CONTENTS |
|
1. |
THE SELF AND ITS
SHEATHS |
1 |
2. |
THE BODY OF ACTION |
30 |
3. |
THE BODY OF FEELING |
64 |
4. |
THE OBJECT ON THE
SHEATHS |
95 |
PREFACE
THE following lectures form a second series, delivered at
Adyar, the first series having been delivered there in 1893, on “The
Building of the Kosmos”, on “Symbolism”, and on “Yoga”. The system adopted
and explained in the first series has been carried on in the second, so that
the preface to the volume of last year may well serve for this.
ANNIE BESANT
Benares, 1895.
THE SELF AND ITS SHEATHS
To know man is to know God. To know God is to know man.
To study the universe is to learn both God and man; for the universe is the
expression of the Divine Thought, and the universe is mirrored in man.
Speaking to you last year I spoke of the Kosmos and its building, and
speaking to you this year I take the same thought in its essence, but in a
new presentment. This time I speak to you of the “SELF and Its Sheaths,” of
that, which understood makes all problems soluble, that which realised
clears all difficulties away, that which known brings us to the Supreme
Peace, that beyond which there is nothing, and in knowing which we know
everything that is or can be.
In these Convention meetings of ours you must remember
there is a double purpose; [1] we are here for the work of the
Theosophical Society, that presently in our hands must be accomplished; and
also we are here for the spiritual side of that mighty movement, for the
understanding of ourselves and of the world, in order that by knowledge we
may help, by understanding we may guide; and in these mornings, apart from
the business portion of our work, we are to consider this mighty problem of
the SELF, to try to gain some glimpses as to the SELF in the sheaths in
which It is clothed, so that thus studying we may learn the Supreme Secret,
and knowing the Supreme Secret may do our duty in the battle of the outer
world. For so taught us Shri Krshna at Kurukshetra; there the Bhagavad Gita
was spoken, there the Supreme Secret was unveiled - not to the hermit, not
to the recluse, not to the man apart from the haunts of men, but to Arjuna
the prince and the warrior, to Arjuna the worker and the struggler; to him
for his guidance was the supreme knowledge given; to him for his helping ere
the battle, the truth about the SELF was told.
Last year I pointed out to you three lines of study,
three rays of light which, brought [2] together to a single point,
illuminated what was obscure, made clear what was difficult. The first of
those rays of light came from the Shastras, came from the spiritual
teachings, came from the Supreme World that is the spiritual source of
knowledge; then I pointed out to you that those great Teachers of the past,
who had given the Shastras for the guiding of the people, had in these
latter days sent a Messenger to deal with these same questions in different
fashion, and in philosophical and intellectual language to give us the key
that had been lost, to give us once more the solutions that had largely
disappeared; and then I showed you also that from western Science, with its
observation of the physical universe, with its record of physical
phenomena, we might gain another ray of light, and joining this to the
other two, taking side by side the spiritual teachings that are the holiest,
the intellectual explanations that are necessary for the day, and the
science which in scrutinising the physical universe translates by way of
the senses the word of the Supreme Life, that in that way we might gain a
knowledge more accurate, an understanding [3] more complete than if
we rejected any one of the three, than if we confined ourselves to the
light shed by any one of the rays. I follow the same plan this year. I take
as the source of the spiritual teaching those books that are most ancient
and most sacred, those books that are the very ‘Word’ given to man; that
Science of Brahman which is hidden for us in the Upanishads, and is there,
if we can find it, for the guiding of our feet. I take to help us in our
study the writings of H. P. Blavatsky, who based herself on those ancient
teachings, and cast light upon them from the Secret Knowledge; and I take
also to aid us those discoveries of western Science that give us in
concrete form the abstract truth, so that understanding the universe on its
physical side we may catch something of the Divine Word, of the truth of
ourselves and of the all; and thus I hope to help you, I hope to lead you
into some understanding of the SELF, some comprehension of the sheaths in
which It is enwrapped. And let me say, that no misunderstanding may arise,
why I go back to the ancient writings instead of to the later philosophical
schools. There is [4] a mighty name in Indian literature, the name of
Shri Shankaracharya that no man can name without reverence for the subtlety
of his intellect, for the vast range of his intelligence. What was his work?
He came in the Kaliyuga, he came when the world was losing or had lost most
of its spiritual light, he came to build up round the Science of Brahman the
buttress of the intellect, the walls of subtle argumentation, the defences
that should be strong and mighty, on which the intellect of the world might
break its teeth in vain. And he did it in order that behind that wall of
intellectual subtlety, behind that fortress of keen intellectual argument,
the Supreme Truth might remain unoutraged by assault, might remain for those
who were worthy, might be protected for the spiritual mind. If you take as
an example the Brahma Sutras, with the commentary upon them of
Shankaracharya, you will see exactly what I mean. In his commentary there is
the most refined hair-splitting; in his commentary the most subtle
distinctions; in his commentary the most careful guarding of language, and
the shading of every possible delicacy of thought; and [5] behind all
that commentary the Sutras themselves. If you want to gain their inner
essence, if you want them not for intellectual arguments outside, but for
the feeding of the Soul within, then take the Sutras alone in their original
tongue, in their own unadorned form, and in silent meditation, when the
senses are quiet and when the mind is tranquil, when the light of the SELF
is shining - then take a Sutra and listen to it in its own words alone, and
you will learn a spiritual truth that no argument may avail to reach.
And now let us try and look backward into what to us is
the past; let us go to the beginning of a universe, and try to realise what
is meant by the SELF; for the SELF of the universe and the SELF of man are
one, and in knowing the SELF we know That which is at the root of the
universe and of man alike. Thus travelling, backward to the beginning, we
come to an infinite Darkness where there is no thought, no language, where
nothing human or limited may be. It has no name, no words may describe It;
nothing that can be said of THAT but is utterly mistaken; and when the
writers of [6] old had gone backwards and backwards, when they had
reached Brahman, Who is without origin, Who is the One and the All, then in
face of the silence beyond and the darkness, they used one epithet only to
describe It; It is beyond Brahman, It is Supreme Brahman, Parabrahman! and
there all voice is silent, all thought falls dead.
But as we try in thought to watch the Darkness before the
universe is born, by an effort of the imagination placing ourselves where
there is nothing, where everything is as it were emptiness and space, then
as standing in the darkness of the night and looking skyward into the
darkness, there might glimmer through the darkness a light which is
formless, we know not whence it comes nor how, save that where there was
blackness of darkness there now is a glimmering that foretells the coming
of the sun - so in that emptiness which is all-fulness, in that darkness
indescribable by us, there is a glimmer, there is light without form, says
the Scripture, luminousness that has no shape, light that is only light
without limitation, and on that glimmering light for a moment our thought
[7] may rest, for there is the first point where thought is
possible at all; and then we hear sounding forth those sublime words of the
Mundakopanishad:
Luminous without form ... without origin, without life,
without mind.
Without life? without mind? what mean these strange words
of the Origin of all life and mind? He has nothing; nay, He is
nothing; He, out of Whom springs the root of all that shall be, out of THAT
which has and is nothing - no special thing just because it is the source of
all the not yet unfolded possibilities of everything that shall be - out of
THAT a universe is to be builded out of THAT all that shall be is to come.
But there is no mind - why not? Because mind implies more than the One, and
THAT is one; because mind implies separation, and here there is no
separateness; because mind implies some one that is thinking, and something
that is thought of, and there is as yet but the One in Whom is enfolded all
that may be thought but has not yet come into manifestation. Therefore
[8] rightly and wisely in dealing with this subject, and in throwing it
into the intellectual form which is necessary if our thought is to be in
any sense understood on earth, therefore rightly and wisely, Madame
Blavatsky - in dealing with this which is beyond all consciousness, with
this which is beyond mind, with this which is beyond thought, not because it
is less but because it is so much more, because it is deeper, wider,
all-embracing - says:
Being Absolute Consciousness and Absolute Motion - to the
limited senses of those who describe this indescribable - it is
unconsciousness and immovableness. Concrete consciousness cannot be
predicated of abstract consciousness, any more than the quality wet can be
predicated of water-wetness being its own attribute, and the cause of the
wet quality in other things. Consciousness implies limitations and
qualifications; something to be conscious of and some one to be conscious of
it ... We call Absolute Consciousness ‘unconsciousness’, because it seems
to us that it must necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute
‘Darkness’, because to our finite understanding it appears quite
impenetrable; yet we recognise fully that our perception of such things does
not do them justice. We involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for [9]
instance, between unconscious Absolute Consciousness and unconsciousness,
by secretly endowing the former with some indefinite quality that
corresponds, on a higher plane than our thoughts can reach, with what we
know as consciousness in ourselves. But this is not any kind of
consciousness that we can manage to distinguish from what appears to us as
unconsciousness.
So again she quotes from the Divine Pymander:
God is not a mind, but the cause that the Mind is; not a
spirit, but the cause that the Spirit is; not light, but the cause that the
Light is.
Let us try to realise what this means. The mind of man
thinks, but in order to think it must remember the Past, it must realise the
Present, it must look forward to the Future. But in Brahman there is no
Past, nor Present, nor Future; there is one eternal Now, and no
distinguishment of time, of place, of succession of states. Therefore a
great Teacher is quoted in this connection, as baffled by the limitations of
human thought and language:
As said in the Scriptures: “The Past Time is the Present
Time, as also the Future, which [10] though it has not come into
existence still is” … Our ideas, in short, on duration and time are all
derived from our sensations according to the laws of association.
Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge, they
nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of the
individual Ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Maya of
phenomenal existence. What is time, for instance, but the panoramic
succession of our states of consciousness? In the words of a Master: “I feel
irritated at having to use these three clumsy words - Past, Present and
Future; miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective
whole, they are about as ill-adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine
carving”.
In that eternal Now, no thought, as we know thought, is
possible; in that eternal Present, no distinctions as we make them can
exist; and therefore Brahman is “without mind”, because He is above it.
And then the Scripture goes on to say that out of Him come life and mind
and all; so that that First and Supreme, the One out of Which everything is
to be builded, that is Brahman, the SELF of the Universe, it is Ishvara,
the Lord. [11]
And now what is the next step? Again from the Sacred
Writings, I take the words that are to guide us:
It willed: I will multiply.
There is the beginning of the universe; there the
commencement of differentiation; and it is an internal differentiation; and
not an external expansion; it is not a change of nature, but a change of
condition; it is not an alteration of substance, but of variety within the
One, due to the word, “I will multiply”; and the very first stage of this
internal differentiation is that which shows itself as Life, said by the
Scripture to be “concealed in Name and Form”, and then from the Life
concealed in Name and Form the Mind comes forth; so speaks the Scripture.
Now let us take it for a moment in the explanation that is given us in
The Secret Doctrine, and then in Science, which will throw so startling
a light on this marvellous far-off stage that you will realise how true it
is that the universe is the expression of the Divine Thought.
Intellectually put, this differentiation [12] is within the One; this
internal preparation for a universe is put in the form of the three Logoi.
I have no time to dilate upon Them, I can only mention Them. The First is
the essence of life and the cause of all. The Second is double,
spirit-matter, positive-negative, or call it what you like. The Third is
Divine Ideation, or power of thought. If you want the details you must go
back to the last year’s lectures. I have not the time to repeat them.
Now come to Science. Suppose you took a microscope in
hand, and suppose that looking through the microscope you took the first
germ of living matter out of which a plant or an animal was to grow, you
would see beneath your eyes under the microscope a tiny speck of matter, and
in that speck of matter a single spot; as you watched the speck of matter
and the central spot within it, you would slowly become conscious - you
could not say when it began, you would be unable to say exactly when first
you were able to see it - but by slow change imperceptible in the beginning
and only becoming perceptible gradually, as you watch through the great
magnifying [13] power of the glass, you would see in the central spot
a separation, and you would see towards each end of the speck of matter two
spots appearing; you would see within this one speck of matter and the
central spot a slow strange gathering together of the material substance,
until this change would appear when complete; that instead of one you had
two, and these two apart at the two poles, as they are called, of this
little mass of matter. So that you would have two separate distinct spots,
duality where there had been unity, separation internally where there had
been none. You would see the two poles within one mass. Those poles are
different though they look the same. Out of the same substance - for there
was only one - by internal differentiation two separate and yet not
separated bodies have formed. How do I know they are different, you may ask.
