PRE-HISTORY OF MYSTICISM

Where, we must wonder, did mysticism begin?  Who was the first to experience the transcendent vision?  To these questions, there are no answers; but it is reasonable to assume that the experience of unity is as old as man himself, and occurred to a few searching souls even in the most primitive of times.  The mystical experience of unity is entirely independent of advancements in learning or civilization.  Indeed, it would seem, if anything, to be more likely to occur in a simpler, less "civilized" environment, since such an experience requires a totally interiorized state of mind, undistracted by external stimuli.  One can easily imagine how spending one's nights beside a fire under the canopy of the stars might enhance one's contemplation of eternity.  It is perfectly reasonable, therefore, to suppose that seers of the Infinite existed even in the very remotest unrecorded period of man's history.  Unfortunately, however, these ancient mystics are lost to us forever in the dark abyss of time.

Yet, while we do not possess the written testimonies of the mystic sages of the dim past, there is some evidence for the antiquity of mysticism to be found in the popular religious symbols, which have come down to us as the artifacts and mythologies of primitive cultures.  When we examine the mythologies of these earliest civilizations, especially those myths, which describe the origin of the cosmos, we find a curious similarity in the religious symbols used by widely separated cultures.  In almost every instance, we may discover the legend of an original Father-God, whose first Thought or Word, symbolized in the form of a Mother-Goddess, is said to have given birth to all creation.

In nearly every part of the globe these two have appeared, albeit with many names.  He, the Father-God, has been called An, Apsu, Huan, Prajapati, Purusha, Yahweh, El, Tem, Atmu, Ptah, Ra, Shiva, Brahman, Dyaus, Zeus, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, Ch'ien, and Tao, among countless other names.  He is the absolute Stillness, the pure Consciousness, the unclouded Mind, the unmanifest Ground, who exists as the substratum upon which all this universe is projected.  Likewise, in nearly every recorded mythology, we find the Mother-Goddess; She has been called Inanna, Isis, Shakti, Kali, Devi, Chokmah, Durga, Maya, Teh, Cybele, Athena, Astarte, Mylitta, Tara, Juno, Prthivi, Freia, Sophia, Prakrti, Semele, Ishtar, and many, many other names as well.  She is the creative effusion of the Father; She is Mother Nature, the creative, manifestory Power of the Father-God, manifest as the entire cosmos.

In order to understand the vision of the earliest seers and mythologizers, we must look beyond the various names given to this primordial Pair, and try to grasp the meaning behind the words and myths.  The reason for the similarity of view among the various primitive cultures is that the Reality, which their pictorial symbols are contrived to represent, is the common and universal Reality experienced in the mystical vision, a Reality that is the same for all who "see" It.  Scholars who know nothing of the experience of unity postulate some cultural interchange to account for such similarities between the various primitive cosmologies, or postulate an "archetypal memory" from which these many identical images supposedly arose, it never dawning on them that the direct knowledge of the one Absolute and Its projection of the universe is an actual experience common to all seers of all times.

In this "vision" or "union," the mind is somehow privileged to experience itself as the eternal Consciousness from which the entire universe is projected.  It knows itself as the unchanging Ground, or Absolute, and the world as Its own projected Thought or Ideation.  The individual who contacts, through prayer or deep meditation, that universal Consciousness, experiences It as his (or her) own identity.  He (or she) realizes, in those few moments, that he (or she) is indeed nothing else but that one Being manifest in a singular individual form; and that all this universe is the manifestation of that one Being, flowing forth from It as a wave of love streams out from a loving heart.

One who has known It sees clearly that this mystically experienced Reality has two distinct aspects; It is the pure, eternal One, beyond motion or change; and It is also the world-Thought, which emanates from It, like the rays of a Sun, or the thoughts of a Mind.  In this clear realization of Reality, the mind, while knowing itself as the undifferentiated Absolute, experiences concurrently the projection and reabsorption of the universe in a continuous cycle of outflowing and returning.  The universal manifestation appears and disappears in a cyclic rhythm extending over eons of our temporal reckoning, but the eternal Awareness, along with Its manifestory-Power, never changes.  It is ever immersed in Its own bliss.

So difficult is this two-in-One to speak of—since It cannot be spoken of without differentiating the two aspects, and making It appear to be two when It is always One—that the ancient seers tended to characterize the two aspects as male and female complements.  In their attempts to explain this ineluctable duality-in-Unity, the seers of early cultures relied upon pictorial symbols—such as the yin-yang symbol of the Chinese, or depicted the projection of the world of matter upon the Absolute in anthropomorphic or animistic images.  In nearly every such instance, the unmanifested Absolute was depicted as Male, and Its projected image-Power, co-existent with It, was regarded as Female.  He is the Father-God, the one Mind, the ultimate Source and Controller; but She, His projected "Thought" is the Creatrix, the Mother-Power from whom all creation flows.

