II. 1, 1-3 : ' As from a blazing fire sparks, being like

fire, fly forth a thousandfold, thus are various beings brought forth from the Imperishable, and return thither also. That heavenly Person (Purusha) is with- out body, he is both within and without, not pro- duced, without breath and without mind, higher than the high, imperishable. From him is born breath, (spirit), mind, and all organs of sense, ether, air, light, water, and the earth, the support of all.'
Nothing in fact is, to my mind, more interesting than to watch these repeated attempts at arriving at higher and higher, purer and purer, concepts of
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 245
deity. These so-called heathens knew as well as we do, that their ancient names were imperfect and un- worthy of the deity, and though every new attempt proved but a new failure, yet the very attempts are creditable, and if we consider the time and the cir- cumstances under which these struggles took place, there can hardly be a sight in the whole history of the human mind more strongly appealing to our sympathy, and more truly deserving of our most careful study. Some people may say, that all this lies behind us, but for that very reason that it lies behind us, it ought to make us look behind us ; that is to say, it ought to make us true historians, for after all, history is looking back, and while looking back on the past of the human race, reading in it our own history. Every one of us has had to pass through that very phase of thought through which the ancient Rishis passed when the early names and concepts of God were perceived to be too narrow, too human, too mythological.
Fr&na, Spirit.
As we had to learn, and have still to learn, that God is a spirit, the Vedic Indians also spoke of the highest deity as Pra?ia, here no longer used in the sense of breath, but of spirit, as for instance, in a hymn of the Atharva-veda, XI. 4, addressed to Prana, where we read : ' Prawa is the Lord of all that does and does not breathe . . . Do not turn away from rne, 0 Prana, thou art no other than I.'
Let us translate Prana by Spirit or Divine Spirit, and this would read : ' The Divine Spirit is Lord of all ... O Divine Spirit, do not turn away from me ; thou art no other than I.'
246 LECTURE VIII.
Again, we read in the Pratua-Up. II. 13 : ' All this is in the power of Prana, whatever exists in the three heavens. Protect us as a mother protects her sons, and give us happiness and wisdom.'
In the Kaush. Up. III. 8 we find a still more im- portant statement : ' He, the Prawa, the Spirit, is the keeper of the world, he is the king of the world, he is the lord of the universe, he is my self, thus let it be known.' In our own language this would mean : The Divine Spirit rules the world, and in Him we live and move and have our being.
As to Purusha, though it generally means man, yet, when applied to the highest Deity, we can only translate it by Person, freed from all that is purely human, although occasionally endowed with attri- butes which belong properly to human beings only. There is this constant conflict going on in the minds of the Brahmans which is going on in our own minds also. They want to exclude all that is limited and conditional, all that is human and personal, from their concept of deity, and yet their language will not submit, and the masculine god constantly prevails over the neuter.
Purusha, we are told in a famous hymn of the Rig-veda, X. flO, has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. This is clearly metaphori- cal and mythological. But immediately afterwards the poet says : ' Purusha is all this, what has been and what will be.'
Then follows a curious passage, in which the crea- tion of the world is represented as a sacrifice of this Purusha, in which from his mind arose the moon, from his eye the sun, from his mouth Indra. Again,
THUE IMMORTALITY. 247
from his breath Vayu, the wind. In the same hymn occurs the earliest reference to the four castes, when we are told that the Brahmana was his mouth, his arms became the Rax/anya, the warrior caste, his legs the Vaisya, while the $udra was produced from his feet.
Other Names of the Supreme Being1, Skambha.
There are many more names of a similar kind. Skambha, literally the support, becomes a name of the Supreme Being. Thus we read in the Atharva- veda: 'Skambha is all that is animated, whatever breathes and whatever shuts the eyes.'
In the Rig-veda Skambha is mentioned as the support of the sky. In the Atharva-veda X. 7, 7, Skambha is celebrated as supreme. Pra^/apati, it is said, rested on Skambha, when he made the worlds firm. The thirty-three gods are supposed to form the limbs of his body (27), the whole world rests on him, he has established heaven and earth, and he pervades the universe (35). Darkness is separated from him, he is removed from all evil (40).
In these and many other different ways the Indian ' mind tried to free itself more and more from the earlier imagery of Physical Religion, and it reached in Brahman, in Purusha, in PraTia, in Skambha the most abstract phase of thought that can find expression in any human language.
