Audiobook test on the old book, 

THE
HIDDEN TEACHING
BEYOND YOGA
By
PAUL BRUNTON, Ph.D.


Most footnotes are  not included here, see other formats of book then.
Some numbers read here can be anything. This is only made for myself to get and over view of this book.

CHAPTER I.
BEYOND YOGA.
tHE more I wander around this turning globe the more I realize
that it is not only individual men, parties, governments or
peoples who are to blame for the distressful condition of the
human race-so mesmerized by popular follies and so deluded by
traditional fables!-but also common ignorance concerning three
fundamental questions : What is the meaning of the world and experience
? What am I ? What is the object of existence ? I perceive with
startling precision that the bursting of this integument of ancient
ignorance will do more than anything else to make enduring peace
descend on our troubled earth.
The pith of the world problem is too plain for our complex age
to perceive : all acts are sprayed up by the hidden fountain of mind,
and when men learn to think rightly they will act accordingly, not
before. Their deeds can never be greater than their ideas, for the
unheard declarations of the mind decide the noisy journeys of the
feet. The world's bitter sorrows and bestial sins are but symptoms of
a disease whose cause is old ignorance and whose only cure is new
knowledge. It is the inescapable duty of every intelligent rational
human being, troubled by half-conscious and inchoate yearnings for a
better life, not to rest in mental sloth but to persist in searching for
the answers to these three questions; that is, for the scintillating
asterism of TRUTH.
It is a commonplace remark that we live today in an unparalleled
world situation. We are born at a crucial juncture in recorded
history. Certain new currents of thought, feeling and activity have
been strongly stirring the whole globe since this century opened, and
less so for a few centuries earlier. The war has but brought them to a
fuller and dramatic convulsion. The slow chronicle ol former epochs
fades into petty insignificance when compared with our own. The
sightless multitudes stand bewildered before its iconoclastic changes
and staggered before its devastating events. Mars has put this planet
on the torture rack. Nemesis has moved among the nations like a
judge, putting on the grim periwig and sternly holding the forgotten

scales. And all peoples wander blindly through one of the most
momentous transitions which time has ever imposed on the race.
Seven new transforming features of our time are most remarkable
from the standpoint of the philosopher, however, and possess an
ultimate bearing on the publication of this book.
The first noteworthy feature is the incredible development of
mechanical transport between villages, towns, countries and continents,
through the use of steam and electric trains, petrol-driven
automobiles, omnibuses, steamships and aeroplanes. Thus the planet
has shrunk and mankind has been involuntarily drawn together.
This has definitely widened the space-sense of millions of people. It has
brought them into personal contact with their own neighbours, with
strangers and foreigners ; hence we witness a resulting interchange of
racial cultures, a multiplication of ideas and an expansion of outlooks.
Something has thus happened to the world which has no
recorded equivalent. Ideas can no longer be insulated, except under
the pressure of brute force, and then only for a limited time. And one
underrated consequence has been that the voice of Asiatic wisdom
is now being heard by European and American ears.
The second feature is the phenomenal raising of both the political
status and the economic standard of living of the working classes,
when compared with two or three generations ago. This has unfolded
within them a sense of self-respect which they lacked when they
were tied with the bonds of inherited serfdom. Aristos has handed
his sceptre to Demos, unwillingly no doubt, and Demos is wielding
it -considerately but uncertainly or dictatorially and decisively. He
worships multitudes and abases himself before magnitude. The
crowd carries the day ; its verdict is the last word. But the brighter
consequence of this unprecedented emancipation has in turn been
the unfoldment of an interest in life beyond the unavoidable grind
of earning a livelihood. The masses have begun to "look beyond their
noses" and to free themselves from a parochial outlook. The larger
questions and arguable issues of religion, politics and culture are no
longer entirely outside their range.
The third feature is the elimination of illiteracy and the democratization
of education. Knowledge is no longer the monopoly of a
fortunate few. Free and compulsory education has worked marvellous
changes within a single century in the mind of those who were
formerly treated as children by despotic ruling classes. The educational
tide has flowed with increasing pressure throughout the world
with the consequence that the masses are far less unsophisticated
today than they once were. They have outgrown to a marked extent
BEYOND YOGA

the kindergarten doctrines with which they were fed. The setting-up
of the first few letter-types sounded the throwing down of all the old
epochs of gross ignorance. Where the European peasant or workman
of a thousand years ago was unable to read a letter and could not
even sign his name, the European and American peasant or workman
of today can not only read all the letters of the alphabet but
also write them. Nor is this progress confined to those continents
although it has reached its crescendo there. Asia and Africa are on
the move, too.
But we must not fall into the superficial assumption that this
has greatly helped man's capacity to think rightly. Education is of
two kinds: that which merely diffuses facts and helps men to
memorize them, and that which helps them to think rightly about
those facts. Most education belongs to the first category, which
depends on the use of intellect only, but some belongs to the second,
which depends on the higher faculty of reason. However, the general
increase in the area of knowledge does lead to some increase in the
area of enquiry, and this in turn to a consequent if still smaller
rational awakening. People are now more ready to apply reason to
life than they formerly were, although they are not ready enough to
make such an application play a vital part in their existence. Therefore
it may reasonably be hoped that many more neophytes will seek
for philosophical initiation when its. deep and difficult tenets are
freed from their opaque veil of forbidding phraseology and put into
more lucid words.
The fourth feature is the list of striking inventions to improve
communication which have succeeded each other ever since Gutenberg
printed the first black-lettered word on white paper in Germany
and William Caxton set up a creaking hand-press in London. The
printing press, the cheap post, the electric telegraph, the telephone,
the cinema and wireless transmission are civilizing instruments
which have combined to communalize and popularize knowledge
and make it swiftly available to all. The consequence has been that a
continuous interchange of facts, thoughts, ideas and views is proceeding
everywhere. Time has lapsed into little account when wireless
and cable can combine to bring the entire planet's news to one's
house in a flash, when newspapers or printed periodicals place a
description of today's scientific discovery in England before the
eyes of a reader in China the same week. A man broadcasting in
London will hear the echo of his voice in one-seventh of a second,
during which flash it has travelled the globe and penetrated the ears
of innumerable listeners. Thus these inventions have also succeeded in

altering*and expanding the time-sense of most people. Moreover, the
opening up for study of immense evolutionary periods in the past
history of man and universe has begun to accustom the educated
to think in terms of tremendous time-vistas.
The old-fashioned sense of time as being a slow-moving thing has
gone with the wind of progress. We live now in a moving world, not
a static one. The tempo of American life has altered to a rate
undreamt of by Inca or Aztec. The domestic arrangements and
mechanisms of European households allow for numerous daily
activities never contemplated in the programme of leisurely old
Romans. The habits of a hundred generations are disintegrating
before our eyes, but those who spend their whole lives in Occidental
cities may not note and appreciate this astonishing alteration so
much as those who sojourn at times in Oriental villages where days
may be passed remote from all signs of our science and our time.
The evolution of men's minds is therefore much more rapid than.in
earlier centuries.
The newspaper, produced at the rate of twenty thousand per
hour, has become a great formative force in modern life. Where the
medieval man could not procure a single book to read because of its
high cost and ^great rarity, his present-day descendant can now
procure a newspaper every day and read a cheap new book every
week. The printed sheet has spread knowledge, prepared the way
for science, publicly proclaimed it in every modern language, and
may now clear a new if narrower path for philosophy in general.
The birth of the printing press signalled the death of all the eras of
esotericism. The time has come to open more fully for the Western
world the little-visited track of a hidden Oriental philosophy.
The fifth feature is the appearance of science on the intellectual
horizon of mankind. For good or for worse it has affected the mind
of today. Its birth in Europe ushered in the era of fact and compelled
the world to begin to bid adieu tathe era of fable. Men are rising from
the primitive rule of magic to the maturer rule of logic. The growth
of human mentality may not be very great, but it is clearly noticeable
and it is antagonistic to human superstition. The rise of the one means
the fall of the other. Scientific facts were once nervous intruders
into the forum where guesswork flourished, but today they dominate
the world scene. Bacon was but a precursor of the Darwinian war of
reasoned teachings against dogmatic beliefs which left such a deep
mark on the thought of the last eentury. Whatever may have been
the place of blind faith during former centuries, it cannot again
for long assume leadership in a century when reason has so visibly
BEYOND YOGA

and so tangibly shown its triumphs all around us. We have begun to
grow up, and the jejune chatterings of primitive minds will sooner
or later annoy our ears.
The achievements of science are the inseparable facts of our day.
Its marvels fill our homes, throng our streets, float on the five oceans
and move invisibly through space. Thus they have decisively
demonstrated to the whole world the superior value of applied
reason. The advent of new scientific knowledge published to the
whole world has begun to shift the foundations of human life, to
affect the spirit of our time and to alter our outlook. Every man who
faithfully follows its discoveries has had to make a fresh appraisal of
all existence, including his own.
The historic moment of the modern scientific era's arisal really
began when Galileo broke away from the stronghold of tradition
and performed his famous experiment in the leaning tower of Pisa.
It was the beginning of a vast series of world-wide researches which
culminated in the scientific picture of the world as a huge, causally
governed automatic machine. God as fussy creator, as capricious
supervisor and arbitrary judge, was conveniently dropped out of the
old medieval picture. This was the first revolution in the Western
outlook. The second came when Rontgen discovered the electrical
basis of the atom. Research moved still more rapidly; so rapidly, in
fact, that the scientists are now again repainting their picture. The
universe is no longer a machine. What it has now become nobody
knows for certain. The new picture is blurred and vague, even
amorphous, but this is because it belongs to the domain of philosophy.
For there has been a gradual process of abstraction, a transition
from the empiric standpoint to the metaphysical, a growing tendency
for science to become part of its own field of investigation and to
turn matter and mechanism into concepts. All signs now indicate
that science is not merely shaking hands with philosophy but that
Mercury is even preparing to marry Minerva ! What is of special
interest is that science is also unwittingly moving into the camp of
the hidden philosophy, for some of its latest tenets as formulated by
Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg, Jeans and others were anticipated and
affirmed by the Indian sages at a time when Western civilization
was babbling in its infancy. For the first time in history it is possible
to formulate the products of Eastern thought in Western terms-that
is to say, in* scientific terms-and to synthesize them with the rich
results of Western researches. Europe and America have furnished
new and broader foundations for the Asiatic wisdom. The latter can
now be expounded with an amplitude which has never before been

voiced. Thus ancient sage and modern scientist unconsciously meet
and it is now possible to construct a tremendously significant
intellectual synthesis, a universal ideology of truth which could not
have been possible before.
The sixth feature is the comparatively increased leisure which
has been made available for people of all classes, but especially
of the working classes, through the applications of machinery to
every department of human existence, consequent on the industrial
revolution.
It is customary for the moderns to complain of lack of leisure, but
the truth is that the caveman had far less. He had to fight inclement
Nature, uncontrolled man and ravenous beast. He had to fight for
his sheer existence, food and satisfaction. It was, therefore, possible
for man to turn to think of higher things only after he had sufficiently
conquered these wants. When in all history has man achieved such
an overwhelming conquest as today ? He has more time to undermine
his own ignorance. Therefore if a few men could study
philosophy in ancient times, the extended leisure of today renders
the hour ripe for more students who are willing to use their leisure
wisely to be attracted to its illustrious tutelage.
The seventh feature is the historical fact that post-war periods
generate religious doubts in many minds with the consequent search
for a more acceptable explanation of life in some of these minds. But
when two wars have been waged within a single generation, when
they are the worst which the world has ever seen, and when they
have spread on the most gigantic scale history has ever known, it is
undoubtedly no error to predict that faith will sink seriously after
the shock of the cataclysm. The despairing feeling that life is without
a purpose will spread through all classes of people. The power of
religion to control men ethically is likely to be much weakened,
which will constitute a position of profound social danger. The
breaking-down of these old sanctions amid unrest and upheaval
demands their reinforcement or replacement by new ones. For most
men cannot live in comfort with the thought that there is no fundamental
meaning and no great purpose in life. They will soon seek out
some faith or theory that will bestow direction to existence. Therefore
the present convulsed and collapsed epoch will witness a search
for such doctrines as no previous epoch has yet witnessed. And
because these changes will always be most marked among the more
educated classes the forms which this quest is likely to take will be
mainly mystical and occasionally philosophical rather than religious.
Mysticism will probably receive a larger number of adherents than
BEYOND YOGA

it has known for a long time, for it offers an emotional inner peace
urgently needed after the maniacal frenzies and horrors of war, but
philosophy will also have to welcome within its portals a modest
modicum of new enquirers who have changed their intellectual gear.
If these seven factors mean anything at all they mean that
history is in the throes of turning its sharpest corner, that the
cultural growth of mankind has been notably accelerated, that a
new and unique epoch in human knowledge is opening before the
educated world, that the potential field of receptivity to the philosophy
of truth is wider and deeper than- ever before, that secrecy is
becoming superfluous, and that for the first time a new world-wide
propagation of higher views has been rendered possible. Moreover,
the international political and economic conditions today are such
as to force people everywhere to see events and things in their
relation to the whole, i.e. to begin to philosophize ! Nothing like this
opportune phenomenon, which requires the utmost emphasis, can
be found in centuries other than the twentieth. This astonishing age
of social transition, general dissolution, technological revolution
and mental illumination is, in short, a continuous acceleration of the
process of turning man from a primitive to a scientific animal. But
even this is not enough. Man should live in the way that is proper to
him, and not after the manner of the beast, the reptile and the
parasite. Hence the time is ripe to disclose a doctrine which does not,
like most religions, contradict the findings of science, but actually
draws support from them. It is really advisable under such conditions
to relax the ancient restrictions and release sufficient of the old
genuinely Aryan knowledge to help the better cultured classes act
more wisely that something nobler may emerge and that we may all
advance towards the shaping of a finer human world. For it is to
them that the sheep-like masses must always lpok for guidance ; it is
their ways of thinking which are set up as criterions to be aimed at;
and it is their ways of living which are held up for ambition or
imitation. Progress flows from the top, from the leading circles and
higher classes of every community, downwards until it permeates
the populace. The ideas and beliefs held by the most educated and
enlightened strata slowly come to be received by those below. Their
outlook and attitude count most in influencing the world. Therefore
it is to them particularly that the hidden philosophy is now
addressed.
The enthusiastic activities of European scientists can now be
harmonized with the calm contemplations of Oriental sages. The
butterfly of true integral wisdom can ere long burst forth from its

cocoon, wherein it has matured and sheltered during the past. This
union may presage the new East-West civilization which may one
day arise when the spindle of time has spun far beyond our counting
and the primacy of materialism has been deposed, and when truth
may sit enthroned to direct the real renaissance of all human life
and labour. The manhood of humanity must eventually arrive, and
if this grand conception could spread among the educated classes of a
warless world from Siberia to Spain, and from Colombo to California,
the consequences would be remarkable. Unfortunately the materialization
of such a vision seems quite remote. It is indeed very far off.
Nevertheless the immense renovation which must follow the world's
gigantic collapse will surely bring more candidates to the portals of
philosophy in eager quest of new roads, new knowledge and new
axioms. Both the sufferings and knowledge of our times have united
to act as a cataclysmic agent which must arouse a new orientation
in the world-mind. Not that the new is to be regarded as the better,
but rather as having the opportunity to be better. Such are the
reasons which render it advisable for this hoary old wisdom to emerge
from its hiding-place in the minds of a microscopically small number
of Asiatics and become accessible to a wider if still limited circle. Its
advent is clearly a product of historical necessity. No other allcomprehensive
culture can fit so well into the recently expanded
time and space sense of mankind.
Who Am IP With this treatise, therefore, I rise with my readers
part of the way to such a higher view. The ascension will demand
much from them, but it will give more, for it will, when completed in
a further volume, finally solve all such problems, remove their
deepest doubts and furnish them with an impregnable rock-like
support throughout life. Moreover, the thoughtful scientist who cares
to study these pages with a free mind may find the further clues he
needs for progress towards the self-disclosure of reality ; the devotee
of religion who wishes to worship the living God rather than dead
dogma may discover the secret mainspring of his own faith; the
mystic may learn how to rise from his blissful thought of God, which
is but an image, to the thought-less and image-less God as He really
is; whilst the philosopher whose brain is distracted by the diverse
opinions which prevail everywhere may here meet with an attitude
of mind which is finally infallible and can dispose of all criticism.
For its roots stretch far back into primeval Asia, when Napoleons
had arisen in the world of thought to unshackle themselves from
hieratic adition and to force their passage through Alpian problems.
Paradoxically yet inevitably this archaic culture must soon levy
BEYOND YOGA

tribute from the adolescent young Western world. Even time itself
can never antiquate the antiquity of such a culture. It is timeconquering
because it arises out of the ever-enduring reality within
which the universe is embraced.
I did not know, when I first landed on India's surf-sprayed
shores, that I had embarked on a quest which would ultimately
carry me even beyond the doctrines of mysticism and the practice of
meditation itself, which for so long I had deemed the highest life
open to man. I did not know, as I slowly but steadily penetrated to
the inmost secrets of orthodox Indian yoga, that the enterprise of
winning the truth about life would not only take me into and through
its confines but also set me wandering again far beyond them. I did
not know that I had thrown dice with Destiny and that the game
was not to be concluded in the manner I had been led to expect-
that is, by settling down to an existence which made physical and
mental withdrawnness in profound contemplation its highest goal
and sublimest fulfilment.
For the benefit of readers to whom the terms are unfamiliar it
must here be mentioned that yoga is a Sanskrit word which appertains
to various techniques of self-discipline involving mental concentration
and leading to mystic experiences or intuitions, techniques
which will be described in a later chapter, whilst yogi is the person
who practises such methods.
Like the yellow-robed Indian yogis I sat in trance, but later arose,
first to compose a chronicle of their lives and then to tell my Western
brethren of the way to find and the worth of finding this mental
quiet. Yet, when the intermittent satisfactions of mental peace
entered into conflict with an innate, ever-enquiring rationalism,
tremendous questions slowly became insistent. I perceived that
although the little pool of light in which I walked had indeed grown
wider, the area of darkness beyond it was as impenetrable as ever.
Quite naturally, when thought, time and experience raised certain
fundamental problems, I turned in the first hope of finding clear
guidance to the Maharishee. It will be remembered, by readers of my
book A Search in Secret India, that this is the name of the renowned
South Indian yogi with whom I practised meditation several years
ago. But the guidance never came. I waited patiently in the hope
that time might draw it out of him, but I waited in vain. Gradually
it dawned upon me as this question of obtaining a higher knowledge
than hitherto rose uppermost in my mind, that so far he had never
instructed any other person in it. The reason slowly emerged as I
pondered the matter. From my long friendship with him it was

possible to gauge that primarily this was not his path and did not
much interest him. His immense attainment lay in the realms of
asceticism and meditation. He possessed a tremendous power of
concentrating attention inwardly and losing himself in rapt trance,
of sitting calm and unmoved like a tree. But with all the deep respect
and affection I feel for him, it must be said that in his few attempts
to explain philosophy he got out of his depth. The role of a teaching
sage was not his forte because he was primarily a self-absorbed
mystic. This explained why his open disdain for life's practical
fulfilment in disinterested service of others had led to inevitable
consequences of a disappointing kind in his immediate external
environment. It was doubtless more than enough for himself and
certainly for his adoring followers that he had perfected himself in
indifference to worldly attractions and in the control of restless
mind. He did not ask for more. The question of the significance of
the universe in which he lived did not appear to trouble him. The
question of the significance of the human being did trouble him and
he had found an answer which satisfied him.
But this was the same answer which all mystics, whether in
ancient Asia or medieval Christian Europe, had also found. Meditation
on oneself was a necessary and admirable pirrsuit, but it did not
constitute the entire activity which life was constantly asking of
man. It was good, but it proved to be not enough. For the efflux of
time had shown me the limitations of mystics, and more time showed
that those limitations were accountable by the one-sidedness of
their outlook and the incompleteness of their experience. The more I
associated with them in every part of the world the more I began to
discern that their defects arose out of sheer shrivelled complacency,
the hidden superiority-complex and the holier-than-thou attitude
which they had unjustifiably adopted toward the rest of the world
and also out of the premature assumption of total knowledge of truth
when what they had attained was only partial knowledge. The
conclusion was finally forced on me that the perfection of human
wisdom would never develop out of any mystical hermitage and
that only a synthetic complete culture could offer any hope for its
unfoldment.
Thus I gradually travelled a road of reflection which made me
see that the Maharishee's classic formula for meditation, Who Am I ?
which I discovered later was borrowed from certain old Sanskrit
authors, was not enough, albeit admirably proper in its own place as
a milestone on the way to wise self-mastery. For this reason I deemed
it advisable some years ago to alter this formula, which I did when
BEYOND YOGA

writing my more recent books, where I offered this seed for analytic
meditation with the new variation, What Am I ? The difference
between the two short initial words was a difference of only two
letters on paper but of a most important divergence of outlook in
thought. The word "who" was a personal pronoun and formed fit
enquiry for the mystic who was preoccupied with himself as an
individual and separate entity, whereas the word "what" was an
impersonal interrogative pronoun whose reference rose to a higher
level. "Who Am I ?" was a question which emotionally presupposed
that the ultimate " I " of man would prove to be a personal being,
whereas "What Am I ?" rationally lifted the issue to scientific
impersonal enquiry into the nature of that ultimate " I " . Not that
the first formula need be abandoned. It was necessary and excellent
in its place, but that place was for novices, whilst the further formula
was for the use of those on a higher level.
The passage of the last few years, with its widening comprehension
consequent on incessant search and its gradual growth of
unusual experience, did not permit me to rest satisfied even with
this important development. The instructive episodes of daily living
confronted me, with deepening disillusionment, with the limitations
and deficiencies of mysticism and the intolerances and defects of
mystics, from whom I did not even exclude myself, and the efforts to
understand the problems that arose eventually brought me to see the
insufficiency of even this expanded outlook. I saw that just as
resigned religious faith in mere dogma was insufficient for the mystic,
so his own intuitional feeling was insufficient for me now, and that
intuition must be put in its proper place and not be expected to
perform miracles. Both had been tested and found wanting.
Yet the other source of knowledge available-intellect-was also
realized on all sides as imperfect if better, and unable to stand the
test of experience. It could become as deceptive as the other ways.
For intellect was logical thinking, and Archbishop Whately had once
proved, with perfect irony, that logically we were well entitled to
doubt the historic existence of the great Napoleon ! Logical induction
was quite useful so far as it went, but it was too incomplete to yield
finality. Its results were always liable to change with further experience.
There was something in all these three ways which man needed
for balanced living. I had used this combination for years, taking
guidance from the words of men deemed wise, i.e. authority, from my
own sensitive feeling in meditation and ecstatic absorption, i.e.
mysticism, and from the check of self-doubt and self-criticism, i.e
intellect. Indeed I had prided myself on being a rational mystic and
B

on refusing to be cast in the conventional shape. Yet even the
totality of this combination did not suffice to unveil a truth that need
never be revised. Was a further and finally satisfactory source of
obtaining knowledge available ? This question also demanded an
answer.
None of the Maharishee's devotees had ever posed himself these
problems, so far as I knew, and consequently my own inability to
obtain any further enlightenment from him would probably have
been attributed by them to the insatiable spirit of enquiry engendered
by my "poisonous" modern Western education. Nevertheless I
respected and revered the Maharishee for his unusual attainment in
mental quiet, for few others had so successfully ascended that
psychological peak, and that might have sufficed to have kept me at
his side until this day, as a friend even where I could not stay as a
seeker after truth, bearing in solitary resigned silence the gnawing
questions which he could not answer. But during my last two visits
to India it had become painfully evident that the institution known
as the Ashram which had grown around him during the past few
years, and over which his ascetic indifference to the world rendered
him temperamentally disinclined to exercise the slightest control,
could only greatly hinder and not help my own struggles to attain
the highest goal, so I had no alternative but to bid it an abrupt and
final farewell.
Fame is the inexorable penalty of success in my profession ;
jealousy is the unwanted penalty of fame and hatred follows as its
ugly fruit. Low manners eventually win the courage of their verbal
vituperation and stoop to threats of physical violence. I realized however
that I must cling to this precious talisman from the Buddhist
Dhammapada: ' 'Among men who hate us, let us dwell free from
hatred" ; and that nobody should be exempt from the wide sweep of
compassion. Nevertheless these bitter experiences of life taught me
severely the exact price to set upon that fragile thing which is verbal
human friendship and outward show of holiness. Those who cannot
understand are always prone to misunderstand. But the rare ones
who, through fine temperament or altruistic experience, instinctively
reach out their hands through the world-darkness quite compensate
for the hurts caused by malicious lying ignorance. With them we are
members of an unseen church that unites those who were born
dedicated to leave their corner of the world a little better than they
found it.
What is the Meaning of the World ? It is time to take up anew the
train of thought which I have been recording. Graduation from the
BEYOND YOGA

formula for analytic contemplation of Who Ami? to What Ami? did
not end there. Both questions still came within the purview of
mysticism and the painful logic of certain events had finally and
fully clinched what the logic of critical reflection had begun to reveal.
I became acutely aware that mysticism was not enough by itself to
transform or even discipline human character and to exalt its ethical
standards towards a satisfactory ideal. It was unable to link itself
thoroughly to life in the external world ! This gap was too serious to
be ignored. Even the emotional exaltations of mystical ecstasy-
wonderfully satisfying though they be-were fleeting both in
experience and effect and have proved insufficient to ennoble men
permanently. The disdain for practical action and the disinclination
to accept personal responsibility which marked the character of real
mystics prevented them from testing the truth of their knowledge as
well as the worth of their attainments and left them suspended in
mid-air, as it were. Without the healthy opposition of active participation
in the world's affairs they had no means of knowing
whether they were living in a realm of sterilized self-hallucination
or not.
Meditation apart from experience was inevitably empty;
experience apart from meditation was mere tumult. A monastic
mysticism which scorned the life and responsibilities of the busy
world would frequently waste itself in ineffectual beating of the air.
The truth obtained by contemplation needed to be tried and tested,
not by pious talk but by active expression ; a so-called higher
knowledge which failed to appear in homely daily deeds was badly
learnt and might be nothing more than vacuous vagary. The true
sage could be no anaemic dreamer but would incessantly transform
the seeds of his wisdom into visible and tangible plants of acts well
done. Emotional exaltations won through religious devotion were
indeed personal satisfactions but might become dangerous illusions
when they failed to find a proper external balance. Society represented
an opportunity for the spiritual dreamer to examine the truth
of his dreams and to test the strength of the castles he had built in
the air. But to do this he needed to change his attitude towards the
despised world of activity, to stand intermittently aside from his
dangerous ascetic pride, and to broaden and balance his outlook by
intellectual culture.
Time, experience, and thought had thus proved faulty and incomplete
the theory which tradition had turned over to me of a short cut
to the kingdom of heaven, and in the end silently pointed away and
bade me continue my quest elsewhere. Mysticism was an important,

necessary and generally neglected factor in human life, but it was only
a single and partial factor after all, and could never do duty for the
whole of Rfe. A more integral culture was needed, one which could be
perfectly rounded by reason and which could survive the test of
every experience.
Such a culture could only come from facing the fact that man
was here to live actively no less than to meditate passively. The field
of his activity was inevitably out there in the external world, not
here in the trance-world. Whilst the practice of meditation did lead
a man to a certain degree of self-knowledge in so far as it penetrated
the strata of his thoughts and feeling to their more peaceful foundation,
it did not lead him to self-sufficiency. This was because the
external world was always confronting him on his return with the
silent demand that it also be thoroughly known and properly understood.
Unless therefore he enquired deeply into its real nature and
united the resulting knowledge with his mystical perception, he
would remain in the twilight and not in the full morning sun, as the
entranced mystic thought himself to be. Most mystics in attempting
to know themselves metaphorically shut their eyes to the profounder
enigma of the surrounding world, but that act did not lead to its
dismissal.
The last logical extension of this argument led one to perceive
that the significance of self would inevitably become clearer when
perceived in its proper place within the organic unity of the whole of
existence. For just as a completely correct view of any part of a
machine was possible only from the standpoint of the whole machine
itself, so a perfect view of the individual man was also possible only
from that of the universal existence in which he was included. One
had to learn to distinguish between the trembling touch of quartertruths,
the hesitant feel of half-truths and the firm grip*of the whole
truth. The old Asiatic tale about the four blind men was instructive.
They wanted to know what an elephant was like, so they asked its
driver to let them touch it. The first touched its abdomen and
exclaimed : " I t is like a round basin." The second touched a leg and
retorted, "No-it is like a tall pillar!" The third felt an ear and
protested it was like a basket. Finally the fourth man felt its trunk
and said that the elephant was like a bent stick. Thus their limited
views of the animal led to an inconclusive argument. The driver
finally settled their controversy by laughing and saying: "You have
all taken a part of the elephant for the whole of it and so you are all
wrong."
The mystic worshipped the half-truth of himself whilst the
BEYOND YOGA

whole truth which put together both inner self and the external
world waited ignored or misunderstood.
Contemporary history plainly foreshadowed that the, scientist
who was preoccupied with the external world alone and ignored his
internal world would, if he were mentally penetrative enough and
temperamentally courageous enough, finally have to turn his preoccupation
towards himself. Thus the man who started with the
formula "What is the Universe ?" was forced to finish with its mate
"What Am I ?" Eddington's latest book The Philosophy of Physical
Science was nothing less than an open confession of the truth of these
statements. But the reverse was equally correct, as experience had
proved to me. The mystic who started with wonderment about
himself would, if he cared more for truth than for delightful moods,
be forced to finish with wonderment at the universe. So long as he
avoided or neglected the question "What is the universe ?" he himself
remained unbalanced and his knowledge incomplete.
If we endeavoured even for a single minute totally to withdraw
any creature from his external sense-activity, we would not only
withdraw him from the universe but also from his conscious self.
For in that condition he would at once be plunged in sound slumber
or sudden swoon, when he would know nothing of the I and could
never know anything of the I. This indicates that not only is he a
constituent part of the world but the world of sense-impression is a
part of him, because it disappears together with the disappearance
of his ego. Hence the right knowledge of self in its fullness must
depend on a right knowledge of this time-fronted and space-backed
world. Truth might be won only by a comprehensive analysis of the
Whole, which necessarily included world-analysis and individual
analysis.
It was much to the merit of German Hegel that he had foreseen
by pure thinking the same problem which now confronted me on
the different road of mystic experience. He pointed out that individual
experience was partial and finite and therefore could not
embrace the fullness of reality. So long as it remained what it was,
isolated from the universal experience, it was filled with the clash of
contradictions and anomalies. But the latter disappeared as soon as
we merged the individual in the Whole, whose existence was already
pre-supposed and always imminent. Hegel perceived, in short, that
the individual could be adequately explained only in terms of the
whole and that when asked to explain its own significance it pointed
beyond itself.
Thus I moved heretically to the climax of this entire thought

process and confronted the final formulae. From "What Am I ?" I
had graduated at last to "What is the Meaning of this World-
Experience ?" and "What is the Object of All Existence ?" I had
come to recognize that the questions involved an ascent from
advanced mysticism to pure philosophy itself.
Apprenticeship to Yoga. There is a fit time for all events, says
Nature as she ritualistically shows her four diverse faces to us every
year. The man who would profit by her silent instruction will follow
her ancient and tested method of making all self-revelations only at
the appropriate hour. The time has certainly come for me to follow
my old revered tutor. Hence the first two chapters of this book are
purely autobiographical and may therefore sound egoistic in a work
which is frankly of a philosophical character. Nevertheless their
patient reading is essential as a preparation for the correct understanding
of a seemingly new departure in my published work.
Moreover, readers will not have to suffer this note of egoism again,
for it has been my endeavour that nothing personal shall be found in
the rest of this volume to detract from its objective.
I must now tell in plainer words what I hardly hinted in the first
chapter of A Search in Secret India, the first book in which I spoke
to my contemporaries. Therein I confessed that long before I met
the first half-clothed Indian yogi " I had lived an inner life totally
detached from my outward circumstance. I spent much of my spare
time in the study of recondite books and in little-known by-paths of
psychological experiment. I delved into subjects which always have
been wrapped in Cimmerian mystery."
Nothing has since been added to those unrevealing words. I have
kept silent so long as silence served its purpose, but that purpose has
now worn itself threadbare. On the other hand, recent happenings
have shown that, in the face of continued misunderstandings by the
ignorant and constant misrepresentations emanating from certain
so-called spiritual ashrams, no less than from the so-called materialistic
world, silence has become injurious.
All this is but a preamble to the necessary confession and defence
that when I first came to India I was no novice in the practice of
yoga, no gaping "greenhorn" seeking to learn the A B C of a foreign
art in its native home. The narrow matrix in which heredity
attempted to mould my nature I early broke and discarded, for my
whole thought and temperament were of another cast. Boyhood
 Indian monastic institutions where monks are supposed to spend their lives
with their thoughts wrapped up in God.
years had been shadowed by a terrible and tremendous yearning to
penetrate the mystery of life's inner meaning. With no maps to make
its intricate mazes clear, with no guide to show in which direction to
travel and what dangers to avoid, surrounded by a civilization which
scorned the very attempt as futile, I yet set forth to explore-or
rather stumble through-this twilit land. That which frightens
most people away from the investigation of mysticism was exactly
what first drew me to it. The very depths of its enigma made me
want ardently to explore them. I did not emerge unscathed in nerve
and body from these explorations in the labyrinths of my brain and
the depths of my heart for "the soul". I made mistakes and had to
pay for them. Chance, however, seemed suddenly to provide a better
road. Before I crossed the threshold of manhood the power of inward
contemplation had been laid up as treasure in heaven, the ineffable
ecstasies of mystical trance had become a daily occurrence in the
calendar of life, the abnormal mental phenomena which attend the
earlier experience of yoga were commonplace and familiar, whilst
the dry labours of meditation had disappeared into effortless ease.
This fugitive bliss of the mystic which makes the mundane
movement seem so poor and pretentious has not lacked for laureates,
as a reference to the world's poetry soon proves. During those
spacious reveries when, hitherto immured in red blood and white
bone, the mind overstepped its imagined limits, the physical world
was left as a remote and alien thing, the physical body with its
inevitable accompaniment of difficult problems and irritating cares
and unsatisfied desires took on a secondary and subordinate aspect,
all one's major interest and attention being focused inwardly on
this incredible and amazing experience of an enchanting serenity
that seemed to lift the mind high above the commonplaceness of
earthly existence. In the deepest stage of trance I seemed to become
extended in space, an incorporeal being. When, later, I came across
translations of Indian books on yoga in addition to the medieval
European books on mysticism I found to my astonishment that the
archaic accents of their phraseology formed familiar descriptions of
my own central and cardinal experiences. Thus I had unconsciously
enfranchised myself in the kingdom of yoga and embarked on
research activities which were one day to lead me far beyond it.
But in those days it did not occur to me that I was anything but a
stumbling beginner. I had begun to understand man through introspection,
but I could only begin to understand life through retrospection.
I suffered from that defect of inexperienced youth-lack of
self-confidence. My imagination painted vivid-nay, even fantastic

-pictures of what might be accomplished given another twenty or
thirty years of practice. Consequently I placed all yogis and mystics
who had reached middle age on a high pedestal, whilst those who
had finished their fourscore years were veritable supermen in my
eyes ! The fallacy that all progress was in a continuous straight line
confused my reasoning, and it was taken for granted that whoever
had practised meditation for even a couple of years longer than I had
was necessarily to be revered almost to the point of worship.
That my own evolution went off suddenly at a tangent from
constant contemplation of external life as a parade of flickering
shadows into strenuous external work amid the high pressure of
editorial cynicism and journalistic materialism not long after, or
that I could never cross the familiar limit of my further occasional
contemplations, taught me nothing. This unexpected change and this
tantalizing inability were ascribed to my own personal defects, and I
never ceased hoping that one day some sudden joyful burst of progress
into an unexplored world would enhearten me. Had I but known
it, these failures were more silently instructive than successes !
The time came when I could wait no longer. Knowing that India
held the tradition of yoga-however attenuated-more livingly
today than any other country, I went off finally in its quest and in
the hope of finding its chief protagonists and of perfecting my
technique. I travelled throughout the heat-soaked plains of India
and devoted precious young years to such investigations. That
knowledge was eventually found profusely written in many books
and actually embodied in a few men. Among the latter I regarded
the Maharishee and still regard him as the most eminent South
Indian yogi. With him I spontaneously relived afresh my earlier
ecstatic moods. The life of rapt inward absorption became again the
only life that really mattered. Under his influence and that of the
slumberous Indian atmosphere I returned brusquely from my
tangential excursion, scorning and despising world-activities and
world-service anew as being nothing more than purposeless and
perfunctory whippings of a dead horse. Once again thought was
redirected in profound concentration upon negating itself. Once
again I gave myself up to repeated practise of yoga as being the
highest end of man, whilst the old hope that a wonderful spurt of
progress into a totally new dimension of consciousness would eventually
reward me dwelt perennially in the heart.
The description of my profoundest trance experience whilst
with the Maharishee given at the end of A Search in Secret India is
accurate as a description of what I felt, although I did not then
BEYOND YOGA

understand the sharp distinction between feeling and knowledge.
What I omitted* to state and now reveal was that it was no new
experience, because many years before I had met the saintly yogi of
Arunachala I had enjoyed precisely similar ecstasies, inward repose
and luminous intuitions during self-training in meditation. My debt
to this truly remarkable mystic was chiefly due for reviving those
beautiful experiences within me, a debt which I gratefully acknowledged
but which has been amply repaid by the work I have done in
making him very widely known to his countrymen, and revered by
them in consequence. It will therefore be clear to perspicacious
readers that I used his name and attainments as a convenient peg
upon which to hang an account of what meditation meant to me.
The principal reason for this procedure was that it constituted a
convenient literary device to secure the attention and hold the
interest of Western readers, who would naturally give more serious
consideration to such a report of the "conversion" of a seemingly
hard-headed critically minded Western journalist to yoga. For the
general motive that governed my researches reflected itself in my
main aim in writing the book, which was to draw European and
American people to this much-neglected path to inner peace, i.e. to
serve them. And the general Western attitude was that it had no use
for the moribund survival of yoga any more than for other superstitions
of a senile and sterile India. I had therefore to show that
yoga at least possessed some living value, and this could best be
certified by using living persons to illustrate this value.
The years passed and my eagerness to unravel the higher
mysteries of yoga did not abate, so meanwhile I wrote about the
lower ones which were familiar and no longer mysterious. I found in
India that the truth about the yoga-system was that, in its twentiethcentury
practice, it was no system at all, for it had become as mixed
as an Irish stew. It was hard to recognize what was mythical and
what was mystical. Yoga had been thought largely useless to the
modern world because it was held tight by fantastic faqueers in the
crippling and unfortunate embrace of superstition. Dogmatic
religion had deflected much of it from its psychological goal, whilst
primitive'magic had distorted another portion of it into a circus
performance. I had not come to India to dig up the graves of old
errors and rattle the bones of their skeletons. I made herculean
efforts to rescue what was workable in yoga and then turn it into a
consciously formulated rational praxis, first for my own clarification
and then for the world's.
My pilgrimage still went on with its inevitable accompaniment

of arduous struggles and unforgettable ecstasies, intermittent
disillusionments and glorious revealments. I did not make this
pilgrimage alone. An unseen and unknown host increasingly travelled
by my side. This crowd of fellow seekers was cosmopolitan and classless.
It was scattered all over the planet. Whenever the higher bidding
affected my reluctant personal will I communicated my discoveries
to them. Thus my books were born. Those who were tied by duty to
concentration upon tHe turning wheel. of modern materialistic
existence were able to profit by the findings of one who had made
good his own escape. It was not easy for me to write words which
would appeal to a practical matter-of-fact age. Sometimes I could
hardly understand why, when so many more exciting and objective
books were on the market, anyone should want to read mine. But
yet there were these misguided folk who showed such a perverse
inclination ! I could but thank them and my stars for the encouragement
given me. What this meant my pen could answer better than
myself. May Allah grant such good people length of days !
But once again I reached the old position of standing at what
seemed an impassable barrier. My connection with the Maharishee
did not avail me in crossing this barrier. Many Indians envied me
for having plumbed the depths of yoga, for they did not know that I
was inwardly dissatisfied with my attainment, but a few friends were
perplexed at the knowledge. For puzzling questions punctuated my
ecstatic satisfactions. It is true that the ability to throw onself into
a mystical trance is no little matter; the capacity to concentrate
thought at will for long periods of time is no common one ; the
power to enjoy ineffable if temporary peace by a mere inward
reorientation of attention is no paltry acquirement. All these and
other characteristics of yoga were in my possession. What then was
the true cause of this dissatisfaction ? Unless this is explained to the
reader he will be perplexed.
After one emerged from the state of trance or contemplation
the exalted feeling slowly and gently subsided, leaving at last only
a lingering after-echo. Therefore one had to repeat the experience
daily if one wanted to live again in the original condition, just as one
had to repeat taking one's dinner daily if one wanted to live without
hunger. If one was expert in the matter one could protract the sweet
after-effects for a longerperiod, but one could not engage in any kind
of practical activity without eventually losing it again. Thus the
illuminations gained by yoga were always temporary ones. They
needed to be renewed daily at the cost of temporary renunciation of
practical duties and worldly activities,
This transiency of the contemplative state became a serious
problem which engaged much of my earnest consideration. That this
problem had troubled more experienced yogis than myself became
known to me some years ago during one of my visits to the extensive
Ashram of Sri Aurobindo Ghose, at Pondichery, French India. There
I was once shown a number of letters which he had written to his
disciples, and one contained the following paragraph, whose truth
struck me so forcibly that I copied it straightway. The authoritative
value of this statement will become apparent when it is added that
Sri Aurobindo is probably the most famous of living Indian yogis and
certainly the best-educated one. He wrote :
"Trance is a way of escape-the body is made quiet, the
physical mind is in a state of torpor, the inner consciousness is
left free to go on with its experience. The disadvantage is that
trance becomes indispensable and that the problem of the waking
consciousness is not solved, it remains imperfect
Moreover, the man who has to live and work in this world, who
must share in its activities; caught in its crucible of work, pleasure
and pain, must sooner or later turn away from his meditation and
resume his activity just as he earlier turned away from the world to
resume his meditation. "Take what thou wilt but pay the price,"
said Emerson somewhere with Greek clarity of statement. The price
of yoga was world-renunciation ; the proof that this was so lay in the
fact that those Orientals who began to make some progress with
meditation and sought further advancement usually ended by
listening to the melancholy melody of asceticism and fleeing from
wife, family, home, property and work ; they took refuge in ashrams,
caves, monasteries, jungles or mountains, so that with the world well
left behind their efforts to reach the contemplative mood might be
made more uninterrupted and continuous. Seeking the day-long
enjoyment of yogic peace, they had perforce to sacrifice the day-long
business of worldly living.
Furthermore, this plain fact that the overmuch daily practice of
meditation inevitably unfitted a man for activity in the practical
sphere of existence became increasingly and disturbingly clear to me.
Indeed, I had had to give up my own career in editorial and journalistic
work for a time partly because of having overdone the practice
and partly because of a resultant hyper-sensitivity which made most
environments a torture. It was much easier to write books because
this was an activity which could be executed on a remote mountain-top,

if necessary, far from the busy turmoils of city life. All the same,
I perceived that at least ninety-five per cent of Western humanity
were caught involuntarily in crowded whirlpools and had no hope
of escape from them. A complete system of yoga could not therefore
be offered as a practical possibility to the generality of people. Then
how could a way of life which offered the world a reward of merely
intermittent peace constitute in itself the ideal of a perfect, true and
integral way which thoughtful persons had ever been seeking ? The
combination of meditation practice and worldly work was valuable
ordinarily only to those who were satisfied with the compromise of
imperfect attainment in meditation.
There was a single exception, however. The system which
formerly prevailed among the Zen Buddhists in old Japan was
sensible and practical. Young men who showed a liking and fitness
for meditation were brought to the Zen monasteries and trained
there for a period of about three years. During this time there were
no distractions to hinder them, so that the work of mind-mastery
could go on uninterruptedly. The Japanese masters, with a sense of
realism and practicality which their Indian confreres often lacked,
did not permit their pupils to overdo meditation or trance but
insisted on strict moderation. Contrary to common opinion, the
Japanese capacities went beyond slavish imitation. The Japs never
became blind adherents of the Indian-born and Chinese-transmitted
customs. They used what was applicable to their own needs and
rejected the rest. The ultimate aim of medieval Zen was to create
keen determined men with crisp clear mentalities who would be
calmly active and skilfully concentrated in all their undertakings ;
who would spontaneously sink self in the service of their country.
The dull lethargy, spectral melancholy and anti-worldliness of many
Indian monks did not suit such a virile, optimistic and practical race.
The students were not allowed to pass the day in lazy, futile or
parasitical existence, but were given active duties to keep them
busy. The Zen aim being a balanced existence they were made to
work hard and to meditate well. But at the end of the disciplinary
period, with the exception of those who felt an inborn and overwhelming
vocation for monkish retreat, they were sent back to
worldly life to marry, take up a career and make good. Equipped
with the power of instant and sustained concentration, poised to
meet the difficulties and vicissitudes of practical living with undisturbed
equanimity, universally respected for their high character,
they generally forged ahead of other men and became highly
successful in their chosen careers. Many of Japan's most famous
BEYOND YOGA

soldiers, statesmen, artists and scholars were Zen trained men.
Their ideal was a perfect balance of the inner and outer man, with
efficiency as the keynote of both. The quality of their meditation was
so high that a half-hour daily was sufficient after their departure
from the monastery to keep them in contact with spiritual peace ;
thus their worldly life did not suffer but was enriched.
There appeared to be little room for such an arrangement in
modern life, so meanwhile we had to look at the facts as they were
today.
Waiting for Wisdom. Such were the unpalatable conclusions
which I drew after my Western and Indian courses of experience in
yoga, as I then knew it, both of which brought me to the point of
intense inward abstraction but no farther. It will be apparent that
my concern was not merely personal alone, but to some extent
altruistic. I had devoutly hoped to find in mysticism a system that
could completely satisfy the higher aspirations of all those who, like
myself, madve experience the final test. I had once thought that the
contemporary materialism might find its partial cure in mysticism.
Such perceptions came to me only after I had made the initial
mistake of believing and occasionally supporting all the traditional
claims on behalf of yoga exercises which one had heard. It was only
later and with great difficulty that the growing breadth of my
approach enabled me to separate what was sound from what was
superstitious in these claims.
Thelse words might easily be misunderstood. Mental quiet has
been strongly advocated in my books and I do not regret or retract
such advocacy for a single moment. The infiltration of a little peace
into a busy life is relatively of great value, and even the memory of a
morning's half-hour bathed in blessed tranquillity sweetens the
harshest labour and disciplines even degraded pleasures. I have
frequently stated in my books that it was never my purpose to
induce Westerners to flee into ashrams but only to flee for a \vhil#-
into themselves. Those books show such a way, the practice of their
exercises offers such an abundant reward, and the latter may well be
enough for most people The other benefits of meditation, if correctly
practised-which is not often-also constitute a valuable asset,
possessing a practical bearing on life and conduct. They are chiefly :
the ability to concentrate thought at will; greater pacification of
emotion and passion ; greater power to keep undesirable or troubling
factors out of the mind, and finally a better understanding of oneself.
Such benefits are obviously not to be despised and are most useful

even amid the ordinary avocations of daily living. From my personal
knowledge several well-known and active men of affairs-such as
Lord Kitchener, the late British Field-Marshal, and Lord Brabourne,
the late Governor of Bengal-had been privately interested in these
practices.
But for the few, again like myself, who sought to understand the
meaning of life and to unravel the imperious problem of truth, peace
or self-discipline could not alone still for ever the keen hunger of the
mind-however valuable in themselves. In short, I sought the realization
of those promises of ultimate knowledge which the old Sanskrit
books held out as pertaining to the higher mysteries of yoga.
I ought to pause upon this parenthesis to render clearer what I
mean by the words "higher mysteries of yoga". They represent the
difference between knowing something and feeling it. In the depths
of meditation one felt, apart from transitory emotional exaltations,
the world to be like a passing dream, the body to be but a drag on
one's true self, and the only permanent value to lie in the heart's
ineffable depth. Through long practical tests I had plumbed the
depths of yoga, as the mystics and yogis of my acquaintance seemed
to know it, and found the proper limits of its usefulness ; it certainly
gave much, it gave the misty feeling of having reached truth, but it
did not give the irrefutable knowledge of truth. Yoga gave only these
vague feelings but could not turn them into definite formulation ;
moreover, it could only convert these intermittent experiences into
permanent attitudes if one were willing to abide in meditation the
day long. This was not only impracticable to most men but also, I
know now, impossible to all men.
My bafflement had been intense until the notion slowly dawned
on me that such permanence could arise only out of the balance
between knowledge and feeling. When intellect had discovered
what emotion glimpsed, when it had established that discovery upon
an irrefutable basis of fact for ever proved, and when reason and
feeling had perfectly fused into spontaneous action, the whole being
of a man would be harmonized, his outlook firmly established and
his inner peace welded like steel into an unbroken and unbreakable
element. It would then no longer matter whether he were active in
the noisy world or plunged in silent trance, for his life would be an
integral unit. There were statements in the old Indian texts which
supported these notions. Although such understanding of the inmost
nature of the world, such insight into the subtler meanings of life,
could come into real rather than theoretical existence only so fdr as it
was of one*s own making, it was equally true that some ancient finger
BEYOND YOGA

had to emerge out of the darkness and point out the way which led
to it. Thus the knowledge that there were apparently summits
still unclimbed, and that no paths leading to them were nowadays
discernible, filled me at times with aching discontent.
This need of wider intellectual enlightenment concerning both
the nature of the world and its correct relation to the mystical view
of man-in short, Truth in all its fullness- caused me to look around
and consider where else it might be satisfied. I knew several of the
answers of the West, knew too that they were often excellent as far
as they went, but they did not go far enough. Science frankly confessed
its own insufficiency, and the foremost scientists like Jeans,
Eddington and Planck had begun in sheer compulsion to point
their venturesome fingers towards philosophy. I knew something of
the Western philosophies, admirably reasoned and laboriously
worked out as they were, but their tremendous conflict of opinion
largely cancelled out each other's value and left the student bewildered.
I knew however that the foremost thinkers of Asiatic countries
had leisurely pondered this problenj long before the first city Greeks
had begun to ponder it in Europe. Moreover, there was this vital
difference-that whereas the Western thinkers usually claimed that
nobody had discovered ultimate truth and that human limitations
were so narrow that nobody was likely to discover it, the authors of
old Asiatic books claimed that ultimate truth was certainly discoverable
and that a few sages had definitely known it.
I remembered the enthusiasm with which, in my younger days,
I had hotly advocated this claim to a sceptical French artist as we
walked beside the Seine on moonlit nights. But alas in those days I
had used the words "sage" and "mystic" as interchangeable ; now I
knew a little better. I felt therefore that if hope lay anywhere it lay
in Asia, the continent where the world's most renowned religious,
mystic and philosophic teachers from Jesus to Confucius had been
born. It needed but slightly more consideration to narrow the search
to India because I knew from wide study and personal travel that
all the Asiatic lands, like Tibet, China and Japan, had directly or
indirectly derived their philosophic knowledge, yoga systems and
religious speculations from this single fountain-head. The stream of
philosophic thought was likely to be purer at the source, and so I
examined its position in present-day India.
At first sight it was evident to any man whose brains were not
closely packed with dusty cobwebs that the medley of contradictory
opinion and barrenness of useful result which afflicted Western
philosophy was just as prevalent in India, too. There were six

classical systems which claimed to explain the universe rationally, but
each started from totally different premises and appealed to totally
different facts. Consequently they all arrived at irreconcilable
notions of what constituted the Truth. There were also innumerable
theological and scholastic systems which masqueraded as philosophies,
hiding their ultimate appeal to faith by an immediate appeal
to reason, or priding themselves on their magnificent structure of
reasoning whilst beginning with the biggest of all dogmas, that of the
existence of a personal God. There were not a few seers and saints
upon whose heads the populace had thrown a nimbus of holiness,
who claimed to be on intimate terms with the Supreme Creator and
who explained verbosely what the significance of the universe was
according to the explanations which the Creator had personally
vouchsafed to them. Here again there was so much conflicting doctrine
that one could only decide that the divine plan was changed from
month to month according to the Creator's momentary mood!
There were also numerous would-be authors who offered the maximum
of verbiage with the minimum of meaning. Wherever one went
in this talkative country agile-minded teachers could be found who
performed breath-taking feats of logical legerdemain and who were
willing to pour out on the least provocation a profuse spate of lengthy
words-often meaningless, sometimes cryptic and generally combining
to form unproven or unprovable statements. But what
experience in this world meant was finally as elusive as ever. I
wanted a philosophy devoid of dogma whose truth could be proved
as irrefutably as one could prove an experiment in science-in short,
to walk on sure ground.
Most other men in my position would undoubtedly have remained
content with their yogic acquirements and enjoyed the daily peace
of meditation, retreating to the inner self and leaving intellectual
busybodies to worry over the meaning of the universe! Unfortunately
my temperament was differently constructed. The stars of
cold reason and quixotic strangeness were in conjunction at my
birth. I had had sufficiently ripe experience of society and its appalling
aridity to know how transitory and how defective were the
external satisfactions it offered in comparison with inner achievements.
Great poverty had dragged itself on miserable crutches
towards me when the fullness of a rich existence was my aim, and I
had loathed it. Great wealth came fawning to my feet at a time when
the simplest of lives was my ideal, and I had spurned it. Now I
disregarded both because my personal life had been committed to
higher hands and I could take whatever came to me with contentment.
BEYOND YOGA

I had reached a mature age when the first grey hairs had grown
alarmingly and the mind had grown sufficiently to make me feel
that any attempt to evade its insistent questions would do violence
to the integrity of conscience. I had been thrown by time into an
epoch tremulous with fateful consequences, when the whole world
was being dazed and stunned by a devastating series of startling
experiences and caught in a complicated web of events from which
it would emerge either ruined or rejuvenated. It was an epoch which
had tried to equip itself as a candidate for death. Because I belonged
to the ink-stained fraternity I was naturally interested in the fate of
my fellow-dwellers on this sad star. The aspiration to serve the
minority of earnest seekers among suffering ignorant humanity with
a compassionate offering of Truth-however humble and imperfect-
as I had earlier tried to serve them with an offering of Peace, burned
like a consuming fire within me. There were not many years left for
an overworked body and I could not afford to wait supinely for the
grave whilst these questions remained unanswered.
But I was caught in a mental cul-de-sac, from which there seemed
no way to emerge until I remembered that if there was no one in
India's living present to help me, there might yet have been someone
in her dead past. Her most serious reflections on the meaning of
existence lay entombed in a multitude of oblong yellowing palmleaf
manuscripts. Perhaps among those muted voices it might be
possible to find one or two which could speak sympathetically and
understanding^ to me across the centuries. So I decided to search
for such an author's work.
c
CHAPTER II

"Trust you will place before the Congress the goal of the truth of
Indian philosophy, the attainment of the happiness of all beings, as enshrined
in the great Sanskrit sayings : (Sarve Janah Sukhino Bhavantu
(May all humanity be happy) and 'Sarve Satwa Sukho Hitah' (Which
brings about the welfare of all that exists)."-Telegraphic message from
His Highness the late Maharaja of Mysore to the Indian Delegate
to the International Philosophical Congress, Paris, 1937.
" O i IT not with a disputer about fate nor begin a conversation
^Nwith him" was the wise admonishment of the practically
minded Prophet Muhammed, who thus dismissed the question
at a single stroke and doubtless saved much time and endless speech
for his trusting followers. Certainly someone like Fate, who had not
seldom befriended me in the past when I invited her attention by
determined effort, now appeared and took a sudden hand in this
celestial game.
I grope on the darkening shelves of memory for the book of this
incident. I had gone high up into jungle-covered hills to escape from
the society of my kind for a time and to work at shaping a medley of
research notes which had accumulated around me. The needs of a
hypersensitive temperament rendered imperative such a withdrawal
from society at recurring intervals. Formerly I had cherished
the hope that in the supposedly spiritual society of a certain ashram,
the Indian equivalent of a fraternal hermitage or monastic institution,
I might find the harmony of lofty thought and peaceful conduct
which would suit those periods of escape from worldly activity. The
hope finally turned out to be a laughable illusion, whilst the ashram
turned out to be a miniature fragment of the imperfect world I had
deserted. To those who feel the same inner need I would therefore
strongly recommend through experiment and experience the only
perfect environment which will fit their case. It is to return to Mother
Earth's friendly scenic solitudes and to make her enchanting beauty
their mistress. In shady silent forests or on lofty rugged heights,

beside quiet-flowing streams or unpeopled wave-beaten shores, in
the earth's stillness, the sky's colour and the mountain's purity, they
will always find healing balm for the wounds caused by contacts
with a harsh unlovely world.
The new perch which I had established through the generous
hospitality of His Late Highness the Maharaj ah of Mysore was one such
blessed spot. As one's eyes travelled the whole circle of this inviting
and inspiring south-west Indian horizon no village came into view, no
city stretched out its cruel tentacles like a giant octopus to seize the
green countryside. Nature was my companion, her wild solitary
grandeur was my joy. In her beautiful presence, under expectant
peach-bloom dawns and hushed coppery-red sunsets, I knew that I
would soon recover what I had lost among petty-minded men as well
as accomplish a modicum of pressing work.
Three inspired weeks passed by when there suddenly befell an
unlooked-for event. My servant appeared one afternoon and handed
me a letter which had been given him by a stranger. It was nothing
more than a simple request for a few minutes' chat from an Indian
gentleman who wrote that he was familiar with my books, and having
come into the neighbourhood on a vacation had discovered that I
was there : yet, had I but known it, on this slip of greyish-white
paper was inscribed the next phase of my tortuous destiny. I could
not help being amused at this unexpected visit, for I thought that I
had well and truly secured solitude in this obscure place. I savoured
something of the surprise which filled the mind of a famous missionary-
explorer long lost in the jungles of Central Africa, who was
suddenly confronted by the figure of a white man appearing as if
from nowhere. The latter politely raised his hat and said, "Mr.
Livingstone, I presume !''
Presently the writer appeared-a white-turbaned, bespectacled
old Brahmin gentleman of placid countenance and short stature,
with three small books tucked under his arm. It is a fact that within
ten minutes I was listening eagerly to him, the while he talked
vigorously of the very problem which had so troubled my mind !
Thus the serpentine coil of fate began to unfold again in a curious
but momentous manner.
Soon he was turning the pages of one of his books, the famous
classic Bhagavad Gita, and expounding quotation after quotation in
ardent advocacy of his unconventional theses, which were : that the
orthodox view of yoga was generally inaccurate and certainly
insufficient, that the practice of meditation was an excellent mental
preparation for the quest of truth but by itself could never yield

truth; that ninety-nine per cent of Indian yogis practised preparatory
disciplines under the widespread but mistaken notion that all
of them led directly to the same highest goal; and that hardly any
contemporary yogi knew or followed the only path which could bring
a man to the realization of ultimate truth, which was called "the
yoga of philosophical discernment" and whose culminating stage
was "the yoga of the uncontradictable".
He picked up from the table the second of the volumes which he
had brought and said,'' Permit me to introduce a book which is scarcely
known, much neglected and rarely read because its contents are either
beyond the comprehension of ordinary students or obnoxious to the
preconceived notions of ordinary pundits. It is called Ashtavakra
Samhita. It is not less than three thousand years old and may even
be many thousand years older, for our remote forefathers did not
burden themselves with keeping dates. This is the mysterious book
which Bengal's much-revered sage and yogi of more than a halfcentury
ago, Sri Ramakrishna, used to hide under his pillow and
produce only when he was alone with his most developed and
favourite disciple, the famous Swami Vivekananda. None of his
other followers was ever instructed in its lofty doctrines, for it
would have upset their most cherished beliefs. From this you will
perceive that this is not a book for beginners. It describes the highly
advanced teaching given by the sage Ashtavakra, who had personally
realized the ultimate goal of Indian wisdom, to King Janaka, who
was an ardent seeker after truth, yet remained faithful to his practical
duties as the ruler of a nation. Its later chapters emphasized the fact
that the true sage does not flee to caves or sit idly in ashrams but is
constantly engaged in work for the welfare of others. It points out
that he will even outwardly pretend to be just like ordinary people
in order not to be put on a pedestal by them. But the tenet to which
I particularly wish to draw your attention is condensed in verse
fifteen of the first chapter : This is your bondage, that you practise
meditation!' The meaning here is that meditation constitutes a
practice for developing calmness, abstract subtlety and concentrative
sharpness of the mind, and that the earnest seeker must not be so
captivated by its resultant peace as to tarry at this disciplinary stage,
but should complement it by seeking the higher truth. Ashtavakra
warns his royal disciple not to rest content with mysticism, ordinary
yoga or religion alone, but also to take the further step necessary to
acquire a knowledge of the philosophy of truth. That step is contained in a higher system, called 'philosophical discernment', for
which such power to tranquillize and concentrate thought as is
given by ordinary yoga is certainly an essential but nevertheless only
an attendant move. You will now understand why such revolutionary
doctrines are not palatable to popular taste." -
The visitor put the book down, paused in his speech and looked at
me through his large round spectacles. I felt a deepening interest in
him. Assuring him of my warm interest, I begged him to proceed.
He now tenderly handled the third book in his little collection,
the while he produced and praised it so highly and then showed it to
me. The volumQ consisted of a very brief text entitled Mandukya
Upanishad, containing only twelve terse paragraphs, together with a
long supplement entitled Gaudapada's Karika, containing two hundred
and fifteen short paragraphs, and finally a lengthier commentary
written by the renowned Shankara on both text and treatise. "He
who intellectually masters both texts and commentary thoroughly
has mastered the highest statement of truth of which India has
remained the unique custodian through thousands of years and
fragments of which have been borrowed by the rest of Asia,"
remarked my visitor. "This work contains the master-key to those
higher mysteries beyond yoga, of which you have heard and which
you have sought, known as 'the yoga of philosophical discernment',
which in its turn culminates in the ultimate approach called 'the
yoga of the uncontradictable'. These methods begin where meditation
leaves off, for they are really philosophical disciplines using the intense
concentration generated by yoga practice, and they are directed
towards freeing the mind of its innate ignorance and habitual error.
Hard indeed are they to comprehend for us of the East, but harder
still for you of the West. These advanced yogas are ignored by almost
all our own Indian yogis and usually misunderstood by almost all
our pundits. Yet knowing these neglected systems you will need to
know no others. If in India, the land of its birth, this text is so little
cared-for and less understood, how hopeless it is to look for correct
penetration of its meaning among your Western Orientalists !"
Now among all the mainsprings of my variegated Indian travels
that which primarily drew me to visit Mysore in response to its
ruler's generous call was the unique reputation enjoyed throughout
India by His Highness the late Maharaja. His irreproachable character,
sincere devotion to culture, and untiring effort for improving
the welfare of his people during a long reign of more than forty

years had made him the most universally respected and widely
beloved of all the native rulers. footnote The Secret Doctrine of the Sage Mandukya. and
 The Concise Stanzas of Gaudapada.
Gandhi had admiringly acclaimed
him with the unique title of Rajarishee, i.e. king-sage. When I came
to know His Highness more intimately I discovered that the secret
source of all his greatness lay in the philosophy with which he had
identified himself, and which I shall endeavour to explain in this
book.
From sea-splashed Cape Comorin to the venerated Himalayas he
had travelled to meet the most renowned scholars and holy men of his
land; from Kashmir to Benares he had conversed with the leading
pundits and yogis ; and he had even crossed the snowy ranges into
cold Tibet on a mystical quest. He sounded the depth of all these
men. He was therefore better entitled than most Indians to judge
what was of most worth in his country's culture. And this he finally
found in the hidden philosophy, whose true interpretation he
embodied not only in personal but also in public life.
His Late Highness summed up the practical value of what
he had learnt in the message to the International Philosophic
Congress quoted at the head of this chapter, the message that
all humanity should be treated as one family. No loftier message
nor a more valuable one could have been given to the world at
such a bewildering time. No institutional religion or exoteric philosophy
has yet really given it because all religions and philosophies
have by the mere act of labelling themselves hitherto excluded
the followers of other faiths or other teachings from their folds.
Europe did not heed this warning, not knowing that the concepts of
genuine philosophy, far from being futile, contained actual implications
for ethical guidance, and the worst war of its history broke
out within two years.
The two Sanskrit passages mentioned in this message were
chanted daily in the Mysore Palace. His Highness proved in his own
State that philosophy could be practically applied with outstanding
benefit to the common people. Mysore well earned its familiar
description of "a model State" as well as its frequent mention of
being the most progressive one in all India. His fame had spread far
and wide, and at his death The Times, the leading London newspaper,
eulogized him as having "set the standard" for the rest of India.
Such was the practical fruit of true philosophy.
 might also be permissible to mention here that the late Maharaj a
took a close personal interest in my philosophical and literary progress,
and said to me some years before his death: "You have studied
and carried yoga to the Western people ; now study and carry the
best that India has to give-our higher philosophy!" The hour
of fulfilling the second part of the duty which was then laid upon
me has at least arrived. His Highness was so anxious for the
vindication of Truth that he warmly encouraged my labours on the
present book, and it is my grief that he did not survive to witness
its publication.
The vanished sages declared from their tower of sapience the
existence of an ultimate path which alone brought the questioning
mind of man to rest in the perfect wisdom and hidden power, the
ethical beauty and universal beneficence of ultimate realization. In
that sublime consciousness even amid the terrific tempo of modern
life everything and everyone was known to be non-different in
essence from oneself, THAT indeed was to be sought for.
I came to understand yoga better after such a long period of'
research ; I came to separate the preliminary and intermediate from
the advanced and little-known stages for which that research had
been really a preparation.
The Three Grades of Yoga. A brief bird's-eye survey may now be
made of the relation between this hidden doctrine, which claims to
be the crown and fulfilment of yoga, and the more popular inferior
yogas. This will necessitate the inclusion of a few anticipatory
glimpses of material properly belonging to more advanced studies.
This relation will come out more clearly if we divide the yoga
praxis into three progressive degrees through which we rise into
wider awareness. The most elementary group is devoted entirely to
physical exercises in concentration because these appeal more readily
to those-always most numerous-whose intellects are uncultivated.
The beginner in mathematics is likely to be much bewildered if he is
started on his course of study by a presentation of the Binomial
Theorem, which is therefore reserved for a later phase of his studies.
Similarly the novice in yoga who is temperamentally and educationally
fit for nothing better is put on one or other of these physical
exercises. But some of them possess a further aim than the cultivation
of concentration, being intended to improve the health, increase the
strength and help to heal the maladies of the aspirant. It is recognized
that a sickly body disturbs the mind and chains thought to the
ailment itself. Therefore these exercises are not infrequently prescribed
as a preliminary step even to those who are cultured enough
to start in a higher degree. The methods employed sound strange to
Western ears, but they are not without remarkable efficacy for their
special purposes. The first method consists in placing the body in a
specific unusual posture and keeping it fixed and unmoving therein
for sometime. The second method involves various peculiar exercises
in rhythmically disciplining for set periods of time the inhalation,
retention and expulsion of the breath. The third method is the
practice of looking with unwinking eyes at some particular point for
the same period of time every day. The fourth method is to mutter a
thousand and one times daily a scriptural name of God. The fifth
method is to chant specified sacred syllables in rhythmic conjunction
with the ingoing and outgoing breaths.
The second or intermediate group of yoga practices rises beyond
the gross body to the higher level of educating the feelings in devotion
and training the thoughts in concentration. It includes various
mystical exercises in meditation whose ultimate aim is the attainment
of emotional and mental peace ; it may also embrace the
inculcation of constant yearning for the presence of God. The generic
character of this group will be outlined in the next chapter. His
meditative reveries and ecstatic trances give the aspirant glimpses
of the world's basis non-materiality and of its underlying harmonious
unity, but these glimpses are nothing more in the end than transient
if exalted feelings. He has next to learn how to convert them into
permanent understanding, which can be done only by interpreting
them in the higher light of reason, an activity which belongs to another
stage. Successful attainment in this second degree is marked by the
power to attain and remain in prolonged reverie with perfect concentration,
and with attention withdrawn from outward surroundings.
With the profits in self-preparation gained from the business of
these earlier methods he climbs to the third step, the yoga of philosophical
discernment.
This is the highest group of the yoga family ; it is finally supermystical
but initially purely intellectual and rational. It is the
hidden doctrine. Part of it is outlined in this book, but before the
threshold of the advanced portion with its final astonishing revelation,
the yoga of the uncontradictable, these pages must perforce
stop for the present. In this third stage the student strives, along
with concentrated and disciplined feeling and thought, to sharpen
his reason and to apply that sharpened intelligence to a guided
philosophical consideration of the meaning and nature of the whole
world and of all life. Hitherto he has been preoccupied entirely with
himself, with his own little ego ; now he expands the entire horizon of
his outlook and makes the world-problem his own problem. He must
train himself thoroughly to impress these new ideas upon every atom
of his being. He must think deeply and think hard about these subtle
truths he learns until thought becomes established as insight. When
these efforts finally and successfully mature he reaches the very
summit of the yoga of knowledge and seeks by the sheer power of his
now-illumined intelligence to fathom the final mystery of all-the
relation between the grand ultimate reality of the world and himself.
He has reached the climax of an adventure where his whole mind and
body must now travel and strive and toil in unison. This peak-path
is the yoga of the uncontradictable. It first proves its own ultimate
tenet of the secret identity of man with the universal reality, and then
shows him how to realize this amid practical life.
Higher than this his mind Gannot go ; and his remaining years
will be engaged in unremittingly establishing the truth in his own
consciousness, in living with it every moment and every day, in
expressing it practically with sustained and uncompromising
thoroughness, in repeatedly dwelling in its spirit and atmosphere
until it loses every vestige of unfamiliarity and becomes first-hand,
ascertained and verified knowledge. Knowledge must become
dynamic by getting itself practised until the practice itself is lost in
its complete fulfilment. He has then finished with the formalities of
religion, with the visions of meditation, with the reasonings of
philosophy. Just as a scaffolding is carefully erected and remains
throughout the building of a house, only to be ruthlessly torn down
at the end, so first religion, then yoga, and finally philosophy, are
now seen to be but scaffoldings which enabled him to build up the
structure of truth. In the end and when climbed they too are all
rejected. But this rejection applies only to their claims to give
realization of the truth through their individual channel alone, and
not to their lesser uses. Once permanently established the master
may dwell in all these different worlds, if he wishes, and be equally at
home in each. He may still study philosophy for the sake of guiding
the mental currents of his time, he may conform to the rites and
requirements of orthodox religion for the sake of encouraging others
who cannot rise beyond it, he may even enter into meditative trances
for the sake of personal relaxation, but he will never again be deluded
into regarding any of them as sole and final avenues to truth. At "best
they may yield its reflection in thought; he himself must become
conscious of its substance, and no wizardry will do this. The reader
will misunderstand these explanations if he does not grasp the
important point that those who have not mastered the yoga of the
second degree will therefore not be able to master the yoga of the
highest degree. For the practice of reverie is needed to render
successful the pursuit of philosophy. Enquiry into truth is the content
which should fill the meditative trance. Ascetic discipline of the
will, the body and the ego must run side by side with their study,
and implement in action the theoretical findings of philosophy. Yoga
as it is ordinarily understood is therefore not to be given up, albeit it
no longer becomes an end in itself but only a means to the end. The
capacity to practise yoga is not only essential at the very beginning
of  but also at its terminus. It is the perfect combination
of keen rational enquiry merged into profound meditative
reverie and revealing its logical consequences in practical daily
living that yields the fruit of ultimate realization in the end. The
mere intellectual grasp of the hidden teaching without the parallel
yogic capacity to sustain that grasp unbrokenly is as partial, as
incomplete and as unsatisfactory as the mere yogic power to withdraw
attention from externals and hold it in abstracted moods
unfilled by philosophic effort. Neither a dry academic intellectualism
nor an unenlightened yoga practice can lead to truth, nor both if
unvivified by action.
Thus the novice graduates from one degree to another, from the
bodily discipline to emotional discipline and thence to the intellectual.
The three groups combine to constitute a progressive unfoldment of
his capacities and understanding. It is important to note that they
are steps, not stops. The truth that he learns is always proportionately
relative to his level of understanding.
The confusion between the second and third yogas is somewhat
general throughout the religious and learned world of India today.
Patanjali is often quoted, but he speaks only of the goal of controlling
the mind and the senses, not of union of the soul with the Ultimate.
It is true that he makes a reference to Ishwara (God), but this is done
only to indicate a method of practice. Those who would make the
yoga of mental concentration a final path are utterly mistaken. The
Bhagavad Gita plainly declares in the fifteenth chapter that there is
nothing equal to the yoga of knowledge, and in the thirteenth chapter
that it is the highest means of realization. Therefore we must not
confuse matters. We must keep religion clear from mysticism in our
minds, and mysticism clear from philosophy. If through sentiment,
habit or error we mistake one for the other, we shall lose our path
and end in bewilderment. It will be seen that the various yoga
methods successively lead from one to another and are emphatically
not paths leading to a common central goal, as is popularly but
erroneously taught nowadays in India. Did not Atmarama Swami
himself, the author of the standard classic manual on the yoga of
body-control entitled Hatha Yoga Pradipika confess that he had
 
composed it to help those people who found it impossible to practise
the yoga of mental concentration ? " I t is only for the attainment of
concentration-yoga that body-control yoga has been prescribed," he
wrote. The popular yogas are quite inadequate to the high purpose of
supreme realization ; at best they yield mediate or indirect knowledge
of truth, but never truth itself. They are but units in a progressive
series, preliminary rungs in a ladder, and we must step from one to
the other in order to rise higher ; no single round will bring us to the
top except the culminating one. Similarly, no single yoga is selfsufficient
and none will bring final realization except the culminating
yoga of the uncontradictable. The term yoga is a wide umbrella
which shelters many diverse ideas and practices. It covers the ascetic
squatting in self-torture on a bed of spikes as well as the thoughtful
philosopher who applies his wisdom to practical life. That is why
those who would limit yoga to meditation practice whilst excluding
philosophical enquiry adopt an unwarranted attitude.
The practical value of each step nevertheless remains in its own
place as much as ever. But to the few who originally take up yoga
in the hope that it will lead them to truth above all else, who practise
the elementary and intermediate methods with some degree of
satisfying result, there is always the unspoken invitation to explore
the higher method. If they entertain this invitation to supplement
the yoga of experience with the yoga of knowledge they will not be
deserting the yoga-scheme but will rather be fulfilling it. For the
work of complete yoga does not end with meditation nor does
devotion exhaust its possibilities. The change can be made by the
wise without any damage to their intellectual integrity, whereas the
foolish will see only danger and disruption in the higher method. The
danger is illusory and consists only in giving second place to the
blissful experience of meditation which old habit has made them
regard as primary, whilst the disruption they fear is only the yielding
of intuitive feeling to the higher check of rational insight. They may
keep their meditations and intuitions, nothing need be lost or given
up, but the excessive claims of meditation and the stubborn extravagances
of intuition to sole supremacy must be given up whenever they
collide with philosophically trained reason. Indeed, the inability to
practise meditation successfully, and incapacity to enter at will into
sustained reverie, would render quite impossible the grand ultimate
realization. They are asked to choose, therefore, between the winning
of momentary peace and the winning of durable peace. The work of
yoga does not end with meditation, does not end with devotion, does
not end with postures or breathings; it ends only with established

realization which alone yields a peace that is ever-present whether
the man practises his meditation or not.
Thus reality may be conceived from four different standpoints,
which are set-along a path to be travelled by progressive stages. It
may be first worshipped religiously as apart and separate from oneself.
It may next be meditated on mystically as being within oneself.
It may thirdly be studied philosophically by dropping all false
conceptions of it. It may finally be realized consciously as what it is
in itself and by ultra-mystical processes.
Where I now stand. Without the power to enter the mystical
trance and without the emotional re-orientation it brings about,
philosophy can only end in sterile disappointing intellectualism. Life
is a product of the whole man, and when philosophical thought has
run its full course and yielded the truth which comes from making
thought go as far as it can reach, yoga must again step in to implement
the philosophical conclusions by its own unique power to absorb
the world-idea into the self. It is not through any arrogant estimation
of my own insight that this book is offered to others, but rather
through a desire to pass on to them an attitude of mind which has
been of immense help in answering clamant questions. This is the
best service I can render them.
Let there be no misunderstanding about my present position in
relation to these matters. I now follow a lone path. It is quite true to
say that I have ceased to search for yogis and teachers in the conventional
sense, and do not identify myself with their ashrams any
longer. This is partly because I have personally exhausted the
serviceableness of such a search, and partly because long experience
of certain ashrams and ascetics has fatally disenchanted me. -Formerly
I confused yogis and others with sages-as most of us do-but
I know better now. I still regard my past mystic experiences as
having been quite indispensable in their own place, and similar
experiences will always be so to others. The change which has come
over me lies in the direction not of denial but of interpretation of
those experiences. Profounder research and better guidance have
helped me to estimate their precise value and put them in their
proper place. Nevertheless they are essential phases of mystic
experience which must be passed through by all seekers. Moreover,
I would not dream of passing a single day without some interlude,
however brief, of mental withdrawal from personal affairs and
worldly activity into that serfene beatific tranquillity of profound
meditation which long habit and constant practice have enabled me
to attain at will at any moment and in any place. I have not given up
 
meditation, but still keep it as a brief attractive and essential part of
the daily programme. However, I refuse to confuse the issues any
longer. Visions, ecstasies and intuitions are now the mere accidents
of meditation and constitute its non-essential by-product. There is no
universal standard by which their validity may be gauged, consequently
I know that it is better to keep the essential purpose of
meditation solely in view.
In two earlier books I promised to give eventually the complete
intellectual statement of those ultimate truths which both fulfil and
lie beyond yoga as it is ordinarily known. The work of formulating
it in the present volume, which has long been awaited by an international
audience, is not complete even now, and does not exhaust
the full stock of what has yet to be given to the world. That task
demands a second volume. What is here presented constitutes part
but not all of the yoga of philosophical discernment alone. The
remainder, together with the trowning keystone of the arch of truth
which I am endeavouring to construct, has perforce been left
untouched. If these pages kindle enough interest, then both the
missing doctrines and the yoga of the contradictable, which is the
last stone, will be built in and the task completed. The undertaking
of the final volume will be extremely difficult and its separation from
the present one is essential. For the latter not only acts as a bridge
thrown across the chasm between my earlier work in mysticism and
this newer work in pure philosophy, but it also re-orientates the
reader's mind and should effectually prepare him for the highly
advanced study with which his rational quest may come to a close.
Common language is defectively constructed as a medium for
conveying abstract concepts ; hence the need usually felt for inventing
a special philosophical terminology. I have tried, however, to
remember for whom I am writing-and it is certainly not for cloistered
pedants or academic metaphysics, but for men in the street who yet
take some thought for the meaning of life-and hence have reluctantly
refused to make use of this remote and unfamiliar terminology
except where it is necessarily unavoidable or easily understandable.
So far as could be, my researches into these complex abstractions
have been brought down into the realm of non-technical language
comprehensible to ordinarily intelligent people, without sacrificing
their accuracy or depth. The brain-racking truths they contain
were once confined to the closed circle of an intellectual elite, yet,
although I have not written for morons, they have here been put into
words so plain as to be understandable by most who can understand
the words of a good-class newspaper. Nevertheless those who have

never practised meditation or concentration nor pursued philosophy
may find no taste for such thoughts, while those who walk the narrow
path of rigid religious orthodoxy will be scared by them. And every
reader will find that although these pages are open and accessible to
anyone who cares to pick them up, the penetration to their true
meaning is closed to all who are unwilling to make a little mental
effort. He would therefore do well to read but little at a time and
then pause to reflect over the philosophical fruit he has thus plucked.
It might be as well to anticipate in print some criticisms which I
have already heard in private and even read in an Indian newspaper
of the lowest class, which acts as the mouthpiece of certain pitiful
creatures who have taken up the vain labours of personal enmity.
These criticisms will certainly be more widely crystallized with the
appearance of the present book. First, the charge of serious inconsistency
will be laid against me. It will be said that I have iconoclastically
shattered previous definitions and doctrines, changed an
established viewpoint, altered earlier estimates of men and experience,
and thus proved unstable in character and unreliable in judgment.
Personal friends will doubtless be highly amused at the injustice of
the last ten words, whilst the general charge betrays a definite
misunderstanding of my present outlook. I have not recanted old
views but simply enlarged them. Anyway, the integrity of my purpose
compels me to confess frankly that consistency is not my hobgoblin.
I have concerned myself with it only so far as keeping up the
quest of truth was concerned ; if the results of that quest alter and
differ as I advance, then let them ! I shall not flinch from acknowledging
the fact. The honesty of my past purpose gives me present
courage to do so. For a writer who has established his fame on the
basis of his researches into an advocacy of yoga, the open confession
of its limitations is no easy matter. It should be obvious that only
the weightiest reasons and the lengthiest experience led me to this
responsible step. I am constantly engaged in learning and verifying
new facts and in maturing my judgment. When this happens it is
inevitable that a man may have to modify his earlier conclusions and
the earlier interpretations of his experiences-unless he is nothing
more than a blind believer in what others tell him or a blind accepter
of whatever happens to him.
This quest is like climbing an unfamiliar mountain, a journey
which entails successive changes of landscape. You see what appears
to be the summit high above. After much arduous effort and many
arduous years you reach the top of the ridge. Alas! at the fateful
moment of success you discover that the real summit lies still higher
 
and that you will have to struggle upward again for more arduous
years before it greets your gaze. Mystical visions, yogic experiences,
religious beliefs and scientific theories are ridges which you pass on
the way up its steep sides and mistake time and again for the final
peak. You get different and hitherto unsuspected views of the truth
as the old landmarks disappear behind and you succeed in struggling
higher. The ultimate exists, let us not doubt that, but if historic
records read aright it can be found only by those who have the
courage to be inconsistent! Even the Buddha, when he glimpsed a
loftier path, did not hesitate to reject elementary forms of yoga
which he had practised for six years.
The second charge which has issued from ignorant lips is that I
am a renegade. Thisis absurd nonsense, because I have never espoused
any other cause than that of truth, to which I am still wedded. If
unenquiring superficial minds have hitherto regarded me, as I am
well aware they have, as a convert to Hinduism, or as a propagandist
for some particular Indian ashram, that is their vain self-created
presumption and was never my personal attitude. But if, however, a
sincere passage from a lower to a higher point of view makes me a
renegade, then I gladly plead guilty.
The third charge, that I have disavowed yoga, is equally nonsensical.
I have not lapsed from my own formulary. I do not oppose
but continue to esteem it highly in its own place, as before, but I
refuse any longer to concentrate my whole gaze upon i t ; rather do I
try to appreciate, criticize and understand it more fairly against the
larger background of ultimate truth. Moreover, I no longer accept
every grossly exaggerated claim on behalf of the inferior yoga-paths
which uncritical irresponsible yogis care to make, and I now regard
these paths as directing us eventually to a region beyond themselves.
I do not disown yoga, but develop it. As a partner of philosophy,
yoga will admittedly yield truth ; standing alone it can only yield
peace. The other charges, instigated by interested parties, are too
petty and too ridiculous with which to spoil good paper, and shall
receive the silent contempt of a clear conscience.
Every truth-seeker, every man who has dared to think honestly
and to accept the results of his thought-whether they be as bitter
as wormwood or as sweet as honey-has been a wanderer. His views
have never been cast in iron finality. He knows that wisdom is the
last residue left over from life's agitating process of distillation, and
not the first. The quest on which he is engaged is a dynamic and not
a static one. He cannot lower himself into an intellectual grave and
put up the tombstone of a stubborn viewpoint to tell of his death.

