Negation as Shakti-energy: The Relation and the Cause of Interplay between the Self and the Not-Self
THE third factor in the sva-bhAva, own-being, of the Absolute is ni-shedha, or prati-shedha, Negation, denial, 'Not' or rather the connecting of 'Not' with 'Not-I' by 'I'.'
From the standpoint of the Absolute, this third factor is not a third, any more than the second is a second; for the third is a negation of the second which is Nothing, No-limited-or-particular-thing, Not-Being; and, where this is so, it also follows that the first is not a first, for there is nothing left to recognise it by as a first; the resultant being a Purity of Peace as regards which nothing can be said and no exception taken.sva-bhAva; ni-shedha, prati-shedha. 'Own-being' may be regarded as a variant of 'thing-in-itself'; it is 'self-being', 'being-in-its-self', the peculiarity, personality, individuality of the thing; 'temperament' in the mediaeval medical phrase; 'constitutional idiosyncracy' in the modern scientific medical phrase; prakrti, nature, in both Samskrt Darshana, i.e., philosophy, and Vaidyaka, i.e., medicine.
Mula-prakrti or Matter and Daivi-prakrti or Force, together, make up the whole sva-bhAva of Purusha or Pratyag-Atma. shakti shaktimatoH abhedaH, 'Force and Possessor of Force are not-different, not-separate though distinguishable.'
Anagogic Permutations
The full significance of this Negation, which is the nexus between Self and Not-Self, will appear when we consider the different interpretations, which turn upon it, of the logion, each correct, and each exemplified and illustrated in the universe around us.
Thus, the logion Aham-Etat-Na may mean:
• (a) M U A. Not Not-Self (,but only) Self (is).
• (b) U A M. Not-self (is, and) Self (is) Not.
• (c) M A U. (Only vacuity, nothingness is, and) Not Self (or) Not-Self.
• (d) A M U. Self (is) Not Not-Self; or, Self (is) Not (,to the) Not-Self.
• (e) U M A. Not-Self (is) Not Self; or Not-Self (is) Not (,to) Self.
• (f) A U M. Self (is) Not-Self (and also) Not (it).
• (g) A--U--M. Self--Not-Self--Not, the Absolute wherein all possible permutations are.
The Self-EvidentThese permutations are based on statements made in the Pranava-Vada, an unpublished Samskrt MS., referred to in Note I at the end of Ch.VII (p.121, supra).
As explained in detail in that work, Veda in the full sense of the word, is Cosmic Ideation, i.e., everything, (see footnote, p.40 supra), and the four collections of hymns, currently known as the Vedas, in the plural, may be regarded as comparatively small but highly important text-books of superphysical art and metaphysical science.
What is Absolute Truth?
The question may be legitimately asked: If all these permutations and combinations of the factors of the logion are, as indeed they obviously ought to be, included in Cosmic Ideation, and therefore true in their own times, places, and circumstances, is there any final absolute truth, independently of time, place, and circumstance; and is there any infallible test of truth? Who is to judge between the rival claimants of truth? What will decide? Is it spiritual experience? But spiritual experiences differ also; who is to judge between them?
These difficulties may be solved thus. Absolute Truth can be only that which totals up, reconciles, and synthesises in itself, all 'other' truths, showing that they are all relative or partial or half-truths.
If a person says: "No; errors and heresies are the irreconcilable opposites of the truth," then he has to explain how they, (like sin, evil, pain, etc.,) came to be.
If he says, "By the act of God," then 'God' is his absolute truth wherein the reconciliation is found. What 'God' means, and how he brings home the 'absolute truth' of 'God' creating error, etc., will remain for him to explain, or rather for the questioner and seeker to find out;
for, the person who says errors are irreconcilable and synthesis impossible, has no use for absolute truth, i.e., the Absolute; he is not seeking it and does not want it--yet. He is perfectly content with what he has got, and it would be a mistake to try to give to him something else which he does not want; as food to one not hungry.
If there be any special reasons making it right to do so, then the need should first be aroused in him. But the craving for Absolute Truth is not easily aroused from without, by 'another'. It comes from within, through the cyclic processes of life of the individual self.
