The true nature of the Self is a matter by no means easy to compass. We
have all probably at some time or other attempted to fathom the deeps of
personality, and been baffled. Some people say they can quite distinctly
remember a moment in early childhood, about the age of THREE (though the
exact period is of course only approximate) when self-consciousness--the
awareness of being a little separate Self--first dawned in the mind.
It was generally at some moment of childish tension--alone perhaps in a
garden, or lost from the mother's protecting hand--that this happened;
and it was the beginning of a whole range of new experience. Before
some such period there is in childhood strictly speaking no distinct
self-consciousness. As Tennyson says (In Memoriam xliv):
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his tender palm is prest
Against the circle of the breast,
Hath never thought that "This is I."
It has consciousness truly, but no distinctive self-consciousness. It
is this absence or deficiency which explains many things which at first
sight seem obscure in the psychology of children and of animals. The
baby (it has often been noticed) experiences little or no sense of FEAR.
It does not know enough to be afraid; it has never formed any image of
itself, as of a thing which might be injured. It may shrink from actual
pain or discomfort, but it does not LOOK FORWARD--which is of the
essence of fear--to pain in the future. Fear and self-consciousness are
closely interlinked. Similarly with animals, we often wonder how a horse
or a cow can endure to stand out in a field all night, exposed to cold
and rain, in the lethargic patient way that they exhibit. It is not that
they do not FEEL the discomfort, but it is that they do not envisage
THEMSELVES as enduring this pain and suffering for all those coming
hours; and as we know with ourselves that nine-tenths of our miseries
really consist in looking forward to future miseries, so we understand
that the absence or at any rate slight prevalence of self-consciousness
in animals enables them to endure forms of distress which would drive us
mad.
In time then the babe arrives at self-consciousness; and, as one might
expect, the growing boy or girl often becomes intensely aware of Self.
His or her self-consciousness is crude, no doubt, but it has very little
misgiving. If the question of the nature of the Self is propounded to
the boy as a problem he has no difficulty in solving it. He says "I know
well enough who I am: I am the boy with red hair what gave Jimmy Brown
such a jolly good licking last Monday week." He knows well enough--or
thinks he knows--who he is. And at a later age, though his definition
may change and he may describe himself chiefly as a good cricketer or
successful in certain examinations, his method is practically the same.
He fixes his mind on a certain bundle of qualities and capacities which
he is supposed to possess, and calls that bundle Himself. And in a more
elaborate way we most of us, I imagine, do the same.
Presently, however, with more careful thought, we begin to see
difficulties in this view. I see that directly I think of myself as a
certain bundle of qualities--and for that matter it is of no account
whether the qualities are good or bad, or in what sort of charming
confusion they are mixed--I see at once that I am merely looking at
a bundle of qualities: and that the real "I," the Self, is not that
bundle, but is the being INSPECTING the same--something beyond and
behind, as it were. So I now concentrate my thoughts upon that inner
Something, in order to find out what it really is. I imagine perhaps an
inner being, of 'astral' or ethereal nature, and possessing a new
range of much finer and more subtle qualities than the body--a being
inhabiting the body and perceiving through its senses, but quite capable
of surviving the tenement in which it dwells and I think of that as the
Self. But no sooner have I taken this step than I perceive that I am
committing the same mistake as before. I am only contemplating a new
image or picture, and "I" still remain beyond and behind that which I
contemplate. No sooner do I turn my attention on the subjective being
than it becomes OBJECTIVE, and the real subject retires into the
background. And so on indefinitely. I am baffled; and unable to say
positively what the Self is.
Meanwhile there are people who look upon the foregoing speculations
about an interior Self as merely unpractical. Being perhaps of a more
materialistic type of mind they fix their attention on the body. Frankly
they try to define the Self by the body and all that is connected
therewith--that is by the mental as well as corporeal qualities which
exhibit themselves in that connection; and they say, "At any rate the
Self--whatever it may be--is in some way limited by the body; each
person studies the interest of his body and of the feelings, emotions
and mentality directly associated with it, and you cannot get beyond
that; it isn't in human nature to do so. The Self is limited by this
corporeal phenomenon and doubtless it perishes when the body perishes."
