Chapter 28
Whenever a mind, engaged in Sravana and the rest, wanders to any worldly object of desire, and, finding it worthless, returns to the performance of the three exercises--such returning is called samadhana.
Sraddha is an intensely strong faith in the utterances of one's guru and of the Vedanta philosophy.
(4.) An intense desire for liberation is called mumukshatva.
Those who possess these four qualifications, are worthy of engaging in discussions as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit, and, like Brahmacharins, they have no other duty (but such discussion). It is not, however, at all improper for householders to engage in such discussions; but, on the contrary, such a course is highly meritorious. For it is said--Whoever, with due reverence, engages in the discussion of subjects treated of in Vedanta philosophy and does proper service to his guru, reaps happy fruits. Discussion as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit is therefore a duty.
Q. What is Spirit?
A. It is that principle which enters into the composition of man and is not included in the three bodies, and which is distinct from the five sheaths (Koshas), being sat (existence),* chit (consciousness),** and ananda (bliss),*** and witness of the three states.
* This stands for Purusha.
** This stands for Prakriti, cosmic matter, irrespective of the state we perceive it to be in.
*** Bliss is Maya or Sakti, it is the creative energy producing changes of state in Prakriti. Says the Sruti (Taittiriya Upanishad): "Verily from Bliss are all these bhutas (elements) born, and being born by it they live, and they return and enter into Bliss." --------
Q. What are the three bodies?
A. The gross (sthula), the subtile (sukshma), and the causal (karana).
Q. What is the gross body?
A. That which is the effect of the Mahabhutas (primordial subtile elements) differentiated into the five gross ones (Panchikrita),* is born of Karma and subject to the six changes beginning with birth.** It is said:--
What is produced by the (subtile) elements differentiated into the five gross ones, is acquired by Karma, and is the measure of pleasure and pain, is called the body (sarira) par excellence.
Q. What is the subtile body?
A. It is the effect of the elements not differentiated into five and having seventeen characteristic marks (lingas).
Q. What are the seventeen?
A. The five channels of knowledge (Jnanendriyas), the five organs of action, the five vital airs, beginning with prana, and manas and buddhi.
* The five subtile elements thus produce the gross ones--each of the five is divided into eight parts, four of those parts and one part of each of the others enter into combination, and the result is the gross element corresponding with the subtile element, whose parts predominate in the composition.
** These six changes are--birth, death, existence in time, growth, decay, and undergoing change of substance (parinam) as milk is changed into whey. --------
Q. What are the Jnandendriyas?
A. [Spiritual] Ear, skin, eye, tongue and nose.
Q. What is the ear?
A. That channel of knowledge which transcends the [physical] ear, is limited by the auricular orifice, on which the akas depends, and which is capable of taking cognisance of sound.
Q. The skin?
A. That which transcends the skin, on which the skin depends, and which extends from head to foot, and has the power of perceiving heat and cold.
Q. The eye?
A. That which transcends the ocular orb, on which the orb depends, which is situated to the front of the black iris and has the power of cognising forms.
Q. The tongue?
A. That which transcends the tongue, and can perceive taste.
Q. The nose?
A. That which transcends the nose, and has the power of smelling.
Q. What are the organs of action?
A. The organ of speech (vach), hands, feet, &c.
Q. What is vach?
A. That which transcends speech, in which speech resides, and which is located in eight different centres* and has the power of speech.
* The secret commentaries say seven; for it does not separate the lips into the "upper" and "nether" lips. And, it adds to the seven centres the seven passages in the head connected with, and affected by, vach-- namely, the mouth, the two eyes, the two nostrils and the two ears. "The left ear, eye and nostril being the messengers of the right side of the head; the right ear, eye and nostril, those of the left side." Now this is purely scientific. The latest discoveries and conclusions of modern physiology have shown that the power or the faculty of human speech is located in the third frontal cavity of the left hemisphere of the brain. On the other hand, it is a well known fact that the nerve tissues inter-cross each other (decussate) in the brain in such a way that the motions of our left extremities are governed by the right hemisphere, while the motions of our right limbs are subject to the left hemisphere of the brain. ---------
Q. What are the eight centres?
A. Breast, throat, head, upper and nether lips, palate ligature (fraenum), binding the tongue to the lower jaw and tongue.
Q. What is the organ of the hands?
A. That which transcends the hands, on which the palms depend, and which has the power of giving and taking.... (The other organs are similarly described.)
