CHAPTER XI.

THE DVANDVAM — THE RELATIVE (continued).
(C. — i.) SHAKTI-ENERGY AND NEGATION — AS THE
RELATION AND THE CAUSE OF THE INTERPLAY
BETWEEN THE SELF AND THE NOT-SELF.
The third factor in the ^>rra, sva-bhava, own-being of the Absolute is the Negation, the denial, the ' Not,' or rather the connecting of the 'Not' with the ' Not-I ' by the 'I.' From the standpoint of the Absolute this third factor is not a third, any more than the second is a second — for the third is a negation of the second which is Nothing, Not-Being — and where this is so, it also follows that the first is not a first, for there is nothing left to recognise it by as a first, the resultant being a purity of peace as regards which nothing can be said and no exception taken. The full significance of this Negation, which is the nexus between the Self and the Not-Self, will appear when we consider the different inter- 138
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 139
pretations, which turn upon it, of the logion, each correct and illustrated in the universe around us. Thus, the logion Aham Etat Na may mean :
(a) M U A. Not (the) Not-Self (but only
the) Self (is).
(b) U A M. (The) Not-self (is, and the)
Self (is) Not
(c) M A U. (Only vacuity, nothingness is,
and) Not Self (or) Not-Self.
(d) AMU. (The) Self (is) Not (the) Not-
Self ; or, (the) Self (is) Not ( , to the) Not-Self.
(e) U M A. (The) Not-Self (is) Not (the)
Self; or, (the) Not-Self (is) Not (, to the) Self.
(/) A U M. (The) Self (is the) Not-Self (and also) Not (it).
(£-)A— U— M. Self Not Self— Not,
the Absolute wherein all possible permutations are.1
Such permutations and combinations of the Self and the Not-Self and the Negation, give rise to the actual varieties of facts in the universe and to the corresponding beliefs of man ; now to the prevalence of spirit, now to
1 These permutations are based on statements made in the Pranava-Vdda, an unpublished Samskrit MS., referred to in the note at the end of Ch. VII.
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the triumph of matter, again to the reign of pralaya ; to dreaming, waking, and sleeping ; to idealism, materialism, shunyavada, pantheism (corresponding to a, b, c, &c., above, respectively) and all other possible forms of belief. But in every case we find the peace of the Absolute left untouched ; because the nett result of the three being taken in combination is always a neutralising and a balancing of opposition, which may indifferently be called fulness or emptiness, peace or blankness, the voice, the music, the resonance of the silence ; because the three, A, U, and M, are verily simultaneous, are in inseparable combination, are not amenable to arrangements and rearrangements, to permuta- tions and combinations, and these last appear, and appear inevitably, only when the whole is looked at from the standpoint of a part — an A, a U, or an M, which is necessarily bound to an order, a succession, an arrangement. And yet also the whole multitude and turmoil of the world-process is in that peace, for ' No-thing,' Not-Self, is 'all things destroying each other,' and Negation is abolition of ' all these particular things,' and the ' I ' is that for the sake of which, and in and by the consciousness of which, all this abolition takes place. This is the true significance of the Safikhya doctrine that Prakriti, the Not-Self, displays herself and hides
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 14!
herself incessantly, only in order to provide an endless foil for the self-realisation, the amuse- ment, of Purusha, the Self. In such interplay, both find everlasting and inevitable fulness of manifestation, fulness of realisation and un- fettered recreation.
The why of the movement of this interplay, of to and fro, identification and separation, action and reaction, has been already dealt with, in one aspect, in the previous chapter. It will have appeared from what was said then that the Negation appears in the limited as, first, an affirmation and, then, a negation.