That these two aspects of Reality should be so commonly symbolized as male and female should not surprise us; for what better pair of symbols can be imagined to represent the duality-in-Unity experienced by the mystic than the two sexes who, while retaining their individual characteristics, are joined as husband and wife, forming an indivisible unit?  The human male seems an apt symbol for the immovable Absolute, the unchanging Consciousness, who witnesses, as the subjective Self, the drama of universal manifestation. He represents the Absolute in mythology as the wise and just Father and King, aloof and impersonal, the pillar of strength, governance, and protection.  The human female seems equally well suited to symbolize the creative Force, which emanates from the witnessing Self.  She is the Womb of Nature from whom all life is born; She is the Source and Nourisher, and She is also the object of desire. She represents the manifestory-Power in mythology as the ever-young maiden, the warm and tender Mother, the Giver of mercy, and the Fountain of all beauty and grace.  Perhaps, in some mysterious way, these two—male and female—really are representative images, or manifestations, of the two complementary aspects of the one Divine Reality.

Evidence exists to show that, by the 3rd millennium B.C.E., and no doubt long before that, worship of a transcendent Father-God and Mother (Nature) Goddess was widespread.  The genuine mystics, the seers of Unity, were no doubt few then, as they are today, but there is repeated evidence in the Creation myths of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon that such seers did exist.  In the cosmologies of many of these early civilizations we find the common conception of the One Reality as consisting of two aspects: the eternally transcendent Mind, and the dynamically creative Thought, which is responsible for the formation and substance of the relative world.  Representing this creative Energy in the 3rd millennium B.C.E., the Sumerian Goddess, Inanna, is made to say:  "Begetting Mother am I.  Within An (the Father-God) I abide, and no one sees me." ¹

Since She, the Mother, is actually the manifestory-Power of the Father, and therefore indistinguishable from Him, they are frequently pictured together, locked in an inseparable embrace; two, yet inextricably One.   As we shall see, this mythic image of the Father-God and His ubiquitous Consort is one which recurs again and again in the metaphysical formulations of all cultures.  It is this recurring conception, which hints to us of mystical experience as the common origin.

When we delve even further backward, into the upper Paleolithic era (ca. 35,000-9,000 B.C.E.), we find it difficult to imagine how one might have communicated mystical experience in that time, long ago, even to one's peers, considering the limited language skills of the peoples of that time.  But the challenge of communicating it to future generations without the benefit of a written language was even more immense.  The transcendent Absolute is beyond even the most eloquent speech; how then was one to represent It in myth or legend?

Here is one possible answer:  Let us suppose that many thousands of years ago some nameless mystic told his comrades of his experience of the great Unity.  And, for century after century, that tale was passed down orally as an authentic description of the origin and beginning of all things; until, around 700 B.C.E., it finally appeared in written form as an allegorical tale, or myth, of creation.  Here is that tale as it appears in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:

In the beginning, there was only the Self.  ... He reflected, and saw that there was nothing but Himself, whereupon he exclaimed, "I am" (Aham).  Ever since, He has been known within as "I."  Even now, when announcing oneself, one says, "I am ...," and then gives the other name that one bears.

He was afraid.  Even today, one who is alone is afraid.  But then he realized, "Since there is nothing else but myself, what is there to fear?"  It is only from [the presence of] a second [entity] that fear need ever arise.  However, he was still unhappy.  Even today, one is unhappy when alone.  He desired a mate.  And so he took on the form of a being the size of a man and woman joined in a close embrace; and then He separated into two individuals: a man and a wife.  Therefore, as the sage Yajnavalkya has declared, this body, by itself, is like half of a split pea.  [In order to become whole again,] this empty space must be filled by a woman.  The male [half] then embraced the female [half], and from that the human race arose.

But the female wondered: "How can he unite with me, whom he has produced from himself?  Well then, let me hide!"  She became a cow; he became a bull and united with her, and from that cattle arose.  She became a mare; he became a stallion.  She an ass, he a donkey and united with her; and from that solid-hoofed  animals arose.  She became a goat, he a buck; she a sheep, he a ram and united with her; and from that goats and sheep arose.  In this way, he poured forth all pairing creatures, down to the ants.  Then he realized: "All this creation is actually myself; for I have poured forth all this."  One who knows this truth realizes that he, himself, is truly the creator [living] within his own creation. ²

A distorted version of this tale shows up a few centuries later in Plato's Symposium, ³ where Aristophanes recounts the legend of the original androgynous creature who was both male and female rolled in one, and who was then divided into two by Zeus as a means of checking its power.  But Plato's version is without the profound allegorical meaning of the original myth as retold in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.  Let me attempt to explain:

In the One, there is no form, no experience at all.  There is no vision, and no knowledge.  For, in order for there to be experience, there has to be two: the experiencer and the experienced.  For vision, there has to be a seer and a seen; for knowledge, there must be a knower and a known, a subject and an object.  For any of these things to be, the One must pretend to be two, must create within Itself the semblance of duality.   If there is only a seer and no seen, there can be no vision.   And if there is only a seen and no seer, again, vision cannot be.