Q. What is the antahkarana? *
A. Manas, buddhi, chitta and ahankara form it. The seat of the manas is the root of the throat, of buddhi the face, of chitta the umbilicus, and of ahankara the breast. The functions of these four components of antahkarana are respectively doubt, certainty, retention and egotism.
Q. How are the five vital airs,** beginning with prana, named?
* A flood of light will be thrown on the text by the note of a learned occultist, who says:--"Antahkarana is the path of communication between soul and body, entirely disconnected with the former, existing with, belonging to, and dying with the body." This path is well traced in the text.
** These vitals airs and sub-airs are forces which harmonize the interior man with his surroundings, by adjusting the relations of the body to external objects. They are the five allotropic modifications of life. -------
A. Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana. Their locations are said to be:--of prana the breast, of apana the fundamentum, of samana the umbilicus, of udana the throat, and vyana is spread all over the body. Functions of these are:--prana goes out, apana descends, udana ascends, samana reduces the food eaten into an undistinguishable state, and vyana circulates all over the body. Of these five vital airs there are five sub-airs--namely, naga, kurma, krikara, devadatta and dhananjaya. Functions of these are:--eructations produced by naga, kurma opens the eye, dhananjaya assimilates food, devadatta causes yawning, and krikara produces appetite--this is said by those versed in Yoga.
The presiding powers (or macrocosmic analogues) of the five channels of knowledge and the others are dik (akas) and the rest. Dik, vata (air), arka (sun), pracheta (water), Aswini, bahni (fire), Indra, Upendra, Mrityu (death), Chandra (moon), Brahma, Rudra, and Kshetrajnesvara,* which is the great Creator and cause of everything. These are the presiding powers of ear, and the others in the order in which they occur.
All these taken together form the linga sarira.** It is also said in the Shastras:--
The five vital airs, manas, buddhi, and the ten organs form the subtile body, which arises from the subtile elements, undifferentiated into the five gross ones, and which is the means of the perception of pleasure and pain.
Q. What is the Karana sarira?
* The principle of intellect (Buddhi) in the macrocosm. For further explanation of this term, see Sankara's commentaries on the Brahma Sutras.
** Linga means that which conveys meaning, characteristic mark. --------
A. It is ignorance [of different monads] (avidya), which is the cause of the other two bodies, and which is without beginning [in the present manvantara],* ineffable, reflection [of Brahma] and productive of the concept of non-identity between self and Brahma. It is also said:--
"Without a beginning, ineffable avidya is called the upadhi (vehicle)-- karana (cause). Know the Spirit to be truly different from the three upadhis--i.e., bodies."
Q. What is Not-Spirit?
A. It is the three bodies [described above], which are impermanent, inanimate (jada), essentially painful and subject to congregation and segregation.
* It must not be supposed that avidya is here confounded with prakriti. What is meant by avidya being without beginning, is that it forms no link in the Karmic chain leading to succession of births and deaths, it is evolved by a law embodied in prakriti itself. Avidya is ignorance or matter as related to distinct monads, whereas the ignorance mentioned before is cosmic ignorance, or maya-Avidya begins and ends with this manvantara. Maya is eternal. The Vedanta philosophy of the school of Sankara regards the universe as consisting of one substance, Brahman (the one ego, the highest abstraction of subjectivity from our standpoint), having an infinity of attributes, or modes of manifestation from which it is only logically separable. These attributes or modes in their collectivity form Prakriti (the abstract objectivity). It is evident that Brahman per se does not admit of any description other than "I am that I am." Whereas Prakriti is composed of an infinite number of differentiations of itself. In the universe, therefore, the only principle which is indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it. The eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of designating the All. Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of these infinite moods, and so is space. The only progress in Nature is the realization of moods unrealized before. --------
Q. What is impermanent?
A. That which does not exist in one and the same state in the three divisions of time [namely, present, past and future.]
Q. What is inanimate (jada)?
A. That which cannot distinguish between the objects of its own cognition and the objects of the cognition of others....
Q. What are the three states (mentioned above as those of which the Spirit is witness)?
A. Wakefulness (jagrata), dreaming (svapna), and the state of dreamless slumber (sushupti).
Q. What is the state of wakefulness?
A. That in which objects are known through the avenue of [physical] senses.
Q. Of dreaming?
A. That in which objects are perceived by reason of desires resulting from impressions produced during wakefulness.
Q. What is the state of dreamless slumber?
A. That in which there is an utter absence of the perception of objects.
The indwelling of the notion of "I" in the gross body during wakefulness is visva (world of objects),* in subtile body during dreaming is taijas (magnetic fire), and in the causal body during dreamless slumber is prajna (One Life).
