Part 2

But now what does this Polytheism mean? There is a truth in it. For every Nation has its own Ḍeva, as we should say; its own Angel, as the Christian and Musalmān would say. These subordinate hosts, these Angels and Archangels, these Ḍevas and Ḍevīs, they are all superhuman intelligences, working out the will of God the Supreme. Think for a moment of Astronomy. There was a time when this little world was the centre of the Solar System, when fixed, with the Waters below and the Waters above, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars also, circled around our Globe. Science gradually found out that the universe was larger than the Solar System; that the Universe had many Suns and many systems. It found out that our globe went round the Sun and not the Sun round our globe. The world was lifted out of this position of superiority and thrown out into space, one among myriads of worlds; that was the heresy for which Giordano Bruno died. He proclaimed the multiplicity of worlds, and that the Sun was the centre of our system, but that there were other worlds and other Suns. In the old days that was a frightful horror, for he turned everything upside down. What can you do with Christian teachings if our globe is one among many? Christ died for this world. Did God die for a grain of dust in an endless Universe? The whole dignity of our world was lost. Then they said that Christ ascended up into Heaven, but Bruno said that there was no "up" and no "down". Our world with space below it; our world with space above it. Where then is Heaven? Where is Hell? Where is Heaven? Where is the Throne of God? Where the right hand of God where Christ is sitting? Where did He go to on that Ascension day? Where is He to be found in this unlimited space? And so they said: "Oh! burn him, get rid of him, send him to find the worlds of which he talks." So they burnt him and scattered his ashes, and joyed that he was dead. But Bruno lived still although the body was dead, and Science, Science triumphed, although its votaries were burnt, were racked, were imprisoned. They took Galileo and forced him to his knees to confess that he had been mistaken; "and yet it moves," were the whispered words of the Scientist, who did not dare to face the horrors of the Inquisition. And so Science triumphed, and now, what do you find? Not only that our Sun is, to us, a stationary body and the world goes round it; but that ours is only one of many systems, and that all those systems and their Suns go round another Sun, and that is not the last, and again that is not the last; for all those masses of systems, they also go round a still higher Sun, and so concentric circles of worlds, of systems, of Universes, without end that human eye can pierce, without end that human mind can grasp; and so we begin to realise that the local Gods of the past, they have their places, all circling round the One who is the centre of all life, "the One without a Second". All Universes rise and fall in Him. All Universes are born and die in His immensity. No thought may limit Him. No mind may grasp Him. He is the All, the One, the Omnipresent, and His Life lives in the Angels and Archangels, lives in the Ḍevas of all the systems, and in all they are His Ministers, carrying out His Will.

And so there arose what is called Pantheism. God is All and in all. Now there is a great difference between the Pantheism of the West as embodied in Spinoza, and the Pantheism of the East, that you find in the Veḍas, that you find in the Zend-Avesta, that you find in the old dead Religions of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome. The Pantheism of the West is one Divine Existence with certain attributes, the Spinozean Pantheism. It is the Formless Boundless Existence. Not quite the Nirguṇa Brahman, the "Brahman without attributes". His Pantheism is as cold and uninspiring for conduct, as the Nirguṇa Brahman would be if that were the last word of Hinḍūism. Infinite, All-embracing, All-in-holding, out of Space and Time, that is the central thought of every great philosophy, Musalmān, Hinḍū, Zoroastrian, I might almost say Christian--though that is more doubtful, for it is more rigid, and narrowed by being confined more or less within the conceptions of the Bible. If you go to the great Musalmān Doctors of the ninth and tenth centuries A. D. you will find magnificent descriptions of the All-God. In That is said to exist not only what has been, not only what is, but that which shall he, and all eternally existent, all that is conceivable, all that is inconceivable, all is in Him. It is the same as the Aḍvaiṭa-Veḍānṭa--if you take away from that the conception of the Saguṇa Brahman, and the devotional side of Shrī Shaṅkarāchārya in his sṭoṭras--the One without a Second, embracing all, conceiving all, all-existing, one Now, without past, present, and future, nothing to be excluded. But then comes the next step, the Saguṇa Brahman, the "Brahman with attributes," that is not a second, but the One in manifestation. He manifests a part of Himself. Said Shrī Kṛṣhṇa: "I established this Universe with a portion of myself, and I remain"; all-transcending, all-embracing, the manifested God, limiting Himself by manifestation. And so Manu speaks of Him as "a mountain of light," the generating Light; the One with attributes, but the attributes belong to the manifestation. They might vary perchance in another age, in another Universe. Then there go forth from Him the three great manifestations, Will, or Power; Wisdom, or Self-Realisation; Activity, or Creative Intelligence, and that threefold manifestation, of Power, of Self-Realisation, of Creative Intelligence, that is the root of every Trinity, as it is called, that you find in the ancient and in the modern worlds. Three forms of Manifestation inherent in one Existence, the creative Power, that brings a Universe into existence, called Brahmā among Hinḍūs; the sustaining all-preserving Power, that maintains a Universe, all-permeating, all-preserving, that is called Viṣhṇu; and He into whom all re-enters, the Destroyer, the Regenerator, He into whom all returns that a higher form may reappear, that is Mahāḍeva, Shiva, the Supreme Bliss.