We may now consider a little more fully the nature of the affirmation and the negation. The statement, repeated from time to time, that negation hides affirmation within it, and as preceding it in time, should be clearly grasped. In the logion, Ego Non-ego Non (est), the bracketed est, or sum, as it becomes later, is the hidden affirmation. A little reflection shows that it should be so, and must be so, quite unobjectionably, that thought can detect no fault in the fact. Take away the est not only from the sentence but really from con- sciousness, and the remaining three words lose all coherent meaning. To deny a thing it is necessary first to describe it, to allege it as at least a supposition ; and to describe it is to
142 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
give it at least a false, a hypothetical, a sup- posititious, existence. In order that the Non- Ego may be denied, it must first be alleged as at least a supposition. For this reason, and for the reason that affirmation and negation cannot be contemporaneous in a single, particular, limited, thing, it comes about, as we have seen, that the legion necessarily falls into two parts, (a) Ego Non-Ego, and (b) Non-Ego Non. The first contains within its expression the implicit word est or sum, otherwise it has no meaning ; and the second part also similarly contains implicitly within it the same word, est or sum, which alone gives it any significance. For the reasons already partially explained in chapters VII. and IX., the affirmation and negation respectively take on the form of an identification of the Self with the Not-Self, and a separation from it. The mere indifferent assertion, in the third person, of the being or the non-being of the Non-Ego has no interest for the Self; it has no motive for making such an indifferent assertion. Such mere statement about another would have no reason to justify it, to make it necessary, to explain why it came to be made at all. It cannot be said that the Not-Self is a fact, and so has an existence independent of the motives and reasons and interests of the Self, because it has been settled
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 143
at the outset that the Not-Self is not inde- pendent of the Self, but very dependent thereon for all such existence as it has. Therefore it follows necessarily that the assertion and denial of that Not-Self by the Self should be con- nected with a purpose in the Self, should immediately subserve some interest in that Self. The only purpose and interest that there can be is self-recognition, self-definition, self- realisation. The eternal Self requires nothing in reality from outside of itself; it is only ever engaged in the one pastime of asking : " What am I ? what am I ? am I this ? am I this?" and assuring itself: " No, I am not this, I am not this, but only Myself." This pastime, it must be remembered, which from the standpoint of the 'this' is repeated again and again, is from the standpoint of the ' I ' but one single, eternal, and changeless act of consciousness in which there is no movement. Thus, therefore, the affirmation necessarily takes on the form of an identification of the ' I ' with the ' Not-I,' and the negation that of the dis-identification, the separation, of the ' I ' from the ' Not-I '; and the logion is not merely an indifferent statement of the nonentity of the ' Not-I.'
The affirmation, then, Ego est Non-Ego, not only imposes on the 'Not-I' the Being which belongs inherently to the Self, but also, for the
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time, makes it identical with the Self, />, a self; and at this stage, that is to say, in the separa- tion of the two parts of the logion, because the ' Not-I' is always a particular limited something, it takes on its most significant character and name, viz,, ' this/ ' idam,' or ' etat,' as it is called in the Samskrit books. Side by side, also, with this change of name of the Not-Self, which does not mean any change of nature, but only the special and most important aspect and mani- festation of the nature of the Not-Self, the bracketed £st becomes sum, and the first part of the logion becomes : " I (am) this." In continued consequence of that same reason, the second part of the logion becomes : " This not (am I)," having the same meaning as, " I am not this," with a special significance, viz., that in the actual world-process, in every cycle — whether it be the daily waking and falling to sleep of the individual human being, or the sarga and pralaya, creation and dissolution, of world- systems — the I-consciousness begins as well as ends the day, the period of activity and mani- festation. The new-born baby's first shut-eyed feeling in the morning is the vague feeling of a self, in which of course a not-self is also present, though a little more vaguely ; and his last shut- eyed feeling in the evening is the same vague feeling of a self returning from all the outward
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 145
and gradually dimming not-self into its own inwardness and sleep. The order of the words in Samskrit, Aham-Etat-Na (asmi), expresses this fact ; and it expresses something additional also, for asmi, (I) am, indicates that the individual ' I ' at the end of the day's work is, as it were, fuller, has more deliberate and definite self-consciousness, than it had at the beginning thereof.
The ' this,' it now appears, is, in the first place, the upadhi, the body, the sheath, or the organism, which the individualised spirit occupies and owns and identifies itself with, and again rejects and casts away ; and, in the second place, it is all the world of ' objects ' with which the spirit may identify itself, which it may possess and own as part of itself, as belonging to itself, and again renounce, in possibility.
