and the general latency remains a latency as ever before. And all this while, from the standpoint of the Absolute, there is no difference at all between latency and patency; for, in the Absolute, all things which are limited, and can be distinguished, are exactly on the same level of etat-'this' in the same way, and not one within or higher or lower than, or in any way different from, another.

The solution of these inconsistencies is that what is latent to one is also patent to it in turn, and simultaneously to others, while what is patent to one is also latent to it in turn, and simultaneously to others; and thus the equality of all is brought about, all existing simultaneously from the standpoint of the Absolute, all serving as latent and patent, ideal and real, one within another, at the same time. A hundred sculptors see a hundred different statues in the same block of marble simultaneously. The facts of physical science, regarding infinite registration by each atom of all sights, sounds, etc., are helpful for understanding, here.

Illustrations

We may further illustrate the fact thus. If a spectator wandered unrestingly through the halls of a vast museum, a great art-gallery, at the dead of night, with a single small lamp in one hand, each of the natural objects, the pictured scenes, the statues, the portraits, would be illumined by that lamp, in succession, for a single moment, while all the rest were in darkness, and after that single moment, would itself fall into darkness again.

Let there now be not one but countless such spectators, as many in innumerable number as the objects of sight within the place, each spectator meandering in and out incessantly through the great crowd of all others, each lamp bringing momentarily into light one object, and for only that spectator who holds that lamp. This immense and unmoving building is the rockbound ideation of the changeless Absolute. Each lamp-carrying spectator, in the countless crowd, is one line of consciousness in the pseudo-infinite lines of such that make up the totality of the One Universal Consciousness. Each coming into light of each object is its patency, is an experience of the Jiva; each falling into darkness is its lapse into the latent.

From the standpoint of the objects themselves, or of the universal consciousness, there is no latency, nor patency. From that of the lines of consciousness, there is. Why there is this appearance of lines of consciousness should be clear from all that has gone before.



For other illustrations, see p.232 supra and World-War and Its Only Cure, pp.411-413 f.n. Each lamp, each point of light, each Jiva, in the illustration above, is a focus of the Diffused Continuum of Light, viz., Universal Consciousness. Focussing does not mean complete concentration of all the Light in one point--an obvious impossibility. It only means a comparative (and that too, only illusive) intensification in one place, and slight reduction in the neighbourhood. W.James' phrase, 'the hot point of consciousness', is very good. Every act of attention creates such a hot point.


The Ideal and the Real

We see then that whenever and wherever we take the World-Process, we shall find it to consist of an outer plane of grosser matter which corresponds to and makes up the 'real' world, the patent, and an inner plane of subtler which makes up the 'ideal' world, corresponding to the latent. At each stage, the Jiva-core consists of matter of the inner plane, while its outer upAdhi, sheath, consists of matter of the outer plane; and when a person says: 'I think', 'I act', it means that the matter of the inner core, which is the 'I' for the time being, is actually, positively, modified by, or is itself modifying in a certain manner, the outer real world, literally in the same kind of way, though vastly subtler, as a glass may reflect an image, or a compressed wire-spring may push back the object which compresses it. The ideality of the inner processes is due to the fact that the inner film of matter is posing and masquerading, for the time, as the truly immaterial Self.



In this fact may be seen illustrated the doctrine of Sankhya that mahat, buddhi, abamkAra, manas, etc., are all derivatives of PradhAna or Prakrti, born because of the simple juxtaposition of Purusha, and are therefore all jaDa, 'material'. Intellectual and other mental proceesss are shapings, colorings, stressings. etc., of the 'mental body', as much as vision is the shaping of (the purpurine on) the retina. The element of I-consciousness, attached to the shaping, belongs to the Self alone. That is the One and Only Thing or Fact that is non-material.


Inner Body and Outer Body

Let us take some concrete facts to illustrate the above remarks. The lower we descend in the scale of living organisms, the less we find of that individuality, that self-consciousness, which looks 'before and after', of memory and expectation in short. And the less we find of these, the hazier is the distinction between inner and outer, ideal and real. But as in no living organism which persists through even two moments of time can there be an utter absence of a unified consciousness, of an individuality, of the sense of 'before and after', however vague and dim it may be, so can there not be an utter absence of inner core and outer sheath.

But in the higher organisms, this distinction, of a persisting core and a more or less changing sheath, is much more definite. In the average man, the sUkShma-sharIra (so named in Vedanta, and corresponding to the astral, or rather astro-mental, body, of theosophical literature), made of a finer grade of matter than that which composes the physical plane we know of, is the inner core.

This forms the individuality, the thread of continuity, the 'present', in which the past and future, the before and after, of one physical life-period of a human being are conjoined, amidst the changes of his physical body and surroundings. The physical body itself has a certain 'form and shape' imposed upon it by this inner body; which form, roughly speaking, persists like an external thread of continuity, through the incessant changes of the material of the body. This but illustrates the pseudo-infinite repetition of every principle in nature. The physical body is sheath to the astral; but in the physical body itself a still further distinction is made between a grosser and a finer, and the former, the grosser, portion becomes sheath to an inner less gross, which becomes distinguished as a linga-dEha, a 'type-body', (or etheric double, in theosophical literature).



And even in the grosser 'physical body', we may not improperly say that the nervous system is the 'inner' and finer, and the rest 'outer' and coarser. Again, in the nervous system, the 'central' portion may be distinguished from the 'peripheral'; and so on, till we come to a recent theory which holds that the nerves proper are not really continuous threads, but consist of microscopic protoplasmic jellylike cells, enclosed within tubes, which cells, during the active waking condition, stretch out on both sides and touch each other, thus becoming one continuous thread, which undulates with the alternate jellfication and softening, or contracting and expanding, of these cells when they are carrying afferent or efferent impulses; sleep resulting when these cells become fatigued, contract, and separate from each other.

[saidevo]

pp.434-438
Physical and Superphysical: Endless Spirals of Evolution

To put the matter in other words: Of the pseudo-infinite variations of the Logion, due to the pseudo-jnfinite variations of the 'this' contained in that logion, each variation may be regarded as representing one life-course, one line of consciousness.

This one life-course, one line of consciousness, taking the case of the average human individual, is represented by the inner sUkShma-sharIra, 'subtle body', which contains, latent in itself, the whole of the (to be unfolded actual) life of that individual, as the seed contains the tree. As one single 'present', it includes all the time-divisions, past and future, of that life within itself. Because of this fact, the Jiva can range in memory and expectation over the whole of this one physical life;



True, most of our experiences are forgotten beyond conscious recall. But the experiments of hypnotists and investigation of 'the unconscious' show that they are still 'present' and can be recalled in special circumstances. In this connection should be considered the physiology of the brain. The Mahatma Letters and The Secret Doctrine say that the material of the physical body is changed and renewed entirely in every seven years. But some Professors of Physiology and Anatomy have told me, on enquiry, that the cells of the brain do not change, though they grow. The subject requires further investigation. Any way, continuity of physical basis, in some way or other (may be by transference of impression from old to new cells) seems to be needed for continuity of conscious memory, while awake in the physical body. The ternaries of anabolism and katabolism within metabolism, of integration and disintegration within preservation, of tidal flow and ebb within a level, of maximum and minimum under an optimum, seem to be at work continuously, in the body, as well as in the mind, in various ways. It is obvious that the softer tissues, like the layers of the skin, are changed and renewed quickly; the harder ones, like deepseated ideas and feelings, slowly.


to him the whole of it is in a manner present at every moment of his life, because it is all present in the sUkShma-sharIra which is the ensouling core of his physical sheath and is himself. But his memory and expectation cannot go beyond the limits of the present life, because the individuality of the sUkShma-sharIra does not extend over other physical births.

