In Gita we are advised to work disinterestedly, abandoning all lust for the result. Many outsiders conclude from this teaching that the conception of the world as something unreal lies at the root of the so-called disinterestedness preached in India. But the reverse is the truth.
The man who aims at his own aggrandisement underrates everything else. Compared to his ego the rest of the world is unreal. Thus in order to be fully conscious of the reality of all, one has to be free himself from the bonds of personal desires. This discipline we have to go through to prepare ourselves for our social duties — for sharing the burdens of our fellow-beings. Every endeavour to attain a larger life requires of man "to gain by giving away, and not to be greedy." And thus to 1 Tyaktena bhunjithah. 2 Ma gridhah.
20 SADHANA i expand gradually the consciousness of one's unity with all is the striving of humanity.
The Infinite in India was not a thin nonentity, void of all content. The Rishis of India asserted emphatically, "To know him in this life is to be true; not to know him in this life is the desolation of death." 1 How to know him then? "By realis ing him in each and all." 2 Not only in nature but in the family, in society, and in the state, the more we realise the World-conscious in all, the better for us. Failing to realise it, we turn our faces to destruction.
It fills me with great joy and a high hope for the future of humanity when I realise that there was a time in the remote past when our poet-prophets stood under the lavish sunshine of an Indian sky and greeted the world with the glad recognition of kin dred. It was not an anthropomorphic hallucina tion. It was not seeing man reflected everywhere in grotesquely exaggerated images, and witnessing the human drama acted on a gigantic scale in nature's arena of flitting lights and shadows. On the con trary, it meant crossing the limiting barriers of the individual, to become more than man, to become one with the All. It was not a mere play of the imag ination, but it was the liberation of consciousness from all the mystifications and exaggerations of * Iha chet avedit atha satyamasti, nachet iha avedit mahatl vinashtih. 2 Bhuteshu bhuteshu vichintva.
i INDIVIDUAL AND UNIVERSE 21 the self. These ancient seers felt in the serene depth of their mind that the same energy which vibrates and passes into the endless forms of the world manifests itself in our inner being as conscious ness; and there is no break in unity. For these seers there was no gap in their luminous vision of per fection. They never acknowledged even death itself as creating a chasm in the field of reality. They said, His reflection is death as well as immor tality.1 They did not recognise any essential opposi tion between life and death, and they said with ab solute assurance, "It is life that is death." 2 They saluted with the same serenity of gladness "life in its aspect of appearing and in its aspect of departure" — That which is past is hidden in life, and that which is to come* They knew that mere appearance and disappearance are on the surface like waves on the sea, but life which is permanent knows no decay or diminution.
Everything has sprung from immortal life and is vibrating with lifef for life is immense* This is the noble heritage from our forefathers waiting to be claimed by us as our own, this ideal of the supreme freedom of consciousness. It is not merely intellectual or emotional, it has an ethical basis, and it must be translated into action. In 1 Yasya chhayamritam yasya mrityuh. 2 Prano mrityuh.
8 Namd astu ayate namo astu parayate. Prane ha bhutam bhavyancha.
4 Yadidan kificha prana ejati nihsritam. 5 Prano virat.
22 SADHANA i the Upanishad it is said, The supreme being is all- pervading^ therefore he is the innate good in all.1 To be truly united in knowledge, love, and service with all beings, and thus to realise one's self in the all-pervading God is the essence of goodness, and this is the keynote of the teachings of the Upanishads: Life is immense! 2 1 Sarvavyapi sa bhagavan tasmat sarvagatah 9*ivah. 2 Prano virat.
II SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS WE have seen that it was the aspiration of ancient India to live and move and have its joy in Brahma, the all-conscious and all-pervading Spirit, by extend ing its field of consciousness over all the world. But that, it may be urged, is an impossible task for man to achieve. If this extension of consciousness be an outward process, then it is endless; it is like attempting to cross the ocean after ladling out its water. By beginning to try to realise all, one has to end by realising nothing.