These words are, in fact, far more abstract, and less personal than other names which likewise occur in the Veda, and which we should, perhaps, feel more readily inclined to tolerate in our own religious language, such as, for instance, Prar/apati, lord of creatures, Visvakarman, the maker of all things,
248 LECTURE VIII.
Svayambhu, the self-existing, names which satisfied the Vedic thinkers for a time, but for a time only, till they were all replaced by Brahman, as a neuter, as that which is the cause of all things, the Infinite and Divine, in its widest and highest sense.
Names for the Soul.
But while this process of divesting the Divine of all its imperfect attributes was going on, there was another even more important process which we can likewise watch in the language of the Veda, and which has for its object the Soul, or the Infinite in man.
After asking what constituted the true essence of Divinity, the early thinkers began to ask themselves what constituted the true essence of Humanity.
Aliam, Ego.
Language at first supplied the name of Ego, the Sanskrit a ham. This was probably in its origin no more than a demonstrative pronoun, meaning like the Greek o5e, this man there, without committing the speaker to anything more. Man said 7 am /, as he had made the Godhead say, I am I. But it was soon perceived that what was meant by this /, in- cluded many mere accidents, was in fact the result of external circumstances, was dependent on the body, on life, on age, on sex, on experience, on character, and knowledge, and signified not a simple, but a most composite being.
At.TVIft.TI,
Sometimes what constituted man, was called by the same name as the Deity, prana, spirit, or asu, vital
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 249
breath, also #iva, the living soul, and manas, the mind. Still all these names expressed different sides of the Ego only, and none of them satisfied the Indian thinkers for any length of time. They were search- ing for something behind all this, and they tried to grasp it by a new name, by the name of Atman. This Atman is again very difficult to explain etymo- logically. It is supposed to have meant originally breath, then soul, then self, as a substantive, till like ipse or avros it became the recognised reflexive pronoun. Many scholars identify this atman with the A. S. sedm, the O.H.G. adum, Athem or Odem in modern German, but both the radical and the deriva- tive portions of the word are by no means satisfac- torily made out.
When atman is used as the name of the true essence of man, it is difficult to say whether it was taken over in its meaning of breath, or whether it had already become the pronoun self, and was taken over in that sense, to take the place of Ah am, Ego, I. It is generally translated by soul, and in many places this is no doubt the right translation. Only soul itself has so many meanings on account of its many attributes, and several of them are so inapplicable to Atman, that I prefer to translate atman by Self, that is the true essence of man, free, as yet, from all attributes.
Atman represents in fact on the side of subjective humanity what Brahman represents on the side of objective Divinity; it was the most abstract name for what I call the infinite or the divine in man.
Of course there have been philosophers in ancient times, and there are philosophers even now who deny
250 LECTURE VIII.
that there is something divine in man, as they deny that there is something divine in nature. By divine in man I mean as yet no more than the non-phenomenal agent on whom the phenomenal attributes of feeling, thinking, and willing depend. To the Hindu philo- sophers this agent was self-evident (svayam-prakasa), and this may still be called the common-sense view of the matter. But even the most critical philosophers who deny the reality of anything that does not come into immediate contact with the senses, will have to admit that the phenomena of feeling, thinking, and willing are conditioned on something, and that that something must be as real at least as the phenomena which are conditioned by it.
This Self, however, was not discovered in a day. We see in the Upanishads many attempts to discover and grasp it. I shall give you at least one extract, a kind of allegory representing the search after the true Self in man. It is a valuable fragment of the most primitive psychology, and as such deserves to be quoted in full.
Dialogue from the AV/andog-ya-Upanishad.
It is a dialogue in the -KMndogya-Upanishad, VIII. 7, that is supposed to have taken place between Prar/apati, the lord of creation, and Indra, as repre- senting the Devas, the bright gods, and Viro&ana, representing the Asuras, who are here mentioned in their later character already, namely, as the opponents of the Devas.
Pragrapati is said to have uttered the following sentence : ' The Self (Atman) free from sin, free from age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst,
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 251
which desires nothing but what it ought to de- sire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that is what we must search out, that is what we must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and desires ' — that is, final beatitude.
The Devas (the gods) and the A suras (the demons) both heard these words, and said : ' Well, let us search for that Self by which, if one has searched it out, all worlds and all desires are obtained.'
Thus saying, Indra went from the Devas, Viro&ana from the Asuras, and both, without having communi- cated with each other, approached Pragrapati, holding fuel in their hands, as is the custom with pupils approaching their master.