Thus, through the dual nature of the Nega- tion, dual by reflection of the being of the Self and the non-being of the Not-Self, is kept incessantly moving that revolving wheel of samsara of which it has been declared : " That wherein all find living, that wherein all find rest, that which is boundless and shoreless — in that tire-less wheel of Brahman turneth round and round the i^, ham-sa, the swan, because, and so long as, it believeth itself to
146 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
be separate from the mover of the wheel ; but, recognising its own oneness with that Self that ever turneth the wheel, it forthwith attaineth the peace of immortality."1 ' Soham,' *ft*?^, is the Jtva that recognises the identity of the universal Ego with the individual ego in the words W. ^^, " Sah aham," " That am I ; " whereas 'ham-sa' (which as an ordinary word, means the migrating swan or flamingo) is the reversal and contradiction of this recognition, and indicates the Jiva that does not recognise its identity with the ' I.' Two arcs and two only, and always, are there in the endless revolution of this wheel. On the first arc, that which is not, the ' this,' appears as if it is ; it takes ' name and form,' a ' local habita- tion and a name,' and predominates over the Self. This is the pravritti-marga, the path of pursuit, whereon the Jiva, the individualised self, feels its identity more and more with the Not-Self, separates itself more and more from the universal Self, runs after the things of sense, and takes them on to itself more and more. But when the end of this first arc of his particular cycle comes, then the Jiva
*srr sp^ns^ira'TTr n
Shvet&shvatara, i. 6.
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 147
inevitably undergoes viveka and vairagya, thought and surfeit, and turns round on to the other arc, the nivritti-marga, the path of renunciation, when, realising more and more its identity with the universal Self, it separates itself more and more from the things of sense, and gradually and continually gives away all that it has acquired of the not-self to the other Jivas who are on the pravritti-marga and need them. Thus while on the first arc the not-self, falsely masquerading as a self, pre- vails, and the true Self is hidden, on the second arc the true Self prevails, and that not-self, or the false self, is hidden and slowly passes out of sight. To him who sees with the eye of matter only, incognisant yet of the true Self, the Jiva seems to live and grow on the first arc and to decay and die on the second, and be no more at the end of it. The reverse is the case to the eye of spirit only. What the truth is, of both and in both, is clear to him who knows the svabhava of the Absolute, and the perfect balance between spirit and matter..
It should be noted here that, inasmuch as the ' this's ' are endless in number and extent of temporal and spatial limitation, cycles are also endless in number and extent, ranging from the smallest to the largest, and yet there are no smallest and largest, for there are always smaller
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and larger ; and again cycles and periods of activity are always and necessarily being equally balanced by corresponding periods of non- activity and vice-versd, further reasons for which may appear later on in connection with the law of action and reaction, and the nature of death. Thus sarga is succeeded by pralaya and pralaya by sarga endlessly, on all possible scales, and their minute intermixture and complication is pseudo-infinite ; so that the names are justified of f^nnjrj, nitya-sarga, constant creation, and ftfflH From this complication it results that there is no law belonging to any one cosmic system, small or large, which the limited Jiva can divine and work out, on limited data, with the lower reason, i.e., the understanding or *m:, manah, of which there is no breach and to which there is no exception ; and, again, there is no breach which will not come under a higher law belonging to another and larger system. The pure reason, or ^fif:, buddhi, sees the necessity of both, the particular law and the breach of that law, from the standpoint of the all-inclusive Absolute.
Having thus very cursorily indicated some of the most important features of the interplay of the Self and the Not-Self in the world- process, as arising out of the affirmative-
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 149
negative nature of the third factor of the Absolute, we may next deal with the cause of the interplay from another standpoint than that taken up in chapter X, in connection with the question why parts appear in the logion.
