CHAPTER X.

THE DVANDVAM — THE RELATIVE (continued). (B] MULA-PRAKRITI OR MATTER — THE NOT-SELF.
We have dealt with the first factor of the triune Absolute, namely the Self. The second factor is the Not-Self. Its many names, each significant of a special aspect, are : 'SMIrHT Anatma, the Not-Self; ^f^nr, achit, the non- conscious ; »f3, jada, the non-intelligent or the inert ; «TT»TT) nana, the many; ifa, jneya, or fwTO, vishaya, the object ; ^fif, anrita, the false ; *^$?» bhedamula, root of separateness ; *&?«*" fa, mula-prakriti, root-nature ; UVT^T, pradhana, the chief, the root-base, of all the elements ; Tf5T matra, the measurer, the mother, matter ; and , avyakta, the unmanifest. l
This Not-Self is — by the necessity of the
1 The word TRT has, regrettably, dropped out of current use somehow ; it deserves restoration, being the same as the well- known English word matter. It is used in this sense in the Bhagavad-Git&: HI^IW^IW ii. 14.
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Negation of it by the Self, which is the very nature of the Absolute — the opposite of the Self in every possible respect and aspect, as is indicated in the fact that some of its most characteristic names are made up by prefixing a negative to the names of the Self. Because of this fact, as the essential characteristic of the Self is unity, the very essence of the Not- Self is manyness, separateness ; and as the marks of the Self are universality and unlimitedness, so the marks of the Not-Self are limitedness, particularity, ever-specifiedness. As Fichte has said1 : "All reality is in consciousness, and of this reality that part is to be ascribed to the Non- Ego which is not to be ascribed to the Ego,
and vice versd The Non-Ego is what the
Ego is not, and vice versd." Or, as reported by Schwegler2 : " Whatever belongs to the Ego, the counterpart of that must, by virtue of simple contraposition, belong to the Non-Ego."
This characteristic opposition of the Self and the Not-Self should be carefully considered, together with other aspects of the nature of the Absolute. The solution of the various difficulties, alluded to before, from time to time hinges upon it.
1 The Science of Knowledge. P. 83 (Kroeger's English translation). 2 p. 246.
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Because nothing particular can be said of the Ego, therefore everything particular, all possible particulars, must be assigned to the Non-Ego. But yet again, lest the totality of these particulars should become a fact different from the Non-Ego instead of identical with it, even as positive is different from negative, these particulars are paired off into opposites. These opposites, again, because particular and definite, are more than presence and absence ; both factors have the appearance of presence, of positiveness, as debt and loan, as pleasure and pain. The pain of a debt is as much a positive burden on the consciousness of the debtor, as the pleasure of a loan is a weight on that of the creditor.
When we are dealing with the ultimate universal and pseudo-universal, viz., Self and Not-Self, Being and Nothing, then even presence and absence are adequately opposed ; it is enough to prefix a negative particle to Self and Being. But when we are in the region of particulars, this is not so ; positive cold, in order to be neutralised, must be opposed by positive heat, and not merely by no-cold : a positive debt is not sufficiently set off and balanced by a no-debt, but only by an asset ; plus is not nullified by zero, but by minus ; a colour is not abolished by no-colour,
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but by another equally positive complementary colour. It should also be borne in mind, in this connection, that the positiveness of par- ticulars, the reality of concrete things, is, after all, not so very definite and indefeasible as it seems at first sight, but on the contrary, a very elusive and illusive fact. In the ultimate analysis its whole essence is found to be nothing else than consciousness ; the more consciousness we put into a thing, the more real it becomes, and vice versd. That a house, a garden, an institution, falls out of repair, or order, and gradually disappears, loses its reality, its existence, if it is neglected by the proprietor or manager — that is to say, if the latter withdraws his consciousness from it — is only an illustration of this on the physical plane. The essential fact is always the same, consciousness upholding itself as well as its object, though the details differ ; thus, to maintain its objects on the physical plane, consciousness employs the ' bahish- karana,' the ' outer," or physical, senses, organs, instruments and means in repairs, &c., while on the mental plane it employs the ' antah-karana,' the 'inner instrument.' As in the case of the individual and his house on the small scale, sp, on the large scale, when Brahma 'falls asleep' and withdraws his K
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consciousness from it, his brahmanda, world- egg or system, disappears. We should re- member here that the arrangement of materials which is the house, the garden, &c., is, for all purposes, the creation of the maker's individual consciousness, and that the other arrangements of material which he uses as senses, means and instruments, &c., are also evolved and created by his life or consciousness ; and finally that that material, ultimately the Not-Self, over which he as an individual has no power, is the creation of, the result of positing or affirma- tion by, the universal consciousness, the Self. If these facts are duly taken into account, then the presence of all possible kinds of mutually-destructive pairs of 'reals,' 'concretes,' ' particulars,' within and as making up the total of the Not-Self, equivalent to Nothing or Non-being in its totality, will not appear altogether incomprehensible.
