CHAPTER IX.CONSCIOUSNESS WITHOUT THOUGHT.
Thequestion is, What is this experience? or rather—since an experience can really only be known to the person who experiences it—we may ask, “What is the nature of this experience?” And in trying to indicate an answer of some kind to this question I feel considerable diffidence, just for the very reason (for one) already mentioned—namely that it is so difficult or impossible for one person to give a true account of an experience which has occurred to another. If I could give the exact words of the teacher, without any bias derived either from myself or the interpreting friend, the case might be different; but that I cannot pretend to do; and if I could, the old-world scientific forms in which his thoughts were cast would probably only prove a stumbling-block and a source of confusion, instead of a help, to the reader. Indeed, even in the case of the sacred books, where we have a good deal of accessible and authoritative information, Western critics though for the most part agreeing that thereissome real experience underlying, are sadly at variance as to what that experience may be.
For these reasons I prefer not to attempt or pretend to give the exact teaching, unbiassed, of the Indian Gurus, or their experiences; but only toindicate as far as I can, in my own words, and in modern thought-forms, what I take to be the direction in which we must look for this ancient and world-old knowledge which has had so stupendous an influence in the East, and which indeed is still the main mark of its difference from the West.
And first let me guard against an error which is likely to arise. It is very easy to assume, and very frequently assumed, in any case where a person is credited with the possession of an unusual faculty, that such person is at once lifted out of our sphere into a supernatural region, and possesses every faculty of that region. If for instance he or she is or is supposed to be clairvoyant, it is assumed thateverythingis or ought to be known to them; or if the person has shown what seems a miraculous power at any time or in any case, it is asked by way of discredit why he or she did not show a like power at other times or in other cases. Against all such hasty generalisations it is necessary to guard ourselves. If there is a higher form of consciousness attainable by man than that which he for the most part can claim at present, it is probable, nay certain, that it is evolving and will evolve but slowly, and with many a slip and hesitant pause by the way. In the far past of man and the animals consciousness of sensation and consciousness of self have been successively evolved—each of these mighty growths with innumerable branches and branchlets continually spreading. At any point in this vast experience, a new growth, a new form of consciousness, might well have seemed miraculous. What could be more marvelous than the first revealmentof the sense of sight, what more inconceivable to those who had not experienced it, and what more certain than that the first use of this faculty must have been fraught with delusion and error? Yet there may be an inner vision which again transcends sight, even as far as sight transcends touch. It is more than probable that in the hidden births of time there lurks a consciousness which is not the consciousness of sensation and which is not the consciousness of self—or at least which includes and entirely surpasses these—a consciousness in which the contrast between theegoand the external world, and the distinction between subject and object, fall away. The part of the world into which such a consciousness admits us (call itsupramundaneor whatever you will) is probably at least as vast and complex as the part we know, and progress in that region at least equally slow and tentative and various, laborious, discontinuous, and uncertain. There is no sudden leap out of the back parlor onto Olympus; and the routes, when found, from one to the other, are long and bewildering in their variety.
And of those who do attain to some portion of this region, we are not to suppose that they are at once demi-gods, or infallible. In many cases indeed the very novelty and strangeness of the experiences give rise to phantasmal trains of delusive speculation. Though we should expect, and though it is no doubt true on the whole, that what we should call the higher types of existing humanity are those most likely to come into possession of any new faculties which may be flying about, yet it is not always so;and there are cases, well recognised, in which persons of decidedly deficient or warped moral nature attain powers which properly belong to a high grade of evolution, and are correspondingly dangerous thereby.
All this, or a great part of it, the Indian teachers insist on. They say—and I think this commends the reality of their experience—that there is nothing abnormal or miraculous about the matter; that the faculties acquired are on the whole the result of long evolution and training, and that they have distinct laws and an order of their own. They recognise the existence of persons of a demonic faculty, who have acquired powers of a certain grade without corresponding moral evolution; and they admit the rarity of the highest phases of consciousness and the fewness of those at present fitted for its attainment.
With these little provisos then established I think we may go on to say that what the Gñáni seeks and obtains is a new order of consciousness—to which for want of a better we may give the nameuniversalorcosmicconsciousness, in contradistinction to the individual or special bodily consciousness with which we are all familiar. I am not aware that theexactequivalent of this expression “universal consciousness” is used in the Hindu philosophy; but theSat-chit-ánanda Brahmto which every yogi aspires indicates the same idea:sat, the reality, the all pervading;chit, the knowing, perceiving;ánanda, the blissful—all these united in one manifestation of Brahm.