But, in reality, it is not so absurd as it sounds. Man has every day to solve this problem of enlarg ing his region and adjusting his burdens. His bur dens are many, too numerous for him to carry, but he knows that by adopting a system he can lighten the weight of his load. Whenever they feel too complicated and unwieldy, he knows it is because he has not been able to hit upon the system which would have set everything in place and distributed the weight evenly. This search for system is really a search for unity, for synthesis; it is our attempt 25 26 SADHANA n to harmonise the heterogeneous complexity of out ward materials by an inner adjustment. In the search we gradually become aware that to find out the One is to possess the All; that there, indeed, is our last and highest privilege. It is based on the law of that unity which is, if we only know it, our abiding strength. Its living principle is the power that is in truth; the truth of that unity which comprehends multiplicity. Facts are many, but the truth is one. The animal intelligence knows facts, the human mind has power to apprehend truth. The apple falls from the tree, the rain descends upon the earth — you can go on burdening your memory with such facts and never come to an end. But once you get hold of the law of gravitation you can dispense with the necessity of collecting facts ad infinitum. You have got at one truth which governs numberless facts. This discovery of a truth is pure joy to man — it is a liberation of his mind. For, a mere fact is like a blind lane, it leads only to itself — it has no beyond. But a truth opens up a whole horizon, it leads us to the infinite. That is the reason why, when a man like Darwin discovers some simple general truth about Biology, it does not stop there, but like a lamp shedding its light far beyond the object for which it was lighted, it illumines the whole region of human life and thought, transcending its original pur pose. Thus we find that truth, while investing all facts, is not a mere aggregate of facts — it surii SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 27 passes them on all sides and points to the infinite reality.
As in the region of knowledge so in that of con sciousness, man must clearly realise some central truth which will give him an outlook over the widest possible field. And that is the object ^rm.h the Upanishad has in view when it says, Know thine own Soul. Or, in other words, realise th<- one great principle of unity that there is in every m^n.
All our egoistic impulses, our selfish desires, obscure our true vision of the soul. Fo<" they only indicate our own narrow self. When y^e are con- scious__ofpur soul, we perceive the inner being that transcends our ego and has its deeper affinity with Children, when they begin to learn each separate letter of the alphabet, find no pleasure in it, because they miss the real purpose of the lesson; in fact, while letters claim our attention only in themselves and as isolated things, they fatigue us. They become a source of joy to us only when they combine into words and sentences and convey an idea.
Likewise, our soul when detached and imprisoned within the narrow limits of a self loses its significance. For its very essence is unity. It can only find out its truth by unifying itself with others, and only then it has its joy. Man was troubled and he lived in a state of fear so long as he had not discovered the uniformity of law in nature; till then the world 28 SADHANA ii 28 SADHANA ii was alien to him. The law that he discovered is nothing but the perception of harmony that prevails between reason which is of the soul of man and the workings of the world. This is the bond of union through which man is related to the world in which he lives, and he feels an exceeding joy when he finds ^is out, foi- then he realises himself in his surround ings. To understand anything is to find in it some thing which is our own, and it is the discovery of ourselves outside us which makes us glad. This relation of understanding is partial, but the relation of love is complete. In love the sense of difference is obliterated and the human soul fulfils its purpose in perfection, transcending the limits of itself and reaching across the threshold of the infinite. There fore love is the highest bliss that man can attain to, for through it alone he truly knows that he is more than himself, and that he is at one with the All.
This principle of unity which man has in his soul is ever active, establishing relations far and wide through literature, art, and science, society, state craft, and religion. Our great Revealers are they who make manifest the true meaning of the soul by giving up self for the love of mankind. They face calumny and persecution, deprivation and death in their service of love. They live the life of the soul, not of the self, and thus they prove to us the ulti mate truth of humanity. We call them Mahatmds, "the men of the great soul."
ii SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 29 It is said in one of the Upanishads: It is not that thou lovest thy son because thou desirest him, but thou lovest thy son because thou desirest thine own soul.1 The meaning of this is, that whomsoever we love, in him we find our own soul in the highest sense. The final truth of our existence lies in this. Paramatma, the supreme soul, is in me, as well as in my son, and my joy in my son is the realisation of this truth. It has become quite a commonplace fact, yet it is wonderful to think upon, that the joys and sorrows of our loved ones are joys and sorrows to us — nay, they are more. Why so? Because in them we have grown larger, in them we have touched that great truth which comprehends the whole universe.
