Chapter XIV
The Passive and the Active Brahman
THE DIFFICULTY which the mental being experiences in
arriving at an integral realisation of true being and world-being may be met by following one or other of two different lines of his self-development. He may evolve himself from plane to plane of his own being and embrace on each successively
his oneness with the world and with Sachchidananda realised as the Purusha and
Prakriti, Conscious-Soul and Nature-Soul of that plane, taking into
himself the action of the lower grades of being as he ascends. He
may, that is to say, work out by a sort of inclusive process of
self-enlargement and transformation the evolution of the material
into the divine or spiritual man. This seems to have been the method
of the most ancient sages of which we get some glimpse in the Rig
Veda and some of the Upanishads.¹ He may, on the other hand, aim straight at the realisation of pure self-existence on the highest plane of
mental being and from that secure basis realise spiritually under the conditions of his mentality the process by which the selfexistent becomes all existences, but without that descent into the self-divided egoistic consciousness which is a circumstance
of evolution in the Ignorance. Thus identified with Sachchidananda in the universal self-existence as the spiritualised mental
being, he may then ascend beyond to the supramental plane of the pure spiritual existence. It is the latter method the stages of
which we may now attempt to trace for the seeker by the path of knowledge.
When the sadhaka has followed the discipline of withdrawal from the various identifications of the self with the ego, the mind,
the life, the body, he has arrived at realisation by knowledge of a pure, still, self-aware existence, one, undivided, peaceful,
¹ Notably, the Taittiriya Upanishad.
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inactive, undisturbed by the action of the world. The only relation that this Self seems to have with the world is that of a disinterested Witness not at all involved in or affected or even
touched by any of its activities. If this state of consciousness is pushed farther one becomes aware of a self even more remote
from world-existence; all that is in the world is in a sense in that Self and yet at the same time extraneous to its consciousness, non-existent in its existence, existing only in a sort of unreal mind, — a dream therefore, an illusion. This aloof and
transcendent Real Existence may be realised as an utter Self of one's own being; or the very idea of a self and of one's own
being may be swallowed up in it, so that it is only for the mind an unknowable That, unknowable to the mental consciousness
and without any possible kind of actual connection or commerce with world-existence. It can even be realised by the mental being
as a Nihil, Non-Existence or Void, but a Void of all that is in the world, a Non-existence of all that is in the world and yet
the only Reality. To proceed farther towards that Transcendence by concentration of one's own being upon it is to lose mental
existence and world-existence altogether and cast oneself into the Unknowable.
The integral Yoga of knowledge demands instead a
divine return upon world-existence and its first step must be to realise the Self as the All, sarvam brahma. First, concentrating
on the Self-existent, we have to realise all of which the mind and senses are aware as a figure of things existing in this pure
Self that we now are to our own consciousness. This vision of the pure self translates itself to the mind-sense and the mind-perception as an infinite Reality in which all exists merely as name and form, not precisely unreal, not a hallucination or a
dream, but still only a creation of the consciousness, perceptual and subtly sensible rather than substantial. In this poise of the
consciousness all seems to be, if not a dream, yet very much like a representation or puppet-show taking place in the calm,
motionless, peaceful, indifferent Self. Our own phenomenal existence is part of this conceptual movement, a mechanical form
of mind and body among other forms, ourselves a name of being
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among other names, automatically mobile in this Self with its
all-encompassing, still self-awareness. The active consciousness of the world is not present in this state to our realisation, because
thought has been stilled in us and therefore our own consciousness is perfectly still and inactive,
— whatever we do, seems to be
purely mechanical, not attended with any conscious origination by our active will and knowledge. Or if thought occurs, that
also happens mechanically like the rest, like the movement of our body, moved by the unseen springs of Nature as in the plant
and element and not by any active will of our self-existence. For this Self is the immobile and does not originate or take part in
the action which it allows. This Self is the All in the sense only of being the infinite One who is immutably and contains all names
and forms.
The basis of this status of consciousness is the mind's exclusive realisation of pure self-existence in which consciousness is at rest, inactive, widely concentrated in pure self-awareness
of being, not active and originative of any kind of becoming. Its aspect of knowledge is at rest in the awareness of undifferentiated identity; its aspect of force and will is at rest in the awareness of unmodifiable immutability. And yet it is aware
of names and forms, it is aware of movement; but this movement does not seem to proceed from the Self, but to go on
by some inherent power of its own and only to be reflected in the Self. In other words, the mental being has put away
from himself by exclusive concentration the dynamic aspect of consciousness, has taken refuge in the static and built a wall
of non-communication between the two; between the passive and the active Brahman a gulf has been created and they stand
on either side of it, the one visible to the other but with no contact, no touch of sympathy, no sense of unity between them.
