CHAPTER VII.

THE LAST ANSWER.
Yama, Lord of Death, than whom, as Nachiketa said, there could be no better giver of assurance against mortality, no truer teacher of the truth of life and death, gives this last answer : " That which all the scriptures ponder and repeat ; that which all the shining sufferers declare ; that for which (the pure ones) follow Brahmacharya (the life of holiness, of sacrifice to Brahman) ; that do I declare to thee in brief, it is AUM."1
1 Katha- Upanishat. I. ii. 15. 84
THE LAST ANSWER. 85
What is the meaning of this mysterious state- ment repeated over and over again in a hundred ways in all Samskrit literature, sacred and secular ? Thus :
The Prashna- Upnnishat says : " This, O Satya- kama, desiror of truth, is the higher and the lower Brahman — this (that is known as) the Aum. Therefore, (strong-based) in that as (his) home (and central refuge), the knower may reach out to any thing (that he deems fit to follow after, and shall obtain it)." 1
The Chhdndogya says : " The Aum is all this ; the Aum is all this." 2
The Taittiriya says : " Aum is Brahman ; Aum is all this."3
The Mdnd&kya says : " This, the imperishable Aum is all this ; the unfolding thereof is the past, the present and the future ; all is Aum." 4
The Tdra-sara repeats these words of the Mdndukya and says again : "The Aum — this is
«m«i>T*
i v. 2.
i n. niii. 3.
?ft I I. viii.
f^fir Tr^rfcirrT ^^ i i.
86 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
the imperishable, the supreme Brahman ; it alone should be worshipped."1
Patahjali says : " The declarer Thereof is the Pranava."2
Such quotations may be multiplied a hundred- fold. What is the meaning of these mysterious and fanciful-looking statements ? Many pro- found and occult interpretations of this triune sound have been given expressly in the Upanishats themselves, also in the Gopatha BrAhmana, and in the books on Tantra, but the deepest and most luminous of all remains implicit only. For if the above seemingly exaggerated statements are to be justified in all their fulness, then, in view of all that has gone before, Aum must include within itself the Self, the Not-Self, and the mysterious Relation between them which has not yet been dis- covered in any of the preceding answers — that mysterious Relation, which being discovered, the whole darkness will be lighted up as with a sun, the Relation wherein will be combined change- lessness and change. If it does this, then truly is the Indian tradition justified that all know- ledge, all science, is summed up in the Vedas, all the Vedas in the Gayatri and
27.
2 Yoga-Sutras, i. 27.
THE LAST ANSWER. 87
the Gayatri in the Aum ; then truly are all the Vedas and all possible knowledge there, for all the world-process is there. The Self, the Not-Self, and their mutual Relation — these three, the primal trinity, the root-base of all possible trinities, exhaust the whole of thought, the whole of knowledge, the whole of the world- process. There is nothing left that is beyond and outside of this primal trinity, which in its unity, its tri-une-ness, constitutes the Absolute which is, and wherein is, the totality of the world - process — the world - process which is nothing else than the Self or Pratyag-atma, the Not-Self or Mula-prakriti, and their Interplay.
But how can these three be said to be expressed by a single word ? The immemorial custom of summing up a series, or of expressing a fact, in a single letter, and then of joining letters thus significant into a single word — of which many examples are to be found in the Upanishats — here gives the clue.1 Each letter
1 This ancient method of expressing a profound truth by assigning to each of its factors a letter, and then writing down the letters as a word, meaningless, a mere sound, except for the meanings thus indicated, is one which is not familiar to, and therefore may not commend itself to, modern thought. These "mystic words," of which so many are found in ancient writings, and later in Gnostic and Kabbalistic works, are regarded as jargon by the modern mind. And yet in these same words ancient wisdom has imbedded its profoundest conceptions, and the Aum is just such a word.
88 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
of this word must be the expression of a com- plete fact, and we are thus compelled to an inevitable conclusion.
The first letter of the sacred word, A, signifies the Self; the second letter, U, signifies the Not- Self; and the third letter, M, signifies the everlasting Relation, the unbreakable nexus — of Negation by the Self of the Not-Self — between them.
According to this interpretation of the Aum, the full meaning of it would be the proposition : Ego — Non-Ego — Non (est), or I — Not-I — Not (am), which sums up all the three factors of the world-process into a single proposition and a single act of consciousness.
The nearest approach to this r&umJ occurs in the Ckhdndogya1 : " The name of Brahman is truth, *n*f, satyam, which consists of three letters, ^T, sa, and frT> ti, and if, yam. That which is sa is the unperishing; that which is ti is the perishing; that which is yam holds and binds the two together." The unperishing here means nothing else than the unlimited universal Self, Pratyag-atma ; the perishing is the endlessly
WlKlft •^TTH ^flfafiT I 7rrf»T *T fif trfsrflT I
i vm. m. 5.
THE LAST ANSWER. 89
perishing, ever-renewed, and ever-dying, ever- limited Not-Self or Mula-prakriti ; the nexus, that which holds and binds the two together, is the unending relation of Negation by the One of the Many other, in which the two are con- stantly and inseparably tied to each other in such a way that the two together make only the numberless Absolute.
A similar statement, again using almost the same words, is made in the Brihad-Aranyaka)- " Truth, satyam, verily is Brahman. . . . The Gods contemplate and worship the truth, satyam, only. Three-lettered is this satyam ; H, sa, is one letter, and fff, ti, is one letter, "and *f, yam, is one letter. The first and the last letters, imperishables, are true ; in the middle is the false (and fleeting). The false is encompassed round on both sides by the true. The true is the more (the greater, the prevailing). He that knoweth this — he may not be overpowered by the false." Here sa, the first truth, is Being ;
?r em i w pr
I * WoR^t f«T
i Y. r. i.
QO THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
and yam, the second truth, is Nothing, for both are imperishable ; the middle is becoming, the ever-fleeting and ever-false.
The Devt-Bhdgavata says1 : "Why, by what means and substance (has all this world arisen) ? How may I know all (at once, by a single act of knowledge) ? — Thus Mukunda (Vishnu) pondered (within himself, in the beginning). Unto him that sovereign deity, Bhagavati, uttered that which giveth all explanations in a single half-verse, mz. : ' I, not another, is (i.e., am) alone verily this eternal all.' " This, it seems, is the plainest statement available in the Purana literature, after the Veda, in which an endeavour is expressly made to sum up the world-process in a single sentence.
The Yoga Vdsishtha says 2 : "I, pure con-
" \
n
inn ifhs