But here again the conclusion, though specious at first, soon appears to
be quite inadequate. For though it is possibly true that a man, if left
alone in a Robinson Crusoe life on a desert island, might ultimately
subside into a mere gratification of his corporeal needs and of those
mental needs which were directly concerned with the body, yet we know
that such a case would by no means be representative. On the contrary we
know that vast numbers of people spend their lives in considering other
people, and often so far as to sacrifice their own bodily and mental
comfort and well-being. The mother spends her life thinking almost
day and night about her babe and the other children--spending all her
thoughts and efforts on them. You may call her selfish if you will, but
her selfishness clearly extends beyond her personal body and mind, and
extends to the personalities of her children around her; her "body"--if
you insist on your definition--must be held to include the bodies of all
her children. And again, the husband who is toiling for the support of
the family, he is thinking and working and toiling and suffering for a
'self' which includes his wife and children. Do you mean that the whole
family is his "body"? Or a man belongs to some society, to a church or
to a social league of some kind, and his activities are largely ruled by
the interests of this larger group. Or he sacrifices his life--as many
have been doing of late--with extraordinary bravery and heroism for the
sake of the nation to which he belongs. Must we say then that the whole
nation is really a part of the man's body? Or again, he gives his life
and goes to the stake for his religion. Whether his religion is right or
wrong does not matter, the point is that there is that in him which can
carry him far beyond his local self and the ordinary instincts of his
physical organism, to dedicate his life and powers to a something of far
wider circumference and scope.
Thus in the FIRST of these two examples of a search for the nature of
the Self we are led INWARDS from point to point, into interior and ever
subtler regions of our being, and still in the end are baffled; while
in the SECOND we are carried outwards into an ever wider and wider
circumference in our quest of the Ego, and still feel that we have
failed to reach its ultimate nature. We are driven in fact by these two
arguments to the conclusion that that which we are seeking is indeed
something very vast--something far extending around, yet also buried
deep in the hidden recesses of our minds. How far, how deep, we do not
know. We can only say that as far as the indications point the true self
is profounder and more far-reaching than anything we have yet fathomed.
In the ordinary commonplace life we shrink to ordinary commonplace
selves, but it is one of the blessings of great experiences, even though
they are tragic or painful, that they throw us out into that enormously
greater self to which we belong. Sometimes, in moments of inspiration,
of intense enthusiasm, of revelation, such as a man feels in the midst
of a battle, in moments of love and dedication to another person, and
in moments of religious ecstasy, an immense world is opened up to the
astonished gaze of the inner man, who sees disclosed a self stretched
far beyond anything he had ever imagined. We have all had experiences
more or less of that kind. I have known quite a few people, and most of
you have known some, who at some time, even if only once in their lives,
have experienced such an extraordinary lifting of the veil, an opening
out of the back of their minds as it were, and have had such a vision of
the world, that they have never afterwards forgotten it. They have seen
into the heart of creation, and have perceived their union with the rest
of mankind. They have had glimpses of a strange immortality belonging to
them, a glimpse of their belonging to a far greater being than they have
ever imagined. Just once--and a man has never forgotten it, and even if
it has not recurred it has colored all the rest of his life.
Now, this subject has been thought about--since the beginning of the
world, I was going to say--but it has been thought about since the
beginnings of history. Some three thousand years ago certain groups
of--I hardly like to call them philosophers--but, let us say, people who
were meditating and thinking upon these problems, were in the habit of
locating themselves in the forests of Northern India; and schools arose
there. In the case of each school some teacher went into the woods and
collected groups of disciples around him, who lived there in his company
and listened to his words. Such schools were formed in very considerable
numbers, and the doctrines of these teachers were gathered together,
generally by their disciples, in notes, which notes were brought
together into little pamphlets or tracts, forming the books which
are called the 'Upanishads' of the Indian sages. They contain some
extraordinary words of wisdom, some of which I want to bring before
you. The conclusions arrived at were not so much what we should call
philosophy in the modern sense. They were not so much the result of the
analysis of the mind and the following out of concatenations of strict
argument; but they were flashes of intuition and experience, and all
through the 'Upanishads' you find these extraordinary flashes embedded
in the midst of a great deal of what we should call a rather rubbishy
kind of argument, and a good deal of merely conventional Brahmanical
talk of those days. But the people who wrote and spoke thus had an
intuition into the heart of things which I make bold to say very few
people in modern life have. These 'Upanisihads,' however various their
subject, practically agree on one point--in the definition of the
"self." They agree in saying: that the self of each man is continuous
with and in a sense identical with the Self of the universe. Now that
seems an extraordinary conclusion, and one which almost staggers the
modern mind to conceive of. But that is the conclusion, that is the
thread which runs all through the 'Upanishads'--the identity of the self
of each individual with the self of every other individual throughout
mankind, and even with the selves of the animals and other creatures.