They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. (This reflects the early life in India, when pupils had to serve their masters for many years, almost as menial servants, in order to induce them to com- municate their knowledge.)
After Indra and Viro&ana had dwelt with Prar/a- pati for thirty-two years, Praf/apati at last turned to them to ask :
' For what purpose have you both been dwelling here1?'
They replied that they had heard the saying of Pra^apati, and that they had both dwelt near him, because they wished to know the Self.
Pragrapati, however, like many of the ancient sages, does not show himself inclined to part with his know- ledge at once. He gives them several answers which, though not exactly wrong, are equivocal and open to a wrong interpretation.
252 LECTURE VIII.
He says first of all: ' The person (purusha) that is seen in the eye, that is the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'
If his pupils had understood this as meant for the person that sees through the eye, or out of the eye, they would have received a right though indirect idea of the Self. But when they thought that the reflec- tion of man in the eye of another person was meant, they were wrong. And they evidently took it in the latter sense, for they asked : ' Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is perceived in a mirror, who is he?'
He replied : ' He, the Self himself indeed is seen in all these.'
' Look at yourself in a pan of water, and whatever you do not understand of yourself, come and tell me.'
They looked in the water-pan. Then Prat/apati said to them :
' What do you see ? '
They said : ' We both see the Self thus altogether, a picture even to the very hairs and nails/
Pragrapati said to them : ' After you have adorned yourselves, have put on your best clothes and cleansed yourselves, look again into the water-pan.'
They, after having adorned themselves, having put on their best clothes and cleansed themselves, looked into the water-pan.
Pra
They said : ' Just as we are, well adorned, with our best clothes and clean, thus we are both there, Sir, well adorned, with our best clothes and clean.'
Pra^apati said : ' That is the Self, this is the im- mortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 253
They both went away, satisfied in their hearts.
And Pra^apati, looking after them, said : ' They both go away without having perceived and without having known the Self, and whoever of these two, whether Devas or Asuras, will follow this doctrine (upanishad) will perish.'
Now Viro&ana, satisfied in his heart, went to the Asuras and preached that doctrine to them, that the Self alone is to be worshipped, that the Self alone is to be served, and that he who worships the Self and serves the Self, gains both worlds, this and the next.
Therefore they call even now a man who does not give alms here, who has no faith, and offers no sacri- fices, an Asura, for this is the doctrine of the Asuras. They deck out the body of the dead with perfumes, flowers, and fine raiment, by way of ornament, and think they will thus conquer the world.
But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas, saw this difficulty. As this Self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when the body is well adorned, well dressed when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body is well cleaned, that Self will also be blind if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled, and perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good in this doctrine.
Taking fuel in his hand he. came again as a pupil to Pra^apati. Pra^apati said to him : ' Maghavat, as you went away with Viro/cana, satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come back?'
He said : ' Sir, as this Self is well adorned when the body is well adorned, well dressed when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body is well
254 LECTURE VIII.
cleaned, that Self will also be blind if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled, and perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good in this doctrine.'
' So it is indeed, Maghavat/ replied Pra I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two years.' He lived with him another thirty-two years, and then Pra(/a- pati said:
'He who moves about happy in dreams, he is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brah- man.'
Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But before he had returned to the Devas, he saw this difficulty. 'Although it is true that that Self is not blind, even if the body is blind, nor lame if the body is lame, though it is true that that Self is not rendered faulty by the faults of it (the body), nor struck when it (the body) is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they struck him (the Self) in dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes even con- scious, as it were, of pain and sheds tears (in his dreams). Therefore I see no good in this.'
Taking fuel in his hands, he went again as a pupil to Pragrapati. Pra^apati said to him : ' Maghavat, as. you went away satisfied in your heart, for what pur- pose did you come back ? '
He said : ' Sir, although it is true that that Self is not blind even if the body is blind, nor lame if the body is lame, though it is true that that Self is not rendered faulty by the faults of the body, nor struck when it (the body) is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they struck him (the Self) in
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 255
dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes even conscious, as it were, of .pain and sheds tears. There- fore I see no good in this.'
' So it is indeed, Maghavat,' replied Pra I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two years.' He lived with him another thirty-two years. Then Pra^apati said : ' When a man, being asleep, reposing, and at perfect rest, sees no dreams, that is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman.'
Then Indra went away satisfied in his heart. But before he had returned to the Devas he saw this diffi- culty. ' In truth he thus does not know himself (his Self) that he is I, nor does he know anything that exists. He is gone to utter annihilation. I see no good in this.'