Figuratively speaking, the One is lonely being alone; so It creates (images forth) a second, in order to experience (enjoy) Itself.  This is the primal division, the primary creation:  it is an apparent bifurcation of the one Consciousness into subject and object, seer and seen.  In all existence, there are only these two—and they are really both the One.  This Self-division of the One into subject and object is the primal dichotomy alluded to in this allegory.  The subject is, in actuality, the One; the object is, in actuality, the One.  That One is, naturally, beyond gender; but, in Its (pretended) roles as subject and object, It becomes the male principle and the female principle.

The male principle, the subject, cannot be seen, touched or sensed in any way; only the object, the female principle, is sensed.  The male principle is the unchanging witness, or seer; it is the pure, unmanifested, awareness that knows "I am."  When there is the impulse of desire, a thought-object is produced to satisfy it; and as soon as that thought-form is manifested, that is the object of experience; that is the seen.  This creation of duality occurs at the macrocosmic level, and it occurs at the microcosmic level.  Mankind, the image of God, operates in the same manner as God, the universal Self.

Keep in mind that neither the seer nor the seen can exist without the other.  They are complements.  They depend upon each other for their own existence.  The seer without a seen or the seen without a seer—neither exists.  When they are together, then we have experience.  We have the enjoyment of life.  We have the expression of the One as many.  This is the meaning of the two "halves" seeking each other for the purpose of delight.  Unless It becomes two, the One has no experience, no universe of forms, no delight.

This same bifurcation is continued throughout creation; the subject and object, as male and female, become the multitude of living forms, and through delighting in each other, continue to recreate themselves.  This is the allegory of the cow and the bull, the mare and the stallion, the she-ass and the jack-ass.  "Then he realizes, 'all this is myself!'"  This is the wondrous knowledge that comes to man when he knows and understands his own true nature and the nature of all 'objective' reality.  He is, indeed, the one Self of all, who lives within his own creation, experiencing the play of duality, while remaining the forever-undivided One.

This is the tale told by all who have been graced with the knowledge of the One who is their source and origin.  It is, no doubt, the tale that was told by some mystic of the Paleolithic era, a tale which had the power of truth, and spread, becoming the archetypal myth or tale of the mystery of Being that was told 'round the night-fires and in the holy caverns across the continent of Old Europe, across the steppes of Central Asia, and eventually written down somewhere in the upper Gangetic plain.

The primitive artifacts brought to light by archaeology seem also to bear out our suspicion of a mystical influence going back thousands of years.  For, today, archaeologists, having unearthed thousands of objects of representative art—some of which date to over 20,000 years ago—have greatly expanded our vision of man's pre-history from that of a century ago.  Some of the most striking examples of this early figurative art come, not from the so-called "cradle of civilization," but from Europe-an"Old Europe"—which spawned a rich independent culture whose primary religious symbols turn out to be the same Father-God and Mother-Goddess who appear in a thousand guises in the East and, in fact, in every significant culture that appeared on earth. ⁴

When we gaze in awe at the magnificent painted beasts stampeding 'cross the walls of the great Magdalenian caves of Altamira in Spain, of Lascaux and Les Trois Freres in France, dating from 17,000 to 12,000 B.C.E., we see a great preponderance of cows and bulls, mares and stallions, goats and rams, marked with symbols as to gender.  In a chamber of the Tuc d'Audoubert cavern, stand a pair of coupling bison made of clay, from ca. 14,000 B.C.E.  Can we help but wonder if it is not this very same allegory of the origin of life that is illustrated in the art of these many ancient sites?  How frequently in both Paleolithic and Neolithic sites do we find representations of the bull, and sometimes just its two horns, to be the premier symbol of the Divine! Is it only coincidence that it also figures as the premier creature in our ancient tale of creation?

There are other artifacts which seem to illustrate the familiarity of early man with that mystical tale of the One who became two.  The most interesting was found near one of the oldest (ca. 20,000 B.C.E), and most familiar examples of Paleolithic art yet discovered: "The Woman With A Horn" (Figure 1), a 17" high relief carved into a sheltering overhang of limestone just above a 100 meter-long ledge, or terrace, at Laussel, in the Dordogne region of France, only a few miles from the spectacular caverns of Lascaux.   Sometimes referred to as "the Venus of Laussel," she is a corpulent naked female, who is holding in one upraised hand a bull or bison's horn.  The other hand is over her protruding belly.  That she is intended to represent the great Mother (Nature) Goddess seems clear.  In fact, it is evident that the site where this Goddess figure appears was a Paleolithic shrine, or sanctuary, to the great Mother-Power; other emblems, symbolic of the female generative organ, are etched into the stone overhang adjoining the Goddess, along with several other female and one male form as well.

