THE SOCIAL ORDER

Ethics, whether as prudence or as art, is nothing but the scientific application of doctrinal norms to contingent problems; right doing or making are matters not of the will, but of conscience, or awareness, a choice being only possible as between obedience or rebellion. Actions, in other words, are in order or inordinate in precisely the same way that iconography may be correct or incorrect, formal or informal.142 Error is failure to hit the mark, and is to be expected in all who act instinctively, to please themselves. Skill (kaualy= σoϕα), is virtue, whether in doing or in making: a matter needing emphasis only because it has now been generally overlooked that there can be artistic as well as moral sin. “Yoga is skill in works”.¹⁴³

Where there is agreement as to the nature of man’s last end, and that the Way by which the present and the paramount ends of life can be realised is that of sacrificial operation, it is evident that the form of society will be determined by the requirements of the Sacrifice; and that order (yathrthat) and impartiality (samadi) will mean that everyman shall be enabled to become, and by no misdirection prevented from becoming, what he has it in him to become. We have seen that it is to those who maintain the Sacrifice that the promise is made that they shall flourish. Now the Sacrifice, performed in divinis by the All-worker (Vivakarma), as imitated here demands a cooperation of all the arts (viv karmi),¹⁴⁴ for example, those of music, architecture, carpentry, husbandry and that of warfare to protect the operation. The politics of the heavenly, social and individual communities are governed by one and the same law. The pattern of the heavenly politics is revealed in scripture and reflected in the constitution of the autonomous state and that of the man who governs himself.

In this man, in whom the sacramental life is complete, there is a hierarchy of sacerdotal, royal, and administrative powers, and a fourth class consisting of the physical organs of sense and action, that handle the raw material or “food” to be prepared for all; and it is clear that if the organism is to flourish, which is impossible if divided against itself, that the sacerdotal, royal and administrative powers, in their order of rank, must be the “masters”, and the workers in raw materials their “servants”. It is in precisely the same way that the functional hierarchy of the realm is determined by the requirements of the Sacrifice on which its prosperity depends. The castes are literally “born of the Sacrifice”.¹⁴⁵ In the sacramental order there is a need and a place for all men’s work: and there is no more significant consequence of the principle, Work is Sacrifice, than the fact that under these conditions, and remote as this may be from our secular ways of thinking, every function, from that of the priest and the king down to that of the potter and scavenger, is literally a priesthood and every operation a rite. In each of these spheres, moreover, we meet with “professional ethics”. The caste system differs from the industrial “division of labor”, with its “fractioning of human faculty”, in that it presupposes differences in kinds of responsibility but not in degrees of responsibility; and it is just because an organisation of functions such as this, with its mutual loyalties and duties, is absolutely incompatible with our competitive industrialism, that the monarchic, feudal and caste system is always painted in such dark colors by the sociologist, whose thinking is determined more by his actual environment than it is a deduction from first principles.

That capacities and corresponding vocations are hereditary necessarily follows from the doctrine of progenitive rebirth: every man’s son is by nativity qualified and predestined to assume his father’s “character” and take his place in the world; it is for this that he is initiated into his father’s profession and finally confirmed in it by the deathbed rites of transmission, after which, should the father survive, the son becomes the head of the family. In replacing his father, the son frees him from the functional responsibility that he bore in this life, at the same time that a continuation of the sacrificial services is provided for.¹⁴⁶ And by the same token, the family line comes to an end, not for want of descendants (since this can be remedied by adoption) but whenever the family vocation and tradition is abandoned. In the same way a total confusion of castes is the death of a society, nothing but a mob remaining where a man can change his profession at will, as though it had been something altogether independent of his own nature. It is, in fact, thus that traditional societies are murdered and their culture destroyed by contact with industrial and proletarian civilisations. The orthodox Eastern estimate of Western civilisation can be fairly stated in Macaulay’s words,

The East bowed low before the West
In patient, deep disdain.

It must be remembered, however, that contrasts of this kind can be drawn only as between the still orthodox East and the modern West, and would not have held good in the thirteenth century.

The social order is designed, by its integration of functions, to provide at the same time for a common prosperity and to enable every member of society to realise his own perfection. In the sense that “religion” is to be identified with the “law” and distinguished from the “spirit”, Hindu religion is strictly speaking an obedience; and that this is so appears clearly in the fact that a man is considered to be a Hindu in good standing, not by what he believes but by what he does; or in other words, by his “skill” in well doing under the law.

For if there is no liberation by works, it is evident that the practical part of the social order, however faithfully fulfilled, can no more than any other rite, or than the affirmative theology, be regarded as anything more than a means to an end beyond itself. There always remains a last step, in which the ritual is abandoned and the relative truths of theology denied. As it was by the knowledge of good and evil that man fell from his first high estate, so it must be from the knowledge of good and evil, from the moral law, that he must be delivered at last. However far one may have gone, there remains a last step to be taken, involving a dissolution of all former values. A church or society—the Hindu would make no distinction—that does not provide a way of escape from its own regimen, and will not let its people go, is defeating its own ultimate purpose.¹⁴⁷

It is precisely for this last step that provision is made in the last of what are called the “Four Stages” (rama) of life,¹⁴⁸ The term itself implies that everyman is a pilgrim (ramaa), whose only motto is to “keep on going”. The first of these stages is that of student-discipleship; the second that of marriage and occupational activity, with all its responsibilities and rights; the third is one of retreat and comparative poverty; the fourth a condition of total renunciation (sannysa). It will be seen that whereas in a secular society a man looks forward to an old age of comfort and economic independence, in this sacramental order he looks forward to becoming independent of economics and indifferent to comfort and discomfort. I recall the figure of one of the most magnificent men: having been a householder of almost fabulous wealth, he was now at the age of seventy-eight in the third stage, living alone in a log cabin and doing his own cooking and washing with his own hands the only two garments he possessed. In two years more he would have abandoned all this semi-luxury to become a religious mendicant, without any possessions whatever but a loin cloth and a begging bowl in which to receive scraps of food freely given by others still in the second stage of life.