Taking fuel in his hand, he went once more as a pupil to Pra(/apati Pra^apati said to him : ' Magha- vat, as you went away satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come back?'
He said : ' Sir, in that way he does not know him- self that he is I, nor does he know anything that exists. He is gone to utter annihilation. I see no good in this.'
' So it is indeed, Maghavat,' replied Pra^apati, ' but I shall explain him (the true Self) further to you, and nothing more than this. Live here other five years.'
He lived there other five years. This made in all one hundred aad one years, and therefore it is said that Indra Maghavat lived one hundred and one years as a pupil with Prat/apati.
Pra^apati said to him : ' Maghavat, this body is mortal and always held by death. It is the abode of
256 LECTURE VIII.
that Self which is immortal and without body. When in the body (by thinking this body is I and I am this body), the Self is held by pleasure and pain. So long as he is in the body, he cannot get free from pleasure and pain. But when he is free of the body (when he knows himself different from the body) then neither pleasure nor pain touches him. The wind is without body, the cloud, lightning, and thunder are without body (without hands, feet, &c.). Now as these, arising from this heavenly ether (space), appear in their own form, as soon as they have approached the highest light, thus does that serene being, arising from this body, appear in its own form, as soon as it has approached the highest light (the knowledge of Self). He (in that state) is the highest person (uttama purusha). He moves about there laughing (or eat- ing), playing, and rejoicing (in his mind), be it with women, carriages, or relatives, never minding that body into which he was born.
' Like a horse attached to a cart, so is the spirit (pra/na, pra$/?atman) attached to this body.
' Now where the sight has entered into the void (the open space, the black pupil of the eye) there is the person of the eye, the eye itself is but the instrument of seeing. He who knows, let me smell this, he is the Self, the nose is but the instrument of smelling. He who knows, let me say this, he is the Self, the tongue is but the instrument of saying. He who knows, let me hear this, he is the Self, the ear is but the instru- ment of hearing.
' He who knows, let me think this, he is the Self, the mind is but the divine eye. He, the Self, seeing these pleasures (which to others are hidden like a
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 257
buried treasure of gold) through his divine eye, i. e. through the mind, — rejoices.
' The Devas who are in the world of Brahman medi- tate on that Self (as taught by Pra^apati to Indra, and by Indra to the Devas). Therefore all worlds be- long to them, and all desires. He who knows that Self and understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires.5 Thus said Pragrapati, yea, thus said Pra^apati.
This is a kind of psychological legend which in spite of certain expressions that strike us as strange, perhaps as unintelligible, it would be difficult to match in any ancient literature. Are there many people even now, after more than two thousand years have elapsed, that trouble themselves about these questions'? If a man goes so far as to speak about his Ego, he begins to consider himself something of a philosopher. But it enters into the mind of very few thinkers, and even of philosophers by profession, to ask what this Ego is, what it can be and what it can- not be, what lies behind it, what is its real substance. Language supplies them with the name of soul ready made. 'I have a soul,' they say, but who or what it is that has a soul, and whence that soul origin- ates, does not trouble them much. They may speak of / and of / myself, but who and what that self is which they call my self, and who the my is to whom that self belongs, is but seldom asked. No Hindu philosopher would say, I have an Atman or a soul. And here we find these ancient thinkers in India, clearly perceiving the question that has to be asked, and answering it too better than it has ever been answered. It may be said we all know that our garments have nothing to do with our self, and that (4) S
258 LECTURE VIII.
not philosophers only, but people at large, have learnt even in the nursery that their body is but a garment and has nothing to do with their soul. But there are garments and garments. A man may say that he is the same when he is eighty years old and when he was eight weeks old, that his body lias changed, but not his self. Sex too is but one of many garments which we wear in this life. Now a Vedantist might ask, if a man were born again as a woman, would his self be still the same, would he be the self-same person ? Other such garments are language, nation- ality, religion. A Vedantist might ask, supposing that a man in the next life were denuded of all these coverings, would he still be the self-same person ? We may imagine that we have an answer ready for all these questions, or that they deserve no answer at all from wise people such as we are, and yet when we ask ourselves the simple question how we hope to meet the souls of those who have been dear to us in this life, we shall find that our ideas of a soul have to be divested of many garments, have to be purified quite as much as the ideas of the questioners in the ancient Upanishad. Old as these questioners are, distant as they are from us, strange as their language may sound to us, they may still become to us at least Friends in Council.