Because action takes place between them; because between those two poles
lines are set up, shapes appear; because between the two poles of the speck
of matter there is alteration, there is variety, there is differentiation,
there are more and more distinct marks of [14] interchanging action;
thus it comes to pass that the one is recognised as positive, the other is
recognised as negative; and between the two everything formative occurs,
and there is built up the germ of the coming plant; then the plant grows
and differentiates further, and develops into three, and you have your
root, your stock and your leaves; but all these formed in germ between the
two poles that were one and then two. Most marvellous picture in the
concrete of the differentiation in the Supreme. Between the two poles a
universe is builded, and out of duality the whole variety comes forth;
therefore it is that we read that after the One has given birth to the Two,
after the Life has become Name and Form, then comes the Mind, then comes
Ideation, then comes the Divine Thought, the picture of all that shall be,
and the image of the universe that not yet has come to the birth. For this
is the womb of Brahman of which Shri Krshna, speak. This is the eternal womb
from which the universe shall proceed and the Third - Mahat, if you call it
so, the Third Logos if you call it so, Shri Krshna if you call it so - is
the eternal Father, that puts [15] the seed within the womb out of
which all else shall come. This is the manifestation of the universe within
the Divine Form, and therefore you read in the eleventh portion of
Bhagavad-Gita of the time when the four-armed Krshna appeared in His
Divine Form stretching from earth to sky, blazing as a thousand suns, before
the dazzled eyes of Arjuna, and when Arjuna - gifted with the divine eye
that alone might gaze into that splendour that no mortal eye could face, no
mortal mind might grasp - cried out in his ecstasy: “In thy body I see all
the Gods, and all the gradations of living things”. For all is within the
Divine Thought as Idea, before it is born, as Form, and before it comes into
manifestation it is stored in the treasure-house of the Universal Mind.
Therefore is it written that for the sake of the SELF
everything is dear: not for the outer shape but for the inner SELF - the
lowest as well as the highest, the speck of dirt as well as the loftiest
Deva. Brahman is in all, pervades all; everything is there. Face the
imperfection of the universe, and there you will find the supreme
consolation. If there is to be a universe, there must be [16]
limitation; if there is limitation, there must be less than perfection,
i.e., imperfection; if there is imperfection, then only you can have
variety; but the separated things cannot be perfect, since perfection
belongs to the unlimited and the all. Then if a universe is to be built at
all, imperfection must appear. The limits of the imperfection are the limits
of the variety. That means, in our mortal words, that there must be evil as
well as good. Evil is only imperfection, and where limitation is, evil, as
we call it, must needs exist. Give the separated things self-moving power
and there will be the striking of one against another, till each obeys the
law of the whole; and because in a universe there must be variety, therefore
Shri Krshna said: “I am the dice of the gambler”, - as much as He is the
purity of the righteous. You cannot separate one single thing from the
Supreme; It is the SELF of all, and exists in all, and is all. Then, indeed,
further differentiation; then, indeed, though all be Itself, all becomes
apparently separate and even in conflict. Strange paradox! Let me see if
again from Science I can gain an analogy which may help you. When the solar
system [17] is going to be built a great nebula appears - a mist of
fire. That fire-mist has in it everything that in the solar system is going
to be gradually evolved; within that fire-mist is everything in essence
that the system can show. Presently a mass of fiery vapour is hurled from
the central mass. It is a planet, it is a future world, and as this process
goes on, planet after planet is hurled from the central mass yet continues
to revolve around it, until at last you have a sun in the centre and
planets circling all round. They are the same as the sun in their essence;
all are of the whirling fire-mist that was un-separated in the beginning;
but now it has become a sun that gives light to separated planets; although
they are all the same in essence, there is a difference in condition. The
analogy is not perfect, but it may help us, and so it is written that as one
sun illuminates the whole world, so one Self is in every separated body.
But all is Itself.
You remember the story of Uddalaka, who taught his son by
salt dissolved in water. [18] You remember how he made the boy: take
the salt and put it into the water, and how the next day he asked for it
back: again, and the boy said he could not find it. Then the father said:
“Taste from the top of the water”; and the son said: “It is saltish”; and
the father said: “Taste from the middle of the water”, and the son said: “It
is saltish”; and the father said: “Taste from the bottom of the water”, and
the son said: “It is saltish”. Then the father told his son that as the salt
which could not be seen yet pervaded all, so it was with Brahman, the
Universal Soul. All-pervading, omnipresent, eternal, the root, the life,
the essence, the substance of all, one and indivisible in substance,
separate in the manifested sheaths that It is going of Its own substance to
evolve; whatever is exists and lives by It, the SELF of the universe, THAT
from which everything proceeds. And then Uddalaka gave a bridge from the One
to the many. He had taught his son that the salt was everywhere in the water
though it had disappeared from sight; he had taught him that the universe
was pervaded by the One. And then he spake [19] the words: “It is the
Universal SELF. O Svetaketu! thou art THAT.” There is our bridge: thou art
Atma, and Atma and Brahman are one. In the heart of men there is a cavity,
and there is Brahman to be found hidden, the SELF of man, the SELF of the
universe. If we speak of the SELF of man, we sometimes say Atma, then
we say Paramatma of the SELF of all; if we say of man Purusha, then we say
Purushottama of the SELF of all. But It is one and the same
everywhere, in the great and in the small; there is no difference, there is
no separation, there is one eternal undying and ancient SELF, and that SELF
is the SELF in you and in me. There may be difference in condition, in
manifestation, but the essence and the nature is one and the same; and
therefore is it written in that most marvellous of all Upanishats, the
Chhandogya, the mightiest and most mystical of all, the hardest to
unravel and to understand; therefore is it written in the
Chhandogyopanishat that Atma is the bridge.
Crossing that bridge the blind no longer are blind, the
wounded no longer are wounded, the sorrowful no longer sorrow. Therefore
crossing [20] that bridge, nights verily become as days Eternally
radiant is that place of Brahman.
And so again is it written in the Mundakopanishad:
Cease from words; He is the bridge to immortality.
Now ‘He’ is Brahman, dwelling in the secret place, in the
cavity of the heart, for Atma and Brahman are one, and in finding the SELF
we find Brahman.
Let us take our next stage. I turn to the same great
Scripture. I take from it further words, for our next step is so difficult,
so little understood, that out of the want of understanding grow the many
controversies of the schools, and the continual arguments which divide
intellect from intellect. Let us then take the simple words first, and then
let us work them out. It is written in the same Chhandogyopanishat:
He who willeth, ‘I shall smell’, He is Atma, desiring to
smell odours; He who willeth, ‘I shall speak’, He is Atma, desiring to utter
words; He who willeth, ‘I shall hear’, He is [21] Atma, desiring to
hear sounds; He who willeth, ‘I shall think’, He is Atma; Manas is the
divine eye.
Yet again we remember how we have read that desire awaked
in the bosom of the Eternal and gave birth to manifestation,
and again that the “nature of Purusha is desire”.
How shall we reconcile the paradox? How shall we understand the seeming
contradiction that Atma is at once the witness and the agent - is at once
quiescent and active - is at once not doing and doing - is at once the
changeless, immutable, and yet the only agents in the universe of
manifested things? If we can understand this, ah! then our road opens before
us. Here the crux of our difficulty - here the great problem that we must
now endeavour to solve. As Atma, Atma is quiescent; as Atma, Atma is
immovable; as Atma, Atma is the witness; as Atma, Atma does nothing, and
acts not. What then means the Scripture - when it says that Atma doeth all
[22] these things? As Atma - other than Which there is nothing -
wills within Itself, so does It make out of Its own substance that which we
call the sheaths. Those sheaths are Itself, for there is naught else, but
they are differentiations within Itself, changed conditions due to Its own
will: “I will multiply,” in which It is active and in which It does the many
things of which the Scripture speaks. In Its own nature; changeless,
unacting, in the sheaths It is the actor; not out of the sheath, but in the
sheath; not separated from the sheath, but working in the sheath; so that
while in Itself it moveth not, in the sheaths It moveth everything that is -
in the sheath, that for the purpose It hath brought out of Itself into
manifestation. Therefore do we speak of all as Maya, because there is but
the One Reality, out of Which by thought everything proceeds, because out of
Itself by will all goes forth. But to you and to me who look from the
outside, that is from the sheath, there is difference, because we see the
sheath and see not the Atma, that is concealed by Name and Form; for in one
sheath It is will, in another [23] sheath It is desire, in another
sheath It is living activity, in another sheath It is chemical attraction
and repulsion, and It is all the wondrous forces in the universe; but the
difference is in the sheath and not in the One that is; in the changed
conditions of manifestation, and not in the manifesting Life. If I take a
current of electricity and if I send it through water charged with a
solution of silver, down will fall the silver, and that falling will be the
result of the invisible current; and if I carry the current onward into a
narrow wire - a thin wire - out of the wire will shine the light, and that
will be the effect of the same current; in the one case the difference of
condition throws down a solid; in another case the difference of condition
gives forth a light. It is one electric force in both the cases, and the
difference of manifestation lies in, that in which it is working and not in
itself. The analogy is imperfect, as it must be; it may yet help us to
understand how one may be manifested in many ways, how there is one Atma in
substance, but multiplicity by changed conditions that we call sheaths.
[24]
It is again written
that though the body be mortal, it is the dwelling-place of Atma, and that
in the sheaths Atma comes into contact with desirable and repulsive objects,
while out of the sheaths It comes not into touch with aught; and because
while in the sheaths It comes into contact with all that is around, It
becomes subject to these contacts. The outgoing energy is Atma; the sheath
makes the difference in manifestation. Thus we shall begin to understand.
This is the point at which I shall have to leave my
subject this morning to take it up tomorrow; this is the point I want you
now to realise and carry away, because on this depends the understanding of
everything that follows: Atma, giving out of Itself everything that is to
be, works in these differentiated selves in different ways. It works to make
the material of a material universe; in the atom It works to build up the
physical substratum (which is Itself), works to bring about a particular
result; so that one line of this manifesting energy is going to be the
building up of physical [25] atoms which are to be used for the
physical universe, for the physical body of man, for the whole line of
prakrtic evolution, in this and every region of the universe. That is the
evolution of form, of everything that has extension; it may be physical, it
may be astral, it may belong to the world of kama, desire, it may belong to
the world of manas, thought. Nay, it may belong to the very region of
Buddhi, and yet it will be a sheath - that is it will have form, it will
have as it were extension; that is, it will serve for the purpose of
manifestation, which necessitates the existence of form. And you will
remember that five sheaths are given: the highest is anandamayakosha, bliss
sheath, buddhi; then coming downwards there is the sheath for higher manas,
the vignanamayakosha; then for lower manas and kama, the manomayakosha, for
all manifestations of working intellect and desire; and yet another for
prana and another the food sheath, the annamayakosha, which is made of the
physical material of the universe. These are the sheaths and all have to be
builded by the One. In the building of the sheaths lies difference of
manifestation. In that the [26] change of forms; in that the activity
which is going to make the whole sheath-side of the universe and of man. But
that is not all; there is another side of the activity which goes to the
building up, by means of the sheath, of the individual man; no longer now
only the Atma in essence, that is the One; no longer now only the sheath in
its separable materials of the Form side; there is the Name, the inner man,
the individual, that which is going to pass from birth to birth, that which
is going to gather experience, that which is going to learn, and by learning
know; that which is going to become the individual mind of man, which is
going to be built up by life and death, by birth and decay, by passing into
svarga and by coming back from svarga into new birth; by these births and
deaths is going to be built up into a mirror of the All; it is going to
become the individual Self which is and shall be, which has its own
knowledge and has its own distinguishment; it is that of which Shri Krshna
said: “It is unborn and constant and eternal,” because in its essence it is
Atma Itself, and yet it is also that which experienced births and [27]
deaths, though itself neither born nor dying. Shri Krshna looking back knew
all His former births and remembered the events of each; Arjuna had been
born many times although he knew it not. And you and I have been born many
times before, and before us also births and deaths may spread. That is the
building up of the individual. That is the building up by the sheaths, which
is slowly accomplished. So that we leave it at this point: One SELF, Atma,
in Itself inactive; sheaths of Its substance in which It is going to act,
sheaths builded by It along one line of evolution; and then Atma working
within the sheaths to build up the individual, the Ego, the self-conscious I
- which shall know itself separate in manifestation, although rooted by its
origin in the One and the All. Carried on into further detail, this thought
will lead us through this tangle, a clue to guide our puzzled steps out of
the apparent contradictions of the One and the many, the All which is at
once one and manifold; keep that thought for this morning and we will follow
it whither it leads us in the mornings that lie in front. But grasp that
clearly and everything [28] else will become simple and definite, and
we shall learn how our bodies today are built of atoms, how these atoms by
change shall be built into the living man, how the man of this manvantara
shall become the deva of another, how step by step this growth is ever
proceeding, how in every universe there is Ishvara, how in every one He
weaves out of Himself the material basis, how out of the elaborated material
basis of past universes He builds the living Egos of men, how out of these
He builds the Devas of another universe, and ultimately unites them in
Himself, that is the All. Such is the mighty subject on which we are to
think for these four mornings of our meeting, the Supreme Secret of the
Master, by knowing which all things are known. [29]
THE BODY OF ACTION
MY BROTHERS: Let me remind you at the outset, of the
three rays of light which we are going to use in order to illuminate the
very difficult subject which lies before us. First, we take the ray of
spiritual light which comes to us from the ancient Scriptures, from the
Shrutis, and, with limitations, from the Smrtis. Then we take the ray of
intellectual light which comes to us through H.P.B., giving us the
intellectual ladder by which we may rise to the higher region. And then we
take the ray that comes from western science, examining the physical
universe, and bearing record to the facts that it observes. These are the
three, you will remember, that I said yesterday were to be the rays of light
converging to a single focus, to illuminate the obscurity that we are trying
to pierce. And let me say on [30] science this; that the thing that
we find to-day of opposition between science and spiritual knowledge is a
plant of modern growth and does not come from the ancient world. Science in
the old days was the hand-maiden of religion and was not its opponent, and I
hope it will be one of the glories of Theosophy to bring back science to its
real duty, as showing on the sensuous plane what religion shows on the
spiritual; once more the child and the servant, once more the helper and the
buttress of the Wisdom-Religion of old.
