II
PRAKRITI AND PURUSHA
We will take up the categories we have been discussing and come to the particulars. If we remember we started with Prakriti, or Nature. This Nature is called by the Sânkhya philosophers indiscrete or inseparate, which is defined as perfect balance of the materials in it; and it naturally follows that in perfect balance there cannot be any motion. All that we see, feel, and hear is simply a compound of motion and matter. In the primal state, before this manifestation, where there was no motion, perfect balance, this Prakriti was indestructible, because decomposition comes only with limitation. Again, according to the Sânkhya, atoms are not the primal state. This universe does not come out of atoms, they may be the secondary, or tertiary state. The original matter may compound into atoms, which in turn compound into greater and greater things, and as far as modern investigations go, they rather point towards that. For instance, in the modern theory of ether, if you say ether is also atomic, that will not solve the proposition at all. To make it clearer, say that air is composed of atoms, and we know that ether is everywhere, interpenetrating, omnipresent, and these atoms are floating, as it were, in ether. If ether again be composed of atoms, there will still be some space between two atoms of ether. What fills up that? And again there will be another space between the atoms of that which fills up this space. If you propose that there is another ether still finer you must still have something to fill that space, and so it will be regressus in infinitum, what the Sânkhya philosophers call anavasthâ,—never reaching a final conclusion. So the atomic theory cannot be final. According to the Sânkhyas this Nature is omnipresent, one omnipresent mass of Nature in which are the causes of everything that exists. What is meant by cause? Cause is the more subtle state of the manifested state, the unmanifested state of that which becomes manifested. What do you mean by destruction? It is reverting to the cause,—the materials out of which a body is composed go back into their original state. Beyond this idea of destruction, any idea such as annihilation, is on the face of it absurd. According to modern physical sciences, it can be demonstrated that all destruction means that which Kapila called ages ago “reverting to the causal state.” Going back to the finer form is all that is meant by destruction. You know how it can be demonstrated in a laboratory that matter is indestructible. Those of you who have studied chemistry will know that if you burn a candle and put a caustic pencil inside a glass tube beneath the candle, when the candle has burned away, if you take the caustic pencil out of the tube and weigh it, you will find that the pencil will weigh exactly its previous weight, plus the weight of the candle,—the candle became finer and finer, and went on to the caustic. So that in this present stage of our knowledge, if any man claims that anything becomes annihilated, he is only making himself absurd. It is only uneducated people who would advance such a proposition, and it is curious that modern knowledge coincides with what those old philosophers taught. The ancients proceeded in their inquiry by taking up mind as the basis; they analyzed the mental part of this universe and came to certain conclusions, while modern science is analyzing the physical part, and it also comes to the same conclusions. Both analyses must lead to the same truth.
You must remember that the first manifestation of this Prakriti in the cosmos is what the Sânkhyas called Mahat. We may call it universal intelligence, the great principle; that is the literal meaning. The first manifestation of Prakriti is this intelligence; I would not translate it by self-consciousness, because that would be wrong. Consciousness is only a part of this intelligence, which is universal. It covers all the grounds of consciousness, sub-consciousness and super-consciousness. In Nature, for instance, certain changes are going on before your eyes which you see and understand, but there are other changes so much finer that no human perception can catch them. They are from the same cause, the same Mahat is making these changes. There are other changes, beyond the reach of our mind or reasoning, all this series of changes is in this Mahat. You will understand it better when I come to the individual. Out of this Mahat comes the universal egoism, and these are both material. There is no difference between matter and mind save in degree. It is the same substance in finer or grosser form; one changes into the other, and this will exactly coincide with the modern physiological research, and it will save you from a great deal of fighting and struggling to believe that you have a mind separate from the brain, and all such impossible things. This substance called Mahat changes into the material egoism, the fine state of matter, and that egoism changes into two varieties. In one variety it changes into the organs. Organs are of two kinds—organs of sensation and organs of reaction. They are not the eyes or nose, but something finer, what you call brain centres, and nerve centres. This egoism becomes changed, and out of this material are manufactured these centres and these nerves. Out of the same substance, the egoism, is manufactured a yet finer form, the tanmâtras, fine particles of matter, those for instance which strike your nose and cause you to smell. You cannot perceive these fine particles, you can only know that they are there. These tanmâtras are manufactured out of that egoism, and out of these tanmâtras, or subtle matter, is manufactured the gross matter, air, water, earth, and all the things that we see and feel. I want to impress this on your mind. It is very hard to grasp it, because, in Western countries, the ideas are so queer about mind and matter. It is hard to take these impressions out of our brains. I myself had a tremendous difficulty, being educated in Western philosophy in my childhood. These are all cosmic things. Think of this universal extension of matter, unbroken, one substance, undifferentiated, which is the first state of everything, and which begins to change just as milk becomes curd, and it is changed into another substance called Mahat, which in one state manifests as intelligence and in another state as egoism. It is the same substance, and it changes into the grosser matter called egoism; thus is the whole universe itself built, as it were, layer after layer; first undifferentiated Nature (Avyaktam), and that changes into universal intelligence (Mahat), and that again is changed into universal egoism (Ahamkâra), and that changes into universal sensible matter. That matter changes into universal sense-organs, again changes into universal fine particles, and these in turn combine and become this gross universe. This is the cosmic plan, according to the Sânkhyas, and what is in the cosmos or macrocosm, must be in the individual or microcosm.