This fourth stage of life may also be entered upon at any time, if and only if a man be ripe for it and the call be irresistible. Those who thus abandon the household life and adopt the homeless are variously known as renouncers, wanderers or experts (sannys, pravrjaka, sdhu) and as Yogis. It happens even today that men of the highest rank, achievement and wealth “change their lives” in this way; this is literally a dying to the world, for their funeral rites are performed when they leave home and take to the open air. It would be a great mistake to suppose that such acts are in any way penitential; they much rather reflect a change of mind; the active life having been led in the imitation of the proceeding deity is now balanced by an imitation of the Deus absconditus.

The mere presence of these men in a society to which they no longer belong, by its affirmation of ultimate values, affects all values. However many may be the pretenders and shirkers who may adopt this way of life for a variety of inadequate reasons, it still remains that if we think of the four castes as representing the essence of Hindu society, the super-social and anonymous life of the truly poor man, who voluntarily relinquishes all obligations and all rights, represents its quintessence. These are those that have denied themselves and left all to “follow Me”. The making of this highest election is open to all, regardless of social status. In this order of nobodies, no one will ask “Who, or what were you in the world?” The Hindu of any caste, or even a barbarian, can become a Nobody. Blessed is the man on whose tomb can be written, Hic jacet nemo.¹⁴⁹

These are already liberated from the chain of fate, to which only the psycho-physical vehicle remains attached until the end comes. Death in samdhi changes nothing essential. Of their condition thereafter little more can be said than that they are. They are certainly not annihilated, for not only is the annihilation of anything real a metaphysical impossibility, but it is explicit that “Never have I not been, or hast thou not been, or ever shall not be”.¹⁵⁰ We are told that the perfected self becomes a ray of the Sun, and a mover-at-will up and down these worlds, assuming what shape and eating what food he will; just as in John, the saved “shall go in and out, and find pasture”. These expressions are consistent with the doctrine of “distinction without difference” (bhedbheda) supposedly peculiar to Hindu “theism” but presupposed by the doctrine of the single essence and dual nature and by many Vedntic texts, including those of the Brahma Stra, not refuted by ankara himself.¹⁵¹ The doctrine itself corresponds exactly to what is meant by Meister Eckhart’s “fused but not confused”.

How that can be we can best understand by the analogy of the relation of a ray of light to its source, which is also that of the radius a circle to its centre. If we think of such a ray or radius as having “gone in” through the centre to an undimensioned and extra-cosmic infinity, nothing whatever can be said of it; if we think of it as at the centre, it is, but in identity with the centre and indistinguishable from it; and only when it goes “out” does it have an apparent position and identity. There is then a “descent” (avataraa)^{152 153} of the Light of Lights as a light, but not as “another” light. Such a “descent” as that of Krishna or Rma differs essentially from the fatally determined incarnations of mortal natures that have forgotten Who they are; it is, indeed, their need that now determines the descent, and not any lack on his part who descends. Such a “descent” is of one che solo esso a sè piace,¹⁵⁴ and is not “seriously” involved in the forms it assumes, not by any coactive necessity, but only in “sport” (kr, ll).¹⁵⁵ Our immortal Self is “like the dewdrop on the lotus leaf”,¹⁵⁶ tangent, but not adherent. “Ultimate, unheard, unreached, unthought, unbowed, unseen, undiscriminated and unspoken, albeit listener, thinker, seer, speaker, discriminator and fore-knower, of that Interior Person of all beings one should know that ‘He is my Self’ ”.¹⁵⁷ “That art thou”.¹⁵⁸

NOTES TO HINDUISM

1

RV.X.129.1-3; TS.VI.4.8.3 ; JB.III.359; SB.X.5.3.1, 2 etc.

2

RV.X. 124.4, etc.

3

RV.X.13.4, “They made Brhaspati the Sacrifice, Yama outpoured his own dear body.”

4

RV.X.90.6-8, “They made the first-born Person their sacrificial victim.”

5

The word deva, like its cognates θoς, deus, can be used in the singular to mean “God” or in the plural to mean “Gods” or sometimes “Angels”; just as we can say “Spirit” meaning the Holy Ghost, and also speak of spirits, and amongst others even of “evil spirits.” The “Gods” of Proclus are the “Angels” of Dionysius. What may be called the “high Gods” are the Persons of the Trinity, Agni, Indra-Vyu, Aditya, or Brahm, Siva, Vishnu, to be distinguished only, and then not always sharply, from one another according to their functioning and spheres of operation. The mixtae personae of the dual Mitrvaruau or Agnendrau are the form of the Sacerdotium and Regnum in divinis; their subjects, the “Many Gods,” are the Maruts or Gales. The equivalents in ourselves are on the one hand the immanent median Breath, sometimes spoken of as Vmadeva, sometimes as Inner Man and Immortal Self, and on the other its extensions and subjects the Breaths, or powers of seeing, hearing, thinking etc. of which our elemental “soul” is the unanimous composite, just as the body is a composite of functionally distinguishable parts that act in unison. The Maruts and the Breaths may act in obedience to their governing principle, or may rebel against it. All this is, of course, an over simplified statement. Cf. Note 129.

6

SB.X.5.2.13.

7

SB.X.5.2.16.

8

TA.V.1.3; MU.II.6 (a).

9

RV.I.32 etc.

10

RV.X.31.7; X.81.4; TB.II.8.9, 6; cf. RV.X.89.7; TS.VI.4.7.3.

11

RV.I.54.5 vasanasya ... uasya; V.29.4 vasanta dnavam; TS.II.5.2.4 jañjabhyamnd agniomau nirakrmartm; cf. SB.1.6.3.13-15.

