CHAPTER IX.

THE DVANDVAM1-THE RELATIVE.

(4) THE PRATYAG-ATMA-THE SELF.

The Aham, the I, the Self, in the logion is the Pratyag-âtmâ. It is the inward, abstract, universal Self or Spirit, eternal Subject, wherein all Jîvas, individual, particular, concrete spirits, selves, or subjects, inhere. It pervades them all, as the genus pervades all individuals. It is all those individuals. The appearance of separateness, the individuation, the differentiation, is caused by matter, Mûla-prakṛiti, as will appear later. In itself, it is the avyakta, the unmanifest, the unspecialised, the unindividualised. It is the One, eka, in a special degree. It is the essence, the source and substratum of all similarity, sameness, unity, all oneness. It is Íshvara in the abstract sense, the one Îshvara of all particular Ishvaras-their Self, as also the Self of, and as much as of, the Jîvas that have not yet arrived at the state of Îshvara-hood. It is some

1

the two-and-two, the paired, the double.

times called the Mâyâ-shabalam Brahman, or Saguṇam Brahman, the Brahman conjoined with attributes, enwrapped in, coloured with, Mâyâ. The Upanishats mostly describe it, this Pratyag-âtmâ, and, leading the enquirer to it, finally state that it is identical with Brahman. Such aphoristic utterances, apparently, have led to the confusion which prevails at the present day amongst the vedântîs of the various schools, as to the relation between Pratyag-âtmå and Param-âtmâ, or Brahman. The great words of the Upanishats refer to the Pratyag-âtmâ: "Unmoving, it outstrippeth the wind; the Gods themselves may not attain to it; it goeth beyond all limitations; by knowledge of it, the Jîva attains to the (first) peace of unity; the white, the bodiless, the pure; the Self-born ; smaller than the smallest, yet vaster than the vastest; which cannot be spoken of or seen or heard or breathed, but which itself speaks and sees and hears and breathes; which espouses the enquirer and appears within him of its own law, and may not be taught by another; ever it hides in the cave of the heart; it upholds the three worlds; it divides itself and appears in all these endless forms, and yet is best described by saying, 'not this,' 'not this." "1

1 Vide the Îsha, Kena, and Katha Upanishats.

And then comes the addition: "This Atmâ is the Brahman." The meaning is that the one so described is the Âtmâ, but the same Âtmâ plus the description, viz., not this'—that is to say, plus the consciousness that 'I am not other than I,' which consciousness is inseparable from, nay, is the very being, and the whole. being, and the whole nature of the Self-is Brahman.

This Pratyag-âtmâ is the true fa, nitya, constant, eternal; the fa, kûṭastha-nitya, the changelessly movelessly permanent, as opposed to the afturfafa, pariṇâmi-nitya, the changefully persistent and everlasting; it is the eternal. While the Absolute may be said to be beyond eternity as well as time-or rather to include them both as eternity plus time, seeing that eternity is opposed to time, and the Absolute is not opposed to anything else and outside of it, but contains all opposites within itself the word eternal, as opposed to temporal, may properly be assigned to the Pratyag-âtmâ in its abstract aspect. As such it is evercomplete and undergoes no change, but is the substratum and support of all changing things and of time, even as an actor of his theatrical attires.

1 Mandukya. 2.

For concrete illustration, take the case of , sushupti, sound slumber, awaking from which the man says: "I slept well, I knew nothing." Knowing nothing, ie., the Not-Self, he was out of time literally, he was at complete rest in the eternal, wherein he felt perfect repose after the day's turn of fatiguing work; whereout he comes back again into time and to the cognition of somethings, when the restlessness of desire for the experiences of samsâra again overpowers him. The further special meaning of sushupti, the meaning of sleep, as of death, may appear later. In the present connection it is enough to refer to this one aspect of it, and to point out that the inner significance of the expression, “the Self knows nothing during sushupti," is that it, in that condition, positively knows what is technically called Nothing, i.e., the Not-Self as a whole, for the potency, the necessity, of the Being of the Self maintains constantly, in one unbroken act or fact of consciousness, this Nothing or pure Not-Self before that Self. In other words the Jîva, in the short moment of sushupti passes almost entirely (for, strictly speaking, it cannot pass entirely, for reasons that will appear on studying the nature of the Jîva) out of the region of the many experiences of particular not-selves, of successive somethings,

into the other side, the other facet (and yet not other but rather all-including aspect), of that region, viz., into the region of the single underlying ever-present one experience, one consciousness by the universal Self of the pseudo-universal Not-Self. That the Jiva does not pass entirely out of the state of cognition, a consciousness which is its very nature and essence, is the reason why the thread and continuity of his identity reappears unbroken after the sushupti.

As with reference to time, the Self obtains the name of the eternal, co-existently present at every point of time-for all the endlessly successive points of time are co-existent to, and in, its eternal and universal all-embracing consciousness-so with reference to space, its name is the fa, vibhu, all-pervading, infinite, unextended, or extensionless; and again the

¶, sarva - vyâpî, all - pervading, omnipresent, the simultaneously present at every point of space, for all the endlessly co-existent points of space are simultaneously present in that same consciousness.

Lastly, with reference to motion, its best name seems to be the , kûṭastha, the rock-seated, or the fat, avikârî, the unchanging, the fixed, or, again, the wait, antaryâmî, the inner watcher or ruler.