The negative Not-Self thus appears as a mass of paired positives, the tf£, dvam-dvam, ' two -and -two,' which, while particular and positive from the standpoint of the limited, are yet by the fact of their being paired into opposites by the affirmation and negation con- tained in the Absolute, always destroying each other by internecine controversy, and so always maintaining and leaving intact the negativity
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of the negative, considered from the standpoint of totality. This feature of Mula-prakriti is only a reproduction and reflection therein of the essential constitution of the Absolute, which is necessarily the supreme archetype and paradigm for all constitutions within it, there being nothing outside it to borrow from. This being clearly grasped, the famous quill of Krug may now be deduced easily. Where everything must be, the quill also may be, nay, shall be ; and not only the quill, but the agencies that destroy the quill. All arbitrariness, all caprice, is done away with by this one state- ment. Arbitrariness means nothing more nor less than this : one thing more than another, one thing rather than another, without due reason. Where all are equally, and none more than another, there is no arbitrariness, no caprice. If we ask why this particular thing at this particular point of space and time, the reply is : In the first place, the particular space and time of the question have no particularity apart from the particular thing which defines them ; so that the particular thing and the particular time and space are inseparable, are almost indistinguishable, are one thing in fact and not three. In the second place, all possible orders or arrangements, all possible particulars, cannot actually be at the same point
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of space and time to one limited Jiva ; and yet they are all there also to him, one actually and the rest potentially, to satisfy even such a demand ; and they are there also actually, turn by turn, to that same Jiva. On the other hand, all possible orders and arrangements and things are actually present also at any one point of space and time ; but they are so only when we take into consideration all possible constitutions and kinds of Jivas, and see that any one order corresponds to one particular kind of Jiva, and thus, the extreme demand that "everything must be everywhere and always J)1 is also justi- fied. Such is the reconciliation of the opposites involved in samsara, and the explanation of its endless flow and flux, its anadi-pravaha, beginningless flow, as well as its ever-complete- ness and rock-like fixity. The significance of this will appear more and more as we proceed, for while all laws exist and operate and interpenetrate simultaneously, they cannot, owing to the limitations and exigencies of speech, be described simultaneously. " Speech proceeds only in succession."2
We see, then, that the negative Not-Self is a
. Yoga-V&sishtha.
\ Yoga-V&sifTitha.
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mass of positive particulars, and that at the same time, because of its being in inseparable connection with the Self, it necessarily takes on the appearance of the characteristics of the Self, and becomes pseudo-eternal, pseudo-infinite, pseudo-unlimited, so that matter appears as indestructible through all its changes.
Though essentially asat, Nothing, Mula- prakriti is yet pseudo-Being, i.e., existent, sat; though many and particular, yet it has a pseudo- oneness and a pseudo - universality ; though limited, it is yet pseudo-unlimited ; though finite, it is also pseudo-infinite ; though dying, it is also pseudo-eternal. It is pseudo- eternal, because it is not only dying but always dying ; always, in order to keep pace, as it must because of inseparability from it, with the eternal Self. It is pseudo-infinite, because it is not only finite but everywhere finite ', every- where, in order to avoid separation from that same infinite and omni-present Self from which it may never be separated. The same is the case with all the other characteristics.
Let us now pass on to the question why the logion has to be taken in parts as well as in the whole.