Therefore, among the special and peculiar qualifications mentioned for the student of Vedanta, the seeker after Brahma, is the ethical attitude of vairAgya, revulsion from the worldly life and dispassionate compassion for all sufferers, and kshama, dama, uparati, titikshA, shraddhA, samAdhAna, inner subsidence of desire and consequent serenity, self-control over senses, wish for retirement and repose, resigned endurance of whatever befalls, firm faith in one-Self and in the guide and teacher one has chosen with due care, and collected single-mindedness; Brhad-Aranyaka Upanishad, 4.4.23; Nrsimha Uttara Tapini Upanishad 6; Shankara, shaarIraka bhAshya, I.i.1.
न अनुभुय, न जानाति, जंतुर्विषतीक्ष्णताम्;
निर्विद्येत स्वयं तस्मान्; न परैर्भिन्नधि: पुनः ।
na anubhuya, na jAnAti, jaMturviShatIkShNatAm;
nirvidyeta svayaM tasmAn; na parairbhinnadhi: punaH | --Bhagavata, VI.iv.41.
Daksha, reprimanding Narada, (who has led Daksha's young sons astray, preaching vairAgya to them), says: "Without experience of the sharpness, the intensity, of the objects of sense, there can be no surfeit and no real, lasting, revulsion therefrom; the Jiva should, therefore, turn from the world, suo motu; not mis-led prematurely by others."
But as soon as the craving is aroused, the possibility of fulfilling it is aroused also. So soon as, and no sooner than, a question forms in the mind, the answer begins to form also.
In fact the question is the first part of the answer. As soon as a person says, "I want the Absolute Truth." he means, "I want something which will reconcile, synthesise, explain, and not merely condemn and abuse, all truths other or less than this ideal Absolute Truth"; and, as soon as he means that, he is on the track of it, he has got hold of a vital feature of it.
"It takes two to tell the truth, one to tell it and one to hear it" ; "truth is truth to him who believes it": "the one test of truth is the belief of the believer"; if you convince a person that what he has believed so far is not true, then you have created a new belief in him; therefore he, the I, the Self, the One We, is the final, universal, absolute test of Truth.
'Self-evidence' is the absolute test and the Absolute Truth. He who asks, "Who is to judge?" understands the answer, "The judge must be common, impartial, equally benevolent to him, you, me, all the parties, and, here, such is the Self"; and he who asks "What is to prove", will understand the answer, "Self-evidence", the evidence of the Self, by, to, and in the Self.
The western school of thinkers who said 'conceivability' was the test, really meant this. 'Spiritual experience' is nothing distant and mysterious. Alla-pa-roksha, direct 'experience', which comes home, whether cognitive, emotional, or actional, is such; and whether of physical or of superphysical and subtle things. It attains its highest degree, its 're-alisation', its 're-ality', its 'act-uality', when all these aspects of the consciousness coalesce, when the individual's cognition is so clear and certain that he feels or desires and also acts accordingly. The faith that maketh martyrs witnesseth itself. See pp.22-23,96, supra.
Such permutations and combinations of Self and Not-Self and Negation give rise to the actual varieties of facts in the universe and to the corresponding beliefs of man; now to the prevalence of Spirit, now to the triumph of Matter, again to the reign of pra1aya; to dreaming, waking, and sleeping; to subjective monism or idealism, objective monism or materialism, shUnyavAda or nihilism, pantheism, solipsism, dualism, absolutism, etc. (corresponding broadly, not strictly, to a, b, c, etc., above, respectively) and all other possible forms of beliefs.
Turmoil within Peaceइति नाना प्रसंख्यानं तत्त्वानां ऋषिभिः कृतम् ।
सर्वं न्याय्यं युक्तिमत्त्वात्; विदुषां किमशोभनम् ।
iti nAnA prasaMkhyAnaM tattvAnAM RuShibhiH kRutam |
sarvaM nyAyyaM yuktimattvAt; viduShAM kimashobhanam | --Bhagavata, XI.xxii.2
"The seers have thus explained the fundamental constituents and features of the universe in various ways. Each way is just, because of its own special reasons. The wise see no conflict and no lack of beauty in any."
Each preceding view leaves behind an unreduced surd, and consequent discontent, which grows slowly. When the last view is reached, no surd remains; all views are reconciled; each is seen to have its own beauty and duty.