That the legend which I translated for you from the Upanishads is an old legend, or that something like it existed before the chapter in our Upanishad was composed, we may conclude from the passage where it said : ' Therefore it is said,' or more literally, that is what they say, * Maghavat lived one hundred and one years as a pupil of Pra
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 259
hand, the legend cannot be ascribed to the earliest Vedic literature, for in the hymns Indra is a supreme god who would scorn the idea of becoming the pupil of Pra^apati. This Pra^apati, i.e. the lord of crea- tures, or of all created things, is himself, as we saw, a later deity, a personification of the creative force, a name of the supreme, yet of a personal and more or less mythological deity.
But whatever the origin of this legend may have been, we have it here in one of the old and recognised Upanishads, and can hardly place it later than the time of Plato and his pupils. I call it a psychological legend, because it seems to have preserved to us some of the earliest attempts of Indian thought to conceive and to name what we without much reflection call by the inherited name of soul. You may remember that certain anthropolo- gists hold the opinion that the first conception of soul had everywhere, and more particularly among savage races, been that of a shadow, nay that some savages believed even now that the shadow was the soul of a living man, and that therefore a corpse threw no shadow. I wonder that anthropologists have never quoted our Dialogue in support of their opinion ; only that in this case it is held not by uncivilised, but by a highly civilised race, and is held by it, only in order to be refuted.
The next opinion also that the soul is that which in sleep, and as it were, without the body, sees visions in dreams, might be quoted in support of another opinion, often put forward by anthropologists, that the first idea of a soul, as without the body, arose from dreams, and that even now certain savage races believe that
Sa
260 LEOTUBE VIII.
in a dream the soul leaves the body and travels about by itself. This may be so in isolated cases ; we saw, however, that the real origin of the name and concept of soul was far more rational, that people took breath, the tangible sign of the agent within, as the name of the soul, divesting it in time of all "that was incom- patible with an invisible agent. But however that may be, anthropologists may possibly begin to see that the Veda also contains remnants of ancient thought, though it likewise supplies a warning against too rapid generalisation and against seeing in the Veda a com- plete picture of savage, or what they call primitive, man.
Deductions from the Dialogue.
But now let us see what the later Vedanta philosophy makes out of this legend. The legend itself, as we find it in the Upanishad, shows already that there was a higher purpose in it than simply to show that the soul was not a mere appearance, not the picture reflected in the eye, not the shadow in the water, not the person dreaming a dream, or losing all conscious- ness in dreamless sleep. One of Pragrapati's pupils, Viro/cana, is no doubt satisfied with the idea that the body as seen reflected in the eye or in the water is the self, is what a man really is. But Indra is not. He is not satisfied even with the soul being the person in a dream, for, he says, that even in a dream a man becomes conscious of pain, and actually sheds tears, and that therefore, if the soul were a dream, it would not be perfect, it would not be free from suffering. Nay, if it is said that the soul is the person in a deep and dreamless sleep, even that would not satisfy Indra, for, in that case, as he says, all consciousness would be
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 261
gone, he would not know, as he expresses it, that he, the self, is I, or that there is a myself.
Pra which he can communicate, by saying that the soul can become free by knowledge only, that it exists by knowledge only, by knowing itself as free from the body and all other limitations. It then can rise from the body, a serene being in its own form, and approach the highest light, the highest knowledge, the know- ledge that its own Self is the Highest, is in fact the Divine Self.
So far all would be intelligible. It would not require death to free the soul from the body, know- ledge would effect that liberation far better, and leave the soul even in this life a mere spectator of its bodily abode, of its bodily joys and its bodily sufferings, a silent spectator even of the decay and death of the body.
But the Vedanta philosopher is not so easily satis- fied ; and I think it will be interesting and give you a better idea of the philosophical acumen of the Vedantist, if I read you Ankara's treatment of our psychological legend. This is, of course, a much later phase of thought, at least as late as the seventh century A.D. Yet what is recent and modern in India, is not so recent and modern with us.
Nankara's Remarks.
$ankara, the commentator on the Vedanta-sutra, is much exercised when he has to discuss this Dialogue between Pragrapati, Indra, and Viro/oana on the true nature of the self, or man's soul. There is an ap- parent want of truthfulness on the, part of Pra(/apati,
262 LECTURE VIII.
he thinks, in conveying to his pupils a false impres- sion of the real nature of the Atman or the human soul, and its relation to Brahman, the Highest Deity. It is quite true that his words admit of two meanings, a wrong one and a right one ; still Pra^apati knows that one at least of his pupils, Viro/cana, when he returns to the Asuras has not understood them in their true sense ; and yet he lets him depart.