Naturally among a people unmetaphysical and unphilosophical, you get a division which in truth does not exist. They see three different Deities and quarrel over them, where there is only One, showing Himself in the three essential forms for a Universe which comes, which lives, which passes; and hence you have the Shaiva and the Vaiṣhṇava fighting the one against the other. I saw the other day in the caves of Elephanta, the Arḍha Shiva Arḍha Viṣhṇu, the Hari-Hara, which is said in the legends to be the combination of the twain in one. A fanatic was worshipping one and depreciating the other, it is said, and the image of Viṣhṇu changed, and became half Mahāḍeva and half Viṣhṇu, and the double image smiled upon the worshipper, to remind him that the division was in man and not in God.

So also there are hosts of Ḍevas, for the eastern Pantheism includes the innumerable forms in which God-in-all expresses Himself, and so we have Polytheism in a higher form. You need not be afraid of words, for that is the all-embracing truth. Polytheism asserts the existence of the Ḍevas and Ḍevīs, who carry out the Will of the Supreme. "Not for the sake of the Ḍeva is the Ḍeva dear, but for the sake of the Self is the Ḍeva dear." Only as the manifestation of the Self is the Ḍeva seen, as you, in your turn, are manifestations of the same Self. But the Ḍeva is a more highly evolved manifestation than you are. These innumerable ministers of the Supreme Will, they also are manifestations of the One; they mar not the Unity. And so in the Veḍas you chant to all of them; and so in the Zend-Avesta you invoke them all.

Now the Western will tell you that all these Ḍevas of yours are the personifications of the elements; that Agni is not a being, but is the Fire personified. You must turn that right upside down, if you want to make it true. Agni is not a personification of the element Fire; but Fire, the element, is the material expression of Agni, his body, his vehicle, by which he shows himself in the world. And that is your key. Ignorance personifies an Element. Knowledge sees a Being whose material expression is an Element. Ignorance sees the physical. Knowledge sees in everything physical a manifestation of the One Self, showing Himself in a limited form for the helping of His world. And so the higher Occultist may address Agni, the Ḍevarāja of Fire, and, below Agni, countless hosts of those who are called Fire Ḍevas, or Fire Elementals, all expressions of his nature, all using a special type of matter in the world. Hence you hear that when the world was built, the elements came forth, and each had the Life-principle within it. Fire came forth, but Agni, the Ḍevarāja, was the Life-principle within the fire-matter, and so with Varuṇa for water, and so with Kubera for earth. You have within every Element, nay, within everything that you call a law in nature, you have a Life-principle, a Ḍeva, or Angel, call him what you will, names matter not, provided that you realise that the Self which works in you as man, works in all these Beings in ascending ranks of hierarchical power; but they all are expressions of the one Divine Will, and the One works in all of them, and "the wise see the One, although they call Him by many names".