Take an individual man. He has first a part of undifferentiated nature in him, and that material nature in him becomes changed into mahat, a small particle of the universal intelligence, and that small particle of the universal intelligence in him becomes changed into egoism—a particle of the universal egoism. This egoism in turn becomes changed into the sense-organs, and out of these sense-organs come the tanmâtras, and out of them he combines and manufactures his world, as a body. I want this to be clear, because it is the first stepping stone to Vedânta, and it is absolutely necessary for you to know, because this is the philosophy of the whole world. There is no philosophy in the world that is not indebted to Kapila, the founder of this Sânkhya system. Pythagoras came to India and studied his philosophy and carried some of these ideas to the Greeks. Later it formed the Alexandrian school, and still later formed the basis of Gnostic philosophy. It became divided into two parts; one went to Europe and Alexandria, and the other remained in India, and became the basis of all Hindu philosophy, for out of it the system of Vyâsa was developed. This was the first rational system that the world saw, this system of Kapila. Every metaphysician in the world must pay homage to him. I want to impress on your mind that as the great father of philosophy, we are bound to listen to him, and respect what he said. This wonderful man, most ancient of philosophers, is mentioned even in the Vedas. How wonderful his perceptions were! If there is any proof required of the power of the Yogis to perceive things beyond the range of the ordinary senses, such men are the proofs. How could they perceive them? They had no microscopes, or telescopes. How fine their perception was, how perfect their analysis and how wonderful!
To revert again to the microcosm, man. As we have seen, he is built on exactly the same plan. First the nature is “indiscrete” or perfectly balanced, then it becomes disturbed, and action sets in and the first change produced by that action is what is called mahat,—intelligence. Now you see this intelligence in man is just a particle of the cosmic intelligence,—the Mahat. Out of it comes self-consciousness, and from this the sensory and the motor nerves, and the finer particles out of which the gross body is manufactured. I will here remark that there is one difference between Schopenhauer and Vedânta. Schopenhauer says the desire, or will, is the cause of everything. It is the will to exist that makes us manifest, but the Advaitists deny this. They say it is the intelligence. There cannot be a single particle of will which is not a reaction. So many things are beyond will. It is only a manufactured something out of the ego, and the ego is a product of something still higher, the intelligence, and that is a modification of “indiscrete” Nature, or Prakriti.
It is very important to understand this mahat in man,—the intelligence. This intelligence itself is modified into what we call egoism, and this intelligence is the cause of all these motions in the body. This covers all the grounds of sub-consciousness, consciousness and super-consciousness. What are these three states? The sub-conscious state we find in animals, what we call instinct. This is nearly infallible, but very limited. Instinct almost never fails. An animal instinctively knows a poisonous herb from an edible one, but its instinct is limited to one or two things; it works like a machine. Then comes the higher state of knowledge, which is fallible, makes mistakes often, but has a larger scope, although it is slow, and this you call reason. It is much larger than instinct, but there are more dangers of mistake in reasoning than in instinct. There is a still higher state of the mind, the super-conscious, which belongs only to the Yogis, men who have cultivated it. This is as infallible as instinct, and still more unlimited than reason. It is the highest state. We must remember that in man this mahat is the real cause of all that is here, that which is manifesting itself in various ways, covers the whole ground of sub-conscious, conscious and super-conscious states, the three states in which knowledge exists. So in the Cosmos, this universal Intelligence, Mahat, exists as instinct, as reason, and as super-reason.