Next comes a more important difficulty. Pra^a- pati had promised to teach what the true Atman is, the immortal, the fearless, the Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst ; but his answers seem to apply to the individual Self only. Thus when he says at first that the person as seen in the eye is the Self (ya esho 'kshmi d?^syate), it is quite clear that Virofcana takes this for the small image or the reflection which a man sees of himself in the pupil of his friend's eye. And he therefore asks whether the Self that is perceived as reflected in the eye, is the same as that which is perceived as reflected in the water or in a mirror. Pra(/apati assents, though evidently with a mental reservation. He had not meant from the first the small figure reflected in the eye, but the seer within the eye, looking out from the eye, the seer, as the sub- ject of all seeing, who sees, and may be said to be seen in the eye. Still, as in an indirect way even the reflection in the eye may be called the reflection of the true Atman, he invites Viro&ana to test his asser- tion by a kind of experiment, an experiment that ought to have opened his eyes, but did not. He asks both his pupils to look at their images in the water or in a mirror, first as they are, and again after they
TRUE IMMORTALITY. 263
have adorned themselves. He thought they would have perceived that these outward adornments could not possibly constitute their own self, as little as the body, but the experiment is lost on them. While Pra(/apati means that in whatever reflection they see themselves, they see, though hidden, their true Self, they imagine that what they see, namely the body, reflected in the water, even the body with its adorn- ments, is their true Self. Pra^apati is sorry for them, and that he was not entirely responsible for their mistake, is shown soon after by the doubts that arise in the mind of at least one of his pupils. For while Viro&ana returns to the Asuras to teach them that the body, such as it is seen reflected in the water, even with its adornments, is the Self, Indra hesi- tates, and returns to Prat/apati. He asks how the body reflected in the water can be the Self, proclaimed by Pragrapati, and of which he had said that it was perfect and free from all defects, seeing that if the body is crippled its image in the water also is crip- pled, so that if that were the Self, the Self would not be what it must be, perfect and immortal, but would perish, whenever the body perishes.
Exactly the same happens again in the second lesson. No doubt, the person in a dream is free from certain defects of the body — a blind person if in a dream sees, a deaf person hears. But even thus, he also seems liable to suffering, for he actually may cry in a dream. Therefore even the dreaming soul cannot be the true Self perfect and free from all suffering.
When in his third lesson Pra(/apati calls the soul in the deepest sleep the Self, because it then suffers
264 LECTURE VIII.
no longer from anything, Indra replies that in that case the soul knows nothing at all, and is gone to destruction (vinasam eva upeti).
It is only at this last moment that Pragrapati, like other sages of antiquity, reveals his full knowledge to his pupil. The true Self, he says, has nothing to do with the body. For the body is mortal, but the Self is not mortal. The Self dwells in the body, and as long as he thinks that the body is I and I am this body, the Self is enthralled by pleasure and pain, it is not the perfect, it is not the immortal Self. But as soon as the Self knows that he is independent of the body and becomes free from it, not by death, but by knowledge, then he suffers no longer ; neither pain nor pleasure can touch him. When he has approached this highest light of knowledge, then there is perfect serenity. He knows himself to be the highest Self, and therefore is the highest Self, and though while life lasts, he moves about among the pleasant sights of the world, he does not mind them, they concern his body only or his bodily self, his Ego, and he has learnt that all this is not himself, not his Self, not his absolute Self.
But there remains a far greater difficulty which the commentators have to solve, and which they do solve each in his own way. To us the story of Pra^apati is simply an old legend, originally intended, it would seem, to teach no more than that there was a soul in man, and that that soul was independent of the body. That would have been quite enough wisdom for early days, particularly if we are right in supposing that the belief in the soul as a shadow or a dream was a popular belief current at the time, and that it really required refutation. But when at a later time this
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legend had to be used for higher purposes, when what had to be taught about the soul was not only that it was not the body, nor its appearance, nor its shadow, nor the vision of a dream, but that it was something higher, that it could ascend to the world of Brahman and enjoy perfect happiness before his throne, nay, when it was discovered at a still later time, that the soul could go beyond the throne of Brahman and share once more the very essence of Brahman, then new difficulties arose. These difficulties were carefully considered by $ankara and other Vedantist philo- sophers, and they still form a subject on which different sections of the Vedantist school of philosophy hold divergent views.