12

BU.IV.5.11 mahato bhtasya . . . etni sarvni nihvasitni; MU.VI.32 etc. “For all things arise out of only one being” (Behmen, Sig. Rer. XIV. 74). As in RV.X.90.

13

SB.I.6.3.15, 16.

14

“Is unstrung,” vyasrasata, i.e. is disjointed, so that having been jointless, he is articulated, having been one, is divided and overcome, like Makha (TA.V.1.3) and Vrtra (originally jointless, RV.IV.19.3, but dissevered, 1.32.7). For Prajpati’s fall and reconstitution see B.I.6.3.35 and passim; PB.IV.10.1 and passim; TB.I.2.6.1; AA.III.2.6, etc. It is with reference to his “division” that in KU.V.4 the immanent deity (dehin) is spoken of as “unstrung” (visrasamna) ; for he is one in himself, but many as he is in his children (B.X.5.2.16) from out of whom he cannot easily come together again (see Note 20).

15

B.X.4.4.1.

16

PB.VI.5.1. (Prajpati) ; cf. B.IV.4.3.4. (Vrtra).

17

TS.II.4.12.6. It is noteworthy that whereas the “Person in the right eye” is usually spoken of as the Sun or solar Indra, it can equally well be said that it is ua (the Scorcher) that is smitten and when he falls enters into the eye as its pupil, or that Vtra becomes the right eye (B.III.1.3.11, 18). That is one of the many ways in which “Indra is now what Vtra was.”

18

MU.II.6, cf. B.III.9.1.2. “Mover,” as in Paradiso, 1.116. Questi nei cor mortali è permotore. Cf. Laws, 898 C.

19

AV.X.8.18, cf. B.II.3.2.3, JUB.I. 14 2, mayy ets sarv devath. Cf. KB.VII.4 ime purue devat; TS.IV.1.4.5 pr vai dev . . . teu paroka juhoti (“The Gods in this man . . . they are the Breaths . . . in them he sacrifices metaphysically”); KB.VII.4.

20

TS.V.5.2.1 Prajpati praj sv prenu praviat, tbhym punar sambhavitu naknot; B.I.6.3.36 sa visrastai parvabhi na aka sahtum.

21

AA.II.1.8. St. Bonaventura likewise equated mons with mens (De dec. praeceptis II, ascendere in montem, id est, in eminentiam mentis); this traditional image which, like so many others, must be dated back to the time when “cave” and “home” were one and the same thing, underlies the familiar symbols of mining and seeking for buried treasure (MU.VI.29 etc.). The powers of the soul (bhtni, a word that also means “gnomes”) at work in the mind-mountain, are the types of the dwarf miners who protect the “Snow-white” Psyche when she has bitten into the fruit of good and evil and fallen into her death-like sleep, in which she remains until the divine Eros awakens her and the fruit falls from her lips. Who ever has understood the scriptural Mythos will recognize its paraphrases in the universal fairy-tales that were not created by, but have been inherited and faithfully transmitted by the “folk” to whom they were originally communicated. It is one of the prime errors of historical and rational analysis to suppose that the “truth” and “original form” of a legend can be separated from its miraculous elements. It is in the marvels themselves that the truth inheres: τ θαυμξειν, ο γ λλη χ ϕιλοσοϕας ατη, Plato, Theatetus 1550, and in the same way Aristotle, who adds δι α ϕιλμυθος ϕιλσοϕς πς στιν γ μθος σγειται θαυμασων, “So that the lover of myths, which are compact of wonders, is by the same token a lover of wisdom” (Metaphysics 982 B). Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words.

22

BG.VI.6; cf. S.1.57 = Dh.66; A.I.149; Rm, Mathnaw 1.267 f., etc.

23

TS.II.5.1.2, II.5.3.6; cf. VI.4.8.1; B.I.2.3.3, III.9.4.17, XII.6.1.39,40; PB. XII.6.8, 9; Kau. Up. III.1 etc.; cf. Bloomfield in JAOS. XV. 161.

24

TS.II.4.12.1, AB.VII.28 etc.

25

Mu.Up. III.2.8, Prana Up. VI.5, and see further parallels in Review of Religion, Nov. 1941, p. 18, Note 2.

26

KU.VI.13; MU.IV.4 etc.

27

MU.VII.11; BU.II.3. No trace of Monophysitism or of Patripassianism can be discovered in the so-called “monism” of the Vednta; the “non-duality” being that of two natures coincident without composition.

28

MU.VI.22; cf. Pra. Up. V.2; Svet. Up. V.1.8; Mu. Up. 11.2,8.

29

BU.IV.4.24; Taitt. Up. III.10.4; MU.VI.1.2.

30

RV.I.146.4; cf. John I.4.

31

RV.I.113.1; BU.IV.16 ; Mu Up. II.2.9; BG.XIII.16.

32

AV.X.8.14; cf. Plato, Laws 898 D. ψυχ μν στιν πειγουσα μν πντα.

33

RV.I.115.1; AV.X.8.44; AA.III.2.4. Autology (sma-jñna) is the fundamental theme of scripture; but it must be understood that this Self-knowledge differs from any empirical knowledge of an object inasmuch as our Self is always the subject and can never become the object of knowledge; in other words, all definition of the ultimate Self must by by remotion.