Now there you have the whole truth: God is everything and in All. God is manifested in countless forms, in countless grades of living intelligences, and each has its own place, and the Ḍevas come forth from Brahmā, as later from Him come forth vegetables and animals and men. There is only the One Life, but it is manifest in infinite forms--Pantheism-cum-Polytheism, God-in-a-Universe. Now, if you realise that, if you understand that, all these many Ḍevas and Ḍevīs, these many Angels and Archangels, are only expressions, phenomena, manifestations, of the One, just as you are. Then, you will realise that all these, carrying out the Divine Will, are the hearers of prayer, are the guardians of mankind; some are guardians of Nations, others the guardians of special areas smaller than Nations, but all are agents of the One. When the peasant prays to the form that he worships, and asks for help, that is really a prayer to the One Supreme, which is answered by His minister, the Ḍeva who is addressed by the peasant; and if you talk to the peasant here in India, you will find that most, if not all, of them realise the One behind the many, and know, that the One alone is God, although they appeal to those who are nearer in evolution to themselves, as they ask a Collector rather than the King. And so we begin to realise that Polytheism has its truth, and only needs to be understood. Then all Nature becomes living, beautiful, sympathetic, God smiles in everything. The thinker should realise it, and then none will ever blur the Unity by the multiplicity of manifestations. Thus you come to the whole truth, and find it living, exquisite, a perpetual joy. All Nature lives and loves. There is but One Life, but One Existence, but one Supreme Omnipresent Being. We cannot call him Spirit, because Spirit is the antithesis of Matter, and Spirit and Matter blend in Him. So we call Him the ONE WITHOUT A SECOND. In the boundless realms of space, in the infinity of Universes, that ONE is expressing Himself in countless ways, but all is a manifestation of Himself. He the One Thinker; from Him, all thought comes forth. He, the one Actor; from Him all activities proceed. All our human words of right and wrong, of good and evil, those are limited to the evolving lives in relation to each other. There is nothing that can be excluded from the One and Universal. In Him, all is well, all is highest and best. And, when we come to deal with Right and Wrong, we shall see how this works out, how it gives us a human standard, a standard by which we may guide our steps. But, for this morning, I will leave with you that Supreme Ideal: that there is but the One in All, in Everything; the lowest dust beneath your feet has the One within it; the highest Ḍeva in the highest heaven is but another expression of the One. You express Him, the animal expresses Him, the vegetable expresses Him, the mineral expresses Him. How else shall they live, save in Him who is life? How else shall they evolve, save in Him who is manifesting Himself through them? Be not afraid to love the world, which is one of His manifestations, one of His thoughts; but see Him everywhere and in everything, and so shall everything become spiritualised. Let Him speak to you through the world, as He speaks to you through the Spirit. He speaks in every breath of air; He speaks in every leaf on the forest tree; He speaks in the foam and crash of the Ocean's breaking billows; He speaks in the solitude and silence of the Mountain. There is none other. There is nothing else. He is the One Existence. And as you realise that, you share His power, and you share His peace.

MAN

FRIENDS:

I will ask you to remember the point at which we had arrived when the first lecture was concluded. We had studied the nature, the existence of God, and we had come to the point where we realised one all-pervading Life, the One without a Second, the One Life permeating every form from the lowest mineral to the highest Ḍeva, nay--the Lord of the Universe, Īshvara Himself. He also is an embodiment of the Supreme Self, showing forth infinite Power, Wisdom and Activity, the attributes of the Self, showing them forth in supreme measure. But even in Īshvara Himself, the Lord of the Universe, we recognise that He is an embodiment, and that, as is written in the _Bhāgavaṭa_, there are many Īshvaras, many Shivas, Viṣhṇus, Brahmās, each triplet the centre of a Universe, each the Īshvara of a Kosmos. Realising that, then, as our foundation, and that everything in a Universe, in its measure, is animated by the One Life, inspired by the One Energy, moved by the One Will, we then descend from those great heights to study one phase of the embodiments, that which we know as MAN. Realise that Man is only one grade in this mighty hierarchy of existences, that, beginning with the mineral, passing onwards through the vegetable, then ascending through the animal, culminates in Man, more and more of the Supreme Life shown out stage by stage. You may remember how the great commentator Sāyaṇa pointed out that the Supreme Self in the mineral shows out only the quality of existence. Passing onwards to vegetable and animal, He shows out there the attribute of consciousness. Passing onwards to Man, He reveals Himself in fuller measure--Man, who remembers what is past, who forecasts that which is yet to come. While man heads these ascending grades in our normal world, we yet pass onward in thought to the great hierarchies of Super-Men, of Ḍevas--Angels, call them what you will--then still onwards and onwards, ever in ascending grades of Power, of Wisdom and of Activity, until we reach those mighty Spirits who stand, as it were, around Īshvara Himself, His Viceroys in the mighty Empire of our system, all subordinates and ministers, who carry out the will of the Supreme Lord.

Now in this great Ladder of Life, Man occupies what we may call a middle place. The characteristic of Man is that in him there is a warfare of Spirit and of Matter, striving for the mastery. In the mineral, in the vegetable, in the animal, there you find Matter is supreme; Spirit is most deeply veiled in the mineral, rather less veiled in the vegetable, still less in the animal. When we come to Man, in his lowest condition we find that Matter is still triumphant; then a struggle begins, and at last Spirit shows himself triumphant. Matter is spiritualised by the indwelling Life, and instead of being a fetter and a clog it becomes a vehicle, an expression of the indwelling, the directing, Spirit. The interest then of Man is that in all the stages of his long evolution the struggle is going on. First we see Matter is supreme. Gradually as Mind develops, the lowest manifestation of the Spirit, the struggle becomes marked; then slowly and gradually evolving, ever further and further, in the Saints, in the Sages of our race, we find the triumph of the human over the animal, the triumph of the Spirit over Matter; it is that mighty evolution that is the subject of our study this morning.