Those who have read the Khandogya Upanishad remember how in that
treatise the father instructs his son Svetakeitu on this very
subject--pointing him out in succession the objects of Nature and
on each occasion exhorting him to realize his identity with the
very essence of the object--"Tat twam asi, THAT thou art." He calls
Svetaketu's attention to a tree. What is the ESSENCE of the tree?
When they have rejected the external characteristics--the leaves, the
branches, etc.--and agreed that the SAP is the essence, then the father
says, "TAT TWAM ASI--THAT thou art." He gives his son a crystal of salt,
and asks him what is the essence of that. The son is puzzled. Clearly
neither the form nor the transparent quality are essential. The father
says, "Put the crystal in water." Then when it is melted he says, "Where
is the crystal?" The son replies, "I do not know." "Dip your finger in
the bowl," says the father, "and taste." Then Svetaketu dips here and
there, and everywhere there is a salt flavor. They agree that THAT is
the essence of salt; and the father says again, "TAt twam asi." I am of
course neither defending nor criticizing the scientific attitude here
adopted. I am only pointing out that this psychological identification
of the observer with the object observed runs through the Upanishads,
and is I think worthy of the deepest consideration.
In the 'Bhagavat Gita,' which is a later book, the author speaks of
"him whose soul is purified, whose self is the Self of all creatures." A
phrase like that challenges opposition. It is so bold, so sweeping, and
so immense, that we hesitate to give our adhesion to what it implies.
But what does it mean--"whose soul is purified"? I believe that it means
this, that with most of us our souls are anything but clean or
purified, they are by no means transparent, so that all the time we are
continually deceiving ourselves and making clouds between us and others.
We are all the time grasping things from other people, and, if not in
words, are mentally boasting ourselves against others, trying to think
of our own superiority to the rest of the people around us. Sometimes we
try to run our neighbors down a little, just to show that they are not
quite equal to our level. We try to snatch from others some things which
belong to them, or take credit to ourselves for things to which we are
not fairly entitled. But all the time we are acting so it is perfectly
obvious that we are weaving veils between ourselves and others. You
cannot have dealings with another person in a purely truthful way, and
be continually trying to cheat that person out of money, or out of his
good name and reputation. If you are doing that, however much in the
background you may be doing it, you are not looking the person fairly
in the face--there is a cloud between you all the time. So long as your
soul is not purified from all these really absurd and ridiculous little
desires and superiorities and self-satisfactions, which make up so much
of our lives, just so long as that happens you do not and you cannot see
the truth. But when it happens to a person, as it does happen in times
of great and deep and bitter experience; when it happens that all these
trumpery little objects of life are swept away; then occasionally, with
astonishment, the soul sees that. It is also the soul of the others
around. Even if it does not become aware of an absolute identity, it
perceives that there is a deep relationship and communion between itself
and others, and it comes to understand how it may really be true that
to him whose soul is purified the self is literally the Self of all
creatures.
Ordinary men and those who go on more intellectual and less intuitional
lines will say that these ideas are really contrary to human nature and
to nature generally. Yet I think that those people who say this in the
name of Science are extremely unscientific, because a very superficial
glance at nature reveals that the very same thing is taking place
throughout nature. Consider the madrepores, corallines, or sponges. You
find, for instance, that constantly the little self of the coralline
or sponge is functioning at the end of a stem and casting forth its
tentacles into the water to gain food and to breathe the air out of
the water. That little animalcule there, which is living in that way,
imagines no doubt that it is working all for itself, and yet it is
united down the stem at whose extremity it stands, with the life of the
whole madrepore or sponge to which it belongs. There is the common
life of the whole and the individual life of each, and while the little
creature at the end of the stem is thinking (if it is conscious at all)
that its whole energies are absorbed in its own maintenance, it really
is feeding the common life through the stem to which it belongs, and in
its turn it is being fed by that common life.
You have only to look at an ordinary tree to see the same thing going
on. Each little leaf on a tree may very naturally have sufficient
consciousness to believe that it is an entirely separate being
maintaining itself in the sunlight and the air, withering away and dying
when the winter comes on--and there is an end of it. It probably does
not realize that all the time it is being supported by the sap which
flows from the trunk of the tree, and that in its turn it is feeding
the tree, too--that its self is the self of the whole tree. If the leaf
could really understand itself, it would see that its self was deeply,
intimately connected, practically one with the life of the whole tree.