Atman (root an, to breathe, cf. τμς, is primarily Spiritus, the luminous and pneumatic principle, and as such often equated with the Gale (vyu, vta, root v, to blow) of the Spirit which “bloweth as it listeth” (yath vaa carati, RV.X. 168.4 as in John 111.8). Being the ultimate essence in all things, tman acquires the secondary sense of “self,” regardless of our level of reference, which may be either somatic, psychic or spiritual. So that over over against our real Self, the Spirit in ourselves and all living things there is the “self,” of which we speak when we say “I” or “you,” mean this or that man, So-and-so. In other words there are two in us, Outer and Inner Man, psycho-physical personality and very Person. It is therefore according to the context that we must translate. Because the word tman, used reflexively, can only be rendered by “self” we have adhered to the sense of “self” throughout, distinguishing Self from self by the capital, as is commonly done. But it must be clearly understood that the distinction is really of “spirit” (πνεμα) from “soul” (ψυχ) in the Pauline sense. It is true that the ultimate Self, “this self’s immortal Self” (MU.III.2, VI.2), is identical with Philo’s “soul of the soul” (ψυχ ψυχς), and with Plato’s “immortal soul” as distinguished from the “mortal soul,” and that some translators render tman by “soul”; but although there are contexts in which “soul” means “spirit” (cf. William of Thierry, Epistle to the Brethren of Mont Dieu, Ch. XV, on this very problem of the distinction of anima from animus) it becomes dangerously misleading, in view of our current notions of “psychology” to speak of the ultimate and unipersal Self as a “soul.” It would be, for ex:ample, a very great mistake to suppose that when a “philosopher” such as Jung speaks of “man in search of a soul” this has anything whatever to do with the Indian search for the Self, or for that matter with the injunction, Γνθι σεαυτν. The empiricist’s “self” is for the metaphysician, just like all the rest of our environment, “not my Self.”

Of the two “selves” referred to, the first is born of woman the second of the divine womb, the sacrificial fire; and whoever has not thus been “born again” is effectively possessed of but the one and mortal self that is born of the flesh and must end with it (JB.I.17, cf. John 111.6, Gal. VI.8, I Cor. 15.50 etc.). Hence in the Upanishads and Buddhism the fundamental questions “Who art thou?”, and “By which self?” is immortality attainable, the answer being, only by that Self that is immortal; the Indian texts never fall into the error of supposing that a soul that has had a beginning in time can also be immortal; nor, indeed, can we see that the Christian Gospels anywhere put forward such an impossible doctrine as this.

34

BG.XIII.15, 16.

35

KU.II. 18.

36

BU.IV.4.5.

37

RV.X.114.5, cf. III.5.4, V.3.1.

38

RV.V.44.6.

39

Kailayamlai (see Ceylon National Review, No. 3, 1907, p. 280).

40

Nirukta VII.4, Brhad Devat 1.70-74; MU.IV.6.

41

RV.III.54.8 vivam ekam.

42

VS.V.35 jyotir asi vivarpam.

43

RV.VI.16.35, cf. III.29.14.

44

RV.III.3.10, X. 115.1 etc.

45

RV.X.8.4, X.122.3.

46

For the Sundoor, the “ascent after Agni” (TS.V.6.8; AB.IV.20-22), etc., see my “Svayamt; Janua Coeli” in Zalmoxis II, 1939 (1941).

47

Marga, “Way,” from mg = χνεω. The doctrine of the vestigia pedis is common to Greek, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist teaching and is the basis of the iconography of the “footprints.” The forerunners can be traced by their spoor as far as the Sundoor, Janua Coeli, the End of the Road; beyond that they cannot be tracked. The symbolism of tracking, like that of “error” (sin) as a “failure to hit the mark,” is one of those that have come down to us from the oldest hunting cultures; cf. Note 5.

48

Lo gran mar d‘errere, Paradiro 1.113. The “crossing” is the διαποεα of Epinomis 986 E.

49

For this whole paragraph see my “Spiritual authority and Temporal power in the Indian theory of Government, American Oriental Series, XXII, 1942.”

50

BU.IV.3.21 (rather freely translated), cf. 1.4.3; CU.VII.25.2. “In the embrace of this sovran One that naughts the separated self of things, being is one without distinction” (Evans, I.368). We are repeatedly told that the deity is “both within and without”, i.e. immanent and transcendent; in the last analysis this theological distinction breaks down, and “Whoever is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (I Cor. 6.17).

51

BU.II.4 etc. On true “Self-love” see references in HJAS.4, 1939, p. 135.

52

BG.VI.29, XIII.27.

53

Meister Eckhart, Evans I.139; cf. Sn. 705.

54

Mathnaw, Bk. II, introduction.

55

B.X.5.2.11, 12; BU.IV.3.21 etc.

56

TU.II.7.

57

For this whole paragraph see my “Ll” in JAOS.61, 1940.

“Thou didst contrive this ‘I’ and ‘we’ in order that thou mightest play the game of worship with Thyself,

That all ‘I’s’ and ‘thou’s’ should become one life.”

Rumi, Mathnaw 1.1787.

Per sua diffalta in pianta ed in affamo
Cambio onesto riso e dolce gioco,

Dante, Paradiso XXVIII.95, 96.

58

CU.I.9.1, VII.12.1; TU.II.1.1. Space is the origin and end of “name and aspect,” i.e. of existence; the four other elements arise from it and return to it as to their prior. When, as often in Buddhism, account is taken only of four elements, these are the concrete bases of material things; cf. St. Bonaventura, De red. artium ad theol., 3, Quinque sunt corpora mundi simplicia, scilcet quatuor elementa et quinta essentia. Just as also in early Greek philosophy the “four roots” or “elements” (fire, air, earth and water of Empedokles, etc.) do not include the spatial ether, while Plato mentions all five (Epinomis 981 C), and as Hermes points out “the existence of all things that are would have been impossible, if space had not existed as an antecedent condition of their being” (Ascl. II.15). It would be absurd to suppose that those who speak only of four “elements” were not conscious of this rather obvious consideration.

59

MU.II.6, VI.26; that is to say, apparently (iva) divided in things divided, but really undivided (BG.XIII.16, XVIII.20), cf. Hermes Lib. X.7 where “souls are ‘so to speak’ ” (σπε) parcelled out and partitioned off from the one All Soul.

60

Jñnni, prajñ-mtr etc., KU.VI.10, MU.VI.30, Kaus. Up. III.8.

61

MU.III.2f.

62

B.II.2.2.8, XI.2.3.6 etc. Cf. Notes 199, 204.

