262 JNANA YOGA that in spite of all the changes that are happening to the body, I yet believe that I am the same "I." This seems to have been the central argument with those who believed in a limited, and yet perfectly complete, individual soul.
On the other hand, the ancient Buddhists denied the necessity of such an assumption. They brought for- ward the argument that all that we know, and all that we possibly can know, are simply these changes. The positing of an unchangeable and unchanging substance is simply superfluous, and then, if there were any such unchangeable thing, we could never understand it, nor should we ever be able to cognize it in any sense of the word. The same discussion you will find at the present time going on in Europe between the relig- ionists and the idealists on the one side, and the mod- ern positivists and agnostics on the other; one set believing there is something which does not change — of whom the latest representative has been your Her- bert Spencer — that we catch a glimpse of something which is, as it were, unchangeable. And the other is represented by the modern Comtists and modern Ag- nostics. Those of you who were interested a few years ago in the discussions between Mr. Harrison and Mr. Herbert Spencer, may have found out that it is the same old difficulty, the one party standing for a substance behind the changeful, and the other party denying the necessity for such an assumption. One party says, we cannot conceive of changes without conceiving of something which does not change, the other party brings out the argument that this is super- fluous; we can only conceive of something which is PRACTICAL VEDANTA 263 changing. As to the unchanging, we can neither know, feel, nor sense it.
The great question in India did not find its solution in the very ancient times, because we have seen that the assumption of a substance which is behind the qualities, and which is not the qualities, can never be substantiated; nay, even the argument from self- identity, from memory, that I am the "I" of yesterday because I remember it, and therefore I have been a continuous something — cannot be substantiated. The other quibble that is generally put forward is a mere de- lusion of words. For instance, a man may take a long series of such sentences as "1 do," "I go," *T dream," "I sleep," "I move," and here you will find it claimed that the doing, going and dreaming, etc., have been changing, but what remained constant was that "I." As such they conclude that the *T" is something which is constant, and an individual in itself, but all these changes belong to the body. This, though apparently very convincing and clear, is based upon word pun- ning. The "I" and the doing, going and dreaming, may be separate in black and white, and on a piece of paper, but no one can separate them in his mind.
When I eat I think of myself as eating — I am iden- tified with eating. When I run I and the running are not two separate things. Thus the argument from per- sonal identity does not seem to be very strong. The other argument, from memory, is also weak. If the identity of my being is represented by my memory, many things which I have forgotten are lost from that identity. And we know that people under cer- tain conditions will forget their whole past. In many 264 J NANA YOGA cases of lunacy a man will think of himself as made of glass, or as being an animal. If the existence of that man depends on memory he has become glass, which not being the case we cannot make the identity of the self depend on such a flimsy argument as mem- ory. What remains? That on the side of the soul, limited, yet complete and continuing, its identity can- not be established as separate from the qualities. We cannot establish a narrowed down, limited existence behind which there is a bunch of qualities.
On the other hand, the argument of the ancient Buddhists seems to be stronger — that we do not know, and cannot know, anything that is beyond the bunch of qualities. According to them the soul consists of a bundle of qualities called sensations and feelings. A mass of such is what is called the soul, and this mass is continually changing. The Advaitist theory of the soul reconciles both these positions.
The position of the Advaitist is that it is true that we cannot think of the substance as separate from the qualities; at the same time we cannot think of change and not change; it would be impossible; but the very thing which is substance is the same which is the quality. Substance and quality are not two. It is the unchangeable that is appearing as the changeable. The unchangeable substance of the universe is not something separate from this changeful universe. The noumenon is not something different from the phe- nomena, but it is the very noumenon which has become the phenomena. There is a soul which is unchanging, and what we call feelings and perceptions, nay, even the body, is the very same soul seen from another point PRACTICAL VEDANTA 265 of View. We have got into the habit of thinking that we have bodies and souls and so forth, but really speaking we can only have one, not two even.
When I think of myself as a body I am a body alone; it is useless to say I am something else. And when I think of myself as the soul the body vanishes, per- ception of the body does not remain. None can get the perception of the Self without his perception of the body having vanished, none can get perception of the substance without his perception of the qualities vanishing.
The ancient illustration of the Advaita, the rope taken for a snake, may be brought in here to illustrate a little further that when a man mistakes the rope for a snake the rope has vanished, and when he takes it for a rope the snake has vanished, and the rope remains. These ideas that we have of dual existence and treble existence come from analysis, and after analysis they are written in books, and we read those books or hear about them, until we come under the delusion that we really have a dual perception of the soul and the body, but such a perception never really exists. The perception is either for body or for soul. It requires no other arguments. You can verify it in your own minds.
