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Commentary

I

The Subject of the Upanishad

THE TWELVE great Upanishads are written round one
body of ancient knowledge; but they approach it from different sides. Into the great kingdom of the Brahmavidya
each enters by its own gates, follows its own path or detour,
aims at its own point of arrival. The Isha Upanishad and the
Kena are both concerned with the same grand problem, the
winning of the state of Immortality, the relations of the divine,
all-ruling, all-possessing Brahman to the world and to the human
consciousness, the means of passing out of our present state of
divided self, ignorance and suffering into the unity, the truth,
the divine beatitude. As the Isha closes with the aspiration towards the supreme felicity, so the Kena closes with the definition
of Brahman as the Delight and the injunction to worship and
seek after That as the Delight. Nevertheless there is a variation
in the starting-point, even in the standpoint, a certain sensible
divergence in the attitude.
For the precise subject of the two Upanishads is not identical. The Isha is concerned with the whole problem of the world
and life and works and human destiny in their relation to the
supreme truth of the Brahman. It embraces in its brief eighteen
verses most of the fundamental problems of Life and scans them
swiftly with the idea of the supreme Self and its becomings, the
supreme Lord and His workings as the key that shall unlock all
gates. The oneness of all existences is its dominating note.
The Kena Upanishad approaches a more restricted problem, starts with a more precise and narrow inquiry. It concerns
itself only with the relation of mind-consciousness to Brahmanconsciousness and does not stray outside the strict boundaries
of its subject. The material world and the physical life are taken
for granted, they are hardly mentioned. But the material world
and the physical life exist for us only by virtue of our internal

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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

self and our internal life. According as our mental instruments
represent to us the external world, according as our vital force
in obedience to the mind deals with its impacts and objects, so
will be our outward life and existence. The world is for us, not
fundamentally but practically at any rate, what our mind and
senses declare it to be; life is what our mentality or at least our
half-mentalised vital being determines that it shall become. The
question is asked by the Upanishad, what then are these mental
instruments? what is this mental life which uses the external?
Are they the last witnesses, the supreme and final power? Are
mind and life and body all or is this human existence only a veil
of something greater, mightier, more remote and profound than
itself?
The Upanishad replies that there is such a greater existence
behind, which is to the mind and its instruments, to the lifeforce and its workings what they are to the material world.
Matter does not know Mind, Mind knows Matter; it is only
when the creature embodied in Matter develops mind, becomes
the mental being that he can know his mental self and know by
that self Matter also in its reality to Mind. So also Mind does
not know That which is behind it, That knows Mind; and it
is only when the being involved in Mind can deliver out of its
appearances his true Self that he can become That, know it as
himself and by it know also Mind in its reality to that which
is more real than Mind. How to rise beyond the mind and its
instruments, enter into himself, attain to the Brahman becomes
then the supreme aim for the mental being, the all-important
problem of his existence.
For given that there is a more real existence than the mental
existence, a greater life than the physical life, it follows that the
lower life with its forms and enjoyments which are all that men
here ordinarily worship and pursue, can no longer be an object of
desire for the awakened spirit. He must aspire beyond; he must
free himself from this world of death and mere phenomena to
become himself in his true state of immortality beyond them.
Then alone he really exists when here in this mortal life itself he
can free himself from the mortal consciousness and know and

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - I

17

be the Immortal and Eternal. Otherwise he feels that he has lost
himself, has fallen from his true salvation.
But this Brahman-consciousness is not represented by the
Upanishad as something quite alien to the mental and physical
world, aloof from it and in no way active upon it or concerned
with its activities. On the contrary, it is the Lord and ruler of all
the world; the energies of the gods in the mortal consciousness
are its energies; when they conquer and grow great, it is because
Brahman has fought and won. This world therefore is an inferior action, a superficial representation of something infinitely
greater, more perfect, more real than itself.
What is that something? It is the All-Bliss which is infinite
being and immortal force. It is that pure and utter bliss and not
the desires and enjoyments of this world which men ought to
worship and to seek. How to seek it is the one question that
matters; to follow after it with all one's being is the only truth
and the only wisdom.

II

The Question. What Godhead?

M

IND IS the principal agent of the lower or phenomenal
consciousness; vital force or the life-breath, speech
and the five senses of knowledge are the instruments
of the mind. Prana, the life-force in the nervous system, is indeed
the one main instrument of our mental consciousness; for it is
that by which the mind receives the contacts of the physical
world through the organs of knowledge, sight, hearing, smell,
touch and taste, and reacts upon its object by speech and the
other four organs of action; all these senses are dependent upon
the nervous Life-force for their functioning. The Upanishad
therefore begins by a query as to the final source or control
of the activities of the Mind, Life-Force, Speech, Senses.
The question is, kena, by whom or what? In the ancient conception of the universe our material existence is formed from the
five elemental states of Matter, the ethereal, aerial, fiery, liquid
and solid; everything that has to do with our material existence
is called the elemental, adhibhuta. In this material there move
non-material powers manifesting through the Mind-Force and
Life-Force that work upon Matter, and these are called Gods
or devas; everything that has to do with the working of the
non-material in us is called adhidaiva, that which pertains to
the Gods. But above the non-material powers, containing them,
greater than they is the Self or Spirit, atman, and everything that
has to do with this highest existence in us is called the spiritual,
adhyatma. For the purpose of the Upanishads the adhidaiva is
the subtle in us; it is that which is represented by Mind and Life
as opposed to gross Matter; for in Mind and Life we have the
characteristic action of the Gods.
The Upanishad is not concerned with the elemental, the
adhibhuta; it is concerned with the relation between the subtle
existence and the spiritual, the adhidaiva and adhyatma. But the

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - II

19

Mind, the Life, the speech, the senses are governed by cosmic
powers, by Gods, by Indra, Vayu, Agni. Are these subtle cosmic
powers the beginning of existence, the true movers of mind and
life, or is there some superior unifying force, one in itself behind
them all?
By whom or what is the mind missioned and sent on its
errand so that it falls on its object like an arrow shot by a skilful
archer at its predetermined mark, like a messenger, an envoy
sent by his master to a fixed place for a fixed object? What is it
within us or without us that sends forth the mind on its errand?
What guides it to its object?
Then there is the Life-force, the Prana, that works in our
vital being and nervous system. The Upanishad speaks of it as the
first or supreme Breath; elsewhere in the sacred writings it is spoken of as the chief Breath or the Breath of the mouth, mukhya,
asanya; it is that which carries in it the Word, the creative expression. In the body of man there are said to be five workings of
the life-force called the five Pranas. One specially termed Prana
moves in the upper part of the body and is preeminently the
breath of life, because it brings the universal Life-force into the
physical system and gives it there to be distributed. A second
in the lower part of the trunk, termed Apana, is the breath of
death; for it gives away the vital force out of the body. A third,
the Samana, regulates the interchange of these two forces at
their meeting-place, equalises them and is the most important
agent in maintaining the equilibrium of the vital forces and their
functions. A fourth, the Vyana, pervasive, distributes the vital
energies throughout the body. A fifth, the Udana, moves upward
from the body to the crown of the head and is a regular channel
of communication between the physical life and the greater life
of the spirit. None of these are the first or supreme Breath, although the Prana most nearly represents it; the Breath to which
so much importance is given in the Upanishads, is the pure lifeforce itself, - first, because all the others are secondary to it,
born from it and only exist as its special functions. It is imaged
in the Veda as the Horse; its various energies are the forces
that draw the chariots of the Gods. The Vedic image is recalled

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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

by the choice of the terms employed in the Upanishad, yukta,
yoked, praiti, goes forward, as a horse driven by the charioteer
advances in its path.
Who then has yoked this Life-force to the many workings
of existence or by what power superior to itself does it move
forward in its paths? For it is not primal, self-existent or its own
agent. We are conscious of a power behind which guides, drives,
controls, uses it.
The force of the vital breath enables us to bring up and speed
outward from the body this speech that we use to express, to
throw out into a world of action and new-creation the willings
and thought-formations of the mind. It is propelled by Vayu, the
life-breath; it is formed by Agni, the secret will-force and fiery
shaping energy in the mind and body. But these are the agents.
Who or what is the secret Power that is behind them, the master
of the word that men speak, its real former and the origin of
that which expresses itself?
The ear hears the sound, the eye sees the form; but hearing
and vision are particular operations of the life-force in us used
by the mind in order to put itself into communication with
the world in which the mental being dwells and to interpret
it in the forms of sense. The life-force shapes them, the mind
uses them, but something other than the life-force and the mind
enables them to shape and to use their objects and their instruments. What God sets eye and ear to their workings? Not Surya,
the God of light, not Ether and his regions; for these are only
conditions of vision and hearing.
The Gods combine, each bringing his contri bution, the operations of the physical world that we observe as of the mental
world that is our means of observation; but the whole universal
action is one, not a sum of fortuitous atoms; it is one, arranged
in its parts, combined in its multiple functionings by virtue of a
single conscient existence which can never be constructed or put
together (akr.ta) but is for ever, anterior to all these workings.
The Gods work only by this Power anterior to themselves, live
only by its life, think only by its thought, act only for its purposes. We look into ourselves and all things and become aware

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - II

21

of it there, an "I", an "Is", a Self, which is other, firmer, vaster
than any separate or individual being.
But since it is not anything that the mind can make its object
or the senses throw into form for the mind, what then is it -
or who? What absolute Spirit? What one, supreme and eternal
Godhead? Ko devah..

III

The Supramental Godhead

T

HE ETERNAL question has been put which turns man's
eyes away from the visible and the outward to that which
is utterly within, away from the little known that he has
become to the vast unknown he is behind these surfaces and
must yet grow into and be because that is his Reality and out
of all masquerade of phenomenon and becoming the Real Being
must eventually deliver itself. The human soul once seized by
this compelling direction can no longer be satisfied with looking
forth at mortalities and seemings through those doors of the
mind and sense which the Self-existent has made to open outward upon a world of forms; it is driven to gaze inward into a
new world of realities.
Here in the world that man knows, he possesses something
which, however imperfect and insecure, he yet values. For he
aims at and to some extent he procures enlarged being, increasing knowledge, more and more joy and satisfaction and these
things are so precious to him that for what he can get of them
he is ready to pay the price of continual suffering from the
shock of their opposites. If then he has to abandon what he here
pursues and clasps, there must be a far more powerful attraction
drawing him to the Beyond, a secret offer of something so great
as to be a full reward for all possible renunciation that can
be demanded of him here. This is offered, - not an enlarged
becoming, but infinite being; not always relative piecings of
knowledge mistaken in their hour for the whole of knowledge,
but the possession of our essential consciousness and the flood
of its luminous realities; not partial satisfactions, but the delight.
In a word, Immortality.
The language of the Upanishad makes it strikingly clear that
it is no metaphysical abstraction, no void Silence, no indeterminate Absolute which is offered to the soul that aspires, but rather

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - III

23

the absolute of all that is possessed by it here in the relative world
of its sojourning. All here in the mental is a growing light, consciousness and life; all there in the supramental is an infinite life,
light and consciousness. That which is here shadowed, is there
found; the incomplete here is there the fulfilled. The Beyond is
not an annullation, but a transfiguration of all that we are here
in our world of forms; it is sovran Mind of this mind, secret Life
of this life, the absolute Sense which supports and justifies our
limited senses.
We renounce ourselves in order to find ourselves; for in
the mental life there is only a seeking, but never an ultimate
finding till mind is overpassed. Therefore there is behind all
our mentality a perfection of ourselves which appears to us as
an antinomy and contrast to what we are. For here we are a
constant becoming; there we possess our eternal being. Here we
conceive of ourselves as a changeful consciousness developed
and always developing by a hampered effort in the drive of
Time; there we are an immutable consciousness of which Time
is not the master but the instrument as well as the field of all
that it creates and watches. Here we live in an organisation of
mortal consciousness which takes the form of a transient world;
there we are liberated into the harmonies of an infinite selfseeing which knows all world in the light of the eternal and
immortal. The Beyond is our reality; that is our plenitude; that
is the absolute satisfaction of our self-existence. It is immortality
and it is "That Delight".
Here in our imprisoned mentality the ego strives to be master and possessor of its inner field and its outer environment,
yet cannot hold anything to enjoy it, because it is not possible
really to possess what is not-self to us. But there in the freedom
of the eternal our self-existence possesses without strife by the
sufficient fact that all things are itself. Here is the apparent man,
there the real man, the Purusha: here are gods, there is the Divine:
here is the attempt to exist, Life flowering out of an all-devouring
death, there Existence itself and a dateless immortality.
The answer that is thus given is involved in the very form
of the original question. The Truth behind Mind, Life, Sense

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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

must be that which controls by exceeding it; it is the Lord, the
all-possessing Deva. This was the conclusion at which the Isha
Upanishad arrived by the synthesis of all existences; the Kena
arrives at it by the antithesis of one governing self-existence to
all this that exists variously by another power of being than its
own. Each follows its own method for the resolution of all things
into the one Reality, but the conclusion is identical. It is the Allpossessing and All-enjoying, who is reached by the renunciation
of separate being, separate possession and separate delight.
But the Isha addresses itself to the awakened seeker; it
begins therefore with the all-inhabiting Lord, proceeds to the allbecoming Self and returns to the Lord as the Self of the cosmic
movement, because it has to justify works to the seeker of the
Uncreated and to institute a divine life founded on the joy of
immortality and on the unified consciousness of the individual
made one with the universal. The Kena addresses itself to the
soul still attracted by the external life, not yet wholly awakened
nor wholly a seeker; it begins therefore with the Brahman as the
Self beyond Mind and proceeds to the Brahman as the hidden
Lord of all our mental and vital activities, because it has to point
this soul upward beyond its apparent and outward existence.
But the two opening chapters of the Kena only state less widely
from this other view-point the Isha's doctrine of the Self and
its becomings; the last two repeat in other terms of thought the
Isha's doctrine of the Lord and His movement.

IV

The Eternal Beyond the Mind

T

HE UPANISHAD first affirms the existence of this profounder, vaster, more puissant consciousness behind our
mental being. That, it affirms, is Brahman. Mind, Life,
Sense, Speech are not the utter Brahman; they are only inferior
modes and external instruments. Brahman-consciousness is our
real self and our true existence.
Mind and body are not our real self; they are mutable formations or images which we go on constructing in the drive of
Time as a result of the mass of our past energies. For although
those energies seem to us to lie dead in the past because their
history is behind us, yet are they still existent in their mass and
always active in the present and the future.
Neither is the ego-function our real self. Ego is only a faculty
put forward by the discriminative mind to centralise round itself
the experiences of the sense-mind and to serve as a sort of lynchpin in the wheel which keeps together the movement. It is no
more than an instrument, although it is true that so long as we
are limited by our normal mentality, we are compelled by the
nature of that mentality and the purpose of the instrument to
mistake our ego-function for our very self.
Neither is it the memory that constitutes our real self. Memory is another instrument, a selective instrument for the practical
management of our conscious activities. The ego-function uses
it as a rest and support so as to preserve the sense of continuity
without which our mental and vital activities could not be organised for a spacious enjoyment by the individual. But even our
mental self comprises and is influenced in its being by a host of
things which are not present to our memory, are subconscious
and hardly grasped at all by our surface existence. Memory is
essential to the continuity of the ego-sense, but it is not the
constituent of the ego-sense, still less of the being.

