The soul is like a king whose ministers
Are body, senses, mind, and understanding'.
The soul is wholly separate from these,

Yet witnesses and overlooks their actions (18).
The foolish think the Spirit acts, whereas

The senses are the actors, so the moon

Is thought to move when clouds are passing o'er it (19).
When intellect and mind are present, then

Affections, inclinations, pleasures, pains

Are active; in profound and dreamless sleep
When intellect is non-existent, these

Exist not; therefore they belong to mind (22).
As brightness is inherent in the sun,

Coolness in water, warmness in the fire,

E'en so existence, knowledge, perfect bliss2,
And perfect purity inhere in soul (23).

The understanding cannot recognize

The soul, nor does the soul need other knowledge
To know itself, e'en as a shining light

Requires no light to make itself perceived (27, 28).
The soul declares its own condition thus-

I am distinct from body, I am free
From birth, old age, infirmity, and death.
I have no senses; I have no connection
With sound or sight or objects of sensation.

I am distinct from mind, and so exempt

The soul is supposed by Vedantists to have three conditions besides the conditions of pure intelligence, viz. waking, dreaming, and profound or dreamless sleep (su-shupti). While awake, the soul, associated with the body, is active and has to do with a real creation. While dreaming, it has to do with an unreal or illusory world. When profoundly and dreamlessly asleep, it is supposed to have retired by the channel of some of the pericardial arteries into the perfect repose of union with the supreme Soul. See Vedanta-sūtra III. 2. 1-10.

2 Hence the Vedantist's name for the one universal Spirit, Saċ-ċidananda.

The celebrated Hindu maxim Atmānam ātmanā paśya, 'know (see) thyself by thyself,' or 'know the soul by the soul,' has, therefore, a deeper philosophical meaning than the still more celebrated Greek precept yvi reauró, attributed to Thales.

From passion, pride, aversion, fear, and pain.
I have no qualities', I am without
Activity, and destitute of option2,
Changeless, eternal, formless, without taint,
For ever free, for ever without stain.
I, like the boundless ether, permeate
The universe within, without, abiding
Always, for ever similar in all,

Perfect, immovable, without affection,
Existence, knowledge, undivided bliss,
Without a second, One, supreme am I' (31-35).
The perfect consciousness that 'I am Brahma'
Removes the false appearances projected
By Ignorance, just as elixir, sickness (36).
The universal Soul knows no distinction
Of knower, knowledge, object to be known.
Rather is it enlightened through itself

And its own essence, which is simple knowledge (40).
When contemplation rubs the Arani1

Of soul, the flame of knowledge blazing up
Quickly consumes the fuel ignorance (41).
The saint who has attained to full perfection
Of contemplation, sees the universe

Existing in himself, and with the eye

Of knowledge sees the All as the One Soul (46).
When bodily disguises are dissolved,
The perfect saint becomes completely blended
With the one Soul, as water blends with water,
As air unites with air, as fire with fire (52).
That gain than which there is no greater gain,
That joy than which there is no greater joy,
That lore than which there is no greater lore,
Is the one Brahma-this is certain truth (53).

1 The epithet nir-guna, quality-less,' so commonly applied to the supreme Being in India, will be better understood by a reference to p. 95. Nir-vikalpa may perhaps be translated, 'destitute of all reflection,' or perhaps, free from all will.'

2

3 Avidya-vikshepin, the projections of ignorance.' See p. 119.

4 See note, p. 18.

6

Yogin, see p. 102.

Upadhi, a term for the illusive disguises assumed by Brahma.

That which is through, above, below, complete,
Existence, wisdom, bliss', without a second,
Endless, eternal, one-know that as Brahma (55).
That which is neither coarse nor yet minute,
That which is neither short nor long, unborn,
Imperishable, without form, unbound

By qualities, without distinctive marks,
Without a name- know that indeed as Brahma (59).
Nothing exists but Brahma, when aught else

Appears to be, 'tis, like the mirage, false3 (62).