It very often happens that our love for our children, our friends, or other loved ones, debars us from the further realisation of our soul. It enlarges our scope of consciousness, no doubt, yet it sets a limit to its freest expansion. Nevertheless, it is the first step, and all the wonder lies in this first step itself. It shows to us the true nature of our soul. From it we know, for certain, that our highest joy is in the losing of our egoistic self and in the uniting with others. This love gives us a new power and insight and beauty of mind to the extent of the limits we set around it, but ceases to do so if those limits lose their elasticity, and militate against the spirit 1 Na va are putrasya kamaya putrah priyo bhavati, atmanastu kamaya putrah priyo bhavati.
30 SADHANA ii of love altogether; then our friendships become exclusive, our families selfish and inhospitable, our nations insular and aggressively inimical to other races. It is like putting a burning light within a sealed enclosure, which shines brightly till the poison ous gases accumulate and smother the flame. Never theless it has proved its truth before it dies, and made known the joy of freedom from the grip of the darkness, blind and empty and cold.
According to the Upanishads, the key to cosmic consciousness, to God-consciousness, is in the con sciousness of the soul. To know our soul apart from the self is the first step towards the realisation of the supreme deliverance. We must know with absolute certainty that essentially we are spirit. This we can do by winning mastery over self, by rising above all pride and greed and fear, by knowing that worldly losses and physical death can take nothing away from the truth and the greatness of our soul. The chick knows when it breaks through the self- centred isolation of its egg that the hard shell which covered it so long was not really a part of its life. That shell is a dead thing, it has no growth, it affords no glimpse whatever of the vast beyond that lies out side it. However pleasantly perfect and rounded it may be, it must be given a blow to, it must be burst through and thereby the freedom of light and air be won, and the complete purpose of bird life be achieved. In Sanskrit, the bird has been called the ii SOJL CONSCIOUSNESS 31 twice-born. So too the man who has gone through the ceremony of the discipline of self-restraint and high thinking for a period of at least twelve years; who has come out simple in wants, pure in heart, and ready to take up all the responsibilities of life in a disinterested largeness of spirit. He is considered to have had his rebirth from the blind envelopment of self to the freedom of soul life; to have come into living relation with his surroundings; to have become at one with the All.
I have already warned my hearers, and must once more warn them against the idea that the teachers of India preached a renunciation of the world and of self which leads only to the blank emptiness of negation. Their aim was the realisation of the soul, or, in other words, gaining the world in perfect truth. When Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," he meant this. He pro claimed the truth that when man gets rid of his pride of self then he comes into his true inheritance. No more has he to fight his way into his position in the world; it is secure for him everywhere by the im mortal right of his soul. Pride of self interferes with the proper function of the soul which is to realise itself by perfecting its union with the world and the world's God.
In his sermon to Sadhu Simha Buddha says, It is true, Simha, that I denounce activities, but only the activities that lead to the evil in words, thoughts, or deeds.
32 SADHANA ii It is true, Simha, that I preach extinction, but only the extinction of pride, lust, evil thought, and ignorance, not that of forgiveness, love, charity, and truth.
The doctrine of deliverance that Buddha preached was the freedom from the thraldom of Avidya. Avidya is the ignorance that darkens our conscious ness, and tends to limit it within the boundaries of our personal self. It is this Avidya, this ignorance, this limiting of consciousness that creates the hard separateness of the ego, and thus becomes the source of all pride and greed and cruelty incidental to self- seeking. When a man sleeps he is shut up within the narrow activities of his physical life. He lives, but he knows not the varied relations of his life to his surroundings, — therefore he knows not himself. So when a man lives the life of Avidya he is confined within his self. It is a spiritual sleep; his conscious ness is not fully awake to the highest reality that surrounds him, therefore he knows not the reality of his own soul. When he attains Bodhi, i. e. the awak- enment from the sleep of self to the perfection of con sciousness, he becomes Buddha.
Once I met two ascetics of a certain religious sect in a village of Bengal. "Can you tell me," I asked them, "wherein lies the special features of your religion?" One of them hesitated for a moment and answered, "It is difficult to define that." The other said, "No, it is quite simple. We hold that we have first of all to know our own soul under the ii SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 33 guidance of our spiritual teacher, and when we have done that we can find him, who is the Supreme Soul, within us." "Why don't you preach your doctrine to all the people of the world?" I asked. "Who ever feels thirsty will of himself come to the river," was his reply. "But then, do you find it so? Are they coming?" The man gave a gentle smile, and with an assurance which had not the least tinge of impatience or anxiety, he said, "They must come, one and all."