But most significant of all, and the artifact to which I wish to call your attention, is an adjoining carved relief, which stands out from the rest:  it is of a male and female united in a single emblem, or symbol (Figure 2).  It has been suggested that the two figures are in a position of intercourse, with the female sitting atop a prone male.  If so, it is reminiscent of certain modern representations from India of Shakti sitting atop the prone corpse of Shiva, symbolizing the dynamic activity of the creative Energy whose foundation and support is the unmoving Absolute.  And if this is the case, the two works of art, though 20,000 years apart, may be fundamentally related.  However, when one examines the ancient rock-carving closely, the two figures, female and male, seem not to be joined in intercourse, but seem rather to be designed to represent the two Principles joined into a single unit.  It is not a realistic joining; in fact, certain elements of the arrangement are difficult to explain: if one looks at it reversed, with the (bearded) male at the top, his legs seem to extend along her left side, merging into and becoming her arm and breast, his feet becoming her head.  Thus, each figure merges into the other, with a unifying border clearly designed to encompass them both.

Set as it is into this sanctuary of worship, this integrated male-female symbol would appear to be the earliest known example of the representation of the divine two-in-One upon which later mystics would so amply elaborate.  Is this conjoined pair intended as an illustration of our primal myth of the original androgyne, prior to its separation into male and female principles?  Some would protest that this is a concept too abstract, too sophisticated for a Cro-Magnon homo sapiens with a flint chisel.  But, as stated earlier, mystical experience is not dependent upon intellectual sophistication, and, without a written language, how else would some early mystic tell of his revelation to future generations except through myth and symbol?

But what are we to make of the bison's horn in the upraised hand of the Goddess?  It is evidently intended as a prominent and recognizable symbol.  But for us, 20,000 years removed, the tale told in that gesture must forever remain a mystery.  Is it, as some scholars believe, a symbol for the moon?  Or is it related to the fact that the bull, and sometimes just its two horns, was regarded in Paleolithic as well as Neolithic times as symbolic of the transcendent God?  Could it be that the single horn in the uplifted hand of the Great Mother of Laussel serves to announce that She, herself, is one of the two complementary aspects of Divinity? We shall never know for certain.  We may feel relatively certain, however, that She is intended to represent the female principle, the universal Mother, the great Womb of Nature, who produces all this (objective) universe from Herself.

Another artifact depicting the great Mother (Nature) as a pregnant naked female was found in the same region: it is a fragment of reindeer bone from 12,000 B.C.E. on which is engraved a scene showing the Father-God, symbolized by a bull, standing over the Mother-Goddess.  The Mother, symbolized by the pregnant female, is below, suppliant, and receptive of the fecundation of the Father (Figure 3).  An inconceivable 8,000 years had passed since the nearby 'Woman With a Horn' was created; but the bull was still the primary symbol for the Male principle, the transcendent Father-God, as it would remain for at least another 10,000 years.

In the mystical experience of unity, there is seen, of course,  neither male nor female.  The One, which contains in Itself all pairs of opposites, is Itself beyond gender.  However, It is apprehended under two different aspects:  It is the transcendent, quiescent Consciousness, beyond the manifestation of time and space; and It is the Creative Force, which cyclically manifests and de-manifests the entire universe.  And it is evident that, in almost every early culture, these two aspects have been commonly represented in word and picture by those who have apprehended them both, as the Father-God and the Mother-Goddess (Figures 4-6).  These two symbols of the primary duality-in-Unity appear in abundance in the earliest myths and cultural artifacts of pre-literate civilization, and they hint to us of the existence of mystical experience transmitted orally and pictographically in the early days of man's history.  The transmission of actual personal testimonies of mystical experience had to await the written record of man's thought; and this occurred in various parts of the world during the third millennium B.C.E., when hieroglyphs, ideograms, and cuneiform writing first began to appear.

Where, then, do we find the earliest records of mystical experience?  We know that some of the most advanced early civilizations existed concurrently in the Nile, Mesopotamian, and Indus valleys; and, while we may only conjecture about the development of a mystical philosophy in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and other Middle Eastern regions, it is in India that we find the earliest explicit testimonies of the mystics and the earliest development of an advanced mystical philosophy, and so it is there we shall begin.

