Bab Bab 1 · THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE

. THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE

THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE

The civilisation of ancient Greece was nurtured within city

walls. In fact, all the modern civilisations have their cradles

of brick and mortar.

These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set

up a principle of "divide and rule" in our mental outlook, which

begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying

them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and

nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us

a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have

built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our

recognition.

When the first Aryan invaders appeared in India it was a vast

land of forests, and the new-comers rapidly took advantage of

them. These forests afforded them shelter from the fierce heat

of the sun and the ravages of tropical storms, pastures for

cattle, fuel for sacrificial fire, and materials for building

cottages. And the different Aryan clans with their patriarchal

heads settled in the different forest tracts which had some

special advantage of natural protection, and food and water in

plenty.

Thus in India it was in the forests that our civilisation had its

birth, and it took a distinct character from this origin and

environment. It was surrounded by the vast life of nature, was

fed and clothed by her, and had the closest and most constant

intercourse with her varying aspects.

Such a life, it may be thought, tends to have the effect of

dulling human intelligence and dwarfing the incentives to

progress by lowering the standards of existence. But in ancient

India we find that the circumstances of forest life did not

overcome man's mind, and did not enfeeble the current of his

energies, but only gave to it a particular direction. Having

been in constant contact with the living growth of nature, his

mind was free from the desire to extend his dominion by erecting

boundary walls around his acquisitions. His aim was not to

acquire but to realise, to enlarge his consciousness by growing

with and growing into his surroundings. He felt that truth is

all-comprehensive, that there is no such thing as absolute

isolation in existence, and the only way of attaining truth is

through the interpenetration of our being into all objects. To

realise this great harmony between man's spirit and the spirit of

the world was the endeavour of the forest-dwelling sages of

ancient India.

In later days there came a time when these primeval forests gave

way to cultivated fields, and wealthy cities sprang up on all

sides. Mighty kingdoms were established, which had

communications with all the great powers of the world. But even

in the heyday of its material prosperity the heart of India ever

looked back with adoration upon the early ideal of strenuous

self-realisation, and the dignity of the simple life of the

forest hermitage, and drew its best inspiration from the wisdom

stored there.

The west seems to take a pride in thinking that it is subduing

nature; as if we are living in a hostile world where we have to

wrest everything we want from an unwilling and alien arrangement

of things. This sentiment is the product of the city-wall habit

and training of mind. For in the city life man naturally directs

the concentrated light of his mental vision upon his own life and

works, and this creates an artificial dissociation between

himself and the Universal Nature within whose bosom he lies.

But in India the point of view was different; it included the

world with the man as one great truth. India put all her

emphasis on the harmony that exists between the individual and

the universal. She felt we could have no communication whatever

with our surroundings if they were absolutely foreign to us.

Man's complaint against nature is that he has to acquire most of

his necessaries by his own efforts. Yes, but his efforts are not

in vain; he is reaping success every day, and that shows there is

a rational connection between him and nature, for we never can

make anything our own except that which is truly related to us.

We can look upon a road from two different points of view. One

regards it as dividing us from the object of our desire; in that

case we count every step of our journey over it as something

attained by force in the face of obstruction. The other sees it

as the road which leads us to our destination; and as such it is

part of our goal. It is already the beginning of our attainment,

and by journeying over it we can only gain that which in itself

it offers to us. This last point of view is that of India with

regard to nature. For her, the great fact is that we are in

harmony with nature; that man can think because his thoughts are

in harmony with things; that he can use the forces of nature for

his own purpose only because his power is in harmony with the

power which is universal, and that in the long run his purpose

never can knock against the purpose which works through nature.

In the west the prevalent feeling is that nature belongs

exclusively to inanimate things and to beasts, that there is a

sudden unaccountable break where human-nature begins. According

to it, everything that is low in the scale of beings is merely

nature, and whatever has the stamp of perfection on it,

intellectual or moral, is human-nature. It is like dividing the

bud and the blossom into two separate categories, and putting

their grace to the credit of two different and antithetical

principles. But the Indian mind never has any hesitation in

acknowledging its kinship with nature, its unbroken relation with

all.