Q. What are the five sheaths?
A. Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vjjnanamaya, and Anandamaya.
Annamaya is related to anna** (food), Pranamaya of prana (life), Manomaya of manas, Vijnanamaya of vijnana (finite perception), Anandamaya of ananda (illusive bliss).
* That is to say, by mistaking the gross body for self, the consciousness of external objects is produced.
** This word also means the earth in Sanskrit. -------
Q. What is the Annamaya sheath?
A. The gross body.
Q. Why?
A. The food eaten by father and mother is transformed into semen and blood, the combination of which is transformed into the shape of a body. It wraps up like a sheath and hence so called. It is the transformation of food and wraps up the spirit like a sheath--it shows the spirit which is infinite as finite, which is without the six changes, beginning with birth as subject to those changes, which is without the three kinds of pain* as liable to them. It conceals the spirit as the sheath conceals the sword, the husk the grain, or the womb the fetus.
Q. What is the next sheath?
A. The combination of the five organs of action, and the five vital airs form the Pranamaya sheath.
By the manifestation of prana, the spirit which is speechless appears as the speaker, which is never the giver as the giver, which never moves as in motion, which is devoid of hunger and thirst as hungry and thirsty.
Q. What is the third sheath?
A. It is the five (subtile) organs of sense (jnanendriya) and manas.
* The three kinds of pain are:--
Adhibhautika, i.e., from external objects, e.g., from thieves, wild animals, &c.
Adhidaivika, i.e., from elements, e.g., thunder, &c.
Adhyatmika, i.e., from within one's self, e.g., head-ache, &c. See Sankhya Karika, Gaudapada's commentary on the opening Sloka. -------
By the manifestation of this sheath (vikara) the spirit which is devoid of doubt appears as doubting, devoid of grief and delusion as grieved and deluded, devoid of sight as seeing.
Q. What is the Vijnanamaya sheath?
A. [The essence of] the five organs of sense form this sheath in combination with buddhi.
Q. Why is this sheath called the jiva (personal ego), which by reason of its thinking itself the actor, enjoyer, &c., goes to the other loka and comes back to this?*
A. It wraps up and shows the spirit which never acts as the actor, which never cognises as conscious, which has no concept of certainty as being certain, which is never evil or inanimate as being both.
Q. What is the Anandamaya sheath?
A. It is the antahkarana, wherein ignorance predominates, and which produces gratification, enjoyment, &c. It wraps up and shows the spirit, which is void of desire, enjoyment and fruition, as having them, which has no conditioned happiness as being possessed thereof.
Q. Why is the spirit said to be different from the three bodies?
A. That which is truth cannot be untruth, knowledge ignorance, bliss misery, or vice versa.
Q. Why is it called the witness of the three states?
A. Being the master of the three states, it is the knowledge of the three states, as existing in the present, past and future.**
* That is to say, flits from birth to birth.
** It is the stable basis upon which the three states arise and disappear. -------
Q. How is the spirit different from the five sheaths?
A. This is being illustrated by an example:--"This is my cow," "this is my calf," "this is my son or daughter," "this is my wife," "this is my anandamaya sheath," and so on*--the spirit can never be connected with these concepts; it is different from and witness of them all. For it is said in the Upanishad--[The spirit is] "naught of sound, of touch, of form, or colour, of taste, or of smell; it is everlasting, having no beginning or end, superior [in order of subjectivity] to Prakriti (differentiated matter); whoever correctly understands it as such attains mukti (liberation)." The spirit has also been called (above) sat, chit, and ananda.
Q. What is meant by its being sat (presence)?
A. Existing unchanged in the three divisions of time and uninfluenced by anything else.
Q. What by being chit (consciousness)?
A. Manifesting itself without depending upon anything else, and containing the germ of everything in itself.
Q. What by being ananda (bliss)?
A. The ne plus ultra of bliss.
Whoever knows without doubt and apprehension of its being otherwise, the self as being one with Brahma or spirit, which is eternal, non-dual and unconditioned, attains moksha (liberation from conditioned existence.)
* The "heresy of individuality," or attavada of the Buddhists. --------
Was Writing Known Before Panini?