THE VEDIC HYMNISTS

When we attempt to discover the origins of mysticism, previous to the existence of written testimonies of mystical experience, we enter a dim, dark realm.  For it is extremely difficult to ascertain whether or not a mystical philosophy was possessed by men living in a preliterate period.  Without the evidence of written documents, one must rely only on the slim evidence provided by the scattered artifacts taken from the ruins of ancient cities.  In the case of India, the surprisingly large and elaborate cities unearthed at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro prove the existence of the remarkably developed civilizations of the Dravidian people who lived in the Indus Valley perhaps as far back as 2500 B.C.E.

Among the artifacts found in these cities was a seal containing a male figure which may be the prototype of the Father-God, Shiva (Figure 7), whose epithets are Pashupati, "Lord of all creatures," and Yogeshvar, "Lord of yoga."  He is shown in his three-faced aspect, with a large crown of horns, sitting cross-legged in contemplation, with an erect penis; and he is surrounded by Shiva's traditional symbol, the bull, and other animals.  In addition, there were found a number of phallus-shaped stones, known as lingams, which are also traditionally representative of Shiva, the world-transcending Absolute.

Along with these representations of the Father-God, however, were found a number of figurines and emblems of the Mother-Goddess, identifiable as Shakti, the fertile Mother of all creation. She is shown in one figure in a dancing pose, and in a seal from Harappa she is shown standing on her head, her legs apart, with a plant or tree growing from her womb (Figure 8).  There were also found a number of ring-shaped stones, called yonis, which are traditionally associated with Shakti, the Female principle of generation.  And even a few figurines were found which appear to be androgynous, having  breasts as well as  what appear to be male genitals.

From the scant evidence found in these excavations we may assume that a mystical religious view which recognized the dual principles of the Absolute and Its creative manifestory-Power as complementary aspects of the one Reality existed and flourished even in so remote a time.  We are led to believe, therefore, that the religious view of these ancient peoples was inspired by one or more seers of the ineffable duality-in-Unity which has been described in more explicit and intelligible terms by mystics of a later era.  Yet, however convincing this evidence may be, it cannot be considered conclusive, but must remain forever a matter of conjecture.

Nevertheless, if we do accept this evidence, from the pre-Aryan (Dravidian) civilization, of a full-blown Shiva-Shakti mythology, we may trace the manifestation of the Shaivite tradition to these pre-Aryan peoples, and account for the appearance of two separately developing traditions among the early Indian peoples: one, the long-established tradition of the aboriginal races, and the other, the imported Vedic pantheon of the invading Aryans.  For the Dravidian population, the Absolute Being came eventually to be known as Shiva, and His world-manifesting Power was called Shakti; while the Aryan tradition eventually adopted the name, Brahman for the Absolute principle, and Maya for Its world-manifesting Energy.  And, while these two traditions eventually intermingled and became recognized by the wise as representative of a common and identical worldview, for many centuries each retained a semblance of independence while coexisting alongside one another.

The earliest written records from India to convey the mystical view of Unity are found in the collection of songs of devotion and ceremonial liturgy known as the Vedas ("Wisdom"). The Vedas were originally part of an orally transmitted legacy of the Aryans, dating from 2000-1500 B.C.E., which was only transmitted to writing centuries later.  The Aryans ("Kinsmen") entered India from the northwest via Persia and Afghanistan, originating from somewhere in Central Asia.  They were a light-skinned race who conquered and absorbed the earlier Indus Valley civilization of the dark-skinned Dravidian peoples, the builders of the vast complex cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.  What later came to be called the civilization of the "Hindus" (a corruption of Sindhu, the name of the river which once served as the nation's northernmost perimeter), is an amalgam of these two cultures, a sifting and blending of two independent traditions whose individual traces can still be found in the divergent racial and religious traditions of present-day India.

For the early Aryan interlopers, the one God of all was called by a great variety of names, according to the qualities intended to be praised.  Here, for example, in the following Vedic verses, He is addressed as Visvakarma ("the all-Creator"):

O Visvakarma, Thou art our Father, our Creator, Maker;
Thou knowest every place and every creature.
To Thee, by whom the names of the gods were given,
All creatures turn in prayer. ¹

The Female Divinity was called Prthivi ("Nature"); and in a prayer to Her, the seer cries:

May Earth pour out her milk for us, as a mother unto me her son.
O Prthivi, beautiful are Thy forests, and beautiful are Thy hills and snow-clad mountains. ²

In yet another song from the Rig Veda, in which the Father-God is spoken of as Prajapati ("Lord of all creatures"), His Female Power of manifestation is called, not Prthivi, but Vac ("Speech" or "Word"):

In truth Prajapati is the Father of the world;
With Him was Vac, the other aspect of Himself.
With Her, He begat life.
She conceived; and going forth from Him, She formed all creatures.
And then, once again, She is re-absorbed into Prajapati. ³

This is a depiction of Creation almost identical to the Egyptian and Judaic ones appearing around the same time (ca. 1500 B.C.E.), and is amazingly similar to the opening paragraph of the Fourth Gospel by the Christian evangelist, John.  Here, once again, we have a symbolic representation of the perennial vision of the mystic who perceives the Absolute and Its manifestory Power as an ineffable duality-in-Unity, and characterizes It as the universal Father-Mother.