Therefore I want as readers only those who are ready to go into the
forbidding wilderness with me. The effort to discover truth is a grand
adventure, an age-long move forward into increasing experience of
the unknown and not a petty stay-at-home rut. The pioneer must
labour and suffer to learn as a new truth that which his successors will
enjoy as an old one. Consistency is to be worn like a welcome new
suit of clothes when it helps the pursuit of truth, but it is to be discarded
like a shrivelled old one when it hinders it. Most questions are
expansive ; they have more sides than one. If the sails of a man's ship
have veered in the past to this side and now veer to another-well, so
much the better for a truer view !
Time has certainly made me a little wiser in these matters, a
little more critical of myself and my experiences, as well as of the
renowned ashrams and belauded mystics personally known to me. I
have dug more deeply into their foundations to get clearer understanding
of them. In this effort I have drawn on the findings of the
most competent modern Western and ancient Indian psychologists.
It would have been more flattering to my vanity to have followed
the long company of fellow mystics-whether of dim antiquity or
bright modernity, whether of the young West or the old East-in
unquestioning acceptance of these extraordinary visions and ineffable
experiences which I had previously viewed in the rosiest light and
let the matter rest there. But Fate was kinder and by hurting my
self-esteem led me into a higher atmosphere of truth. Both delightful
successes and dreadful disappointments were minor teachers which
prepared the way. Most invaluable was philosophy's favour in
showing me how to evaluate mystic visions by the light of that Supreme
Truth which few care to seek because it crushes egoistic desire and
shames every personal motive.
Those, therefore, who will view this book as a symbol of the
defect of inconsistency will view it wrongly. I have no need to
apologize weakly before the bar of reason. Some of the new teachings
here presented are not altogether inconsistent with my earlier
statements. They were already known to me as long ago as the time
of writing The Quest of the Over self, where it was plainly stated
as follows in the first chapter that the last word was still unwritten
:
"Every writer or teacher must perforce take up a different
position according to the grade of development of the mind with
which he is dealing.The purpose of these pages should not beT
misconstrued. They are designed to show a yoga-path suited to
 
Western people.they show how to achieve certain satisfactions,
but they do not attempt at this stage to solve the mystery
of the universe.When peace of mind and concentration of
thought have been gained, then only will one be fit and ready to
embark on the quest of Ultimate Truth. We are still in the process
of unveiling a subtle and startling wisdom which not one person
in a million has yet grasped."
And in the same chapter it was stated that in the Maharishee I had
found the highest embodiment of Indian mysticism. The last word
was deliberately used, though with all fitting respect. I had begun to
perceive that truth lay as far beyond mysticism as the latter lay
beyond religion. In the succeeding book I boldly and frequently
admitted that mysticism was not enough and that there was an
ultimate path beyond it. But only with the present work has the
time arrived for a clear explication of the reasons for my change
from a fragmentary to a fuller view.
Every book that I have gathered out of the fluid gloom of ink
represents, therefore, a milestone which has been passed, an oasis
where I camped for a while on my journey through the desert of
this world in search of a valid explanation of life and reality. I may
never live to write a last philosophical will and testament or a final
credo, but in the present volume readers will assuredly find the Quest
carried closer to its final terminus. Let them not think that the
former volumes can now be ignored. Such a mistake would be fatal
to their growth. The earlier teachings remain, but they are supplemerited.
Those writings will live and be needed so long as men have
to struggle upward from stage to stage for truth, so long as human
minds must ripen like the fruit on a tree; that is to say, they picture
gates which cannot be avoided and must be entered and passed.
There is no sudden miraculous transition into ultimate truth overnight
for those who are in a breathless hurry. Therefore those earlier
books, in representing as faithfully and as lucidly as my pen could
do so what I indubitably thought, felt and experienced at the time
they were written, are factual records which represent also what
many others will perforce think and experience as they follow and
progress along the same path.
Einstein found that a ray of light curved its way through space.
All earlier scientists took it for granted that it proceeded in a straight
direction. Were they mistaken or were they liars ? The Theory of
vRelativity dispels both criticisms. It demonstrates that the earlier

explanations were quite accurate when regarded from the standpoint
where the observer had established himself. I was like a restless
scientist working his way through one experiment after another in
the laboratory towards a fuller understanding of them all. Even the
accepted principles of mathematics have to be taken as possessing a
relative character only. The thirst for absolute knowledge kept me
from the lethargy of satisfaction with existing discoveries. It is true
that I have written with strong conviction and with apparent
dogmatism. The justification is that I have been practising meditation
for a quarter of a century and having found its benefits naturally
sought to pass them on to others. I felt it necessary to play an advocate's
part and forcefully to draw the attention of my fellow human
beings in the West to the fact that such a line of experience was also
open to them if they would but interest themselves in it.
The present effort is more than a mere excursion into bookmaking.
It is a structure of welded East-West thought built for our
own age. It is a twentieth-century interpretation of a mellow old
wisdom that captured the loyalty of grave aged sages who lived long
before Christ. It is a contribution towards the understanding of life's
most obscure and paradoxically most important theme, written in
response to the further pressure of fate and inclination. I shall frankly
regard its present achievement and future completion as the highest
and holiest task of my career so far. In an age which venerates the
authority of science and which rejects anything incapable of intellectual
demonstration, it is no small task to attempt to organize
thought on behalf of the wordless transcendental reality, and make
it march by its own inherent and inexorable logic. We can prove
that two and two make four, that the earth is round, and that water
is merely a combination of two gases; but how shall we prove the
reality of that which is above formulated thought, which is wholly
inaudible and for ever invisible, and which cannot be known until all
argument disappears ? There indeed is a provoking paradox, when
that which is appears as that which is not! We can arrive at the
ineffable dimension of the ultimate by travelling through a series of
thoughts and experiences, but the ultimate itself is neither a thought
nor an experience. Truth in its absolute nature can never be enfleshed
by words nor conveyed by anything else. Hence the mysterious
silence of Christ, of Buddha and of the Sphinx.
But the lonely way towards august truth can be chalked out by
human words, the flinty path to its realization can be delineated by
them, and men can be led by a process of close reasoning to a position
which will indicate how they can make it real to themselves. Once
 
the secret thread of Ariadne is put into their hands, analytic reasoning
yoked to yoga can take them to the very gate of reality. It can
never enter that gate, however, for then the reasoner himself drops
the instrument of thought to the ground as he perceives at long last
what he really is. He who stood in his own light by deceiving himself
with the notion that he was only a finite person, tied to a few inches
of poor earth, is awakened by the inherent force of his own yoga-held
reasoning when it is sufficiently strong to affect and fuse his will and
feelings, and lets the ancient illusion lapse for evermore. In that
moment he disappears within the gate and his journey is at an end. I
would not waste my own and my reader's time in asking him to
strain after unattainable altitudes, but I do ask him to seek out the
meaning of all earthly existence on the one hand and to find out the
purpose of his fleshly embodiment on the other, until he can live
thereafter in harmony with both.
CHAPTER 3,
THE RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC GRADES.
soME age-old queries have persistently confronted mankind. Is
life simply a tremendous yet pathetically tragic joke played on
mankind by its Creator ? Has this vast panorama of glowing
stars set in tremendous space a meaning or not ? Are we but biological
accidents parading uselessly through time ? Is man but a
guttering candle that throws its little pool of light amid the shadows
for a few minutes and then vanishes for evermore ?
The primitive answers to these questions were formed by men
into the first religions, now lost in the gloomy abyss of pre-history,
whose echoes have travelled down to our own time through their
successors. A little research soon shows that no faith is entirely
new, that few dogmas are peculiar to any one religion, but all have a
mingled ancestry. Just as in linguistics the Sanskrit word bhrater, the
Latin frater, the French fr&re, the German bruder and the English
brother indicate a common Aryan stock, so too does the similarity of
several religious doctrines indicate the influence of older contacts.
The recorded researches of comparative religion and the revelations
of comparative mythology have already put a sorry face upon the
narrow notion that any one creed contains the only revelation of
whatever Gods there be. In each religion we hear more or less of the
same sounds : fear of the shadowy other-world, wonder at the
pageantry of Nature, praise of a marvellous superior Being who made
both the known and the unknown, supplicatory petitions for personal
or national favours, consolations for those in personal distress,
muffled murmurs of deeply philosophical tenets and faint adumbrations
of high truth-all curiously mixed and all ending in beneficent
moral injunctions.
Religion may briefly be defined as belief in a supernatural Being
or Beings. Each religion in its origin was certainly entitled to be
called a revelation, for it was an appeal to the faith and fancy rather
than to the critical reason of man.
Most important and most significant of all religions was the
consequence of an attempt by a truly wise man, later turned by

history into its titular leader, to share his knowledge with illiterate
masses in the only way that they could grasp his instruction-by
feeding them with symbolic beliefs and simple fables rather than
with straightforwardly expressed truths. Such men have crossed the
orbit of our world-fate but rarely. We need not turn them in imagination
into superhuman beings, as their followers generally do, yet we
have to recognize that a deep destiny has allotted an unusual
importance to their personal lives and spoken words. Even Macaulay,
broadly sceptical as he was, could not resist writing that "To give
the human mind a direction which it shall retain for ages is the rare
prerogative of a few imperial spirits. It is such spirits who move the
men who move the world.''
Such a sponsor of a genuinely inspired new faith came with
lighted torch in hand to dispel some of the ethical darkness of his
time and environment, to decipher the first meaning of life for the
slumbering many and to open the first gate to ultimate salvation
for the seeking few. Out of wide compassion and noble sympathy he
wished to make a little part of his wisdom available to those who
were mentally unfit to comprehend its dazzling whole. He did not
want to screen his knowledge from the toiling masses, but he dare
not ignore the psychological fact that it could only be imparted in
its unabridged plenitude to those who had attained a stage which
rendered them fully qualified to grasp it. To all others it would be
tiresomely unintelligible.
For the final truths of life were remote and abstract. They
belonged to the region of philosophy, which term is not here to be
confused with metaphysics. The latter has come to mean speculation
about truth, whereas philosophy is here meant as the verification of
truth. Such views could not be brought within the reach of immature
minds without first throwing them into solid and concrete form.
This could be done only by converting them into popular symbols
and a system of such collated symbols would constitute a historic
religion. The symbolism would have to appear in the forms of ritual,
legend, myth, pseudo-history, simple dogma and so on, but whatever
shape it took it would necessarily represent a disappearance of profoundly
abstract conceptions and a substitution of crudely concrete
ones. Thus philosophy would apparently die only to be reborn in
the dwarfed guise of religion. The metaphysician might lament this
transformation but the true sage would not. He would know that
the masses who found philosophy unpalatable and unlearnable
would thereby be helped in their own way and not left in utter
darkness. He would know too that the populace would very slowly

but very certainly rise from these faint emotional adumbrations to
the intellectual apprehensions of their origin in the fullness of
time.
A God who was not partial and personal, who was not warmly
interested in the individual lives of his faithful devotees, would have
appeared coldly bleak to them. Their minds were too uneducated
and too undeveloped to grapple successfully with abstract notions,
their intelligence was too dull to visualize an impersonal Mind
remote from their petty interests. As an expert psychologist the wise
religious leader perceived this. He did not wish to bewilder but to
help them. Consequently he considered it a mistake to give to the
gross many that which was fit only for the refined few. He fully
understood that the presentation of philosophic truth must necessarily
be determined by the limits of his followers' understanding,
and that a long time must elapse before it could become accessible in
its purity to the crowd.
He had no alternative therefore but to make this presentation
in a somewhat crude manner, using the vesture of mythological
anecdote in which to dress his subtle truths, offering the ultimate
reality under the heavy veil of a personal Deity as the object of the
people's prayers or as the focus of their concentration in worship,
and lifting them to a nobler code of ethical precepts than the one
already current amongst them. He was compelled to put knowledge
into symbolic terms, to take that which was most immediate and
present to his people-the phenomena of Nature-and to invest
them with easily imagined invisible beings whose power was more
extraordinary than the power of human beings; to embed his
wisdom in interesting half-historic tales, to appeal to the picturesque
sense of immature minds and capture their imagination by dramatizing
some of its facts in ritualistic ceremonial forms; to hint at a
higher reality by expressing it in the form of an immensely exaggerated
man, i.e. a personal God, and to harness the whole to its
immediate practical object by delineating the pleasant rewards of
virtue as against the unpleasant punishments of wrongdoing. What
else could he do when he was dealing with intellectual children ? Do
not children everywhere love fairy tales and revel in fables ? A
religion created by a genuinely wise man was therefore always a
significant fable, a tremendous metaphor, whose ultimate purpose
was to direct the thought of the masses towards higher ideas and
nobler ideals, and whose immediate purpose was to inculcate
through the appeal to fear and hope some degree of moral responsibility
in their personal lives.
THE RELIGIOUS AND MYSTIC GRADES.
What was its practical significance ? It provided a credo to
satisfy the curiosity of the minds of ignorant labouring masses, who
had no leisure and no capacity to cast far-reaching plummets of
enquiry into the stream of life. It offered a faith to satisfy their
strong need of consolation amidst distress and to bring comfort
amidst hardship. It set up a salutary ethical code to guide their
footsteps amid the perplexities of human behaviour, to guard them
against their own worst natures, and to erect an elevating ideal for
their aspirations. It was an authority to give practical guidance in
the shaping of social forms and the binding of individuals into entire
nations. It was an aesthetic force to inspire and foster the fine arts.
It was a first hint that a grander existence than being tossed and
buffeted by circumstance, than this endless harassment of unsought
sorrows and short-lived joys, this constant struggle against outer
misfortune and inner weakness, this long catalogue of material
agitations that end in dust and disappearance, for ever awaited man
in all its beneficence and serenity.
Thus the entire structure of religious dogma and formulated
doctrine, ornate ceremonial and legendary miracle, was originally but
an emblem of loftier matters. Those who went into church or temple
and worshipped God were not wholly wasting their time nor indulging
in the luxury of empty soliloquy. They had taken a definite step
on the road to recognition of the fact that the material world did not
exhaust reality, albeit it was only a first faltering step. The hushed
awe which they felt in what they believed to be the sacred home of
divinity was a faint recognition of the truth that man might know
the presence of this ultimate reality. The comfort they derived from
the scriptural teachings and graven images which postulated the
eternal existence of a Deity was their elementary introduction to the
philosophical value of the concept of an everlasting existence which
subsisted beneath the ever-changing world. The conceptual symbolism
of religion was usually anthropomorphic, a fact wrhich made it
intelligible to the herd's mind. Their worship was therefore really
directed towards an imaginary Being, but it was the only way in
which they could worship what they believed to be truth at all.
When in the long course of evolution their intellectual capacities
would develop sufficiently, doubts would infallibly arise and thus
drive them to seek a more satisfactory concept. This would lead them
eventually to penetrate the surface of the symbol and approach
nearer to its true meaning. They would try to unveil God as He really
was and not as He had been imagined to be. The primitive instinct
of worship was therefore a sound# one, but the way in which men

yielded to that instinct had necessarily to differ in accordance with
their different grades of culture.
From this we may draw the right inference that the mass of
humanity always need a worthy religion as a primitive far-off glance
at philosophy, but that its scriptural symbols and historical emblems,
its pontifical dogmas and traditional doctrines, are not eternal but
only tentative, and may be altered or improved without harming the
real aims of religion.
Such are the nature, values, operations and services of .a worthy
religion. But we hear much from scornful rationalists of terrorstricken
savages who carve a grotesquely ugly wooden fetish to
represent their God, of primitive folk who personify the impersonal
forces of Nature as Spirits on whose right side it is desirable to get
through ceremonial sacrifice and propitiatory worship, and of sacred
rituals that are undisguised phallic worship. The sceptical notion
that every faith drew its first breath out of the timid fears of ghostly
ancestors or the animistic superstitions of untutored early man alone
is opposed by the pious notion that an anthropomorphic God sent a
special emissary equipped with a sacred book to an arbitrarily chosen
group of fortunate persons and made them His chosen race. Both are
too biased to perceive correctly why it is that religions arise and
what is their rightful place in society.
Every religion provides a different case for examination. If one
has arisen through the desire of an ambitious, aggressive and
unscrupulous character to wield influence over weaker minds,
another has arisen through the honest if mistaken belief of a wellmeaning
and highly imaginative man that he was the recipient of a
sacred mission to "save" other men. If one faith was an attempt to
propitiate powerful natural forces a second was really an effort on
the part of a profoundly benevolent man to elevate his less ethically
disciplined fellows by inculcating higher ideas of good and evil and
by enforcing social restraints through a fixed code.
That even a worthy religion may degenerate in the course of
time and bring misery to mankind is sadly admitted; that sincere
earnest believers have persecuted and even murdered each other is
the testimony of all history; that charlatans, scoundrels and brutes
have used religion to satisfy their selfish motives and personal lusts
is equally true, and that the world's progress has periodically been
hampered by ignorant and fanatical religionists must be granted.
Colossal sins stain the pages of religious history. In a complete
treatment of the subject such criticisms must be dealt with frankly
yet constructively by the light of philosophy. Here it is only desired
to point out the position occupied by religion in relation to the hidden
Indian teaching. It is but the primal attempt to understand life, and
appeals to men who are in the first degree of mental evolution. The
time will come when doubts about the truth and value of religion
will insistently enter the mind of the more thoughtful man who may
want neither the salvation offered by popular religion nor the
annihilation offered by orthodox atheism, for he may find the first
tawdry and the second terrible. Where then is he to seek ? The
hidden philosophy is usually beyond his ken and capacity, besides
being very hard to find anywhere. And no man may jump the high
hurdle between simple religion and subtle philosophy. The feat is
beyond his powers. Life is a growth, not a leap. He has to find an
intermediate stage which will be more accessible to him. And this he
can find in mysticism, which constitutes the second step upwards.
What Meditation Is. Mysticism is a phenomenon which has
appeared in all parts of the world and among all religious communities.
There is no space here to deal with its historical derivation ;
many competent pens have already traced out its earlier lines.
Stripping off the mere externals arising out of dogmatic ignorance,
geographical difference, religious environment and racial outlook,
it may fairly be said that the mysticism of the West can be equated
with the middle degree of Asiatic yoga in its two branches : the yoga
of Devotion and the yoga of mind control. The reader is therefore
asked to assume that the word ''mysticism" in these pages and
indeed throughout this book covers both these yogas, and that the
word "mystic" is intended to include the yogi also. The literary
convenience of such a practice far outweighs the trouble of acknowledging
in this condensed examination the minor differences which
exist. Moreover, the word "yoga" has now become as ambiguous in
the land of its birth as the word' 'mysticism'' is in Europe or America.
We may rightly regard mysticism, with its attempt to penetrate
beneath the commonplace surface of religion and its search for
internally born satisfactions rather than those derived from external
rites, as an inevitable phase of the development of the human mind
when it becomes dissatisfied with the narrowness of orthodox faith.
This change-over proceeds by slow but sometimes by sudden
development from ordinary theistic worship. It can come in three
ways. In the first case the seeker becomes disappointed with the
actual results of religion or disgusted with the ancient hypocrisies
which are practised in its name, or dissatisfied with theological
contradictions and conflicts, or disillusioned by the seeming impotence
of God to help a war-stricken world. The once-honoured
symbols lose their historic glamour and are no longer sacrosanct; he
passes through a period of chilling doubt and bleak agnosticism,
possibly even militant atheism, where he remains anchorless for a
time. It is succeeded, however, if he keeps to his further quest, by the
interesting discovery that a small minority of men have found it
possible to hold a large view of religion-a view which enables them
to stand aside from unsatisfying orthodoxy and its sacerdotal
organizations and to come closer to the original atmosphere of a
religion. He becomes as interested in studying the literature of such
a broad view as he was formerly interested in clinging to the narrower
one. Then he hears further that a practical method-mystical
contemplation-exists whereby he may experience for himself the
beauty and peace of an ever-present divine spirit in which formerly
he could believe but never know. All that is asked of him by those
who testify to such experience is that he should experiment with
the prerequisite exercises Such promises are attractive to not a
few persons in an age which wants definite results.
Or his change-over may come without any earlier phase of
disbelief at all but through the intensity, ardour and sincerity of his
religious aspiration, leading him by degrees from the formal repetition
and materialistic petition of conventional verbal prayer to the
spontaneous silent aspiration which matures gently and of its own
accord into inward concentration and quietening of the mind, i.e.
meditation. His prayers are then no longer personal requests but
sacrificial self-offerings. The religious devotee who finds satisfaction
in ordinary prayer must necessarily visit some temple or church
either to praise and propitiate or to obtain assistance from its Deity,
or to seek consolation from some holy figure contained within its
holy precincts, whereas the devotee who achieves satisfaction
through meditation has no need to do this. He finds it sufficient to
retire within himself and discovers his heart is already a holy place
inhabited by the Deity. He replaces the material image he once
worshipped in a temple by the mental image which he now worships
within his mind. He substitutes his own heart for the stone, his own
spirit for the scripture and his own thought for the priest. Meditation
is, therefore, superior to prayer in the sense that the man who is able
to practise it necessarily possesses a higher mental capacity because
he does not depend on material things or places. He can carry his
object or place of concentration as a mental image or concept
wherever he goes. He finds that spoken prayer is but a parable, and
that in the holy silence of humble contemplation there arises a wordless
orison which needs no uttered speech. The ethical results of
successful attainment are also important. The man ceases to sacrifice
his sheep and cattle or their equivalent on priestly altars and begins
to sacrifice a greater or lesser part of his excessive materialism, his
unbalanced activities, and his short-sighted pursuit of physical
pleasures on the altar of his own heart.
The third way in which this change may arise is through the
coloured gate of appreciative receptivity to beauty, whether manmade
as in good music or Nature-made as in green landscapes.
From a practical standpoint the physical forms in which beauty is
pressed or found possess their own intrinsic value, but from a
higher standpoint its enjoyment is an activity which exists not
merely for its own sake but still more as a means to a higher end. A
man who is fond of yielding himself to the impressions received
through such channels as fine Art and grand Nature will one day
spontaneously experience a sensation of being lost to himself, as
when listening to beautiful bars of sound or contemplating the superb
prospect of snowy peaks mounting to the sky or yielding to the
sublime sunsets which come trembling with the close of day. This
gentle feeling bubbles softly like a brook from he knows not where
and carries his self-centred thoughts along with it. All argument by
care and all resistance by self are washed clean away. The feeling
may grow imperceptibly into an unforgettable ecstasy. His mind has
slipped away from the fetters of time, as it were. A supreme quiescence
enthralls his heart and enfolds his emotions. Such a state is
difficult to describe adequately. Nietzsche momentarily felt it in his
elevated mountain home and wrote: "The greatest Events-these
are not our loudest, on the contrary, the quietest hours. The world
turns itself not around the discoverer of new noises, but around the
discoverer of new values ; unheard it itself revolves." The German
writer's reference to the change of values indicates the new view of
life which is induced by the intense stillness of thought, a view which
makes material existence seem ephemeral, transient and unreal, but
alas ! the glimpse is only momentary. Nevertheless this exquisite
feeling has revealed higher possibilities. Thereafter the man will be
haunted by its shoreline 'memory until he learns that through the
mystic discipline, pure aesthetic joy may be deliberately recovered
without external aids and intermittently repeated. Thus he begins
to understand how subjective is its basis when pure contemplation
can evoke, as with a magic wand, every variation of such

inspirations from faint pleasure to wild ecstasy. Such effects are by no
means an exclusive characteristic of either the pure mystic or the
pure aesthete, but belong to both. These statements are equally true
of the man who produces artistic forms as of the one who enjoys
them. The creative mood carries him through similar impressions,
rhythms, reveries, silences, stillnesses, ecstasies and other emotional
deepenings of being.
The basic principle of all mystical practice is mental abstraction,
which may be illustrated in two ways. Whoever is f 'lost'' in following
intently a train of thought or in full surrender to the fancies of
reverie becomes less aware of physical conditions and eventually
hardly notices them. Thus the cripple nearly forgets his deformity,
the pedestrian hardly observes the crowds swirling past him on the
sidewalk, the author is almost oblivious of his domestic surroundings,
and so on. Such instances show that consciousness may temporarily
free itself from its habitual assumption that it is confined to the
immediate limits of the physical brain and body. They are signs
indicative of the larger possibilities of the mind, when released from
its universal and overwhelming gravitation towards the physical
senses, a gravitation which prevents it from becoming aware of its
own non-material nature and which unconsciously converts physical
existence into its life-long prison-house.
In the. other illustration we may picture the surface of a lake,
when it is agitated by frequent waves and repeated storms, as being
like the habitually restless condition of the average human mind.
The waves of this lake may drag an uncontrolled (i.e. rudderless and
oarless) boat hither and thither regardless of the welfare of the boatman,
so that his mind will constantly be anxious about his life.
Similarly our thoughts incessantly drag our attention, hither and
thither in purely mechanical response to physical existence and
regardless of the true welfare and peace of the mind, which is the
only "soul" of whose existence man knows.
The methods used by yogis and mystics vary greatly, but they
generally consist of following a prescribed course of rigid physical
asceticism or worldly renunciation, together with attempts to induce
a certain contemplative mood by disciplining during fixed periods
the confused drift of thoughts and impressions which make up man's
inner existence. This mood arises when all irrelevancies are shut out
of the mind and only the chosen line of concentration persistently
adhered to. The key to success is twofold : constant practice and
expert help. This effort is to be repeated every day and the will must
exercise itself to gain control over the external wanderings of the
mind, over the restless workings of ideas. It is not easy to do this,
and many novices become disheartened, for the tide of thought surges
and subsides in a rebellious manner. The faculty of attention must
be so controlled and so made to recede from externals that a state of
complete undisturbed abstraction arises. It must then be held as
fixedly as a lizard waiting for its prey. This effort may be linked in
imagination with the purely religious notion of finding the presence
of God, or it may be linked with the purely psychological notion of
finding one's real self, or even with the purely magical one of entering
an invisible world. Success reveals itself by slow degrees when the
meditator is able to relax all effort, and when the tempo of his
thinking slackens till it lies quiescent and he enters imperceptibly
into a state of intense inward absorption, undistracted and undisturbed
by the spectacle of worldly existence. The fully advanced
mystic need make no conscious effort to destroy intruding thoughts,
for the firmness of his intention keeps them away. By regularly
forgetting the external world and its affairs for a brief while and
turning thoughts inward upon themselves with sharply concentrated
attention he may enter a hinterland of mental peace and get
into an emotional stillness which is profoundly satisfying. Sometimes
the bodily senses may even fall into a temporary coma. Ecstatic
trance, in various degrees of depth, may also supervene. Both states
are usually harmless, but sometimes terrifying to those unfamiliar
with them.
There are certain fugitive and subjective accompaniments of the
mystic experience. The religious devotee may see visions of environing
light, or of the beloved "Spiritual Guide"-whether living or
long dead-to whom he has looked for help in his endeavour. Other
practitioners may fancy themselves floating outside the body or
conversing with spirits or receiving commands from some angelic
being. Although such mental phenomena differ so greatly there are
certain factors common to most advanced mystic experiences, such
as (a) feelings of serene delight, of blessed calm; (b) sensations of the
remoteness of physical surroundings ; and at rarer intervals (c)
ecstatic exaltation above bodily and personal existence. These arise
after the conscious and voluntary struggles with the waves of thought
have achieved a measure of success.
The mystic usually derives extreme satisfaction from such
experiences and when he attains the ecstatic state considers that
his quest is at an end, that he has entered into union with God or
found his own immortal soul. The subtle exquisiteness of this state
can only be appreciated by those who have actualized it in their own.

being. Nevertheless the vital sap which feeds the tree of mysticism
is drawn up from its roots in feeling alone.
The essential benefits of successful yoga practice indubitably
exist, whatever critics may legitimately say in criticism of its incidental
visions and religious intuitions. It would appear that the curse
of Babel came upon men when they first began to think. Their minds
are now normally in a state of such continuous motion that the
power to rest them adequately has been lost. When the brain is
weary of its never-ending thoughts and the heart is tired of its everchanging
moods, when the world tires both and nerves are frayed,
our great need of mental rest and inward peace is manifest, and this
can be partly satisfied through the habit of calm meditation. A
certain system of memory-training found a host of purchasers
throughout the world in the years during and after the 1914-18 war.
Nowadays many distressed people who are overwhelmed by troubles
would like to buy a system on the art of forgetting ! Count Keyserling
has ventured the prediction that the very materialism of Western
civilization will drive it at least into the reaction of mysticism, and
few competent observers will disagree with him.
We are caught like squirrels in the revolving cage of this world.
We climb the steps of that turning cage thrilled with the illusion of
incessant activity. The wiser ones cease their climbing now and again,
rest interiorly and save their strength. They go farther than we do,
for they at least reach a measure of peace, and we . . . ?
The discipline of mental quiet was discovered thousands of years
ago, yet holds just as true today in this era of mechanical marvels
and auto-filled streets. It still shows man how to let his faculty of
attention work for him, and not against him.
These psychological advantages have nothing to do with the
religious side of meditation, although most mystics would deny such
a statement. They cannot but do otherwise because their approach
is prejudged, biased and unscientific. Nevertheless the impartial
investigator may find for himself that meditation may be practised
even by an atheist, let alone an agnostic, and yet the same benefits
may be obtained!
Undoubtedly the introduction of a carefully considered, simplified,
non-religious and impeccable technique of meditation as an adjunct
to right living should prove highly advantageous to the modern
world and especially to the modern Western world. Such a system
ought to be purely rational and purged of all the absurd superstitions
often attached to yoga in India. The deep need for it becomes
more urgent every year. In the feverish strain and harsh struggle of
European and American life, meditation, as a method of developing
the ability to keep out disturbing thoughts, securing better emotional
balance, calming fretting fears and attaining pleasurable inner peace,
would seem to be a paramount necessity. Its introduction as a part
of daily living deserves strong advocacy. Its exercises could and
should be introduced at a suitable age into the educational curricula
of high schools and colleges to discipline the students' minds and
concentrate their thoughts. But the ignorant prejudices of parents,
the suspicious attitude of ecclesiastics and the complete unfamiliarity
of pupils themselves erect high barriers to the consummation of this
important project.
A Summary of Mysticism. Such is the second degree in man's
ascension to truth. Mysticism might be cryptically described as a
mode of life which claims, without long and laudatory praises of
God, to bring us nearer to f j im than do ordinary religious methods ;
as a view of life which rejects the all-too-human God made by man
in his own image and out of his own imagination, replacing it by a
formless infinite divinity ; and as a psychological technique which
seeks to establish direct communication with this spirit, through the
channel of interior contemplation.
Certain collective tenets of mysticism are not confined to any one
faith, to any one country or to any one people, and are roughly
universal. These cardinal positions of the mystic's thought are five
in number and may be briefly picked out and exhibited as follows.
Mystics hold first that God is not to be located in any particular
place, church or temple, but that His spirit is everywhere present in
Nature and that Nature everywhere abides in it. The orthodox
notion that God is a particular Person among many other persons,
only much more powerful, yet still saddled with likes and dislikes,
anger and jealousy, is rejected as childish. Pantheism is therefore
the initial note to be sounded. Right thought hallows a place or makes
it profane, and real sacredness dwells within the mind alone. Next
they hold that as a corollary from the first tenet God abides inSide
the heart of every man as the sun abides in all its myriad rays. He
is not merely a physical body alone, as materialists believe, nor a
body plus a ghost-like soul which emanates from it after death, as
religionists believe, but He is here and now divine in the very flesh.
The heavenly kingdom must be found whilst we are yet alive, or not
at all. It is not a prize which is bestowed on us in the nebulous courts
of death. The practical consequence of this doctrine is embodied in
the third tenet of the ipystics, which asserts that it is perfectly
possible for any man, who will submit to the prerequisite ascetic
discipline, to enter into direct Communion by contemplation and
meditation with the spirit of God without the use of any priest or
prelate as an intermediary and without the formal utterance of
verbal prayer. This renders it quite unnecessary to lift upturned
palms in suppliant adjuration of a higher Being. Silent aspiration
thus replaces mechanical recitation. The fourth tenet is as obnoxious
to official religion as the last, for it declares that the stories, events,
incidents and sayings, which in their totality constitute a holy
scripture, are merely a mixture of imagined allegories and actual
happenings, a literary concoction whereby mystical truths are
cleverly conveyed through the medium of symbolic myth, legendary
personification and true historic fact; that the twentieth century
indeed could quite justifiably write its new Bibles, its new Qurans,
its new Vedas afresh if it wished, for the divine afflatus may descend
again at any hour. Mystics hold, fifthly, that their practices ultimately
lead to the development of supernormal faculties and
extraordinary mental powers or even strange physical ones, either
as the gift of God's grace or as the consequence of their own efforts.
It will be plain that when mystical ecstasy is strong it must
logically lead a man to regard himself as a bearer of divinity and in
extreme cases as Deity itself. Thus a renowned Muhammedan Sufi
mystic exclaimed to the astonished people of Baghdad, a thousand
years ago, " I am God !" Unfortunately the Caliph thought otherwise,
and punished his impiety with Neronian tortures, finally throwing
his body into the Tigris. Such was the fate of the celebrated Hallaj.
The broadening effect of mysticism upon man's religious outlook
is an incentive to tolerance and therefore a definite asset in this
intolerant world. To take the Bible, for instance, as the sole authentic
basis of religious truth, completely ignoring the possibility that other
races, such as the Hindus or the Chinese, have produced scriptures
which deserve at least an equal claim to consideration, is a narrow
view. This religious bigotry which can see no other faith than its
own is out of place in our broader time, when the study of comparative
religion can demonstrate amply the family ties between the
world's faiths. Religious loftiness is not the exclusive possession of
any single man, movement or race. The fully developed mystic
understands that God's sun shines on all alike, and that he is free to
follow any particular creed or none. That which he seeks he must
discover for himself, and from himself by meditative introversion.
The inspirer or founder of a religious cult who is really advanced
would know how to grade his hearers and devotees, when to give
the populace entry to the first degree but no farther, and when to
give the more mystically minded entry to the second degree. \Ve
may take the words of Jesus as an example of this knowledge, when
he said to his closest disciples: "To you it is given to know the
Mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to them it is not given . . .
therefore I speak to them in allegories ; because . . . hearing, they hear
not, neither do they understand." The word ''Mysteries" in the
original has the meaning of "formerly hidden but now revealed",
whilst Moffat has not hesitated to render it as "secret truth" in his
translation of the New Testament. But such mysteries have no
reference to philosophy. That Jesus instructed some of his personal
followers, and through them the later apostles, in the tenets and
practices of the second degree, i.e. yoga and mysticism, there is ample
evidence in the words and lives of his early followers, such as in the
mystic trances of John and the mystical sentences of Paul.
This merely mystical understanding of truth on their part brought
certain defects into their own teachings later, as well as certain
misapprehensions of the real nature of Jesus' personality, defects and
errors which the later Gnostic philosophers saw up to a degree and
tried to remedy. But if the history and mystery of Jesus baffled his
own people we need not be surprised that they have baffled the
whole world since.
A careful perusal of the New Testament sections will show that
although most of them may conveniently be classified as first degree,
i.e. purely religious matter, there is also a thin vein of mysticism of
the second degree running right through them. For instance, the
sentence "The kingdom of heaven is within you" has absolutely no
connection whatever with official religion and entirely refers to the
experiences of yogis and mystics. The explanation why such a
mixture of concepts exists is twofold. Firstly, the compilation of
these records in a single volume did not occur until a few hundred
years after Jesus is believed to have passed away. The obscure
Council of Nicea found numerous gospels extant when it sat to make
the compilation, consisting of a mixed collection of religious books
intended for the masses and mystical ones intended for the elect
few. The immense number of bishops who constituted this council
had quite a fight over the nature of Christ; they naturally made their
selections and rejections according to their personal temperaments
and outlook. Hence the somewhat uneven selection of authentic
footnte , The official account of the miraculous self-movement and self-classification of
the books during the darkness of night may be dismissed for what it was-a chirdish
tale intended to impress the ignorant.

gospels and unjustifiable rejection of certain apocrypha. Secondly,
Jesus was in revolt against the stiff orthodoxy of the Jewish priests,
most of whom wTere not only ignorant of the higher degree themselves
but deliberately persecuted those who were mystically inclined. His
indignation expressed itself in the words, "Woe unto you! Ye
entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering ye prevented.'
' It is evident that his sympathy with the ignorant helpless
masses was so large and overwhelming that he deliberately opened
the doors of the higher mystical teaching to a little extent for them,
although only his close disciples were fully initiated. Buddha was
undoubtedly actuated by precisely the same feelings and opened the
same doors even wider than did Jesus.
Hardly an ancient people existed but cherished its mystical
tenets. When we search their more recondite records we find that
nearly all exclaim with Epicurus : "Gods exist but they are not what
the common people suppose them to be." Similar notions are known
in certain high quarters of some world-religions even today, but
closed lips are usually maintained about them. The Vatican knows
how to keep its historical secrets and to guard its store of rare
mystical manuscripts and books. Some were not a little surprised at
the frankness of the significant confession recently made by a former
Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, when he publicly said : "As
for repudiating obsolete dogmas, it is very difficult. We have no right
to offend these little ones that believe.It is perfectly hopeless to
try to compose a creed which will satisfy both a learned scholar and
his kitchenmaid."
Mysticism is not enough. But the law of life is movement. Man
cannot remain immobile like a hibernating toad in prolonged trance.
He has to get out of it at some time or other. He has to associate
with his fellow mystics or with his family or with the world at large.
Or he has to attend to one physical need or another. Moreover, he will
soonei or later be brought up against the various limitations of
mysticism and the characteristic defects of mystics. Some of them
are serious and important. The seeker who has never met with them,
or having met them has never had the courage to face them adequately,
can never rise beyond the second grade, but will put a
premature end to his quest and remain a smug and self-satisfied
undergraduate. As this chapter deals only with the practical value
of mysticism and not its philosophical or truth-value, consideration
of problems involving the latter must be deferred to a later one.
Thus will the seeker one day arrive at the wall which limits the
range of mysticism. He will see that, whatever good it can do, there
is much that it cannot do yet wrongly claims to do. He will see,
further, that the social value of historic mysticism is as little as its
individual value is great, and therefore it cannot constitute a complete
solution of the problem of human existence, or offer a complete
panacea for the malady of human suffering. He will turn in disgust or
disillusionment from the veiled exploitation of their followers'
ignorance, credulity, financial resources, diseases, anxieties or desires
by most of those who profess to teach this subject or who proclaim
their competency to guide its aspirants. He will ask why it is that
such harmful charlatanries and gross superstitions have clouded the
sky of mysticism's history. The final view can only be that the very
possibility of these defects reveals the insufficiency and limitations of
mysticism. On its meritorious side it is admirable, yet it is not
perfect. There is something lacking in it. That missing element is
precisely the same as the missing element in religion. The one makes
its direct appeal to emotional faith ; the other to emotional experience.
Neither makes an appeal to the criterion of highest truth. Both
lack a rational foundation and even glory in their lack. For him who
breathes the rarefied atmosphere of truth no charlatanry, no superstition
and no exploitation can ever be possible. He will not permit
self-deception to touch him and will certainly never knowingly
deceive others. The variations and contradictions of mystical
experience necessarily indicate that ultimate truth must lie beyond
its province. For there must be one such truth of life, not two or more.
The ethical failures of mystics and occultists must be attributed to
their personal failures to discover and realize this supreme truth,
and to their dependence on an unstable and uncertain source of
inspiration, viz. feeling, which is notoriously changeable no matter
how exalted it becomes temporarily by contemplation. Their
intellectual difficulties are the logical result of their disdain of logic
and of their inner opposition to tested rational processes in preference
to debatable intuitive ones. It is clear that he who seeks the highest
must one day make up his mind to travel farther than mysticism,
however useful and necessary a stage of his onward journey it has
been, and must always remain.
The inability to obtain satisfactory and convincing answers to
such questions as fullness of experience and love of knowledge will
eventually arouse must lead the thoughtful enquiring mystic who
has not settled down into smug self-laudation or conservative
quiescence to a wilderness where he will walk in lonely bafflement
for a time, just as once he may have walked into the wilderness of

doubt, despair and scepticism when he emerged from the selfcontradictions
of dogmatic religion. The operation of reversing gear,
from surrender to mystical feeling to sharp self-criticism by reason,
for a man who has driven for years in the former is neither easy nor
quick to make. Some time-lag will be needed for its accomplishment,
and the principle of gradualness will hold good here. Could he but
know it, the very discontent which has crept into his mind is a
harbinger of his close approach to the invisible frontier of a higher
region of thought. Yet the frontier will remain closed to him unless
he persevere with his solitary journey and refuse to be held back by
old habits or other opinion. The courage which is required from him
now is not less than that which he needed in that earlier momentous
escape from religion or agnosticism to mysticism. Few were ready to
accompany him then, but he must expect infinitely fewer still to
accompany him now into this howling wilderness. But if he keeps in
view the gravity of his undertaking he will not flinch from acceding
to these requirements. He will come to perceive, if dimly, that the
inner urge which imperiously drives him out must be respected
beyond all else, for its ineffably holiness is something far beyond the
imputed holiness of religious faith or mystic intuition.
The elementary position of all religious and mystical systems
becomes clear, therefore, when they are co-ordinated in the larger
conceptions of philosophy. Whatever of truth they contain is but the
symbolic translation of subtle philosophical tenets. The pious confections
of a humanized God afford useful pabulum for common folk ;
the peaceful reveries of meditation are benedictions to more evolved
minds : but to both of these classes the caviare-like food of a
moral," emotional or intellectual elite is inevitably cold and unattractive.
So the mystic whose motto is "Excelsior!" must suffer and
struggle, even amidst the frequent if fitful interludes of contemplative
peace which he has now attained. The moment will arrive when he
will stand at the very gate of the frontier itself. A few more paces and
he may stride across it. Beyond lies a new land, vastly mysterious
and hardly trodden. It is the region of the third degree, the empire
of the supreme wisdom open to man. Yet he will not know how close
he is to it unless a guide now appears to make the revelation and to
escort him farther. The guide may be an ancient one and speak to
him across the generations through the inscribed pages of a manuscript
or the printed pages of a book. Or he may be a living one and
speak to him face to face. The first is a chart which may take him
slowly some of the way, while the second will take him quicker and
farther. But once the new journey has begun and the frontier lies
behind him, he will never again know the meaning of-complaccnt
rest or selfish ease. For the new acolyte of the Absolute must now
struggle incessantly, first towards his own final position and then for
the beneficent liberation of others, under the authoritative command
of a superior power-TRUTH !
CHAPTER 4,
THE HIDDEN PHILOSOPHY OF INDIA.
thE readers who come with a kindly attitude to these chapters
do not come with a prepared one. It is to be feared that some
propositions must have startled them and others must have
alarmed them. But the teachings which are yet to be set down will
come as a surprise to those who have relished the writer's narratives
of yogic adventure or accounts of mystic experience. Let them bear
patiently, however, for in the end they will find that all the real gold
in religion and mysticism will not be lost and that full assay value
will be returned for their patience. All that is admirable in religion
and well serves toiling mankind shall here be well respected too ; all
that makes mysticism a boon to struggling individuals shall receive
the favourable evaluation it merits. Our scales are just. Nevertheless
they cannot be deceived. They will not accept the spurious along
with the genuine or the fictitious with the factual. Nor will they
permit the detrimental to crowd into their pans under the shelter of
the beneficial.
Although the appeal of these pages shall be made only to rational
understanding and not to sentimental faith and credulity, nor even
to easily stirred imagination, such is the distinctive amplitude of
truth that it covers all things with its comprehensiveness. An
undreamed-of unity, a sublime synthesis bringing together the Real,
the True, the Good and the Beautiful, awaits them at the end. The
endless wars of doctrinc and the bestial hatreds of men here find
their last grave.
The relation of philosophy to religion has been considered and
its relation to mysticism has been freely hinted at. The interrelations
of all three are such that if religion be regarded as the vestibule
of mysticism, the latter will occupy the same position with
reference to philosophy. However, it is here necessary to bring out
more clearly the relationship of the hidden philosophy towards
what is frequently but often erroneously termed philosophy in both
the West and the East. This demands some preliminary reflection
upon the general meaning of the term.
No tortured animal has ever asked with benignant Buddha
why universal suffering existed, or has ever gone behind momentary
appearances and asked what larger meaning underlay the enigma of
life. Man alone of all living species has done this.
The monkey is the animal most nearly like man, yet the ethical
conflicts of religion, the aesthetic appreciation of art and the tormenting
questions of philosophy have never entered its head. What then
is the most marked difference between the mind of a man arid the
mind of a monkey ? Most animals certainly have thoughts and
retain memories, whilst many undoubtedly possess intelligence.
Some, like the Indian elephant, possess an extremely high degree of
intelligence. But there is one thing which no animal can ever do,
and that is to use its intelligence in the abstract. It cannot reason
theoretically nor bring reflection to transcend its physical environment..
Its actions are invariably determined by the concrete conditions
which surround it.
A further mental activity which lies beyond the intelligence of
the most intelligent animal in the world is to think impersonally. No
animal has ever been known to attempt to communicate with another
animal dwelling on a different and remote continent, because none
feels the need of troubling about those who do not touch its immediate
environment or are unlikely to touch it at some time. This
implies that it cannot rise beyond individuality into impersonality,
the cause being its inability to bring an isolated item of its experience
into proper relation with the universe. It cannot stand away from
its own body and contemplate with complete selfless detachment the
character, nature and life of another beast moving a hundred yards
away, let alone the stars overhead when they appear at night. For
every beast the primordial needs of the body are its chief concern.
The hub of its universe around which everything revolves is and for
ever remains itself, and all other creatures are reacted to according
to their relation to its own fears, desires, etc. Life is a simple fact for
such a creature, whereas the intellect of man is fated to create problems
and then torture itself trying to solve them.
Man alone has deemed it worth while to agitate his mind and do
all these things. He alone is provoked by the universe into posing
questions and seeking their answers, which proves that he possesses
distinctive mental faculties which are denied to animals. And the
sum of those faculties is nothing more than the thinking-power
developed not only to a higher degree but also to an abstract impersonal
level. Man's intellect may rise into purely theoretical activity ;
it may engage itself in the most impersonal studies like astronomy
loo
and trace the movements of remote planets; it may disdain the
exigencies of cramping material surroundings and soar aloft into
questions concerning the cause and course of the entire structure of
the universe; whilst it can take the facts and items of experience
and by constant reflection relate them into rational connections,
finally weaving them into a comprehensive and systematic pattern
of explanation. When we seek the significance of all this we have to
conclude that an opportunity has been vouchsafed to man alone to
possess the capacity of arousing interest in, enquiring into, reflecting
upon and perhaps eventually understanding the truth about his own
life, as well as the surrounding universe. No insect, no plant, no
animal possesses this unique and lofty privilege of seeking truth and
reflecting upon it. Vasishta, an ancient Indian sage, exclaimed:
"Better the rock-bound toad, better the crawling earthworm, better
the blind cave-serpent, than the man without enquiry/' Such
enquiry is called philosophy.
But let nobody think that philosophy is something to be chosen
by a man when it so pleases him ; on the contrary, it chooses him ! The
very fact that he is a human and not an animal being has perforce
made him a philosopher, albeit an unconscious one. True he did not
ask for this distinction, but he cannot escape i t ! The first few crude
disjointed thoughts about his environment which floated through the
mind of the earliest savage, the primitive odd pieces of knowledge
about himself and other men which he picked up during brief hazy
reflections, the wonderment and adoration which the advent of the
morning sun always stirred in him-these were the beginnings of a
mental life which distinguished man from beast and marked his
early unwitting steps in that quest of wisdom to whose last and final
stage he one day awakens and affixes the name of philosophy. Then
his attitude becomes a conscious and reasoned one ; then it attains
high rank. Henceforth his movements are no longer slow, groping
and blundering, but quick and direct. By asking abstract questions,
by enquiring deeply into universal existence, he shows how far he has
travelled beyond the brutes. But the quest is really a unity, even
though it may be divided into these two clearly defined stages.
Everybody therefore is something of an actual philosopher even
if he be an imperfect, inarticulate and inchoate one. It has already
been explained why religion is an elementary initiation into an
inferior form of philosophy, and hence every religious person likewise
comes under this category. Only he prefers parables where the
intelligentzia demand reasoned expjanations. The business man who
is too busy to trouble his head with such barren and worthless
intellectual fabrication as he deems philosophy to be nevertheless
possesses his own outlook on life, his own views as to what he is
here for and how far matter is real. He may believe that there is no
meaning in the cosmic masquerade, that the essential purpose of his
incarnation is solely an economic one. He may regard the chair in
which he sits as being possessed of a materiality which is so obvious
as to be beyond a single moment's consideration or question. Whether
these views are correct or not is beside the point, for the mere act of
holding them proves that he too, like the academic metaphysician
whom he contemptuously despises or ignores, has a philosophy.
Moreover, it influences his conduct and possesses a practical bearing
on his life just as much as the other man's.
Thus we arrive at the little-known truth that the ordinary man's
criticism that philosophical reflection is utterly useless and that the
points- at issue with which philosophers struggle are meaningless and
trivial is itself the outcome of philosophical reflection ! He is using the
same method which the philosophers use, albeit crudely. The
barrenness of practical results and the lack of settled conclusions of
which he complains in philosophy are partly due to the fact that
philosophers are much more cautious in approach, much less hasty
in procedure, much more clear-seeing in mentality to be willing to
arrive at the premature judgments which please him. Even the very
wording of his own criticism itself constitutes a conclusion reached
by generalized logical thinking upon given facts-which is precisely
the method used by philosophy. Therefore his judgment against
philosophy is itself invalidated by the way in which it is obtained !
Moreover, he has to think about life whether he likes to or not and
whether he wants to or not, because the most commonplace facts
and circumstances of his personal existence demand some thought,
however little, about them and .their meaning. The difference
between him and the philosopher is that he reflects casually and superficially,
whereas the latter reflects deliberately and deeply, never
ceasing to ask questions until all is quite clear to him.
It is-an oft-heard plaint that philosophy will not fill the kitchen
larder. People nowadays say, "Let us put our economic house in
order, or our political house in order, and then we shall have time to
philosophize." The old Romans said very much the same thing in
their proverb: "First one must live, then one may philosophize."
People were making the same plaint when Nebuchadnezzar ruled in
sultry Babylon, and they will go on making it when the architectural
colossi of New York City are but thin phantoms of the past.
Every man is perfectly free, therefore, to ignore the stupendous
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problem which life silently sets him and nobody will care to reproach
him for neglecting it. Twentieth-century existence is difficult enough
with its stress, strain and struggle to justify a man looking only to his
immediate wants and deferring all consideration of such apparently
remote questions as philosophy raises. This he usually does. He
relegates the whole subject to a few academic hermits who have no
better business to attend to than to indulge in such abstruse speculations-
on an abstract Ultimate. Such is his first and superficial
glimpse of the place of philosophy. But like many first glimpses it ia
quite a questionable one and open to revision with time.
The general objection carries the implication that the world can
get on quite well without philosophy. It does not occur to the world
that those who first decide whither they may best journey before
mounting their horses may arrive at a better place than the others
who leap on their steeds and rush off they know not where. According
to all reports the world is still trying to extricate itself from the
widespread difficulties into which such a ' 'practical" but unreflective
policy has brought it. Its distresses are melancholy attestation to the
absence of philosophy from its midst.
The particular plaint that it is easier for a rich man to indulge in
this study than a poor man, and for a free man than an enslaved one,
is certainly true. But ^he law of compensation starts working here
and renders it easier for a poor man to practise philosophy than for a
rich one ! This truth will become more apparent later.
It is also justifiable to say that some amount of free leisure is
needed to carry on this study as well as to reflect upon its points, and
some amount of educational background is demanded for its understanding.
So far as the latter point is concerned biography is full of
instances where men without means have practically educated
themselves rather than submit to cultural defeat, and so far as the
former is concerned those who complain that time for study cannot
be found have only to steal it from their sleep. In this way they can
get at least one hour daily. This will not cause them any suffering,
for it is little and given in a good cause. But there are others who
could make the time more easily. They have too many irons in the
fire and should take a few out. They need not neglect essential duties
nor cancel existing relationships in order to accomplish this adjustment.
But when they have found a way to fit in the study-period
they will find their reward with it. Thus the final truth is that the
aspiring and the ambitious will always bestir themselves whilst
others moan.
If none of us then can escape being a philosopher, why should it
seem a puerile request to ask that we learn to philosophize correctly,
consciously, systematically and with open eyes instead of faultily,
sleepily and blindly ; in short, to be a real philosopher and not a
drifting fool ? Our endeavour to deny the supremacy of such generalized
directed thought by ignoring it will always be in vain. It cannot
be a stupid nor a useless pursuit, but rather an indispensable one
which would have us lift the whole of our life-activity from the level
of groping effort to that of a deliberate one. Life presents us with its
own educational curriculum in the shape of painful and pleasurable
experiences, but the conscious quest of truth is an item which we must
ourselves insert.
The thoughts that are habitual lead to their consequences in
action. The ordinary man's general outlook will always determine
the course of his actions just as much as will the philosopher's. But
whereas he is usually blown by the wind of circumstance, and hence
afflicted by uncertainty, the philosopher has the advantage that he
has long reflected and brought to light certain principles of sound
action. A mail who has never asked fundamental questions, who has
never worked out a reasoned attitude of his own, will find himself
gripped by doubt or darkness when the first big crisis of his life
occurs. On the other hand, he who has mastered true philosophy
will be quietly ready in all situations, all eventualities. The lack of
predetermined principles leads unwary man to acts detrimental
not only to his own well-being but also to that of others. And yet
the man of the world is impatient with philosophers !
People are even frightened away by the mere sound of the name
philosophy. Even Plutarch could glorify only public men, warriors
and politicians in his Parallel Lives. Thus he praised Lycurgus and
sneered at Plato for being a philosopher, for' 'while the first stabilized
and left behind him a constitution the other left behind him only
words and written books". Nevertheless philosophy played a leading
part in the old Corinthian culture. The Greeks had some regard for
right thinking. But the attitude of a jazz-minded age is, "Why should
we fret our foreheads with such problems ?" Most of the men and
women of our time prefer the crude chatter which passes for conversation
and they are satisfied to slip from cradle to grave with both
eyes closed. These intellectual incapables have little use for a climb
to the mountain-tops of thought and a soliloquy in that rarer atmosphere.
In the average person's imagination the subject is a dry,
dead and barren tree, a monotonous and colourless weaving of
thoughts. There is some good ground for his mental image because
much dubious matter passes for philosophy which is nothing of the
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kind, but when we enquire a little more deeply into the basis of his
fear and dislike we are likely to discover that they arise out of his
ignorance rather than out of his acquaintance with the subject. He
rightly thinks, however, that it is going to lift his mind from the
familiar ground of concrete reality into unfamiliar altitudes of life,
and so, like many elderly persons prior to their first flight in an
aeroplane, he fears it. And when he happens to meet a desiccated
human being who calls himself a philosopher he adds irritation to
his fear because the man seems to be wandering about in a deserted
wilderness where nothing that is fruitful and nothing that is edible
can be found.
Our scientific friends add to this dismal chorus of complaint.
They sneer in disdain at the barren results of the world's three
thousand years of recorded philosophizing ; they point with pride to
the immense encyclopaedia of ascertained and agreed facts which
science has attained in less than three hundred years. They utter
the ancient joke about the philosopher being like a blind man
searching in a dark room for a black cat which is not there, although
the twentieth century has brought the joke up to date by adding a
theologian to the philosopher and announcing that he succeeds in
finding the cat! He who is so bold as to talk of a philosophy of truth
must surely be an ignoramus, unacquainted with philosophical
history and raising hopes in himself and others which are foredoomed
to vanish dismally.
These plaints are just ones. The story of philosophical exploration
is a fascinating account of inconclusive adventures in futility. AH
history shows that the philosophers have no settled platform of
knowledge upon which they can stand in agreement, and that they
are still in the realm of conjecture when they attempt to interpret
the meaning of the world.
What one philosopher built up so convincingly was-torn down so
cogently by the next; what the eighteenth century thought to be a
fine discovery was disproved and rejected with contempt by the
nineteenth; the venerated systems of one people were thrown into
the lumber-room by another. Countless pages of innocent paper have
been deluged with black ink by eager thinkers, but still the shape of
truth remains unseen. Certainly those grave discussions whether
life has a graveyard goal or not are as tormentingly unsettled as
they ever were. The answers of philosophers to the questions they
posed themselves have been as different and opposite to each other
as are the North and South Poles. The importance of being frivolous
is impressed upon readers every time they take up many of these
stilted ponderous pages. They may indeed finally be reduced to
exclaim, in Anatole France's flippant and ironic words: 'Things
have diverse appearances and we know not even what they are . . .
my opinion is to have no opinion !"
It has already been observed that this same demon of selfcontradiction
haunts the houses of mysticism and religion too. Is
no escape possible from it then ? Is Herbert Spencer right in declaring
that absolute truth is to be relegated to the domain of the unreachable
? Do the religious, the mystical and the philosophical seekers
journey along a path which is but a blind endless maze without
discernible starting-point and without attainable goal ?
The wonder is that men have not ceased to philosophize altogether.
What is it that urges them to construct and reconstruct, to
criticize and to destroy, the theories of their predecessors and the
speculations of their contemporaries ? Why do they not abandon in
irritation this vain pursuit and thus follow the example of gifted
Persian Omar Khayyam, who
When young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint, and heard great argument
About it and about, yet evermore
Came out by that same door wherin I went.
The fact is that they are ceasing, and with increasing tempo, to
philosophize. She who once sat in regal enthronement over the
empirical sciences is today a neglected Cinderella. Those who care
for the study of philosophy as the pursuit of Truth are rapidly
diminishing in number. The process of decline in prestige and disappearance
in interest is going on all over the world. Germany, which
a single century ago could claim to be the home of European philosophy,
now scorns that subject as useless and derides it as a mere
game of intellectual marbles. India, which, a thousand years ago,
maintained universities like that of Nalanda, where none could
obtain admittance save those who could answer the most abstruse
metaphysical questions, and where ten thousand students were
once to be found despite this difficult initial bar-India, which has
fed all the other Asiatic lands with her thoughts, cannot today find
sufficient college students to form more than ridiculously small
classes in the same subject. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that
several colleges have now abolished the chair in philosophy. It has
in fact suffered a severe downfall and its systems have become everywhere
in the world a collection of desolate antiques, with its professors
busy as melancholy curators of this metaphysical museum !
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The modern mood is usually irritated by any attempt to entice it into
the cobwebbed parlours of metaphysical speculation. �
The Philosophy of Truth. Such criticism is justifiable only where
so-called philosophy leads away from action and not to it, where it
runs around in a vicious circle and remains for ever inconclusive,
and where it starts its movement of thought with mere fancies
instead of with ascertained facts, although even in these cacjs *it
may be useful to those who want to enjoy the intellectual stimulus
of mental gymnastics. But all this has nothing to do with the hidden
philosophy.
The world-wide error which has jumbled personal fancy with
philosophy or opinionative theology with metaphysics makes it
necessary to utter the warning that the philosophy of truth as
revealed in India must not be confused with such philosophical
speculation on truth. If half-philosophy and pseudo-philosophy have
now run their course^ and been dismissed, then the way is left open
for true philosophy. The former soars into realms of fancy like a free
bird, whereas the latter is strictly chained to facts. It begins with
them so far as they are available and refuses to outrun them. It takes
nothing for granted, starts with no assumptions, no dogmas, no
beliefs of any kind. It proceeds solely by the use of strict reasoning
upon these facts, the acutest and sharpest reasoning ever practised
by the human mind, and it concludes by applying the test of all
human experience. Many famous metaphysicians have exhausted
their ingenuity in imagining, for instance, a hypothetical Noumenon,
Substance, Spirit, Absolute, etc., underlying the world-appearance,
but the philosophy of truth does not permit either its exponents or
its students to seek a single fancy nor accept it without enquiry as
true. Spirit may indeed exist, but it has to find out its existence by
investigation and not start by assuming it. Fact is its sole foundation
and actuality its superstructure.
Academic philosophy presents a picture of conflicting opinion
chiefly because of the diverse standpoints taken up by philosophers.
Only one standpoint is possible to the true philosopher, and that the
highest. Such a standpoint must be based on the facts of all experience.
Therefore all assumptions, all dogmas, all blind faith, all
surrender to sentiment, all dreams of the unseen and unknown, are
immediately ruled out of court. Wherever philosophy has failed its
failure has partly been due to violation of this factor. Life can never
be satisfactorily interpreted by studying our fancies in place of its
facts.
To this extent, therefore, genuine philosophy must embrace
science, must start with it, must walk by its side, even though it
will later outstrip it because it is more venturesome. Science is
indeed a part, albeit the preliminary part, of the philosophy of truth.
And by science is meant principally the scientific method, the scientific
approach, the vast collection of verified facts, but not the
fluctuating guesses and opinions of individual scientists.
To many a Western person metaphysical speculation is a hobby
or game for dilettantes, or at best an exercise in intellectual ghosthunting.
Genuine philosophy is an infinitely more serious and
fruitful occupation than that. It regards this life of ours as a precious
opportunity to gain eternal profit out of its seeming transiency.
Consequently it cannot afford to waste time on vain or useless
efforts which are foredoomed to end disappointingly in emptiness.
It uses the method of philosophical enquiry not to find excuses for
living less fully but to find guidance for living more so, not to
attenuate human interests but to expand them, and not to pursue
fleeting spectres but to seek the enduring Real.
We shall consider in a later chapter a further special characteristic
of the higher philosophy which is its actual justification (where all
other philosophies fail to do so) of the claim to provide an allcomprehensive
world examination and connected synoptic view of
Life. Its success in proving its claim explains why Indian minds
should have succeeded in fully penetrating the world-darkness
where Western minds still regard the task either as impossible or as
set for possible completion in a remote future.
We have already seen that the explanations of religion are
excellent for simple or timid folk but too elementary and too adverse
to the conscience and common sense of cultured ones. We have also
learnt that the tenets and practices of mysticism are ampler and
better, but they too are insufficient because they yield only a partial
view of life. It is the claim of the hidden philosophy of truth-which
will henceforward be named by the single word "philosophy" in this
book, partly as a verbal convenience and partly because the derivation
of the word points to truth and not to the mere speculation into
which it has frequently degenerated-that it alone seeks to enquire
into every phase of total universal existence, leaving nothing out,
and it alone strives to get the fullest explanation and the final one ;
moreover, it not only starts to enquire but pushes on with iron
determination until it successfully reaches the goal.
From this statement it may be gathered that true philosophy is
no monochrome but is so rich that it must not only embrace the
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methods used by religion, mysticism, science and art, for instance,
as well as all the results achieved by them; it must not only take
within its scope of examination such diverse matters as business,
industry, warfare, marriage and maternity, bright dreams and base
drudgery, because they form a part of human life ; it must not only
include the vast array of animals and plants and rivers and mountains
within its examination because they belong to universal
existence ; but it must even turn back critically upon itself, for, after
all, every enquiry-whether it be religious, mystic, scientific or
philosophic-is made with the mind. Hence philosophy seeks also to
discover why the mind wants to know all these things, why it takes
up the quest of truth, and what is its own nature, what are the limits
of its capacity to know truth, how it comes to know the world, and
what in short is the ultimate truth of all the truths that we already
know. It demands truth in its entirety, not half- or quarter-truths.
Philosophy values the contributions of the departments of fact or
faith already named, and indeed of all others, whilst escaping from
their restricted specialism because it refuses either to pause at any
single one of them or to limit its enquiry to it. Science, however
valuable it be in providing us with a reasonable approach to life and
in organizing our knowledge of the world, is obviously limited. It
deals in fragments. The average scientist cannot be expected to
understand the significance of music, for example. He works, like all
specialists, with blinkers, for he keeps within a certain department
and has to accept both the limitations and the constricted views of
that department. Every specialist is unconsciously influenced by the
emphasis placed upon the particular aspect of life with which he
concerns himself. The consequence is that he forces his notion of
truth within the confining walls of a compartmental outlook and
ignores the goal of truth as it is when freed of such limitation. However
workable this be for practical purposes,- it becomes a hindrance
when the wider objective of ultimate, universal and uncontradictable
truth is set up.
It is hard to know how to place so remarkable a mental attitude,
for it is too up-to-date to be antique, too rational to be medieval and
too historic to be modern. Such is the paradox of the world's most
archaic wisdom, which is still so far in advance of contemporary
knowledge that we are only now beginning to catch up with it!
Such is the uniqueness of a philosophy which is a courageous
endeavour to get at the meaning of existence, to use man's loftiest
faculty of intelligence for the loftiest imaginable aim, and to discover
an adequate criterion for ethics, an unassailable canon of truth and
wisdom for the sustenance of social action. Only the superficial
dare doubt its practical utility and marked advantage, but admittedly
such an endeavour does not belong to the everyday life of the
crowded plains. It must necessarily belong to distant mountain
trails. The plain-dweller is entitled to refuse to forgo his comforts
and travel to this unfamiliar region, but let him not despise those who
put fear aside and essay the climb. They will find no dullness there,
but on the contrary a fascinating and stimulating adventure. It is
really engrossing and, when its full practical bearing appears on the
horizon of study, will be found to hold vital human interest. Henceforth
the episodes of their everyday personal lives will be seen
against a perspective of growing grandeur.
We have seen how the approach to truth arranges itself in a
graded series, and have followed it to the end of its second phase.
This is in accord with the ancient Indian teaching, which postulates
three stages of evolution through which the mind of man must pass,
three progressive attitudes towards life. The first is religion and is
based on faith; the second, mysticism, is controlled by feeling; and
the third, philosophy (which is inclusive of science), is disciplined by
reason. Nor can it be otherwise, for man's understanding of the world
must necessarily grow parallel to his mental capacity. His outlook is
invariably and inevitably limited by the degree of his intelligence.
Hence it is impossible for all men to answer life's queries in the same
way.
We must stand now at the door of the third degree in the archaic
temple of wisdom and knock hopefully. If wre are to reach our
optimum development we must cross this threshold and learn what
lies beyond it. Over the lintel we may behold deeply carved in
dignified lettering four words, The Philosophy of Truth ; whilst above
them the figure of Minerva's owl is solemnly staring at us. For this
peculiar bird becomes active when the shades of night are falling,
and it clearly sees varied objects where man sees only sable darkness.
But who has ever heard of such an unlabelled philosophy ? We
have heard of German philosophy, Greek philosophy, Indian
philosophy ; we remember as from a remote past some of the world's
most unintelligible volumes, written by the world's most intelligent
men, marring our student days with tormenting emotions of confusion,
despair and final bafflement; we recollect having fuddled our
brains by reading a spate of tedious books on the subject, but
instead of advancing us into clearer light the contradictory theories
and speculations carried us back into greater darkness ; we believed
ironically what seemed to be a general rule in philosophical discussion,
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that the more trivial the point at issue the graver became the argu:
ment; we have picked up a little of the lingo of the system of
Spinoza, the system of Anaxagoras, the system of Immanuel Kant,
but we have never found, nor do we know of anyone who has ever
found, a philosophy which represented more than the views of one
man or one school.
There exist a few, however, who have thoroughly explored the
twilit lands of religion, mysticism and metaphysics and not merely
coasted along their shores, who know also what science can say about
the world, and who possess no such pessimism. Their initial wonder
has waxed into the desire to know, and this again into the passion to
understand, and that finally into the search after reality. They feel
that this all-engrossing search which has driven them onward and
upward reacts in response to something that is. An inextinguishable
hope lures them. For what they had half believed with religion, fully
felt with mysticism, rationally suspected with science and speculatively
argued with metaphysics is that some ultimate essence exists
as the true nature of things and men, that this essence, being ever
and everywhere present, bestows the highest possible significance on
the universe, and consequently the first and highest human duty is
personally to know it. But they perceive that before it can be finally
and certainly known in any way it must first be intellectually and
speculatively known for what it is and certainly for what it is not.
Hence they realize the need of a fitting philosophy-not the philosophy
of this or that school, person or country, but solely the
philosophy of truth. Such a philosophy, if discovered, would act as an
indispensable map with which the explorer could then set out to
discover the truth for himself.
But why should not the hope of these unconventional few be
nothing more than self-deception, an illusion created by personal
desire masquerading as profound intuition ? Only one answer is
possible to this just complaint, but it is an answer which will raise
surprised eyebrows and curl sneering lips in Western circles" suffering
from superiority-complexes justifiable perhaps by sheer ignorance of
what men have been doing and thinking in the other hemisphere for
the past few thousand years. However, it possesses as much right to
our ear as any other, as will be amply demonstrated during the
course of this book. It is the bold declaration that the hope of a few
has been converted, at infrequent intervals however, into the tested
realization of uncommon individuals, and that whatever the public
archives of world-thought may say, both the unwritten and written
records of India indicate that the truth which the West deems
unattainable has already been attained by such individuals in the
past and may even now be attained by those who prize it enough to
pay its high cost.
When we have witnessed the wonders which the human mind
has achieved in changing the earth's face, are we to be so hopeless
as to believe that 'the whole of Nature fears the unveiling of truth
and has cunningly plotted to prohibit man irom ever understanding
the ultimate significance of his life on this planet ? And if anyone
asserts that this significance is quite unknowable, then he is unconsciously
affirming that he is already aware of what future generations
may or may not succeed in knowing-an entirely unjustifiable and
unprovable assumption. But why can we not condescend to learn
from the ancients what we cannot learn from the moderns ?
The Secret Doctrine of India. An Indian recondite doctrine, which
constitutes this philosophy of truth and is placed on a level higher
than those of religion and mysticism, has existed during a period
which scholars admit cannot be less than five thousand years in
extent, but is in fact very much older, for its origin disappears
.into historically untraceable epochs. It was the traditional possession
of a few initiates who formed a closed exclusive circle and
who guarded it with great care as being the acme of all their country's
wisdom, permitting none save qualified aspirants to have access to
it. (Indeed, until the dawn of the modera era a Brahmin who dared
reveal that the truth which lies latent in religion becomes actual
only in philosophy was liable to be punished.) They transmitted it
from generation to generation, but kept it so firmly secret in the
process that the stray echoes which floated accidentally or surreptitiously
into the larger world quickly became queerly distorted ones.
Self-styled and self-deceived representatives appeared in public
later and turned the few echoes of pure philosophy which they had
heard into religious scholasticism in some cases or into theological
mysticism in others. Miscomprehension led to mutilation, and thus
converted a grandly universal into a shrunken tribal truth. Nevertheless,
even when its true and faithful living representatives all but
died out or disappeared from this earth, it maintained an immortal
existence in a few rare neglected writings and fragmentarily in
several more popular ones. However, erroneous interpretations
invariably result from their being read without the proper personal
elucidation by a competent teacher, which is indispensable.
It is therefore to be expected that several of the explanations
which are being given in these chapters may be denied as unauthentic
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by most of the learned scholars of present-day India or abused as
perversions by the generality of her conventional mystics and yogis
or denounced as atheistic by the majority of her religious authorities.
Let it be so. We do not address ourselves to them or their numerous
followers but to strictly truth-seeking minds. The truth may be
hidden from view for countless ages, for it depends on the secret
suffrages of a rare few, but it is unkillable ; it will outlive like the vast
ocean the froth of mortal opinion and the foam of prejudiced interests.
Although our unconventional presentation of this knowledge is a
modern and Western one, its original source is an ancient and Indian
one. Both silent texts and living voices which have informed our
Writing are mostly Indian, supplemented by some Tibetan documents
and a personal Mongolian esoteric instruction. A million men
may gainsay the tenability of the tenets unfolded here, but none can
gainsay the fact that they are Indian tenets, albeit little known,
without twisting the most authoritative ancient documents to suit
their mediocre minds. If we do not quote those texts here it is
because our readers are primarily Western and we do not wish to
burden them with the troublesome necessity of exploring exhaustive
glossaries for unfamiliar Sanskrit names. Indeed, the very failure to
use more than two Sanskrit philosophical terms in this book will be
an added charge against it, because it is claimed that certain Indian
philosophical ideas are not only incomprehensible to the West but
also inexpressible in any traditional Western language. It is quite
correct that we have here to deal with ideas that are expressed in
Sanskrit by a single word, whereas a string of English words is often
required to equate their meaning. But truth existed before the
mesmerism of Sanskrit was born ; it will surely endure long after that
language has vanished. Men must have found or invented expressive
terms before it appeared, and as the need presses them perhaps they
may do so again.
There will also be vociferous denial and personal opposition from
those narrow circles in both the West and East which assume the
title of "esoteric" and claim the possession of "occult'' wisdom. The
confusion and misunderstanding among these half-informed people
is pardonable. They believe, and believe rightly, that some of the
renowned world-teachers taught a secret doctrine to their closest
disciples. They also believe, but believe wrongly, that this doctrine
consisted largely of magic and marvel, thaumaturgy and theology.
These great masters had better work to do than that. The ultimate
purpose of the Indian esotericism was to lead men to detect the
essential meaning of human life, to help them gain insight into the
real structure of the universe and to point out the grand sun of
absolute truth shining on the horizon of all existence.
Even before the victorious wanderings of Alexander brought
Oriental and Hellenistic thought into fertilizing contact, fragments
of this doctrine had been brought back to Europe by enterprising
travellers like Appolonius of Tyana and Pythagoras. In our own
epoch fragmentary proofs of the existence of this hidden teaching
have crept into the outer world as the growing band of Western
Orientalists have given to the world the harvest of their century-long
search through India's cultural treasure. They have broken down
the walls of secrecy and exclusiveness which have kept the most
important books in the possession of a small number of Brahmins.
Whoever cares to rummage through them may find for himself
numerous indications of a guarded teaching which was hidden from
all save those who could fulfil certain difficult conditions and who
possessed certain rare qualifications of character and capacity, as
well as constant references to the fact that full knowledge could only
be obtained personally from a competent teacher. Such verification
may be found not only in the ancient rule that initiated Brahmins
who revealed their knowledge to unqualified outsiders were liable
to be punished, but in the English translations now available of
Sanskrit texts like the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, the Commentaries
of Shankara thereon, Vivekachudamani, Brahma Sutras, Panchadasi,
etc.
With these statements we may match the following wTords of
the Buddha, taken from The Saddharma Pundarika :
0
"Superior men of wise understanding guard the doctrine,
guard the mystery, and do not reveal it.That knowledge is
difficult to understand; the simple, if hearing it suddenly, would
be perplexed.I speak according to their reach and capacity;
by means of different significances I accommodate my doctrine
(to them'1).
We have already seen how, according to this hidden teaching,
there are progressive stages of development through which the seeker
after reality must pass. This is plainly stated by the sage Gaudapada
in his very ancient book already mentioned in the following words :
"There are three stages of life corresponding to three powers
of comprehension-the lower, the middle and the high.It (the
yoga of the uncontradictable) is hard to be attained by the yogis
who are devoid of the knowledge prescribed in the higher philosophy
. . . those other yogis who are also traversing the path but
who possess inferior or middling understanding.'
, Commenting on these sentences the great teacher Shankara
observes : "The orders of mankind are also three in number. How ?
It is because they are endowed with three grades of understanding,
i.e. low, middle and high."
Pythagoras, who travelled all the way to India and succeeded in
obtaining initiation into the secret wisdom of the Brahmins, divided
men into three classes, placing those who loved philosophy in the
highest class. It was indeed in this connection that he coined and
used the word philosophy, and was thus the first European to do so.
Ammonius, who founded an important mystical and philosophical
school at Alexandria, also divided his disciples into three grades,
placing them under oath not to reveal his higher philosophical
teachings. His rules were copied from the more ancient Grecian
Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to the historian Herodotus,
brought them from India.
It should not be thought that the strong secrecy with which this
teaching was once enveloped was entirely wilful. It developed out of
four prime factors. The first was a clear perception that if the real
truth of religion was made commonly known the whole fabric of
public morality would be seriously endangered. The indiscriminate
publication of a teaching which described God as He really is and
repudiated God as He is commonly imagined to be, and which
revealed all rites and sacrifices and priesthoods as unnecessary
supernumeraries, would soon destroy the influence of institutional
religion amongst the others who need it, and with this destruction
would vanish its dependent ethical restraints and moral disciplines.
The confused masses of uneducated people would then turn against
their accepted idols, but could not grasp the undoubted benefits of
higher philosophy in exchange, for the latter would be rejected by
them as being too remote. They would be left with a mental vacuum,
or at best with a bewildering misconstruction, with the consequence
that society would be thrown into bewilderment and social life might
revert to the ruthless law of the jungle. It would be harmful to
unsettle the minds of the mentally adolescent masses by removing
their faith in traditional religion when nothing which they could
assimilate could be offered to replace it. Hence the sages therefore
carefully and wisely kept their knowledge and confined to the select
few who were ready for it, who had become dissatisfied with orthodox
religion and wanted something more rational. In addition to the
mentally ripe, initiation was also given to kings, statesmen, generals,
Brahmin High Priests and others charged with the responsibility of
guiding a people's life; thus they were better equipped to carry out
their tasks wisely and effectively.
The second factor rested in the aristocratic nature of this philosophy.
It was not fit for the sheep equally as for the lions. It could
not be carried into the caves and huts of unlettered men and there
hope for an understanding welcome. It was so mentally abstruse
and so ethically advanced that it lay far beyond popular reach. If it
could have found easy acceptance it would have achieved that soon
after it was first formulated. It was also self-condemned to obscurity
by the law which renders it useless to impose upon the many ideals
which only the few can obey. Its tenets could only be mastered by
persons with well-developed intellects and noble characters; they
were too subtle and therefore too incomprehensible to unripe minds,
to the dull and stupid, the petty and the selfish. The early populations
chiefly consisted of peasants who laboriously toiled in the
fields from dawn till dusk or herdsmen who mechanically followed
their flocks. Both classes could not easily develop minds able and
willing to consider for long periods the most impersonal abstract
topics which were seemingly quite remote from field and home, but
they could give credence to simple tales. Therefore they were quite
content to take the easy path of believing in whatever their parents
had believed. The masses generally were illiterate and uneducated
whilst they lived in a world where they had perforce to be quite
busy for their livelihood, in order to attend to their immediate
physical wants, where the giant octopus of personal activity and
family responsibility held them tightly in its tentacles, so tightly
that they had neither the will nor the leisure left to explore the
subtler significance of their own existence, let alone ultimate knowledge
of the more remote universal one. To work, to suffer, to propagate
their species and to die made up their limited horizon. They
hardly suspected and hardly cared what they were here for in the
higher sense. How then could it be rightly hoped that they should
understand tenets and appreciate values which were as beyond their
orbit as post-graduate university lectures are beyond that of elemen- *
tary school pupils ? The young popular mind must be given time to
grow, and it could not be expected in those early times to judge
matters which were often beyond the capacity of the cleverest.
Moreover, "Many are called but few are chosen" of the New
Testament text has its Hindu equivalent in the sentence "Out of the
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thousands one man, perchance, struggles to realize truth", of the
Bhagavad Gita. There is no arbitrary exclusiveness here, but one based
on human limitations,Jor the latter book also says, " I do not reveal
myself to all and sundry, most people having their vision clouded by
illusion."
The third factor of such secrecy was that the few sages who had
mastered this doctrine usually dwelt in small forest hermitages or
obscure mountain retreats. This mode of living away from the
multitude was not chosen for their own personal need, for they had
attained a rock-like impregnability of mind and character which
could pass unaffected through the mingled activities of crowded
cities, as in the case of Shankara, or could remain unchanged amid
the gilded grandeur of royal courts, as in that of Janaka. Such
seclusion was chosen for the benefit of those who needed it, i.e. for the
restricted handful of pupils who were ripe for such special tuition.
The sustained concentration and profound reflection demanded by
the goddess of hidden wisdom from her votaries for several years
found the least opposition and the least interruption in her last
outposts amid the wild solitudes of beautiful forests or the immense
grandeur of lonely mountains. So much was this tendency to resort
to such places for study recognized that the old texts used by these
teachers in their expositions were and are still called The Forest
Doctrines. It would be a profound error, however, to confuse such
deliberate withdrawal by a few from the world for the sake of
becoming better equipped through severe study to understand and
afterwards usefully serve mankind, with the cheap asceticism which
prevails in most of the large, present-day populous caricatures of
these tiny vanished hermitages. Sterile lethargy and superstitious
speculation now take the place of mental effort and disciplined
study. The ancient students in the third degree were men who
realized that too long had they been busy like ants without understanding
what they were busy about, and that too long had they
danced in mad haste like puppets upon the world stage to the tune
of someone else's making. They had come to the point when they
wanted to know what it all meant, why they were here on this earth
at all, and whither was the fated compulsion of life leading them and
others. They felt that they must find some place in their programme
for the study of philosophy. Life totally devoid of deeper thought
was reckoned unworthy of a man, since it brought him to resemble an
animal. In short, they wanted to know truth. Hence they withdrew
from the busy world for a time and played the runaways, not in
emotional disappointment but in consecration to a serious intellectual
task. Such prolonged absence from society, although intended
to be a temporary means and not a permanent end, inevitably if
gradually withdrew the knowledge gained from the common cultural
tradition of society until the very word in Sanskrit which means
"The Forest Doctrine" came also to mean "The Hidden Doctrine".
Not that the sages always kept themselves hidden, but when they
did venture into public notice they taught people only what suited
them, i.e. pure religion in most cases and pure mysticism in others.
The fourth factor has already been mentioned. It was the danger
that the traditional texts would be misinterpreted and misunderstood,
so that gradually falsity would pass as truth and actually be
labelled as such by later generations. Those who were ethically and
mentally unprepared and undisciplined would assign their own
meanings to the texts, would imagine interpretations to suit their
personal tastes or temperaments. And this danger was very real, for
the texts were highly condensed and needed discursive explanation.
Thus esotericism first arose as a natural phenomenon, although,
with the deteriorating effect of time, it was later pushed to extreme
limits by human selfishness on the part of the few, and by human
indifference on the part of the many. The materials for a history of
this slow declension would be not a little instructive concerning
departments quite other than that of philosophy, could they only be
secured.
Two questions will now come naturally to the lips of the Western
critic. Firstly, if such a philosophy has existed in India for so long a
time, why has it failed to lift Indian culture to the pinnacle of worldesteem
? The reply is that, as already explained, those Indians who
possessed this knowledge were too few at all times and well-nigh nonexistent
in recent times to make much mark on the culture of a vast
sub-continent. Yet although their immediate influence was limited
to a select and influential circle, their ultimate and indirect influence
has nevertheless been immense.
The material and linguistic difficulties of cultural communication
between India and Europe until the last century or two,
together with the esoteric character of this philosophy, accounted
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for its lack of world-influence, as is proved by the fact that in the
rest of Asia with which communication was much more constant and
frequent Indian wisdom was always held in the highest esteem.
Nevertheless it is a significant thing that the man who introduced the
word "philosophy" into European usage was the first noted Greek
to adventure forth as far as India in quest of wisdom. Pythagoras
was well repaid for the hazards of his long journey. He brought back
new and higher conceptions of truth to the West.
The second question which might reasonably be asked is why, if
this doctrine was kept scrupulously hidden from the masses for so
many centuries, it should now be brought forward so openly and made
plain to the populace. This may be met with a threefold answer.
The revelation is not a new one at all, because it has been going on
ever since the force of British arms prepared the way for British,
French and German scholars as long ago as the eighteenth century.
Text after text has been taken by them, in the early days as part of
military loot, but since then by orderly purchase from the exclusive
Brahminical circles which had hitherto jealously guarded the books.
These have now been made available for the benefit of a wider world.
Numerous villages have been combed by purchasing agents and
numerous manuscripts hidden away for'centuries through fear of
destructive Muhammedan conquerors or neglected through sheer
inability to understand them have been brought to light from their
boxes or burrows of concealment. Some of these texts have been
translated into European languages and can be studied by anyone,
whilst most have been carefully gathered and preserved in their
original condition in excellent libraries like those of the Secretary of
State for India, the Mysore, Baroda and Travancore State Oriental
Collections, the Royal Asiatic Society and so on, where they are now
accessible to scholars. Two hundred years ago few of these works
could be got at by anyone who did not belong to a small ilite of
Indian intelligentzia. Today several hundred different ancient
philosophical works can be got at quite freely by European or
American students. No new revelation is here being made, therefore,
but a revelation which began one and three-quarter centuries ago
is being continued. The presentation which is being offered here will,
however, probably be regarded by most readers as a new and essentially
modern restatement and certainly as an unconventional one.
Nevertheless what is a novel element in these pages is that its
principles are partly based on a few books which the floodtide of
Western Oriental scholarship has flowed past and ignored, because,
their especial importance and difficult meaning were not grasped
and partly on a personal instruction which is perhaps unique in the
whole of present-day India.
The further reply to the critic's question is that the chief prohibition
of the unveiling of the hidden philosophy in' former times
was accounted for by its danger to the authority of orthodox religion,
and consequently of morality. Since those days so many agencies
have been at work undermining this authority that it fulfils its
functions of protecting morality somewhat feebly. Conditions are
different from the days when Socrates could be put to death for
weakening religious faith. The minds of the people are now unsettled
and their religious supports damaged. The position today is so
altered as to be somewhat paradoxical, for the hidden philosophy,
instead of destroying what is left of religion, could save it through
its symbolical exegesis and through its justification to educated
minds of the^place and purpose of institutional religion. Its revealment
now would hardly affect the masses because they would ignore
it as they ignore all abstract philosophy, or where they did not
ignore it they would fail to understand its subtleties.
The third factor which has provided the occasion for a franker,
bolder, fuller and freer explication of the higher philosophy than
ever before is quite exceptional and the most important of all.
Since the days when its teachings were first formulated and concealed
the world has greatly changed and mankind with it. The
details of such changes as affect the position of this philosophy, have
been fully given in the opening pages of this book.
CHAPTER V
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCIPLINE
HE simple fact that the average person permits whatever
desire for knowledge he may possess to be overborne by dislike
arising from his superficial impression of philosophy or by a
feeling of fear of the abstract itself unfits him to pursue such study.
For there are certain cardinal characteristics required of every man
before he can even be permitted to cross its very threshold. Nobody
can hope to philosophize with profit who lacks seven psychological
qualities. They are necessary because they represent the means
whereby he may hope successfully to reach his end. An explorer who
wishes to penetrate into difficult new territories, who will have to
cross mountains, rivers and deserts on his journey, should, if he
knows his business at all, first prepare for the expedition by obtaining
a proper equipment. He who seeks to explore the hidden philosophy
and penetrate into the new territory of truth must likewise
look to the nature and quality of his own personal equipment before
his mind may venture forth into an activity which is likely to try
and test his capacity to the uttermost.
It is not anybody and everybody who can undertake such an
expedition. Those who will fulfil the preliminary conditions can alone
hope for final success. These conditions are not externally imposed
but are inherent in the very nature of the apprehension of truth, and
therefore their fulfilment is inexorable. Nor are they manufactured
arbitrarily by any exacting teacher. They are imposed by Nature
herself and accepted by long tradition. However, nobody need
trouble himself with them unless he or she belongs to the earnest
few who seek to know the ultimate secret of life at any cost. All other
persons can comfortably ignore them and take their own time and
ease in life. Emerson has well said : "Take what thou wilt, but pay
the price." These words fit quite squarely at this point of our quest.
In the Western countries it has always been open for anyone to
enter upon a philosophical study, but in Asia the aspirant was first
required to show or acquire a modicum of suitable capacity for the
task. Until both aptitude and attitude were acceptable he was
regretfully refused instruction. It did not matter to the custodians
of wisdom whether he held any religious faith or none, whether he
was an atheist or a Christian or a Muslim, but it did matter that he
should get psychologically fit. This difference is an important one
and helps to account for the superior result and notable success
obtained by the Asiatics. Fichte, however, must have caught a glimpse
of the need for this disciplinary preparation, because he once said :
"What kind of philosophy a man chooses depends ultimately upon
the kind of man he is." The successful assimilation of the higher truth
will be in exact proportion to one's personal qualification.
After the reading of the present chapter has been completed the
student should earnestly examine himself at leisure in a strictly
objective manner to ascertain how far the desirable characteristics
are present within his mental make-up. The examination must be
conducted on a basis of the strictest honesty. The results of this
leisurely survey may startle him if he is earnest, shame him if he is
sensitive, or enlighten him if he is eager for self-knowledge. One of
the first things it will show him is the extent to which he is swayed
by harmful instincts, well-known prejudices, unknown bias, hidden
fears, foolish hopes, unjust attitudes, moods of the moment, powerful
hallucinations or deep-seated illusions; and how he gropes in a fog
of conflicting motives and powerful subconscious influence. Thus he
discovers what he really is ! Such a revelation will not be pleasant. If
he is really unfitted for philosophy this moment will become the
crucial one, when he will irritably cast the book aside and drop the
subject altogether. But if he is made of the right stuff he will take to
the needed discipline and gradually bring about the desired change.
The first concern of a philosophical tutor is to knock down the
student's idols made with feet of clay, or to tell him plainly what he is
really doing when he worships them. For the tutor is in the unpleasant
position of an asylum doctor who has sometimes humoured the
lunatics who regard themselves as being what they are not, such as
Napoleon, by agreeing with them, but who eventually deems the
time ripe to tell them brusquely they are not what they imagine
themselves to be! At .such an unpleasant moment it is invariably
the experience of the doctor to become the most hated man in the
institution!
The knowledge that they find themselves in a similar position-
for few persons like to be told that they are not competent to receive
truth-is an additional reason why the tutors of the hidden philosophy
kept it secret for so many centuries. In fact, from the standpoint
of philosophy few people are properly balanced and really
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normal, and hence it takes it as axiomatic that the aspirant has to
be treated and cured of this unbalanced condition which he shares
in common with millions. For philosophy seeks to put its students
at the correct angle whence to view the pageant of cosmic existence
as it really is, bereft of glamour and deception. This cannot be done
until the intellect is well clarified and the strength of its hidden
complexes vanishes. The task of re-ordering one's mind is likely to
be a painful process. The work of clearing away the falsities and
foolishnesses which beset it is likely to leave some emptiness behind.
It is essential to find out what forces are acting in the mind and
affect its reasoning and its outlook. Once the student unearths the
real bases of his actions and attitudes he can philosophize freely and
fearlessly, but not before. He must ruthlessly unmask by searching
criticism his hidden motives, his unconscious desires, his darkly
covered bias. The complexes which fill the subconscious layer of
the human mind and which he neither recognizes nor names are
partly responsible for his inability to apprehend truth. A most
important department of preliminary activity is therefore to dig
out these mental weeds and present them to the clear light of
consciousness.
Once he becomes aware of the secret processes of his mind and
the secret workings of his wishes he will discover that many false
beliefs, many emotional distortions, cling to it out of its long past,
acting as powerful detriments of right conduct and preventing the
clear insight into truth. He will find that he carries a heavy burden
of illusions and rationalizations which resist the entry of real knowledge.
Only through such a thorough psychological understanding
into what is going on behind the scenes of his conscious personal life
can liberation come and prepare the way for further steps on the
ultimate path. He must strip naked his innermost characteristics,
taking and making no excuses, but boldly seeking to understand the
bitterest truths about himself. He must see himself as he really is,
exposing self to self. Such is the delicate psychological operation
needed to detect for removal from the process of thought and action
all those tendencies, complexes, hallucinations and rationalizations,
which prevent the entry of truth into the mind or drive it along
wrong roads. Until these influences are detected by analysis and
exposed by interrogation they will not cease their maleficent
operation. These complexes come to dominate the man and retard
his free use of reason. He has to humble himself from the beginning
by not hesitating to admit that his character, both in its open and
concealed phases, is a deformed, crippled and unbalanced thing. In
95
short, he has to study a little psychology before he can profitably
study philosophy. He has to analyse his emotions, examine the interaction
of feeling and reason, perceive how he forms conceptions of
ideas and things, and tackle the problem of unconscious motivation.
When a particular idea, for instance, recurs constantly and
irresistibly to the mind and finally becomes a deep-seated obsession
it interferes with the free play of thinking and thus renders accurate
philosophical reflection impossible. Or when a man makes a mental
reservation #in favour of certain beliefs in a particular subject or
field of interest and will not allow his faculties to work fully therein
his mind is then divided into two or more insulated departments
which are never permitted to interact logically on each other. We
may then have the spectacle of complete credulity in one department
and critical reasoning in the other. He is really unbalanced in
one department and yet quite balanced in the other. The excellence
of the latter hides the defect of the former. The fault does not lie in
inability to think properly but in a particular complex which
interferes at a certain point. Again, when a concession must be
made to reason for the sake of self-respect or for the respect of others
we witness the peculiar process of the person finding a conscious
basis for his conclusions which is quite other than the real one. Thus
he deceives himself and perhaps others by such rationalizations of
egoistic wishes and unjustifiable prejudices. Other difficulties are
delusions which assume such a fixed character as to afford an
impregnable front to reason. Their persistence usually appears in
the domain of political, religious, social or economic belief.
All these may be classed as diseases of the mind and until they
are cured they prevent a healthy working of those faculties which are
called into play when we seek truth. For they determine the processes
of thinking and action.
Such is the self-revelation which awaits the student. It will not
be pleasant, but if he will have the courage to accept it like a medicine
it will be purifying. There can be no cure as long as he is not aware
that he is diseased.
It is difficult to arrive at an accurate analysis by oneself, and
here the aid of an expert philosopher, i.e. a sage, is always useful
when obtainable, but such men are exceedingly rare. The competent
philosopher sees what complexes are operative in a man after a little
conversation and without the need of going through the lengthy
and sometimes fantastic processes of psycho-analysis. Moreover, he
will see them much more clearly than the psycho-analyst because
they will themselves suffer from a different set of complexes so long
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as they have not undergone the philosophic discipline I Such an
examination can be most effectively carried out only by one who is
himself mentally "free".
However, these pages should assist every earnest reader in selfexamination
to some degree, whilst the constant pursuit of the lofty
ideal of truth will generally do much to cure complexes. No genuine
teacher can effect the final self-overcoming for the student; he must
bring it about by his own free choice and by his own firm effort; but
the constructive criticism of such a teacher is usually illuminating,
whilst his personal presence is always inspiring.
This introspective dive into the depths of the aspirant's character
and capacity is a venture which must be coolly and boldly made. It
will inevitably meet with innate resistances, instinctive oppositions
and emotional impediments which seek to check his descent. These
arise naturally out of inborn tendencies as well as environment,
education or circumstances. They are mostly masked weaknesses or
psychological repressions. Nevertheless, as he becomes aware of
them by calm self-criticism he should find in their very presence-
if he is philosophically minded-a special incentive to correct them
and secure right adjustment to life. This demands great intellectual
honesty in refusing to evade realities and greater intellectual courage
in overcoming obscurantism ; it is therefore a task for a mental hero
who is not ashamed tQ learn that he needs altering and not afraid to
contribute voluntarily to such a reform. It is an inner metabolistic
process which gives temporary pain but leads to permanent health.
And this is the only way in which he can fit himself for the mastery
of the hidden philosophy.
To persuade people to challenge or change their old habits of
thinking is immensely hard, for human nature is conservative at
heart. And these old habits stubbornly re-assert themselves at every
opportunity. Yet if a man finds that these psychological qualifications
seem far beyond his reach, and this standard of intellectual
conduct far too exalted, he need not be mortified. The remarkable
clinical results achieved by psycho-therapeutic treatment point the
way to undreamed-of powers of self-improvement which lie latent in
the human mind. None of us has reached the limit of his capacity.
Insight always accumulates when we search for new horizons.
Many a man might become a philosopher if he would but bestir
himself, if he would pay the price in persistent unrelenting effort to
break the spell of old fallacies, and if he would take firm hold of a
living transforming faith in his own progressive possibilities.
Years ago we used to think that every man was born with a set
character, a fixed degree of ability, and a limited amount of mental
power and that he could never exceed these limits. Today the
penetrating analysis of psychology has banished the myth of the
last phrase into the limbo where it deserves to remain. Just as the
power of physical culture is nowadays universally acknowledged to be
a definite one, just as we know that our muscles can be made stronger
and the blood circulation quickened by daily exercise, so we know
now that our mental ability and natural characteristics can be
developed along precise lines, if we set about the task in the right
way.
"A ten-thousand-mile journey starts with the first step," says a
Chinese proverb.
No wise man will despair, therefore, over the perplexities and
difficulties of studying this philosophy. Nobody has really failed until
he has given up. Why should we not today do what other men intend
to do tomorrow ? Or-to alter Milton's line : they are not served who
only stand and wait. We may remake our mentality if we will. For
the theories of psychology and the actualities of experience clearly
exhibit the fact that the capacity of the mind is extraordinarily
flexible and expansive ; it can grow beyond recognition when patient
effort to understand the apparently incomprehensible is conjoined
with hope, which is the last of human possessions, as wisdom is the
best. Therefore we must ungrudgingly discipline ourselves mentally
and mould ourselves ethically to arouse the right attitude for the
arduous journey which lies before us. This is our preliminary step.
If this book presents the world with a doctrine which demands
an unusual amount of sustained attention merely to follow it, which
requires an intensity of concentrated thought on the part of its
students such as few seem to possess, and which holds up an ideal of
selflessness that will seenTto most men as quite unattainable, the
reply in defence may be taken from Thoreau that "we are not the
less to aim at the summits, though the multitude does not ascend
them".
Nor does this mean that we are required to possess the required
characteristics to perfection ; it means that we are to make an inner
exertion to develop them to an extent sufficient to enable us to grasp
the elementary and earlier principles of philosophy at least, and to
keep the seven qualifications ever before us as personal ideals. Thus
jthe narrow chiilk of intellectual light may grow and grow until it
becomes a broad beam, illuminating much that was formerly indistinct.
A humble beginning may suffice to start with, for by the time
we have mastered more of these principles we will have experienced
G
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the subtle charm and extraordinary fascination which lie in the soul,
deeply hidden behind philosophy's forbidding face. We shall then
yield willingly to its demand upon us for further self-improvement
in such qualifications, even though we may realize that their fuller
acquisition will not be a swift matter nor a simple one. We shall thus
unfold the characteristics stage by stage, not all at once.
Most of us begin as sinners ; we may only hope to end one day as
sages. But there is an immense difference between the man who
wallows contentedly in his sins and the man who lifts himself up
dissatisfied and discontented after every occasion of sinning. The
first is bogged and aimless, whereas the second is not only moving
but possesses right direction. For the pure joy of ennobling character,
sharpening intelligence and gaining strength as we proceed is one of
the uncounted profits of philosophy. A mere glimpse at the qualities
needed for such a chastening study will prove that they can be no
mere polish to show off a man's intellect nor even a cultural ornament
; they demand much from a man but in the end they give more,
for they possess plenty of bearing on this business of making both
material livelihood and eternal life. They lead to a balanced understanding
of the whole of life, not for theoretical display but for
effective and sensible action. It has already been shown that the
practical justification of religion is its advocacy of the good life ; it
shall later be shown that the practical justification of philosophy is
its advocacy of the best life. Even if this study does nothing more,
the practical and psychological aims it sets before us will have laid
the firm mental and moral foundation for an exceptional personality,
who is sure sooner or later to be marked out for superiority in one
sphere or another. It will become a safe guide to proper action and a
satisfaction of the purest and most exalted feelings. We shall undergo
a profound transformation for the better of attitude, outlook and
habits.. Thus those sacrificial hours which are given to philosophic
discipline or study are not given in vain. The deity whom we thus
worship well rewards its faithful devotees.
It would be easy for the inexperienced to undervalue the necessity
of these seven psychological qualifications, but the striving philosopher
knows that they are his most precious attributes. With them
he is rendered ready for enlightenment and may hope to realize life's
supreme goal, but without them-never !
The Truth Above All. The first characteristic is none other than a
strong yearning to find truth. The aspirant must learn how to go
down on his knees for freedom from ignorance. No Asiatic sage of