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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

Neither is moral personality our real self. It is only a changing formation, a pliable mould framed and used by our subjective life in order to give some appearance of fixity to the
constantly mutable becoming which our mental limitations successfully tempt us to call ourselves.
Neither is the totality of that mutable conscious becoming,
although enriched by all that subconsciously underlies it, our
real self. What we become is a fluent mass of life, a stream of
experience pouring through time, a flux of Nature upon the
crest of which our mentality rides. What we are is the eternal
essence of that life, the immutable consciousness that bears the
experience, the immortal substance of Nature and mentality.
For behind all and dominating all that we become and experience, there is something that originates, uses, determines,
enjoys, yet is not changed by its origination, not affected by its
instruments, not determined by its determinations, not worked
upon by its enjoyings. What that is, we cannot know unless we
go behind the veil of our mental being which knows only what
is affected, what is determined, what is worked upon, what is
changed. The mind can only be aware of that as something which
we indefinably are, not as something which it definably knows.
For the moment our mentality tries to fix this something, it loses
itself in the flux and the movement, grasps at parts, functions,
fictions, appearances which it uses as planks of safety in the
welter or tries to cut out a form from the infinite and say "This
is I." In the words of the Veda, "when the mind approaches That
and studies it, That vanishes."
But behind the Mind is this other or Brahman-consciousness, Mind of our mind, Sense of our senses, Speech of our
speech, Life of our life. Arriving at that, we arrive at Self; we
can draw back from mind the image into Brahman the Reality.
But what differentiates that real from this apparent self? Or
- since we can say no more than we have said already in the
way of definition, since we can only indicate that "That" is not
what "this" is, but is the mentally inexpressible absolute of all
that is here, - what is the relation of this phenomenon to that
reality? For it is the question of the relation that the Upanishad

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - IV

27

makes its starting-point; its opening question assumes that there
is a relation and that the reality originates and governs the
phenomenon.
Obviously, Brahman is not a thing subject to our mind,
senses, speech or life-force; it is no object seen, heard, expressed,
sensed, formed by thought, nor any state of body or mind that we
become in the changing movement of the life. But the thought of
the Upanishad attempts to awaken deeper echoes from our gulfs
than this obvious denial of the mental and sensuous objectivity
of the Brahman. It affirms that not only is it not an object
of mind or a formation of life, but it is not even dependent
on our mind, life and senses for the exercise of its lordship
and activity. It is that which does not think by the mind, does
not live by the life, does not sense by the senses, does not find
expression in the speech, but rather makes these things themselves the object of its superior, all-comprehending, all-knowing
consciousness.
Brahman thinks out the mind by that which is beyond mind;
it sees the sight and hears the hearing by that absolute vision and
audition which are not phenomenal and instrumental but direct
and inherent; it forms our expressive speech out of its creative
word; it speeds out this life we cling to from that eternal movement of its energy which is not parcelled out into forms but has
always the freedom of its own inexhaustible infinity.
Thus the Upanishad begins its reply to its own question.
It first describes Brahman as Mind of the mind, Sight of the
sight, Hearing of the hearing, Speech of the speech, Life of the
life. It then takes up each of these expressions and throws them
successively into a more expanded form so as to suggest a more
definite and ample idea of their meaning, so far as that can be
done by words. To the expression "Mind of the mind" corresponds the expanded phrase "That which thinks not with the
mind, that by which mind is thought" and so on with each of
the original descriptive expressions to the closing definition of
the Life behind this life as "That which breathes not with the
life-breath, that by which the life-power is brought forward into
its movement."

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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

And each of these exegetic lines is emphasised by the reiterated admonition, "That Brahman seek to know and not this
which men follow after here." Neither Mind, Life, Sense and
Speech nor their objects and expressions are the Reality which
we have to know and pursue. True knowledge is of That which
forms these instruments for us but is itself independent of their
utilities. True possession and enjoyment is of that which, while
it creates these objects of our pursuit, itself makes nothing the
object of its pursuit and passion, but is eternally satisfied with
all things in the joy of its immortal being.

V

The Supreme Word

T

HE UPANISHAD, reversing the usual order of our logical
thought which would put Mind and Sense first or Life
first and Speech last as a subordinate function, begins
its negative description of Brahman with an explanation of the
very striking phrase, Speech of our speech. And we can see
that it means a Speech beyond ours, an absolute expression of
which human language is only a shadow and as if an artificial
counterfeit. What idea underlies this phrase of the Upanishad
and this precedence given to the faculty of speech?
Continually, in studying the Upanishads, we have to divest
ourselves of modern notions and to realise as closely as possible the associations that lay behind the early Vedantic use of
words. We must recollect that in the Vedic system the Word
was the creatrix; by the Word Brahma creates the forms of the
universe. Moreover, human speech at its highest merely attempts
to recover by revelation and inspiration an absolute expression
of Truth which already exists in the Infinite above our mental
comprehension. Equally, then, must that Word be above our
power of mental construction.
All creation is expression by the Word; but the form which is
expressed is only a symbol or representation of the thing which
is. We see this in human speech which only presents to the mind
a mental form of the object; but the object it seeks to express
is itself only a form or presentation of another Reality. That
reality is Brahman. Brahman expresses by the Word a form or
presentation of himself in the objects of sense and consciousness
which constitute the universe, just as the human word expresses
a mental image of those objects. That Word is creative in a
deeper and more original sense than human speech and with a
power of which the utmost creativeness of human speech can be
only a far-off and feeble analogy.

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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

The word used here for utterance means literally a raising
up to confront the mind. Brahman, says the Upanishad, is that
which cannot be so raised up before the mind by speech.
Human speech, as we see, raises up only the presentation of
a presentation, the mental figure of an object which is itself only
a figure of the sole Reality, Brahman. It has indeed a power of
new creation, but even that power only extends to the creation
of new mental images, that is to say of adaptive formations
based upon previous mental images. Such a limited power gives
no idea of the original creative puissance which the old thinkers
attri buted to the divine Word.
If, however, we go a little deeper below the surface, we shall
arrive at a power in human speech which does give us a remote
image of the original creative Word. We know that vibration of
sound has the power to create - and to destroy - forms; this is
a commonplace of modern Science. Let us suppose that behind
all forms there has been a creative vibration of sound.
Next, let us examine the relation of human speech to sound
in general. We see at once that speech is only a particular application of the principle of sound, a vibration made by pressure
of the breath in its passage through the throat and mouth. At
first, beyond doubt, it must have been formed naturally and
spontaneously to express the sensations and emotions created
by an object or occurrence and only afterwards seized upon by
the mind to express first the idea of the object and then ideas
about the object. The value of speech would therefore seem to
be only representative and not creative.
But, in fact, speech is creative. It creates forms of emotion,
mental images and impulses of action. The ancient Vedic theory
and practice extended this creative action of speech by the use
of the Mantra. The theory of the Mantra is that it is a word of
power born out of the secret depths of our being where it has
been brooded upon by a deeper consciousness than the mental,
framed in the heart and not originally constructed by the intellect, held in the mind, again concentrated on by the waking
mental consciousness and then thrown out silently or vocally
- the silent word is perhaps held to be more potent than the

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - V

31

spoken - precisely for the work of creation. The Mantra can not
only create new subjective states in ourselves, alter our psychical
being, reveal knowledge and faculties we did not before possess,
can not only produce similar results in other minds than that
of the user, but can produce vibrations in the mental and vital
atmosphere which result in effects, in actions and even in the
production of material forms on the physical plane.
As a matter of fact, even ordinarily, even daily and hourly we
do produce by the word within us thought-vibrations, thoughtforms which result in corresponding vital and physical vibrations, act upon ourselves, act upon others, and end in the indirect creation of actions and of forms in the physical world.
Man is constantly acting upon man both by the silent and the
spoken word and he so acts and creates though less directly
and powerfully even in the rest of Nature. But because we are
stupidly engrossed with the external forms and phenomena of
the world and do not trouble to examine its subtle and nonphysical processes, we remain ignorant of all this field of science
behind.
The Vedic use of the Mantra is only a conscious utilisation
of this secret power of the word. And if we take the theory that
underlies it together with our previous hypothesis of a creative
vibration of sound behind every formation, we shall begin to understand the idea of the original creative Word. Let us suppose a
conscious use of the vibrations of sound which will produce corresponding forms or changes of form. But Matter is only, in the
ancient view, the lowest of the planes of existence. Let us realise
then that a vibration of sound on the material plane presupposes
a corresponding vibration on the vital without which it could
not have come into play; that again presupposes a corresponding
originative vibration on the mental; the mental presupposes a
corresponding originative vibration on the supramental at the
very root of things. But a mental vibration implies thought and
perception and a supramental vibration implies a supreme vision
and discernment. All vibration of sound on that higher plane is,
then, instinct with and expressive of this supreme discernment
of a truth in things and is at the same time creative, instinct with

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a supreme power which casts into forms the truth discerned
and eventually, descending from plane to plane, reproduces it in
the physical form or object created in Matter by etheric sound.
Thus we see that the theory of creation by the Word which
is the absolute expression of the Truth, and the theory of the
material creation by sound-vibration in the ether correspond
and are two logical poles of the same idea. They both belong to
the same ancient Vedic system.
This, then, is the supreme Word, Speech of our speech.
It is vibration of pure Existence, instinct with the perceptive
and originative power of infinite and omnipotent consciousness,
shaped by the Mind behind mind into the inevitable word of the
Truth of things; out of whatever substance on whatever plane,
the form or physical expression emerges by its creative agency.
The Supermind using the Word is the creative Logos.
The Word has its seed-sounds - suggesting the eternal syllable of the Veda, A U M, and the seed-sounds of the Tantriks -
which carry in them the principles of things; it has its forms
which stand behind the revelatory and inspired speech that
comes to man's supreme faculties, and these compel the forms
of things in the universe; it has its rhythms, - for it is no disordered vibration, but moves out into great cosmic measures, -
and according to the rhythm is the law, arrangement, harmony,
processes of the world it builds. Life itself is a rhythm of God.
But what is it that is expressed or raised up before the
mental consciousness by the Word in the phenomenal world?
Not Brahman, but truths, forms and phenomena of Brahman.
Brahman is not, cannot be expressed by the Word; he does not
use the word here to express his very self, but is known only to
his own self-awareness. And even the truths of himself that stand
behind the forms of cosmic things are in their true reality always
self-expressed to his eternal vision in a higher than the mental
vibration, a rhythm and voice of themselves that is their own
very soul of movement. Speech, a lesser thing, creates, expresses,
but is itself only a creation and expression. Brahman is not
expressed by speech, but speech is itself expressed by Brahman.
And that which expresses speech in us, brings it up out of our

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - V

33

consciousness with its strivings to raise up the truth of things to
our mind, is Brahman himself as the Word, a Thing that is in
the supreme superconscience. That Word, Speech of our speech,
is in its essence of Power the Eternal himself and in its supreme
movements a part of his very form and everlasting spiritual body,
brahman.o rupam.
Therefore it is not the happenings and phenomena of the
world that we have to accept finally as our object of pursuit, but
That which brings out from itself the Word by which they were
thrown into form for our observation by the consciousness and
for our pursuit by the will. In other words, the supreme Existence
that has originated all.
Human speech is only a secondary expression and at its
highest a shadow of the divine Word, of the seed-sounds, the
satisfying rhythms, the revealing forms of sound that are the
omniscient and omnipotent speech of the eternal Thinker, Harmonist, Creator. The highest inspired speech to which the human
mind can attain, the word most unanalysably expressive of
supreme truth, the most puissant syllable or mantra can only
be its far-off representation.

VI

The Necessity of Supermind

A

S THE Upanishad asserts a speech behind this speech,
which is the expressive aspect of the Brahman-consciousness, so it asserts a Mind behind this mind which is its
cognitive aspect. And as we asked ourselves what could be the
rational basis for the theory of the divine Word superior to
our speech, so we have now to ask ourselves what can be the
rational basis for this theory of a cognitive faculty or principle
superior to Mind. We may say indeed that if we grant a divine
Word creative of all things, we must also grant a divine Mind
cognitive of the Word and of all that it expresses. But this is not a
sufficient foundation; for the theory of the divine Word presents
itself only as a rational possibility. A cognition higher than Mind
presents itself on the other hand as a necessity which arises from
the very nature of Mind itself, a necessity from which we cannot
logically escape.
In the ancient system which admitted the soul's survival
of the body, Mind was the man, in a very profound and radical
sense of the phrase. It is not only that the human being is the one
reasoning animal upon earth, the thinking race; he is essentially
the mental being in a terrestrial body, the manu. Quite apart
from the existence of a soul or self one in all creatures, the body
is not even the phenomenal self of man; the physical life also is
not himself; both may be dissolved, man will persist. But if the
mental being also is dissolved, man as man ceases to be; for this
is his centre and the nodus of his organism.
On the contrary, according to the theory of a material evolution upheld by modern Science, man is only matter that has
developed mind by an increasing sensibility to the shocks of its
environment; and matter being the basis of existence there is
nothing, except the physical elements, that can survive the dissolution of the body. But this formula is at most the obverse and

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - VI

35

inferior side of a much larger truth. Matter could not develop
Mind if in or behind the force that constitutes physical forms
there were not already a principle of Mind striving towards selfmanifestation. The will to enlighten and consciously govern the
life and the form must have been already existent in that which
appears to us inconscient; it must have been there before mind
was evolved. For, if there were no such necessity of Mind in
Matter, if the stuff of mentality were not there already and the
will to mentalise, Mind could not possibly have come into being
out of inconscient substance.
But in the mere chemical elements which go to constitute
material forms or in electricity or in any other purely physical factor, whatever unconscious will or sensation they may be
possessed by or possess, we can discover nothing which could
explain the emergence of conscious sensation, which could constitute a will towards the evolution of thought or which could
impose the necessity of such an evolution on inconscient physical
substance. It is not then in the form of Matter itself, but in the
Force which is at work in Matter, that we must seek the origin of
Mind. That Force must either be itself conscient or contain the
grain of mental consciousness inherent in its being and therefore the potentiality and indeed the necessity of its emergence.
This imprisoned consciousness, though originally absorbed in
the creation first of forms and then of physical relations and
reactions between physical forms, must still have held in itself
from the beginning, however long kept back and suppressed,
a will to the ultimate enlightenment of these relations by the
creation of corresponding conscious or mental values. Mind
is then a concealed necessity which the subconscient holds in
itself from the commencement of things; it is the thing that must
emerge once the attractions and repulsions of Matter begin to be
established; it is the suppressed secret and cause of the reactions
of life in the metal, plant and animal.
If on the other hand we say that Mind in some such secret
and suppressed form is not already existent in Matter, we must
then suppose that it exists outside Matter and embraces it or
enters into it. We must suppose a mental plane of existence

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which presses upon the physical and tends to possess it. In that
case the mental being would be in its origin an entity which
is formed outside the material world; but it prepares in that
world bodies which become progressively more and more able
to house and express Mind. We may image it forming, entering
into and possessing the body, breaking into it, as it were, - as
the Purusha in the Aitareya Upanishad is said to form the body
and then to enter in by breaking open a door in Matter. Man
would in this view be a mental being incarnate in the living
body who at its dissolution leaves it with full possession of his
mentality.
The two theories are far from being incompatible with each
other; they can be viewed as complements forming a single truth.
For the involution of Mind, its latency in the material Force of
the physical universe and in all its movements does not preclude
the existence of a mental world beyond and above the reign of
the physical principle. In fact, the emergence of such a latent
Mind might well depend upon and would certainly profit by
the aid and pressure of forces from a supra-physical kingdom, a
mental plane of existence.
There are always two possible views of the universe. The
one supposes, with modern Science, Matter to be the beginning
of things and studies everything as an evolution from Matter;
or, if not Matter, then, with the Sankhya philosophy, an indeterminate inconscient active Force or Prakriti of which even mind
and reason are mechanical operations, - the Conscious Soul, if
any exists, being a quite different and, although conscient, yet
inactive entity. The other supposes the conscious soul, the Purusha, to be the material as well as the cause of the universe and
Prakriti to be only its Shakti or the Force of its conscious being
which operates upon itself as the material of forms.1 The latter
is the view of the Upanishads. Certainly if we study the material
world only, excluding all evidence of other planes as a dream or
a hallucination, if we equally exclude all evidence of operations
1 Cf. for example, the Aitareya Upanishad which shows us the Atman or Self using the
Purusha as that in which all the operations of Nature are formed.