If, however, by development of mind, by persistent introspection and metaphysical or even psycho-philosophical and abstract thought, helped by yogic practices (which are only scientifically systematised processes of education, of extension or development of special old or new faculties), a Jiva advances in evolution to the stage when he separates 'himself' as much from the sUkShma-sharIra as from the sthUla-sharIra or physical body, then the sUkShma-sharIra loses, in and to him, its character of inner core; it becomes that Jiva's normal seat or centre of 'waking' consciousness, as the physical or sthUla is now; and becomes merged with the physical into the outer sheath; and another body, (now called the kAraNa-sharIra), made of a still subtler grade of matter, takes the place of the inner core, and becomes a new sUkShma-sharIra ranging over many rebirths and compassing memory and expectation of them all.



KrshNa says to Arjuna, Gita, iv.5, 'I remember all my past births; you do not.' See also the conversation, regarding their memories of past births, between Jaigisbavya and Avatya: Yoga-Bhashya, iii.18.


This process is repeated ad infinitum in the endless spirals of evolution including system within system.



aMtaraMtaH TrIpAd-VibhUti-MahA-Narayana Upanishat. We have seen before, that the doctrine, that there are atoms within worlds and worlds within atoms endlessly, is very familiar in Yoga-Vasishtha and other works. For the specific statement that a param-Anu, a 'super-atom', is also an 'organism', a 'compound' of articulated parts, a [b]sanghAta, as distinguished from a mere loose collection, a samUha, see Yoga-Bhashya, iii.44.


Recession of the Ideal

Such seems to be the metaphysic of the facts stated in The Secret Doctrine (Vol.v, pp.424. et seq., Adyar edn.) that, to the Logos of our Solar System, all the planes of that system are as the sub-planes of one plane. They would be to Him, one outer real world; his own inner, ideal, world would be a grade beyond.

It is like this: If there were beings who had sense-experience of only solid matter, to them liquid matter would be in the place of soul, spirit, inner or ideal substance; but if they should gradually grow very familiar with water, and begin to have some experience of gaseous matter, then solid and liquid would become ranged as degrees or subdivisions of the outer plane to them, and air would take the place of soul, spirit, etc.; as air grew familiar, radiant matter, or ether, or whatever other name might be given to the next degree of matter, would take its place as principle of continuity and support and unification, in actual life and in general estimation.



Devl-Bhagavata speaks of the five mahA-bhUtas serving as sUtras, threads, principles of continuity to one another and to the countless forms within each.

एवं परस्परोत्पन्नाः, धारयंतिपरस्परं,
आधार आधेय भावेन विकारस्य विकारिषु ।

evaM parasparotpannAH, dhArayaMtiparasparaM,
AdhAra Adheya bhAvena vikArasya vikAriShu | --Vayu Purana, I.iv.

'Born one from another, each preceding supports each succeeding one.'

yad idaM sarvaM apsu otaM cha protaM cha, kasmin nu khalu ApaH otashcha protashcha, iti vAyau iti brahmalokeShu; ----Brhad-Aranyaka Upanishad, III.vi.

यद् इदं सर्वं अप्सु ओतं च प्रोतं च, कस्मिन् नु खलु आपः ओतश्च प्रोतश्च, इति वायौ इति ब्रह्मलोकेषु;

'All this (solid land) is inter-woven with (and supported by) water. But what is water supported by? By Air. And that Air? ... By Brahma ultimately is everything supported.'


Witness, in illustration of one aspect of this fact, various theories of the earlier Greek philosophers, who endeavoured to reduce the universe to one single element, earth, water, fire, air, etc., successively; and in illustration of another aspect thereof, modern scientific theories with respect to ether.

Opposite Attributes

Modern scientists have collected together and discussed all the attributes assigned to this hypothetical ether, and pointed out that they are in most instances exactly opposite of those assigned to known kinds of matter. [See, for instance, A.E. Dolbear, The Machinery of the Universe, p.93, (Romance of Science Series).]

As a fact, the list of attributes thus given, e.g., continuity, unlimitedness, homogeneity, non-atomicity, structurelessness, gravitationlessness, frictionlessness, etc., is not a list of attributes of any kind of matter or Mula-prakrti, but of Pratyag-AtmA. But it always happens in the history of evolution, that each subtler and more pliable grade of matter, in its relation to the next denser and more resistant, displays the characteristics which Pratyag-AtmA generally displays towards Mula-prakrti, viz., characteristics of being a source of existence and support, and of supplying a basis of continuity, of lubrication, whereby the resistant and separate are brought into relation with each other with the least possible friction, and are unified.

It is worthy of remark in passing that the Samskrt word sneha, means lubricant oil, or moisture, our water, as well as love, which is Pratyag-AtmA in the desire-aspect, desire for unity, and pre-eminently 'lubricates' our human relations.

We may well entertain the supposition, therefore, that when modern science, becoming more and more familiar with radiant matter and protyle and ether, etc., shall have discovered their real properties, they will all fall into line with the kinds of matter now better known; and a new and hypothetical element will have to be assumed, with these same characteristics of Pratyag-AtmA, to explain the otherwise paradoxical behaviour of the known kinds. Puranic and theosophical literature speaks of two such elements, after ether or AkAsha, to be discovered within the time-limits of our Manvantara, which have been already referred to before, viz., mahat or Adi-tattva and buddhi or anupAdaka-tattva.



P.372 supra, f.n. If these are (as is said) sense-able, in the same way as [b]AkAsha, vAyu, etc., and will have their corresponding sensor and motor organs, as AkAsha has ear and vocal (Skt. vale) cords; vAyu, skin and feet; agni, eyes and bands, then mahat-buddhi, the psychological principle or faculty, antah-karaNa or 'inner organ' of Sankbya, has to be distinguished from them, for it has to underlie all senses, old or new. See Pranava-vada.

[saidevo]

pp.438-446
Co-ordination of Planes of Matter

Co-ordination of these pseudo-infinite planes of matter then, is to be found in the fact that, wherever and whenever we take it, we find the World-Process as a limited brahm-AnDa, a world-system, small or large, which is a tri-bhuvanam, a tri-lokI, a system of 'three worlds' or layers or planes of matter.

That is to say, every Jiva, wherever and whenever he lives, lives in a world-system which to him has three factors: an outer or real world, an inner or ideal world, and the all-embracing consciousness--which connects the two, and which, being itself essentially and fully ever-present, is the basis of every 'present', whatever stretch of time-space-motion that lower present or ideal may include.

In our system, to average humanity, the outer world is the world of the physical plane and sthUla-sharIra; the inner, of the astro-mental plane and sUkshma-sharIra; the abstract consciousness (the principles or outlines on which the individual is constructed, the basic constituents of his nature, the special aspect or mode of the One Consciousness which that individual is intended to manifest, anger, or love, or art, or philanthropy, etc., in pseudo-infinite variety), of kAraNa-sharIra, the 'causal' body, which is the cause of the others; in a way corresponding to that in which Absolute-Consciousness is cause of all that occurs within it.

Waking up on Higher Planes

When, by evolution and opening up of the paths of individual consciousness through layers of the sUkshma-sharIra (i.e., by the 'waking up' of the individual on that plane, by transfer to it of 'the hot place' in his consciousness), the latter and its material will become as much 'object' to the consciousness as the physical body and its material are now; then kAraNa-body will take the place of sUkshma-body, and abstract consciousness will retire to a subtler plane of matter, which has been called buddhic, or mahA-kAraNa, or turIya; and then the range of memory and expectation will extend beyond the present life to past and future births, since the kAraNa-body (because of its subtler matter) has a more extensive 'present', and lasts through many physical births, even as the sUkshma-sharIra lasts through all changes of the physical body in one birth. From the standpoint of the kAraNa-body, physical births-deaths are as bright-dark fortnights, or even day-nights, of physical life would be to the sUkshma-sharIra.



