English
This so solid-seeming World, after all, were but an air-image, our Me the only reality: and Nature, with its thousandfold production, and destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, ‘the phantasy of our Dream’; or what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names it, the living visible Garment of God : “In Being’s floods, in Action’s storm, I walk and work, above, beneath. Work and weave in endless motion! Bu'th and Death, An infinite ocean; A seizing and giving The fire of Living ; ’T is thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply. And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by,” *' Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not ; except in rare half- waking moments, suspect not. Creation lies be- fore us, like a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in 196 that strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances ; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake I This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on Earth call Life ; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from left ; yet they only are wise who know that they know nothing.*’^ “ Man is always throwing his praise or blame on events, and does not see that he only is real, and the world is mirror and echo. He imputes the stroke to fortune, which in reality himself strikes. The student discovers one day that he lives in enchantment: the house, the works, the persons, the days, the weathers, — all that he calls Nature, all that he calls institu- tions, when once his mind is active, are visions mere- ly — ^wonderful allegories, significant pictures of the laws of the mind, and through this enchanted gallery he is led by unseen guides to read and learn the laws of Heaven. This discovery may come early-— sometimes in the nursery, to a rare child ; later in the school, but oftener when the mind is more mature ; and to multitudes of men wanting in mental activity it never comes — any more than poetry or art. But it ought to come ; it belongs to the human intellect, and is an insight which we cannot spare. “Wondrous state of manl never so happy as when he has lost all private interests and regards, and exists only in obedience and love of the Author.’*^ 1, Carlyle’s Sartor Besartw, pp, 36-37. 2. The Sovereignty of Ethics, by B. W, Emerson. The North American Review, May-Jane 1878. 197 The Jivanmuhta fiads that he was estranged from God and suffered for it, but is received back by Him, as it were, as soon as he earnestly desired to return to Him. The riddle is explained to him. He sees that the same is applicable to the Universe. He is convinced by his own experience that the true course for him who desires to attain to the highest end of life is to acquire the true knowledge of the highest Self, who is hidden in the heart of all. The great Being is manifest, near and moving in the heart. In It everything is centred. It is the True, It is the Immortal. It is to be hit as ordained in the Mundahopanishad. He should take the Upanishad or Om , — the symbolic word for Brahman — as the bow ( ^15 ), as the great weapon, and placing the arrow ( of the indivi- dual Self), sharpened by devotion, and drawing it with a thought ( withdrawn from all other objects and ) directed to Brahman, the highest Self, the aim { 55^ ), which is indestructible, he should hit the mark. Be it remembered that it is to be hit by a qualified man who is not thoughtless; and then, as the arrow ( becomes one with the target ), he be- comes one with Brahman ( ). The wise (^) who understands this beholds the Immortal which shines forth full of Bliss ( ). The fruit of the true knowledge of the highest Self ( ) is final release. It iS also declared therein that: — T’he fetter— knot-— ( all desire) of the heart is 198 broken, all doubts are solved (i. e., nescience is discarded), all his ( accumulated and current ) works ( and their effects ) perish, when He, who is high and low ( cause and effect ) has been beheld ( as ‘in Him I am’).^ Or, as declared in the Bhagvad-Gitd (IV.37): — ‘‘ As a fire well-kindled, O Arjuna, reduces fuel to ashes, so the fire of knowledge reduces all actions ( and their consequences ) to ashes. He has ac- complished his task.” Or, as the blazing fire makes flame and bright- ness out of everything that is thrown into it, so the awakened and enlightened make everything coming in true contact with them pure and bright. When wrong knowledge is removed by the know- ledge of one’s Self being one with the highest Self, Brahman, then the memoiy of the Highest Self, once experienced, remains firm, and all selfish indi- viduality vanishes. Whenever, withdrawing himself from other objects, he is in meditation and comes back to his Self, he finds that he is at rest, he is free, he is blessed. He feels that nothing can separate him again from that eternal Self. He ceases to be what he seemed to be ; he is thenceforward what he knows himself to be. He remains in the world, as observed above, but quite a different man, till his fructescent work or appointed task is done, and his physical and phenomenal body becomes lifeless, and he is then and there returned and absorbed in the Highest 1. See tbe Mundabopemi^Md, II, 2, 4, 8. 