olden days would even touch on the alphabet of philosophy to any
enquirer if he noticed that this yearning was absent or extremely
feeble. One cannot set a water-sodden wood pile ablaze until it is
somewhat dry; neither can any honest teacher take a satisfied
worldling, to whom the world needs no questioning and looks good
enough as it is, and take his mind to the higher regions of being.
This yearning is a higher octave of the same deep-felt longing to get
at the hidden heart of life which mystics call "the manifestation of
Grace", only here it rises from compelling emotion to calm thought
as it takes a more advanced form and demands ultimate truth rather
than temporary satisfaction. Not many are born with such an
attribute of loving truth for its own sake, for ordinarily the mind
does not want to exert itself to find it. Those others who acquire it
later in life usually do so out of the depths of agonized suffering,
tragic loss or disappointment with religion or mysticism. It may also
arise from personal contact with a genuine sage, when the outward
demonstration of its benefits, especially in critical times, may become
both plainly apparent and mentally attractive.
The desire for truth really means the desire to get rid of ignorance.
No truly thoughtful man can rest satisfied like a merely sensual
animal, but after initial wonder or doubt about the cosmic spectacle
must at some time or other strive to tear aside the veil that hides
life's meaning. He must be bent on the removal of this ignorance ;
if he dogmatizes that truth is unattainable he thereby becomes
unqualified. Let him strive first, and never desist from such striving,
if he wishes to dogmatize correctly on this point.
And whoever is merely or momentarily curious likewise renders
himself unfit, for he too will soon fall by the wayside. Wisdom must
win a man as her ardent disciple or not at all. He is best fitted for
philosophy who is attracted to it by a burning passion for truth
rather than by an ascetic repugnance to the world. Truth demands a
deep devotion before revealment. Very few want it so strongly.
Most men and women may be interested in it as a hobby or for polite
intellectual discussion, but stop short at permitting it to tincture
their lives. Therefore they axe hoodwinked, and given shoddy substitutes,
because just as in everyday transactions for material things
they get only what they pay for. They are soon tested on this quest,
anyhow. Those who are unconsciously insincere or whose motives
are quite mediocre or whose aims are limited will let their love of
lesser but more tangible things outweigh their love of intangible
truth. For they will be brought to consider deeply and deliberately
whether by time or by teacher not only if they want the highest truth
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but also if they want it irrespective of its unpleasantness or pleasantness.
The right kind of seeker will pursue it to the end and then accept
it whatever its taste, be it like poison or like nectar, for he has understood
the implication and felt the force of Bacon's saying that "No
pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of
truth." Whoever yearns to hear the veiled goddess's call and to
follow her wherever she be found, whether in unfamiliar lands or in
unfamiliar thoughts, becomes her beloved votary.
Hold On and Hope On. But the goddess will not walk in like an
apparition to visit him ; he must go in restless search of her. It will
be quite natural therefore for anyone who feels such a strong truthward
yearning to strive in consequence to possess the second qualification,
which is an enduring determination to take up the quest of
truth and persevere, come what may, until the goal is reached. The
quest is inevitably a long and steep hill which must be climbed with
struggle and effort, rather than a flat road where progress is easy and
predictable. This single factor of unabated endurance amid all the
perplexity and darkness which envelop the aspirant is most essential
if he is not to tire in discouragement and forgo the quest. It is
essential because it give* him the propulsive force which he needs to
drive him onwards through all difficulties, across all disadvantages
and against all obstacles, rendering him strong enough indeed to
carry through to the bitter end. Even he who does feel the truthyearning
must guard it well, for he is swimming against the stream of
superficial present-day environments-a hard task but a manageable
one, because whoever is really in earnest receives an undaunted
courage born of despair.
Defeatist moods of mind and heart will inevitably blow over him
and go, but the determination to carry on with the quest must
remain. Mental chameleons who change the colour of their goal with
every year cannot suit this path. The seeker must be patient enough
to endure steadfastly both trials and temptations, troubles and joys,
and yet remain as patiently determined as before. Tests and ordeals
will beset his whole worldly path and constantly assail his mind.
Let us return to our analogy of an explorer and say that he has
set out to cross Northern Africa from coast to coast. If he were to
stop short-at any point of his journey and turn back because of lack
of water or hostile environment or attacks by sand-flies, snakes and
mosquitoes he would never reach the other coast. The seeker after
truth must be no less keen within his own sphere of intellectual
exploration and refuse to turn aside from pressing onward in his

settled direction. He must know how to continue with studies that
yield no immediate fruit and how to wait for the favoured moment
of illumination. None of us is entirely our own master and all must
await the proper time, the destined hour of higher comprehension,
and yet we must not slack in our work whilst waiting. Time is thus a
factor which must be allowed for. Colonel Lindbergh's leap across
the Atlantic was in its day a feat which was sung to the skies in which
he flew. But it came only after he had already practised seven
thousand lesser trips. The glamour of philosophic achievement gives
vivid colour to a historic name, but beneath the story of success runs
an unseen river of persistent and patient day-by-day toil. The
revelation of truth must grow little by little within oneself as it
draws the mind to a gradual transfiguration ; albeit its final realization
may occur with startling suddenness.
We must fight our own weakness of purpose. The real struggle in
life is the struggle of man against himself. It is the one which fewest
enter because it asks so much from him. Yet it is the only one which
is really worth while. Nothing great or grand can be obtained by
mere wanting. To get one must be prepared to give-oneself ! There
was once a wandering teacher in Galilee who noticed the common
inclination to feebleness in his own followers. He had to tell them :
"Those that do my words shall know my doctrine."
The determined mind achieves most. When the pressure-valve
on a steam boiler begins to rise a greater volume of energy begins to
come out of the-engine. When the same wires which carried a feeble
current of electricity suddenly begin to carry a high voltage, results
improve as quickly. These things are parables which man should
heed.
Finally, philosophic determination to ascertain what is truth
refuses to confuse defeat with failure. From the first it draws the
dividends of warning or wisdom, but the second it never acknowledges.
Think! The third required characteristic is thinking-power, an
intelligence sufficiently vigorous to weigh the relative importance of
things or validity of statements correctly and not merely conventionally.
Philosophy demands perspective It seeks to see things as
they really are. This implies a certain -nental alertness which is
awake to the trite but true saying that things are not always what
they appear to be. The false often appears or is made to appear as
the true. Reasoning should be so independent that it produces a
stubborn refusal to accept any opinion merely because everyone else
holds it. The herd sinks in the flood of the opinions and theories of
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others because it is held mentally by erroneous beliefs, seeming
realities and misleading appearances, but the Thinker stands firm.
The way out from this bondage is right reflection, deep analysis and
constant enquiry-all combined in quest of truth. This study involves
much new and not at all easy thinking; our generation may not
assimilate much of it but the pioneer minds certainly can. An intense
intelligence is required. We must think, we must act, not for ourselves
but for truth. Such cultivation of rational insight will facilitate the
understanding of the philosophy.
Nor is this all the implication. Equally important is the keen
capacity to distinguish what is ephemeral from what is eternal, the
things of a day from the things of a lifetime, the passing show of
material existence from the relatively more permanent mental
factors. It might be called the sixth sense, which knows what is
genuinely fundamental in the game of living. It should so act that it
leads to a constant exercise of discernment between those values
which are enduring and those which are merely temporary.. And it
should so love strict fact rather than pleasant fancy that the determination
to discriminate the real from the illusory, which is most
essential throughout the study and practice of philosophy, gradually
becomes uppermost.
Philosophy cannot become intelligible without much mental
effort; it is hard to follow-so hard that the effort is often like trying
to walk on a logical tight-ropg without losing balance-and those
who are unable or unwilling to put the effort forth will necessarily
find parts of this book a puzzle no matter how plain its language.
The intellectually timid and the mentally weak often excuse themselves
by saying that such enquiries are unnecessary. This is because
they do not know the place of truthful thought in life ; consequently
they do not understand that to stimulate thought is no less needed
than to inform it.
To play with a few problems in order to be able to air some witty
remarks to admiring society does not make anyone a philosopher.
He alone who will think matters out to their final end, who will hunt
every question down to its central issue and not hesitate at any
point because he comes counter to a notion held by all other men,
who will ruthlessly apply the conclusion he makes to the life he
leads, is worthy of the name of truth-seeker. Whoever is unwilling
to examine a tenet in order to find out whether it be true or not,
merely because its alien face is completely unfamiliar, has no right
to receive truth. And whoever is deterred from enquiring into a
doctrine because it is not held within his own country or among his
own people, but hails from another land and from people of another
complexion, is equally unworthy of this priceless gift. Reason knows
no geographical frontiers. In this sphere of philosophical research
the introduction of political bias or racial prejudice against tenet or
teacher is utterly fatal to success.
The ordinary man is impatient of sustained reflection and is
governed by immediate impressions; he jumps too quickly to
conclusions, often basing them on superficial and misleading appearances.
Thus he remains bound by ignorance. This weakness is a
defect which can be overcome by discipline. Such a mind needs to
deepen and sharpen its own character, and train itself into habits
of travel beneath surfaces. No mind which refuses to undergo such
strengthening and training is capable of the undertaking involved
in philosophy, the quest of what is, Sharpness of understanding is
needed to take away all those things which are not true, all illusions,
and to clear away confusions. Moreover, its need will also become
apparent when in the further volume we shall study the significance
of sleep and dream.
The ultimate ideal is a mind as keen as a Toledo sword-blade
that the steely thrust of its thought may effectively pierce delusions
and fancies, sentiments and superstitions. The most cherished and
cheerful notions may have to vanish when dissected by such a keen
blade, for it will be discovered as this study unfolds, that nearly all
men harbour plenty of illusions merely because the movement of
their mind is faulty and tardy, and because its edge is blunt.
Inner Detachment. When the mind has thus been sharpened it
will be better predisposed to unfold the fourth characteristic. This
is a settled attitude of inner detachment from both the unpleasant
episodes and pleasant attractions which constitute the nadir and
zenith of mundane living. Whatever misfortune the turning wheel of
destiny may bring to the forefront of the student's life, he must
cultivate a hidden indifference, and whatever enjoyment or desires
rule the hour he should not be so strongly attached to them that he
cannot let them quickly go if need be. If he wants to secure a philosophic
perspective he must stand on the ground of such indifference,
because his attachments create mental fa\ ouritism and thus prevent
his reaching a fair impartial attitude when weighing evidence,
pursuing enquiries or delivering judgment. Moreover, such a qualification
is needed so that, the seeker may not be drawn aside from
his quest by temporary allurements. For were he so attached to the
ordinary experience of the world that it meant everything to him,
there would not exist any cause for embarking on this philosophic
quest.
An intelligence which is not stupefied by social convention,
personal status, inordinate ambition, hilarious hedonism or unsatisfied
desires cannot help discerning that life upon this rotating globe
is a changing flux of both favourable and unfavourable events
from which none are exempt. And if this same intelligence is sufficiently
sharp it will also perceive that everything, including itself, is
perishable, everything is evanescent. All worldly attractions, all
earthly possessions, all human relationships, all sensual pleasures as
well as their objects may die or disappear tomorrow. Therefore the
philosophic student is required to cultivate a correct attitude
towards their seductive .glamour, which is to be neither one of blind
infatuation nor of total repulsion. He must assign an accurate value
to this fitful panorama of the passing days if he is not to deceive
himself. When he sees that everything is relative and everyone is
transient he will understand that they can yield only a relative and
transient happiness to him at the best. He must understand that he
is not safe if he regards what is fleeting as the end-all and be-all of his
incarnation. He must therefore become serious enough to use his
intelligence in the uncommon direction of seeking for something
that does not die and does not pass away. Whether such a thing can
be found or not is a different matter, but the quest of philosophy is
for a reality which is enduring and an absolute truth which lies
beyond mere human opinion. But not only does he need his intelligence
to see all this but he also needs his courage to admit it. If he
can travel so far -and few can-he is then prepared to take up the
attitude advocated here-a certain stoic detachment from the
fluctuations of individual fate and an ascetic equanimity towards
pleasure.
There are other minds, however, which may not be so sharp asto
see the need of such an attitude and yet they will arrive at it all the
same, as the outcome of certain experiences through which they
have passed. In them it arises out of great suffering, bitter loss,
sudden shock, unsuccessful striving or profound danger. Such
persons are often quite rich in earthly experience. When they ai:e
bored with paying court to the casual and leaving the fundamental
far behind; when they are tired of fretting through the dark years
and philandering through the bright ones, they unconsciously form
this philosophic characteristic for themselves. The abrasions to
women's hearts caused by unkind or unfaithful men, no less than
the shadowed emptiness which fickle women bring into the hearts of
infatuated men, may eventually cause this qualification to appear t
Thus intense suffering injects some indifference towards life into
human blood.
The world-wide sorrows and sufferings which have bitterly
wounded our century have provided some lesser initiation into such
an attitude. When people observe that the existence of their possessions,
properties and persons is no longer secure, but may disappear
on the morrow; when they have passed through the anguish of
losing the substance of their wealth or the presence of beloved
relatives, they tend to lose something of their attachment to worldly
life. They realize how transient and unstable it is, and the days of
dreadful chaos and continued insecurity become less attractive in
their eyes. Thus sorrow leads to understanding. Every tear becomes
a tutor.
It would be easy for the nature of such a quality to be misunderstood
by those who have never felt it or have never seen it in action
or having seen it manifested theoretically taken it to be what it is
not. It does not imply ascetic running away from human life nor
turning away from personal activity nor even estrangement from
common enjoyments, but something quite different. A mere temporary
disgust due to passing affliction will not suffice. Something
profounder is needed-a veritable casting-off of invisible chains.
Indeed, he who possesses it may outwardly partake of all the same
routine existence of family obligations, work and pleasure as others,
but deep down in his heart he will evaluate it at its true worth as
being transitory and unabiding.
This characteristic need not divorce him from practical and
personal life-he will carry out all their requirements to the letter
and his external relationships may even exist as before-but he will
form a different estimate of them from the common one. He may act
in the same way -as others, but will not get lost in his action. He
may appreciate the delight of comfortable environments and other
attractions and he may know how to enjoy them no less than others.
Nevertheless, he does not pin his hopes for happiness entirely to
such* a basis, for he has a clear sense of the transitory nature of all
things. In this sense only may it be said that he abstains mentally.
Nor does this characteristic mean a weakening of worldly
capacities. It is to be interpreted correctly only when its emphasis
is placed in the background of the mind rather than the forefront.
The man will be as firm and matter-of-fact in his practical dealings
as any business executive, but duty will motivate him more than
desire.
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If there is no room here for a facile "optimism about life, neither is
there place for gloomy pessimism. The goal is too grand for that.
The ordinary person may mask his bitter disappointment or secret
suffering behind a polite smile or a pungent cynicism, but the
philosopher needs no such mask, and even if he has a deeply serious
purpose in life he knows that he can be serious without being solemn.
He may still like to laugh. He will always hope that the time will
never come when he shall be unable to laugh at himself. But should
such an unfortunate mishap befall him, if he is a true philosopher he
will ask his friends but one favour: to wrap him up neatly in a
winding shroud and bear him away quickly to the nearest crematorium
! For he would rather not afflict the world with one who
thinks so highly of self that he has forgotten that his present birth
is but one out of millions, and who thinks so meanly of reality that
he cannot play with his surface life as cheerfully as a child plays
with hoop and stick. And if in his search after truth by the power of
strict reasoning he slay all the poetry of his soul, neglect and lose
all the fine nuances of feeling which come to him through the arts
and Nature, he is undone. If it brings him to the point where a forest
becomes a collection of so many thousand trees and nothing more,
nothing of mellow peace and classic beauty, he is undone. If he
cannot linger for a few minutes every evening to pause amid his
business and watch the play of lovely colours as the sun dies, he is
also undone. The zest for accurate measurement by the logical mind
need not displace the appreciation of charm and atmosphere by the
sensitive heart; there is plenty of room in life for both.
Thus it is both possible and preferable that the philosophic
insight which produces detachment should rest alongside the full
growth of human culture and human activity. Not the loss of passion
or a maimed zest for life is desirable so much as the cultivation of
profound detachment deep within those moments of passion or zest.
Concentration, Calmness and Reverie. The need of gaining the
fifth characteristic has already been mentioned in an earlier chapter.
This consists of ability to practise the technique of meditation. The
general aspects of this technique have been fully dealt with in the
writer's other books, and here it will suffice to note only three points
which the practitioner needs to emphasize specially if he is also
pursuing the philosophic quest. He has here no concern with the
other consequences of yoga. Indeed, occult experiences, extraordinary
visions and similar abnormal happenings will only hinder his progress
in philosophy if he pays them undue attention. They have no
importance here, however encouraging they often are on the mystic
path. The first of these points is the power to regulate the thoughts
and master attention, and then to concentrate fully in any required
direction. The mind possesses a natural tendency to run in various
directions and to flit from one subject to another, on account of
the pressure of emotional attachments, physical environment or
imperfect education. This tendency can be stopped and corrected by
the psychological discipline of meditation. The power to become
completely absorbed in the subject in hand can then be unfolded.
The meaning of such concentration is extreme attentiveness to the
topic under consideration, never permitting it to lapse through
laziness or fatigue. The mind must move only where the will directs
it. Much may be accomplished through this single power of concentration.
It is a steady force which, when directed towards any
purpose or obstacle, overcomes such resistance. The acetylene
welding-ray-which melts the hardest steel-is a fit example of
physical concentration. Similarly the faculty of fixing attention at
will and retaining it ultimately helps to burn a way through the
hardest intellectual problems.
The second factor of philosophic importance to be sought after
in the mystic discipline is equipoise-a calm, steady and even disposition
of mind which will withstand shocks. When passions rage
strongly within a man, when anger flares up too frequently or when
desires threaten to submerge him, he becomes unbalanced. And
when powerful emotional complexes are opposed by adequate
reasons, when domestic troubles or business anxieties unremittingly
distract his attention, or when the temperament is unstable and
vacillating, flitting from one thing to another, mental conflicts
must inevitably arise and harass a man. In all these conditions
steadying of the mind may be effected by meditation practice.
Through its aid a better equilibrium between feelings and thoughts,
between thoughts and thoughts, between passion and reason, may
be tentatively evolved and fitfully maintained. Permanent equilibrium,
however, can be established only by completing a course in
philosophic discipline. Nevertheless, meditation in the hands of a
moderately advanced practitioner can quickly remove violence and
agitation of the mind, as well as pacify its conflicts. Excited feelings
can be subdued, the strength of wrath reduced, and hot desires that
distort life put aside by resort to the discipline of meditation. This
settles the mind down again and restores its evenness and balance,
at any rate for the time being. The Indian yogis call such a
condition of resistance to momentary passions and of general
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self-control "level-headedness". We may prefer to call it "inner
peace".
The third point to be noted is the unfoldment of reverie. This is
of profound importance and the highest value when, in the more
advanced stages, the student attempts to gain the final fruits of his
philosophic effort, the realization of ultimate truth. It is that which
appears in the constant endeavour of the mystic to cease external
activity, to shut out the distractions of his material environment, to
stop the operation of his five senses, and to develop a condition of
complete introversion. The latter is akin to the profound abstractiveness
and creative moods noted in the lives of famous geniuses. This
sustained inwardness may consummate itself even in trance, but the
essential factor is the capacity to re-orientate the attention at will
from the world of concrete things to the world of abstract thoughts.
Many a practical man of business or industrial affairs possesses a
keen sharp mind but is yet unable to move amid abstract ideas
because he can apply his attention only to concrete objects. This
capacity for subtle introspection is an unusual one.
It is now convenient to explain a matter in connection with
mysticism and% yoga which was out of place in the earlier treatment
devoted to it, and which will throw some light upon the formulaproblem
raised in the first chapter. Every philosopher must possess
these three qualities of concentrativeness, calmness, and reverie. In
these respects he will be a mystic, but most mystics are not philosophers.
Mysticism may now be viewed as a disciplinary stage through
which the would-be philosopher must pass if he finds, as most do,
that he lacks such qualifications. The difficulty of completely concentrating
the thoughts in ordinary life, which is so familiar and so
personal, is well known ; how much greater must it be in philosophic
research, which is so remote and impersonal ? The difficulty of such
research soon tires the unwilling mind unless it has previously
developed the strength which comes through such discipline. And
without the complete concentration which mobilizes the mind to a
single-pointed end, and which keeps out extraneous thoughts,
resistance will beset the effort to grasp either the meanings of
philosophic problems or to move onward to their proper solutions.
The lengthy trains of thought in which the philosophical student is
""forced to indulge absolutely demand the presence of this quality.
His mind must be competent to take them up without being shaken
from its purpose by extraneous ideas or disturbing environments.
Furthermore, the composure of mental peace is an essential
prelude to the undisturbed investigation of truth. The man who
cannot keep conflicts and anxieties out of his mind will not be able
to keep his attention uninterruptedly fixed on philosophic matters.
The poise needed for such reflection can be got from meditation and
will help to prevent emotional interferences, remove ideological
obstructions and permit the student to approach his study with a
clearer mind. It is a commonplace fact that excitement darkens
intelligence, that sound well-balanced judgment cannot be delivered
when the mind is full of wrath ; but both are dismissed or disappear
under the calming influence of yoga. Even if a man possess sharp
understanding he may injure its philosophic value if he uses it
when he is angry. The mind must be emotionally free for study.
When hostility to another man or an injury done to oneself rankles
within it, or when it is excessively discontented, it becomes distracted
and to that extent unfit for profound reflection.
It will later become necessary in the course of this quest to defeat
the naive reports of the bodily senses and penetrate to a region they
know not of. This task is difficult because the average man more or
less believes his mind is imprisoned in the body and unconsciously
handicaps himself by this belief, which will be proved erroneous. If
this task is to be achieved it can be done only by first detaching the
mind from its self-imprisonment and thus rendering it flexible
enough to find that region. The habits of introspection and abstraction
engendered by meditation prove indispensable pre-essentials
here. And in the investigation of the significance of sleep the value
of such extreme fineness or subtlety of mind will also be realized.
Moreover, all metaphysical thinking is made much easier by an earlier
experience of meditation. And when the mind must move quickly
from the practical world into the consideration of ultimate principles
and abstract themes the intensely sharp attentiveness of the yogi
can enable him to grasp them more effortlessly.
From these observations it will be seen that philosophy regards
the yoga of concentration as an invaluable psychological training
which it prescribes to qualify a man for.its pursuit. Such yoga
assists the understanding of the world to the extent that it helps to
shape the instrument of mind with which we must get such understanding.
The mystic who unfolds reverie and calmness through
meditation and stops there, intent upon enjoying the peace or
ecstasy he may feel, will remain in ignorance of the supreme truth
about life although he will have gone farther than others in selfknowledge.
He may feel happy, but he will not be wise. To put the
matter in a nutshell, the yoga of philosophical discernment is the
necessary sequel to the yoga of mental concentration. The one is
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required to prepare the mental instrument which must be used in
the operation of the other. *
It must also be repeated that only when meditation is correctly
practised is it likely to be useful for this quest or indeed any other.
When wrongly done or when carried to excess it becomes a hindrance
to philosophic activity, breeding fresh evils, whims and fancies
which will need to be overcome and which were not formerly present.
It should be practised within suitable limits. When people lose sight
of these disciplinary and purificatory purposes of mysticism and
magnify it to the exclusion of all else they not only fail to remove
their complexes but may even increase them !
It will be noticed that the philosophical aim is definitely different
from that of mysticism. In the latter the neophyte rises in the scale
by repressing thought; here he rises by exerting thought. The one
teaches inertia, the emptying of mind, whilst the other teaches
activity, the expansion of mind. Both are correct in their own places,
and do not conflict. The mystic stills the mind in order to get thoughtcontrol,
but once the control is attained he should begin to think vigorously.
Thus he should kill thoughts only to use them better later!
Meditation practice must in this more advanced stage be set behind
the study of philosophy ; the correct order now is to begin with the
one and finish with the other. But the seeker who is satisfied with
nothing short of ultimate realization may not stop even here. For
when his philosophical course is run he will once again drop the
labours of thinking and his mystical practice. This time, however,
thinking will now come to its deserved rest spontaneously, of its
own accord, its purpose fulfilled, whilst his absorption in yoga will
now be a natural day-long process, secret, unmanifest, and not
interfering with his practical everyday activities. It is not possible
to achieve this final stage of ultimate realization unless he has
perfected himself not only in both formal yoga and formal philosophy,
but also in the art of immediately expressing their logical
consequences in vigorous action.
In earlier books, it may be remembered, the writer made a most
elementary fragment of the higher analytic philosophy the basis of
certain meditation exercises, thus attempting what was rarely done
among mystics-to render even the meditation exercises fruitful,
for later philosophic purposes. This was an original contribution
introduced because he did not want his readers to become fools,
which so many mystics appear ardently to desire, and also to prepare
the way for the work of the present volume. Indeed, it was written in
The Quest of the Overself: "This is the true fulfilment of yoga-to
wield thought as a master and then discard i t ." Such a statement was
quite correct and perfectly justifiable when considered in relation
to the level of those for whom it was written, i.e. for those striving to
succeed in the yoga of mental concentration. The highest ideal of
this level is to still the mind, reduce thoughts and bask in the sunshine
of mental peace. But now the student who has made some
progress in meditation and seeks to rise to a higher level ought to
reverse the statement quoted. There will be no contradiction here ;
only a continuation and further fulfilment of the quest into higher
strata. In his exercises he should practise stilling the mind first and
immediately after that awaken it into fullest vigour for the pursuit of
philosophical enquiry. Whereas before he suppressed thought, now
he should seek to examine and direct it. Henceforth he will be alert
to Nature and note her workings where before he dismissed her and
cared only to turn inwards. He may keep his inner peace and stillness
-philosophy will not rob him of that-but he should not imagine it
to be the ultimate goal. It is a stage closer to the apprehension of
reality, but it is not reality itself. If he works in the way recommended
here he will approach still closer to the final apprehension of ultimate
reality. Only near the end of this quest can formal yoga and philosophy
again become co-equals, for then both will have to be fused
and then transcended.
Reason Must Master Emotion. The sixth of this group of psychological
attributes which marks the competent student is not likely
to be palatable to most people. At every stage of philosophical
research the student must suppress his emotions and sentiments
whenever they come into sharp conflict with reason. Whenever the
psychological process has been illuminated it has been found that,
especially in the examination of complex problems, as well as in the
evaluation of rival ideas, the tendency of undisciplined persons to
cloud clear thinking by a confused emotional haze is inveterate.
They usually see the world and interpret the experiences of life
through this haze. It is the business of the student to clear it
away.
The human personality holds within itself congeries of conflicting
desires and contradictory impulses. It provides refuge for
instinctive passions and ancient urges whose deep-seated character is
not always suspected until critical moments bring them fully to the
surface. All these forces are so powerful that it is true to say that
most men live more by feeling than by thinking. The consequence is
that they colour most of their thinking with conscious or subloo
THE HIDDEN TEACHING BEYOND YOGA
conscious wishes and desires, with irrational neurotic fears and other
emotional complexes. They have not seldom been known to put
chains on their feet in the form of disreputable personal cravings
which are essentially harmful to their own interests. The ebb and
flow of these feelings and impulses drives them involuntarily and
renders it difficult for them to base their general attitude towards life
on solid facts or right reasoning.
We may see the meaning of these statements more clearly by
watching unchecked emotion at work in larger fields than that of the
individual. During the tense days of war passion sweeps through
people and often reaches crescendo point. A nation may then be led
like a sheep to slaughter into decisions fatal to its true interest.
During political elections whole crowds fall into emotional excitement
and are then easily swayed by demagogues ; at such times it is
obvious that their minds are obfuscated and rigorous reasoning is
out of the question. And doctors attached to asylums know that
when the emotional excitement of mobs becomes so intense as to be
uncontrollable it is recognizably similar to one of the symptoms of
insanity with which they are quite familiar. Strong gusts of emotionalism
therefore provide a barricade against which the attacks of
reason are futile. Emotion unchecked by reason is one of the great
betrayers of mankind. Two powerful emotions-hate and greed-are
together responsible for many of the crimes in world history. The
passions engendered by sex are responsible for terrible troubles.
Herein lies one of the causes of the traditional privations and vetoes
which society has imposed on the free and full manifestation of
emotion in decent social intercourse.
Now the philosophical student especially cannot afford such
emotional luxuries. He knows that when feeling inundates the whole
life of a man it does so to the detriment of his intellectual nature.
And because his chief instrument of penetration into the domain of
truth is nothing but the mind itself, sharpened to a delicate edge, he
must sooner or later come to a definite choice between the constant
exercise of reason and restraint or the constant indulgence of
emotion and passion. He more than others must beware of delusions
bred by personal sentiment, of letting sober judgment give way to
infectious enthusiasm, of sacrificing cold fact to heated imagination,
and of swinging through the alluring arc of delusions bred by
personal sentiment or sexual desire. He cannot possibly discover
truth if he is not willing to depart from an unreliable standpoint at
its behest. It is not the pleasure or the pain which any idea or event
yields him which is entitled to determine either its truth or its value,

for these emotions merely reveal something about his own character, but
nothing about the true nature of the idea or event itself.
Feelings easily^entangle the thinking faculty and prevent its
clear operation. The irrational element in the human soul is for ever
seeking the feeling of satisfaction and for ever avoiding that of
frustration, merely because the one produces pleasure and the other
pain. Primitive people who have not evolved their reasoning powers
provide a clearer illustration of this principle than civilized men.
And who does not know that the verdicts of anger are mostly
ephemeral, whereas those of reason always endure ?
The questions which come for consideration in philosophy are
often so finely balanced that emotion may quite easily obtrude its
arbitrary judgment against the cooler voice of reason and thus
prevent the student from perceiving the real truth. And his difficulties
are enhanced because human feelings know how to camouflage
themselves cleverly. Human desires in particular are extremely
competent to seduce reason. Few people recognize the real motives
for some of their most important actions. There are many internal
barriers to such recognition that are of their own building or that
are purely inborn. They have wrapped the bandage of many an
emotional complex around themselves which must be painfully
unwound again before truth can be seen. They twist knowledge not
seldom to suit their complexes. A student may in a hypothetical
case even have a sharply developed mind and yet his attachment
through desire may make him favour his belief in the ultimate
materiality of the physical world when all proof might point to its
ultimate nature being essentially mind-stuff.
He may also not like this and that person, yet, for the purpose
of understanding them, he ought to be prepared to refrain from
allowing such a sentiment to sway his examination. Otherwise he
will blunt his power of judgment and blind his faculty of insight.
The learner's liking or disliking of certain facts or certain experiences
has nothing to do with their truth or with their reality. If he
insists on making such attractions or repulsions his guide-as do
most people-then he will never succeed in finding either truth or
reality. The surface of a lake can reflect an image without distortion
only when it is free from disturbance by the wind, alid
the mind can properly enquire into truth only when it is free from
disturbance by strong feelings. Wishful thinking is always pleasant
but often unprofitable.
The hope of philosophy lies in following reason, and not in
thwarting it by following inordinate desires and emotional vagaries.
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Even unbalanced ambition and undue vanity will distort thinking
and prevent the acquisition of accurate knowledge. Anger and hatred
however are notorious misguiders. When unrestrained all these
emotions are lying invaders who nevertheless claim to speak truth.
Hence those who persist in denying reason in the interests of their
feelings thereby render themselves unsuited to this quest, just as
those who prefer to keep their mentalities warped, their passions
untamed and their instinctive repulsions uncontrolled can never
attain a true understanding of the significance of life. For they will
engage themselves in the futile and even impossible endeavour of
fitting truth to a procrustean bed of involuntary and internal
compulsions.
A scientific fidelity to fact irrespective of personal feeling will
alone carry the student to a successful issue of his researches. When
the reasoning faculty is loaded with thick sentiments and narrow
preferences it is soon unconsciously perverted. Every emotion
becomes potentially dangerous when it takes upon itself the task of
guiding reason instead of letting reason guide it. To think truthfully,
therefore, the neophyte must courageously enforce a strict selfdiscipline.
This is the awful sacrifice which he is called to commit,
this holy offering of what he desires upon the lofty altar of what is.
A manifestation of feeling which is peculiarly prone to bring the
unwary student into danger is undue unjustified enthusiasm. It is a
star which often blazes brightly for a time, only to sink down on the
horizon of disappointment. Quite notoriously enthusiasts sail freely
over established facts into an empyrean of mere theory ; not seldom
they lack discrimination and certainly detachment. Therefore their
judgments are often distorted. The seeker must take care therefore
not to be carried away by any kind of enthusiasm when considering
evidence or forming judgment. He should always be on his guard when
in the literary or personal presence of the overheated doctrinaire, as
well as of the hard bigot who has closed his mind. He should refuse
to pronounce upon any subject which he has not investigated upon
sounder evidence than the misrepresentations of his personal
preferences. If he shirks this caution he is likely to open the gate for
phantasies to come into his being or for specious and, delusive
reasoning to mislead him. The novice in philosophy must seriously
set out to train himself to disregard both emotional aversions and
emotional attractions during the hours of his study. He has to free
his mind from its inherited inborn and acquired distortions. He
must not let impossible fancies and wildly visionary excitements
sweep him off his feet. All such imaginations must be brought
analytically into the foreground of the mind and there submitted
to the closest impartial scrutiny. If he resists this process and fails
to insulate himself against them-as he is likely to do in the earlier
stages-he merely delays the time when his feet can be led to
truth.
Thus we arrive at the hoary wisdom that if in the kingdom of men
emotion rules for the moment, reason should rule in the end.
These have been hard sayings. They are likely to be much misunderstood.
Hence a warning must be uttered for the second time
within this chapter that the student is not asked to kill intimate
emotion and destroy warm feeling ; that indeed is quite impossible ;
he is asked only to keep them subordinate to reason and not let
them when contrary to it rise to the top of his being. He may rightly
and usefully appeal to emotion when it is supported by reason. Not
the destructions of sentiment and feeling should be his aim, but their
proper guidance and control. Emotion is a part of man's nature and
is therefore incapable of elimination ; it must be given its fit place
in his life, but reason must direct its course whenever the two come
into collision. Nothing worth keeping is to be stifled, but everything
is to be brought into right relation.
Nor is the worth of properly directed reasonable enthusiasm to
be undervalued. It gives precious driving-force to the novice and
insulates him against biased critics and baseless opposition. Indeed,
all feeling is the propulsive element in human personality and leads
more to action than anything else ; hence the melancholy spectacle
of unfeeling philosophical bookworms who are unable to live up to
their noble reasonings.
However, the aspirant will certainly have to curb the disabling
passions of anger and obliterate the abysmal sin of hatred, because
only such a self-critical habit fits him to find truth. He must make
this resolve plain in every conflict.
He must demand complete candour from himself. Not wanting
to face a problem must not be the excuse for shirking it. He may not
and will not always be able to control the rising surge of feelings or
to check the irrational compulsions from within, but at such times he
ought at least to seek to understand them and weigh them for what
they are. Thus even when he surrenders himself to them he will no
longer do so blindly. It is a considerable gain for the earnest novice
to arrive at such a step.
His desires will surely diminish under the probe of keen analysis
and thus render his mind more peaceful. And out of such governance
of feelings there will inevitably follow a more organized and
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disciplined governance of conduct. He will begin to live as a better
and wiser man.
It should not be surprising after such reflections to learn that
philosophy is more the business of the masculine sex than its counterpart,
and more of maturity rather than of adolescence. It is generally
easier for men to follow this path than for women, although Nature
compensates by rendering the mystic path easier for women.
Women axe naturally more prone than men to permit reason to
stoop to the baits of sentimental emotion and to permit them to
cloud the sky of thought. Due to social causes Western women are
more intellectual than their Eastern sisters, but they cling more
strongly to egoism. Hence i^the matter of this truth-quest they are
no better off. However, it will always remain axiomatic that an
exceptional woman will forge her way out of these weaknesses, face
the unconscious motives which beset her, and claim her higher
heritage from Nature. Finally we find that philosophy is better
suited to those who are nearing middle age than to the youthful.
The young are more quickly moved by emotion and passion than
their elders, who, possessing riper experience in the unwritten
discipline of life, are more level-headed. But here again the beautiful
law of compensation is also at work. For it is the privilege of youth
to tread new paths of thought with a magnificent daring that others
lack.
Give up the Ego! From all these struggles there will slowly
appear of itself the seventh and final characteristic, but the aspirant
must now take up its cultivation in full awareness of what he is
doing and after full deliberation. This is the willingness to look
directly at life through a clear lens and not through one tinted by the
predilections and preconceptions of his ego. It is perhaps the most
difficult of all his preparatory tasks consciously to unfold this
impersonality. However, its importance can hardly be overrated.
Every man who has not undergone the philosophic discipline is
inclined to rate his own judgments far more highly than they merit.
He usually seeks to arrive at conclusions which gratify his implanted
prejudices and satisfy his inherited bias. It is quite customary for
him to accept no facts in an argument save those that dovetail into
his existing outlook. In this way and not infrequently he comes to
reject what he urgently needs, as an invalid may refuse to swallow
a bitter-tasting medicine which he needs far more than the sweet
confection for which he asks.
Every time a man thrusts his ego into a train of thought its

balance is disturbed and its truth-value distorted. I f he is to judge
every fact by the standards of his earlier experience alone he will
thereby prevent new knowledge from arising. When we examine the
manifestations of his mentality in speech and act his general if
unconscious attitude appears to be : "This fits in with what I believe,
therefore it must be true; this agrees with my views, therefore it
must be true ; this fact does not conflict with the facts of which I am
aware, therefore I shall accept i t ; that belief is quite contrary to
what I believe, therefore it must be wrong; that fact does not
interest me, therefore it has no value in discussion ; that explanation
is hard for me to understand, therefore I dismiss it in favour of one
which I can understand and which must consequently be true!"
Whoever wishes to be initiated into genuine philosophy must
begin by casting aside such merely egoistic standpoints. They show
forth his conceit and vanity; his quest of corroboration of his own
preconceptions and prejudices, and not the quest of truth ; his study
of the printed page only to confirm his foregone conclusions; his
resort to a teacher not to gain new knowledge but for endorsement
of his old beliefs. By keeping the " I " foremost in his thinking he is
unconsciously^ drawn into various and vicious fallacies. The sympathies
and antipathies generated by such personal views constitute
hindrances to the discovery of what an idea or object really is in
itself. They often cause a man to see things which do not exist at all,
but which through association of ideas he imagines to exist. It is a
pathological fact that the various forms of insanity and mental
disorder are rooted in the- ego and all the obsessions and complexes
are likewise connected with the I.
He who has not undergone the philosophic discipline is frequently
infatuated with himself and his state of mind is bounded on all sides
by the pronoun " I " . This " I " cheats him out of truth, for it blocks
his path to correct perception. It unconsciously prejudges arguments
or decides upon beliefs in advance, and thus he never has any guarantee
of reaching right conclusions, but only of returning by the
discovery of justifications and rationalizations to the mental standpoint
where he started. He is like a spider caught in a web of its own
weaving. When such egoism dictates the trend of thought reason
must stand aside as impotent. It locks the mind in a cupboard and
thus loses the benefit of new ideas which would fain become entrants
therein. When ego becomes the centre of obsessive states we meet
with minds narrowed by religious bigotry or clouded by metaphysical
meandering or hardened by unreflective materialism or
disequilibrated by traditional beliefs and overweighted by acquired
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ones-all blindly refusing to examine the unfamiliar, the unpalatable
or the unknown and rejecting them off-hand. They willingly believe
what appeals to them and willingly disbelieve what does not, afterwards
inventing rationalizations of their own preferences, but in
neither case is the question "Is this true ?" investigated independently
of their predilections, and the result accepted whether it turns
out to their liking or not.
All this means that those who have the strongest personal views
are the most difficult to lead to truth. Such persons need to absorb
the lesson inculcated by Jesus : "Except ye become as little children
ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." The humility
implied in this phrase has often been misunderstood, It means the
childlike mind and not the childish mind. It does not mean a flabby
surrender to wicked persons or a weak yielding to foolish ones. It
means putting aside all prejudices born from experience and all
preconceptions born from earlier thought until one is undetained
and unperturbed by them when facing the problem of truth. It
means being alienated from personal bias and uninfluenced by
thoughts.of "me" and "mine". It means ceasing to use as an
argument the words " I think so" or " I stick to my belief", and
ceasing to believe that what you know must therefore be true. Such
an argument leads only to mere opinion, not to truth. Personal
beliefs may be false, asserted knowledge fictitious. We must walk
humbly in these philosophical precincts. Teachers of the right kind
are admittedly rare, but so are students !
Now philosophy is a purely disinterested study and demands
that it be approached without previous mental reservations. But
bias is often so deeply rooted and therefore so hidden that students
do not always suspect, let alone detect, its presence. Even many
so-called philosophers of repute have a subconscious determination
to accept nothing that is different from what they expect to learn,
and under such self-suggestion they allow bias to overcome judgment
and prepossession to enslave reason. Therefore the student who is
earnest must deliberately weed out those comfortable subterfuges
behind which he hides his insincerities and hypocrisies of thinking,
his personal weaknesses and selfishnesses. During the course of his
study and whenever he brings his mind to-bear on any problem he
must endeavour to free himself from the pressure of all individual
predilections. Such mental selflessness is uncommon arid will come
only through deliberate development. The student should always
remember that he should first fairly state and then cautiously
examine a case from all sides before delivering judgment. Truth has

nothing to fear from fullness of investigation but is really strengthened
thereby. If then he discovers that he is in error he should
welcome the discovery and not flee from it because he smarts under
the wounds of hurt vanity and unexpected humiliation. He has need
of complete elasticity of mind in order to rid himself of slavery to
prejudice and to attain an inner integrity and genuine mental health.
Bertrand Russell has somewhere pointed out that "the kernel of
the scientific outlook is the refusal to regard our own desires, tastes
and interests as affording a key to the understanding of the world-".
This is an excellent statement of the qualification here demanded,
the de-personalization of all enquiry into knowledge, the mental
recording of things as they are and not as we wish them to be, the
setting of every problem in a detached mental background.
The student may not dodge an issue. He ought not to shrink
from wrestling with his own complexes. He has no option but to
face them staunchly. He must be truthful to himself at least, trying
to rise above private preconception, for in this way alone can he
view things in their right perspective. His adherence to truth must
be as incorruptible and as admirable as was that of Socrates. A firm
intellectual objectivity rather than a weak wish-fulfilment will
emancipate his mind from bondage to the ego and enable it to take
truth in without offering resistance. Thus it will be raised to an
atmosphere of impartiality and impersonality and trained in
untainted self-denying thinking which alone can advance him to
correct insight. And even those who declare this task too difficult in
everyday life can at least endeavour to aim temporarily at its ideal
during the minutes or hours devoted to these studies.
Wherever truth leads, there the aspirant must follow. If he betrays
his rational insight and proves traitor to his highest ideal at the
clamorous bidding of- preconceptions which demand a low conformity
he condemns himself to the penalty of being perpetually
captive to common ignorance.
CHAPTER VI

HITHERTO this study has proceeded on the common assumption
that the words used, being in everyday general circulation,
were well understood by both writer and reader. But the
hidden philosophy, true to its determination to take no assumption
for granted, now rises in revolt against such universal complacency
and demands that we learn to know more precisely what we are
talking about. In fact it stresses immense importance upon the
analysis of language and the uncovering of meaning as an essential
foundation of the rigorous thinking which enters into its construction.
Nor is the feeling of this need of verbal clarification a peculiarly
Asiatic one, although Asia alone has carried its satisfaction not only
farther but to the inexorable and logical end. A distinguished Professor
of the University of London not long ago made the amazing
confession that:
"When I undertook the task of expressing my own philosophy
in non-philosophic language, I found, with considerable astonishment,
how vague was my own apprehension of the real meaning
of technical terms which I habitually used with considerable
precision. The attempt to discover their meaning proved to be
the first philosophical discipline to which I have ever submitted,
and of more value for the understanding of philosophy than any,
scholarly study of classical texts." 
When a famous philosopher makes such a disconcerting discovery-
which is tantamount to admitting that he only half-knew
what he had been talking about-we should be prepared for even
greater shocks when we come to examine the way in which ordinary -
people habitually use language. Such an examination forms an
essential part of this course, because we cannot get away from words;
they constitute the medium of communication, thought, study and
understanding. They are the tools with which we work. What will
be revealed in this chapter may well make timid people start with
surprise or draw back in fear. The student who has survived the
humiliations inflicted by the preceding chapter and is yet willing to
proceed further may now prepare to have more of his personal idols
thrown down. But here the missiles shall be aimed at words !
Thus we are warned to heed the grave importance of verbal
expression. It behoves us to be careful indeed in this realm of written
or spoken language. For the whole mind writes itself down in the
word. Our thinking processes are to a large extent the pensioners of
language. We cannot sarry on conceptual thought without the help
of words. Most of man's thinking, as distinct from perceiving, is done
in words rather than in pictures. They give form to thought and
provide the tools which must be used by reason. In the last analysis
words are but servants of thought, and like all servants should be
kept in their proper places. We iflay have therefore to become
more cautious and hesitant in our free use of words, but we shall be
the gainers even though our neighbours may be the losers.
There was once a British Labour Party politician who could get
up on a platform and speak fluently and easily on any subject. He
went away for a two-year course of study at Ruskin College, where
men of his party and class were given the equivalent of part of a
university education. After that time he came back a changed man.
He now spoke slowly and hesitatingly. Why ? The increase of intellectual
capital had made him lose his former cocksureness and
conviction : hence he became more wary of words.
The next point to note is to avoid the temptation of seemingly
saying too much whilst actually saying too little. Men often disguise
the emptiness of their heads in the glamorous profuseness of their
flourishing verbiage. Sankara Acharya, an Indian sage of the
ninth century, compared the effusive learned among his contemporaries
to men who get lost in a forest of long words. Hamlet
waxed eloquent in his three-word answer to Polonius' question as to
what he was reading: "Words, words, words." The parrot-like
abuse of language either ties thought and entangles it in thick
knots, which must first be unravelled to think rightly, or it produces
* a treacherous facility of reading which conveys the illusion of progress
in knowledge. Those who mistake verbosity for wisdom and
volume for truth like to rev.el in a pretentious maze of words, but
those who know how elusive both wisdom and truth are treat
words gingerly. They speak before they think, tracing and retracing
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their steps in constant confusion, whereas the others think before
they speak.
On the other hand, it is equally dangerous to accurate comprehension
to say too little. Two schoolboys read the word pencil.
The first is poor and immediately thinks of a broken wooden stub
of lead pencil. The other is rich and at once connotes the word with
a gold propelling pencil. The writer of the word was thinking of
neither, for he meant a full-length wooden pencil. Thus fragmentary
and inconsequential statements cannot lead to correct understanding
of communicated experience. Language should be adequate to
meaning; when it is not, then we are either left to grope in mental
twilight or apt to supply meanings of our own manufacture which
may turn out to be false assumptions.
It is a common mistake to assume that the meanings of most
words are self-evident. The fact is that many have different nuances
of significance. The language of incompleteness is an obstruction to
adequate comprehension. It is (r)ften said, for instance, that a particular
public measure, if passed into law, will be a great boon. But
what is a boon to one man may be the reverse to another. If it is a
question of driving a railroad through a farmer's land the proposal
might be a boon to the public but an injury to the farmer. Similarly
it is quite useless for anyone to say that the world is progressing and
to leave it at that. The horrors which have bein let loose on humanity
during the two major wars of this century indicate technical progress,
but they do not indicate any moral progress on the part of those
who have perpetrated these horrors, but rather the reverse. It is
therefore necessary to particularize the application of such indefinite
terms. Unless this is made explicit by extending a statement
such terms are useless from the point of view of the enquirer into
the truth of a matter, however useful for oratorically impressing
and mentally dazzling a thoughtless public.
A word that is read but not thoroughly understood is a word
that is dead. Unless completely intelligible meaning flies from the
spoken or written word to the mind we are left unprofited. How
much more then should we learn to give careful attention to the
words we use in important study and serious discussion ?
This uncertainty is the real source from which many an unnecessary
controversy flows and the real cause of many a useless
dispute. Much intellectual disputation about "facts" is really about
the actual meaning of words without reference to things, and thus
becomes as meaningless as the dispute whether it is the convex or
concave side of a circumference that forms a circle. When we move

amid ambiguous language we move amid treacherous people of
whom we should beware. Century-old bickerings still drag on because
of this defect. Nebulous words have been responsible for giving a
three-thousand-year-long headache to bewildered metaphysicians.
How can two people hope to attain perfect mutual understanding
when they use two different thoughts for the same word or two
different words for the same thing ? How many avoidable disputes,
how many unnecessary arguments, have arisen from such a hidden
cause ?
Suppose someone utters the word man during a discussion in
which five other persons are taking part. And suppose that he is
thinking of an Indian monk with slim figure, brown skin and shaven
head. What happens in the minds of those who hear him ? The first
forms a mental picture of an extremely tall man with powerful
figure and ruddy complexion. The second sees with his mental eye an
extremely short man with stout figure and sallow complexion. The
third thinks of a man with middle stature, medium build and fair
complexion. The fourth pictures to himself an old grey-haired man,
whilst the fifth frames in his mind the idea of a young brown-haired
man. Which of these five definitions corresponds to the idea held by
the speaker himself ? None of the six people therefore could give a
settled significance to ^this simple and comfnon word man. This
seemingly easy word can give rise to a plethora of different definitions.
When hearers react variously to the utterance of such a
common word, when they fail to exhibit uniform agreement in such
a simple case, it becomes clear that many conflicting meanings are
created or found by those who receive words which are never
intended by those who utter them. Nor is escape from such ambiguities
wholly avoidable. Those who would make man stand everywhere
for the same idea must immediately limit it to the single instance of
a particular man out of the millions who dwell on this teeming earth
and thus leave all the rest unnamed! Such a procedure is quite
impracticable. For the everyday affairs of life it usually suffices to
use any workable definition of this word, but for the higher affairs of
accurate reflection this is a dangerous habit. The only satisfactory
method of treating it, then, is to demand or supply a more extended
description of the kind of man about whom we are talking.
But this is only an instance of unintelligibility arising out of the
incomplete use of a single word. When the same word brings different
images to the minds of different persons, what is likely to happen
when several words of such ambiguous significance are combined
into a number of sentences ?
124
Satisfactory communication is achieved only when a content is
communicated and understood by the reader precisely as the writer
himself understood it.'
The service which a word renders will depend on the significance
it is given by those who use it. A word which does not possess a
common meaning for all ceases to possess a common value for all.
When it is used so indefinitely that it can be used to refer to several
mental concepts it becomes dangerous ground on which to tread.
How many people talk at cross-purposes, indulge in bitter controversies
or argue in vain, merely because the same words mean
different things to the minds of different persons! If, therefore, to
free language from its interpretational pitfalls and to translate
perfectly meaning from one mind to another is infinitely harder
than the multitude supposes, how much more difficult must it be
when making philosophical enquiries ? Socrates was probably the
first semantic enquirer outside Asia. We may now understand why
he went about questioning teachers and troubling talkers for
definitions.
It is therefore not always enough to define the meaning of a
word: we must often define the precise application of a word.
Otherwise in speaking or reading a word may be given one meaning
in the mind of one party but something different may be the thought
of another. What seems wealth to a destitute person will seem
poverty to one with a large.bank balance. In a case like this it is
necessary to relate the word "wealth" to a particular sphere in
order to bring out its full significance. Although it is more befitting
children than grown men to talk without having clear and distinct
ideas of what they are talking about, a little enquiry will reveal that
people habitually move in a haze of vague thought and unclear
notions,'merely because they never trouble to go deeply into what
their terms signify.
Then, again, meaning fluctuates with every man that uses a word.
He can perceive in it only what his past experience and present
capacity permit him to perceive. Consequently the same word may
mean much to one man and little to another. Let us not be blind to
such limitations of language. To the poor peasant in Italy the word
America once conjured up a vision of a land where wealth abounded
and where he hoped to emigrate in order to get rich quickly. The
same word in the mind of an unemployed Italian workman living in
Chicago now evokes quite a different meaning. He pictures a land
where reigns a merciless struggle for the survival of the fittest and
where poverty grinds more harshly than in his native country.
The derivative meaning of a word is nothing. Whatever society
or the individual chooses to affix to it becomes its acquired interpretation.
Usage alone counts. A meaning may even vary from one
century to another and from one author to another. A modern
English Lexicon may hardly approve of the meaning given by an
obsolete, one. Thought must inevitably fall into fallacy when it is
inconsistent in the use of terms and assigns now one meaning and
now a different one to the same word. Not that it is suggested that
words shall be fixed in meaning unto all eternity and that they shall
never be used except in a single sense. Such a desire would be
impossible of fulfilment. Even today with all our dictionaries it has
proved impossible. Language is a flux and for ever on the move. It
adapts and re-adapts itself as it tries laggardly to catch up with the
times. It is not, never has been, and never can be static. It has grown
simply because it possesses the characteristic of change, expansion
and loss. It is as subject to the processes of birth and decay as any
other form of human activity. But what is desirable is that significance
must first be clearly settled by mutual definition and then
consistently adhered to whenever such a word is used, if it plays an
important part in instruction or discussion. To take for granted
that we know what it means is to put on mental blinkers.
No words are really wrong ones and none right. A word becomes
so only by the wrong or right use we make of it. It becomes defective
only when we understand it defectively. And for everyday use no
word is quite meaningless because every word is given^a significance
by the mind of its user or hearer. Therefore we must separate the
intended meaning of a word from the accepted meaning if we would
achieve accurate transmission,. But it is when we turn to philosophical
usage that grave problems arise and we find baffling obscurity and
sable darkness where the outside world finds complete clarity and
sun-like brilliance.
The Psycho-Pathology of Words. An act which is beyond question
never permissible to any mathematician is the introduction of
personal favouritism, emotional bias or subjective self-interest in
either his use or understanding of an algebraic sign or geometric
symbol. The student must take a valuable lesson from such a
specialist and apply it to his own handling of linguistic signs and
symbols, i.e. words. Thus many persons pronounce such a judgment
as "This is excellent tea !" when they would be more correct if they
confessed, "J regard'this as excellent tea." The difference between
these two linguistic forms may be unimportant when mere tea is at
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stake, but it is vital when philosophic truth is at stake, because it is
the wide difference between objective fact and unconscious personal
projection upon fact. Indeed, many erroneous popular assumptions
are the consequence of such structurally defective language.
Psycho-pathological factors peep through every phrase used by
the undisciplined mind when its speech comes forth. When an
object or an event is distasteful to a man he uses quite a different
term of reference than he would use were it to his liking. But because
in both cases his individual feelings-and not the object or event
itself-have dictated the adoption of the particular term, the terms
used cannot constitute accurate indicators of the referent. It is
dangerous in fact to assume that we know what a word means
merely because it stirs strong feelings in us. How careful therefore
must the seeker after truth be when he enters this realm of language !
People suit meanings to their personal wishes. When somebody
succeeds in overturning a government by violent means he refers
to himself as the head of the new government, but to his rivals as
traitors. During the struggle for power, however, he was himself
referred to by the then existing government as guilty of committing
treason and therefore branded as a traitor. If he were then a traitor
he could not have ceased to be one afterwards, and if he were not,
then the former government was using the word in a wholly incorrect
sense, or, in plainer language, telling lies. Hence a traitor never
succeeds, because when he does he ceases to be one in both law and
fact. It is only the unsuccessful who are dubbed traitors ! In both
cases the word represents a confusion of thought with desire, and
has taken on a purely private value.
We colour interpretations of words with personal emotions of
like or dislike and thus play false to accuracy. Labour leaders are
not infrequently referred to as ' 'agitators" by unsympathetic
employers but as "bourgeois conservatives" by workmen who hold
extreme views. Thus if we listen to both sides and are too lazy to
make a critical analysis for ourselves we shall learn that the definition
of labour leader is someone who is simultaneously a revolutionary
and a reactionary ! From such instances the immense value of verbal
analysis becomes clearly apparent, for it assists us to separate stark
fact from prejudiced opinion.
When the religious propagandist or the political controversialist
uses a name like atheist or radical with such heated scorn as to make
the name itself deliver judgment before any rational discussion is
possible, it is evident that he is uninterested in reaching the truth
about these terms but merely wishes to sway emotion and mesmerize
his audience into acceptance. When an innocent term is uttered in
tones of contempt or disgust as though it were an abusive epithet
the mentally unguarded masses rarely pause to examine fairly the
idea which underlies it but fall victim to the subtle psychological
suggestion.
Catchwords and slogan-phrases are favourite methods of unprincipled
politicians, cheap demagogues, unethical advertisers and all
who care more for gain than for truth. They use such phrases to let
loose in large numbers of people's minds over-emphasized emotions,
concealed misstatements, deliberate half-truths, or distorted images
that obstruct sound judgment. People repeat such slogans under the
delusion thafc they are thinking. However handy these catchphrases
are to such propagandists, it is advisable to enquire more
closely into their meaning before we may accept them, just as
we must look beneath the embellishments of oratory to find its
substance. %
Superficial conceptions have become so strongly ingrained in our
language that truer ones can dislodge them only after meeting with
and vanquishing the utmost resistance. The ordinary unthinking
loose-lipped man is unwilling to trouble himself with this clash and
conflict of significances, so the philosopher must bear the struggle
alone. Language-the choice of words and the structure of sentences
-may markedly help or hinder the philosophic quest, and that is
why the philosopher must be tremendously more careful about its
use than others. The irresponsible carelessness of ordinary men
becomes utterly unpardonable in him.
The successes of modern science have been chiefly achieved
because it deals essentially with facts. The failure of medieval logic
or scholasticism arose because it dealt essentially with words. The
success of the hidden philosophy in solving the problem of truth has
been largely attained because it deals with both facts and words.
Medieval theology or scholasticism is filled with numerous pseudoquestions,
such as how many angels can rest on the point of a needle,
merely because it never took the trouble to find out what it really
knew. 1 'Better be ignorant than be a theologian and know so much
that is untrue" said an American business man who worshipped in
his own mystical way and knew how to die nobly and high-faithed
when the Lusitania was sunk.
The dangers of metaphorical phrases are far better known than
the dangers of literal ones. When we shall come to the study of mind
we shall discover how the conjunction of a tiny preposition of two
letters with an anatomical figure of speech is accountable for much
that is wrong in our outlook. For when we speak of a thought being
"in my head" we unconsciously force the mind into the bony box of
the skull. Thus we give it certain limited dimensions in space without
ever having enquired whether it be so located or not. We shall
discover at the end of our enquiry that this is not a fact and that the
use of this dangerous spatial metaphor misleads us into confusion
and error.
Ordinary language is careless language. It tolerates illogicalities,
ambiguities, unrealities, illusions and deceptions. Words, statements
and definitions possess an important bearing on the solution of
philosophical problems. Thus the ordinary man is quite rightly
content to say " I see a tree." This kind of statement is perfectly in
order for everyday practical use, but it is insufficient for philosophy.
The student has to learn to ask : "What is the correct significance of
the statement that I see a tree ?" Through this dissection of word
and sentence he gains the inestimable benefit of separating fact from
assertion and truth from assumption. It is the bringing into the full
glare of light the everlasting struggle between what is certain and
what is uncertain. It is indeed a solid achievement to find out what
he really knows and what he does not know but wrongly thinks he
does! Thus he can move forward, but otherwise he is either brought
to a standstill or wastes years in pursuing phantoms. Thus he pares
away smug notions of assumed knowledge, cuts them to pieces as it
were.
Men may unconsciously enshrine their whole attitude towards
life in two or three words which they carelessly utter. The individual
process of mentation reveals itself in the shortest phrase and the
longest sentence. What is our reaction to the word supernatural ? It
will be piously defined in one way by a clergyman but in quite a
different and scornful way by a sceptic. Thus the same word will
certainly yield conflicting definitions. Whatever meaning both
individuals may arbitrarily associate with this word, they believe
that they are getting a definition, but what they really get is a
thought that answers to their personal idea of the definition. Hence
they will mistakenly suppose that they are interpreting facts when
they are only interpreting their own or other people's imaginations
concerning these facts.
In the end the definition which a man gives depends on his
individual theory of the universe. Meaning becomes a creation of the
mind! Thus the element of personal preconception, against which
the philosophical student has already been so strongly warned, will
tend to creep again into the most unsuspected places, into his use or

understanding of these counters of thought which totalize into
language.
Every word has therefore two meanings: the external meaning,
which is the objective fact or event in external experience, and the
internal meaning, which is the idea of that fact or event which is
formed in the mind. The fact itself and the statement of it will always
differ and never meet, do what we like. Whatever meaning we may
assign to a term, it can never wholly correspond to the thing which
it labels. For it is only a preferred abstraction-using the latter term
in its technical sense. We all know what Napoleon said to his troops
before the Battle of the Pyramids, but nobody knows the precise
shade of tone in which his words were spoken and the precise feeling
they aroused in each soldier. Therefore we would be more accurate
in confessing that we know something about his famous exhortation
but we do not and can never know all about the eve$t.
Words tell us what is in our imagination, not what is in the thing
itself. They speak about our own imagined definition rather than
about what really is. In consequence there is a further snare which
lies waiting for the heedless against which we must also be on guard.
It is impossible to verify directly any statement made by another
concerning his personal experience. We can only accept the truth of
his statement on an analogical or inferential basis, i.e. indirectly.
Whatever he tells us, all we can do is to imagine the idea that is held
by his mind. Therefore where we dupe ourselves into the belief that
direct understanding has been reached and duplicate verification
achieved, we really get an individual imagination. When we use the
same name as others for an object, we are often deceived into thinking
that all are concerned with the same object. But no object can
possibly be alike in all respects to all observers. The mountain which
I see is not the same as that seen by another observer who is standing
in a different position, for instance. Yet we both call it by the same
designation ! Let us be frank with ourselves in such cases and
realize that we often entertain mental images different from those
of other persons, whilst both of us apply the same label to these
dissimilar entities.
The man who has received news of the death of a most beloved
friend may, in response to a question, explain how sad he feels about
the event. But his hearer can only get a rough grasp of what he
hears, never of what the other man feels. And because powers of
verbal expression may be feeble in the other man's case, even this
approximate understanding may be still more imperfect than it
would have been in another case. Anyway, the essential point is that
I
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there is and must be a gap between what the bereaved man says and
what he actually feels. Therefore this gap is a pointer to the fact that
verbal meaning is necessarily both incomplete and imperfect meaning,
i.e. not strictly accurate !
Hence the word does not and cannot represent all the idea. It
tells us something about the idea, it is no more than an excerpt of the
total meaning, that is all. The smug satisfaction which we often
feci when we speak to express ourselves is a fallacious one. It is and
shall ever be only partially supported and supportable by successful
communication. Is the meaning of the word table, for instance, the
mental image which rises in someone's mind with its utterance or is
it the thought of the particular object at which his hearer sits down
to dine ? If it is the latter we are then faced with the problem that
the particular image which rises in the hearer's mind may differ
largely from the table which was being thought of by the speaker of
the word. His may be a three-legged one, whereas the other is fourlegged.
Linguistic conventions cannot be trusted. We must evidently go
beyond the mere word or its sound if we would get precision. We
ought to keep clearly before us the actual relationship between the
term and the thing itself. The educated man will irritably assert that
he knows what words mean, but really he frequently mistakes his
mastery of grammatical correctness and his width of vocabulary for
the actual knowledge which this language-structure represents. For
words are not things. It is easy to confuse the written word with
the actual thing or to forget that the spoken word is only an abstraction
made from the thing it signifies. At the best a word will convey only
a selective approximation of the thought or emotion, the event or
the fact, which is in its speaker's mind. Such an error may turn the
word into a stumbling-block which prevents a proper knowledge of
the object itself.
The student of philosophy must therefore take care to separate
the word from the. thought it stands for and the thought again from
the thing it stands for. Then only may he perceive accurately what
worth the word has for him. He must analyse individual words and
sentence-structures by retranslating them into factual rather thain
imagined referents. This demands probing beneath surfaces as a
surgeon probes with his lancet. He must be quite clear on this point:
that the meaning of a word may itself be purely verbal, i.e. nothing
more than a number of other words, or it may be utterly non-verbal,
i.e. an actual thing ; and if it is the latter there is the further question
of how much of that thing is symbolized by the word. Descriptive
sentences tell us something about a part of an object, but they fail
to tell us about the whole of it because they are necessarily always
abstractions. For this they are not to be blamed as they possess,
like all things, their limitations and we ought not to expect them to
perform miracles. But, this said, we need not make matters worse
by being loose, slipshod, vague and careless when pouring thoughtstuff
into the linguistic matrix.
It is customary for most of the untechnical laity, when first
presented with these problems of meaning, to brush them aside as
being too obvious for special attention or too trivial for prolonged
consideration. And even professed students of philosophy are not
infrequently highly impatient when subjected to this novel crossexamination
of what seems plain and familiar everyday language.
They regard it as a waste of time at best and a positive nuisance at
worst. They can see neither tangible profit nor particular interest in
such a task. Nor can they see its connection with the quest of truth.
They ask what has all this preoccupation with mere words to do with
philosophy. Is it not the proper concern of the philologist only ?
The answer is that the full implication of such semantic study
can come only with the fuller unfoldment of this course. Only when
this research is well advanced will the student come adequately to
realize for himself why the importance of this investigation has been
insisted on, in face of the fact that most educated people assume
that they understand quite well the words which they habitually use.
Nevertheless, even within the limit of the present chapter something
of its usefulness will be shown.
The would-be philosopher who has equipped himself psychologically
for his expedition will see the whole expanse of existence
as his province. He has to set out to explore sub-surfaces for the
truth of what he hears or reads, as well as what he says or writes,
for the truth of the world around him, for the truth of what he thinks
and what others think, and for the truth of the world within, i.e. the
mind. But he has to start somewhere and it will be most convenient
to start at the nearest point, which means that he should begin with
words, because all his other knowledge will have to be formulated in
words.
His enquiry starts then by making himself as mentally uneasy
and as linguistically uncomfortable as possible ! He has to go out to
do some ghost-laying ! For most men, perhaps all men, have been
conversing with thin phantoms and dealing with transparent wraiths
under the delusive impression that they were solid figures of flesh. In
short, he has to find out how much of his word-formulated thought
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and speech is sheet nonsense and how much is verifiable and veritable
fact, how much is mere misunderstanding and how much is authentic
interpretation. The more he makes his meanings clear to himself and
to others, the nearer he gets to truth. Non-ambiguity is therefore an
essential ingredient of the efficient philosophic vocabulary. The
arbitrary use of words may often be unimportant in the world of
mundane matters, but where the reception or communication of
truth is in question he must be extremely careful to fix their precise
significance, so as to render them immune to misunderstanding.
With a well-defined set of terms constituting a common language
between writer and reader, both may hope to make some progress.
Without it both may fall into the old trap of building up an entire
philosophical structure out of nothing more substantial than mere
ambiguity.
To consider such verbal dissection as pure pedantry is therefore
quite wrong. It is part of the essential equipment for ascertaining truth.
Whoever will not give time to this preparatory effort is doomed to
remain outside the porch of philosophy. Many hope to evade this
fatiguing labour and yet gain the slow-growing fruits of philosophy !
How little do they know that an appreciative mastery of verbal
analysis will later enable them to turn the flanks of specious arguments
and false assumptions, thus clearing the ground for their
onward progress towards truth! For words grow into sentences,
which in their turn develop into entire systems of statements that
embody whole trains of thinking. If the words themselves presuppose
what is actually false, who can get at truth by mingling
them with other words ?
If men persist in maintaining an attitude of indifference towards
the problems of meaning they render themselves unfit to proceed
with further philosophical study. For the psychological effect of
their obstinacy is nothing less than the desertion of the labour of
thinking and nothing more than an unspoken claim to knowledge,
which, in fact, does not really exist inside their heads. It is equivalent
to a sudden paralysis of the reasoning "faculty. It leads to
acceptance of specious arguments. They ignorantly imagine that
such problems are purely fanciful and academic and belong to the
region of worthless medieval discussions, such as the one already
mentioned of how many angels could dance on the point of a needle !
In this they are wholly mistaken. The solution of these problems
has both a practical and philosophical application, a value quite
unsuspected by those who have not deeply delved into them.
This demand for philosophic precision in the handling of terms

is not ail arbitrary one. It-is really a demand for clearing the ground,
because progress is impeded by false and misleading notions. It is a
demand that we examine words in order to draw a clear line between
fact and falsity, detect the fallacies which underlie their use, and lay
bare unwarranted or unconscious assumptions. We are thus to
watch for unguarded expressions which give a status to meaningless
nonsense.
Strange Discoveries about Truth, God and Spirit. Philosophy is the
comprehensive quest of impregnable truth, the underlying significance
of all existence. Most men who subscribe to the doctrine of a
particular religion, cult, or school of thought lazily adopt an attitude
which regards those doctrines as constituting the last word in wisdom,
an attitude which is often most impatient of contradiction. The
unconscious implication of such an attitude is therefore, "J know
that this is true." But how is it possible for them to be certain that
what they know is true if they have not previously examined its
very foundations analytically and critically, if they have not made a
similar study of all comparative and conflicting doctrines, and above
all if they have not still earlier endeavoured to ascertain the proper
meaning of truth ? We cannot do better, in order to provide a
glimpse into one philosophical application of the principles just
laid down, than to start examining into the meanings given to this
word truth by some contemporaries.
Let us take pains to discover what the learned can inform us
about truth. We find it defined in a standard dictionary as "being
true or truthful; a true statement; accuracy of representation ; the
real explanation". When we turn to the writings of philosophers to
ascertain their definition, an interesting variety of theories of truth
or opinions of truth is put before us ! The Pragmatic school says,
with William James, that "the true is the name of whatever proves
itself to be good in the way of belief". Those who hold to the Correspondence
theory say that "truth is that which conforms to fact
and corresponds to the actual situation". The protagonists of the
Coherence theory say that truth is consistency. Others say that the
word truth is liable to four further interpretations : it may firstly be
taken as something that is unopposed. It may secondly be taken as
indicating a factual reality; it may thirdly be taken as merely a
statement about that factual reality ; lastly it may indicate a correct
relation existing between two things, two persons or two units as
3 + 2 = 5.
From this medley of mutually conflicting definitions we perceive
that the term is so protean that it is strictly no better than a strange
jargon, and that the common belief that everyone knows its meaning
is merely an erroneous assumption. The differences in connotation
are too wide to make clear-cut sense. Yet the world uses this word
"truth" glibly and pretends to possess an adequate understanding
of its meaning. This is where the world obviously deceives itself. The
ordinary man soon falls a victim to the seductive simplicity of this
short word and never dreams that it is nothing more than a startingpost
in the race for philosophic understanding. Yet to him it is the
finishing-post!
The hardest thing in the world is to reach truth, the easiest to
reach its simulacrum. That is why every man fancies he knows the
truth. In the philosophical dictionary this word should be assigned
the most important place of all, as it is in the best texts of India,
but the West has been unable to find a fixed definition to which its
thinkers can agree. Generally they have not occupied themselves
with the question of defining truth although they are familiar with
the importance of the general principle of defining their terms. But
it is their common belief that the nature of the ultimate truth cannot
be determined and that therefore it is useless to attempt to define
the unknowable. But if philosophy is to live up/to its professed
purpose of ascertaining the meaning of the Whole, i.e. the truth of
the Whole, what other fate awaits its writers and readers than a fall
into obscurity when this most important word evades uncontradictable
definition ? Those few, however, who have attempted the task
offer such unashamedly different denotations that it is quite clear
they are offering mere opinions under elaborate linguistic guise. All
the current definitions have their weaknesses and can be overthrown
by a keen mentality.
We thus arrive at the appalling position that the meaning of
some of the most important words used in the quest of truth is not
fixed but is purely relative to their interpretation. Such a discovery
helps to explain, however, why Buddha maintained a calm silence
when a hearer questioned him as to the nature of Nirvana and why
Jesus maintained a similar silence when Pontius Pilate questioned
him as to the nature of Truth. Whatever answer either of these two
would have given would inevitably have meant something imagined,
hence something different, in the mind of the questioner from what
it meant in the speaker's own mind. But the complete explanation of
these mysterious silences belongs to the most advanced part of this
course.
It will perhaps be asked where is the grave importance of arriving

at a universally acceptable and completely uncontradictable definition
of the nature of truth before actually arriving at truth itself ?
The answer must be that we are like explorers in an unknown
continent who must have a guide to direct their movements, whether
that guide be a living man or a mechanical compass. A trustworthy
definition of truth would provide right direction for the efforts of
thinkers by showing them the path to be followed for its attainment.
It would warn them like the moving needle of a compass whenever
they were headed for delusion, error and deception, and it would
encouragingly reassure them whenever they were going forward to
the right goal. It would blaze perpetually in the mental sky like the
pole-star so that they need not lose themselves in useless speculation
or grope vainly among fanciful theories. Nor is this all. It would
prevent them deceiving themselves into the acceptance of a "truth"
merely because it be pleasant to their taste. It would enable them to
avoid acceptance of their own or someone else's imagination about
truth as being truth itself. It would give a final certitude of outlook
unpossessed by those who do not know whether what they believe is
truth or not and who are therefore always liable to change their
mind.
A further glimpse of the philosophical value of vigorous verbal
analysis may now be given. How many men are wholly drugged or
half-awed by the mere sound of an impressive word like God and
thus deflected from calm verification and impartial analysis of all
its implication ? This word gives great comfort and magical solace to
millions of people, but the truth-seeker, alas ! can derive no comfort
from it in advance before he has considered the thought itself rather
than the word. Because society has used this word continuously
throughout several centuries superficial minds come to assume that
the word must therefore represent a "something" which exists
within human experience, which is. The student, however, must first
analyse psychologically what they have done. For he must start with
a basis of enquiry which shall be dogma-free and yet fruitful for the
growth of understanding, otherwise it is mere verbiage. Specific and
accurate definition must be this starting-point in study. He has not
the good fortune of those glib clergymen and wise theologians who
speak of God with such familiarity and such certitude as to give the
impression that they were doubtless present when He created the
world, or at least as if, in the words of Matthew Arnold, "he were a
person in the next street".
The first thing which he then discovers is that this brief threeletter
word can be understood in many different senses. As he
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rummages through the cluster of pious associations which it possesses
he soon perceives that ten men may utter the word "God"
but important differences of view may lie concealed beneath each
utterance, although it is heard as one and the same sound. The word
may mean a personal or an impersonal being, it may mean the
abstract totality of the laws of Nature or a particular individual
existence, a piece of carven wood or a moulded metal image. In the
mind of a primitive man it is a purely animistic term, whereas in the
mind of the late Lord Haldane it was an abstract and absolute one.
The student should not limit his enquiry to the conception held in
his immediate locality or in his country or among his race ; he is a
seeker after the truth of all life and therefore he must collect and
compare conceptions from every quarter of the globe. He will then
discover that there are racial gods like Jehovah, tribal gods galore,
personal rulers of the universe like Vishnu, and impersonal and
universal spirits without any form at all, and that the human mind,
in its primitivity, worships a Deity totally unlike that which it
worships in its maturity.
His attempt to get under the skin of this term and fix its full
significance thus carries him into a weary task which is as interminable
as it is inconsequential. For do what he may he is wholly
unable to discover what exactly is meant by this disarmingly short
word. It is susceptible of a diversity of strange interpretations. It
may furnish fifteen meanings to as many persons. It has probably
given rise to more nebulous vapourizing than any other word in the
dictionary. All that he can discover is what a multitude of persons,
ranging from simple Fiji Islanders to finished university graduates,
imagine, believe, hope, suppose, trust or visualize the meaning may
be, but none-not a single person-really knows what it is. The
bewildering consequence is that all their definitions contradict each
other. The diversity of definitions given to "God", not merely by
uncouth barbarians but by educated people, is really scandalous.
Few mental Gods are alike. Because they are forced to use words as
prime elements of their thinking, because meaning must first flow
into word-shapes before it can be properly appropriated by the mind,
this motley multitude of talkers about God do not really know what
they are talking about when they do not know the precise meaning
of the word. And not only do they not know themselves what they
are talking about but those who listen to them do not really understand
them either. For the notions that are received and formed in
their minds are likely to be quite other than those formed by the
minds of the talkers. All, in fact, have objectified their personal


assumptions into the word and through the latter into the world
that environs them.
The student of philosophy should not submit unresistingly to
such an extraordinary situation. He must put himself on guard and
take antiseptic precautions against these serious dangers to mental
health. He has to apply the test of disinterested thinking to the
confident talk about God which constantly pours into his ears or
passes in print before his eyes. He cannot do this merely by consulting
a printed dictionary for an answer to the question, "What is the
significance of God ?" He should know that all dictionaries are merely
attempts to stabilize meanings and that they have never fully
succeeded in their aim because different dictionaries offer different
meanings, and that after all they are but indicators of interpretational
opinion existing at the time of compilation : their authority is
not absolute. He can do it only by reframing his question thus:
"What is felt in my mind when I use this word ? What is there in
experience of the world or life which corresponds to the term God ?"
Thus when we deeply consider "the meaning of meaning" we
find that it is, after all, only an idea in the mind, a thought which we
hold, or even an imagination which we construct. And because it
possesses a purely mental existence it is never possible to compare
the idea held in one man's mind with that held in another's. Two
external objects such as pencils can easily be placed side by side and
compared, but not two internal ideas. Consequently each hearer or
reader of a word may and will imagine only what he prefers as the
meaning. Accurate communication and perfect reception are thereby
defeated. Such a defeat can only be averted by entering more carefully
into cautious examination and prior definition. When the
student has not only understood how to assess the worth of words,
but also how to assess the meaning of meaning, then the time has
come when he may hope to discover what God truly is, in contrast
to what some people merely imagine Him to be, but before then-
never! His discovery will not come at once, it will not be made
indeed until the end of his philosophic quest, but if he perseveres it
will come, and thereafter he will no more be deceived by the graven
images of false Gods.
A word which has also played much part in entrapping men in
false conceptions or bewildering them with vague ones is spiritual.
It has been used by totalitarian dictators to label their outlook on
life, but it has also been used by their opponents ! There is something
ironic in the way in which dictators and democrats have mutually
accused each other of being materialistic and unspiritual. There is
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obviously much confusion here in the notions possessed by politicians
about this attractive word. But when we enter into the spheres of
religion and mysticism the confusion increases greatly. We hear of
"spiritual" experiences which, on analytical examination, turn out
to be magnificent emotional titillations, or extremely imaginative
flights, or beautiful moods of intense peace, or crudely sentimental
conversions, or visions of immaterial beings, and so on. The possible
interpretations are therefore many. Finally, if we say that a certain
man is very spiritual one hearer thinks it means that he is noble in
character, another believes that it indicates he is possessed of a
tranquil temperament, a third imagines that he lives a life of ascetic
simplicity and solitude, a fourth pictures him as being ultra-religious,
whilst a fifth regards him as living in a mysterious state of consciousness
unknown to ordinary mortals and so forth. Thus each definition
differs from all the others.
Let us now analyse more deeply the implication of the word
spiritual. Whatever be the nature of anyone's spiritual experience
or consciousness, trace it to ah analytical terminus and it will be
discovered that it is his mind that tells him of it and it is his mind
that enables him to know it as existent in his life. Now the mind can
only make us aware of anything -whether it be a tiny fly or a great
God-by entertaining the thought of it. Therefore whatever is
known in any way is known ultimately as a thought. Spiritual
experiences and spiritual consciousness are no exception to this
universal rule. They too are really nothing more than thoughts,
however unusual in character they might otherwise be. Hence there
is no difference between the word spiritual and the word mental. All
conscious life is thought-life. The most "spiritual" man lives in
thoughts as much as the most materialistic man. He cannot do
otherwise and remain awake.
It is now possible to understand not only why people form no
clear and consistent notion of the meaning of spiritual, but also why
they never can form one. All that they can do is unconsciously to
construct imaginatively a meaning which pleases their personal
taste or temperament. The philosopher must refuse to be captivated
by the charm of this word and by deeper thinking discipline his own
use of the term so that he achieves clarification of what he is talking
about.
What is a Fact ? A fourth linguistic enemy, against whose superficial
acceptance the philosopher must war lest it deceive and entrap
him in illusion, is fact. For the philosophy of truth prides itself in


being based on facts rather than on beliefs. But what is a fact ?
Here is a word whose meaning in everyday usage is commonly
taken for granted, but even a slight analytical enquiry will show that
it treacherously shades off into quite a number of other nuances. If
anyone arbitrarily accepts the first or third of all these interpretations
because the effort of further enquiry is too troublesome,
how can he assure himself that his knowledge is really based on
facts ?
Suppose a boy is walking home in the dim twilight and notices
that a coiled snake is lying beside the road. He hurries on and later
meets another traveller, who, however, is proceeding in the opposite
direction. The former-deems it his duty to inform him of the fact
that a snake is resting further along the road and to warn him against
accidentally treading on it and being bitten in consequence. The
next day the boy meets the same man, who informs him that he shot
at the snake and then approached it. To his astonishment he found
it to be no reptile at all but merely a coil of thick rope. The dimness
of the light had deceived them both ! The reptile was but a creature
of their unverified imagination, an unconscious self-deception.
Was it a fact that the boy saw a snake ? The answer must be yes.
Was it a fact that the object seen was really a rope ? The answer
must again be in the affirmative. But suppose he had never met the
other man again. Would he not have stoutly asserted it was a fact
that he had seen a snake just as the man would now stoutly assert
the "fact" that the boy had not seen any snake at all ?
It will be clear to the thoughtful mind that we must be more
wary when using this term. If a fact is something reported by the
five senses, then it is possible for the senses to deceive us and to
provide us with a misrepresentation of it. In that case the student
must add the word fact to the list whose uncritical use he ought to
regard with suspicion. If, instead of thinking, " I have seen a snake,"
he had thought, "I have seen something which appears to have the
characteristics of a snake," he would not have misled himself and
others so easily.
This, however, is the simplest of his difficulties in accepting the
term. Words which belong to the pre-scientific age and to conceptions
far off in time and space still permeate our language and may
actually mislead him now that their referent is something about
which contemporary knowledge shows an enormous extension. The
results which have been achieved in our generation could not have
been achieved in any earlier age, for they have largely been made
possible by the marvellous new instruments and delicate apparatus

which have been devised and invented to help the five senses function
where they could not function so finely before. Thus the microscope,
the telescope and the spectroscope, the sensitive photographic
surface and the photo-electric cell have made visual reports possible
which the unaided human eye could not have got otherwise.
The microscope, for instance, reveals a new world to our eyes, a
wonderful world which shows .that the corpse we thought statically
dead is in truth dynamically alive with active parasites, that the
water we thought uninhabited simply teems with minute living
creatures, that the razor-edge we thought perfectly straight is sawlike
and crooked, and that what is perceptible to the gross senses is
only a pitifully slight abstraction of what is still imperceptible. A
few centuries ago everybody glibly said that the unaided first
impressions referred to facts, whereas modern science now declares
that the later ones alone refer to facts. Both groups of observations
seem to contradict each other, or appear to falsify each other. Yet
millions of people have been thinking and many still think of the
simpler observations as being facts.
We still go on applying the old primitive terms to such phenomena,
although every student of science now knows them to be technically
inaccurate and misleading. Our minds still use concepts of the world
as it is signalled by the naked senses. Our talk still embraces verbal
expressions based on those delusive concepts. Language trails like a
laggard far in rear of our knowledge. How can those who unguardedly
use such a deceptive medium of thought, understanding and communication
ever hope to bring the ultimate truth of life within their
reach ?
For what in the last analysis is the significance of these statements
? It is that men may easily read their own beliefs into the
word fact. When we consider matter scientifically we learn that every
material object is constituted of whirling electrons. Your typewriter
may report itself to the senses as continuously existent and constant,
but it reports itself to modern laboratory enquiry as an energy
whose waves undulate away in a moment. Still more, science, having
failed to find an ultimate substance, has dropped the word "object",
for the word "event", so that your machine is a complex of events in
* 'space-time'' which can never identically recur twice. The typewriter,
as a space-time fact, can never be identical at successive moments of
time. So long as your concern with the machine is merely a practical
one, these considerations may not interest you, for they have no
value when you want to write on a sheet. But wjien your concern is a
scientific one, because you seek to learn more truth about the typeTHE
WORSHIP OF WORDS

writer as a material object among many others, these considerations
become vitally important. It would then be erroneous and misleading
if you thought of the word typewriter, i.e. defined it, in the same
way that you would think of it from the practical standpoint.
Should you stick stubbornly and slavishly to the old pre-scientific
definition it is quite obvious that you would never get at the scientific
truth, but be tricked by the five senses and corrupted by the
word itself. If you insist on regarding the term "fact" as holding
only the superficial content which the ordinary man usually assigns
it, i.e. referring to matter in its crudest sense, to whatever is tangible
to the unaided five senses, you remain in an atmosphere of thought
which prevents the acquisition of truth.
Nor is this all. If you could wait for thousands of years and watch
the process of gradual rust and eventual decay through which the
typewriter would pass, it would eventually crumble away into dust
and vanish from sight altogether. It would thus be transformed into
some other "stuff". In an altogether new form it wrould somehow
continue existence. Enquiry into the nature of that ultimate
existence is a work that rises beyond science into philosophy, which
then reveals a previously unsuspected version of the meaning of
"fact" to which the student will come in due course, and which is at
present beyond the horizon of the specialized scientist.
Philosophy is thus not satisfied with knowing the fact of a
moment: it wants also to know the permanent fact, if there be one.
Hence it is of little use to the philosopher to be told that something
is a fact when the statement is made by someone who has never
sought to know the characteristics and tests of a fact. If he wants to
get effectively at ultimate truth he has indeed to retranslate some part
of the terminology of everyday life. He cannot use even such a prescientific
term as ' 'fact'' indiscriminately without mutilating modern
knowledge, for it is but one of a number of major words borrowed
from the realm of everyday experience which carelessly used may
hinder him from attaining right thinking because their meanings
are too blurred by popular misusage. How much more will this be
the case when he ascends beyond the scientific level into the still
more rarefied atmosphere of their philosophic interpretation! Such
correction of his vocabulary will lead to the correction of his thinking,
because both are inseparable. Unconsidered words of this
character carry a heavy burden of ancient half-understandings,
primitive miscomprehensions and erroneous modes of early thought
from which they ought to be purified whenever they are utilized for
anything higher than rudimentary practical purposes. Release from

these defects should be sought. Language is linked with knowledge
and should logically evolve with it, not drag painfully behind it.
Our examination of these four terms, truth, God, spiritual, fact,
has revealed the contradictory definitions which each one may yield
to different users. They are glibly uttered by everybody, by men in
the street who have never given a day's thought to them, by many
who are even incapable of giving them such thought, and-let it be
said!-by every mystic who presumes his ecstatic experiences
entitle him to speak the last word concerning them. How can any of
these people rightly possess certitude when he has not taken the
trouble previously to ascertain what it is that corresponds to his
words ? But the haziness of his thoughts provides him with convenient
shelter under which to take cover against troublesome
questions or sudden doubts. The student cannot afford to tolerate
such weakness.
This examination has also shown the vital importance of obtaining
a definite understanding of word-thoughts which can act as a
working compass to lead him out of all this confusion and give him
right direction in the quest. This effort to reach semantic understanding
is what the student must seek to achieve from now onwards,
and he must also bring within its scope certain other important
terms of a similar nature as they arise. He must guard against using
words which bring emotional satisfaction but lack intellectual
enlightenment; he must beware of terms that cater to ancient prejudice
and ingrained habit but define nothing factual. He must recognize
that to release himself from the tyranny of superficially used
language is to release his mind from the burden of ignorance and
misunderstanding. He must protect himself against false theories
which rest not on verified fact but on fictions of purely verbal
construction.
It is not the purpose of the present chapter to take up all the
chief ideas expressed in religious, mystic, philosophic or everyday
terms and analyse them. Words like intellect, reason, reality,
exist, mind and so on will appear and be defined in the course of
this book, and a re-education of thinking may be effected when
their meaning is properly attended to. The precise purpose here is
to prepare the reader's mind by broadly showing the way to deal
accurately with the verbal problems that arise, by explaining the
general principle which must be followed -from now on. Tht first
difficulty of the problems of philosophy is that their real nature is
usually hidden from those that seek to solve them because the
language terms in which these problems are stated stand at the end
of a long series of known and unknown processes. Analysis helps to
unearth what is implicit in them.
The seeker will therefore have to apply the method of verbal
discipline not only now but at every further step of his study. Jlence
he must here learn to pick up a special intellectual characteristic.
He was told in the previous chapter to pick up certain other characteristics
essential to philosophical enquiry. These two chapters are
therefore quite complementary. A consequence of this effort will be
that he will gradually escape from the delusion which often haunts
so many religious, mystical and metaphysical people among others,
that they have learnt something veridically new whereas they have
actually learnt nothing but sounding words. He will discover that
people explore words for ideas which they do not contain, never have
contained, and never can contain, words that are often mere hollow
sounds. He will come specially to beware of those indefinite meanings,
those emotional words which sound so full of sense but are actually
full of non-sense. Politicians, orators and demagogues particularly
are fond of using grandiloquent words, slogans and phrases which
either reek with gross overstatement or mean absolutely nothing
relevant at all, or which are intended to arouse strong blind feelings,
or which seek to cover uncomfortable facts-and do !
They possess a glamorous spell, a mesmeric effect which gives a
semblance of significance to them but which hides their emptiness.
When he resolutely analyses such sentences he can destroy their
false pretensions to knowledge.
The use of meaningless words may lead even a reputedly intelligent
man to believe that he is investigating given data and objective
facts, when in reality he i� merely investigating his own. hallucinations
in which he may be thoroughly entangled like a fly caught
in a spider's web. Most people are under the delusion that every
word must necessarily represent a non-verbal thing. But there may
actually be nothing at all behind its surface. The falsity of this belief
that every word must needs possess a meaning is demonstrated by
the possibility of using such phrases as "the son of a sterile woman"
and "flowers in the sky", which are clearly ridiculous even to a
schoolboy, but are no more ridiculous to a philosopher than numerous
expressions which are thoughtlessly used by people in the highest to
the lowest circles.
The basis of this criticism is that one ought to be silent about the
truth of those things whose existence one has never verified and can
never verify. To speak in such a case is to imagine, and therefore to
depart from the straight road of strict fact. We ought not to permit a
word to deceive us into believing that we are dealing with objects,
experiences and existences when in actuality we are doing nothing
of the sort.
"Does this word designate something real or something fictitious
?" should become a constant query when faced with assertions
made by many advocates and most propagandists. When a word
does duty for the inconceivable it may soon blind the judgment of a
man and lead him to accept the non-existent. This is pseudointerpretation,
this shooting one meaningless term after another
and moving in a circle which returns to the original word without
having provided any real explanation of meaning during its journey.
Magnificent verbal worlds are thus constructed in which their
creators live happily ever after! Men everywhere entertain false
opinions through their incorrigible habit of inferring that something
named is something that exists, through their traditional tendency
to mistake empty words for substantial realities. Hence Hie need to
examine statements to ascertain whether they are really thinkable
or whether they are merely pseudo-meanings-sets of symbols with
nothing substantial in human experience that actually corresponds
to them. In short, it is the need to get at what is truly known, to
unveil hidden assumptions, and to elucidate what is being done when
a thing is said to be true.
The student of philosophy has no option but to begin by distrusting
every word which does not represent a particular thing within
definite and universal personal experience. He must doubt the
verbal idols which former men or present tradition have set up for
his worship. He must put aside the simple faith that the existence
of a word necessarily signifies the existence of a thing or of an idea
denominated by that word. He may then discover, to his astonishment,
that its supposed existence is no existence at all! Of course,
although such a word does not represent any existent object, as is
supposed, it may represent a feeling of the one who utters it and in its
turn it may stimulate another feeling of the same class in the hearer.
Thus he has to seek for the solid substance behind the show of
language, to-get at the' 'meaning of meanings". Before he can rightly
start with a sentence like ' 'What is the nature of the world around
me?" he should ask, "What is the character of this expression
'nature of the world' ? " He has to learn how to frame questions
rightly if he is to secure correct answers. Eighteenth-century chemists
lost themselves in the falsity of the phlogiston theory because they
asked "What special substance is involved in the process of burning?"
instead of asking, "What kind of process is burning?"


