English
The wise consider it to be the noblest object of their life to seek for and find within themselves the Divine — ^pure and simple — which they find everywhere 1. Bnskis quoted by Sir John Lubbock iu his Pleasures of Li/e, Part I. Chap. IX, on Science, p. 165. 183 without. This may sound curious to the lay mind; nevertheless, it is true. Here may be added a parallel idea from Goethe, which also confirms what has been brought forward in the above paragraphs: — " When a great idea enters the world as a Gospel, it becomes an offence to the multitude, which stag- nates in pedantry ; and to those who have much learning but little depth, it is folly, “ Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realised, it is hardly dis- tinguishable from phantasy and phantastery. “ This it is that has been called, in a good and in a bad sense, ideology ; and this is why the ideologist is so repugnant to the hard-working, practical man of every day, "You may recognise the utility of an idea, and yet not quite understand how to make a perfect use of'it, " Credo Deum ! That is a fine, a worthy thing to say ; but to recognise God, where and as he reveals himself, is the only true bliss on earth, “ Kepler said : ' My wish is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside me.’ The good man was not aw^are that in that very moment the divine in him stood in the closest con- nection with the divine in the Universe.”^ “That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element. And one far-off divine event, ■ To which the whole creation moves.” Tennyson, — ^In MemoTiam. CXXXI, 1, The Maxims and Bejlections of Goethe — translated by Bailey Saunders, pp. 135-6, 184 The position, in short, is simply this: — Of man, divested of all his impurities by undergoing parti- ciilar processes, only the Self remains* and this Self is identical with the Highest Self, Brahman. This is what is meant by * Thou ax*t That/ But the Nescience has veiled it. To all who are under the influence of Nescience the Vedanta points out, as a specimen of the promised supreme happi* ness to be derived from returning to the Highest Self, the following fact daily experienced by all:— • When one is in sound ■ dreamless sleep ( ), he does not experience his bodily or mental miseries, however insufferable they may be, and feels freed from them and finds rest and happiness, for the sound sleep gives him a faint reflection of the real happiness of the Self. This dreamless sleep, where there remains Nescience ( ) only, is a transient union with the one and only Self that is pure happi- ness and untouched with miseries, beyond the duality of subject and object, and beyond the plural- ity of things of experience. It is a state in which for the sleeper, all differences are merged, and the world has disappeared. His very personality has nearly passed back into the impersonality of the true Self. This absence of miseries and the feeling of rest and faint reflection of happiness are caused, because in that state he goes only near to his Self ivith the screen of ignorance on. ( This position is establish- ed after weighing other views accounting for it ). How intense, the Ved^lnta asks us to conclude, must then be the perfect bliss of him who, divested of his veil of ignorance by knowledge, returns en- 185 lightened to the Highest Self, as it were, face to face, and becomes reunited 1 He cannot but experience the perfect rest and supreme happiness inherent in Him. The tendency of everything in the Universe, to return to its ^rst cause to find rest, is well-known in these days. We cannot have rest and happiness till we return to our first cause, the Highest Self, and are merged in Him. Ignorance prevents us from doing so. It must be removed first by the light of knowledge ; and then by the way of one-pointedness or concentration ( ) on the Highest Self, man becomes able to return to his Self and recover ultimately his true Self in the Highest Self, It is affirmed that at some stage of his meditation (tr) he clearly perceives the essence of which he consists. It gives him a new sense, and complete content- ment, lifts him up above the physical part, and makes him feel the omnipresence of a higher Power. He then experiences that there rejnains only the subjective Self ( and the Highest Self ( and passes his allotted day ‘with in- ward glory crowned " believing that the highest end of man, who has ‘the likest God within his soul,’ can only be likeness with God, which can be reached by the true knowledge. The Eye of knowledg'e. The true knowledge leads to the highest beati- tude, which is the highest perfection of human nature. What