It has been said that this multitudinous process of samsara takes place though the Negation, and the word ' necessary ' and its derivatives have been used from time to time all along in accounting for step after step of the deduction. It is clear that the Negation, with its included affirmation, is only a descrip- tion of the Relation between the Self and the Not-Self. It stands between them as a nexus between two termini. It inheres in the two and is nothing apart and separate from them ; by itself it can do nothing ; but, as being the combined nature of the two, it explains, expounds, accounts for, and supports the infinitely complex process of samsara. This combination of the nature of the two into the dual Negation is the necessity of the movement involved in the logion. This necessity requires no support or justification ; it is self-evident at every step of the deduction ; it plainly inheres in, and is part of the nature of, the three factors of the triune Absolute, which have been sufficiently explained and justified
150 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
and established before. For, remember, this nature is not three separate natures — or even two separate natures, belonging to three or two separate, or even separable, factors of the Absolute — but is only one single and changeless nature, the nature of the ' I ' denying that it is the ' Not-I! Whatever may be distinguished or said of the Not-Self and the Negation, or of their nature, can be said only by the courtesy of that supreme nature which is the source, the essence, and the whole, indeed the very nature of what we call their natures. Bearing this in mind, we may easily see that this supreme and changeless nature is necessity, i.e., the nature of the Whole, that which must be always, that which cannot be changed and avoided. This necessity is the one law of all laws, because it is the nature of the changeless, timeless, spaceless, Absolute ; all laws flow from it, inhere in it, and are included within it. It is the primal power, the one force, the supreme energy, in and of the world-process, from which all forces are derived and into which they all return, being inseparate from it, being only its endless manifestations and forms. Its unbreakable and unalterable oneness and completeness appears in the facts of the conservation of energy and rnotion and the inde- structibility of matter, manifesting in ever-new ways, ever-new qualities, but never changed in
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 151
quantity, for the Absolute may not be added to nor substracted from. It is the absolute free- will which is called in the sacred books by the name of Maya-Shakti, the impersonal Goddess of a hundred hymns and a thousand names. It includes in itself the characters, or rather the single character, of all the three ultimates, and it thereby becomes another expression for and of the Absolute, vtz.y becoming ; thus, Shan- kara, for the immediate purpose of his hymn, personifying Shakti in imagination, utterly inseparable though she is from the Absolute, exclaims :l " Thou art the consort of the most high Brahman." This necessity is the cause of all causes, ^FTTlf «RTWRt karanam kara- nanam, and all other so-called necessities are but reflections of it.
We may appropriately consider the meaning of the word cause in this connection. From the standpoint of psychology, as has been shown over and over again by various acute and accurate thinkers in many lands, the world is an endless succession of sense-impressions, and the idea of absolute necessity, which we associate with the successions that are described as cause and effect, is a mere hallucination produced by the fact that a certain succession has been
Ananda-Lahart.
152 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
invariable so far as our experience has gone. This view is correct so far as it goes ; but only so far as it goes. It does not go far enough. It does not explain satisfactorily the ' why ' of the hallucination. Indeed some holders of the view refuse to deal with a ' why ' at all. They content themselves with a mere description, a ' how.' But others will not rest within such restrictions. They must understand how and why there come to be a 'how' and a 'why' at all in our consciousness; how and why we talk of 'because' and ' therefore ' and ' for this reason.' It is true that every so-called law of nature is only " a rJsumJ, a brief description, of a wide range of perceptions 'a, but why is there any uniformity in the world at all, such as makes possible any such rfcum^ or brief description ?
The explanation of all this is that each ' why,' each generalisation, each law, is subsumed under a wider and wider law, till we come to that final and widest law, the logion, which is the resumt, the svabhava, the nature, of the Absolute, which because of its changelessness requires no further ' why.'
A cause is asked for by the human mind only when there is an effect, a change. We do not ask ' why ? ' otherwise. We ask it because the very
1 Pearson's Gram mar of Science. P. 132. ist edn.
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constitution of our being, our inmost nature of unbroken unity as the one Self, " I am I," " A is A," revolts against the creation of some- thing new, against A disappearing and not-A appearing, against A becoming not-A. We cannot assimilate such an innovation ; there is nothing in that inmost nature of ours to respond to it. We therefore inevitably break out with a 'why?' whenever we see a change. And the answer we receive is a ' because/ which endeavours to resolve the effect into the cause in the various aspects of matter, motion, force, &c., and shows that the effect is really not different from the cause. And we are satisfied, our sense of unbroken unity is soothed. Causality is the reconciliation between the necessity, the fixed unity, of the Self on the one hand, and the accidentality, the flow and flux, the manyness, of the Not- Self, on the other.