The principal difficulty was to determine what was the true relation of the individual soul to Brahman, whether there was any essential difference between the two, and whether when it was said that the soul was perfect, fearless, and immortal, this could apply to the individual soul. This view that the individual soul is meant, is upheld in the Vedanta philosophy by what is called the Purvapakshin, a most excellent institution in Indian philosophy. This Purvapakshin is an imaginary person who is privileged in every dis- puted question to say all that can possibly be said against the view finally to be upheld.' He is allowed every possible freedom in objecting, as long as he is not entirely absurd ; he is something like the man of straw whom modern writers like to set up in their arguments in order to be able to demolish him with great credit to themselves. From the Hindu point of view, however, these objections are like piles, to be driven in by every blow that is aimed at them, and
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meant in the end to support the true conclusion that is to be built up upon them. Frequently the objections contained in the purvapaksha are bona fide objections, and may have been held by different authorities, though in the end they have all to be demolished, their demolition thus serving the useful purpose of guarding the doctrine that has to be established against every imaginable objection.
In our case the objector says that it is the indi- vidual that must be meant as the object of Pra^apati's teaching. The seer in the eye, he says, or the person that is seen in the eye, is referred to again and again as the same entity in the clauses which follow, when it is said, ' I shall explain him still further to you,' and in the explanations which follow, it is the individual soul in \ts different states (in dreams or in deep sleep) which is referred to, so that the clauses attached to both these explanations, viz. that is the perfect, the immortal, the faultless, that is Brahman, can refer to the individual soul only, which is said to be free from sin and the like. After that, when Pra^apati has dis- covered a flaw in the condition of the soul in deep sleep also, he enters on a further explanation. He blames the soul's connexion with the body, and finally declares that it is the individual soul, but only after it has risen from out the body. Hence the opponent argues that the text admits the possibility of the qualities of the highest Self belonging to the indi- vidual soul.
/Sankara, however, proceeds at once to controvert this opinion, though we shall see that the original words of Pra(/apati certainly lend themselves to the opponent's interpretation. We do not admit, he says,
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that it is the individual soul in its phenomenal reality that is the highest self, but only the individual soul, in so far as its true nature has become manifest within it (avirbhutasvarupa), that is to say, after, by means of true knowledge, it has ceased to be an indi- vidual soul, or after it has recovered its absolute reality. This equivocality runs through the whole system of the Vedanta as conceived by $ankara. Pragfapati could apparently assert a number of things of the individual self, which properly apply to the highest Self only, because in its true nature, that is after having recovered a knowledge of its true nature, the individual self is really the highest Self, and in fact never was anything else. $ankara says, this very expression (' whose true nature has become mani- fest') qualifies the individual soul with reference to its previous state. Therefore Pra^apati must be under- stood to speak at first of the seer, characterised by the eye, and then to show in the passage treating of the reflection in the water or the mirror, that he, the seer, has not his true Self in the body or in the reflec- tion of the body. Pra(/apati then refers to this seer again as the subject to be explained, saying, 'I shall explain him, further,' and having then spoken of him as subject to the states of dreaming and of sleeping a deep sleep, he finally explains the individual soul in its real nature, that is, in so far as it is the highest Brahman, not in so far as it appears to be an indi- vidual soul. The highest light mentioned in the passage last quoted, as what is to be approached, is nothing else but the highest Brahman which is distin- guished by such attributes as perfection, freedom from sin, freedom from old age, from death, and all im-
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perfections and desires. All these are qualities which cannot be ascribed to the individual soul or to the Ego in the body. They belong to the Highest Being only. It is this Highest Being, this Brahman alone, that constitutes the essence of the individual soul, while its phenomenal aspect which depends on ficti- tious limitations and conditions (upadhis) or on Nescience cannot be its real nature. For as long as the individual soul does not free itself from Nescience, or a belief in duality, it takes something else for itself. True knowledge of the Self, or true self-knowledge, expresses itself in the words, ' Thou art That/ or ; I am Brahman,' the nature of Brahman being un- changeable, eternal cognition. Until that stage has been reached, the individual soul remains the indi- vidual soul, fettered by the body, by the organs of sense, nay, even by the mind and its various functions. It is by means of /S'ruti or revelation alone, and by the knowledge derived from it, that the soul perceives that it is not the body, that it is not the senses, that it is not the mind, that it forms no part of the transmigratory process, but that it is and always has been, the True, the Real, TO ov, the Self whose nature is pure intelligence. When once lifted above the vain conceit of being one with the body, with the organs of sense and with the mind, it becomes or it knows itself to be and always to have been the Self, the Self whose nature is unchanging, eternal intelligence. This is declared in such pas- sages as, ' He who knows the highest Brahman, becomes even Brahman. And this is the real nature of the individual soul, by means of which it arises from the body and appeal's in its own form.'