Now the section of the subject that today we have to
deal with is, first of all, the object of the sheaths - not worked out; that
will be done in my last lecture; but a word or two on the object - in order
to show to you how and why there should be sheaths at all. Then something on
the becoming of a universe, for by studying the becoming of the universe
that now is, we shall understand both what the present inherits from the
past, and also what it is preparing to bequeath to the future. For in every
universe there is a preparation of that which in the next universe shall
serve as [31] material. In each universe there is an inheritance
from the past of what in the previous universes was prepared for the
present. You cannot separate one universe from another, nor deal with a
single manifestation as though it were isolated from the rest. There is ever
an out-breathing from the One, in-breathing again into the One when a
manvantara is over; out-breathing for a fresh manvantara, in-breathing again
when that also is concluded; but all the out-breathings and the
in-breathings are connected. And the out-breathing of today has in it
results of the in-breathings that have preceded it in time, and therefore to
understand we must remember that in every universe we look backwards for its
inheritance, and we look forwards to see what it will lead to; we study the
present universe because it is the nearest, and here we can best learn to,
understand the process of becoming. Then - finishing this brief description
of the outline of what I have to say - I shall deal in detail with two of
the sheaths, the two lower sheaths, that of annam or food, and that of prana
or life. Tomorrow morning I shall deal with the [32] two sheaths that
belong to the mental and emotional activities, with the manomayakosha and
gnanamayakosha, leaving myself for the last discourse to say the little that
can be said on the highest sheath - the anandamayakosha, and then dealing
in detail with the object of the sheaths and the final result which comes
out of the whole.
In taking now at once the first division that I have thus
sketched of today's work - the object of the sheaths - let me remind you,
taking up what is written in the Mundakopanishat which I quoted
yesterday, as to Brahman being “without life, without mind”, that then in
the very next shloka it is written:
From Him are produced Life, Mind, and all the organs,
ether, air, light, water, earth.
Purposely - let me say, in parenthesis – I am
translating. I am not using here a distinct quotation in Samskrt from the
Sacred Books and I will tell you frankly my reason. Shlokas which come from
the Vedas have in them a mantric force which may not be used in a mixed
assemblage, and may not be raised among the conflicting magnetisms [33]
which are gathered together without distinction and without separation. I
am using the teaching; I am not using the Samskrt tongue in the definite
order of its syllables, which gives them the force of mantrams. Every
quotation that I intend to give to you this morning, I have taken myself in
the Samskrt, so that I may be sure that I am giving the meaning accurately.
I am not in any one case going to quote the original, because I will not
take on myself the responsibility of repeating the mantram-form in the
mixed audience that I address now.
It is written in the Mundakopanishat that from
Brahman the One - I need not repeat to you today, that which I addressed to
you yesterday - comes Life - Prana is the word used. I shall show you
presently that Prana is Atma in its outgoing activity; then Mind, Manas,
that is the second; then the five elements as we know them - ether, air,
fire, water and earth; seven in all. These are the seven regions of the
universe; the seven sheaths of Brahman, as the SELF of the All;
corresponding to those in man are the sheaths with which we have now to
deal; and the object of the sheaths in man [34] is to come into
contact with each corresponding region in the universe. So that Atma which
in itself is pure Sat and therefore quiescent, so that Atma which cannot as
Atma deal with these different regions by way of contact, may through the
sheaths come into contact with everything, and so gradually build up an
individual self-consciousness, many individual self-consciousnesses; the
building of these individuals is the object of the universe, and at the end
of the manvantara, of the universe, there is the existence of these separate
self-consciousnesses which were not existent as self-consciousnesses at
the beginning, but only existent potentially in the Atma, which is the root
of the possibility of all.
Then we come first to our material universe, as we call
it. Let us realise that in this material universe, in the widest sense of
the term, prakrti, we have the seven-fold division to which I have just
alluded, and that the essence of matter, not matter as we have it down here,
but the essence of matter, is eternal. Prakrti, says Shri Krshna, is
eternal; not in its manifestation but in its essence; not in its [35]
manifestation but in its root; the root of matter not yet in manifestation,
that is eternal in Brahman, or otherwise never could it be. For once again
says the Divine Teacher:
The non-existent cannot become, neither can the existent
cease to be.
You must hold firm to the principle that if a thing be
true, the outer and superficial difficulties are things to be conquered,
without letting go the fundamental truth that you have. Have faith enough in
truth to hold to fact when you have it, and believe that if a thing be a
fact it must come into co-ordination with all other truths, and as knowledge
increases all superficial difficulties will gradually vanish away. Now this
matter, or prakrti, which is without beginning in its essence, never can be
separated from that which is co-eternal with it; that which comes with it
into manifestation, and abides with it for evermore. For you cannot talk of
Matter alone. If you say Matter, you must say Spirit. If you say Prakrti,
you must say Purusha. They are the two sides of the one existence, and are
never to be separated [36] from each other in fact, although in
thought we distinguish them by quality, in order that we may be able to
think at all. But in manifestation they are never apart. There is no such
thing as dead Matter. There is no such thing as Spirit, or force, or life,
without Matter by which it takes its form, by which it shows its energy.
Wherever there is Name there is Form, wherever there is Form there is Name.
Life is hedged round by the two, and they are never separated in
manifestation.
Now H. P. Blavatsky in dealing with this, points out
that, matter becomes, and she quotes the teachings of a mighty
Egyptian who drew his knowledge from the Rshis of old, and gave out through
Egypt to Greece, and so onwards to the western world, the eastern teaching,
which is the source of all our knowledge on these subjects. And this great
Egyptian, Hermes, saying exactly as he had been taught, declared:
Oh, my son, Matter becomes; formerly it
was; for Matter is the vehicle of becoming.
Realise that idea; matter is a “vehicle of becoming”; and
no universe may be without this vehicle of becoming, as well as the [37]
force that informs. And then taking it still more clearly - and here doing
us one of those great services that should make her name to be held ever
in honour and in respect amongst us - she explains to us what this means.
Everything that is, that was, that will be, eternally is. Even the countless
forms in the universe are finite and perishable only in their objective,
and never in their ideal form; they exist as Ideas in the eternity; when
they vanish as forms they still exist as reflections. If you realise that,
you will understand the links that unite the universes together. Nothing
that ever has been can perish. It exists for ever in the Eternal Thought.
Objective existence perishes; the ideal form remains for ever, and is handed
on from manvantara to manvantara. The objective forms of today will be
handed on to the next universe as ideal forms; they are to govern the line
of evolution, so that each successive universe inherits the karma of the
past, as it modifies and builds the karma of all the universes yet to be.
Now an atom is at once the form and the force of life. In
every universe the [38] atom is the basis which in that universe se
is built for the lowest types of manifestation on every plane; that is, it
is the form of every plane. In those seven that I spoke of - the five great
Elements, Prana and Manas - you have in each of these planes this basis of
the atom, modified as we come down lower and lower into more and more
objective forms, but ever present as the form-side of the region. And this
building up of the form-side in the atom is repeated in every universe, and
the atom of one universe passes on as ideal form to take its place as the
life of the line of evolution of the next. Try to realise that, for it is
the key to the puzzle in every universe of forms involving, and instinct
with, life; through the universe the process of becoming, then passing into
the ideal and remaining as reflection in the Eternal One that is, and coming
forth in the next universe to be the informing life of the atoms of the
next. So that in each case that which in one universe is, to use a clumsy
phrase, an outer form becomes in the next an informing life; and the atom
of the one is the mind and the energy of the next; and so [39] each
universe is builded and linked to those that in time lie behind.
Now let us see the atom as a form and a force; the Atma
and in addition the sheath which Atma differentiates within Itself for the
manifestation of Its own energy; and so it is written in an Esoteric
Scripture that
The Jivas are the Souls of the atoms.
Again, I say, try to realise that thought: Jiva is
another name for Atma in manifestation; Jiva is the soul of the atom - that
is, that in every atom you have this duality; the Atma that informs and the
differentiated Atma which makes Itself the sheath. This is the work of
building the Prakrtic side, as it were, of Atma.
Again turning to H. P. Blavatsky, we learn that these
atoms are “visible complex units” and act from within - a
point of enormous importance, as you will see when in a moment I pass to
what science tells us about them. For H. P. B. writing on these atoms said,
as we have seen, that there are souls to these atoms, that they are informed
with Jiva. And then she [40] goes on to say that these atoms fill the
immensity of space, that within the atoms is all the activity, and that the
atoms become complex units - note the phrase “every atom becomes a complex
unit” - that they propel the molecules into activity from within.
Now turn to science. Science deals with atoms in chemical
form and also, of course, in the physical. The chemical form is the one that
throws most light on the occult side of Nature. The physical deals more with
the outer manifestation; the chemical deals more with the forces that mould
the outer manifestation. Now western science dealing chemically with the
atom gives us certain facts, and they are very strange. I will take one form
of atom in order that what I may say may be distinct, and let me say that if
this is difficult to follow, as I know it is, you will have it presently in
print, and you can study, the technicalities that I cannot avoid when I am
dealing with a highly instructed audience, as I have the right to expect
this audience to be. I have not the time to explain as I should do to a
popular audience. I will [41] take carbon, an atom of carbon, in the
mineral kingdom. It is a simple thing. It joins other elements and enters
into combinations, and it has the power of joining by a four-fold link. If
I may appeal for the moment to your imagination, think that you see a carbon
atom; think of a ball, and into that ball four hooked sticks are struck, so
that they leave outside their four hooks. Thus you will have a ball with
four hooks sticking out. That is the chemical atom of carbon in the mineral
kingdom. By each of these hooks it can join on to a hook of another chemical
atom, so that it can join with four other atoms provided that each of these
four atoms has only one hook of its own. In the mineral kingdom you may
follow that right through, and you may get a number of compounds of
different chemical elements in which carbon plays its part, in which it
joins itself, with one or the other, in which it unites itself by these
hooks-stretching out its hooks as it were, and grasping other elements -
but always simple in its combinations, hooking on to two atoms of an element
that has two hooks, to four of an element that has one hook, and [42]
so on. For when an atom is working in the building of this most material
part of the universe, it is beginning in the simplest way; by a changing of
the inner constitution of the atom, it gradually becomes able to enter into
more and more complex combinations. Follow on our carbon atom remembering
it is Atma plus form - and follow it out from the mineral into the
vegetable and animal kingdoms. What is the difference? The difference is
that in this carbon atom there is developed a power of combination in more
and more complex ways, so that at last, in what is called organic chemistry
technically, you get numbers of compounds in which the carbon atoms unite
in what are called technically ‘closed rings’, instead of in lines as in the
mineral kingdom. These closed rings of carbon atoms make up the most
complicated combinations of every character, and these are never found in
the mineral kingdom, but only when that has been accomplished, and the
further evolution has been followed. So that in this working we can see that
in the atom there is evolution, in the atom there is change, in the atom
there is the differentiating [43] life; the working of Atma in this
lower kingdom is to inform this atom, to differentiate it within, to make
it more and more complex in its inner powers, so that it may manifest more
and more of life, until at last, built through mineral, vegetable and
animal kingdoms, it shall be ready to be built into the sheaths of the man,
and there, in combination with other similar atoms, make the sheath which
Atma can use gradually for the building of an individual
self-consciousness. Thus the atomic building, and the combination of atoms
into molecules, and of the molecules then again into cells, and of cells
into the sheath, give us the food - sheath that is necessary for contact
with the lowest region of the universe; and by this process brings Atma into
contact, as we shall see later, with the subtle sheaths of the mind, into
physical contact with the material universe for the gathering of experience,
by contact, by attraction, by repulsion, by pleasure and by pain.
Now supposing that you have been able to follow that, we
can come to our first sheath, that of food - the annamayakosha, the body
that we use, the body that we wear. [44] I am not my body. I need not
tell you that this body is not me; this is a thing that I use for certain
purposes; but it is I who use it.