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - VI

37

in mind which exceed the material limitation and study only its
ordinary equation with Matter, we must necessarily accept the
theory of Matter as the origin and as the indispensable basis
and continent. Otherwise, we shall be irresistibly led towards
the early Vedantic conclusions.
However this may be, even from the standpoint of the sole
material world Man in the substance of his manhood is a mind
occupying and using the life of the body - a mind that is greater
than the Matter in which it has emerged. He is the highest present
expression of the will in the material universe; the Force that has
built up the worlds, so far as we are able to judge of its intention from its actual operations as we see them in their present
formula upon earth, arrives in him at the thing it was seeking
to express. It has brought out the hidden principle of Mind that
now operates consciously and intelligently on the life and the
body. Man is the satisfaction of the necessity which Nature bore
secretly in her from the very commencement of her works; he
is the highest possible Name or Numen on this planet; he is the
realised terrestrial godhead.
But all this is true only if we assume that for Nature's terrestrial activities Mind is the ultimate formula. In reality and
when we study more deeply the phenomena of consciousness,
the facts of mentality, the secret tendency, aspiration and necessity of man's own nature, we see that he cannot be the highest
term. He is the highest realised here and now; he is not the
highest realisable. As there is something below him, so there is
something, if even only a possibility, above. As physical Nature
concealed a secret beyond herself which in him she has released
into creation, so he too conceals a secret beyond himself which
he in turn must deliver to the light. That is his destiny.
This must necessarily be so because Mind too is not the first
principle of things and therefore cannot be their last possibility.
As Matter contained Life in itself, contained it as its own secret
necessity and had to be delivered of that birth, and as Life contained Mind in itself, contained it as its own secret necessity and
had to be delivered of the birth it held, so Mind too contains
in itself that which is beyond itself, contains it as its own secret

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necessity and presses to be delivered, it also, of this supreme
birth.
What is the rational necessity which forbids us to suppose
Mind to be Nature's last birth and compels us to posit something
beyond it of which itself is the indication? A consideration of
the nature and working of mentality supplies us with the answer.
For mentality is composed of three principal elements, thought,
will and sensation. Sensation may be described as an attempt
of divided consciousness to seize upon its object and enjoy it,
thought as its attempt to seize upon the truth of the object and
possess it, will as its attempt to seize upon the potentiality of the
object and use it. At least these three things are such an attempt in
their essentiality, in their instinct, in their subconscious purpose.
But obviously the attempt is imperfect in its conditions and its
success; its very terms indicate a barrier, a gulf, an incapacity. As
Life is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis
with Matter, so Mind is limited and hampered by the conditions
of its synthesis with Life in Matter. Neither Matter nor Life has
found anything proper to their own formula which could help
to conquer or sufficiently expand its limitations; they have been
compelled each to call in a new principle, Matter to call into
itself Life, Life to call into itself Mind. Mind also is not able to
find anything proper to its own formula which can conquer or
sufficiently expand the limitations imposed upon its workings;
Mind also has to call in a new principle beyond itself, freer than
itself and more powerful.
In other words, Mind does not exhaust the possibilities of
consciousness and therefore cannot be its last and highest expression. Mind tries to arrive at Truth and succeeds only in touching
it imperfectly with a veil between; there must be in the nature of
things a faculty or principle which sees the Truth unveiled, an
eternal faculty of knowledge which corresponds to the eternal
fact of the Truth. There is, says the Veda, such a principle; it is
the Truth-Consciousness which sees the truth directly and is in
possession of it spontaneously. Mind labours to effect the will
in it and succeeds only in accomplishing partially, with difficulty
and insecurely the potentiality at which it works; there must be

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - VI

39

a faculty or principle of conscious effective force which corresponds to the unconscious automatic principle of self-fulfilment
in Nature, and this principle must be sought for in the form of
consciousness that exceeds Mind. Mind, finally, aspires to seize
and enjoy the essential delight-giving quality, the rasa of things,
but it succeeds only in attaining to it indirectly, holding it in
an imperfect grasp and enjoying it externally and fragmentarily;
there must be a principle which can attain directly, hold rightly,
enjoy intimately and securely. There is, says the Veda, an eternal
Bliss-consciousness which corresponds to the eternal rasa or essential delight-giving quality of all experience and is not limited
by the insecure approximations of the sense in Mind.
If, then, such a deeper principle of consciousness exists, it
must be that and not mind which is the original and fundamental
intention concealed in Nature and which eventually and somewhere must emerge. But is there any reason for supposing that
it must emerge here and in Mind, as Mind has emerged in Life
and Life in Matter? We answer in the affirmative because Mind
has in itself, however obscurely, that tendency, that aspiration
and, at bottom, that necessity. There is one law from the lowest
to the highest. Matter, when we examine it closely, proves to
be instinct with the stuff of Life - the vibrations, actions and
reactions, attractions and repulsions, contractions and expansions, the tendencies of combination, formation and growth, the
seekings and responses which are the very substance of life; but
the visible principle of life can only emerge when the necessary
material conditions have been prepared which will permit it to
organise itself in Matter. So also Life is instinct with the stuff
of Mind, abounds with an unconscious2 sensation, will, intelligence, but the visible principle of Mind can only emerge when
the necessary vital conditions have been prepared which will
permit it to organise itself in living Matter. Mind too is instinct
with the stuff of supermind - sympathies, unities, intuitions,
emergences of preexistent knowledge, instincts, imperative lights
and movements, inherent self-effectivities of will which disguise
2 I use the language of the materialist Haeckel in spite of its paradoxical form.

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themselves in a mental form; but the visible principle of supermind can only emerge when the necessary mental conditions
are prepared which will permit it to organise itself in man, the
mental living creature.
This necessary preparation is proceeding in human development as the corresponding preparations were developed in the
lower stages of the evolution, - with the same gradations, retardations, inequalities; but still it is more enlightened, increasingly
self-conscious, nearer to a conscious sureness. And the very fact
that this progress is attended by less absorption in the detail,
less timidity of error, a less conservative attachment to the step
gained suggests as much as it contradicts the hope and almost
the assurance that when the new principle emerges it will not
be by the creation of a new and quite different type which,
separated after its creation, will leave the rest of mankind in
the same position to it as are the animals to man, but, if not
by the elevation of humanity as a whole to a higher level, yet
by an opening of the greater possibility to all of the race who
have the will to rise. For Man, first among Nature's children,
has shown the capacity to change himself by his own effort and
the conscious aspiration to transcend.
These considerations justify to the reason the idea of a Mind
beyond our mind, but only as a final evolution out of Matter. The
Upanishad, however, enthrones it as the already existing creator
and ruler of Mind; it is a secret principle already conscient and
not merely contained inconsciently in the very stuff of things.
But this is the natural conclusion - even apart from spiritual
experience - from the nature of the supramental principle. For
it is at its highest an eternal knowledge, will, bliss and conscious
being and it is more reasonable to conclude that it is eternally
conscious, though we are not conscious of it, and the source
of the universe, than that it is eternally inconscient and only
becomes conscient in Time as a result of the universe. Our
inconscience of it is no proof that it is inconscient of us: and
yet our own incapacity is the only real basis left for the denial
of an eternal Mind beyond mind superior to its creations and
originative of the cosmos.

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - VI

41

All other foundations for the rejection of this ancient wisdom have disappeared or are disappearing before the increasing
light of modern knowledge.

VII

Mind and Supermind

W

E ARRIVE then at this affirmation of an all-cognitive
Principle superior to Mind and exceeding it in nature,
scope and capacity. For the Upanishad affirms a Mind
beyond mind as the result of intuition and spiritual experience
and its existence is equally a necessary conclusion from the facts
of the cosmic evolution. What then is this Mind beyond mind?
how does it function? or by what means shall we arrive at the
knowledge of it or possess it?
The Upanishad asserts about this supreme cognitive principle, first, that it is beyond the reach of mind and the senses;
secondly, that it does not itself think with the mind; thirdly,
that it is that by which mind itself is thought or mentalised;
fourthly, that it is the very nature or description of the Brahmanconsciousness.
When we say, however, that "Mind of mind" is the nature or
description of the Brahman-consciousness, we must not forget
that the absolute Brahman in itself is held to be unknowable
and therefore beyond description. It is unknowable, not because it is a void and capable of no description except that
of nothingness, nor because, although positive in existence, it
has no content or quality, but because it is beyond all things
that our present instruments of knowledge can conceive and
because the methods of ideation and expression proper to our
mentality do not apply to it. It is the absolute of all things
that we know and of each thing that we know and yet nothing
nor any sum of things can exhaust or characterise its essential
being. For its manner of being is other than that which we
call existence; its unity resists all analysis, its multiple infinities exceed every synthesis. Therefore it is not in its absolute
essentiality that it can be described as Mind of the mind, but
in its fundamental nature in regard to our mental existence.

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43

Brahman-consciousness is the eternal outlook of the Absolute
upon the relative.
But even of this outlook we may say that it is beyond the
reach of mind and speech and senses. Yet mind, speech and
senses seem to be our only available means for acquiring and
expressing knowledge. Must we not say then that this Brahmanconsciousness also is unknowable and that we can never hope to
know it or possess it while in this body? Yet the Upanishad commands us to know this Brahman and by knowledge to possess it
- for the knowledge intended by the words viddhi, avedt, is a
knowledge that discovers and takes possession, - and it declares
later on that it is here, in this body and on this earth that we
must thus possess Brahman in knowledge, otherwise great is
the perdition. A good deal of confusion has been brought into
the interpretation of this Upanishad by a too trenchant dealing
with the subtlety of its distinctions between the knowability and
the unknowability of the Brahman. We must therefore try to
observe exactly what the Upanishad says and especially to seize
the whole of its drift by synthetic intuition rather than cut up its
meaning so as to make it subject to our logical mentality.
The Upanishad sets out by saying that this Ruler of the
mind, senses, speech and life is Mind of our mind, Life of our life,
Sense of our senses, Speech of our speech; and it then proceeds
to explain what it intends by these challenging phrases. But it introduces between the description and the explanation a warning
that neither the description nor the explanation must be pushed
beyond their proper limits or understood as more than guideposts pointing us towards our goal. For neither Mind, Speech
nor Sense can travel to the Brahman; therefore Brahman must be
beyond all these things in its very nature, otherwise it would be
attainable by them in their function. The Upanishad, although
it is about to teach of the Brahman, yet affirms, "we know It
not, we cannot distinguish how one should teach of It." The two
Sanskrit words that are here used, vidmah. and vijanmah., seem
to indicate the one a general grasp and possession in knowledge,
the other a total and exact comprehension in whole and detail,
by synthesis and analysis. The reason of this entire inability

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is next given, "because Brahman is other than the known and
It is there over the unknown," possessing it and, as it were,
presiding over it. The known is all that we grasp and possess by
our present mentality; it is all that is not the supreme Brahman
but only form and phenomenon of it to our sense and mental
cognition. The unknown is that which is beyond the known
and though unknown is not unknowable if we can enlarge our
faculties or attain to others that we do not yet possess.
Yet the Upanishad next proceeds to maintain and explain
its first description and to enjoin on us the knowledge of the
Brahman which it so describes. This contradiction is not at once
reconciled; it is only in the second chapter that the difficulty
is solved and only in the fourth that the means of knowledge
are indicated. The contradiction arises from the nature of our
knowledge itself which is a relation between the consciousness
that seeks and the consciousness that is sought; where that relation disappears, knowledge is replaced by sheer identity. In what
we call existence, the highest knowledge can be no more than
the highest relation between that which seeks and that which
is sought, and it consists in a modified identity through which
we may pass beyond knowledge to the absolute identity. This
metaphysical distinction is of importance because it prevents
us from mistaking any relation in knowledge for the absolute
and from becoming so bound by our experience as to lose or
miss the fundamental awareness of the absolute which is beyond
all possible description and behind all formulated experience.
But it does not render the highest relation in our knowledge,
the modified identity in experience worthless or otiose. On the
contrary, it is that we must aim at as the consummation of our
existence in the world. For if we possess it without being limited
by it, - and if we are limited by it we have not true possession
of it, - then in and through it we shall, even while in this body,
remain in touch with the Absolute.
The means for the attainment of this highest knowledge
is the constant preparation of the mind by the admission into
it of a working higher than itself until the mind is capable of
giving itself up to the supramental action which exceeds it and

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - VII

45

which will finally replace it. In fact, Mind also has to follow the
law of natural progression which has governed our evolution in
this world from matter into life and life into mind. For just as
life-consciousness is beyond the imprisoned material being and
unattainable by it through its own instruments, just as mindconsciousness is beyond the first inconscient movements of life,
so too this supramental consciousness is beyond the divided
and dividing nature of Mind and unattainable by it through its
own instruments. But as Matter is constantly prepared for the
manifestation of Life until Life is able to move in it, possess it,
manage in it its own action and reaction, and as Life is constantly
prepared for the manifestation of Mind until Mind is able to use
it, enlighten its actions and reactions by higher and higher mental
values, so must it be with Mind and that which is beyond Mind.
And all this progression is possible because these things are
only different formations of one being and one consciousness.
Life only reveals in Matter that which is involved in Matter, that
which is the secret meaning and essence of Matter. It reveals, as
it were, to material existence its own soul, its own end. So too
Mind reveals in Life all that Life means, all that it obscurely is in
essence but cannot realise because it is absorbed in its own practical motion and its own characteristic form. So also Supermind
must intervene to reveal Mind to itself, to liberate it from its
absorption in its own practical motion and characteristic form
and enable the mental being to realise that which is the hidden
secret of all its formal practice and action. Thus shall man come
to the knowledge of that which rules within him and missions
his mind to its mark, sends forth his speech, impels the life-force
in its paths and sets his senses to their workings.
This supreme cognitive Principle does not think by the mind.
Mind is to it an inferior and secondary action, not its own
proper mode. For Mind, based on limitation and division, can
act only from a given centre in the lower and obscured existence;
but Supermind is founded on unity and it comprehends and
pervades; its action is in the universal and is in conscious communion with a transcendent source eternal and beyond the formations of the universe. Supermind regards the individual in the

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Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

universal and does not begin with him or make of him a separate
being. It starts from the Transcendent and sees the universal and
individual as they are in relation to it, as its terms, as its formulas;
it does not start from the individual and universal to arrive at the
Transcendent. Mind acquires knowledge and mastery; it reaches
it by a constant mentalising and willing: Supermind possesses
knowledge and mastery; possessing, it throws itself out freely in
various willing and knowing. Mind gropes by divided sensation;
it arrives at a sort of oneness through sympathy: Supermind
possesses by a free and all-embracing sense; it lives in the unity
of which various love and sympathy are only a secondary play of
manifestation. Supermind starts from the whole and sees in it its
parts and properties, it does not build up the knowledge of the
whole by an increasing knowledge of the parts and properties;
and even the whole is to it only a unity of sum, only a partial
and inferior term of the higher unity of infinite essence.
We see, then, that these two cognitive Principles start from
two opposite poles and act in opposite directions by opposite
methods. Yet it is by the higher cognitive that the lower is formed
and governed. Mind is thought by that which is beyond Mind;
the mentalising consciousness shapes and directs its movement
according to the knowledge and impulse it receives from this
higher Supermind and even the stuff of which it is formed belongs to that Principle. Mentality exists because that which is
beyond Mind has conceived an inverse action of itself working
in a thinner, poorer, darker, less powerful substance of conscious being and founded upon its self-concentration on different
points in its own being and in different forms of its own being.
Supermind fixes these points, sees how consciousness must act
from them on other forms of itself and in obedience to the pressure of those other forms, once a particular rhythm or law of
universal action is given; it governs the whole action of mentality
according to what it thus fixes and sees. Even our ignorance is
only the distorted action of a truth projected from the Supermind
and could not exist except as such a distortion; and so likewise
all our dualities of knowledge, sensation, emotion, force proceed
from that higher vision, obey it and are a secondary and, as one

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - VII

47

might say, perverse action of the concealed Supermind itself
which governs always this lower action in harmony with its
first conception of a located consciousness, divided indeed and
therefore not in possession of its world or itself, but feeling out
towards that possession and towards the unity which, because
of the Supermind in us, it instinctively, if obscurely, knows to be
its true nature and right.
But, for this very reason, the feeling out, the attempt at
acquisition can only succeed in proportion as the mental being
abandons his characteristic mentality and its limitations in order
to rise beyond to that Mind of the mind which is his origin and
his secret governing principle. His mentality must admit Supramentality as Life has admitted Mind. So long as he worships,
follows after, adheres to all this that he now accepts as the object
of his pursuit, to the mind and its aims, to its broken methods,
its constructions of will and opinion and emotion dependent
on egoism, division and ignorance, he cannot rise beyond this
death to that immortality which the Upanishad promises to the
seeker. That Brahman we have to know and seek after and not
this which men here adore and pursue.