The West seeks the individual consciousness—theenriched mind, ready perceptions and memories, individual hopes and fears, ambitions, loves, conquests—the self, the local self, in all its phases and forms—and sorely doubts whether such a thing as an universal consciousness exists. The East seeks the universal consciousness, and in those cases where its quest succeeds individual self and life thin away to a mere film, and are only the shadows cast by the glory revealed beyond.
The individual consciousness takes the form ofThought, which is fluid and mobile like quicksilver, perpetually in a state of change and unrest, fraught with pain and effort; the other consciousness isnotin the form of Thought. It touches, sees, hears, andisthese things which it perceives—without motion, without change, without effort, without distinction of subject and object, but with a vast and incredible Joy.
The individual consciousness is specially related to the body. The organs of the body are in some degree its organs. But thewholebody is only as one organ of the cosmic consciousness. To attain this latter one must have the power of knowing one’s self separate from the body, of passing into a state ofecstasyin fact. Without this the cosmic consciousness cannot be experienced.
It is said:—“There are four main experiences in initiation, (1) the meeting with a Guru, (2) the consciousness of Grace, orArul(which may perhaps be interpreted as the consciousness of a change—even of a physiological change—working within one), (3) the vision of Siva (God), with which the knowledge of one’s self as distinct from the body is closelyconnected, (4) the finding of the universe within.” “The wise,” it is also said, “when their thoughts cease to move perceive within themselves the Absolute consciousness, which isSarva sakshi, Witness of all things.”
Great have been the disputes among the learned as to the meaning of the word Nirwana—whether it indicates a state of no-consciousness or a state of vastly enhanced consciousness. Probably both views have their justification: the thing does not admit of definition in the terms of ordinary language. The important thing to see and admit is that under cover of this and other similar terms there does exist a real and recognisable fact (that is a state of consciousness in some sense), which has been experienced over and over again, and which to those who have experienced it in ever so slight a degree has appeared worthy of lifelong pursuit and devotion. It is easy of course to represent the thing as a mere word, a theory, a speculation of the dreamy Hindu; but people do not sacrifice their lives for empty words, nor do mere philosophical abstractions rule the destinies of continents. No, the word represents a reality, something very basic and inevitable in human nature. The question really is not to define the fact—for we cannot do that—but to get at and experience it.
It is interesting at this juncture to find that modern Western science, which has hitherto—without much result—been occupying itself with mechanical theories of the universe, is approaching from its side this idea of the existence of another form of consciousness. The extraordinary phenomenaof hypnotism—which no doubt are in some degree related to the subject we are discussing, and which have been recognised for ages in the East—are forcing Western scientists to assume the existence of the so-calledsecondary consciousnessin the body. The phenomena seem really inexplicable without the assumption of a secondary agency of some kind, and it every day becomes increasingly difficultnotto use the word consciousness to describe it.
Let it be understood that I am not for a moment assuming that this secondary consciousness of the hypnotists is in all respects identical with the cosmic consciousness (or whatever we may call it) of the Eastern occultists. It may or may not be. The two kinds of consciousness may cover the same ground, or they may only overlap to a small extent. That is a question I do not propose to discuss. The point to which I wish to draw attention is that Western science is envisaging the possibility of the existence in man of another consciousness of some kind, beside that with whose working we are familiar. It quotes (A. Moll) the case of Barkworth who “can add up long rows of figures while carrying on a lively discussion, without allowing his attention to be at all diverted from the discussion”; and asks us how Barkworth can do this unless he has a secondary consciousness which occupies itself with the figures while his primary consciousness is in the thick of argument. Here is a lecturer (F. Myers) who for a whole minute allows his mind to wander entirely away from the subject in hand, and imagines himself to be sitting beside a friend in the audienceand to be engaged in conversation withhim, and who wakes up to find himself still on the platform lecturing away with perfect ease and coherency. What are we to say to such a case as that? Here again is a pianist who recites a piece of music by heart, and finds that his recital is actually hindered by allowing his mind (his primary consciousness) to dwell upon what he is doing. It is sometimes suggested that the very perfection of the musical performance shows that it is mechanical or unconscious, but is this a fair inference? and would it not seem to be a mere contradiction in terms to speak of an unconscious lecture, or an unconscious addition of a row of figures?