There is a double activity in this sheath of ours that we
call our body. First there is the activity of the atoms and the molecules
and the cells of the body. This is not your activity but theirs. Not your
activity, but the activity of the Atma in the atoms and the molecules and
the cells of the body. It is not Atma's activity in the sheaths as the Self
of the sheath, but Atma's activity in the constituent particles as the Self
of the particles which is necessary for their existence. How can I prove
that to you? By science once more. See how I can use this western science
for purposes they dream not of who observe for us the facts. But see how
useful is their work! They observe the facts and give them to the world;
granted they do not know what the facts imply; granted they do not see the
underlying verities. But they see the physical truths and speak the physical
truths; and we who are taught by the ancient Teachers can take the [45]
physical fact and illuminate it by the Divine Light, and understand the
‘why’ as well as the ‘how’, the cause as well as the effect. So I turn to my
science. The cells in the body, says the great German Materialist, Haeckel,
the cells have souls. Our great Materialist, Haeckel, has struck on a
strange and occult truth. There is, he says, a soul of the cell. Why does he
say this? Because he finds in the separate cells of the body there is a
cell-activity that is not the activity of the body as a whole. He finds that
the separate cells of the body exercise particular functions of their own,
without regard to the general actions of the body. They select, they choose,
they accept, they reject, each cell according to its own impulse, each cell
according to its own work. But there is this strange peculiarity: that the
so to speak independent action of the cell is limited to its own narrow
interest, and while it is subordinated in its normal activity to the general
welfare of the body of which it forms a part - as you will see when we come
to Prana - none the less is it true that it will sometimes act against the
general welfare, following out the law of its own [46] activity and
unconscious of the greater use which it serves in the little universe of
the body. Take a cut; you may get a wound in the body. What will the cells
do? They will set to work at once; without any thought of your brain,
without any consciousness of yours, without any directing force of your
intelligence, they will bring to that place where matter has been cut away
the new supplies that are wanted for the filling up of the hole in the body
that has been left. They will build and build and build; and they will build
without the intelligence which should subordinate their building to the
whole; for they will make a scar, they will build more than is wanted. For
what the physiologists call the “unconscious memory of the cell” makes the
building go on, building and building and building beyond the point that is
necessary, following out their individual activity by the law of their own
nature, and not conscious of the needs of the greater one that they are
clothing. So that you get your scar which you cannot get rid of. So also
you get continually built matter which then is flung away, and the whole
activity of the outer cells of [47] your body is continually building
matter that then is thrown off again. For they build and build and build
according to the law of their own activity, by the Atma in the cell,
building the cell, and not considering the need of the sheath as a
complicated whole.
But here is an important thing to learn. There is an ‘I’
as well as a sheath, and the ‘I’ uses this sheath for its own purpose. The
‘I’ in me wants to write. Myself, I, write. My hand holds the pen and dips
it into the ink, and traces it on the paper. When this sheath of mine was
very young and was training for my use, it was taught to write, and one part
of the sheath learned to take the pen in a particular way, to hold it in a
particular way; and always when the ‘I’ wanted to write it was to do this
duty, without which the mind, the ‘I’ could not write on the material plane.
The ‘I’ might think as much as it liked. It could not produce the material
result so that other people might see it and use it, without the help of the
sheath. Without this it would be un-provided with any instrument on the
lowest plane of the universe, and so [48] could not work. Atma
plus manas would be helpless down here unless this sheath can be made
into an instrument and taught to produce on its own plane, under orders,
what was wanted here for the work. So it was taught and had to learn its
lesson, but note this: that when it has once learned it, it continues to do
it in the same way, and if I want to change the way of writing, the holding
of my pen in the hand, I have got to take a lot of trouble to change the
automatic activity of the cells of the sheath, which are independent of my
consciousness; when once I have moulded it to my purpose it does what I
taught it to do, and it goes on doing it, and if I want to change it, if I
mean to change it, I must set to work by repeated efforts, repeated
volitions, and I must undo with much pains that which I with much pains
before impressed upon the sheath, and I must set it going along the new
line, the new direction, that I impose. You see then the automatic action of
the sheath, and you see how the sheath has a life of its own, and that this
may help or hinder the life which is expressed through it by the ‘I’. If
your [49] sheath is to be a help and not a hindrance, if your sheath
is to serve you and to be useful to you, you must be its master not its
servant; you must be its ruler, not its slave. For it is a karma that you
have made; this karma is the method of automatic-action by the body, and it
limits you when you want to express yourselves; you have to work within the
karmic limitations that you have made. You are there; you can change them,
you can alter them, you can subdue them to the new will that you impose;
but you have got to do it step by step, you have got to do it by toil and by
effort. Law is Law in every region of the universe, and you cannot escape
its working in the body-sheath any more than anywhere else in the realm of
life.
There is a link which I can only just allude to, by which
co-ordinated action takes place in the food-sheath; you know what are called
the nerves; you know what are called the nervous centres; you know the
pillar of nerve matter that goes down the centre of the backbone from the
nervous matter of the brain, the threads of nerve matter that go out to
every part of the [50] body, and the double nature of the nervous
system, one part under the immediate control of the will and the other
automatically acting, carrying on life processes; these indeed are largely
the result of the past action of the will, which has made this vehicle for
itself. Now Prana acts on these centres, and there is the co-ordinating
power, there is the force that is going to make the sheath the vehicle of
the ‘I’, and not merely a combination of a number of independent cells and
molecules. Not in the sheath of food but in the sheath of Prana lies the
co-ordinating energy, and the food-sheath supplies the nervous centres on
which Prana acts directly as the co-ordinating and controlling energy, so
that it may make the food-sheath obedient, and fashion it for the purposes
which the higher intelligence demands. But remember this outside sheath is
wanted for contact, is necessary to collect experience. Remember it is only
a receiver. As a sheath it does not feel. Does that seem strange? When you
say a blow struck you, you feel. Do you think you feel at the spot where the
blow touches you? Western science tells you that it is not so. Even science
says [51] that the centres of sensation are in the brain, and we know
that if we break the bridge of nervous matter, we may burn the living flesh
and no feeling of pain is experienced. Feeling is not in the food-sheath;
not in the cells of the body lie the power of feeling pleasure and pain. It
only receives the contact and transmits it inwards by prana. It has its own
feeling in the cells, but you do not share that. True, sense-organs
are not the senses; true, sight and the eye must be distinguished; true,
feeling and the skin and the nerves must be separated; but the sheath has
its own feeling. There are certain ‘massive’ feelings, as they are
technically called - general fatigue and so on - that are dull sensations of
the separate cells transmitting up to the brain what they feel, and coming
vaguely into the consciousness of man; not acute, not sharp, not keen, but
massive and vague and general; that is the consciousness of the cells; that
goes through part of the sheath, passes on as a vague statement of the cells
to the consciousness which is within the sheath, which moulds it and
controls. And this activity of the cells is the activity of the [52]
Atma in the matter of the body. This activity in the cells is the Atma
working in the atoms, working in the molecules, working in the cells. That
is the place; so to speak - it is a wrong phrase, but I can use no other -
the place of Atma as regards these individual cells of the body; not working
in the sheath as a whole but in every constituent part; for Brahman is
omnipresent, all-pervading, as the salt in the water, and can be absent from
no spot in space.
Next we come to prana, the sheath of prana,
pranamayakosha. Now here from the Kaushitakopanishat we can find what
prana really is. It is the outgoing energy of Atma. Indra - and the name
Indra designates, as you know, the Lord of the atmosphere and the Lord of
all the lower world - Indra says:
I am prana . . . prana, is life.
That is the exoteric form, and the separate name is given
of the great Head of the Life-hierarchy of the lower world, that great
Entity, who is known as the Deva Indra - not an object of worship for those
that can [53] go beyond, not an object of worship for the
spiritually enlightened man, but a mighty Deva, working in the lower worlds,
distributing as it were the Essence of the ONE through all the forms of the
lower life of things. Now Shankara tells us that this prana is kriyashakti -
the shakti of doing and not of knowing - and there is a distinction of
enormous importance. This sheath which is the sheath of prana is the sheath
of activity, not of knowledge, the sheath which is to actively gather
everything, and hand it on to the receptacle which lies within. But it is
not the Knower. It is the outgoing energy of Atma for action, not for
thought. And this works in what is called astral or ethereal, matter, in
the matter that science calls ether; and by this it works, and brings all
parts into connection, and controls the whole of these lower cells that we
have been speaking of, co-ordinating them to make up the food-body of man.
This subtler sheath, in which Atma as prana is working, controls and holds
together the whole of the lower matter as sheath. There could be no sheath
of food, no physical body, if it were not [54] for prana; which
co-ordinates all the separated cells and makes them into one complex and
orderly whole. That is the function of this pranic sheath. Prana works in
the subtler matter, in what we sometimes call an astral body. It is not that
which in Indian literature is called by this name, the subtle body that we
know as sukshma sharira. Do not confuse them together. Nor is it the linga
sharira of the Hindu books, though called by its name. This is an
awkwardness of nomenclature that we must keep clear in our minds. It is the
lower astral, an essential part of the sthulopadhi and not of the
sukshmopadhi. That is necessary to remember, for the astral body that you
read of in Theosophical works is nothing more than the pranic sheath. It is
the form-side of pranic activity, without which prana could not act, that
is, without which the outgoing energy of Atma would not be able to
coordinate the physical molecules of the external body. We are told in the
same Kaushitakopanishat that speech, sight, hearing and everything
else are dependent on prana in the body. Sight is not the eye; hearing is
not the ear; taste is not the tongue; [55] smell is not the nose;
touch is not the skin. It is the prana in every case which gives the
sense-activity to the organs, and which is the transmitter of the outer
vibration to the sense-centres which lie in kama, in the sheath which is
next to that of prana, the manomayakosha.
Now understanding that, the next point is that prana
divides itself into five pranas, “five-fold dividing itself”, says the
scripture, in order that it may uphold and support every part of the body,
carry on every vital activity, carry on every function of the body, carry on
everything which is necessary for the maintenance of the physical life of
the body; and prana five-fold dividing itself becomes the five pranas that
are familiar to every one of you. But remember that five is exoteric, and
seven is the esoteric number of pranas, and in the Mundakopanishat
and in the Prashnopanishat prana divides itself into seven, not only
into five. Five for the outer world, because we are now in the Fifth Race,
because we have at present five senses, and only five pranas are in
manifestation. But there is a sixth that is going to evolve its sense,
[56] and a seventh that must be formed ere yet man is perfect. And so it
is true that prana is five-fold in man in manifestation today although
seven-fold in its essence ; and that is why in both the Upanishats
just named you will find the seven-fold flame of prana, not explained but
only mentioned, as though to remind every one with intuition that there is
a mystery that lies behind, and that the five-fold that is given to the
world is not the whole of the pranic activity, either in man or the universe
And then we learn another great truth. It is written:
From Atma this prana is born.
Atma is prana, and prana is only Atma in activity.
Realise that great truth. I quote the words of the scripture repeating them
again, translating word for word:
From Atma this prana is born.
It is the outgoing energy of Atma. It is the energy of
the body. Atma in itself cannot work. I repeat it, because, of the enormous
importance that the thought shall be clear. Atma in itself cannot work. It
[57] is Sat, quiescent, immovable, unchangeable. The outgoing energy
is prana: therefore it is written that from Atma prana is born.
Science tells us in its own way something of the same
strange story; tells us how in every part of the world and of the body
electric currents work. It proves this by the use of the delicate apparatus
it invents that it may observe more minutely than by the unassisted senses.
Take your brain. Whenever there is thought, electric currents are running
through it, and if you test the brain, the instrument answers to the
current, and the tiny needle gives a sweep which shows the passage of the
current, and proves physically that this electrical action is there. You
find the same all over the body, in the contracting muscle and so on. You
find electric currents in every part of the body where any functional
activity is being carried on. Use your instrument and electricity shows
itself, and electricity is only a western word for one form of pranic
activity. Science further tells you that wherever electricity is there is
ether, and without ether electricity cannot manifest. I translate this into
the older [58] phrases: wherever prana is there also is akasha, and
without akasha prana cannot show itself. Thus prana is the organiser and
controller of the annamayakosha of man, holding together the complicated
aggregation.
Man's constitution should now be becoming a little
clearer as to its constituent parts, and the study of life explains ‘death’.
For what will death be? It will be the drawing away of this outgoing energy
of Atma from the sheath of the physical body. It does not, of course, take
away Atma from the cells of the body, but it takes away Atma as prana, as
the co-ordinating energy of the sheath. The cells of the body break away
from each other; each cell acts in its own way, shows its own life, its own
activity, but there is no longer co-ordinated action. In the corpse you find
the hairs growing, for instance; then there is life; yet it is not life in
the sheath of the body, but it is life in the constituent cells, which are
no longer controlled by the pranamayakosha of man. Think that out at leisure
and you will see how these sheaths are going to be used, and how we shall be
able to work out their object and their [59] utility, when the whole
of them are understood and grasped. We have now got hold of two sheaths,
the sheath of food and the sheath of prana; the food-sheath that receives
from the outer world, the prana-sheath which transmits, that outgoing energy
which controls and co-ordinates, keeps the body together and subordinates it
to the ‘I’ that is going gradually to be built up, the self-conscious
intelligence of man. You find that prana is the great transmitter,
transmitting outwards the moving energy, gathering and transmitting inwards
all the contacts from the outer universe; gathering them inwards always, and
therefore a bridge between all the sheaths of man. For this pranic activity
plays through every sheath and gathering from the outermost carries inwards
to the innermost. The Kaushitakopanishat tells us that, when death
comes, prana gathers everything together, and withdrawing from the body
hands everything onwards to the Knower, that is the receptacle of all.
Now these two sheaths that we have dealt with this
morning form together the lowest upadhi of Atma. These two [60]
koshas together form what we know as the
sthulopadhi. If you ask me why I draw your attention to that, my answer is
this that while there are five sheaths, there are only three upadhis, and
that in yoga, in practical knowledge, consciousness is going to work
separately in each upadhi.
