CHAPTER IX.

THE DvANDVAM1 — THE RELATIVE.
(A) THE PRATYAG-ATMA — THE SELF.
The Aham, the I, the Self, in the logion is the Pratyag-atma. It is the inward, abstract, universal Self or Spirit, eternal Subject, wherein all Jivas, individual, particular, concrete spirits, selves, or subjects, inhere. It pervades them all, as the genus pervades all individuals. It is all those individuals. The appearance of separate- ness, the individuation, the differentiation, is caused by matter, Mula-prakriti, as will appear later. In itself, it is the avyakta, the unmani- fest, the unspecialised, the unindividualised. It is the One ifoF, eka, in a special degree. It is the essence, the source and substratum of all similarity, sameness, unity, all oneness. It is Ishvara in the abstract sense, the one Ishvara of all particular tshvaras — their Self, as also the Self of, and as much as of, the Jivas that have not yet arrived at the state of Ishvara-hood. It is some-
1 ^g1 the two-and-two, the paired, the double. 107
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times called the Maya-shabalam Brahman, or Sagunam Brahman, the Brahman conjoined with attributes, enwrapped in, coloured with, Maya. The Upanishats mostly describe it, this Pratyag-atma, and, leading the enquirer to it, finally state that it is identical with Brahman. Such aphoristic utterances, apparently, have led to the confusion which prevails at the present day amongst the vedantis of the various schools, as to the relation between Pratyag-atma and Param-atma, or Brahman. The great words of the Upanishats refer to the Pratyag-atma : " Unmoving, it outstrippeth the wind ; the Gods themselves may not attain to it ; it goeth beyond all limitations ; by knowledge of it, the Jiva attains to the (first) peace of unity ; the white, the bodiless, the pure ; the Self-born ; smaller than the smallest, yet vaster than the vastest ; which cannot be spoken of or seen or heard or breathed, but which itself speaks and sees and hears and breathes ; which espouses the enquirer and appears within him of its own law, and may not be taught by another ; ever it hides in the cave of the heart ; it upholds the three worlds ; it divides itself and appears in all these endless forms, and yet is best described by saying, ' not this,' ' not this.' "1
1 Vide the fsAa, Kena, and Katha Upanishats.
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And then comes the addition : " This Atm& is the Brahman."1 The meaning is that the one so described is the Atma, but the same Atm& plus the description, viz., ' not this' — that is to say, plus the consciousness that ' I am not other than I,' which consciousness is inseparable from, nay, is the very being, and the whole being, and the whole nature of the Self — is Brahman.
This Pratyag-atma is the true frRq, nitya, constant, eternal ; the «j?7Wfrw, kutastha-nitya, the changelessly movelessly permanent, as opposed to the qfwrfqfiin, parinami-nitya, the changefully persistent and everlasting ; it is the eternal. While the Absolute may be said to be beyond eternity as well as time — or rather to include them both as eternity plus time, seeing that eternity is opposed to time, and the Absolute is not opposed to anything else and outside of it, but contains all opposites within itself — the word eternal, as opposed to temporal, may properly be assigned to the Pratyag-atma in its abstract aspect. As such it is ever- complete and undergoes no change, but is the substratum and support of all changing things and of time, even as an actor of his theatrical attires.