For 'practical' purposes, works like Yoga-Vasishtha speak of only two 'bodies', viz., Adhi-bhautika (made up of mahA-bhUtas) and Ati-vAhika (by or in which the Jiva 'passes from one mood or body to another').

In Sufi terms, the two are jism-i-kasIf and jism~i-latIf' or [i]nafs-i-muqIm[i] and [i]nafs-i-jAri; (see Essential Unity of All Religions, Index). This latter would be 'core'-body, as the former is 'crust'-body.

For considerations, in terms of modern science, supporting belief in the existence and the possibility of development of such an 'inner body', see Edward Carpenter's The Drama of Love and Death. The possibility of such extraction of a subtler and finer body from the denser, is evidenced by the even more incredibly wonderful yet very familiar actuality of the caterpillar--chrysalis--butterfly and larva--pupa--moth transformations. Theosophical doctrines as to larger and larger reaches of subtler and subtler bodies and planes, buddhic, nirvANic, etc., are illustrations of the principles attempted to be expounded in the text.

More on the significance of the 'present' will be found in PraNava-vAda.


Two Senses of the Same Words

We may now pass on to certain inferences from the facts stated above. But before doing so it may be noted--as useful to bear in mind in systematising apparently disjointed and otherwise inconsistent-seeming and confusing statements in old Samskrt and theosophical literature--that the same words are employed, and for reasons existing in the nature of things as shown above, to indicate abstract general principles and types which have a universal application, and also special and concrete facts which are peculiar only to a particular locality or system.

Thus (a) AtmA, (b) buddhi, (c) manas these have one universal sense, viz., (a) Self, (b) unifying Reason or Universal Mind, which is but Self 'holding together' the Many as dharma-megha, web of life, and network of laws, and (c) separative intelligence.



Yoga-sUtra, i,2, and iv.29,32; 'the cloud, megha, which rains, mehati, all dharma and dharma-s, virtue, and laws of Nature, and also functions and characteristic qualities of things'; see the present writer's Yoga-Concordance-Dictionary.


They are also occasionally used in theosophical literature in another sense, viz., the three subtlest planes of matter out of the seven of which our solar system is there said to consist. When all the seven planes are taken as subplanes of one cosmic plane, these three may be regarded as composing the inner core to the outer sheath made up of the other four; even as the three subtler sub-planes of the physical plane supply the material for the 'inner' etheric double, which pervades and holds together the outer body composed of the four grosser sub-planes of physical matter, viz., solid, liquid, gaseous, and etheric.

A Corollary

The necessary corollary from the above statements is: Planes of matter which may be very different from each other, which may be mutually uncognisable by, and even as non-existent to, the Jivas ordinarily inhabiting each, i.e., having sheaths and bodies made of, or corresponding to, it, will always be seen from the standpoint of a higher Jiva, having a sufficiently extensive consciousness, to be graded or related to each other in some way or other.

We can conceive of beings whose bodies are made of air, and of others made of fire-flames. These two sets of beings might even interpenetrate without being conscious of each other. But a Jiva, who was familiar with both kinds of matter in all their forms, would be able to distinguish between the two, and see the gradation between the atoms composing the one and the other kind of matter.

A mosquito can walk upon the surface of water; for all practical purposes, the water is to it as hard and resistant as stone. It is not so to the fish. The fish and the mosquito may not be able to understand, the one how the other lives and moves in water, and the other how the one can walk upon the surface of it without being immersed.

Interpenetrating Planes

Man can understand both things. Pseudo-infinite necessarily are these diversities of consciousness; and each plane and each kind of matter, corresponding to each variety of this diversity, is again pseudo-infinite in extent of space, time, and motion, as already said. From the narrow standpoint, which knows of only one, each may seem to exclude even the possibility of others; so that if one said that there were living beings whose bodies were composed of subtler matter, that our earth was thronged with them so that our bodies and theirs were passing through each other very often, and in entire unconsciousness of each other's existence, the statement would ordinarily either not be believed, as involving a breach of geometrical axioms, or if believed, would be regarded as disproving those axioms.

But to a higher and broader outlook, both kinds of matter and their corresponding lines of consciousness fall into their proper places; and the graded relations, to each other, of these planes of matter, by interpenetration, without violation of any mathematical laws, also becomes apparent.

No Fourth Dimension

Another connected corollary seems to be that, by metaphysical deduction, the so-called fourth and fifth and higher dimensions of space can really not be anything differing in kind from the known three dimensions.*



The Secret Doctrine, I.29S-296, and The Mahatma Letters, p.404, clearly repudiate the notion of any fourth, fifth, etc., dimension of space, other than the three, length, breadth, depth. They explain that 'interpenetration' has been mistaken for a new 'dimension'.


These three dimensions themselves, length, breadth and depth, are but varieties of the one fact of co-existence which is the essential and the whole significance of space. Three straight lines intersecting each other at right angles at one central point give us these three dimensions. But a million, a billion, a pseudo-infinite number, of such triplets of lines can intersect each other at the same central point; that is to say, a pseudo-infinite number of single straight lines can intersect each other, at that point, at angles of all possible degrees; and we can therefore justifiably speak of a pseudo-infinite number of dimensions of space.

In any other sense, all so-called new dimensions resolve themselves into cases of interpenetration in various ways; and interpenetration itself, it is clear, is but the co-existence of atoms, or molecules, or component particles, in special positions towards each other. The case would be similar with dimensions and divisions of time and motion.

Higher Includes Lower Consciousness

The question of how the consciousness of a Jiva expands, so as to embrace more and more planes of matter, is one of general evolution, or of practical yoga when an endvavour is made to accomplish this deliberately.

The nature itself of the process of expansion of consciousness is nothing peculiarly mysterious. All education is such expansion; and yoga is specialised education. A Jiva takes up a new subject of study, a new line of livelihood, a new department of life and mode of existence, and forthwith a new world is opened to him, and his consciousness flows out into, becomes co-extensive with, takes in and assimilates, that new world. Every sense, ear, eye, nose, is a window into a world of its own.

Illustrations

In another aspect of 'expansion', viz., of (comparatively) simultaneous communion, we find other illustrations. Take the case of an ordinary government. The consciousness of an officer in charge of the police-administration of a sub-district is coextensive with the police-affairs of that district; that of another in charge of its revenue administration is similarly co-extensive with its revenue affairs; and so with a number of other departments of administration, medical, educational, arboricultural, commercial, municipal, side by side, in the same sub-district. But there are larger districts made up of numbers of these sub-districts, and still larger divisions of country made up of numbers of these districts; and at each stage there are administrative officers in charge of each department, whose consciousness may be said to include the consciousnesses of their subordinates in that department, exclude those of their compeers, and be in turn included in those of their superiors.

The more complicated the machinery of the government, the better the illustration will be, of inclusions, exclusions, partial or complete coincidences, and overlappings and communions of consciousness.

At last we come to the head of the government, whose consciousness may be said to include the consciousnesses, whose knowledge and power include the knowledges and powers, of all the public servants of the land, whose consciousness is so expanded as to enable him to be in touch with them all and feel and act through them all constantly. An officer promoted through the grades of such an administration would clearly pass through expansions of consciousness.