VIII

The Supreme Sense

T

HE UPANISHAD is not satisfied with the definition of
the Brahman-consciousness as Mind of the mind. Just
as it has described it as Speech of the speech, so also it
describes it as Eye of the eye, Ear of the ear. Not only is it an
absolute cognition behind the play of expression, but also an
absolute Sense behind the action of the senses. Every part of
our being finds its fulfilment in that which is beyond its present
forms of functioning and not in those forms themselves.
This conception of the all-governing supreme consciousness
does not fall in with our ordinary theories about sense and
mind and the Brahman. We know of sense only as an action of
the organs through which embodied mind communicates with
external Matter, and these sense-organs have been separately
developed in the course of evolution; the senses therefore are not
fundamental things, but only subordinate conveniences and temporary physical functionings of the embodied Mind. Brahman,
on the other hand, we conceive of by the elimination of all that
is not fundamental, by the elimination even of the Mind itself. It
is a sort of positive zero, an x or unknowable which corresponds
to no possible equation of physical or psychological quantities.
In essence this may or may not be true; but we have now to
think not of the Unknowable but of its highest manifestation
in consciousness; and this we have described as the outlook
of the Absolute on the relative and as that which is the cause
and governing power of all that we and the universe are. There
in that governing cause there must be something essential and
supreme of which all our fundamental functionings here are a
rendering in the terms of embodied consciousness.
Sense, however, is not or does not appear to be fundamental;
it is only an instrumentation of Mind using the nervous system. It
is not even a pure mental functioning, but depends so much upon

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49

the currents of the Life-force, upon its electric energy vibrating
up and down the nerves, that in the Upanishads the senses are
called Pranas, powers or functionings of the Life-force. It is true
that Mind turns these nervous impressions when communicated
to it into mental values, but the sense-action itself seems to be
rather nervous than mental. In any case there would, at first
sight, appear to be no warrant in reason for attri buting a Sense
of the sense to that which is not embodied, to a supramental
consciousness which has no need of any such instrumentation.
But this is not the last word about sense; this is only its
outward appearance behind which we must penetrate. What,
not in its functioning, but in its essence, is the thing we call
sense? In its functioning, if we analyse that thoroughly, we see
that it is the contact of the mind with an eidolon of Matter, -
whether that eidolon be of a vibration of sound, a light-image
of form, a volley of earth-particles giving the sense of odour,
an impression of rasa or sap that gives the sense of taste, or
that direct sense of disturbance of our nervous being which we
call touch. No doubt, the contact of Matter with Matter is the
original cause of these sensations; but it is only the eidolon of
Matter, as for instance the image of the form cast upon the eye,
with which the mind is directly concerned. For the mind operates
upon Matter not directly, but through the Life-force; that is its
instrument of communication and the Life-force, being in us a
nervous energy and not anything material, can seize on Matter
only through nervous impressions of form, through contactual
images, as it were, which create corresponding values in the
energy-consciousness called in the Upanishads the Prana. Mind
takes these up and replies to them with corresponding mental
values, mental impressions of form, so that the thing sensed
comes to us after a triple process of translation, first the material
eidolon, secondly the nervous or energy-image, third the image
reproduced in stuff of mind.
This elaborate process is concealed from us by the lightninglike rapidity with which it is managed, - rapidity in our
impressions of Time; for in another notation of Time by a
creature differently constituted each part of the operation might

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be distinctly sensible. But the triple translation is always there,
because there are really three sheaths of consciousness in us, the
material, annakos.a, in which the physical contact and image
are received and formed, the vital and nervous, pran.akos.a, in
which there is a nervous contact and formation, the mental,
manah.kos.a, in which there is mental contact and imaging. We
dwell centred in the mental sheath and therefore the experience
of the material world has to come through the other two sheaths
before it can reach us.
The foundation of sense, therefore, is contact, and the essential contact is the mental without which there would not be
sense at all. The plant, for instance, feels nervously, feels in terms
of life-energy, precisely as the human nervous system does, and
it has precisely the same reactions; but it is only if the plant has
rudimentary mind that we can suppose it to be, as we understand
the word, sensible of these nervous or vital impressions and
reactions. For then it would feel not only nervously, but in terms
of mind. Sense, then, may be described as in its essence mental
contact with an object and the mental reproduction of its image.
All these things we observe and reason of in terms of this
embodiment of mind in Matter; for these sheaths or kos.as are
formations in a more and more subtle substance reposing on
gross Matter as their base. Let us imagine that there is a mental
world in which Mind and not Matter is the base. There sense
would be quite a different thing in its operation. It would feel
mentally an image in Mind and throw it out into form in more
and more gross substance; and whatever physical formations
there might already be in that world would respond rapidly to
the Mind and obey its modifying suggestions. Mind would be
masterful, creative, originative, not as with us either obedient to
Matter and merely reproductive or else in struggle with it and
only with difficulty able to modify a material predetermined
and dully reluctant to its touch. It would be, subject to whatever
supramental power might be above it, master of a ductile and
easily responsive material. But still Sense would be there, because
contact in mental consciousness and formation of images would
still be part of the law of being.

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51

Mind, in fact, or active consciousness generally has four
necessary functions which are indispensable to it wherever and
however it may act and of which the Upanishads speak in the
four terms, vijnana, prajnana, samjnana and ajnana. Vijnana is
the original comprehensive consciousness which holds an image
of things at once in its essence, its totality and its parts and
properties; it is the original, spontaneous, true and complete
view of it which belongs properly to the supermind and of
which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the
comprehensive intellect. Prajnana is the consciousness which
holds an image of things before it as an object with which it
has to enter into relations and to possess by apprehension and
a combined analytic and synthetic cognition. Samjnana is the
contact of consciousness with an image of things by which there
is a sensible possession of it in its substance; if prajnana can
be described as the outgoing of apprehensive consciousness to
possess its object in conscious energy, to know it, samjnana
can be described as the inbringing movement of apprehensive
consciousness which draws the object placed before it back to
itself so as to possess it in conscious substance, to feel it. Ajnana
is the operation by which consciousness dwells on an image of
things so as to hold, govern and possess it in power. These four,
therefore, are the basis of all conscious action.
As our human psychology is constituted, we begin with
samjnana, the sense of an object in its image; the apprehension
of it in knowledge follows. Afterwards we try to arrive at the
comprehension of it in knowledge and the possession of it in
power. There are secret operations in us, in our subconscient and
superconscient selves, which precede this action, but of these we
are not aware in our surface being and therefore for us they do
not exist. If we knew of them, our whole conscious functioning
would be changed. As it is what happens is a rapid process by
which we sense an image and have of it an apprehensive percept
and concept, and a slower process of the intellect by which we try
to comprehend and possess it. The former process is the natural
action of the mind which has entirely developed in us; the latter
is an acquired action, an action of the intellect and the intelligent

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will which represent in Mind an attempt of the mental being to
do what can only be done with perfect spontaneity and mastery
by something higher than Mind. The intellect and intelligent will
form a bridge by which the mental being is trying to establish a
conscious connection with the supramental and to prepare the
embodied soul for the descent into it of a supramental action.
Therefore the first process is comparatively easy, spontaneous,
rapid, perfect; the second slow, laboured, imperfect. In proportion as the intellectual action becomes associated with and
dominated by a rudimentary supramental action, - and it is
this which constitutes the phenomenon of genius, - the second
process also becomes more and more easy, spontaneous, rapid
and perfect.
If we suppose a supreme consciousness, master of the world,
which really conducts behind the veil all the operations the
mental gods attri bute to themselves, it will be obvious that that
consciousness will be the entire Knower and Lord. The basis
of its action or government of the world will be the perfect,
original and all-possessing vijnana and ajnana. It will comprehend all things in its energy of conscious knowledge, control all
things in its energy of conscious power. These energies will be
the spontaneous inherent action of its conscious being creative
and possessive of the forms of the universe. What part then will
be left for the apprehensive consciousness and the sense? They
will be not independent functions, but subordinate operations
involved in the action of the comprehensive consciousness itself.
In fact, all four there will be one rapid movement. If we had
all these four acting in us with the unified rapidity with which
the prajnana and samjnana act, we should then have in our
notation of Time some inadequate image of the unity of the
supreme action of the supreme energy.
If we consider, we shall see that this must be so. The supreme
consciousness must not only comprehend and possess in its
conscious being the images of things which it creates as its selfexpression, but it must place them before it - always in its own
being, not externally - and have a certain relation with them
by the two terms of apprehensive consciousness. Otherwise the

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53

universe would not take the form that it has for us; for we
only reflect in the terms of our organisation the movements of
the supreme Energy. But by the very fact that the images of
things are there held in front of an apprehending consciousness
within the comprehending conscious being and not externalised
as our individual mind externalises them, the supreme Mind
and supreme Sense will be something quite different from our
mentality and our forms of sensation. They will be terms of
an entire knowledge and self-possession and not terms of an
ignorance and limitation which strives to know and possess.
In its essential and general term our sense must reflect and
be the creation of this supreme Sense. But the Upanishad speaks
of a Sight behind our sight and a Hearing behind our hearing,
not in general terms of a Sense behind our sense. Certainly eye
and ear are only taken as typical of the senses, and are chosen
because they are the highest and subtlest of them all. But still
the differentiation of sense which forms part of our mentality
is evidently held to correspond with a differentiation of some
kind in the supreme Sense. How is this possible? It is what we
have next to unravel by examining the nature and source of the
functioning of the separate senses in ourselves, - their source
in our mentality and not merely their functioning in the actual
terms of our life-energy and our body. What is it in Mind that is
fundamental to sight and hearing? Why do we see and hear and
not simply sense with the mind?

IX

Sense of Our Senses

M

IND WAS called by Indian psychologists the eleventh
and ranks as the supreme sense. In the ancient arrangement of the senses, five of knowledge and five of
action, it was the sixth of the organs of knowledge and at the
same time the sixth of the organs of action. It is a commonplace
of psychology that the effective functioning of the senses of
knowledge is inoperative without the assistance of the mind; the
eye may see, the ear may hear, all the senses may act, but if
the mind pays no attention, the man has not heard, seen, felt,
touched or tasted. Similarly, according to psychology, the organs
of action act only by the force of the mind operating as will
or, physiologically, by the reactive nervous force from the brain
which must be according to materialistic notions the true self and
essence of all will. In any case, the senses or all senses, if there
are other than the ten, - according to a text in the Upanishad
there should be at least fourteen, seven and seven, - all senses
appear to be only organisations, functionings, instrumentations
of the mind-consciousness, devices which it has formed in the
course of its evolution in living Matter.
Modern psychology has extended our knowledge and has
admitted us to a truth which the ancients already knew but
expressed in other language. We know now or we rediscover the
truth that the conscious operation of mind is only a surface action. There is a much vaster and more potent subconscious mind
which loses nothing of what the senses bring to it; it keeps all its
wealth in an inexhaustible store of memory, aks.itam sravah.. The
surface mind may pay no attention, still the subconscious mind
attends, receives, treasures up with an infallible accuracy. The
illiterate servant-girl hears daily her master reciting Hebrew in
his study; the surface mind pays no attention to the unintelligible gibberish, but the subconscious mind hears, remembers and,

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55

when in an abnormal condition it comes up to the surface, reproduces those learned recitations with a portentous accuracy which
the most correct and retentive scholar might envy. The man or
mind has not heard because he did not attend; the greater man
or mind within has heard because he always attends, or rather
sub-tends, with an infinite capacity. So too a man put under
an anaesthetic and operated upon has felt nothing; but release
his subconscious mind by hypnosis and he will relate accurately
every detail of the operation and its appropriate sufferings; for
the stupor of the physical sense-organ could not prevent the
larger mind within from observing and feeling.
Similarly we know that a large part of our physical action
is instinctive and directed not by the surface but by the subconscious mind. And we know now that it is a mind that acts and
not merely an ignorant nervous reaction from the brute physical
brain. The subconscious mind in the catering insect knows the
anatomy of the victim it intends to immobilise and make food
for its young and it directs the sting accordingly, as unerringly as
the most skilful surgeon, provided the more limited surface mind
with its groping and faltering nervous action does not get in the
way and falsify the inner knowledge or the inner will-force.
These examples point us to truths which western psychology, hampered by past ignorance posing as scientific orthodoxy,
still ignores or refuses to acknowledge. The Upanishads declare
that the Mind in us is infinite; it knows not only what has been
seen but what has not been seen, not only what has been heard
but what has not been heard, not only what has been discriminated by the thought but what has not been discriminated by the
thought. Let us say, then, in the tongue of our modern knowledge
that the surface man in us is limited by his physical experiences;
he knows only what his nervous life in the body brings to his
embodied mind; and even of those bringings he knows, he can
retain and utilise only so much as his surface mind-sense attends
to and consciously remembers; but there is a larger subliminal consciousness within him which is not thus limited. That
consciousness senses what has not been sensed by the surface
mind and its organs and knows what the surface mind has not

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learned by its acquisitive thought. That in the insect knows the
anatomy of its victim; that in the man outwardly insensible not
only feels and remembers the action of the surgeon's knife, but
knows the appropriate reactions of suffering which were in the
physical body inhibited by the anaesthetic and therefore nonexistent; that in the illiterate servant-girl heard and retained
accurately the words of an unknown language and could, as
Yogic experience knows, by a higher action of itself understand
those superficially unintelligible sounds.
To return to the Vedantic words we have been using, there
is a vaster action of the Sanjnana which is not limited by the
action of the physical sense-organs; it was this which sensed
perfectly and made its own through the ear the words of the
unknown language, through the touch the movements of the
unfelt surgeon's knife, through the sense-mind or sixth sense the
exact location of the centres of locomotion in the victim insect.
There is also associated with it a corresponding vaster action of
Prajnana, Ajnana and Vijnana not limited by the smaller apprehensive and comprehensive faculties of the external mind. It is
this vaster Prajnana which perceived the proper relation of the
words to each other, of the movement of the knife to the unfelt
suffering of the nerves and of the successive relation in space
of the articulations in the insect's body. Such perception was
inherent in the right reproduction of the words, the right narration of the sufferings, the right successive action of the sting.
The Ajnana or Knowledge-Will originating all these actions was
also vaster, not limited by the faltering force that governs the
operations directed by the surface mind. And although in these
examples the action of the vaster Vijnana is not so apparent, yet
it was evidently there working through them and ensuring their
coordination.
But at present it is with the Sanjnana that we are concerned.
Here we should note, first of all, that there is an action of the
sense-mind which is superior to the particular action of the
senses and is aware of things even without imaging them in
forms of sight, sound, contact, but which also as a sort of subordinate operation, subordinate but necessary to completeness

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57

of presentation, does image in these forms. This is evident in
psychical phenomena. Those who have carried the study and
experimentation of them to a certain extent, have found that
we can sense things known only to the minds of others, things
that exist only at a great distance, things that belong to another
plane than the terrestrial but have here their effects; we can both
sense them in their images and also feel, as it were, all that they
are without any definite image proper to the five senses.
This shows, in the first place, that sight and the other senses
are not mere results of the development of our physical organs
in the terrestrial evolution. Mind, subconscious in all Matter
and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in
order to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing etc., on
the physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they
are inherent capacities and not dependent on the circumstance
of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the
use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. Supposing that there are
psychical senses which act through a psychical body and we thus
explain these psychical phenomena, still that action also is only
an organisation of the inherent functioning of the essential sense,
the Sanjnana, which in itself can operate without bodily organs.
This essential sense is the original capacity of consciousness to
feel in itself all that consciousness has formed and to feel it in all
the essential properties and operations of that which has form,
whether represented materially by vibration of sound or images
of light or any other physical symbol.
The trend of knowledge leads more and more to the conclusion that not only are the properties of form, even the most
obvious such as colour, light etc., merely operations of Force,
but form itself is only an operation of Force. This Force again
proves to be self-power of conscious-being1 in a state of energy
and activity. Practically, therefore, all form is only an operation
of consciousness impressing itself with presentations of its own
workings. We see colour because that is the presentation which
1 Devatmasaktim svagunair nigudham, self-power of the divine Existent hidden by its
.
.
own modes. Swetaswatara Upanishad.