We find in the Vedas many different names for the Father-God, each representative of a special power or quality of the one Being.  Sometimes He was called Dyaus, "the Almighty", or Varuna, the power of the wind; sometimes He was Indra, whose thunderbolts brought the rain.  But as time went on, these various epithets came to be recognized as but various aspects of the same one Lord:

They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, or Agni, or Garutmat, the heavenly bird.
Reality (Sat) is one; learned men call It by various names, such as Agni, Yama, or Matarisvan. ⁴

Too often, men take the names of God, which accumulate over the centuries to represent separate and distinct entities, and then pit them one against the other.  This was true of the early poets and mythologizers of the Vedas as well.  As soon as one tribe or civilization absorbed another, it established its own name for God as the superior, and relegated the subjugated people's name for God to an inferior position.  In this way, a polytheistic mythology accumulated in no time, peopled with all manner of anthropomorphized gods.  This, however, is the work of the priests and mythologizers, not of the seers.  As one Vedic mystic put it:

With words, priests and poets make into many the hidden Reality, which is but One. ⁵

The Vedas are an amalgamated collection of many songs written by priests, sages, legalists, rulers and poets of the early Aryans, and they run the gamut from lyrical devotion to ceremonial doctrine; from primitive superstition to high philosophy.  They represent not only a broad extent of time—perhaps a thousand years of development—but also a wide divergence of intellects.  It was the poets and priests contributing to the Vedas who fashioned the liturgical and legal traditions of subsequent generations, but it was some unnamed mystic or mystics who gave expression to the exalted vision of Unity which is the cornerstone of the Vedas and the foundation upon which rests the great  non-dual tradition of Vedanta.

Others may attempt to speak of such things, but it is only the mystic whose words are capable of conveying the certainty and authority which is born of true experience.  Here, in the Creation Hymn (X:129) from the Rig Veda, we have a description of the primal Reality prior to the manifestation of the world by a sage who had seen It for himself.  In one of the oldest extant declarations of a true mystic, that one Beginning-place of all things is described:

1.       Then, neither the non-Real (asat) nor the Real (sat) existed.
There was no sky then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What was contained by what, and where, and who sheltered it?
What unfathomed depths, what cosmic ocean, existed then?

2.       Then, neither death nor deathlessness existed;
Between day and night there was as yet no distinction.
That ONE (tad ekam), by Its own power (svadha) breathlessly breathed.  ⁶

First, let us understand that "the Real" (sat) refers to the Absolute, the pure Mind, the one Origin and Father of all; and "the unreal" (asat) refers to this illusory universe of form and apparent substance that is, at bottom, truly only the Creative Energy (svadha) of the Real.  Elsewhere we shall meet up with this same pair referred to as "Brahman and Maya," "Purusha and Prakrti," or "Shiva and Shakti."  Such terms conceptually separate out the two aspects of the one Reality perceived in the "mystical experience" of which our seer speaks.  It is a conceptual division only, and does not represent an actual division in the ultimate Reality.

Then the Hymnist goes on in an attempt to explain how, within the Nondual Existence, the creative impulse arises, bringing about the manifestation of the universe:

3.       In the beginning, darkness lay wrapped in darkness;
All was one undifferentiated (apraketa) sea (salila).
Then, within that one undifferentiated Existence,
[Something] arose by the heat of concentrated energy (tapas).

4.          What arose in That in the beginning was Desire (kama),
[Which is] the primal seed of mind (manas).
The wise, having searched deep within their own hearts,
Have perceived the bond (bandha) between the Real (sat) and the unreal (asat).

Mystics of succeeding generations, who have seen THAT in the depths of contemplation for themselves, have recognized the author of the above Hymn as one who had also known "the mystical vision."  He was, himself, one of those sages he describes, who, searching deep within themselves, perceived "the bond between the Real and the unreal."  He had seen THAT from which all Creation emanates; for in that mystical experience of unity, one goes back—not temporally, but causally—to the Beginning of things, to that eternal, unmoving Consciousness from which the world-manifestation springs forth.  There, in that perfect Stillness, night and day, life and death, do not exist; they are indistinguishable in that state prior to the coming into being of all such opposites.  All these opposites, these complements, rely for their existence on an initial differentiation within the One, creating a perceiver and a perceived.

