CHAPTER XI.TRADITIONS OF THE ANCIENT WISDOM-RELIGION.
I havedwelt 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 itsdifferencesfrom 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 nodoubt 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 andexpression, 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 extraordinaryrapprochementand 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 LactantiusIndicopleustesintroduced from the East into Europe about the 3rd centuryA.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, someabovethe earth, somebelow, and some on either hand. As to the earth itself it had been destroyed and recreated many times in successive æons, but therehad 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 Westernbhoga 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 hisEsoteric 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 thegrossether, air, fire, water and earth that we know, butsubtleelements 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 philosophyaltogether 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 theformof the doctrine may be largely fantastic. The primal element, according to this doctrine, is the ether orspace(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, thesat-chit-ánandaBrahm—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 adistinct experience. It may well be that the formal doctrine about the five elements is merely an attempt—necessarily very defective, since these thingscannotbe adequately expressed in that way—to put the thing into a form of thought. And so with other doctrines—some may contain a realinhalt, others may be merely ornamental thought-fringes, put on for the sake of logical symmetry or what not. In itsexternalsense 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-sixtatwas(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 thetatwasmay 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.”
To go with the five elements, etc., the system expounded by the Guru supposes five shells enclosing the soul. These, with the soul itself, and Brahm, the undifferentiated spirit lying within the soul, form seven planes or sections—as in the Esoteric Buddhism of Sinnett and the Theosophists. The divisions however are not quite identical in the two systems, which appear to be respectively North Indian and South Indian. In the North Indian we have (1) the material body, (2) the vitality, (3) the astral form, (4) the animal soul, (5) the human soul, (6) the soul proper, and (7) the undifferentiated spirit; in the South Indian we have (1) the material shell, (2) the shell of the vital airs, (3) the sensorial shell, (4) the cognitional shell, (5) the shell of oblivion and bliss in sleep, (6) the soul, and (7) the undifferentiated spirit. The two extremes seem the same in the two systems, but the intermediate layers differ. In some respects the latter system is the more effective; it has a stronger practical bearing than the other, and appears to be specially designed as a guide to action in the work of emancipation. In some respects the other system has a wider application. Neither of course have any particularvalue except as convenient forms of thought for their special purposes, and as very roughly embodying in their different degrees various experiences which the human consciousness passes through in the course of its evolution. “It is not till all the five shells have been successively peeled off that consciousness enters the soul and it sees itself and the universal being as one. The first three are peeled off at each bodily death of the man, but they grow again out of what remains. It is not enough to pass beyond these, but beyond the other two also. Then when that is done the student enters into the fulness of the whole universe; and with that joy no earthly joy can for a moment be compared.”
“Death,” he continued, “is usually great agony, as if the life was being squeezed out of every part—like the juice out of a sugar-cane; only for those who have already separated their souls from their bodies is it not so. For them it is merely a question of laying down the body at will, when itskarmais worked out, or of retaining it, if need be, to prolonged years.” (It is commonly said that Vasishta who first gave the sacred knowledge to mankind, is still living and providing for the earth; and Tilleináthan Swámy is said to have seen Tiruválluvar, the pariah priest who wrote theKurralover 1,000 years ago.) “In ordinary cases the last thoughts that cling to the body (‘the ruling passion strong in death’) become the seed of the next ensuing body.”
In this system the outermost layer of that portion of the human being which survives death is the shell of thought (and desire). As the body is modified in every-day life by the action of the thought-formswithin and grows out of them—so the new body at some period after death grows out of the thought-forms that survive. “The body is built up by your thought—and not by your thought in this life only, but by the thought of previous lives.”
Of the difficult question about hereditary likeness, suggesting that the body is also due to the thought of the parents, he gave no very detailed account,—only that the atomic soul is carried at some period after death (by universal laws, or by its own affinities) into a womb suitable for its next incarnation, where finding kindred thought-forms and elements it assimilates and grows from them, with the result of what is called family likeness.
