From Adam's Peak to Elephanta

by Edward Carpenter

I have dwelt so far on the nature of certain experiences (which I have not however attempted to describe) and on the methods by which, specially in India, they are sought to be obtained; and I have done so in general terms, and with an endeavor to assimilate the subject to Western ideas, and to bring it into line with modern science and speculation. I propose in this chapter to dwell more especially on the formal side of our friend’s teaching—which will bring out into relief the special character of Eastern thought and its differences from our present-day modes of thought.

I must however again warn the reader against accepting anything I say, except with the greatest reserve, and especially not to broaden out into sweeping generalities any detailed statement I may happen to make. People often ask for some concise account of Indian teaching and religion. Supposing some one were to ask for a concise account of the Christian teaching and religion—which of us, with all our familiarity with the subject, could give an account which the others would accept? From the question whether Jesus and Paul were initiates in the Eastern mysteries—as the modern Gurus claim that they were, and as I think there can be no doubt that they were, either by tradition or by spontaneous evolution; through the question of the similarity and differences of their teaching; the various schools of early Christianity; the Egyptian influences; the Gnostic sects and philosophy; the formation and history of the Church, its organisations, creeds and doctrines; mediæval Christianity and its relation to Aristotle; the mystic teachers of the 13th and 14th centuries; the ascetic and monastic movements; the belief in alchemy and witchcraft; the miracles of the Saints; the Protestant movement and doctrines, etc., etc.; down to the innumerable petty sects of to-day and all their conflicting views on the atonement and the sacraments and the inspiration of the Bible, and all the rest of it—who would be so bold as to announce the gist and resume of it all in a few brief sentences? Yet the great Indian evolution of religious thought—while historically more ancient—is at least equally vast and complex and bewildering in its innumerable ramifications. I should feel entirely incompetent to deal with it as a whole—and here at any rate am only touching upon the personality and utterances of one teacher, belonging to a particular school, the South Indian.

This Guru was, as I have said, naturally one of those who insisted largely—though not by any means exclusively—on the moral and ultra-moral sides of the teaching; and from this point of view his personality was particularly remarkable. His gentleness and kindliness, combined with evident power; and inflexibility and intensity underlying; his tense eyes, as of the seer, and gracious lips and expression, and ease and dignity of figure; his entire serenity and calm—though with lots of vigor when needed; all these were impressive. But perhaps I was most struck—as the culmination of character and manhood—by his perfect simplicity of manner. Nothing could be more unembarrassed, unselfconscious, direct to the point in hand, free from kinks of any kind. Sometimes he would sit on his sofa couch in the little cottage, not unfrequently, as I have said, with bare feet gathered beneath him; sometimes he would sit on a chair at the table; sometimes in the animation of discourse his muslin wrap would fall from his shoulder, unnoticed, showing a still graceful figure, thin, but by no means emaciated; sometimes he would stand for a moment, a tall and dignified form; yet always with the same ease and grace and absence of self-consciousness that only the animals and a few among human beings show. It was this that made him seem very near to one, as if the ordinary barriers which divide people were done away with; and if this was non-differentiation working within, its external effect was very admirable.

I dwell perhaps the more on these points of character, which made me feel an extraordinary rapprochement and unspoken intimacy to this man, because I almost immediately found on acquaintance that on the plane of ordinary thought and scientific belief we were ever so far asunder, with only a small prospect, owing to difficulties of language, etc., of ever coming to an understanding. I found—though this of course gave a special interest to his conversation—that his views of astronomy, physiology, chemistry, politics and the rest, were entirely unmodified by Western thought and science—and that they had come down through a long line of oral tradition, continually reinforced by references to the sacred books, from a most remote antiquity. Here was a man who living in a native principality under an Indian rajah, and skilled in the learning of his own country, had probably come across very few English at all till he was of mature years, had not learned the English language, and had apparently troubled himself but little about Western ideas of any kind. I am not a stickler for modern science myself, and think many of its conclusions very shaky; but I confess it gave me a queer feeling when I found a man of so subtle intelligence and varied capacity calmly asserting that the earth was the centre of the physical universe and that the sun revolved about it! With all seriousness he turned out the theory (which old Lactantius Indicopleustes introduced from the East into Europe about the 3rd century A.D.)—namely that the earth is flat, with a great hill, the celebrated Mount Meru, in the north, behind which the sun and moon and other heavenly bodies retire in their order to rest. He explained that an eclipse of the moon (then going on) was caused by one of the two “dark planets,” Ráku or Kétu (which are familiar to astrology), concealing it from view. He said (and this is also an ancient doctrine) that there were 1,008 solar or planetary systems similar to ours, some above the earth, some below, and some on either hand. As to the earth itself it had been destroyed and recreated many times in successive æons, but there had never been a time when the divine knowledge had not existed on it. There had always been an India (gñána bhumi, or Wisdom-land, in contradistinction to the Western bhoga bhumi, or land of pleasure), and always Vedas or Upanishads (or books corresponding) brought by divine teachers. (About modern theories of submerged continents and lower races in the far past he did not appear to know anything or to have troubled his head, nor did he put forth any views on this subject of the kind mentioned by Sinnett in his Esoteric Buddhism. Many of his views however were very similar to those given in that book.)