Now comes a delicate question, which is always being asked. If a perfect God created the universe, why is there imperfection in it? What we call the universe is what we see, and that is only this little plane of consciousness or reason, and beyond that we do not see at all. Now the very question is an impossible one. If I take up only a bit out of a mass and look at it, it seems to be imperfect. Naturally. The universe seems imperfect because we make it so. How? What is reason? What is knowledge? Knowledge is finding associations. You go into the street and see a man, and know it is a man. You have seen many men, and each one has made an impression on your mind, and when you now see this man, you calmly refer to your store of impressions, see many pictures of men there, and you put this new one with the rest, pigeon-hole it and are satisfied. When a new impression comes and it has associations in your mind, you are satisfied, and this state of association is called knowledge. Knowledge is, therefore, pigeon-holing one experience with the already existing fund of experience, and this is one of the great proofs that you cannot have any knowledge until you have already a fund in existence. If you are without experience, or if, as some European philosophers think, the mind is a tabula rasa, it cannot get any knowledge, because the very fact of knowledge is the recognition of the new by comparison with already existing impressions. There must be a store ready to which to refer a new impression. Suppose a child is born into this world without such a fund, it would be impossible for him to get any knowledge. Therefore the child must have been in a state in which he had a fund, and so knowledge is eternally going on. Show me any way of getting out of this. It is mathematical experience. This is very much like the Spencerian and other philosophies. They have seen so far that there cannot be any knowledge without a fund of past knowledge. They have drawn out the idea that the child is born with knowledge. They say that the cause has entered the effect. It comes in a subtle form in order to be developed. These philosophers say that these impressions with which the child comes, are not from the child’s own past, but were in his forefathers’; that it is hereditary transmission. Very soon they are going to find this theory untenable, and some of them are now giving hard blows to these ideas of heredity. Heredity is very good, but incomplete. It only explains the physical side. How do you explain the influence of environment? Many causes produce one effect. Environment is one of the modifying causes. On the other hand we in turn make our own environment, because as our past was, so we find our present. In other words, we are what we are here and now, because of what we have been in the past.
You understand what is meant by knowledge. Knowledge is pigeon-holing a new impression with old impressions—recognizing a new impression. What is meant by recognition? Finding its association with the similar impressions that we already have. Nothing further is meant by knowledge. If that be the case, it must be that we have to see the whole series of similars. Is it not? Suppose you take a pebble; to find the association, you have to see the whole series of pebbles similar to it. But with the universe we cannot do that, because in our reasoning we can only go after one perception of our universe, and neither see on this side nor on that side, and we cannot refer it to its association. Therefore the universe seems unintelligible, because knowledge and reason are always finding associations. This bit of the universe cut off by our consciousness is a startling new thing, and we have not been able to find its associations. Therefore we are struggling with it, and thinking it is so horrible, so wicked, and bad;—sometimes we think it is good, but generally we think it is imperfect. The universe will be known only when we find the associations. We shall recognize them when we go beyond the universe and consciousness, and then the universe will stand explained. Until we do that all our fruitless striving will never explain the universe, because knowledge is the finding of similars, and this conscious plane gives us only a partial view. So with our idea of the universal Mahat, or what in our ordinary everyday language we call God. All that we have of God is only one perception, just as of the universe we see only one portion, and all the rest is cut off and covered by our human limitation. “I, the Universal, so great am I that even this universe is a part of me.” That is why we see God as imperfect, and we can never understand Him, because it is impossible. The only way to understand is to go beyond reason, beyond consciousness. “When thou goest beyond the heard and hearing, the thought and thinking, then alone wilt thou come to truth.” (Bhagavad Gita II. 52.) “Go thou beyond the Scriptures, because they teach only up to Nature, up to the three qualities.” (Gita II. 45.) When we go beyond them we find the harmony, not before.
So far it is clear that this macrocosm and microcosm are built on exactly the same plan, and in this microcosm we know only one very small part. We know neither the sub-conscious, nor the super-conscious. We know only the conscious. If a man says “I am a sinner,” he is foolish, because he does not know himself. He is the most ignorant of men about himself; one part only he knows, because the fact of knowledge covers only one part of the “mind-ground” he is in. So with this universe; it is possible to know only one part through reasoning, but Nature comprises the whole of it, the sub-conscious, the conscious and the super-conscious, the individual mahat and the universal Mahat with all their subsequent modifications, and these lie beyond reason.