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Where shall we begin? We must necessarily begin in the bosom of Īshvara Himself, whence come forth the human Spirits, the Jīvāṭmās. For is it not written that as millions of sparks go forth from the flaming fire, so do the Jīvāṭmās go forth from Īshvara Himself; or again, do we not find it said by Shrī Kṛṣhṇa, speaking as the Supreme Īshvara: "A portion of Myself--Mamāmsha--a fragment of Myself, going forth into the world of Matter, draws round itself the senses, and mind as the sixth." There you have the definition of Man. A portion of Īshvara Himself, a fragment of that illimitable Life, thrown down into the world of Matter, which incases the fragment within itself, which that fragment is destined to turn into a vehicle for the unfolded powers of God. As a seed is cast into the ground and within that seed lie hidden every power, every beauty, every possibility of the tree that sent it forth, so from the eternal Tree of Life of God Himself the seed is cast into the soil of our world, impotent, helpless, nescient--knowing nothing at first. But, inasmuch as it is a seed of God, it is destined to unfold Divine Powers, and to become in the course of ages the image of That from whom it has come forth. And so we find it written in the _Bṛhaṭ Āraṇyaka_, showing the contrast between the Supreme Āṭmā, the Paramāṭmā, and the Jivāṭmā, the human Spirit: "All-powerful the one, but powerless the other." In the one, all power manifests; in the other, every potentiality is present. And so, you find also in the later religion of Christianity, that it is declared by the mouth of the Christ Himself: "Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which in Heaven is perfect." I ask all of you to realise what lies in those words of the Christ; as God in Heaven is perfect, such is the destiny of the children of men; not always to be weak and frivolous, not always to be childish and impotent, but to become, in the course of ages, _perfect_ as God Himself is perfect. That, and nothing less than that, is the destiny of every one of you. You may delay it; you may retard it; you may wander in many bye-ways and lose ages of time; but what is time, however long, to you who are eternal, for whom there is no limit of space or time, inasmuch as your essence is the essence of God Himself. Nothing less than that, your Future.

But now, let us look at this Seed of Divinity and ask: How it is to develop, how it is to grow into splendour so illimitable? For though you be sons of a King, though your heritage be sure in the future, you may yet, if you will, grovel in the mire; you may, if you will, forget your birthright; you may think yourselves children of the dust, while you are children of Īshvara; but you must at last come to your inheritance, for the Divine Will in you cannot be ultimately frustrated, and your destiny, your Divine destiny, must be worked out.

Now, we have a fragment of Divinity embodied in flesh. Under what conditions, by what laws, is that fragment to evolve, to unfold its powers? There are two great laws under which that Seed of Divinity must develop into manifested God. The one, the Law of Reincarnation; the turning of the wheel of births and deaths to which every one of us is bound; where freedom can only come to us by realising our Divinity; whence we may not escape until the law is utterly fulfilled. And the second, the Law of Karma, that law of the Divine Nature in which everything exists related, bound together, by simultaneous co-existence; hence, when out of that Eternity any portion of the Divine comes into space and into time, you have causation, where before there was simultaneity. You have what you call causation, which is only the coming into appearance and recognition of the real simultaneity of all. In God all is; in man all becomes; but that is the only difference; and what you call causation is nothing more than the unfolding in time, which is succession, of that which ever exists out of time in the Supreme. Let us then see how the law works, and it works through many stages, it works through endless ages. We have our Divine Seed--a child-Spirit, let us call him--born into our world. He is not left there alone, to find out by long experience only how evolution must proceed; for, out of previous Universes, out of past evolutions in other worlds, there come to the helping of these infant children of Man, Those who have passed through the earlier stages, and have become superhuman in Their knowledge and Their power. There are two ways of finding out the existence of a law. One, the way in which, surrounded by the laws of nature that we may not change nor violate, unknowing that they exist, unconscious that they are around us, we are like a man in a darkened chamber, where there is no light to see his environment, who knocks himself up against one thing or another and bruises himself in the knocking. By the bruising, he finds out the obstacles; by the pain that he suffers, he finds that he can only move without pain in a certain direction. That is the scientific way. Every law of nature that has been so far discovered by Science has been discovered by experience which has turned ignorance into knowledge. Take Roger Bacon, one of the early chemists in the days when to investigate was heresy, in the days when to understand was crime. He was a monk, but a monk with the soul of a scientist in him. He experimented with chemical substances. He knew nothing about them. He did not know that putting these two together made a new and useful substance; that putting another two together made an explosive substance, that scattered everything around. He put together whatever he could find. What was the result? One time he was stretched senseless on the floor of his cell; another time a finger was blown off; another time an eye was blown out; onward and onward he went, with that dauntless courage, that interminable patience, which make the truly scientific man, who looks on knowledge as the supreme good. Struck senseless he came to again, and began again his work: missing a finger, he used the rest for new experimentation: when one eye had gone, the other remained with which he could still see. And, by such pain, by such loss, such infinity of dangers, Science slowly won its way to its knowledge of the laws around it. Inviolably, unchangeably, God manifests in Nature.