176 JNANA YOGA tion of utility, there will be various other questions, but in all we shall find, that we are prompted by our past associations. It is association of ideas that has such a tremendous power in our mind. To those who from childhood have always heard about a personal God and the personality of the mind, these ideas will of course appear very stern and harsh, but if we listen to them, think of them for a long time, they will become part and parcel of our lives, and will no longer frighten us. The great question that gener- ally arises of course is the utility of philosophy. To that there can be only one answer, that if on the utilitarian ground it is good for men to seek for pleasure, why should not those whose pleasure is in religious speculation seek that? Because sense enjoy- ments please many, they seek for them, but there may be others whom they do not please, who want higher enjoyment. The dog's pleasure is only in eating and drinkmg. The dog cannot understand the pleasure of the scientist who gives up everything, and perhaps dwells on the top of a mountain to observe the posi- tion of certain stars. The dog may smile at him and think he is a madman. Perhaps this poor scientist never had money enough to marry even; he eats a few bits of bread and drinks water and sits on the top of a mountain. Perhaps this dog laughs at him. But the scientist will say, ''My dear dog, your pleas- ure is only in the senses; you enjoy it; you know nothing beyond it, but for me this is the most enjoya- ble thing, and if you have the right to seek your pleasure in your own way so have I, in my own way." The mistake is that we want to tie the whole world REALIZATION 177 down to our own plane, we want to make our minds the measure of the whole universe. To you the old sense things are perhaps the greatest pleasure, but it is not necessary that my pleasure should be the same, and when you insist upon that, I differ from you.
That is the difference between the worldly utilitarian and the religious man. The worldly utilitarian says: "See how happy I am. I get a little money, but about all these other things I do not bother my head. They are too unsearchable, and so I am happy.*' So far, so good; good for all you utilitarians. This world is terrible. If any man gets happiness in any way excepting by injuring his fellow beings, God speed him, but when this man comes to me and says you too must do these things; you will be a fool if you do not, I say you are wrong, because the very things which are pleasurable to you, have not the slightest attraction for me. If I had to go after a few handfuls of gold, my life would not be worth living! I would die. That is the answer the religious man would make to him. The fact is that religion is only possible for those who have finished with these lower; ^^^-^—, things. We must have our experiences, must have ) our full run. It is only when we have finished this ] run that the other world opens.
There is a great problem that arises in my mind. It is a very harsh thing to say, and yet a fact. These enjoyments of the senses sometimes assume another phase which is very dangerous and tempting. This idea you will always hear — it was in very old times, in every religion — ^that a time will come when all the miseries of life will cease, and only its joys and pleas- 178 J NANA YOGA ures will remain, that this earth will thus become a heaven. That I do not believe. This earth of ours will always remain this same world. It is a most terrible thing to say, yet I do not see my way out of it. It is like rheumatism; drive it from the head, it goes to the legs, drive it from there it goes to other parts. Whatever you do is there. So is misery. In olden times people lived in forests, and they ate each other up; in modern times they do not eat each other's flesh, but they cheat one another. They ruin whole countries and cities by cheating. That is not great progress; I do not see that what you call progress in the world is other than multiplication of desires. If one thing is obvious to me it is this, that desires bring all misery, the state of the beggar, always begging for something, unable to see anything without the idea of having it; having, having, everything. The whole life is the life of the thirsty, thirsty beggar, unquenchable thirst of desire. If the power to satis- fy our desires is increased in arithmetical progression, the power of desire is increased in geometrical pro- gression. The sum-total of happiness and misery in the world is at least the same throughout. If a wave rises in the ocean it makes a hollow somewhere. If happiness comes to a man unhappiness comes to some other, or to some animal. Men are increasing and animals are vanishing; we are killing them, and taking their land; we are taking all means of sustenance from them. How can we say that happiness is increasing? The strong race eats up the weaker, but do you think that the strong race will be very happy? No; they will begin to kill each other. I do not see REALIZATION 179 how it can be on practical grounds. It is a question of fact. On theoretical grounds, also, I see it cannot be.