Therefore, I say that this Indian view is not unscientific. On the
contrary, I am sure that it is thoroughly scientific.
Let us take another passage, out of the 'Svetasvatara Upanishad,' which,
speaking of the self says: "He is the one God, hidden in all creatures,
all pervading, the self within all, watching over all works, shadowing
all creatures, the witness, the perceiver, the only one free from
qualities."
And now we can return to the point where we left the argument at the
beginning of this discourse. We said, you remember, that the Self is
certainly no mere bundle of qualities--that the very nature of the mind
forbids us thinking that. For however fine and subtle any quality or
group of qualities may be, we are irresistibly compelled by the
nature of the mind itself to look for the Self, not in any quality or
qualities, but in the being that PERCEIVES those qualities. The passage
I have just quoted says that being is "The one God, hidden in all
creatures, all pervading, the self within all... the witness, the
perceiver, the only one free from qualities." And the more you
think about it the clearer I think you will see that this passage is
correct--that there can be only ONE witness, ONE perceiver, and that
is the one God hidden in all creatures, "Sarva Sakshi," the Universal
Witness.
Have you ever had that curious feeling, not uncommon, especially in
moments of vivid experience and emotion, that there was at the back of
your mind a witness, watching everything that was going on, yet too deep
for your ordinary thought to grasp? Has it not occurred to you--in a
moment say of great danger when the mind was agitated to the last degree
by fears and anxieties--suddenly to become perfectly calm and collected,
to realize that NOTHING can harm you, that you are identified with
some great and universal being lifted far over this mortal world and
unaffected by its storms? Is it not obvious that the real Self MUST be
something of this nature, a being perceiving all, but itself remaining
unperceived? For indeed if it were perceived it would fall under the
head of some definable quality, and so becoming the object of thought
would cease to be the subject, would cease to be the Self.
The witness is and must be "free from qualities." For since it is
capable of perceiving ALL qualities it must obviously not be itself
imprisoned or tied in any quality--it must either be entirely without
quality, or if it have the potentiality of quality in it, it must have
the potentiality of EVERY quality; but in either case it cannot be in
bondage to any quality, and in either case it would appear that there
can be only ONE such ultimate Witness in the universe. For if there were
two or more such Witnesses, then we should be compelled to suppose them
distinguished from one another by something, and that something could
only be a difference of qualities, which would be contrary to our
conclusion that such a Witness cannot be in bondage to any quality.
There is then I take it--as the text in question says--only one Witness,
one Self, throughout the universe. It is hidden in all living things,
men and animals and plants; it pervades all creation. In every thing
that has consciousness it is the Self; it watches over all operations,
it overshadows all creatures, it moves in the depths of our hearts, the
perceiver, the only being that is cognizant of all and yet free from
all.
Once you really appropriate this truth, and assimilate it in the depths
of your mind, a vast change (you can easily imagine) will take place
within you. The whole world will be transformed, and every thought
and act of which you are capable will take on a different color and
complexion. Indeed the revolution will be so vast that it would be quite
impossible for me within the limits of this discourse to describe it.
I will, however, occupy the rest of my time in dealing with some points
and conclusions, and some mental changes which will flow perfectly
naturally from this axiomatic change taking place at the very root of
life.
"Free from qualities." We generally pride ourselves a little on our
qualities. Some of us think a great deal of our good qualities, and some
of us are rather ashamed of our bad ones! I would say: "Do not trouble
very much about all that. What good qualities you have--well you may be
quite sure they do not really amount to much; and what bad qualities,
you may be sure they are not very important! Do not make too much fuss
about either. Do you see? The thing is that you, you yourself, are not
ANY of your qualities--you are the being that perceives them. The thing
to see to is that they should not confuse you, bamboozle you, and hide
you from the knowledge of yourself--that they should not be erected into
a screen, to hide you from others, or the others from you. If you cease
from running after qualities, then after a little time your soul will
become purified, and you will KNOW that your self is the Self of all
creatures; and when you can feel that you will know that the other
things do not much matter.
Sometimes people are so awfully good that their very goodness hides them
from other people. They really cannot be on a level with others,
and they feel that the others are far below them. Consequently their
'selves' are blinded or hidden by their 'goodness.' It is a sad end to
come to! And sometimes it happens that very 'bad' people--just because
they are so bad--do not erect any screens or veils between themselves
and others. Indeed they are only too glad if others will recognize them,
or if they may be allowed to recognize others. And so, after all, they
come nearer the truth than the very good people.