By opposition to the unity and unlimitedness of the Self, the Not-Self is many and limited. Under these necessary conditions the Self denies
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the Not-Self. But while pure Non-Being, i.e., the whole of the Not-Self, in being denied, and in order to be effectively denied, becomes simultaneously affirmed, and so becomes a multitude of passing and mutually-destructive particulars, any one of these particulars, by the very reason of its being limited, defined in time and space and motion, is incapable of simultaneous affirmation and denial. Pure Non- Being may without objection be affirmed and denied in the same breath ; but a particular limited something, which is asat and yet sat, which is sad-asat, existent and non-existent, cannot be both simultaneously. And yet it must be both, for Absolute-consciousness contains both the affirmation and the negation. The reconciliation of these contradictory necessities, these two antinomies of the reason, the solution of this apparently insuperable logical difficulty, is found in the 'successive' existence and non-existence of each limited something. This 'succession' is fR**n, mithya, mythical, a mere illusion, an appearance, because true only from the standpoint of the limited. Pass into the non-limitation of the Self, by turning the consciousness inwards, whenever and wherever you like, and thence into the fulness of the Absolute, and there is no succession. The whole of the limited, past,
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present and future, is in that unconditioned thought at once. The ever-complete and perfect balance of the Absolute appears, to the limited and from its own standpoint, as the successive and continuous balancing of things in samsara. And this continuity of succession, this resurrection and rebirth between life and death, this recurrence between existence and non-existence, this becoming between Being and Nothing, this equivocation between affirm- ation and denial, may itself be regarded as a third part in the logion, completing the triplicity found everywhere because of the tri-uneness of the Absolute.
But lest this appearance of succession should seem to introduce something new and foreign to the svabhava, the nature, of the Absolute, the safeguard, already mentioned in other words, is provided. While each one of a pair of opposites is succeeded in a later time in the same place (or space) by the other, it is also co-existed with in the same time in another place by that other; for the endless limited positives that make up the pseudo-unlimited negativity or non-being of the Not-Self, in order to do so, must be constantly paired as opposites so that they always counterbalance each other, and so actually leave behind a cipher only, whenever the totality of them may be summed
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up. Thus a constant balance too appears in the world-process, wherein the many co-exist with, as well as succeed, each other. The truth of this may be verified in the daily life of human beings as well as the life of kosmic systems. Life to one means and necessarily implies death to another simultaneously, at the same time, and to that one itself successively, i.e., at a later time. Pleasure to one is pain to another and, again, to that one, in the same way. So with the rise and decay of solar systems. That this must be so is due to the fact that the totality of paired and opposed matter (positive and negative) is fixed, once for all, as the whole, by that unconditioned thought which is the Absolute, and cannot newly be added to or taken away from. Matter is uncreatable as well as indestructible. Therefore what appears as an increase in one place or moment is necessarily due to a decrease in another place and moment, and vice versd. This will appear further in treating of the law of action and reaction.
In these facts, co-existent and successive, combined with the infinity and eternity of the Self — against which they are outlined and which they constantly endeavour to reflect and reproduce in themselves — we find embodied and manifested the continuous movement of
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all and everything from place to place and moment to moment ; and also the recurring return of all and everything, though only in appearance and not in actuality, to the same position in co-existent surroundings amidst its companion-objects, and also to the same position in the successive order and arrangement of those objects.
This thought, if properly followed out, explains the why of recurring cycles in individual as well as kosmic life ; why every Jiva and all Jivas must pass though all experiences and the same experiences, turn after turn ; how every finite thing, even a passing thought, an atom vibration, the most evanescent phenomenon, is pseudo-infinite and pseudo- eternal, i.e., endless and everlasting ; xvhy there must be an endlessness of veils upon veils, planes within planes, senses beside senses, and elements after elements ; why nothing and no one, atom-dust or solar system, on the whole, is really more important than any other ; why and how the immortality of the Self is assured to all ; and how all are yet always graded to each other and bound up, in ever higher and higher range of unity, in (the) one consciousness.