But, all the same, it is only a subterfuge, an evasion, a mayavic illusion, it is only ' the next best thing ' and not the best. For, in strictness, the merest change, the passing of something into nothing and of nothing into something, is impossible, and impossible to understand. True satisfaction is found only when we have reduced change to changelessness. Then we see that there are no effects and no causes, but only steadfastness, rockboundness, and such stead- M
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fastness or rockboundness is its own necessity, and requires not any external support. Such rockboundness we find in the logion, wherein all possible sense-impressions, all possible con- junctions and disjunctions of the Self and the Not-Self, are present once for all, and therefore in all possible successions. These pseudo- infinite and mutually subversive successions make up the multitudinous order as well as dis- order of samsara, the world-process, which is the contents of the logion. And the shadow of the ever-present necessity of the logion on each one of these successions is the fact, and the source, of the belief about ' cause and effect,' ' reason,' ' why,' ' therefore,' etc. Each one of these successions, because included in the necessity of the logion, appears as necessary also, as a necessary relation of cause and effect. And yet it never is in reality necessary, for every law has an exception, and every excep- tion is under another law, as said before ; it is only an imitation of the one real necessity. The counterpart of this truth is that every particular free-will, while not in reality free at all, appears free by imitation of the absolute free-will ; and necessity and free-will obviously mean exactly the same thing in the Absolute, Aham-Etat-Na, which is and includes the totality of endless becoming. We may express the same idea in
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 155
other words, thus : each one of the endless flow of sense-impressions, of motions, of successions, is an effect, of which the totality of them is the one constant cause ; or again, the Absolute, or the universe, is its own cause ; or still again, the necessity of the nature of the triune Absolute is the one cause of all the possible variations and details and movements which fall within and make up that triune, all that endless- ness of becoming, as one effect.
The whole is the cause of each part within it. This is what we have to studiously realise in this connection, in order to understand the nature of cause, necessity, or Shakti-energy. The simultaneous, the changeless, the ever- complete, the Absolute, is the cause of the successive, the changing, the partial, which, in its full totality as the Not-Self, is always con- tained within that Absolute. When we so put it, the idea of causation presents no difficulty. But it may be said that the difficulty disappears because the essential idea of causation — one thing preceding and giving rise, by some in- herent, mysterious, unintelligible power, to another thing which succeeds — is surreptitiously subtracted from the problem. To this the reply is that there is no such surreptitious subtraction, but an entirely above-board abolition and refu- tation of that so-called essential idea, and of
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every thing and fact that may be supposed to be the basis and foundation of that idea. We show that the idea of necessary causation by some limited thing of some other limited thing is only an illusion, and a necessary illusion, in the same way in which the idea of any one of many individuals being a free agent, having free-will, is an illusion and a necessary illusion. The one universal Self is free, obviously, because there is nothing else to limit and compel it. Here the word ' free ' may, from one point of view, be well said to have no significance at all ; but from another, it has a whole world of significance. Now, because every self is the Self, therefore it also must be free by inalienable birthright. And yet, being limited, being hemmed in on all sides, being not only the Self, but also a not-self, how can it be free? The reconciliation is that every individual Jiva feels free, but is not free ; it is free so far as it is the one Self, and it is not free so far as it has made the ' mistake,' avidya, of identifying itself with a piece of the Not-Self. It is now generally recognised, and so need not be proved in detail here newly, that the idea of necessity present in our idea of causation is a purely subjective factor, not justified by any- thing or any experience outside of us. The outside world shows only a repeated succession,
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 157