Perfection is always infinite. We are this infinite already, and we are trying to manifest that infinity. You and I and all beings are trying to manifest this infinity. So far it is all right. But from this fact, some German philosophers have tried to make out a very peculiar theory of philosophy — that this mani- festation will become higher and higher until we attain perfect manifestation, until we have become perfect beings. What is meant by perfect manifesta- tion? Perfection means infinity, and manifestation means limit, and so it means that we shall become unlimited limiteds; which is self-contradictory. Such a doctrine may please children; it may be very nice to please children, to give them a comfortable religion, but it is poisoning them with lies, and it is bad for religion. We are told that this world is a degrada- tion, that man is a degradation of God, that Adam fell. There is no one religion to-day which does not teach you that man is a degradation. We have been degraded down to the animal; now we are going up, to emerge again, to get away from this bondage, but we shall never be able to manifest the infinite here. We shall struggle hard, and then find it impos- sible. There will come a time when we shall find that it is impossible to be perfect here, while we are bound by the senses. And then the march back will be sounded.
This is renunciation. We shall have to get out of the difficulty as we got in, and then morality and l8o. J NANA YOGA charity will begin. What is the watchword of all ethical codes? ''Not I, but thou/' and this "I" is the outcome of the infinite behind, trying to manifest itself on the outside world. This little 'T' is the result. This is the result that has been obtained, and this little *T" will have to go back and join the infinite, its own nature. It will find that it has been making a false attempt. It has put its foot into the wheel and will have to get out, and this is being discovered every day. Every time you say: "Not I, my brother, but thou," you are trying to go back, and every time you forget the ideal, you say: *T, not thou." Struggles and evils are in the world, but after that must begin renunciation, eternal renunciation. Why care for this little life? All these vain desires of living here and enjoying this life, this thinking I will live and enjoy again in some other place — living always in the senses and in sense enjoyment — these ideas bring death.
If we are developed animals the very same argu- ment can be worked out on the other side; the animals also may be degraded men. How do you know it is not so? You have seen that the proof of evolution is simply this, that you find a series of bodies, one near to the other, from the lowest body to the highest body, but from that argument how can you insist that it is from the lower up, and not from the top down? The argument applies to both sides, and if anything is true I believe it is going up and down, the series repeating itself. How can you have an evolution without going back in the same series in which we came up? However it may be, the central idea to which I am referring is there.
REALIZATION l8l REALIZATION l8l Of course I am ready to be convinced the other way, that the infinite can manifest itself. As to the other idea — that we are going ever and ever in a straight line — I do not believe it; it is too nonsensical to believe. There is no motion in a straight line. If you could throw a stone forward with sufficient force, a time would come when it would complete the circle and return to its starting place. Do you not read the mathematical axiom, a straight line infinitely pro- jected becomes a circle? It must be so, only it may vary as to details. So I always cling to the side of the old religious ideas, when I hear Christ preachy and Buddha assert, and the Vedanta declare, and the Bible proclaim, that we must all come to perfection in time, but only by giving up this imperfection. This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous carica- ture, a shadow of the reality. All the fools are rush- ing after sense-enjoyments.
It is easy to live in the senses. It is easier to run in the old groove, eating and drinking; but what these modern philosophers want to tell you is to take these comfortable ideas and put the stamp of religion on them. Such a doctrine is dangerous. Death is in the senses. We must go beyond death. It is not a reali- ty. Renunciation will take us to the reality. Renun- ciation is meant by morality.^ Renunciation is the vqry basis of our true life; every moment of good- ness and real life that we enjoy, is when we do not think of ourselves. This little separate self must die; and then we shall find that we are in the Real, and the Vedanta says, that Reality is God, and He is our own real nature, and He is always in us and with us.
1 82 J NANA YOGA Live in Him and stand in Him; although it seems to be so hard, it will become easier by-and-by. You will find that it is the only joyful state of existence; every other existence is of death. Life on the plane of the spirit is the only life, life on any other plane is mere death; the whole of this life can be only described as a gymnasium. We must go beyond it to enjoy real life. We must attain to Realization.