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The True Natitre of the Individual Soul.
Here a new objection is raised? How, it is asked, can we speak of the manifestation of the true nature (svarupa) of that which is unchanging and eternal? How, in fact, can we speak of it as being hidden for a time, and then only reappearing in its own form or in its true nature ? Of gold and similar substances, the true nature of which becomes hidden, while its specific qualities are rendered non-apparent by their contact with some other substance, it may indeed be said that their true nature was hidden, and is rendered manifest when they are cleaned by the application of some acid substance. So it may be said likewise, that the stars, whose light during daytime is overpowered by the superior brilliancy of the sun, become manifest in their true nature at night when the overpowering sun has departed. But it is impossible to speak of an analogous over- powering of the eternal light of intelligence by any agency whatsoever, since it is free from all contact. How then did this momentous change take place ?
The Phenomenal and the Real,
In our own philosophical language we might express the same question by asking, How did the real become phenomenal, and how can the pheno- menal become real again? or, in other words, How was the infinite changed into the finite, how was the eternal changed into the temporal, and how can the temporal regain its eternal nature ? or, to put it into more familiar language, How was this world created, and how can it be uncreated again ?
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We must remember that, like the Eleatic philo- sophers, the ancient Vedantists also started with that unchangeable conviction that God, or the Supreme Being, or Brahman, as it is called in India, is one and all, and that there can be nothing besides. This is the most absolute Monism. If it is called Pantheism, there is nothing to object, and we shall find the same Pantheism in some of the most perfect religions of the world, in all which hold that God is or will be All in All, and that if there really existed anything besides, He would no longer be infinite, omnipresent, and omnipotent, He would no longer be God in the highest sense. There is, of course, a great difference between saying that all things have their true being in and from God, and saying that all things, as we see them, are God. Or, to put it in another way, as soon as we say that there is a phenomenal world, we imply by necessity that there is also a non-phenomenal, a noumenal, or an absolutely real world, just as when we say darkness, we imply light. Whoever speaks of anything relative, conditioned, or contingent, admits at the same time something non-relative, non-conditioned, non-contingent, something which we call real, absolute, eternal, divine, or any other name. It is easy enough for the human understanding to create a noumenal or non-phenomenal world ; it is, in fact, no more than applying to our experience the law of causality, and saying that there must be a cause for everything, and that that cause or that Creator is the One Absolute Being. But when we have done that, then comes the real problem, namely, how was the cause ever changed into an effect, how did the absolute become relative, how did the noumenal become phenomenal ? or, to put
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it into more theological language, how was this world created ? It took a long time before the human mind could bring itself to confess its utter impotence and ignorance on this point, its agnosticism, its Docta ignorantia, as Cardinal Cusanus called it. And it seems to me extremely interesting to watch the various efforts of the human mind in every part of the world to solve this greatest and oldest riddle, before it was finally given up.
The Indian Vedantist treats this question chiefly from the subjective point of view. He does not ask at once how the world was created, but first of all, how the individual soul came to be what it is, and how its belief in an objective created world arose. Before there arises the knowledge of separateness, he says, or aloofness of the soul from the body, the nature of the individual soul, which consists in the light of sight and all the rest, is as it were not separate from the so-called Upadhis, or limiting conditions such as body, senses, mind, sense-objects, and perception. Similarly as in a pure rock-crystal when placed near a red rose, its true nature, which consists in transparency and perfect whiteness, is, before its separateness has been grasped, as it were non-separate from its limiting conditions (the Upa- dhis), that is, the red rose, while, when its separate- ness has once been grasped, according to legitimate authority, the rock-crystal reassumes at once its true nature, transparency and whiteness, though, in reality, . it always was transparent and white. — in the same manner there arises in the individual soul which is not separate as yet from the limiting conditions (Upadhi) of the body and all the rest, knowledge of separate-
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ness and aloofness, produced by Sruti ; there follows the resurrection of the Atman from the body, the realisation of its true nature, by means of true knowledge, and the comprehension of the one and only Atman. Thus the embodied and non-embodied states of the Self are due entirely to discrimination and non-discrimination, as it is said (Ka£Aa-Up.