Many actions and processes of the body,e.g.swallowing, are attended by distinct personal consciousness; many other actions and processes are quite unperceived by the same; and it might seem reasonable to suppose that these latter at any rate were purely mechanical and devoid of any mental substratum. But the later developments of hypnotism in the West have shown—what is well known to the Indian fakirs—that under certain conditions consciousness of the internal actions and processes of the body can be obtained; and not only so, but consciousness of events taking place at a distance from the body and without the ordinary means of communication.
Thus the idea of another consciousness, in some respects of wider range than the ordinary one, and having methods of perception of its own, has been gradually infiltrating itself into Western minds.
There is another idea, which modern science hasbeen familiarising us with, and which is bringing us towards the same conception—that namely of the fourth dimension. The supposition that the actual world has four space-dimensions instead of three makes many things conceivable which otherwise would be incredible. It makes it conceivable that apparently separate objects,e.g.distinct people, are really physically united; that things apparently sundered by enormous distances of space are really quite close together; that a person or other object might pass in and out of a closed room without disturbance of walls, doors, or windows, etc.; and if this fourth dimension were to become a factor of our consciousness it is obvious that we should have means of knowledge which to the ordinary sense would appear simply miraculous. There is much apparently to suggest that the consciousness attained to by the Indian gñánis in their degree, and by hypnotic subjects in theirs is of this fourth-dimensional order.
As a solid is related to its own surfaces, so, it would appear, is the cosmic consciousness related to the ordinary consciousness. The phases of the personal consciousness are but different facets of the other consciousness; and experiences which seem remote from each other in the individual are perhaps all equally near in the universal. Space itself, as we know it, may be practically annihilated in the consciousness of a larger space of which it is but the superficies; and a person living in London may not unlikely find that he has a backdoor opening quite simply and unceremoniously out in Bombay.
“The true quality of the soul,” said the Guru oneday, “is that of space, by which it is at rest, everywhere. But this space (Akása) within the soul is far above the ordinary material space. The whole of the latter, including all the suns and stars, appears to you then as it were but an atom of the former”—and here he held up his fingers as though crumbling a speck of dust between them.
“At rest everywhere,” “Indifference,” “Equality.” This was one of the most remarkable parts of the Guru’s teaching. Though (for family reasons) maintaining many of the observances of Caste himself, and though holding and teaching that for the mass of the people caste rules were quite necessary, he never ceased to insist that when the time came for a man (or woman) to be “emancipated” all these rules must drop aside as of no importance—all distinction of castes, classes, all sense of superiority or self-goodness—of right and wrong even—and the most absolute sense of Equality must prevail towards every one, and determination in its expression. Certainly it was remarkable (though I knew that the sacred books contained it) to find this germinal principle of Western democracy so vividly active and at work deep down beneath the innumerable layers of Oriental social life and custom. But so it is; and nothing shows better the relation between the West and the East than this fact.
This sense of Equality, of Freedom from regulations and confinements, of Inclusiveness, and of the Life that “rests everywhere,” belongs of course more to the cosmic or universal part of man than to the individual part. To the latter it is always a stumbling-block and an offence. It is easy to show that menare not equal, that they cannot be free, and to point the absurdity of a life that is indifferent and at rest under all conditions. Nevertheless to the larger consciousness these are basic facts, which underlie the common life of humanity, and feed the very individual that denies them.
Thus repeating the proviso that in using such terms as cosmic and universal consciousness we do not commit ourselves to the theory that the instant a man leaves the personal part of him he enters into absolutely unlimited and universal knowledge, but only into a higher order of perception—and admitting the intricacy and complexity of the region so roughly denoted by these terms, and the microscopical character of our knowledge about it—we may say once more, also as a roughest generalisation, that the quest of the East has been this universal consciousness, and that of the West the personal or individual consciousness. As is well known the East has its various sects and schools of philosophy, with subtle discriminations of qualities, essences, god-heads, devilhoods, etc., into which I do not propose to go, and which I should feel myself quite incompetent to deal with. Leaving all these aside, I will keep simply to these two rough Western terms, and try to consider further the question of themethodsby which the Eastern student sets himself to obtain the cosmic state, or such higher order of consciousness as he does encompass.