The considerations which explain why the logion is taken in two, or rather, three parts,
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also explain how three moments are distinguish- able in the Absolute. Indeed, the difference between the three parts and the three moments is only the difference between the third person, on the one hand, and the first and second, on the other, between looking at the Self and Not-Self as Being and Nothing, or as ' I ' and ' This.' The simultaneity of past, present, and future ; the compression into one point of behind, here, and before ; the absence of all movement — these are congenial to the whole, but are not possible to and in the part and the particular. The positing (while denying) of the Not-Self by the Self, the op-posing (while affirming) of the same by the same, the corn-posing of (while negating all connec- tion between) the two by means of the Negation — these three facts, while simultaneous in the Absolute, where the whole Self deals with the whole Not-Self, cannot be such where a particular, limited, not-self or ' this ' is concerned. They can appear only in succession : first the positing, the moment of jnana ; then the op-posing (after identifying), the moment of kriy& ; and, intervening between them, or, indeed, enveloping them both and holding them together, the corn-position, the moment of ichchha. And yet, even while so succeeding one another, these moments cannot, as pointed out in the previous
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chapter, altogether lose the contemporaneousness which belongs to them by right of being in the timeless and successionless Absolute, and which appears in the fact that they succeed not only one another but each other, and in incessant rotation.1
Thus is the world-process one vast device, or, rather, one vast mass of devices, for reconciling the opposed necessities of the reason.
Another of the more important con- sequences issuing from the essential nature, the limitedness, the particularity and many- ness, of Mula-prakriti may also be noted here.
The distinctions between thought and thing, ideal and real, abstract and concrete, are all immediately due to this characteristic, and are in reality nothing more than the distinction between whole and part. From the standpoint of the whole, the Absolute, or even from that of the universal Pratyag-atma, all possible varieties of the Not-Self are 'ideal,' are 'thought,' are parts of the ' abstract ' Not-Self, thought by the Self as negated ; but each such variety, from
1 These facts constitute the metaphysical ' why ' of the continuum of consciousness, the theory of which has been propounded by James Ward, and is being elaborated by Stout and others.
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its own standpoint, to itself, is 'real,' is 'thing,' is ' concrete.' The present, to that which is present, is the real, while the past and the future are ideal ; but to the eternal, wherein past, present and future are all present, all is ideal, or all real. Because all is present in the Pratyag-atma, therefore memory of the past and expectation of the future become possible in the Jiv-atma. All this will be discussed more fully, later on, in connection with the nature of cognition.
We may now consider those special attri- butes of the Not-Self which stand out with prominence in the Sarnskrit books. They are "W&, sattva, TWI, rajah, and fffi:, tamah. They correspond exactly to the three attributes of the Pratyag-atma, and arise also from the same compulsion of the constitution, the svabhava, the essential nature, of the Absolute, as described by the logion. It is unnecessary to repeat here all that has been said in this reference before. It will be enough to say that : (a) as sat is the principle of action in the Selfj so rajas is the corresponding principle in the Not-Self, which makes it capable of being acted on, makes it amenable and responsive to all activity, gives it the tendency to active movement ; ( b) as chit is the principle of cognition in the One, so sattva is the
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principle of cognisability in the Many ; and (c) as ananda is the principle of desire in the enjoyer, the Subject, so tamas is the principle of desirability in the enjoyed, the Object. They correspond, respectively, to what appears in the particular as ^ karma, movement, *J>!T, guna, quality, and "5^, dravya, substance1 ; and, again, to the Etat, the Aham, and the Na, respectively, in the Absolute.2
II
Devi-B \dgavata. III. vii. 26.