From one standpoint, pantheism may appear as a combination of I and Not-I only, rather than as a permutation of all three factors of the Logion. But (f) above may be interpreted as Spinoza's pantheism, viz., that A and U, Thought and Extension, (Mind and Matter), both, are two aspects of that which is Not-describable otherwise; or as (the poet Alexander) Pope's pantheism, viz., "The universe is one stupendous whole, whose Body Nature is and God the soul."
All these permutations mean only the accentuating, in different degrees, of the factors of the Logion severally. If we emphasise them all equally, then we find the Peace of the Absolute left untouched; because the net result, of the three being taken in combination, is always a neutralising, a balancing, of opposition, which may indifferently be called fullness or emptiness, peace or blankness, "the voice, the music, the resonance of the silence";
because the three, A, U, and M, are verily simultaneous, are in inseparable combination, are not amenable to arrangements and re-arrangements, to permutations and combinations; and these last merely appear, but appear inevitably, only when the whole is looked at from the standpoint of a part--an A, a U, or an M, which is necessarily bound to an order, a succession, an arrangement.
And yet also the whole multitude and Turmoil of the World-Process is in that Peace; for 'No-thing', Not-Self, is 'all things destroying each other', and Negation is 'abolition of all these particular things'; and 'I' is that for the sake of which, and in, and by the consciousness of which, all this abolition takes place.
This is the true significance of the Sankhya doctrine that Prakrti, Not-Self, displays herself and hides herself incessantly, only in order to provide an endless foil for the Self-realisation, the amusement, of Purusha, Self. In such interplay, both find everlasting and inevitable fullness of manifestation, fullness of realisation, and unfettered recreation.
Metaphysical Catalysis
Compare H.Ellis, Psychology of Sex, Vol.Ill, p.95 ("Love and Pain"):
"... The male is active and the female passive and imaginatively attentive to the states of the excited male ... The female develops a superadded activity, the male becoming relatively passive and imaginatively attentive to the psychical and bodily states of the female. ...";
and the well-known doctrines, of Sankhya, viz., that Purusha is the actionless Spectator of the movements, the dance, of Prakrti;
and of Vedanta, viz., that the juxtaposition or coexistence of Purusha and Prakrti, (the metaphysical archetypes of sex), superimposes, causes adhyAsa of, the characteristics of each upon the other, by vi-varta, inversion.
The mere presence and proximity of a person, of one sex is enough to produce some excitement (not necessarily lustful at all) in a person of the other sex. The Sankhya description of Prakrti exhibiting Herself to the watching Purusha, and shrinking away ashamed, as soon as the latter loses interest and turns away His eyes--this is, literally, an expansion, to the Universal and Infinite scale, of the facts of daily sex-life; and the latter are, conversely and obversely, the contraction to the finite scale, of the Infinite Fact, of the never-ceasing Drama of the Interplay of the Eternal Masculine and the pseudo-Eternal Feminine.
पुरुषस्य दर्शनार्थं, कैवल्यार्थं, तथा, प्रधानस्य,
पुंगु अन्धवद्, उभयोर् अपि संयोगः, तत्कृतः सर्गः ।
प्रकृतेः सुकुमारतरं न किंचिद् अस्ति, इति मे मतिर्भवति,
या द्यष्टा अस्मीति पुनर्न दर्शनं उपैति पुरुषस्य ।
puruShasya darshanArthaM, kaivalyArthaM, tathA, pradhAnasya,
puMgu andhavad, ubhayor api saMyogaH, tatkRutaH sargaH |
prakRuteH sukumArataraM na kiMchid asti, iti me matirbhavati,
yA dyaShTA asmIti punarna darshanaM upaiti puruShasya |
--Sankhya Kaarika, 21 and 16.
"In order that Purusha may see Prakrti and then retire into Soli-tude, and that Prakri may show Herself (and then shrink away), the two come together; as may the lame man who cannot walk but can see, and the blind man who can walk but cannot see, in order to help each other. Very modest, shy, sensitive, is Prakrti; for having shown herself, and been seen, if the spectator turns away, she vanishes."
The chemical phenomenon of catalysis seems to correspond to the psychological phenomenon of "imaginative attention" and its effects upon that which is attended to. The watering of the mouth in the presence of a tasteful edible; the expanding of the eyes or the nostrils, in that of a beautiful form or color or fragrant perfume all these are variants of the same fact. In all cases, of course, the perceiver must be 'interested' and 'pursuant'; not 'tired' and 'renunciant'.
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