There are only three upadhis in which consciousness, in which Atma can
work, and the highest Adept can separate only these three upadhis and
cannot separate the constituents of man any further. Raja Yoga is, as you
know, the way in which this is learned. Raja Yoga teaches us how we may
separate the three upadhis one from the other, and how thus may be visited
the three regions of the universe, the sensuous, the intellectual and the
spiritual. The three upadhis are correlated to these regions, while the
sheaths are correlated to the separate prakrtis, to the different kinds of
matter. And H. P. Blavatsky in this connection has said that to whatever
nationality the yogi may belong - whether he be Hindu or Buddhist or
Muhammadan or anything else in his outer faith it makes no difference -
before he can [61] become an Adept, a Mahatma, a Rshi, he must go
through the school of Raja Yoga, and learn this lesson without which
Adept-ship is impossible. Do not forget that that is true. On this side of
the Himalayas or the other, there is but one school of Raja Yoga, only one
and none other, the Eastern School. From time immemorial it has existed, to
time immemorial it will stretch, unchanged and immutable, one and the same.
The Vedas came forth through it to the Aryan Race, every great Rshi belongs
to it, and today none may rise to the heights of Adept-ship unless he pass
through that School. Here there may be no confusion as to different schools,
no quarrelling as to eastern and western, and all the rest of these follies
that divide the external world. H. P. B. says, the Messenger of the great
Teachers proclaimed, that there is no Adept known to the Great Lodge save
Those who learned in and passed through the Raja Yoga School, and studied
there; nowhere else may they learn the separation of the upadhis, and the
conquest of the universe by knowing that last word of the Science of the
Soul. [62]
And therefore it is that I am trying to make you
understand - though fettered by the necessary brevity which time-limit puts
upon me - I am trying to make you see how all these truths are linked and
how while the sheaths I dealt with must be understood, the upadhis must not
be left out; for without a knowledge of them no practical Occultism is
possible, although theoretical Occultism may be understood.
Here I leave it for this morning, taking tomorrow the
next two sheaths in which the Self is enwrapped, the sheaths which feel and
which are the receptacle, the sheaths which are to hold experience, where
building of the individual goes on, and where self-consciousness is
gradually evolved. [63]
THE BODY OF FEELING
If we take the division of man which is used by Manu,
we shall find that that division, though varying in its names, is
practically identical with that to which we referred as the division of the
Raja Yoga School, that of the three upadhis as distinguished from that of
the five sheaths or koshas. The two sheaths referred to yesterday are
sometimes classed together, and are classed together by Manu, as making the
bhutatman or elemental self, that is the self which is acting, for he so
defines it. He speaks of it as the self which acts, the corporeal self, as
it is translated sometimes into English. The main point, to which I want to
draw your attention in passing, is that these two sheaths, with which we
yesterday dealt, are the two sheaths of [64] action and are related
essentially to the elements; are related to the external universe in those
regions familiar to us as the regions of the elements. And in leaving these
aside now we pass in a very real sense from the external to the internal
world; we pass in a very real sense from the world that we regard as made up
of vibrations, atomic and molecular, to the world which essentially consists
in the recognition by the SELF, the translations through the sheath employed
by the SELF, of those external vibrations and contacts, into what we will
for a moment call sensations and ideas. That is, we pass from a world in
which the things external to the man are going on, to a world which to the
man is internal, and in which everything he considers is no longer a looking
outward and receiving from the outside, but a dealing with that which he has
received, the manipulating, the elaboration, the working upon materials, by
the forces which come to him from the innermost life of all. And so we pass
from that body which Manu speaks of as the body of action to the one which
he speaks of as the body of feeling. You may remember that he gives it the
name [65] Jiva, which is a little
unusual, and you may require to read the commentary with it in order to
avoid possible confusion; because the way in which Manu uses the word Jiva
is not that which connects it with prana as prana. He defines it as that
body in which the knower, the Kshetragna, becomes sensible of pleasures and
of pains. It is essentially this body in which the knower becomes conscious
of pleasures and of pains that we have to deal with today.
In their external relations the two sheaths that comprise
it, especially the lower of these sheaths, the manomayakosha, are related
to the deva world. I want that point to be very clearly grasped. If
you turn to the Aitereyopanishat, you will find that after the devas
were formed, the animals were formed and also man. You may remember that the
devas refused to be satisfied with the animals, but when man appeared they
said: “This is good”, and entered into him. Now that entering in of the
devas is further described as the entering in of the presiding deities of
the elements, and those presiding deities of the elements give rise [66]
to sensations in man, receiving from the different elements their suitable
vibrations and performing the work of changing the contacts from without
into what are called sensations, or the recognition of the contacts, from
within. This is essentially a deva action. This is essentially the work
which is done in the making and building of, in the evolution of, the
manomayakosha. It has in it those devas that belongs to the elemental
kingdoms. Here comes the link of man with all those lower devas, the link
which, when supreme control has been obtained, makes man the master in every
region of the universe. For the great Adept Himself would be unable to
manipulate the lower worlds of matter, the lower worlds of sensation, if it
were not that He possesses these sheaths co-ordinated into perfect harmony
and perfect subordination, which none the less connect him with the external
universe; inasmuch as these belong to the devas, he having the devas subject
to him, has subject to him also every region of the external universe that
they control. Great then is the importance of this sheath, and the two
together which we have to consider [67] are the most important
sheaths of the whole. This manomayakosha is the one that we will take first,
and in that we shall find we have got together the elements which will make
the basis of the individual self-consciousness which gradually is to be
evolved - not Self-consciousness, but the materials on which consciousness
is going to work and which, ideally reflected into itself, will make the
true individual Self-consciousness possible. How difficult and how
complicated the subject is, you will realise even from this suggestion. I
can only hope that in putting it to you I may give - probably to those who
have not studied it for themselves - not a complete idea but the
materials, so to speak, on which you may afterwards yourselves work, and
so out of the materials make up for yourself a completer and fuller
realisation.
Now, for a moment I must ask you to think of the animal
world; because in the animal world we get, not the manomayakosha, but some
of the elements that enter into it, that which is really only the germ of
the higher; that in which and by means of which, the higher will later be
developed. [68] And just as I asked you yesterday to realise the
internal changes of the atoms, by which the atoms become differentiated from
within, and built through the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, gain
a peculiar additional capability and increasing complexity which enable them
to form more elaborate combinations, so in dealing with these sheaths, which
are connected in the lower part with the animal kingdom, I must ask you to
realise the changes that occur in connection with what we know as feeling in
animals. That which only exists in the germ, not in the vegetable but in the
animal kingdom, is developed, and becomes what we know as the human power of
sensation, the higher feelings of pleasure and of pain. Not that man is
evolved from the animal as such - that is the western blunder - but that the
materials which go to build the manomayakosha in man have been evolved in
the animal kingdom, and these materials carry on the results of their
evolution, and are therefore available for the building of man. You notice
the point of difference: it is not that man is directly evolved from the
brute, as Darwin teaches; it is that the materials [69] which have
been elaborated in the animal kingdom are then used for the building of Man.
Quite a different thing from the purely physical succession, and introducing
a different idea; this may show you what underlies and forms the strength
of the Darwinian theory, for it is the truth that gives it the strength,
although there is also the blunder which comes from studying from without
instead of from within, by looking at everything from the standpoint of the
external pole of Matter instead of from the internal pole of Spirit.
Now let me, having guarded myself for the sake of
clearness of conception, see what we have in the animal kingdom of this
power of sensating pleasures and pains. We notice in animals what we have
spoken of as desire: that is an outward-going attraction towards objects
that are external, so that when contact is experienced what is called
pleasure is felt. We notice also that this outward-going energy comes into
contact sometimes with objects which do not by contact give pleasure but
pain, and we then notice that repulsion is the result. Attraction by
contact, which inwardly is [70] translated into pleasure. Repulsion
from contact, which inwardly is translated into pain. Not that pleasure and
pain are in the external object, but that contact between the outer and
inner is either a contact of harmony and, therefore, is pleasure to the
feeler, or is a contact of discord and by the feeler is translated as pain.
That is really the essence which underlies these words. Vibrations meet each
other; some are harmonious -pleasure; some are discordant -pain.
But pleasure and pain cannot exist either in one set of
vibrations alone or in the other. They exist in the contact between the two.
Leave those vibrations outside and they are harmonious in themselves; there
is neither pleasure nor pain, but there is motion. Take the inner; there
also there are vibrations; but these are not pleasurable nor painful. They
are in, and in connection only with, the knower. But when the two come into
contact, and come against each other, they are either harmonious or
discordant; then by contact arises pleasure or pain, which is harmony or
discord at the point of contact of the vibrations. That, [71] if you
think it out, will enable you to realise how it is possible to overcome
pleasure or pain, and how the vibrations from outside may continue and may
be realised in thought - after experience has been gained - while by the
severing of absolute contact it will no longer be the discord or harmony
which we know as pleasure or pain reflected on the inner sheath.
Now in the animal there is this to notice ere we leave
it. That pleasure and pain in animals are very brief. There may be a feeling
of pain arising from a discordant contact, say a blow, but it is brief. An
animal, say with a broken leg from a fall will, when the agony of the
contact is over, turn and eat food. It will eat and enjoy - provided it has
not come much into contact with man. That is a strange point to keep in
your minds and which needs to be explained. The wild animal, evolved along
the line of nature un-interfered with by the consciousness of man, does not
suffer in the same sense as the domesticated animal suffers. Its pleasure
and pain are very brief, its pleasure and pain have not the same element of
continuity. The wild animal, which [72] falling has injured itself,
is even found eating calmly with a broken limb. It is a strange fact to
notice, and a fact which throws much light on the evolution of the inner
consciousness. But that is not all; the animal does go one step further, but
very, very, very slowly. Realise that it takes the step, because otherwise
you will be forgetting that in Atma is every possibility. Although It be
involved in all these lower stages, It is there enfolding all possibilities,
It is there enfolding all potentialities; and in the lower animals we find
the germ, as it were, which when we come to deal with the further
elaboration of these materials in the human being, we find developed into
the possibility of thought. And what is the essence? It is a connection
between the outer object and the inner sensation, and the recognition of
this connection, the recognition that the two things are joined together,
that when one occurs the other will follow - this is the beginning of
thought, making the link between the outer object and the inner sensation.
Very, very, very slowly is that made, and very imperfectly in the lower
animals. Let me give you [73] one instance to show exactly what this
means, an experiment. There was a fish, a pike, kept in a large, glass case
of water. In the West they are very fond of keeping animals to look at, and
there are aquariums in which water-creatures are preserved, so that they may
be studied and kept under view. In one of these there was a fish, a pike,
and between the place where the pike was and the next box of water there was
the glass wall, of course invisible. This fish naturally going onwards as
animals will and pursuing fish in the adjoining compartment constantly
struck its nose against the glass which it could not see. Over and over and
over again that went on. Week after week, month after month; no connection
recognised between the blow and anything external, no link of thought, until
at last the repetition of this vibration, coming from without and felt as
shock, formed a dull link between that particular spot and the impossibility
of going forward, and the fish turned before it touched the glass. Then the
glass was taken away; but to the pike the impossibility of going forward
remained, and it invariably turned when it reached [74] that place
where the glass had been, having slowly made the connection between
external object and internal sensation, which is the germ of thought. This
connection between the external object and the internal sensation persisted
after the object was removed, because the thought-power was germinal,
because the thought-power was not elaborated; so when the external object
was removed the connection ideally remained, and the creature turned when
nothing stopped it, merely because there was in the pike the beginning of
thought without the power of being able to carry it further and adapt it to
the varying conditions. Now supposing that you realise that, you will
understand what is meant by instinct. It means the tendency to repeat
continually that which has been felt. To repeat it unconsciously, as we say,
that is without previous volition and distinct recognition. The instinct of
animals is in that stage, corresponding to the automatic action of the lower
sheaths of which I spoke. Presently we shall find we have: automatic action,
then instinct, then we shall find memory, unconscious almost or partial,
then gradually active, then [75] complete. For this is all part of
the great law of Rhythm which works in every region of the universe. Now I
can leave my animal. I was obliged to make this digression; it was necessary
in order that you might realise the complicated nature of what we mean by
the manomayakosha. I was obliged to show you how in the animal kingdom the
response to pleasure and pain has been evolved. In order that man might be
builded it was necessary that the materials of the sheath should be ready to
be co-ordinated together.
And next we shall also perceive that there is a limit to
the upward working of Atma from the lowest stage of the physical, that there
is a point where no further progress is possible unless there is the
cooperation of another factor evolved in a past universe, in a past
Manvantara. All evolution is not only, a becoming for the present, but also
the preparation for a future Manvantara. All evolution, as we shall see in a
moment, is carried on by co-operation. From the results of the past there
is going to be a further process of becoming, which in its turn will help in
the next universe [76] that is evolved. For thus we shall begin to
realise what we are doing and what we evolve, how we are being helped by the
evolution of the past and how we shall help in the evolution of the future.