Therefore to the passive Self all conscious being seems to be passive in its nature, all activity seems to be non-conscious in
itself and mechanical (jada) in its movement. The realisation of .
this status is the basis of the ancient Sankhya philosophy which taught that the Purusha or Conscious-Soul is a passive, inactive,
immutable entity, Prakriti or the Nature-Soul including even
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the mind and the understanding active, mutable, mechanical,
but reflected in the Purusha which identifies itself with what is reflected in it and lends to it its own light of consciousness. When
the Purusha learns not to identify himself, then Prakriti begins to fall away from its impulse of movement and returns towards
equilibrium and rest. The Vedantic view of the same status led to the philosophy
of the inactive Self or Brahman as the one reality and of all the
rest as name and form imposed on it by a false activity of mental
illusion which has to be removed by right knowledge of the immutable
Self and refusal of the imposition.²
The two views really differ only in their language and their viewpoint; substantially, they are the same intellectual generalisation from the same spiritual experience.
If we rest here, there are only two possible attitudes towards the world. Either we must remain as mere inactive witnesses of
the world-play or act in it mechanically without any participation of the conscious self and by mere play of the organs of
sense and motor-action.³ In the former choice what we do is to approach as completely as possible to the inactivity of the passive
and silent Brahman. We have stilled our mind and silenced the activity of the thought and the disturbances of the heart, we have
arrived at an entire inner peace and indifference; we attempt now to still the mechanical action of the life and body, to reduce it
to the most meagre minimum possible so that it may eventually cease entirely and for ever. This, the final aim of the ascetic
Yoga which refuses life, is evidently not our aim. By the alternative choice we can have an activity perfect enough in outward
appearance along with an entire inner passivity, peace, mental silence, indifference and cessation of the emotions, absence of
choice in the will.
To the ordinary mind this does not seem possible. As, emotionally, it cannot conceive of activity without desire and emotional preference, so intellectually it cannot conceive of activity
without thought-conception, conscious motive and energising of the will. But, as a matter of fact, we see that a large part of our
² adhyāropa.
³ .
kevalair indriyair. Gita.
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own action as well as the whole activity of inanimate and merely
animate life is done by a mechanical impulse and movement in which these elements are not, openly at least, at work. It may
be said that this is only possible of the purely physical and vital activity and not of those movements which ordinarily depend
upon the functioning of the conceptual and volitional mind, such as speech, writing and all the intelligent action of human
life. But this again is not true, as we find when we are able to go behind the habitual and normal process of our mental nature. It
has been found by recent psychological experiment that all these operations can be effected without any conscious origination in
the thought and will of the apparent actor; his organs of sense and action, including the speech, become passive instruments
for a thought and will other than his.
Certainly, behind all intelligent action there must be an intelligent will, but it need not be the intelligence or the will of the conscious mind in the actor. In the psychological phenomena of
which I have spoken, it is obviously in some of them the will and intelligence of other human beings that uses the organs,
in others it is doubtful whether it is an influence or actuation by other beings or the emergence of a subconscious, subliminal
mind or a mixed combination of both these agencies. But in this Yogic status of action by the mere organs,
kevalair indriyair,
it is the universal intelligence and will of Nature itself working from centres superconscious and subconscious as it acts in the
mechanically purposeful energies of plant-life or of the inanimate material form, but here with a living instrument who is
the conscious witness of the action and instrumentation. It is a remarkable fact that the speech, writing and intelligent actions
of such a state may convey a perfect force of thought, luminous, faultless, logical, inspired, perfectly adapting means to ends, far
beyond what the man himself could have done in his old normal poise of mind and will and capacity, yet all the time he himself
perceives but does not conceive the thought that comes to him, observes in its works but does not appropriate or use the will
that acts through him, witnesses but does not claim as his own the powers which play upon the world through him as through
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a passive channel. But this phenomenon is not really abnormal
or contrary to the general law of things. For do we not see a perfect working of the secret universal Will and Intelligence in
the apparently brute (jada) action of material Nature? And it .
is precisely this universal Will and Intelligence which thus acts through the calm, indifferent and inwardly silent Yogin who
offers no obstacle of limited and ignorant personal will and intelligence to its operations. He dwells in the silent Self; he allows
the active Brahman to work through his natural instruments, accepting impartially, without participation, the formations of
its universal force and knowledge.