63

RV.V.86.5, X.63.4 etc.

64

AV.X.7.39, XI.4.19, JUB.IV.23.7, BU.IV.3.37, 38 etc.

65

RV.X.90.2; AV.X.VIII.1; KU.IV.13; Svet. Up. III.15 etc.

66

akarcrya, Svtmanirpaa, 95. The “world-picture” (jagaccitra = οσμς νοτος) may be called the form of the divine omniscience, and is the paradigm, apart from time, of all existence, the “creation” being exemplary, cf. my “Vedic Exemplarism” im HJAS.I, 1936. “A precursor of the Indo-Iranian arta and even of the Platonic idea is found in the Sumerian gish-ghar, the outline, plan, or pattern of things-which-are-to-be, designed by the Gods at the creation of the world and fixed in the heaven in order to determine the immutability of their creation” (Albright in JAOS.54, 1934, p. 130, cf. p. 121, note 48). The “world picture” is Plato’s παδειγμα αν (Timaeus 29 A, 37 C), Hermes’ τ χτυπον εδας (Lib. 1.8) and St. Augustine’s “eternal mirror which leads the minds of those who look in it to a knowledge of all creatures, and better than elsewhere” (see Bissen, L‘Exemplarisme divin selon St. Bonaventura, 1929, p. 39, note 5) ; cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., 1.12.9 and 10, Sed omnia sic videntur in Deo sicut in quodam speculo intelli-gibili ... non successive, sed simul. “When the body-dweller, controlling the powers of the soul that seize upon what is their own in sounds, etc., glows, then he sees the Spirit (tman) extended in the world, and the world in the Spirit” (Mahhhrata III.210); “I behold the world as a picture, the Spirit” (Siddhntamuktval, p. 181).

67

BU.I.4.10; Pra. IV.10. Omniscience presupposes omnipresence, and conversely.

68

A.XIII; CU.VI.8.7 etc.

69

RV.I.164.20.

70

RV.X.114.5.

71

Mu. Up. III.1.1.3.

72

BU.II.5.15, IV.4.22, Kaus. Up. III.8 etc.; similarly Plotinus, Enneads, VI.5.5.

73

Paradiso, XIII.11, 12.

^73a James 3.6.

74

MU.III.2; BG.XIII.21.

75

MU.II.6, VII.11.8, etc.

76

AA.III.2.4; BU.III.8.11, IV.5.15 etc.

77

JUB.I.28.8, and similarly for the other powers of the soul.

78

Sakarcrya on Br. Stra I.1.5, Satya, nevard anyah sasri: this very important affirmation is amply supported by earlier texts e.g. RV.VIII.43.9, X.72.9; AV.X.8.13; BU.III.7.23, III.8.11, IV.3.37, 38; Svet. Up. 11.16, IV.11; MU.V.2 etc. There is no individual transmigrant essence. Cf. John III.13 “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of (the) Man which is in heaven.” The figure of the land-leech in BU.IV.4.3 does not imply the passing over from one body to another of an individual life other than that of the universal Spirit but only of a “part as it were” of this Spirit wrapped up in the activities that occasion the prolongation of becoming (akarcrya, Br. Stra II.3.43, III.1.1). In other words, life is renewed by the living Spirit of which the seed is the vehicle, while the nature of this life is determined by the properties of the seed itself (BU.III.9.28, Kaus Up. III.3, and similarly St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., III. 32.11) and so as Blake expresses it, “Man is born like a garden, ready planted and sown.” All that we inherit from our ancestors is a character; the Sun is our real Father. Accordingly, as in JUB.III.14.10, M.I.265/6, and Aristotle, Phys. 11.2. νθωπος γ νθωπον γενν λιος as rightly understood by St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., I.115.3 ad 2, and Dante, De monarchia IX, cf. St. Bonaventura, De red. artium ad theologiam, 20. [Wicksteed’s and Cornford’s remarks in the Loeb Library Physics. p. 126, show that they have not grasped the doctrine itself].

79

80

B.X.4.4.1.

81

BG.III.27, XVIII.17, cf. JUB.I.5.2; BU.III.7.23; MU.VI.30, etc. Similarly S.II.252; Udana 70, etc. To the conceit “ ‘I’ am” (asmi-mna) and “‘I’ do” (kart’ham iti) corresponds Greek οησις = δξα (Phaedrus 92 A, 244 C). for Philo, this οησις is “akin to untaught ignorance” (1.93); the mind that says “I plant” is impious (I.53); “I deem nothing so shameful as to suppose that ‘I exert my mind or my sense’ ” (1.78). Plutarch couples οημα with τϕος (II.39 D). It is from the same point of view that St. Thomas Aquinas says that “In so far as men are sinners, they do not exist at all” (Sum. Theol., 1.20.2 ad 4) ; and in accordance with the axiom Ens et bonum convertuntur that sat and asal are not only “being” and “nonbeing” but also “good” and “evil” (e.g. in MU.III.1 and BG.XIII.21). Whatever “we” do more or less than correctly is ‘amiss” and should only be regarded as a thing not done at all. For example ”What in the laud falls short is not-lauded, what is over. much is ill-lauded, what is exactly lauded is actually lauded” (JB.I.356). That what is not done “right” might as well not have been done at all, and is strictly speaking ”not an act” (aktam), underlies the tremendous emphasis that is laid upon the notion of a “correct” performance of rites or other actions. The final result is that “we” are the authors of whatever is done amiss, and therefore not really “done” at all; while of whatever is actually done, God is the author. Just as in our own experience, if I make a table that does not stand, I am “no carpenter”, and the table not really a table; while if I make a real table, it is not by my self as this man but “by art” that the table is really made, “I” being only an efficient cause. In the same way the Inner Person is distinguished from the elemental self as promotor (krayit) from operator (kart, MU.III.3 etc.). The operation is mechanical and servile; the operator being only free to the extent that his own will is so identified with the patron’s that he becomes his own “employer” (krayit). “My service is perfect freedom”.