The subtle source of that differentiation, says our mystic, is "Desire;" i.e., the impulse within the One to create within Itself an object, an "other," for the purpose of experiencing enjoyment.  Is it not the same with us?  Does not the same subtle process occur in all our own mental constructions?  First, arises a desire, followed by the formation of a thought or fantasy to gratify the desire, and then delectation.  It is this subtle movement of desire which comes into expression as mind (manas) or mentation; and, by the production of mental imagery, we have created within our integral consciousness an artificial duality: a seer (the witnessing subject) and a seen (the object of inner vision).  And so, within ourselves, we experience a microcosmic reproduction of the process, which occurs as universal Creation within the one Mind. Universal Destruction is likewise mirrored in the dissolution of a thought within the mind, as we return to self-awareness.

5. They (the wise) have stretched the cord (rashmi) of their vision [to encompass the Truth],
And they have perceived what is higher and lower:
The mighty powers [of Nature] are made fertile
By that ONE who is their Source.
Below [i.e., secondary] is the creative Energy (svadha),
And above [i.e., primary] is the Divine Will (prayati).

It is, we are reminded, the one Divine Consciousness, which is the primary Reality (sat); the thought-creation is but illusion  (asat). The Divine Will (prayati) is superior, or above; and the creative energy (svadha) of thought-imagery is subordinate, or below.  This has been seen in contemplation by all the mystics of every time.

6.       [But, after all,] who knows, and who can say whence it all                  
came, or how this creation came about?
The gods, themselves, came later than this world's creation,               
so who truly knows whence it has arisen? 

7.       Whence all creation had its origin, only He, whether He fashioned it or not—
He, who surveys it all from highest heaven—He knows.
Or perhaps even He does not! ⁷

Why on earth, we must all wonder at some time or another, would God have given birth to this dream-like realm, where individualized souls struggle for wisdom and contentment while continually buffeted by passions, blinded by ignorance, assailed by pain, and threatened with death?  What could be His motive?  As there were no witnesses to the initial Creation, there is no one to tell.  But what of the mystic?  Surely, while he is lost in the depths of the Eternal, he is in a unique position to explain the 'why' of Creation!  Unfortunately, even the mystic perceives no 'why'.  For, in that unitive vision, He alone is.  The joyful expression, which is the universal drama, radiates from Himself, the one Mind.  He alone is the one Cause.  There is nowhere else to look for causation, for whatever appears from Him and before Him is His own most natural and unquestionable radiation of Bliss.

Another way of expressing this truth is to say that the appearance of the world-manifestation in and on the one Consciousness is simply the nature of That.  All questions regarding the how and why of it are therefore alogical.  It is like asking, "Why does light shine?" or "Why does a mind think?"  Who knows why a desire arises?  Who knows how a thought is formed?  We are aware that our thinking processes are distinguishable from our background consciousness, which is merely a witness to the mind's activity.  We are aware that the thought-producing aspect of our mind is superimposed on our consciousness, but we don't know how or why.  It simply occurs.  We say that it is merely the nature of consciousness to manifest as thought.  Similarly, the nature of That, the one Consciousness, is to manifest as the phenomenal world.  "Perhaps," says our Vedic author, "even He doesn't know the how or why of it."

Here is another passage from the Rig Veda (X:90:1-5) that points up the difficulty of explaining the relationship between the two complementary aspects of Reality:

All this is He—what has been and what shall be.  He is the Lord of immortality.  Though He has become all this, in reality He is not all this.  For truly, He is beyond the world.  The whole series of universes—past, present, and future—express His glory and power; but He transcends His own glory.  All beings of the universe form, as it were, only a portion of His being; the greater part is invisible and unchangeable.  He who is beyond all predicates appears as the relative universe; He appears as all sentient and insentient beings. ⁸

In the above Hymn, we are taught the perennial paradox of duality-in-Unity:  "Though He has become all of this, in reality He is not all of this."  He is the transcendent, the Unchangeable, the Eternal; yet conjunctive with the absolute, unqualified voidness of that one Consciousness, is the shining forth of His "glory."  This 'shining forth' as the universe of forms is not He, yet it is He.  His "glory" stands in relation to the Absolute as the Sun's radiating light stands to the Sun.  They are different, yet they are one.  The rays of the Sun have no independent existence, and exist only because of the Sun; the glory of God, which appears as the phenomenal universe, also has no independent reality, but exists only as a radiation or emanation from that pure Sun of Consciousness. "He transcends His own glory," says the seer; remaining forever One, unchanging and pure, He appears as the multiform universe.

Such an understanding comes not from the mind of a speculative philosopher, but from the vision of the mystic.  Only one who has plumbed the depths of his own mind, and passed beyond the mind to the Source of all mind and all manifestation, can know the truth of this unity-in-duality, this duality-in-unity.  It is the knowledge of the Vedic seer, which, as we shall see, has been throughout the ages the common knowledge of all who have passed beyond the "glory" of God, and have seen in the depths of inner contemplation the one Beginning and Ending of all things.