Yes, he is right, this simple ascetic of rural Bengal. Man is indeed abroad to satisfy needs which are more to him than food and clothing. He is out to find himself. Man's history is the history of his journey to the unknown in quest of the realisation of his immortal self — his soul. Through the rise and fall of empires; through the building up gigantic piles of wealth and the ruthless scattering of them upon the dust; through the creation of vast bodies of symbols that give shape to his dreams and aspira tions, and the casting of them away like the play things of an outworn infancy; through his forging of magic keys with which to unlock the mysteries of creation, and through his throwing away of this labour of ages to go back to his workshop and work up afresh some new form; yes, through it all man is marching from epoch to epoch towards the fullest realisation of his soul, — the soul which is greater than the things man accumulates, the 34 SADHANA ii 34 SADHANA ii deeds he accomplishes, the theories he builds; the soul whose onward course is never checked by death or dissolution. Man's mistakes and failures have by no means been trifling or small, they have strewn his path with colossal ruins; his sufferings have been immense, like birth-pangs for a giant child; they are the prelude of a fulfilment whose scope is in finite. Man has gone through and is still under going martyrdoms in various ways, and his institu tions are the altars he has built whereto he brings his daily sacrifices, marvellous in kind and stu pendous in quantity. All this would be absolutely unmeaning and unbearable if all along he did not feel that deepest joy of the soul within him, which tries its divine strength by suffering and proves its exhaustless riches by renunciation. Yes, they are coming, the pilgrims, one and all — coming to their true inheritance of the world; they are ever broaden ing their consciousness, ever seeking a higher and higher unity, ever approaching nearer to the one central Truth which is all-comprehensive.
Man's poverty is abysmal, his wants are endless till he becomes truly conscious of his soul. Till then, the world to him is in a state of continual flux — a phantasm that is and is not. For a man who has realised his soul there is a determinate centre of the universe around which all else can find its proper place, and from thence only can he draw and enjoy the blessedness of a harmonious life, ii SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 35 There was a time when the earth was only a nebulous mass whose particles were scattered far apart through the expanding force of heat; when she had not yet attained her definiteness of form and had neither beauty nor purpose, but only heat and motion. Gradually, when her vapours were con densed into a unified rounded whole through a force that strove to bring all straggling matters under the control of a centre, she occupied her proper place among the planets of the solar system, like an emerald pendant in a necklace of diamonds. So with our soul. When the heat and motion of blind impulses and passions distract it on all sides, we can neither give nor receive anything truly. But when we find our centre in our soul by the power of self- restraint, by the force that harmonises all warring elements and unifies those that are apart, then all our isolated impressions reduce themselves to wisdom, and all our momentary impulses of heart find their completion in love; then all the petty details of our life reveal an infinite purpose, and all our thoughts and deeds unite themselves inseparably in an internal harmony.
The Upanishads say with great emphasis, Know thou the One, the Soul.1 It is the bridge leading to the immortal being.2 This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his 1 Tamevaikam janatha atmanam. 2 Amritasyaisha setuh.
36 SADHANA n soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom. His desires are many, and madly they run after the varied objects of the world, for therein they have their life and fulfil ment. But that which is one in him is ever seeking for unity — unity in knowledge, unity in love, unity in purposes of will; its highest joy is when it reaches the infinite one within its eternal unity. Hence the saying of the Upanishad, Only those of tranquil minds, and none else, can attain abiding joy, by realising within their souls the Being who manifests one essence in a multiplicity of forms.1 Through all the diversities of the world the one in us is threading its course towards the one in all; this is its nature and this is its joy. But by that devious path it could never reach its goal if it had not a light of its own by which it could catch the sight of what it was seeking in a flash. The vision of the Supreme One in our own soul is a direct and immediate intuition, not based on any ratiocination or demonstration at all. Our eyes naturally see an object as a whole, not by breaking it up into parts, but by bringing all the parts together into a unity with ourselves. So with the intuition of our Soul- consciousness, which naturally and totally realises its unity in the Supreme One.