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consciousness makes to itself of one of its own operations; but
colour is only an operation of Force working in the form of
Light, and Light again is only a movement, that is to say an
operation of Force. The question is what is essential to this
operation of Force taking on itself the presentation of form? For
it is this that must determine the working of Sanjnana or Sense
on whatever plane it may operate.
Everything begins with vibration or movement, the original
ks.obha or disturbance. If there is no movement of the conscious
being, it can only know its own pure static existence. Without
vibration2 or movement of being in consciousness there can be
no act of knowledge and therefore no sense; without vibration
or movement of being in force there can be no object of sense.
Movement of conscious being as knowledge becoming sensible
of itself as movement of force, in other words the knowledge
separating itself from its own working to watch that and take it
into itself again by feeling, - this is the basis of universal Sanjnana. This is true both of our internal and external operations. I
become anger by a vibration of conscious force acting as nervous
emotion and I feel the anger that I have become by another
movement of conscious force acting as light of knowledge. I am
conscious of my body because I have myself become the body;
that same force of conscious being which has made this form of
itself, this presentation of its workings, knows it in that form, in
that presentation. I can know nothing except what I myself am;
if I know others, it is because they also are myself, because my
self has assumed these apparently alien presentations as well as
that which is nearest to my own mental centre. All sensation, all
action of sense is thus the same in essence whether external or
internal, physical or psychical.
But this vibration of conscious being is presented to itself by various forms of sense which answer to the successive
operations of movement in its assumption of form. For first
2 The term is used not because it is entirely adequate or accurate, no physical term can
be, but because it is most suggestive of the original outgoing of consciousness to seek
itself.

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59

we have intensity of vibration creating regular rhythm which
is the basis or constituent of all creative formation; secondly,
contact or intermiscence of the movements of conscious being
which constitute the rhythm; thirdly, definition of the grouping
of movements which are in contact, their shape; fourthly, the
constant welling up of the essential force to support in its continuity the movement that has been thus defined; fifthly, the actual
enforcement and compression of the force in its own movement
which maintains the form that has been assumed. In Matter these
five constituent operations are said by the Sankhyas to represent
themselves as five elemental conditions of substance, the etheric,
atmospheric, igneous, liquid and solid; and the rhythm of vibration is seen by them as sabda, sound, the basis of hearing,
the intermiscence as contact, the basis of touch, the definition as
shape, the basis of sight, the upflow of force as rasa, sap, the basis
of taste, and the discharge of the atomic compression as gandha,
odour, the basis of smell. It is true that this is only predicated
of pure or subtle matter; the physical matter of our world being
a mixed operation of force, these five elemental states are not
found there separately except in a very modified form. But all
these are only the physical workings or symbols. Essentially
all formation, to the most subtle and most beyond our senses
such as form of mind, form of character, form of soul, amount
when scrutinised to this five-fold operation of conscious-force
in movement.
All these operations, then, the Sanjnana or essential sense
must be able to seize, to make its own by that union in knowledge of knower and object which is peculiar to itself. Its sense
of the rhythm or intensity of the vibrations which contain in
themselves all the meaning of the form, will be the basis of the
essential hearing of which our apprehension of physical sound
or the spoken word is only the most outward result; so also its
sense of the contact or intermiscence of conscious force with
conscious force must be the basis of the essential touch; its sense
of the definition or form of force must be the basis of the essential
sight; its sense of the upflow of essential being in the form, that
which is the secret of its self-delight, must be the basis of the

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essential taste; its sense of the compression of force and the
self-discharge of its essence of being must be the basis of the
essential inhalation grossly represented in physical substance by
the sense of smell. On whatever plane, to whatever kind of formation these essentialities of sense will apply themselves and on
each they will seek an appropriate organisation, an appropriate
functioning.
This various sense will, it is obvious, be in the highest consciousness a complex unity, just as we have seen that there the
various operation of knowledge is also a complex unity. Even if
we examine the physical senses, say, the sense of hearing, if we
observe how the underlying mind receives their action, we shall
see that in their essence all the senses are in each other. That
mind is not only aware of the vibration which we call sound;
it is aware also of the contact and interchange between the
force in the sound and the nervous force in us with which that
intermixes; it is aware of the definition or form of the sound and
of the complex contacts or relations which make up the form;
it is aware of the essence or outwelling conscious force which
constitutes and maintains the sound and prolongs its vibrations
in our nervous being; it is aware of our own nervous inhalation
of the vibratory discharge proceeding from the compression of
force which makes, so to speak, the solidity of the sound. All
these sensations enter into the sensitive reception and joy of
music which is the highest physical form of this operation of
force, - they constitute our physical sensitiveness to it and the
joy of our nervous being in it; diminish one of them and the
joy and the sensitiveness are to that extent dulled. Much more
must there be this complex unity in a higher than the physical
consciousness and most of all must there be unity in the highest. But the essential sense must be capable also of seizing the
secret essence of all conscious being in action, in itself and not
only through the results of the operation; its appreciation of
these results can be nothing more than itself an outcome of this
deeper sense which it has of the essence of the Thing behind its
appearances.
If we consider these things thus subtly in the light of our

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61

own deeper psychology and pursue them beyond the physical
appearances by which they are covered, we shall get to some
intellectual conception of the sense behind our senses or rather
the Sense of our senses, the Sight of our sight and the Hearing
of our hearing. The Brahman-consciousness of which the Upanishad speaks is not the Absolute withdrawn into itself, but that
Absolute in its outlook on the relative; it is the Lord, the MasterSoul, the governing Transcendent and All, He who constitutes
and controls the action of the gods on the different planes of
our being. Since it constitutes them, all our workings can be no
more than psychical and physical results and representations of
something essential proper to its supreme creative outlook, our
sense a shadow of the divine Sense, our sight of the divine Sight,
our hearing of the divine Hearing. Nor are that divine sight and
hearing limited to things physical, but extend themselves to all
forms and operations of conscious being.
The supreme Consciousness does not depend on what we
call sight and hearing for its own essential seeing and audition.
It operates by a supreme Sense, creative and comprehensive, of
which our physical and psychical sight and hearing are external
results and partial operations. Neither is it ignorant of these, nor
excludes them; for since it constitutes and controls, it must be
aware of them but from a supreme plane, param dhama, which
includes all in its view; for its original action is that highest
movement of Vishnu which, the Veda tells us, the seers behold
like an eye extended in heaven. It is that by which the soul sees
its seeings and hears its hearings; but all sense only assumes
its true value and attains to its absolute, its immortal reality
when we cease to pursue the satisfactions of the mere external
and physical senses and go beyond even the psychical being to
this spiritual or essential which is the source and fountain, the
knower, constituent and true valuer of all the rest.
This spiritual sense of things, secret and superconscient in
us, alone gives their being, worth and reality to the psychical and
physical sense; in themselves they have none. When we attain to
it, these inferior operations are as it were taken up into it and the
whole world and everything in it changes to us and takes on a

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different and a non-material value. That Master-consciousness
in us senses our sensations of objects, sees our seeings, hears
our hearings no longer for the benefit of the senses and their
desires, but with the embrace of the self-existent Bliss which has
no cause, beginning or end, eternal in its own immortality.

X

The Superlife - Life of Our Life

B

UT THE Brahman-consciousness is not only Mind of our
mind, Speech of our speech, Sense of our sense; it is also
Life of our life. In other words, it is a supreme and universal energy of existence of which our own material life and its
sustaining energy are only an inferior result, a physical symbol,
an external and limited functioning. That which governs our
existence and its functionings, does not live and act by them,
but is their superior cause and the supra-vital principle out of
which they are formed and by which they are controlled.
The English word life does duty for many very different
shades of meaning; but the word Prana familiar in the Upanishad
and in the language of Yoga is restricted to the life-force whether
viewed in itself or in its functionings. The popular significance
of Prana was indeed the breath drawn into and thrown out from
the lungs and so, in its most material and common sense, the life
or the life-breath; but this is not the philosophic significance of
the word as it is used in the Upanishads. The Prana of the Upanishads is the life-energy itself which was supposed to occupy and
act in the body with a fivefold movement, each with its characteristic name and each quite as necessary to the functioning of
the life of the body as the act of respiration. Respiration in fact
is only one action of the chief movement of the life-energy, the
first of the five, - the action which is most normally necessary
and vital to the maintenance and distribution of the energy in
the physical frame, but which can yet be suspended without the
life being necessarily destroyed.
The existence of a vital force or life-energy has been doubted
by western Science, because that Science concerns itself only with
the most external operations of Nature and has as yet no true
knowledge of anything except the physical and outward. This
Prana, this life-force is not physical in itself; it is not material

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energy, but rather a different principle supporting Matter and
involved in it. It supports and occupies all forms and without it
no physical form could have come into being or could remain
in being. It acts in all material forces such as electricity and
is nearest to self-manifestation in those that are nearest to pure
force; material forces could not exist or act without it, for from it
they derive their energy and movement and they are its vehicles.
But all material aspects are only field and form of the Prana
which is in itself a pure energy, their cause and not their result.
It cannot therefore be detected by any physical analysis; physical analysis can only resolve for us the combinations of those
material happenings which are its results and the external signs
and symbols of its presence and operation.
How then do we become aware of its existence? By that
purification of our mind and body and that subtilisation of
our means of sensation and knowledge which become possible
through Yoga. We become capable of analysis other than the
resolution of forms into their gross physical elements and are
able to distinguish the operations of the pure mental principle
from those of the material and both of these from the vital or
dynamic which forms a link between them and supports them
both. We are then able to distinguish the movements of the
Pranic currents not only in the physical body which is all that
we are normally aware of, but in that subtle frame of our being
which Yoga detects underlying and sustaining the physical. This
is ordinarily done by the process of Pranayama, the government
and control of the respiration. By Pranayama the Hathayogin
is able to control, suspend and transcend the ordinary fixed
operation of the Pranic energy which is all that Nature needs
for the normal functioning of the body and of the physical life
and mind, and he becomes aware of the channels in which that
energy distributes itself in all its workings and is therefore able to
do things with his body which seem miraculous to the ignorant,
just as the physical scientist by his knowledge of the workings
of material forces is able to do things with them which would
seem to us magic if their law and process were not divulged.
For all the workings of life in the physical form are governed

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65

by the Prana and not only those which are normal and constant
and those which, being always potential, can be easily brought
forward and set in action, but those which are of a more remote potentiality and seem to our average experience difficult
or impossible.
But the Pranic energy supports not only the operations of
our physical life, but also those of the mind in the living body.
Therefore by the control of the Pranic energy it is not only
possible to control our physical and vital functionings and to
transcend their ordinary operation, but to control also the workings of the mind and to transcend its ordinary operations. The
human mind in fact depends always on the pranic force which
links it with the body through which it manifests itself, and it is
able to deploy its own force only in proportion as it can make
that energy available for its own uses and subservient to its own
purposes. In proportion, therefore, as the Yogin gets back to the
control of the Prana, and by the direction of its batteries opens
up those nervous centres (cakras) in which it is now sluggish
or only partially operative, he is able to manifest powers of
mind, sense and consciousness which transcend our ordinary
experience. The so-called occult powers of Yoga are such faculties which thus open up of themselves as the Yogin advances
in the control of the Pranic force and, purifying the channels
of its movement, establishes an increasing communication between the consciousness of his subtle subliminal being and the
consciousness of his gross physical and superficial existence.
Thus the Prana is vital or nervous force which bears the
operations of mind and body, is yoked by them as it were like
a horse to a chariot and driven by the mind along the paths on
which it wishes to travel to the goal of its desire. Therefore it is
described in this Upanishad as yoked and moving forward and
again as being led forward, the images recalling the Vedic symbol
of the Horse by which the pranic force is constantly designated
in the Rig Veda. It is in fact that which does all the action of the
world in obedience to conscious or subconscious mind and in the
conditions of material force and material form. While the mind
is that movement of Nature in us which represents in the mould

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of our material and phenomenal existence and within the triple
term of the Ignorance the knowledge aspect of the Brahman, the
consciousness of the knower, and body is that which similarly
represents the being of the existent in the mask of phenomenally
divisible substance, so Prana or life-energy represents in the flux
of phenomenal things the force, the active dynamis of the Lord
who controls and enjoys the manifestation of His own being.1
It is a universal energy present in every atom and particle of the
universe and active in every stirring and current of the constant
flux and interchange which constitutes the world.
But just as mind is only an inferior movement of the supreme
Conscious-Being and above mind there is a divine and infinite
principle of consciousness, will and knowledge which controls
the ignorant action of mind, and it is by this superior principle
and not by mind that Brahman cognises His own being whether
in itself or in its manifestation, so also it must be with this Lifeforce. The characteristics of the life-force as it manifests itself
in us are desire, hunger, an enjoyment which devours the object
enjoyed and a sensational movement and activity of response
which gropes after possession and seeks to pervade, embrace,
take into itself the object of its desire.2 It is not in this breath of
desire and mortal enjoyment that the true life can consist or the
highest, divine energy act, any more than the supreme knowledge
can think in the terms of ignorant, groping, limited and divided
mind. As the movements of mind are merely representations
in the terms of the duality and the ignorance, reflections of a
supreme consciousness and knowledge, so the movements of
this life-force can only be similar representations of a supreme
energy expressing a higher and truer existence possessed of that
consciousness and knowledge and therefore free from desire,
hunger, transient enjoyment and hampered activity. What is desire here must there be self-existent Will or Love; what is hunger
1 The three are the reverse aspects of Chit, Sat and Chit-Tapas.
2 All these significances are intended by the Vedic Rishis in their use of the word

Ashwa, Horse, for the Prana, the root being capable of all of them as we see from the
words asa, hope; asana, hunger; as, to eat; as, to enjoy; asu, swift; as, to move, attain,
pervade, etc.

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67

here must there be desireless satisfaction; what is here enjoyment
must there be self-existent delight; what is here a groping action
and response, must be there self-possessing and all-possessing
energy, - such must be the Life of our life by which this inferior
action is sustained and led to its goal. Brahman does not breathe
with the breath, does not live by this Life-force and its dual terms
of birth and death.
What then is this Life of our life? It is the supreme Energy3
which is nothing but the infinite force in action of the supreme
conscious Being in His own illumined self. The Self-existent is
luminously aware of Himself and full of His own delight; and
that self-awareness is a timeless self-possession which in action
reveals itself as a force of infinite consciousness omnipotent as
well as omniscient; for it exists between two poles, one of eternal stillness and pure identity, the other of eternal energy and
identity of All with itself, the stillness eternally supporting the
energy. That is the true existence, the Life from which our life
proceeds; that is the immortality, while what we cling to as life
is "hunger that is death". Therefore the object of the wise must
be to pass in their illumined consciousness beyond the false and
phenomenal terms of life and death to this immortality.
Yet is this Life-force, however inferior its workings, instinct
with the being, will, light of that which it represents, of that
which transcends it; by That it is "led forward" on its paths to
a goal which its own existence implies by the very imperfection
of its movements and renderings. This death called life is not
only a dark figure of that light, but it is the passage by which we
pass through transmutation of our being from the death-sleep
of Matter into the spirit's infinite immortality.