XI THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL The Katha Upanishad, which we have been study- ing, was written much later than that to which we now turn — the Chandogya. The language is more modern, and the thought more organized. In the older Upanishads the language is very archaic, like that of the hymn portions of the Veda, and one has to wade sometimes through quite a mass of unneces- sary things to get at the essential doctrines. The rit- ualistic literature about which I told you, which forms the second division of the Vedas, has, to a large extent, left its mark upon this old Upanishad, so that more than half of it is still ritualistic. There is, however, one great gain in studying the very old Upanishads; you trace, as it were, the historical springing up of spiritual ideas. In the more recent Upanishads the spiritual ideas have been collected and brought into one place, just as in the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, which we may perhaps look upon as the last of the Upanishads, and you do not find in them any inkling of these ritualistic ideas. Every verse of the Gita has been collected from some portion of the Upanishads, and made into a sort of bouquet. But therein you cannot understand the rise of the idea, you cannot trace it to its source, and to do that is, as has been 184 J NANA YOGA pointed out b)^ many, one of the great benefits of study- ing the Vedas; for the great idea of holiness that has been attached to these books has preserved them, more than any other book in the world, from mutilation. There, thoughts at their highest and at their lowest level have all been preserved, essential and non-essen- tial. The most ennobling teachings and simple mat- ters of detail stand side by side, for nobody has dared to touch them. The commentators came, of course, and tried to smooth them out, and to bring out won- derful new ideas from very old things; they tried to find spiritual ideas in even the most ordinary state- ments, but the texts remained, and, as such, they are the most wonderful historical study. We all know that in every religion in later times, as thoughts began to grow and develop there came this spiritual progress. One word is changed here and one put in there; another is thrown out, apart from the commentators. This, probably, has not been done with the Vedic literature at all, or if ever done, it is almost imper- ceptible. So we have this great advantage, we are able to study thoughts in their original significance, to note how they developed, how from materialistic ideas, finer and finer spiritual ideas evolved, until they attained their greatest height in the Vedanta. Some of the old manners and customs are also there, but not very much in the Upanishads. The language is a peculiar terse mnemonic.
The writers of these books simply jotted down these lines as helps to remember certain facts which they supposed were already well known. In a narrative, perhaps, as they are telling a story they take it for THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL 185 granted that it is well known to every one they are addressing, and thus a great difficulty arises; we scarcely know the real meaning of any one of these stories, because the traditions have nearly died out, and the little that is left has been very much exaggerated. So many new interpretations have been put on them that when you find them in the Puranas, they have al- ready become lyrical poems. Now, just as in the West, we find one fact in the political development of western races: that they cannot bear absolute rule, that they are always trying to throw off any sort of bondage, to pre- vent any one man from ruling over them, and are grad- ually advancing to higher and higher democratic ideas, higher and higher ideas of physical liberty, so in meta- physics exactly the same phenomenon appears in the development of spiritual life. Multiplicity of gods gives place to one God of the Universe, and in the Upanishads there is a rebellion against that one God. Not only was the idea of so many governors of the universe ruling their destinies unbearable, but it was also intolerable to them that there should be one person ruling this universe. This is the first thing that strikes us. The idea grows and grows, until it attains its climax. In almost all of the Upanishads we find the climax coming at the last, and that is the dethroning of this God of the Universe. The personality of God vanishes, the impersonality comes. God is no more a person, no more a human being, however magnified and exaggerated, ruling this universe, but God has become an embodied Principle in us, in every being, immanent in the whole universe. And of course it would be illogical to go from the personal God to the 1 86 J NANA YOGA impersonal, and at the same time to leave man as a person. So the personal man has to be broken down, man is also a principle. The person is without, the principle is within. Thus from both sides simulta- neously we find the breaking down of personalities and the approach towards principles, the personal God approaching the impersonal, the personal man ap- proaching the impersonal man, and then come the suc- ceeding stages of delineating the difference between the two advancing lines of impersonal God and impersonal Man. And the Upanishads embody these succeeding stages, by which these two lines at last become one, and the last word of each Upanishad is, ''Thou art That." There is but One eternally blissful, and that One Principle is manifesting Itself as all this variety.
