this other

science: ".

statement of the same man of this monistic conception

alone holds strictly to experience

necessarily sets aside the ancient doctrine of the wandering of the soul."1

and

But still it is

much to have advanced to a recognition of the Self; the correction of inaccurate and hasty deductions is possible only on due study of the nature of that Self, which will show how there may be, or, rather, must be, one Self and monism, and yet also many selves and 'wanderings of souls,' at the same

CHAPTER XI.

THE

THE DVANDVAM-THE RELATIVE (continued). (C.-i.) SHAKTI-ENERGY AND NEGATION-AS RELATION AND THE CAUSE OF THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN THE SELF AND THE NOT--SELF.

The third factor in the , sva-bhâva, own-being of the Absolute is the Negation, the denial, the 'Not,' or rather the connecting of the 'Not' with the 'Not-I' by the 'I.' From the standpoint of the Absolute this third factor is not a third, any more than the second is a second-for the third is a negation of the second which is Nothing, Not-Being— and where this is so, it also follows that the first is not a first, for there is nothing left to recognise it by as a first, the resultant being a purity of peace as regards which nothing can be said and no exception taken. The full significance of this Negation, which is the nexus between the Self and the Not-Self, will appear when we consider the different inter

pretations, which turn upon it, of the logion, each correct and illustrated in the universe

around us. Thus, the logion Aham Etat Na

may mean :

(a) MU A. Not (the) Not-Self (but only the) Self (is).

(b) U A M. (The) Not-self (is, and the) Self (is) Not.

(c) M A U. (Only vacuity, nothingness is, and) Not Self (or) Not-Self.

(d) A M U. (The) Self (is) Not (the) NotSelf; or, (the) Self (is) Not (, to the) Not-Self.

(e) UM A. (The) Not-Self (is) Not (the) Self; or, (the) Not-Self (is) Not (, to the) Self.

(f) A U M. (The) Self (is the) Not-Self (and also) Not (it).

(g) A-U-M. Self-Not Self- Not, the Absolute wherein all possible permutations are.1

Such permutations and combinations of the Self and the Not-Self and the Negation, give rise to the actual varieties of facts in the universe and to the corresponding beliefs of man; now to the prevalence of spirit, now to

1 These permutations are based on statements made in the Pranava-Vâda, an unpublished Samskṛit MS., referred to in the note at the end of Ch. VII.

the triumph of matter, again to the reign of pralaya; to dreaming, waking, and sleeping; to idealism, materialism, shûnyavâda, pantheism (corresponding to a, b, c, &c., above, respectively) and all other possible forms of belief. But in every case we find the peace of the Absolute left untouched; because the nett result of the three being taken in combination is always a neutralising and a balancing of opposition, which may indifferently be called fulness or emptiness, peace or blankness, the voice, the music, the resonance of the silence; because the three, A, U, and M, are verily simultaneous, are in inseparable combination, are not amenable to arrangements and rearrangements, to permutations and combinations, and these last appear, and appear inevitably, only when the whole is looked at from the standpoint of a part-an A, a U, or an M, which is necessarily bound to an order, a succession, an arrangement. And yet also the whole multitude and turmoil of the world-process is in that peace, for 'No-thing,' Not-Self, is all things destroying each other,' and Negation is abolition of 'all these particular things,' and the 'I' is that for the sake of which, and in and by the consciousness of which, all this abolition takes place. This is the true significance of the Sâñkhya doctrine that Prakriti, the Not-Self, displays herself and hides

herself incessantly, only in order to provide an endless foil for the self-realisation, the amusement, of Purusha, the Self. In such interplay, both find everlasting and inevitable fulness of manifestation, fulness of realisation and unfettered recreation.

The why of the movement of this interplay, of to and fro, identification and separation, action and reaction, has been already dealt with, in one aspect, in the previous chapter. It will have appeared from what was said then that the Negation appears in the limited as, first, an affirmation and, then, a negation.

We may now consider a little more fully the nature of the affirmation and the negation. The statement, repeated from time to time, that negation hides affirmation within it, and as preceding it in time, should be clearly grasped. In the logion, Ego Non-ego Non (est), the bracketed est, or sum, as it becomes later, is the hidden affirmation. A little reflection shows that it should be so, and must be so, quite unobjectionably, that thought can detect no fault in the fact. Take away the est not only from the sentence but really from consciousness, and the remaining three words lose all coherent meaning. To deny a thing it is necessary first to describe it, to allege it as at least a supposition; and to describe it is to