The fundamental unity of creation was not simply a philosophical

speculation for India; it was her life-object to realise this

great harmony in feeling and in action. With mediation and

service, with a regulation of life, she cultivated her

consciousness in such a way that everything had a spiritual

meaning to her. The earth, water and light, fruits and flowers,

to her were not merely physical phenomena to be turned to use and

then left aside. They were necessary to her in the attainment of

her ideal of perfection, as every note is necessary to the

completeness of the symphony. India intuitively felt that the

essential fact of this world has a vital meaning for us; we have

to be fully alive to it and establish a conscious relation with

it, not merely impelled by scientific curiosity or greed of

material advantage, but realising it in the spirit of sympathy,

with a large feeling of joy and peace.

The man of science knows, in one aspect, that the world is not

merely what it appears to be to our senses; he knows that earth

and water are really the play of forces that manifest themselves

to us as earth and water--how, we can but partially apprehend.

Likewise the man who has his spiritual eyes open knows that the

ultimate truth about earth and water lies in our apprehension of

the eternal will which works in time and takes shape in the

forces we realise under those aspects. This is not mere

knowledge, as science is, but it is a preception of the soul by

the soul. This does not lead us to power, as knowledge does, but

it gives us joy, which is the product of the union of kindred

things. The man whose acquaintance with the world does not lead

him deeper than science leads him, will never understand what it

is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural

phenomena. The water does not merely cleanse his limbs, but it

purifies his heart; for it touches his soul. The earth does not

merely hold his body, but it gladdens his mind; for its contact

is more than a physical contact--it is a living presence. When a

man does not realise his kinship with the world, he lives in a

prison-house whose walls are alien to him. When he meets the

eternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then

he discovers the fullest significance of the world into which he

is born; then he finds himself in perfect truth, and his harmony

with the all is established. In India men are enjoined to be

fully awake to the fact that they are in the closest relation to

things around them, body and soul, and that they are to hail the

morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth, as the

manifestation of the same living truth which holds them in its

embrace. Thus the text of our everyday meditation is the

_Gayathri_, a verse which is considered to be the epitome of all

the Vedas. By its help we try to realise the essential unity of

the world with the conscious soul of man; we learn to perceive

the unity held together by the one Eternal Spirit, whose power

creates the earth, the sky, and the stars, and at the same time

irradiates our minds with the light of a consciousness that moves

and exists in unbroken continuity with the outer world.

It is not true that India has tried to ignore differences of

value in different things, for she knows that would make life

impossible. The sense of the superiority of man in the scale of

creation has not been absent from her mind. But she has had her

own idea as to that in which his superiority really consists. It

is not in the power of possession but in the power of union.

Therefore India chose her places of pilgrimage wherever there was

in nature some special grandeur or beauty, so that her mind could

come out of its world of narrow necessities and realise its place

in the infinite. This was the reason why in India a whole

people who once were meat-eaters gave up taking animal food to

cultivate the sentiment of universal sympathy for life, an event

unique in the history of mankind.

India knew that when by physical and mental barriers we violently

detach ourselves from the inexhaustible life of nature; when we

become merely man, but not man-in-the-universe, we create

bewildering problems, and having shut off the source of their

solution, we try all kinds of artificial methods each of which

brings its own crop of interminable difficulties. When man

leaves his resting-place in universal nature, when he walks on

the single rope of humanity, it means either a dance or a fall

for him, he has ceaselessly to strain every nerve and muscle to

keep his balance at each step, and then, in the intervals of his

weariness, he fulminates against Providence and feels a secret

pride and satisfaction in thinking that he has been unfairly

dealt with by the whole scheme of things.

But this cannot go on for ever. Man must realise the wholeness

of his existence, his place in the infinite; he must know that

hard as he may strive he can never create his honey within the

cells of his hive; for the perennial supply of his life food is

outside their walls. He must know that when man shuts himself

out from the vitalising and purifying touch of the infinite, and

falls back upon himself for his sustenance and his healing, then

he goads himself into madness, tears himself into shreds, and

eats his own substance. Deprived of the background of the whole,

his poverty loses its one great quality, which is simplicity, and

becomes squalid and shamefaced. His wealth is no longer

magnanimous; it grows merely extravagant. His appetites do not

minister to his life, keeping to the limits of their purpose;

they become an end in themselves and set fire to his life and

play the fiddle in the lurid light of the conflagration. Then it

is that in our self-expression we try to startle and not to

attract; in art we strive for originality and lose sight of truth

which is old and yet ever new; in literature we miss the complete

view of man which is simple and yet great, but he appears as a

psychological problem or the embodiment of a passion that is

intense because abnormal and because exhibited in the glare of a

fiercely emphatic light which is artificial. When man's

consciousness is restricted only to the immediate vicinity of his

human self, the deeper roots of his nature do not find their

permanent soil, his spirit is ever on the brink of starvation,

and in the place of healthful strength he substitutes rounds of

stimulation. Then it is that man misses his inner perspective

and measures his greatness by its bulk and not by its vital link

with the infinite, judges his activity by its movement and not by

the repose of perfection--the repose which is in the starry

heavens, in the ever-flowing rhythmic dance of creation.

The first invasion of India has its exact parallel in the

invasion of America by the European settlers. They also were

confronted with primeval forests and a fierce struggle with

aboriginal races. But this struggle between man and man, and man

and nature lasted till the very end; they never came to any

terms. In India the forests which were the habitation of the

barbarians became the sanctuary of sages, but in America these

great living cathedrals of nature had no deeper significance to

man. The brought wealth and power to him, and perhaps at times

they ministered to his enjoyment of beauty, and inspired a

solitary poet. They never acquired a sacred association in the

hearts of men as the site of some great spiritual reconcilement

where man's soul has its meeting-place with the soul of the

world.

I do not for a moment wish to suggest that these things should

have been otherwise. It would be an utter waste of opportunities

if history were to repeat itself exactly in the same manner in

every place. It is best for the commerce of the spirit that

people differently situated should bring their different products

into the market of humanity, each of which is complementary and

necessary to the others. All that I wish to say is that India at

the outset of her career met with a special combination of

circumstances which was not lost upon her. She had, according to

her opportunities, thought and pondered, striven and suffered,

dived into the depths of existence, and achieved something which

surely cannot be without its value to people whose evolution in

history took a different way altogether. Man for his perfect

growth requires all the living elements that constitute his

complex life; that is why his food has to be cultivated in

different fields and brought from different sources.

Civilisation is a kind of mould that each nation is busy making

for itself to shape its men and women according to its best

ideal. All its institutions, its legislature, its standard of

approbation and condemnation, its conscious and unconscious

teachings tend toward that object. The modern civilisation of

the west, by all its organised efforts, is trying to turn out men

perfect in physical, intellectual, and moral efficiency. There

the vast energies of the nations are employed in extending man's

power over his surroundings, and people are combining and

straining every faculty to possess and to turn to account all

that they can lay their hands upon, to overcome every obstacle on

their path of conquest. They are ever disciplining themselves to

fight nature and other races; their armaments are getting more

and more stupendous every day; their machines, their appliances,

their organisations go on multiplying at an amazing rate. This

is a splendid achievement, no doubt, and a wonderful

manifestation of man's masterfulness which knows no obstacle, and

which has for its object the supremacy of himself over everything

else.

The ancient civilisation of India had its own ideal of perfection

towards which its efforts were directed. Its aim was not

attaining power, and it neglected to cultivate to the utmost its

capacities, and to organise men for defensive and offensive

purposes, for co-operation in the acquisition of wealth and for

military and political ascendancy. The ideal that India tried to

realise led her best men to the isolation of a contemplative

life, and the treasures that she gained for mankind by

penetrating into the mysteries of reality cost her dear in the

sphere of worldly success. Yet, this also was a sublime

achievement,--it was a supreme manifestation of that human

aspiration which knows no limit, and which has for its object

nothing less than the realisation of the Infinite.

There were the virtuous, the wise, the courageous; there were the

statesmen, kings and emperors of India; but whom amongst all

these classes did she look up to and choose to be the

representative of men?

They were the rishis. What were the rishis? _They who having

attained the supreme soul in knowledge were filled with wisdom,

and having found him in union with the soul were in perfect

harmony with the inner self; they having realised him in the

heart were free from all selfish desires, and having experienced

him in all the activities of the world, had attained calmness.

The rishis were they who having reached the supreme God from all

sides had found abiding peace, had become united with all, had

entered into the life of the Universe._ [Footnote:

/**

Samprāpyainam rishayo jñānatripatāh

Kritātmānō vītarāgāh praçantāh

tē sarvagam sarvatah prāpya dhīrāh

Yuktātmānah sarvamēvāviçanti.

*/

]

Thus the state of realising our relationship with all, of

entering into everything through union with God, was considered

in India to be the ultimate end and fulfilment of humanity.

Man can destroy and plunder, earn and accumulate, invent and

discover, but he is great because his soul comprehends all. It

is dire destruction for him when he envelopes his soul in a dead

shell of callous habits, and when a blind fury of works whirls

round him like an eddying dust storm, shutting out the horizon.