Then came the philosophers. The work of the Upanishads seems to have ended at that point; the next was taken up by the philosophers. The frame- work was given them by the Upanishads, and they had to work out the details. So, many questions would naturally arise. Taking for granted that there is but one impersonal Principle which is manifesting Itself in all these manifold forms, how is it that the One becomes many? It is another way of putting the same old question which in its crude form comes into the human heart in the shape of an inquiry into the cause of evil and so forth. Why does evil exist in ( the world, what is its cause? But the same question has now become refined, abstracted. No more is it asked from the platform of the senses why we are unhappy, but from the platform of philosophy. How THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL 1 87 is it that this one Principle becomes manifold? And the answer, as we have seen, the best answer that India produced, was the theory of Maya, that it really has not become manifold, that it really did not lose a bit of its real nature. This manifold is only apparent. \ Man is only apparently a person, and in reality he is the Impersonal Being. God is a person only appar- ently, but really He is the Impersonal Being of the Universe.
Even in this answer there have been succeeding stages — philosophies have varied. All Indian philoso- phers did not admit this theory of Maya. Possibly most of them did not. There are the dualists, with a very crude sort of dualism, who would not allow the question to be asked, stifled it at its very coming into existence. They said you have no right to ask such a question, you have no right to ask for an ^.
explanation; it is simply the will of God, and we '%yhSuAdL have to submit quietly. There is no liberty for the human soul. It is all predestined — what we shall do, and have, and suffer, and enjoy, and it is our duty quietly to suffer, and if we do not we shall be punished all the more. How do we know that? Because the Vedas say so. And so they have their texts, their meanings, and they want to enforce them. The idea here is much like the theory of predestination preached by St. Paul.
There are others who, though not admitting the Maya theory, stand midway, and try to explain all this by succeeding manifestations, succeeding develop- ment and degradation of the nature of man. All souls are metaphorically expanded and contracted in turn.
I05 JNANA YOGA The whole of this creation forms, as it were, the body of God. God is the Soul of all souls and of the whole of nature. Creation means the expansion of this nature of God, and after it is expanded for a certain time it again begins to contract. In the case of indi- vidual souls the contraction comes from evil doing. When a man does anything evil his soul begins to contract in its power, and so on it goes, until it does good works, and then it expands again. One idea seems to be common in all these various Indian sys- tems, and to my mind in every system in the world, whether they know it or not, and that is what I should /call the Divinity of Man. There is no one system V in the world, no proper religion, which does not hold somewhere or other, either expressed in the language of mythology or in the language of allegory, or in the polished, clear language of philosophy, the one idea that the human soul, whatever it be, or whatever its relation to God, is essentially pure and perfect. Its real nature is blessedness and power, not weakness and misery. Somehow or other this misery has come. The crude systems may call in a personified evil, a devil, or an Ahriman to explain how this misery came. Other systems may try to make a God and a devil in one, making some people miserable and some happy, ■ without any explanation whatever. Others again, more thoughtful, bring in the theory of Maya and so forth. But one fact stands out clearly, and it is with this that we have to deal. After all, these philosoph- ical ideas and systems are but the gymnastics of the mind, intellectual exercises. The one great idea that to me seems to be clear, and comes out through masses THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL 189 of superstition in every country and every religion, is the one luminous idea that man is divine, that that divinity is our nature.
Whatever else comes is a mere super-imposition, as the Vedanta calls it. Something has been super- imposed, but that Divine Nature never dies. In the most degraded, as well as the most saintly, it is ever present. It has to be called out, and it will work itself out. We have to ask and it will manifest itself. The people of old fancied that fire lived in the flint, and that friction of the steel was necessary to call that fire out. Others believed that fire lived in two dry pieces of stick and that friction alone was necessary to cause it to manifest itself. So this fire of natural freedom and purity is the nature of every soul, not a quality, because qualities can be acquired and therefore can be lost. The soul is one with freedom, and the soul is one with existence, and the soul is one with knowl- edge; this Sat-Chit-Ananda — Existence-Knowledge- Bliss Absolute — is the nature, the birthright of the soul, and all the manifestations that we see are the expressions of this nature of the soul, dimly or brightly manifesting itself. Even death itself is but the mani- festation of that Real Existence. Birth and death, life and decay, degradation and degeneration, or regen- eration, are all only the manifestations of that One- ness. So, knowledge, however it manifests itself, either as ignorance or as learning, is but the manifes- tation of that same Chit, that essence of knowledge;' the diflference is only in degree, and not in kind. The difference in knowledge between the lowest worm that crawls under our feet and the highest genius that