And by ‘past’ I mean a past universe, and by ‘future’ I mean a future
universe, separated from this by pralaya, separated from us by a long
period of repose, but linked to us by that unbroken law of karma which is
of the Essence of the Supreme and is, like It, without beginning and without
end. Co-operation, I say, is wanted. And how? Now there is going to be
evolved what we call mind -the power of thought. It must be evolved by the
cooperation of the minds that have been evolved and perfected in a previous
universe. Take the Aitereyopanishat again: you will remember there is
something more than the entering in of the devas. Paramatma said: “How shall
I enter in?” There is to be something more than these sheaths which are made
as it were along the primary line of evolution. Now we must seek the minds
that have been already evolved, the Sons of Mind we call them. We have
[77] now to come to the building of man, the making possible of a new
humanity.
And now I must turn for a moment to my western science
and give you a microscope to help in the understanding of this next stage.
Suppose you take a germ developed in, we will say, a plant - it does not
matter a bit whether we take a plant, an animal or man, for the purpose of
my argument - a germ-cell in a plant, say a flower; pulling the flower to
pieces, throw aside the calyx and the petals, which are simply protective;
throw aside the male organs, for we do not need them yet; and going into the
very centre, the very middle of the flower, we find there a sheath, and when
we open this sheath, little bodies like seeds. When we open these little
bodies, we then want to help our eyes with some magnifying power, that we
may see further and thus examine these bodies, or ovules. I find a cell
within the ovule, a cell that is called the germinal cell. And going further
still within that even I find the nucleus, as it is called; and then still
further the nucleolus. Is it not strange that in modern science we are doing
exactly the same as Uddalaka [78] did when he taught his son and made
him take a seed and open case after case to find the germ of the future tree
within the seed; Uddalaka did it just for the same purpose that I am turning
to this morning, that we may understand the power of Brahman the invisible,
and that within the seed there lay enfolded the future material tree. But I
am doing this by way of science, so we are quite respectable. Within my tiny
germ what do I find? Possibility. But one side of possibility only and not
the whole. For if that germ be left to itself nothing more will happen.
Everything has been done that can be done by the female side to make the
germ ready for future growth and the development of a new individual. But
the individual is not there: only the preparation. The female side of Nature
can do nothing but prepare the receptacle, wherein shall be assembled
together everything that is necessary for the nourishing of the future
individual, but something more is wanted ere further evolution can take
place. Within that germ there are possibilities, but there is as yet no
individual. For the making of that new [79] individual there needs
the junction of two forces and not the growth of one alone. And although the
germ be there, and the tracing of the future, there is no possibility of
growth unless from outside some new force shall arise. How does it come? It
comes from that which I threw aside in my first dissection of the flower;
from those male organs which for the moment I did not require. And from
these there comes the force enwrapped in the form which is the other side of
the dual evolution with which we are now familiar - the invigorating, the
vitalising, the fertilising energy, which by itself can do nothing, which by
itself is sterile, as that other also is barren; but which coming to the
other, meeting the other, will give rise to a new individual. That is the
point that I want you to grasp. For mind you, there is one Law and one Life
everywhere, and that which in material nature you can see with your eyes,
you can see with your mind in the higher regions of the universe. For
Brahman is one and His works everywhere show the same nature, and the
sameness is felt through the difference of the materials. [80] The
principle of evolution is the same everywhere, for Brahman alone is the
energising force, and His nature is the Law by which everything is evolved.
When this union has taken place, then only growth begins; when this union
has occurred, then only a new individual is slowly and gradually formed.
The beginning of the individual is at the point of junction; although
the essence be eternal, the junction is a point in time; where the junction
occurs, there is the beginning of the individual as individual, although
the essence of which he is formed is eternal, undying, and knows neither
ending nor beginning.
Now we have the materials to enable us to understand the
coming of the Sons of Mind, evolved in a past manvantara by the processes
that we are undergoing in the present. And the coming of these Sons of Mind
to the helping, as it were, of the lower nature is exactly parallel to the
coming from the stamen of the invigorating energy which shall vitalise the
germ within the seed and give birth to the new individual. And so in those
wonderful stanzas that come to us from the far side of the Himalayas,
[81] in those ancient, most ancient, stanzas, it is written:
FROM THEIR OWN RUPA THEY FILLED THE KAMA.
From Their own Rupa They filled the receptacle which had
been slowly prepared for the filling:
SOME PROJECTED A SPARK.
That spark is as it were the plasm of mind; coming from
those in whom mind had been evolved in a previous manvantara, and filling
with its energising and vitalising force what I will call the female germ in
the receptacle of which we have been speaking, it gives the possibility of a
new individual, a Self-consciousness, an Ego, an Ego to be slowly evolved,
but none the less taking its start from the union which now is
accomplished. For the spark projected from the Flame of Mind is to fire the
material upon which it has fallen, and from that a new Flame will arise,
identical in its essence with that which generated it, but separated in its
individuality for purposes of manifestation. And this is why it is said that
you may light a thousand candles from a single [82] flame, and the
flame is never diminished, although a thousand flames are visible where only
one was visible before.
Now we shall be able to understand, I hope, our
manomayakosha. For what now will occur? You have now the beginning of the
sheath which is able not only to receive contact from without, but, by this
impulse which has been thrown into it by the generating Mind, will become
able to complete the power of connecting the outer object and the internal
sensation, of which we saw the unfolding possibility in the animal but which
is the characteristic of the mind in man. And this recognition of the
connection, this understanding and taking into consciousness in an ideal
form of the constant link between the external object and the inner feeling
is the beginning of the working of mind in man, and is the peculiar
function of the sheath with which we are concerned. For by feeling - the
power, that is, of answering to the impressions from without - it gains
those contacts through the outer sheaths which are necessary in order that
Self-consciousness may be made gradually possible and then, having [83]
translated the outer contact into sensation - that is the first stage - it
transforms the sensation into the idea; that is, it changes it by a process
of elaboration; it changes the contact which gave rise to the sensation into
an ideal form, which it then preserves as material. These ideal forms are
what we call percepts, technically, or the thoughts that are to be the
material on which the knower is to work, elaborating them into concepts, and
building up gradually the individual that is self-conscious and is to be
ultimately all-knowing. The manomayakosha, then, collects all these
sensations and turns them into percepts, that is, the connection between the
outer object and the internal sensation; and then elaborates the percepts
into concepts, that is, changes the recognition of the connection into the
ideal form which is capable of preservation and is the material for all
possibility of future thought. And this is in truth the process of thinking.
The internal image, as it is technically called, is the ideal form of the
sensation which has been rendered possible by the contact that I have
explained; and the work of the manomayakosha is to do [84] this
elaboration. It is just like the crucible of the chemist into which he
throws different materials and a new combination comes out - not new in its
essential elements, but new in its combined existence. He puts them in, but
working on each other they bring about a combination which is the outcome of
the interaction between them, not of the separate action of each. You must
realise that just as there is a difference between the threads of cotton
separate and the cloth into which those threads of cotton are woven, so
there is a difference between the separated sensations and the elaborated
ideas woven out of them by the mind, or, if we take our chemical
illustration, which are gradually elaborated in the crucible by the
interaction of the forces of attraction and repulsion. When that is
accomplished the beginning of self-consciousness is present.
Consciousness is everywhere; how shall we distinguish it?
It is so hard, because we only know self-consciousness, and are not
sufficiently advanced to take from each sheath its own material in the state
of elaboration brought about by the sheath, and study the result. But dimly,
I think, [85] I can put it to you. Consciousness may be taken as the
response of a gradually separating centre to that which is around it - the
mere response; self-consciousness is when in addition to the response there
is the recognition of the ‘I’ that responds. Not the response only, but the
knowledge of the response; not the response only, but the recognition of
the response. For the ‘I’ is builded by the memory that links all these
percepts and concepts together, and so really gives that continuing
consciousness which makes the recognition of an ‘I’ as apart from that
which is ‘not-I’.
Now let me take still a step further. It is said in the
Mundakopanishat:
The organ of thinking of every creature is pervaded by
the senses.
This emphasises the double action of the manomayakosha.
It is in truth the organ of thinking, but is also pervaded by the senses;
that is, you have this double action going on in it always, the receipt from
without and the elaboration from within. And that is why this sheath is so
difficult to understand; that is why so much depends on the [86]
understanding; that is why you cannot master it until you begin to
understand. And that is why knowledge is necessary if the SELF would become
free and know Itself as Itself alone. For here is the element of confusion,
here the element of contact, here the function from without and from
within, and hence the strongly illusory ‘I’ that I shall want to deal with
more fully when we come tomorrow to speak of the use and control of this
sheath. For the moment I must leave it with that great statement of the
Mundakopanishat:
The organ of thinking is pervaded by the senses; that
organ purified, Atma manifests Itself.
We shall see why that is when we deal with the purified
organ and the changes that result.
Now at death there is a separation in this sheath; all
the lower deva element passes from it; all the deva element, which joins man
to the world of devas becomes separated from the next sheath, and from the
manomayakosha. For here is the rending that is caused by death, and this
part waits, as the devas wait in devaloka, to bring [87] the SELF
back to earth and bind it to the necessity of rebirth. There lie the
chains, there lie the bonds, there the links of desire which keep the SELF
imprisoned and tie it to the wheel of births and of deaths. When death
occurs every particle is set free, but the links remain to bind It, until by
Its own deliberate action they are cut.
But I must take the other sheath, which is very easy to
understand and grasp; the real subtle difficulties lie in the understanding
of the one that we now for the moment leave. I take the discriminating
sheath, that which is called the vignanamayakosha - the particle vi
implying the discriminating, separating and arranging of things - the
vignanamayakosha which is to be the sheath of the SELF by which the lower
sheaths are to be mastered. Into that sheath experiences are reflected from
the manomayakosha as ideal concepts; into it is reflected everything which
in the manomayakosha is collected. The one is the collector and elaborator,
the other is going to arrange and to discriminate, to have the whole of
this elaborated collection as material to work on, the whole of this as
material by which it is going to [88] gain higher consciousness and a
more perfect cognition of the individual SELF. For what is the process of
Atma in this sheath? It works on the internal images, it works on those
ideal and elaborated forms reflected into it from the other sheaths; it
works on them and elaborates them further, and it has its special work, what
we call abstract reasoning of the loftiest kind; no longer sensations, no
longer perceptions, no longer the making of ideas, or the elaboration of
ideas, but the discriminating between them, then the arranging of them, and
then the reasoning from them. So that the special work in this sheath is the
work of abstract reasoning, dealing with pure ideas, separated from the
concrete presentations, the realm of truth, no longer so illusory as the
other. For here we have the abstract and not the concrete, the pure internal
working no longer confused by the senses, nor in any way interfered with by
the outer world; there is pure intelligence, clear vision, intelligence
unmoved by the senses, intelligence tranquil, strong, serene. That sheath
must be realised, that sheath must be understood, for there lies the
creative power of meditation, there [89] lie all the energies that
grow out of one- pointed contemplation. There is the creative sheath of man,
as in the Kosmos Divine Ideation is the creative sheath whence all comes
forth; for just as in the first lecture I reminded you that in the divine
form of Shri Krshna as shown to Arjuna, the divine eye when given to Arjuna
saw all forms of living things which in the Universe could exist, so in this
sheath of man, in ideal reality, there exist all forms that can come forth,
to which objective reality may be given by this creative power. That is the
force of Atma in the sheath with which I am dealing, for the outgoing energy
of Atma in this vignanamayakosha is the force which dominates and moulds
everything that is external to it, from which the creative energy of Atma
can work through the lower sheaths when they are purified.
We can now take another problem, so easy once we have
reached this point that one wonders why it was so confusing and difficult
before we reached it. That with which we have to deal are Will and Desire.
What is Desire? desire is the outgoing [90] energy of Atma, working
in the manomayakosha, and attracted by external objects. That is, desire
is outward-going energy attracted from without, and its direction governed
from without. What is will? Will is the outgoing energy of Atma working in
his vignanamayakosha, and dealing no longer with choice directed from
without but with choice initiated from within, moulded on the internal
images by a process of discriminative reflection. So that the outgoing
energy is guided from within in its direction, whereas in desire it is
attracted from without. The direction in one case comes from the external
object, in the other from the inner Life that chooses and wills. Hence what
you call strong and weak will in men. What is weak will in man? A man with a
weak will is the man that is always drawn by desire towards external objects
that attract him and goes after them. He is weak in will. Why? Because he
does not rule himself, choosing his road by the power of memory, reason,
judgment, and discrimination, and everything that should make him steady in
the midst of a moving universe. He is [91] drawn out by the external
object and goes out after everything that attracts him by a desire for
contact, and he goes as circumstances attract him. If he be surrounded by
temptations, if he sees something pleasant, he desires to obtain it; if he
sees beauty he desires to enjoy it; so he is at the mercy of external
circumstances, and we say that the man is weak and we never know what he is
going to do. But the strong-willed man is the man who having gathered
together all these experiences and having translated them into ideal
forms, compares them and arranges them, and discriminating between them and
understanding the connection between pleasure and pain, and understanding
the sequence which sometimes makes a momentary pleasure the womb of a
future pain, he, knowing all this and remembering, chooses from the inner
standpoint; and the outer circumstances may be exactly what they like, the
inner man stands unmoved and chooses as he knows.