distinguishes man from all other creatures is his desire to know God — ( ) inquiry into Brahman-which is the highest end and 186 the real beatitude of man. The knowledge of God {s^nSTR) is of three degrees: — (1) a natural knowledge of God, which is common to all human beings, ( 2 ) ( ) a knowledge of God, demonstrated by the S'dstra ( Scripture ), ( 3 ) ( ) an immediate knowledge of God by intuition. I\Ian is endowed with a three-fold eye ( ),-i. e., intellect, ( 1 ) the eye of the flesh (^^^),(2)the eye of reason ( ), and ( 3 ) the eye of intui- tion ( By the first, man sees the external world ; by the second, he sees the ideal or spiritual world ; and by the third, he sees the highest Self within himself and everywhere, and derives the highest and fullest happiness from this intuitional knowledge or immediate intuition of the Infinite, Brahman. It is ordained that: — ag rT g.f4^r^ g[ JT%: II II II Man cannot see the true until his eye of know- ledge (^TPIFI^) is opened. An unintelligent — unthink- ing — man ( STS' ) believes his body to be himself ; an intelligent man ( f^g[RC.) sees that he cannot be the body which is no better than dust, and is incessantly changing and transient. He sees that there is some- thing lasting in the body, for which he cares more. It is the ' I.’ He calls it his soul, and the body is then its garment. He further finds that the I, the soul, throughout remains constant and the same, while the body undergoes various changes. If he knows something of philosophy he speaks about his Ego, but he seldom asks himself what this Ego is, 187 what it can be, and what it can not be ; what lies behind it, what is its real substance. He says that he has a soul, but who or what it is that has a soul, he never thinks of. He speaks of I and of I my- self, but who and what that Self is, which he calls myself, and who the my is to whom that self be- longs, is but seldom thought of. He I’egards his body and his soul to be himself. All these problems are solved by the knowledge-eye ( In the Chhdndogyopanishud Praj^pati declares: — “That the I ( ), the soul, can become free by knowledge ( ) only, by properly knowing itself as free from the body and all other adjuncts A discriminating learned personage knows the highest Self to be himself. “The serene Being, Jiva, (having been awakened to its reality by the knowledge that ‘ thou art not of the body or of the senses, thou art That — Sat’ ) rising above this body (i. e., recognising its own true nature as diiferent from the body, renouncing the notion of the body being his Self), and having reached the highest Light, appears in its own form ( )• That is the highest person.^'’ It does not require death to free the soul from the body. Knowledge would effect that liberation, and leave the soul even in this life a mere spectator of its bodily abode, of its bodily joys and sufferings, and of the decay and death of the body. They concern his body only or his bodily self, his Ego. The knowledge brings him perfect serenity. 1. See the Chhdnd, Up. VIII. 12, 3. 188 He duly knows himself to be the highest Self, and therefore is the highest Self. Thought may be arranged into three kinds: — ( 1 ) instinctive or unconscious, ( 2 ) conscious, ( 3 ) super- conscious. The unconscious thought is lower, and super-conscious thought is higher, than conscious thought. The first is common to man and brute, and is, therefore, called animal. Pas' avajn^na The second belongs to man, and distinguishes him from brutes, and is, therefore, called rational, Mdna- vajndna ( ). The third, super-conscious, is called the true knowledge, Yathdrthajndna ( ?TJT5|- ^TR). It could only be developed in the mind of one who has made its faculty higher by pui'ifying and illumining it by profound meditation or perfect con- centration ( on the knowledge of God, Brahman. This super-conscious thought or knowledge enables the enlightened to sec truths beyond the reach of common reason. The highest Vedanta truth — to discern the identi- ty of all, — the souls, the whole universe, and Brah- man — is realized in this super-conscious state CR, ), where all difference (^) is lost in the knowledge of non-difference This is not only the brotherhood of men and the Father- hood of God, but the self-hood in the best and widest sense of men, and the Brahma-hood of all. To arrive at this super-conscious knowledge one has to change his point of view. 1. The same is called ‘Ecstacy’ by Plotinus, and intellectual Intuition* by Schelling. It was held to be the endowment only of a few of the privileged ; it was the faculty of philosophising. See Lewes* Biog, Hist, of Phil^ p. 603.