3 Tapas or Chit-Shakti.

XI

The Great Transition

T

HE THOUGHT of the Upanishad, as expressed in its first
chapter in the brief and pregnant sentences of the Upanishadic style, amounts then to this result that the life of the
mind, senses, vital activities in which we dwell is not the whole or
the chief part of our existence, not the highest, not self-existent,
not master of itself. It is an outer fringe, a lower result, an inferior
working of something beyond; a superconscient Existence has
developed, supports and governs this partial and fragmentary,
this incomplete and unsatisfying consciousness and activity of
the mind, life and senses. To rise out of this external and surface consciousness towards and into that superconscient is our
progress, our goal, our destiny of completeness and satisfaction.
The Upanishad does not assert the unreality, but only the
incompleteness and inferiority of our present existence. All that
we follow after here is an imperfect representation, a broken and
divided functioning of what is eternally in an absolute perfection
on that higher plane of existence. This mind of ours unpossessed of its object, groping, purblind, besieged by error and
incapacity, its action founded on an external vision of things, is
only the shadow thrown by a superconscient Knowledge which
possesses, creates and securely uses the truth of things because
nothing is external to it, nothing is other than itself, nothing is
divided or at war within its all-comprehensive self-awareness.
That is the Mind of our mind. Our speech, limited, mechanical,
imperfectly interpretative of the outsides of things, restricted by
the narrow circle of the mind, based on the appearances of sense
is only the far-off and feeble response, the ignorant vibration
returned to a creative and revelatory Word which has built up
all the forms which our mind and speech seek to comprehend
and express. Our sense, a movement in stuff of consciousness
vibratory to outward impacts, attempting imperfectly to grasp

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69

them by laboured and separately converging reactions, is only
the faulty image of a supreme Sense which at once, fully, harmoniously unites itself with and enjoys all that the supreme Mind
and Speech create in the self-joyous activity of the divine and
infinite existence. Our life, a breath of force and movement and
possession attached to a form of mind and body and restricted
by the form, limited in its force, hampered in its movement,
besieged in its possession and therefore a thing of discords at war
with itself and its environment, hungering and unsatisfied, moving inconstantly from object to object and unable to embrace and
retain their multiplicity, devouring its objects of enjoyment and
therefore transient in its enjoyments, is only a broken movement
of the one, undivided, infinite Life which is all-possessing and
ever satisfied because in all it enjoys its eternal self unimprisoned
by the divisions of space, unoccupied by the moments of Time,
undeluded by the successions of Cause and Circumstance.
This superconscient Existence, one, conscious of itself, conscious both of its eternal peace and its omniscient and omnipotent force, is also conscious of our cosmic existence which it
holds in itself, inspires secretly and omnipotently governs. It is
the Lord of the Isha Upanishad who inhabits all the creations
of His Force, all form of movement in the ever mobile principle
of cosmos. It is our self and that of which and by which we
are constituted in all our being and activities, the Brahman. The
mortal life is a dual representation of That with two conflicting elements in it, negative and positive. Its negative elements
of death, suffering, incapacity, strife, division, limitation are a
dark figure which conceal and serve the development of that
which its positive elements cannot yet achieve, - immortality
hiding itself from life in the figure of death, delight hiding itself
from pleasure in the figure of suffering, infinite force hiding
itself from finite effort in the figure of incapacity, fusion of love
hiding itself from desire in the figure of strife, unity hiding itself
from acquisition in the figure of division, infinity hiding itself
from growth in the figure of limitation. The positive elements
suggest what the Brahman is, but never are what the Brahman
is, although their victory, the victory of the gods, is always the

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victory of the Brahman over its own self-negations, always the
self-affirmation of His vastness against the denials of the dark
and limiting figure of things. Still, it is not this vastness merely,
but the absolute infinity which is Brahman itself. And therefore
within this dual figure of things we cannot attain to our self, our
Highest; we have to transcend in order to attain. Our pursuit
of the positive elements of this existence, our worship of the
gods of the mind, life, sense is only a preparatory to the real
travail of the soul, and we must leave this lower Brahman and
know that Higher if we are to fulfil ourselves. We pursue, for
instance, our mental growth, we become mental beings full of an
accomplished thought-power and thought-acquisition, dhrah.,
in order that we may by thought of mind go beyond mind itself
to the Eternal. For always the life of mind and senses is the
jurisdiction of death and limitation; beyond is the immortality.
The wise, therefore, the souls seated and accomplished in
luminous thought-power put away from them the dualities of
our mind, life and senses and go forward from this world; they
go beyond to the unity and the immortality. The word used for
going forward is that which expresses the passage of death; it is
also that which the Upanishad uses for the forward movement
of the Life-force yoked to the car of embodied mind and sense
on the paths of life. And in this coincidence we can find a double
and most pregnant suggestion.
It is not by abandoning life on earth in order to pursue
immortality on other more favourable planes of existence that
the great achievement becomes possible. It is here, ihaiva, in this
mortal life and body that immortality must be won, here in this
lower Brahman and by this embodied soul that the Higher must
be known and possessed. "If here one find it not, great is the
perdition." This life-force in us is led forward by the attraction
of the supreme Life on its path of constant acquisition through
types of the Brahman until it reaches a point where it has to
go entirely forward, to go across out of the mortal life, the
mortal vision of things to some Beyond. So long as death is
not entirely conquered, this going beyond is represented in the
terms of death and by a passing into other worlds where death is

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71

not present, where a type of immortality is tasted corresponding
to that which we have found here in our soul-experience; but
the attraction of death and limitation is not overpassed because
they still conceal something of immortality and infinity which
we have not yet achieved; therefore there is a necessity of return,
an insistent utility of farther life in the mortal body which we
do not overcome until we have passed beyond all types to the
very being of the Infinite, One and Immortal.
The worlds of which the Upanishad speaks are essentially
soul-conditions and not geographical divisions of the cosmos.
This material universe is itself only existence as we see it when
the soul dwells on the plane of material movement and experience in which the spirit involves itself in form, and therefore
all the framework of things in which it moves by the life and
which it embraces by the consciousness is determined by the
principle of infinite division and aggregation proper to Matter,
to substance of form. This becomes then its world or vision of
things. And to whatever soul-condition it climbs, its vision of
things will change from the material vision and correspond to
that other condition, and in that other framework it will move
in its living and embrace it in its consciousness. These are the
worlds of the ancient tradition.
But the soul that has entirely realised immortality passes
beyond all worlds and is free from frameworks. It enters into
the being of the Lord; like this supreme superconscient Self and
Brahman, it is not subdued to life and death. It is no longer
subject to the necessity of entering into the cycle of rebirth, of
travelling continually between the imprisoning dualities of death
and birth, affirmation and negation; for it has transcended name
and form. This victory, this supreme immortality it must achieve
here as an embodied soul in the mortal framework of things. Afterwards, like the Brahman, it transcends and yet embraces the
cosmic existence without being subject to it. Personal freedom,
personal fulfilment is then achieved by the liberation of the soul
from imprisonment in the form of this changing personality and
by its ascent to the One that is the All. If afterwards there is any
assumption of the figure of mortality, it is an assumption and

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not a subjection, a help brought to the world and not a help
to be derived from it, a descent of the ensouled superconscient
existence not from any personal necessity, but from the universal
need in the cosmic labour for those yet unfree and unfulfilled
to be helped and streng thened by the force that has already
described the path up to the goal in its experience and achieved
under the same conditions the Work and the Sacrifice.

XII

Mind and the Brahman

B

EFORE we can proceed to the problem how, being what
we are and the Brahman being what it is, we can effect the
transition from the status of mind, life and senses proper
to man over to the status proper to the supreme Consciousness
which is master of mind, life and senses, another and prior question arises. The Upanishad does not state it explicitly, but implies
and answers it with the strongest emphasis on the solution and
the subtlest variety in its repetition of the apparent paradox that
is presented.
The Master-Consciousness of the Brahman is that for which
we have to abandon this lesser status of the mere creature subject
to the movement of Nature in the cosmos; but after all this
Master-Consciousness, however high and great a thing it may
be, has a relation to the universe and the cosmic movement; it
cannot be the utter Absolute, Brahman superior to all relativities.
This Conscious-Being who originates, supports and governs our
mind, life, senses is the Lord; but where there is no universe of
relativities, there can be no Lord, for there is no movement to
transcend and govern. Is not then this Lord, as one might say
in a later language, not so much the creator of Maya as himself
a creation of Maya? Do not both Lord and cosmos disappear
when we go beyond all cosmos? And is it not beyond all cosmos
that the only true reality exists? Is it not this only true reality and
not the Mind of our mind, the Sense of our sense, the Life of our
life, the Word behind our speech, which we have to know and
possess? As we must go behind all effects to the Cause, must
we not equally go beyond the Cause to that in which neither
cause nor effects exist? Is not even the immortality spoken of
in the Veda and Upanishads a petty thing to be overpassed and
abandoned? and should we not reach towards the utter Ineffable
where mortality and immortality cease to have any meaning?

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The Upanishad does not put to itself the question in this
form and language which only became possible when Nihilistic
Buddhism and Vedantic Illusionism had passed over the face of
our thought and modified philosophical speech and concepts.
But it knows of the ineffable Absolute which is the utter reality
and absoluteness of the Lord even as the Lord is the absolute
of all that is in the cosmos. Of That it proceeds to speak in the
only way in which it can be spoken of by the human mind.
Its answer to the problem is that That is precisely the Unknowable1 of which no relations can be affirmed2 and about
which therefore our intellect must for ever be silent. The injunction to know the utterly Unknowable would be without
any sense or practical meaning. Not that That is a Nihil, a pure
Negative, but it cannot either be described by any of the positives
of which our mind, speech or perception is capable, nor even can
it be indicated by any of them. It is only a little that we know; it
is only in the terms of the little that we can put the mental forms
of our knowledge. Even when we go beyond to the real form of
the Brahman which is not this universe, we can only indicate,
we cannot really describe. If then we think we have known it
perfectly, we betray our ignorance; we show that we know very
little indeed, not even the little that we can put into the forms of
our knowledge. For the universe seen as our mind sees it is the
little, the divided, the parcelling out of existence and consciousness in which we know and express things by fragments, and we
can never really cage in our intellectual and verbal fictions that
infinite totality. Yet it is through the principles manifested in the
universe that we have to arrive at That, through the life, through
the mind and through that highest mental knowledge which
grasps at the fundamental Ideas that are like doors concealing
behind them the Brahman and yet seeming to reveal Him.
Much less, then, if we can only thus know the MasterConsciousness which is the form of the Brahman, can we pretend
to know its utter ineffable reality which is beyond all knowledge.
1 Ajneyam atarkyam.
2 Avyavaharyam.

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But if this were all, there would be no hope for the soul and a
resigned Agnosticism would be the last word of wisdom. The
truth is that though thus beyond our mentality and our highest
ideative knowledge, the Supreme does give Himself both to this
knowledge and to our mentality in the way proper to each and
by following that way we can arrive at Him, but only on condition that we do not take our mentalising by the mind and our
knowing by the higher thought for the full knowledge and rest
in that with a satisfied possession.
The way is to use our mind rightly for such knowledge as is
open to its highest, purified capacity. We have to know the form
of the Brahman, the Master-Consciousness of the Lord through
and yet beyond the universe in which we live. But first we must
put aside what is mere form and phenomenon in the universe;
for that has nothing to do with the form of the Brahman, the
body of the Self, since it is not His form, but only His most
external mask. Our first step therefore must be to get behind the
forms of Matter, the forms of Life, the forms of Mind and go
back to that which is essential, most real, nearest to actual entity.
And when we have gone on thus eliminating, thus analysing all
forms into the fundamental entities of the cosmos, we shall find
that these fundamental entities are really only two, ourselves
and the gods.
The gods of the Upanishad have been supposed to be a
figure for the senses, but although they act in the senses, they
are yet much more than that. They represent the divine power
in its great and fundamental cosmic functionings whether in
man or in mind and life and matter in general; they are not
the functionings themselves but something of the Divine which
is essential to their operation and its immediate possessor and
cause. They are, as we see from other Upanishads, positive selfrepresentations of the Brahman leading to good, joy, light, love,
immortality as against all that is a dark negation of these things.
And it is necessarily in the mind, life, senses, and speech of man
that the battle here reaches its height and approaches to its full
meaning. The gods seek to lead these to good and light; the
Titans, sons of darkness, seek to pierce them with ignorance

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and evil.3 Behind the gods is the Master-Consciousness of which
they are the positive cosmic self-representations.
The other entity which represents the Brahman in the cosmos is the self of the living and thinking creature, man. This
self also is not an external mask; it is not form of the mind
or form of the life or form of the body. It is something that
supports these and makes them possible, something that can say
positively like the gods, "I am" and not only "I seem". We have
then to scrutinise these two entities and see what they are in
relation to each other and to the Brahman; or, as the Upanishad
puts it, "That of it which is thou, that of it which is in the
gods, this is what thy mind has to resolve." Well, but what
then of the Brahman is myself? and what of the Brahman is in
the Gods? The answer is evident. I am a representation in the
cosmos, but for all purposes of the cosmos a real representation
of the Self; and the gods are a representation in the cosmos -
a real representation since without them the cosmos could not
continue - of the Lord. The one supreme Self is the essentiality
of all these individual existences; the one supreme Lord is the
Godhead in the gods.
The Self and the Lord are one Brahman, whom we can
realise through our self and realise through that which is essential in the cosmic movement. Just as our self constitutes
our mind, body, life, senses, so that Self constitutes all mind,
body, life, senses; it is the origin and essentiality of things. Just
as the gods govern, supported by our self, the cosmos of our
individual being, the action of our mind, senses and life, so the
Lord governs as Mind of the mind, Sense of the sense, Life of
the life, supporting His active divinity by His silent essential selfbeing, all cosmos and all form of being. As we have gone behind
the forms of the cosmos to that which is essential in their being
and movement and found our self and the gods, so we have to
go behind our self and the gods and find the one supreme Self
and the one supreme Godhead. Then we can say, "I think that I
know."
3 Chhandogya and Brihadaranyaka Upanishads.

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77

But at once we have to qualify our assertion. I think not
that I know perfectly, for that is impossible in the terms of our
instruments of knowledge. I do not think for a moment that
I know the Unknowable, that that can be put into the forms
through which I must arrive at the Self and Lord; but at the
same time I am no longer in ignorance, I know the Brahman in
the only way in which I can know Him, in His self-revelation to
me in terms not beyond the grasp of my psychology, manifest
as the Self and the Lord. The mystery of existence is revealed
in a way that utterly satisfies my being because it enables me
first to comprehend it through these figures as far as it can be
comprehended by me and, secondly, to enter into, to live in, to
be one in law and being with and even to merge myself in the
Brahman.
If we fancy that we have grasped the Brahman by the mind
and in that delusion fix down our knowledge of Him to the terms
our mentality has found, then our knowledge is no knowledge; it
is the little knowledge that turns to falsehood. So too those who
try to fix Him into our notion of the fundamental ideas in which
we discern Him by the thought that rises above ordinary mental
perception, have no real discernment of the Brahman, since they
take certain idea-symbols for the Reality. On the other hand if
we recognise that our mental perceptions are simply so many
clues by which we can rise beyond mental perception and if
we use these fundamental idea-symbols and the arrangement of
them which our uttermost thought makes in order to go beyond
the symbol to that reality, then we have rightly used mind and
the higher discernment for their supreme purpose. Mind and the
higher discernment are satisfied of the Brahman even in being
exceeded by Him.
The mind can only reflect in a sort of supreme understanding
and experience the form, the image of the supreme as He shows
Himself to our mentality. Through this reflection we find, we
know; the purpose of knowledge is accomplished, for we find
immortality, we enter into the law, the being, the beatitude of the
Brahman-consciousness. By self-realisation of Brahman as our
self we find the force, the divine energy which lifts us beyond

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the limitation, weakness, darkness, sorrow, all-pervading death
of our mortal existence; by the knowledge of the one Brahman
in all beings and in all the various movement of the cosmos we
attain beyond these things to the infinity, the omnipotent being,
the omniscient light, the pure beatitude of that divine existence.
This great achievement must be done here in this mortal
world, in this limited body; for if we do it, we arrive at our true
existence and are no longer bound down to our phenomenal
becoming. But if here we find it not, great is the loss and perdition; for we remain continually immersed in the phenomenal
life of the mind and body and do not rise above it into the true
supramental existence. Nor, if we miss it here, will death give it
to us by our passage to another and less difficult world. Only
those who use their awakened self and enlightened powers to
distinguish and discover that One and Immortal in all existences,
the all-originating self, the all-inhabiting Lord, can make the
real passage which transcends life and death, can pass out of
this mortal status, can press beyond and rise upward into a
world-transcending immortality.
This, then, and no other is the means to be seized on and
the goal to be reached. "There is no other path for the great
journey." The Self and the Lord are that indeterminable, unknowable, ineffable Parabrahman and when we seek rather that
which is indeterminable and unknowable to us, it is still the Self
and the Lord always that we find, though by an attempt which
is not the straight and possible road intended for the embodied
soul seeking here to accomplish its true existence.4 They are
the self-manifested Reality which so places itself before man as
the object of his highest aspiration and the fulfilment of all his
activities.