which by itself is never sufficient to substantiate any notion of invariable, inherent, necessary, power of causation. This element of the idea comes from within us, from the Self, from our self as willing, as exercising a power of causa- tion, from our indefeasible feeling of an exercise of free-will, though that again, because limited and dealing with the limited, the material, is naturally always resolvable, on analysis and scrutiny, into physical forces. We thus see that the two ideas are intimately connected, nay, are different aspects of the same fact — the idea of necessary causation and the idea of causation by free-will. And as the one is an illusion, so is the other, neither more nor less. And we can understand both only by understanding how the changing is contained in the changeless — that there is in reality no change ; that there is in reality no succedence and no precedence, but only simultaneity ; no causation of one part by another part, but only the unarbitrary co-exist- ence of all possible parts, by the one changeless necessity of the nature of the Absolute ; and that whatever appears as a particular necessity of any special relation between one part and another part is only an illusive reflection, appearing from the standpoint of the particular parts concerned, of the One in that particular many. The necessity of the changeless we can
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understand ; indeed we can understand it so well that we are almost inclined to call it a truism. The necessity of the changing is what we cannot understand, and are very anxious to understand ; but we can never understand it, as we imagine and describe the fact of change to ourselves, because it is the very reverse of a truism, its opposite extreme, because it is false, not a fact, because there is no change. And only by understanding this can we understand the whole situation, by reducing change to change- lessness, by realising that while from the stand- point of the successive particular 'this' there appears change, from the standpoint of the transcendental universal Self it disappears altogether in the rock-like fixity of the constant negation of the whole Not-Self, i.e., of all the parts of the many Not-Self, at once, by the Self. A slight illustration may perhaps help to make the thought clearer. A large library contains millions of different permutations and combinations of the words of a language, each permutation or combination having a connected serial as well as individual meaning. The library, as a whole, contains all these at once in an ever-complete and finished condition. Yet if any individual character out of the thousands whose life-story the library contains endea- voured to picture out its own life-story, realise
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 1 59
it in every point, it would do so in what would appear to it, from its own standpoint, only a succession. In the library of the universe, the number of volumes is endless, and each volume is a life-story without beginning or end, the sole author is the one Self, the readers are also pseudo-infinite in number and pseudo-eternal in time, and they also are all only the author himself, the one Self, and each volume, again, tells only one and the same story, but in an order different from that of every other. Or take this other case, which may come even nearer home. Each one of us is living in the whole of his body, at every point of it, and at every moment of time. But let him try to define, to realise, to throw into distinct relief, his consciousness of every one of these points of his body. So far as he can do so at all, he will be able to do it only in succession. The whole of the universe, the whole of the Not- Self, is the body of the Self. It lives in it at each point of it, com- pletely, at once, and in the way of innumerable mutually contradictory and therefore neutral- ising and counterbalancing functions ; and it lives in each one of these points in the same way as in every other. Each point, to itself, therefore, seems to live in these innumerable ways and functions, in an endless succession which constitutes its immortal life.
I
The nature of this endless becoming, this endless world-process, this cause and effect combined, is embodied in that most common and most significant name of Shakti-energy, viz., »mjT, Maya, even as the whole nature of the Absolute is embodied in the Pranava.
Maya, as explained by the books on Tantra,1 is TIT TT> y£-ma, reversed, ya and ma being two complete Samskrit words meaning, when put together as a sentence, 'that which is not,' is as well as not, sad-asat, existent and not-existent, truly mysterious to the outer view. The extant Tantra-books, dealing with Shakti in a personal aspect, give to it a hidden name consisting of the single letter 3^, 'i,' even as they call various other Gods by single letters. 2 This letter stands naturally between ' a ' and ' u,' as should also ' m ' being only the outer sheath of ' i,' though it is thrown to the end because of the fact that it appears as negation after affirmation. But this ' i ' placed between ' a ' and ' u ' coalesces with and disappears entirely into the ' a,' in the con- junction which brings out of the joined vowel-
1 The Tantra-shastra is a very important class of Samskrit literature, of which only the veriest fragments are now extant. It seems to have dealt with many departments of physical science, especially in their bearing on yoga-practice.