Here I find I must leave the subject for this morning. In
truth these two sheaths are completed, as far as in so brief a space I may
complete them. And I need only in [92] closing say this morning that
this inner man passes from birth to birth, carries on his memory life after
life. These ideal forms persist in the sheath; these ideal forms brought out
of one life are carried on into another, and so are continually growing,
until the highly evolved Ego begins to be master of the lower sheaths, and
the creative force that resides within comes forth, and he is no longer
guided from without. For the process of evolution leads to the controlling
of the lower by the higher, the less differentiated by the more highly
evolved. So that in this sheath sovereignty shall at last be centred, and
all shall be obedient to the impulse of the One within; coming back to
birth, it picks up the lower deva-elements it left for a while, and it has
to bring them back time after time until they are absolutely subject to its
will. It contains all the essence of all experiences. It contains the very
inner quality of everything through which it has passed on earth.
Now you will see why it is written that as the wind
passes through a garden of flowers and does not pick the flowers but takes
the fragrance from them and goes on [93] fragrance-laden, so also
Atma passing over the garden of experience gathers, not the facts,
sensations and phenomena, but as it were the fragrance, the ideal form of
each, and goes on with all this aroma of experience fragrance-laden into the
bosom of its God. [94]
THE OBJECT OF THE SHEATS
We have studied during the last three mornings the
question of Atma manifesting through certain sheaths, and we have dwelt at
some length and with some care on the two outer sheaths whose special work
is that of collection; then with the two inner sheaths whose special work is
that of elaborating that which has been collected from without and
transmitting the results, and that of assimilating that which has been
collected and transmitted. Today we have to deal with the last of the
sheaths, and then I purpose to sketch for you, very imperfectly, the method
of the working and the use of the sheaths, so that we may thus complete our
subject and have it - however rough and poor in its outline, yet that
outline complete - and then by further study for ourselves and above all by
further [95] meditation we may succeed in filling in the details that
are lacking and come to a real understanding of the whole. Now the great
difficulty that lies before us this morning in trying to gain any idea at
all of the nature of the anandamayakosha is that a state of consciousness
which has not been experienced by a person is a state which that person is
unable to conceive or to understand. There are many states of consciousness
in the Universe as various as the various kinds of living things - and all
is life. Professor Huxley, for instance, dealing with this difficulty, has
pointed out, that there is nothing contrary to the analogy of nature in
conceiving that there are states of consciousness higher than ours; that as
there are many lower than the human, so there may be many states of
consciousness that rise above that which we speak of as the human, that
there may range above us, stage after stage, grade after grade,
consciousness after consciousness, becoming loftier and loftier, greater
and greater, wider and wider in limits, consciousness ever expanding,
until it is possible to imagine, although not to understand, the
consciousness that [96] shall include everything that exists; and
then he (Professor Huxley) points out that such a consciousness would be as
much higher than ours as the human consciousness would be incomprehensible
say to the consciousness of a black-beetle - and we may add, as
incomprehensible to us in its workings as ours to the black-beetle. This is
a thing necessary to realise; otherwise we limit everything by our own
limitations, and fall into the error of imagining that because we cannot
conceive therefore that which to us is inconceivable has no existence in
fact. Try to realise, for instance, how incapable we are of understanding a
lower state of consciousness. That of a creeper as example, which spreading
over a wall sends out tiny tendrils and pushes a tendril into a hole in the
wall in order that it may grasp it and find support in the roughness within;
and then withdraws the tendril finding the hole unsuitable, and travels over
the surface of the wall until it finds another and testing the other finds
that perchance suitable to its needs. How can we translate in though the
consciousness of, that vegetable creeper? How can we realise in our
consciousness - [97] so different - what is the impulse that makes
it follow its path, that makes it go into a particular hole, enables it to
know that it is unsuitable, and to search for another which is suitable
wherein it remains? What dim, vague and strange consciousness is it which
thus communicates what is necessary for the growth of the plant, and yet
shows us nothing that we realise as consciousness in action, in feeling, in
anything that we can identify with our own? And then conceive again for a
moment - for I want you to realise this, ere I put what I know will be so
difficult even to sense - try and think what it would be if some lower
animal, some insect or fish or quadruped, seeing a philosopher sitting in
abstract contemplation, trying to deal with some mighty intellectual
problem, insensitive to outer impressions, concentrated within the realm of
mind, if that lower creature tried to understand the working of the mental
consciousness of the philosopher, and to judge whether he was wise in his
method, whether he was wasting his time or no. You can realise how foolish
would be the attempt; you can realise how incompetent would be the judgment.
Try [98] then for a moment to realise that there may be above you
more than there is below you, a condition of consciousness as much mightier
than that you know in the brain, as yours is mightier than the consciousness
of the plant, of the insect, of the fish or of the quadruped; and then, not
so much thinking, but, if you will, trying to sense and to feel, follow
consciousness inwards and feel that which cannot be translated into words,
try and sense a possibility, where Atma, clad but in the anandamayakosha,
begins in that last sheath to come face to face with Itself which is
Brahman, that sheath making a delicate film of separation which still will
preserve the duality necessary for the recognition, and at the same time
being so thin, so delicate, and so subtle, that it seems well-nigh as though
the knower and the known were one. The one sheath remains, for without a
sheath no manifestation. Without a sheath there would be unity, and then
all thought as we know it ceases, our form of consciousness is impossible.
Brahman cannot act without the sheath of the universe that He makes for
himself. Brahman cannot act in manifestation without the sheath which
[99] makes manifestation possible. Having, as it were, centred all life
and energy within the last sheath, the sheath of bliss - anandamayakosha -
then let us listen for a moment to the sacred words which give some glimpse
of the glory, and may lead us into some dim sense of that which lies beyond
the veil; it is written:
He, all-wise, all-knowing, glorious in the world, in the
divine town of Brahman, placed in the ether, standeth Atma; of the nature of
mind, ruler of Prana, of the body, of food. Concentrated in the heart, by
the knowledge of THAT, the wise behold the Radiant, whose body is bliss,
immortal.
There are moments, supreme and rare moments, that come to
the life of the pure and the spiritual, when every sheath is still and
harmonious, when the senses are tranquil, quiet, insensitive, when the mind
is serene, calm, and unchanging; when fixed in meditation the whole being is
steady and nothing that is without may avail to disturb; when love has
permeated every fibre; when devotion has illuminated, so that the whole
nature is translucent; there [100] is a Silence, and in the silence
there is a sudden change; no words may tell it, no syllables may utter it,
but the change is there. All limitations have fallen away. Every limit of
every kind has vanished; as stars swing in boundless space, the Self is in
limitless Life, and knows no limit and realises no bounds: light in wisdom,
consciousness of perfect light that knows no shadow, and therefore knows
not itself as light; when the thinker has become the knower; when all reason
has vanished and wisdom takes its place; who shall say what it is save that
it is bliss? Who shall try to utter that which is unutterable in mortal
speech - but it is true and it exists. That is the anandamayakosha where the
Atma knows Itself; its nature is bliss; all the spheres have ceased;
all else has gone; none but the pure may reach it; none but the devotee may
know it; none but the wise may enter into it; for, once again, it is said
that:
Steadfastly by truth, by austerity, by perfect wisdom, by
Brahmacharya-practice, is this Atma attained. In the midst of the body, clad
in [101] light, He whom the sinless and subdued behold is pure.
It is Brahman. It is the Logos of the Soul. It is the
Atma conscious of Itself. But on that the fewest words are the best, and
though I may not leave the stage unspoken of, I leave it quickly, because to
reach it there must be yearning to aspire; because truth, wisdom, devotion
and purity are asked for the vision, and this must be won by many a
struggle, ere the Pure shall see the Pure. We are told that it is bliss. The
end of pain is bliss. Here, there is struggle and agony and friction, but at
the end is bliss, and bliss unspeakable. So that in all the trial of life,
and in all the anguish and misery that may overwhelm the soul of man, in the
struggle that leads it well-nigh to despair, those, who once have known,
know for evermore, and in the worst of agony the centre in the heart is
calm, for it knows that the end shall be in peace and that harmony shall be
the close of strife. Let us, thus realising, come to regions where our foot
is surer, regions more fitted for your feet and mine, that still are
[102] in the mire of earth and that must learn to tread the path of
which the end is bliss unutterable.
Let us now come back to a lowlier study, having caught a
glimpse from a mountain top as it were, of a land that lies beyond, into
valleys of earth where our lot is cast, and let us realise how that end
shall be gained, the path that leads to it and the methods that shall guide
us towards it; for while it may be well for a moment to realise the goal, it
is still more important to find the road that leads to it and to begin, not
in mere hope and yearning, mighty as those are, not only in aspiration and
in desire, to achieve it here, in the life that we lead here, in the place
in which we learn how we may set our feet on the Path and by knowledge
wedded with devotion may find our way at last. So, I come to the working of
the sheaths. Before I conclude with their use I want you to see the
working, because by the realisation of the way in which they work, we shall
solve so many of the problems that puzzle us every day, problems that hinder
our growth, problems that are, as it were, like fetters [103] which
prevent us from walking freely; which make things so difficult to
understand, that we grow discouraged and sometimes fall back into lack of
belief, unable to grasp the belief which it is so difficult to understand.
The first result of the working of Atma in these many sheaths is the setting
up of a number of illusory ‘I’s’, apparently conscious entities, and we
find in ourselves when we look inwards, a struggle, a conflict and a war,
as though we consisted of many ‘I’s’, instead of one, many Egos instead of
one Ego. Self-consciousness must be a unit; none the less we are confused by
this apparent multiplicity, and these ‘I’s’ that yet are not the ‘I’, are a
constant source of disturbance, of mental confusion, and of moral mistake.
Let us then try and understand what they are, and how they come to be. Let
us see how far they are illusory, and what it is that makes them seem real.
For mind you, the conflict to us is real enough whether the combatants are
illusory or are not.
We understand that Atma is working in all the sheaths. We
have conceived, taking sheath by sheath, something of the nature [104]
of, and the working in, each; and it is very easy to realise that if we
stand outside and look at them from without, we shall not see the one worker
but the moving sheath, and that the moving sheath as different from another
moving sheath will at once give an apparent individuality, an apparent
separation, and therefore place for conflict. If, for instance, looking from
without, I sea the body which is at work, and then I trace the activity of
prana, and then I see the passions carrying a man away, and then see the
mind interfering and pulling him back again - studying like that from
without I see all these different things warring the one against the other,
because I am looking from the side of differentiated objects and not from a
centre where the unity of action might be perceived; and just as you may go
into a room full of machinery and see many whirling wheels, and see many
apparently independent bars swinging from side to side, as the engineer
might take you and show you the one point at which all the force was
generated and from which the whole was moved and controlled, so by wisdom
may we place [105] ourselves in the centre, and see the one outgoing
energy which is differentiated in the sheath and not in Itself, so that the
actor is really one, although that in which he is acting gives this apparent
diversity But there is more. That is not a full explanation. Take the body:
not only have we learned that the atoms and molecules and the cells of the
body have their independent life, and are living as atom, as molecule, as
cell, but we have also learned that they are co-ordinated into the food
sheath, they act as a sheath. That is, they act together under the
co-ordinated energy; they act, ruled by the common life, as sheath; and we
have further learned that thus acting, there is what we call automatism
produced. That is to say, when a sheath has acted along a particular line
over and over and over again, that then its inherent energy - which is also
of course Atma but Atma in the sheath - its inherent energy
tends to reproduce, without the direction of the central consciousness, the
actions which it has continually practised; so that automatic action is set
up in which the central Self-consciousness takes no longer [106] any
active part. Two things cause this: first the habit of repetition of that
which is caused originally by purposive action. I pointed out to you that
when you learned to write, it was by deliberate effort, by well-concentrated
endeavour; that a child’s hand is trained to write and traces line after
line, all the words that it desires to form. The Thinker is working there
and moulding the child’s hand to its own purpose as an instrument. When it
is taught and trained, it can do it over and over and over again without
conscious effort; then the sheath takes up the work and repeats the
accustomed motions; it is continuing automatically what was a purposive
action at the beginning; automatic action repeats that to which the body has
been trained, and if you want to change it, you must bring the will to bear
on the change; otherwise repetition is the law of the sheath’s action, the
great law of rhythm, the universal law, everywhere working, of a tendency to
repeat: the night and the day; the light and the darkness; the ebb and flow
of the ocean; all the revolutions of moon, of sun, of stars - all regularly,
rhythmically repeated. [107] That is the law of the Great Breath, and
everything is dominated by it, whether it be atom or central sun in space.