Some of his expositions of Astrology were very interesting to me—particularly to find this world-old system, with all its queer formalities and deep under lying general truths still passively (though I think not actively) accepted and handed down by so able an exponent—but I cannot record them at any length. The five operations of the divine spirit, namely (1) Grace, (2) Obscuration, (3) Destruction, (4) Preservation and (5) Creation, correspond to the five elements, space, air, fire, water and earth, and are embodied in the nine planets, thus: (1) Ráku and Kétu, (2) Saturn, (3) the Sun and Mars, (4) Venus, Mercury and the Moon, (5) Jupiter. It is thus that the birth of a human being is influenced by the position of the planets,i.e.the horoscope. The male semen contains the five elements, and the composition of it is determined by the attitude of the nine planets in the sky! There seems here to be a glimmering embodiment of the deep-lying truth thatthe whole universe conspires in the sexual act, and that the orgasm itself is a flash of the universal consciousness; but the thought-forms of astrology are as indigestible to a mind trained in Western science, as I suppose the thought-forms of the latter are to the philosopher of the East!
When I expostulated with the Guru about these, to us, crudities of Astrology, and about such theories as that of the flat earth, the cause of eclipses, etc., bringing the most obvious arguments to attack his position—he did not meet me with any arguments, being evidently unaccustomed to deal with the matter on that plane at all; but simply replied that these things had been seen “in pure consciousness,” and that theywereso. It appeared to me pretty clear however that he was not speaking authentically, as having seen them so himself, but simply recording again the tradition delivered in its time to him. And here is a great source of difficulty; for the force of tradition is so tremendous in these matters, and blends so, through the intimate relation of teacher and pupil, with the pupil’s own experience, that I can imagine it difficult in some cases for the pupil to disentangle what is authentically his own vision from that which he has merely heard. Besides—as may be easily imagined—the whole system of teaching tends to paralyse activity on the thought-plane to such a degree that the spirit of healthy criticism has been lost, and things are handed down and accepted in an otiose way without ever being really questioned or properly envisaged. And lastly there is a cause which I think acts sometimes in the same direction, namely thattheyogilearns—either from habit or from actual experience of a superior order of consciousness—so to despise matters belonging to the thought-world, that he really does not care whether a statement is true or false, in the mundane sense—i.e.consistent or inconsistent with other statements belonging to the same plane. All these causes make it extremely difficult to arrive at what we should call truth as regards matters of fact—appearances alleged to have been seen, feats performed, or the occurrence of past events; and though there may be no prejudice against thepossibilityof them, it is wise—in cases where definite and unmistakable evidence is absent, to withhold the judgment either way, for or against their occurrence.
With regard to these primitive old doctrines of Astronomy, Astrology, Philology, Physiology, etc., handed down from far-back times and still embodied in the teaching of the Gurus, though it is impossible to accept them on the ordinary thought-plane, I think we may yet fairly conclude that there is an element of cosmic consciousness in them, or at any rate in many of them, which has given them their vitality and seal of authority so to speak. I have already explained what I mean, in one or two cases. Just as in the old myths and legends (Andromeda, Cupid and Psyche, Cinderella and a great many more) an effort was made to embody indirectly, in ordinary thought-forms, things seen with the inner eye and which could not be expressed directly—so was the same process carried out in the old science. Though partly occupied with things of the Thought-plane, it was also partly occupied in giving expressionto things which lie behind that plane—which we in our Western sciences have neither discerned nor troubled ourselves about. Hence, though confused and defective and easily impugnable, it contains an element which is yet of value. Take the theory of the flat earth for instance, already mentioned, with Mount Meru in the north, behind which the sun and moon retire each day. At first it seems almost incredible that a subtle-brained shrewd people should have entertained so crude a theory at all. But it soon appears that while being a rude explanation of external facts and one which might commend itself to a superficial observer, it is also and in reality a description of certain internal phenomena seen. There are a sun and moon within, and there is a Mount Meru (so it is said) within, by which they are obscured. The universe within the soul and the universe without correspond and are the similitudes of each other, and so (theoretically at any rate) the language which describes one should describe the other.