1 M&nd&kya. 2.
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For concrete illustration, take the case of ^JTO, sushupti, sound slumber, awaking from which the man says : " I slept well, I knew nothing." Knowing nothing, i.e., the Not-Self, he was out of time literally, he was at complete rest in the eternal, wherein he felt perfect repose after the day's turn of fatiguing work ; whereout he comes back again into time and to the cognition of somethings, when the restlessness of desire for the experiences of samsara again overpowers him. The further special meaning of sushupti, the meaning of sleep, as of death, may appear later. In the present connection it is enough to refer to this one aspect of it, and to point out that the inner significance of the expression, " the Self knows nothing during sushupti," is that it, in that condition, positively knows what is technically called Nothing, i.e., the Not- Self as a whole, for the potency, the necessity, of the Being of the Self maintains constantly, in one unbroken act or fact of consciousness, this Nothing or pure Not-Self before that Self. In other words the Jiva, in the short moment of sushupti passes almost entirely (for, strictly speaking, it cannot pass entirely, for reasons that will appear on studying the nature of the Jiva) out of the region of the many experiences of par- ticular not-selves, of successive somethings,
THE PRATYAG-ATMA. Ill
into the other side, the other facet (and yet not other but rather all-including aspect), of that region, viz., into the region of the single underlying ever-present one experience, one consciousness by the universal Self of the pseudo-universal Not-Self. That the Jiva does not pass entirely out of the state of cognition, a consciousness which is its very nature and essence, is the reason why the thread and continuity of his identity reappears unbroken after the sushupti.
As with reference to time, the Self obtains the name of the eternal, co-existently present at every point of time- — for all the endlessly successive points of time are co-existent to, and in, its eternal and universal all-embracing consciousness — so with reference to space, its name is the f^H, vibhu, all-pervading, infinite, unextended, or extensionless ; and again the TH^n'tf, sarva - vyapi, all - pervading, omni- present, the simultaneously present at every point of space, for all the endlessly co-existent points of space are simultaneously present in that same consciousness.
Lastly, with reference to motion, its best name seems to be the «8«w, kutastha, the rock-seated, or the ^ifacifn^, avikari, the un- changing, the fixed, or, again, the antaryami, the inner watcher or ruler.
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Out of the relation of the Self to the Not-Self, as embodied in the logion, there arises a triplicity of attributes in both. The triune nature of the Absolute — the one constant and timeless moment thereof which contains within it three incessant moments — imposes severally on the Self and the Not- Self, three gunas, WWl attributes, properties, or qualities. These three inseparable moments in the Absolute may be thus distinguished : (a} The T holds the ' Not-I' before itself, and, .so facing it, denies it, i.e., cognises the Not-Selfs non-entity, its nothingness. This face-to-faceness constitutes the moment of cognition (including sub-divisions to appear later), (b) This cognition of the Not-Self by the Self is due to, and is of the nature of, a self-definition by the Self, a constant definition of its own nature to itself as being actually different from all Not-Self, from all things other than the pure Self, which might possibly be regarded as identical with itself. Implied there- fore in this Self-consciousness is the action of an identification and a separation of the Self with and from the Not-Self. This is the moment of action, having its sub-divisions also, (c) The third moment is that which intervenes between the other two, the inner condition, so to say (for there is no real distinction of inner and
THE PRATYAG-ATMA. 11$
outer here), of the ' I,' its tendency or desire, between the holding of the ' Not-I ' before itself, on the one hand, and its movement into or out of it, on the other. This third moment, of desire, also has sub-divisions, to be developed later. These three moments manifest in the individual Jiva as SFR, jnana, fall, kriya, and ^ST, ichchha respectively.1 They will be treated of in detail further on. Here it is enough to say that these three moments in the Absolute Brahman appear in the universal Pratyag-atma as the three attributes of f**H, chit, ^JTf, sat, and wt which are the seeds, the principia, the possi- bilities and potencies, the universal and abstract aspects, of what in the individual Jiva manifest as jnana, kriya and ichchha.2 Sat, being in a special sense and degree, the principle in con- sciousness of actual (self-) assertion and (other-) denial, actual identification and separation, putting together and taking apart, corresponds to kriya, which alone gives or takes away existence, or particularised being. Chit, con-
1 The English words 'know, con, ken, cognise,' 'create' and 'wish 'are apparently derived from the same roots, viz., 'jfia,' ' kri ' and ' ish,' respectively.
2 In current Vedanta works the meaning, as generally accepted, of sat, chit, and ananda, is explained to be being, consciousness, and bliss respectively.
