CHAPTER III.

UNCERTAINTIES.
Tentative, temporary, full of uncertainty and full of question is this stage. Baffled in his efforts to understand the world-process completely, barred out from a perfect religion- philosophy, a system of knowledge which would consistently and directly unify and guide his thought, desire, and action, in the present life as well as in all possible lives to come, unable to rest peacefully in a mere incomplete know- ledge, in a mere belief which remains outside of his daily life and is often coming into conflict with it, the Jiva goes back again and again to that earlier answer, which, if only belief, only incomplete knowledge, is yet a religion also, a religion-philosophy, however imperfect. But each such going back is only the prelimi- nary to a still stronger going forward. The Jiva is now in the grasp of an indefeasible reflectiveness, of a craving of the intellect that
UNCERTAINTIES. 13
may not be repressed.1 He has attained his majority and must now stand on his own feet ; his parents may not fondle him in their lap any longer. And so he progresses onwards through and from the second stage, full of doubts and full of questions. For though of course the main object of his quest is but this : "How shall I make sure of my eternity?" " How shall I be freed from the fear of death ? " yet in the searching he has trodden many paths which have allured him with promise of profit, have sometimes made him forget for the time being the goal of his enquiry, and have even, now and then, led him to a short-lived peace and confidence in agnosticism, in a declaration of the impossibility of final knowledge and the futility of all search. And all these paths he has discovered again and again to be blind alleys, each only leading to a new question and a new wall of difficulty — all the questions awaiting solution by means of the one solution only, the whole labyrinthine maze clearly leading him back again and again to the same starting-point, the whole to be mastered and traversed by means of only a single clue.
viveka, ever-present discrimination between the transient and the permanent ; and f^TTC> vichara, ever-present reflection on the why and wherefore of things.
I
14 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
The many doubts and questions which the Jiva gathers under the one great question are mainly these : —
What am I ? what is Spirit, the Self, the Ego, the Subject ? what are these other selves, Jivas, like and unlike myself? what is Matter, the World, the Not-Self, the non-Ego, the Object ? what is life ? what is death ? what is motion ? what are space and time ? what are being and non-being ? what is consciousness ? what is unconsciousness ? what is pleasure ? what is pain ? what is mind ?
What are knowledge, knower, known ? What is sensation ? what are the senses ? what are the objects sensed, the various elements of matter ? what is the meaning, use, and necessity of media of sensation? what is an idea? what are perception, conception, memory, imagina- tion, expectation, design, judgment, reason, intuition ? What are dreams, wakings, and sleepings? what are abstract and concrete? what are archetype, genus, and species ? what are universals, particulars, and singulars? what is truth ? what are illusion and error ?
What is desire ? what are the subjects and the objects of desire? what are attraction and repulsion, harmony, and discord ? what is an emotion ? what are love and hate, pity and scorn, humility and fear? what is will?
UNCERTAINTIES. 15
What are action, acted on, and actor? what are organs ? what an organism ? what is the meaning of stimulus and response, action and reaction? what is the real meaning and signi- ficance of power, might, ability, force or energy? what is change, creation, transformation? what are cause and effect, accident and chance, necessity and destiny, law and breach of law, possible and impossible ?
What is a thing? what are noumena and phenomena ? what are essence, substance, attri- bute, quality, quantity, number? what are one and many, some and all, identity and difference ?
What are speech and language, command and request and narration, social life and organisation ? what is art ? what is the relation between things and Jivas ?
What is good and what is evil? what are right and wrong ? what is a law ? what are com- pulsion and destiny ? what is a right ? what is a duty? what is conscience? what is liberty? what are order and evolution and the world- process? are Jivas bound and helpless, or are they free, and if not free, g^5, mukta, 'libe- rated,' how may they become so ?
Such are the harassing questions concerning every moment and aspect of his life, that follow on the heels of the searcher. Small blame to him if he despair of mastering them ! Well
l6 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
may he give up the task again and again as hopeless, and try to climb out of their way with the help of the weakling plants that rise up here and there before him, growths of temporary belief and uncertain knowledge, naturally belonging only to the first stage of his journey. But the branches which he clings to fail him at the last, after having served their purpose of giving him rest and strength for a greater effort, and he is shaken down from them by his pursuers and compelled to press forward again.
Let him not despair. The intensity and stress of his vairagya1 will soon break up the shell of selfishness that limits consciousness in him into a personal - self - consciousness and transform it into the all-Self-consciousness, when that inmost mystery of the universe that is now hidden from his sight shall stand revealed ; the energy of that vairagya will transform his hurrying feet into wings on which he will rise high above the labyrinth of doubts and ques- tions ; and from that height he will be able
, vairagya, the passionate revolt from all limitation of the Self, from all selfishness, all selfish and personal attach- ments in himself as well as others, which constitutes the indis- pensable pre-requisite to a true, earnest and fruitful enquiry into the origin and end of things.
UNCERTAINTIES. I?
to master all the foes that harassed and pursued him so relentlessly.1
It should be noted here that each of the first two answers to the great question carries with it its own corresponding set of answers to all these questions. But, like those two, these also are unsatisfactory, external and superficial. The earnest enquirer must search deeper. How to answer them in terms of consciousness, of the Self, which is the nearest to him and there- fore after all the most intelligible ? He must interpret all things in their deepest connection with and origin from the Self; otherwise doubt will remain and satisfaction not be gained. For as the answer to the one great question is to disclose the answer to all these, so in turn the good answering of these will be the test that that one answer itself is good.
1 The expression employed here may appear a little too emotional. This has been done purposely to show that metaphysic deals, not only with the single, cold and sober department of intellectual life, but with the whole of it as manifesting in cognition, desire, and action, and has to show forth the travail of a thought that would encompass all these. The whole life of the true and earnest enquirer is put into such search, hence the mixture of science and emotion.