"The Self is free from qualities." That thing which is so deep, which
belongs to all, it either--as I have already said--has ALL qualities,
or it has none. You, to whom I am speaking now, your qualities, good and
bad, are all mine. I am perfectly willing to accept them. They are all
right enough and in place--if one can only find the places for them. But
I know that in most cases they have got so confused and mixed up that
they cause great conflict and pain in the souls that harbor them. If
you attain to knowing yourself to be other than and separate from the
qualities, then you will pass below and beyond them all. You will be
able to accept ALL your qualities and harmonize them, and your soul
will be at peace. You will be free from the domination of qualities then
because you will know that among all the multitudes of them there are
none of any importance!
If you should happen some day to reach that state of mind in connection
with which this revelation comes, then you will find the experience
a most extraordinary one. You will become conscious that there is no
barrier in your path; that the way is open in all directions; that all
men and women belong to you, are part of you. You will feel that there
is a great open immense world around, which you had never suspected
before, which belongs to you, and the riches of which are all yours,
waiting for you. It may, of course, take centuries and thousands of
years to realize this thoroughly, but there it is. You are just at the
threshold, peeping in at the door. What did Shakespeare say? "To thine
own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou can'st
not then be false to any man." What a profound bit of philosophy in
three lines! I doubt if anywhere the basis of all human life has been
expressed more perfectly and tersely.
One of the Upanishads (the Maitrayana-Brahmana) says: "The
happiness belonging to a mind, which through deep inwardness (1) (or
understanding) has been washed clean and has entered into the Self, is a
thing beyond the power of words to describe: it can only be perceived by
an inner faculty." Observe the conviction, the intensity with which this
joy, this happiness is described, which comes to those whose minds have
been washed clean (from all the silly trumpery sediment of self-thought)
and have become transparent, so that the great universal Being residing
there in the depths can be perceived. What sorrow indeed, what, grief,
can come to such an one who has seen this vision? It is truly a thing
beyond the power of words to describe: it can only be PERCEIVED--and
that by an inner faculty. The external apparatus of thought is of no
use. Argument is of no use. But experience and direct perception are
possible; and probably all the experiences of life and of mankind
through the ages are gradually deepening our powers of perception to
that point where the vision will at last rise upon the inward eye.
(1) The word in the Max Muller translation is "meditation." But
that is, I think, a somewhat misleading word. It suggests to most people
the turning inward of the THINKING faculty to grope and delve in the
interior of the mind. This is just what should NOT be done. Meditation
in the proper sense should mean the inward deepening of FEELING and
consciousness till the region of the universal self is reached; but
THOUGHT should not interfere there. That should be turned on outward
things to mould them into expression of the inner consciousness.
Another text, from the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad (which I have already
quoted in the paper on "Rest"), says: "If a man worship the Self only as
his true state, his work cannot fail, for whatever he desires, that he
obtains from the Self." Is that not magnificent? If you truly realize
your identity and union with the great Self who inspires and informs the
world, then obviously whatever you desire the great Self win desire, and
the whole world will conspire to bring it to you. "He maketh the winds
his angels, and the flaming fires his ministers." (I need not say that
I am not asking you to try and identify yourself with the great Self
universal IN ORDER to get riches, "opulence," and other things of that
kind which you desire; because in that quest you will probably not
succeed. The Great Self is not such a fool as to be taken in in that
way. It may be true--and it is true--that if ye seek FIRST the Kingdom
of Heaven all these things shall be added unto you; but you must seek it
first, not second.)
Here is a passage from Towards Democracy: "As space spreads everywhere,
and all things move and change within it, but it moves not nor changes,
"So I am the space within the soul, of which the space without is but
the similitude and mental image;
"Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all life--death
shall no longer divide thee from whom thou lovest.
"I am the Sun that shines upon all creatures from within--gazest thou
upon me, thou shalt be filled with joy eternal."
Yes, this great sun is there, always shining, but most of the time it is
hidden from us by the clouds of which I have spoken, and we fail to see
it. We complain of being out in the cold; and in the cold, for the time
being, no doubt we are; but our return to the warmth and the light has
now become possible.
Thus at last the Ego, the mortal immortal self--disclosed at first in
darkness and fear and ignorance in the growing babe--FINDS ITS TRUE
IDENTITY. For a long period it is baffled in trying to understand what
it is. It goes through a vast experience. It is tormented by the
sense of separation and alienation--alienation from other people, and
persecution by all the great powers and forces of the universe; and it
is pursued by a sense of its own doom. Its doom truly is irrevocable.