Language must be adjusted to fit the pursuit of philosophy, and not
vice vetsa. Words which carry no meaning must be ruthlessly
abandoned. Words which carry false meaning must be rigorously
corrected. Words which carry ambiguous meaning must be sharply
clarified. Words which pretend to represent fact but really represent
imagination must be revealed for what they are. All such words hold
the budding philosopher in fetters and limit the field of his enquiry
until he sunders the conceptual reality of their meanings from the
actual reality, the fictitious significance from the real significance.
The elucidation of their ultimate meanings is a necessary stage in
the elucidation of ultimate truth, because it involves the wholesale
reconstruction of thought.
The re-orientation involved in this revision of verbal evaluations
to bring them into conformity with the philosophical outlook is
admittedly painful at first. It may be troublesome to become meticulously
linguistically self-conscious, but the arduous effort passes into
easy habit with time. Nevertheless the half-educated frankly find it
a bore, whilst the feminine sex usually find it a bother ! Hence we
observe few women take to philosophy and few men care for it also,
unless either their mental background or yearning for truth is of the
right quality.
It is tiue to add that the general effect of this verb&l self-training
will certainly appear within the field of everyday living. As the mind
becomes more exacting in its demands on thoughts and words
during philosophical enquiry, so will it slowly and automatically
extend the habit to include ordinary practical affairs. The universally
careless condition which characterizes most thinking, permeates
much wilting and distorts daily conversation will give way gradually
to significant, purposeful and realistic certitude. These consequences
are likely to be far-reaching indeed. Not merely the labels but the
very stuff of thought will be altered and improved. When we pay
attention to meaning we are paying attention to. something whose
range extends far beyond the sphere of communication or learning;
it is carried over by its own impetus of habit into other environments
and other fields of activity where we reap the consequent
benefits. It is not too much to say that it leads to a mental re-education.
We thus unfold a capacity for independent thinking. "Words
plainly force and overrule the understanding," confessed that
master of words, Francis Bacon. He was shrewd enough to point out
that of all the obstacles to right reasoning those imposed by words
were "the most troublesome of all", and his warning to all would-bephilosophers
is to be ever remembered : "Words, like a Tartar's bow,
K
do shoot back upon the understanding and mightily entangle and
pervert the judgment." If the structure of language is after all but
a system of implication, the possibilities of error and uncertainty
are very real. Statements which imperfectly represent a thing may
always lead to incorrect thought upon it.
As before in this book it is necessary to utter another warning.
There should be no misunderstanding of the function of linguistic
analysis. It is not meant that speech should exist only for the purpose
of conveying facts. It is not meant that all metaphorical
language, all the beauties of poetry, all the pleasures of fiction, all
the relaxations of humour and all imaginative work should be
neither expressed nor appreciated. The light and often grossly
exaggerated touches which humour gives to conversation, the
colourful patches which the reading of novels gives to leisure, are
not to be rejected in disdain. There is nothing said here against such
reasonable enjoyments of life. "Be a philosopher," counselled Scotch
Hume,' 'but amidst all your philosophy be still a man."
What is really meant is that, whether talking or appreciating
humorous nonsense, one ought not to be oblivious of the fact that
it is nonsense ; that when writing or reading fanciful unrealities one
ought to know just what one is doing and not fall into the belief
that there is any substance to these fancies ; and that amid all the
petty talk inseparable from social life one is not carried away into
unconsciousness of its pettiness or into confusion of the practical
with the philosophical necessities. What we require for everyday life
is not necessarily to be judged by the standards of what we require
for philosophical research. We may indulge in as much nonsense as
we please in connection with the former within the limits of personal
taste, but we may not indulge in the slightest nonsense in connection
with the latter. We may utter a million meaningless words during
the gossip of a lifetime without doing much or any harm to ourselves,
but we may not utter or think a single meaningless word
during the philosophical quest without losing our right direction.
We may load our sentences with as much artistic imaginativeness or
emotional colour as we wish, so long as we do not deceive ourselves
thereby and can acknowledge what has been done. We may peruse
page after page of fiction so long as we understand the unphilosophical
nature of the language we are dealing with. We may even
harangue a political audience with misleading metaphors and
figurative innuendoes if that be our lot, but we ought not to fall into
the errors which we prepare for others. 
Language need not be drained of colouring and fancy, provided

we retain the consciousness that it is colouring and fancy. Art is as
admissible into the philosopher's life as into the empiricist's. We
may enjoy all these to the full, only let us not set them up as the
standards whereby truth also is to be judged and let us keep them in
consciousness outside the purlieus of our keen quest for what is
ultimately real. We must renounce them to ascend the altitudes like
a cold ascetic renouncing the world, but we may pick them up again
calmly the moment the mind turns from this study. Thus a twofold
viewpoint will gradually develop, the practical and the philosophic.
Such a duality will last as long as man is a seeker, *but to the sage
who has attaired the hidden goal all life becomes a sublime unity
and there is nothing for him to guard against.
What is it that the mind does when it searches for a meaning ?
This question provides a philosophic task of the first magnitude and
its answer is itself a mental triumph.
This chapter may be summed up by the statement that when a
man speaks or writes he reveals not only what he does know but also
and unconsciously what he does not know. His ignorance, no less than
his knowledge, lies naked in his sentences to the philosophic insight.
They constitute a document of self-revelation, a manifestation of his
subconscious no less than of his conscious mind. Only the sage can
ever achieve an exact formulation of his knowledge, where others
reveal the poverty of their thinking by their use of ambiguous,
biased, inexact or empty linguistic constructions, for he alone has
burrowed to the roots of his own ideas. Thus too only the sage can
detect from the style of man's speech, the character of his linguistic
structures, the precise stage on the road to truth to which his
intelligence and his knowledge have advanced.
Philosophical analysis in linguistic matters along the lines
indicated here will help the student to see whether any statement
which he or others may make conveys genuine information or mere
misinformation. For the philosophy of truth is taught in a particular
and peculiar way. It begins to lead men to truth by pointing out
their error, by showing where they think or talk nonsense, by causing
them to unlearn illusory knowledge and then by reminding them
that penetration to a deeper level of enquiry is possible and desirable.
It is established in the mind of its students not so much by the
affirmation of what is as by the elimination of what is not. It displays
the leading principles of all other known views of existence and then
proceeds to show their falsity and mistakes. When these false views
are once thrown out of the mind they carry away with them
numerous problems, pseudo-problems and tormenting questions
CHAPTER VII
THE ARBITRAMENT OF THINKING POWER
" \TT J AS a further and finally satisfactory source of obtaining
\ A / knowledge available ?" Such was the question asked in the
* * first chapter of this book after a brief reference to religious
faith, logical thought and mystic experience characterized them all as
partial, insufficient and devoid of absolute certainty. The subsequent
chapters have supplied further facts for this conclusion. An analysis
must now be conducted and an answer found, if possible, to the
question which heads this paragraph. It should not be thought,
however, that faith, intuition, logical thinking and mystic trance are
valueless. On the contrary, they have their proper places and particular
uses, but they should be regarded only as steps. They are
not and can never be perfect instruments for the service of a man
who is seeking nothing less than complete certitude. Had they really
been such, then the world would have answered its age-old queries
long ago and its long-drawn quest would today be unnecessary. The
mere presence of many conflicting views which still puzzle mankind
alone proves the insufficiency and indecisiveness of such sources,
upon which mankind has chiefly relied in the past.
The weary enquirer may well be provoked into asking whether
the human mind is at all capable of solving ultimate problems. This
is an important question. It is indeed the same as our preliminary
one, but in another form. Its answer involves the answer to other
questions, such as "How do I get knowledge ? What is meant by
knowledge ? Which kind of knowledge is true ?"-all of which must
be dealt with by the philosopher if he is to walk warily in the light
and not dubiously in darkness.
All enquiry into the final meaning of experience and the mystery
of the world would be a waste of time if the very limits of such
enquiry were set for us beforehand by hard impassable barriers that
encircled the available means of knowledge. It is therefore better to
know the worst, if worst there be, than to indulge in the folly of
pursuing an unattainable quest. It is to the honour of Immanuel
Kant that he was the first Western thinker to raise the question
whether man possessed a mental instrument fit for knowing truth.
He came to a negative conclusion. Fortunately we need not be so
pessimistic, for we shall find, as the ancient Indian sages found, that
only the best awaits us in the end and that the riddle of life can be
solved with man's present resources.
An infant is too helpless to find its way about life alone. It has
perforce to rely on others, i.e. its parents. So too grown men who feel
more or less ignorant and uncertain about the interpretation of
existence in general have to seek the help of others. Thus to satisfy
such a need arises the earliest guidance offered to man, which is that
of authority, whether religious, political, cultural or otherwise, and
whether traditional or not. It says :  'Believe and you will be safe !"
We must therefore begin an examination of such authoritarianism
with the startling postulate of universal ignorance. And this means
that the teeming masses are still infantile in some ways. Millions and
millions of grown-up men and adult women living in the world today
are still intellectual children who fully accept and completely believe
much that is nonsensical and more that is false. We ought not to be
afraid of such a statement. In the operations of arithmetic we find
that the figure of one million multiplied by nought still remains
equal to zero. In human life the same calculation evaluates the
knowledge of most people. But society being what it is, the masses of
mankind, busy with toil or suffering in trouble, must trust in authoritarianism
and in normal times can usually find no better guides
through the maze of life-problems than their traditional ones,
provided the trust is not abused.
Take the instance of religion. A religion has to establish its
authority by congealing its views into formal assertions and fixed
dogmas. It has to announce these doctrines as supernaturally revealed
"sacred" truths, not as arguable human ones. The moment it is
willing to discuss its tenets on any other basis than that of given and
infallible revelation it has opened a door to numerous schisms and
to slow but sure weakening of its entire position. Continuance of
such weakening will one day lead to its collapse. Therefore religion
prudently offers its knowledge to man as something received from a
higher source, from a higher being or a higher world, Which he must
piously accept on unquestioning faith and reverently maintain as an
unquestioned tradition.
Let us examine this position. It is historically satisfactory to the
masses, who naturally set out in life with the simplest possible
conceptions and who are willing to accept the universe in which they
find themselves without troubling their heads overmuch about it.
 
Its value is little, however, to the few who are engaged in the quest
of ultimate certitude and who are therefore counselled to begin with
the exercise of agnostic enquiry.
Why have the sages enjoined such a cautious attitude ? Because,
after all, every famous scripture is nothing more than a book which
some man or men once wrote or else it could not have come into
being, and because religious beliefs flourish in such an immense
variety of bewildering contradictions. Whoever ventures to enquire
impartially into all of them will arrive at the end in inescapable
confusion. He will be totally unable to resolve the mass of conflicting
claims into any kind of unity. He can never know for certain which
of the worshipped Gods really exist, or which of the cosmological
stories are correct, or how to harmonize either irreconcilable dogmas
or the different accounts of heaven and hell. He cannot even peer
into the mind of another man who is standing before him because
mind is the sole characteristic which is never normally open to public
inspection. How then can he peer into the mind of a totally invisible
being-God-and assert that the latter is all-merciful ? For aught he
can tell God might be all-merciless. Knowledge of what is going on in
God's mind must necessarily be confined to God Himself. If he
attempts to read the mind of God he can only succeed in reading the
mind of his own idea of God, i.e. his own imagination ! His belief
concerning God is in the end his imagination about God; it is certainly
not verified knowledge. And when he perceives the hand of
divine intervention in his own or others' lives his perception is
really but an imaginative effort on his part ; such an effort may fully
satisfy his personal feelings and bring him much solace, but will not
be better than any other imagination as a criterion of what is true.
In short, his mind can come to complete rest in any religion only
because it is incapable of investigating deeply or tired of acute
thinking, not because it has found truth ! Faith has often been shown
in this world by the record of national history and the test of individual
experience to be unreliable ; hence it cannot lead to uniformly
certain knowledge.
It will be asked, perhaps in horror, then do the sages teach
atheism ? The charge can neither be admitted nor denied. They
teach it where dubious Gods are concerned, i.e. imagined Gods.
They deny it where the true God is concerned, i.e. God as He really is.
But they do not dogmatize about the latter. What God is must
constitute part of the object of our search and can only be ascertained
after such search. It is a riddle to be solved, not a dogma to be
set up. If in the beginning we have to doubt the ready-made Gods
and reject them and their legacies of revelation as sources of sure
knowledge, this is only to clear the ground for a thorough investigation
into what is the irrefutable truth about the whole matter. And
if later conclusions may here be hopefully anticipated, we shall
happily succeed through philosophy in rediscovering the true God,
not in losing Him.
A famous contemporary scientist, after admirable support of
the value of philosophy to science and of the truth of metaphysical
idealism, proceeded thereafter to cut himself adrift from both
philosophy and science and floated away into mere speculation. He
wrote reverently of the "divine architect" who is responsible for
this world. He fell into the easy fallacy of thinking that because
the best classes of human beings plan their houses architecturally
before building them, therefore God must also plan His universe in
the same way. He thus reduced his almighty God to the level of a
mere human being. Where is the justification for lowering the stature
of Deity in this way ? The scientist did not see, unfortunately, that
all these anthropomorphic speculations were but refined blasphemy !
Such a God existed in his personal imagination and could not be
proved to the satisfaction of everybody else to exist in fact.
The student of philosophy should not make an offering of faith
before such an altar, because he above all others seeks truth ; i.e. he
must confine his quest to facts and not to speculative imaginations.
These words will not be palatable to sincerely pious persons.
But whatever critics may make of such statements there is always
one inconvenient fact from which religionists usually turn their
faces. God has endowed us all-in however feeble a degree-with
thinking-power, with the potential capacity to discriminate and
reason for ourselves. Should we not therefore use His gift and not
scorn it ?
However, our concern at this point is less with the existence and
nature of God than with the help to be derived by the truth-seeker
from the revelations of religion in their popular form. The question
lies enfolded in a larger one, that of the validity of belief in any
authority at all whether it be religious or otherwise. Here the reader
must again be warned not to make the error of confusing different
systems of dimension in the world of thought. The same rule should
not be used to measure both utility and truth. We are not at the
moment concerned with the practical value of authoritarianism ;
this has its undeniable place and is indeed absolutely indispensable
for regulating the affairs of society. We are studying the question
from a higher dimension altogether, that of philosophy, the search

for ultimate truth, and for the time being the reader must drop the
lower dimension of thought completely; otherwise he will mix the
issues and bewilder his mind. And it is now that the essential qualifications
which have already been described in a previous chapter
will prove their worth. Indeed, without their passport he cannot even
pass the very threshold of this dimension.
There must be adamant refusal to be overawed by authority.
There must be an attitude which keenly probes and dissects every
dogma which is set up for consumption; there must be a freedom
from the ancient prejudices and irrational predilections implanted
by heredity, environment and experience ; there must be the courage
to resist the emotional pressure generated by conventional social
forces, a pressure which carries most people along the stream of
untruth, dissimulation and selfish interest.
What shall we find when the authority of a book, bible, man or
institution is offered as sole sanction of the philosophical truth of
any statement ? We shall find that it is always possible to discover
elsewhere another book, bible, man or institution that may also be
offered as the sanction for a directly contrary statement! Whatever
can be put forward on one side can always be opposed, whether
justifiably or not, on the other. There is hardly a religious, sociological,
economic, political, literary, artistic, metaphysical or
mystical tenet in the history of ancient, medieval and modern
culture which does not have or has not at some time had its contradiction
equally existent. There is hardly an assertion which has not
been vigorously assailed by opponents who make counter-assertions.
He who declares that "the Hindu religion promises many lives
on earth to man" will be met by another who objects: "The
Christian religion promises only one life on earth to man." He who
quotes a passage from Buckle to show that history is but the outworking
of man's individual and national effort will be opposed by
another who quotes a passage from Bunsen to demonstrate that
history is the outworking of God's will in the world. Such a settingup
of authorities against each other can go on endlessly and has done
so during the past ages. Religions will boldly contradict each other,
writers will gravely oppose one thesis to another, two historians will
unashamedly find the same event as a proof and as a denial of
purpose in the world drama!
Whence have all these conflicting tenets and discordant assertions
been derived ? They have invariably been proffered on some
dead or living authority. They cannot all be true ; many even cancel
each other out! The timid enquirer usually ignores this awkward
 .
position,but the more courageous one will face it fully, for it indicates
that somewhere among the statements there is a logical fallacy. He
will then be compelled to confess what the sages have long taught,
that the mere say-so of any man, be he as world-revered as
Muhammed or as world-reviled as Nero, possesses no value at all to
the philosophic student but must be thoroughly enquired into if it
be true, no less than the statement of the most obscure and the least
esteemed of men. Nor can any authority permanently prevent people
from enquiring into dogmas forced on them. Even the ant runs
hither and thither examining various substances to enquire if they be
edible ! Credulity arises out of mental weakness : it is to be overcome
by strengthening the mental fibre.
If the seeker may not make any individual authority final, that
is because such a source has often proved fallible in the past and
may again fall into error. Its only use for him is as a possible indicator
of truth but never as its arbiter. He has no right to accept beliefs
solely because somebody else accepts them or because most people
accept them. For if the others hold their beliefs on the same basis,
then all may have accepted complete falsehoods as being completely
true. Hence philosophy is unable to bend the knee before fallible
persons but only before hard facts. It applies this formula to all men
without exception, whether they be enthroned and crowned as kings,
barefooted and yellow-robed as yogis, mitred and cloaked as cardinals
or writers mantled with a fame that makes millions follow
their every word. Quotation of a thousand sentences is quite valueless
as philosophical proof, although quite valuable in empirical
existence in many cases where the authorities quoted are experts in
specialized knowledge.
The method of disagreement can be applied to all those who
quote some authority as final. If they say as proof that A asserts one
thing, that does not settle the matter. It is always possible to take
up an opposite position and quote B as asserting something else
that disagrees with A's statement. This is enough to show that no
man can be taken as a final authority. The student on the philosophic
quest must therefore entirely discard blind faith, unquestioning
acceptance, easy following of tradition and submission to the
tyranny of large numbers, for all these are to be reckoned as
fallacies of thinking! Though useful to the majority of men for
the practical purposes of everyday living as they are, they are
useless to him for the ascertainment of a truth which cannot be
belied.
This is not to say that all such authorities are always wrong; on
"  
the contrary, they are sometimes right; it is to say that they might
be wrong, that we have no guarantee ensuring their perpetual
infallibility.
The very occurrence in man of the desire to know, the need to
understand, whether it take the form of belief or not, indicates that
ignorance is likewise there. Hence it is better to recognize that he
must take to a different path if he would gain knowledge, and this
he can do only by beginning with doubt. Unless he introduces the
element of courageous questioning into his everyday conceptions he
cannot hope to learn more about their validity.
It is not possible to reach the summit of knowing the truth of
everything unless we start at the bottom with the first step of
doubting the truth of everything ! This is the only way in which to
obtain a guarantee that every further step taken will be a safe one
and that we shall not afterwards have to retrace our path in disappointment.
It is important to realize that the term ' 'doubt" is used
here in no sceptical sense but in an agnostic one. It is not a correct
attitude to deny intolerantly what we do not even understand, but
it is perfectly correct to observe : 'T do not know. I have not seen.
Therefore I cannot start with any dogmatic assumptions, whether
they be in affirmation or in denial." Such a position wjll not be taken
up by those who are naturally impatient, who are ready to believe
anything at once because it pleases them, who are not willing to
suspend premature judgment and to pose pertinent questions before
advancing forward into acceptance of any claim. Those who jump to
the first and easiest conclusion free themselves from the trouble of
internal conflict but they unconsciously commit the fallacy of
primitivity. In the end, therefore, their defective attitude must one
day yield its fruit in disappointment. An unhurried spirit is therefore
an advantage here.
This is not to say that we are to rest satisfied with our doubts
and be content with the gloomy confinement of agnosticism. It
means that we shall make our doubt act as a constantly pressing
spur to deeper investigation, and not as a cold clammy hand to
dishearten us. The sages say that doubts are extremely valuable
provided we are induced to overcome and solve them by persevering
search which carries us eventually to a higher level of understanding.
They are not to be forcibly expelled or feebly smothered. And if we
foolishly let doubts paralyse all further search, then we have no right
to dogmatize pessimistically about the unattainability of truth in
general, as so many in the West do.
The hidden philosophy says, in a manner contrary to authority t
 .
"Welcome doubt fearlessly as being the first step to certainty.
Doubt and you will be saved!" But it says this only to the seeker
after the highest truth. To all others, to all those who have no time
to take thought for such a long quest or no will and no capacity for
it either, it unhesitatingly endorses the injunctions of authority. It
is well aware of the practical value to such men of ready-made
institutions, which, through sacred books and appointed priests,
enthroned rulers and office-holding leaders, shall dictate their
customary forms of thought, their regular habits of conduct and
their basic outlook.
It will now be clearer why, when describing the qualifications
needed by the philosophic enquirer, great emphasis was laid upon
the elimination of the ingrained human tendency to view things
from an egoistic platform. For we may now observe that the authoritarians
of every kind are so imbued with the colours of their personal
predilections and emotional pre-suppositions that they unconsciously
set limits to their possibilities of getting at the truth of
things. The hidden root of their assertions is-the ego ! I am right,
says one ; no, I am right, retorts another.
The I lurks beneath the gregarious ignorance, the fatuous
mistakes and the primitive misunderstandings of men.
Of all the false beliefs and deceptive illusions which darken the
mind, the strongest is that whatever one knows, believes, sees or
mentally holds is necessarily true. "I know!" is the statement
which any fool can make, as the sages say, but whether what he
knows is correct he seldom stops to enquire. This is why doubt is
needed. It is a characteristic of such people-and it should be
remembered that this means almost the whole of mankind-to
believe that they plainly understand when they really do not. Hence
the sage who is initiating the candidate into  takes
as his first task the unveiling of this universal defect. He explains
that " I know!" is the conscious or unconscious presumption of
mankind and that humility in its truest sense must be sought and
found by the aspirant before he can take a single step forward. And
this sense is not only moral but psychological. " I know!" usually
means " I feel" or " I experience" or " I prefer"-none of which is a
fit criterion of truth. Hence the need of rigorously doubting what we
think we know, of sternly putting aside our imaginations, of verifying
the ideas and testing the concepts we hold so fervently and of
raising questions in points where we are confessedly ignorant. We
should not believe in belief. For belief steps in where reason fears to
tread.
"  
From Intuition to Logic. The student must put on his shoes and
depart from the hall of authoritarianism. He has tried faith but it has
failed him. Whither shall he go ? The first reaction from depending
on others is to depend on oneself. Thus arises reference to personal
feelings underived from reference to external experience, as a better
guide than authority, i.e. to intuition. So he passes upwards to the
second degree of human intelligence, where the knowledge which is
offered him seems superior to blind faith. Those who are weary of
the contradictions of credulously depending on others sometimes
turn away to these personal sources and find therein a fresh certainty,
as it appears, and a satisfaction that seems to set them free from
such doubtful dependence. We have examples of this in Immanuel
Kant, with his interior "categorical imperative" in the matter of
morals; in George Fox and his Quakers, humbly waiting in the
silence for words from God, and lastly in our own times in Dr. Frank
Buchman, whose Oxford Groups listen-in during the "quiet time"
for intuitive messages of guidance concerning their personal activities
in the world.
An intuition is a thought or idea which springs up spontaneously
and unsought, to be asserted to by the ego without demur. It arises
in a flash of its own accord, remains independently of our volition,
and departs without even asking permission. It may profess to tell
us at a moment's glance something of the real nature of a thing or it
may be prediction of future happenings or it may be description of
events which happened in remote antiquity or it may-as is most
common-proffer immediate guidance for a course of action when
faced by a certain set of circumstances.
Is it possible to fix here a source that will yield by itself sure
knowledge about the object of existence and the meaning of the
universe ? Alas ! a little historical enquiry will soon yield the disconcerting
information that the intuitionists of all ages have differed
from one another in their final conclusions, have had absurdly
contradictory spontaneous guidance and have ventured into bold
statements that time has mockingly falsified. Not all their predictions
have failed of fulfilment nor all their intuitions been in vain ; there
have indeed been striking instances where words have amply justified
themselves and have been verified as correct. The discovery of
outstanding technological inventions and useful scientific laws has
sometimes come to birth intuitively and of its own accord during
moments of relaxation or reverie. But these instances have been so
relatively few in number that nobody could in advance guarantee
the infallibility of any such statement, On the other hand the
 .
instances of disagreement, unfulfilment, emotional bias and obvious
departure from known facts have been so numeroi^s that we must
regretfully confess that the ground upon which the intuitionist
walks is unsure and unsafe. If his inner guide has served him unerringly
sometimes, there is no guarantee that it will continue to do so.
If it remains faultless he will be unique among men, for experience
shows that intuition does not hesitate to mislead the same man
whom it has earlier led aright. The best that can be said of an
intuition is that it may or may not be true. Most of us find in everyday
life that intuitive thoughts strike us from time to time and often
prove incorrect even though they have sometimes been correct. In
any case, intuition is not forthcoming at will and therefore is not to
be unfailingly relied on. Moreover, those who have not undergone the
philosophic discipline are easily apt to mistake sudden impulse or
overpowering emotion for intuition.
Once again the student must take his regretful leave.
He may ascend to a higher level and knock at another door-
that of logic. Everybody uses it to some extent. The bird, the beaver
and the fish are guided by a natural instinct, but man must find his
way by using some thinking-power. Logic possesses immense worth
in the realms of day-to-day living ; it can arrange our thinking in
coherent and orderly fashion ; it can detect gross errors and various
fallacies in our journey from premise to conclusion ; it can usefully
show us how not to think ; but we must humbly confess that the
theoretical knowledge of logical rules has never prevented men from
making numerous and absurd mistakes.
Lawyers use logic in presenting their case to a court. But as their
conscious or unconscious purpose is to win the case it is not infrequent
that truth is mauled in the process by every overweighting of
lesser issues, by every suppression of awkward or inconvenient facts,
and by every appeal to the emotional bias of a jury. Moreover, when
we examine the stock syllogism of logic from a philosophical viewpoint
we find it to be quite fallacious.' 'All men are mortal. Socrates
is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal/' Beneath the plausible
syllables of this classic syllogism hides the gigantic assumption that
we have known all men who ever lived in the past, all men who are
living today and all those who shall live in the future. This is entirely
impossible. Therefore the syllogism starts with asserted knowledge
which, in fact, is no knowledge at all. Logically it is perfect, but
philosophically it is defective. It will suffice for the limited conditions
of practical everyday purposes, but for the higher purpose of final
truth it is completely unacceptable. Expert logicians themselves
"  
admit now that it cannot yield new truth but only draw out what is
already contained in the given facts. Logic is an imperfect instrument
and as such cannot yield absolute certainty. It operates within
a limited range of usefulness and validity. And therefore it cannot
reveal the ultimate meaning of existence ; the walls which surround
it are too steep.
It occasionally happens that those who become aware of these
incurable defects of logic take a short cut to intellectual relief by
turning backwards in their despair or darkness and descending to
the vacated level of intuitional feeling-a course which appears to
be the only one open to them. Here the intellect may voluntarily
abdicate and find repose for a while, but severe disappointments and
blatant contradictions are likely to occur sooner or later, thus
indicating that no real relief can be got in this easy manner.
Others who are unwilling to retrace their steps have begun to
desert the old formal methods and to construct non-Aristotelian
systems of logic. But these are still in the stage of experiment.
The seeker who wishes to leave logic for a higher method will
ultimately proceed to the next step, which is that of mystical
experience. This is illustrated historically by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
with his symbolical "influx of the divine mind into our mind", by
Jacob Boehme with his sudden "illuminations" gained from the
three trances that marked his life, and by Emmanuel Swedenborg
with his strange visions of the spirits of dead men and women amidst
their heavenly or purgatorial habitats. A mystic experience is sometimes
spontaneous but usually self-induced. In the latter case it
arises out of the practice of mental concentration or intense emotional
aspiration or attention inwardly turned, self-absorbed and prolonged
into a condition of reverie or even trance. During these states visions
of men, events or places may appear before the mind's eye with
extraordinary vividness ; voices may be audible to the mystic
although to none else, and these may convey to him either a message,
a warning, a series of instructions or a religious revelation; God
Himself may even be felt as an environing and exalting presence;
the mystic may fancy himself being wafted into space, as sometimes
happens in dream to the non-mystical also, so that he is able mentally
to visit distant scenes, persons and spheres. Or he may reach the
final consummation in joyous ecstasy which may be violent and
erotic or serene and settled, but which he will take as the sign of
entry into a higher realm of being, which he usually calls "spiritual",
"the soul", "divine reality" and so on.
 .
Mysticism Under the Microscope. We have now to consider such
experiences from a higher standpoint. First, applying a tenable
'criterion, let us see how far are the mystics from contradicting each
other. Without making a long excursus into a debatable land, it may
briefly be said that it must not be thought that mysticism is so
unique an experience that all mystics thereafter find themselves in
harmony. Far from it. Just as we find that men of religion, from the
crudest peasant to the most cultured preacher, vary greatly in
personal calibre and mental outlook, so shall we find that similar
individual differences exist among mystics, and that once we put
aside their five common tenets mentioned in an earlier chapter even
the mystics betray by word and deed that they have achieved not
much more unanimity themselves. Although there are several similarities
in their doctrines and practices, there are also many unbridgeable
differences. Whereas most spend much time ploughing up
problematic esoteric meanings buried in scriptures, a few disdain
scriptures and regard this practice as imaginative acrobatics and
not as spiritual discovery, holding that the time would be better
spent in meditating on themselves. Whereas most still cling more or
less loosely to the name of some sacred personage like Jesus or
Krishna, a few declare that it does not matter much whom one
follows provided the presence of divinity is felt. The doctrines about
which they disagree are replete with prolific fancies and are much
more numerous than the five specified essentials about which they
are all likely to agree.
Those who dispute this fact-and they are mainly well-meaning
but uncritical people-should endeavour to imagine a solemn
conclave of the following famous historic mystics imprisoned in a
room until they could emerge declaring their complete unity of outlook
(would they ever emerge at all ?): Cornelius Agrippa, who
mingled mystical piety with strange magic ; Emmanuel Swedenborg,
who chatted familiarly with angels and spirits ; Simon Stylites, who
sat in lonely self-mortification for many years on the top of a stone
pillar; Anna Kingsford, who openly claimed she had killed vivisectors
by thought-power in order to save the lives of animals; Miguel
Molinos,' who brought Spanish emotional intensity into his union
with God ; Eliphas Levi, who applied queer Cabbalistic interpretations
to Catholic theology ; Jacob Boehme, who was ecstasy-rapt
amid the old shoes of his cobbler's shop; Hui Ko, who taught his
mysticism to the Chinese peasants and was cruelly martyred for his
pains; and Wang Yang Ming, who discovered a "divine world in his
own heart!
"  
For this is the hidden limitation and undetected weakness of
mysticism, that it is not a quest of conclusive truth so much as a
yearning for emotional experience. -Therefore the mystic is more
concerned to get his feelings temporarily held by a great peace or
temporarily thrilled by a great vision or temporarily flattered by a
personal oracular message. Hence philosophy accosts or startles
him with the question, "How do you know that the source of your
communion really is God or Reality or Jesus or Krishna ?"
But. he will listen to no criticism, however impressive it be, of
the possible irrelevancy of his conclusions. He will insist on making
the undeniable fact of his own experience the deniable criterion of
its validity. It is quite inevitable and perfectly human that under
such circumstances he should be so irresistibly carried away by the
feeling of extraordinary immediacy in the event and by the strength
of his uncommon exaltations that he lays stress upon the less
essential and that it suffices to satisfy him without his making any
further enquiry into its hidden nature and truth.
The value of meditation for inner peace, sublime ecstasy and
world-free self-absorption is immense. But its value for the quest of
truth and reality unaided by philosophy is quite a different matter
and demands searching investigation by sympathetic yet impartially
critical minds possessed of a sense of proportion and philosophic
acumen-qualities usually absent from the mystic's make-up.
Ecstasy is indeed a form of personal satisfaction, but it is not either
a complete criterion of reality or an adequate evidence of truth. For
satisfaction of any kind whateverhowever noble it be, is no evidence
of truth. Indeed, the warmer a man's feelings and the more propulsive
his enthusiasm, the more he should cool and calm them in order to
examine experience impartially and impersonally. If it be true, it
will lose nothing by such examination, but if it be false his calmness
will greatly help him to detect its falsity.
Furthermore, we are faced with the insuperable difficulty that
it is impossible to verify the inner experience of another man because
ordinarily it is impossible to enter directly into his mind. Even
thought-transference and thought-reading, although genuine possibilities,
are still uncommon and still imperfect. We may draw inferences,
creatively imagine or make conjectures, but this is not at all
the same as actually and perfectly participating in. the knowledge or
inner experience of another man. The latter must needs be beyond
normal human range. So even if a mystic tells us that he has seen God
we have no undeniable means of either confirming or refuting his
vision. It is not transmissible. Even if we succeed in reproducing it
L
 .
mentally, it will then be our own production and we can,never place
both visions side by side and compare their likeness. And granting the
occasional accuracy of particular knowledge gained in meditation, it
is unfortunately not possible for most other men in other parts of
the world to be sure of duplicating the same discovery in the same
manner for themselves: they must either resort to mere faith or
forgo this method entirely. Hence mystical experience is utterly
individual and possesses only a personal certainty. Thus the lack of
universal certitude which was found among men of faith is now
found among men of vision. Where is the guarantee that what they
now feel to be the highest state, what they now take to be the
loftiest consciousness, the final reality, will not later be replaced by
a different one ? Goethe correctly pointed out that mysticism was
the "scholastic of the heart and the dialectic of the feelings". The
whole level with which it deals is that of unchecked feeling. But how
does the mystic or yogi know that what he has come in contact with
during meditation or ecstasy is the ultimate reality? 'T felt it,
therefore it must be real," is the general attitude of most mystics
who never pause to enquire. They assume the reality of their feelings
because they are so much attached to them as to be blind to the
important difference between the seeming existence of a thing and
its proven reality, or between what appears to be and what is. How do
they know that they have reached the highest state of knowledge ?
Why should extraordinary peace constitute a sufficient title to the
estate of truth ? Why should it become a synonym for omniscience ?
We are quite justified in posing such crucial questions, for in doing so
we render a double service-to ourselves and to truth. The votaries
of meditation who have found the final truth within its quietude
should pause to enquire if it be truth, even if that pause takes a few
months or a whole lifetime.
Inasmuch as mystics have not penetrated beyond their feelings,
however exalted these be, we have to conclude that whatever
knowledge they purport to bring us from meditation might not be
ultimately true. Why ? Because feeling is liable to change ; what is
felt now as true may be discarded tomorrow as untrue. Even Plotinus,
who is hailed by ancient mystics and modern theosophists alike as
being one of the most illustrious of their band, has confessed that the
highest mystical realization yields no emotion, no vision and no
concern with the beautiful. Had he not been a disciple of Ammonius
he might never have reached this understanding. For Ammonius'
school at Alexandria taught both mysticism and philosophy, the
latter, however, being reserved for the highest class, and was based.
"  
as previously explained, on a tradition of initiation which drew
ultimately from India.
"What do you want ?" asked Ramakrishna, the illustrious sage
who lit up the nineteenth-century darkness of India. Replied his
famous disciple Swami Vivekananda: "I wish to remain immersed
in mystic trance for three or four days at a stretch, breaking it just
to take food." Said Ramakrishna: "You are a fool! There is a state
which is even higher than that'
Our quest of a valid source of knowledge can come to an end only
when it will yield one that is universally and for ever unalterable,
which will be the same and hold to the same laws of verification at
all times and in all conditions, not during meditation alone.
However, a further means of assaying the work of mystic guidance
is at hand. Let us consider how many mystical statements pass
unchallenged, how many are without counter-assertions, how many
are absolutely beyond all doubts. Let the annals of sceptical science
and orthodox religion provide an answer !
It is clear therefore that as a sole source of certain knowledge,
mystical or yogic experience cannot be relied on. Its chief value
exists for the particular indivfdual who experiences it, but not for
society in general. Hence only when a disciple has passed through
all the preliminaries of personal self-discipline and has completed
a long course of meditation practice is he regarded as being ripe for
initiation into the higher mysteries of knowledge beyond ordinary
yoga. Then the student on  who is fortunate
enough to secure a personal teacher will notice that the latter begins
to suggest certain doubts to his mind. This is done so cleverly
and so carefully that the pupil is insensibly led by slow degrees from
his present position to a higher one. It is not done suddenly and
violently, or he will only lose faith in his present standby without
being able to find support in a new and stronger one. This change
is achieved by the teacher making certain indirect observations and
asking certain cryptic questions of the pupil in such a way that his
mind begins to acquire more strength and to grow in clearness until
certain doubts arise of their own accord. The more he submits to this
discipline of doubt, the more is he likely to relinquish long-held
attitudes of mind. He gets the courage to question his own experiences
and to re-estimate them anew after a critical examination
from a fresh standpoint. Only so can he read their meaning aright.
He will then begin to see the insufficiency of his attainments, the
invalidity of his beliefs and the limitations of his practices. Whatever
illusions have held him will begin to loosen their grip. But his
 .
master warns him not to rest until all these doubts are fully
cleared.
This analysis does not mean we are to despise meditation
exercises as futile or dismiss the mystic's experience as worthless.
Peace, tranquillity and ecstasy are not worthless things. And no
scornful sceptic can rightly deny that the successful mystic gets
them, albeit intermittently. Neither the sage nor the novice need
discard these or other satisfactions, only the former will never permit
them to deflect his mind from truth. Meditation becomes a hindrance
only when it consists in hugging imagination as though it were
reality or clinging to vision as though it were truth, whereas it is
indeed a partner to philosophic technique when it consists in onepointed
surrender to utter tranquillity.
We who seek truth may reject the mystic's uncriticized visions
and his narrow view of the world, but we would be foolish indeed if
we rejected the valuable gifts of concentration and peace which
mysticism offers us. The novice who has practised meditation faithfully
for some period may unfold a fair degree of concentrativeness
and subtlety which will be most valuable when he passes to a higher
degree, for he will be expected to keep his mind thoroughly onepointed
during his development in the yoga of philosophic discernment.
Through Reason to Insight. Thus we arrive again at the question
with which this chapter was begun. Is there a further and fully
satisfactory source which we can tap for truly uncontradictable
knowledge ? The ancient sages declared there is, that, to put it
shortly, the method of reasoning upon all available facts raised by
the utmost concentration to the high stature of immediate insight is
precautionary and preliminary to such a source which is in sight
and transcends reasoning.
Before we proceed further it is essential to rid the term reason of
the widespread ambiguity and confusion with which it is frequently
associated. It is the faculty which apprehends and judges truth,
distinguishing it from falsehood, opinion, imagination or illusion.
And here it will be fitting to introduce the sages' definition of the
term "truth". It has been earlier demonstrated that without such a
definition men wander in a dry wilderness of hollow fancies, unfounded
opinions, worthless theories and hypostatized words.
This definition may sound quite simple, but its implications are
most profound. It should be graven deeply on the heart. Here it is :
TRUTH is that which is beyond all contradiction and free from all
"  
doubt; which is indeed beyond the very possibility of both contradiction
and doubt; beyond the changes and alternation of time and vicissitude ;
for ever one and the same, unalterable and unaltering; universal and
therefore independent of all human ideation.
The quest of this philosophy is knowledge which is independent
of the endless vicissitudes of human opinion. Applying the criterion
of this definition, we discover that all reliance on changeable human
authorities, all belief in written or spoken words, all acceptance of
anything short of adequate reason as the final court of appeal or
guidance, immediately brings us within the region of contradictions,
counter-statements and possible doubts and therefore rules out these
dubious sources of knowledge from our operations. There is no
certitude in them. The word "reason" is therefore not used here as a
mere synonym for dry logic-chopping. The Scholastics of an earlier
day used the word in this sense and showed how even astute men
could find many reasons for supporting hollow assumptions. Logic is
the art which seeks to ensure correct sequential thinking, but unfortunately
it does not seek to ensure that it starts with correct data ;
it may and often does start with assumptions that may be mere
fancies or wrong data. Reason is the faculty of correct thinking, which
seeks truth and which ensures that its activity shall start with all
the observed facts of actual experience. The logician whose premises
are faulty may nevertheless think correctly and yet arrive at wrong
conclusions. Reason avoids this mistake.
Nor is the term used as a synonym for mere speculation. The
annals of metaphysics are replete with numerous flights of sheer
fancy which have been given a seemingly rational direction. Such
thinking as ignores the facts of experience is not reasoning in our
sense. And such reasoning as is restricted to the facts of personal
experience alone is likewise not reasoning in the full sense. Although
both logic and reason set up the same criterion that thinking shall not
fall into self-contradiction, and that it shall not be loose and crooked,
the former is satisfied with partial facts whereas the latter demands
nothing less than totality of facts. Again, intellect, which may be
defined as th& activity of logical thinking, is swayed by personal
desires and individual bias to choose its data preferentially, whereas
reasoning, which may be defined as the activity of truthful thinking,
is rigorously impersonal and ascetically detaches its feelings from
the handling of facts.
Only when thinking is not only rigidly logical but also rigidly
impersonal; only when it is pushed to its farthest extreme and
throughout its course based on facts which are universally valid,
 .
which can be tested and verified in the deserts of North Africa
equally as in the streets of New York and which will still hold good
in ten centuries' time as in ours, only then does it deserve the lofty
name of reason.
Such competent reasoning, such intellectual integrity is rare. We
shall find that it possesses a twofold self-expression. The first dwells
in science, but -this is only a limited and imperfect one. The second
exists in philosophy, and here it finds the best and fullest play. Therefore
it may be noted that science is the porch of philosophy. The vanguard
of modern scientists are themselves beginning to make this
discovery, for, do what they will to escape, the pressure of their own
results and the force of their own reasoning lead them pace by pace
into the quest of the ultimate meaning of all experience, which is
philosophy.
It may be objected that the ancient Indians never knew science
as we understand it today. That is correct if reference is made to the
method of experiment inaugurated by Bacon, but the sages among
them knew the scientific principle of verification and the philosophic
value of observation which are essential elements of their doctrines.
Both the scientist and the mystic share this common factor, that
they are tired of blind beliefs and seek the satisfying verification of
experience. This is why mysticism is placed so high in the scale of
mental evolution as to be beyond faith, intuition and logic. Certain
differences of much importance must, however, be noted. The mystic
seeks and finds satisfactory his own experience, whereas the scientist
is not satisfied with the validity of personal experience but seeks
also the experience of a larger number of individuals, i.e. a group.
Hence his verification is wider. Science is a collaboration ; its results
are the results of the efforts of groups such as biologists, chemists or
physicists. It is the irremediable weakness of mysticism that it rests
its validity on what one man feels and finds within himself, a region
which is inaccessible to others and therefore most of his findings
cannot be verified. It is the admirable strength of science that it
rests its validity on what can be found quite accessible in Nature or
in laboratories and hence can be verified by any other member of
the scientific group, who are thus able to agree among themselves.
It is the impregnability of genuine philosophy that it alone appeals
to universal experience, to what any man at any time in any place
may verify if he has the requisite mental capacity.
It is a fashion among mystics, intuitionists and some religionists
to speak caustically of the shifting hypotheses of science, and to
pour the acid of scorn upon its most modern achievements and
"  
technological applications. Moreover, when war breaks out nowadays
part of its horror is blamed on science too. All this shows confused
thought and emotional bias. If the changes of theory reveal the
imperfections of science, as they admittedly do, we ought to recognize
that they also reveal a twofold inner aim which philosophy
would gladly encourage and value as possessing extreme significance.
Firstly, a search after truth which generates a readiness to drop
faulty views for better ones when their faultiness has been conclusively
demonstrated by additional facts. Secondly, an effort to
generalize data, to formulate universally comprehensive laws. This
is in reality an attempt to enclose the many within the one, to
receive the differentiated multitude of things into a grand unity.
These are characteristics which, pushed to their terminal point,
will unfailingly bring the marching army of scientists into the everwaiting
camp of true philosophers.
So far as the censuring of science for the worsening qf war is
concerned, it may be said that like everything else it has its bright
and dark sides, its attractive advantages and repulsive disadvantages.
If it has given us high-powered explosives and low-diving
aeroplanes, it has also given the great convenience of electric light,
power and heat.
Science is not to be blamed because some men are too foolish or
too unethical to use it rightly. It is utterly neutral. The same explosive
chemicals which can blow a platoon of living men to the sky
can refertilize exhausted soil and cause new crops to spring into life.
The same internal combustion engine which propels the deathdealing
armoured tank can propel the utilitarian omnibus. The
same broadcasting station which fills the minds of a million listeners
with lies, hate and distorted propaganda can also fill them with
grand, noble and instructive truths. Scientific discoveries have poured
into the twentieth century like an advancing flood. Scientific knowledge
may be well used or badly abused by man, as hejwishes, but
its remarkable advances cannot stop. It has come stubbornly to stay.
It is the outstanding phenomenon of our age. We have to accept it.
The mystic may try to ignore it, but he cannot succeed. No modern
man can carry on for a week without availing himself a hundred
times of the fruits of scientific research. And is it not better that we
enslave steel machines rather than groaning men ?
It is a further fashion among Oriental mystics, of whom Gandhi
is a conveniently illustrative type, to denounce everything modern
in favour of everything medieval and consequently to ascribe a
satanic origin to science but a heavenly one to primitive forms of
 .
culture and civilization. No other reply is needed than that which
is afforded by their own lives, for even Gandhi himself did not disdain
to utilize the latest methods of scientific surgery to secure the
removal of his pain-bringing appendix; yogis do not hesitate for a
moment to take advantage of steam-drawn railway trains to carry
them nearer their retreats in the foot of the Himalaya; pilgrims
enthusiastically crowd the motor-lorries which ply in stages across
the plains to the holy cities; and even those critics who send forth
such denunciations write them with fountain-pens on paper which is
mill-manufactured often with a view to having them printed on
machine-presses for wider circulation! Science thus occupies its
inescapable place in their lives, however ungrateful be those whom it
serves. Its capacity for harming mankind through war and violence,
however regrettable it be, can be entirely removed in one way alone,
and that is through bringing philosophic truth into mankind's
purview.
It is now necessary to utter a warning based on facts known to
practising psychiatrists and professional psychologists. The reasoning
faculty may be highly developed so far as its application to a
special sphere of interest is concerned, and yet in the same man it
may be almost entirely unapplied or at best working weakly when
a different sphere comes into question. This is the singular phenomenon
called schizophrenia, or mind-splitting. For example, a man
may have risen rapidly to the forefront of his profession through
the effective use of reason, and yet as soon as his attention is turned
to other matters no belief may be too silly to engage his wholehearted
assent!
It is quite feasible that one and the same man may be a child in
religious matters and an adult in business affairs ; consequently he
may be mentally apart, yet bodily together !
The mind may be divided into idea-tight compartments, one of
which is reasonable and efficient but the other, being dull or even
deranged, is totally insulated against it. Certain famous judges and
statesmen of proved shrewdness have historically exhibited this
peculiar mental infirmity, as when their reason recoiled from questioning
the bases of traditional religion. This defeat of intellectual
 'compartmentalism" arises out of a conscious or unconscious
refusal to use reason when thinking about certain reserved subjects.
In consequence we see the pitiable spectacle of an otherwise sensible
man indulging in special pleading to support ridiculous beliefs.
People are duped into believing that because a man is famous for his
keen capacity in one field, or is doing his public work in an efficient
"  
manner, his opinions about matters outside the sphere of his professional
work have the same value. They do not know that insanity
can be localized in particular parts of the mind, as it were.
Mind-splitting is frequently found among the insane. But there
are various grades of insanity. It is only when an insane person
becomes dangerous to others or harmful to himself that he is labelled
as such and confined in a lunatic asylum. Large numbers of people
do not come within this category but are still sufficiently unbalanced
to be partly insane, although neither they themselves nor society
at large can realize this. It is not too much to say that the wars,
crimes, hatreds, conflicts and social struggles which afflict the world
exist because most of mankind are more or less insane. And according
to the hidden teaching, only the sages have achieved full sanity
and complete balance !
Insanity tends to grow gradually. What begins as a mild and
harmless form of superstitious belief may develop into outright
inability to manage the ordinary concerns of life.
The attempt to justify mere baseless fancies or wild inherited
superstitions by a plausible show of logic is rationalization. The
effort to think strictly and impersonally upon facts is reasoning.
The distinction between, both can be observed in the cases of many
public men by the curious.
The word reason has such a familiar sound, it is so often upon the
lips of orators and the pens of writers, that the reader who has
waited expectantly for some kind of novel revelation is now likely
to recoil in disappointment. He has hoped, perhaps, to learn that the
sages of the Far East, as the crest-wave of human mental and
ethical evolution, had evolved in their own persons a new organ of
knowledge, something that the rest of the laggard mankind would
themselves evolve during the course of future ages. And now he is
told that they had nothing newer to offer the modern world than
its own trite, commonplace and much-talked-of faculty of reason,
married, it is true, to a yoga technique and thereby converted into a
higher octave of itself dignified with the bold title of insight. He is
likely to feel that this chapter has led to an anticlimax.
Let us see. Were the sages so foolish and so unaware of the
history of world culture as to proffer an instrument of knowledge
which was apparently tried extensively by the Greeks and is still
being tried extensively by Eur-American scientists and philosophers,
but which has led in neither case to a single solution of the worldproblem
that is likely to remain for ever uncontrovertible ; were they
so ridiculous as to designate such an instrument as perfect ?
 .
The answer is that both ancient Greek and modern thinker
have three principal charges laid to their door to account for this
failure : (a) neglect to gather complete data, (b) ignorance of the
applicability of the law of relativity not merely to observed physical
phenomena but also to observed psychological phenomena and
finally to the mind of the observer himself, (c) neglect to push their
line of reasoning to its last possible terminal-point, and thus to
exhaust all its still unknown possibilities. These charges are weighty,
but they shall be made good. Nevertheless, even if the three defects
were rectified, still the truth would be beyond the grasp of the average
scientific investigator unless he were willing to discipline himself
in a certain way. With all this done, however, then the human mind,
purified of its native egoism, concentrated to a perfect degree,
sharpened to the most metaphysical subtlety of reasoning upon
adequate data and abstracted into intense reverie of deliberate selfwatchfulness,
can "hope at last to gain a unique insight into the real
nature of things, into the ultimate meaning of universal existence
and into the hidden truth of its own mysterious being.
The first charge may now be justified. Western philosophy has
not lived up to its own credo. That which has most attracted thoughtful
men and generous minds to the study of philosophy through the
centuries has perhaps been its claim to seek-alone among all the
branches of human culture-a comprehensive view of life as a whole.
Yet it is singular enough that the whole historic tradition of Greek,
European and American philosophy completely ignored and omitted
from its enquiry an aspect of life which is of such importance
that it occupies no less than one-third of the duration of human
existence.
We refer to the condition of sleep. Those few who studied this
subject were psychologists or medical men, not philosophers, and
consequently interested only in some of its limited physical meaning.
It is not to be wondered at that the Western thinkers failed to
arrive at any agreed solution of the problem of existence when they
all failed to investigate the problem of sleep and thus took only a
fragmentary and incomplete view of life, although their claim as
philosophers was to investigate the whole panorama in its entirety !
It need not surprise us that they wandered around so inconclusively,
for without the facts to be elucidated by such investigation they
were insufficiently equipped for their ambitious task and were foredoomed
to return baffled and undecided to their starting-point, much
as a mutilated tiger wanders vainly in circles through the jungle on
its three sound legs. How could they have covered in thought the
"  
whole of our complex human life when that wide section which is
spent in peaceful slumber, or troubled dream was regarded as too
insignificant to be worth studying, when all their emphasis was
unfairly thrown on the waking state alone ? Such an outlook was
totally inadequate to the aim they set before themselves and their
defeat was thereby rendered certain at the very start of their battle
for truth. There can be no finality about any system of thought
which excludes the study of sleep, but only liability to erroneous,
faulty or imperfect conclusions.
If science is to evolve into philosophy, and if logic is to evolve
into reasoning, they must take all three states of existence into their
orbit. It is to the little-known credit of the Indian sages that even
when the civilization of Europe was still in its infancy they had
seized on this special aspect of life and were proclaiming to listening
pupils that it offered a key to the profounder mysteries of being and
they early included it as an object of their philosophical studies.
Indeed, they declared that an investigation of the nature and implications
of dream and sleep was most essential, because these phenomena
of life were as fully important to its understanding as the
waking state.
There is a common but pardonable notion in the West that only
primitive people need pay attention to dreams and that scientific
minds have nothing to learn from deep sleep. The superficiality of
this view will be amply demonstrated when the subject comes to be
dealt with in detail.
A further handicap for the Western philosophers as well as for the
scientists lay not only in their insufficient data but also in their
imperfect instrument. The tool with which a philosopher must needs
work is his mind. The ancient sages did not permit a man to begin
philosophic studies until he had put his mind into proper shape so
that it could function efficiently. This preliminary phase consisted
in a practical course in the yoga of mental concentration often
coupled with a parallel course in ascetic self-abnegation. Both courses,
however, were usually temporary and continued only so long as they
were necessary to bring the mental faculties to a reasonable degree
of concentrative competency, and the pupils' character to a reasonable
degree of self-detachment, sufficient to undertake the difficult
task of philosophical reflection.
Western thinkers have made admirable attempts, but they have
failed to win success partly because they lacked this tool of a yogaequipped,
ego-purified and body-subdued mentality with which to
force open the shut gate of truth.
 .
The lack of a course in yoga-training likewise accounts for the
inability of certain distinguished Western-scientists to proceed to
the fullest implications of their own discoveries. Therefore, those
scientists and philosophers who have not acquired the enduring
mental benefits of mystic practice (as opposed to the fugitive visions
and feelings) will have to retrace their steps and do so.
This lack is partly responsible for the second charge against
them, for amid all their investigations they have been unable to
detect, as will be demonstrated in the second volume, that their own
ego has entered into and interfered with their work, although it is
as relative, as transient and as objective as all the other phenomena
they have observed ; and furthermore, it has prevented most of them
from seeing the subtle truth of the mental nature of all phenomena,
whether of the world outside or of the ego within.
The justification of the third charge will likewise be fully given
in the further volume, but it will suffice for the moment to point out
that despite the discoveries of Heisenberg, author of the Law of
Indeterminacy, and of Max Planck, formulator of Quantum
Mechanics, not a single Eur-American leader of thought has yet
dared to take a bold and decisive stand on the question of Non-
Causality, but all sit on the fence which separates the old familiar
law of causation from the strange new and revolutionary tenet whose
full acceptance would involuntarily convert scientists into fullfledged
philosophers ! However, physics, as the most virile of presentday
sciences, has made a noticeable beginning and cast several
hesitant glances in the direction of philosophy, which lies immediately
beyond its present position and to which it will be eventually
forced to travel.
The successful termination of the quest of the ancient sages did
not come from blindly believing the words of some personage ; it did
not come from yielding to the consolations of some religious book ;
it did not come from mystic intuition, that appeared suddenly and
involuntarily; it did not come from the satisfactions of mystic
practices or empty meditation; it came only at the end and as a
consequence of long-laboured arduous yoga-gripped thinking, more
rational than any ever known to our modern so-called Rationalists !
Nevertheless it should also be noted that the sources of knowledge
which have been found fallible are not thereby excluded from
the rational life. Some beliefs are quite reasonable even if many are
quite ridiculous. Where authorities and scriptures, intuitions and
illuminations, arguments and conclusions agree with universal
experience and genuine reason they should be most acceptable.
"  
They may be useful as helps, even though they may not be relied on
alone. The philosopher is not unwilling to listen to what these have
to say to him, for he knows that knowledge can often be got through
such sources, but unlike others he will be determined to judge them
ultimately by higher canons for himself, so that he may find out
how far they may be relied on. For he seeks a rock-like impregnable
position. He rejects nothing in advance but he questions everything
in the end to enquire if it be true, whereas unenlightened men'
deliberately divorce intuition from any contact with reason whilst
unenlightened mystics deliberately refuse to submit their "truth" to
any test: He will not be so foolish as to repel an intuition, for instance,
but he will be ready to accept it only after he has controlled, examined
and confirmed it. Thus mentally fortified he will so use his own
intuitions or expert authorities that they may become a most useful
help.
Fidelity to reason does not debar but admits faith, therefore, only
it demands that we should test our beliefs and discover if they be
true. It likewise accepts the existence of spontaneous intuition, but
asks that we check our intuitions and ascertain whether they be
correct, not hesitating to reject them where found unsatisfactory. It
unhesitatingly admires the unusual tranquillity to be found in
mystic meditations, but counsels that we enquire rigorously whether
the feeling of reality which it gives us be reality. It always approves
of the exercise of logic in the organization of thinking, but it points
out that the operations of logic are strictly limited by the amount
of available data and that at best logic can only rearrange in an
orderly manner what we already explicitly or implicitly know. In
short, it seeks firm verification.
If, for instance, those who are having mystic experiences will,
without necessarily giving them up, subject them to the tests here
described, the profit will be much and the progress more. It is one
of the functions of philosophic discipline to act as a corrective to
mystic experience.
Now how can we test our beliefs, check our intuitions, enquire
into the reality of meditation experience, know whether our logic
is dealing with all possible facts or not and eliminate the errors of
every one of these methods ? There is but a single answer to all these
queries, a single means of satisfying our doubts concerning them,
and that is-we must begin and end with the canons of reason as
the sole criterion of judgment. For it is only by critically reasoning
upon them that such examinations can be fruitfully carried out.
What is it that even theologians attempt to use when they wish
 .
to discriminate between authentic scriptures and spurious ones ?
They seek to use reason. What is it that tells us of the insufficiency
of logic and the fallibility of intuition ? It is not intuition itself,
not revelation and not vision ; it is reason. And when it is claimed
that both intuition and mystic feeling are above reason, then why
do those who make the claim venture to discuss, to argue and to
prove by reasoning that what they have felt or seen is correct ?
Is this not an unconscious reference to reason as the final court of
appeal, to the verdict of thinking power as the supreme arbitrament ?
Is it not a tacit admission that reason alone has the right to sit
in silent judgment on the ultimate value of all other faculties ?
Thoughts cannot cease save in sleep or trance, and every form of
thinking-whether used by hard-headed realist or other-worldly
mystic-involves some reasoning, however imperfect and however
crude the latter be. Why should we then not go the full length, when
we have gone so far along this road, and unreservedly accept the
supremacy of reason ?
A thorough conviction and an unassailable grasp of true
principles can only be reached through the adequate exercise of
thinking-power intently concentrated and raised to its highest
degree. No other method of approach can yield such an enduring
correctness in every instance. And it will eventually be the sole
means of obtaining world-wide agreement among all peoples and
in all places on this globe, because reason cannot vary in its conclusions
about truth ; it is universally verifiable and will remain so
a hundred thousand years hence. Such variations will, however,
belong to what pretends to be reason. And they will also exist
whenever reason is unjustifiably limited to the experience of waking
state alone.
Thus is it possible to arrive at a knowledge of the meaning of
world-existence which shall be valid at all times, which some bearded
Indian sage dwelling in his Himalayan school forty centuries ago
once gladly recognized and fully acknowledged but which shall yet
not be antiquated or found false by some keen American scientist
forty centuries hence, despite the fact that he shall then be heir to
all the knowledge of the vanished generations which preceded him.
Such a series of unvarying final conclusions can never be dispossessed
by the activities of new thinkers nor displaced by the novel
wizardry of modern science.
The ancient Indian sages once stood in certain respects where
the scientists stand today, but they did not hesitate to push their
enquiry into a wilderness where all familiar landmarks were lost.
"  
They devaluated the personal factor and thus began as heroes
sworn never to stop until the last letter of the last word of human
thought about truth had been completely spelt out. They firmly
pushed their reasoning to its ultimate possibility, to a point where,
in fact, it could go no farther for the reasoning faculty ceased to
work at the mysterious moment when it detected the hidden truth,
itself coming to rest in the same instant. They discovered, moreover,
that there are really two different kinds of thinking which might be
termed the lower and higher stages of reasoning. In the first the
power of analytic judgment is applied to the external world in an
effort to distinguish what is substantially real from what is merely
apparent. When this has been carried as far as possible--and not
until then-thought must critically return to itself and unhesitatingly
examine its own nature, which final step can only be successfully
achieved if success in yoga has previously been achieved.
This is a task of immense difficulty because it requires the utmost
concentration of the subtlest kind. Nor can a feeble and fragile
intelligence make the needed effort. When this concentration has
finally fulfilled its object the knowledge of reality dawns immediately,
and in that moment reason ceases to work for its services in judging
and discriminating within itself are no longer needed. This spontaneous
cessation of thinking is not to be confused as is so often
done with the mystic's "direct intuition of reality". It marks the
successful conclusion of thinking, not the successful abolition of
thinking. Reflection must not renounce itself before it has done its
fullest work. Nor does the mystic ever achieve abolition of thought
simultaneously with the retention of waking consciousness, the
feat being impossible ; he only changes one set of ideas' for another.
Thus what the mystic regards as the final achievement of his task
is regarded by the sage as only the half-completion of his own.
And where the mystic merely feels, he thoroughly understands.
The sages who have gone looked within self in the quest of
abiding reality rather than fitful experience, of final truth rather
than emotional satisfaction, and above all in completion rather
than in commencement of their examination of the world-hence
they alone found the genuine goal. And because they did not flee
as did mystics from the vexing problem of the world, they solved
that too at the same startling moment that the self was understood.
That rare instant of all-embracing comprehension in the depth of
thought-filled mystic trance was the culminating point in the
pyramid of their philosophical endeavour. It was called by the sages
"the lightning-flash", for it moved across the field of consciousness
 .
with the tremendous speed of a stroke of lightning. This having
been achieved, their further work was to recover and stabilize the
gratifying glimpse thus gained. With that their quest came to a
perfect end. For the new sun did not rise in the reddening East for
them alone. Thenceforth they made the age-old cause of all mankind
their own.
What they knew, that they were!
CHAPTER VIII
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY
HE student who has determinedly and understanding^
followed this thread of thought thus far will have raised
himself above the primitive consolations of religion and the
unsubstantial conjectures of imagination ; he will have awakened
from the blissful dreams of mysticism, the systematic self-deceptions
of logic and the profound slumber of verbalist ; he will have sharpened
his understanding and shaped his feelings to engage in the
loftiest adventure to which any man can be called-the quest of
final truth. He will be well prepared for the first trial of strength
which must now be undergone. The problem of the world confronts
him first because it is the problem of that which is most familiar and
most visible. Whereas the problem of self seems nearer it is actually
more remote, and although it seems simple it is really harder to
solve than the riddle of this inescapable universe that surrounds
him. Therefore it is right to start with an enquiry into the nature of
this curious world into which we humans are suddenly thrust and
from which we are slowly removed without anyone consulting us in
the matter!
It has already been explained why the initial attitude of a
philosopher is one of doubt. He must carry this attitude with him
not only when seeking a satisfactory source of knowing truth but
also to mental distances which may well stagger the complacency
of the ordinary man. He must be bold enough to begin his enquiry
by seeking to go behind his conventional knowledge of the universe
The alarmed reader may, however, be immediately reassured.
He is not asked to doubt the existence of this world which is the
first fact that confronts his eyes every morning and the last one
that he shuts his eyes on every night. He is asked to question the
truth of the sights, sounds and feels of which he is aware and the
reality of the objects thus seen, heard or felt, all of which nobody
but a lunatic would think of dismissing as non-existent. These are
two separate and distinct questions which demand different
itself!
M
 .
treatment; it will suffice therefore to consider in this chapter how
far our knowledge is basically true and to reserve for the following
chapter how far what is known is also basically real.
The student, like everybody else, experiences the "given" world
all right, but has he ever paused to question the validity of this
experience ? If not, it is his business to do so now. For if he pushes
such enquiry to its deepest point he will make the queerest and
most startling of intellectual discoveries.
What was one of the few supreme events in the scientific world
during our generation ? What revolutionary principle was then
established which threw sensational new light on old problems ?
Without a doubt Albert Einstein's formulation of the Theory of
Relativity not only summed up two thousand years of mathematical
research and passed in review three hundred years of physical
research, but it opened new pathways and expanded enormous
vistas for pioneer thinkers. The reasoned proof of this complicated
conclusion is filled with formulae which are beyond the brain of the
average layman, nor can the doctrine itself be fully explained
except in abstruse mathematical equations. Einstein himself
confessed once, when asked to put it in a few understandable words,
that it would take him three days to give a short definition !
However, without losing ourselves in a difficult tangle of complex
technical symbols and such indigestible intellectual foods as the
calculus of variations and the theory of invariants, we may and must
simplify and illustrate certain aspects of Einstein's hypothesis of
special interest to philosophers. That he himself looks somewhat
askance at philosophy is a natural if regrettable consequence of the
prejudice born of his scientific specialism ; but it also arises because
he confounds mere speculation with verified philosophy, a misconception
for which some so-called philosophers and many halfphilosophers
are themselves responsible. In his abhorrence of
metaphysics he has sought to confine his thought upon his work
within well-defined limits, but he could never have evolved his
hypothesis by mere experiment alone, and to the extent that he
indulged in rigorous reflection he was willy-nilly an unconscious
philosopher. It is impossible for the physicist to contemplate the
question of relativity with the thoroughness such an important
principle deserves without rising into ultimate questions and hence
without turning himself for the time into a member of the philosophic
fraternity. But Einstein is a mathematician and a physicist and
wishes to keep strictly to his trade. Hence he refuses to consider the
further implications of his work, i.e. he refuses to philosophize.
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
But all his disciples are not so limited. Eddington and Whitehead
have ventured to follow up the consequences of carrying his doctrine
to realms where thought runs deeper, the first in philosophical
psychology and the second in philosophical logic, both regions where
the master will not venture. But only in the ancient Asiatic thought
is the path of analysis which both have begun to travel been followed
to its fullest extent.
We need not let the highly mathematic character of Einstein's
calculations depress us or frighten us away from the hypothesis
itself. For mathematics is only a kind of logical shorthand whose
symbols yield conclusions from given data with a quickness unknown
to logic. It abbreviates syllogistic procedure by the substitution of
formulae and equations. The conceptual essence of Einstein's discovery
was known to the vanished sages of Hindustan, who were
not, however, like Einstein, trained mathematicians, whilst Greek
philosophers like Plato and Aristotle realized its profound importance.
The Jaina thinkers of India formulated a similar philosophic
doctrine, Syadvada, which resembles Relativism, more than
two thousand years before Einstein formulated his scientific doctrine.
Thus the Indian and Greek thinkers anticipated a principle which
was not to be experimentally tested and finally proved till many centuries
had passed away. What Einstein really did was to corroborate
it scientifically, to place it on a foundation of original mathematical
observation and experimental proof by illustrating its practical
application to a special sphere. He formulated relativity in order to
fit the hypotheses of physics to observed data. He made science
responsible for the testing and verification of a principle which had
hitherto lived precariously either among the arguable speculations
of ignored metaphysicians or amidst the antique doctrines of
unknown aliens. And it was the growth of such technological sciences
as optics and electro-dynamics that made his experimental work,
in the investigation of the sun's gravitational influence on light-rays,
for instance, at all possible. Hence this proof could not have been
arrived at earlier in history than it was!
 Light plays a unique role among the elements. A light-ray is the quickest
travelling thing known to science and it is the most important means of human
communication with the world outside. The introduction of the theory of relativity
into scientific thinking owes its origin to a famous experiment on the speed of light
performed by the Americans Michelson and Morley towards the end of last century.
Their work determined that the speed with which light travelled remained the same
no matter in what direction it did travel or to what body in space it was moving to
meet. The experiment showed that light moved at the same rate relative to the earth
whether the latter was approaching it or receding from it. It was difficult to reconcile
this discovery with the fact that the earth is moving through space. We should
expect the rate of movement of light to be greater when light is approaching the
 .
Relativity has taken the unalterable fixity out of time and turned
it into a variable dimension. Put in plainer language, time has no
particular meaning that is always fixed and the same for all human
beings. Those who would limit it to their measurement of clocks or
of the revolutions of starry bodies are merely airing a prejudice. For
the sense of time is not an absolute actuality but an interpretation
of both clock and star made by a conscious being. It is the way
sensations arrange themselves in the mind. There is no such thing
as an absolute measure of time. Close analysis will reveal that all
our measurements based on planetary revolutions are ultimately
nothing else than our relative impressions. Einstein began to point
this out, but he did so without realizing its fullest consequences.
The doctrine teaches that movement merely means the positional
change of relation between one thing and another, and therefore
physical change, as movement, is never absolute but always relative.
Once we admit that standards of time and space measurement may
vary, then we have to abandon our conventional ideas of the sciences
of physics, geometry and astronomy. Astronomy talks glibly of the
earth. This is on the same principle that the combined speeds of two trains approaching
each other from opposite directions is greater than the speed of a single train.
Therefore an observer situated on a planet which was advancing rapidly towards an
approaching ray of light ought to discover that its rate of movement was higher
than when he was receding before it. But the experiment ascertained that the speed
of light remained unaltered, being exactly the same, 186,000 miles a second, as
before the mutual motion was taken into account. This fantastic result was therefore
arithmetically equal to 2 + 1 = 2 !
Why did not the rays of light increase their rate of travel as according to known
laws they should have done ? No explanation of this peculiarity that was really
adequate was forthcoming until Einstein gave it. He pointed out in mathematical
language that all previous reflection on the matter was evidently based on principles
which themselves wrongly interpreted the experiment, and that it would be wiser to
modify those principles until they fitted the facts it revealed. But this put on trial
the whole question of the way in which the speed of light was measured, and the way
in which every instrument and every observer using the instrument arrived at the
time and space dimensions which resulted. If this were done it would then be found
necessary to alter inherited and prevalent notions of time and space themselves.
They had previously been regarded as something fixed for all time and in all places
and under all conditions, but the old standards with respect to them had been proved
fallible by this experiment made on the behaviour of light in a rapidly moving system.
By making a change in the character of these standards, by depriving them of their
assumed fixity and putting them in fundamental dependence on the situation of the
observer, by recognizing that*all spatial measurement is the comparison of the
relative positions of two things in space, and by accepting that there is nothing
ultimately constant about time or movement or measures of length, a new worldview
would come into being which would not only satisfactorily explain the problem
of light's uniform speed but would also explain other physical problems which recent
advances in science had brought up. Such were the beginnings of the principle of
relativity. Einstein then applied the principle to the influence of solar gravitation on
passing rays of light and by its aid made a precise calculation of the deflection they
would undergo. When in 1919 astronomical observations during an eclipse confirmed
his prediction the principle of relativity was magnificently vindicated before the world
of scientists. They could no longer continue to ignore it. The basis of all conventional
scientific thought about its own position had to undergo a vital change.
constellations of "fixed" stars. Yet this is a relative term only, for
without doubt they too are hurrying through space when seen by
somebody who is situated on what is to him a point of comparative
rest. We treat the Pole Star as if it were always at rest, yet the
phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes proves that it too is
a moving body. Therefore our use of the word "fixed" is quite
arbitrary. The fixed stars are thus named not because we really know
that they remain stationary in space but because astronomy has not
yet been able to devise instruments which will bring them close
enough to our perception conclusively to detect any movement in
them. When Einstein said that there was no position in the universe
which was absolutely at rest, and therefore no position from which
the shape and measurement of an object could be ascertained and
hold good under all other conditions of observation, he said in effect
that science was impotent to come to a final calculation about
the world.
We make our space-time measurements of position and motion
in relation to some standard which we assume is permanent, unalterable
and immutable; in short, ever at rest. But Einstein has
convincingly demonstrated that there is nothing in the universe to
which we can finally apply the description of "rest". For aught we
know it may be moving around a second thing also supposed to be
at rest. How can we know that anything is perpetually at rest and
never moving when our range of perception is so limited ? We
habitually judge by plausible outer appearances, by what the limited
five senses tell us, and commonly but ignorantly take solid stones
for matter at rest. Yet the truth is plainly revealed by modern
physical investigation into the wonderful world of atoms and
molecules. For the whole of stationary matter is built up out of
electrons and protons and neutrons which are incessantly moving
like swarms of restless bees. We must revise our simple notion of
the world.
If we sit for some time in a running train watching the green
landscape slide past the glazed windows our eyes become accustomed
to the motion and take it to be a normal condition. If the
train stops there is a temporary illusion that the landscape is
moving forward or that the train is moving backward. In certain
relations to the universe all mankind is like the passenger in the train.
A man who is walking along a bend in the railroad will not
notice, if he continually keeps his eyes directed towards his feet,
that the very track he is passing over is curved. It will appear
quite straight to him. It is only when he lifts his eyes, looks a little
distance ahead, and thus alters his perspective that he will see that
the rails are really curved. The same object therefore looks different
from a different perspective. How much of our world-view would
be altered if we could alter our perspective ?
A caravan of five hundred camels resting in a valley appears to
an observer who is standing on. a precipice overhead to be wholly
at rest. But this holds good only of the customary ideas of space
belonging to pre-relativity physics, and hence ignores the fact that
the earth is travelling around the sun and carrying the caravan on
its movement too. The observer, being quite unable to detect this
motion, unconsciously deceives himself into the belief that what is
true from his standpoint is also true from every other standpoint
within the universe. This is obviously incorrect, for a second observer
would certainly witness the caravan's passage through space were it
possible to overcome the practical difficulties of placing him on the
sun, and were he to survive the ordeal, devise and be provided with
an optical instrument adequate to the purpose. All that the first
observer is entitled to say is that the camels are at rest relative to
the earth ; more he may not say with truth unless he is able to shift
his point of vantage. Yet neither observer is wholly right nor wholly
wrong. The fact is, as Einstein points out, each moving body
possesses its own standard of time and its own system of space with
which an observer will always be in relation. He will not know
ordinarily that the other standards "and systems may differ from his
and that if he persists in sticking to the latter he will be unable to
explain the presence of utterly incomprehensible and completely
irrational factors in the universe.
These statements are the logical consequence of our knowledge
that the earth revolves round the sun. But the movement of any
planet can only be measured and described by mutual comparison
with something else that is quite still, say with the totality of fixed
stars. Hence relativity teaches that we can know only the relations
between bodies in space and that the description of them is only
comparative. We can only compare one thing with another. We are
compelled to deal in dualities. For our conception of space is
meaningless without a given standard of reference.
 A man who listens regularly for the clock of a city hall to chime the hour of
noon will assert that he hears the sound proceed from the same spot every day. If,
however, it were possible for another man placed on the sun to listen for the event he
would have to assert that the sounds proceeded from spots which were successively
300,000 miles distant from each other every day. For the earth and the clock would
have regularly moved to a different daily position relative to the sun. Thus the change
of standpoint produces an immense change in the results obtained.
If somehow we were so closed in that it was impossible to see
the other stars and planets in the sky we could not know that our
eaHh was moving forwards through space. We would feel sure that
it was fixed immovably in the firmament. For we would possess no
standard of reference. Thus motion is quite relational.
The earth is dynamically working its way through space around
the sun at the enormous velocity of nearly 70,000 miles an hour,
yet nobody feels the slightest pulse of this movement; everybody
upon it, on the contrary, feels that the earth is standing perfectly
still!
We glibly use the word "here". Yet even whilst we point out the
spot so designated the earth has whirled at a gigantic speed through
space, taking the spot with it, so that in a few minutes the latter is
many miles distant from where it was before. The "here" becomes
therefore a relative term, relational to some point or person on the
earth but meaningless when applied to space. Moreover, the earth
turns on itself and then revolves around the sun. But the latter is
itself moving relative to the Milky Way, and although it is a matter
at present beyond our measurement the Milky Way may most
probably be speeding through space too. When all these movements
are taken into account we must realize that we can form no probable
estimate of how far the same spot has really shifted in the course of
these few minutes. Nor could any experiment ever detect the speed
with which it is really moving through space, for there is no body
that is absolutely at rest with which its movement could be compared.
We can only determine its relative place and relative rate of movement.
And this will be the result wherever we station ourselves.
Thus we arrive again at the basis of Einstein's doctrine, which
is that space has no ultimate standard of measurement in itself and
that it is not the same under all circumstances. Space in the ultimate
analysis does not possess the properties implied by Euclid in his
postulates and axioms. Such is the conclusion of relativity. But
long before Einstein both Zeno and Pythagoras in*Greece and several
sages in India had found the contradictions which inhere in the idea
that space has a characteristic existence, an unalterable fixity of its
own. They saw that from one point of view it is measurable, purely
relational and finite, but from another it is quite immeasurable and
infinite in every direction. From the first we may limit it to its
parts, which can easily be marked out from the other parts in the
extension occupied by physical objects, but which from the second
viewpoint have no independent existence separated from the whole,
and we can impose no limits on its indefinite continuance, For when
we try to put all its parts together we can never arrive at an aggregate
which is the whole of space; whatever we think of as being
the whole will always have some more space extending beyond it,
and so on in an endless regress. Thus if you think of space as a
lesser part you deny its existence as a whole. If both views cancel
each other out in this way, then we must'conclude that space is
more a subjective idea than an objective element.
Moreover, if we apply some of the valuable lessons learnt in the
sixth chapter to certain words which are used whenever the absolute
existence of space is taken for granted, the words here and there, a
curious situation has to be faced. For space is supposed to be that
in which something exists or that in which the world-order differentiates
itself.
Now think of a point here upon this white sheet of paper.
Geometry defines a point as being a position without magnitude.
It has no dimension at all. This means that a point has nothing
inside it and has no place for anything to be put* inside it. Carry
this analysis still further and you will see that the point is not
spatial at all and therefore space, as represented by its "here", both
is and is not, contradictions which thus again cancel themselves out.
Think again of something that is out "there" in space, say the
distant continent of Australia. That means it is "not here". But
by "here" you may imply here in this city, or here in this country,
or here in this continent; or you may widen its embrace to the whole
of this world. You can go no farther, because you can no longer
have a special standpoint whereby one place can be distinguished
from another. The narrowness of attention which restricts your
definition of "here" will then be abolished. But in going so far you
have included Australia in your "here". Thus "here" and "there"
contradict each other, and with that the very notion of space as a
separate reality which rests upon them collapses altogether.
What becomes of our ordinary notion of space when radioactive
investigation tells us that the sharp point of the sharpest
needle made is a minute world where millions of moving bodies
incessantly circulate without ever touching each other ?
Those wha object to the analysis of such paradoxes as mere
word-quibbling do not understand the important role played by
words in secretly constructing our thought, nor do they comprehend
that semantic problems are really logical ones, and quite often they
are even epistemological ones. And they do not understand that the
meaning of a thing is inseparable from what we ourselves think it
to be; it is not only what some dictionary prints concerning it.
And they do not understand that the hidden working of the mind
in the viewing of the world is something quite other than they
usually suppose it to be.
Relativity shows at least that we have got to alter our inherited
habits of thinking about the world. Space and time demand lamination
because they enter into every conception of the external
world. They are the forms in which our experience is given us. A
complete understanding of this world completely involves them
too. Our objective life on earth obviously moves within the conditions
imposed upon it by space and time; all our experience is
indeed inseparable from them. All measurable bodies and all living
creatures are presented to our senses as existing spatially or temporally
and we cannot help representing the entire universe to
ourselves within a specific frame of space and time. We cannot think
of the myriad facts and manifold events of Nature without thinking
of them as filling a position somewhere in space and somewhen in
time. But the meaning of the latter is always relative and changes
with changing circumstances. Therefore these phenomena of
Nature can themselves only be thought of relatively. If we change
our frame we shall change familiar characteristics of our universe
too. It will lose its fundamental fixity, its unalterable absoluteness.
There can be no such thing as unique spatial relation or unchangeable
time observation. When we look more deeply into space it
tends to change its character from what appears to be an outward
fact to what is really an inward mental factor. We must, in short,
begin to mentalize space and spatialize mind. So far from being a
property of the external world, space begins to appear as a mysterious
subjective element which conditions our perception of the entire
external world.
But this view abandons the old conceptions of physics. It is
in line with Einstein's mathematical deductions which have made
the mass of a body variable. The old idea of matter was that its
most prominent and most tangible characteristic-technically
termed mass -was also its most enduring one. This is true of the
low rates of movement of everyday objects, but it is no longer true
of those beyond ordinary experience where extremely high rates
of movement prevail, for Einstein has forced science to discard the
old belief inasmuch as he has proved that the mass of matter may
vary. Thus physical objects become transformed into fields of
electrical force, of pure energy assuming forms dictated by velocity.
The belief in a separate something, a solid material substance, has
been seriously affected. Hitherto we could not speak of matter apart
 .
from the space it occupied, whereas we can speak of energy with far
less need to put it into space.
This new notion that energy has mass and that the mass of a
material body can change proportionately above certain rates of
movement renders the material character of a thing no longer its
cardinal one. The imagination cannot here easily catch up with
reason, but that must not be taken as an excuse for allowing the
former to obstruct the latter. The new scientific view must necessarily
offend common sense in thus destroying the static nature of an
object. It is impossible for the mind to present to itself in any
adequate imagery the idea of how relativity strangely affects the
mass of our material universe. We must be content to know, without
knowing how.
The Tricks of Time. The strange light which relativity has thrown
on our beliefs about space is quite similar to that which it has cast on
our beliefs about time. Our confidence in dating a single event is
shattered when we learn that it will be seen at different times by
two observers who are placed on bodies with different rates of
' movement; we start in surprise on hearing that two occurrences
which are simultaneous in occurrence for one witness will appear to
have a lapse of duration between them for the other.
The earth does not spin so fast through space as it did during the
earlier days of its hot youth and consequently the length of our day
is more than double what it then was !
Such is the relativity of time that the slow turtle which lives for
a century may not feel that it has endured more than the swift
insect which appears, grows, mates and dies in a single week, for
it determines its experience from a different standpoint. The point
is how many sensations pass through the mind ; if the number is equal
in both cases then years do not count. Whoever has experimented
with certain drugs knows that one consequence will be the unfoldment
of an abnormal sense of time so that a simple act like lifting
a hand will vividly take a half-hour to perform in consciousness,
yet to a watching person it is but the deed of a moment. Some who
have escaped death from drowning by a hair's-breadth report that
during the brief period preceding unconsciousness the history of
their life flashed like lightning before their mind's eye.
We fall asleep only apparently to awake again soon after in
dream, but we know later that we actually awoke only next morning.
We feel as much awake during dream as during the day. Yet in
five minutes of dream-time we complete a journey that takes three
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
weeks of waking time. We live in dream through a long sequence of
dramatic events, often highly detailed, and hours or days seem to
have passed in the experience, but enquiry reveals that the whole
series of events has occupied only a fraction of a minute! Thus
experience reveals the strange fluctuations of our sense of time
when we approach the same fact from different points of view.
A man differently situated, say on the planet of Venus, would
necessarily have a different time-sense from ours. The notion
that twenty-four hours will be twenty-four hours always under all
conditions and in all places is not correct. Such a disclaimer may
give a deep shock to our most familiar habits of thought. Yet
consider the case of a young man who has spent three or four hours
with an ardently loved sweetheart. The period will seem to him to
be shortened to less than a single hour. Consider as contrast the
case of an invalid who has accidentally fallen on a hot stove, and
is unable to lift himself up quickly ! To him each intensified second
will seem as long as an hour! Each man has his individual time
perception, as such abnormal instances make clear, and it is illusory
to believe that it is any other than his own unique experience. He
sees events in the perspective of his own special standpoint, because
time itself is only a relation. We never really measure time itself.
Even clock-time is only a measurement of a motion in space, i.e. a
relation between two things.
We are compelled by Nature to see everything as existent in
space and time. Time is immutably presupposed in the thinking
process. Space is a necessary condition of the perceiving process.
We can never separate a single thing from them. Yet we never see
space and time themselves! We get no direct sense-impression of
pure space or pure time. We cannot clothe the bare idea of space in
any mental image ; we can only think of a thing occupying distance,
extension ; hence we know space only as a property of things and
time as a property of movement.
The ordinary way is to regard time as being like a flowing
stream or like a constant succession of ticked-off moments. This
is perfectly natural, for the human mind cannot even imagine a
time which is devoid of the passage of happenings or in which no
"before, now and after" of events exist. It is in time that one
thought follows another as it is in time that events occur. Can you
form any idea of time at all unless you conceive it in beginnings
and endings or with breaks and changes ? But unfortunately this
leads us into an illusion. For we suppose time to be divided into
moments, but try to get precise hold of them and they vanish.
 -
Analysis discovers no separate parts, no independent moments ;
there is no interval between present and past. How can anyone
distinguish when the present moment begins or when it ends ?
Try to find the recognizable point of separation between the past
and the future, between "before" and "after*'. Whatever you take
as such a point will no longer remain such the moment you have
distinguished it. Yet what is the present moment except such a
hypothetical point ? It is one of the illusions of time that we perpetually
believe ourselves to be living -in the events of the present
time when no such division really exists. Whether it be a single
second or one-thousandth of a second or one millionth of a second
later, the so-called present moment will already have lapsed into
the so-called past. Our glib talk of the present, past and future phases
of time is talk of something which nobody can determine and of
which nobody can form an appreciable idea that will be correct
enough to defy all analysis. What then becomes of our whole notion
of time when no notion can be formed of its separate constituents ?
Thus what seemed to be a reality seems more likely to be to some
extent at least an idea harboured by our minds, i.e. the movement of
time is largely within ourselves.
Observe anything that grows, a grass seed for example. Can
you state at what precise moment the seed becomes a plant ? This
is quite impossible* Then where is that moment when the seed was
no longer a seed but a plant ? If it exists anywhere, it must be in
your mind or imagination. Thus the time-changes are really your
own experiences. Moments do not really exist. Time is not an addition
of non-existences. Add nought to nought and the total sum is still
nought; therefore time is not an independent reality but an
abstraction which is made from reality. Time, like space, is an
abstraction. But when an abstraction is taken to be something
real it contradicts itself.
When we push our reasoning still farther we have to admit
that our sense of time may contract just as our sense of space may
enlarge, and that when we measure the flight of time the mind
somehow and to some degree creates it. Relativity teaches that the
forms which times takes in experience are never final. They are
aspects which may alter in the wildest manner. Yet there is one
inseparable element which persists through all their alterations and
which unifies and holds them all. And that is the factor, of mind.
All this shows that time is not the simple thing we take it to be
but is actually pregnant with mystery. "Mankind perishes speedily
by thinking time real. The little time I spend in asking, Ts there
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
time at all ?' has revealed to me the perfect Peace, the very Deity
Himself/' was the observation of Tirumoolai, a medieval writer in
the Tamil language. And still more sagely he asked the question :
"Do you not know that time, vanishes when its origin is sought for ?
What then is the use of limiting yourself to it ?"
It would be a great error to imagine that any attempt is being
made to deny that man has any sense of time. Nothing of the kind
need be denied. He certainly feels the passage of time and feels its
reality strongly. The attempt made here is to cast a little light upon
its nature. The hidden source of this feeling of its reality will become
apparent as this course unfolds.
The Doctrine of Standpoints. The value of Einstein's work in
proving the truth of relativity by physical facts instead of metaphysical
fancies is immense. What he has unconsciously achieved
has been a critique of knowledge albeit he has limited his enquiry
to scientific methods of measurement. The entire principle of
relativity raises a gigantic question-mark against all our experience
of the universe and hence against all our definitions of knowledge.
What do we really know ? The world is no longer a hard fact but a
harder problem.
Relativity is a fundamental law which underlies all physical
events, all objects in Nature. Nothing is known that is not known
in relation to other things. Hence the saying of Lotze, that to exist
is to stand in relation. The idea that there are any closed systems
in the universe disappears under the searching light of relativity.
Each is"only a tentative stage in the approach to truth and never the
final step. The universe requires constant re-interpretation.
There may be as many relative truths in the physical world as
there are possible positions or ways of looking at a thing. This is
the anthropocentric flaw which vitiates ordinary knowledge. There
may be as many views of truth in the world of thought as there are
human beings. Such pluralistic and protean views are dependent
on human limitations and are therefore always conditional and
often liable to alter. Each is but an aspect, none is the entire truth.
The mid-Victorian materialism, for instance, is now refuted by
several leading scientists as vigorously as their � predecessors had
maintained it.
Here is mir red signal of warning. An observation may be quite
true when it is the consequence of fixing our attention on any
particular point of view in the realm where relativity reigns and yet
it may not be the truth in itself. The two are different.
 -
All these factors are to be looked upon as men's individual
and incomplete views because they are dependent on the flexibility
of human taste, the kinds of human temperament, the grades of
human knowledge or the degrees of its capacity. This is why we see
such wide differences of opinion, such strange conflict of experience,
and so many varieties of belief, outlook, custom and conclusion.
Therefore these departments are called "relative truths". So wide
is the possible range of the individual views arising out of such
dependence on relative truth that there can be no limit to their
number. Each department, like biology or pharmacology, for
instance, possesses its own particular view of life or deals with some
fragment of it, but none possesses a view which is common to all,
just as none deals with the totality of existence.
When the apparition of relativity appeared on the threshold
of science it frightened the timid. Well might they fear to push
its logical Consequence to its farthest end. This they still hesitate
to do, so philosophy must take up the task for them. From its lofty
standpoint, which, it must be pointed out, is that of ultimate truth
and not of practical value, all non-philosophic knowledge, whether
scientific or otherwise, stands on treacherous territory. None of
its conclusions are or can ever be final. All depend on the parochial
standpoint of observers on our insignificant planet, a mere speck
among millions of other stars in space. All its results may be modified
when with additional knowledge further standpoints become
available. It may hope to discover distortions of the final reality
by its present methods, but never reality itself. It moves ever from
one provisional tenet to another like a restless ever-wandering Jew.
We may therefore well become bewildered as to the nature of
the perplexing world in which we live. It is as paradoxical as any
that could be conceived. It is a world where reason does violence
to experience and where fact offers denial to thought. All human
intellectual knowledge suffers from being entirely relative and in
the end is chasing its own tail. It travels in a circle from which
escape seems impossible. It would seem that we can never get at
the final truth of the universe, and that we are captives perpetually
doomed to receive only the illusion of fresh knowledge but never the
knowledge itself.
Truth has become a myth. Finality is a fiction. It merely means
one out of countless possible views. Every outlook* may thus
receive its justification. No scientific observation may now be
declared correct for all time and for all observation. No scientific
theory exists but is incurably tainted with this all-pervasive
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
relativism. These different and divergent appearances of one and
the same thing when the observers or standpoints are themselves
different may well make us despair at ever knowing what is the
truth about the world. For men will constantly change their
intellectual position and shift to newer notions, only to lose them
again next time. Everything thus becomes in the last analysis
either a fleeting appearance or an insignificant illusion ! Nothing
may make pretension to finality.
It means that we get only fragmentary views of the world and
never see the world as a whole. It means that we get only an endless
supersession of one doctrine by another. It means that the mind
for ever displaces one set of ideas by another. It means that the fact
itself depends on the standpoint from which we approach it. What is
appropriate to one standpoint will not suit another. For we get at
aspects, not at independent entities. The sight of one aspect
excludes all the others. There is no finality in metaphysics also
because it equally with science is afflicted by the stubborn and
persistent malady of relativity. The attempt to attain an irrevocable
system of explanation has proved futile. In short, the picture of the
world which we possess or which science possesses is not the final
one.
In this world of relativism where all views are both false and
true, where what can be affirmed from one standpoint can also be
denied from another, there seems to be no final meaning. Those
Indian seekers who perceived the inevitability of this consequence
became dissatisfied. They wanted to know whether it is possible to
arrive at a view which would explain all the facts and not only some
of them. So the cardinal question again forced itself upon them.
They sought an answer, like Pontius Pilate, to their supreme query,
"What is truth ? Can we get at the last word of truth in its
integrity ?" By this they meant something that was not so imperfect,
that was no less universally valid for all men as that the addition
of one plus two results in three. Nobody in any part of the world or
in any century has yet questioned this arithmetical result. Such
an unvarying principle of truth was sought by them. This they
called the ultimate truth. Finally they found a satisfactory answer
and then the hidden teaching was formulated. They proved that it
was all a matter of standpoint, of climbing sufficiently high until
the summit of all possible peaks was reached. They urged that the
failure to find any absolute characteristic in the materials of our
knowledge of the universe need not frighten us into despair. It
should stimulate us to listen to the voice of the hidden philosophy
 -
which explicitly says that a fresh approach to the problem should
be sought for and may be found.
Euclid showed that parallel lines never meet; Einstein showed
that they may. Yet both may be considered as right provided we
remember that they differ according to the different -standpoints
taken. "The inhabitant of another planet using a watch marked
in exactly the same manner as our watches would apparently
measure time in the same way, but actually the similarity would
be fictitious. His day might be longer or shorter than ours, therefore
his three o'clock might not be equivalent to ours. For the standards
of spatial reference would be different and the time systems would
necessarily differ too. The difference of standpoint will always be
fatal to uniformity of observation ; the appearance of what the
earth-man sees cannot be separated from his own position in space.
The shape of a thing, the position it occupies and the place in time
and space which it possesses are after all appearances presented
differently to different observers. This is the implication of Einstein's
General Theory of Relativity. #
The need of taking fresh standpoints to secure expanded outlooks
is thus an essential and important lesson of relativity. The
relativity principle does not put Newton in the wrong nor makfe it
necessary to discard old measurements. It draws a line of limitation
around every kind of result and within each such system of reference
the old measurements and the Newtonian notions hold good. It
shows that we must not expect them to be always applicable,
because they are only relative to a particular standpoint.
One standpoint which is higher than another will reveal a
wider horizon. Even the shallowest experience of life shows that
many things are not what they seem at first sight, that the naive
immediate impressions of them prove to be insufficient when we
move to a deeper enquiry into them. It is �he first lesson of philosophy
and the last lesson of experience. It is the difference between
what actually is and what only appears to be, between what is
substantial and what seems to be substantial; we meet this contradiction
of experience everywhere. It is to be found in human
society as well as in planetary processes. The course, size and distance
of a starry body do not yield to the gaze, look at it as long as we
will. We must put forth intellectual effort, take instruction from
astronomy, and then only can we wrest its secret from the seen.
If everything revealed its whole nature to first uncorrected impression,
science would never be needed and philosophy would
never have to fatigue itself by following on the heels of science.
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
The wide discrepancy between experience and the truth of experience
compels us to press onward beyond the plausible fact to challenging
reflection upon the fact.
To stick always to a single position and take things from that
position only because it is troublesome to find a fresh one or
because everybody else sticks to that position is ultimately unsafe
and philosophically unwise. From what point of view are we seeking
truth ? On what point of vantage do we stand when gazing at what
we deem truth ? For all that will determine both what we see and
how far what we see is true. The meaning of what we believe to be
truth and the value of a judgment are entirely conditioned by the
standpoint we take up. Thus the possibility of ascertaining more
truth in the scientific sphere increases by the mere upward shifting
of standpoint. Philosophy absorbs this lesson and then carries it
still further, for it says : let us therefore rise to the highest possible,
the ultimate standpoint, where there is no relativity, and make our
final conclusions about the world only then. It points out that we
cannot escape from the need of a double viewpoint, the first being
inclusive of all possible and relative positions embraced by ordinary
practical life and experimental science, the second being the remote,
austere and unique one of purely universal reason free from all
relativity. For the view which will be obtained from the latter will
be absolutely independent of those personal human characteristics
which render all results partial and relative. They may be most
useful for immediate and practical purposes, but they cannot serve
the more exacting quest of final truth.
A mind that tires easily will, at the sight of unaccustomed
paths, be content with the first and most immediate standpoint,
that of practical utility, taking things just as they are perceived by
the senses, whereas one that is well imbued with the love of truth
will exert itself to rise above first appearances or the homely surface
of things and reach their explanation by taking up a critical and
inquiring position. This is what the scientist does. But he stops
there. Hence the plaint of hidden philosophy. It welcomes the
forward march of the scientist. It is not, like religion, afraid of him.
Only it would urge him to rest at nothing short of a position from
which he can affirm the ultimate truth or uncontradictable judgment.
Such a position can belong only to the rigorous activity of pure
reason put on its widest stretch, and is not to be disclosed by
physical observation or laboratory experiment.
The primitive standpoint is a necessity of day-to-day living.
It may prove quite successful for practical as opposed to theoretical
N
 -
purposes and thus require no other sanction from the average man.
It is generally based on the crude and naive reports of the five
senses; the fact of these reports is there and everybody must
accept it. The simpleton is satisfied with the face-value of his fact
and in his mental poverty refuses to go behind the actual experience,
but both scientist and philosopher will accept it only tentatively
and then proceed to question it for its meaning. Both perceive that
it is essential to pass in thought beyond immediate experience into
wider and deeper enquiry into the way in which the fact came into
being. If popular thought were always right thought, instruction
would not be required ; if immediate impressions were sufficient to
know the whole truth about anything, education would not be called
in to correct them ; and if men naturally perceived the meaning of
the universe and of their own lives the work "of philosophy would
be -quite superfluous. Men are, in fact, born in original and native
error; they win through to sound knowledge only by laboriously
rectifying their common and spontaneous judgments. Yet popular
abhorrence of mental effort is usually content with the easier view,
ridden with numerous fallacies though it be, and often suspicious
of the philosopher's, although the latter's represents the long
struggle and final victory of reason.
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that there will always be
two possible ways of looking at the world. The first standpoint is
multiple and may include innumerable degrees of what is believed
to be real or true, but it is always involved in what is technically
called in logic the fallacy of simplicity. It may be described as
being primitive, inferior, relative, ordinary, simple, practical,
common-sense, empirical, immediate, partial, finite, phenomenal,
local, ignorant and obvious. The second viewpoint may be described
as being absolute, ultimate, philosophic, unified, highest, noumenal,
reflective, universal, true, full, unique, superior, final and
hidden.
We have already seen how science offends the common-sense
standpoint. Then how much more will the latter bp offended by
whatever takes up a stand which is higher even than that of science ?
This higher view is not only unquestionably necessary but happily
possible. Philosophy alone provides it because it alone climbs to
the very summit and refuses to limit itself to ' 'compartmentalism'',
but surveys the whole of existence, including the surveying mind
itself. Philosophy seeks to fill the lack created through the compartmentalism
of practical life and scientific research by taking the
utmost care that no aspect of mental and material existence-
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
however insignificant it be regarded by others-shall be omitted
from its wide purview and unique co-ordination.
Science can never complete its task alone. Its adventure is a
grand one but it can come to no terminus. When it gets weary of
this circle-travelling it shall seek for respite; not by weakening
into the soothing arms of mysticism but by rising into the arctic
air of philosophy shall it find enduring peace. This vicious round of
relativity has no outlet unless science has recourse to the help of
the philosophic view. Two separate standpoints thus arise and
bifurcate our view of nature. There can be only one ultimate truth
and one final standpoint whose character will be both unalterable
and invulnerable. The philosopher seeks to discover them and is
satisfied with nothing less. The concept of the world which arises
out of the utmost pure reflection is different from that which arises
out of the first sensual impression. We must distinguish sharply
between them. For the first is perfect whilst the second is premature.
The first standpoint is that of the universe itself, the second is that
of man : the first, sees from the viewpoint of the whole universe and
not merely from that of the knowledge of any particular man,
hence it is absolute and true, whereas the second sees only anthropocentrically,
hence always relatively.
The change-over from the lower to the higher standpoint taken
by the hidden teaching can come only after one climbs up the
scaffolding of long experience of life or after one struggles across
the river of deep reflection about it. For it is the change from first
love to final mating. It is often heralded when circumstances
present hard problems which conflict with preconceived beliefs and
perplex the unenslaved mind. This evokes the dark wraith of
doubt, which in its turn calls for further and deeper investigation.
But investigation soon causes pointed questions to arise. Knowledge
resulting from adoption of the higher standpoint can alone proffer
a satisfactory answer to these questions because it alone deals in
ultimates, whereas all other standpoints offer answers which may
serve for the moment, which are useful pragmatic working views
for a time, but they too are bound to fail one later under the pressure
of hard facts. History proves how governments, religions, theories
and institutions fcreak down in the end, despite their one-time
invincibility. For there is no permanent settlement except in
ultimate truth. It is far less important to travel from Canada to
Cape Town than to travel from the primitive point of view to the
philosophic.
Thus philosophy alone can become the sole apex at which all
-
lines of the pyramid of knowledge and action must meet. Its
deliverances are adamantine, they may be ratified by time but not
rectified by it.
The unique virtue and incomparable value of such an attitude
displays itself in the daring claim which the hidden philosophy
alone ventures to make, viz. that it arrives at completeness of
results, uncontradictability of truth and the verified principle underlying
all phases of experience and knowledge which, when attained,
makes everything else understood. This claim must be tested,
however, like all others, and the hidden philosophy will fearlessly
and gladly submit to every imaginable test because haying been
always its own severest critic it is conscious of having reached a
basis as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. If everywhere that which
passes for philosophy differs with the philosophers themselves
nowhere can the genuine philosophy vary in essential principles by
one iota from what it always has been and always must be.
Thus in our quest we must learn to apply the proper standpoint.
Do we want the last word in truth ? Then we must approach the
world from the philosophic position. Do we want a practical working
view ? Then we may take the limited and lower view. But whatever
we do we ought not to confuse our categories. For the penalty will
be distortion of truth and inability to find a working rule. The
philosophical viewpoint must be kept distinct and separate from the
practical, otherwise we shall get a blurred and muddled outlook,
says the hidden doctrine.
Moreover, it must not be thought that to take this higher view is
to destroy the lower one. The antithesis between them belongs to
the world of elementary thought and does not dislocate the springs
of everyday action. They can be co-ordinated according to individual
circumstances. The two viewpoints can be distinguished but cannot
be separated, cannot be divorced. We may study one apart from the
other, but in doing so we make a mere abstraction of both, whereas
the real is the whole. They are not to be taken as rigid divisions but
as necessary distinctions. Nobody can be negligent of the first
without ceasing to be a human being, whilst nobody can be negligent
of the second without condemning himself to remain outside the
realm of truth. Nobody can dispense with the more primitive outlook
because practical life has to be based on belief to a larger extent
than on truth. We have to take our cook on trust, for instance, for
there is no time to investigate or supervise every minor detail of
the cooking every day. This means that we must be content never
to know the truth about it, never to prove that everything is as it
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
purports to be. Active life would be impossible if we had to wait
and collect all the facts before every single deed or movement, so
we are compelled to take much or most of it on appearance-value.
Application of the higher standpoint to every petty concern of the
day is neither desirable nor necessary. It would make every ordinary
business a nuisance. It would be as foolish and as impossible as the
attempt to apply the canons of common sense to the questions of
pure philosophy. Thus it is enough that we keep perpetually present
in knowledge the roundness of our earth and not demand that sight
and touch should also tell us of it. It is enough that the philosopher
remain a sensible human being, so long as he holds firmly to the
principles that generalize the truth behind all the changing scenes
of his daily diorama.
Such a method, however, as the practical one is alone too defective
for philosophy, which must thoroughly test every inch of its forward
progress. When man begins to think of what life means and what the
world means he must leave the little compromises which make up
popular existence and ascend to Himalayan mental altitudes.
When he philosophizes let him be done with all such compromises,
all easy concessions to the infirmities of our adolescent race, and let
him be loyal to his mistress.
The movement of thought within both stages is inescapable.
They are complementary. We have to co-ordinate them. But to
confuse or to compromise the two standpoints is to mix up the issues
of life and thought. From its unique standpoint philosophy seeks
to provide the final and consistent explanation of everything that
exists, yet it does not deny the value of the work accomplished by
those who are confined to the ordinary standpoint alone nor the
experience of those who can find truth only in what they see. But it
shows up the purely relational character of such work, experience,
judgment and knowledge as being quite inadequate to a comprehensive
view of life which omits nothing from its survey.
Thus we can adjust the claims of practical life with the claims
of philosophical truth and harmonize all knowledge. For experience,
science is the starting-point .of genuine philosophy. When it can
summon up sufficient courage to make the leap, when the revelation
of relativity forces it to confess it can never alone attain certitude,
it will elevate itself to the mantled dignity of philosophy. It need
not abandon the pursuit of practical achievements if it does this,
for the two can and should be co-ordinated. And thus it must
labour amid the turmoil of earthly strife while holding to the inner
silence of unearthly being; it must reconcile the limitations that
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
only because we do not follow light for a course of millions of miles
and during a sufficiently long period of time. Could we but do so
we should find them curved. But such a discovery is subversive of
all the axioms of Euclid, of all the geometry that had been based on
those axioms, of all the old concepts of fixed material bodies arranged
in space according to the old Euclidean laws. Euclid's geometry
worked well provided it was applied only to limited portions of the
universe. But when a vaster field was brought into consideration
it became unsatisfactory and non-Euclidean systems such as
Riemann's were found more adequate to the measurement of the
world. Here again the expanding space sense has revolutionized even
the character of mathematics. If it has demanded the giving up of
limited notions it has offered more comprehensive and more
generalized explanations of physical phenomena in their place.
The expansion of the time sense of mankind is equally important
to thought and culture and has shown itself in various ways. Men
do not get giddy nowadays at this striking change, as they would
surely have done five hundred years ago. The gramophone brings to
their ears a voice which spoke a decade ago, the radio enables them
to hear immediately speech or song which would formerly have
required several days or some weeks of journeying to hear. The
world of time has contracted whereas the sense of time has enlarged.
This widening of the space sense which brought the discoveries
of Copernicus and of Einstein in science has also brought other new
truth in its train. It is affecting the practical policies of statesmen
and the theoretical principles of economists. It is influencing the
major departments of human life and human culture. And to the
extent that this alteration is bringing men to realize the unity of
existence, to that extent it conforms to the practical teaching of
philosophy concerning social life and ethical conduct. Both science
and philosophy here tend to meet and their paths become increasingly
less divergent. Moreover, all these new truths about
space and time are bringing a great growth in the thoughts of men
and a great growth in their conception of the world. They are thus
preparing the public mind for more favourable reception of the
truths of the hidden Indian philosophy, towards which they tend
strikingly and inescapably to lead. As people get used to thinking
in this newer way it will be easier for them to appreciate the higher
philosophic outlook.
Relativity has provided a new world-view as the background
for all future thought about things. A thorough grasp of the meaning
of relativity cannot but bring to birth a new outlook for thoughtful
 -
men and emancipate their minds from dead ideas, for hitherto the
characteristic of the external world was its inevitableness, its
mechanical status. We were constrained and compelled by our
feelings to accept it as it seemed to be. We instinctively felt that it
was not a case of what we wished to think about it but of what we
must think about it. Hence everybody, even the scientists, had
cherished the belief that whatever was seen to occupy a certain
shape possessed a separate appearance and measurement which
was objectively its own precisely as perceived. They had also
believed that whenever an event happened its duration was likewise
precisely something that inhered within itself, as Newton had said,
and all the scientists who followed after him had said, everywhere
absolutely unchangeable and uniform and consequently quite
independent of human experience of them. The stellar universe
which we humans believed to be "out there" in space and enduring
through time was quite unaffected by our position, presence or
absence and continued a uniform existence whose fundamental
characteristics were the same for all observers in all ages. Space and
time were once and for all "given".
With Einstein's advent these views are shown to be fallacious,
imperfect and misleading. He demonstrates that the conventional
standards of measurement, as made in space and time, are not at
all absolute and irrevocable. They are entirely dependent on factors,
such as the position of an observer, which in themselves are variable
and relative. What we really know of the world is not stereotyped
for everybody and everywhere but is entirely relative to a particular
standpoint which we have taken up. By changing the standpoint
we shall visualize the same world in a different way. But, be it noted,
to turn space into a variable is to deprive it of its Euclidean character
and to make a mental factor enter it.
Through the whole of last century science, as if it were an
observer who had scrutinized the world, did not know that the
data it had thus gained was more useful for getting things done than
for getting at ultimate truth. It was like a man in a closed astronomical
system unable to tell that the earth was moving because
he had nothing else with which to compare it. But the mental sleep
of the race was ending. History had marked the twentieth century
as the century of sudden awakening. Science began to scrutinize its
own position, itself, and thus become conscious of a missing element
in its observation of other movements-its own movement!
Science had absorbed itself in the study of the external world
but omitted to take into reckoning the student himself, the conTHE
REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
ditions under which he worked and the preconceptions with which
he worked; yet all these were factors which entered into the
observations themselves and consequently modified the results
obtained. To think of the objects apart from the men who study
them is to think of abstractions. It is like two ends of the same
stick-you cannot have one without the other, do what you will.
Somebody must be there to know the object; so far as human knowledge
of them goes they exist as known things. To treat them otherwise
is to abstract one end of . the stick and pretend that the other
is not there. Relativity plainly states that the observer cannot be
separated from his observations, that space is not a wide void in
which objects are hanging nor time a broad stream in which they
are standing. The shapes we perceive, the measurements we make,
depend on the position of the one who perceives and measures. Let
him shift his position and new shapes and new measurements will
present themselves to his gaze. Therefore empirical knowledge is
perpetually exposed to revision. We can never arrive without
philosophy at a determination of the character of the universe
which shall be and shall remain absolute.
The inner meaning of relativity is that the world may be known
differently in the experience of different human beings. The principle
may be applied to the particular way in which an object appears to
us from a particular position or it may be applied to the fact that
the object itself is known also as an idea in relation to a knowing
mind. An object is never independent of the conditions affecting a
particular observer.
The universe has been deprived of unalterable entity. Relativity
has converted it into a universe of individual or collective interpretation.
Even if the observations of a million persons agree more
or less with each other they still remain interpretations. The
principle of relativity does not forfeit its truth because a million
people grouped together in a town find no difference in their
general observation of a particular object ; it still applies to them,
albeit collectively, because they have used the same general position
or set up the same general standard of reference.
Apart from its practical value, which is not under consideration
here, the worth of Einstein's work to the cultural world is that it
gives a jolt to the smug scientific tradition which tried to make a
fixed representation of the universe. It inaugurates a new era of
comprehension for thoughtful minds. For the aspect of it that
matters most proves conclusively that the observed universe, i.e.
the known universe, as apart from the one supposed to be outside,
 -
depends partly at least for its appearance upon the observer himself.
And anyone may enter into this comprehension, however, without
turning mathematician and trying to master the technicalities of
relativity, if only he will set out to study his own world more closely
for what it is rather than what he feels it to be. He wilLthen perforce
see that the space and time sides of his human experience are not
so objective as everyday thought holds them to be.
If nothing exists in isolation, independently of its relation to the
one who perceives it, then, without actually stepping into the shoes,
the body and mind of another man, i.e. without becoming the other
man, it is an impossible feat to observe any object precisely as he
himself observes it. Thus we stubbornly carry ouf world-view with
us wherever we go. The observations which we make are really
made within it, are inseparable from it. Our world of observed facts
is also a world of judgments ! We separate out by abstraction some
special aspect and call that the thing itself. We isolate special
appearances of the object, we make an abstraction from all its
possible appearances and then proceed to assert that we have seen
the object! The logic which proves -that the object known can never
be separated from the knowing subject as an independent entity,
that the observer is part of every observation which he makes, and
that the world is describable only in terms of relations is unanswerable.
When Einstein shows that there is no space and no time common
to all groups of human beings, it is like showing that various
spectacles are in use, each group's glasses being tinted differently
and hence producing a different-coloured picture. Where do these
changes of aspect really occur ? The resultant pictures when traced
to their ultimate abode are not "out there" in the object but in the
observers themselves. If five men studying the same thing from
five different positions find that it differs in size, mass, rate of
movement and so on, who but themselves are responsible for the
changes in the observed object ? This is the only possible way of
construing such relativity. Throw the observer out of your calculation
and the whole system of relativity collapsesThe observations
are to a large extent at least dependent on the observer. The world
of massive continents and majestic oceans appears to be set out in
space, and yet when we reflect upon the mattes the space-relations
themselves are somehow inextricably mixed up with the observer
who is looking at it. If the earth looks flat and is actually round,
seems stationary but is continually rotating, where is the error to
be sought for ? Obviously in the observer himself, for his senses are
THE REVELATION OF RELATIVITY 
at work in moulding and presenting the picture of the earth to him.
The plausible assumption which inheritance and habit have
engraved upon our minds that we enter into direct connection with
a world independent and apart from ourselves can no longer be
justified. Relativity drags from us the rueful admission that there
are always different ways of looking at the world, that there are
no fundamental characteristics which all observers perceive, and
that alteration of position or reference standard will alter the sensepicture
of the world in the observers themselves. And that sensepicture
is the only one which they unquestioningly invest with
reality, for they know no other.
We get our facts about the world ordinarily through the use of
the five sense-organs, those complicated structures which began in
the far past as simple sensitive patches of skin. The scientist has to
work on measurements which he has read off an instrument or an
apparatus with his own faculty of sight. To that extent he is entirely
dependent on the services rendered him by his two eyes. The chemist
alters weights in the scale pan of a laboratory balance and then reads
the figures indicated by a pointer which moves over a figured scale.
Actually his consciousness has noted certain visual sensations,
certain experiences which have occurred to nervous mechanisms in
his own body. Science is said to be based on measurement alone,
but this is evidently an incomplete statement ; the human observer
must be reckoned as a part of the results too. Science cannot be
separated from the scientists. Therefore the pattern which science
has created is also a pattern of human experience. This has been
granted by Einstein, for he included a mathematical idea of an
observer in his conclusions. And the observer in turn depends on his
senses for information.
"But what has all this analysis to do with me?" some will ask.
"Is it not the special preserve of scientists and mathematicians ?"
The answer is everything! For you, dear reader, are yourself an
observer with the world which you see and the environment around
you as your field of observation. Einstein's work is being used here
only as an example, only to illustrate some most important tenets
 We may watch on a cinema screen a slow-motion picture of a horse leaping over
a hurdle. Its legs move so tardily that the animal takes sixty seconds for a feat
which was actually done in two. What has happened ? The photographer has accelerated
the turning of his camera handle so as to take hundreds of pictures per
second, whereas the operator has projected thern^ on the screen at such a retarded
rate that the movements are slowed down to diminishing-point. It is not an illusion.
The machine has acually expanded our measurement of time by altering the number
of our sensations. It has simply and practically iUustrated what the principle of
relativity expresses 19 mathematical formulae.
of the hidden Indian teaching. He has shown that we know nothing
definite about reality and he has shown by implication the need of
the higher philosophic standpoint. Moreover, although his discovery
referred to quantitative measurements in space and time it may
be extended to many other fields of enquiry. Relativity is a principle
which holds good almost everywhere, and its philosophic study is of
consequence to you. It will serve as a useful stepping-stone to a
unique level of reference, where the true character of the world and
later the true meaning of your existence can*be unveiled.
Relativity reigns in the mental world equally as in the physical.
Belief colours or conditions perception. Predilection is selective and
shuts out whole strata of facts from observation. Egoism is deceptive
and often sees only what it likes to see. Assumption falsifies even
that which it does see. Emotion overweights the trivial, deflects the
mental and ignores the substantial. Imagination effortlessly manufactures
the most improbable data.
Moreover, Einstein's work not only strips both time and space
of their independent reality, but leads logically to another point
which should not be overlooked. When he makes it clear that a
man on the moon would have a different kind of time to a man on
the earth the time-reference is shown to be somehow mixed up
with the space-reference. Relativity shows that you cannot separate
space from the observer, that you cannot separate time from the
observer, and that both time and space form part of a single thing.
The space-time continuum is one thing, not two : there is no space
without time as its inseparable co-existent companion. The "when"
and "where" are for ever in union.
All perceptions of time must involve reference to the external
world and hence involve perceptions of space too. They are
inseparables. The time at which an object occupies its three
dimensions in space must be brought in to complete its measurement.
All our knowledge of nature is the knowledge of things extended
in space and occurring in time ; all our experience is the experience
of objects occupying a particular spatial position and a particular
time-order. It is not only that we see the surrounding world but we
see it in a space-time relation.
Time and space mutually imply each other, are dependent on
each other. For we see objects in space separately and therefore
successively and therefore in the total dimension of space-time.
Conversely, if we could not separate the earth from the sun in space
we would have no means of measuring time, nor any revolutionary
movement wherewith to mark it. Thus all our sensations are coTHE
related in space-time. We spatialize by arbitrary withdrawal from
the fourth-dimensional continuum where both space and time lie
perpetually united. The space-time continuum is the foundation
which underlies all our experience of the world.
We need not let ourselves be intimidated by the formidable
sound of this word "continuum". It becomes explicable when we
know that space and time are relative to the mind of the observer
and that this continuum is somehow inextricably mixed with the
mind itself. Space-time is after all a mathematical idea, a conceptual
picture, and hence a mental thing.
How comes it that we seem to find space and time as separate
realities ? It is because the mind has unconsciously picked and
partitioned them out to some degree from itself and then arbitrarily
imposed them as objective discoveries upon itself. Thus the structure
of the world depends partly on the structure of the mind. We must
not overlook that the mind is constantly interpreting the world for
us, constantly at work behind every measured movement in time
and every measured thing in space. The farthest point to which
science has gone is that space-time is the ultimate matrix which
moulds the objects and events that emerge into being : it is both
their mysterious source and the fourth dimension of matter. When,
however, we come to realize that space-time is itself inseparable from
the mind we shall see what direction science will be forced by further
investigation and discovery to follow. The longer it hesitates to take
this step the larger will be the accumulation of proof that will
confront it.
From the moment that Einstein announced his discoveries,
physical science could no longer stand aloof as it had done in the
past from the problem of the relation of mind to the world. For
relativity undermined the entire objective nature of such science
and involuntarily introduced a subjective factor. Nothing therefore,
according to relativity, is completely self-existent. This interpreted
world is partially, at least, dependent on the interpreting mind of
the observer. The old notion that space and time were containers
in which things were exhibited must go, The new notion that space
and time are contained within the observer must come in. The
corollary to be drawn from this is that mind and sensation are
inescapable factors in the making, as apart from the perceiving, of
the world we know, for that world is as inseparable from space as it
is from time.
Truth as it exists in itself, unconditioned, is in Einstein's belief
unattainable; truth as it exists in relation to the faculties of
 -
individual men is alone possible of attainment. The hidden teaching
emphatically disagrees with this pessimism, pointing out that entity
exempt from all relation can only be of a common mental nature
and that it might be apprehended through a non-individual
approach. Anyway, somehow and to some extent the principles which
determine human knowledge exist within the human senses and the
human mind and not definitely beyond them in the universe.
Without the aid of mind we are unable to know anything at all.
This proposition is irrefutable. Thus in the stage to which we have
travelled the world hinges largely upon ourselves as observers of it.
But what are we without our instruments of observation, without
the five senses ? Nothing! Everything is received through them.
The earth on which we walk and the chair in which we sit enter
into our awareness only because they are registered on the skin, the
eyes and the ears. The world we know is a sense-world, whatever else
lies beyond it or outside it. It will vary as our fivefold sensations
themselves vary. What they tell us constitutes our world. And they
can tell different things to men who are differently placed. This is
the fundamental lesson of relativity. Relativity introduces an
individual or group character into all observations. Unreflective
people do not understand that part at least of what they take to
be outside themselves exists rather as sense-impressions within
themselves. What is believed to exist beyond these impressions is
not definitely known.
We are following a suggestive and exploratory trail which has
led us back through the things of time and space to man himself,
partly to his mind and particularly to the sensations which he forms
of the world without. This raises the physiological and psychological
question of how we get sensations and what they really are. We
habitually accept the deliverances of the senses as true and therefore
do not pause to consider how far they are true. It is the next task
to. investigate their precise nature, as well as to ascertain how much
of what we see is dependent on this mental factor.
CHAPTER IX
FROM THING TO THOUGHT
WE are now on the threshold of an ancient mystery. There
is a stirring and stimulating aspect of the scientific discovery
of relativity which has not been allotted its proper significance
and its adequate value by the West, but which was known, understood
and valued by the Indian thinkers of antiquity. And this
mystery is the relation between the things of our experience, the
senses and the mind. For we have come to see at this stage that
every separate thing of which man is or can be aware of is apparently
a product of two ingredients, the mental and the material, and not
of the material alone. But in what proportions the two are mixed is
a question which we have yet to answer. How much of a thing is
supplied by the mind and how much is received from the external
world is a riddle which has puzzled men from Kapila to Kant, more
because its right answer is too unexpected and unsuspected to
be acceptable than because its difficulty is too insuperable to be
overcome.
We know that there is around us a world of common objects
such as brick houses and leafy trees. But what we really know of this
world depends on how we come to know it. Talkative ignorance can
assert that we see it, that certain corresponding images register on
our eyes and are somehow grasped by the mind. Sight, however, is
not such a simple matter as it seems, for it will yield surprising
reyelations when subjected to analytic treatment. The average
untutored mind with usual and unquestioned habit is satisfied that
its awareness of the world, its personal experiences and environmental
changes, are simple affairs, but the scientific mind knows how
complex and elaborate they really are.
The forms which we see on every side do not explain themselves.
If we want to know the truth about them we have to make rigorous
enquiry. The world that is "given" to the mind is not given with
its easy explanation accompanying it. We have to hunt and ferret
the latter down with all the energy we can muster. Otherwise it
 