Analogies in Daily Life

A more common illustration, which may appear to show out the so-called immediacy of consciousness better, is chat of friends and relatives. Two friends may be so intimate with each other, husband and wife, and members of a joint family, may love and be in rapport with each other so much, that they have a 'common life', a 'common feeling', a 'common consciousness'. But it should be borne in mind that, strictly speaking, there is no more immediacy in the one case than in the other, but only quicker cognition. Consciousness of the particular, the limited, working unavoidably, through an upAdhi, 'sheath', 'garment', 'tenement', 'instrument', 'vehicle', necessarily deals with time as with space; and the time element is always a definite element, however infinitesimal it may be in any given case. The word 'immediate' in such cases has only a comparative significance, as is apparent from the fact that the time of transmission of a sensation, from the end of a nerve to the seat of consciousness, has been distinctly and definitely calculated in the case of living organisms; and differs with the organisms; it is much longer in a whale than in a human.



Members of a bench of judges, arriving at a concurrent judgment; disputants coming to an agreement, after examining all the pros and cons; a classful of students, following with intelligent assent, a mathmatical demonstration by a professor; all these are illustrations of coincidence of consciousness; so too, a great public meeting adopting a resolution unanimously.

A simple and effectively intelligible way of putting the idea is this: The 'We'-consciousness includes, synthesises, coincides with, unifies, all the 'I-, You-, He-, She-, It-consciousnesses' which that 'We'-consciousness may stretch itself over, and cover, and embrace. 'We' includes all 'thou-s', 'you-s', 'he-s', 'she-s', 'it-s', 'they-s'; and it does so in such a way that every, individual, included therein, retains his, her, its, separate individuality, while feeling identity with the whole.

[saidevo]

pp.446-451

Such expansion of consciousness, then, is not in its nature more recondite than any other item in the World-Process, but a thing of daily and hourly occurrence. In terms of metaphysic, it is the coming of an individual self into relation with a larger and larger not-self. The processes of yoga are no more and no less methods of e-duc-ation--using the word in its true significance of developing, 'forth-leading', opening up and orienting, of faculties already existent but weak or latent--than the processes followed in the million schools and colleges of modern life, for developing the physical and mental powers of children and youth; only they are (probably) more systematic, better thought out, based on deeper knowledge of psychology and metaphysic. Every act of attention, of concentration, of regulation and balancing, of deliberately 'joining' and directing the self to an object, or to itself, of con-jug-ating it to, or en-gag-ing it in, anything, is (jnAna- or kriyA-) yoga (respectively, according as the chitta, mind, is made receptive or projective); and means some development of the individual consciousness.

Two Kinds of MokSha: Metaphysical and Superphysical

NOTE: Two kinds of mokSha, liber-ation, de-liverance, quitting, letting go, e-mancip-ation, un-binding, (from much, 'to un-tie, re-lease ') are indicated in the old books.

(1) One is the 'metaphysical', mokSha proper, 'radical deliverance', once for all, from all and ultimate doubt of Immortality, doubt of Utter and Perfect Self-dependence; from fear of pain and death, fear of subjection-to-another, of being at the Mercy-of-Another. It is a change of the attitude of the chitta, mind; change of its outlook upon Life and World-Process.

One of the Masters (the real Founders of the Theosophical Society) is reported to have said, on some occasion, 'mokSha is not a change of conditions' (plural) 'but of condition' (singular). The person, whose mind undergoes this change of 'condition', becomes Self-sure; and instead of always thinking of, clinging to, working for, the part, the limited, i.e., his individualistic egoistic self, he turns to, or rather into, the Whole; and persistently knows, desires (the welfare of), and works 'for', or rather 'as', the whole, the unlimited Universal Self.

(2) The other may be called 'technical' mokSha. Children released from school, prisoners let out from jail, public servants 'off' duty, wage-workers set free after work-hours--all these experience mokSha in the technical sense, even on the physical plane, in daily life. Any 'freeing' from any bonds, any ties, is a mokSha.

Receiving the 'freedom' of a city, in England, now a formal honor, seems to have meant, originally, that the person honored was really 'free' to enter into any house of that city and be welcomed as a guest, as a matter of right; he was 'freed' from the ordinary limitations and restrictions to which strangers are subject. (Compare Chhandogya Upanishad, VII.xxv.2): "He who has such Self-Knowledge becomes sva-rAt, Self-governed; ... He can pass into any world and all worlds at will" (in and by 'imagination', and then in corresponding 'reality').

'Super-physically', with the achievement, siddhi, (from sidh, sAdh, to effect completely, accomplish, suc-ceed), of each new extension of faculty, each new sense, the person becomes 'free' of and in the corresponding new world, free to range in it at will. Also, per contra, if he becomes tired of any kind of experience, any world (of science, art, fairies, nymphs, gods, titans, comedies, tragedies, heavens, hells), and abandons it, then too he becomes 'free', but free from it; he transcends it, rises above it (aty-eti), by negation; (see quotation from Charaka, p.131, supra).

In this sense, while 'metaphysical mokSha' is of one kind only, the other, 'technical or superphysical mokSha' may be of countless kinds; for there must be as many kinds of freedom as there are, or may be, of bondage; thus, books of medicine speak of a person 'freed from fever', as jvara-mukta.

All this implies, over again, that 'laws' are the same, for physical as well as super-physical planes, worlds, conditions; and thereby re-inforces the Law of Analogy or Correspondences.

Seven Stages to MokSha

Yoga-BhAshya ii.27, speaks of two kinds of vimukti; (the word is here used as a synonym for mukti or mokSha, but is seldom employed in this sense).

The commentary, on this and the preceding aphorism, says in effect: The only cure for a-vidyA, Primal Error ('I am this-body') is viveka, discrimination, between Purusha, 'I', and sattva (the finest attribute of Prakrti, here standing for the whole of Prakrti, 'This', 'Not-I'. This discrimination wavers, falters, flickers, does not burn with a steady flame. To make it steady, firm, unshakable, it has to be developed and strengthened through seven stages:

• (1) Thar which has to be given up, viz., 'this'-body, to which the mind clings, is recognised as what ought not to be clung to;

• (2) the causes which have produced the clinging are attenuated, (the causes being, as stated in Yoga-Sutra, ii.3, the series of five, a-vidyA, asmitA, rAga, dvesha, abhi-nivesha, error or ne-science, egoism, like, dislike, and 'ego-complex', i.e., obstinate separative individualism; of which five and the corresponding opposites, the whole World-Process is product and illustration);

• (3) the dropping away of them is brought about by appropriate mind-discipline, and accomplished more and more fully in and by samAdhi-meditation;

• (4) it is realised that discrimination (as above) is the only means of the utter subsidence of the causes. These four constitute kAryA-vimukti, 'freedom which has to be made', achieved, by practice.

The remaining three stages constitute chita-vimukti, 'freeing, or freedom, or dissolution, of the mind';

• (5) the momentum, desire-force, of buddhi, mind, is exhausted; there is no craving left for separative individualised existence;

• (6) the guNa-s, sattva-rajas-tamas, attributes of mind or Prakrti, like displaced boulders tumbling from a mountain-top, and rushing unstayably down to the bottom, merge back into their primal source and disappear;

• (7) Purusha, Self, (individual self which has become Universal Self by the dropping away of all limiting and individualising upAdhi-sheath and entanglements) remains fixed in Its own Sole-ness, kevala-ta or kaivalyam. "The dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea."

Yoga Vasishtha also enumerates seven steps or stages, in three separate places; each list varies a little, in names and order, but not in substance. The places are Bk.3, ch.118, verses 3-16; Bk.6, pUrv-Ardha, ch.120, verses 1-9; and ch.126, verses 70-73. Buddhist, Sufi, and other schools of Yoga, have, each, their own special lists of steps, practices, disciplines.