Try to think of yourself as a soul, as a disembodied something. You will find it is almost impossible, and those few who find it possible will find that at the time when they realize themselves as soul they have no idea of body. You have heard, or have seen, perhaps, some persons who had been at certain times in peculiar states of mind, brought about either by hypnotism 266 J NANA YOGA 266 J NANA YOGA or some hysterical disease, or drugs. From their experience you may gather that when they were per- ceiving the internal something, the external had van- ished for them; it did not remain. This shows that whatever exists is one. That one is appearing in these various forms, and all these various forms give rise to the relation of cause and effect. The relation of cause and effect is one of evolution — ^the one becomes the other, and so on. The cause, as it were, some- times vanishes, and in its place leaves the effect. If the soul is the cause of the body, the soul, as it were, vanishes for the time being, and the body remains, and when the body vanishes the soul remains. This theory would meet the arguments of the Buddhists, the arguments that were levelled against the assump- tion of the dualism of body and soul, by denying the duality, and showing that the substance and the qual- ities are one and the same thing, appearing in various forms.
We have seen also that this idea of the unchange- able can only be established as regards the whole, but never as regards the part. The very idea of part comes from the idea of change, of motion. Every- thing that is limited we can understand and know because it is changeable, and the whole must be unchangeable because it cannot change — there is no other thing besides it. Change is always in regard to something which does not change, or which changes relatively less.
According to Advaita, therefore, the idea of the soul as universal, unchangeable and immortal, can be as far as possible demonstrated. The difficulty would PRACTICAL VEDANTA 26'J be as regards the particular. What shall we do with the old dualistic theories which have got such a hold on us, which we have all to pass through, these beliefs in limited, little, individual souls?
We have seen that we are immortal with regard to the whole, but the difficulty is, we desire so much to be immortal with regard to the parts of us. We have seen that we are infinite, and that that is our real indi- viduality. But we want so much to make these little souls individual! What becomes of them when we find in our everyday experience that these little souls are continuously growing and cannot really be indi- vidual? They are the same yet not the same. The "I" of yesterday is the 'T" of to-day, and yet not. It is changed somewhat, and if we take the most modern of conceptions, that of evolution for instance, we find that the "I" is a continuously changing, expanding identity.
If it be true that man is the evolution of a mollusc, the mollusc individual is the same as the man, only it has to becom_e expanded a great deal. From mollusc to man has been a continuous expansion towards the state of infinity. Therefore the limited soul can be styled an individual which is continuously expanding towards the Individual. Perfect individuality will only be reached when it has reached the Infinite, but on this side of the Infinite it is a continuously changing, growing personality.
The Advaitist system of the Vedanta has one pecu- liar tendency, the tendency to harmonize the preceding systems. In many cases it was very helpful; in others it hurt the philosophy. They had the same idea that 268 J NANA YOGA is called the theory of evolution in modern times, that all is growth, step by step, and this instrument in their hands made it easy for them to harmonize all preced- ing systems. Thus not one of these preceding ideas was rejected. The fault of the Buddhistic ideas was that they had neither the faculty nor the perception of this continual expansive growth, and for this reason, they never even made an attempt to harmonize their system with the pre-existing steps towards the ideal. They rejected all of them as useless and harmful.
You will find this tendency is a most harmful one in religion. A man gets a new and better idea, and then he looks back on those he has given up, and forth- with decides that they were mischievous and unnec- essary. He never thinks that however crude they may appear from his present point of view, they were very useful to him, that it was necessary for him to reach his present state through these ideas, and that every one of us has to grow in a similar fashion, living first in crude ideas, taking benefit from them, and so arriv- ing at a higher standard. To the oldest theories, therefore, the Advaita is friendly. Dualism, and all theories that had preceded it, are accepted by the Advaita, not in a patronizing way, but with the con- viction that they are truths, manifestations of the same truth; and that they have all to rise to the same conclusions that the Advaita has reached.
With words of blessing, and not of cursing, are to be preserved all these various steps through which humanity had to pass. Therefore all these dualistic systems have been kept intact in the Vedanta, and never rejected or thrown out, and the dualistic con- PRACTICAL VEDANTA 269 ception of an individual soul, limited, yet complete in itself, finds a place in the Vedanta. According to this conception the man dies and goes to other worlds, and so forth, and these ideas are also kept in their entirety, because with this recognition of growth behind the Advaitist system any one of these theories can be kept in its proper place, by understanding that they repre- sent only a partial view of the truth.