That indeed kills the very spirit of his being, which is the

spirit of comprehension. Essentially man is not a slave either

of himself or of the world; but he is a lover. His freedom and

fulfilment is in love, which is another name for perfect

comprehension. By this power of comprehension, this permeation

of his being, he is united with the all-pervading Spirit, who is

also the breath of his soul. Where a man tries to raise himself

to eminence by pushing and jostling all others, to achieve a

distinction by which he prides himself to be more than everybody

else, there he is alienated from that Spirit. This is why the

Upanishads describe those who have attained the goal of human

life as "_peaceful_" [Footnote: Praçantāh] and as "_at-one-with-God_,"

[Footnote: Yuktātmānah] meaning that they are in perfect

harmony with man and nature, and therefore in undisturbed union

with God.

We have a glimpse of the same truth in the teachings of Jesus

when he says, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye

of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven"--which

implies that whatever we treasure for ourselves separates

us from others; our possessions are our limitations. He who is

bent upon accumulating riches is unable, with his ego continually

bulging, to pass through the gates of comprehension of the

spiritual world, which is the world of perfect harmony; he is

shut up within the narrow walls of his limited acquisitions.

Hence the spirit of the teachings of Upanishad is: In order to

find him you must embrace all. In the pursuit of wealth you

really give up everything to gain a few things, and that is not

the way to attain him who is completeness.

Some modern philosophers of Europe, who are directly or

indirectly indebted to the Upanishads, far from realising their

debt, maintain that the Brahma of India is a mere abstraction, a

negation of all that is in the world. In a word, that the

Infinite Being is to be found nowhere except in metaphysics. It

may be, that such a doctrine has been and still is prevalent with

a section of our countrymen. But this is certainly not in accord

with the pervading spirit of the Indian mind. Instead, it is the

practice of realising and affirming the presence of the infinite

in all things which has been its constant inspiration.

We are enjoined to see _whatever there is in the world as being

enveloped by God._

[Footnote: Içāvāsyamidam sarvam yat kiñcha jagatyāñ jagat.]

_I bow to God over and over again who is in fire and in water, who

permeates the whole world, who is in the annual crops as well as

in the perennial trees._ [Footnote: Yo dēvō'gnau y'ōpsu y'ō

viçvambhuvanamāvivēça ya ōshadhishu yō vanaspatishu tasmai dēvāya

namōnamah.]

Can this be God abstracted from the world? Instead, it signifies

not merely seeing him in all things, but saluting him in all the

objects of the world. The attitude of the God-conscious man of

the Upanishad towards the universe is one of a deep feeling of

adoration. His object of worship is present everywhere. It is

the one living truth that makes all realities true. This truth

is not only of knowledge but of devotion. '_Namonamah_,'--we bow

to him everywhere, and over and over again. It is recognised in

the outburst of the Rishi, who addresses the whole world in a

sudden ecstasy of joy: _Listen to me, ye sons of the immortal

spirit, ye who live in the heavenly abode, I have known the

Supreme Person whose light shines forth from beyond the darkness._

[Footnote: Çrinvantu viçve amritasya putrā ā ye divya dhāmāni

tasthuh vedāhametam purusham mahāntam āditya varņam tamasah

parastāt.] Do we not find the overwhelming delight of a direct

and positive experience where there is not the least trace of

vagueness or passivity?

Buddha who developed the practical side of the teaching of

Upanishads, preached the same message when he said, _With

everything, whether it is above or below, remote or near, visible

or invisible, thou shalt preserve a relation of unlimited love

without any animosity or without a desire to kill. To live in

such a consciousness while standing or walking, sitting or lying

down till you are asleep, is Brahma vihāra, or, in other words,

is living and moving and having your joy in the spirit of

Brahma._

What is that spirit? The Upanishad says, _The being who is in

his essence the light and life of all, who is world-conscious, is

Brahma._ [Footnote: Yaçchāyamasminnākāçē tējōmayō'mritamayah

purushah sarvānubhūh.] To feel all, to be conscious of

everything, is his spirit. We are immersed in his consciousness

body and soul. It is through his consciousness that the sun

attracts the earth; it is through his consciousness that the

light-waves are being transmitted from planet to planet.

Not only in space, but _this light and life, this all-feeling

being is in our souls._ [Footnote: Yaçchāyamasminnātmani

tējōmayō'mritamayah purushah sarvānubhūh.] He is all-conscious

in space, or the world of extension; and he is all-conscious in

soul, or the world of intension.