This status of an inner passivity and an outer action independent of each other is a state of entire spiritual freedom. The Yogin, as the Gita says, even in acting does no actions,
for it is not he, but universal Nature directed by the Lord of Nature which is at work. He is not bound by his works, nor
do they leave any after effects or consequences in his mind, nor cling to or leave any mark on his soul;4 they vanish and
are dissolved5 by their very execution and leave the immutable self unaffected and the soul unmodified. Therefore this would
seem to be the poise the uplifted soul ought to take, if it has still to preserve any relations with human action in the world-existence, an unalterable silence, tranquillity, passivity within, an action without regulated by the universal Will and Wisdom
which works, as the Gita says, without being involved in, bound by or ignorantly attached to its works. And certainly this poise
of a perfect activity founded upon a perfect inner passivity is that which the Yogin has to possess, as we have seen in the Yoga of
Works. But here in this status of self-knowledge at which we have arrived, there is an evident absence of integrality; for there is still
a gulf, an unrealised unity or a cleft of consciousness between the passive and the active Brahman. We have still to possess
consciously the active Brahman without losing the possession of the silent Self. We have to preserve the inner silence, tranquillity,
4 .
na karma lipyate nare. Isha Upanishad. 5. praviliyante karmāni. Gita.
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passivity as a foundation; but in place of an aloof indifference
to the works of the active Brahman we have to arrive at an equal and impartial delight in them; in place of a refusal to
participate lest our freedom and peace be lost we have to arrive at a conscious possession of the active Brahman whose joy of
existence does not abrogate His peace, nor His lordship of all workings impair His calm freedom in the midst of His works.
The difficulty is created by the exclusive concentration of the mental being on its plane of pure existence in which consciousness is at rest in passivity and delight of existence at rest in peace of existence. It has to embrace also its plane of conscious
force of existence in which consciousness is active as power and will and delight is active as joy of existence. Here the difficulty
is that mind is likely to precipitate itself into the consciousness of Force instead of possessing it. The extreme mental state of
precipitation into Nature is that of the ordinary man who takes his bodily and vital activity and the mind-movements dependent
on them for his whole real existence and regards all passivity of the soul as a departure from existence and an approach towards
nullity. He lives in the superficies of the active Brahman and while to the silent soul exclusively concentrated in the passive
self all activities are mere name and form, to him they are the only reality and it is the Self that is merely a name. In one
the passive Brahman stands aloof from the active and does not share in its consciousness; in the other the active Brahman stands
aloof from the passive and does not share in its consciousness nor wholly possess its own. Each is to the other in these exclusivenesses an inertia of status or an inertia of mechanically active non-possession of self if not altogether an unreality. But
the sadhaka who has once seen firmly the essence of things and tasted thoroughly the peace of the silent Self, is not likely to
be content with any state which involves loss of self-knowledge or a sacrifice of the peace of the soul. He will not precipitate
himself back into the mere individual movement of mind and life and body with all its ignorance and straining and disturbance. Whatever new status he may acquire, will only satisfy him if it is founded upon and includes that which he has already
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found to be indispensable to real self-knowledge, self-delight
and self-possession.
Still there is the likelihood of a partial, superficial and temporary relapse into the old mental movement when he attempts again to ally himself to the activity of the world. To prevent
this relapse or to cure it when it arrives, he has to hold fast to the truth of Sachchidananda and extend his realisation of
the infinite One into the movement of the infinite multiplicity. He has to concentrate on and realise the one Brahman in all
things as conscious force of being as well as pure awareness of conscious being. The Self as the All, not only in the unique
essence of things, but in the manifold form of things, not only as containing all in a transcendent consciousness, but as becoming
all by a constituting consciousness, this is the next step towards his true possession of existence. In proportion as this realisation
is accomplished, the status of consciousness as well as the mental view proper to it will change. Instead of an immutable Self containing name and form, containing without sharing in them the mutations of Nature, there will be the consciousness of the Self
immutable in essence, unalterable in its fundamental poise but constituting and becoming in its experience all these existences
which the mind distinguishes as name and form. All formations of mind and body will be not merely figures reflected in the
Purusha, but real forms of which Brahman, Self, conscious Being is the substance and, as it were, the material of their formation.
The name attaching to the form will be not a mere conception of the mind answering to no real existence bearing the name, but
there will be behind it a true power of conscious being, a true self-experience of the Brahman answering to something that it
contained potential but unmanifest in its silence. And yet in all its mutations it will be realised as one, free and above them. The
realisation of a sole Reality suffering the imposition of names and forms will give place to that of eternal Being throwing itself
out into infinite becoming. All existences will be to the consciousness of the Yogin soul-forms and not merely idea-forms
of the Self, of himself, one with him, contained in his universal existence. All the soul-life, mental, vital, bodily existence of all
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that exists will be to him one indivisible movement and activity
of the Being who is the same forever. The Self will be realised as the all in its double aspect of immutable status and mutable
activity and it is this that will be seen as the comprehensive truth of our existence.
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