The hour of fulfilment approaches, the veil lifts, and the soul beholds
at last ITS OWN TRUE BEING.
We are accustomed to think of the external world around us as a nasty
tiresome old thing of which all we can say for certain is that it works
by a "law of cussedness"--so that, whichever way we want to go, that way
seems always barred, and we only bump against blind walls without
making any progress. But that uncomfortable state of affairs arises from
ourselves. Once we have passed a certain barrier, which at present looks
so frowning and impossible, but which fades into nothing immediately we
have passed it--once we have found the open secret of identity--then the
way is indeed open in every direction.
The world in which we live--the world into which we are tumbled as
children at the first onset of self-consciousness--denies this great
fact of unity. It is a world in which the principle of separation
rules. Instead of a common life and union with each other, the contrary
principle (especially in the later civilizations) has been the one
recognized--and to such an extent that always there prevails the
obsession of separation, and the conviction that each person is an
isolated unit. The whole of our modern society has been founded on this
delusive idea, WHICH IS FALSE. You go into the markets, and every man's
hand is against the others--that is the ruling principle. You go into
the Law Courts where justice is, or should be, administered, and you
find that the principle which denies unity is the one that prevails.
The criminal (whose actions have really been determined by the society
around him) is cast out, disacknowledged, and condemned to further
isolation in a prison cell. 'Property' again is the principle which
rules and determines our modern civilization--namely that which is
proper to, or can be appropriated by, each person, as AGAINST the
others.
In the moral world the doom of separation comes to us in the shape of
the sense of sin. For sin is separation. Sin is actually (and that
is its only real meaning) the separation from others, and the
non-acknowledgment of unity. And so it has come about that during all
this civilization-period the sense of sin has ruled and ranged to such
an extraordinary degree. Society has been built on a false base, not
true to fact or life--and has had a dim uneasy consciousness of its
falseness. Meanwhile at the heart of it all--and within all the frantic
external strife and warfare--there is all the time this real great life
brooding. The kingdom of Heaven, as we said before, is still within.
The word Democracy indicates something of the kind--the rule of the
Demos, that is of the common life. The coming of that will transform,
not only our Markets and our Law Courts and our sense of Property, and
other institutions, into something really great and glorious instead
of the dismal masses of rubbish which they at present are; but it will
transform our sense of Morality.
Our Morality at present consists in the idea of self-goodness--one of
the most pernicious and disgusting ideas which has ever infested the
human brain. If any one should follow and assimilate what I have just
said about the true nature of the Self he will realize that it will
never again be possible for him to congratulate himself on his own
goodness or morality or superiority; for the moment he does so he will
separate himself from the universal life, and proclaim the sin of his
own separation. I agree that this conclusion is for some people a most
sad and disheartening one--but it cannot be helped! A man may truly be
'good' and 'moral' in some real sense; but only on the condition that
he is not aware of it. He can only BE good when not thinking about the
matter; to be conscious of one's own goodness is already to have fallen!
We began by thinking of the self as just a little local self; then we
extended it to the family, the cause, the nation--ever to a larger and
vaster being. At last there comes a time when we recognize--or see that
we SHALL have to recognize--an inner Equality between ourselves and all
others; not of course an external equality--for that would be absurd and
impossible--but an inner and profound and universal Equality. And so we
come again to the mystic root-conception of Democracy.
And now it will be said: "But after all this talk you have not defined
the Self, or given us any intellectual outline of what you mean by the
word." No--and I do not intend to. If I could, by any sort of copybook
definition, describe and show the boundaries of myself, I should
obviously lose all interest in the subject. Nothing more dull could be
imagined. I may be able to define and describe fairly exhaustively
this inkpot on the table; but for you or for me to give the limits and
boundaries of ourselves is, I am glad to say, impossible. That does not,
however, mean that we cannot FEEL and be CONSCIOUS of ourselves, and of
our relations to other selves, and to the great Whole. On the contrary
I think it is clear that the more vividly we feel our organic unity with
the whole, the less shall we be able to separate off the local self and
enclose it within any definition. I take it that we can and do become
ever more vividly conscious of our true Self, but that the mental
statement of it always does and probably always will lie beyond us.
All life and all our action and experience consist in the gradual
manifestation of that which is within us--of our inner being. In that
sense--and reading its handwriting on the outer world--we come to know
the soul's true nature more and more intimately; we enter into the mind
of that great artist who beholds himself in his own creation.