4 Gita.

XIII

The Parable of the Gods

F

ROM its assertion of the relative knowableness of the
unknowable Brahman and the justification of the soul's aspiration towards that which is beyond its present capacity
and status the Upanishad turns to the question of the means by
which that high-reaching aspiration can put itself into relation
with the object of its search. How is the veil to be penetrated
and the subject consciousness of man to enter into the masterconsciousness of the Lord? What bridge is there over this gulf?
Knowledge has already been pointed out as the supreme means
open to us, a knowledge which begins by a sort of reflection of
the true existence in the awakened mental understanding. But
Mind is one of the gods; the Light behind it is indeed the greatest
of the gods, Indra. Then, an awakening of all the gods through
their greatest to the essence of that which they are, the one
Godhead which they represent. By the mentality opening itself
to the Mind of our mind, the sense and speech also will open
themselves to the Sense of our sense and to the Word behind
our speech and the life to the Life of our life. The Upanishad
proceeds to develop this consequence of its central suggestion
by a striking parable or apologue.
The gods, the powers that affirm the Good, the Light, the
Joy and Beauty, the Strength and Mastery have found themselves
victorious in their eternal battle with the powers that deny. It
is Brahman that has stood behind the gods and conquered for
them; the Master of all who guides all has thrown His deciding
will into the balance, put down his darkened children and exalted the children of Light. In this victory of the Master of all
the gods are conscious of a mighty development of themselves,
a splendid efflorescence of their greatness in man, their joy, their
light, their glory, their power and pleasure. But their vision is as
yet sealed to their own deeper truth; they know of themselves,

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they know not the Eternal; they know the godheads, they do
not know God. Therefore they see the victory as their own,
the greatness as their own. This opulent efflorescence of the
gods and uplifting of their greatness and light is the advance of
man to his ordinary ideal of a perfectly enlightened mentality,
a strong and sane vitality, a well-ordered body and senses, a
harmonious, rich, active and happy life, the Hellenic ideal which
the modern world holds to be our ultimate potentiality. When
such an efflorescence takes place whether in the individual or
the kind, the gods in man grow luminous, strong, happy; they
feel they have conquered the world and they proceed to divide
it among themselves and enjoy it.
But such is not the full intention of Brahman in the universe
or in the creature. The greatness of the gods is His own victory
and greatness, but it is only given in order that man may grow
nearer to the point at which his faculties will be strong enough to
go beyond themselves and realise the Transcendent. Therefore
Brahman manifests Himself before the exultant gods in their
well-ordered world and puts to them by His silence the heartshaking, the world-shaking question, "If ye are all, then what am
I? for see, I am and I am here." Though He manifests, He does
not reveal Himself, but is seen and felt by them as a vague and
tremendous presence, the Yaksha, the Daemon, the Spirit, the
unknown Power, the Terrible beyond good and evil for whom
good and evil are instruments towards His final self-expression.
Then there is alarm and confusion in the divine assembly; they
feel a demand and a menace; on the side of the evil the possibility
of monstrous and appalling powers yet unknown and unmastered which may wreck the fair world they have built, upheave
and shatter to pieces the brilliant harmony of the intellect, the
aesthetic mind, the moral nature, the vital desires, the body
and senses which they have with such labour established; on
the side of the good the demand of things unknown which are
beyond all these and therefore are equally a menace, since the
little which is realised cannot stand against the much that is
unrealised, cannot shut out the vast, the infinite that presses
against the fragile walls we have erected to define and shelter

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our limited being and pleasure. Brahman presents itself to them
as the Unknown; the gods knew not what was this Daemon.
Therefore Agni first arises at their bidding to discover its
nature, limits, identity. The gods of the Upanishad differ in one
all-important respect from the gods of the Rig Veda; for the
latter are not only powers of the One, but conscious of their
source and true identity; they know the Brahman, they dwell in
the supreme Godhead, their origin, home and proper plane is
the superconscient Truth. It is true they manifest themselves in
man in the form of human faculties and assume the appearance
of human limitations, manifest themselves in the lower cosmos
and assume the mould of its cosmic operations; but this is only
their lesser and lower movement and beyond it they are for ever
the One, the Transcendent and Wonderful, the Master of Force
and Delight and Knowledge and Being. But in the Upanishads
the Brahman idea has grown and cast down the gods from this
high preeminence so that they appear only in their lesser human
and cosmic workings. Much of their other Vedic aspects they
keep. Here the three gods Indra, Vayu, Agni represent the cosmic
Divine on each of its three planes, Indra on the mental, Vayu on
the vital, Agni on the material. In that order, therefore, beginning
from the material they approach the Brahman.
Agni is the heat and flame of the conscious force in Matter
which has built up the universe; it is he who has made life and
mind possible and developed them in the material universe where
he is the greatest deity. Especially he is the primary impeller of
speech of which Vayu is the medium and Indra the lord. This
heat of conscious force in Matter is Agni Jatavedas, the knower
of all births: of all things born, of every cosmic phenomenon
he knows the law, the process, the limit, the relation. If then
it is some mighty Birth of the cosmos that stands before them,
some new indeterminate developed in the cosmic struggle and
process, who shall know him, determine his limits, strength,
potentialities if not Agni Jatavedas?
Full of confidence he rushes towards the object of his search
and is met by the challenge "Who art thou? What is the force in
thee?" His name is Agni Jatavedas, the Power that is at the basis

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of all birth and process in the material universe and embraces
and knows their workings and the force in him is this that all that
is thus born, he as the flame of Time and Death can devour. All
things are his food which he assimilates and turns into material
of new birth and formation. But this all-devourer cannot devour
with all his force a fragile blade of grass so long as it has behind
it the power of the Eternal. Agni is compelled to return, not
having discovered. One thing only is settled that this Daemon
is no Birth of the material cosmos, no transient thing that is
subject to the flame and breath of Time; it is too great for Agni.
Another god rises to the call. It is Vayu Matarishwan, the
great Life-Principle, he who moves, breathes, expands infinitely
in the mother element. All things in the universe are the movement of this mighty Life; it is he who has brought Agni and
placed him secretly in all existence; for him the worlds have
been upbuilded that Life may move in them, that it may act,
that it may riot and enjoy. If this Daemon be no birth of Matter,
but some stupendous Life-force active whether in the depths or
on the heights of being, who shall know it, who shall seize it in
his universal expansion if not Vayu Matarishwan?
There is the same confident advance upon the object, the
same formidable challenge "Who art thou? What is the force in
thee?" This is Vayu Matarishwan and the power in him is this
that he, the Life, can take all things in his stride and growth and
seize on them for his mastery and enjoyment. But even the veriest
frailest trifle he cannot seize and master so long as it is protected
against him by the shield of the Omnipotent. Vayu too returns,
not having discovered. One thing only is settled that this is no
form or force of cosmic Life which operates within the limits of
the all-grasping vital impulse; it is too great for Vayu.
Indra next arises, the Puissant, the Opulent. Indra is the
power of the Mind; the senses which the Life uses for enjoyment,
are operations of Indra which he conducts for knowledge and
all things that Agni has upbuilt and supports and destroys in
the universe are Indra's field and the subject of his functioning.
If then this unknown Existence is something that the senses can
grasp or, if it is something that the mind can envisage, Indra

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shall know it and make it part of his opulent possessions. But
it is nothing that the senses can grasp or the mind envisage, for
as soon as Indra approaches it, it vanishes. The mind can only
envisage what is limited by Time and Space and this Brahman
is that which, as the Rig Veda has said, is neither today nor
tomorrow and though it moves and can be approached in the
conscious being of all conscious existences, yet when the mind
tries to approach it and study it in itself, it vanishes from the
view of the mind. The Omnipresent cannot be seized by the
senses, the Omniscient cannot be known by the mentality.
But Indra does not turn back from the quest like Agni
and Vayu; he pursues his way through the highest ether of the
pure mentality and there he approaches the Woman, the manyshining, Uma Haimavati; from her he learns that this Daemon
is the Brahman by whom alone the gods of mind and life and
body conquer and affirm themselves, and in whom alone they
are great. Uma is the supreme Nature from whom the whole
cosmic action takes its birth; she is the pure summit and highest
power of the One who here shines out in many forms. From this
supreme Nature which is also the supreme Consciousness the
gods must learn their own truth; they must proceed by reflecting
it in themselves instead of limiting themselves to their own lower
movement. For she has the knowledge and consciousness of the
One, while the lower nature of mind, life and body can only
envisage the many. Although therefore Indra, Vayu and Agni are
the greatest of the gods, the first coming to know the existence
of the Brahman, the others approaching and feeling the touch
of it, yet it is only by entering into contact with the supreme
consciousness and reflecting its nature and by the elimination of
the vital, mental, physical egoism so that their whole function
shall be to reflect the One and Supreme that Brahman can be
known by the gods in us and possessed. The conscious force
that supports our embodied life must become simply and purely
a reflector of that supreme Consciousness and Power of which
its highest ordinary action is only a twilight figure; the Life must
become a passively potent reflection and pure image of that
supreme Life which is greater than all our utmost actual and

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potential vitality; the Mind must resign itself to be no more than
a faithful mirror of the image of the superconscient Existence. By
this conscious surrender of mind, life and senses to the Master of
our senses, life and mind who alone really governs their action,
by this turning of the cosmic existence into a passive reflection of
the eternal being and a faithful reproductor of the nature of the
Eternal we may hope to know and through knowledge to rise
into that which is superconscient to us; we shall enter into the
Silence that is master of an eternal, infinite, free and all-blissful
activity.

XIV

The Transfiguration of the Self
and the Gods

T

HE MEANS of the knowledge of Brahman are, we have
seen, to get back behind the forms of the universe to
that which is essential in the cosmos - and that which
is essential is twofold, the gods in Nature and the self in the
individual, - and then to get behind these to the Beyond which
they represent. The practical relation of the gods to Brahman in
this process of divine knowledge has been already determined.
The cosmic functionings through which the gods act, mind, life,
speech, senses, body, must become aware of something beyond
them which governs them, by which they are and move, by
whose force they evolve, enlarge themselves and arrive at power
and joy and capacity; to that they must turn from their ordinary
operations; leaving these, leaving the false idea of independent
action and self-ordering which is an egoism of mind and life
and sense they must become consciously passive to the power,
light and joy of something which is beyond themselves. What
happens then is that this divine Unnameable reflects Himself
openly in the gods. His light takes possession of the thinking
mind, His power and joy of the life, His light and rapture of
the emotional mind and the senses. Something of the supreme
image of Brahman falls upon the world-nature and changes it
into divine nature.
All this is not done by a sudden miracle. It comes by flashes,
revelations, sudden touches and glimpses; there is as if a leap of
the lightning of revelation flaming out from those heavens for a
moment and then returning into its secret source; as if the lifting
of the eyelid of an inner vision and its falling again because the
eye cannot look long and steadily on the utter light. The repetition of these touches and visitings from the Beyond fixes the

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gods in their upward gaze and expectation, constant repetition
fixes them in a constant passivity; not moving out any longer to
grasp at the forms of the universe mind, life and senses will more
and more be fixed in the memory, in the understanding, in the
joy of the touch and vision of that transcendent glory which they
have now resolved to make their sole object; to that only they
will learn to respond and not to the touches of outward things.
The silence which has fallen on them and which is now their
foundation and status will become their knowledge of the eternal
silence which is Brahman; the response of their functioning to
a supernal light, power, joy will become their knowledge of the
eternal activity which is Brahman. Other status, other response
and activity they will not know. The mind will know nothing
but the Brahman, think of nothing but the Brahman, the Life
will move to, embrace, enjoy nothing but the Brahman, the eye
will see, the ear hear, the other senses sense nothing but the
Brahman.
But is then a complete oblivion of the external the goal?
Must the mind and senses recede inward and fall into an unending trance and the life be for ever stilled? This is possible, if the
soul so wills, but it is not inevitable and indispensable. The Mind
is cosmic, one in all the universe; so too are the Life, and the
Sense, so too is Matter of the body; and when they exist in and
for the Brahman only, they will not only know this but will sense,
feel and live in that universal unity. Therefore to whatever thing
they turn which to the individual sense and mind and life seems
now external to them, there also it is not the mere form of things
which they will know, think of, sense, embrace and enjoy, but
always and only the Brahman. Moreover, the external will cease
to exist for them, because nothing will be external but all things
internal to us, even the whole world and all that is in it. For the
limit of ego, the wall of individuality will break; the individual
Mind will cease to know itself as individual, it will be conscious
only of universal Mind one everywhere in which individuals are
only knots of the one mentality; so the individual life will lose its
sense of separateness and live only in and as the one life in which
all individuals are simply whirls of the indivisible flood of pranic

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activity; the very body and senses will be no longer conscious of
a separated existence, but the real body which the man will feel
himself to be physically will be the whole Earth and the whole
universe and the whole indivisible form of things wheresoever
existent, and the senses also will be converted to this principle
of sensation so that even in what we call the external, the eye
will see Brahman only in every sight, the ear will hear Brahman
only in every sound, the inner and outer body will feel Brahman
only in every touch and the touch itself as if internal in the
greater body. The soul whose gods are thus converted to this
supreme law and religion, will realise in the cosmos itself and in
all its multiplicity the truth of the One besides whom there is no
other or second. Moreover, becoming one with the formless and
infinite, it will exceed the universe itself and see all the worlds
not as external, not even as commensurate with itself, but as if
within it.
And in fact, in the higher realisation it will not be Mind, Life,
Sense of which even the mind, life and sense themselves will be
originally aware, but rather that which constitutes them. By this
process of constant visiting and divine touch and influence the
Mind of the mind, that is to say, the superconscient Knowledge
will take possession of the mental understanding and begin to
turn all its vision and thinking into luminous stuff and vibration
of light of the Supermind. So too the sense will be changed
by the visitings of the Sense behind the sense and the whole
sense-view of the universe itself will be altered so that the vital,
mental and supramental will become visible to the senses with
the physical only as their last, outermost and smallest result.
So too the Life will become a superlife, a conscious movement
of the infinite Conscious-Force; it will be impersonal, unlimited
by any particular acts and enjoyment, unbound to their results,
untroubled by the dualities or the touch of sin and suffering,
grandiose, boundless, immortal. The material world itself will
become for these gods a figure of the infinite, luminous and
blissful Superconscient.
This will be the transfiguration of the gods, but what of the
self? For we have seen that there are two fundamental entities,

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the gods and the self, and the self in us is greater than the cosmic
Powers, its God-ward destination more vital to our perfection
and self-fulfilment than any transfiguration of these lesser deities.
Therefore not only must the gods find their one Godhead and
resolve themselves into it; that is to say, not only must the cosmic
principles working in us resolve themselves into the working of
the One, the Principle of all principles, so that they shall become
only a unified existence and single action of That in spite of all
play of differentiation, but also and with a more fundamental
necessity the self in us which supports the action of the gods
must find and enter into the one Self of all individual existences,
the indivisible Spirit to whom all souls are no more than dark
or luminous centres of its consciousness.
This the self of man, since it is the essentiality of a mental
being, will do through the mind. In the gods the transfiguration
is effected by the Superconscient itself visiting their substance
and opening their vision with its flashes until it has transformed
them; but the mind is capable of another action which is only
apparently movement of mind, but really the movement of the
self towards its own reality. The mind seems to go to That, to
attain to it; it is lifted out of itself into something beyond and,
although it falls back, still by the mind the will of knowledge
in the mental thought continually and at last continuously remembers that into which it has entered. On this the Self through
the mind seizes and repeatedly dwells and so doing it is finally
caught up into it and at last able to dwell securely in that transcendence. It transcends the mind, it transcends its own mental
individualisation of the being, that which it now knows as itself;
it ascends and takes foundation in the Self of all and in the status
of self-joyous infinity which is the supreme manifestation of the
Self. This is the transcendent immortality, this is the spiritual
existence which the Upanishads declare to be the goal of man
and by which we pass out of the mortal state into the heaven of
the Spirit.
What then happens to the gods and the cosmos and all that
the Lord develops in His being? Does it not all disappear? Is
not the transfiguration of the gods even a mere secondary state