Same Troupe of Actors Throughout

In between the first stage and the seventh, come all the phases of 'life abounding', 'fuller life' of the Right Hand Path of White Magic, fuller life of "terrible toil and profound sadness, but also a great and ever-increasing delight" (Light on the Path); gradual progress on the nivrtti-mArga, Path of Renunciation and Ascent, by 're-vers-ion' to more and more subtle bodies and planes, through which the Jiva had come down, grade by grade, on the Path of Pursuit and Descent, pra-vrtti-mArga.

The Secret Docrine, V.300, says:

"Mankind, from the first down to the last, or seventh Race, is composed of one and the same company of actors, who have descended from higher spheres to perform their artistic tour on this our planet, Earth. Starting as pure spirits on our downward journey around the world, with the knowledge now feebly echoed in the occult doctrines inherent in us, cyclic law brings us down to the reversed apex of Matter, which is lost down here on earth, and the bottom of which we have already struck; and then, the same law of spiritual gravity will make us slowly ascend to still higher, still purer, spheres, viz., those we started from."



Pp. 294-296 of H.P.B.'s From the Caves and Jungles of Hindustan should be carefully read as a continuation of the above extract from her Secret Doctrine. The following sentence on p.296 indicates that Spirit, in its descent into Matter, comes right down into the mineral stage (atom) and then reascends: "With every new Maha-Yuga (great cycle) the Deva separates from that which is eternal, attracted by existence in objective existence, like a drop of water first drawn up by the Sun, then starting again downwards, passing from one region to another, and returning at last to the dirt of our planet. Then having dwelt there while a small cycle lasted, it proceeds again upwards on the other side of the circle." Pp. 293-294 say useful things about spiritualistic phenomena. The whole confirms belief in personal immortality and Reincarnation.

On these two subjects, The Mahatma Letters throw much light; read the pages referred to in its Index against 'Death' and 'Reincarnation'; pp.170-171 give some specially beautiful injunctions for those who watch by a death-bed; these injunctions indicate that the departing soul gathers out of its past, the most important material with which it will start its next re-incarnation. H.P.B.'s Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled have also helpful information on the subject; see their Index-references against 'Reincarnation'.




[b]The Finer Spiritualism

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is well known as the creator of the famous detective 'Sherlock Holmes'. He was also a very versatile writer on many subjects, historical novels, romances, short stories, tragic and comic.

A very important book by him, on a very serious subject, entitled The Edge of the Unknown, came into my hands only in September, 1947, (while these pages were passing through the press). It deals with the subject and the literature of spiritualistic phenomena from their beginnings, a little before the middle of the last century, till the year of its publication, 1930; recounts the author's own personal experiences with clairvoyants, clairaudients, levitators in broad daylight, and mediums of many sorts, and his very careful investigations and testings; and also records the conversions of several leading scientists, journalists, and clergymen, who were formerly unbelievers.

Of course the views of such believers as Sir William Barratt (founder of the Psychical Research Society), Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, all famous scientists, are referred to. Bulwer Lytton, the famous novelist, is described as one of the moral cowards "who admitted the facts in private and stood aloof in public" (p.248) as regards D.D.Home's phenomena; though himself the author of those 'Magic'-novels, Zanoni (referred to in The Mahatma Letters with some commendation) and A Strange Story.

Sir A.C. Doyle says that all the finer spirits declared, through their mediums, that the sole purpose, for which they were endeavouring to communicate with the earth-world, was to convince mankind of the certainty, the fact and truth, of personal immortality, and thereby bring great solace and peace of mind to all, as regards the fate of their departed dear ones, and also their own future; also to show to mankind that the Supreme Power at the heart of the Universe was essentially Just, and that there were different kinds of purgatories for sinners of different degrees, and also heavens for the virtuous similarly; also that reincarnation was a fact.

And there is little doubt that the faith of mankind at large has been revived on a large scale, by means of spiritualistic phenomena, as also in various other ways, directly and indirectly, in personal immortality and reincarnation. The whole book is well worth reading and pondering over by Theosophists. Also The Wanderings of a spiritualist (1921) by the same author.

[saidevo]

pp.451-460
Personal and Impersonal God

In other words, out of countless DhyAn Chohans, Jivas, devas-asuras, spiritual intelligences or individuals, a great host decided (by the Free-Will of Inner Necessity) to become 'a troupe of actors' and gradually 'descend' to the state and stage of Humanity, and then 're-ascend', equally gradually, to the primal state of spiritual intelligences, devas-asuras. For fuller understanding of this, one should read up the references in the S.D. Index under 'Dhyan Chohans', 'Dhyanis', 'Dhyani-Buddhas', etc. In Samskrta terms, pitR-s, 'fathers', 'ancestors' are born as 'putra-s', 'sons'; i.e., the same old souls are born over and over again, in new bcdies, generation after generation.

One point may be specially noted here. S.D., V.374, says: "Vajra-dhara or Vajra-sattva is the Regent or President (chief) of all the Dhyan Chohans or Dhyani Buddhas, he is the highest, the Supreme Buddha; personal yet never manifested objectively." In this sentence may be seen the reconciliation of belief in a Personal God (of a particular and limited world, as in a king or emperor or president or other ruler of a State), and non-belief in an extra-cosmical and Universal but yet Personal God of the whole Beginningless and Endless World-Process; see pp.170-172, supra. In The Mahatma Letters, all notion of such an extra-cosmical, universal, 'personal' god, is strongly repudiated (pp. 52-59).

We have seen above that moksha-freedom has as many kinds, technically, as bondage. Self, having, of It-Self, 'put aside' ('forgotten') Its Freedom, and put on countless bonds of finite forms, modes, moods, experiences; is everlastingly engaged in the task of regaining Its freedom; freedom from this want, that slavery, this pain, that restriction, this limitation, that oppression, this ignorance, that powerlessness--political, economic, domestic, social, individual, biological, psychological, racial, national, etc.; freedom from inability to fly at will to planets and stars, to see what is happening, or has happened, or will happen, on any of them; and so forth.

Three Kinds of Yoga

For practical purposes, however, a few of the more important kinds or stages of moksha are specified by different schools or systems of jnAna-knowledge or bhakti-devotion, from their own respective standpoints.

A yoga-method of preponderant karma-action is also recognised, viz., the karma-yoga and karma-sannyAsa-yoga expounded in Chapters iii and v of Gita. But it is generally agreed that it is subsidiary; while the yogas of predominant bhakti or of predominant jnAna are more direct means to moksha; the former, chiefly to the special and super-physical kinds; the latter, mainly to the metaphysical.

Pranava-Vada (see its Index-references under 'moksha') gives helpful information. The main idea to bear in mind, explaining the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, is that these many kinds of moksha, 'free choice', are like the many vocations and careers from which any one may be selected, according to his taste and temperament, by a person, who has completed a good general education. But, while the several vocations may be regarded as of equal importance, yet there is also a grading and ranking among the persons pursuing them. Thus Rshis, MahA-Rshis, Brahma-Rshis, Deva-Rshis, Parama-Rshis; Bodhi-sattvas, Buddhas, Maha-Buddhas, Masters or Chohans of 'seven rays', Pratyteka-Chohans; Thrones, Principalities, Powers; AuliyA, AbdAl, AbrAr, Ghausas or Qutubs (in Vedic, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, schemes), have different functions as well as grades and ranks in the Invisible Spiritual Government.