will not be forthcoming and we shall remain in the kindergarten
stage of thought.
Before we should credit or discredit the testimony of our senses
we ought to understand properly how they come to offer such
testimony. We need not deny that they will tell us of a world
without, but we ought to ascertain what it is precisely that they are
trying to tell us. Those who have the patience to take up these
enquiries in an earnest spirit are taking important steps to awaken
from the dream of ignorance which holds almost all mankind in its
heavy folds ; they will have begun to break up the universal illusion
in the only way that it can be broken because they will have begun
to interrogate it. They will be the forerunners of a rightly educated
and nobly elevated populace.
We must start like modern science, lucidly and logically from the
standpoint of the known, and only then may we work our way to
the unknown. Therefore we must for the moment triply turn ourselves
into physicist, physiologist and psychologist. We must
examine our bodily apparatus, watch the way in which it behaves
when sensing things and search our field of awareness. And if a
few technical scientific terms will have-to be introduced into this
account they will be found simple and well-known to most readers ;
nevertheless'their full explanation will also be given so that none
may be unclear to anybody.
Physical and physiological enquiry should come first, for the
body is better understood than the mind. Such study will reveal
some peculiar facts about the working of our senses. All experience
passes into awareness through the portals of the sense-instruments :
eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. It is hardly necessary to point out
that perception of and intercourse with the world would be impossible
if we did not possess these five sensitive bodily instruments
which keep us informed about the world of surrounding things, five
channels of sense: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. A life
without any of the senses is a tragically limited one. That is why
we instinctively feel pity for the blind, the dumb and the deaf, who
live in colourless, speechless or silent worlds.
The skin is crowded with the sensitive bulb-like terminals of
numerous delicate nerves which lie beneath its surface. Through
these terminals we get our senses of touch, of temperature and of
pressure, which are simpler reports than those of the other senseinstruments.
The tongue and part of the mouth are lined with hairlike
nerve-endings whicli tell us about the taste, the sweetness and
the sourness of things. The upper part of the nose contains a nervous
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
membrane whereby we smell the fine gaseous particles of odours
which enter the air. The flap-like ear we see is not the real instrument
of hearing but a kind of shield for it. We really hear waves of sound
through a drum-like membrane which lies inside the head at the end
of an inch-long channel.
A sixth sense is the awareness of our own muscular movements,
a seventh is the sense of keeping bodily balance, but it will suffice
to restrict ourselves to grasping the essential principle which runs
through all the senses.
Our senses tell us something about an object but never tell us
more than a fraction of the facts concerning it. For they function
within a well-defitied and limited range of vibrations. Were they
able to tell us everything, were the ears bereft of the capacity to
cut out sounds with high frequencies or the nostrils fully sensitive
to every odour, life would become intolerable, if not unlivable. This
should be a serious warning to us not to be over-confident about the
adequacy of sense-gathered knowledge. And it should be a plain
hint that whatever we know from this source should not only be
supplemented by the use of reasoned enquiry but also checked by
it. Something of this was learnt in the last chapter in our study of
the principle of relativity, a study which showed the imperative
need for setting up a double standpoint, and something more will be
learnt about it in the present chapter. Philosophy is therefore
recalcitrant in being discontented with our first view of the WQ] % as
it immediately presents itself to the senses. It perceives m/stery
where the ordinary mind perceives none. It seeks in fact to unravel
the mystery behind sensed appearance.
Of all the five senses, that which tells us of an external world
is chiefly the sense of sight. We usually apprehend the existence of
each individual thing through the instrumentality of vision. All
the other senses are subordinate to it. Sight, therefore, is the most
important of all our senses, and only after it comes hearing. And it
is also the most useful of all the five, for we mostly think ol the
world in terms of visual images, whilst the larger number of the
pictures which enter into memory and imagination are visual ones
also. Moreover, the function of the eyes is far superior in scope to
the function of any other sense. Thus they can perceive a large
number of different things both far off and quite near within a few
moments, whereas touch, for example, is restricted to those immediately
at hand. Finally, sight is the subtlest and most like the mental
of all our senses.
What happens when we gaze out at the host of surrounding
O
 -
objects ? What do we mean by announcing that we have "seen"
something ? Vision is by no means the simple process that it seems
to be. It is a highly complicated process. First in the series to be
noted is that it shares with the other senses the need of a physical
stimulus which will arouse it into activity. Waves of sound will
arouse the ear when they touch its drum and it is waves of light that
beat upon the eye and arouse it into action. Light is its actual
stimulus. The nerve-tissue of the eye is sensitive to light as
nothing else.
Here is a fountain-pen. Rays of light must therefore take their
point of departure in this object by being thrown back from its
surface and then they must travel and stimulate those amazingly
effective mechanisms which are Nature's optical instruments-
the eyes.
Two balls of fibrous tissue are set inside deep recesses of the
skull. There are three coats of nerve-fibre upon each eyeball and
it is the innermost one that is so sensitive to light and therefore to
colour. This coat is technically called the, retina. It plays the same
part that a sensitive film or a ground-glass view-finder plays in a
photographic camera, for it registers images of outside objects.
But whereas a camera film can be used only once and must then be
discarded, the retina can be used countless times and still render
(r)od service. The light rays meet in it and affect numerous little
rovPh^e and cone-like nerve-endings, whose activity starts the
secoiis link in the chain of connected processes stretching from the
fountain-pen to our knowledge of its existence. Every other sense
instrument, such as the ear and the skin, also contains the terminals
of suitable nerves, and if it did not possess them it would be utterly
useless
This retinal structure possesses microscopic fineness and
consequently permits detailed pictures to form upon its surface of a
precision and clearness unequalled by the data furnished by any of
the other senses. We must not forget that the presence of such a
picture is nothing more than the mere influence of light upon
the retina.
In order to see any external object at all it must have a background
of colour, for it is by the -contrast of one colour against
another that we distinguish the shape and size of the object, but in
order to be coloured it must be lighted, for colour is a product of
the rays of light. It is only when we can make a comparison between
two colours that we can even assert that an object is before us. We
recognize the flaming glory of the flamingo because of the duller
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
tints of the place wherein it is set. We perceive the massive
pyramid because its brownish stones rise out of yellow sands and
because its ruddy apex is thrust into the limpid blue of an Egyptian
sky. If only a single colour surrounded us or were before us no
object could take shape at all for our eyes, because the perceived
shape of a thing is the consequence of having a second colour or
several more colours against which to contrast it.
It is these rays that are broken by the objects into the browns
and greys and greens that popular superstition puts into the things
it sees. The rind of an orange, for instance, reflects and breaks white
light in such a way that it appears to us as golden yellow. It is a
schoolboy's experiment to prove that white light can break and
divide itself into several other colours, technically termed the colours
of the spectrum, for he has but to set up a prism of glass near the
window of a shaded room and lovely hues like violet, yellow, red,
blue, etc., will then appear.
Thus we do not see things directly but rather the light which
they reflect or emit. It is'not the pen that actually impinges upon
the eyes ; it is the light rays alone which travel from the pen and
impinge upon the eyes. The superstition which science explodes is
that colours are part of the things themselves. They are not. They
are the result of waves of white light broken up. The light is not in
the things themselves. It is only reflected by them. Scientific experiment
has effectively proved this, but a simple instance will well
illustrate its truth. Sunset lessens the light inside a house and with
it things change their hues and darken. Brown tables become black
and green curtains become grey. For their colour is not really their
own essential property.
It might be said with actual truth that the only world we ever
see is a mysterious world of light, as was once mystically affirmed
by ancient cults and as is now experimentally demonstrated by
modern science. But philosophy cannot stop there. It must penetrate
to the very root of -things. It must ascertain whence even light
itself derives its own existence.
From Eye to Mind. Let us return to our fountain-pen. The
impression of having seen it starts with light entering the eye, which,
in response to this stimulus, forms an image on the retina. Nature
turns artist, as it were, and paints a picture in coloured light on a
canvas of nervous stuff. But we are not conscious of it as existing
there, a proof of this being that the picture which appears upon the
retina is inverted just as it is on the negative film of a camera. If
 -
we knew this picture alone the pen would appear upside down also !
It is clear, therefore, that the picture passes through some further
process of change and even transformation before we become
correctly aware of the pen.
All that has happened is a chemical and structural change in
the upper layer of the retina. No awareness of the glistening colour,
the long slender shape and the golden head of the pen has yet
managed to penetrate our ignorance of it. For us there is still no
pen. The news of its existence has not yet, reached the mind and
has to be brought a stage farther than the eyes, has to be brought
indeed to some central spot in the body which can act as a clearinghouse
for all the sense-reports sent in from various points distributed
throughout the body's length and breadth. Such a spot exists in
the brain.
Nature has therefore made admirable provision to carry out
this task. The entire body is really a nervous receiving apparatus
which reacts variously to each physical stimulus received. Enormous
numbers of white nerves thread their way from the surface of the
body to the brain and constitute a comprehensive system of communication,
a kind of nervous and cerebral telegraphic system,
in fact.
A general process of interaction between the external objects
and the internal brain exists through the working of the medium
between them, the five bodily sense-instruments. Certain events
occur in the instruments and, through vibrations which pass along
connecting nerves, initiate nervous impulses which diffuse, themselves
over a particular part of the brain.
The pen, which makes an "impression" on the eye, as it is
technically termed, has aroused an activity in the numerous rod-like
and cone-like parts of the retina and through them in the nerves
which run from their bases. This current of wave-like movement is
transmitted by them to the main nerve which leads out of the
eyeball, called the optic nerve, and the latter again in its turn
passes its response along its own entire length to its birthplace at
the back of the brain. Here a portion of the brain-surface called the
cerebral cortex becomes acquainted with the vibrating activity
which constitutes the message sent by the eye.
Let us consider an aspect of this last point. That which makes
the image possible and throws its form upon the retina is the combination
lens furnished by the cornea of the eye and the crystalline
lens. The surface of this lens is convex, and had Nature increased its
convexity we wotild always have seen the pen with exaggerated
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
dimensions and distorted shape. Everything else in the universe
would have taken on the same grotesque appearance, whether it
be a glacial mountain range like Himalaya or a tiny insect like an
ant. From birth to death we would have firmly believed that the
objects and people surrounding us were really possessed of such
appearance. The so-called distorting mirrors of fairs and exhibitions
provide comical illustrations of the kind of queer faces and figures
our fellow men would then have had.
Why is this possible ? Because the brain is entirely dependent
on the image furnished by the eyes. It can obviously never come
into direct contact with any external thing.
Again, some people are born colour-blind. Until their attention
is called by others to this peculiar defect in their eyes they may
not even know that their vision is peculiar. They may assert of two
differently coloured things placed before them that they see the same
colour in each thing. They may blandly assure you that a pink
rose possesses the same colour as a yellow marigold, merely because
they are incapable of seeing. They are unable to distinguish between
unripe green strawberries and ripe red ones, or between the green
lamp on a railroad signal which indicates the safe passage and the
red lamp which warns of danger. For this reason the companies
require their engine-drivers to pass a strict examination in distinguishing
colours. The lesson to be got from analysing this defect
is that the wrong colour, not being a part of the lamp or the
strawberry, must be a part of the image which falls on the retina,
and that the brain is limited to the material found in the retinal
representation, not to that which is available in the external thing
itself. The essential point here is what we do see, not what we should
see according to ordinary observation.
All that the eyes can offer, in the case of our fountain-pen, is
contained in the sensitive portion of the retina and consists of a
picture which is less than one inch in diameter, which is upside
down and which has the two dimensions of height and width only.
But the pen which is actually there is six inches long and not one
inch, is upright and not upside down, and possesses the three
dimensions of height, width and depth, so that it stands out in solid
relief. Here are three pointed hints that the external pen present
to our sight is not the perceived pen of which the mind becomes
aware and that the popular belief that we see things-in-themselves
is sheer illusion. For the image with which the brain deals is within
our eyes, i.e. within our body, hence within ourselves ! We cannot
even get beyond it. This means that we see pictures, appearances,
 -
and that these are always relative to the observer-a lesson which
we learnt in the previous chapter from other data, as well as from
reflection upon Einstein's work. For everyday practical purposes
we must assume that we perceive a thing exactly as it purports to
be, but for philosophic enquiry we must � penetrate beneath the
surface of such an assumption.
The eyes' message of the pen's existence is the only account
which the brain can hope to receive, for it is too remote from the
pen. Yet, physically speaking, quite clearly it offers only an inverted
miniature. Such an imperfect message does not square with the
external pen and cannot be taken literally. It must be worked upon
until the pen is accurately represented by what is seen, i.e. it must
be interpreted. The message reached the brain therefore in the form
of a physiological Morse code. To imagine that the visual image
itself travels along the optic nerve is equivalent to imagining that
actual words and not corresponding short or long electrical impulses
travel along a telegraph wire. These impulses splutter out at their
destination in the form of meaningless sounds until taken up and
interpreted according to the Morse code by an operator, a human
being whose mind translates them into significant alphabetical letters
and words. Moreover, a telegram itself is nothing more than a series
of black marks on a sheet of white paper. These marks have to be
deciphered and converted into thoughts by the person who reads
it. The mind must similarly set to work to decode the wave-like
nervous impulses which the brain has received and translate them
back into awareness of the corresponding impressions of their
original physical stimulus, which in this case is a pen. It is extremely
difficult to define the word mindt as most recent scientists and
philosophers have confessed. The hidden teaching thoroughly
understands the significance of what lies behind this little word, but
that significance can only be fully revealed near the end of this course,
not when we are less than half-way as now. However, for present
purposes we may briefly, simply and tentatively define mind as
being that which .makes us think of anything and which makes us
aware of anything.
Such interpretation must necessarily be a mental activity. It
must transpire in the mind, for it demands the positive activity of
intelligence rather than the passive receptivity of eye, nerve and
brain. Intelligence implies consciousness of some kind, and as we are
normally unaware of such a process we must conclude that it occurs
beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness and is , wholly
subconscious. We know only the results of this unseen work. They
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
appear to us as an accurate vision of this beautiful writing
instrument.
This is the instant when awareness has stepped into the process
and determined the birth of an observation for us. This is the crucial
point when we first begin to know that the pen is there. Until this
moment we are unaware of its existence, despite the picture in the
retina, despite the vibration that passes along the optic nerve and
despite the brain's response.
A proof of this is found in the annals of surgical science. The
skin of each finger is linked with the spinal cord by bundles of
fibrous nerves. If the latter are severed close to the spine the
fingers may be cut or smashed, but no pain will be felt in them. The
messages from them can no longer reach the brain and unless they
reach the brain they cannot be taken up into consciousness. When
therefore we speak of having a feeling of pain in an injured foot we
are uttering misleading words for the feeling ought to be referred to
the point where it is actually experienced, i.e. subsequent to the
movement of a vibration in the brain. We localize feelings of sweet
or bitter taste on the tongue when they really occur after the brain
has responded. But in both the cases the foot and the tongue can
only receive the impressions of painful pressure and sweet fluidity
respectively, whereas the impressions are not transformed into bits
of conscious experience until after the nerves have vibrated them
as far as the proper cerebral centres. To place these feelings locally
at the nerve-endings is to fall into gross illusion, albeit perfectly
pardonable illusion.
The important places assigned by Nature to the nerve-paths
and brain-centres may now appear clearer. So long as the nerveconnection
with the brain continues unimpaired so long does the
sense-instrument continue to function. But a leper whose nervecommunication
between hand and brain has been eaten away will
have no sensation of touch. His leprous hand may be burnt or cut
off yet he will feel no pain. Destroy the nerve, paralyse it or let a
lesion appear in the appropriate brain centre and the sense-instrument
fails to perform its work-sight goes or feeling in the fingers
vanishes. Therefore our knowledge of an object cannot be got without
nerve and brain. The eyes might be perfectly unharmed and show
all their normal physical response to light and yet a man might see
nothing more than a blind man could see if the cortical section of
his brain were injured, diseased or cut or if the optic nerve were
severed midway. No sight is possible without the vital co-operation of
both brain and nerve with the eye-thus making a triple partnership.

The plain meaning of this is that knowledge of an object's
existence does not arise in the bodily eye, ear, skin, tongue or nose
which lie at the ends of the nerves but rather only after the message
has reached the brain-centres which lie at the starting-points of the
nerves. For only then does that mysterious element called consciousness
reveal itself. We first come into cognition of a thing in
sense-experience by noting the particular characteristics that
distinguish it from other things, such as its special shape, particular
size and degree of hardness, for instance ; we can become conscious
of it only through knowing these qualities of it.
Now we know that a thing called clock is before us because
there is a tiny picture of the clock in the eyes, the sound of its
rhythmic ticking in the ears and the feeling of its resistant touch
in the fingers ; all these impressions combine and corroborate each
other. An orange is known to us because it looks round and yellow,
tastes sweet and feels pulpy. These are its well-known characteristics.
But how do we become aware of them ? We can do so only
by experiencing the immediate effects which the orange produces
in our mind through the senses. Each individual effect, such as the
pulpy feeling of the orange alone and not the whole orange itself,
which arises in our consciousness is technically called a sensation.
Whatever is perceived by the senses or thought of in reflection
becomes an object in the field of awareness. We may therefore
attach the technical term of "object" to it, Every object possesses
certain recognizable qualities which are presented to the mind as
sensations. The latter are greatly varied : they tell us where the
object is, how small or how large it is, what its shape is like, how
sweet, sour or salty its taste is or how disagreeable its odour, how
much weight or how much warmth it possesses, and whether it is
lying still or actually moving.
When transmitted nervous impulses originating in the ears
complete their journey and reach the brain they arouse sensations of
sound. The latter will vary in pitch, strength and character. The
pitch may be high or low, the strength loud or soft, and the character
mere noise or musical tone, but each sound effect will be a separate
sensation.
From impressions made on the skin at one end and the processes
consequently occurring in it related processes are excited at the
other end in the brain, wherefrom we receive sensations of touch
which fall roughly into three classes : those of contact, of temperature
and of surface pain. These appear as recognitions of distinct qualities
such as warmth or cold, smoothness or roughness, heaviness or
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
lightness, pain, movement or pressure. The largest number of touch
sensations are received through the skin of the hand because it is
the most active of man's limbs. Hold this book in your hand and you
will experience the sensations of pressure on its skin as well as the
sensation of strain on its sinews. These two sensations taken
together form the combined sensation of the book's weight. When
you pick up a piece of iron your hand comes in contact with its
surface and a sensation of hardness is then felt. And your fingers
will tell you that the fountain-pen's barrel is round and smooth,
which means that you are getting sensations of roundness and
smoothness. When you hold it tightly in the palm both finger and
pen begin to repel each other and further sensations come to you,
those of resistance and hardness. The tighter you hold it, the stronger
will these .sensations become.
The lights and shades which play upon and around things
provide us with sensations of coloured shapes. When we pick up the
pen and look more closely into its beautiful appearance we^ experience
sensations of purple, grey, gold and black. The science of
physics knows that the different rates of vibration of one and the
same light-ray are read by the eyes as different colours. The colour
of a thing is therefore an optical interpretation. What we perceive
as colour is not perceived separately from ourselves.
When we speak to a man and hear him reply, what is really
happening ? Sound, a vibration in the air, acts  both bodies,
and certain movements then occur in the nerve-endings at the
tympanums of the ears ; whilst light forms certain retinal pictures
in the eyes. These stimulations are propagated as commotions along
the main nerves to the brain where corresponding sensations
subsequently arise. If we touch the man's body we shall garner in
the form of muscular sensations of pressure and relaxation the
results of impressions made on the skin.
Where do the sensations of hardness and roughness, for instance,
originate ? Are they in the thing or in the observer of the thing ? A
little analysis will show that they tfce in the observer, superficially in
his body but actually in his mind. Similarly the sensations of heaviness
and roundness are not. to be found in the material things
themselves but in our sensations of them.
Where is the point when a man becomes conscious of having smelt
the rose ? Is it when the rose approaches the nostrils ? Is it when the
minute particles of perfume touch the inner membrane of the
nostrils ? Is it when the olfactory nerve registers the disturbance ?
Is it when the disturbance reaches the brain ? No ! He does not know
 -
and he cannot know what the rose smells like until his mind takes
up the registration, until he thinks it into existence. Only at this
point does the physiological intercourse which has taken place
between the rose and himself assume meaning for him. The interpretation
of the impressions of physical experience communicated
by the nerves is followed by a reconstruction of the resultant sensations
in mental experience. Each sensation is therefore, speaking in
terms of physiology only, a purely mental response into which a
material nerve stimulus has somehow translated itself. Each sensation
is a mental affair; it is within consciousness, whereas senseimpressions
are within the body.
It is easier to grasp this point by considering what happens when
we cut a finger with a knife. A feeling of pain arises. That feeling is
indubitably within ourselves and in nobody else; moreover, it is a
state of our consciousness and not a state of the knife. It is, in short,
a sensation of pain. Similarly, if we place our hand upon a book the
act gives rise to a sense of resistance as the surface of the palm meets
.with resistance from the surface of the book. We then say that we
feel the book, but this is not the case ; what we actually feel is that
part of our skin which the book touches and from the skin^t message
is sent to the spinal cord and thence to the brain until a sensation
of resistance is born into our individual zone of awareness. Hence
we do not feel the book but rather what is happening to our own
self. All the other kinds of sensation-whether the smells, the tastes
or the sounds of daily experience-are likewise states of our
consciousness.
Where is the bitterness that we taste on eating an unripe fruit ?
Actually, like all tastes, it is a sensation derived from the tongue,
for it is primarily an awareness, an item furnished by consciousness.
It must be identified with our mind. Therefore as an experience it
is in us, yet we unconsciously project it outside on the fruit. The
fruit produces the sour taste in us but we wrongly say it is itself
sour. A state of consciousness is thus erroneously ascribed to an
external thing ! Such an instance shows how faulty language misleads
our thought. We learnt in earlier chapters to beware of words and to
watch for the pitfalls and snares they prepare for our understanding
of the world.
Do we know anything more of a clock than these sensations
which tell us what it looks like and what it sounds like ? If we pause
to analyse the position and if we make our analysis correctly and
deeply we are compelled to confess that it is these sense-reports
alone which make up for us the actual clock that we know. Take
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
away the brown, gold and black colours, the hard, round, cool and
-smooth feels, and the rhythmic ticking sound-how much of the
clock will remain ? Without these there can be no clock at all in
anyone's experience. Yet without exception these are all sensations,
they are all events in the mind, ideas if we wish to call them so.
What we see, what we hear and what we feel are the first things that
we become aware of in relation to every object. The movements
within sense, nerve, brain and mind are made with such lightninglike
speed that we are unable to notice the process at all. The sensations
are therefore not only the first things we know about the clock
but actually the last things also. It is this incredible rapidity of
mental action which creates what is nothing less than an illusion
of having entered into direct contact with something outside when
in fact we have only entered into our own sensations. Similarly the
sight of somebody standing near is a composite result of various
sensations, i.e. the sum of what the senses represent to our mind,
but nothing more. Every separate thing that we see or experience
possesses therefore an assemblage of qualities and characteristics
and each quality impresses itself individually on the senses, thus
yielding a^ separate sensation of colour, sound, taste and so on.
When we cut deep down into the foundation of our knowledge of
the world we find this primal fact of sensation is its support and
origin. No such knowledge is at all possible unless sight, hearing,
touch and other sensations or their revived memories are first
present. For each is an item of human experience.
We may know many things but the only things we know for
certain are the conditions of our consciousness, i.e. our sensations
and nothing else. It is our five senses alone that tell us about the
existence of this familiar world and provide us with information
about it. It is impossible to get directly at the object as an independent
existence. We get only at the sensed interpretation of it ;
that is to say we get at a physiological condition in ourselves.
Every sensation is a private and individual matter because it is
an activity originating in one's own self. It is not shared in common
with others; we cannot ordinarily see directly into the mind of
another. Every man can normally only observe what is-passing
within his own consciousness. He experiences sensations which are
separate and may even be somewhat different from those of another
man viewing the same object. These personal impressions of light
and sound and touch which tell us of the external object are what
we know at first hand, what we are immediately aware of and what
we are alone sure of experiencing.
 -
The point which must be grasped -and it will need a concentrated
subtlety of thought to grasp it-is that we never know the
panoramic external world in itself. We see thai world only through the
immovable spectacles of the sense-reports which we receive concerning it.
We cannot bring it under direct observation. What we directly
observe is-our mental reaction to it, i.e. ourselves! yVithout ever
being conscious of this certain and simple truth we live day and night
in no other world than that whose form is figured for us through what
is termed sensation. Unscientific and unphilosophic persons never
suspect the existence of this truth. Let it not be forgotten that these
statements are drawn from a long series of observations in the storehouse
of modern science and that they are based on experiments
made on living persons no less than  dissections performed on
dead ones.
Let none become impatient with these pages for repeating
scientific facts already known to the world. They are certainly known,
but chiefly to the narrow circles of students of medicine and psychology.
They are not generally known to the wider circles of layfolk.
They are important to our purpose for two reasons. First, they
amply confirm a crucial tenet of the hidden teaching which must be
absorbed at this stage of our studies. Second, because we are appealing
to facts, because we are interrogating Nature in the spirit of
Francis Bacon, the founder of modern science. A modern presentation
of the ancient Indian teaching must be based on science because the
latter is the dominant trend of modern culture and because the new
scientific discoveries are beginning to support and vindicate the old
Indian discoveries. But whereas science is bewildered by the facts
it has gathered and does not quite know what to make of them, the
hidden philosophy has a perfect grasp of those facts, for it fully
understands their i>\a.ce and significance. Whereas science must
sooner or later become philosophical or continue in perpetual
bewilderment, the hidden teaching has worked out every tenet in
a form which is finished to the last syllable. It knows no uncertainty,
no doubts, no bewilderment. It has ascertained truth and can lead
willing votaries straight to truth. If therefore we take science in our
stride here we shall not stop with science. We shall move fearlessly
on and far outstrip it until we reach a verified knowledge compared
with which the utterances of science are but broken stammerings
before the universal mystery. Let readers be patient therefore, for
we are keeping something quite new in reserve for them. Let them
await the further final volume in which shall be presented for the
first time in any modern form or any Western language the advanced
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
and secret teachings of the oldest philosophy known to Asia, the
home of this world's oldest culture.
The Birth of Conscious Experience. Any fact or event which
is actually observed becomes entitled to the term experience. We
ordinarily think of objects and happenings without ever realizing
that we are thinking of sensations. Such realization can come only
afterwards, when thoughtful analysis endeavours to understand the
actual experiences. Ordinarily we are more concerned with an
objQct than the mental content immediately referring to it or than
the way in which we become aware of its existence. For this is the
specialized business of the psychologist.
At the moment of looking at a pen we are quite unaware of
the extraordinary complexity of this seemingly simple act. It might
be believed that when we are conscious of all the sensations produced
by the pen we perceive it. Uninstructed opinion usually believes
that recognizing the existence of a pen is a perfectly simple matter
of passively receiving all the sensations it yields and nothing more.
Scientific investigation reveals, howevef, that the operation is much
more complicated than that.
A sensation is not further divisible by analysis, since it distinguishes
a single basic quality of the object. But we are not
normally aware of a single isolated sensation. That is to say we
never see the golden colour of our fountain-pen nib apart from its
shape as a nib. Colour, for instance, does not come into consciousness
divorced from size and form. Nobody can examine one apart from
another by the light of consciousness. Such a thing exists for us only
in theoretical study and is the consequence of theoretical analysis.
This is because what we are aware of is a variety of different
experiences at one and the same moment, a rush of several sensations
simultaneously. Thus the feeling that here is something that is hard
to the touch arrives simultaneously with the feeling that here is
something that is smooth-surfaced and with the visual recognitions
that it is purple coloured and round shaped. All these separate
qualities, if taken in isolation, would not tell us that the object is a
pen. Just as a jumbled, heap of bricks produces nothing more than a
sense of chaotic confusion until they are built up to make a house,
so the sensations have no rational value until they are brought into
related and intelligible order. We must not only form sensations ;
we need to be able to distinguish one thing from another, we need to
be able to discriminate the form of the pen from the form of a bottle,
for instance.
 -
We see a flower. We also touch it and smell its perfume. The
sight, feel and smell of the flower are single sensations. The entire
group of sensations must combine before they can constitute the
flower for us. Tha simple stimulus of the coloured surface of a rose
may result in a sensation of redness, but only the reaction of the
mind, not only to this but to all the other sensations received-such
as softness, fragrance and lightness-is what finally determines our
understanding that here is a rose.
And what is true of the rose is true of all things experienced. To
see anything is to think of it, to feel a piece of soft cloth or a log
of hard wood is to think of it, and to hear any sound, whether it be
the softest whisper or the roll of thunder, is likewise to think of it.
All sense-experience is impossible without the association of an
equivalent act of thought. Everything from infinitesimal microbe
to infinite space is first an object of thought, an image or an idea.
Thus bare sensations remain meaningless until they are
gathered up, not in series but simultaneously, and constructively
put together to form a perceived thing by the mind which experiences
them. A multitude of individual impressions may crowd in upon the
eyes from a single pen, but not until the mental operations of
associating and welding them are complete do they attain the stage
of definite recognition as being the pen itself. Not until then do they
divulge their meaning and their significance get appreciated. The
identification of any object involves a creative process of implanting
adequate meaning and giving significant association to the elementary
sensations. This can arise only after all the salient sensations
have been brought together in a single united experience. This is
precisely what does happen and thus sensations are converted into
the thoughts of things or events as we ordinarily know them. Mind
arranges, synthesizes and constructs these single and simultaneous
sensations into complete thoughts or images. Each thought is
contemporaneously compounded from two or more associated
sensations. Each separate sensation is an element in the orderly
building up of perception so that the perceived picture of the pen
is really a group of such elements brought into the full light of
consciousness. We have a sensation as the first subconscious reaction
to a physical stimulus from outside things and we have a conscious
thought as the first conscious reaction to the sum of sensations.
The whole series appears, then, as a stimulus to the sense-instrument
 Such a thought is technically termed a percept, or more popularly, a perception.
But as it is an actual construction within the zone of mind it is sometimes also called
a mental construct, which is sometimes shortened to a construct.
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
by an outside object, then a sense-impression, next a nervetransmission,
fourth a brain-response, fifth a subconscious mind
response (sensation), and finally a fully conscious response (mental
picture, idea of event, image, thought). We ordinarily know only
the sixth stage in this series because it is the finished and familiar
conscious experience, whereas the fifth is only the raw material for
such experience.
But we must not fall into the error of regarding such a perceptual
thought as the mere adding together of new sensations:
they certainly make its core, but it is necessarily supplemented by
something more if every experience is to be adequately filled in.
The mind must first interpret and then creatively form its own
image of the pen not only out of the impressions gathered by the
senses but also out of those associated with the memories of earlier
experiences of seeing and handling pens. It must imagine and add
something to the bare message received from the senses if it is
successfully to re-interpret the inverted, undersized and twodimensional
retinal image. Hence three other mental contributions
inevitably enter into each act of perception and mingle with the
material supplied by sensations, thus elaborating the whole into a
final thought of recognition. () Association with past similar
experience, () anticipation of new experience, () personal interpretation
peculiar to the experiencing individual. The most important
of these elements is the first.
When we recognize the sensation of hardness in handling a
' piece of wood our memory automatically connects and classifies
it with the store of. previously experienced sensations of hardness.
The remembered hardness fuses, as it were, with the new sensation
of hardness. We graft familiar old impressions or unconsciously
reproduce past experience on the new sensations. Thus old experience
is revived and put with the new, appearing to us in the form of an
actual perception. The hand may yield impressions of something
hard and smooth, whilst the eye may yield impressions of something
round and brown-coloured, but all these sensations are merely the
material to which the mind must add an element drawn from the
wealth of past experience which it possesses subconsciously and then
synthetically construct the whole into the image of a table. This it
does by welding all these sensations and at the same time interpreting
them in the light of remembered experience. The memory of
previous and associated sensations is brought in. In this way it
arrives at the meaning of the thing as the round top of a table.
The mind draws upon the apparently vanished past, thus rising

above time's limitation, and grasps at those experiences which
are most likely to help it understand the present experience.
The resurrected sensations influence the making of the new
image.
Further proof of the contribution thrown by the past into the
moulding of these mental images may be found in the relative
swiftness with which an adult recognizes the size, distance and shape
of a thing as compared with an infant. The little creature has to
learn to distinguish between one vague thing and another vague
thing until both slowly begin to acquire clearer outline through
familiarity and clearer meaning through experience. The infant
stretches out its hand to grasp the moon, thinking it is quite close,
whereas the adult sees the moon as being quite remote from his own
body. But the infant's eyes registered the impressions of the moon
no less faithfully and accurately than the adult's, for their construction
is not in anyway different. The infant's failure to perceive
its proper spatial relation to the moon is not to be blamed upon the
eyes, but can only be accounted for by the feebler activity of its mind
in constructing an image out of its visual sensations, due to the
lack of sufficient former experience to draw upon. And a child who
has only just learnt to read will peruse the printed page with slowness
and difficulty, not infrequently mistaking one letter for another or
even one word for another. The same child grown to maturity will
read the same page with rapidity and accuracy. Yet the impressions
and images registered by the retina are precisely similar in both
cases. The eyes may be as perfect in the child as in the adult. Why
then does this difference in result occur ? The answer is that as the
growing child reads printed books more and more frequently its
mind remembers earlier images of letters and words and increasingly
contributes these recollections to the operation of reading until
finally each word is fully and correctly recognized, i.e. perceived for
what it is. This is a plain proof of the complex and creative nature
of every thought which refers to an experience.
Here is a simple way of grasping how powerfully the mind
contributes to present experience by drawing on the past. Listen to
the same person singing two different songs quickly, one of which is
quite familiar and the other quite unknown. The words of the first
song will be followed with ease, whereas those of the second will be
followed with a little difficulty, so that it may be impossible to
recognize some of them. The sounds will be heard but they will not
be distinguished as recognizable words. On the other hand, memory
has added something to the sensations of sound in the first case.
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
The impression produced on the ears is of the same quality in both.
And yet the hearing is confused when the song is unknown but
perfect when it is familiar and recollected. It is defective in one case
and accurate in the other. A mental factor is therefore present in
all cases of hearing and makes its due contribution to what is
consciously heard rather than what is actually impressed on the ears
by sound vibrations.
A strange illustration showing how the past exists as an ingredient
in human perception is to be found in the case of those who have
lost a leg or arm through violent accident or surgical amputation.
Medical annals reveal that such persons have in several instances
complained of feeling pain in the foot or fingers of a missing limb as
if the latter were still connected with the body ! Thus the mind can
even wreathe fictions into its experience under the powerful influence
of memory. This indicates that the testimony of memory prepares
the way for the entry of expectancy. Hence a further element which
enters the making of an image along with the new and remembered
sensations is anticipation of what the object is or ought to be. It is
the final factor in shaping the thought. Not only do images of past
experience enter into the train of mental activity, but so do personal
emotions. Each mental construct is conditioned by our individual
organization. This is well illustrated when certain optical illusions
arise. We do not directly draw, therefore, entirely on new senseimpressions
for all our awareness. Memory of the past supplies some
of it in the form of revived mental images, whilst expectant imagination
supplies others, but indirectly both of these are derived from
earlier sense-impressions.
Thus deeply ingrained mental habits, strongly seated expectations
and aroused associations also take their share in this work of
moulding a mental picture or the thought of an event. The passage
from bare sensation to full perception is not only the passage to a
group of sensations simultaneously uniting in consciousness to form
the experience, but is also the passage to mental interpretation and
mutual adjustment of the simple sensations.
The idea is a completed product when we actually recognize it
as belonging to a particular class, as when a red-and-gold-coloured,
smooth-feeling, oblong-shaped, six-inch-long object is recognized as
being one of the class called books. However, its formation of a
percept must not be thought of as one of merely arithmetical
addition. It is much more a process of instantaneous fusion. The
sensations do not merely interlace, they fuse. All these operations
which go to the making of experience are not performed by us so
p
 -
far as we are aware, nor are they directly accessible to our observation.
They are performed automatically beneath the threshold of
conscious mind. They are demonstrated by their effects. If we are
unable to unravel these single and separate elements and expose
them individually to our gaze it is precisely because a thought is
nothing other than their final and permanent fusion into a unit.
During the time of manufacture the thought forms itself automatically
and beyond the control of the conscious will. We are not
personally aware of this ceaseless activity of the mind in giving
birth to the thoughts, images and ideas whose totality constitutes
our world-experience, and therefore we are not aware of the fact
that the pen as it appears to us is mind-made.
Thus the analysis of perception reveals that the form and size
of any object which confronts us, no less than the feel and the
colour of it, are qualities which ultimately exist for the mind alone.
This is no less true of hard and heavy things like granite rocks, for
they exist for us as fused groups of sensations. Only when we become
conscious of the rocks can we regard them as being there. Only felt
and seen rocks can exist for us at all. We know everything through
the totality of the sensations, i.e. the awareness, it produces in us,
through the colours, smells, tastes, feels and sounds which make up
our physical experience and which are ultimately experiences of the
mind. What we see is not the thing-in-itself but the thing-in-our
mind. The thought is more intimate than the thing.
How is it that the formation of a thought takes place with such
unbelievable swiftness ? We can only reply that originally it must
have been a slow and conscious act which in the course of evolution
through countless centuries was imperceptibly transformed by the
individual and the race into an instantaneous and unconscious one.
Familiar and frequently recurring experiences have rendered it easy
for the mind to create its images practically instantaneously. The
complex and complete act of seeing the object really occupies a
number of successive steps, but they flash by with such unimaginable
and incredible rapidity as practically to fuse into a single instantaneous
operation. This rapid working is partly a result of the existing
background of past sense-experience into which new sensations
immediately merge, and partly a result of the mind's innate
power.
These separate steps in the awareness of a thing do not disclose
themselves to ordinary consciousness but only to scientific analysis.
Hence they may appear to the uninitiated as a farrago of nonsense.
They belong to a process which is entirely below the surface ; they
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
are subconscious to a partial or complete extent. They are described
here in the way they would unfold themselves to us could we but
view them individually. Perception is ordinarily such a tremendously
rapid, perfectly smooth and automatic process that we do not pause
to consider the great significance involved in its actual operation.
Thus sight may be viewed from three distinct standpoints. The first
is the physical stimulus and is a matter of the movement of lightrays
from the object to the eye. The second is the physiological
process and is a matter of projecting an image upon the retina. The
third is the psychological construct and is a matter of first becoming
aware that the object exists. Physics investigates the light,
physiology investigates the eye and brain, psychology has to study
the arisal of a conscious percept, whilst philosophy must not only
co-ordinate the results of all three sciences but evaluate them
and ascertain their true worth in a grander system of worldexplanation.
Thus we may come to perceive that so long as we confine our
examination to the top of the picture, so long any understanding of
the way we enter into awareness of the familiar things and persons
that surround us seems a simple affair, but the moment we try to
view the lower part also and to gaze at the picture as a whole, then
only do we begin to grasp how difficult and how complex an affair
it really is. Thus too we may realize why the scientist to some extent
and the philosopher to the fullest extent are not satisfied with
superficial explanations of what they see and touch every day, as
are common folk, but Seek rather to plunge into deeper water. For
in the case of the subject of this chapter we have been led step by
step to the surprising discovery that however tangible be the everyday
material things themselves, their existence is ultimately revealed
to us only by our mental experience of them, i.e. our knowledge of
these things shuts us up within the four walls of thoughts alone.
Put into plainer language, what we undoubtedly know are our
ideas of what are usually said to be external objects, whereas what
we erroneously believe we know are the objects themselves. The
difference between the two is the difference between a cinematographic
photograph of the inimitable and genial Charlie Chaplin
on a white screen and the living Charlie Chaplin in the flesh. But there
the analogy must end. To stretch it farther is to falsify it. For whereas
a photograph is after all but a copy of something, a thought is not
a copy at all; it is a mental creation. It is new because it represents
a new birth into consciousness, a new arisal of idea. It is an evidence
of the mind's wonderful power of constructing-and not merely
 -
exploring-what it perceives. And it is also an evidence of what was
hinted in the opening lines of the present chapter-that the external
world is entirely relative to the mind that perceives it, that the
pregnant principle of relativity rules all our observations and all
our experience. Here we carry this principle to a length which
Einstein has not grasped and will therefore be unwilling to follow.
Those who can understand this point have received an introduction
to an infallible inoculation against the crude kind of materialism
which prevailed last century among the proletarian camp-followers
of science, and against the sanctimonious materialism which
prevailed among the unintelligent upholders of religion.
The fountain-pen which began as a collection of sensed qualities
has ended as a fragment of our mind. The last lesson of this chapter
is that what we see is primarily seen as a thought, that what we
touch is primarily touched as an image and that every human
experience of the physical world is essentially a mentally produced
experience. Our perceptions, which seem so physical, are prominently
and paramountly mental events. All the coloured and odorous and
felt things that we are acquainted with are ultimately experienced
in the mind and nowhere else. In order to get in touch with the
world of outside things we have to think them into existence ;
otherwise we remain totally unaware of them. The idea which the
mind thus subconsciously brings to birth represents, rightly or
wrongly, as much of the thing as we know and as much as we can
ever know. For we cannot go beyond our thoughts. We cannot see
what they do not picture forth for us. A pen itself may be six inches
long, but if our mind were to play the trick of showing it to us as
only one inch long we would continue in blissful ignorance to believe
that the pen was only one inch long. Fortunately such tricks are
rare, although they are certainly not non-existent, as the next chapter
will clearly show. And if our mind did not know that the eyes were
seeing a mountain and the hands vwere touching it we would not
know that the mountain existed at all.
We need more truth. There is no other anodyne for our troubled
age. It is admittedly hard to believe that we are aware of thoughts
of external things only, when all these years we have fondly believed
we were aware of the things themselves. Most men are inaccessible
to this tenet. It sets them down beneath a sky which is strange, cold,
unfamiliar. It \frill therefore be hard to divest ourselves of the
familiar conventional outlook-that is to say, the materialistic
outlook. But it can be done if only we are willing to give a little
time and much inquiring independent thought to the task. We must
FROM THING TO THOUGHT 
be pitiless and thresh out all error, all falsity and all illusion from
our mentality. Our bondage to popular ignorance need not last for
ever. It can grow weak and insignificant as our wrong thoughts
grow weak and insignificant. Instructed and concentrated thinking
can work miracles, for it can turn the water of error into the costly
wine of truth.
CHAPTER X
THE SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME
WE must now enter the most difficult stage of our enquiry
into the process whereby we perceive external objects-that
is to say, of our enquiry into the nature of human experience
of the external world. We must relentlessly pursue this enquiry
despite its difficulties, for the world is ever confronting us and silently
demanding adequate understanding of its nature.
It is impossible to think of the world, or of anything in the world,
without thinking of it as existing in space and time. This, as has
been shown, is because the mind itself plays a most important part
in predetermining how we shall see the world, compelling us to
see it in terms of separate and successive images. Therefore the
Indian sages said that thinking itself cannot reach and observe the
world's reality or essence. The scientists who have established the
theories of relativity and' quantum mechanics have now found
themselves in the same plight. They have confessed that it is
impossible to reach and observe the subtler phenomena of Nature
without interfering with these same phenomena in the very process
of observation. The moment scientific research entered the
mysterious sub-atomic world of electrons, neutrons and protons, it
had to recognize that the observer himself played a role in determining
the phenomena observed by him.
What is immediately seen as the outside thing is really the
mental picture. Science has slowly begun to realize this. The older
scientific theories of optical illusion, for instance, made it purely
physical, attributing it to some physiological disturbance of the
retina or to a defect in the muscles of the eye, whereas the later ones
introduce a definite mental ingredient. Matter is no longer all that
matters! The older theories thought illusion an unimportant
abnormality, whereas the later ones find it is bound up with the
process of perception from beginning to end.
To mistake the bodily structure for the immaterial consciousness
itself and to fall into the old trap of regarding the brain of flesh
as the mystery of mind, are natural and pardonable errors in

THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
unreflective and uninstructed persons, in those philosophically
unsophisticated people who turn in disgust from the first mention
of this mentalistic doctrine. That a thing which is touched, seen and
tasted is as internalio the mind,as it is external to the body, and
that the body is in its own turn just as internal to the mind,
irritates their common sense. Only the deepest reflection can show
that the sensations derived from the human body itself are really
as objective as sensations derived from fountain-pens, because they
are capable of being observed by mind, the subject. Thus second
thought refutes what first impression asserts.
However, it would be quite a mistake to suppose that this
teaching asks us to believe that visible objects are not seen outside
our own body, that because it describes these objects as mental
perceptions they must therefore be placed somewhere inside ourbody
and that the glazed window before which we are seated is no
nearer than yonder twinkling star. To attempt to place a house
within the bony skull of a man is the futile endeavour of those who
have failed to understand this doctrine, which, it need hardly be
said, is entirely exempt from any expression of such absurdity. No
material object of such a siza could possibly exist within the material
head of a man. Such impossible and improbable beliefs belong to the
annals of lunacy and not to the annals of the hidden philosophy of
India. The latter does emphatically agree that we see objects like
houses and trees outside our bodies and certainly not inside them,
and that all such objects are most undoubtedly seen to be at a
distance from us as well as from each other. What it does assert is
that the perceptions of the objects being purely mental, and it being
impossible to assign any special spatial location to the mind, it is
consequently impossible to say that these objects are seen at a
distance from the mind itself.
The notion of the body's existence as separate from mind, from
awareness, is the fashionable fallacy entertained by the materialistic.
To invest the body with the qualities which should be ascribed to
the mind is strangely to misinterpret all experience. We have no
right to treat our knowledge of all external objects as mental but
that of our own body as material. Such a distinction is illogical and
unjustifiable. If it be true to say that everything is known through
the mind, it will be true not only of all external objects but also of
our own body, with its head, hands, trunk, legs and feet. These
also are necessarily known mentally. There are no grounds whatever
for thinking that they come in a different class from that of external
objects. We must, therefore, treat the body in exactly the same way
 -
in which we treat all other objects and regard our awareness of it
solely as the awareness of thought.
Nor must we make the mistake of many novices in this study,
and most critics who disdain it, of imagining that the human body
is known through the body alone although the objects which are
outside it are all mentally known. Our body with its five senseinstruments,
the eye, ear, nose, tongue and skin, exists in precisely
the same manner as a brick wall, so far as it exists as an idea of
consciousness. We are aware of the sense-instruments themselves
because of the sensations derived from them and not otherwise.
For the reason that it consists of a certain shape, size, colour, etc.,
which are made known to us by the mind, the entire body-even
the physical brain-is as much within the mind, and we are as much
dependent upon the mind for awareness of its existence as we are
for awareness of a brick wall.
The fact is that most men confuse their skin with their mind.
They do not comprehend that the distance that extends from the
surface of their body to the nearest thing is emphatically not the
distance that extends from the latter to their mind. The cardinal
error is to mistake extra-bodily existence for extra-mental existence.
Mind unconsciously projects its perceptions into space and then
views the things of its own making.
Let us sum up these statements by applying a little analytic
treatment, a little corrosive criticism to this word "external".
Nobody has ever seen an object outside the mind, but only outside
the body. Putting atide the practical standpoint and speaking
philosophically, it is wrong to talk of "external" objects, for even
the body is known ultimately as a thought and is therefore mental:
thus nothing at all is ever really external. To talk of an object being
even outside the body is to talk of it being outside a thought, i.e.
outside a mental thing, i.e. outside the mind-which is impossible.
Those who use the word "external" ought to define whether they
mean external to body or to mind. For if to body, then it has been
shown that the body itself is internal to mind, so the objects
themselves must also be internal to mind. And if to the mind, then
the notion of inside and outside is wholly inapplicable. Hence we
may not accurately say anything is external; we may only say it
exists. The word contains its own contradiction. It belongs to an
irrational and superstitious jargon.
From the first beginnings of consciousness each object is
incessantly presented to the mind as being something apart and
independent. We not only recognize a thing, but we recognize it as
THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
having a particular shape and size and standing at a certain distance
away from our own body and from other things. We recognize it to
exist in space. We are seeing it spatially. We possess an inveterate
conviction, for example, that the wall which we see is situated out
there in space and we feel that we dare not desert this conviction
without losing our sanity.
But we must begin to face a queer problem. If no sensation can
extrude itself beyond the periphery of the body, because every
sensation is supposed to be the internal result of the operation of a
bodily sense-instrument, why do we perceive the finished thought
as a form extended in space ? All objects said to be external stand
in spatial relation to each other, but how can our ideas of them,
which are apparently all that we know, be considered as having
positions in space ? If it has been shown that our thoughts or
observations of these objects really are our experiences of them, why
is it that this self-same experience confutes our reasoning, for it
reveals the objects as standing entirely separate from and outside
bodies ? How can an image which is said to be internal appear to
us as an object which is external and which possesses spatial
characteristics ? How car colours which are scientifically provable
as being optical interpretations, i.e. within the eyes, be able to
assume the forms of independent outside things ? The puzzle in
short is how to account for the conversion of a purely mental
experience into a seemingly separate and independent one, and for
the projection of a purely internal experience into an external one.
To cast some light upon the answers to these questions we must
make a lengthy scientific examination of certain aspects of the
process of perceiving things through the senses. There exists a
certain anomalous functioning of the senses which seems of trivial
importance when considered from a practical point of view, but
which actually offers unique material for an approach to profounder
understanding of the places taken by the senses and the mind in
observation of the world. Those peculiar errors of the senses which
we call illusion and those mysterious derangements of the mind
which we call hallucination provide interesting illustration of a
principle whose weighty importance is usually overlooked by the
unscientific or non-philosophical mind. To underrate their instructive
value because of their practical pettiness would be a mistake.
The experience of illusion shares certain common elements with
constant and habitual experience, although it appears to mock
sardonically at it. The psychological act of perception is present in
both although the causes differ. The process whereby we become
 -
conscious of an illusion cannot be different from the way in which
we become conscious of any ordinary thing. As an act of awareness
both are indeed the same, even though one is said to be erroneous and
the other accurate.
Science has found that the study of what is abnormal sheds new
light on what is normal. Disturbances in the psychic process and
defects in the physiological mechanism sometimes reveal valuable
clues to the working of both or confirm the results previously
obtained by scientific examination and pure reflection. Therefore
when the mechanism of sensation is disturbed, as in illusions, and
the physical stimulus is misconstrued, we get a glimpse of how the
mechanism itself operates. Careful and systematic dissection of
these abnormal experiences supplies valuable pointers which will help
to render the intricate processes of perception more intelligible and
light up more revealingly the respective roles played by the observing
mind, the observing senses and the observed object. Therefore it is
because of its scientific worth in helping to explain sense-experience
that the subject of illusion is here taken up.
The Greek intellectuals like Aristotle were troubled about the
easy way men could be deceived by their senses, but the Indian
sages like Gaudapada not only noted this fact but carried their
investigation to the last possible stage. For they were troubled about
the easy way men could be deceived by their mind. The full
implications of the phenomena of illusions-which every philosophy
worth the name is called upon to investigate-require for their
grasp a refined subtlety of apprehension which is not often found
among occidentals. The achievements of the Aryan races in mental
and physical spheres entitle them to superior status, but it is the
Indo-Aryan branch which has proportionately produced the most
men whose sharpness of concentration and subtlety of thought have
combined with a singular subdual of the desires and egoisms which
might weaken their undivided aim to pursue philosophy. Every
aspect of illusion and hallucination has been thoroughly dealt with
by the Indian sages, for they had a scientific bent of mind and would
accept nothing until it had been investigated and verified. Unfortunately
the sages disappeared, their knowledge was largely lost
and Indian philosophy degenerated with the lapse of centuries into
the empty babbling speculation which it became in other countries.
Illusions are connected with-a strange factor in perception which
ought long ago to have set enquiring Western minds on the correct
 This term is used only in its genuinely scientific sense.
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track to psychological truth, for it was noticed and deeply pondered
on by Indian sages thousand of years ago, but its significance has
not received proper attention in the West. And this is that we
observe only what we are paying attention to; that amid all the
multitude of retinal experiences we unconsciously select those only
in which we are interested. Thus we may be reading a book whilst
seated in a room ; or we may be in an office at work which is deeply
fascinating or of high importance. A clock may twice strike the hour
and yet we may not remember hearing its chimes simply because
attention has been highly concentrated on the reading or the work.
The impressions are actually made on the sense-instrument, the
sound-waves succeed in striking the tympanums of healthy ears,
but owing to the dissociation of attention they are not perceived by
us although they are heard by other persons. We may be walking in
the street and a passing friend may greet us. Yet if we are plunged
in deep reflection we fail to see him and do not return his greeting.
We see what we are looking for rather than what we are looking at.
Consciousness grades down to dimness or even nothingness where
we pay no attention to what we see whilst it compensatingly vividly
lights up the object towards which thought has been surrendered in
utter concentration.
When any piece of work is being attended to so completely as
to occupy consciousness to the exclusion of all else, events may
occur or objects may be present to the gaze and yet escape attention
and pass unnoted. They remain outside the field of awareness
although inside the field of sense-impression. That which dominates
the mind dictates that which shall be perceived: this is one lesson
to be learnt. When attention of the sensory faculties is preoccupied
by the ideas of internal reverie the path to their external activity
is blocked. This is practically illustrated by the case of yogis who are
totally plunged in the state of trance or coma and then remain
unaware or pain-free when cut with knives or buried beneath the
ground. The mental factor of attention plays a powerful role in
determining the content of what we perceive. The more the mind is
directed to a bodily hurt, the more intense and intolerable does the
pain become. On the other hand, the more the mind is occupied with
some other eVent, the less troublesome will the hurt be felt. When
thought flags or is totally withdrawn we may be blind to what is
actually present before our eyes.
This extraordinary fact should alone have been a plain hint
that the functioning of the mind both contributes to and withdraws
something from the making of the world we witness. It should have
 -
been a warning that the mental factor cannot rightly be left out of
any account of sense-experience. For if the mind does not co-operate
with the senses there will be no conscious experience of any external
object, however much the physical conditions may be fulfilled ; or if
it co-operates imperfectly, then experience will becomes less clear
and less intense in proportion. It is difficult to become aware of the
degree of mental interference when our normal state gives no evidence
of it. We can hope, however, to do so by watching for abnormal
experiences and unusual events which cause rifts in the veil of
perception as it were. It has already been pointed out that psychologically
it is an error to separate illusions from the accepted facts
of normal life. It is from the analytic study of such exceptional
deviations from the ordinary course of Nature that we gain fresh
knowledge of what such course really is. If an illusion is a false
sensory impression it is still an impression no matter how it arises.
Let us consider first the class of illusions which belong to Nature.
The most elementary consideration of this question brings a startling
revelation. Take, for example, the simple chair upon which you are
sitting. Here is a solid, hard and tangible object made of a natural
material substance, which you call wood. That is the truth about
this chair so far as you are concerned. Go, however, to the laboratory
of a scientist. Let him take a piece of this wood of which your chair
is constructed and submit it to his searching analytic examination.
He will successively reduce it to molecules, atoms, electrons, protons
and neutrons. He will tell you finally that the wood consists of
nothing more solid than a series of electrical radiations or, in plain
language, of electricity. Yet despite such expert instructions and
scornful of what irrefutable reason tells you, your five senses will
continue to report wood as being something most substantial, the
very opposite of whatever you can imagine electrical energy to be.
Does this not mean that you are experiencing an amazing
illusion, one that is stranger than any conjurer's feat ? Indeed, the
entire planet itself offers us a curious example of great masses of
solid, liquid and gaseous substances which are not really what they
seem. For, if scientific investigation has not deceived itself, they
are whirling winds of electrical energy, i.e. the lofty mountains,
flowing rivers, rolling seas and green fields are not really constituted
as we see them. Their existence is certainly undeniable, but their
appearance as "lumps of matter" is fundamentally illusory.
The study of modern scientific geography reveals the extraordinary
fact that millions of persons are really walking upon this
globe with their heads suspended downwards and with their feet
THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
clinging to rather than resting on the earth. Such a statement,
taken as it stands upon the printed sheet, is so astonishing that
so-called common sense, when it is common uninstructed opinion,
refuses to believe it, although the acceptance of the proved fact of
the globular shape of our planet leaves us with no other alternative
but to accept this further finding which is so contradictory to what
our eyes tell us. What man would have known this fact if the
scientists, through constant probing, had not ascertained it for him
and thus discovered that the popular belief about the human bodily
relation to the surface of the earth is purely illusory ? This simple
illustration may help us to grasp why those who insist on accepting
the testimony of their immediate sense-impressions as alone being
true are unfit for philosophy.
When the full moon rises, glowing redly, near the horizon it
assumes the size of an enormous wagon-wheel. But see the same
moon when it is overhead and it has shrunk to the relative size of
a coin. Which appearance are you to take as the correct one ? Your
eyes are not to be blamed, for the retina records a perfectly accurate
image in both cases. The difference occurs because you unconsciously
measure the suddenly rising moon on the same scale by which you
habitually measure the hills, trees, buildings or other objects which
also occupy the horizon, whereas you ordinarily use quite another
scale to measure those which are far overhead. Thus the sun setting
behind a familiar full-branched tree will appear tremendously
magnified because it fills the space occupied by the branches. You
set up a false standard of perception through established habit and
then judge the sun's or moon's size by it. But where does this error
really occur ? It is not in the object nor in your eyes. It can only
occur in your mind, for it is a mistake of interpretation, i.e. a mental
activity. The apparent enlargement of sun or moon is actually present
in your idea.
Look at the landscape spread out before you in the morning.
Your eyes may see nothing more in the background than a dull mist
which fills the horizon. Photograph the mist with the help of a
special plate sensitive to infra-red rays. The camera will then
grasp what the unaided sight cannot, for it will faithfully register
the image of a hitherto unseen range of mountains twenty miles
away. Similarly a sensitive spectroscope and photographic plate will
reveal the existence of stars in apparently empty space even where a
powerful telescope fails to reveal them. The fact that such natural
illusions do exist and are possible is itself a critique of our knowledge
of the world and its validity. If the senses can deceive us in these
 -
cases is it not likely that they can deceive us in others which pass
unnoticed ? These instances should give us ground not so much for
distrusting the senses-for they are not directly to blame for these
errors-as for distrusting our interpretations of the reports of the
senses.
Yes, the senses can delude us. An observer in a rapidly descending
aeroplane actually sees the earth rushing upwards and a traveller
in an express train actually sees telegraph poles moving past him.
These are visual errors. But they help to illustrate how the process
of vision really works. For they betray an element of judgment, i.e.
of mental contribution, in what appears as the finished deliverance
of the senses.
Why do the last hundred yards of a four-mile walk seem much
longer than the first hundred yards when the impressions made
on the senses of sight and touch are still the same as before, still as
accurate ? The answer is that the tired muscles have suggested a
different series of exaggerated sensations, which produce the illusions
of magnified movement and lengthened duration. The sensations,
we must remember, are mental.
Enter a room which has been somewhat darkened and let the
light of a small window fall on a green-coloured coat. Look at it
through a piece of red glass. You may be startled to discover that
it appears black. Then look at a red garment through blue glass and
it also will seem to be black. Fit a green electric bulb and look at a
blue coat with your naked eye. It too will appear black! Or fit a
red bulb and gaze at a bunch of yellow primroses. The flowers will
look strange, for they will look red. And it is a common experience
to find that certain shades of cloth which look green in daylight
change their colour to brown in artificial light. And santonin, a
poisonous drug, if taken in a certain degree, causes many things to
appear yellow. The plain implication of such optical illusions is
that you must be prepared at least to mistrust not your senses
but their working. For they are unable to work without the
mind.
When you gaze at a patch of green-coloured cloth for some time
and then turn to look at a different patch of grey-coloured cloth,
the latter will assume a rose-red tint. The sense-impressions of grey
colour cannot have changed. What is wrong is that the mind has
misinterpreted them because present sensations are relative to
previous ones and affected by them because in forming the images of
experience the mind works on what it receives.
You see a magnificent rainbow arched from earth to heaven.
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But the pilot of an aeroplane passing through it will see nothing at
all-a. clear instance of relativity !
The lovely colours which touch the sky at dawn and sunset are
partly the consequence of drifting dust and hanging vapour scattered
in the air. Yet you see neither dust nor vapour and superimpose
the colourings upon the space they fill. When water-drops are large
enough to break light up into the spectrum we perceive a beautiful
rainbow. When they are assembled as massed clouds they are
radiantly white when they reflect the sun's rays to your eyes, but
are dismally grey or black when they are so placed as to be unable
to do so. Amid all these alternations of colourful dress and bleak
veiling the light certainly does not change its own nature ; it remains
one and the same, but only appears to be different to different
observers at different times. Thus the vast canopy of heaven is
frequently a gigantic illusion of colour, teaching the unheeding minds
of men to be wary of what they see, to reflect upon the relativity of
all things and to grasp the grand difference between seeming and
being.
Look into a tumbler of clean water. Your eyes tell you that it
is absolutely pure. Examine the same water under a microscope and
you will find it to be swarming with countless animalculae. Lettuce
may be thoroughly washed and appear temptingly clean, but here
again the microscope finds it to be full of bacteria. In both cases the
unaided senses not only fail to tell you the truth, but actually mislead
you into illusion.
When a stick is partly immersed in a glass bowl filled with water
it will appear to be bent out of position at the place where it touched
the surface of the water, so that the lower part will seem to beiifted
upward out of its straight course. Here the visual experience gives
definitely inaccurate information about the shape of the stick, and
will persist in doing so however perfect your eyes and however often
the stick is seen.
Here is a wooden telegraph pole. When we apply a measuringrod
we find it to be forty feet high. If we walk some distance away
from it and view it it appears somewhat smaller. And if we proceed
considerably farther in the same direction and again look at it the
height has been brought down to a mere few feet. Is the pole this
little stick which is now visible ? Is it the object which was so clearly
and so convincingly forty feet long when measured ? Here are
three different heights which the pole appears to possess. Which one
represents the real as apart from the apparent height ? If we reply
that the measured figure is alone correct, then we must explain why
 -
a measuring-rod should be more privileged than a man and why the
mathematical concept, i.e. idea, "forty feet" should be entitled to
take precedence of the other idea, "four feet", which arises when
standing a considerable distance away. Nor is this all, for we shall
also have to explain why the measuring-rod-which is merely a
length of wood-should be assigned certitude of length when there
is such uncertainty about the telegraph pole, which is also a length
of wood. For it is evident that whether we are standing immediately
close to the pole or to the rod or whether we are standing at a
hundred yards distance from them, what we see in both cases is only
the object as it appears to us.
This point has been covered in our scientific analysis of relativity
in an earlier chapter. It raises serious and startling questions. Is
the pole one thing and what we see of it another ? Do we see things
as they really are or only as they appear to us ? If the latter, are we
doomed to perceive appearances only, never their reality ? The
answers to these questions now begin to reveal themselves from our
study of the perceptive process. For we have begun to learn that
what we really see are the images formed by our own mind. Whether
formed subconsciously or consciously they are still nothing more
than mental images, thoughts. All appearances of poles or rods are
but the revelations of our mind. We see our thoughts of things, not
the things themselves. The question of what is the reality behind
these appearances, what is the real object that gives rise to the
thoughts about it, is too advanced to be dealt with here and will be
taken up later.
What is true of sight may also be true of other senses. There
are illusions of touch, Tor instance. Take three bowls of water-
respectively cold, tepid, and as hot as is bearable. Put your left hand
in the hot water and at the same time plunge your right hand in the
cold water. Keep both hands immersed for two or three minutes.
Then withdraw them quickly, shake off the drops and plunge both
hands in the bowl containing lukewarm water. The water will feel
cold to your left hand but warm to the right one ! The sense of touch
in each limb will contradict the other, for it will estimate different
temperatures for the same water. That the same water is both hot
and cold is not only a clear discrepancy between sense reports but
also an astonishing illustration how present sensations do depend
on previous ones and that what we actually feel is partly a projection
by memory from past experience.
Let a spade remain outdoors throughout a frosty night. Pick
it up next morning. The wooden handle will feel a little cold, but the
THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
metal part will feel intensely chill. Touch will therefore yield a
striking difference in the temperature of both parts of the same
spade. Test them with a thermometer, however, and they will be
found to register an equal degree of cold ! So much for the dangers of
trusting the accuracy of what we actually experience !
The Illusions of Geometry. Let us next consider a totally different
class of illusions, those which man has artificially created. There
are interesting instances of geometrical illusions which are known to
students of physics, physiology and psychology. Figure  shows
four horizontal lines of apparently unequal length each bounded
by short oblique lines that turn inward or outward. Which line
do you estimate as the longest ? Measure them with a marked ruler
and they will all be found quite equal! The top line looks the shortest
because the eye locates its end somewhere in the arrowhead and
does not follow it to the tip. The other lines also seem unequal
because you do not isolate them from the rest of the figures. The
retinal images of all four lines must nevertheless be the same size.
So if we see the lines as unequal, then the eyes are not to be blamed,
but the judgment. This means that a mental factor is at work in
what we see and that, it is powerful enough to make us see what it
chooses, even when, as here, it is itself at fault by making wrong
presentation, i.e. by constructing a wrong image.
Figure  shows a circle which appears to be unsymmetrical and
flattened in four places, i.e. at the corners of the square. Test it with
a compass and it will be found perfect! Figure  shows two long
lines crossing a number of shorter lines and giving the impression of
being curved in the middle, where the intersections are closei*and
more numerous. Actually they are straight and parallel! Here are
two lines which are perfectly parallel, yet by the mere insertion of a
few cross-strokes most observers will find that they yield the impression
of being convergent. This is an illusion of direction. Figure 
apparently shows the outline of an elongated irregular four-sided
figure intersected by many parallel lines. But if you accept it as
such you will be mistaken, for it is really a perfect square ! Figure 
provides a conundrum. Which of the double lines on the right side
of the oblong continues the sloping line on the left side ? Most people
think it is the upper line. Apply a straight-edged ruler and their
error will be clearly shown.
Look steadily at Figure . Sometimes it will appear as a flat
pattern, an acute-angled intersection of two lines, but sometimes it
will recede from sight and appear as a solid object, a right-angled
Q
 -
THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
cross lying on the floor, at which you are looking obliquely from
above. Close one eye and gaze for a time at Figure . Sometimes it
will appear as a folded sheet of paper seen from outside and sometimes
as if seen from inside with the fold farthest away !
The unshaded illustration in Figure  is more ambiguous and
complicated than any of the others. A transparent cube confronts
you. It will at first show one of its surfaces nearer the eye, but
continued attention will suffice to reverse the experience and bring
the other surface to the fore. The original surface will then appear
to have retreated to the back and to be looked at through the body
of the cube. This will convert the flat transparent cube into a solid
opaque one. When steadily looked at the cube shifts alternately back
and forth into different positions from moment to moment. The
consequence is that different corners of the figure will be drawn
forward in turn. It is important to note that the reversed interpretation
will*possess all the force of any ordinary everyday perception.
You begin to see not what the artist has drawn in black ink on
white paper but what your mind has imagined, i.e. constructed, out
of its former experience of similar or related figures. The actual
impressions made by these simple lines upon the sensitive retinas
of your eyes are perfectly correct, as has been proved in cases where
photographs of the retinal images have been taken by ingenious
methods and reveal that no change has there occurred. Nevertheless,
the figure of which you are aware is not merely a compound of these
sensations but an entirely re-created one. That the mind itself can
contribute largely to what it perceives is well shown by this
experience. The illusory figure which is intermittently seen is the
direct consequence of a subconscious mental labour upon the
materials proffered by the artist's drawing, for the latter remains
unchanged.
Figure  should be held with the book askew. The horizontal
lines will hardly look parallel, but they are ! And when the illustration
in Figure  is brought in the field of view the oblique lines will meet
exactly at the same point on the right vertical line, although the
eyes will almost invariably mislead one into the belief that they will
not meet there! The sense-impressions are valid ones, but the
judgment which the mind unconsciously passes upon them is not.
The impressions of the eyes are free from reproach, but the
impressions of the mind are not.
Only a moment's glance is needed to tell you emphatically that
the upper arc in Figure n continues the curve which begins and ends
below the lower horizontal line, But take a pair of compasses and
 -
THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
you will find how deceptive the simple faculty of sight can be. For
it is the lower concentric arc which is the true continuation of the
curve ! Figure  is an excellent illustration of an illusion which
persists despite its conscious correction after being detected. No
matter how often and how long you look at this picture, nor how
familiar with it you become, you will hardly avoid seeing it
possessed of the same illusory character which it possessed on the
day when you first saw it. Here is a picture of a silk top hat whose
height appears to be much greater than its width. It is scarcely
credible, but measurement will reveal that both vertical and
horizontal dimensions are equal! The instruments of vision are not
at fault, for the retina records only what it receives. What is at fault
is the judgment on the impressions received, i.e. the mind.
It would be a gross error to dismiss all these illusory effects as
unimportant geometrical curiosities. They are psychological tutors.
They possess profound significance because they provide special
clues to elucidating aright the most advanced phases of the process
of perception. They demonstrate that the mental interpretation
becomes mixed with the physiological impression, and in the
consequent confusion it is easy to perceive the projected mental
image as superimposed upon the printed figure. We may see as fact
what the mind perceives, not necessarily what the senses tell us.
How difficult, then, to vindicate the validity of one class of things
seen as against another ! Thus these fallacies of vision throw light
on normal vision itself. When we see a geometrical figure differently
from the way it is actually drawn we are actually seeing a production
that the mind has transferred from itself to the figure. This is the
psychological law lying at the root of illusion.
It is necessary to note a further strange point about the
mechanism of these illusions. Continued observation does not lead
to better observation. Even when you deliberately continue to fix
attention upon them, they are not eliminated. They remain and
cannot be removed. They may be illusions but they are obstinate and
picturesque illusions. You cannot by taking thought rid yourself of
them. No matter how familiar you may become with the same
simple diagram, different interpretations of its form fluctuate before
your eyes although your reason tells you that it is fixed by printing
ink to the white paper ! What does this stubborn persistence imply ?
How are you to account for this strange fact ? If it means anything
at all it means that errors of sensation, i.e. the results of processes
which take place within the observer s own body and mind may be
projected from him so as to appear as physically outside things ! For
 -
the illusory shapes which the drawings assume have no objective
reality outside the mind that perceives them. You must therefore be
ready to accept if necessary the startling notion thai your visual
impressions of the "outsideness" of a thing may be an utterly erroneous
interpretation of those impressions. For the tricks of the senses are
beginning to appear as triumphs of the mind.
Mental Projections. We now come to a third class of illusions
which may seem simple yet which possesses serious implications. A
machine called the vitascope was popular a score of years ago in
amusement places. You put a coin in the slot and turned a crankhandle,
when a brief but plausible moving picture was seen through
a little window. The illusion of continuous movement was gained
from a series of photographs mounted on cardboard which were
brought into view one after another by the mechanical rotation of
the handle. A further development of the same illusion is nowadays
provided by the cinematograph. Here a series of individual static
photographs are thrown upon a screen, but owing to the rapid
succession in which they are shown they appear as actually moving
pictures.
Where is the continuity of action which the beholder sees in
such a picture ? Is it in the picture itself ? No, that cannot be, for
it is only a lengthy series of "stills". Therefore it must really result
from some process that occurs in the eyes and mind of the beholder
himself.
If a burning torch is rapidly whirled in the dark in the form
of a figure  an observer who is standing some distance away will
actually see the illuminated figure as a steady, unbroken and
complete shape. Thus at a particular fraction of a second when the
torch may really be at the crossing-point midway in the figure the
observer will nevertheless see it elsewhere forming the upper and
lower curves of the figure. The explanation of science is that this
happens because, as in the case of the cinema picture, the actual
appearance of the figure depends on the persistence of the retinal
image in the eye beyond the fraction of a moment when it actually
caught the figure itself. Science has experimentally ascertained that
a sense-impression may persist for a time even after the original
stimulus has been withdrawn. The image which results is termed an
"after-image". The response of the retinal nerve-centres outlasts the
stimulus itself and thus -continues an independent existence of
its own.
It is necessary to gaze a little more gravely, to penetrate a little
THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
more deeply, into this case. The eye is like a camera and faithfully
photographs whatever it sees. It is even superior to a camera, because
the necessary adjustments of focus, etc., are usually made automatically.
It can therefore only actually register, in the case of the
figure , a series of individual images of points of light. The registrations
succeed each other so swiftly that the brain cannot separately
take them up quickly enough. Consequently it fuses the multitude
of visual impressions into a single sensation and holds to the general
image of. a scintillating figure  which is consequently formed. It
is the latter that then is taken up by the mind. Thus the mind
continues to see what is virtually its own creation.
There are two stages to be noticed here. First, the varied positions
of the torch-flame as it is swung round are presented to the senses
and immediately registered for what they are. Second, the senseimpressions
are transmitted by the optic nerve to the brain so rapidly
that the latter is unable to cope with them individually. So it uncritically
receives them as an apparently continuous figure . The
latter is then mentally seen and accepted as assuredly real. Nothing
but close investigation can eliminate the error and correct the false
perception.
It is most important to understand that the figure is physically
non-existent even when it appears to be seen. Where is it really
seen ? It can only be perceived by the mind as one of its own images,
for it is connected with the observer himself, not with the torch.
And it is still more important to understand that it is seen outside
the observer's body although it is actually inside his mind. It appears
as a ''given" presentation to his bodily senses. Yet this illuminated
figure is after all only an intellectual construction.
The observer is not conscious at the time of having mentally
constructed the figure, nor is he even later conscious of what he has
done. Furthermore, even when he has learnt that the figure is merely
an optical illusion, nevertheless he continues to see its illusory form.
Thus the deception remains despite the fact that it is now understood
to be such. Such a feat sounds almost self-contradictory. It is,
however, a contradiction of the conceivable, not of the inconceivable,
like a round square, nor of the fantastic, like a goat with lion's head.
It remains something which mocks at man's belief and violently
disrupts his conventional idea that what he sees is actually and
necessarily just as he sees it. And it hints strongly that what he elsewhere
takes to be valid observation may- possibly be nothing more
than mere credulity.
Consider the case of a still more significant illusion belonging to
 -
the same family. How often, at a certain moment of the falling
twilight, when the galaxy of stars have not yet appeared, does the
lonely wayfarer in Oriental jungles mistake the brown stump of a
tree by the pathside for a wild animal crouching to spring upon him ?
. . . In the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear,
says the poet. And how often does a solitary leafless shrub by the
roadside with a pair of bare short horizontal branches swaying in
the wind as the same lonely traveller approaches it from a little
distance away appear to be a menacing brigand waiting in ambush ?
The traveller will suddenly notice the figure in the dusk and start
back in fear, hearing suspicious movements in the innocent rustling
sounds, yet he is perceiving nothing more than a contrasted play of
failing light and growing darkness acting as a background for the
imaginary figure of a living man superimposed upon an inanimate
shrub.
Insufficient or diverted attention, mental preoccupation or
incorrect judgment, defective sight or dimness of light, may be said
to explain why he sees a brigand and not a bush. This, however, does
not explain the deeper significance of the illusion, which is why he
should see externally an image which is existent either in the senses
or in the mind. For it certainly cannot be said to rest in the object
itself. Nor can it rest in the eyes alone, for they are, after all, only
a natural photographic apparatus. They can record only what is
physically present. It can therefore only be an imposition of
imagination upon the object. It is here, when the interpreting
faculty of the mind gets to work on the accurate data supplied by
the senses, that the possibility of false interpretation enters and it
is thus that illusions are created. Psychologically, it is impossible to
distinguish a wrong image from a right one, because both are
intimate personal experiences. Hence we may believe that we have
observed something when, however, we have done nothing of the kind.
Memories that burgeon out of the past or personal expectations of
what vShould happen may incline us to expect to see the same thing
again, even when it is not there. Under such mental preoccupation
we tend to assume its presence. Thus the eyes are deceived because
the idea is faulty.
If the illusion is produced by the man's own mind, then its
substratum is not to be sought in the swaying bush but in himself.
The brigand in the bush is ultimately peculiar to himself; it is a
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part of himself. When it is closely analysed the illusory thing ceases
to be external and becomes internal to his mind. The mind has put
itself into a frame of vivid expectancy and intense anticipation,
which has moulded through morbid fear or cowardly timidity the
very image that it perceives. The impress ions of the bush which it
has received may provide the slightest resemblance to a brigand, but
that is enough for the mind to seize and work it up into an illusory
percept which falsifies the act of seeing not because fear and suspicion
fill the man's physical eyes but because they fill his mind. The misinterpretation
of scene and sound is mental. The force of suggestion
in the brigand illusion is so powerful as to superimpose a mental
creation upon the physical thing registered by the sense-instrument.
The image which should be the normal consequence of such
registration is displaced by another which takes its place as the
perceived object. Thus a fiction of the imagination displaces part of
a physical fact : the form of the bush is merged in the form of the
brigand.
These statements provoke an interrogation. What is the practical
difference between a genuine brigand who is somewhere seen and
this illusory brigand ? In both cases the terrified traveller really
believes he has seen a brigand. Yet in one case he has only seen a
bush which does duty for a robber. His eyes can only have recorded
the impressions of a bush, for a camera placed in the same spot and
using the new kind of films which are ultra-sensitive to images even
in darkness would have photographed a bush and nothing more.
The eye, we know, is really constructed like a camera. The image of
the brigand must therefore have existed somewhere else if it never
existed in the eyes themselves. And the only other medium wherein
it could have existed is the mind. The mind, therefore, must possess
the amazing power to fabricate images which strikingly resemble
ordinary percepts as well as the astonishing capacity to throw them
seemingly outward into space.
Shall we raise our eyebrows in astonishment at these provocative
paragraphs or shall we merely dismiss them with a tremendous
sneer ? Shall we hesitate to admit that the mind possesses the power
to put forth and retract images that are seen externally to the body ?
For this would indicate that men unconsciously possess a kind of
magical power. But is it not heresy to declare this ? Well, let us be
bold and admit that we do not know what limits to set to the
faculties of the mind : it is an ineluctable mystery, and stranger
things have been recorded in the annals of abnormal psychology
which stagger the unfamiliar and perpetually puzzle the researcher,
 -
Or if this is not to our taste let us agree to call the possibility of
objectifying a mental picture, not a mental power but a mental
defect! That will not, however, remove the fact that it is universally
shared,and therefore we must all be prepared to suspect the presentations
of .both sense and mind. This is the startling implication of the
impregnable logic of these facts. For it opens up the strangest
possibilities. If a single illusory object may thus be perceived,
why should not a world-wide range of illusory objects also be
perceivable within self ?
We must try to assimilate these luminous discoveries to our
world-outlook and to our view of man himself. We must become
courageous iconoclasts and refuse to remain intellectual idolators.
We need not fear to follow up such thoughts to their logical conclusions
if we are to winnow out some wisdom from these studies.
Is not the immutable stability of the earth but a deceptive show, a
flagrant error of sensation, a visual and tactual experience which
reason boldly denies, for it is easy to prove that the globe is in
perpetual movement ?
There are two kinds of illusions, those which deceive us about
what we do physically see and those which deceive us into seeing
something that is not founded on any physical stimulus at all. The
second kind is called hallucination and is an error of thought alone,
whereas the first is an error caused by imposing a mental image upon
a physical object.
Sensations suggest the presence of an external object, but when
sensations arise in the absence of such an object, then we have a
case of hallucination. Hallucination of the higher senses, i.e. sight
and hearing, are the most common. An hallucination might be
termed an illusion that has no physically objective basis. Illusion
approaches the degree of hallucination when there is physically
nothing at all present to the bodily senses to justify it. If a man
vividly sees something where there is nothing to justify what he has
seen he is under an hallucination, whereas if there is some physical
thing to afford a basis, however slight, for his perception, then he is
under an illusion.
It is common to regard hallucinations as occurring only among
the mentally deranged and the cerebrally diseased. This selfflattering
error arises because it is in such circles that the most
striking and the most distressing forms of hallucination exist. But
aside from these pathological cases it is nevertheless true that
everyday experience in politics, business and society shows that
pumerous individuals who are apparently normal and sane in every
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other respect fall under private hallucinations of their own at some
time or other of their life.
The roots of false perception and illusory sensation lie precisely
where the roots of right perception and normal sensation lie-in the
mind. From the standpoint of psychology there is no antithesis
between the hallucinations of madmen and the illusions of the sane.
Both are so closely related at bottom that the one class passes by
imperceptible degrees into the other. Hallucination is the strong
conviction that something is present when it is not. The insane,
the delirious and the feverish are attacked by wild beasts or hear
strange voices which obviously exist only in the patients' own
imaginations. The fact that hallucinations may arise out of such
abnormal sources as disease, exhaustion and drugs does not
diminish their value for helping to understand the normal processes
of perception.
There was once a painter who after a first sitting could call up
the face, form and dress of his sitters with such vivid accuracy
that he would glance from time to time at the imagined sitter in
order to compare him or her with the picture whilst he worked. In
the end he became convinced that these imagined persons were as
real as the flesh-and-blood ones. So a sapient civilization rewarded
his remarkable development of the imaginative faculty with a long
stretch in a madhouse. He was certainly suffering from hallucinations,
but his case was full of instruction for the humble. For a mental
process like this that ran off the usual track made it possible to
approach the study of mental workings to a degree that would
otherwise be impossible.
The significance of such an hallucination lies in its indication
that the mind, without any extraneous aid, possesses a power to
project convincing images which have no corresponding physical
stimulus and which are then taken for perceptions. Such images
also possess the capacity to recur or even to persist. The mistake in
identity made by maniacs who fancy themselves to be Napoleon,
etc., reveals the power of a .dominant idea to create wrong sensory
impressions. When the mind is dominated by a fixed preconception
of this kind the likelihood of falling victim to illusion or hallucination
is increased. We begin to see what we expect to see. The hallucination
has a reality not less cogent than that of physically-based experience.
Yet if we are willing to be patient and without prejudice whilst we
make a deeper analysis than habit usually permit's, examination will
show that the same characteristics may be found in all other mental
images, whether they be the reproductions of fancy or the products
 -
of dream. For fancied objects will be hard to the touch of a fancied
finger, and dream landscapes will be coloured and lined to dream eyes.
If, however, we set up the wrong standard and demand that fancied
things should submit to physical tests we are mixing our planes of
reference and confusing our standards of dimension. We must be
fair. For the reply to such unfairness could be a demand that our
physical things be tested by dream standards ! The sense of externality
in our view of the physical world seems inexpugnable.
But close the eyes, shut the doors of all outer sense-organs in sleep,
and lo !-in dream you will find a world as vividly external as your
physical one. This betrays the mental character of the feeling of
externality. The existence of abstract reverie and the experience of
dream provide evidence of this power to project mental pictures
into space and impregnate them with the force of reality. We must
make it perfectly plain to ourselves that the processes of consciousness
are so amazing that mental images may appear objectively to
the body. Hypnotism proves this, dream illustrates it and the
phenomena of illusions demonstrate it completely.
The difference in content between an hallucination and a dream
is, from the psychological standpoint, non-existent. Consider for
a moment how imagery that has no objective basis at all develops
during dreams abnormal states like hypnosis and insanity into
actual perceptions that are in no way different and in no way
distinguishable from those seen in the case of physically-based ones.
A hypnotized person may readily observe what the hypnotist
suggests to him as being present, whilst on the other hand he may
fail to observe an object confronting him if a contrary suggestion
is given by the operator. If it be suggested that he is sniffing
pepper he may begin to sneeze violently, even though no pepper
is actually there. And mystics who concentrate excessively on a
particular image during meditation find in time that it takes on
the vivid immediacy and colourful actuality of a physically stimulated
percept.
It is the revolutionary lesson of hallucination and of illusion
that things and persons seen standing outside one's body and yet
having only mental existence are seen as objectively as things and
persons having a physical existence. We need this lesson badly, for
we are all equipped by Nature and heredity with a bias which falsely
believes that everything seen outside the body must therefore be outside
the mind and that the products of pure consciousness are only to
be experienced internally to the body, i.e. within the head. It would
be well to give such an outworn doctrine a valedictory dismissal.
THE- SECRET OF SPACE AND TIME 
We have learnt that a group of images can appear within the
field of consciousness and yet appear as though they were outside
oneself. It has been sufficiently shown that the mind can certainly
throw its pictures outside the body -the analysis of illusions alone
has yielded this startling fact. Illusion shows that we can perceive
what is not in our physically derived sensation of an object, whilst
inattentive mind-wandering shows that we cannot perceive all that
our physically derived sensations tell us about an object. Ordinarily
the transformation of mere sense-impressions into full percepts is
instantaneous, and therefore indistinguishable to self-observation.
The entire physiological and psychological movement occurs with
such kaleidoscopic quickness that nobody is able to detect the two
stages. This is one of the important reasons why the study of errors
of sense and hallucinations of mind is such a tremendous help in
throwing light upon the manner in which sense and mind combine to
construct our experience. For they open a gap, as it were, in this
movement and enable us to. observe something of what is really
happening. It is an error to regard them as extraordinary perception.
They are not. They are normal perception operating as it always
operates by an act of mental creation.
Let us attempt to assess the valuable lessons which we may
draw from illusions. The richest of all the broad veins of gold in this
neglected mine of study are twofold. First is the striking proof thus
offered that the whole of perceptual life can be a mental construct.
For the apparently abnormal experience of illusion demonstrates
how the acceptedly normal experience of everyday life is not something
solely and passively received by the senses from an outside
world but something which still more is formed, arranged and
imprinted by the mind from its own inner store. It is itself the main
source of its own experiences. Each perceived thing is indeed known
only as a mental one. And this is true even of such hard and heavy
things as the thousand-ton statue of Rameses II, which lies prostrate
and broken on the desert's edge, as it is true of such soft and delicate
things as the winter snow which lies thickly on the Himalayan passes.
For the empire of mind extends over all that is seen, heard, touched,
tasted or smelt.
The varying causes of illusory appearances may be trifling or
important, may be flaws in the mechanism of perception or images
brought up from the past, but this does not reduce the significance
of the point. The arisal of the spectacle of such externally perceived
objects is a mysterious and meaningful event. It must be understood.
And it can only be understood when understood as a mental
 -
experience, a pictorial and creative effort of mind. The inner working
of illusion, which is said to be abnormal, becomes a guide to the
inner working of sense-awareness, which is admittedly normal.
We may now understand that illusions and hallucinations are
ultimately mental in character merely because all sensations and
all perceptions are mental in character. There is no difference in the
ultimate origin of both, for although one seems subjective and the
other seems objective they arise alike from the same source-mind.
The second noteworthy lesson from hallucinations and illusions
is their bringing things into awareness that are seen to be extended
in three dimensions of space, lit, shaded and coloured, and are
nevertheless nothing but ideas, mental pictures. Where have we
seen the illusion ? It has been seen outside the body. Where is the
illusion found to be when we thoroughly investigate it ? Inside the
mind. The conclusion can only be that ideas can be projected so as
to appear outside the body and thaft the common belief that ideas are
only to be seen within one's head is a false belief. So far as any illusion
is an act of perceiving something, it stands on the same footing as
the ordinary and authentic perception of everyday life. But if the
former has now been shown to be a mental act, then we must conclude
the latter to be mental likewise. The final conclusion is that the
analysis of illusion verifies the primary character of the mind's
contribution in the knowledge of external things'and vindicates the
doctrine that ideas can be objectified into space-relations with
the body.
The Making of Space and Time. Our earlier enquiry into
Relativity revealed that much of the fixity of space and time was
fancied, for they were found to vary with different observers. Man
thinks he is experiencing real space when he looks but at his external
environment and sees one thing here and another thing there and
so on. If that is so, why does he see the sun as the size of a silver
coin ? And why does he still perceive that the sun rises and sets daily
when reason denies it and proves its denial ? It is clear that he is
not aware of the real dimensions of the sun ip space, and therefore
either cannot be experiencing space as it is or else is experiencing
space as he unconsciously thinks it is. The paradox is that although he
never meets with such an unchanging space in experience he is
constantly subject to the belief that he does. It is a pure illusion but
one which binds the mind more tightly than it ever knows.
The three-dimensional world which stands behind his reflected
image in a glass mirror is purely illusory. He knows that it is illusion
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and yet his knowledge cannot get rid of it, do what he will. Hence
something may be immediately "given" in his experience and yet
its existence may be only apparent and not real. Similarly the
philosophic attitude which labels its percepts of external things as
mental does not change them in the philosophic experience. They
still remain as they are, i.e. external and extended in space, and
remain so throughout a lifetime.
Let it be clear therefore without the possibility of misunderstanding
that the hidden teaching does not deny in any way whatsoever
that a world of objects is set out in space beyond our bodies.
The fact itself is indisputable, the notion of it is universal, and none
but a lunatic would set himself up to question it, but the form in
which it is maintained is not. All these things-the objects, the spaces
and the bodies-may still exist as they appear and yet be known
only as phases of consciousness. If sight tells us that an object has
distance in the field of vision, reason explains that the distance is a
mental construction.
When we reflect that a stereoscope shows flat surfaced photographs
in all the depth, solidity, relief and perspective of the natural
scenes, we have to grant that it is not more miraculous for us to
perceive the actual scenes themselves as projected at a distance from
our bodies and outside them in space. For not only are two slightly
different drawings or pictures made to appear as a single and
complete one but their flatness totally disappears and what is
portrayed upon them is made to appear in perfect relief, actual
depth and natural solidity. Thus the stereoscope produces the
illusion of a single picture when actually two separate and distinct
pictures have been placed in the apparatus and are both being gazed
at. We do not explain this strange fusion by explaining that the two
lenses of the stereoscope, like the two eyes of the human head, being
set in different positions, reveal different aspects of the same object
and the two resultant pictures coalesce into one. This is certainly
the beginning of the process but not the end. Such a case of plane
illusion which appears to have depth when there is only length and
breadth alone indicates that the mind co-operates in vision and is
finally responsible for what is seen. For the work of uniting the two
pictures is a constructive and creative one. Therefore it is done by
the mind. The final integrated percept is fully mental. Its manufacture
may be a subconscious one but it is certainly a mental one.
Mind puts forth its own constructions. All these analytic
processes which make sensation possible and all these synthetic
workings which present us with an external object are ultimately of
 -
the nature of mind itself. Perceptions have all the spatial qualities
and all the spdtial relations, all the solidity and all the resistance
to touch, all the coloured surfaces and all the lines, angles or curves
when they appear before the mind, that we believe the outside
objects to have. Nevertheless it is unavoidable human habit to
objectify and spatialize its images and solely attribute them to a
non-mental, i.e. material, basis.
To understand the final phases of the perceptive process let it
first be noted that we never directly see the real size of an object
because only the image which it produces on the retina of the eye
-is reported to the brain. Look at a lofty telegraph pole, for instance,
through a pair of spectacles whilst standing some distance away.
Give part of your attention to the lens of the spectacles and part
to the pole. You will then become aware of the fact that the pole
stretches across half their diameter and no more-that is, less than
three-quarters of an inch. This is the image on your lens. Let us
suppose that the pole is about forty feet high. Do you see a fortyfeet
image ? No, you actually see upon the spectacle lenses an
image which is one six-hundredth smaller. Now remember that the
pair of spectacles are simply like projected portions of the eyes but
slightly larger than the eyes themselves. What appears to be seen
as though it were in the lenses of the spectacles is very little larger in
size than the image which appears on the retina of the eye. It is
quite impossible for the optic nerve to report to the brain and hence
to the mind any dimension larger than the dimensions of the retina
itself. The mind never learns directly the size of the external pole
but only the size of its greatly shrunken image. The up and down,
right and left movements of the eyes produce muscular sensations
of the pole's distance, position and direction. The image of the
scene pictured on the retina is a spatial one, i.e. it has length and
breadth. But no such spatial picture can itself be conveyed to the
brain by the optic nerve, but only "the telegraphic code" vibration
concerning it. Therefore the mind has somehow to imagine, construct
and project such a picture as well as the space needed for its background.
This it does and then an image arises. The space, the spaceproperties
and the space-relations of the pole are therefore purely
mental creations.
The flow of sensation is uninterrupted. We are continuously
giving birth to numerous thoughts, for that is the essential meaning
of human experience, and the mind must discriminate one from
another. Every perception of an object must be different from every
other if it is to be perceived at all. The mind must determine a
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separate form for all its images. This it does by spatializing them, by
spreading them out, by setting up each image in space dimensions of
length, height and breadth. Consciousness could not operate otherwise
in the form of perception unless it did this, for failure to do so would
mean that no image could exist separately and therefore could not
exist at all.
No object could ever be visible to us unless it appeared to be
outside us in space. For in no other manner could it be formed into
a distinct separate thing apart from the seer. If the object were in
the inside of the eye it could not be seen at all. Therefore it must
appear to be existent beyond the eye if the eye is to function like a
photographic camera at all. Any object to be visible must be visible
as separately individualized and independent of the eye which
beholds it. We have already learnt, however, that all sense-function
is performed only mediately by the sense-instruments and immediately
by the mind. If therefore the mind is to possess the power to
perceive any particular object it is compelled to form such perception
by externalizing the object and thus extending it in space.
Mind must set out all perceptions in space, i.e. localize them, and
it must project them outside the body and thus finally perceive the
entire result as an extended and external object. The space, however,
is not really a property of the perceived object; it is a property of
the mind itself and is bestowed by the mind upon the object.
A striking illustration of such working is provided by the cases
of persons born totally blind and afterwards cured in later life
through surgical operation. During the first period after the restoration
of their sight they are unable to judge size, shape or distance
without making the most ludicrous errors. Objects appear to be so
close to the eye as almost to touch it. Neither externality nor
distance takes on proper meaning, for although the eyes have been
put in good order the ideas supplied by memory or association,
which enter into the formation of ideas of space, are lacking. One
blind man who was operated on and recovered his sight thought at
first that all objects "touched his eyes". He could not judge the
smallest distance, could not tell whether a wall was one inch or ten
yards away from him and could not understand that things were
outside each other.
Precisely the same necessities apply to the mind's need of setting
up images in time. It is forced to put them into sequence, to make
them succeed each other, in order to put them into existence at all.
Everything crowded together in one point and one moment would
be equivalent to nothing appearing. Hence the need of time, which
R
 -
mind accordingly makes for itself. Thought becomes possible only
through the mind making it take its passage through time. Time is
the very form of thought.
Why is it that despite the fact that we are all travelling through
space at a speed of not less than one thousand miles an hour-a
motion easily determinable by the earth's relation to other heavenly
bodies -we feel no sensation of this enormous velocity at all ? Why
is it that the passenger in an aeroplane who shuts his eyes can
hardly realize a sense of journeying and notices its movement only
to the degree that it proceeds more slowly and not more quickly ?
The answer is that the world of time is entirely based on relativity,
which is ultimately mental. Time is so elastic that it is a completely
variable relation and its power over us is due to the peculiar way in
which the mind naturally works, to the manner in which thought
manufactures the arbitrary distinctions between slow and fast,
present and future.
The distance, the size and the shape of a fountain-pen appear
to be outside us. In the case of distance it will be found that sight
is unable to determine by itself without the aid of judgment, i.e.
without the aid of mind, the relative distances at which objects
are placed from the eyes and from one another. The impression of
the pen is mental, hence inside us, but we think of it as being outside
us. We refer the perception of it outward to space, projecting
its qualities to points or areas external to the body; we think
of it as existing at a distance from us, although the sensation
which constitutes the first conscious knowledge of it occurs
within ourselves. Thus the appearance of its spatiality is mindborn.
When we say that the pen is outside us we are saying something
about its position in relation to the eyes but nothing about its
position in relation to the mind. We are reckoning its distance
and direction by setting up the body as the spatial centre and
confusing that with the mind. Ordinarily we locate the mind somewhat
indefinitely in the head, but never dream that the picture of
the pen which is presented to our eyes may actually be immaterial,
i.e. mental. This is because we become aware of our own body and
feel that we are spatially situated inside it. This feeling plays a
central part in space-perceptions and arises chiefly because of
passive sensations of touch originating in the surface of the body,
together with sensations of pressure received through the muscles,
and also through sensations of sight. We are not immediately aware
that it is the mind which has brought into being this field of touch,
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pressure and sight. The qualities are transferred externally to the
body and thus given an objective existence.
It is said that a thing must be there in the external world because
the eye tells us so, because the ear informs us so and because the
touch so reveals it. But here a most important question must be
asked. Where are these three senses ? Where are eye, ear and skin ?
Are they not where the thing itself is because they interact with it ?
Do they not occupy the same world as the table that is seen and
touched ? This cannot be denied. But if that is so then they are
part of the external world themselves. Therefore to argue that we
know a thing is outside because our senses tell us so is to argue that
it must be outside because our senses themselves are outside. But
this brings us back to the starting-point. For if everything is outside,
then the term ' 'external" loses all meaning. There is then no
"outside" at all. We may only say that the world is there and that
the senses are there but we may not say that they are external to
the mind.
From this we may deduce that the old notion that the body is
a sort of perishable box containing a permanent soul inside is fit
only for children. The newer notion that it is itself an idea within
consciousness is more in consonance with modern science.
The situation of a thing and the period of time during which it
is situated-these are the twin moulds in which must perforce be
thrown our entire knowledge of all things. Thus space and time are
the mind's very modes of arranging conscious experience. No other
modes are possible if we are to become aware of anything-whether
it be a vastly distant star or our own finger-tip. The mind, by
making its images conform to the laws of space and time, anticipates
the very form of all its possible experiences of the external world.
The images are not produced by experience, but themselves produce
our experience. This is the iconoclastic but clear truth.
When the true nature of perception is placed in a clear light it
will be seen how doubly we may be deceived by the very senses
which pretend to reveal the external world to us. For they may not
only distort the thing they have to report, as in the case of illusions,
but also deceive us into thinking that our direct experience of that
thing in space and time is physical and not mental. It is now possible
to understand' why the revelation of Einstein mentioned in th
previous chapter, although but a partial and limited one, was
nevertheless on the right track. He found that space was a variable
relation and showed why it must be so, but he never attempted to
explain how it was so or how it came to exist for us,
 -
Thus the clusters of sensations which constitute the things we
view are automatically and inevitably moulded by the mind into
space-time form. In short, so long as we continue to experience the
world we must perforce experience it as an appearance in space and
as an event in time. This is a predetermined condition of human
existence and applies to everyone, and nobody, not even the
philosopher, can escape from this condition. The very principle which
accounts for our knowledge of the existence of this world accounts
also for its space-time characteristics. They are but necessary factors
in the formation of our sensations. We are ourselves its source. Our
faith in the objective character of space and time relative to mind
is, however, so strongly inborn and inherited that its validity passes
unquestioned. Only a tremendously bold effort of enquiry can ever
bring us to repudiate this belief. Cowardice is not caution. Truth
wants no timid friends.
For practical purposes we believe, and we cannot but believe,
that the printed book which lies so plainly before us is perceived
outside ourselves but inside space. The very constitution of human
awareness tells us so with an irresistible authority that cannot for
a moment be denied. Any other assertion runs contrary to common
sense. Yet we have previously proved that space is a constituent of
the mind, that without its presence the mind would refuse to
function. In short, space dwells within the mind. This leads us
inexorably to the next conclusion. If the book exists in space, and if
space exists within the mind, then the book can exist nowhere else
except in the mind itself. That which we are perforce compelled by
'Nature to see as the printed page outside us, i.e. as the seeming notself,
is none other than a perception of the self itself, a refraction of
its own light, a presentation of the mind to its own sight.
People think that the mind must dwell only within the confines
of the skull. But if the mind is the secret manufactory of space, how
can it be itself tied to spatial limits ? How can it be limited to this
or that point in space ? How can it be placed only in each man's
head ? We shall look in vain for a plummet which shall fathom the
mind's depth or a rod which shall measure its breadth and length.
There confronting us is a world of hard realities, a panoramic
procession of solid objects and substantial things. He who comes,
like Socrates, to persuade us to call into question their' 'outsideness'',
which seems so certain and so irrefutable, has no easy task. He is
quite unwelcome, for even were his queer ideas to be true they are
most distasteful. They appear to remove the very ground from
beneath our feet. There are inherent properties in such ideas which
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render them chemically repulsive to the crowd mentality, which
flies from truth to take refuge in self-deception. Hence philosophy
has kept them hidden in the past for the benefit of a truth-loving
few. The fact that every surrounding thing is known only as an
integral mental construction rather than as an outside material one,
that it is seen as an image produced in the mind, will appear to be
a miracle to untutored people and utterly beyond belief, just as
popular uneducated thought naturally and inevitably assumes that
the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around our planet. It
holds firmly to such an opinion and deems the contrary statement
that antipodean lands exist and that the earth circles the sun to be
sheer madness. How then has it been possible to establish this
startling astronomical truth among men ? It has been possible
only by supplying them with certain related facts, and then by
persuading them to use their reasoning powers courageously upon
those facts until deeper significance stood revealed. Precisely the
same problem confronts us in the popular belief that every material
thing exists outside, apart and separate from the mind. Philosophy
refutes this naive overwhelming belief and removes this misapprehension,
but it can do so only if men will look at the facts it
offers and then study them deeply and impartially with inexorable
logic to the very end. Without such absolute rationality it could
never hope to triumph over such a powerful and primeval instinct
of the human race like materialism, which is not truth but rather a
travesty of truth.
Our knowledge of the outer world and our perception of things
in space and time are the forms taken by our mental processes. We,
need to absorb this hard truth here ascertained that what is inside
the mind can be seen outside the body. The case for it is unanswered
and unanswerableIts position is unassailable. All counterarguments,
all contrary views, can be met and mastered. For it is
not merely the odd notion of amiable cranks but as certain and as
proven as any other verified fact in the armoury of science. Therefore
this shall be the truth which shall take a new incarnation for
tomorrow.
Those who fear to follow reason when it leads them into the
strangest paradoxes are lost to truth. These doctrines may startle
and frighten us, but if they be true then they must be accepted.
We look up at the skies above like prisoners with space-covered
eyes and time-fettered hands yet know not that our deliverance is
close at hand. Thought has imprisoned us : thought may release us.
Once we begin to understand this awe-arousing mystery of the
 -
tyranny f space and time we begin to understand why we should
hearken to ancient voices like that of Jesus and what was meant by
the marrowy phrase which he uttered to a worried and weeping
world : "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you/' The mysterious
kingdom wherein man may get his best hopes fulfilled is not to be
found in future time, as in a next world after death, nor in remote
space, as in some region beyond the stars, but here within our own
mind and now within our own thought.
Such a realization of the mind's innate power to contribute to
the making of its own world will raise men-be they saints or
cynics-to the level of self-poised sages, calm their agitated minds
and soothe their suffering hearts.
CHAPTER XI
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND
WE must now consider the most crucial point in this elementary
course on the hidden teaching. The concepts of modern
science have got rid of the static things suspended in space
and replaced them by fields of force. If it is difficult to credit that we
are knowing thoughts of things when we believe we are experiencing
independent external things, is it not equally difficult to credit the
knowledge offered by science that a pen is made up of electrons which
cannot even be imaginatively compared with the hard stuff out of
which we experience the pen to be made ? Nothing that we see or can
possibly see even roughly resembles the electronic "stuff" to which
science has reduced our familiar fountain-pen. And if science may
thus undermine our realistic experience, why not philosophy ? And
if the electronic pen is the real pen, then we are seeing only an
image, only a representation of it, when we see the material pen.
Yet such a representative image must be in our mind, for it can be
nowhere else. If the idea is but a mental copy of a material object
which is outside mind and therefore a separate and distinct entity,
why is it that the two of them cannot be brought simultaneously
before awareness and compared with each other ? If the external
pen which is given to us in sense^experience were the cause of the
thought of it we would never be able to verify its existence, for every
attempt to observe external pens would only end in the observation
of thoughts.
We cannot get at things first hand, cannot inspect them directly,
do what we will. We can never get beyond the thoughts of them.
Hence we cannot even verify their separate existence. We cannot
exhibit the objects to our eyes because both eye and brain are
themselves known mentally, i.e. they are ideas, and through them
we can become conscious of mental things, of ideas alone.
When we try to test our mental constructs by turning to the
things themselves, by comparing one with the other, all that we
succeed in doing is to test one construct by another, i.e. compare one
thought with another.

 -
The perception of a thing and the thing itself are the two sides
of a curve, the inside and the outside of it. Do what we will, we
can never separate the one side from the other r The thing is on the
outside and the perception is on the inside. But the curve is not two
things, but one. The thing refuses to be taken apart from its perception.
We cannot separate the perception from the thing, but we
can distinguish them in speech and thought by making a mental
abstraction of one or the other, although with wiser speech and
profounder thought we shall find that even this feat is impossible.
Now we cannot see any object without thinking of it as being
seen. If it is to exist for us at all it must exist as something that
is perceived. Let us try to think of a pen, without thinking of
personally seeing it, without permitting the operation of actually
seeing it to mingle with the pen itselL We shall find that it is impossible
to sever one from the other. We can think of the pen only
through and by the thought of perceiving it. Do what we may, we
shall be utterly unable to think of it otherwise. Nobody can separate
in thought an external pen from his actual perception of it. What is
the conclusion to be drawn from this ? That the pen is not purely
objective but both objective and subjective, both material and
mental in one.  ~
If it is objected that when the pen is in a dark room where
nobody can see it its existence is not thereby cancelled, the reply
is that we cannot talk or mention such an object without thinking
about it and we can only think of it by constructing a mental
image of it, and if we wish to do this then we are forced to imagine
it as being seen, we are compelled to think sight along with the pen.
It is only by thinking both together that we can come to the idea
that it exists at all.
A further objection may be made that a thing may exist in
some remote untrodden part of the globe where nobody has ever
perceived it and where nobody is ever likely to perceive it. Here the
reply is precisely the same as to the previous objection. Wherever
the thing may be, it cannot be discussed as existent unless it is
thought of, unless it is mentally pictured, and it cannot be so
pictured unless we regard it as perceived either by ourselves or by
some unconsciously assumed imaginary observer. Similarly, if it be
objected that it is easy to imagine a scene like the North Pole, where
no observer is likely to be present but where great masses of ice
exist and are known to exist, despite the non-presence of anyone
to see the ice, to walk upon it, to feel its coldness and to admire its
white purity, the answer is that in thinking of the polar region and
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
of the ice that fills it we have not kept out an observer but have
actually, although unconsciously, brought him to the scene to note
its details. We have imagined an observer but we are quite unaware
of having done so. And in bringing such an imaginary observer to
the Pole we have brought his mind there and made him think of the
scene. The solid ice is known to be solid only because our unseen
spectator feels its resistance beneath his feet.
We can think of an object only by thinking of the seeing of the
object: it is not humanly possible to consider its existence in any
other way. Therefore sight becomes an indivisible concomitant of
existence. Nothing can possibly possess any being for us independent
of our awareness of it. Both thing and thought must be understood
in the united idea of a thing seen by somebody or by ourselves.
A similar analysis holds good of the other forms of sensation.
Objects cannot be separated from the thought of their being felt by
us for instance or by someone else ; they exist only because they can
be thought of as being hard, solid, heavy and so on to the touch.
The same is precisely true of heard things. The sensation of hearing
comes first and the sound itself is subsequent to that. Sounds exist
only because we can think the hearing of them at the same time. We
can think of them only as heard sounds.
Remove mind from our picture of the world and we remove
space and time from i t ; we knock the bottom out of it. The world
as idea exists for some mind or it cannot exist at all. For every
object seen there must exist a seer. In other words, whatever is
known is known by some mind. Nothing has ever been known and
nothing can ever be known apart from a knower. This is incontrovertible.
No object can exist alone and unknown. Those
therefore-and they are in the vast majority-who believe and assert
that a thing can possess a separate existence of its own are really
talking nonsense. If they indignantly deny it, let them show a single
object, let alone the whole world of objects, without also simultaneously
showing it to be connected with a knower! They cannot
do so, for they cannot separate anything from mind. The world is
inextricably and inevitably bound up with mind. Thus the final
conclusion is that, look where we will, in the universe everything is
because it is thought of.
The reverse is equally true. We cannot think of perception
without thinking also of perceiving some object, nor of the act of
hearing without coupling some sound with it. There is no hearing
without sound, no sense perception without its object. Therefore we
find again that the two cannot be imagined save as one, that sight
 -
and the thing seen are two sides of a single coin, that touch and a
thing touched are the subjective and objective halves of a unity.
When the scientific principle of relativity says that the observer
is part of his bbservation, this means that the person who has
experience of anything is part of his experience. We may carry this
further and now say that it means that the thought is part of the
thing thought of. If we ponder well upon this statement we shall
see that the mental factor is inseparable from every object known.
And if we ponder deeper we shall find that the two are really one.
We cannot hold existence and the perception of existence apart
from each other and so we are forced to form the conclusion that
the two are not two in reality but indissolubly one. The thing and
the sensation of the thing live in fundamental and inseparable union.
Thus there is nothing else but awareness. Ask yourself whether that
statement will explain all your experience and you will find that it
will do so quite adequately. Try, on the other hand, to discover
whether the theory of the materialists will explain your experience
of the world, the theory that there is nothing else but independently
existent physical things, and you will find that it does not and cannot
explain the existence of thoughts and feelings. For if you believe
that you can put something material into a test-tube you cannot do
the same with thought.
It must therefore be emphatically repeated that a percept is
not a mere copy of something external. It is primal and not
secondary. This should not be overlooked, because it is a key to
correct understanding of "mentalism", which is the doctrine that
all things are mental things.
We see that the notion of a pen existing independently of the
mind to which it is present is a pure fiction. The percept of the pen
is nothing less than the pen itself. That any other pen exists
separately and materially is utterly beyond our range of possible
knowledge and must therefore be ignored if we are to deal with
scientifically ascertained facts rather than uncertain assumptions.
The pen is a construct in consciousness. Its being is being known.
There are not two pens, a material one and a mental copy of it.
There is only one. The image which is immediately before consciousness
is the pen itself. It is so vivid, so perfect and so
convincingly stamped with the characteristic of objectivity that
we do not stop with merely seeing i t : we go on to infer that it is
nothing less than the independent pen itself and refuse to believe
otherwise. Yet the pen which is known by the senses is none other
than the percept which is known by the mind.
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
But we must now face an objection: "Here am I with direct
experience of a pen which lies outside me in space, separate from me,
which I can pick up and grasp in my hand, finding it to be solid,
weighty and hard. How then can you expect me to believe that it is
merely an idea in my mind ?"
To this the reply is that this doctrine must not be misunderstood
to mean that it is asserted that the pen is not directly present to
our vision. It most emphatically is present. Its very immediacy
disarms us. We have got to grasp this truth that the perceived pen
is not less rounded and weighty and coloured and useful than the
supposedly-existent material pen, despite the fact that the former
is a mental construct. In the previous two chapters we have seen
that the mind is involved in all our experience of the world and we
have found that sensation, so far from being a purely passive and
receptive process, is creative and even projective. But we are so
enamoured of the sensations of solidity which we receive from the
things around us, and so deceived by the sensations of distance and
position which we receive from their relations to each other and to
our eyes, that we habitually underrate the tremendously suggestive
and creative force of mind. We are almost totally ignorant of the
proven and provable fact that mental images can assume size, shape,
length, height, breadth, solidity, relief, perspective, weight, colour
and other qualities that we usually associate with external objects.
They can provide all these sensations with perfect vividness and
with all the actuality of ordinary experience. And yet they remain
nothing mdre than ideas !
Thus mental experiences are the visible things that we take
to be outside us. The thing itself is admittedly existent, but the
character of the thing is what we have now found out and we have
found it to be quite other than it is commonly thought to be. Those
who would declare there are two separate facts, the fact of perception
and the fact of an external material object, have made a false analysis
of sensation. The oneness of both idea and object is a discovery to
which the subtle thinking of the ancients and the sharp observation
of the moderns inescapably lead, but it emerges only after the
hardest and most rigorous reflection.
Once this point is grasped, then one may say to himself: " I am
aware of my awareness of this thing," and he will then perceive
that he cannot strip the second awareness from the thing in itself;
they constitute an indivisible entity. Those who want to divide the
fact, the thing known, into a percept of it on one hand and its material
substantiality on the other, who make perception a mental act and
 -
substantiality a non-mental thing, who posit mind against matter,
fall into a grievous fallacy. What we know is an idea, what we
perceive is not a discovery but a mental construction. Those who deny
this put themselves in the predicament of explaining away the
inexplicable.
Comes a further objection: "Do you mean to tell me," cavils
the sceptic, "that the abstract objects of my imagination, the
phantasmagoria of my dreams, the pictures of my reveries and the
phantom creations of my fancy are as real, are as existent and are
as substantial as the twenty-ton locomotive engine which draws
yonder train of coaches ? Do you mean to say that this engine is
nothing more than a thought in my brain like these other fanciful
thoughts ? If that be so, why is it I cannot think such an engine
into immediate existence, think as hard as I may, or think such a
train into existence and step into the train and be driven away ?
The contrast between a supposed train and a real train is so strong
as to make the suggestion that they are in any way similar quite
absurd. There is the real train standing clearly and distinctly
before me, I can confidently step into it, I can hear its powerful
engine roar and puff, but I cannot see my imaginary train so solidly
before me nor cian I get anywhere in it except in self-delusion.
Therefore I cannot accept your doctrine of mentalism. There is a
trick in it somewhere, a snare or a pitfall. The perceived train is
most useful to me, but the imaginary one is useless. It is utterly
ridiculous for anyone to tell me that both stand on the same
footing."
Let it first be noted that what the critic cannot do has been
done by others, i.e. find in waking fancies a reality and a vividness
that make them completely present to the mind's eye. Great poets
have done this, artists of genius have done this, celebrated mystics
have done this and separated lovers have done this. They have
found amid the scenes of their imagined surroundings and among
their imagined faces a perfect sense of actuality. They did not at the
time disbelieve in the real presence of the objects and persons thought
of. There are indeed two conditions of the human mind which have
been experienced by most persons and in which we find extraordinary
illustrations of the possibility of doing part of what our critic cannot
do. And they are when we are plunged in profound reverie and when
we are plunged in profound dream. In these states the contrasts,
between the perceived world and the imagined world-a contrast
which is admittedly felt at normal times by ordinary people-is
spontaneously suspended. We may enter trains during these rapt
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
states and be driven away in them and not for one moment shall we
feel that they are not real trains and that our journey is not a real
journey.. On the contrary, we possess at the time a complete belief
in the reality, solidity and existence of our reverie-born and dreamborn
universe. Were we to live mostly in such conditions they would
certainly be more real to us than would seem any temporary lapse
into full waking life that might occur. Indeed, we would then attach
reality to them and deny it to the waking world. It is therefore
unjustifiable to assert that because material things are so vividly
and distinctly seen, whereas mental images are comparatively dim
and vague, therefore the former cannot belong to the same class as
the latter, cannot also be mental themselves. For it is here not a
question of the manner in which a perception originates but of
whether it is or is not mental.
But our critic will object that this is a perverse and not a proper
answer to his criticism. It is certainly not intended to be a full answer,
for it is offered only as illustration and not as proof. If it vindicates
nothing it hints at many of the mysterious possibilities whereby the
mind can fabricate reality. It is intended to warn him not to
dogmatize too quickly about what or what not the mind can do.
The full answer to our critic cannot be given here because it
involves an explanation of the final secret of human personality,
a revealment which falls into its natural place in the second and
last volume of this work, which is yet to be written. And what the
mystic apprehends with dreamlike vagueness about this secret the
philosopher determines with amazing precision. Suffice it to say
that pur critic is right in making the latter part of his objection, for
it is not contended by the hidden teaching that the individual mind,
the ego, of any man can create his familiar world at its sweet will.
Within this limit the criticism shall find some answer in the present
and the following chapter.
The Riddle of Sensations. The further question will be asked by
the critic, "What then is the real nature of the independent objects
which cause these thoughts to be presented ? You tell us that what
we see are only thoughts. Admitting this point, there is still a
question which troubles us and which all this demonstration has
completely if not cleverly avoided. Even if it be admitted that we
know only the thoughts of things, there are still the things which
seem to make the impressions on our sense-instruments and so bring
these thoughts ultimately into existence. If what we perceive is
only a thought felt to be external, what becomes of the object which
 -
- gives rise to this thought ? Surely you would not ask us to identify
the real thing with the mere thought of it ? Surely that which
causes the mental image to arise is not the same as the image itself ?
We may discredit the testimony of the senses but we are. unable to
discard it. Nor is this all. You have passed over in complete silence
the process whereby a sensation is born out of the vibrations in the
brain. How is such a thought created ? You have told us how the
thing thought of is produced but not how a thought itself comes
into being."
What is the independent object ? How does the brain communicate
with the mind ? Certainly these two questions may now
properly be asked, for they have not been explained so far. But can
the existence of anything rightly come under consideration until
what it is that is known to exist has been made clear ? Yet this in
turn depends on how we come to know it. Therefore it will be easier
to see clearly the answer to the first question when we have learnt
the answer to the second one. We shall therefore begin with the
latter.
Let us begin by noting that each sense-experience is a twofold
fact,% first the physiological impressions experienced by the body
and second the consciousness of these impressions. This consciousness
may be termed the perception of the object. The combination of
these two factors, physical impression on eye, ear, etc., and conscious
thought constitutes our perception of it. Hence when we smell a
rose we co-ordinate a state of mind with a state of physical
disturbance. But how can the latter resolve into the former ? How
can mind take in what is non-mental ? A physical disturbance is
the very antithesis of a mental one. Where is the medium, the
connecting link, which can bridge the striking gap between both
these opposites ?
Here is a doubt which may legitimately be raised, a question
which demands a direct answer. How does mind make the miraculous
leap from a physical to a non-physical immaterial entity like
sensation ? How can mind testify to the existence of anything outside
itself? Nobody has-ever been conscious of the mind taking tfiis
distinct step of attending to and interpreting the activity in the grey
matter of the. brain. To say that we are never aware of the process
whereby a sensation is born and to say that the nerve-vibration is
converted into unconscious thought is to take a leap in the dark and
to land on entirely different territory. To make the process a subconscious
one does not solve the difficulty, for it still remains a
mental process. We come to a sudden full stop when we come to
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
the molecular change m the brain. There the continuity ends.
Consciousness makes an abrupt appearance at the other side of the
chasm and we do not know how to unite two such totally different
orders of existence together. How can physiology bring the two ends
together ?
The answer is that it does not bring them together. It leaves them
precisely where they are. It bridges the chasm by using the word
"somehow", by assuming that the ends are somehow united. It
accepts the chasm and then assumes that it is not a chasm. When
therefore the science of physiology says that the gap is somehow
closed, although it is quite unable to say how it is closed, it is indulging
in a play of speculative fancy, not in a discovery of ascertained and
verified fact. The leap it makes is not natural but arbitrary. Thus
we return to the troubling question: How is it possible to relate
mind which is immaterial to the brain which is material ?
. Physiology confesses that the clearance of this gap between a
wave-like movement in nerve-stuff and a conscious movement ol
thought is incomprehensible to it although it has tried to advance
various hypotheses and guesses. None of these have been able to
secure wide agreement. Nobody has ever adequately explained the
facts of psychology by the phenomena of physiology. All such
efforts have failed because they failed to understand the connection
between mind and matter. Those who complacently assert that the
crowning function of the nervous system is to "produce" thought
beneath the bony rind of the skull assert a miracle more marvellous
than any. Let them take up a measuring-rod and mark the distance
between one idea and another, between one conscious thought and
another. They cannot do it. For nobody knows where the mind
begins or ends. Is it not foolish to imply that in nodding their visible
heads men nod their invisible minds at the same time ? For under
no conceivable circumstances can the mind be seen to reside in the
head. Yet materialists accept unthinkingly the vague belief which
regards the mind in the same way as it regards material objects.
Nobody can bring an immaterial presence like mind together with a
material place like the head, for there is no point and no surface in
mind to meet any point or surface in the head. Yet they still talk as
though mind were definitely located at- the brain terminals of the
sensory nerves. For the sake of convenience in common talk we may
-perhaps must-continue to speak of the mind as though it were
in one's head, but for philosophic purposes it is reprehensible to do so.
Perception is a mental process, i.e. thought, and reason demands
that the thought be referred to some subject to which it occurs,
 -
to some consciousness whereto the process happens. We must not
therefore mistake the movements of material molecules in the
fleshly brain for conscious thoughts. Those who cannot grasp the
difference between both can never grasp the meaning of sensation
-which is the most elementary fact of psychology. And the first
steps in psychology are inescapable steps in philosophy. No
microscope has ever discovered consciousness, and no opening of the
skull has ever done it either. It is not observable. It must be treated
for what it is-a separate and distinct fact. To treat the physical
brain as identical with full consciousness is to deal in pure fancy.
The attempt to explain perception away as being merely a matter of
nervous functioning is nothing less than to beg the question.
When the physiologist follows a sensation through its entire
course from surface of the body to centre of the brain, what has he
really done ? He has followed it in his own mind, he has performed
an act of consciousness. It does not lose its mental character because
he chooses to affix the name of ' 'nerve-change'' to its corresponding
physical vibration. His difficulty is that he cannot actively take a
percept apart and yet keep it in full consciousness. It can be divided
only theoretically. It is an entity, and now beyond any possibility
of practical analysis. The dissecting knife can expose the nervous
substance of the brain to sight but it cannot expose a thought, an
idea, a fancy or a memory-image. The chasm between both seems
quite unbridgeable.
Here physiological science must frankly stop, bewildered and
dumbfounded, for it is totally unable to explain satisfactorily
this sudden and startling leap from unconsciousness to consciousness.
Despite the best efforts of the best thinkers of modernity, physiology
has failed to solve the following problem satisfactorily: What is
the connection between the human mind within and the material
universe without ? What is the nature of the intercourse between
thought and thing ? Herbert Spencer, for example, who tried to
interpret science to the nineteenth-century world, who wrote
scornfully of the philosophical attempt to reduce knowledge of things
to knowledge of thoughts, had to confess that  how the material
affects the mental and how the mental effects the material are
mysteries which it is impossible to fathom".
For the fact of consciousness is a primary one. And it is the
most mysterious fact in all human existence. No movement of
material molecules can directly explain it, as nothing non-conscious
can adequately account for it. We do not know that molecules
possess the power to reflect upon their own nature. Mental experience
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
is and has ever been the supreme enigma set in the midst of a
seemingly non-mental world. To confine consciousness to its events
or to its contents, as is so often done, does not help to explain its
own existence, but merely evades the issue. Science has succeeded
admirably in telling us what mind does and how it behaves, but it
lias so far failed to tell us what it is. Mind is the recalcitrant entity
which refuses to be disintegrated into anything else. Therefore we
must keep on asking: How is it that a physiological process is
converted into a mental one ? For mind is both mysterious and
unique-nobody seems to know what it is although everybody
guesses. This we do know, however, that there is nothing else like it
in the universe.
Physiology has well considered and has long considered this
problem but has given it up as insoluble and inscrutable. The hiatus
is utterly insurmountable. And such it must remain for ever unless
and until we recognize two simple yet subtle points which help to
solve this problem and with it the whole train of foolish questions
that drag after it.
The physiologist has not noticed these two points for the simple
reason that such recognition would take him beyond the limits of
his special science. If he is to remain a physiologist and nothing more
he must pay the heavy price of narrow specialism-expertness
within those boundaries but ignorance outside them! If, however,
he is willing to pursue his enquiry farther, then he must turn
psychologist; there is no other direction to which he may turn for
light. For the psychological standpoint is a beginning of the still
higher philosophical standpoint.
These two points are : first, the ultimate order in which the
details of our becoming aware of objects follow each other and fall
into their proper places ; second, what it is that the mind can really
know. When the answers to these are both forthcoming, the answer
to the great problem which stands at the end of the physiologist's
road will reveal itself of its own accord.
The first point bids us find out at which precise and crucial
moment we actually become conscious of the objects around us. We
then remember that according to physiology during the whole passage
of the impression from nerve-ending to brain-centre there is no
moment that leaps into awareness of i t ; there is no fraction of a
second of consciousness of the independent thing supposed to be
outside and supposed to be reported. Only after it has reached its
terminus, only as a subsequent act, does the striking contrast of the
percept arise.
s
 -
We think of an object, and then mind, curious to know how
the thought has arisen, tries to get behind it, with the consequence
that the sensory side of the science of physiology gradually comes
into being. The physiologist then slowly ascertains bit by bit the
whole sensory process until he gets back to the thought again. He
reveals nothing about the perception as a moment when thoughtflashes
into the mind when he reveals the way in which the object
makes an impression on the sense-instrument or the way in which
this impression is carried to the brain. For all these things imply the
primacy of consciousness, whose presence is not explained by noting
the things of Which we are conscious, but is only described. The
physiologist is like a man who can construct a violin and explain the
laws of sound but who cannot produce or explain the music itself.
He does not realize that all his descriptions, which purport to
account for the existence of his consciousness of an object, are
descriptions of what occurs after the consciousness of it has already
arisen. He does not perceive that his explanations of the action of
nerve and brain processes which are the result of interaction
between the body and an object are catalogues of occurrences which
appear subsequent to consciousness of the object. Therefore his
attempts to explain awareness explain everything but the percept
itself, a fact which he unconsciously accepts when confessing that
there is an inexplicable gap in the entire series of events.
Now pose yourself the question, " How do I first know that
anything exists at all ?" And you will have to reply that you know
or become aware of anything primarily through the mind and only
secondarily through the senses. This is proved by the phenomenon of
mind-wandering and distracted attention described in the early part of
the previous chapter. The brick wall that confronts you may remain
outside the threshold of your consciousness so long as you persist
in profound and attentive reflection upon a bygone experience or an
immediate problem. This does not mean that the eyes have not
performed their duties. On the contrary, the image of the wall will
be found perfectly registered on the retina. Nor does it mean that the
optic nerve has not performed its task of vibrating a message to the
brain nor that the cortical centre in the brain has not received the
message. All this has been done, the sense-impressions have been
made and the excitations have arisen in the brain. Why then does the
wall remain unseen ? Because all these have been unattended to by
the mind. Because they have not been taken up into consciousness.
Because, to put it briefly, we can experience only what the mind
experiences! When therefore you say that you have become aware
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
of a wall before you, what you really mean is that you have become
aware of the percept of a wall, i.e. of the idea of a wall as an object
of consciousness.
Moreover, this same theorem was demonstrated in the examination
of illusions and hallucinations likewise recorded in the previous
chapter.
When we put on a pair of spectacles for the first time we become
quite conscious of their presence on the face. But after a while the
glazed circles before our eyes and the pressure on our nose fade off
from our awareness and we finish by becoming completely oblivious
of both presence and pressure of the spectacles. The nerve-endings
in the skin, i.e. touch, tell us that they are there. The nerveendings
in the eyes, i.e. sight, likewise report their existence. Yet
we habitually fail to notice these impressions. Perception of the
spectacles disappears from the mind and their existence with it.
Why ? Because the thought of the spectacles comes first and
when we cease to think of them, being engrossed with other matters,
the perception of the spectacles ceases also. Because the external
aspect of the spectacles is only a projection of the internal idea. A
thing cannot exist for us when there is no thought of it first-this is
our experimental proof!
Every event and every object is an event which must first be
perceived and an object which must first be recognized. But
perception and recognition are states of consciousness, ideas. Their
dependence is on mind. Can any man be competent to know what
' 'solidity" is apart from first becoming aware of it ? Can a thing
come before the mind unperceived ? Can it be known at all unless a
knowing mind is apprehended along with it ? Can there be any sort
of cognition of something solid without the mental principle
initially entering into it ? We do not know and we cannot know any
object apart from knowing the idea of it. The birth of awareness
begins first.
We have to get firm hold of this fact : that we are not first aware
of a pen or a pageant but only of our sensations of them. We must
make this distinction as clear to our experience as it is self-evident
to our reason after we have analytically enquired into the process
of our knowledge of external things. We become aware of thoughts,
images, representations of things, not the things themselves. We
feel sensations, touch them, smell them and taste them. Those who
deem this impossible .know neither psychology as science nor
philosophy as interpretation of science. We know that things exist
only because we originally know them mentally. Mind is the final
 -
ground of them. The thought of the thing comes first and must
come first if we are to know it at all. Therefore consciousness must
arise before anything else, even before the whole sensory process
operates.
To sum up: The analysis of perception which physiology offers
us is the result of direct observation. But nobody has ever seen the
external object beforeit has passedintoperception. This is irrefutable,
for the seeing of it presupposes the perception of it. Therefore the
object is brought into the field of notice for the first time with the
perception of it and not before. Thus the analytic series which
physiology originally offered us turns out to be incorrect from the
higher standpoint of psychology, which makes the birth of the
thought the first item in this series, although quite correct from its
own. Were physiology to rise to philosophy it would be forced to
revise its own analysis and offer a less fallible one. For physiology
has fallen into this error because it insists on regarding the body
as that which is alone real and enduring in comparison with thought,
which it regards as ephemeral and illusory. The physiologist's "gap"
appears only whilst he begins the series in the wrong order. Let him
reverse it and put his idea, which he has put last, at the beginning
where it ought to be, and then the gap will vanish.
Consciousness is the inaugural fact of all our knowledge of the
object without. Until it comes into operation we cannot even
conceive that such an object exists. Yet after it comes into operation
we do not even grant this simple primary condition! We perceive
the object because we think i t ; we do not think the object because
we perceive it. This truth is not one of those which man can make
his own by merely glancing around : he can comprehend it only after
hard thinking and relentless enquiry.
It was earlier mentioned that there were two points which
would help to bridge the gap between brain and mind. The first has
now been explained and the second will now be explained : what is it
that the mind does really know ?
There exist various theories of knowledge which are technically
termed the double-aspect theory, interactionism, psycho-physical
* parallelism, the emergent theory, etc., but they all fail to meet
different objections adequately. Above all, they have yet to perceive
that the place occupied by mind is paramount, for nothing can be
known unless mind is present as an entity in its own right. If anyone
makes the assertion that mind can take direct hold of a material
object or of a collection of material objects, and if matter were
something quite different from mind, then he is making an assertion
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
which inextricably falls into self-contradiction. For if mind and
matter do interact, then there must be a link between them, and
this link can only be that they are ultimately of the same nature.
If matter were not the same as mind, then the process of knowing
external objects could not take place, for knowledge is a mental
activity; ideas are its product, and all that we know as perception
or as reflection are ideas.
Knowledge is an inner psychical process, and when we know a
thing we are compelled by a law of relation to know it as a thought.
The ultimate act of vision is a mental one. A multitude of images may
fall on the retina of a dead man but he will see nothing. His mind
is not active, and  relationship can be set up. Where do the
sensations really fall ? Do they fall within the mind or without it ?
Because they occur to the mind and because the mind cannot overstep
itself we must admit that they fall within it. An object must
fall within the lenity of the same stuff as consciousness if it is to be
recognized at all; which means it must first be converted into mental
stuff. Therefore an object or an experience must first be transformed
into an idea before the mind can become aware of it.
The five senses seem to tell us of material things, but without the
mind they would be struck dumb and remain for ever silent. Analysis
of the process of knowing has already revealed that sight, hearing,
etc., really and finally reside in the mind and nowhere else, and that
what is actually brought into awareness is a mental thing. That is
to say, the mind's immediate and direct knowledge is of things of
its own nature, of the same character and not different from it as
material things are supposed to be different.
Thought and feeling are the prerogatives of mind. That which
is thought or felt is therefore mental, i.e. idea, whether it be a wooden
table, a distant star or hot anger. Nothing is perceived without being
thought, hence nothing that is seen is known as being other than idea.
What is the relation which exists between your perceptions and
your mind ? Do they exist outside of your mind ? Reflection will
show its impossibility. They are themselves of the very nature of
mind; that is, they are conscious, invisible and immaterial. They
are, therefore, composed of the same stuff as that of which the mind
itself is composed. The activity of the experiencing mind generates
whatever it knows. Hence consciousness, as we ordinarily know it,
is a continuum of ideas and images. It is the mind that makes it
possible for us to see, hear and feel and it is seeing, hearing and
feeling that make it possible for us to experience the object. Therefore
no internal idea-no external object!
 -
The common belief is that what is experienced in sensation
is identical with the physical object. Actually we do know more of
the nature of the object than what it is in terms of sensation, i.e.
idea. The unreflecting attitude of a common-sense view of the world
takes what is seen for a truism; it knows little of the process of
perception whereby that world of what are said to be physical things
becomes known. It does not know that the world is never directly
apprehended and consequently never really gets within our
experience. The mind actually takes hold of something related,
some sensation, percept, image or picture which is essentially mental.
It becomes aware of what is akin to it, which means that it may know
ideas, but nothing else. It sees finally that which represents itself in
consciousness rather than that which represents itself to the senses.
The known is not less mental than the knowing element itself.
The mind thus fulfils a double office. It is both awareness and
the idea of which it is aware. Its nature is such^that it becomes
directly conscious of nothing that extends beyond itself but only of
the changes within itself, i.e. of thoughts. To make the mind the
passive recipient of impressions from an alien world is to ignore
the fact that mind knows only mental things, i.e. ideas. Whether an
outward thing gives birth to sensation or not, it can still only be
an idea in itself if it is to be apprehended^
A whole train of false interpretations and futile questions
disappears when this truth is seen. Mind does not depend on any
external thing fpr its awareness of that thing, because there is nothing
that is external or internal to mind. The thing must be present to
mind as an idea and can be immediately present in no other way.
Thoughts, indeed, are all that it possesses, all that it experiences,
whether they be thoughts of hearing something or seeing something.
It is not the five physical senses which finally feel the pleasure
of a summer's garden walk or the pain of a winter's icy exposure,
but the immaterial mind. It is not the visible fleshly eye which really
reads the words imprinted upon this page, but the invisible mind.
The truth of this fundamental fact of existence is as scientific as it
is philosophic, and will become an accepted axiom of college textbooks
before the troubled sands of this century have run out.
The Primacy of Thoughts We must now gather up whatever
insight into our external experience of things we have gained. When
we first picked up our fountain-pen we started with the physical
notion that but for the light-rays we could never have seen it. We
went on to the anatomical notion that but for the eyes we could not
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
have seen the light-rays. We proceeded to the physiological notions
that but for the nerves the eyes would have seen nothing, and but
for the brain the nerves would have experienced their vibrations in
vain. Then we rose to the psychological notion that here, at this
point, the mind began its constructive work and that but for the
latter we should still have failed to see the pen. For we become aware
of it finally as a thought, the instant of conscious perception being
the instant of actual experience of the pen's existence. But we noted
that there was no ascertainable connection at the point of transition
from the physical brain to the non-physical sensations, so that the
continuity of the whole process was broken. In searching for an
explanation of this break we made the startling discovery that
because the mental image of the pen was the first intimation we had
of its existence, and because the only things perceptible to mind were
such images, such thoughts, then it must have constructed the idea
of the pen before it could have known that the pen existed.
We began by making mind, light, eye, nerve and brain partners
in this game of getting experience of the pen. We have ended by
finding not only that mind alone underwent the experience, but
that it also produced the idea which constituted its experience !
What does this mean ? It means that we have begun by knowing
there is a pen, but in making an analysis of how we came to this
knowledge, this thought, we return to our starting-point, the same
thought. We have been travelling in a perfect circle. This implies
that at no point of the circle have we touched the object other than
as a thought. Stranger still, it further implies that we have been*
travelling within the realm of thoughts throughout. We have only
succeeded in passing from one mental construct to another !
This last conclusion is strange, because it compels us to place
within the mental circle not only the brain but the nerves, and not
only the nerves but the eyes, and not only the eyes but the light.
Then what of the actual pen itself ? Let us put that question aside
for a brief while and concentrate on this astonishing state of affairs
in which we have somehow got involved. For the sum of all these
statements is that in moving from light-ray to physical brain we have
merely moved from one thought, one percept, to another at every
separate stage of the journey!
What takes place in the eyes, in the nerves, and in the brain we
can learn only from what we can observe therein, i.e. from sensations
formed into percepts and from what we can infer from such
observations, i.e. from inferences. But both sensations and inferences
are thoughts. Unless we have the intellectual courage to come to
 -
this conclusion we shall make the serious blunder of treating one
group of sensations, i.e. the percept of the reflected light-image of
the pen, as mental, but treating another group of sensations, i.e.- the
percept of our bodily sensory system, as non-mental. The two realms
of observations are identical in so far as they are both objectively
experienced and both physically seen. Both light-ray and fleshly
body stand on precisely the same footing!
We must be consistent, therefore. What is valid for the lit and
coloured image of the pen formed by the light-rays is equally valid
for the lit and coloured images of the eyes themselves, of the nerves
and of the brain ! We know all these things because they are thinkable
things, because they are known in the last analysis as ideas.
Therefore we have no alternative but to make the whole system of
eyes, nerves and brain a system of ideas.
Science has never been able to demonstrate how objective
sense-impression and subjective idea can coalesce. This is because
it has artificially divided that which forms an indivisible union. It
has severed in theory what has never been severed in reality. The
question involved in the problem of the physiologist's "gap" is
unanswerable because it is unaskable. The broken continuity of
explanation can only be maintained if he has the boldness to throw
the whole nervous system, the entire body and the external object
into unity with the sensation itself, i.e. to deprive them of their
material character and convert them all into ideas. He must take
up the view that their place in the sensory circuit is as mental as is
the idea in which this circuit ends. Otherwise the process of knowing
the varied things of this world becomes unaccountable and must
ever remain an insoluble mystery.
Both the initial and the ultimate acts in sensation are thus seen
to be acts of mind! All that occurs between them occurs within
mind. Similarly the initial and ultimate substance dealt with is also
mind : where then is room for a material structure of eyes, nerves and
brain ? They must be mental constructs too, for neither nerve nor
brain nor eye can sufficiently account for the formation of a perception
if they are to be taken as non-mental things. Their very
nature offers intrinsic obstacles to the building of a bridge between
the conscious act of perception and the supposedly unconscious
materials which are worked up into the act. Science has not succeeded
in overcoming these obstacles and it is impossible to conceive that
it can ever do so. Physiology can minutely describe these materials
and the way they are arranged, but it cannot do more. For the final
perception is a mental affair and hence beyond its boundary. The
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
solution is to recognize that mind is present and active throughout.
The hidden teaching disturbs none of the scientific facts about
sensation and perception already narrated; on the contrary, it
allows for them. What it does is to complete them by casting a
bridge across the enormous chasm left by them. It explains that the
entire structure of eyes, nerves and brain falls inside mind and has
never existed outside it, which means that we are dealing with ideas
all the time when we believe we are dealing with non-mental material
substances fashioned in the forms of eye, nerve and brpin. The reason
why we are not aware of this is that we circumscribe the mind within
a small space inside the head and therefore have no option but to
place the sensory and nervous structure outside mind. We forget
that the entire body itself is but a complex of mental percepts. All
the delicate physiological apparatus which manufactures impressions,
all the marvellously responsive eyes, nose, ears, skin and tongue, all
the network of complicated nerves and winding convolutions of the
brain which belong to the physical body and which are taken to be
solid material things, are themselves enclosed within the charmed
circle of consciousness, are only mentally known: they must be in
short nothing more and nothing less than mental constructs.
What!-it will be objected-are we to regard our awareness of a
person standing before us as being merely the awareness of a group
of ideas ? The reply is that both touch and sight and all the senses
are mental, that beyond these sensations which tell us of head, trunk,
legs and arms and which ultimately resolve themselves into conscious
states, we know for certain of nothing. Our consciousness and its
states exist with a surety which is irrefutable but the materiality
of the other person's body exists only as an idea. The whole content
of his being is identical for us with our conscious states. He is not
and he cannot be extra-mental. He cannot be independent of our
consciousness.
Once we abandon the futile attempt to regard sense impressions
of the human body, whether of our own or of another's, as being
material activities and take them for what they are-purely mental
-the picture of our universe becomes clearer and the puzzles which
beset the materialist view disappear altogether. Nothing else will
perfectly answer our question and nothing less will profoundly satisfy
our reason.
Thus our ultimate awareness of the existence of all these sensory
nerves and sensory organs is itself an act of perception. If we have
had to end with the mind, it may dawn on us that we unconsciously
 -
began with mind too. We have been travelling in a circle and never
really got away from mind at any moment. The terms "brain",
"nerve" and "sense-instrument'' are indeed merely terms used by
the mind to describe its own experiences. They are themselves
perceived objects ! The whole of man's physical body is nothing less
than a percept, for we become aware of it because we see parts
of it and feel its surface, etc., all of which are simply internal
sensations.
Finally it may be suggested to those who find difficulty in grasping
these admittedly difficult points that a helpful illustration is to
consider the dream experience of dream bodies.
So long as men come to premature unreflected conclusions about
this familiar act of experiencing an external thing, which recurs
continuously throughout their waking^ lives, so long will they be
unable to comprehend its vital and immense importance as one key
to the right understanding of life's mystery.
Let it be emphasized that what is written in this chapter is not
written from the practical standpoint of everyday living but from
the subtler standpoint of what is ultimately true. Our criterion of
truth is not to be what the lined palm of one's hand feels, which is
satisfactory enough to the plain man, but what the reasoning and
judging power of the mind ascertains, which is alone satisfactory to
the philosopher. Nobody will ever be able to dislodge reason from
this central fact of mentalism, do what he will.
What Are Things ? It is now time to face one of our final problems.
What becomes of the independent externally experienced thing
which has somehow been left out of this reckoning whilst we were so
preoccupied with ascertaining how we formed our idea of it ? We
seem to ourselves to have entered into close intercourse with those
external objects but we now know that we never attain to more than
intercourse with ideas. We seem to have immediate experience of
the material things, but it is wholly impossible to prove their immediate
presence in our experience. We can testify only to"the experience
of pictures in the mind and to the fact that the independently
existing object has never really been revealed to our senses ; we have
only thought of it, just as we have thought of the senses themselves.
We can make no truthful statement about it for the simple, reason
that our experience is completely cut off from it. We cannot place
ourselves beside it.
Must we then bow our head humbly and admit that this
mysterious thing in itself remains outside the other end of the eyeTHE
MAGIC OF THE MIND 
nerve-brain series, apparently an unknown and ever unknowable
object ?
We accept the existence of things because we perceive them.
Let us look into, the point. It is necessary to examine this act of
perception more closely. We take it habitually for granted when
we attend to sensations and perceptions that we are attending to
^material things and that we are receiving information about objects
which exist quite separately from ourselves. The philosopher cannot
afford to take anything for granted, however. He endeavours through
the profoundest possible reflection to enter into an understanding
of what is actually occurring, rejecting all assumptions and inferences
in the process.
First of all, we must make it clear beyond doubt that the very
moment of sensing the existence of a fountain-pen is an act of mind,
consciousness, and no longer an act of nerve vibration or cerebral
change; that it is not a physical process at all. The physiological
account of sensation accounts for everything except for this first
moment of awareness when the pen becomes known to us. It does
not account for the birth of consciousness of the pen, for the mental
act of knowing it as apart from the supposedly physical act of
entering into relation with it. Moreover, the mere act of judging the
impressions of objects is itself a mental activity which cannot be
explained by any physical process. Thus instead of separating
percept from object we ought to separate the awareness of perception
from the percept itself, both being mental; and instead of separating
the subjective from the objective we would do better to separate
consciousness from the object of consciousness, i.e. idea.
When we examine this verbal symbol idea we find it to be an
expression of an awareness which is immediate, innate, direct and
obvious, whereas that of things is indirect, added and interpreted-
in short, inferred.
It is because we see the mental image of a separate independent
external material man that we automatically and unconsciously
think that there is also a person to whom that image corresponds.
Nevertheless, such is the relativity of thought that the very presence
of an idea forces us to prejudge the issue and think that there is
a material thing outside which has given birth to the idea. The
percept of a man is alone directly known. Any other must be a
mentally constructed one. The awareness of sensations is certain and
indubitable. The knowledge of an external cause of those sensations
to which they answer is entirely inferred and supposed.
We see, taste and feel external things as being absolutely
 -
independent merely because we start with an inborn belief that they
are absolutely independent. If A and B are in causal relation, then
A always comes first. Cause precedes effect. Now what do we
experience first of the external objects ? Why, we become aware of
the mental impression of them, and nothing else at any time!
Hence, if the mental impression comes first, it must be the cause!
To make the external object the cause of the internal sensation is
equal to making sensation the cause of sensation, i.e. to beg the
question and to attempt what is impossible and inconceivable.
We must emphasize what will appear only from acute analytic
reflection-namely, that mental experience precedes physical
experience and that the latter follows the former merely because it
is a subsequent inference. The image is antecedent to the inference
that the object exists. We unconsciously and almost instantaneously
decide that the object is outside after we have perceived the image ;
it is a later act. But granting that the knowledge of the independently
existent object comes second after the knowledge of the percept, how
is it proved that it is only an inference ? The answer is that everything
that cannot be immediately known, everything that cannot
be known as it is in itself, must necessarily be brought to our
knowledge by the working of imagination. We must represent it to
ourselves through the image-making faculty of mind. And to know
what particular image to construct we have to pass through the
corridor of subconscious reasoning until we come to final conclusion,
which could only be an inference even if it were a right inference,
which it is not.
The thought is primary, whereas the thing is secondary. The idea
is factual, whereas the object is inferential. Before the mind reveals
the perception to itself there is no knowledge of any external object.
Such an object appears subsequently on the scene; until then
nothing can be said of it. It is this important distinction which
forms the very foundation of mentalism. And this distinction is not
the fanciful speculation of imaginative metaphysics; it is slowly
beginning to be the factual finding of leaders like Eddington and
Jeans, who are in the front ranks of modern science. The meaning of
this distinction is that the object veritably depends for its existence
on the idea of it, not the idea on the object. Nobody can prove that
it possesses any independent existence. Mind is its basis and upholder.
It is a mental derivative.
We may find enough courage to face the truth about these
external objects. For we found in our study of illusions that the
capacity of an illusion to deceive us disappeared after we took the
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
trouble to enquire into it, even though the existence of the illusion
remained. Similarly the external objects have now, after we have
taken the trouble to inquire into them, turned out to be inferred,
although they continue to remain in experience. Now an inference
is an imagination, i.e. an idea. So our external object turns out to be
an idea just as much as our actual experience of it is an idea. When
analysed it also turns out to be a thought. What does this mean ?
As in illusion the mind creates an object of its own and then
proceeds to assume its reality, so in the case of ordinary everyday
experience the mind has created an external thing and then assumed
its existence ; and as in illusion the assumed thing was indubitably
and repeatedly seen, so here too the inferred object is also plainly
and persistently seen. That a percept is an item of consciousness is
indubitable, that the object is outside it is merely an idea. The
first is fact but the second is unproved and unprovable. An
independent object is never seen separately but only inferred
psychologically. We may pay it the utmost attention and give it our
alertest awareness, but we will never detect it apart from the idea.
For its very existence rests on inferences and involves assumptions.
But truth does not deal in inferences. It must keep its feet on firm
ground-fact verified and ascertained.
Whoever has been impatient at this venture into seeming
abstractions has erred. For until he has formed a correct idea of
how we come to know the external world of things which rest or
move in space he cannot penetrate to its reality. Until he has analysed
the content of world-consciousness he cannot understand how it has
been built up. We habitually consider the wall that confronts us as
standing quite aloof from our sensation of its existence. We hold
unreflectingly to the view that we see the wall first and then make
a representative image of its appearance in the mind. The wall
falls into first place and the mental picture into second place in the
order of our supposed awareness of it. We have already found how
little this is correct. We shall now arrive at the right view and it will
sap the foundations of our age-long human certitude about the
nature of the world, the position of the body and the dimension of
the mind.
How can we continue to take it for granted that although we
cannot directly know the object, our idea of it is an image which
duplicates it more or less satisfactorily, a kind of photograph made
on the mind by the object ? How can this belief continue to stand in
face of all that we have discovered by our prying analysis ? How can
it be that the object is really there outside us ant? the perception of
 -
it is only a copy of it, albeit a mental one ? How can it be that our
superficial apprehension of a material universe is correct, is just as
it seems to be, and is in no need of analysis ? For all our facts show
that we have unconsciously begun with the idea of the object and
consciously ended with it, and that perception is a psychological
act, and that the perception of a fountain-pen is not merely seeing
the mental copy of a pen but literally seeing the pen itself, because
it is identical with the mental percept and not merely related to
it. The theory that although it is true that we know only our mental
constructs, nevertheless these constructs are only copies, representations,
of some unknown external material object, is utterly invalid.
For the object is itself part of the construct and no justification
exists for separating it from the totality of perception other than
the justification of ancient and habitual prejudice. Those who
believe in the "mental copy" theory, who put idea and object at
different ends of the same pole, are joining together complete
incompatibles.
Material things are not only just as much mental as their socalled
"subjective" perceptions but are intrinsically the same. It
would be a gross error to believe that a perception is a mere mental
copy of a material object. The latter itself is as subjective as the
former. Both the supposed material thing and the conscious registration
of it are mental constructions and nothing else. The notion
that the construct itself conforms to the material thing is pure
supposition.
The idea of a wall is all that we know for certain because it is
all that we really experience, the rest is but uncon^ious deduction
and automatic erroneous judgment. For our entire attention is
directed towards the externalized wall and not towards the awareness
of what is actually taking place during its perception. Hence simple
and superficial persons fall into easy error by taking this idea for an
external thing. The idea, the mental copy which is supposed to have
come into existence in consequence of the presence of the material
wall is the first thing we really know, whereas the matter is the
second thing. But it has not the advantage of being known, it is
only inferred and remote and as an inference it is only a copy of the
first idea, i.e. we have multiplied the construct itself. We can get
along quite well without such multiplication.* The lesson is that we
must give preference and allow priority to the perception itself
rather than to the object of perception, because we must mark out
a strict boundary-line between what is actually perceived and what
is merely inferred.
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
But we are not yet done with our critic. He iAay very properly
ask : "If there is nothing external, no independent thing at all, then
the question will inevitably arise: 'Why do we get the idea of an
object when there is apparently nothing to cause it ?' " This and
other criticisms and objections which can be made and are likely to
be made against mentalism must regrettably be left for further
consideration when the doctrine is more adequately explained and
finally proved in the succeeding volume of this work. They are linked
together with more advanced problems. For unless the nature of
Mind, the mystery of sleep, the meaning of dream, the secret of
the J, and the significance of creation are thoroughly understood,
the conviction of mentalism's truth cannot be finally clinched nor
can its own tremendous contribution be brought into relation with
our common life. Philosophy in general has hitherto offered many
questions but few final solutions, whereas the hidden teaching offers
a complete key to the understanding of the ALL. Let it be noted
that it touches on these tantalizing mysteries only to solve them, but
that solution belongs to the more advanced tenets and can only be
grasped after the difficult preparatory studies have been made, and
may not be separated without causing bewilderment arising from
the strange facts there to be revealed. Such is the regrettable
position and there we must perforce leave it for the present.
Meanwhile, in reply to the questions, why does the independent
object contribute to our sensation of sight, smell and touch, and
why does it induce those sensations by its mere presence ?-we may
now say that because the percept manufactured out of such
sensations is the object itself, the questions collapse as unaskable.
Thing and thought are identical. Those who would distinguish
between the thing as apart from our mind and the thing in relation
to us attempt what is impossible, for they are as inseparable as the
sun-ray and the sun. The thought is the thing, the percept is the
object, rather than the reverse. Every object, together with the
space and time relations that go with it, is an object perceived in
consciousness and nowhere else, and therefore dependent on it.
What we call a material object really is the percept of a material
object built in our minds, and the outward projection of a percept
really is the outward object itself. That which immediately and
indisputably exists for us is the finished percept. We need not
hesitate to apply this principle with the utmost boldness. Locomotive
engines and reinforced concrete skyscrapers, broad lakes and lofty
mountains are as much mental constructs as any other things that
we see amid teeming cities or in placid landscapes.
 -
It is hard at first but easy in the end to grasp this primary fact,
that the supposed deliverances of sense-activities, i.e. sensations,
are themselves the objects with which we are dealing in our intercourse
with the world. When we ponder reflectively we shall find that
thing and thought meet, that objective and subjective merge, that
any distinction between them is arbitrary, for it is made by man and
not by Nature. Thus subjective and objective elements merge into
unity, into radical identity. It is impossible to think thing and
construct asunder when we deeply consider what they really are..
Reflection relentlessly demands that we blend them into one. It is
an iron necessity of the laws of thought against which no shuffling
convention can prevail.
What is the distinction between a thing as we see it and as it is
in itself ? For us there is none. The purposes of the practical activities %
of mankind quite entitle us to enquire no farther than the common
view which does not take the thought for the thing. But this will not
stand up to critical philosophical enquiry, which demands the whole
truth and nothing less and which therefore finds that the thing is
really the thought of the thing. Hence for philosophic purposes we
are compelled to rub out the distinction between the thought and
the thing. It might exist in Nature but it does not exist in knowledge.
It is impossible to prove that it is a fact and it is equally impossible
to prove that it is a fiction. For the thiug-in-itself is beyond our
reach as any thing other than as a thought.
The setting up of a material activity in opposition to a mental
one rests on the false and perverted notion of a bifurcated world
containing both outside things and internal thoughts. The superficial
masses immediately make this discrimination, but were they
to think deeply enough they could never maintain this absurd
thesis. Uninstructed and unreflective persons believe that they have
direct awareness of external objects, for they call the mental construct
the material object. The best philosophical psychologists know better,
for they know that the mental operations concerned are the first to
enter the field of awareness, as they are also the last.
So long as we stubbornly persist in drawing a line between
things and our perception of these things, so long shall we be unable
to comprehend their real character. So long as we sever the one from
the other, so long shall we find ourselves in this cid de sac which
renders the problem wholly insoluble. Once we throw this primary
error, this fundamental and fatal miscalculation, into the crucible
of intent reflection, we may hope to find the true fact about our
knowledge of the world but not before. The masses naturally think
THE MAGIC OF THE MIND 
and feel that every external thing comes first and the mental image
of it is merely a copy that arises subsequently. They are not to be
blamed for this, for Nature hides her gold in the depths of earth and
hides her truth in the depths of reflection. Habit forces us to establish
this separation of thought from thing, but reflection equally forces
us to repair this error. Those who will not take the trouble to pick
their way through this tangled enquiry cannot hope to perceive the
truth about the familiar things around them. That whether it be a
pen or a pageant each of these things is mental, is a truth which
stands in direct and primary opposition to their first and foremost
impressions. Nothing but the severest scrutiny of himself and the
subtlest thinking within himself could ever have given man the
knowledge of this amazing truth.
When we carry this line of reasoning to its farthest end with
thorough consistency we cannot fail to conclude that although it
has converted objects into ideas it does not stop there, but converts
ideas back again into objects !
T
CHAPTER XII
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM
ET us return to our locomotive engine. Even when you stretch
your hand out and feel that it is standing there in space,
separate and apart from you, still the whole event occurs within
your consciousness and nowhere else. For space is as mental as time.
The locomotive engine is but a mental construction. Try to
become aware of it without those characteristics which produce the
sensations of its existence within your mind: You will find the
feat impossible. Think away its colour, form, hardness, weight;
think away all its properties, in fact, and what will remain ? There
will be nothing left, because it is through the sum of these properties
that you are able to perceive the engine there at all.
' 'Admittedly/' you may say, "the engine must disappear for me
when there are no sensations of i t ; but have we not forgotten the
substance of which it is made, the stuff to which these characteristics
belong, the root of all these properties ?"
Let us reflect if this be so. Can you see this substance ? "Yes/'
you answer, "it is green." But that which you see as green is a
colour, and it has already been shown that colours do not inhere in
the things themselves. If your alleged substance is really there then
it should possess no colour at all. Can you see a colourless substance
in the engine ? You will be forced to admit that you cannot, and
that when you think of it without simultaneously thinking a colour
you are compelled to imagine that some colour must subsist in it and
that therefore colour is a part of matter. This, however, is an
illusion on your part, because science has demonstrated that the
colours of every object which we see, have seen, or are likely to see
do not fprm a part of the object itself but come into being through
the play of light-rays upon it. In other words, the colour is really
an optical interpretation of the light itself and not of the object
revealed by the light. The physiological analysis of sight proves that
the production of colour is the work of the eyes, whilst the sensation
of colour is the work of the mind. The feat of imagining a colourless
matter is impossible ; no matter how hard the mind may strive not
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
to do so, it will have to assign some kind of colour to every seen
substance, because the two must coincide together. Therefore it is
impossible to separate colour entirely from any perceived object.
But this leads .to a curious situation. For the colour cannot
exist within us whilst the thing itself exists "without us. They must
both be together, and as we find that colour finally has a mental
existence, so must the object's substance or "matter" also possess a
mental existence. Both are built up out of mind and nothing else.
"But how is it that colours vary if they are interpretations ?
What is the cause of these changes ?" This question brings up the
complex problem of cause and effect. Immanuel Kant pointed out
that this relation was a natural form of human thinking, that it is
the mind which begins by believing that there is such a thing as
cause and consequently seeks for it, and that there is a mysterious
unapproachable substance-in-itself whose presence gives us the idea
of material substance. What the hidden teaching has to say concerning
such a substance-will be explained here, but the more difficult
problem of cause and effect must be reserved for the further volume.
"But," you will add, "even if I cannot see this substance, nevertheless
I can feel it with my fingers." To this the reply is that what
you feel are solidity and roundness, resistance and impenetrability.
But these are qualities which reach you as muscular sensations and
therefore belong to your mind. They are not apart from ft. They
are not the non-mental substance you allege them to be. It is
impossible to separate the size and figure of an object from the
colour and the feeling which it produces when touched. That is, we
cannot put the former outside and the latter inside the mind. They
both exist and from their nature can only exist together. We are
able to identify a form by its feel and colour, and if we put the latter
in one place and the mass or volume in another, then we are doing
violence to the very act of perception and rendering it impossible.
Therefore the final conclusion is that the entire object and not
merely a part of it, the entire matter of which it is composed, can
exist only mentally.
The earlier objection that if this doctrine of perception be true,
then a large locomotive engine should not be either heavy or hard if
it is composed solely of mental substance may again be mentioned
as inadmissible. For we may now perceive hotv it has confused issues
and failed to grasp the true nature of the doctrine. Nobody denies
the hardness and the heaviness of the vehicle. We accept both
because they come to us in the form of sensations. We actually feel
that we can touch but cannot shift the locomotive engine and that
 -
it is hard and heavy. Yet the hardness, heaviness and resistance of
which we become aware are known only by the mind and within
the mind. This proves that the mind is entirely capable of experiencing
every kind of sensation whether it. be of hardness or
softness, or whether it be of heaviness or lightness. Therefore it is
erroneous to declare that what is mental cannot be experienced as
such substantial and touchable sensations. Were that correct, then
we could never have dreams !
At this point you may retire in annoyance, or if you remain
it will be to persist stubbornly in asserting that there is and must
be something more of the engine's stuff than mere sensations, that
no delicate nervous registration like a sensation could possibly
resemble a substantial thing like matter.
We are forced here to ask a direct question and demand a
direct answer: "What is this 'matter' like?" Do what you will,
rack your reason and torment your knowledge as you may, you will
be unable to speak of it except in terms of sensation. You will be
unable to assert in what single instance matter is different from
sensation. Any view that you take of it will necessarily make it
visible or touchable) smellable or hearable or tastable ; that is to say,
will make it reside in your sensations and hence in your mind. Let
your awareness of the engine be bereft of all sensations and there
will be no engine left for you to be aware of and no material stuff to
remain as a residue. Why therefore should anyone believe in this
mysterious matter ? We may believe in sensations because we know
they exist, but this alleged matter cannot be truly grasped either by
hand or mind. Substantiality exists as a sensation of the mind,
whereas substance by itself exists only in imagination. The critic's
matter is simply an unnecessary addition to his sensations; it is
fictitious and non-existent. When closely peered into it collapses as
a mere figment of the human mind. True, pure mind is in itself as
remote from sight, as alien to touch and as empty to human
perception as matter. But whereas we know its effects in thoughts, ideas
and images, i.e. in consciousness, we never know any effects of matter
at all.
A dictionary tells us that matter is the substance of which a
physical thing is made, and it is in this sense that the word is used
here. But when we open its pages again we learn that substance is
the essence or most important part of anything, and that physical
means that which is of matter. The upshot of all these definitions
is merely this: that all the things around us are essentially material,
and that matter is matter ! Looking into the dictionary has been a
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
vain exertion. What we have really learnt is nothing more than, in
Hamlet's phrase, "Words, words, words!" The application of
semantic analysis is most important here. We are often led away by
the customary use of innocent-looking words to believe that they
represent facts, whereas they represent only mere sounds. For
analysis shows that the word "matter" is a meaningless one. We
are entitled to write an interrogation-mark all over it. We are
entitled to pose the questions: Has anyone observed matter in
itself, as apart from the objects in which it is supposed to clothe
itself ? Has it ever been accessible to the five senses of man ? Has
anyone ever observed it before the idea of it was formed ? Thus to
define matter adequately is to deny it.
The existence of matter or substance stripped of every quality
which enables an object to exist for our senses is unthinkable. It
is the totality of these qualities which constitutes the object; this
we know, but the knowledge of matter itself is psychologically
impossible. Apart from percepts, there is no trace of such a thing as
material substance. We can pick up no object, whether it be a stick
or a stone, which is not picked up in conscious experience, i.e.
mentally.
Matter as an independent entity stands in direct antithesis to
mind, unless we recognize that it is none other than mind. The
notion of the latter's immateriality will for ever come into conflict
with that of the former's separate substantiality. That which is
present before consciousness is hardly entitled to be regarded as
being more real than the consciousness itself. Matter is not different
from mind, although thought to be so by those who have not
enquired deeply into it. This is as true of engines as it is of the steel
rails along which they run. The mental not only explains the
existence of matter but also its own existence, whereas it is utterly
impossible to explain the mental by the material unobjectionably.
It may be disconcerting to be told that matter is only an idea, but
no mind has ever been able to form a conception of this phantom in
itself, but only as it is thought to be. It is the act of a child to accept
the sense-reports as really being reports of a material world, but that
of a thinker to question them. If matter is theoretically sundered
from mind it becomes a spurious substance, a chimera, which we
may seek but can never find. Such a thinker will therefore uncompromisingly
repudiate its existence.
Several thousand years ago, solely by the keenest possible
concentration of mind, the Indian sage perceived what the Western
scientist has merely begun to perceive in our own time-that matter
 -
is not the independent substance that it seems. Those who took
college courses in physics hardly more than a single generation ago
learnt of matter which has since disappeared from scientific
reckoning, but where it has disappeared what scientist clearly
knows ? For his mind battles with the incomprehensible unless and
until he is willing to turn philosopher. The unpalatable dilemma in
which science will soon find itself and from which it cannot escape
is : How does it know that there is a material object corresponding
to the idea of it if it has never once seen a material object, and if it
can never have any experience of such an object ?
For one of the greatest theoretical achievements of science in
this century has been the dematerialization of matter! The conception
of matter has undergone such a radical and rapid change
that no scientist now dare dogmatize about its existence. The notion
that matter is substance has been replaced by the notion that
matter is wave-energy. Nevertheless, the latter, although far more
plausible, is still as much of an inference as the former. Matter,
accepted by the man in the street, converted into waves of force by
the man in the laboratory, is returned into mind by the philosopher.
What we know of it is only sensation, and the sensations of light,
stone or iron are entirely mental in their origin.
We touch and grasp something firmly, we press and contract
our muscles as we hold the solid thing in our hands, and thus seem
to reassure ourselves of the existence of matter, but all that we have
really done is to betray ignorance and show bias. Those who take
matter to be real and, like impatient Dr. Johnson, stamp their feet
impulsively on the ground to prove it, merely prove that they take
their muscles as fit criterions of truth ! Their triumph is grotesque
and illusory. For the shape-showing muscular sensations of resistance
and pressure are still sensations, and sensations in the end are
events in their consciousness; that is to say, in themselves and not
in matter. The muscular kind of sensation is ultimately as much
mental as the visual kind.
Those who regard a perceptual world as a spectral one have
not understood these explanations. For it is the solid and graspable
world that we daily live in. The habitual assumption that some kind
of mysterious substance called matter, of which all things are
composed, exists outside this perceptual world deceives them. They
do not comprehend that they have assumed its existence when they
ought to have questioned it. There is not the slightest evidence that
anything exists in this mind-fashioned universe which is not wholly
mental. It should now be clear that when we are talking about
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
"matter'' we are talking about a delusive word and not about a
thing graspable by the senses, about a vague abstraction and not a
concrete object, about an illusion rather than a reality. For it can
neither be pictured by imagination nor justified by reason.
Nevertheless our belief in matter-this vaguest of all vague
abstractions-is almost incurably ingrained. This is because we
habitually narrow the mind down to the confines of the head,
wrongly believing it to be kindled inside the phosphorized cerebral
mass instead of habitually expanding it to contain all things
perceived. We believe that we see and touch matter and even move
it merely because we do not grasp this fundamental point that mind
is dimensionless and measureless. Thus mentalism is based on
proven fact and not on mere inference as is materialism. The
mentalist has the positive assurance that he is not affirming a
supposition or a deduction as does the materialist, but rather an
ascertained and irrefutable actuality. The materialist's demand that
we accept as real something which he himself confesses we cannot
know in itself, and that we shall take as independent and external
something which is really given only internally as an object of
consciousness and which can be fully intelligible to us only through
the activity of consciousness, is absurd.
Materialism does not adequately explain the higher mental life.
It does not throw full light on why we can form abstract ideas, why
we have the capacity to conduct thought along a line of pure
reasoning, the power to judge between truth and error, the creative
imagination of the artist, the inventive faculty of the scientist, the
ability to construct generalized ideas, the metaphysical thinking of
the philosopher, and, above all, why we can reflect about our own
consciousness as being an immaterial thing. Materialism never even
touches the hem of the garment of consciousness.
Yet such is the intellectual degradation of mankind that it
irritably denounces the truth of mentalism as illusory and impulsively
upholds the error of materialism as truth! Materialism
succeeds in solving its numerous minor problems only by shutting
its eyes to its single major problem-itself. For nobody has ever
seen matter, nobody has ever handled it and nobody has ever known
where to detect its presence. Its existence is a bluff. Matter thus
becomes a merely illegitimate entity in our explanation of the world,
a fiction which works quite well for the purposes of practical life but
becomes meaningless for the purposes of philosophical truth. When
such an erroneous notion is seen for what it is it will simply vanish
from one's understanding and be regarded no more. One will still