Says the Upanishad: This deity who is manifesting 1 Ekam rupam bahudha yah karoti * * tarn atmastham ye anupa?y- anti dihrah, tesham sukham ^a^vatam netaresham.
ii SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 37 himself in the activities of the universe always dwells in the heart of man as the supreme soul. Those who realise him through the immediate perception of the heart attain immortality.1 He is Fishvakarma; that is, in a multiplicity of forms and forces lies his outward manifestation in nature; but his inner manifestation in our soul is that which exists in unity. Our pursuit of truth in the domain of nature therefore is through analysis and the gradual methods of science, but our appre hension of truth in our soul is immediate and through direct intuition. We cannot attain the supreme soul by successive additions of knowledge acquired bit by bit even through all eternity, because he is one, he is not made up of parts; we can only know him as heart of our hearts and soul of our soul; we can only know him in the love and joy we feel when we give up our self and stand before him face to face.
The deepest and the most earnest prayer that has ever risen from the human heart has been uttered in our ancient tongue: 0 thou self-revealing one, reveal they self in me.2 We are in misery because we are creatures of self — the self that is unyielding and narrow, that reflects no light, that is blind to the infinite. Our self is loud with its own discordant clamour — it is not the tuned harp whose chords 1 Esha devo vishvakarma mahatma sada jananam hridaye sanni- vishtah. Hrida mamsha manasabhiklripto ya etad viduramritaste bhavanti.
2 Aviravfrmayedhi.
38 SADHANA 11 vibrate with the music of the eternal. Sighs of discontent and weariness of failure, idle regrets for the past and anxieties for the future are troubling our shallow hearts because we have not found our souls, and the self-revealing spirit has not been manifest within us. Hence our cry, 0 thou awful one, save me with thy smile of grace ever and evermore.1 It is a stifling shroud of death, this self-gratification, this insatiable greed, this pride of possession, this insolent alienation of heart. Rudra, 0 thou awful one, rend this dark cover in twain and let the saving beam of thy smile of grace strike through this night of gloom and waken my soul.
From unreality lead me to the real, from darkness to the light, from death to immortality.2 But how can one hope to have this prayer granted? For infinite is the distance that lies between truth and untruth, between death and deathlessness. Yet this measure less gulf is bridged in a moment when the self- revealing one reveals himself in the soul. There the miracle happens, for there is the meeting-ground of the finite and infinite. Father, completely sweep away all my sins! 3 For in sin man takes part with the finite against the infinite that is in him. It is the defeat of his soul by his self. It is a perilously losing game, in which man stakes his all to gain a 1 Rudra yat te dakshinam mukham tena mam pahi nityam.
2 Asatoma sadgamaya, tamasoma jyotirgamaya, mrityorma mritanga- maya.
8 Vishvanideva savitar duratani parasuva.
ii SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS 39 part. Sin is the blurring of truth which clouds the purity of our consciousness. In sin we lust after pleasures, not because they are truly desirable, but because the red light of our passion makes them appear desirable; we long for things not because they are great in themselves, but because our greed ex aggerates them and makes them appear great. These exaggerations, these falsifications of the per spective of things, break the harmony of our life at every step; we lose the true standard of values and are distracted by the false claims of the varied in terests of life contending with one another. It is this failure to bring all the elements of his nature under the unity and control of the Supreme One that makes man feel the pang of his separation from God and gives rise to the earnest prayer, 0 God, 0 Father, completely sweep away all our sins.1 Give unto us that which is good,2 the good which is the daily bread of our souls. In our pleasures we are confined to ourselves, in the good we are freed and we belong to all. As the child in its mother's womb gets its sustenance through the union of its life with the larger life of its mother, so our soul is nourished only through the good which is the recognition of its inner kinship, the channel of its communi cation with the infinite by which it is surrounded and fed. Hence it is said, "Blessed are they which 1 Vishvani deva savitar duritani parasuva. 2 Yad bhadram tanna asuva.
40 SADHANA n do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." For righteousness is the divine food of the soul; nothing but this can fill him, can make him live the life of the infinite, can help him in his growth towards the eternal. We bow to thee from whom come the enjoyments of our life.1 We bow also to thee from whom comes the good of our soul.2 We bow to thee who art good, the highest good* in whom we are united with everything, that is, in peace and harmony, in goodness and love.
Man's cry is to reach his fullest expression. It is this desire for self-expression that leads him to seek wealth and power. But he has to discover that accumulation is not realisation. It is the inner light that reveals him, not outer things. When this light is lighted, then in a moment he knows that Man's highest revelation is God's own revelation in him. And his cry is for this — the manifestation of his soul, which is the manifestation of God in his soul. Man becomes perfect man, he attains his fullest expression, when his soul realises itself in the Infinite being who is Avih whose very essence is expression.