His general philosophy appeared to be that of the Siddhantic system, into which I do not propose to go in any detail—as it may be found in the books; and all such systems are hopelessly dull, and may be said to carry their own death-warrants written on their faces. The Indian systems of philosophy bear a strong resemblance to the Gnostic systems of early Christian times—which latter were no doubt derived from the East. They all depend upon the idea of emanation—which is undoubtedly an important idea, and corresponds to some remarkable facts of consciousness; but the special forms in which the idea is cast in the various systems are not very valuable.

The universe in the Siddhantic system is composed of five elements—(1) ether, (2) air, (3) fire, (4) water, and (5) earth; and to get over the obvious difficulties which arise from such a classification, it is explained that these are not the gross ether, air, fire, water and earth that we know, but subtle elements of the same name—which are themselves perfectly pure but by their admixture produce the gross elements. Thus the air we know is not a true element, but is formed by a mixture of the subtle air with small portions of the subtle ether, subtle fire, subtle water, and subtle earth; and so on. This explains how it is there may be various kinds of air or of water or of earth. Then the five subtle elements give rise to the five forms of sensation in the order named—(1) Sound, (2) Touch, (3) Form, (4) Taste, (5) Smell; and to the five corresponding organs of sense. Also there are five intellectual faculties evolved by admixture from the subtle elements, namely, (1) The inner consciousness, which has the quality of ether or space, (2) Thought (manas) which has the quality of aerial agitation and motion, (3) Reason (buddhi) which has the quality of light and fire, (4) Desire (chittam) which has the emotional rushing character of water, (5) The I-making faculty (ahankára), which has the hardness and resistance of the earth. Also the five organs of action, the voice, the hands, the feet, the anus, and the penis in the same order; and the five vital airs which are supposed to pervade the different parts of the body and to impel their action.

This is all very neat and compact. Unfortunately it shares the artificial character which all systems of philosophy have, and which makes it quite impossible to accept any of them. I think our friend quite recognised this; for more than once he said, and quoted the sacred books to the same effect, that “Everything which can be thought is untrue.” In this respect the Indian philosophy altogether excels our Western systems (except the most modern). It takes the bottom out of its own little bucket in the most impartial way.

Nevertheless, whatever faults they may have, and however easy it may be to attack their thought-forms, the great Indian systems (and those of the West the same) are no doubt based upon deep-lying facts of consciousness, which it must be our business some time to disentangle. I believe there are facts of consciousness underlying such unlikely things as the evolution of the five subtle elements, even though the form of the doctrine may be largely fantastic. The primal element, according to this doctrine, is the ether or space (Akása), the two ideas of space and ether being curiously identified, and the other elements, air, fire, etc., are evolved in succession from this one by a process of thickening or condensation. Now this consciousness of space—not the material space, but the space within the soul—is a form of the supreme consciousness in man, the sat-chit-ánanda Brahm—Freedom, Equality, Extension, Omnipresence—and is accompanied by a sense which has been often described as a combination of all the senses, sight, hearing, touch, etc., in one; so that they do not even appear differentiated from each other. In the course of the descent of the consciousness from this plane to the plane of ordinary life (which may be taken to correspond to the creation of the actual world) the transcendent space-consciousness goes through a sort of obscuration or condensation, and the senses become differentiated into separate and distinct faculties. This—or something like it—is a distinct experience. It may well be that the formal doctrine about the five elements is merely an attempt—necessarily very defective, since these things cannot be adequately expressed in that way—to put the thing into a form of thought. And so with other doctrines—some may contain a real inhalt, others may be merely ornamental thought-fringes, put on for the sake of logical symmetry or what not. In its external sense the doctrine of the evolution of the other elements successively by condensation from the ether is after all not so far removed from our modern scientific ideas. For the chief difference between the air, and other such gases, and the ether is supposed by us to be the closeness of the particles in the former; then in the case of fire, the particles come into violent contact, producing light and heat; in fluids their contact has become continuous though mobile; and in the earth and other solids their contact is fixed.

However, whatever justification the formal analysis of man and the external world into their constituent parts may have or require, the ultimate object of the analysis in the Indian philosophy is to convince the pupil that He is a being apart from them all. “He whose perception is obscured mistakes the twenty-six tatwas (categories or ‘thats’) for himself, and is under the illusions of ‘I’ and ‘mine.’ To be liberated by the grace of a proper spiritual teacher from the operation of this obscuring power and to realise that these are not self, constitute ‘deliverance.’” Here is the ultimate fact of consciousness—which is the same, and equally true, whatever the analysis of the tatwas may be.

“The true quality of the Soul is that of space, by which it is at rest, everywhere. Then,” continued the Guru, “comes the Air quality—by which it moves with speed from place to place; then the Fire-quality, by which it discriminates; then the Water-quality, which gives it emotional flow; and then the Earth or self-quality, rigid and unyielding. As these things evolve out of the soul, so they must involve again, into it and into Brahm.”