I am entrusted with the task of putting together some facts which would support the view that the art of writing was known in India before the time of our grammarian--the Siva-taught Panini. Professor Max Muller has maintained the contrary opinion ever since 1856, and has the approbation of other illustrious Western scholars. Stated briefly, their position is that the entire absence of any mention of "writing, reading, paper, or pen" in the Vedas, or during the whole of the Brahmana period, and the almost, if not quite, as complete silence as to them throughout the Sutra period, "lead us to suppose that even then [the Sutra period], though the art of writing began to be known, the whole literature of India was preserved by oral tradition only." ("Hist. Sans. Lit.," p. 501.) To support this theory, he expands the mnemonic faculty of our respected ancestors to such a phenomenal degree that, like the bull's hide of Queen Dido, it is made to embrace the whole ground needed for the proposed city of refuge, to which discomfited savants may flee when hard pressed. Considering that Professor Weber--a gentleman who, we observe, likes to distil the essence of Aryan aeons down into an attar of no greater volume than the capacity of the Biblical period--admits that Europe now possesses 10,000 of our Sanscrit texts; and considering that we have, or have had, many other tens of thousands which the parsimony of Karma has hitherto withheld from the museums and libraries of Europe, what a memory must have been theirs!
Under correction, I venture to assume that Panini, who was ranked among the Rishis, was the greatest known grammarian in India, than whom there is no higher in history, whether ancient or modern; further, that contemporary scholars agree that the Sanskrit is the most perfect of languages. Therefore, when Prof. Muller affirms that "there is not a single word in Panini's terminology which presupposes the existence of writing" (op. cit. 507), we become a little shaken in our loyal deference to Western opinion. For it is very hard to conceive how one so pre-eminently great as Panini should have been incapable of inventing characters to preserve his grammatical system--supposing that none had previously existed--if his genius was equal to the invention of classical Sanskrit. The mention of the word Grantha, the equivalent for a written or bound book in the later literature of India--though applied by Panini (in B. I. 3, 75) to the Veda; (in B. iv. 3, 87) to any work; (in B. iv. 3, 116) to the work of any individual author; and (in B. iv. 3, 79) to any work that is studied, do not stagger Prof. Muller at all. Grantha he takes to mean simply a composition, and this may be handed down to posterity by oral communication. Hence, we must believe that Panini was illiterate; but yet composed the most elaborate and scientific system of grammar ever known; recorded its 3,996 rules only upon the molecular quicksands of his "cerebral cineritious matter," and handed them over to his disciples by atmospheric vibration, i.e., oral teaching! Of course, nothing could be clearer; it commends itself to the simplest intellect as a thing most probable! And in the presence of such a perfect hypothesis, it seems a pity that its author should (op. cit. 523) confess that "it is possible" that he "may have overlooked some words in the Brahmanas and Sutras, which would prove the existence of written books previous to Panini." That looks like the military strategy of our old warriors, who delivered their attack boldly, but nevertheless tried to keep their rear open for retreat if compelled. The precaution was necessary: written books did exist many centuries before the age in which this radiant sun of Aryan thought rose to shine upon his age. They existed, but the Orientalist may search in vain for the proof amid the exoteric words in our earlier literature. As the Egyptian hierophants had their private code of hieratic symbols, and even the founder of Christianity spoke to the vulgar in parables whose mystical meaning was known only to the chosen few, so the Brahmans had from the first (and still have) a mystical terminology couched behind ordinary expressions, arranged in certain sequences and mutual relations, which none but the initiate would observe. That few living Brahmans possess this key but proves that, as in other archaic religious and philosophical systems, the soul of Hinduism has fled (to its primal imparters--the initiates), and only the decrepit body remains with a spiritually degenerate posterity.*
* Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman. --------
I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying. We know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans. But I hope to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing. Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim--though they will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents.
I.--It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements; and this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of the Tyrian settlement.
II.--Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.
III.--It can be proved that before the final division and classification of languages, there existed two languages in every nation: (a) the profane or popular language of the masses; (b) the sacerdotal or secret language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries--the latter being one and universal. Or, in other, words, every great people had, like the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and later on in a phonetic alphabet. Now it requires a stretch of prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman Aryans--mystics and metaphysicians above everything--were the only ones who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the characters in which it was recorded. To contradict this gratuitous assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs. It can be demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the influence of the former for all their arts and sciences. (Even if we accept Mr. Cunningham's "Indo-Grecian Period," for it lasted only from 250-57 B.C., as he states it.) The direct progenitor of the Vedic Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among the initiates). The Vach--its alter ego or the "mystic self," the sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman--became in time the mystery language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and Chaldea; of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans; of the Pelasgi and Palanquans; in short, of the whole globe. The appellation DEVANAGARI is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians.