CHAPTER I.

THE GREAT QUESTIONING.
Katha-Upanishat. I. i.
" The doubt that seizeth the beholders when a man passeth away, so that one sayeth, ' He still is,' and another, ' No, he is no more ' — I would know the truth of this, taught by thee, O Death ! This is the third of the (three) boons (thou gavest)!"
This is the boon that Nachiketa asked of Yama. And Yama shrank from the great task imposed on him and answered: "Even the Gods have suffered from this doubt, and very subtle
2 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
is the science that resolveth it. Ask thou another boon ! Besiege me not with, this. Take all the pleasures that the earth can give ; take undivided sovereignty of it ! " But Nachiketa : " Where shall all these pleasures be when the end comes ! The pleasures are no pleasures, poisoned by the constant fear of Thee ! The Gods too suffer from the doubt, for they are only longer-lived and not eternal ; and that they suffer is but reason why I would not be as they. I crave my boon alone. Nachiketa asks not for another."
" If all this earth with all its gems and jewels were mine without dispute, should I become immortal ? " So Maitreyi questioned Yajnaval- kya when he offered wealth to her at parting. And Yajnavalkya answered : " No, thou couldst only live as the wealthy live and die as they. Wealth brings not immortality ! " Then Maitreyi : " What shall I do with that which makes me not immortal? Tell me what thou knowest brings assurance of eternity."1
So Rama also asks Vasishtha : " The books that say that Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesha are the three highest Gods that rule our solar system, say also that They die. Brahma, the highest-seated, falls ; the unborn Hari dis-
1 Brihad-Aranyaka-Upanishat. II. iv.
THE GREAT QUESTIONING. 3
appears ; and Bhava, source of the existence of this world, Himself goes into non-existence ! How then may feeble souls like mine find peace and rest from fear of death and change and ending ? "1
" To be dependent on another, (to be at the mercy of another, to be subject to the relent- lessness of death) — this is misery. To be self- dependent — this, this is happiness."2
Thus, instinctively in the beginning, con- sciously and deliberately at the stage when self-consciousness and intelligence are developed, the Jiva3 feels the terror of annihilation and struggles to escape from it into the refuge of some faith or other, low or high. And in such struggles only, and always, begin religion and philosophy, each shade of these according, step by step, with the stage and grade of evolution and intelligence of the Jiva concerned.
But when this fear of death of soul and body, this fear of loss and change and ending, pervades the intelligent and self-conscious Jiva ;
1 Yoga- Vasishtha. Vairagya Prakarana. xxvi. 29.
2 Manu. iv. 160.
*Jlva means a separate self, a spirit or soul, an individual unit and centre of latent or evolved consciousness, a single part, so to say, of the universal Self, developing from the mineral through the vegetable and animal into the human and super- human kingdoms ; here of course a human soul or spirit.
4 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
when it destroys his joy in the things that pass, makes him withdraw from all the old accustomed objects of enjoyment, and fills him for that time with sadness and disgust and loathing for all the possible means of pleasure that ever hide within their lying hearts the means of pain ; when it leaves him naked and alone, intensely conscious of his solitude and sorrow, shrinking violently from the false and fleeting show of the world, desolate with his own misery and the misery of others, longing, yearning, pining, for the Permanent, the Eternal, the Restful, for a lasting explanation of the use and purpose, origin and end, of this vast slaughter-house, as the whole world then seems to him to be — then is that searching Jiva passing through the fires of burning thought, reflection, and discrimination between the transient and the permanent, of passionate rejection of all personal and selfish pleasures and attachments in himself as well as others, of the self-suppres- sion, the intense quiescence and compassionate sadness of utter renunciation, and of a con- suming, ever-present craving and travailing for the means of liberation from that seeming slaughter-house for himself and for all others ; then is he passing through the fires that shall purify him and make him worthy of Vedanta, of that final knowledge which he craves, and
THE GREAT QUESTIONING. 5
which alone can bring him peace and fit him for the work that lies before him. Then is his consciousness, his individuality, his personal self, focussed into an infinitesimal point and, thus oppressed with the feeling of its own extreme littleness, is it ready for the supreme reaction, ready to lose itself and merge into and realise the all -consciousness of the infinite and universal Self.
Why and at what stage of his evolution this most fearful and most fruitful mood comes necessarily on every Jiva will appear of itself when, later on, the mystery of the world-process has been grasped.
NOTE. — The first six chapters of this work constitute, in a way, the psychological autobiography of the writer. They describe the stages of thought through which he passed to the finding embodied in the seventh chapter. And they have been written down only as a possible guide-book to travellers along the same path. All the opinions and beliefs criticised in them and, for the time, left behind, in order to pass further on, have served as staging-places to the writer himself, have been held by him closely for a longer or a shorter time, and then, failing to bring lasting satisfaction of the particular kind that he was seeking, have been passed by. But this does not mean that the staging-places and the rest-houses have been abolished, or are of no use. They continue to exist, and will always exist, and will always be of use to future travellers. No depreciation of any opinion whatsoever is ever seriously intended by the writer. Indeed, it is a necessary corollary of the view embodied in the seventh
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and subsequent chapters of the work that every opinion, every darshana, i.e., view-point, catches and embodies one part of truth ; and he himself now holds each and every one and all of the opinions that appear to be refuted in these preliminary six chapters — but he holds them in a transmuted form. Each form of faith, each rite of religion, each way of worship has its own justification. And if the writer has unwittingly used, in the passion of his own struggle onwards, any words that are harsh and offend, he earnestly begs the forgiveness of every reader really interested in the subject, and assures him that if he does think it worth while to read this book through systemati- cally, he will realise that it verily endeavours not to depre- ciate any but to appreciate all thoughts, and put each into its proper place in the whole world-scheme.