199 Self. He views everything in, and refers it to, God, He being one in all. All ideas are true to him, in- asmuch as they refer to God, the Highest Self. His views become extensive, tolerant, and comprehensive. His worldly life is a picture of moral purity, noble conduct, and intellectual indifference to the transi- tory and deceiving charms cf this world. His worldly happiness and freedom consist in con- stant and unchangeable love of all wherein he sees the Highest Self, and in viewing optimistically the Universe which manifests more impressively its fundamental Substance ( ), Brahman. This most exalted belief in One Infinite Being, the High- est Self of all phenomenal manifestations, — brought into so-called existence by Mkyt, and Which is not only in and around everything of the Universe, but beyond it — becomes part and parcel of the Ved4ntin. This belief, resulting from conviction, gilds and sweetens everything he sees. In short, he knows that the Highest Self, God, is in all, permeates and pervades all, and is above all, and that the Highest Self is ( not has ) the Sack- chiddnanda Svart{ 2 )a, and that according to the Vedanta ' to know is to be.* It is proclaimed in the Mtindakopatiishad ( III, 2, 9 ) “ aniT He who knows that Highest Brahman becomes (is) Brahman Itself; and the final release from the fetters of Nescience is nothing but being Brahman ( ). It is ordained: — " Let a man tell this science of Brahman ( ) to those only who have per- formed all necessary acts who are versed 200 in the Vedas ( ), and firmly established in ( the lower) Brahman ( sr^rfsiST’ )” that is to say, to those who have performed their duties, who are learned and devoted to God. The Jimnmvkta becomes all happiness and joy when he is finally detached from his gross parts, never again to undergo tbo miseries of births and deaths, and returns to the Highest Self. This is the emancipation or liberation of the Veddnta It will be obvious that it is this idea which is reflected more or less in what Fichte, a great German philosopher, maintains in his later work. He says that his doctrine is the doctrine of Christianity, and particularly of the Gospel of John. It is this : — “The absolute and eternally true position is that... ( he ) who vitally perceives his unity with God, and who really and in deed devotes his entire individual life to the divine life within him, coalesces in the one common vital source of all, the Godhead. And so, then, Christianity, its end attained, coincides once more with absolute truth, and proclaims that all require to come into unity with God. So long as a man wants to become something for himself, God comes not into him, for no man can become God. So soon, however, as he annuls himself perfectly, completely, and to the last root, there remains but God alone, and He is All in All. Man cannot make for himself a God ; nevertheless himself, as the negation proper, he can annul, and then he is merged in God,” Fichte’s advanced philosophizing is summed up by himself in the following verses: — 201 “Th’ undying One Lives as thou liv’st, and sees in all thou see’st, Nought is but God ; and God is nought but hfe. Quite clear the veil is raised from thee, and lo ! ’T is Self : let die, then, this destructible ; And henceforth God will live in all thy strife. Consider what survives this strife below ; Then will the veil as veil be visible, And all revealed thou’lt see celestial hfe.”i Dr. Max Muller rightly judges and says:—“ The highest aim of all thought and study with the BrQJimana of the Upanishads was to recognise his own Self as a mere limited reflection of the Highest Self, to know his Self in the Highest Self, and through that knowledge to return to it, and to regain his identity with it.” Another thinker pronounces that, ‘The study of the Ved^ntic doctrines is wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society in solitude." The system is certainly the most sublime. Its natural tendency is upwards. Dr. Caird defines re- ligion as ‘Simply the return of the Finite conscious- ness into union with the Infinite.’ Hegel regards religion as ‘the effort of the soul to realise its unity with the Absolute’: — “God only to behold and know and feel. Till by exclusive consciousness of God All-self annihilated, it shall make God its identity.” One, who is enlightened and advanced enough to 1 Sohwegler’s HUtory of Philoaoyhy, p. 277.