82

JUB.III.14 etc. Cf. my “The ‘E’ at Delphi”, Review of Religion, Nov. 1941.

83

TS.I.5.7.6.

84

Pra. Up., VI.3; cf. answers in CU.III.14.4 and Kaus Up., 11.14:

85

CU.VIII.12.1: MU.III.2, VI.7. For the γεμν, AA.II.6 and RV. V.50.1.

86

AA.II.5; A.II.4; MU.VI.30, cf. TS.I.8.3.1. Ktaktya, “all in act” corresponds to Pali katakaranyam in the well known “Arhat formula”.

87

Amytattva is literally “not dying”, and so far as born beings, whether Gods or men are concerned, does not imply an everlasting duration but the “whole of life”, i.e. “not dying” prematurely (B.V.4.1.1, IX.5.1.10; PB.XXII.12.2 etc.). Thus the whole of man’s life (yus=aeon) is a hundred years (RV.I.89.9, 11.27.10, etc.) ; that of the Gods a “thousand years” or whatever this round number is taken to mean (SB.X.I.6.6, 15 etc.). So when the Gods, who were originally “mortal” obtain their “immortality” (RV. X.63.4; B.XI.2.3.6 etc.) this is to be taken only relatively; it only means that as compared with mortal men, their life is longer (B.VII.3.1.10, Sankara on Br. Stra 1.2.17 and II.3.7, etc.). God alone, as being “unborn”, or “born only as it were”, is immortal absolutely; Agni, vivyus—π ανος, alone “immortal amongst mortals, God amongst Gods” (RV.IV.2.1; B.II.2.2.8 etc.). His timeless (akla) nature is that of the “now” without duration, of which we, who can only think in terms of past and future (bhtam bhavyam), have not and cannot have experience. From him all things proceed, and in him all are unified (eko bhavanti) at last (AA.11.3.8 etc.). There are, in other words, three orders of “not dying”, that of man’s longevity, that of the God’s aeviternity, and that of God’s being without duration (on “aeviternity” cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol., I.10.5).

The Indian texts lend themselves to no illusions: all things under the Sun are in the power of Death (B.II.3.3.7); and in so far as he descends into the world, the deity himself is a “dying God”; there is no possibility of never dying in the body (B. 11.2.2.14, X.4.3.9, JUB. III.38.10, etc.); birth and death are inseparably connected (BG.II.27; A.IV.137; Sn.742).

It may be observed that Gk. ϑανασí has similar values; for the “mortal immortality”, cf. Plato, Symposium 207 D-208 B, and Hermes, Lib. XI.1.4 a and Ascl. III.40 b.

88

B.11.3.3.9; BU.I.5.2 etc.

89

AV.X.8.44, cf. AA.III.2.4.

90

Mathnawi, VI.723 f.

91

RV.IX.113.9; JUB.III.28.3; SA.VII.22; BU.II.1.17, 18; CU.VIII.5.4, VIII.1.6 (cf. D.I.72) ; Taitt.Up.III.10.5 (like John X.9).

92

RV.IX.88.3, X.168.4; cf. John III.8; Gylfiginning, 18.

93

BG.IX.29.

94

Luke XIV.26, cf. MU.VI.28 “If to son and wife and family he be attached, for such an one, no, never at all”; Sn.60; Meister Eckhart, “As long as thou still knowest who thy father and thy mother have been in time, thou art not dead with the real death” (Pfeiffer, p. 462). Cf. Note 193.

95

BU.IV.4.14; CU.VII.1.6, VII.8.4 etc.

96

BU.I.4.2.

97

JB.I.17: B.VII.2.1.6 with VII.3.1.12; BU.II.1.11 and innumerable texts differentiating the two selves. The doctrine is universal, notably Indian, Islamic, Platonic and Christian. Cf. “On being in one’s right mind”. Rev. of Religion, VII.32f.

98

B.I.6.4.21, III.9.4.23; KB.XV.3; JUB.III.14.8.

99

TS.V.5.2.1, cf. B.I.6.3.35, 36; Sakarcrya, Br. Stra 11.3.46:

100

TS.V.5.2.1.

101

B.III.8.1.2, etc.

102

B.II.4.1.11, IX.5.1.53.

103

BU.1.4.10, IV.5.7. Cf. Meister Eckhart, “Wer got minnet für sinen got unde got an betet für sinen got und im da mite lzet genüegen daz ist nur als, ein angeloubic mensche” (Pfeiffer, p. 469).

104

B.VII.2.1.4 etc.

105

TS.VII.2.10.2. At such a “seance” the Self (Spirit) is the guerdon and it is inasmuch as the sacrificers obtain the Self as their reward that they go to heaven (tma-dakia vai sattram, tmnam eva ntv suvarga lokam yanti, TS.VII.4.9.1, cf. PB.IV.9.19).

106

TS.I.8.4.1; AV.III.15.5.6.

^106a AA.II.2.2. “He”, the immanent Breath (pra), Vmadeva. The point is that the transcendental Syllable (akara=Om) is the source of all uttered sounds (cf. CU.II.23, 24), itself remaining inexhaustible (akara),—pouring forth but never poured out. [There is no separate word for “gifts” in the original text].

107

RV.VIII.92.32 (cf. Plato, Phaedo, 62 B, D), V.85.8 (similarly VII.19.7, Indra) and II.11.1.

108

Vasor dhr, TS.V.4.8.1, V.7.3.2; B.IX.3.2-3; AA.II.1.2, 111.1.2; MU.VI.37; BG.III.10.f etc. Wedding gifts, PB.VII.10; AB.IV.27; JB.1.145; B.I.8.3.12 etc.

109

RV.VIII.70.3.

110

AA.11.2.3; Kaus Up. 111.1.

