aspect common to all the Vedantic schools, and the other the cosmological aspect. I will first take up the latter. To-day we find wonderful discoveries of mod- ern science coming upon us like bolts from the blue, opening our eyes to marvels we never dreamed of. Man had long since discovered what he calls force. It is only the other day that man came to know that even in the midst of this variety of forces there is a unity. Man has just discovered that what he calls heat, magnetism, electricity, and so forth, are all con- vertible into that one unit force, whatever you may call it. This has been done even in the Samhita; as ancient and hoary as the Samhita, is that very idea of force I was referring to. All the forces, whether called gravitation, or attraction, or repulsion; whether expressing themselves as heat, or electricity, or mag- netism, are but the variations of that unit energy. They may even express themselves as thought, reflected from antahkarana, the mentality of man, and the unit from which they spring is what is called the Prdna. Again what is prdna f Prdna is spandanam, or vibra- tion. When all this universe shall have resolved back into its primal state, what will become of this infinite force? Do they think that it becomes extinct? Of course not. If it became extinct, what would be the cause of the next wave, because the motion is going in wave forms, rising, falling, rising again, falling again? Here is the word srishti, which expresses the universe. Mark that the word is not "creation." I am helpless in talking English, I have to translate the Sanskrit words as best I can. It is srishti, "pro- jection." Everything becomes finer and finer, and is 3l8 J NANA YOGA resolved back to the primal state from which it sprang, and there it remains for a time, quiescent, ready to spring forth again. That springing forth is srishti, projection. And what becomes of all these forces, the prdnas? They are resolved back into the primal prdna, and this prdna becomes almost motionless — not entirely motionless, but almost motionless — and that is what is described in the Vedic hymn, "It vibrated without vibrations." There are many difficult texts in the Upanishads to understand, especially in the use of technical phrases. For instance, the word vayu, to move; many times it means air and many times motion, and often people confuse one with the other. We have to be careful about this. And what becomes of what you call matter? The forces permeate all matter; they all dissolve into ether, from which they again come out; and the first to come out is akdsa. Whether you translate it as ether, or as anything else, this is the idea, that this akdsa is the primal form of matter. This akdsa vibrates under the action of prdna, and when the next srishti is coming up, as the vibration becomes quicker, the akdsa is lashed into all those wave forms which we call the suns, moons, and systems.
We read again, "Everything in this universe has been projected, prdna vibrating, (ejati.) You must remark the word ejati, because it comes from ej, to vibrate. Nissritam — projected, yadidamkincha jagat — whatever is this universe.
This is a part of the cosmological side. There are many details working into it. For instance, how the process takes place, how there is first ether, and how VEDANTA 319 from the ether evolve other things, how that ether begins to vibrate, and how from that comes vdyu (air). But the one idea is here, that it is from the finer that the grosser has come. Gross matter is the last to emerge and is the most external, and this gross matter had the finer matter before it. Yet we see that the whole thing has been resolved into two, but there is not yet a final unity. There is the unity of force, prdna; there is the unity of matter, called akdsa. Is there any unity to be found behind them? Can they be melted into one. Our modern science is mute here, has not yet found its way out, and if it is finding its way out, just as it slowly found the same old prdna and the same ancient akdsa, it will also have to seek this unity along similar lines. The next unity is the omnipresent, impersonal being, known by its old mythological name as Brahma, the four-headed Brahma, and psycho- logically called Mahat. This is where the two unite. What is called your mind is only a bit of this mahat caught in the trap of the brain, and the sum total of all brains caught in the meshes of mahat is what you call samashti (the aggregate, the universal). Analysis had to go further; it was not yet complete. In this view we were each one of us, as it were, a microcosm, and the world taken altogether the macrocosm. But whatever is in the vyashti (the particular), we may safely conjecture that a similar thing is also in the universal. We may feel reasonably sure that if we had the power to anaylze our own minds we should find in them what we find outside. What is this mind, is the question. In modern times, in Western countries, as physical science is making rapid progress, as phys- 320 J NANA YOGA iology is step by step conquering stronghold after stronghold of old beliefs, people do not know where to stand, because to their great despair modern phys- iology has identified the mind with the brain at every step. But that we in India have known always. It was the first proposition the Hindu boy should learn, that the mind is matter, only finer. The body is gross, and behind the body is what we call the sukshma sharira, the fine body or mind. This is also material, only finer; but it is not the Atman. I will not trans- late this word to you in English, because the idea does not exist in Europe, it is untranslatable. The modern attempt of German philosophers is to translate the word dtman by the word ''self," but until that word is universally accepted it is impossible to use it. So, call it self or anything, it is our dtman. This dtman is the real man behind. It is the dtman that uses the material mind as its instrument, its antahkarana (inter- nal instrument), as the psychological term for the mind is. And the mind by means of a series of internal organs works the visible organs of the body. What is this mind? It was comparatively only the other day that Western philosophers arrived at the knowledge that the eyes are not the real organs of vision, but that behind these are other organs, the indriyas, and if these are destroyed a man may have a thousand eyes, like Indra, but there will be no sight for him. Aye, your philosophy starts with this as- sumption, that by vision is not meant the external vision. The real vision belongs to the internal organs, the brain centres inside. You may call them what you like, but the indriyas are not the eyes, or the nose.
VEDANTA 321 or the ears. And the sum total of all these indriyas plus the manas, huddhi, chitta, ahankara, etc., is what is called the mind, and if the modern physiologist comes to tell you that the brain is what is called the mind and that the brain is formed of so many organs, you need not be afraid at all; tell him your philoso- phers knew it always, it is the very alpha of your religion.
Next we have to understand what is meant by this manas, huddhi, chitta, ahankara, etc. First of all let us consider the chitta; it is the "mind-stuff" — a part of the mahat — and is the generic name for the mind itself, including all its various states. Suppose here is a lake on a summer evening, smooth and calm, without a ripple on its surface. Let us call this the chitta. And suppose some one throws a stone into this lake. What happens? First there is the action, the blow given to the water, next the water rises and sends a reaction towards the stone, and that reaction takes the form of a wave. First the water vibrates a little, then immediately sends back a reaction in the form of a wave. This chitta let us compare to this lake, and the external objects are like these stones thrown into it. As soon as it comes in contact with any external object by means of these indriyas — the indriyas must be there to carry these external objects inside — there is a vibration, what is called the manas, indecisive. Next there is a reaction, the determinative faculty, huddhi, and along with this huddhi flashes the idea aham (egoism) and the external object. Suppose there is a mosquito sitting on my hand. This sensa- tion is carried to my chitta and it vibrates a little, this 322 J NANA YOGA is the psychological nianas. Then there is reaction, and immediately comes the idea that I have a mos- quito on my hand, and that I shall have to drive it off. Thus these stones are thrown into the lake, but in the case of the lake, every blow that comes to it is from the external world, while in the case of the lake of the mind the blows may either come from the external world, or the internal world. This whole series — chitta, manas, etc.^ form what is called the antah- karana. Along with it you ought to understand one thing more that will help us in understanding the Advaita system later on. It is this. All of you must have seen pearls, and most of you know how pearls are made. Some irritating grain of dust or sand enters into the body of the pearl oyster and sets up an irritation there, and the oyster's body reacts towards the irritation and covers the little grain with its own juice. That crystallizes and forms the pearl. So the whole universe is like that, the universe is the pearl which is being formed by us. What we get from the external world is simply the blow. Even to know that blow we have to react, and as soon as we react we project really a portion of our own mind towards the blow, and when we come to know of it, it is really our own mind as it has been shaped by the blow. Therefore it is clear even to those who wish to believe in a hard and fast realism of an external world, (and they cannot but admit it in these days of physiology,) that, supposing that we represent the external world by "X" what we really know is "X" plus mind, and this mind element is so great that it has covered the whole of that ''X" which has remained unknown and VEDANTA 323 unknowable throughout, therefore if there be an ex- ternal world it is always unknown and unknowable. What we know of it is as moulded, formed, fashioned by our own mind. So with the internal world. The same applies to our own soul, the dtman. In order to know the dtman we shall have to know it through the mind, and therefore what little we know of this dtman is simply the dtman plus the mind. That is to say, the dtman covered over^ fashioned, and moulded by the mind, and nothing more. We shall revert to this a little later, but we will remember it here.
The next thing to understand is this. The state- ment was made that this body is merely the name of one continuous stream of matter. Every moment we are adding material to it, and every moment material is being thrown off by it, like unto a continually flow- ing river in which vast masses of water are always changing place; yet we take up the whole in imagina- tion, and call it the same river. What do we call the river? Every moment the water is changing, the shore is changing, every moment the trees and plants, the leaves, and the foliage are changing; what is the river? It is the name of this series of changes. So with the mind. There is the Buddhistic side, the great Kshanika Vijndna Vada doctrine, most difficult to understand, but most rigorously and logically worked out; and this also arose in India in opposition to some part of the Vedanta. It had to be answered, and we will see how, later on, it could only be answered by the Advaita and by nothing else. We shall also see how, in spite of people's curious notions about Advai- ta, people's fright about Advaita, it is the salvation 324 J NANA YOGA of the world, because therein alone is to be found the reason of things. Dualism and other *4sms" are very good as means of worship, very satisfying to the mind; it may be that they have helped the mind onward; but if man wants to be rational and religious at the same time, Advaita is the one system in the world for him. We will regard the mind as a similar river, contin- ually emptying itself at one end, and filling itself at the other end. Where is that unity which we call the dtmanf The idea is that, in spite of this continuous change in the body, and in spite of this continuous change in the mind, there is in us something that is unchangeable. When rays of light coming from dif- ferent quarters fall upon a screen, or a wall, or upon something that is not changeable, then and then alone it is possible for them to form one complete whole. Where is this background in the human mind, falling upon which, as it were, the various ideas will come to unity and become one complete whole? This cer- tainly cannot be the mind itself, seeing that it also changes. Therefore there must be something which is neither the body nor the mind, something which changes not, something permanent, upon which all our sensations, all our ideas fall to form a unity and a complete whole, and this is the real soul, the dtman of man. And seeing that everything material, even if you call it fine matter, or mind, must be changeful; seeing that what you call gross matter, the external world, must be more changeful in comparison to that; this unchangeable something cannot be of material substance; it must be spiritual; that is to say, it is not matter; it is indestructible, unchangeable.
VEDANTA 325 Next will come another question — apart from those old arguments which only rise in the external world, the arguments from design — who created this external world, who created matter, etc.? The idea here is to know truth only from the inner nature of man, and the question arises just in the same way as it arose about the soul. Taking for granted that there is an unchangeable soul in each man, which is neither the mind, nor the body, there is still a unity of idea among these souls, a unity of feeling, of sympathy. How is it possible that my soul can act upon your soul, where is the medium through which it can work, where is the medium through which it can act? How is it I can feel anything about your soul? What is it that is in touch both with your soul and with my soul? Herein arises a metaphysical necessity for admitting another soul, for it must be a soul which acts in contact with all the different souls; one Soul which covers and interpenetrates all the infinite number of souls in the world, in and through which they live, in and through which they sympathize and love and work for one another. And this universal Soul is Paramdtman, the Lord God of the universe. Again, it follows that because the soul is not composed of matter, because it is spiritual, it cannot obey the laws of matter, it cannot be judged by the laws of matter. It is therefore deathless and changeless. "This Self the fire cannot burn, nor instruments pierce, the sword cannot cut it asunder, the air cannot dry it up, nor can water melt it; unconquerable, deathless, and birthless is this Self of man." What is this Self doing then? We have known that according to the GUa and according ^26 J NANA YOGA to Vedanta, this individual Self is also vihhu (all per- vading), is, according to Kapila, omnipresent. Of course there are sects in India which regard this Self as anu (infinitely small), but what they mean is ami in mani testation; its real nature is vihhu.
There comes another idea, startling perhaps, yet a characteristically Indian idea, and if there is any idea that is common to all our sects it is this. Therefore I beg you to pay attention to this one idea and to remember it, for this is the very foundation of every- thing that we have in India. The idea is this. You have heard of the doctrine of physical evolution preached in the Western world, by the German and English savants. It tells us that the bodies of the different animals differ only in degree, not in kind. The differences that we see are but varying expres- sions of the same series, but from the lowest worm to the highest and most saintly man it is but one chain of expression, the one changing into the other, going up and up, higher and higher, until it attains perfec- tion. We had that idea also. Declares our Yogi Patanjali, ''Jdtyantara parinamah/' "one species (the jati is species) changes into another species," (evolu- tion); parindmah means one thing changing into an- other, just as one species changes into another. Where do we differ from the Europeans? Patanjali says: "Prakritydpurdf — ''By the infilling of nature." The European says it is competition, natural and sexual selection, etc., that forces one body to take the form of another. But here is another idea, a still better analysis, going deeper into the thing, and saying ''By the infilling of nature." What is meant by this infilling VEDANTA 327 of nature? We admit that the amoeba goes higher and higher until it becomes a Buddha; we admit this, but we are, at the same time, equally certain that you cannot get any amount of work out of a machine until you put it on the other side. The sum total of the energy remains the same whatever the form it may take. If you want a mass of energy at one end you have got to put it in at the other end, it may be in another form, but the amount must be the same. Therefore, if a Buddha is the one end of the change, the very amoeba must have been the Buddha also. If the Buddha is the evolved amoeba, the amoeba was the involved Buddha. If this universe is the manifestation of an almost infinite amount of energy, when this universe was in a state of pralaya (rest), it must have represented the same amount of involved energy. It cannot have been otherwise. As such it follows that every soul is infinite. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the noblest and greatest saints, all possess this infinite power, infinite purity, and infinite everything. The apparent difference is in the degree of manifestation. The worm is manifesting only a little bit of that energy; you have manifested more, another god-man has manifested still more; that is all the diflPerence.
But that infinite power is there all the same. Says Patau jali; ^'Tatah kshetrikavat" — "J^^t as the peasant irrigating his field." He has a little canal that comes into his field and brings water from a reservoir some- where, and perhaps he has a little lock that prevents the water from rushing into his field. When he wants water he has simply to open the lock and in rushes the 328 J NANA YOGA water by its own power. The power has not to be added, it is already there in the reservoir. So, every one of us, every being has as his own background such a reservoir of strength, infinite power, infinite purity, infinite bhss, and infinite existence, only these locks, these bodies are hindering us from fully expressing what we really are. And as these bodies become more and more finely organized, as the tamasa guna (dull- ness) becomes the rajasa guna (activity) and as the rajasa guna becomes sattva guna (purity), more and more of this power and purity will become manifest; and it is for this reason that our people have been so careful about their eating and drinking. It may be that the original ideas have been lost, just as with our child-marriage, which, though not belonging to the subject, I may take as an example. If I have another opportunity I will talk more fully about it, for the ideas behind child-marriage are the only ideas through which there can be a real civilization. There cannot be any- thing else. If a man, or a woman, is allowed the freedom to take up any man or wornan, as wife or husband, if individual pleasure, or satisfaction of animal instincts, were to be allowed to run loose in society, the result must be evil, evil children, wicked and demoniacal. Aye, man in every country is, on the one hand, producing these evil children, and on the other hand multiplying the police force to keep down their brutal instincts. The question is not how to destroy evil that way, but how to prevent the very birth of evil, and as long as you live in society, your marriage certainly affects every member of it; there- fore society has the right to dictate whom you shall