It is well known that much of the mediæval alchemy had this double signification—the terms used indicated two classes of facts. Sometimes the inner meaning preponderated, sometimes the outer; and it is not always easy to tell in the writings of the Alchemists which is specially intended. This alchemical teaching came into Europe from the East—as we know; yet it was not without a feeling of surprise that I heard the Guru one day expounding as one of the ancient traditions of his own country a doctrine that I seemed familiar with as coming from Paracelsus or some such author—that of the transmutationof copper into gold by means of solidified mercury. There is a method he explained, preserved in mystic language in some of the ancient books, by which mercury can be renderedsolid. This solid mercury has extraordinary properties: it is proof against the action of fire; if you hold a small piece of it in your mouth, arrows and bullets cannot harm you; and the mere touch of it will turn a lump of copper into gold.
Now this doctrine has been recognised by students of the mediæval alchemy to have an esoteric meaning. Quicksilver or mercury—as I think I have already mentioned—is an image or embodiment of Thought itself, the ever-glancing, ever-shifting; to render quicksilver solid is to fix thought, and so to enter into the transcendent consciousness. He who does that can be harmed neither by arrows nor by bullets; a touch of that diviner principle turns the man whose nature is but base copper into pure gold. The Guru however expounded this as if in a purely literal and external sense; and on my questioning him it became evident that he believed in some at any rate of the alchemical transmutations in this sense—though what evidence he may have had for such belief did not appear.
I remember very well the evening on which this conversation took place. We were walking along an unfrequented bit of road or by-lane; the sky was transparent with the colors of sunset, the wooded hills a few miles off looked blue through the limpid air. He strode along—a tall dark figure with coal-black eyes—on raised wooden sandals or clogs—his white wrapper loosely encircling him—withso easy and swift a motion that it was quite a consideration to keep up with him—discoursing all the while on the wonderful alchemical and medical secrets preserved from ages back in theslokasof the sacred books—how in order to safeguard this arcane knowledge, and to render it inaccessible to the vulgar, methods had been adopted of the transposition of words, letters, etc., which made the text mere gibberish except to those who had the key; how there still existed a great mass of such writings, inscribed on palm and other leaves, and stored away in the temples and monasteries—though much had been destroyed—and so forth; altogether a strange figure—something uncanny and superhuman about it. I found it difficult to believe that I was in the end of the nineteenth century, and not three or four thousand years back among the sages of the Vedic race; and indeed the more I saw of this Guru the more I felt persuaded (and still feel) that in general appearance, dress, mental attitude, and so forth, he probably resembled to an extraordinary degree those ancient teachers whose tradition he still handed down. The more one sees of India the more one learns to appreciate the enormous tenacity of custom and tradition there, and that the best means to realise its past may be to study its present life in the proper quarters.
His criticisms of the English, of English rule in India, and of social institutions generally, were very interesting—to me at any rate—as coming from a man so perfectly free from Western “taint” and modern modes of thought, and who yet had had considerable experience of state policy and administrationin his time, and who generally had circled a considerable experience of life. He said—what was quite a new idea to me, but in the most emphatic way—that the rule of the English in the time of the East India Company had been much better than it had become since under the Crown. Curiously enough his charge was that “the Queen” had made it so entirely commercial. The sole idea now, he said, is money. Before ’57 there had been some kind of State policy, some idea of a large and generous rule, and of the good of the people, but in the present day the rule was essentially feeble, with no defined policy of any kind except that of the money bag. This criticism impressed me much, as corroborating from an entirely independent source the growth of mere commercialism in Britain during late years, and of the nation-of-shopkeepers theory of government.