be active in the world of things, but they will no longer be ' 'lumps
of matter". They will be ideas. They will no longer be in opposition
to mind but integrated with it.
We have travelled far from the ordinary man's argument that
matter is much too self-evident even to need discussion. For we have
converted it into a significant appearance, pointing to mind as its
hidden reality. Yet it is a most extraordinary anomaly of human
reason that consciousness, mind, is popularly regarded as being much
less real than matter, although adequate reflection reveals it as being
entitled to' a status of reality which is unique and primary.
Popular belief, never having enquired into the truth of its
intuitive beliefs, is alarmed when it first hears of this terrifying
tenet of mentalism which throws doubt on a thing it has hitherto
held to be beyond discussion. For there can be no way of reconciling
the common-sense view of the world with the philosophic fact of
mentalism.
In our earlier study of illusions and hallucinations we traced
their origin primarily to the natural bent of the mind to externalize
its own images and to see them as separate entities. It is now of
grave importance to remember that even when we know any
illusions to be such, and when we have discovered and mentally
corrected errors of sense, still we cannot free ourselves from
perceiving them in precisely the same way in which we perceived
them formerly. Their appearance continues to persist contrary to
our knowledge. We may see through the deception by our power of
reason, but that does not cause the deception itself to disappear. We
may know by reflection and reason that the appearance which
presents itself to consciousness is illusory and yet we may be quite
unable to resist its power of continued existence and its spell of
solid reality.
This is a positive demonstration of the complex character of our
percepts and of the mysterious power of the mind to impose its
own manufactures upon our senses without our personal awareness
and beyond our power of control, just as it does during dream.
The possibility and prevalence of these illusions should constitute
a warning to all mankind and start them reflecting whether they
are not subject to illusion in other matters which they habitually
take to be correctly perceived. It should also guard against overconfidence
when indignantly denying the frank hint that the
materiality of the whole world may after all be a still wider illusion.
Moreover, the public feats of jugglers and the staged phenomena of
conjurers which compel us to see what is quite contrary to fact prove
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
that illusions may be collectively shared by a large number pf people
at the same time ; whilst they point to the important possibility of
even the whole of mankind being susceptible to a general illusion.
May it not be that the collective illusions of the world's externality
and materiality have arisen in the minds of all people because all
share psychological and physiological similarities ? When we
discover how deep-seated hallucinations may sway the individual
we are prepared for the further discovery that they may also sway
and coerce the collective human race. And it is a fact that the forceful
illusions of materiality and externality are indeed shared persistently
by all men throughout the world. For this reason the ancient Indian
sages compared ignorant mankind to a race asleep and dreaming,
but compared the wise to those who were awake and fully conscious.
Belief in matter, in short, is belief in a gross but mesmeric
illusion. This is the emphatic message of the hidden teaching to a
materialistic age, a message that also yields a warning against the
useless pursuit of mere phantoms. We destroy the power of a terrifying
nightmare or unpleasant dream when we awaken and discover its
unreality. Similarly we destroy the power of illusive matter-this
idol with feet of clay whom myriads of blind worshippers have
wrongly revered-over the mind when we awaken into Truth. Yet
the stupendous difficulty of this revelatory task of philosophy may
be grasped by comparing it with the task of convincing a dreamer
whilst he is still dreaming that his environment of houses, persons
and conversations is an imagined one. We who are in the waking
state live also in an imagined world, but the statement sounds as
incredible to us whilst we are awake as it would to the hypothetical
dreamer.
The wise old Greeks said that philosophy was death. We may
interpret these words as we wish. Many dying and most drowning
men perceive their past as a swift-rushing vivid dream. So far as
human life is mental life it is a series of ideas, i.e. of the same stuff
as dreams. Philosophy seeks to make men realize that the entire
texture of life is pure thought, but it wants them to see it here and
now, not when they are dying. For if they can awaken to truth when
it is most needed, i.e. when they are in the midst of work and living,
suffering and pleasure, health and sickness, they will know how best
to deal with those alternating vicissitudes from which none cg,n
escape.
Let it not be feared, however, that we shall then become mere
dreamers; on the contrary, after we shall have penetrated to the
reality hidden behind and within both dream and waking we shall

henceforth be done with dreams and learn to be truly and incessantly
active not only for our own benefit but also for that of
others. Whereas the ignorant live blindly, we shall live in the light,
and whereas they cherish illusions, we shall cherish truth. We shall
not flee from this dream of earthly life, for we cannot: it is not our
individual finite mind that brought this dream into being and it is
not our individual finite mind that can put an end to it. We shall
accept it in all its comprehensiveness and not vainly seek to negate
it. We shall firmly encourage action and not discourage it, but in
the midst of our dream we shall be somewhat like a sleeping man who
knows at the same time that he is asleep and dreaming. Thus we
shall not suffer ourselves to be swept away by bitter nightmares
or pleasurable reveries: always we shall seek peace in place of
agitation.
From the Unreal to the Real. We have laboured to cross a difficult
frontier, but at different points of our journey a certain problem has
met us again and again. It must now be faced. For the question will
necessarily arise that if externally experienced things are but
thoughts, do they exist at all ? Is each object unreal ? If so, how is
it that our daily experience flagrantly contradicts such startling
possibilities ?
None need be alarmed. We do not deny the existence of a single
thing that forms part of our world-experience. But we must get
our minds clear about this problem.
The experiments of Michelson and Morley which preceded the
experiments of Einstein demonstrated that the velocity of light
remained constant when all ordinary experience, common sense and
scientific reason said that it ought to have risen to a much higher
rate. Hence they were an astounding surprise. For this was not a
mere piece of metaphysical speculation but a scientific piece of work
performed with appropriate instruments. The experimental results
contradicted what was expected .and what ought to have happened.
Science might have got rid of this awkward piece of data by
conveniently explaining it away as an illusion of the senses. But to
its credit it had the courage of accepting the ' 'illusion'' as a reality.
Is the brigand which the observer sees in the bush a real one or
not ? If not, what is it ? That the brigand was seen means that he
exists, even if he exists only as an illusion. This brings up an
important difference-that between the meaning of real and the
meaning of exist. We may here seek to profit again by the lesson
learnt from the sixth chapter, where the need of analysing words for
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
the factual rather than apparent meaning was strongly emphasized.
It is necessary to consider the question and to discover what we
mean by these terms, for relativity also raised the entire issue.
Properly to do this we must first return to our earlier consideration
of illusions.
Both the brigand and the bush share the common characteristic
of being experienced, and only in this way do they certify to their
existence. But the first is negated by closer investigation, whereas
the second is confirmed by it. It is only when we find it impossible
to reconcile the spurious knowledge of such an illusion with the
content of normal experience that doubt begins to awaken within
us and we are led to discover that it is illusory. So long as we remain
content with the knowledge we have, we accept first impressions
about things or people for what they seem to be, but when they
come into direct conflict with other facts which emerge in the course
of subsequent experience the question of their criterion of validity
arises. Then the need of putting* them to the test and where necessary
correcting them is felt.
If ah illusion is to be recognized as such, then the evidence of
the senses is to be denied, whilst if the evidence of the senses is to
be accepted, then we have two co-existent "realities" claiming to
be one and the same thing. This absurd situation means that we are
not to trust entirely to what our senses tell us about a thing's reality
although we may trust them to tell us about a thing's existence. It
means also that to call anything real is a dubious and dangerous
procedure. What becomes of everyday experience of "matter", for
instance, when it is contradicted by pure reason ? Therefore to appear
is one thing, whereas to be is another. We must learn to take care to
distinguish between the two concepts. The puzzling contradictions
of illusion vanish when we understand that different standpoints
produce different perceptions, that from the standpoint of reflective
reason we may possibly perceive a thing differently than from the
standpoint of sense experience, and that it is a primitive attitude
to take such experience as always possessed of decisive sanction.
The existence of an illusion like the brigand seen in the bush cannot
be denied. It would be absurd to reject anyone's experience of it ;
for to deny an illusion is to deny the content of experience and to
negate what is given in consciousness. All that we may rightly do is
to reject a particular interpretation of i t ; that is to say, to reject its
reality. It exists but it is not real.
We have in fact to distinguish between the various kinds of
existence, for we now see that something can exist and be real whilst

another thing can exist and yet be unreal. Here again the need of
penetrating behind the facade of a word becomes plain. In an earlier
chapter it was shown that the term fact was open to unsuspected
interpretations, and so here analysis of the two terms exist and real
proves useful, although everybody who has never reflected about the
matter wrongly assumes he already knows this meaning !
These words mislead most people because they think that
whatever appears to them or whatever looks like reality must
necessarily be real. Their error is to be satisfied that merely because
they perceive things the latter are therefore real things. Perception
is no proof of reality. For we may have wrong perception and
imaginary perception even among the so-called real perceptions!
Men in delirium may see blue snakes and nobody dare deny that
they are perceived. Such snakes must therefore be said to exist, for
they do exist in the mind of the sufferers, to whom they are unquestionably
real. Similarly nobody can deny that objective things
exist, for they are perceived by the minds of men, who also regard
them as unquestionably real, but in both these cases the philosopher
is entitled to question not their existence but their reality.
Everybody can see and nobody can dispute that there is a
brick wall confronting us, for instance. When it is said, however,
that this wall can have only a mental existence, it is totally unjust,
totally false and totally stupid to misrepresent this assertion as
meaning that the wall has no existence whatever. And when we say
that we are touching this wall we do not mean that we are touching
the shadow of a real wall called an idea, but that the touch itself is
an idea and that the various mental sensations of the wall is all of
the wall we shall ever know, not that it is a copy of the real material
wall, which appears to be somewhere beyond our body. It is preposterous
and unintelligent to misconstrue the results of this analysis
into a statement that a wall which is plainly beheld is but a shadow
of the real wall and that the chair in which we now sit is but a mere
copy of the real chair, which exists somewhere else in space. Both
chair and wall do in point of fact exist quite as much for the mentalist
philosopher as for the materialist, the difference being that the
former by a profound and habitual reflection has pierced into the
true nature of their existence. He has certainly never denied them
away. And if such a philosopher thinks that the chair in which he
sits and the pen with which he writes do not really exist, he will not
go to the trouble of writing any book. And to those who would
object that a mental reality is equivalent to no reality at all, he
would reply that there is no other that we human beings know.
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
The word "real" has a meaning only when it is distinguished
from the word "unreal" in the same way that one colour can only
be distinguished by its contrast with another. Therefore no adequate
definition of reality csm be found until the proper meaning of its
contrary is also found. Now people often make the mistake of
thinking that because a thing is unreal it should therefore be invisible.
Illusions prove the contrary. The world will be visible both to the
philosopher and to the ignorant man, but whereas the latter will
deem it to be just as he sees it, the former will deem it physically
unreal but mentally constructed.
Objects are seen physically and externally but cannot exist
apart from the mind's construction of them. We are not asked to
doubt the actual appearance of the things we see nor give up our
belief in their existence : we are asked to ascertain the kind of their
existence, whether it be illusory or real; and we are asked to distinguish
the pretended reality of what is merely an idea from the
genuine reality of what unchangingly is-a point into which we
shall shortly inquire.
There is vital difference between the terms "unreal" and "nonexistent".
Let us not leap hastily past these words: we need to be
most careful when we denounce anything as such. We may rightly
speak of "a barren woman's son" as being non-existent. We may not
however label the brigand seen in the bush as equally non-existent
but only as unreal. For he acquires existence, although not reality,
by the mere act of being perceived. The two categories are totally
different in meaning from each other and ought not to be confused.
Non-existent things must be carefully distinguished from existent
ones when we class both as illusions. A unicorn and a round square
belong to the first class because you cannot even think them or
imagine them. They are hollow meaningless phrases, whereas a
mirage seen in the desert belongs to the second because it is a discredited
appearance. The former can never be observed under
any conditions but the latter may be seen under certain conditions.
It is important that we take care therefore not to confuse absolute
mental existence with absolute non-existence. Everything which we
see and touch really does exist. There is and there cannot be the
slightest doubt of that, but it may not exist in the way in which we
believe. It may exist mentally whilst not existing physically.
It is now needful to enquire still more closely what we mean
when we use this word "real". Are we able to form any picture in
our mind to correspond with it ? If we are, there is the bewildering

situation that other people may and will form a different picture,
giving it a different definition.
The notion which postulates the real as what can be weighed
and measured, and which implies that all mental things are a kind
of luminous haze floating above the ' 'real'' physical world and
unable to affect it at all, is, as has been earlier shown in our study of
matter, bad science and worse philosophy ; we must protest against
it. What then are the tests and characteristics of reality ? To reply
with most that experience of the external world of things is alone
real, or to assert with a few that experience f the internal world of
thoughts is alone real, is to ignore that such a view is based on the
feeling of reality and to forget that we have a similar feeling during
dream which both these views may denounce as unreal. Hence it is
useless to judge by feeling. We must first find a definition that will
hold always. Few people care to define so scrupulously; they want
to judge by feeling or by temperament alone. The consequence is
that they imagine reality, they study their own idea of it only, and
thus lamentably fail to avoid deceiving themselves into accepting
what merely pleases them, not what is true.
At one time science said that the reality behind the world was
made of atoms, later it said that the real stuff was made of molecules,
still later it said things were really electrons. Now it is
beginning to stutter something else. Science now confesses that there
is no guarantee that it has reached the last secret of the supposed
world-stuff. Should it therefore not drop the word real from its
vocabulary-and should we also not drop it-altogether ? For both
science and we are dealing only with what appears to us, with what
is presented to us, but not with what is ultimately hidden beneath
all these presentations of atoms, molecules, electrons and jvhat not.
Having burnt its fingers, however, science has learnt to keep itself
fluid to its conception of reality. Therefore it has now learnt never
to put forward a final statement about this elusive word. Thus the
path of human knowledge is a progressive awakening from illusory
things which exist but which are ultimately unreal.
The fact finally known for what it is is the reality, whereas
the final knowledge of the thing is the truth. This is correct only
from the standpoint of practical affairs and until we reach the
Ultimate. Then there are no two things, but unity, and hence no
distinction between truth and reality. European metaphysicians
have evolved a plausible doctrine which multiplies the degrees of
reality. They would have come nearer to truth had they said that
there exist degrees of the apprehension of reality. In that unity
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
which is the unchangeably real there can never be any gradation
whatsoever. Fpr, as the ancient Indian philosophers-not mystics-
have rightly said: that is real which can not only give us certainty
about its existence in its own right beyond all possibility of doubt and
independently of man's individual ideation but which can remain
changeless amid the flux of an ever-changing world. Such a reality is,
after the pursuit of ultimate truth, the foremost pursuit of philosophy,
whether it be labelled "God", "Spirit", "Absolute" or otherwise.
What has become of the millions of human beings who have
died ? What has become of the prehistoric palaces of unrecorded
kings ? What has become of those kings themselves ? All have
crumbled away into dust and vanished. But what has become of
THAT which appeared in the forms of those men and buildings ?
Whoever took it to be matter did not even know he was dealing with
mind. Our own enquiry into it must take us not only through the
appearances of matter but also beyond the workings of mind. This is
the enquiry into ultimate permanent reality ; this is philosophy.
� When it shall be our good fortune to come into the fuller
understanding of such reality we shall find, as the old sages found,
that this puzzling world does not stand in startling contradiction to
it as we fear. For in a subtler sense which we do not grasp at present
the one is no less real than the other. The world is not essentially
an illusion. Ultimately it is as real as the world of this unnameable
uniqueness that is the true God. Things therefore are not themselves
illusory, but it is our apprehension of them, as furnished by the
senses, which is illusory. Nobody need worry over the loss of matter.
It is something which we have never possessed and consequently
the loss is not a real one. The world which has been revealed by our
thoughts is the only world we have known, although it is not the
ultimate world that we shall know. Therefore the truth robs us of
nothing. He who flees the world in ascetic disdain flees from reality ;
he should correct himself first and thus learn to understand aright
what is that something which appears as the world. What it is, what
that ultimate reality means to the life of man, is the second quest
of philosophy after the quest of truth, because we soon find that both
quests are involved in one another. And this is therefore the second
reward which philosophy holds out to man, that he shall learn how
to live consciously in reality rather than blindly in illusion.
The World as a Thought. We have been dealing with the cases
of single objects and isolated things and found them to be ultimately
ideas. But we have to remember that these fragmentary facts which

axe ideas appear continuously in our daily life. It is therefore now
necessary to take them up into a unity, to connect them together
into the world-process and thus relate them to the world in which
we are living. We have discovered every inanimate thing and every
living creature to be a mental construct. Now the whole world is
only an assemblage of all things and all creatures in their totality.
Have we then the courage to take the intellectual plunge, to be bold
enough and march straight to the logical conclusion that the whole
world is itself but an idea also ?
The world is a world of relatives, a network of connected colours,
sounds, spaces, times and their, dependent things; all things exist
in relation to other things, but relations themselves are ultimately
ideas. The limitless panorama of the passing world is a mental one.
Such is the tremendous thought with which we are faced that ageold
solar systems rolling through space are as much mental constructs
as the pen which we analysed down to the point of regarding it as
a pure percept. The universe in all its immensity consists in the end
of a construct of mind. This is the psychological picture of our
external world ; it is a gigantic mental construct and nothing more.
For perceptual experience stretches its embrace over everything and
nothing known to man can stand outside it.
Mentalism alone provides an adequate explanation. It expounds
the manner in which mind creates its own space to contain all the
objects which, it equally constructs from itself. Space is as much an
idea as the things that seem to stand in it. If, as relativity has
begun to show, space-time is the continuum of the world of material
objects, then whatever this mysterious fourth dimension may be it can
only be something that is within mind and therefore ultimately mental
itself. Thus although we begin by contemplating the universe as being
presented to mind we end by contemplating it as constructed by mind.
That a world exists around and outside our bodies is a certainty
and not a deception. That this world exists around and outside
our mind is a deception and not a certainty. For there is no such
thing as existence outside or inside the mind. Ideas may be outside
or inside each other but all stand in non-spatial relation to mind.
There is no such thing as an extra-mental world of objects. Yet men
are everywhere convinced of its existence! The human body is a
part of the world, the world is an idea and the body must be an
idea with it. If the world stands outside body it does not stand
outside mind, but must fall within it. If the world existed outside
the mind that perceives it it could never be perceived at all, for the
mind does not get beyond its own states, i.e. ideas.
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
The part played by the five sense-instruments is therefore
to provide the conditions whereby man participates in the perception
of objects as external to the body. The senses are the means whereby
he shares the ideas of a material world which subsist in the dimensionless
mind. The function of the body would then be to provide the
conditions for that event which is the arisal of finite individual
�egoistic consciousness; without these conditions ultimate mind
remains as it is, the mysterious and unique fact of all existence.
In that first moment when consciousness breaks into ideated
being the silence of mind has spoken. Not that it needed voice nor
that it needed listeners-^-but this is a mystery to be kept for a while in
reserve. The tick-tock of time and the impressive landscape of the
universe exist only mentally. This world which weighs so heavily
upon us is but Appearance, a shadow flung out of the Timeless.
Thus we arrive at the final conclusion that, not because things are
outside our bodies, nor because they are very far from our bodies, nor
because of their immense size, nor because of their great number, nor
because of the varied elements which compose them, can we deny the
mental nature of those things. The notion of the world is, in the final
analysis, fabricated by the mind. It is a transitory mental construction.
When we look out on a stretch of country scenery and observe
a chain of hills far away with a small forest in the foreground we
do not dream for an instant that we are looking on a reconstructed
scene. The hills are so high and so substantial, the trees are so green
and so leafy, that we take these for solid things not in any way
comparable with the pictures the mind constructs during daydreaming.
But the science of psychology teaches that the entire
landscape is as mind-made as the images that pass through consciousness
during reverie. Every time a percept appears in the mind
it must necessarily be reconstructed anew and therefore no one thing
c'an have continuous existence nor appear twice in the same
experience. What does appear is an incessant reconstruction of what
is believed to be the same thing, and this is the real secret of the
mystery of maya, that celebrated but misunderstood Indian doctrine.
In this way we learn the larger lesson of illusion, a lesson which is
applicable not merely to our perception of solitary things but to
. our perception of the whole world.
This vault of Heaven under which we move,
Is like a magic lantern, this to prove :
The Sun there-is the flame; the World-the lamp,
And we the figures who revolving move.
Omar Khayydm.
u

But the solid objective world is not destroyed by mentalism. It is
left precisely where it is. Its five continents are not denied, its
impressive grandeur not banished. Only, for the first time it begins
to be understood instead of being misunderstood.
The whole of your past is now a thought. The whole of your
future is likewise a thought. The present is unseizable and indeterminable,
as was shown in an earlier chapter. Even if you could'
catch it the past would at once claim it and it would be converted
into an idea. Therefore all your life-which includes all its background
of a panoramic world-is but a thought! If no other proof
were available this alone would suffice !
Until you see that the world is only an idea you are a materialist,
no matter how pious, how religious, how ' 'spiritual'' you think you
are. You take matter for what it is not. When you find that the
material universe is just a mental experience, then alone do you
become liberated from materialism.
But the presence of ideas postulates the fundamental presence
of mind, of that which makes us aware of ideas. Hence the
materialistic picture of the world accounts for everything except the
world itself ! For it leaves out our conscious awareness of the world,
which awareness is the only world we know. Any other world is
merely an inferred one. Just as you cannot take the centre out of a
circle and still keep your circle, so you cannot take the mind out of
the universe and still keep your matter. Both are indissolubly bound
together. All materialistic theories are shipwrecked on this fatal
fact. Whatever we examine in this world, mind is present at the very
beginning, for the former exists only to consciousness. Moreover, mind
is also the final entity. It cannot be kept out of any reckoning at
any point.
We are nearing the end of the first lap of our quest. We have
brought the world down to the position of a great and grand appearance,
but still a show. Every spectacle implies the existence of a
spectator. What is this mystery that hides beneath the world-show ?
It might be thought that the weak point in mentalism is its likelihood
of leading to the position that the world is oiie's own personal
mental creation, a position which would be demonstrably absurd.
For it would imply that we could capriciously form new stars at will
merely by imagining them or construct whole cities by the voluntary
exercise of fancy. Moreover, the latter existed before we appeared in
the world and will probably continue after we are gone, whereas our
imagined stars and cities will vanish in a few moments. The
Himalaya mountains are still there to someone else whether we
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
think of them or not; their existence is at least relatively more
permanent, whereas our personal thought of them is transient. They
are beyond the control of our own mind to make or unmake them.
How then can mentalism make the bold fantastic assertion that the
majestic Himalayas are merely ideas, merely mental states of feeble
humans who cannot even create a single cedar tree by thought, let
alone the world's mightiest mountain range ?
This criticism is quite just, but. it embodies a complete misunderstanding.
Whilst-it must be rigidly maintained that every
formed physical thing which exists must exist as a thought, we must
not fall into the profound error which regards these thoughts as
originating in the finite mind of a particular individual. They do not.
They can not. For this will lead to the further notion that there is no
thing, no person and no world other than one's individual self. Such
is the erroneous conclusion which might be drawn from these
statements. But such is not the finding of the hidden philosophy.
The latter does not set up one's little limited self as alone real and
all else as illusory. This error is technically termed "solipsism".
Solipsism is sheer lunacy. Were it true this poor finite brain of ours
would then become the creator and sustainer of the universe !
Every object is an idea; it is an idea present to man's mind ;
but it is not created by man's individual and independent mind.
He merely participates in it. For when we enquire more deeply we
shall find that his individual mind is ultimately part of a universal
mind, and it is there that we must look for the origin of this idea.
We dare not say that man himself creates the ideas of the material
objects, but we can say that he has them. For an idea without a mind
to which it belongs is inconceivable. The myriad manifestations of
mind stand in striking contrast with the perfect and primary unity
of the mind itself. The multitude of individual things that are really -
ideas must ultimately be ideas of an all-comprehensive mind. We
must penetrate beneath the individual mind and lo! there is a
universal mind as its hidden reality and as the origin of his ideas of
material objects. Mentalism does not claim the world to be any
individual's creation. It claims that the world is this mind's creation,
not "my" mind's creation. It does not teach that the world is a
product of one's individual mind, of one's personal self. Common
experience is alone sufficient to invalidate such a tenet. It cannot
possibly be held by any philosopher who has investigated the nature
of mind and self, an investigation which will be made at the proper
point in the second volume of this work, where the higher mysteries
of mind will be unfolded.

At this point we may again take up the two loose ends of yoga
and philosophy and tie them together. For when the mind is better
understood, then the proper place of mysticism and the extraordinary
practices of yoga will likewise be better understood. It is much easier
for one who has pursued such practices to grasp the truth of
mentalism. He has already felt the world's unreality, but those who
have never practised find it difficult at first to credit mentalism.
"How," they say, "can this solid tangible world be only an idea ?
Nonsense!" The hardness of matter deceives them, but it is more
easy for the yogi to convert this hard matter into imagination and
thus the whole world into a thought.
Yoga was partly devised as a means of preparing the mind to
accept the teaching of mentalism. For when the mind has become
subtle, detached and concentrated by the practice of a yoga system
it can more readily grasp this difficult doctrine with conviction. The
power which is developed by such practice to abstract attention
from physical surroundings and focus it upon internal states or ideas
proves its value as an accessory to philosophy by rendering the truth
of mentalism less hard to accept. The mind that has never practised
meditation or never engaged in the labours of artistic creation
inevitably stumbles at the very threshold of this grand doctrine,
whereas the flexibility and abstractiveness of the mind, which has
previously disciplined itself to the point of easily attending to its
own thoughts with complete concentration and complete forgetfulness
of its material environment assist it to walk across this threshold
and perceive the heretofore hidden ideality of things.
The universality of mind and the implication of mentalism also
make it possible for us of the West to begin to understand how
strange faculties whose existence has long been known to hoary Asia
may operate in perfect obedience to scientific laws; how telepathy,
apparitions, thought-reading and thought-transference, mesmeric
feats and all the marvel magic and miracle of primitive and
medieval religious, mystical and yogic history may be factually
based ; and how the little-understood energy of "kargia" may be as
universally and ceaselessly present as the equally mysterious energy
of electricity and be just as precise in its workings and effects.
We have reached the position that the world is an idea but
we have reached it through acute analysis of experience and with
minds sharpened by concentrated reflection on ascertainable and
verifiable facts. The yogi who succeeds in his practices of meditation
reaches the same position, but he has reached it by reverie or trance
based on subtle feeling. But feeling is not a valid standard for others.
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
His conclusion is purely personal and therefore not of much value to
them. When he is plunged in his meditation he has a vivid sense of
the dreamlike character of the world, how like a great thought it
really is. But he can go no farther. He cannot penetrate *to the
reality which so expresses itself. So he contents himself with the
illusion of his own "spiritual" reality (by which he really means
"mental") which the standpoint of regarding the world as a dream
gives him. Henceforth he becomes temperamentally detached from
the world, whose practical activities he comes to regard as a vain
useless pursuit.
Thus the highest effect of successful yoga, apart from intermittent
tranquillity, is to make man see the world as he would see
a dream object and to feel acutely that the everyday experiences
of ordinary existence suffer from unreality. Hence the mystic's
attachment for "escapism", his dislike of useful activity and fear
of the practical world. But this is to stop half-way on the quest.
It is certainly not the goal of philosophy. For the highest effect
of philosophy is to make man feel the forms of this world to be
dream-like but to know it as real in a higher sense, its essence being
nothing less than reality itself.
Again, just as the mystic receives the illusion of penetrating
reality, so he also receives the further illusion of giving up his ego.
This happens during meditation, and therefore intermittently, or
more enduringly in the outer world through the development of a
martyr-complex or through the practice of external non-resistance to
evil. The philosopher, on the other hand, first loses the sense of reality
of ego through insight into its relation to the whole and then gives
it up in the outer world through service to mankind. Hence the
true sage is keen on constant action because he is keen on real
service.
Yoga is a step, not a stop. When we are wiser we shall ascribe
to it the significance of being a most important milestone on our road,
but still a milestone. Its delight should not be permitted to deceive
us. There is still much more of the road to be travelled. Those who
are mystically inclined or religiously bent will inevitably weary of
the foregoing pages and mutter impatiently at their semi-scientific
" A quarter-century ago, as a consequence of th(c) full-time practice of meditation
in virtual solitude, the present writer underwent in Europe the series of mystical
exaltations in the deep-trance state referred to in the first chapter. Afterwards he
returned to social existence, but found that all activities seemed empty and purposeless,
all persons mere wraiths. Such was his unbalanced state resulting from
mysticism unchecked by philosophy. The philosopher, on the other hand, does not
lose his balance in the slightest way.

detail. This is because they do not understand that we are engaged
upon a momentous journey and that if we are using Science we shall
not remain in science. They yearn for inward ecstasies of the soul or
new revelations of Deity. Let them learn that we are on the move.
If we have taken this deep plunge into mentalism it is because there
is no other route that we could take if we are to carry out the
allotted task'of leading them intellectually to the true God, the real
"Spirit", and to that satisfying realization of "soul" which can alone
endure. The way to the promised land lies through the wilderness
of seemingly arid facts ; but this need not cancel out the enjoyment
of peace-filled meditations. For right reflection upon these facts will
yield understanding, and this effort, when made with proper concentration,
rapt absorption and repetition, is the yoga of philosophical
discernment. We are not moving farther away from God,
as the ignorant may wrongly think, but actually moving nearer.
We need not give up the grandeurs of mystical ecstasy for dull and
dry intellectualism, but may retain them, the while we discover a
permanent satisfaction that will not come and go intermittently like
these ecstasies.
Let not these criticisms be taken amiss. Let them not blind
us to the true worth of yoga in its rightful place and within its
lawful limits. There it can help much. And we may now see the deep
and practical wisdom of the early Indian teachers who prescribed
yoga to those whose intellectual power was not strong enough to
grasp the truth of mentalism through reasoned insight, for thus these
men were enabled to arrive at the same goal through feeling, not
through knowledge. For the same reason these teachers also
prescribed the study of illusions to ordinary people because the
sciences of physics, physiology and psychology were then too
primitive to afford the comprehensively detailed analysis which has
been made for modern students in the foregoing pages. However, the
yogi untrained in philosophy is always in danger of losing his
conviction that the world is idea because being based on feeling
he is subject to the law that feelings are always liable to change.
On the other hand, the yoga-prepared philosopher can never lose
the profound insight he has gained through the use of pure reason.
It is something that has grown up within him and achieved maturity.
He cannot "ungrow" it any more than a year-old infant can
"ungrow" itself and get back into its mother's womb. Permanent
certitude must come through making the truth of mentalism
our own with a rigid certitude which needs no prop of fallible
authority or fading emotion. Such certitude can arise when this
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
/
truth is seen, not even as scientific theory but only as scientific
fact.
Yet we must never forget that mentalism is only a step leading
to ultimate truth. It is a hurdle which blocks the path of the truthseeker.
It must be climbed and crossed. In its own place this crossing
is of vital importance. It is also a temporary ground which the
questing mind must occupy whilst consolidating its* first victory,
the victory over matter. Once the consolidation is fully effected it
must begin to move onwards again ; it must leave mentalism ! The
ultimate reality cannot consist of thoughts, because these are fated
to appear and vanish ; it must have a more enduring basis than such
transiency. Nevertheless we may see in thoughts, to which we have
reduced everything, intimations of the presence of this reality, and
apart from which they are as illusory as matter. The further and
final battle must lead to victory over the idea itself. Both materialism
and mentalism are tentative viewpoints which must be taken up and
then deserted when the ultimate viewpoint is reached. Then alone
may we say : "This is real." Hence if we must close this study with
the questions, "What is a thought?" and '*What is the mind?"
regretfully left unanswered, this is because those answers belong to
the further and final stage of our journey, which not merely the
necessities of space and the compulsions of time bid us reserve for
a later volume, but other reasons which are more important still.
Meanwhile it is essential to study well this basis of mentalism, because
upon it shall later be reared a superstructure of stupendous but
reasoned revelation.
The foolish who cling to what is personal when all the pangs
of a suffering epoch teach the futility of doing so will be dismayed
at the apparent blankness of these teachings and they may turn
away with a shiver. But the intelligent, who have learnt much,
thought deeply and suffered long, will be ready to accept it, blankness
and all. For they will understand that in so doing they are accepting
truth after lies, peace after pain, sight after blindness and reality
after illusion. If later they pursue it to its farthest end and gain the
fullest realization, thereafter they shall beat out the measure of
their days in an interior harmony that shall be more holy and more
blessed than any ritual of religion could ever be, more serene than
any yogic experience is likely to be.
Thus far we may not have outpaced, except in certain slight
hints, the foremost Western cultural thought. If those who have
pursued technical courses in philosophy find some of these tenets
familiar, their indulgence is craved and they are asked to remember

that those pages are written primarily for anyone who cares for
truth, whether he has some academic acquaintance with philosophy
or none at all. Ramifications of this doctrine are already known to
the West under the technical term of "idealism". Nevertheless it
must be pointed out that this is a generic term covering contradictory
tenets. Whoever studies in their totality the absolute idealism of
Hegel, the subjective idealism of Berkeley, the objective idealism
of Kant and the nihilistic idealism of Hume, for instance, will depart
bewildered and confused. For it will be like studying religion, a word
which may mean the gibberings of Central African Negroes around
a grotesque wooden figure or the quiet still meditations of Quaker
Christians. Nobody seems to know the truth about idealism or the
falsity of it. There are idealists who accept God and idealists who
reject God just as there are idealists who uphold the existence of
matter and idealists who deny it. In any case beyond idealism all
reflection shades down to twilight and then darkness, for even the
proponents of idealism perceive nothing but mystery beyond it.
Every step forward into that mystery that they venture to take
causes them to lose their way in guesswork and speculation. Only
the hidden Indian teaching has bravely and boldly explored and
explored successfully the lands which stretch from idealism all the
way to final truth.
Bishop Berkeley had the quaint notion that those whom he
ignorantly termed idolators might be persuaded to relinquish their
worship of the sun could they but learn that it is nothing more than
their idea. It never dawned on his pious mind that the God whom
he posited in a lengthy argument, which incidentally is full of
fallacies, as having put the ideas of the sun and of all other external
objects into the minds of men, was only an idea also. For this
personal and providential God was an imagined one who who did
not exist independently of Berkeley's thinking. But there is neither
the time nor place to enter into academic argument here. This book
is not a treatise on metaphysics ; it represents a formal and final
testament of truth.
However, it may be advisable to explain to those who fear that
the hidden teaching necessarily leads to atheism that the term 'God''
is not a term to our taste because it means all things to all ihen. But
descending to an unphilosophic level it may be affirmed that we
shall find God at the end of this quest, but it shall be God as He really
is. It shall be neither the glorified man of religion nor the attenuated
gas of metaphysics. Yet it shall still be the God whom men rightly but
remotely revere in oriental temples and occidental churches, in
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
sunsplashed mosques and grey brick chapels, but whom they tread
underfoot and try to torture with their ignorant hatreds and intolerant
persecutions of other men. We shall find the God whose
caricatured image scornful rationalists or bitter atheists rightly
reject and against whose cruelty they justly rebel, but whom they
wrongly deny, for He is none other than their own ultimate self. We
shall find the God whom lean ascetics seek but do not find in gloomy
caves and starved bodies and upon whom satiated sensualists shut
the door in night clubs and jazz halls, yet who paradoxically dwells
in both cave and club unseen, unnoticed and unknown. We shall find
that God whom meditating mystics and trance-wrapped yogis
prematurely grope for within their hearts: God's aura of peaceful
light is all they touch, for the flame would shrivel their ecstasy-seeking
ego in an instant of time ; but once they have obeyed the angel whose
sword shall sooner or later drive them back to the world they would
forsake, and learnt what this thing is that surrounds them, search
into the self will soon yield its final secret for them, as ancient Indian
sages have pointed out. All these men who have vainly yet unconsciously
tried to displace reality and who have set up for worship
a God of their own imagination, a mere idol of their own making,
philosophy will lead to the true God, whom they shall henceforth
worship in full awareness of what they are doing. Finally, we shall
find that elusive world-essence now unknown to scientists and which
they think to be some kind of energy.
We may now begin to grasp why  was always
taught in secret. The books and texts were kept in the possession of
the teacher, to be revealed and expounded only when candidates had
travelled through the other paths. It would have been unwise to
teach the general public. Men cannot bear to learn the truth about
the real nature of this world, and so they flee from its first glimpses
towards the immediate comfort of illusory existence. For the notion
that th�re is a material world confronting them and existing outside
them is instantaneous, immediate and irresistible. It is not something
which they arrive at by any laborious process of logical
reasoning from something else: it is a self-evident overpowering
intuitive perception which seems undeniable and which apparently
does not depend on any worked-out case which is liable to be overthrown.
Only a continuous series of clever questions spread over a
long-drawn course of personal instruction could ever show the
ordinary unreflective man that his materialistic realism is foundationless
and that the philosopher's thought-out jnentalisjn is based on
solid rock-like fact,

The great fear that descends on anyone when he learns that
matter and space and time do not exist apart from man himself is
unjustified. For this non-existence does not deprive him of the
sensations of matter and space and time. Is it not enough to see an
apparently objective world extended in space and to watch its events
extend in time and to feel its solidity ? Mentalism does not rob him
of these sensations which he experiences ; it merely explains them.
What difference does it really make to give up his illusions about
them ? Why should he demand anything more than truth itself ?
For philosophy must stick to facts ; sensation is a fact, but matter,
time and space are proven suppositions. Here philosophy is far more
rigorous than science. There is no tangible difference in his practical
life and only a rectification of wrong notions in his mental life.
Chocolate will taste just as sweet and just as delicious when he knows
it to be a cluster of sensations as when he erroneously believed it to
be a material substance, whilst the engines of his car will purr away
as noisily as before. He will lose none of the things he cherishes, none
even of the joys of life, only he will understand them correctly. For
the streets, the houses and the people around present precisely the
same aspect to the sage as they do to the ignorant man. The former,
however, is enlightened by reflection and thus knows that these varied
forms are all mental; he knows too that mind is the stuff of all
these productions, whereas the latter is quite blinded by unreflection
to this truth. Mentalism staggers the simple-minded with its apparent
profundity and complexity, yet once well enquired into and therefore
well understood nothing could seem more simple or more apparent.
Thus the ancient Indian sages wrote down a teaching which
foreshadowed some findings of the best modern Western scientists.
The same science which gave us the bleak hopelessness of mortality
and materialism last century will give us the bright hopefulness of
mentalism in this one. Truth will be established on a basis of proven
demonstration ; it will need nothing mystical to support it. The time
is riper for the world to come to this age-old truth, but it must come
to it in terms of twentieth-century scientific concepts. This doctrine
has remained insulated from the world long enough. Nor will it
suffice merely to translate its teaching into Western tongues ; it
must also be constructively interpreted.
We live in an age of revolution. Kings, Governments and
Constitutions have been hurled from their pedestals and familiar
scientific concepts have been hurled out of laboratory windows. But
the greatest revolution of all in the world of twentieth-century
knowledge is that which the front rank of scientific investigators
THE DOWNFALL OF MATERIALISM 
is effecting before our eyes. This fundamental turnover in the
outlook of educated men will consist of nothing less than bringing
the whole world into the circle of thought and thus converting
matter into idea. Just as the study of radio-active substance opened
a new horizon for science when its old lines of research seemed to be
at an end, so this study of the relation between the world and man,
between matter and mind, will before long end in the discovery that
the entire panorama of the world from telescope-seen star to microscope-
seen cell which confronts our eyes is in reality a mental
construction. It will destroy materialism root and branch, and will
throw wide open the gates which lead to the infinite reality whose
knowledge is Truth.
EPILOGUE
THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE
HAT this teaching has been forgotten, neglected and mis
understood for so many centuries in sleepy monasteries or
remote mountain-caves is not its own fault. It is the fault of
men. Those who could understand its immensely practical bearing,
its vital immediacy, were necessarily few in number. Such understanding
could be got only by arduous intellectual efforts beyond
the capacity of most men. But generally we get what we pay for.
The one teaching which could guide mankind to the right solution
of difficult problems is to be valued accordingly. It is a costly genuine
diamond, not a cheap bit of glass.
We live in a practical world. Men may theorize as-they like,
but they have to act, to work and to deal with other men. Therefore
the question must come up, will this teaching make any difference to
the way in which people live on earth ?
For it is a widespread belief that philosophy is aristocratically
cut off from the pressing concerns of everyday existence, that the
philosopher-if not a fool or even a lunatic !-is a hopelessly
impractical man occupied merely with manufactured problems and
that the pursuit of truth is a pastime for those who have no burden
of practical responsibilities, or for library-crawling bookworms or for
armchair dreamers who wish to escape action. It Is widely believed
that the philosopher makes an unnatural dichotomy of attitude
between the inner life of thought and the outer life of action.
This may be true of that merely metaphysical speculation or
theological web-spinning which passes itself off for philosophy, but
it is not true of genuine philosophy, such as some of the best ancient
Greek citizens followed, whilst utterly untrue of the hidden Indian
philosophy. If so-called philosophy has lost touch with life this is
because it has lost itself in a maze of long technical words or made
such a fetish of clever logical subtleties which delight nobody but
dialecticians that it has forgotten its foundation--the facts of
human experience. Perhaps in no other study are men so carried
away by sounding words and polysyllabic names which disguise

EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
error and crystallize fallacy, and in no other study has such a
forbidding terminology arisen with so little necessity. A philosopher
who cannot say what he has to say with a minimum of longr difficult
and unfamiliar words, but must get himself involved into using a
maximum, is not only likely to get himself involved in hidden
untruths but is sure to keep not a few sincere aspirants outside the
portals of philosophy itself.
If such philosophy has vanished from everyday ken into a verbal
vacuum or fallen from high regard into contempt, then the socalled
philosophers themselves are to blame. They write their
thoughts down in a technical jargon which hides meaning and
harms clearness, and which builds forbidding bulwarks of unintelligibility
around the grandest truths. They construct systems of
reflection about the world and about life which do not take into
account the primary facts of the world and life. They ignore the
tremendous asset of science and find themselves left to play with
their own fancies. They start their reflections with the arbitrary
fancies of other philosophers instead of starting with the verified
facts of the world that confronts them. In this they are curiously
like unto mystics. They imitate each other and get caught in the
literary history of philosophy instead of actively creating fresh
philosophy.
What is the business of philosophy ? What definite end has it
in view ? What is the proper vocation of a philosopher ? What are
the practical lessons of philosophy ? The briefest answer to all
these questions is: genuine philosophy shows men how to live! If
it could not do that, if it could not serve practical ends, it would not
be worth* having. It does not toil through the profoundest strata
of thought merely to become alienated from the suffering world. It
does not end in abstraction, but in action. The fruits of philosophy
can be gathered only on this hard earth, not in some remote metaphysical
empyrean. It embraces an individual and social labour
which must visibly contribute to the welfare of our race and make
jtself felt in living history, or else it is not true philosophy. It must
justify its existence by what it can do, not only by what it can
imagine. It must show men not only what they really are but also
what course of life should be the object of their behaviour.
The fact is that philosophy does make a revolutionary difference
when applied to human existence, expressed in human deeds and
inlaid in human intercourse. It is the deep-held desire of those who
are the living custodians of the hidden teaching in our tormented
age that the artificial divorce which exists between philosophy and

practical life should come to an end. It is their heartfelt wish to
bring men to realize that philosophy is intimately linked with life
and is useful as a guide, an inspirer and a judge. It will be one of
the missions of the subsequent volume*to challenge the validity of
the common criticism that philosophers can deal with concerns that
are too remote from everyday life to be of use to anyone. It will
there be shown that the very contrary is the correct case so far as
the hidden teaching is concerned, for its fined teachings affect every
moment of a man's earthly existence.
For philosophy is not a pale fiction fit for dreamers only, it is
primarily for men living in the world of action. It is interested in
the full circle of existence, not merely in a segment. The moment
we begin to reflect upon life, the moment we begin to consider the
lessons of experience, the moment we search for meaning or
explanation of the world in which we find ourselves, that moment
we become a temporary philosopher. Where the specialist philosopher
goes farther than us is when he demands that all experience be
taken as the material for reflection, that the experience of all
existence be meditated upon. But the critic will ask how can that
be when history has not written its last word, experience is
continually increasing and life never comes to an end ? The answer
is that just as a circle may be indefinitely enlarged without ceasing
to be a circle, so experience may be continually expanded without
the truth of experience ceasing to be the truth. And that truth is
the philosopher's final target. This is why he must work methodically,
why he must first establish the true meaning of universal experience
and then seek to translate this meaning in terms of concrete
activities. His visible actions must first be justified by his invisible
reflections.
The world has no use for a doctrine which treats the common
life of men as something alien and apart. The world is right. The
philosopher does not know any point in this wide universe where
truth should be kicked out. Hence he finds its principles are everywhere
applicable and everywhere present and that whoever neglects
them does so at his own peril. Philosophy is what is workable; it
is put in practice, or it is only half philosophy. It believes in inspired
action and illumined service. Its worth is not known to dilettanti
who play with academic theories for a day and then forget them. It
can be carried into action : it can be made of worth to the toilers,
the sufferers and the executives of society : it shows everybody how
he ought to live amid the particular circumstances in which he finds
himself. For every deed of the genuine philosopher is the direct
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
descendant of those ideas of truth for which he has struggled so
arduously. He learns the right rules of the game of life and sets out
to obey them.
Therefore philosophy is equally for the man doomed to hang
from the ghastly gallows as for the man who dooms him from the
grand judicial bench. It reveals a truth whose application to daily
living arrests fear, removes doubt, supplies inspiration and kindles
mental strength. Be we workers with hoe and plough, or surgeons
with scalpel and lancet, or directors with glass-topped desks, we all
meet with critical moments when we need the sure guidance, the
firm pointing finger which philosophy alone can offer. For it alone
is concerned with the rigid truth of a situation rather than with
emotional distortions of it or egoistic veilings of it. Therefore the
value of philosophy is the value of its practical contribution to
day-to-day living. The connection between the office, the factory,
the farm, the theatre and the home with philosophy is direct and
plain. Philosophy is the guide of all life. Its final worth is to tell
us how to live, and how to meet and master our difficulties and
temptations.
The study of the hidden teaching demands that one pass through
a severe intellectual discipline which may extend over some years,
according to the reasoning capacity of the student. It certainly
cannot be got in a hurry. Once this knowledge is won, however, it
proves its practical worth by standing every test. The wisdom it
confers, the ethic it upholds, the strength it gives, the tranquillity
it sheds and the intellectual capacity it develops-all combine to
make the student who completes his course, who passes from
nescience to knowledge, a better man. If he turns to politics he will
render superior service, and not inferior. If he takes up manufacturing
his products will be honest and meritorious. The man trained in
the labours and pains of philosophical reflection will tackle each
practical problem as it arises with clear insight, and only he-other
things being equal-will be the most likely to give correct judgment
upon a matter.
All our ideas are dumb until we try to put them into practice.
They then gain voice and people our message. The philosophic life
is not a mere fragment to be lived out in a dusty library ; it is a
continuous experience whether it be lived in a home, a business, a
senate chamber or a farm. And a man will be a better citizen because
he is a philosopher just as he will be a better philosopher because
he is a citizen. If his studies separate him outwardly from the general
life of his community, then whatever else they may be they are

certainly not philosophic studies. For the philosopher has got to put
the content of continuous disinterested action into the fine or clever
phrases that he writes or utters, or he will merely be a halfphilosopher.
Only when the tenets of philosophy have entered his
blood-stream can he become a real philosopher.
Truth is a dynamic, not a narcotic.
The philosopher will always be found a rational, sensible, practical
and balanced man in his everyday dealings. He well understands
that the two wings of a bird must move to keep it in balanced
flight, and that the two sides of man-thought and action-must
operate to keep him in balanced existence. But his balance is wider
than that. Amid the restless hustle of modern society he keeps
inwardly calm and undisturbed. And his peace is so hard-forged as
to endure when he passes out of the quiet philosophical sanctus into
the busy street.
The philosophic discipline trains the mind and through the mind
all the acts of a man. Thoughts that are constantly and intensely
held tend sooner or later to speak in deeds. It is because men have
not realized the power of concentrated thinking to help or hurt
others that they have brought forth the hideous age in which we
are born. Without joining those who harm a good cause by poor
logic and worse philosophy when they deny the power of external
surroundings, we may yet say that the general and habitual line of
thinking tends ultimately and largely to reproduce itself in the
features of one's environment. The mind has both attractive and
repulsive properties. It attracts other minds and material conditions
of a like nature; it repels those of jarring kind. This activity constantly
goes on in man's subconscious self; he need not always be
aware of it to make it effective. This silent influence never ceases
operating. Only when we see it strikingly made evident in the lives
of good or evil geniuses do we dimly realize what potency lies hid in
controlled and concentrated thought.
It is the invisible inner man of thought and feeling who dictates
man's daily actions and reactions, who faces him when he is alone
and who lives a secret existence which imperils or protects his
whole external existence. The thoughts which most often occupy
his mind and the moods which most frequently fill his heart are his
invisible rulers and, in comparison with the physical body, constitute
his more important self. The younger races of the West look first
to the outward stature of a man when they wish to measure him,
whereas the older people of Asia knew thousands of years ago that
his greatest power for weal or woe lay hidden in his mind. The ancient
EPILOGUE: THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
sages who sat with crossed legs and benignant faces in the Himalayan
forests taught their reverent pupils this vital truth. Thus this
teaching amply justifies itself on the most utilitarian grounds.
On Conduct and Art. Everything or everyone is in relation to
something or someone else. Nothing or nobody stands alone. The
life of every creature is interwoven with the lives of others : its
fancied separateness of vaunted independence is a delusion.
Humanity especially is interrelated. Therefore the philosopher is
not merely a philosopher ; he is also a member of society. He cannot
escape being so, cannot completely disentangle himself. Even if he
retreat to a cave he will need another to attend him or a dog to
accompany him or a cow to give him milk, and lo ! there is a society
of two already. How he conducts himself in this society will depend
on ethical principles which will remain precisely the same even if
it were a society of two millions and not merely of two. Does
philosophy, then, contribute anything to ethics, anything to values,
anything to point out the right path of duty ?
The answer is that philosophy is the only thing in the world
which makes such contributions to the fullest extent needed by
human existence. Once we come into consciousness of this great
truth all the most important questions that trouble mankind take
on a totally new appearance. Then, and then only, can satisfactory
solutions of ancient and perplexing problems be got at. The very
atmosphere in which these answers have to be worked out will be
wholly changed. We shall be compelled, whether we like it or not,
to force the old queries into new shapes, because the standard of
reference will now be far other than it hitherto was. Here the student
of philosophy finds the actual value of his studies and gets his reward
in the awakened insight which shows him how to act rightly, wisely
and well. The philosopher could never be a failure in life, however
much he might fail in fortune.
Philosophy is meant not only to interpret the world} but also
to better it, for it pursues ideas through to their practical conclusion.
Social or personal idealism must be related to an attainable goal,
otherwise it will be harmful. Philosophy provides drifting men with
a compass. Hence it is as much for those who are conscious of the
absence of any principle of ethical guidance in their lives as for
those who seek pure knowledge. They will find philosophy of the
greatest help in reaching right decisions at the demands of practical
life. What, in the whole range of human culture, could be more
useful than this ?
x

There is no minute of the day when we are not engaged in doing
something or thinking something and this process goes on all through
our waking life ; it is an endless and incessant activity. The problem
whether what we are doing or what we are thinking is right or
wrong, best or worst, that is to say the problem o ethics, is one of
the most fundamental and most important we can raise.
There are two questions which face every man every day. They
are : What is the right way for me to act ? And what is the right
thing for me to seek ? Several other problems are involved in and
hinge on this single problem of what constitutes the duty of man ;
some of them are: (a) What is my highest duty as against my
immediate duty, the intrinsic as against the instrumental ? {b) What
is the justification for accepting the notion that there is such a thing
as duty and that it is not the creation of human fancy ? (c) What is
the standard of measurement which permits me to grade duties on
any scale ?
All these, however, are philosophical problems. This indicates
that pure philosophy does have the most practical bearing on life.
And whatever a man sets up as right or wrong is the conscious or
unconscious reflection of his conscious or unconscious philosophy of
life. His general view of the universe, that is to say his conscious
or unconscious philosophic view, supplies him with a standard to
mark out or to test either duty or desire. When it applies itself to
conduct, philosophy is less concerned with laying down particular
rules than with laying down foundational principles. It cares less
for little legal clauses and more for large ways of living.
Human conduct is ordinarily governed by desire. All desires,
emotions, passions, energies, longings, sympathies and antipathies
begin to regulate themselves when we understand them better, when
we understand ourselves better and when we understand the world'
better. The value of this study in restoring emotional balance may
be expressed in such physical terms as these. It normalizes bloodpressure
and beneficially regulates glandular secretions. Still more,
it harmoniously integrates the neurophysiological functions. It
disciplines passions, overcomes bad habits and eliminates nervous
fears. It tranquillizes the heart, puts reason into the head and
purpose into life. It is of special value to kings, rulers, presidents,
ministers of state and governmental chiefs, and to a lesser extent
to professional men such as physicians, awyers, educators and
business executives. The benefits received affect both the personal
and professional sides of life.
It is a misapprehensioni however; to imagine that the philosopher
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
must be an acolyte of asceticism, a votary of life-negation, utterly
remote from human interests and human enjoyments. There is no
room in true philosophy for the incurable antinomies of the ascetichedonistic
conflict. The narrow ascetic denies life and views the
world as a treacherous trap. But the philosopher finds it a useful
school wherein he learns much and lives understandingly. Experience
does not merely offer him theoretical food for thought but also
practical training for wisdom.
Nevertheless Cupid and cupidity need to be well-reined. Every
sensible man who wants to fortify his life is indeed something of
an ascetic. The power that self-restraint give his mental, ethical and
physical character helps him in every way. And when such a man
betakes himself to the quest of truth he will need even more of
this inner strength. The flabby weakling who yields to every
impulse does not know the delight of being independent, the satisfaction
of being in bondage to nothing. But such sane restraint is
never to be confused with the unhealthy and unnatural total
rejection of everything human. We are here to live and not to run
away from life. We must find a way of existence that is reasonable
and balanced, not fanatical and remote. Anything overdone is a
mistake; a good overdone generates a fresh evil, a virtue overdone
creates a new vice.
The philosopher is not afraid of any facet of life. He makes the
contradictory the complementary ! That is why he does not need
to run away from the world like the ascetic. Whatever running away
he deems necessary is done secretly inside his heart and is not
publicly advertised by donning the coloured robe of the monk. No
amount of world-desertion will lead to wisdom in his view because
he knows that he was put into the world to learn its lessons. Nevertheless
he is at one with the monk in wishing to be free from enslavement
to desires and in seeking dominion over his own emotions.
Beyond this he cannot travel with the fanatical ascetic. His chief
effort being directed towards the control of thought and disciplining
of the intellect, its success will reward him with the ability to pass
through comfort and discomfort with sufficient detachment to keep
his mind unruffled and provide him with the power to work amid the
intense hustle of any environment without any loss of inner calmness.
Ascetic ife is a good and necessary beginning, but when it
congeals into rigidity, frigidity and a profession it is an imperfect
end. The wise man is not afraid to endorse the generous and
excellent lines of Terence: "I am a man; nothing pertaining to
humanity is aJien to me/' He will move untempted amid the fretting

tide of a city's crowds, where he is needed, whilst the fearful hide in
caves ; he will keep his serenity amid labour or leisure, for his ascetic
abandonment is hidden deep within the mind. He will not need to
crush out human affection in order to crush out human egoism. He
will not need to ignore the treasures of art or fail to respond to the
charms of Nature in order to maintain emotional equipoise.
But the problems of action and conduct do not exhaust man's
concern with society and the world. He seeks also to beautify both.
Thus art is born. Philosophy has also to find a place for it, and to
consider its contribution to the whole. Art indeed is fuel for the
philosophic enterprise. Why is it that man feels drawn to music,
painting, architecture, poetry, drama and the other arts ? What is
this beauty which lures man on through his lesser loves ? Is the
culture of artistic sensitivity a stage on his quest ? Those who
imagine that philosophy isolates man from all that is warm and
beautiful in life are mistaken. The fragrance of white jasmine gives
him pleasure as much as it does to others, the ravishing beauty of
the sun dying in a great ball of fire does not leave him unaffected,
and the tender voice of a violin is not meaningless to him. He is
different from other men in this, that he keeps always moored to the
higher viewpoint which places these experiences where they belong
and does not permit them to overwhelm him utterly.
The work of the genuine artist is primarily an imaginative one.
He is entitled to call himself a creative artist to the extent that he
can carry out an original work in his first available medium-
imagination. If he can work only in his second medium, that is to
say merely copy photographically in paint, wood, stone, word or
sound what others have thus created, we call him a talented artist,
but not a creative one. Indeed, competent critics have gone so far
as to separate both classes, refusing to dignify the unimaginative
with the title of artist and calling him but a workman. There are
usually authentic indications in the works of genius to show the
profundity of its imaginative power.
Yet the imagination itself is nothing else in the end than a tissue
of mental pictures, i.e. of thoughts. Mozart, who was a genius even as
a child, described the process of his experience of musical composition
in a brief but illuminative sentence: "All the finding and
making only goes on in me as in a very vivid dream." In this selfcreated
world the artist must make himself at home so completely
and so absorbedly that he will resent the coming of meal-times as a
disturbance and the coming of friends as an intrusion. This is why
Balzac locked himself in a room literally night and day. When he
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
wrote those wonderful novels he was as much in a state of semitrance
as any Indian yogi. That Balzac well understood the mystical
character of his art is attested by his own utterance: "today the
writer has replaced the p r i e s t . . . he consoles, condemns, prophesies.
His voice does not resound in the nave of a cathedral, it spreads
thunderously from one end of .the world to the other." For the
production of genuine art is nothing less than the practise of genuine
yoga. The artist is on a perfect level with the mystic, only he seeks
memorable beauty where the latter seeks memorable peace.
Inspiration simply means that the artist is so carried away by
a series of ideas that for the time being their reality dominates him
completely. For him thought has temporarily become what is felt
to be the Real. In this respect the artist is a veritable mystic. Both
come to acquire a fervent faith in the reality of their mental
constructions. Both arrive unconsciously at the truth of mentalism
through the same avenue intense concentrated self-absorption in
a single dominating idea or a single series of thoughts. Both are in
the end conscious, semi-conscious or unconscious believers in
mentalism. The painter Whistler saw great beauty on the mistcovered
river Thames shrouding its dirty barges and rat-ridden
wharves and raucous steam-tugs ; this really means that the beaut}
he saw was contained within his own mind. The artist who would
attain to the front rank of creative genius must be a mentalist. He
must be a believer in this subtle and refined doctrine which is fit only
for subtle and refined temperaments. Were he otherwise he would
be false to his own experience and blind to its implicit meaning.
We hear often of the enthralling ecstasy wherein he creates
his work and of the moody melancholy which succeeds it later. He
walks on air for a while but then treads the earth with leaden feet,
regretting that he did not know how to hold his high mood, how to
retain it. Let us not envy him. For he pays heavily for his ecstasies ;
he pays for them in the coin of gloomy moods and black depressions.
There are two explanations, two causes to account for this fact
to be found in all the biographies of genius : the first is that during
creative work he forgets himself, loses his I utterly, because it is
only by perfect concentration that he can accomplish perfect work.
If he cannot forget his ego, then he cannot concentrate perfectly,
hence cannot become a perfect artist. Or else he unites in feeling with
his prospective audience, i.e. merges his individuality in others, and
thus loses his ego for another cause. The second is that the brief
pleasure he derives from those precious minutes when he is absorbed
in his imagination is the same that his audience will later derive

when beholding or experiencing the finished product of his work. But
if this second fact means anything at all it means that at the precise
v moment of inspired production by the artist or of engrossed reception
by the audience, both are or should be utterly immersed in the world
of imaginations. At this sacred time they find thought to be allimportant
and as real as they had heretofore regarded the material
world of their own belief. Moreover, in the artist's yearning to find
perfect expression of his ideas in paint or on paper he is unconsciously
seeking to break down the fancied barriers between
thought and thing, between mind and matter. He is^ in short,
striving to construct a second idea which shall be a perfect copy of
his first one.
We may now understand why the artist suffers when his creative
mood passes away. For it is then that, psychologically, he lapses
back into the ordinary egoistic state and the ordinary unconcentrated
state. The contrast is as striking as that between black and white
and affects his emotions accordingly. These are some elementary
lessons which philosophy teaches in regard to art.
The Doctrine of Karma. Because of its neglect of the primal fact
of mind being the ground that supports all else in human life, the
scientific culture of the last century found itself in the position of
an ethically-dangerous materialism which made man into a
mechanically-manipulated biped. Although the front-rank scientists
themselves are now emerging from this materialistic phase, the
onslaughts of their predecessors have seriously damaged the fabric
of religious authority and greatly weakened the strength of religious
influence. The popularization of science in the West has made the
masses less amenable to the checks and disciplines offered by religion.
Moreover, the aftermath of all wTars has often been a decay of religious
faith and an indifference to codes of morality.
We are therefore approaching a period when the chief social
justification of religion-its power to restrain the conduct of the
masses within certain limits-will be definitely impaired. The
example of Russia's violent rejection of organized religion following
war and revolution is a phenomenon to be calmly and dispassionately
considered. It is not to be enthusiastically admired by the irresponsible
and unbalanced, nor to be violently denounced by the
reactionary and unteachable. For we face a period when the decay
of moral sanctions, the loosening of social ties, the lowering of
individual standards and the general inclination to unsettle and
disturb society combine to constitute an ethically dangerous
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
situation. Those who care for human welfare should understand that
to apply antiquated sanctions which have lost much of their force
will not meet this situation satisfactorily. Religion will be unable
to avoid the straight issue and will do better for humanity and for
itself if it faces the problem with courage and common sense. Its
contribution is always needed, but it ought to be a right one.
Every institutional orthodox religion can save itself from the
crisis whose preliminary rumbles herald its approach, and even
effectively expand its influence, if, first, it will have the courage to
cast bad custom behind if need be and find a better life for man,
and if, second, it will live up to its ethical highest and not down to
its ethical lowest; and if, third, it will abandon the mental slavery
of childish dogma and become intellectually progressive. It should
add new beliefs, or alter and adapt its system wherever needed.
It must progress parallel with the intellect of man, be on the move
with our moving age, and not remain an inflexibly obstinate creed.
Some of the more sensible ecclesiastics have- already yielded their
old crude ideas in surrender to advancing knowledge, but many more
are merely parcels of timid conventional superstitions, neatly tied
together and adorned with hat, suit and shoes. The Very Reverend
Inge has not hesitated to advocate bold rational changes in Christian
doctrine, while in Africa and Asia, Muhammedan, Hindu and
Buddhist divines have done the same to a lesser extent. But until
the highest dignitaries boldly promulgate more refined and rational
conceptions, a more tenable faith, until they value living ethics
above dying history, present trends will injure their obsolete dogmas
and, what is worse, injure the moral supports of their devotees.
The illusions of their flocks may be excused, but the ignorance or
obstinacy of the clerics themselves is unpardonable. The world is in
pregnancy with new thoughts. The labour pains of commencing
childbirth affect it and the cries that come from it are to be expected.
The whole universe is subject to the law of change ; all history is but
a tale of continuous adaptation to environment; and when the
leaders of a religion submit to this law voluntarily their reward will
be great in every way. Those who submit at the proper time will be
practising wisdom; those who resist at the wrong time will be
practising foolishness. In an age of advancing education such as
ours religion must voluntarily clear its labyrinth of traditional
rubbish and reorganize itself on a more intellectual basis. Mystery
and tradition have made the organized religions powerful institutions
; science and the spirit of enquiry are unmaking them. Therefore
the last word of counsel from every well-wisher who is not dead to

the time-spirit nor blind to the world crisis is that religion must
grow up with the growing mind of man. The position of an unprogressive
religious institution which rigidly rules its adherents,
binds them for ever to believe in a kindergarten creed, and
discourages interest in contemporary knowledge is not different from
that of a schoolmaster who, whilst welcoming new pupils to his
class, prevents the old ones from passing up to the next higher
class and would for ever detain them under him in the same class.
It ought never to forget its higher purpose, which is to fit the more
advanced among its flock for the next higher degree. It will then
cease to resent the individualism of mystics but rather delight in
their progress. In this way it will best help others and most help
itself. Finally there is plenty of hope for religion for the reason that
it is needed, if only it will arouse new energies and bravely reconstruct
itself.
But even if this unlikely event occurs the ethically-dangerous
post-war situation will not be fully solved thereby. Many people
will still be irrevocably lost to religion, however much it adapt
itself. For when ignorant men think that religion is a delusion they
often leap to the false conclusion that morality is a myth. History
shows that it has proved disastrous in times of great social change
to identify ethics with any special religious creed. When the creed
goes the ethics entangled with it goes too.
Whoever cares for the well-being of the race cannot look
unconcerned upon this dark prospect. What is to be done ? The
remedy lies in remembering that those who have caught the modern
attitude are not going to yield to ethical exhortations unless these
are scientifically based. But is such a basis obtainable ? Is a rational
ethics available for them which will uplift and not degrade them and
which will supply a sensible motive for well-doing ? The answer is
that a most reasonable doctrine has long existed in Asia. Unfortunately
it has not kept its pristine purity, but degenerative time has
mixed much irrelevant superstition with it, whilst imaginative man
has tangled much religious dogma with what is the fundamentally
sane and scientific basis of a sound ethical code. The Indian name of
this venerable doctrine is karma.
The essence of this doctrine is, first, psychological reaction, i.e.
that habitual thoughts form themselves into tendencies and thus
affect our own character ; this in turn expresses itself sooner or later
in deeds ; these, again, not only affect other persons, but also, by a
mysterious principle of reaction, ourselves. The working out of this
principle implies, second, physical rebirth, i.e. the persistence of
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
thought in the sphere of the Unconscious Mind, as well as sooner or
later the reappearance of more or less the same "character" or
personality upon this earth. Karma creates the need for readjustments
and inevitably leads to rebirth, to an outlet for the dynamic
factors which have been set in motion. The consequence of this
principle is personal retribution, i.e. that acts whereby we injure
others are inevitably reflected back to ourselves and thus injure us,
whereas acts whereby we benefit others eventually benefit us too.
This doctrine, like that of 'mentalism, was discovered by the
astute Indian sages through the revealing power of intense concentration
of mind, used to sharpen an intelligence devoted to the
perplexing problems of the inequality in character and circumstance
of human beings. In this manner they came to discern^a certain
rhythm at work beneath the incessant flux of man's fortunes.
There is no such thing as a natural law in the sense of an
arbitrary or authoritative commandment issued by some supreme
being. Man makes a law of Nature in his thought in order to describe
how a particular part of Nature behaves. Karma is a perfectly
scientific law. It dovetails smoothly into three great scientific
discoveries whose verification and proclamation during the nineteenth
century stirred thoughtful men with the tremendous
possibilities thus opened up as well as into two others which have
not been so sensational. The first two were : (a) the evolution of
animal and human forms, (b) the conservation or indestructibility
of energy. The former brought together all the myriad kinds of
species in Nature into some kind of scheme of progressive
improvement, giving at least a cold justification for the agonizing
immolation of the individual upon the altar of its class, whilst the
latter brought together the different manifestations of heat, work and
chemical power into a simple unified system. Although more modern
views have largely modified the original explanation of the method
of these processes, and although the "how" of both still remains
much of a mystery, nevertheless their basic principles remain
untouched. The evolutionary character of Nature's larger changes
and the persistence of force still fit better to the known facts of the
general universal movement than any other hypotheses.
A third scientific teaching which requires mention is that of
heredity. The patterns of the fleshly body are inherited ones.
If we go farther back in time we shall find a fourth significant
scientific teaching. Newton's third law of motion reveals that for
every action there is a reaction, which is equal and opposite.
But we are not yet done. For there is a fifth discovery of science

-which cannot be overlooked-that all life is ultimately unitary.
The universe constitutes a single entity. All the sciences touch each
other at some point and none can stand alone. The unity of the
universe is the fundamental law of its being.
When we bring all these scientific principles into harmony with
karma we find how they analogically support it. The law of evolution
reveals that life is a continuation of all that has gone before. We are
but links in a long series. We begin as primal molecule and end as
complex man. We press towards an unseen goal because we feel the
need of completion. We have already travelled a long journey from
the planetary mud up to our present-day self. But we shall have to
travel still farther. For the end of this journey will be the sublime
discovery that man is no mere cypher in a statistical census, no mere
glorified ape of the jungle, but an unconscious partaker of a blessed
and benign Reality.
The principle of conservation of energy expresses the fact that
no energy can be destroyed in the process of its transformations.
In the same way human thoughts and deeds are nothing else than
energies which ars not destroyed but which reappear in the form of
their effects upon others and upon ourselves. They are seeds which
sprout eventually into time-and-space manifestation.
Science admits in the doctrine of heredity that every body has
had some kind of existence before birth. Similarly, the mind must
have had some kind of existence before birth. The mental characteristics
are transmitted ones and can have been derived from a former
earthly existence alone.
Newton's law of equal return reappears in the world of ethics,
where the same sequence holds true. Whatever we do unto others is
returned to us in some way and at some time. Life pays us back in
our own coin. Qur misdeeds find us out one day. The good deeds we
do foreshadow the good fortune we shall eventually reap. We get
what we give.
The unitary character of the whole universe must also include
man's life. Any violation of this law of his own being must, by
reaction, sooner or later bring its own punishment in the shape of
suffering or discord. Any fulfilment of it must equally bring harmony
and happiness. Moreover, this same individual unity indicates that
rebirth is inevitable because of the continuity of the world process,
because each appearance of life must emerge out of what has
somewhere gone before, because the present cannot be sundered
from the past.
Thus human life becomes, broadly speaking, an education of
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
mind, character and capacity. This education develops over long
periods of time in a series of related physical re-embodiments, each
of which provides appropriate lessons through the experiences and
reflections therein generated. All living is learning. All incarnation
is education. To take a new body is to take a new seat in life's school.
The growth of mind is the true biography of man. All history
becomes allegory. Just as a child's understanding of the three R's-
reading, writing and 'rithmetic-constitutes its elementary education
in school, so an adult's understanding of these three R's of Reaction,
Rebirth and Retribution constitutes his elementary education in the
larger school of life. Mentally, the struggles of existence tend first
to unfold and then to sharpen reason ; ethically, the notion that
whatever seeds we sow we shall reap an appropriate harvest becomes
slowly borne in upon us ; technically, ability rises from untrained
mediocrity and gradually gets concentrated along special lines until
it achieves i^s culmination in facile unlaboured genius.
The law of karma is the only one which will reasonably account
for those blights on existence which must otherwise be accepted as
the awful products of mere chance or as the unjust fiats of an
arbitrary Deity. Without karma we must give up these problems in
despair as being pieces in a perfectly insoluble puzzle. The babe
helplessly born blind, the child brought up in a squalid filthy slum,
the fame-hungry young man who struggles in vain to find a fit
outlet for unrecognized ability, the middle-aged woman whose
whole life has been wrecked by an unfortunate marriage, the elderly
family breadwinner who falls fatally under an automobile-these
are the tragedies which make life seem either a hideous game of sheer
luck or the unfortunate plaything of a cruel God. Karma, however,
puts a more rational face upon these enigmas by turning them into
the outcome of wrong acts done previously, either in the same
existence or in an earlier fleshly embodiment. Thus it responds to a
profound need of the human heart for more adequate justice
in life.
An imperfect notion of this tenet is that which places the effect
of present thoughts and deeds only in future births and remote
incarnation. We must impress firmly upon our minds that the
consequences of our actions may have to be reaped at any moment
here in this birth ; that the wrong or right behaviour of one
incarnation may determine the misery or happiness of the same
incarnation : and that there is no necessity to wait for lives yet to
come before we can feel the benefits of virtue or pay for the pains
caused to others. Karma covers both the present and future births.