Therefore it of course rules the sheath of the body, the food sheath; and
this tendency to repeat what once has been impressed upon it, is the law of
rhythm working in a particular sheath, and repeating without the active
consciousness of the Ego, all actions repeatedly imposed upon it previously
by that purposive will. So, again you get in the third sheath inwards what
we call ‘instinct’. I need not work that out similarly in detail. It is
automatic action plus feeling; but it is exactly on the same lines. Acts
which have been done over and over and over again are repeated unconsciously
as we see. Coming on then still further, you find the beginning of the third
‘I’, partly conscious of itself, because it remembers partially. That is the
brain consciousness which has memory, although a fragmentary one, of the
life during which it has been working. You get in every one of us this brain
consciousness of the ‘I’ which is based on a partial memory, that is the
memory of the life during which it has [108] been the organ of the
Thinker. And then there is the real ‘I’, whose consciousness is able to
stretch back to every life behind it, and that contains as receptacle every
experience that in myriads of lives has been gathered. Thus all these ‘I’s’
are there, and only one is the real. ‘I’, but when a sheath reflects its
illusory ‘I’ on to the real one, then the real ‘I’ lends its own self -
consciousness to the reflection thrown on to it by the sheath, and so you
have this apparent reality which is illusory, and is lent by the one
consciousness, which transfers to that which it looks on as separate its own
individuality, and gives to the reflection within itself the apparent and
deceptive reality of life. So might you take an image in a mirror for the
real man. If a mirror is so placed that it does not show itself as a mirror,
say, at the end of a passage, you may think that the reflections that are
there are objects that lie further on, and that you will find as external
objects as you advance; thus every sheath reflects on to the consciousness
its own image and to this self-consciousness is erroneously attributed by
the Ego that receives them all. [109]
Now you will find that a light is thrown on our
limitations, our individual karma, by this view. See how the self-conscious
Ego must be limited by the working of the sheaths; see how that which in the
past it has done, and which comes back to it as the automatic action of the
body and the astral, which comes back to it in the manomayakosha, as
feelings, as emotions, as instincts, every one which it has gathered in its
pilgrimage through many lives; how all these must govern, limit and control
it; when it comes into these sheaths for any particular life. You cannot
separate one life from another. You cannot deal with human lives as though
they were separate individuals, for they are not. The life that you are in
now is to the Ego but as a day. Death is as the night which closes it. Birth
comes with the dawning, and that is as another day of life. And the next
death is as the night in which you lie down to slumber. Can you separate
today from tomorrow? Can you get rid tomorrow of all the obligations that
you have entered into today? Will the night get rid of them and set you
free from them? or, [110] are you held crippled and controlled by
them, and have to work them out bit by bit, piece by piece, not freely,
because you have bound yourselves, and because one day is conditioned by the
days that have gone before? So with lives. These lives are days, and these
deaths are nights, and they are bound one to another, and the Sutratma, the
Thread-Soul, passes through them all. Thus you begin to see why you are
bound. You begin to realise the reality of the karma that limits you; but in
recognising the limitation, forget not the freedom. In recognising the
sheath that limits you, forget not the Atma that permeates the sheath, and
moulds it in the permeating. You are Atma, “Thou art That”. Thou,
being Brahman, art never crippled so as to be unable to move. There is the
paradox of at once our slavery and our freedom. Bound by the doings of our
past, but remaining Brahman in the centre, that knows no limit and that is
moved by Its own Nature alone. When then will harmony come out of the
conflict? Clearly when they all are subordinated to the One Life, and when
everything comes from the vibration from within. [111] There is the
end of strife. When the SELF has permeated and dominated everything, and in
the higher sheaths has gained Self-consciousness, and gradually
Self-consciousness on every plane, then inasmuch as all the vibrations will
come from within, and none outside will have power of spreading disturbance,
then there will be perfect harmony and co-ordination between sheath and
sheath. That is why the true yogi knows no disturbance. That is why the true
yogi is ever harmonious and serene. Though the sheaths are there, no outer
vibration may avail to make disturbance; though the sheaths are there, they
will not answer to anything that comes from without. They know their master.
They recognise the hand that holds them. They are like the well-broken
horses of a chariot, answering only to the hand of the driver, which no
longer is rigid but light and easy as the hand of a child. Then there is
perfect harmony and peace and bliss.
We have to study the use of the sheaths, our last point.
Why all this conflict and work? Why all these many sheaths, and these,
myriads of lives, and these millenniums of years? Why these countless
successions of [112] lives and deaths? Why this endless procession,
as it were, of the days and nights of Brahma? Why all these? Let us see if
we cannot understand. Let us see now if, with the knowledge that we have
been trying to gather together, we cannot understand something of the
purpose of the universe, something of the outcome which makes it worth
while that a universe should be. We have seen that there is the gathering of
knowledge. But to what purpose? for mere gathering is not sufficient. The
gathering of knowledge by each sheath is for this purpose: namely, that the
knowledge may remain for use, while that which is its material shall be
powerless for disturbance. We have seen that the outside universe shows
itself to our senses by way of vibration, and that these vibrations shake
the sheath. We have seen further that while knowledge is gained by these
vibrations in the sheath that thus answers to the vibrations from without,
in the progress and the growth of the Ego, the Individual, all this
knowledge becomes reflected in an ideal form, and is finally realised by the
Ego, not as affecting itself, but as having been gathered for the purpose
[113] of use. The whole process of development consists in this; that
you learn to touch, that you learn to feel, that you learn to know, and
then, gathering that up, you possess the whole of it for utility, while it
has lost its power to disturb you and so to fetter you to the acts that you
perform. Easily I think, in a few phrases, can I show you the steps of this
growth. Cast your mind back to that point of junction that I spoke of
yesterday, where the baby Ego, so to speak, was born by the joining of the
two lives. That Ego knows nothing of the world into which it has come,
literally a baby soul, unconscious of law, ignorant of everything that
surrounds it. There is only in it desire, outward-going energy. It goes out,
attracted. Sometimes it enjoys. It goes out again. Sometimes it suffers. It
shrinks back. On and on it goes like this, through, the whole of the life,
aye, through many lives, and after a considerable time, it begins, as I
hinted to you yesterday, to make the connecting link between the sensation
of pleasure or of pain and the outer object, and that is the first thought;
that thought being a perception, [114] i.e., the connection
that joins together the object and the sensation, and so makes the material
on which reasoning may be possible. Thus gradually going on, the baby Ego
begins to gather experience, and learns that there is law. The result of all
this feeling of pleasure and pain, and of joining together the pleasures and
pains with outer objects, of the reasoning upon them, all this teaches this
child-Ego growing out from babyhood to childhood - teaches it that it is in
a world of law, and that wherever there is pain it has struck itself against
the law; teaches it that only by obedience to the law can it avoid pain and
find the harmony that is pleasure. Many hundreds of lives are needed to
learn this perfectly; many hundreds of lives, as we count lives - to the
SELF they are but one. During each of these, lessons are learned. Just as in
the present human life we went to school, and just as we passed from class
to class as we learned more and more and became worthy to go higher, and
from school to college and from college into the outer life of the world, so
it is with this Ego, this Individual, that is growing in many lives,
[115] passes from one life to another, passes from one stage to another;
then gathering knowledge in each life it comes back wiser than it was
before, until it gains its manhood and has something of the knowledge of the
world in which it is to live and work; and then it gains something more.
Using the sheaths in this way, it kills out desire by experience; for, it
learns that, although there are many desires that, being in harmony with
law, give pleasure, nevertheless, they sometimes turn into wombs of pain, by
the great law that is impressed on all that is not Brahman as Reality, the
Law of Change, the Law of Weariness. You enjoy a legitimate enjoyment, and
you get tired of it. When you have enjoyed it to the full, you are worn out
and you get a feeling of disgust and you are weary of it. You eat legitimate
food and enjoy, and the appetite is satisfied, and it turns aside from that
which attracted it. So with every material satisfaction. You enjoy it, yes;
but it cloys. You become satiated and weary. That is the only way of finally
getting rid of desire. Desire vanishes when you realise that all desires
that are not directed to the Permanent have in them the element of [116]
pain. When you find that time after time the joy is followed by weariness,
you say: “Of what avail is it to enjoy for a moment and then to be weary?
Let me seek joy where joy is permanent, and where, the more I have, the
deeper shall be enjoyment and peace and happiness”. For there is this
difference between material and spiritual bliss; the one cloys and disgusts,
while the other increases with every new consumption. With every increase
there is still more increase that lies beyond. That is the difference
between the life of the divine and the material, between the life of the
inner SELF and the life of these outer sheaths. Never shall desire be dead
till that lesson is learned, and the SELF turns inwards to Its own centre,
which is infinite, in which bliss can never be exhausted nor lost. And so,
the use of the sheaths is not only to gather knowledge, and not only to
learn the law of pleasure and pain, but also to get rid of the root of
desire, without which there never can be peace and bliss unspeakable.
And then there is the third use which I was going to say
is the most important of all. I say it is the most important, [117]
because it deals with all men and not with the individual. It deals with
humanity and not with the single man. The third use of the sheath is that in
the sheath you may feel, and feeling you may learn sympathy, and learning
sympathy you may take succour to those who are in pain; for remember, the
life of the God is the life of giving. Do you remember what Shri Krshna
said? That there was nothing He need do. He acts, not for Himself, but
because if He did not, the whole world would stop. There then is a higher
teaching still than yet we have reached. The use of the sheaths is that we
may learn sympathy by suffering, and knowing what it is to be in anguish may
carry help to our fellow, who has not learnt the lesson. We feel in the
sheath. How shall we sympathise? Sympathy is only perfect when pain is felt
in the sheath, vibrating to every throb of agony from the outside world, but
when the SELF knows Itself as separate from the sheath, and realises the
pain, feels it in the sheath, but is not disturbed in Itself by the
vibration that is agonising the sheath in which It is clothed. Try to follow
the thought. It is [118] possible to feel pain with the uttermost
anguish. It is possible to feel the whole of your outer world throbbing with
agony and with anguish that needs your whole will to master it. It is
possible that the manomayakosha shall be full of pain and every fibre
strained almost to the breaking point, and yet that the Self within, knowing
the pain and feeling it by reflection, and entirely conscious of every throb
of agony, is yet absolutely still, calm and unshaken. No pain touches It,
though the pain is felt in the sheath, and It can act with perfect
steadiness, with perfect wisdom, unblinded by the pain and unshaken by the
anguish, and therefore absolutely at human service with every expanding
energy and with every force that It possesses. There is the triumph.
When man by myriad lives has reached a certain point,
when man by myriad lives has reached the entrance of what is technically
called the Path, then the Guru comes forward to take that man in hand, to
lead him along the Path of discipleship and give him the final lessons in
the understanding of the sheaths and of the SELF; and then along that Path,
with the Guru, who guides him, [119] he goes for still a few more
lives learning these final lessons, and having learned them, and being there
within the sheaths, and yet, in a strange kind of fashion, separated, then
there comes at last the point where the Soul, the individualised Self,
absolutely free from all desires and yet dwelling within the sheaths, stands
where It may go onwards into freedom, or turn backwards to help the world.
If it wills, It has a right to go onward, onward into bliss, onward into
All-consciousness, onward, having conquered all the regions of the
universe, into the One, the Unlimited, the All. Or it may, if It wills, turn
back: not again to be in bonds, not again to be fettered, not again that
desire shall grip It and tie It to birth and death; but by a voluntary
choice, by a self-made decision It says: “I will not have final peace till
my brothers share It; I will not have final liberty that is not shared by my
brothers, and enjoyment which is not theirs. I will not take Nirvana for
myself and leave my brothers in the bonds of birth and death, in their
ignorance and in their darkness, in their helplessness and in their folly.
If I have won wisdom, I have [120] won it for their enlightening. If
I have won strength, I have won it for their service. If I have learned to
vibrate in agony for man what avail is it then to throw aside the sheaths
and go on where no agony is useful? I will stay where I am and will work for
man. Every pain of man shall strike me. Every agony of man shall touch me,
and shall wring my heart. Every folly of man shall be my folly by
identification with humanity, and every sin and crime of theirs my suffering
until the whole of us are free.” Such is what we call the Master. Such is
the Mahatma of the Hindu, the Asekha of the Buddhist, the Supreme and the
liberated SELF that remains voluntarily within the sheaths as long as Its
brethren are in bondage, and puts Itself at human service by the supreme act
of renunciation, to remain in bondage till the whole are free, and to go
into Nirvana when all can go hand in hand with Him.
There is the purpose of the sheaths; there is the sublime
triumph; there is the glorious ending. When the manvantara is over, there
shall be myriads of individuals as the results of that manvantara, and at
their head, these [121] triumphant Ones who have led them onward,
have taken them onward into rest, into Nirvana, of which no words may speak,
to the Place of Peace and Rest and All-consciousness, that is in store for
humanity. And then on the other side Those who have triumphed bring back
Their memory, Their individuality, and Their knowledge, to the building of a
new universe, to the making of a new race. They are the Sons of Mind that I
spoke of yesterday, who came to the help of the world, so that the
baby-Egos might be formed and the new individuals might start. Thus do the
Mahatmas of the past manvantara come back, as it were, as Gods for the
building of the worlds. That is the possibility for all who choose the whole
instead of the individual, who choose love instead of selfishness, and
service instead of gain. We must begin it today. We must begin it in our
lives, in duty to wife, to child, to nation, to humanity. Never is a great
One made save where the smaller duties are first accomplished and that which
in the end is a Mahatma, at the beginning was a self-sacrificing Grhastha in
the home. [122]
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