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through which we pass towards that culmination and which
drops away from us as soon as we reach it? And with the disappearance of the gods and the cosmos does not the Lord too,
the Master-Consciousness, disappear so that nothing is left but
the one pure indeterminate Existence self-blissful in an eternal
inaction and non-creation? Such was the conclusion of the later
Vedanta in its extreme monistic form and such was the sense
which it tried to read into all the Upanishads; but it must be
recognised that in the language whether of the Isha or the Kena
Upanishad there is absolutely nothing, not even a shade or a
nuance pointing to it. If we want to find it there, we have to put
it in by force; for the actual language used favours instead the
conclusion of other Vedantic systems, which considered the goal
to be the eternal joy of the soul in a Brahmaloka or world of the
Brahman in which it is one with the infinite existence and yet in
a sense still a soul able to enjoy differentiation in the oneness.
In the next verse we have the culmination of the teaching
of the Upanishad, the result of the great transcendence which
it has been setting forth and afterwards the description of the
immortality to which the souls of knowledge attain when they
pass beyond the mortal status. It declares that Brahman is in its
nature "That Delight", Tadvanam. "Vana" is the Vedic word
for delight or delightful, and "Tadvanam" means therefore the
transcendent Delight, the all-blissful Ananda of which the Taittiriya Upanishad speaks as the highest Brahman from which all
existences are born, by which all existences live and increase
and into which all existences arrive in their passing out of death
and birth. It is as this transcendent Delight that the Brahman
must be worshipped and sought. It is this beatitude therefore
which is meant by the immortality of the Upanishads. And what
will be the result of knowing and possessing Brahman as the
supreme Ananda? It is that towards the knower and possessor
of the Brahman is directed the desire of all creatures. In other
words, he becomes a centre of the divine Delight shedding it on
all the world and attracting all to it as to a fountain of joy and
love and self-fulfilment in the universe.
This is the culmination of the teaching of the Upanishad;

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there was a demand for the secret teaching that enters into the
ultimate truth, for the "Upanishad", and in response this doctrine has been given. It has been uttered, the Upanishad of the
Brahman, the hidden ultimate truth of the supreme Existence;
its beginning was the search for the Lord, Master of mind, life,
speech and senses in whom is the absolute of mind, the absolute
of life, the absolute of speech and senses and its close is the
finding of Him as the transcendent Beatitude and the elevation
of the soul that finds and possesses it into a living centre of that
Delight towards which all creatures in the universe shall turn as
to a fountain of its ecstasies.
*
* *
The Upanishad closes with two verses which seem to review
and characterise the whole work in the manner of the ancient
writings when they have drawn to their close. This Upanishad
or gospel of the inmost Truth of things has for its foundation,
it is said, the practice of self-mastery, action and the subdual
of the sense-life to the power of the Spirit. In other words, life
and works are to be used as a means of arriving out of the state
of subjection proper to the soul in the ignorance into a state
of mastery which brings it nearer to the absolute self-mastery
and all-mastery of the supreme Soul seated in the knowledge.
The Vedas, that is to say, the utterances of the inspired seers
and the truths they hold, are described as all the limbs of the
Upanishad; in other words, all the convergent lines and aspects,
all the necessary elements of this great practice, this profound
psychological self-training and spiritual aspiration are set forth
in these great Scriptures, channels of supreme knowledge and
indicators of a supreme discipline. Truth is its home; and this
Truth is not merely intellectual verity, - for that is not the sense
of the word in the Vedic writings, - but man's ultimate human
state of true being, true consciousness, right knowledge, right
works, right joy of existence, all indeed that is contrary to the
falsehood of egoism and ignorance. It is by these means, by

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using works and self-discipline for mastery of oneself and for
the generation of spiritual energy, by fathoming in all its parts
the knowledge and repeating the high example of the great Vedic
seers and by living in the Truth that one becomes capable of the
great ascent which the Upanishad opens to us.
The goal of the ascent is the world of the true and vast
existence of which the Veda speaks as the Truth that is the final
goal and home of man. It is described here as the greater infinite
heavenly world, (Swargaloka, Swarloka of the Veda), which is
not the lesser Swarga of the Puranas or the lesser Brahmaloka of
the Mundaka Upanishad, its world of the sun's rays to which the
soul arrives by works of virtue and piety, but falls from them by
the exhaustion of their merit; it is the higher Swarga or Brahmanworld of the Katha which is beyond the dual symbols of birth
and death, the higher Brahman-worlds of the Mundaka which
the soul enters by knowledge and renunciation. It is therefore a
state not belonging to the Ignorance, but to Knowledge. It is, in
fact, the infinite existence and beatitude of the soul in the being
of the all-blissful existence; it is too the higher status, the light
of the Mind beyond the mind, the joy and eternal mastery of the
Life beyond the life, the riches of the Sense beyond the senses.
And the soul finds in it not only its own largeness but finds too
and possesses the infinity of the One and it has firm foundation
in that immortal state because there a supreme Silence and eternal Peace are the secure foundation of eternal Knowledge and
absolute Joy.

XV

A Last Word

W

E HAVE now completed our review of this Upanishad; we have considered minutely the bearings of its
successive utterances and striven to make as precise
as we can to the intelligence the sense of the puissant phrases
in which it gives us its leading clues to that which can never be
entirely expressed by human speech. We have some idea of what
it means by that Brahman, by the Mind of mind, the Life of
life, the Sense of sense, the Speech of speech, by the opposition
of ourselves and the gods, by the Unknowable who is yet not
utterly unknowable to us, by the transcendence of the mortal
state and the conquest of immortality.
Fundamentally its teaching reposes on the assertion of
three states of existence, the human and mortal, the Brahmanconsciousness which is the absolute of our relativities, and the
utter Absolute which is unknowable. The first is in a sense a
false status of misrepresentation because it is a continual term
of apparent opposites and balancings where the truth of things
is a secret unity; we have here a bright or positive figure and a
dark or negative figure and both are figures, neither the Truth;
still in that we now live and through that we have to move to
the Beyond. The second is the Lord of all this dual action who
is beyond it; He is the truth of Brahman and not in any way a
falsehood or misrepresentation, but the truth of it as attained by
us in our eternal supramental being; in Him are the absolutes of
all that here we experience in partial figures. The Unknowable
is beyond our grasp because though it is the same Reality, yet
it exceeds even our highest term of eternal being and is beyond
Existence and Non-existence; it is therefore to the Brahman, the
Lord who has a relation to what we are that we must direct our
search if we would attain beyond what temporarily seems to
what eternally is.

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The attainment of the Brahman is our escape from the mortal status into Immortality, by which we understand not the
survival of death, but the finding of our true self of eternal
being and bliss beyond the dual symbols of birth and death. By
immortality we mean the absolute life of the soul as opposed to
the transient and mutable life in the body which it assumes by
birth and death and rebirth and superior also to its life as the
mere mental being who dwells in the world subjected helplessly
to this law of death and birth or seems at least by his ignorance
to be subjected to this and to other laws of the lower Nature. To
know and possess its true nature, free, absolute, master of itself
and its embodiments is the soul's means of transcendence, and
to know and possess this is to know and possess the Brahman.
It is also to rise out of mortal world into immortal world, out
of world of bondage into world of largeness, out of finite world
into infinite world. It is to ascend out of earthly joy and sorrow
into a transcendent Beatitude.
This must be done by the abandonment of our attachment
to the figure of things in the mortal world. We must put from
us its death and dualities if we would compass the unity and
immortality. Therefore it follows that we must cease to make
the goods of this world or even its right, light and beauty our
object of pursuit; we must go beyond these to a supreme Good,
a transcendent Truth, Light and Beauty in which the opposite
figures of what we call evil disappear. But still, being in this
world, it is only through something in this world itself that
we can transcend it; it is through its figures that we must find
the absolute. Therefore, we scrutinise them and perceive that
there are first these forms of mind, life, speech and sense, all of
them figures and imperfect suggestions, and then behind them
the cosmic principles through which the One acts. It is to these
cosmic principles that we must proceed and turn them from
their ordinary aim and movement in the world to find their own
supreme aim and absolute movement in their own one Godhead, the Lord, the Brahman; they must be drawn to leave the
workings of ordinary mind and find the superconscient Mind,
to leave the workings of ordinary speech and sense and find the

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supra-mental Sense and original Word, to leave the apparent
workings of mundane Life and find the transcendent Life.
Besides the gods, there is our self, the spirit within who
supports all this action of the gods. Our spirit too must turn
from its absorption in its figure of itself as it sees it involved in
the movement of individual life, mind, body and subject to it
and must direct its gaze upward to its own supreme Self who
is beyond all this movement and master of it all. Therefore the
mind must indeed become passive to the divine Mind, the sense
to the divine Sense, the life to the divine Life and by receptivity to
constant touches and visitings of the highest be transfigured into
a reflection of these transcendences; but also the individual self
must through the mind's aspiration upwards, through upliftings
of itself beyond, through constant memory of the supreme Reality in which during these divine moments it has lived, ascend
finally into that Bliss and Power and Light.
But this will not necessarily mean the immersion into an
all-oblivious Being eternally absorbed in His own inactive selfexistence. For the mind, sense, life going beyond their individual
formations find that they are only one centre of the sole Mind,
Life, Form of things and therefore they find Brahman in that also
and not only in an individual transcendence; they bring down
the vision of the superconscient into that also and not only
into their own individual workings. The mind of the individual
escapes from its limits and becomes the one universal mind, his
life the one universal life, his bodily sense the sense of the whole
universe and even more as his own indivisible Brahman-body.
He perceives the universe in himself and he perceives also his self
in all existences and knows it to be the one, the omnipresent,
the single-multiple all-inhabiting Lord and Reality. Without this
realisation he has not fulfilled the conditions of immortality.
Therefore it is said that what the sages seek is to distinguish and
see the Brahman in all existences; by that discovery, realisation
and possession of Him everywhere and in all they attain to their
immortal existence.
Still although the victory of the gods, that is to say, the
progressive perfection of the mind, life, body in the positive

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terms of good, right, joy, knowledge, power is recognised as a
victory of the Brahman and the necessity of using life and human
works in the world as a means of preparation and self-mastery
is admitted, yet a final passing away into the infinite heavenly
world or status of the Brahman-consciousness is held out as the
goal. And this would seem to imply a rejection of the life of the
cosmos. Well then may we ask, we the modern humanity more
and more conscious of the inner warning of that which created
us, be it Nature or God, that there is a work for the race, a
divine purpose in its creation which exceeds the salvation of the
individual soul, because the universal is as real or even more
real than the individual, we who feel more and more, in the
language of the Koran, that the Lord did not create heaven
and earth in a jest, that Brahman did not begin dreaming this
world-dream in a moment of aberration and delirium, - well
may we ask whether this gospel of individual salvation is all the
message even of this purer, earlier, more catholic Vedanta. If so,
then Vedanta at its best is a gospel for the saint, the ascetic, the
monk, the solitary, but it has not a message which the widening
consciousness of the world can joyfully accept as the word for
which it was waiting. For there is evidently something vital that
has escaped it, a profound word of the riddle of existence from
which it has turned its eyes or which it was unable or thought it
not worth while to solve.
Now certainly there is an emphasis in the Upanishads increasing steadily as time goes on into an over-emphasis, on the
salvation of the individual, on his rejection of the lower cosmic
life. This note increases in them as they become later in date, it
swells afterwards into the rejection of all cosmic life whatever
and that becomes finally in later Hinduism almost the one dominant and all-challenging cry. It does not exist in the earlier Vedic
revelation where individual salvation is regarded as a means
towards a great cosmic victory, the eventual conquest of heaven
and earth by the superconscient Truth and Bliss and those who
have achieved the victory in the past are the conscious helpers
of their yet battling posterity. If this earlier note is missing in the
Upanishads, then, - for great as are these Scriptures, luminous,

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profound, sublime in their unsurpassed truth, beauty and power,
yet it is only the ignorant soul that will make itself the slave
of a book, - then in using them as an aid to knowledge we
must insistently call back that earlier missing note, we must
seek elsewhere a solution for the word of the riddle that has
been ignored. The Upanishad alone of extant scriptures gives us
without veil or stinting, with plenitude and a noble catholicity
the truth of the Brahman; its aid to humanity is therefore indispensable. Only, where anything essential is missing, we must
go beyond the Upanishads to seek it, - as for instance when
we add to its emphasis on divine knowledge the indispensable
ardent emphasis of the later teachings upon divine love and the
high emphasis of the Veda upon divine works.
The Vedic gospel of a supreme victory in heaven and on
earth for the divine in man, the Christian gospel of a kingdom of
God and divine city upon earth, the Puranic idea of progressing
Avataras ending in the kingdom of the perfect and the restoration of the golden Age, not only contain behind their forms a
profound truth, but they are necessary to the religious sense in
mankind. Without it the teaching of the vanity of human life and
of a passionate fleeing and renunciation can only be powerful
in passing epochs or else on the few strong souls in each age
that are really capable of these things. The rest of humanity
will either reject the creed which makes that its foundation or
ignore it in practice while professing it in precept or else must
sink under the weight of its own impotence and the sense of
the illusion of life or of the curse of God upon the world as
mediaeval Christendom sank into ignorance and obscurantism
or later India into stagnant torpor and the pettiness of a life of
aimless egoism. The promise for the individual is well but the
promise for the race is also needed. Our father Heaven must
remain bright with the hope of deliverance, but also our mother
Earth must not feel herself for ever accursed.
It was necessary at one time to insist even exclusively on the
idea of individual salvation so that the sense of a Beyond might
be driven into man's mentality, as it was necessary at one time
to insist on a heaven of joys for the virtuous and pious so that

Kena Upanishad: Commentary - XV

97

man might be drawn by that shining bait towards the practice
of religion and the suppression of his unbridled animality. But
as the lures of earth have to be conquered, so also have the lures
of heaven. The lure of a pleasant Paradise of the rewards of
virtue has been rejected by man; the Upanishads belittled it ages
ago in India and it is now no longer dominant in the mind of
the people; the similar lure in popular Christianity and popular
Islam has no meaning for the conscience of modern humanity.
The lure of a release from birth and death and withdrawal from
the cosmic labour must also be rejected, as it was rejected by
Mahayanist Buddhism which held compassion and helpfulness
to be greater than Nirvana. As the virtues we practise must be
done without demand of earthly or heavenly reward, so the
salvation we seek must be purely internal and impersonal; it
must be the release from egoism, the union with the Divine, the
realisation of our universality as well as our transcendence, and
no salvation should be valued which takes us away from the
love of God in his manifestation and the help we can give to the
world. If need be, it must be taught for a time, "Better this hell
with our other suffering selves than a solitary salvation."
Fortunately, there is no need to go to such lengths and
deny one side of the truth in order to establish another. The
Upanishad itself suggests the door of escape from any overemphasis in its own statement of the truth. For the man who
knows and possesses the supreme Brahman as the transcendent
Beatitude becomes a centre of that delight to which all his fellows shall come, a well from which they can draw the divine
waters. Here is the clue that we need. The connection with the
universe is preserved for the one reason which supremely justifies
that connection; it must subsist not from the desire of personal
earthly joy, as with those who are still bound, but for help to
all creatures. Two then are the objects of the high-reaching soul,
to attain the Supreme and to be for ever for the good of all the
world, - even as Brahman Himself; whether here or elsewhere,
does not essentially matter. Still where the struggle is thickest,
there should be the hero of the spirit, that is surely the highest
choice of the son of Immortality; the earth calls most, because it

98

Kena and Other Upanishads: Part One

has most need of him, to the soul that has become one with the
universe.
And the nature of the highest good that can be done is also
indicated, - though other lower forms of help are not therefore
excluded. To assist in the lesser victories of the gods which must
prepare the supreme victory of the Brahman may well be and
must be in some way or other a part of our task; but the greatest
helpfulness of all is this, to be a human centre of the Light,
the Glory, the Bliss, the Strength, the Knowledge of the Divine
Existence, one through whom it shall communicate itself lavishly
to other men and attract by its magnet of delight their souls to
that which is the Highest.


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