If you regard the universe from a certain point of view from which you can only look at one part, this is the way in which the universe presents itself to the mind. From the dualistic standpoint this universe can only be looked upon as a creation of matter or force, can only be looked upon as the play of a certain will, and that will again can only be looked upon as sep- arate from the universe; thus a man from such a standpoint has to see himself as composed of a dual nature, of the body and soul, and this soul, though limited, appears individually complete in itself. Such a man's ideas of immortality and of the future life would be applied to this soul. These phases of thought have been kept in the Vedanta, and it is neces- sary, therefore, for me to present to you a few of the popular ideas of dualism. According to this theory we have a body, of course. Behind the body there is what they call a fine body. This fine body is also made up of materials, only very fine. It is the receptacle of all our karma, of all our actions; the impressions of all actions live there in that fine body, ready to spring up. Every thought that we think, every deed that we do, after a certain time becomes fine, goes into seed form, so to speak; that lives in the fine body in a potential 270 JNANA YOGA form, and after a time it emerges again and bears its results. These results condition the life of man; thus he has moulded his own life. It is not that man is bound by any laws excepting those he makes for him- self. Our works, our thoughts, our deeds, are but threads in the net which we throw round ourselves for good or for evil. Once we set in motion a certain power, we have to bear the full consequences of it. This is the law of Karma. Behind the subtle body lives the jiva, or individual soul of man. There are various discussions about the size, or the form, or the non-form, of this individual soul. According to some it is very small, like an atom; according to others it is not so small as that; according to others it is very big, and so on. This jiva is a part of the uni- versal substance, and it also is eternal; without begin- ning it is existing as a part of the whole; it will exist without end, and it is passing through all these forms in order to manifest its real nature as purity. Every action that retards this manifestation is called an evil action; so with thoughts. And every action and every thought that helps the jiva to expand, to manifest its real nature, is a good action. One theory is common in India with the crudest dualists and the most ad- vanced non-dualists — that all the possibilities and powers of the soul are always in it, and will not come from any external source. They are in the soul in potential form, and the whole work of life, or lives, is simply directed to manifesting those potentialities. They have also the doctrine of reincarnation, that after this body has been dissolved, the jiva will have another body, and after that has been dissolved it will PRACTICAL VEDANTA 27I have another body, and so on, either here or in some other worlds; but this world is given the preference; it is considered as the best of worlds for all our pur- poses. Other worlds are conceived of as worlds where there is very little misery, but for that very reason they argue that there is less chance there of thinking of higher things. This world being nicely balanced, a good deal of misery, and some happiness, too, the jiva sometime or other gets awakened, as it were, and thinks of freeing itself. But just as very rich persons in this world have the least chance of thinking of higher things, so if the jtva goes to heaven it will have no chance, but only the same position intensified, having a very fine body w^hich thinks of no disease, being without the necessity of eating, or drinking, and having all its desires fulfilled. The jwa goes there, with enjoyment after enjoyment, and forgets all its real nature. Still there are some higher worlds, where, in spite of all these enjoyments, further evolu- tion is possible. Some dualists conceive of the goal to be reached as the highest heaven, where souls will go and live with God forever. They will have beau- tiful bodies there, and will know no more disease or death, or any sort of evil. They will have all their desires fulfilled, and live with God forever, and from time to time some of them will come back to this earth and take another body to teach human beings the way, and the great teachers of the world have been such. They have been already free, and were living with God in that sphere, but their mercy for suffering humanity here was very great, so they came and incarnated again, and preached unto mankind the way to heaven.
272 J NANA YOGA Of course we know that the Advaita holds that this cannot be the goal or the ideal; bodilessness must be the ideal. The ideal cannot be finite. Anything short of the Infinite cannot be the ideal, and there cannot be an infinite body. That would be impossible, as body comes from limitation. There cannot be infinite thought, because thought comes from limitation. We have to go beyond the body, and beyond thought too, says the Advaita. And we have also seen the other peculiar Advaitist position, that this freedom is not to be attained, it already fj. We only forget it and deny it. This perfection is not to be attained, it already exists. This immortality and unchangeable- ness are not to be attained; they already exist. W^e have them all the time. If you dare declare of your- self that you are free, free you are this moment. If you say you are bound, bound you will remain. How- ever, the dualists and others have these ideas. You can take up whichever )^ou like.
