Two Old Faiths | Page 8

existence, which is in consequence of ignorance (or illusion). Ignorance makes the soul think itself different from God; and it also "projects" the appearance of an external world.
"He who knows God becomes God." "When He, the first and last, is discerned, one's own acts are annihilated."
Meditation, without distinction of subject and object, is the highest form of thought. It is a high attainment to say, "I am God;" but the consummation is when thought exists without an object.
There are four states of the soul--waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep, and the "fourth state," or pure intelligence. The working-man is in dense ignorance; in sleep he is freed from part of this ignorance; in dreamless sleep he is freed from still more; but the consummation is when he attains something beyond this, which it seems cannot be explained, and is therefore called the fourth state.
[Sidenote: Doctrine of "the Self." Inconsistent statements.] The name, which in later writings is most frequently given to the "one without a second,"[16] is Atman, which properly means self. Much is said of the way in which the self in each man is to recover, or discover, its unity with the supreme or real self. For as the one sun shining in the heavens is reflected, often in distorted images, in multitudes of vessels filled with water, so the one self is present in all human minds.[17] There is not--perhaps there could not be--consistency in the statements of the relation of the seeming to the real. In most of the older books a practical or conventional existence is admitted of the self in each man, but not a real existence. But when the conception is fully formulated the finite world is not admitted to exist save as a mere illusion. All phenomena are a play--a play without plot or purpose, which the absolute plays with itself.[18] This is surely transcendent transcendentalism. One regrets that speculation did not take one step more, and declare that the illusion was itself illusory. Then we should have gone round the circle, and returned to sensus communis. We must be pardoned if we seem to speak disrespectfully of such fantastic speculations; we desire rather to speak regretfully of the many generations of men which successively occupied themselves with such unprofitable dreams; for this kind of thought is traceable even from Vedic days. It is more fully developed in the Upanishads. In them occurs the classical sentence so frequently quoted in later literature, which declares that the absolute being is the "one [thing] without a second."[19]
[Sidenote: The Gita.] The book which perhaps above all others has molded the mind of India in more recent days is the Bhagavad Gita, or Song of the Holy One. It is written in stately and harmonious verse, and has achieved the same task for Indian philosophy as Lucretius did for ancient Epicureanism.[20] It is eclectic, and succeeds, in a sort of way, in forcing the leading systems of Indian thought into seeming harmony.
[Sidenote: Intellectual pride.] Some have thought they could discern in these daring speculations indications of souls groping after God, and saddened because of the difficulty of finding him. Were it so, all our sympathies would at once be called forth. But no; we see in these writings far more of intellectual pride than of spiritual sadness. Those ancient dreamers never learned their own ignorance. They scarcely recognized the limitations of the human mind. And when reason could take them no farther they supplemented it by dreams and ecstasy until, in the Yoga philosophy, they rushed into systematized mysticisms and magic far more extravagant than the wildest theurgy of the degraded Neoplatonism of the Roman Empire.
A learned writer thus expresses himself:
"The only one of the six schools that seem to recognize the doctrine of divine providence is the Yoga. It thus seems that the consistent followers of these systems can have, in their perfected state, no religion, no action, and no moral character."[21]
[Sidenote: Indian philosophy a sad failure.] And now to take a brief review of the whole subject. The Hindu sages were men of acute and patient thought; but their attempt to solve the problem of the divine and human natures, of human destiny and duty, has ended in total failure. Each system baseless, and all mutually conflicting; systems cold and cheerless, that frown on love and virtuous exertion, and speak of annihilation or its equivalent, absorption, as our highest hope: such is the poor result of infinite speculation. "The world by wisdom knew not God." O, that India would learn the much-needed lesson of humility which the experience of ages ought to teach her!
[Sidenote: Sacerdotalism. The tyranny of sacerdotalism.] While speculation was thus busy Sacerdotalism was also continually extending its influence. The Brahman, the man of prayer, had made himself indispensable in all sacred rites. He