Thus to attain our world-consciousness, we have to unite our

feeling with this all-pervasive infinite feeling. In fact, the

only true human progress is coincident with this widening of the

range of feeling. All our poetry, philosophy, science, art and

religion are serving to extend the scope of our consciousness

towards higher and larger spheres. Man does not acquire rights

through occupation of larger space, nor through external conduct,

but his rights extend only so far as he is real, and his reality

is measured by the scope of his consciousness.

We have, however, to pay a price for this attainment of the

freedom of consciousness. What is the price? It is to give

one's self away. Our soul can realise itself truly only by

denying itself. The Upanishad says, _Thou shalt gain by giving

away_ [Footnote: Tyaktēna bhuñjīthāh], _Thou shalt not covet._

[Footnote: Mā gridhah]

In Gita we are advised to work disinterestedly, abandoning all

lust for the result. Many outsiders conclude from this teaching

that the conception of the world as something unreal lies at the

root of the so-called disinterestedness preached in India. But

the reverse is true.

The man who aims at his own aggrandisement underrates everything

else. Compared to his ego the rest of the world is unreal. Thus

in order to be fully conscious of the reality of all, one has to

be free himself from the bonds of personal desires. This

discipline we have to go through to prepare ourselves for our

social duties--for sharing the burdens of our fellow-beings.

Every endeavour to attain a larger life requires of man "to gain

by giving away, and not to be greedy." And thus to expand

gradually the consciousness of one's unity with all is the

striving of humanity.

The Infinite in India was not a thin nonentity, void of all

content. The Rishis of India asserted emphatically, "To know him

in this life is to be true; not to know him in this life is the

desolation of death." [Footnote: Iha chēt avēdit atha

satyamasti, nachēt iha avēdit mahatī vinashtih.] How to know him

then? "By realising him in each and all." [Footnote: Bhūtēshu

bhūtēshu vichintva.] Not only in nature but in the family, in

society, and in the state, the more we realise the World-conscious

in all, the better for us. Failing to realise it, we

turn our faces to destruction.

It fills me with great joy and a high hope for the future of

humanity when I realise that there was a time in the remote past

when our poet-prophets stood under the lavish sunshine of an

Indian sky and greeted the world with the glad recognition of

kindred. It was not an anthropomorphic hallucination. It was

not seeing man reflected everywhere in grotesquely exaggerated

images, and witnessing the human drama acted on a gigantic scale

in nature's arena of flitting lights and shadows. On the

contrary, it meant crossing the limiting barriers of the

individual, to become more than man, to become one with the All.

It was not a mere play of the imagination, but it was the

liberation of consciousness from all the mystifications and

exaggerations of the self. These ancient seers felt in the

serene depth of their mind that the same energy which vibrates

and passes into the endless forms of the world manifests itself

in our inner being as consciousness; and there is no break in

unity. For these seers there was no gap in their luminous vision

of perfection. They never acknowledged even death itself as

creating a chasm in the field of reality. They said, _His

reflection is death as well as immortality._ [Footnote: Yasya

chhāyāmritam yasya mrityuh.] They did not recognise any

essential opposition between life and death, and they said with

absolute assurance, "It is life that is death." [Footnote: Prāno

mrityuh.] They saluted with the same serenity of gladness "life

in its aspect of appearing and in its aspect of departure"--_That

which is past is hidden in life, and that which is to come._

[Footnote: Namō astu āyatē namō astu parāyatē. Prānē ha bhūtam

bhavyañcha.] They knew that mere appearance and disappearance are

on the surface like waves on the sea, but life which is permanent

knows no decay or diminution.

_Everything has sprung from immortal life and is vibrating with

life_, [Footnote: Yadidan kiñcha praņa ejati nihsritam.] _for life

is immense._ [Footnote: Prāno virāt.]

This is the noble heritage from our forefathers waiting to be

claimed by us as our own, this ideal of the supreme freedom of

consciousness. It is not merely intellectual or emotional, it

has an ethical basis, and it must be translated into action. In

the Upanishad it is said, _The supreme being is all-pervading,

therefore he is the innate good in all._ [Footnote: Sarvavyāpī

sa bhagavān tasmāt sarvagatah çivah.] To be truly united in

knowledge, love, and service with all beings, and thus to

realise one's self in the all-pervading God is the essence of

goodness, and this is the keynote of the teachings of the

Upanishads: _Life is immense!_ [Footnote: Prāņo virāt.]