Karma-yoga is the preliminary step, bhakti-yoga the next, jnana-yoga, the last; after achieving jnAna, the soul pursues all three conjointly, with a new vision and a new purpose.

By bhakti-devotion, the soul attains the following kinds of moksha, step by step. Chhandogya 2.20.2; Mukti (1.23); and other Upanishats, mention them:

• (l) SAlokya, life in the 1oka, world, of the loved and worshipped deity;
• (2) Samipya, 'nearness' to him or her;
• (3) SArshti, holding of similar rshti-s, powers and possessions,
• (4) SArUpya, sameness of rUpa, appearance, with him or her;
• (5) SAyujya, complete identification with, mergence into, him or her.

The worshipped object may be any one of the great gods or goddesses. The several grades of gaNa-s, retinue, of Shiva; pArshada-s, companions of Vishnu; rshi-s, court-iers, of Brahma; sakhi-s, comrades, of Devi; anu-chara-s, followers, of other deities; are examples.

Correspondences to all these 'super-physical' states will be readily seen in human relations in earth-life. Theosophical tradition as to the souls of Chaldean votaries of various stars and planets going away to them, at special astronomical conjunctions, by means of special rites and ceremonies also illustrates the same idea.

The difference between such moksha-s and states of svarga or Devachan or SukhavatI, heaven, may be regarded as one of degree of comparative voluntariness and conscious control in the former, and the opposite in the latter; like the differences of wakefulness and reverie.

"Live in the Eternal"

As regards 'Metaphysical emancipation from all fetters of the soul, and gain of Self-dependence', it should be noted that 'Realisation of the Reality, the Real, the Self', is not merely intellectual, nor merely emotional, nor merely actional (physical, volitional), nor merely intuitional--but is all these at once.

A person learning to swim, has one supreme moment, when the experience comes to him of 'Sink or Swim', and ends in 'Swim, and not Sink'. The travail, the soul-and-body-rending of the spiritual experience of 'Die, clinging to the Finite body, or Live, clinging to the Infinite I', is similar.

As Light on the Path describes it, solemnly, beautifully, the lower nature weeps, the heart cries, the lower self frenziedly strives to preserve its separateness; but it has to be transformed, transmuted, into the Higher non-separative all-inclusive Self: "Seek in the heart the source of evil and expunge it. He who will enter upon the Path must tear this thing out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. This ordeal must be endured ... Fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present, nor the future, but in the Eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there."

The illumination, the transfiguration, comes in different ways to different souls. In some, the intellectual aspect is predominant--rshis, sages, seers; in others, the emotional--munis, saints; in others, the actional--hatha-yogis, ritualists. The Ultimate Goal is the same for all.

Some More Texts

Following quotations supply further explanations and illustrations of the principles indicated above. (For Sanskrit quotes, check pp.455-457 of the book).

Yoga Sutra
(Translation by Chip Hartranft, added by me--sd)

bhava-pratyayaH videha-prakRutilayAnAm |--1.19

"Once the body is gone, and these latent impressions are dissolved in nature, they are inclined to be reborn."

tadabhAvAt saMyogAbhAvaH hAnaM tad dRusheH kaivalyam | --2.25

"With realization, the appearance of indivisibility vanishes, revealing that awareness is free and untouched by phenomena."

sattva-puruSha-anyatA-khyAti-mAtrasya sarva-bhAva-adhiShThAtRutvaM
sarva-j~jAtRutvaM cha | --3.49

"Once one just sees the distinction between pure awareness and the luminous aspect of the phenomenal world, all conditions are known and mastered."

tad-vairAgyAd api doSha-bIja-kShaye kaivalyam | --3.50

"When one is unattached even to this omniscience and mastery, the seeds of suffering wither, and pure awareness knows it stands alone."

sattva-puruShayoH shuddhi-sAmye kaivalyam | --3.55

"Once the luminosity and transparency of consciousness have become as distilled as pure awareness, they can reflect the freedom of awareness back to itself."

prasaMkyAno&pi akusIdasya sarvathA viveka-khyAteH dharmameghaH samAdhiH --4.29

"One who regards even the most exalted states disinterestedly, discriminating continuously between pure awareness and the phenomenal world, enters the final stage of integration, in which nature is seen to be a cloud of irreducible experiential substances."

puruShArtha-shUnyAnAM guNAnAM pratiprasavH kaivalyaM svarUpa-prathiShTA vA chitishaktiriti | --4.34

"Freedom is at hand when the fundamental qualities of nature, each of their transformations witnessed at the moment of its inception, are recognized as irrelevant to pure awareness; it stands alone, grounded in its very nature, the power of pure seeing. That is all."

[Please check the book, pp.455-457 for the following Sanskrit quotes, for which translations are not given by the author:

• Vayu-Purana, quoted in Vachaspati's Tffed on Yoga-bkashya, i.19.
• Vayu-Purana, PurvArdha, Ch.57, and Matsya-Purana, Ch.143.
• Chhandogya Upanishad, 2.20.2
• Muktika Upanishad, i.15-43.
• Bhavishya-Purana, III, KhaNda iv, Ch.7.
• Bhagavatam xi. xx.
• Gita
• Vayu-Purana, Purva, Ch.vii.
• MAdhyamika Sutra, Ch.25, verses 3 and 9.]

KAIVALYA--AL(L-) ONENESS

The substance of the above quotations is this:

"kaivalya, kevala-tA, soleness, soli-tude, L-one-li-ness, On-(e)-li-ness, is the final transcendental metaphysical moksha. I-On-(e)-ly- am and-None-Else. All-is-I, I-am-All; not-an(y)-Other. (Leave me Al-one!, the harrassed person cries!) Dis-junction of a-vidyA (the Error, I-am-this) from I is Kaivalya.

"The soul that has become sure of the difference, opposition, mutual-other-ness, of Self and Nature (Not-Self, Matter, This, with its guNas, sattva, etc.) grasps all (i.e., the whole of This) by (one comprehensive act of Thought, and therefore rises superior to all. (See quotation from Charaka, p. 131, supra; what I really do not care for, what I take no interest in, what I have have cut off from myself--that has no power over my mind, cannot influence me in any way; I am superior to his, her, or its guiles and wiles and witcheries).

"Then that soul's condition is the one called Dharma-megha SamAdhi, meditation in which the Dharma-s, laws of Nature, rain down (megha, mehati) upon the passion-less error-free truth-seeing mind; then the facts and laws of the World-Process appear fully and clearly to the meditator.

"When the soul loses its interest in and is tired of even such contemplation and enumeration of Nature's secrets, pra-san-khyane api a-kusidasya; then it retires into Kaivalya.

"When sattva becomes equal in purity to Self, it merges into the latter, (Nature dis-appears into Self, in pralaya-sleep), and Kaivalya remains. When guNa-s, Nature's triple attributes, have no momentum left, nothing left to do, no unexhausted unfulfilled desire, no object to strive for, then they dissolve and vanish, and Kaivalya remains, i.e., the Principle of Consciousness, established in It-Self."

Jivan-Mukti and Videha-Mukti

Souls which still cling to the finest super-subtle aspects of nature, attain to the condition of vi-deha-s, bodiless ones, and prakrti-laya-s, dissolved into Nature (This); (or the state of bodiless beings who have become dissolved into Prakrti-Nature); and they enjoy this condition for long eons (though there is no time-marker in those conditions; (vide Mahatma Letters, regarding Deva-chan, and Avlchi, pp.194-197).

Buddhist books also mention these. Puranas amplify details.