111

RV.passim; cf. TS.II.5.11.4, 5; BU.IV.4.19.

112

B.XI.2.6.13, 14. See also my “tmayajña” in HJAS, 6, 1942.

113

B.X.4.3.24 etc.

114

B.X.5.4.16.

115

B.XII.2.3.12.

116

AB.VII.31; B.III.4.3.13, XII.7.3.11.

117

RV.X.8.34.

118

RV.V.43.4; B.III.4.3.13 etc.

119

B.III.9.4.17,18.

120

B,III.3.2.6.

121

PB.XXV.15.4.

122

RV.IX.86.44.

123

TS.VII.4.9; PB.IV.9.19-22; JUB.1.15.3 f., III.30.2; CU.VIII.13, cf. BU. III.7.3 f., CU.VIII.12.1. Attainment of immortality in the body is impossible (B.X. 4.3.9 etc.). Cf. Phaedo, 67 C “Katharsis (=uddha karaa) is the separation of the soul from the body, as far as that is possible”.

124

B.II.5.2.47; BU.IV.4.7, and passim.

125

MU.III.3 f.

126

RV.I.168.3, I.179.5, cf. X.107.9 (antapeyam).

127

Cf. Philo, I.76, “to pour out as a libation the blood of the soul and to offer as incense the whole mind to God our Saviour and Benefactor”.

128

B.III.8.1.2; TS.I.7.5.2. As it was in the beginning, RV.X.90.5; B.111.9.1.2.

129

The Gods are true, or real (satyam), men false or unreal (antam), AB.1.6, B.I.1.1.4, III.9.4.1 etc. [universals are real, particulars unreal]. The initiated sacrificer has fallen away from this world and is temporarily a God, Agni or Indra (B.III.3.3.10 etc.) ; and if no provision were made for his return to the world of men, he would be liable to die prematurely (TS.1.7.6.6 etc.). The redescent is therefore provided for (TS.VII.3.10.4; PB.XVIII.10.10; AB.IV.21); and it is in returning to the human world of unreality or falsehood and becoming this man So-and-so once more that he says “Now I am whom I am” (aham ya evsmi so‘smi, B.I.9.3.23, AB.VII.24); a tragic confession that he is “once again conscious of a more limited, even a bodily and earthly life” (Macdonald, Phantastes, 1858, p. 317). For there can be no greater sorrow than to reflect that we still are what we are (Cloud of Unknowing, Ch.44).

130

TS.II.5.4.5.

131

Purgatorio, XXVII.131, 142.

132

BG.VI.7, Jittmana prantasya paramtm samhita, “The Supreme Self of the individual-self is ‘composed’ (samhita=‘in samdhi’) when the latter has been conquered and pacified”. Observe that to “pacify” is literally to give the quietus. nti, “peace”, is not for any self that will not die. The root, am, is present also in amayit, the “butcher” who “quiets” the sacrificial victim in the external ritual (RV. V.43.3, B.III.8.3.4 etc.); the sacrificer “quenches” (amayati) the fire of Varuna’s wrath (TS.V.1.6; SB.IX.1.2.1); within you, it is the higher Self that “pacifies” the individual self, quenches its fire. Whoever would be “at peace with himself” must have died to himself. Cf. Republic, 556 E; Gorgias, 482 C; Timaeus 47 D; and HJAS.VI.389, 1942 (“On Peace”).

133

Cf. RV.I.32.5 vajrea=II.11.5 vryea as in Manu 1.8 viryam avasjat, and in the sense of RV.X. 95.4 snathit vaitasena. On the fier baiser, Disenchantment by a Kiss, see W. H. Schofield, Studies on the Libeaus Desconus, 1895, 199 ff.

134

B.X.6.2.1.

135

Meister Eckhart, Evans 1.287, 380. Our highest good is thus to be devoured by “Noster Deus ignis coasumens”. Cf. Speculum, XI, 1936, pp. 332, 333 and, further, Dante, Paradiso XXVI.51, Con quanti denti questo amor ti morde! His kiss, who is both Love and Death, awakens us to becoming here, and his love-bite to being there. Cf. my “Sun-kiss” in JAOS. 60, 1940.

136

B.X.5.2.11, 12.

137

BU.I.4.3.

138

BU.IV.3.21.

139

A.X, cf. B.II.2.4.7, 8; M.1.77.

140

B.X.5.3.3; AA.II.3.8.

141

B.X.5.3.12.

142

In fact, just as the forms of images are prescribed in the ilpastras, so those of action are prescribed in the Dharma-stras. Art and prudence are both equally sciences, differing only from pure metaphysics in the fact of their application to factibilia and agibilia. The fact that there is an application to contingent problems introduces an element of contingency into the laws themselves, which are not identical for all castes nor in all ages. In this sense, the tradition is adaptable to changing conditions, always provided that the solutions are derived directly from the first principles, which never change. In other words, while there can be a modification of laws, only those laws that can be reduced to the Eternal Law can ever be called correct. There is, in the same way, necessarily and rightly, an application of pure metaphysics to the variety of religions that correspond to the variety of human needs, each of which religions will be “the true religion” to the extent that it reflects the eternal principles. In saying this we distinguish between metaphysics and “philosophy” and are not suggesting that any systematic or natural philosophy can presume to the validity of the theology that Aristotle ranks above all other sciences (Metaphysics, 1.2.12 f., VI.1.10f).

143

BG.II.50; also “Yoga is the resignation (sannysa) of works”, BG.VI.2. In other words, yoga does not mean doing less or more than enough, nor doing nothing at all, but doing without attachment to the fruit of works, taking no thought for the morrow; he sees indeed, who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction (BG.IV.18 and passim). This is the Chinese doctrine of wu wei.