Its reactions can come into operation on the very same day that an
act is performed or the same year or the same birth without waiting
for a future embodiment. The relation between an evil deed and its
inevitable retributory consequences is a sure one, but the time when
it manifests itself is obscure and must necessarily vary with each
individual.
Nevertheless this doctrine does not imply that all our sufferings
without exceptions are merited. For humanity is so interlinked that
we cannot always escape the effects of the evil acts performed by
others with whom we are thrown in contact even though the misfortune
thereby wrought is not our due. But in that case we may
rest assured that the compensatory working of karma will eventually
bring into play some good fortune which would not otherwise have
been ours.
Karma therefore does not doom us to complete fatalism. It is
only a part of life. The element of freedom is likewise present. There
is no absolute freedom in life, but then there is no absolute fatalism
either. Karma makes us personally responsible for our thoughts and
deeds. We cannot shift the blame for wrongdoing on to the shoulders
of another, whether he be man or God.
We take up our old tendencies with each new birth in this frail
tenement of flesh, renew great loves and grand friendships, face
afresh the problem of old enmities, suffer or enjoy our proper
deserts and drink from the cup of life's experience until we are
satiated. But satiety forces reflection, and this in turn brings wisdom.
When we have moved up and dowh the ladder from ragged beggar to
bejewelled king we learn at last how to handle the contrasting
situations of human existence correctly. When we have been
tempted, tantalized and disillusioned, when we have burnt our fingers
because of wrongdoing or been benefited by well-doing, we understand
finally the best way to conduct ourselves in all dealings with
others. We are all the products of our unseen past experience and
our unremembered past thinking, i.e. of time, and are not to be
blamed for being what we are : we cannot help that, but we are to
blame for not trying to be better. Time is thus the supreme teacher.
No mortal can give us the lessons it places before our eyes. It brings
all the wealth of varied experience, it assuages errors into wisdom,
pain into peace, disappointment into discipline and hatred into
goodwill. Time will turn better pages for us than those in books,
and speak more sagely than the lips of men. It teaches us to learn
from our weaknesses, not to weep over them.
It is an error to put karma on a moral plane only. It also operates
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
on the intellectual plane. Thus a good- man's feebler intelligence
pitted against an evil man's superior intelligence may bring the
former loss and even suffering for a time, even though he is morally
better. For he has to learn to build a balanced personality, and not
merely a lop-sided one. Moreover, pious persons who suffer from an
excess of sentimentality do not understand that charity only
becomes a virtue when it is done at the right time to the right person,
and that it is nothing less than a vice when it is misplaced or mistimed.
Karma provides us with the assurance that no efforts are wasted.
Whether in this birth or in a later we shall enjoy their just consequences.
Where heredity fails to explain why a clever son should be
born to foolish parents, karma steps in and smooths the problem.
We inherit physical characteristics from our parents but mental
characteristics from our previous personality on earth. This explains
why there are children who are old for their age and adults who are
children for their age. It puts order and justice where formerly
chaos and cruelty alone reigned.
Those who reject karma reject what is patent all around them.
Their own lives are unalterably predetermined to a certain extent,
do what they will. The good or bad family into which they were born,
the wealth or poverty they have inherited, the white or black skin
they possess-all these are matters in which they have been powerless
to choose and wherein they have been but the unconsulted recipients
of the awards of karma. To a limited extent, therefore, but no more,
karma forges a steel ring around every man.
Others who raise the ancient bogey that where there is nc
remembrance of past lives there can be no benefit from present
pleasure or pain arising out of them overlook two points. The first
,is the very constitution of the mind itself, which presents the
double faces of the Unconscious and the conscious to our gaze. The
merest initiation into psychology is an initiation into this undoubted
fact. How much of present experience has already disappeared into
the storehouse of the Unconscious ? The second point is that they
cannot have the memory of one previous embodiment without
having the memories of all the thousands which preceded it. But
who could endure such an opening of the bound volumes of human
experience for even a single day ? Who could take in all that
cinematograph-film of a myriad bestial horrors and a myriad
primitive joys that are now no longer joys ? The upshot of such n
experience would be a complete lapse into madness. Rather should
we be thankful to Nature for this gift of forgetfulness as we should
be thankful to her for the gift of sleep. For if we had not received

it we should be totally unable to concentrate upon the present life
at all.
Karma properly understood never kills initiative but positively
promotes it. What we do now will actively contribute to the making
of our future, no matter what we have done in the forgotten or
remembered past. Therefore there is always some degree of hope
for everyone. We are simultaneously the hapless creatures of. our
past and the hopeful creators of our future. What men do not
comprehend about fate is that although certain events of life are
more or less predetermined by karma at birth, still they can sometimes
be changed to some extent by changing character. For
character is the seed, the root, of all fate. If we have to endure
certain limitations imposed by destiny we have also got certain
freedom to work within those limitations. It is the art of right living
to reconcile both factors and adjust them sensibly.
Here it may be well to observe that the Indian teaching adds
that the last thoughts of a dying man will conjoin with his general
and subconscious tendencies to determine the characteristics
which will take a foothold in his next embodiment. It would be well
therefore if this were better known and more widely utilized. For
thus we may more readily meet again those we love, thus we may
mentally picture and obtain a particular field of desired service and
thus the disciple ties himself more closely to his teacher.
There are times to fight fate and times to endure it. When the
latter periods come it is wise to apply the Chinese technique of
handling a cycle of misfortune as expounded in their ancient classic
texts. This is based on the principle of adapting oneself to the
cycle by conforming patiently and voluntarily to its restrictions and
anticipating them in self-restraint. Just watch a juggler catch
falling eggs on porcelain plates without breaking egg or plate !
How does he do it ? When the moment of meeting between egg and
plate occurs he gives a slight downward movement to the latter.
The speed of this movement coincides with the speed of the fall of
the egg and thus reduces the shock of contact. Or observe the
technique of expert boxers. When one launches a hard blow at the
other the latter will sometimes make a backward motion as though
apparently yielding to the blow. Were he to move forward to meet
the attack the force of impact would naturally be greater just as the
combined velocities of two trains approaching each other is greater
than that of any single train. The boxer who yields by slightly
retreating lessens the force of the blow which he receives. In the
same way we should meet the blows of karma by flexibly adapting
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
ourselves to the inevitable, by not attempting new enterprises during
a dark cycle, for instance.
Here again we can call in the confirmation of science. Quantum
theory and uncertainty principle have shed startling new light on
physics. The old views of science were favourable to faith in the
notion of karma; the new views are favourable to faith in the notion
of freewill. The old views were based on a world-structure which
was clasped in the iron clutches of physical law. Determinism and
necessitarianism were inevitable outlooks in such a universe. The
new science has passed beyond this cold-blooded rigidity and has
penetrated into the strange spontaneity of sub-atomic life. Its
discovery completes the circle. The truth is that the universe has
freedom at its heart but fate at its circumference, and that man
consequently is a creature of both influences.
The practical lesson is: change the prevailing tenor of your
thoughts and you will help to change, in time, the prevailing condition
of your affairs. Correct your mental and ethical errors and the
correction will ultimately tend to become apparent in better
character and improved environment. To a considerable extent man
builds and changes his environment, constructs the history of his
life and shapes his own circumstances by the simple power of mind,
for destiny is ultimately self-earned and mind-made. Karma shows
how this^can be so, and the doctrine of mentalism shows why this
must be so.
Lastly we must learn through yoga-practice and philosophic
reflection the art of being unruffled. For troubles must come, but
as they come so will they go. The same power that brought them
will also take them away. Fortune is a turning wheel. Meanwhile
the mind should remain firmly anchored where it belongs-in truth,
not in illusion.
Although karma is really a scientific law it was appropriated by
the Asiatic religions as well as by the pagan faiths of primitive
Europe. But for an apparent accident of history it might also have
been an item among the tenets of modern Christianity, for it lived
in Christian faith for five hundred years after Jesus. Then a group
of men, the Council of Constantinople, banished it from the Christian
teaching, not because it offended the ethics of Jesus (what could be
nobler than its perfect harmony with the Master's own statement:
Whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap ?), nor because it offended
the integrity of Christianity (where is there a clearer advocacy of it
than in the writings of the great Christian Patriarch Origen ?), but
because it offended their own petty personal prejudices. Thus a

little band of foolish men sitting near the shores of the Sea of
Marmora so late as five hundred and fifty years after the appearance
of Jesus have been permitted to banish a Christian tenet which did
not suit their own cast of temperament. Thus they have robbed the
West of a religious belief which, in the turn of history's wheel, must
now be restored to the modern world for the scientific truth that it
really is.
It is the duty of those who rule nations, guide thought, influence
education and lead religion to make this restoration. Truth demands
it in any case, but the safety and survival of Western civilization
imperiously demand it still more. When men learn that they cannot
escape the consequences of what they are and what they do they
will be more careful in conduct and more cautious in thinking. When
they comprehend that hatred is a sharp boomerang which not only
hurts the hated but also the hater, they will hesitate twice and
thrice before yielding to this worst of all human sins. When they
understand that their life in this universe is intended to be an
evolutionary process of gradual growth in understanding they will
begin to assess their physical, moral and mental values aright. A
sound ethical life will follow naturally as a function of such understanding.
The West has great and quick need for the acceptance of
karma and rebirth because they make men and nations ethically
self-responsible as no irrational or incoherent dogma can make them.
Modern scientific knowledge can easily fit these doctrines into its
framework of reference, provided they are properly presented,
because they alone explain neatly how the simple-minded Hottentot
evolves into the subtle-minded Hegel.
We live in a shrieking tower of Babel. Nearly everyone has
something to say, says it at the top of his voice, and yet for all this
shouting few succeed in saying anything that is worth while, for
few tell us why we are here on earth at all. Hence the urgency of
popularizing the karma doctrine.
The Welfare of the World. We have so far treated karma from
the scientific and practical standpoint. What the hidden philosophy
has to say about it puts an entirely different aspect on the matter,
but that is a reserved subject too. We have indeed forgotten the
philosopher for the moment to remember the more urgent needs of
 The Right Reverend Sigurgeir Sigurdsson, Bishop of Iceland and a personal
friend of the author, has courageously made this experiment. The result has
been remarkably successful among the younger generation, who have responded
energetically.
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
the unphilosophic masses who have been touched by the questioning
ferment of our time. It may be said, however, that as our studies in
mentalism have revealed that the primal substance of this world is
thought and that matter is nothing other than mind, so we must
concede to mind in actuality and universality a permanence with
which we normally refuse to endow it. And we must further concede
that because man's whole life and activity are purely mental his
thoughts may vanish into the depths of the Unconscious and yet
not be lost. For mind is incessantly generating its constructions
anew, unhindered by limitations of time and space because the latter
are also its own constructions. Hence the individual streams of ideas
may reappear again or react on each other across long lapses of time
and great acres of space. Thus the doctrine of karma can find a
mentalistic justification.
The philosopher, however, finds a still higher basis than karma
for lofty and unselfish personal and social ethics when he finds
truth and reality. To understand this we must anticipate advanced
studies and consider for a moment that the ecstatic peace which
comes to the artist during his creative moments is not dissimilar
from that which comes to the mystic. It has been pointed out that
this is mostly due to their temporary release from the ego. The I
carries a great burden, be it one of ulcerous worries or gay pleasures.
Few know that forgetting oneself is the key to a larger happiness. In
philosophy, after all the facts have been ascertained and verified,
this ideal is set up as one of its rational conclusions ; it is then also
found that there is a secret thread running from man to man, from
creature to creature, and that the hidden constitution of the world
is so unified that whoever believes he can assure his own happiness
and welfare regardless of what happens to others is for ever fated to
be bitterly disillusioned. So long as the chasm which separates the
I and the you remains as wide and as deep as it is, so long will I
and you be foredoomed to suffer. Moreover, one of the philosophical
implications of the principle of relativity is that no single thing
in the whole universe stands isolated from anything else, no single
thing exists in its own right. A web of interrelatedness stretches
right across the world. Even the interdependence of modern society
-with its economic, political and social reactions from one corner
of the world to another-is alone enough to hint at this. There is
hardly a half-educated man in any country of the globe who is not
more familiar with international affairs than was the average
educated man prior to . Such is the growing awareness of this
interdependence.
Y
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
Philosophy preaches self-control and advocates service of
humanity not because these might be good for the other man alone
or good for the philosopher alone, but because it is good for both!
Its view of man is a view of society as a whole. Hence it teaches and
proves that no individual man can attain other than illusory happiness
so long as his fellows are unhappy. The old notion that a
philosopher is impervious to current events must go. He is interested
in them because he is interested in the welfare of his fellow men.
But he will not permit them to swamp his judgment or menace his
peace, for amid all else he holds to philosophic calm and impartial
reason.
Whoever finds the high privilege of this wisdom conferred upon
him will automatically find that it comes like a double-edged
sword-the new privilege upon one side but a new responsibility
upon the other; for the lofty knowledge which he has attained
enjoins upon him that he shall henceforth practise the highest of all
ethics. In discovering the final unity of all things and creatures, in
being born again, as Jesus put it, in realizing that the Overself of
which he is now aware is likewise the Overself of all other living
beings, he has no alternative but to perceive that the welfare of the
world is equivalent to his own welfare. The service of the ALL will
henceforth replace in his heart the service of the individual ego.
His acts must not only satisfy his own self but also be beneficial
to others : they must always try to perform this twofold function.
It is for this reason that a real sage is not a hibernating hermit.
Such a sage makes the discovery that the Golden Rule of doing
unto others what we would have them do unto ourselves is uncommon
sense made common. No religion has ever taught a higher ethic than
this and no experience can ever suggest a more sensible one. No
other maxim for the conduct of life than this simple maxim of
Jesus and Krishna, Confucius and Buddha, will help a man more to
travel smoothly and unhindered along the stone-scattered highways
of existence. It is a rule which works wonders and whiqh can be
universally applied to all men in all stations of life and at all times.
It is as good with brown-skinned Orientals as with white-skinned
Occidentals, as satisfactory with ragged outcasts as with well-fed
millionaires, and its value is out of all proportion to its simplicity.
For we are all children of the one Infinite Life, members of the same
yast human family. Let us therefore do the considerate, the generous,
 This invented term is here introduced and will be frequently used later because
it has already become familiar to readers of the author's other works. It is intened
to signify the ultimate reality of both man and the universe.
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
and the compassionate deed whenever possible in preference to the"
mean, the selfish and the cruel one, if we would have karma deal
kindly with us.
If it be asked why should a man trouble to learn or define truth
if he is already practising goodwill to all beings, the reply is : because,
first, he will not know that it is truth and may therefore change his
mind tomorrow, and so give up his goodwill. It will be based on
feelings, which are admittedly volatile. And, second, human affairs
are notoriously complex, and right and wrong are often curiously
intermingled. And, third, philosophy offers the only warrant for an
ethical and selfless life which is based wholly on reason and yet does
not lead to selfishness or wickedness.
When the Buddha, therefore, inculcated compassion it was not
on the basis of mere sentiment but on that of profound knowledge.
The man who left loving wife and marble palace in quest .
of intangibles like peace and truth was no sentimentalist.
It would be a profound error, however, to suppose as is usually
supposed that because Buddha also taught the doctrine of nonviolence
(which Gandhi has made famous in modern times) he meant
this for the practice of all men. He meant it only for monks and those
ascetics who had renounced the worldly life with its responsibilities.
Like all true sages the Buddha recognized that there was no universal
code of morality and that there were gradations in duty, stages in
ethics. Hence when General Simha came to question him about this
very point, torn by doubt whether he should give up his profession
of soldiering or continue in it, the Buddha replied : "He who deserves
punishment must be punished. Whosoever must be punished for the
crimes he has committed suffers his injury not through the ill-will of
the judge but on account of his evildoing. The Buddha does not
teach that those who go to war in a righteous cause after having
exhausted all means to preserve the peace are blameworthy. He
must be blamed who is the cause of the war. The Buddha teaches
a complete surrender of self but he does not teach a surrender of
anything to those powers that are evil/'
These words are quoted only because they express exactly the
viewpoint of the hidden teaching upon the same question. It is not
denied that the correct attitude for monk or mystic is to take no
life under any circumstances, but rather to suffer his own, martyrlike,
to be taken away instead ; and to cause no hurt to any other,
person even in punishment. Gandhi, therefore, with his doctrine of
non-violence, represents Indian mysticism at its best; but it would
be a gross mistake to take him as. a representative of the far higher
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
Indian philosophy. The latter does not teach an ethic of emotional
exultation but an ethic of reasoned service. It is strong where the
other is sentimental.
The famous injunction of Jesus to resist not evil must also be
interpreted in the same light. It is to be followed literally and
externally by mystics and renunciants but intelligently and
internally by the wise. For although the latter have come to know
their ultimate oneness with the crook and criminal, this need not
prevent them from protecting themselves or others against crookedness
and criminality or from punishing wrongdoers for their malpractices,
provided, as Buddha further pointed out, this is done
without hatred. For then, observed the great Asiatic teacher, "the
criminal should learn to consider that this punishment is the fruit
of his own act, and as soon as he can honestly arrive at such understanding
the punishment will purify his soul and he may no longer
lament his fate but actually rejoice in it".
A mysticism which makes a man into a passive spectator of
aggressive injustice or violent murder or an asceticism which makes
him condone evil done in his presence on the plea that' he has
renounced the world and its ways does not represent the real wisdom
of India. It is the duty of a philosopher not to refuse help when
suffering victims cry out against attack, but to bestow it, using force
if necessary. A doctrine that preaches lethargic inertia or flabby nonviolence
in the face of acts of flagrant violation of justice and
goodwill is completely unacceptable to philosophy. Such misunderstanding
of the old sages and such weakness of heart and mind have
never helped India but merely degraded her. The mystic who is
afraid of administering punishment because he is afraid of causing
suffering is guided by emotion. The philosopher who is not afraid
to do So when necessary knows that suffering is the greatest teacher
of man ; for what man will not learn by reason he must learn by pain.
He who will not think must suffer. What he might learn in a few
minutes through reflection will be whipped into him during a few
years through pain.- Many a blow falls on the head of a man just to
get a single idea into it. He must learn by personal anguish what he
has refused to learn by personal reflection. He must understand by
bitter pain what he would not understand by the persuasions of
philosophy. For the mystic wishes to be undisturbed and to disturb
none, whereas the philosopher wishes to be altruistic and to
serve all.
Nevertheless the philosopher helps humanity in his own way,
not in theirs, For they know only what they desire, he what they
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
need. He helps wisely, which means that he is not a sentimentalist.
Heart and head must justify each other. Finally he prefers to go
quietly to the fountain-head and help the few through whom he
can help the many. Thus he economizes time, resources and energy
and in the end achieves immeasurably more service than if he gave*,
his whole time to individuals.
In our frankest moments we discover that we have never been
altruistic, but we have sought a subtle or obvious self-satisfaction
in all our deeds. Unselfishness is unnatural. We all look at life
through /-glasses ! "Why therefore should I do good to others?"
is a natural and proper question to ask. Philosophy answers by
saying: "Because secretly and ultimately all mankind forms one
great family. Because the full consciousness of this fact is the grand
goal of human evolution. Because life is far holier than pious people
realize. Because that unknown reality which men in their remoteness
call God, which we may better call the Overself, is both our own
secret self and the world's secret self. He who has realized this
unitary consciousness has simultaneously realized that it is the duty
of the strong to assist the weak, of the advanced to help the
backward, of the saintly to guide the sinful, of the wealthy to lighten
the burden of the destitute, and of the wise to enlighten the
ignorant." And because ignorance is the root of all other troubles,
therefore the Buddha pointed out that, ' 'explaining and spreading
the truth is above all charities".
Most of us have to work at something whether we like it or not
and whether we are philosophers or not. Philosophy does not alter
that, but it can alter the ultimate ends for which we are working.
We can work to earn a mere livelihood or we can work to make a
memorable life. For most people life consists of some pleasures but
more burdens. Yet they think and act as though it consisted of some
burdens but more pleasures. We must make men reflect upon the
values they wish to obtain from life. Do they want to earn a livelihood
? Do they want to enjoy themselves ? Do they want the truth
about the world's meaning and life's end ? Yet they may have all
these, for none are contradictory, provided always they learn to keep
a sense of proportion, a proper equilibrium. Tremendous are the
possibilities of an existence governed by the philosophic rule of a
balanced life, actuated by the selfless desire to better one's corner
of the world, dynamized by the pointed power of concentrated
thought and guided by the full light of this new-old East-West
wisdom. Men with far less equipment have amazed the modern
world with their achievements for good or evil; are there a few
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
courageous enough to gamble their personal lives with destiny that
they may enrich their age and bless others, wise enough to give up
this long littleness of the egoistic life whose ultimate end is but the
cold grave ? Can truth find a few friends to serve and support her
with a wholly dedicated life ? Who can put self strongly behind him
and stretch out his hands far enough to grasp this great paradox ?
A Philosophic View of the World Crisis. If the call for men
who are actuated by the will to help not only themselves but also
mankind is for ^ever sounding silently in the ears of those who
understand the meaning of life, it is today sounding a hundred times
more strongly. For in no previous epoch of world history has such
misery and such ignorance been so widespread. The need of world
enlightenment is immensely greater today than in the centuries jof
Jesus and Buddha-those grand figures who walk through history
in auroral splendour. For consider our own time. The modern epoch
was the most delightful and withal the most miserable of any. It
was sired by Mammon, mothered by the misunderstanding of life's
end and cradled in a comfortable automobile. It began with the
cloud-high expectations and rosy promises of applied and inventive
science, but has set low with disappointment and disillusion. It
sinks in a dismal decrepitude of ideals.
We went forward so breathlessly that we deluded ourselves
with the sensation of rapid and all-round progress. Now that delusion
has been exploded. A day of relentless reckoning has come to the
world. For our progress was a one-sided affair. It was mainly
technological, not teleological. When men crystallize their habits
of thought, ways of living and general outlook along materialistic
lines they become unconscious of their ethical danger and of-their
waste of the precious opportunity of incarnation. Only a tremendous
outside impact could shock them back into awareness of the ^futility
and failure of such a life. Such an impact has been provided by the
world crisis, with the two wars and the national nightmares which
have been its spotlights.
Karma is for ever at work in the history of all nations and of
all individuals. It does not merely operate among individuals alone :
it can also be collective and operate among groups, such as families,
tribes and whole peoples. But this fate is self-created. It is not
imposed upon them arbitrarily by any outward power. The fortunes
or misfortunes of a country are not wholly due to the capacity or
foolishness of those who govern it. They are partly the reflection
of the capacity or foolishness of the people themselves. We must
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
always keep in mind that either in the past or the present both the
people and the rulers of the country helped to create, often
unconsciously, the causes and conditions which reach their climax
with open sufferings. Until a transformation in their way of thinking
occurs they will have to face intermittent recurrence of conflicts,
with the consequent sufferings.
Nevertheless it is an inescapable duty of administrators, who
are set by self or circumstance in a position to lead, control and
influence people, to fit themselves for it. So long as their own mind
is confused and bewildered and they are unable to put themselves
in the position of posterity and gaze at our age through the telescope
of time, so long is it impossible for them to guide or govern others
aright. The mastery of philosophy, the study of its liberating
thoughts, will help them to drive correctly instead of drifting wrongly.
These are hard words, but bursting bombs and grinding
calamities have begun to burst the illusions of men and to grind to
dust the lies under which they lived. The world crisis provokes the
gloom of disillusionment and brings the stirrings of dissatisfaction
to a head. It is worth remembering that philosophy appeared in
Greece at a time when, as Socrates said, there seemed nothing to
be done except crouch behind the wall until the storm passes by.
It is wrong thinking that has ruined and wrecked Europe. It
is right thinking that can redeem it. The present state of Europe is
but an expression of what concentrated and unbridled emotion-
whether for good or evil-can achieve.
The racial antipathies and economic antagonisms, the nationalistic
hatreds and militaristic horrors of our woeful planet bear
terrible witness to the fact that we have forgotten the high business
for which we are here on earth-the business of making our personal
lives disclose something of that which is their fundamental reality,
the business of breaking the ancient illusion that the ego is our
only self and the body our only existence. We might well become
sad at the thought of thoughtless mankind, attending to every
concern except this first and fundamental one, if we did not know
that suffering was itself a tutor. The world has trod its Via Dolorosa
and learnt bitter truths from the breaking down of what it has built
with deluded mind. A great war telescopes several decades into one,
bringing about forced changes in men and their minds, in society
and its systems. Calamity creates wisdom and forces people into the
wiser path they ought to have travelled willingly. Thus their painful
sufferings and disappointed strivings breed wisdom. War strips them
of their smug complacency, stabs their frailties and comes as a grim
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
corrective. The great wars which give us personal gloom give us
also mental awakenings. The compensation of chaos and war are
the new ideas they generate. The revolutions in historical events
usually play the part of a prelude to the revelations in men's minds.
It is a mistake to regard adversity as being always an adversary. It
may sometimes be a friend in disguise. *
It is true that the study of the theory of philosophy does not
flourish during crises, nevertheless the practice of it does. For then
its students can show the benefits of their attainment and understanding,
then they can display how unflurried and unperturbed
they are amid all trials and how sure and decisive when called to
posts of responsibility and judgment; then their thought can rest in
the quiet inner citadel whilst their body acts energetically and
fearlessly amid the grave terrific stresses outside.
We become unnerved at the outbreak of war and begin to see
that life is largely transient, afflicted by disappointments and painladen.
Ordinarily people do not observe this instability of existence,
do not see that everything is either altering or vanishing continuously.
But the contemporary period-with its characteristics
of high speed and sudden surprise so well exemplified in its history
moving overnight-has begun to make this evident. Such suffering
is educative and brings thoughts into our head which would not
otherwise have arisen. The instability of sensual existence and the
successiveness of personal life are sharply brought home to us and
thus our narrow egoistic outlook is diminished, i.e. purified through
the arisal of a yearning to find something more stable, unchanging
and lasting. This yearning can only be satisfied in the quest of a
reality other than merely material existence. When we become
conscious of our weakness we begin to search for a fresh source of
inner strength. When we realize that we are unable to order life
right we commence to take up the quest of its meaning. When we
discover that we have been deceived by appearances we are ready to
learn something about reality.
This war teaches us in the severest possible manner the transiency
of all things ; let us therefore ask ourselves what this means. Where
is the fine house which has been shattered to pieces, the beloved
child slain, the modest fortune lost ? What are they today ? Only
memories which seem like vivid dreams. But what are memories ?
Mental constructions, i.e. thoughts! What will these things be in
the future ? Thoughts ! If therefore we have the courage to complete
the logical circle, then we are forced to conclude that something
which is purely mental both in the past and the future must have
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
been purely mental in that which rests upon both-the present.
Thus mentalism is being silently taught by the vicissitudes of life
to ordinary unphilosophic folk.
We can keep calmer and saner amid the terrors of our time if
we keep to the truth of mentalism, if we regard these terrors as
experiences whose stuff is ultimately as mental as the stuff of
dreams. And just as men who have bad dreams and fearful nightmares
suffer most when they are deluded into clinging to the reality
of their experiences, but will suffer least if they could know that they
are dreaming and let go their delusion, so we too may modify our
physical sufferings by remaining awake to the truth that they are
all ideas which come and are felt indeed but will also vanish as
they came.
The philosopher, more than any other,'can show a path to other
men at a time when they are bewildered and when the whole world
is at cross-roads.
There is always a way of liberation.
It is the way of repentance and return.
Nothing seems simpler, yet nothing seems so hard. But another
way there is not. And the way of unloosed suffering is still harder
to tread.
However, it is not untrue that the night is darkest before dawn.
We have been living through an unforgettable period. Here is
history in the making, with all its terrific drama and all its tragic
interest. For our age is transitional. Its very uniqueness prepares
the way for a unique renaissance. The ravages of the war will
need to be repaired. We must learn to meet bad times with better
thoughts. We must struggle for a new era characterized by heartfelt
universality. It is for us to spell the riddle of the future with letters
drawn from the alphabet of the present. It is for us to evaluate the
movements disclosed by history and follow its iron logic. It is for
us to draw wise lessons out of the vanished centuries for our own
ethical guidance and material profit.
First and foremost of these lessons is that we are living at the
end of a cycle when karma is closing all the national accounts,
clearing up mass arrears. We stand and watch the disappearance of
an era. The circle is being completed. The monuments of the old
world are toppling. This transition must necessarily be one of
confused outlooks, convulsive ferment and contending ideals, or
rebellious emotions and fanatic feelings!
Second and easiest of these lessons is that a stupendous process
of swift change is going on before our eyes, such as no people has
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
ever before witnessed. The practical import of this is that although
society should certainly be stable it should also be flexible. A fossil
is also stable but it is not flexible. The lesson of countries like China
is that when the law of change is ignored, suffering comes. The
dualism between these two forces, stability and change, will always
persist, but the art of reconciling them must always be practised.
In times like the present a deliberate emphasis must be placed on the
aspect of change.
This does not imply that sudden and violent revolutionary
changes are advocated. Revolution for its own brutal sake is the
principle of unbalanced emotions and distorted minds. A mystical
belief in the coming of a millennium lurks behind every fervid and
furious revolution, yet has never been historically realized. Whoever
uses wrong methods thereby ruins right aims. Whoever abuses
freedom asks for restraint. For he cuts short the period of human
adolescence in trying to make too much haste and thus infects
society with a fearful psychological disease-hatred !
On the other hand, whoever fails to recognize the time-spirit
-which is one of iconoclastic renovation proceeding at an accelerated
pace-and foolishly resists it, will resist it at his peril.
There are various ways of bringing about social improvement.
There is the way of suddenly beating your neighbour on the head,
which is the way of revolution.There is the alternative of
persuading him to bring a more rational and less self-centred mode
of thought to bear upon social problems, which is the way of reason.
Both unreflective revolutionary and prudent reasoner may be
motivated by the same concept of a better world. But the two trends
are antagonistic and must inevitably clash. It is perfectly possible
for men everywhere to have a finer and fairer existence. The attitude
of constructive service and unselfish co-operation will meet all needs.
But if it is absent, if men's desires conflict with fate's designs, there
will then arise the misery of unnecessary strife. It therefore behoves
all men to adapt themselves to these irresistible changes or suffer
for their stupidity. The stubborn reiteration of loyalties that
pertain to a disappearing past is meaningless. It is for those in
authority to realize that iconoclastic forces are at work abrogating
old dispensations, that new ideas are fermenting and that a new,
noble and generous outlook is required of them. Let us not bemoan
the passing of that which has outserved its time. The roaring
imperious tide of the twentieth century cannot be restrained. It
must be given its way, but it need not be permitted to destroy what
is worthwhile in our inheritance. The commingling of keen thought
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
with courageous action will.bring tremendous possibilities. Let us
envisage the integration of the highest ideals of Orient and Occident,
of the union of their two streams of discovery-one coming from the
farthest antiquity and the other from the freshest science.
Meanwhile we must keep our sanity. If we abandon all the
cultural heritage of religion, mysticism, philosophy, ethics, ideals
and intuitions which has come down to us from our forefathers we
are making a terrible mistake. For we abandon the most priceless
elements of human existence. Let us simplify and purify this heritage
if we wish. Let us sift sound doctrine from superstitious belief.
But let us not forget that existence ultimately turns to ash and dust
when it holds none of the inner serenity of a good life and inner
support of a true one which are needed more than ever by our
bewildered epoch.
Can we not see in the awful position of the world woeJs victims
-a forced asceticism, an involuntary and undesired renunciation, a
compulsory giving up of every desired thing, person, attachment ?
Can we not see in the sudden impoverishment of once-wealthy seats
of empire like London and Paris a constrained self-mortification and
a coerced putting on of sackcloth and ashes ? Can we not see that
if millions have been beggared, if all this means anything at all in a
larger sense, it means that humanity is being passed against its own
will through a purifying process on a scale previously unknown in
history ? Can we not also see that the financial avalanche which
swept away the life-savings of millions of Americans in  is of
the same piece ? Are we not all being taught that the earth is but a
camping-ground and not an eternal home ? Is it not plain that what
the sage learns through profound reflection and voluntary selfdenial
the peasant and the townsman are being made to learn
through the bitterest misfortunes and the direct losses ; that nothing
is to become the focus of our whole being save the aspiration towards
truth, life-meaning, reality-the kingdom of heaven in Jesus' wrords
-which are all within us ? The sage has sought and found his basic
happiness in the Mind, wThich is his inalienable possession and of
which no catastrophe can rob him. Everywhere we perceive that
mankind is being blindly driven to seek in the same direction
because all else has begun to fail it. This does not mean that wealth
is to be ascetically spurned, property to be thrown away and money
mentioned only with hypocritical horror. Such an attitude is right
for the monk but not for the man of wisdom. What it does mean is
that we may accumulate wealth if we wish to, possess property and
estimate the usefulness of money, love and family and friends, but
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
the moment we permit these things to absorb our whole mind and
take up our whole time so that we have neither mind nor time to
give to the quest of understanding what we are here for, then they
become a disguised curse and a source of latent suffering.
Not that we need war to shrive our spirits and purge our hearts ;
life th its changing panorama of thought and deed, its endless
personal struggles, is always assisting us likewise. But often war is
the visible climax of graded periods of the cosmic struggle between
the selfless and selfish tendencies in man's outlook, between whatever
works towards unity and whatever works towards disintegration.
Meanwhile humanity will rise to higher and higher conceptions of
what constitutes evil, dropping its narrower outlooks and ancient
brutalities with deepening shame. The horrors of bloody war will
disappear and soldiers will throw aside their steel helmets when the
beast in man is tamed, but the conflict of minds will replace it.
Struggle must continue while the world lasts, but it will gradually
be refined, modified, dignified and purged of its physical brutality.
We must therefore admit with Socrates : "Evil, O Glaucon, will
not vanish from the earth. How should it, if it is the name of the
imperfection through whose defeat the perfect types acquire their
value ?" and with Buddha: "Struggle there must be, for all life is
a struggle of some kind." But Buddha also pointed out that the
conflict in lJfe is not really between good and evil but between
knowledge and ignorance. We must remember that the sages refuse
to recognize evil as a positive independent existence but place it in
the limited view of the man who believes in it. Our task is to learn
wisdom from all experience, from pain as from pleasure, from cruelty
as from kindness, and to express in the arena of everyday life just
what we have learnt. In this way everything that happens gives us
a better foothold for future living.
Fourth and last of the lessons we may draw is that intelligence,
adequately sharpened, courageously accepted and selflessly applied,
is always the dominant factor in the end. Those who worship force
rather than brains as the highest social power should take a lesson
from the calm perspective of history. If force were the greatest thing
known the gigantic dinosaur would be king of this world, and the
prehistoric monsters would have inherited the earth long ago. Yet
how many herds of these animals have gone with the years and left
no heirs ? They have died out and disappeared. Why ? Because there
is something greater than mere force. That something is Thought.
Man-puny animal that he was in comparison with these giants-
conquered them all. He did it not by force, but by brains. There
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
no limit to what he shall be able to do when he shall have fully
harnessed this wondrous power of thought, so little understood
though it be. Science is only a stage in this growth. There are those
who have become afraid of it because they have become afraid of
what scientific war has done to man. But science is only a sword.
With it you may pierce through your problems or pierce through
your throat. Whatever you do the responsibility lies with yourself,
not with the sword. Intelligence blossoms as the flower of wellreasoned
thought and it matures gradually into the fruit of
spontaneous insight. That which begins in the primitive savage as
a glimmer of purely local inquisitiveness ends in the evolved man as
a passion for consummate understanding of all existence. The
innumerable lives on earth which intervene between both are but
lessons in the school of intelligence. When intelligence is only
partial, immature and incomplete it teaches man cunning, selfishness
and materialism. When full, mature and perfect it teaches him
wisdom, selflessness and truth.
Thus we return to the central thought that the world's greatest
need is not the discovery of a new scientific marvel or a new
momentary pleasure but the discovery of a new understanding of
life. It is not enough to seek things which complicate existence ;
it must also be comprehended. We must make up our minds whether
we wish to learn this truth through the pain which succeeds folly
or through the peace which succeeds philosophy. We who have
wandered this queer planet and kept its lessons at heart know
inwardly that neither the peaceful, primitive settings of Nature in
the colourful Orient nor the noisy, metropolitan complexities of man
in the colourless Occident constitute our true home. We know that
the latter lies in a remote place to which no rolling steamer, no
puffing engine, no creaking bullock-cart could ever bear us. For it
lies in the infinitude of the unpathed Overself.
The restoration of philosophy to its honoured place in the world
of living men rather than dead ones has yet to come. After all,
the world's search is not for men who must die but for truths which
will live. Philosophy will gather a few votaries because it is our
belief that it can be made intelligible to any intelligent man, even
if he has never previously studied it, although it cannot be made
intelligible to any highly egoistic man because, being nothing but a
human bundle of prejudices, he cannot care for truth. The ego is a
needle through whose eye the camel of truth cannot contrive to
squeeze its way. And truth is the proper target of all genuine
philosophy. Egoism and illusion are all that philosophy deprives us
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
of, but in return it assuredly proffers much. The poet will see the
radiance of the sunset but ignore the atmospheric conditions that
cause it. The scientist will see the atmospheric conditions and
ignore the radiance. The philosopher will see both atmospheric
change and vivid radiance and something more which neither poet
nor scientist knows, for he will know how to live amid the deceptive
flux of the evanescent in the fixed serenity of the REAL.
The philosopher is he who has come to the understanding of
himself, whilst his philosophy is his ordinary experience of the world
come to the understanding of itself. The fact that we close this
modern restatement of an ancient doctrine leaving loose ends of
thought and discovery, that we have loosened the knot of the worldproblem
but have not untied it, should not mislead its readers into
impatient judgment upon its contents. For there are no loose ends
in the hidden philosophy. Everything is perfectly tied, and he who
can master it will possess a finished attitude of mind. Meanwhile
the groundwork for the teachings of the final volume of this work
with which we shall humbly endeavour to ascend intellectually the
highest peaks of human thought has now been prepared. The basis
upon which the superstructure of ultimate truth may be reared has
now been laid down. Correct comprehension of those higher tenets,
which are reserved with regret, will cast a powerful searchlight upon
mankind's most perplexing riddles such as, what is this mystery of
Mind, what is the meaning of Death, what is God, what is Man,
why has Nature given us Dream and Sleep and so on.
Let us not lose ourselves in despair because the world seems so
bad. It is slowly coming of age amid apparent retrogression and
periodic lapses. Its marred childhood draws to an inevitable end
before our eyes ; its agonies are but the throes of adolescent change.
Those of us who have glimpsed both man and life beneath the surface
can remain steady and affirm, with American Emerson, that "the
age of the quadruped is to go out. The age of the brain and of the
hfeart come in." If we have been witnessing the woes of an epoch
struggling in its death-grapple, we are also about to witness the
arisal of a new era where a humane life for human beings may be
more possible.
We may honestly nourish the conviction that, amid all the
constant alternations of ethical stagnation and awakening during
mankind's long and painful journey from ignorance to truth, goodwill
must prevail in the end-not merely because we want to console
ourselves, but because the fundamental principle of life is
EPILOGUE : THE PHILOSOPHIC LIFE 
For seven thousand years at least according to the modern
histofian's reckoning, but for double that period according to ours,
the Sphinx has squatted before the Egyptian desert, propounding
its riddle to the unheeding ears of mankind in a silence as profound
as that of Christ's when he stood in the court before Pilate with the
shadow of a ghastly cross over him.
"What is truth?" asked the Roman Governor, thus echoing
man's most perennial question. Did Christ know ? Yet he did not
answer. His lips did not move. But his eyes fixed themselves on
those of Pilate's throughout that awed silence.
What he could not reveal by lip and tongue -for it transcends
both - none else can reveal. But the road that leads to such sublime
realization may be mapped out for the ardent seeker. Unto this
difficult endeavour an eager pen and white waiting pages have been
humbly dedicated.
This quality of the timelessness of truth thrust itself powerfully
into the present writer's meditations one evening in a land of
steaming jungles and dense forests, where forgotten Indian sages
had carried their culture long ago. He sat amid the vast deserted
ruins of ancient Angkor, in Cambodian Indo-China, and watched
the night lay siege to day and then waited for the stars to rise
outside its largest temple, so large that the enclosing wall was nearly
two and a half miles in perimeter. Here and there the great building
was ominously cracked ; mutilated statues of Ramayana's gods
strewed the ground ; lichen and creeper laced themselves around the
panels of carved goddesses ; thorns flourished thickly around him
as advance-guards of the invading jungle ; lizards crawled blasphemously
over the calm faces of fallen Buddhas; bats coated the
holy shrines with their nauseous excrement ; the bright constellations
of heaven gazed down on a scene of solemn desolation ; gone were
the proud glories of the Khmer people, but the sacred truths taught
by their sages still remained though their lips were dumb and their
bodies annihilated by time. Was it not wonderful that the
immemorial wisdom of these men, who flourished and taught when
Europe lay benighted in the dark age?, could be known and
studied today, and would be known and studied yet again
when another two millenniums had once more passed over this
planet ?
Out of the burial-urn of the Past this same wisdom has been
extricated. But because it has here been moulded in an ultra-modern
form to suit both our time and need, its authenticity or truth may
not be plainly recognizable to its present-day Indian inheritors. Yet
 THE HIDDEN sTEACHING BEYOND YOGA
there is not a single important tenet here which cannot be found
phrased in the old Sanskrit writings. We are only the inheritors and
not the discoverers of this ever-ancient but ever-new lore. Therefore
the writer bends in homage before the Himalayan intelligence of
those sages who, since untraceable antiquity, have kept Truth
alive.
THE END
I N D E X
  

INDEX
A
Acharya, Sankara, 
Action, , , -
Ammonius, , 
Angkor, 
Animals, 
Appearance, , , -, ,
, <>
Art, , , -
Asceticism, , , , 
Ashtavakra Sampita, 
Atiparama Swami, 
Attention, , , , , , ,
, 
Aurobindo Ghose, 
Authoritarianism, , -
B
Bacon, , , , , 
Balzac, , 
Beauty, , 
Berkeley, 
"Bhagavad Gita", , , 
Bible, , 
Body, , , , , , ,

Boehme, , 
Brabourne, Lord, ,
Brahmins, , 
Brain, , , , 
Brunton's defence, -
Buchman, Dr., 
Buckle, 
Buddha, , , , , , ,

Bunsen, 
C
Calmness, , -, , 
Change, , , , 
Charlatans, , 
Chinese technique, 
Colour, -, , , ,
, 
Concentration, -, 
Consciousness, -^, -,
, , 
Constructs, , 
Copernicus, 
Council of Constantinople, 
Council of Nicea, 
Credulity, 
D
Detachment, -
Determination, ,ioi,
Doubt, , . , 
Dream, , , , , 
Dying Man, 
E
Ecstasy, , , , , , 
Eddington, , , 
Education, , 
Ego, -, 
Einstein, , , -, -
, 
Emerson, , , , 
Emotion, -, 
Epicurius, 
Ethics, , -
Euclid, , , 
Evil, , 
Evolution, , , , 
Existence, , -
Experience, , , -, ,

Externality, -
F
Fact. , -
Fate, 
Feeling, -, 

 INDEX
Fichte, 
Fox, George, 
France, Anatole, 
Freewill, , -
G
Gandhi. , , , 
Germany, 
God, , , , , , , ,.
, io, , 
I
H
Haldane, Lord 
Hallaj, 
Hallucination, -, -,

Hegel, , 
Heisenberg, , 
Heredity, , , , 
Hidden teaching, , , >
, , , , , ,
. i" i, , i
Hui Ko, 
Hume, , 
I
" I " , -, , "

Idea, , -
Ignorance, , , , 
Illusions, , -, -,
-, 
India, , , , , -, 
Inge, Dean, ,
Insight, , 
Intellect, , 
Intuition, , , , 
Inventions, , 
J
Janaka, the King-sage, 
Jeans, , 
Jesus, , , , , , 
K
Kant, , , , , 
Karma, , -, 
Kitchener, 
Knowledge, , , -, , ,
- , , , , 
L
Laughter, 
Leisure, , 
Light, , 
"Lightning-flash", 
Logic, , -, ?, 
Lotze, 
M
Macaulay, 
MacMurray, Prof., 
Maharajah of Mysore, , , , 
Maharishee, , , , -, .
Man, , , , 
Mandukya, Secret Doctrine, 
Matter, , , , , -,
 ,
Maya, 
Meaning, , , -, -
Meditation, , , , , , ,
, n o , 
Memory, -
Mental abstraction, , 
Mental constructs, , , -,
, 
Mentalism,  -, , -
, 
Metaphysics, , , , , ,

Mind, , , -, , ,
-, , 
Mind-splitting, 
Monks, 
Mozart, 
Muhammed, , 
Mysticism and Mystics, , , ,
, , , , , n o , -
N
Nations, 
Nerves, , -
New Testament, , 
Newton's Law, , , 
Nicea, Council of, 
Nietzsche, 
Non-violence, 
INDEX 
o
Omar Khayy�m, , 
Origen, 
Overself, , 
P
Pain, 
Pantajali, 
Perception, , , , ,
-, , -
Percepts, , -, 
Philosophy, -, , , ,
, , , -, -
Physics, , 
Physiology, -, 
Planck, , , 
Plotinus, 
Plutarch, 
Prayer, , 
Psycho-analysis, , 
Psychology, , , 
Pythagoras, , , 
R
Rajarishee, 
Ramakrishna, 
Reality, , -, , 
Reason, -, -
Rebirth, -
Relativity, , , -, 
Religion, , , -, -,
> 
Reverie, 
( Rontgen, 
Russell, Bertrand, 
S
Sages, , , , , , -,
, , , , , 
Sanskrit, 
Science, , , , , , *>
, , , , , ,
, , , 
Self, 
Self-improvement, , 
Sensations, , "-, , ,

Senses, , -, , -,

Shankara, The Sage, , -
Sight, , -
Simha, General, 
Sleep, , 
Socrates, , , , 
Solidity, 
Space, -, ^, , 
Spencer, Herbert, ,  .
Sphinx, , 
Spiritual, , 
Standpoints, -
Substance, -
Swedenborg, ,
T
Things, -
Thinking, , no,  ,"
Time, , -, , 
Times, The, 
Trance, , , 
Transport, 
Truth, , -, , , , -,
, , , , -, ,
, , , , , 
U
Ultimate, , , , �* 
Unconscious Mind, , , 
Unity, , , , 
Universe, , , . 
V
Vasishta, The Sage, 
Vivekananda, 
W
Wang Yang Ming, 
War, , , , -
Whistler, 
Women, , , 
World as Thought, -
World Crisis, , , -, ~
Words, -, , 
Y
Yoga and Yogis, , , , , , ,
-" -
Youth, 
Z
Zen (Japanese Mysticism), , 



With Dr. Brunton's Compliments
The Hidden Teaching
Beyond Yoga
Some Misconceptions Cleared Up
Issued as an explanatory supplement to the book, which is published by Rider
& Co. at  s. This supplement will be supplied free to all who have purchased
the book and make application for a copy to Rider & Co.,  Princes Gate,
London, S.W'.-j
BECAUSE of its apparently abrupt
divergence from the line formerly
taken by me, the recent publication
of my new book bearing the above
title has aroused so much comment,
controversy and criticism
among those familiar with my
earlier works that I owe it as a
duty to these numerous persons-
no less than to myself-to proffer
this note of explanation. And
when such an explanation involves
touching upon principles of vital
importance to every seeker after
truth, its value, even to those who
neither know nor care for my work,
destroys the last lingering hesitations
which may have kept me
from descending into a disturbed
and disturbing atmosphere.
First of all, let it be frankly
stated that the book contains certain
defects and some obscurities
which of themselves have undoubtedly
contributed to the creation
of this position. One day,
when the difficult circumstances
under which most of it was written
come to be revealed, the feat of
writing, despite them, such a highly
philosophical work at all may well
be wondered at. For it was written
amid the scrappy intervals and
stolen leisure of a time-pressed
life, harassed by wartime duties and
uncertainties and beset by the
varied handicaps and sudden illnesses
of existence in the heatfilled
tropics. But perhaps the
main cause of these obscurities lay
elsewhere. For three years a large
international group of students had
waited impatiently for this
promised volume, and the echoes
of their impatience constantly
reached my ears. The need of
assisting them towards a correct
attitude regarding the war was also
urgent and imperative. Finally I
decided that they could not be
asked to wait longer, and rather
than let them do so I would release
for publication what was so far
available, however imperfect and
incomplete it be, and defer its
completion to a second volume.
Thus the hidden teaching was
presented to the extent of only an
elementary fragment of its full
content.
I have to put up with the fact
that this new book is so different
in character and tone from those
which have preceded it that the
general reader is going to have a
difficult time should he plunge into
it with the light-heartedness with
which he may have plunged into
the others. Its pages made hard
writing for me and must make
harder reading for others. It needs
sustained and concentrated attention,
demands keen thinking, and
propounds tough problems. For
it offers a pabulum which is difficult
to digest, being occupied with
metaphysical matters rather than
with mystic experiences. It is indeed
intended more for the select
discerning few who have made the
- Supplement,
pole-star of truth their main guide
amid the trials of conflicting doctrine
and the temptations of
natural prejudice. Very few have
ever mastered this higher doctrine
by their own unaided efforts.
Whether known to history or not,
a competent personal teacher has
usually been present in the background
of nearly everyone who has
learnt it. The difficulties of finding
one's own way through such metaphysical
subtleties from beginning
to end are not less than the difficulties
of finding one's way on a
black moonless night through a
dense forest. The doctrine is so
abstruse and so unfamiliar that the
rninds of most students necessarily
bristle with thorny queries and
questions. Continued enlightenment
of their understanding and
continuous elucidation of their
perplexities is inevitably required.
It is unfortunate, therefore, that
a serious consequence of presenting
such knotty material in such
an unfinished form is that grave
misconceptions concerning the
teaching itself easily arise. It avails
me little to point out that first sight
delivers quick judgment, whereas
second sight reserves it. The misconceptions
have already arisen,
and must be removed. It was only
when the manuscript was being
printed off, i.e. when it was too
late for me to alter it sufficiently,
as  was then thousands of miles
away in India, that I had the leisure
to go through my copy of it. I
then perceived how easily certain
passages might create these wrong
impressions.
First and foremost is the notion
that because I have revealed the
limitations of yoga and mysticism
(the two terms may roughly be
equated for our purposes) as
ordinarily known, because I have
asserted that they do not yield the
ultimate experience possible to
man, therefore they are vain pursuits
and illusory activities, and
consequently the strong advocacy
of meditation made in my former
books falls to the ground. Such a
misapprehension is queer and fantastic.
For the very contrary is the
case. I consider the practice of
meditation to be as essential for
everybody as ever it was, and I also
consider it one of the most useful
and most profitable pursuits a man
can engage in. And it will be seen
when the second volume of this
book comes to be completed and
published that certain meditation
techniques comprise part of its
most valuable content. But because
these techniques are impersonal
in spirit and universal in
outlook, because they seek to provide
ultimate realization rather
than personal satisfaction, and
because they are separated in time
from ordinary mysticism by the
metaphysical discipline (largely
provided through the studies of
the first volume), I have been compelled
to call them "ultra-mystic"
and "philosophic" and thus avoid
confusion with the better-known
but inferior ones. If, therefore, I
ventured to criticize the latter, it
was only to prepare the way for
the coming revelation of these
almost unknown but superior
techniques ! This must not be
mistaken to mean that the earlier
work in yoga is in vain. On the
contrary it is of the greatest value,
for the higher level cannot be
attained if this preparatory stage
has not been passed through. To
imagine that I was disowning
mystical experience altogether is
utterly to misconceive my purpose.
In spite of the seemingly conflicting
tendencies of my earlier writing,
the basic doctrines which were
there affirmed still remain tenable,
even though their stretch is now
seen to be not far enough.
For precisely the same reason, I
deliberately emphasized the in-
 Supplement,
sufficiencies of ordinary mysticism,
the defects of ordinary yogis and
the mistakes commonly made by
meditators. It was to guard
students against possible extravagances
that I warned them that
their work was not done with the
reception of either exaltation or
message, vision or voice. Who
among them has not fallen into the
self-admiring error of imagining
that the first ecstatic exaltation is a
direct communion with God or of
taking the last oracular message
from within as being the last word
from God ? Who has not heard of
those who have degenerated into
deluded visionaries or have fallen
into exaggerated egoism or become
foolish sentimentalists or set
up a cult to exploit others financially
? These are real dangers
which surround the yogi, the
occultist and the mystic, and which
claim their victims throughout the
world. And they arise because the
student does not adequately understand
what really happens to him
during his mystic reverie, yogic
trance, clairvoyant vision or ecstatic
absorption.
The seeker begins with faith,
yes, but he must end with knowledge.
God requires not only his
vague belief from afar but his
actual perception from close by.
Only when his thoughts are made
precise, clear and factual, when his
feelings are given an almost clairvoyant
self-understanding, and
when his experiences are able to
fall with complete comprehension
into their proper place, can he hope
to escape the aforementioned
dangers.
We can grasp this point better
by taking the simple analogy of a
child and an old man travelling on
a trans-continental journey. The
one will pass through the same
varied changes of environment,
vehicle and experience involved as
the other. Nevertheless, where the
old man will thoroughly appreciate
the meaning and worth of each
change, the child will have only a
more or less vague idea of it.
Where the child enters a bank and
is given money for the journey, all
the chain of transactions that lies
behind the simple act will be entirely
unknown to it, whereas the
old man will be fully cognisant of
them. In consequence of this
ignorance the child may tear up
and throw away a four-figure
cheque merely because it believes
the cheque to be a useless piece of
paper, whereas it may hug strongly
a bag of copper coins merely because
the latter's heaviness seems
to indicate greater worth. Similarly
the mystic may have remarkable
experiences or exalted meditations,
but may not understand
accurately what is happening to
him. He may, as we so often find
in the history of mysticism, mistake
the unimportant, unessential
and accidental items for the important,
essential and basal. For
instance, the clairvoyant visions,
occult experiences or oracular intuitive
messages which may come
to him may be taken as being more
important than the sense of worldimmateriality
and of inner peace
which he may experience along
with them. He will thus be liable
to minimize what should be magnified
and to magnify what should
be minimized. Moreover, unless
he can tell with certainty the precise
origin of each vision, voice,
message or experience, he is
always liable to make egregious
mistakes. Finally he is also likely
to exaggerate the importance of his
own ego because it has been fortunate
enough to receive these wonderful
experiences, and thus he will
strengthen the very barrier which
stands in his way to the highest
goal. For he will one day find that
he has exhausted his exaltation,
that the dread experience of "the
 - Supplement,
dark night of the soul", of utter
"spiritual dryness", has descended
grimly upon him. He could not
understand before that when he
permitted his ecstatic experiences
to please him unduly and to flatter
his ego unhealthily, they were
weakening him. He may now discover
that it is not enough to be
as innocent as a child; it is also
necessary for him to be as wise as
a serpent. For the universal existence
of which he is but a part must
be understood, and the faculties of
thought which are needed to
understand it must be developed
accordingly. Hence when King
Malinda asked the Buddhist sage
Nagasena why children could not
attain Nirvana, the reply was that
a child "cannot with a mind so
limited comprehend that which is
vast and endless".
The mystic who imagines that
he has attained to the Overself has
really attained the edge but not
the centre of its flame. For if he
has not undergone a certain kind
of discipline belonging to the ultimate
path, his effort will be a
premature leap, and he will be
unable to remain in the ecstatic
state which he fondly believes has
been permanently attained. Indeed,
the very forces which he has
evoked will sooner or later hurl
him back, and this reaction will
bring him that terrible and melancholy
experience which nearly all
advanced mystics have known. St.
John of the Cross called it "the
dark night of the soul"; St.
Teresa called it "the great dereliction"
; the medieval Indian mystics
like Dadu called it "the phase
of separation" ; Suso-the medieval
European Christian saint-tells
how he suffered for ten years from
a sense of sheer abandonment by
God ; the author of The Cloud of
Unknowing tells of that terrible
period when the mystic "mayest
neither sec Him clearly by the light
of understanding nor feel Him in
the sweetness of love" ; the Persian
Sufi mystics describe eloquently
"the agony of separation"; and
modern Western students of mysticism
like Underhill, Inge, de
Sanctis and Barbanson describe it
roughly as a period of spiritual
lassitude, stagnation, barrenness
and dryness following a period of
intense mystical activity and ecstatic
experience. But it is most important
to note that "the dark
night" is an experience which
happens only to highly advanced
mystics. For it is the automatic
effort of Nature to secure balance,
it is a pointing finger directing the
mystic who has finished his mystical
path to take to 
and thus bring the world which he
has disdained or neglected once
again within his purview. Something
is obviously needed to check
the gross extravagances of mysticism,
to chasten the gullible tendencies
of its votary, and to teach him
to separate what is essential in his
experiences from what is accidental.
And this he can find in the
metaphysical discipline. He must
have the courage coldly to dissect
every inner experience, mercilessly
using as his instrument a rapier-like
sharpened intelligence. He must
not take his intuitions for granted,
but must take the trouble to verify
them. He must have the patience
to study the true metaphysical
meaning and purpose of the universe
as of the Overself, to explore
the mystery of time, space, matter
and mind, to probe into the constitution
of the human ego and to
lay bare the most secret workings
of his thoughts, words and acts.
With the knowledge thus gained,
he can proceed to test the truth,
gauge the value and regulate the
course of his inner development.
And as the latter passes through
this purifying crucible of rational
metaphysical examination, he will
- Supplement,
discover how easy it is to set up
mere fictions in the firm belief that
they are solid facts, and how hard
to keep to the straight and narrow
path which leads to the sublime
Overself. Such a pioneer researcher
as a Blavatsky, whose
name is so often invoked for support
to mysticism, occultism and
yoga, herself admitted in the
guarded hints given on page 
of The Secret Doctrine (Vol. , Los
Angeles facsimile edition) that
philosophy alone could "throw
absolute and final light" and that
"outside of metaphysics no occult
philosophy, no esotericism is possible",
although her monumental
book does not itself deal with the
universe from this ultimate standpoint.
Metaphysical reasoning has
here a twofold utility. It is needed
not only to act as a corrective for
mystic experience but also to
point out the further course which
meditation should take. And that
course lies in the direction of attunement
to the universal impersonal
ALL.
All this is a preamble to the
explanation that the harmony with
all being, the unity with the world,
which the mystic certainly experiences,
is felt but not understood, is
temporary and not enduring, is indirect
and not immediate, is tentative
and not final. So long as the
ego lives fruitfully within him, all
such cessation of egoistic experience
must necessarily be transitory.
The ego can be mastered and the
mystic experience, by dulling the
egoistic feelings, affords a powerful,
necessary and pregnant hint of
this truth, but it remains only a
hint so long as the reason cannot
take up and irrefutably prove, unshakably
know with sharp insight,
what the emotion intermittently
feels during meditation. Hence
metaphysics must step in and be
coupled with meditation. The " I"
can finally be defeated in one way
alone, and that is by traversing the
ultimate path. This combines a
twofold process, first, by studying
and understanding its true nature,
by reaching through repeated and
sustained examination and analysis
the comprehension of its ultimate
character; second, by practising
the ultra-mystic contemplation
exercises, which lift consciousness
above the intellect and the ego
altogether. The knowledge had in
this manner becomes a weapon
wherewith ego can be conquered
with surety. The adventure of the
yoga of philosophic discernment
must join the yogas of devotion
and mental concentration ; all are
necessary if a true and enduring
experience of the hidden unity of
all existence is to be gotten.
Let it be remembered that the
critical points which I make do not
come from an opponent of yoga
but from one who daily and devotedly
practises it; they represent
the observations of a friend,
and it is the friends who have the
courage to tell us the truth about
ourselves rather than flatter us
who help us most. It is therefore
a gross misunderstanding of my
new book to say that it counsels
the aspirant to end his yoga
practice when it really counsels
him to mend it. Meditation must
not be dropped. Only the foolish
will ever do so. For it is a move
in the right direction. Only it
must be deepened and widened.
Such deepening and widening constitutes
. Because
we have passed into a loftier dimension
of thought or experience we
should not in our enthusiasm for
it commit the error of renouncing
as worthless what has already been
attained. Because we have won an
ampler comprehension of things,
we arc not called upon to reject
what is true and useful in its own
if more limited place. I have
made a case for the need of still
- Supplement,
higher attainment, and such a need
can only be satisfied by the ultimate
path. In this way the first
volume has broken the ground for
seeds to be sown by the second,
wherein the supreme metaphysical
keystone plus the ultra-mystic
meditation practices will be offered.
The second misconception which
requires to be corrected is the most
dangerous of all. It prevails chiefly
among European and American
readers, for Asiatics grasp the point
better. Despite the plain hints and
open statements scattered throughout
the first volume, they have
misunderstood me to assert that
the faculty of reason is sufficient of
itself to attain the highest truth.
This is a gross error and will certainly
not receive any support from
my pen. I have explained in the
book the difference between intellect
and reason, showing the
superiority of the latter, but pointing
out that it does not attain its
fullest development unless it can
be raised from the concrete level
of science to function vigorously
on the abstract level of metaphysics.
I have stressed the need
of verifying the findings of authority,
intuition, intellect and mystic
experience by reason, but I have
not set up its final supremacy.
Such an exalted position must be
reserved for a grander faculty.
Hence if I have given the impression
that this ultimate path is purely
an intellectual process, then I have
not succeeded in communicating
my ideas. It is initially rational, yes,
but it is ultimately ultramystical.
For metaphysics may fall beneath
the wheels of as many errors
and dangers as mysticism. Its
greatest possible error is when it
would abstract and set up a single
part of man's being-the reason-
as alone entitled to satisfaction,
when it would thin down all experience
to purely logical and
rational experience, and when it
would intellectualize all the fullness
of existence into a dried-up
formula. Life is more complex
than that. For if the ordinary yogi
is like a blind man who can move
but cannot see clearly where he is
going, the ordinary metaphysician
is like a cripple who can see clearly
enough but cannot move at all.
Metaphysics, because of its intellectualist
basis and rationalist
bias and because of its disdain of
the claims of feeling and experience
as illegitimate, can only arrive at
one-sided abstractions. For feeling
and experience are integral parts of
human existence and a sound,
adequate and true outlook must be
comprehensive enough to stress
their claims. We need a wider integration
than that which metaphysics
gives, because it passes
everything through the sieve of the
reason and therefore does not do
justice to what is extra-rational.
Its subtlest concept must be inadequate
to interpret the Real, i.e.
the Overself. Metaphysics points
to reality, but leaves it as an unattained
possibility. It offers the
conceptual pattern of truth but
leaves it as an unexplored actuality.
For metaphysics must in the end
point beyond itself. It is but a
stepping-stone to ultra-mysticism.
Reason can never give more
than mediate knowledge. This is
its inescapable limitation. It can
only enter into the relational order
of things, and is thus for ever
confined to the circle of relativity.
Such is the dismal result of the
reason's own unpre judicial enquiry
and yet a result of the highest
consequence to truth-lovers-
however humiliating it be to those
who would foolishly place reason
on the highest pedestal-as clearly
shown by Kant in the West and
Shankara in the East. The true
tells us of the real, informs us that
it exists and makes its factuality
known to us. But the true does
- Supplement,
not bring the real within our consciousness,
does not turn its factuality
into actuality and does not
enable us to feel it as a content of
experience. For the real can
neither be known by finite thinking
nor communicated in finite
thoughts. The Overself cannot be
defined in positive conceptual
terms. The failure to comprehend
this, the insistence on squeezing it
into rationalist forms, is to commit
the intellectualist fallacy which
lurks underneath every metaphysical
claim to cognize ultimate truth.
Metaphysics finds its fitting nemesis
at the culmination of its own
activity, when it must always lead
to the explicit recognition of its
inadequacy to absorb the real. Let
it not set up its own limitations on
a pedestal as though they were
virtues, and worship them. The
first service of reasoned thinking
is to draw our attention to the fact
that the Overself exists, but its
final service is to perceive its own
inability to reveal it. The mediate
service is to tell us what that immaterial
reality is and is not; but
we may think of or about the
Overself without actually knowing
it. Such knowledge can only come
outside thinking, which means that
it can only come within some kind
of mystical apprehension. Reason
rises to its highest metaphysical
level when, understanding its own
restrictions, it eliminates itself, saying
: "I, too, am but an instrument
of Being and not Being
itself."
The concept of the Overself is
thus only an intellectualization of
reality, and can never be a substitute
for the experience of the
Overself. It indicates and anticipates
this experience, but does not
bestow it. What reason establishes
as truth can be made real only by
the ultra-mystic insight. One
primary function of metaphysics
is to discover what truth cannot
be, and to correct the understanding
of it. Thus it affords a precautionary
check to the questing
mind and prepares it to receive the
ineffable illumination. If it attempts
to grasp reality it must
then find how inadequate it is.
At the point where it finishes it
must persuade the mind to have
resort to ultra-mysticism. This is
not the suppression of reason but
the recognition of its limitation.
It knows full well what it can and
what it cannot do. For metaphysics
develops that critical spirit
of cold analytical appraisal which
is essential to separate the false
from the true, the illusory from the
real. Such criticism cannot destroy
what is true in mysticism, but only
confirm it, whilst it preserves its
practitioner from becoming the
dupe of unworthy or incompetent
teachers.
It will now be seen how far away
from the truth are those who have
thought I have displaced mystic insight
for mere reasoning. This
article should clear up any further
possibility of falling into such an
error. If, therefore, my book
praised the power of reason to
adjudge the truth of ideas and to
verify the experiences of authority,
intuition and mystic visions, it was
only to prepare the way for the
work of the second volume, where
the reader would be confronted by
the grander doctrine of the Overself
and where the reason would
be forced to confess its own inadequacy.
Thus would emerge the
need of the superior faculty of insight,
but this could be fully
described only then. Moreover, I
did not take the first volume
farther than the doctrine of mentalism
and reason sufficed for that.
However, reading through the
written manuscript with a leisure
which I did not possess in the
slightest when writing it, I frankly
confess that the last section of
- Supplement,
Chapter VII is likely to leave my
readers in a state of confusion
about my attitude towards reason.
Because of my critical evaluation
of what is called intuition, they
will find it difficult to reconcile my
strong emphasis upon reason with
further remarks made in the same
section, such as "the method of
reasoning upon all available facts
raised by the utmost concentration
to the high stature of immediate
insight, is precautionary and preliminary
to such a source which is
insight and transcends reasoning."
I have deliberately selected this
sentence because it contains an
obvious clerical error, one which
I endeavoured to get corrected on
discovery, but was too late owing
to the delays brought about by my
being in India and by the book
being printed in the West, and
accentuated by the difficulties of
wartime communication. The correct
sentence is as follows : "the
method of reasoning upon all
available facts raised by the utmost
concentration to the highest stature,
is precautionary and preliminary
to such a source which is
immediate insight and transcends
reasoning." The mere fact that the
sentence closes with the words and
transcends reasoning should have
sufficed to indicate to perspicuous
readers that reason was not here
regarded as being the ultimate
faculty for finding truth. But confusions
and doubts will arise because
I did not attempt to describe
this ultimate faculty of immediate
insight, merely noting its existence,
whereas I went at detailed length
into the virtues of reason. The
explanation of this course is that
for the purposes of the first
volume I had to stop with reason
because the nature of insight and
the ultra-mystic methods of its
attainment properly belonged to
the final exposition of the hidden
teaching and were therefore reserved
for the second volume. It
would have been more helpful to
readers had I added a few pages
briefly explaining this difference
between reason and insight as well
as between intuition and insight,
and I greatly regret not having
done so, and shall conclude this
reparation by touching on the
latter point now.
Why have I refused to lend the
name of "intuition" to this culminating
process, although I admit
that it is ultra-mystical ? Why instead
do I term it "insight" ? The
first answer is, as explained in my
new book, that intuition is not
always reliable, and must needs be
checked by reason. The second
answer is that intuition is not
always at our command; it may
be here today but gone tomorrow.
But the most important answer is
that intuition is something which
comes to you, whereas insight is
something which you have earned,
which you have consequently
made your own. Therefore the
sage can never lose his insight,
whereas the mystic may lose his
intuition at any time. The sage
can always know the truth about
existence because his insight is
always there, whereas the mystic
may sometimes feel the truth of
existence and sometimes not I
However, it will be easy to misunderstand
my attitude towards
intuition. I do not for a single
moment deny the fact of its existence,
and indeed could not do so
without denying my own past
experience and the present experience
of many others. What is
really meant is that the average
person can never be certain whether
a particular intuition which occurs
to him at any moment is genuinely
such or not. Such certitude can
come only to the sage, that is, to the
man who has comprehended and
realized the ultimate truth about the
universe. Such a man is the rarest
- Supplement,
of creatures. I have therefore
preferred to name his faculty "insight",
so as to differentiate it from
this uncertainty which wraps itself
around the ordinary man's intuition.
The sage's insight enables
him always to act with the assurance
that he is right, and to think
with the confidence that his conclusions
are accurate. Moreover,
it is not a fitful faculty but always
at his command, whereas no ordinary
man dare honestly claim that
he can command intuition at will
or that it is always reliable. Insight
is infallible, and therefore it
can be used to check reasoning,
whereas the ordinary man must
check his intuitions by reason. Intuition
is blind; it may be accurate,
but it does not know why
what it feels is accurate. Insight,
on the contrary, is the fruition of
complete understanding and fullness
of perception.
A further difference between intuition
and insight is this: the
former extends to thoughts and
things, whereas the latter is confined
to knowledge of one object
alone-the supreme reality, the
Overself. Nobody can ever succeed
in dragging insight down to
the level of giving correct guidance
to enable him to negotiate material
circumstances, whatever they be,
whereas anybody may get an intuition
about the winning horse
in a race, the true character of a
human being or the worth of a
doctrine.
Insight shares with intuition the
same qualities of spontaneous
arisal, birth from within the self
and unexpectedness, but after this
it cannot bear comparison, for it
works on a different and deeper
level.
I call insight an ultra-mystic
faculty only to indicate that its
nature is nearer intuition than
intellect, that it cannot be thoughtdetermined
and that it arises more
from meditation than from ratiocination.
Mystics who cannot
understand this point should consider
that their own experience may
admit of degrees of depth as well
as of varying areas of comprehension.
Insight is the ultimate degree,
the widest possible area.
There are thus two kinds of
mysticism: ordinary and ultramystifc.
The first is preparatory
and disciplinary, whereas the other
is ultimate and culminatory. The
first fits the mind and forms the
character, while the other fits the
metaphysician-mystic for his transformation
into a philosopher,
which is the grand climax of all
these preparations. We must not
confuse the two stages which are
separated from each other by the
metaphysical discipline. Meditation
is practised in both, but the
exercises differ greatly. These
higher and formerly secret exercises,
which implement the metaphysical
doctrines, will be revealed
in the second volume of my work,
which will answer in the fullest
possible way for the first time in
Western writing the question:
How are we to know the Overself
as it is ? For thinking gives only
an indirect view of existence,
whilst feeling gives only a personal
view. The solution to our difficulty
lies in the unfoldment of
insist. And this arises only when
feeling surrenders the ego and
thought stills itself into quietude,
when the reports of feeling refined
by calm meditation are checked,
scrutinized and confirmed by
thought sharpened to a keen edge
of rationality, and when both
metaphysics and mysticism have
done their work and departed.
This insight is neither intellect nor
intuition, as ordinarily understood :
it is an ultra-mystical faculty.
What I am trying to say is that
it is not right to look for final
knowledge and experience of the
- Supplement,
Overself to the immature and halfgrown
mystic, but rather to the
full -grown, philosophically-trained
mystic, and that what is commonly
believed to be the final mystic
experience is in reality followed by
a further and more advanced stage.
For a protracted maturation is required
to bring the young plant
into complete bloom. And it is
only at this final stage that metaphysics,
which was the higher
octave of science, can and must
become converted into its own
higher octave : philosophy. We
must differentiate between metaphysics
and philosophy, between
rational ratiocinative speculation
and actual ultra-mystic verification.
A man may be a learned metaphysician
when seated in his study,
but an utter fool when moving in
the street. A philosopher, however,
seeks to live as befits his
name, i.e. wisely, whether it be the
life of thought or the life of action.
Although we are compelled to
make a sharp separation of mysticism
from metaphysics in the earlier
stages of this quest, when the
purpose of that separation has
been achieved and our mystical
experiences have been purified,
guided, disciplined and verified by
metaphysical reflection, we are
later compelled to abolish the distinction
between both. In that
ultimate stage they are no longer
contraries, no longer exclude each
other, but merge in the ultramystical
revelation that is insight.
Thus, too, the currents of feeling
and reasoning which formerly
diverged from each other, now
meet and harmonize. Nor could
this insight have been born in any
other way except from the marriage
of mystical striving and metaphysical
activity. The process
whereby every metaphysician must
become a mystic if he would attain
the goal is as inevitable as the
process whereby every mystic must
become a metaphysician for the
same reason. Tlie traditional bifurcation
between them ultimately
becomes artificial although fully
justifiable formerly. The distinction
between truth got by reasoning
and truth got by feeling is
suppressed by the subsequent
mysterious experience of insight
which embraces and fuses the
profoundest elements of both, and
yet somehow transcends them also.
Religion may convert a man in a
moment; mysticism may give him
its results in ecstatic hours within
a few years ; but philosophy is the
labour of a lifetime.
Reflection has taught me and
experience has convinced me that
to take any particular factor in life
like mysticism, to set it up alone
and to exalt it above all others, is a
partial and misleading procedure,
and one therefore to be deprecated.
I do not believe that it is possible
to arrive at a sound and sane view
of life unless it is a geheral view,
unless it is sufficiently well-informed
to accept all the principal
factors into their justly-proportioned
proper places and, finally,
unless it relates them all together
into a complete whole.
Let us not lose ourselves in
fanatical extremes of doctrine, but
remember that wisdom lies in
picking out here and there the
minute grains of truth amid the
widespread mass of rubbish. It is
a mistake to regard the yoga of
body-control, for instance, with
contempt, and to term it a lower
path. It deals with the purification,
strengthening and healing of
that most important part of the
self-the body. No amount of
wishful thinking or metaphysical
magic on the part of a student can
spirit this body away. It is there
and has to be reckoned with. If,
for instance, he has a severe toothache
and sits down to what he
hopes will be a blissful meditation,
- Supplement,
the pain of the tooth wiJl continue
to trouble him, to disturb his
thoughts and to destroy his inner
bliss. How foolish then for anyone
to regard with contempt a
method of putting the body into
good order so that it shall not
Jiinder the yogi's mental aspirations.
Therefore none of the
three conventional yoga groups
really exclude each other, none is
really fit to stand on its own feet,
but all are inseparably associated
with each other and must simultaneously
or successively supplement
each other in actual study and
practice.
The various yogas-physical,
emotional, intellectual and ultramystical-
are traditionally made to
follow one another and students
usually graduate from the one to
the other. But it would be better
and wiser under the altered conditions
of modern times if they
could practise them as simultaneously
as possible, so far as the
first three are concerned. It is
only the fourth that is really to be
entered independently.
It is unfortunate that this larger
view of yoga has been lost with the
lapse of time in India, so that
pundits come to exaggerate the
value of the intellect, ascetics fuss
themselves to death with bodily
regimes and mystics wallow in a
bath of unchecked emotion, whilst
all three mutually despise each
other. The philosopher does not
fall into this error. He realizes that
human life rests on the tripod of
thought, feeling and action, and
that genuine growth cannot be
made piecemeal but must be
balanced and is to be made only
integrally. It is as absurd and
chimerical to take the intellectual
yoga to be high and holy as it is to
take the emotional yoga to be inferior
and illusory. All three paths
must be followed to attain a
genuine initiation into philosophy
-as distinct from mere metaphysics-
and moreover they must
be followed as simultaneously as
possible. For the whole being of
man must be worked upon and not
merely a part. We must make use
of all parts of human nature if it is
to be properly developed. Philosophy
therefore deals not merely
with the mind alone but also with
the feeling and with the flesh.
Wisdom is consummated when it
has understanding and control of
these three.
Despite appearances, the course
is consistent throughout. The
God whom we find by meditation
in the heart is the first step towards
the God whom we find in the
whole universe. The force which
drew us away from the world in
our ascetic effort to become selfdetached,
is inevitably followed by
the force which drives us back to
the world in selfless service.
I have not abandoned the principles
advocated in my earlier
books, but have merely put them
where they properly belong. Hence
nobody else need abandon them
either, nor because  have pointed
to further steps complain, as some
have complained, that I have cut
away the step on which they already
stand. Others feel that what
they had hitherto regarded as
sacrosanct has been relegated to
the useless and illusory, and thus
their greatest support torn away.
I can only reply that they have
utterly mistaken my words. They
have not been asked to throw
personal intuitions or mystical feelings
away but only to cleanse them.
They have not been asked to renounce
yoga but only to readjust
the values apportioned to their
yogic experiences. Meditation is
as indispensable to them now as
ever it was. God is not illusory
but the greatest reality of human
existence ; only we have to purify
our ideas of Him. Let it be ad-
 Supplement,
mitted that the Overself of the
mystic is not the Overself of the
philosopher. The God of the
African savage was not the God of
Prime Minister Gladstone who
laid down the law for him, yet both
were right in their attitude of
veneration. What I have formerly
written about the Overself and the
way to it is still true for all those
who have not successfully passed
through the second degree. They
are the great majority. And if they
feel that strength or desire or opportunity
are lacking for this ultimate
path, they need not attempt
to tackle it but may rest content
with remembering that it exists
and occasionally reading a little
about it. This, too, will bear good
fruit in time. Nevertheless, the few
who care to mount higher with me
now have the opportunity to do so.
And the urge will come to them
because they will have the eyes to
see that I have prepared the way
for a revelation still to come, which
will be essentially more "spiritual'
than any yet vouchsafed in my
writings. I may fitly conclude with
some words written nearly a century
and a half ago by that
illustrious Frenchman Louis St.
Martin:
The only initiation which I preach and
seek with all the ardour of my soul is
that by which we enter into the heart of
God and make God's heart enter into us.
. . . There is no other mystery to arrive
at this holy initiation than to go more
and more down into the depths of our
being and not let go till we can bring
forth the living, vivifying root.

the
hidden teaching
beyond yoga

paul brunton