With regard to the five sheaths (pañća-kośa) alluded to in the fourteenth verse of the Atma-bodha, it must be noted that in the Vedanta the individuated soul, when separated off from the supreme Soul, is regarded as enclosed in a succession of cases (kosa) which envelope it and, as it were, fold one over the other, 'like the coats of an onion. The first or innermost sheath is called the Vijnana-maya-kosa or 'sheath composed of mere intellection,' associated with the organs of perception. This gives the personal soul its first conception of individuality. The second case is called the Mano-maya or 'sheath composed of mind,' associated with the organs of action. This gives the individual soul its powers of thought and judgment. The third envelope is called the Praṇa-maya or 'breathing sheath,' i. e. the sheath composed of breath and the other vital airs associated with the organs of action. The fourth case is called the Anna-maya or covering supported by food,' i. e. the corporeal form or gross body; the three preceding sheaths, when combined together, constituting the subtile body. A fifth case, called Ananda-maya or 'that composed of supreme bliss,' is also named, although not admitted by all. It must be regarded as the innermost of all, and ought therefore, when five are enumerated, to be placed before

As remarked by Dr. Ballantyne, Lecture on the Vedanta-sāra, p. 29.

the Vijnana-maya. Moreover, a collective totality of subtile bodies is supposed to exist, and the soul, which is imagined to pass through these subtile bodies like a thread, is called the Sūtratman, 'thread-soul' (occasionally styled the Prāṇātman), and sometimes identified with Hiranyagarbha.

Of course the Vedanta theory, if pushed to its ultimate consequences, must lead to the neglect of all duties, religious and moral, of all activity, physical or intellectual, and of all self-culture. If everything (rò Tav) be God, then you and he and I must be one. Why should any efforts be made for the advancement of self or for the good of others? Everything we have must be common property. According to the Brihad-āraṇyaka Upanishad (IV. 5):

Where there is anything like duality there one sees another, one smells another, one tastes another, one speaks to another, one hears another, one minds another, one regards another, one knows another; but where the whole of this (Tò πâv) is one spirit, then whom and by what can one see? whom and by what can one smell? whom and by what can one taste? to whom and by what can one speak? whom and by what can one hear? whom and by what can one mind? whom and by what can one regard? whom and by what can one know ?

This Indian pantheism is paralleled by some phases of modern German thought, as described by Dean Mansel in the following extract from one of his Essays lately published:

With German philosophers the root of all mischief is the number two -Self and Not-self, Ego and Non-ego. The pantheist tells me that I have not a real distinct existence and unity of my own, but that I am merely a phenomenal manifestation, or an aggregate of many manifestations of the one infinite Being. If [then] we shrink from Nihilism, there remains the alternative of Pantheism. The instincts of our nature plead against annihilation and maintain, in spite of philosophy, that there must really exist something somewhere. Granting that something exists, why is that something to be called Ego? What qualities can it possess which shall make it I rather than Thou, or any one being rather than any other being? I am directly conscious of the existence of a self. But this consciousness

is a delusion. This self is but the phenomenal shadow of a further self, of which I am not conscious. Why may not this also be a shadow of something further still? Why may there not be a yet more remote reality, which is itself neither self nor not-self, but the root and foundation, and at the same time the indifference of both? This ultimate existence, the one and sole reality, is then set up as the deity of philosophy, and the result is pure pantheism.

Perhaps it may not be out of place here to contrast with Indian ideas Aristotle's grand conception of the nature of God as propounded in the eleventh book of his Metaphysics. In chapter vii of that book Aristotle says (not, however, quite in the order here given):

The principle of life is in God; for energy of mind constitutes life, and God is this energy. He, the first mover, imparts motion and pursues the work of creation as something that is loved (Kiveî dè ws épwμevov). His course of life (daywyn) must be similar to what is most excellent in our own short career. But he exists for ever in this excellence, whereas this is impossible for us. His pleasure consists in the exercise of his essential energy, and on this account vigilance, wakefulness, and perception are most agreeable to him. Again, the more we examine God's nature the more wonderful does it appear to us. He is an eternal (dîôtov) and most excellent (aprov) Being. He is indivisible (adauperós), devoid of parts (dups), and having no magnitude (uéye@os), for God imparts motion through infinite time, and nothing finite, as magnitude is, can have an infinite capacity. He is a being devoid of passions and unalterable (ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἀναλλοίωτον) 2.

This work has been well translated by the Rev. J. H. M'Mahon. Hence, according to the translator, Aristotle's idea of God is that he is a Being whose essence is love, manifested in eternal energy, the final cause of this energy being the happiness of his creatures, in which he himself participates for ever. Aristotle, again, warns his disciples against regarding God's nature through the medium of their own subjectivity. There is a celebrated passage in book XI, chap. viii, in which he says that traditions have been handed down representing the heavens as gods, and the divine essence (rò beiov) as embracing the whole of nature; and these traditions, he affirms, are kept up to win over the multitude and secure obedience to the laws and for the sake of general expediency. On that account gods are described as existing in the form of man (à: Opwmoedeis), or even as taking the shape of animals.