"In accord with their respective aspirations, souls merge into

• (a) various cosmic or systemic indriyas, senses, of the systemic Ishvara (corresponding to various deva-s, rshi-s, etc.); or
• (b) into the systemic bhuta-s or tattva-s, elements; or
• (c) into the principle of aham-kAra, egoism, mere pure 'I am'; or
• (d) into the principle of mahat-buddhi, universal mind; or
• (e) into the principle of Avyakta-MUla-Prakrti; or attain other states.

"(• Artists of a high order, painters, sculptors, musicians, perfumers, inventors of delicious perfumes, gustators, creators of exquisite tastes, tactators, or palpators, devisers of delightful touches, as of silks, velvets, plushes, gossamers, zephyrs, cool or warm and limpid waters, soft emulsive oils and unguents--such would be candidates for the technical moksha of indriya-chintakas, sense-contemplators;

• great scientists, for that of bhuta-chintakas;

• abstract introverts or, rather, introspectors, of Abhi-mAnika-s or ahamkAra-chintakas,

• profound comprehensive thinkers or philosophers, of buddhi-chintakas;

• meditators on the unmanifest, of Avyakta-chintakas).

"The state of (a) lasts for ten manvantaras ; of each succeeding one, ten times longer than the preceding. (These figures are scarcely to be taken as precise! They generally imply that the more subtle is the longer-lasting). When the attributeless Nirguna Purusha is reached, all measure of Time disappears."

Other Kinds of Moksha

"The states of various gods are attained by appropriate yajna-s (mystery sacrifices, mystic rituals, etc.; of VirAt (a deity below Brahma), by renunciation of the fruit of all actions; of mergence into Prakrti, by vai-rAgya, revulsion from the world; of Kaivalya, by knowledge. These are the five gati-s, goings, courses, ways, that lie before the aspiring soul."

"Dwelling in the world of the worshipped deity is known as sAlokya-mukti; attaining general resemblance to him (in appearance, in way of living, wearing his uni-form, so to say), is sA-rUpya; being entrusted with some of his powers and possessions (as a public servant is, with a king's), is sArshti; being near him, (as a member of a king's entourage or personal staff), is sAmipya; being identified with him, con-join-ed with him, (able to take his place and act for him, on occasion,, as queen or son), is sAyujya".

"While the physical body lasts, a soul that has achieved (metaphysical) moksha, is called jIvan-mukta; when the body falls away, it becomes videha-mukta, which is the same as kaivalya-mukta."

"SAlokya is obtained by tapas-asceticism; sAmipya, by bhakti-devotion; sAarupya (and sarshti), by dhyAna-meditation; sAyujya, by jnAna-knowledge. Each succeeding one of these is twice as blissful as the preceding. Moksha into deva-s comes to an end, soon or late; usually at the end of the Manvantara. Im-mortality, a-mrta-tva, technically means conscious existence or life (in a superphysical subtle body, till the pralaya-dissolution-chaos of the elements, A-bhUta-samplava."

"There are three Paths of (a) karma, way of works; (b) bhakti, way of devotion; (c) jnAna, way of knowledge; in other words, energism, pietism, gnosticism. The first is for those who are not yet tired of the world; they should continue to perform all right-and-due acts till fatigue begins to come upon their mind. The second is for those who are not too strongly attached to the world, not yet detached from it; and have generally heard of me, the Self of all, and begun to aspire for a higher life (of fine feelings and fine artistic thoughts and ideas); the third is for those who are surfeited with the world, and long to cease from its restlessness, and find repeal and peace!"

"Those who worship the devas, go to them. They whoworship Me, the Self, the God in all and of all, they come to Me." (Gita).

"That which is causeless, is not believed or arrived at by gradual steps and stages, (but flashes forth all at once), is never destroyed, never cut short, nor is ever-lasting (in time), has no end and no beginning, (but Is, once for all, eternally)--that is Nirvana. This com-motion, this restless going-and-coming, which, believed in and en-dur-ed (as taking place in dura-tion), time, is SamsAra, World-Process; this same, not believed in, not accepted, (as true, but seen at Illusion, as Mind's Imaginary Creation), is Nirvana.' (Buddhist Madhyamika Karika).

[saidevo]

pp.460-464
Personal & Impersonal Immortality

"The insAn-ul-kAmil, perfect man, is a man who has fully realised his essential oneness with the Divine Being in whose likeness he is made ... An ecstatic feeling of oneness with God constitutes the walI, (singular of auliyA, saints). He unites the One and the Many, so that the universe depends on him for its continued existence." (Here, the singular he is obviously to be understood as standing for a numerous class of souls, in the same way as when one may say that the atoll owes its existence to the coral insect, or that the color of the Red Sea is due to a microscopic plant). "He brings relief to the distressed, health to the sick, children to the childless, food to the famished, spiritual guidance to those who entrust their souls to his care, blessing to all who invoke Allah in his name"; Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, p.78.

Jalal-ud-din Rumi, chief of Persian SUfis, says:

Kulle shayin hAlikun juz Wajh-i-U.
Gar na-1 dar Wajh-i-U, hasti ma jU!

'All things are mortal save the Face of God.
If thou hast found no place within that Face,
Then hope not thou for Immortality.'

Face, here, means Being, the Being of the Eternal Self. The secret of preserving personal immortality (of the technical kinds) is indicated in these lines, entirely in accord with the theosophical view.

If a soul deliberately fixes in its memory, attaches to its higher manas, the upper half of the fifth principle, any great incidents, great loves, and other noble emotions, in their settings, great devotion to a great deity, and thus fixes, shapes and crystallises, conglomerates, a particular personality or individuality or 'ego-complex', purposefully creates a centre of individuality, and attaches that strongly to its realization of the Eternal Self; then the Immortality of the latter is reflected on to the former also.

Vedanta tradition is the same; the higher associations and memories of the charama-deha, 'the last physical body', may, at the will of the liberated soul, be carried into the liberated condition. The 'last body' here is the same as the 'an-AgAmI' of Buddhism; it is the body in which Self is seen and realised; after the falling away of which, there is no un-conscious rebirth, karma having been exhausted, 'burnt up by jnAna' (Glta); whatever birth there is, afterwards, of that Jiva-soul, is conscious, deliberately chosen, for some particular service of the world.

Experience in MokSha

Yoga-Vasishtha (3.9) gives a fine description, first of the jIvan-mukta, (some of the verses occur in Glta also); and then of the videha-mukta, thus:

"When the body of the jIvan-mukta falls away under the touch of time, he enters into the videha condition. As space he holds the stars within himself; he blazes as the sun; he blows as the breezes; as the earth he bears the mountains, the forests, the races of men and animals; he bears fruit in the trees, he flowers in the creepers, he flows as the rivers, he surges against the shores of the earth as the mountainous billows of the ocean; he rains life-sap into the vegetable kingdom as the moonlight; he kills out life as the hAlA-hala venom; he illumines the heavens as light, and merges them in gloom as darkness; he lives, wakes, sleeps, sorrows and rejoices, as the minds of all; he is each atom and all stars at once; indeed he is now all time, all space, and all their moving contents! ... But if the videha-mukta becomes thus identical with the World-Process, is that deliverance, or is it but a deeper immersion in the welter of illusion-mAyA? ... It would be such deeper sinking were it not accompanied by the consciousness that the illusion is illusion, that there is No Other-than-I, that Brahma is An-Anyat.' In the last statement is probably conveyed the distinction between the videha and prakrti-laya of Yoga-sutra on the one hand, and the kaivalya of Yoga or videha of Vedanta on the other.