What makes nature change? We see that Up to this point everything, all Prakriti, is jadâ (insentient). It is working under law; it is all compound and insentient. Mind, intelligence, and will, all are insentient. But they are all reflecting the sentiency, the Chit (Intelligence) of some Being who is beyond all this, and whom the Sânkhya philosophers call Purusha. This Purusha is the unwitting cause of all these changes in Nature—in the universe. That is to say, this Purusha, taking Him in the universal sense, is the God of the universe. It is claimed that the will of the Lord created the universe. This is very good as a common daily expression, but that is all. How could it be will? Will is the third or fourth manifestation in Nature. Many things exist before it, and what created them? Will is a compound, and everything that is a compound is a production out of Nature. Will itself cannot create Nature. It is not a simple. So to say that the will of the Lord created the universe is illogical. Our will only covers a little portion of self-consciousness, and moves our brain, they say. If it did you could stop the action of the brain, but you cannot. It is not the will. Who moves the heart? It is not the will, because if it were you could stop it or not at your will. It is neither will that is working your body, nor that is working the universe. But it is something of which will itself is one of the manifestations. This body is being moved by the power of which will is only a manifestation in one part. So in the universe there is will, but that is only one part of the universe. The whole of the universe is not guided by will, that is why we do not find the explanation in will. Suppose I take it for granted that the will is moving the body, and then I begin to fret and fume. It is my fault, because I had no right to take it for granted that it was will. In the same way, if I take the universe and think it is will that moves it and then find things that do not coincide, it is my fault. This Purusha is not will, neither can it be intelligence, because intelligence itself is a compound. There cannot be any intelligence without some sort of matter. In man, this matter takes the form which we call brain. Wherever there is intelligence there must be matter in some form or other. But that intelligence itself is a compound. What then is this Purusha? It is neither intelligence nor buddhi (will), but yet it is the cause of both these; it is His presence that sets them all vibrating and combining. Purusha may be likened to some of these substances which by their mere presence promote chemical reaction, as in the case of cyanide of potassium which is added when gold is being smelted. The cyanide of potassium remains separate and unaffected, but its presence is absolutely necessary to the success of the process. So with the Purusha. It does not mix with Nature: it is not Intelligence, or Mahat, or any one of these, but the Self, the Pure, the Perfect. “I am the Witness, and through My witnessing, Nature is producing all that is sentient and all that is insentient.” (Gita IX. 10.)
What is this sentiency in Nature? The basis of sentiency is in the Purusha, is the nature of the Purusha. It is that which cannot be spoken, but which is the material of all that we call knowledge. This Purusha is not consciousness, because consciousness is a compound, but whatever is light and goodness in this consciousness belongs to It. Sentiency is in the Purusha, but the Purusha is not intelligent, not knowing, it is knowledge itself. The Chit in the Purusha, plus Prakriti, is what is known to us as intelligence and consciousness. Whatever is pleasure and happiness and light in the universe belongs to the Purusha, but it is a compound because it is that Purusha plus Nature. “Wherever there is any happiness, wherever there is any bliss, there is one spark of that immortality, which is Purusha.” This Purusha is the great attraction of the universe, untouched by, and unconnected with the universe, yet it attracts the whole universe. You see a man going after gold, because therein is a spark of the Purusha, even though he knows it not. When a man desires children, or a woman a husband, what is the attracting power? That spark of Purusha behind the child or wife, behind everything. It is there, only overlaid with matter. Nothing else can attract. “In this world of insentiency that Purusha alone is sentient.” This is the Purusha of the Sânkhyas. As such it necessarily follows that this Purusha must be omnipresent. That which is not omnipresent must be limited. All limitations are caused; that which is caused must have beginning and end. If the Purusha is limited it will die, will not be final, will not be free, but will have been caused. Therefore if not limited, it is omnipresent. According to Kapila there are many Purushas, not one. An infinite number of them, you are one, I am one, each is one; an infinite number of circles, each one infinite, running through this universe. The Purusha is neither born nor dies. It is neither mind nor matter, and the reflex from it is all that we know. We are sure if it be omnipresent it knows neither death nor birth. Nature is casting her shadow upon it, the shadow of birth and death, but it is by its own nature eternal. So far we have found the theory of Kapila wonderful.
Next we will have to take up the proofs against it. So far the analysis is perfect, the psychology cannot be controverted. There is no objection to it. We will ask of Kapila the question: Who created Nature? and his answer will be that Nature (Prakriti) is uncreate. He also says that the Purusha is omnipresent and that of these Purushas there is an infinite number. We shall have to controvert this last proposition, and find a better solution, and by so doing we shall come to the ground taken by Vedânta. Our first doubt will be how there can be these two infinites. Then our argument will be that it is not a perfect generalization, and that therefore we have not found a perfect solution. And then we shall see how the Vedantists find their way out of all these difficulties and reach a perfect solution. Yet all the glory really belongs to Kapila. It is very easy to give a finish to a building that is nearly complete.