Yoga is literally and etymologically a “yoking”, as of horses; and in this connection it will not be overlooked that in India, as in Greek psychology, the “horses” of the bodily vehicle are the sensitive powers by which it is drawn this way or that, for good or evil, or to its ultimate goal if the horses are controlled by the driver to whom they are yoked by the reins. The individuality is the team, the Inner Controller or Inner Man the rider. The man, then “yokes himself like an understanding horse” (RV.V.46.1).

As a physical and mental discipline, Yoga is Contemplation, dharaa, dhyna and samdhi corresponding to Christian consideratio, contemplatio and excessus or raptus. In its consummation and total significance, yoga implies the reduction of separated things to their unitary principle, and thus what is sometimes called “mystical union”; but it must be clearly realised that yoga differs from “mystical experience” in being, not a passive, but an active and controlled procedure. The perfected yog can pass from one state of being to another at will, as for example, the Buddha, M.I.249.

Every Hindu is to some extent a practitioner of Yoga, and just what this implies is admirably stated in Plato, Republic 571 D f., ες; σννοιαν ατòς ατ ϕιxóμενος.

When, however, it becomes a question of more intensive contemplation, and the intention is to scale the uttermost heights, the practitioner must be prepared by suitable physical exercises, and must especially have acquired a perfectly balanced control and awareness of the whole process of breathing, before he proceeds to any mental exercises; nor can any of these exercises be safely undertaken without the guidance of a master. Some idea of the nature of the first steps, by which the vagrant stream of thought is arrested and brought under control, will be gained if the attempt is made to think of some one thing, no matter what, for so long a period even as ten seconds; it will be found with surprise, and perhaps embarrassment, that even this cannot be done without much practise.

144

B.IX.5.1.42. In the same way that the Christian Sacrifice demands the collaboration of all the arts.

145

The best discussion of this will be found in A. M. Hocart, Les Castes, Paris, 1939.

146

AA.II.4.5 (Ait. Up. IV.4) “For the perpetuation of these worlds. For thus are these worlds perpetuated. That is his being born again. This self of his is put in his place for the doing of holy works. That other Self of his, having done what there was to be done, enters into the Gale and departs. That is his third birth”, cf. JUB.III. 9.6, MU.VI.30. The inheritance of vocations provides for the continuity of divine service. From the same point of view in Plato, Laws 773 E f., “Concerning marriage ... it is decreed that we should adhere to the ever-productive nature by providing servants of God in our own stead; and this we do by always leaving behind us children’s children”. Similarly B.I.8.1.31 tasmt prajottar devayajy.

147

On Law and Liberty cf. St. Augustine, De spiritu et littera. It is by the Spiritual Power that the Temporal power is freed from its bondage (brahmaaivena dmno’ pombhann muñcati, TS.II.4.13).

148

MU.IV.4. See also akarcrya, Br. Stra, SBE. Vol. XXXVIII, Index, s.v. “Stages of life (rama)”. The first three lead to heavenly states of being, only the fourth, which may be entered upon at any time, to an absolute immortality in God.

On the fourth rama cf. Plato, “But with the advance of age, when the soul begins to attain maturity ... they should do nothing but (consider all time and all being), unless as a by-work, if they are to lead a blessed life and when they finish crown the life they have led (here) with a corresponding lot there . . . when they reach that life in which they will be born again” (Republic, 498 C, D with 486 A). True philosophy is an ars moriendi (Phaedo, 61, 64, 67).

149

“Blessed is the kingdom wherein dwells one of them; in an instant they will do more lasting good than all the outward actions ever done” (Meister Eckhart, Evans 1.102); and as he also says “while other people watch, they will be sleeping”, cf. BG.II.69. For those whom we call “useless’ are the “true pilots” (Plato, Republic 489 f).

150

151

BG.II.12.

152

Br. Stra II.3.43 f. Das Gupta, Indian Philosophy, II.42 f.

153

Avataraa=ατδασις, as in Republic 519 D and John III.13. The “return to the cave” of those who have made the “steep ascent” corresponds to the Sacrificer’s redescent for which references are given in Note 129.

Avatr varies in meaning from “come over” to “overcome”, the latter meaning predominating in the earlier texts. The meaning “descend” is often expressed in other way or by other verbs such as avakram or avasth, prati-i, (prasy-)avaru. The earliest reference to Vishnu’s “descent” may be TS.I.7.6.1, 2 ... punar imam lokam pratyavaroha, cf. B.XI.2.3.3 where Brahma im lokn ... pratyavait. In view of the later recognition that the Buddha was an avatra, cf. J.I.50 where the Buddha descends (oruyha=avaroha) from the Tusita heaven to take birth, the illustration of this event at Bharhut inscribed bhagavo okti (=avakrmati), and DhA.III.226 where he descends (otaritv=avatirtv) from heaven at Sakassa.

For the idea of a “descent” otherwise phrased, see JUB.III.28.4; B.XI.2.3.3 and BG.IV.5 f. Cf. Clementine Homilies III.20 “He alone has it (the spirit of Christ) who has changed his forms and his names from the beginning of the world and so reappeared again and again in the world”.

154

155

See Note 57 and “Play and Seriousness” in Journal of Philosophy XXXIX. 550-552. Nitya and ll, the constant and the variable, are Being and Becoming, in Eternity and Time.

156

CU.IV.14.3; MU.III.2; Sn.71, 213, 547 (like KU.V.11), 812, 845; A.II.39.

157

AA.III.2.4, cf. AV.X.8.44; JUB.III.14.3; CU.IV.11.1, VI.8.7 f; Kaus. Up. 1:2, 1.5.6 etc.

158

A.XIII; and previous note.

“All you have been, and seen, and done, and thought,
Not You, but I, have seen and been and wrought . . .
Pilgrim, Pilgrimage and Road
Was but Myself toward Myself: and Your
Arrival but Myself at my own Door . . .
Come, you lost Atoms, to your Centre draw . . .
Rays that have wandered into Darkness wide,
Return, and back into your Sun subside”

Maniqu’-air (tr.Fitzgerald).