Going on to speak of government generally, his views would I fear hardly be accepted by the schools—they were more Carlylean in character. “States,” he said, “must be ruled by Justice, and then they will succeed.” (An ancient doctrine, this, but curiously neglected all down history.) “A king should stand and did stand in old times as the representative of Siva (God). He is nothing in himself—no more than the people—his revenue is derived from them—he is elected by them—and he is in trust to administer justice—especially criminal justice. In the courtyard of the palace at Tanjore there hung at one time a bell which the rajah placed there in order that any one feeling himself aggrieved might come and ring it, and so claim redress orjudgment. Justice or Equality,” he continued, “is the special attribute of God; and he who represents God,i.e.the king, must consider this before all things. The same with rich people—they are bound to serve and work for the poor from whom their riches come.”
This last sentence he repeated so often, at different times and in different forms, that he might almost have been claimed as a Socialist—certainly was a Socialist in the heart of the matter; and at any rate this teaching shows how near the most ancient traditions come to the newest doctrines in these respects, and how far the unclean commercialism out of which we are just passing stands from either.
As to the English people he seemed to think them hopelessly plunged in materialism, but said that if they did turn to “sensible pursuits” (i.e.of divine knowledge) their perseverance and natural sense of justice and truth would, he thought, stand them in good stead. The difficulties of the gnosis in England were however very great; “those who do attain some degree of emancipation there do not know that they have attained; though having experience they lack knowledge.” “You in the West,” he continued, “sayO God, O God!but you have nodefiniteknowledge or methods by which you can attain to see God. It is like a man who knows there isghee(butter) to be got out of a cow (pasu, metaph. for soul). He walks round and round the cow and cries,O Ghee, O Ghee!Milk pervades the cow, but he cannot find it. Then when he has learned to handle the teat, and has obtained the milk, he stillcannot find the ghee. It pervades the milk and has also to be got by a definite method. So there is a definite method by which the divine consciousness can be educed from the soul, but it is only in India that complete instruction exists on this point—by which a man who is ‘ripe’ may systematically and without fail attain the object of his search, and by which the mass of the people may ascend as by a ladder from the very lowest stages to such ‘ripeness.’”
India, he said, was the divine land, and the source from which the divine knowledge had always radiated over the earth. Sanskrit and Tamil were divine languages—all other languages being of lower caste and origin. In India the conditions were in every way favorable to attainment, but in other lands not so. Some Mahomedans had at different times adopted the Indian teaching and become Gñánis, but it had always been in India, and not in their own countries that they had done so. Indeed the Mahomedan religion, though so different from the Hindu, had come from India, and was due to a great Rishi who had quarrelled with the Brahmans and had established forms and beliefs in a spirit of opposition to them. When I asked him what he thought of Christ, he said he was probably an adept in gñánam, but his hearers had been the rude mass of the people and his teaching had been suited to their wants.
Though these views of his on the influence of India and its wisdom-religion on the world may appear, and probably are in their way, exaggerated; yet they are partly justified by two facts which appear to me practically certain: (1) that in everyage of the world and in almost every country there has been a body of doctrine handed down, which, with whatever variations and obscurations, has clustered round two or three central ideas, of which perhaps that of emancipation from self through repeated births is the most important; so that there has been a kind of tacit understanding and freemasonry on this subject between the great teachers throughout history—from the Eastern sages, down through Pythagoras, Plato, Paul, the Gnostic schools, the great mediæval Alchemists, the German mystics and others, to the great philosophers and poets of our own time; and that thousands of individuals on reaching a certain stage of evolution have corroborated and are constantly corroborating from their own experience the main points of this doctrine; and (2) that there must have existed in India, or in some neighboring region from which India drew its tradition,before all history, teachers who saw these occult facts and understood them probably better than the teachers of historical times, and who had themselves reached a stage of evolution at least equal to any that has been attained since.
If this is so then there is reason to believe that there is a distinct body of experience and knowledge into which the whole human race is destined to rise, and which there is every reason to believe will bring wonderful and added faculties with it. From whatever mere formalities or husks of tradition or abnormal growths have gathered round it in India, this has to be disentangled; but it is not now any more to be the heritage of India alone, but for the whole world. If however any one should seek itfor the advantage or glory to himself of added powers and faculties, his quest will be in vain, for it is an absolute condition of attainment that all action for self as distinct from others shall entirely cease.