to master all the foes that harassed and pursued him so relentlessly.1

It should be noted here that each of the first two answers to the great question carries with it its own corresponding set of answers to all these questions. But, like those two, these also are unsatisfactory, external and superficial. The earnest enquirer must search deeper. How to answer them in terms of consciousness, of the Self, which is the nearest to him and therefore after all the most intelligible? He must interpret all things in their deepest connection with and origin from the Self; otherwise doubt will remain and satisfaction not be gained. For as the answer to the one great question is to disclose the answer to all these, so in turn the good answering of these will be the test that that one answer itself is good.

1 The expression employed here may appear a little too emotional. This has been done purposely to show that metaphysic deals, not only with the single, cold and sober department of intellectual life, but with the whole of it as manifesting in cognition, desire, and action, and has to show forth the travail of a thought that would encompass all these. The whole life of the true and earnest enquirer is put into such search, hence the mixture of science and emotion.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE THIRD AND LAST ANSWER-THE SELF AND THE NOT-SELF.

The second answer remains, as said before, wavering and satisfactionless. Explanation of the world, which is the sole purpose of philosophy, by means of two factors can only be a tentative, and not a final solution. It is a great advance to have reduced the multifariousness of the world to a duality. But what the searcher wants is a unity, and in this respect indeed the first answer was even better than the second, for it reduced all things to a unity, the will of an omnipotent being. That unity was, however, a false unity. It had no elements of permanence in it. The will of an individual by itself carries within it no true and satisfactory explanation of the contradictions that make up the world; it embodies no reason and no safeguard against caprice. Tenure of immortality at the will of another is a mockery and a contradiction in terms, and therefore the Jîva, however reluctantly, however painfully, has to give up that

In

first unity and search for a higher one. this search his next step leads him, by means of a close examination of the multiplicity which presses on him from all sides, to a duality which seems to him, and indeed is, at the time, the nearest approach to that higher unity that he is seeking.

The forms of this duality, wherein he is centred for the time being, beginning with rough general conceptions of spirit or force and matter, end in the subtlest and most refined ideas of Self and Not-Self.

These, the Self and the Not-Self, are the last two irreducible facts of all consciousness. They cannot be analysed any further. All concrete life, in cognition, desire, and action, begins and ends with these. simplest constituents of the

philosophical research.

They are the two

last result of all

None doubts "am I or am I not." 1 This has been said over and over again by thinkers of all ages and of all countries. The existence of the Self is certain and indubitable.

The next question about it is: What is it? Is it black? is it white? is it flesh and blood and bone, or nerve and brain, or rocks and

1

नहि कश्चित् संदिग्धे अहं वा नाहं वेति । P. 2. (Bib. Ind.)

Bhâmati.

1

rivers, mountains, heavenly orbs, or light or heat or force invisible, or time or space? is it identical with or coextensive with the living body, or is it centred in one limb, organ or point thereof? The single answer to all this questioning is that because "what varies not nor changes in the midst of things that vary and change is different from them," therefore the I-consciousness which persists unchanged and one throughout all the changes of the material body and of all its surroundings is different from them all. 'I' who played and leaped and slept as an infant in my parent's lap so many years ago have now infants in mine. What unchanged and persistent particle of matter continues throughout these years in my physical organism? What identity is there between that infantine and this adult bodies of mine? But the 'I' has not changed. It is the same. Talking of myself I always name myself 'I,’ and nothing more nor less. The sheaths in which I am always enwrapping the 'I'—thus: I am happy, I am miserable, I am rich, I am poor, I am sick, I am strong, I am young, I

am old, I am black, I am white-these are accidents and incidents in the continuity of the 'I.' They are ever passing and varying. The

1

व्यावर्तमानेषु यदनुवर्तते तशेभ्यो भिनं ।

Ibid.

'I' remains the same. Conditions change, but they always surround the same 'I,' the unchanging amid the changing; and anything that changes is at first instinctively, and later deliberately, rejected from the 'I,' as no part of itself. And as it remains unchanged through the changes of one organism, so it remains unchanged through the changes and multiplicity of all organisms. Ask anyone and everyone in the dark, behind a screen, through closed doorleaves: "Who is it?" The first impulsive answer is: "It is I." Thus potent is the stamped impress, the unchecked outrush, the irresistible manifestation of the common 'I' in all beings. The special naming and description: “I am so and so," follows only afterwards, on second thought. So real is the 'I' to the 'I' that it expects others to recognise it as surely as it recognises itself. Again, what is true of the 'I' with regard to the body is also true of it with regard to all other things. The house, the town, the country, the earth, the solar system, which 'I' live in and identify and connect with myself are all changing momentarily; but 'I' feel myself persisting unchanged through all their changes. 'I'am never and can never be conscious of myself having ever been born or of dying, of experiencing a beginning or an end. "In all the endless months, years, and small and