2 The ordinary current, and, so far, almost exclu- sively accepted meaning of sattva, rajas, and tamas is different, as in the case of sat, chit, and ananda. The eighteenth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gttd deals largely with these three qualities of Mula-prakriti : and they are also defined in the Sdftkhya-Kdrikd. At first sight there seems to be no connection between the meanings assigned here to the two triplets of qualities belonging to the Self and the Not-Self and the meaning assigned in current Sams- krit works. When the ordinary vedanti wishes to describe the opposites of sat-chid-ananda, which he vaguely ascribes to Brahman (without making any definite distinc- tion between Brahman and Pratyag-atma), he speaks of anrita-jada-duhkha, untrue-unconscious-pain, as charac- terising what he, again vaguely, calls samsara, the world- process, or prapancha, the ' quintuplicate ' or the ' tangled.' This is, /.*'., the phraseology employed in the Safikshepa- Sh&rtraka. These current acceptations are by no means incorrect, but they are not the ' whole truth.' They are correct only if regarded as expressing one, and a compara-
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Such are the three gunas, rajas, sattva and tamas, or, in the order in which they are usually mentioned sattva, rajas, and tamas — the great qualities of Mula-prakriti. They are here slightly diverted from the order in which the attributes of Pratyag-atma, sat-chid-ananda, are usually spoken of in order to bring out the opposition and alliance between sat and sattva, or action and cognisability, and chit and rajas or cognition and movement, and finally ananda and tamas, or desire and substance. With regard to these it has been said that "there is
tively less important, aspect or portion of the full signifi- cance. A little reflection will show how they naturally arise out of, and are connected with, the interpretations given here. The following statement of the various senses in which each of these six words is used in Samskrit will help to show how thought has passed from one shade of meaning to another :
^fiTN, sat, is good, true, being, existent, real, asserted or assertable, actual.
, chit, is living, conscious, aware, cognisant.
> ananda, is peace, feeling of satisfaction, joy, bliss, pleasure, realisation of desire.
, sattva, is goodness, truth, being, existence, living being, energy, illuminating power, vital power.
, rajas, is dust, stain, blood, passion, restlessness, activity.
, tamas, is darkness, dulness, inertia, confusion, chaos, pain, faintness, sleep.
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no individual or thing either on earth here or in heaven amongst the Gods, which is free of any one of these three qualities." l Their inseparability from each other and from the Not-Self, and therefore from the Self, follows naturally from all that has gone before. The Devi-Bhdgavata*- shows and states clearly how while one quality may, nay must, predominate in a certain individual, the others are never, and can never be, entirely absent, even in the case of the high Gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, who are ordinarily regarded as wholly rajasic, sattvic, and tamasic respectively.
The manifestations and results, but not the causes, of these gunas are spoken of largely in the current Samskrit works. Nor are any detailed statements as to the correspondences between these triplets of attributes, sat-chid- ananda, rajas-sattva-tamas, kriya-jnana-ichchha, and karma-guna-dravya, available in the extant books. Of course, it is enough, in a certain sense, to group the contents of the world- process under sattva, rajas and tamas, because, at present, the Mula-prakriti or material aspect is the most prominent in human life ; but the full understanding of their significance
1 Bkagavad-Gtid. xviii. 40. 2 III. vi. vii. viii. ix.
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necessarily requires knowledge of the other triplets.
This Not-Self, the second of the three ultimates of the world-process, is not capable of receiving worship, or of being made the basis of religious practice, except in the way of study, as the object. But even so, because it is one of the ultimates, it will necessarily lead in the end to a recognition of the other two, and so to peace. To single-minded, disinterested and unselfish scientists and students of the world of material objects may be applied the words of Krishna : " They also, ever desirous of the good of all creatures, come ultimately to the Self",1 as witness the instinctive recognition of the Self in these statements by a man of science : " Science serves life, not life science ; " " The world is an idea, or a sum of ideas ; " " The actual problem . . . consists not in explaining psychical by physical phenomena, but rather in reducing to its psychical elements physical, like all other psychical, phenomena."2 It is but natural that such recognition should often be imperfect and often distorted, as witness
1 Bhagavad-Gttd. xii. 4.
s Max Verworn. General Physiology, translated into English by F. S. Lee (1899). Pp. 2, 37 and 38.
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this other statement of the same man of science : ". . . this monistic conception . . . alone holds strictly to experience . . . and necessarily sets aside the ancient doctrine . . . of the wandering of the soul."1 But still it is much to have advanced to a recognition of the Self; the correction of inaccurate and hasty deductions is possible only on due study of the nature of that Self, which will show how there may be, or, rather, must be, one Self and monism, and yet also many selves and 'wanderings of souls,' at the same time.
1 Ibid. P. 39.