This highest ideal of the Vedanta is very difficult to understand, and people are always quarrelling about it, and the greatest difficulty is that when they get hold of one set of these ideas they want to deny and fight the other sets. Take up what you are fit for, jjand let others take up what they are fit for. If you ' are desirous of clinging to this little individuality, to this limited manhood, you will have to remain in it, you will have these lower ideals, and be content and pleased with them. If your experience of manhood has been very good and nice, retain it as long as you like, for you know you are the makers of your own fortunes; none can compel you. You will be men PRACTICAL VEDANTA 273 as long as you like; none can deter you. If you want to be angels, you will be angels; that is the law. But there may be others who do not like to be angels even. What right have you to tell them that they must be? You may be frightened to lose a hundred pounds; there may be others who would not wink a bit if they lost all the money in the world. There have been such, and are still such. Why do you dare to judge them according to your standard? You cling on to your limitations, and these little worldly ideas may be your highest ideal. You are welcome. It will be to you as you wish. But there are others who have seen the truth, finished all this, and cannot rest in these limitations, who want to rush outside, and whom nothing in this world satisfies. The world with all its enjoyments is a mere mud puddle for them. Why do you want to bind them down to your ideas? You must get rid of this once for all. Give place to every one.
I once read a certain story of how some ships were caught in a cyclone in the South Sea Islands, and there was a picture in the Illustrated London News. All were wrecked except one, an English vessel which weathered the storm, and the picture showed those men who were getting drowned standing up on the decks and cheering the people who were sailing through the storm.* Be brave like that and do not try to drag others down to where you are. There is another foolish notion going on — if we are to lose our little individuality, there will be no morality, no hope for * H. M. S. Calliope and the American men-of-war at Samoa. -Ed.
f- 274 J NANA YOGA f- 274 J NANA YOGA humanity. As if everybody had been dying for hu- manity all the time! God bless you, if in every country there were two hundred men and women really wanting to do good to humanity, the millennium would come in five days. We know how we are dying for humanity. These are tall talks and nothing else. But the history of the world shows that those who never thought of this little individuality were the greatest benefactors of the human race, and the more men and women think of themselves the less were they able to do for others. One is selfishness, the other unselfishness, clinging on to their little enjoy- ments, and to desire the continuation and repetition of this state of things is utter selfishness. It arises not from any desire for truth, its genesis is not kindness for other beings, but in the utter selfishness of the human heart, in this idea of "I will have everything," without caring for any one else. This is as it appears to me. I would like to see in the world more moral men like some of those grand old prophets and sages of ancient times who would have given up a hundred lives if they could by so doing benefit one little animal! Talk of morality and doing good to others! Silly talk of the present time!
I would like to see moral men like Gautama Buddha, who did not believe in a personal God, or a personal soul, never questioned, never asked, stood there a per- fect agnostic, and yet a man ready to lay down his life for any one, and who worked all his life for the good of all, and thought only of that. Well has it been said by his biographer, describing his birth, he was born for the good of many, for a blessing to many. He PRACTICAL VEDANTA 275 never even went to the forest to meditate for his own salvation. He felt that the world was burning; some one must find a way out. Why is there so much misery was the one thought that dominated his whole life. Do you think we are so moral as that?
The more immoral is the man, the more immoral is the race, the more selfish it is. That race which is bound down to itself has been the most cruel and the most wicked in the whole world. There has not been a religion that has clung on to this dualism more than that founded by the Prophet of Arabia or which has shed so much blood and been so cruel to other beings. In the Koran there is a doctrine that a man who does not believe these teachings should be killed; it is a mercy to kill him! And the surest way to get to heaven, where there are beautiful houris, and all sorts of sense enjoyments, is by killing these unbe- lievers. Think of how much bloodshed there has been in consequence of such beliefs!
In the Religion of Christ there was little of crude- ness, very little of difference between the pure religion of Christ and of the Vedanta. You find there the idea of oneness preached, and Christ also takes up the dual- istic ideas in order to please the people, give them something to take hold of in order to come up to the highest ideal. The same prophet who preached "Our Father which art in heaven,'' also preached, "I and my Father are one," and the same prophet knew that through the Father in heaven lies the way to the "I and my Father are one." There was only blessing and love in the religion of Christ, but as soon as crude- ness came, it was degraded into something not much 276 J NANA YOGA