Freedom from Egoism

The ancient tradition of Upanishats and Yoga-Vasishtha is that when the soul turns from the finite, ethically, emotionally, and intellectually, it necessarily finds the Infinite and attains mokSha; that, thereafter, the individual consciousness turns more and more into the cosmic consciousness, that jnAna-vairAgya-bhakti are but the inseparably correlated aspects of each other, and grow towards perfection side by side. As said in BhAgavata,

भक्तिः परेशानुभवो विरक्तिरन्यत्र चैष एककालः ।

bhaktiH pareshAnubhavo viraktiranyatra chaiSha ekakAlaH |

"Devotion to, and vision of the Supreme Self, and turning away from all Else these three are simultaneous." And in Yoga-bhAshya (1.16):

ज्ञानस्यैव परा काष्ठा वैराग्यम् ।

j~jAnasyaiva parA kAShThA vairAgyam |

"The highest degree and fullness of knowledge is complete vai-rAgya".

That this tradition has never died and is living still may be indicated by the following renderings of songs in Hindi and Urdu, the first by Kabir, and the two others by recent Sufi poets. All mystic literatures of all religions, Vedanta, Tasaw-wuf, Gnosticism, Qabbala, etc., are on the same lines.

But before recording those renderings of mystic songs, attention may be called to a very serious danger of terrible misunderstanding which lurks under the word kaivalya, 'Solitude', 'Oneness', 'Soleness'. It seems to be the last wile of the Maya of the 'lower ego', which would live on by masquerading as the 'Higher Universal Ego': 'I will have mokSha for myself; why should I care for others'. But mokSha is freedom from this very egoism; which freedom is nothing else than Universal all-others-including (not excluding) Ego-ism. Hence mumukshA, 'wish for mokSha', is rightly understood as Universal Love incipient, while Moksha is that same Universal Love full-blown and triumphant.

In theosophical literature, stress is laid on the fact that the greatest qualification for 'initiation' is--having brought others along on to the Path and helped them to their 'majority' of soul. Gita and Bhagavata and other scriptures repeatedly declare that an indispensable qualification for the aspirant is 'love and active service of all beings'. The gateway of the Path is vai-rAgya, 'dis-passion', but it has to be a 'passionately compassionate dispassion'.

Kinds of Vairagya

Many types of vai-rAgya are pictured in the classic legends of India.

• The purest of the pure is that of Rama, wholly sAttvika, so to say, (see Mystic Experiences or Tales from Yoga-Vasishtha); also that of Gautama Buddha; in both we see profoundly compassionate wish to free all living things from their misery.

• Arjuna's revulsion is very limitedly sAttvika, mixed with much rajas too; his compassion is only for his kith and kin and relatives.

• Bhartr-hari's is rAjasa-tAmasa, caused by disgust with the world because of the infidelity of his queen; but it is, later on, made sAttvika by his intense pursuit of Atma-vidyA.

• Similar is the case of the merchant SamAdhi (in Durga-Sapta-Shati), who was driven away from his wealthy home by his wife and sons, because they wanted to be unchecked masters of the whole property; and, at the end of three years' severe asceticism, desired from the goddess Durga, only 'the Supreme Knowledge which would annihilate egoism'.

• Somewhat different is the case of SamAdhis' companion, king Suratha (in the same high story), who desired from Durga, long-lasting kingship, and is to become the reigning Manu, SAvarni, of the next Manvantara;



This writer has met with no definite statement to that effect in the old books; but it almost seems that Suratha and SamAdhi were born as Maru and DevApi (Bhagavata, XII.ii); are now the Theosophical Masters Morya and Koothoomi; and will be the Manu and the Buddha of the next Race and Epoch.


strictly speaking, perhaps there was no vairAgya in his case, but a sAttvika-rAjasa wish to rule justly and give happiness to the people; but since such rule is not possible without good grounding in Atma-VidyA, the rajas in his case was infused with a high degree and quality of sattva.

• Steadiest and also pure in sufficient degree is the deliberate 'vairAgya' of the son (or daughter) of Manu, who, having performed the duties of the first two stages of life, Ashrama-s, 'retires' from the world, philosophically; in this case too, it is not so much vairAgya in the sense of sudden onset of passion or compassion, as, indeed, mokSha already achieved, partly, if not wholly: for exposition of the subject of Ashramas, see The Science of Social Organisation, or the briefer The Science of the Self.

Helping Others on to the Path

Dear reader!, if you happen to be husband, wife, father, mother, elder relative, super-ordinate officer, teacher, in the outer world!--your position acquires a new and deeper and more wonderful significance for you, when you realise this marvellous fact, that the necessary condition of your own advancement is that you help your youngers and dependents on to that same path of Progress.

The realisation becomes a powerful incentive to patience and tenderness; for you now always say to yourself consciously: "These weaker souls have been entrusted to me that I may help them on, with myself, to that ancient Path, 'sharp as the razor's edge', yet also strewn with the flowers of love and sympathy, and also safeguarded with the balustrades of holy instructions, by the strong and watchful hands and hearts of the Elders of the Race!"

[saidevo]

pp.464-466

When the Soul's inebriate,
With God, 'tis in no mood to prate!
The gem, when found, is hid away;
Why make display day after day!
The balance holds, the scales don't sway,
What need the goods again to weigh!
The Swan hath found the Manasa-lake;
Shall it again to puddles take?
That wanton barmaid Consciousness
Hath drunken love's-wine to excess
Herself, and keeps no more the tale
Of how much and to whom the sale!
Thy Lover Loved is there, in Thee!
Not out, but in, ope eyes and see!
--KABIR

Mystic Ecstasies

No bar guards His palace-gateway, no veil screens His face of light,
Thou, O Soul! by thine own self-ness art enwrapt in darkest night!
Youth is gone, and age is on thee, yet vain dreams still fill thy mind,
If thou turn not from thy small self, how shalt thou thy Great Self find ?
Taste the wonder of this heart-meat, as it burneth more and more,
Through life's ocean-brine there spreadeth savour sweet from shore to shore!

But the names differ, beloved!, thou, I, all are only One,
In the firefly gleams the self-same beam that blazeth in the Sun!
Since He knows all art and science, we too may invent and know;
In the human heart is hidden more than all the Scriptures show!

Thou the music in the song-bird, Thou the fragrance in the rose,
Thou the Goal that all are seeking, Thou the Self that each one knows!
Why, and Where, art Thou in hiding, My Beloved!, come to Me!
Every year-long moment brings thy Lover desperate agony!
Not without Thy-self permittest may the strongest win to Thee,
Out of this Turmoil and Tumult of our Life's Tempestuous sea!
--QARlN

Behind the mask of every face He hid
God, very God; and I--I knew it not.
The Right had fallen wrongly into Wrong,
The True into Untruth--I knew it not.
The Lord of all the Worlds in mud and mire
He begged from door to door--I knew it not.
On every page of scripture He had writ,
'Nearer am I to Thee than time own heart,'
But I--I could not read--I knew it not.

In temple, church, and mosque I sought for long,
The gold hid in the 'mine' (Me)--I knew it not.
The moon that I had seen and had forgot
The clouds had hid the moon--I knew rt not.
The rust of selfishness o'erlay my heart,
I had forgot my-Self--I knew it not.
I sought the Wonder in the Noise Outside
It lay still in My Heart--I knew it not.

But now, my Soul, my God, my Self, my All,
Thou magic-maker of this vast mirage,
Juggler of joys and sorrows, loves and hates,
Thee sole I (know) An-other (I know) Not!
I know I only am, all Else is Naught!
I only is, and all This Else is Not!
I know I am but I, 'I-(am)-This-Not.'
--HASAN SHAH

[saidevo]

Duplicate post deleted. (I posted it again as the latest posting was not visible for quite sometime).--sd