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sciousness in its special aspect of cognition, mere holding before oneself of a Not-Self and ignoring it, denying it, knowing it to be not, corresponds to jfiana, which enables a thing to be known as existent or non-existent, true or 'false. Ananda, the inner condition of the Self between cognition and action, is that principle of consciousness which connects the other two, is the basis of desire, which leads the Jiva from knowledge into action. It should be borne in mind that these three aspects, sat, chit, and ananda, are not prior in time to kriya, jfiana, and ichchha, nor are they in any sense external causes or creators of the latter. They are co-eval with each other in their universal and unmanifested aspect, and are identical with the second triplet, which is only their particular and manifested aspect ; even as universal and particular, abstract and concrete, substance and attribute, may be said to be identical. The two cannot be separated, but only dis- tinguished, as before pointed out. Pratyag-atm^ cannot and does not exist without and apart from Jivas, and Jivas cannot and do not exist without and apart from Pratyag-atma. But while in Pratyag-atmS. consciousness is self- consciousness, which, against the foil of the Not -Self, is self-assertion, self-knowledge
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and self-desire all in one, all evenly balanced and equal, none greater than the other, all merging into each — so that the Pratyag-citmci is often exclusively referred to in the Upa- nishats by only one of the three attributes, as only ananda, or chit, or sat — the Jiva is a compound of jMna, ichchha and kriya", which, by the necesssary fact of their confinement to particulars, realise their inseparable contem- poraneousness only in an endless succession, rotating one after the other, two being always latent, but never absent, while one is patent.
How and why three moments come to be distinguishable in what is partless will appear on fully considering the nature of the second factor in the triune Absolute.1
Such then is the Sat- chid -&nanda, the Saguna- Brahman, having three attributes as the constituent principles of its being, the three potentialities which are necessarily present in it with reference to the necessary nature of its two co-factors in the Absolute. But we see clearly all the while that it is not personal, not individual, not some one that is separate from other ones, not the single ruler of any one particular kosmic system, but the universal Self, that is the very substratum of and is
1 See the next chapter.
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immanent in all such particular Ishvaras, i.e., Jivas risen to be rulers of world-systems, and all other Jivas whatsoever.
We may note that the triplicity of attributes in the Self is a reflection of the triuneness of the Absolute : Self, with reference to the Self, whose very being is constant awareness of itself, developes chit ; with reference to the Not-Self, which it posits — therefore creates, i.e., gives to it the appearance of existence — and denies, sat ; with reference to the Negation, ceasing from the restless turmoil of the Many, it shows forth ananda and the bliss of peace.
This Pratyag-atma is in a sense capable of being worshipped. Worship and devotion may be directed to it in the shape of constant study and recognition of its nature ; of constant desire to see and feel by universal love its presence everywhere, and as all selves and in all not-selves ; of constant endeavour to realise such presence by acts of compassion and help- fulness and service. Such is the worship of the Atma by the Jiva who, having finished (for that cycle) his journey on the path of H^ftf, pravritti, pursuit, marked out by the first half of the logion, is now treading (for that cycle) the return-path of fa^fi* nivritti and renunciation, which is laid down by the second half of that same logion. To such a Jiva the
THE PRATYAG-ATMA.
special Ishvara of his own particular world- system is the higher individuality — of which his own individuality is, in one respect, an integral part — the father of his material sheaths, and the high ideal of renunciation and self- sacrifice whom he is lovingly and devotedly to serve and closely to imitate, as far as may be within his own infinitesimal sphere.
Students who cannot yet quite clearly grasp the nature of the relation between the Self and the Not-Self in its purity and nakedness, cannot yet clearly distinguish the Pratyag-atma from its veil of Mula-prakriti, and yet more or less vaguely realise the universality of the Self, who are in short at the stage of the Vishishtadvaita — such students worship the particular Ishvara of their world-system in a vaguely universalised aspect. Still other Jivas, at the stage of the Dvaita and of the theory of creation, worship only and wholly the individual ruler of their world-system, or a subordinate deity, regarding him as the final explanation of the universe.
The absolute Brahman transcends and includes all worship.