Let us, first of all, ask ourselves, looking at the world around us,
what it is that the history of the world signifies. When we read
history, what does the history tell us? It seems to be a moving
panorama of people and events, but it is really only a dance of
shadows; the people are shadows, not realities, the kings and
statesmen, the ministers and armies; and the events—the battles and
revolutions, the rises and falls of states—are the most shadowlike
dance of all. Even if the historian tries to go deeper, if he deals
with economic conditions, with social organisations, with the study of
the tendencies of the currents of thought, even then he is in the midst
of shadows, the illusory shadows cast by unseen realities. This world
is full of forms that are illusory, and the values are all wrong, the
proportions are out of focus. The things which a man of the world
thinks valuable, a spiritual man must cast aside as worthless. The
diamonds of the world, with their glare and glitter in the rays of the
outside sun, are mere fragments of broken glass to the man of
knowledge. The crown of the king, the sceptre of the emperor, the
triumph of earthly power, are less than nothing to the man who has had
one glimpse of the majesty of the Self. What is, then, real? What is
truly valuable? Our answer will be very different from the answer given
by the man of the world.
“The universe exists for the sake of the Self.” Not for what the outer
world can give, not for control over the objects of desire, not for the
sake even of beauty or pleasure, does the Great Architect plan and
build His worlds. He has filled them with objects, beautiful and
pleasure-giving. The great arch of the sky above, the mountains with
snow-clad peaks, the valleys soft with verdure and fragrant with
blossoms, the oceans with their vast depths, their surface now calm as
a lake, now tossing in fury—they all exist, not for the objects
themselves, but for their value to the Self. Not for themselves because
they are anything in themselves but that the purpose of the Self may be
served, and His manifestations made possible.
The world, with all its beauty, its happiness and suffering, its joys
and pains, is planned with the utmost ingenuity, in order that the
powers of the Self may be shown forth in manifestation. From the
fire-mist to the LOGOS, all exist for the sake of the Self. The lowest
grain of dust, the mightiest deva in his heavenly regions, the plant
that grows out of sight in the nook of a mountain, the star that shines
aloft over us-all these exist in order that the fragments of the one
Self, embodied in countless forms, may realize their own identity, and
manifest the powers of the Self through the matter that envelops them.
There is but one Self in the lowliest dust and the loftiest deva.
“Mamamsaha,” “My portion,” “a portion of My Self,” says Sri Krishna,
are all these Jivatmas, all these living spirits. For them the universe
exists; for them the sun shines, and the waves roll, and the winds
blow, and the rain falls, that the Self may know Himself as manifested
in matter, as embodied in the universe.