We must now pass on to consider the different degrees of the manifestation of Ātmā, regarded as the personality, insofar as this manifestation constitutes human individuality; and it may indeed literally be said to constitute it, since this individuality would enjoy no existence at all if it were separated from its principle, that is to say from the personality. The expression just used calls, however, for one reservation; by the manifestation of Ātmā must be under stood manifestation referred to Ātmā as its essential principle, but it must not be inferred from this that Ātmā manifests itself in some way, since it never enters into manifestation, as we have previously stated, and that is why it is not in any way affected thereby. In other words, Ātmā is “that by which all things are manifested, and which is not itself manifested by anything”;1 and it is this point which must never be lost sight of throughout all that follows. We will repeat once more that Ātmā and Purusha are one and the same principle, and that it is from Prakriti and not from Purusha that all manifesta tion is produced; but if the Sāṇkhya, because its point of view is chiefly “cosmological” and not strictly speaking metaphysical, sees this manifestation as the development or “actualization” of the potentialities of Prakriti, the Vedānta necessarily sees it quite differ ently, because it regards Ātmā, which is outside any change or “becoming”, as the true principle to which everything must ulti mately be referred. It might be said that, viewed in this manner, the Sāṇkhya and the Vedānta represent respectively the points of view of “substance” and of “essence”, and that the first can be called a “cosmo logical” point of view, because it is that of Nature and of “becoming”; but, on the other hand, metaphysics does not limit itself to “essence” regarded as the correlative of “substance”, nor even to Being, in which these two terms are unified; it extends much further, since it attains to Paramātmā or Purushottama, which is the Supreme Brahma, and therefore its point of view (assuming that such an expression is still applicable here) is truly unlimited.
Furthermore, when we speak of the different degrees of individ ual manifestation, it should be readily understood that they corre spond with the degrees of universal manifestation, by reason of the basic analogy between the “macrocosm” and the “microcosm” to which we have already alluded. This will be still better understood if one remembers that all manifested beings alike are subject to the general conditions which limit the states of existence in which they are placed; if we cannot, when considering any given being, really isolate one state of that being from the whole composed of all the other states among which it is situated hierarchically at a given level, no more can we, from another point of view, isolate that state from all that belongs, not to the same being, but to the same degree of universal Existence; and thus all appears linked together in various different ways, both within manifestation itself, and also insofar as the latter, forming a single whole in its indefinite multiplicity, is attached to its principle, that is, to Being, and through Being to the Supreme Principle. Multiplicity, once it is a possibility, exists according to its own mode, but this mode is illusory, in the sense we have already ascribed to that word (that of a lesser reality), because the very existence of this multiplicity is based upon unity, from which it is derived and within which it is principially contained. When viewing the whole of universal manifestation in this manner, we may say that in the very multiplicity of its degrees and of its modes “Existence is one”, according to a formula borrowed from Islamic esoterism; furthermore, there is a fine distinction which it is important to note here as between “unicity” and “unity”: the first embraces multiplicity as such while the second is its principle (not its “root”, in the sense in which this word is applied to Prakriti only, but as containing within itself, “essentially” as well as “substantially”, all the possibilities of manifestation). It can therefore correctly be said that Being is one, and that it is Unity itself2 in the metaphysical sense, however, and not in the mathematical sense, for at this stage we have passed quite outside the domain of quantity. Between meta physical Unity and mathematical unity there is analogy but not identity; and similarly, when we speak of the multiplicity of univer sal manifestation, it is again not with a quantitative multiplicity that we are concerned, for quantity is merely a special condition of cer tain manifested states. Finally, if Being is one, the Supreme Principle is “without duality”, as we shall see in what follows: Unity is indeed the first of all determinations, but it is already a determination, and, as such, it cannot properly be applied to the Supreme Principle.
Having given these few indispensable explanations, let us return to the consideration of the degrees of manifestation. It is necessary, as we have seen, to draw a distinction first of all between formless and formal manifestation; but when we confine our attention to the individuality, it is always exclusively with the latter that we are concerned. The human state properly so called, like every other indi vidual state, belongs wholly to formal manifestation, since it is precisely the presence of form among the conditions contributing to make up a particular mode of existence which characterizes that mode as individual. If, therefore, we have to consider a formless element, it will also necessarily be a supra-individual element, and, as regards its relationship with human individuality, it must never be considered as constitutive of it, nor for any reason at all as forming a part of it, but as linking the individuality to the personality. The personality, indeed, is unmanifested, even insofar as it is regarded more especially as the principle of the manifested states, just as Being, although it is properly the principle of universal manifesta tion, remains outside of and beyond that manifestation (and we may recall Aristotle’s “unmoved mover” at this point); on the other hand, formless manifestation is also, in a relative sense, principial in relation to formal manifestation, and thus it establishes a link between the latter and its higher unmanifested principle, which is, moreover, the common principle of these two orders of manifesta tion. Similarly, if we distinguish, in formal or individual manifestation, between the subtle and the gross state, the first is, more relatively still, principial in relation to the second, and hence placed hierarchically between it and formless manifestation. We have, therefore, through a series of principles becoming progressively more relative and determined, a chain at once logical and ontologi cal (the two points of view, moreover, corresponding in such a way that they can only be separated artificially) extending from the unmanifested downward to gross manifestation, passing through the intermediary of formless manifestation and then of subtle man ifestation; and, whether we are dealing with the “macrocosm” or with the “microcosm”, such is the general order which must be fol lowed in the development of the possibilities of manifestation. . . .
One last observation is called for; in speaking of the order of development of the possibilities of manifestation, or of the order in which the elements corresponding to the different phases of this development should be enumerated, great care must be taken to explain that such an order implies a purely logical succession, signi fying, however, a real ontological connection, and that there cannot be any question at all here of a temporal succession. Development in time, indeed, only corresponds with a special condition of existence, which is one of those conditions defining the domain in which the human state is contained; and there is an indefinite number of other modes of development equally possible, and included also within universal manifestation. Human individuality cannot therefore be related in the order of time to other states of the being, since these, in a general way, are extra-temporal: and that is also true even when it is only a question of states which likewise belong to formal mani festation. It might further be added that certain extensions of the human individuality, outside its corporeal modality, are already freed from time, without on that account being exempt from the general conditions of the state to which this individuality belongs; these extensions are really situated in mere prolongations of that state, and we shall doubtless have occasion in other studies to explain just how such prolongations may be reached through the suppression of one or other of the conditions which together con tribute to make up the corporeal world. Such being the case, it is all the more apparent that there cannot be any question of the tempo ral condition applying outside this same state, nor, consequently, of its governing the relation of the integral human state with other states; and this is even less admissible when it is a question of a principle common to all the states of manifestation, or of an element which, though indeed manifested, is nevertheless superior to all for mal manifestation, as is the element to be considered next.
1 Kena Upanishad I.5-9.
2 The same idea is expressed by the Scholastic adage: Esse et unum convertun tur.