2 See the T&rasAropanishat for instances.
SHAKTI-ENERGY. l6l
sounds, 'a' and 'u,' the vowel-sound ' o,' for Aum is pronounced as Om. l This is in accor- dance with the grammatical rules, allowing of a double sandhi2 (coalescence of letters), of archaic Samskrit, the deliberately 'well-con- structed,' the ' perfected ' language, the complete grammar of which, if we only had it, would show, as tradition says, in the articulate develop- ment of vibration after vibration, sound after sound, letter after letter, word after word, and sentence after sentence, the corresponding articulate development of the world-system to which that language belongs. That this coalescence and disappearance is just, is plain from all that has been said as to the nature of Shakti, which ever hides in the Self, and disappears into the Not-Self whenever the Self acts3 upon that Not-Self, and goes back again
1 This is taken from the Pranava-vdda, mentioned before.
2 Instances of this are frequently met with in such ancient works as the Rdmdyana, the Mahdbhdrata, and the Puranas.
3 This it does, it must be remembered, in the one single way of lending to, and at the same time withdrawing from, the Not-Self its own being. IRfff! t^qfiT J^t WBf«fr^ " Purusha, fixed, self-contained, like a spectator, witnesscth Prakriti." — Sdnkhya-Kdrikd. Verse 65. This beholding, this •witnessing, by the Self is the affirmation by it of Prakriti, the Not-Self, which affirmation alone gives to it all the existence it has ; it is Consciousness which energises and makes possible all the phenomena that physical science deals with.
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to the Self through and after the Negation. When we endeavour to consider it apart from the others it will still not be separated from the 1 m,' and then, too, it will identify itself with the hidden affirmative, whereby power manifests and appears forth in many-formed results and effects, rather than with the overt negative. This has been indicated in exoteric Hinduism in the relation between Shiva and His consort Gauri ; Gauri, in her many forms, is the implied and affirma- tive aspect of ichchha, while Shiva is its overt aspect of destruction and negation only ; in His being this Gauri hides inseparably as veritable half of His frame, so that the hymns addressed to her declare that " it is only when conjoined with her, the primal Shakti, that Shiva becomes able to prevail and energise, and otherwise knows not even to stir."1
Because of its special connection with the Negation is this necessity, this Shakti, treated of together with the Negation, and not as a fourth ultimate. This ever-present necessity, the nature of the triune Absolute, of the succession of the world-process, appears as and is that which we call Shakti, might, ability, power,
f^nr.
$3 ^ * *
Satindarya- Lahari .
SHAKTI-ENERGY. 163
force, energy, etc. In other words, as negation is the nature of the relation between the Self and the Not-Self, so this necessity, which inheres in the combination of the three and is not separable from any, may be regarded as the power of that nature of the Self and the Not-Self which makes inevitable that relation. This relation immediately flows from, or better, is only another form of that necessity, and the necessity is therefore treated as being more closely connected with the relation, i.e., Nega- tion, than with the other two factors of the Absolute. In this Maya-Shakti we see repeated the trinity of the Absolute, the primal impress of which is always appearing and reappearing endlessly everywhere. Each of the factors of the Absolute repeats in itself, over again, that trinity in the shape of corresponding aspects. In the Pratyag-atma, the sat corresponds to Etat, the manifest seat of action, whereby the existence of the Self appears ; the chit corres- ponds to the Aham, which is the manifest seat of knowledge; and ananda to the Na (asmi) wherein lies the principle of affirmation-nega- tion, attraction-repulsion, i.e., desire. In Mula- prakriti again, rajas, activity, corresponds to Etat ; sattva, illumination, knowability, to Aham ; and tamas to Na (asmi), denial, darkness, inertia, substantiality, possessibility. In the
1 64 THE SCIENCE OF PEACE.
Maya-Shakti of the Negation, the triplicity appears as the energy of : (a) affirmation, attrac- tion, enjoyability, qim^n, avarana, enveloping, corresponding to the Aham ; (b) negation, repul- sion, distraction, flinging away, ft^i|, vikshepa, corresponding to the Etat ; and, (c) the revolution- process of alternation, balancing, ^rn^T, samya, corresponding to ananda, the spiral dance of Shiva, tamas and the Na. 1 The meaning of this may become fuller and fuller as we proceed, for no work, that endeavours to describe the essence of the world-process, can help imitating that process more or less, combining the simul- taneity of all and everything in the Absolute with its gradual development in fuller and fuller
1 There is no current triplet of Sarnskrit words, like sat- chid-ananda, or sattva-rajas-tamas, to express the three gunas, or aspects, of Shakti spoken of in the text above. The words used here, at least the first two of them, are met with in the extant works of Advaita-Vedanta, as describing aspects of Maya-Shakti, but in a somewhat different sense. Possibly the powers of ^T¥, srishti, emanation, throwing forth, tWITf,
sthiti, maintenance, keeping together, and ^HT or *$£! or samhara, reabsorption, destruction, neutralisation, balancing up, which are currently ascribed to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, or rajas, sattva, and tamas, respectively, mean the same three aspects in essence. Looked at in another way, samhara would be reabsorption or attraction, srishti would be throwing forth or repulsion, and sthiti would be maintenance or the balancing of the two. In this view, the correspondences of the triplets would also have to be read differently. As to these variations see the remarks in the next chapter.
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repetition in the succession of 'the relative' of the world-process.
This Maya-Shakti is said to be the movement and the intelligence of all the worlds;1 it is their whole wisdom and whole wealth ; it is the power of desire for the maintenance of the worlds' things, and also for their destruction. Many are its aspects and corresponding names. One half of it — that appears in the affirmation, "I (am) this" — is the ^rfVsrTj avidya, the nescience, the error, the illusion, the imperfect knowledge, the separative intelligence, that binds the Jiva to the first arc of the wheel of samsara. The other half — that is embodied in the negation — appears as the vairagya and the f^TT, vidya, the satiation with the pleasures and the sorrow over the pains of the world, and the discrimination, the know- ledge, the clear understanding, of the distinction between the permanent and the transient, that lead the same Jiva on to the second arc of the wheel. In its completeness, it is the *T^Tf^€Tr, maha-vidya, the fulfilled and perfected knowledge, the unifying wisdom of buddhi and pure reason, that frees the Jiva from all bondage, makes of him an Ishvara (in the strict and technical sense), and guides his life on that second arc in that condition of yoga, union, of reason with desire,
1 Symbolised as ^TOT and 2TT respectively (vide Devt- Bh&gavata. L. ix.)
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which makes the true free-will of a deliberately universal love and so confers true liberty, true mukti.
They that desire to grasp or fling away the things of the world, physical or subtle, worship Shakti in her form of avidya, or vidya, in one or other of their many aspects ; they that desire the wealth and fulness of the spirit worship her as T^Tfasrr, maha-vidya, the great wisdom. Each worship leads on, in course of time, by cyclic necessity, to the next. The worship of maha- vidya is the same as the worship of Shakti's true lord, the Pratyag-atma, whose supremacy she ever insists on, and, in dutiful and loving subordination to whom and for the fulfilment of whose universal law of compassion to all selves, she — as Gayatri, the mother of the Vedas, the wisdom-illumined will that knows how to draw upon the inexhaustible stores of nature — confides high sciences and powers gradually to the Jivas walking on the path of renunciation, for the humble service and helping of all fellow- Jivas.
One point should be specially noted here. As there is much confusion in the extant Samskrit works between the Pratyag-atma and the Param- atma, so there is also much confusion as regards Shakti and Mula-prakriti or Prakriti. Because Shakti is connected with both Pratyag-
SHAKTI-ENERGY. l6/
atma and Mula-prakriti and is herself hidden, there is a natural tendency to regard her only as the one or the other. Throughout the Devi- Bhdgavata, for instance, she is now identified with the Self, mentioned under the epithet of Shiva, and now with Mula-prakriti. Thus Shakti, personified, is made to say : " Always are He and I the same, never is there any difference betwixt us. What He is, that am I ; what I am, that is He ; difference is due only to perversion of thought." But the distinction is also pointed out at the same time : " He who knows the very subtle distinction between us two, he is truly wise, he will be freed from samsara, he is freed in truth." l Again it is said : " At the beginning of creation, there were born two shaktis, viz., prana and buddhi, from samvit, consciousness, wearing the form of Mula-pra- kriti." 2 Of course it is true, in the deepest sense,
iwftffer
w. i
n in. vi. 2, 3.
11
l