EARLY EGYPTIANS

So far, we have looked only at the early evidence of mysticism in a small portion of the sub-continent of Asia-from the Indus Valley to the Gangetic plain.  Now, let's turn to equally ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the emerging nation of Israel.

When we examine any ancient civilization, we see before us a broad cultural tapestry of multiple mythic images.  And yet, if we search carefully, we shall undoubtedly find in one small corner of that tapestry the evidence that a genuine seer existed, and spoke, and left his imprint on future generations.  The popular polytheistic culture of ancient Egypt, with which we are familiar from the findings of archaeology, was the product of its artists, poets, priests, and intellectuals.  They invented a panoply of gods and goddesses, creatures of the religious imagination; yet, despite this apparent polytheism, the cornerstone of the religious consciousness of ancient Egypt was the recognition of an absolute Unity, which was called Neter, in which all gods (neteru), men, and creatures were included.

For the Egyptians of the early dynasties, the various gods, such as Ra, Horus, and Osiris, for example, were symbolic representatives of various aspects or attributes of the one universal Spirit, much as Indra, Varuna, and Agni personified various attributes of the universal Brahman in the Vedic tradition.  The Unity, called Neter, was regarded as the one eternal Being, omnipotent, omniscient and inscrutable, in whom and from whom all the phenomenal and noumenal universe exists.  Men, gods, creatures, and all objects were seen to be mental creations of the transcendent God, who, in Himself, remained eternally pure and unchanging.  Here is a synopsis of their view of Creation, as presented by noted Egyptologist, Sir Wallis Budge:

According to the writings of the Egyptians, there was a time when neither heaven nor earth existed, and when nothing had being except the boundless primeval water, which was, however, shrouded with thick darkness.  In this condition, the primeval water remained for a considerable time, notwith-standing that it contained within it the germs of the things, which afterwards  came into existence in this world and the world itself.  At length, the Spirit of the primeval water felt the desire for creative activity, and having uttered the word, the world sprang straightway into being in the form which had already been depicted in the mind of the Spirit before he spake the word which resulted in its creation. 1

This view, it should be noted, is strikingly similar to the view, already cited, of the Vedic seers of ancient India. It should be noted also that, for the ancient Egyptians, it is the "Thought" or "Word" of the one Spirit which constitutes the world of creation-a Thought or Word born of, yet distinct from the originating Mind.  We find this view consistently held as far back as the 24th century B.C.E. at Memphis, in Egypt, where an independent religious tradition worshipped the One as Ptah.  The rock carvings on the walls of the pyramids, known as "the Pyramid Texts" (ca. 2350-2175 B.C.E.) declare:

Mighty and great is Ptah, who gives power to all the gods; ... He is in every body and every mouth of all gods, all men, all beasts, all crawling things, and whatever lives, since He thinks forth and calls into being everything according to His will.  When the eyes see, the ears hear, and the nose breathes, these sensations are referred to the mind.  And it is the mind that brings forth every word, for the tongue only repeats the thought of the mind.  Likewise, everything has come into existence through the thought of Ptah and His word. [Through the mind of Ptah] all the gods were fashioned, ... and all the gods are at one with Him, content and united with the Lord of heaven and earth.²

This is undoubtedly the work of an ancient mystic, of one who has seen the origin of the universe in the clarity of mystical vision.  But even more compelling evidence for the existence and influence of an ancient mystic may be found in a portion of The Egyptian Book Of The Dead, called "The Papyrus of Ani," which contains material dating back to the 30th century B.C.E., and may even have predated the dynastic eras in a purely oral tradition.  Here, we find a number of recurring epithets for the one originating Principle, which clearly bespeak such a mystical influence:

God is One and alone, and none other exists with Him; God is the One, the One who has made all things.  He is eternal and infinite; ... He has endured for countless ages, and He shall endure to all eternity.  God is a spirit, a hidden spirit, the Spirit of spirits,  the Divine Spirit.  He is a mystery to His creatures, and no man knows how to know Him.  His names are innumerable; they are manifold, and no one knows their number.  God has made the universe, and He has created all that is in it; ... He has stretched out the heavens and founded the earth. What His heart conceived came to pass straightway, and when He had spoken, His word came to pass, and it shall endure forever. God, Himself, is existence; He lives in all things, and lives upon all things.  He endures without increase or diminution; He multiplies Himself millions of times, and He possesses multitudes of forms and multitudes of members.

God is life, and through Him only man lives.  He gives life to man, and He breathes the breath of life into his nostrils.  God is merciful unto those who reverence Him, and He hears those who call upon Him.  He protects the weak against the strong, and He hears the cry of him that is bound in fetters.  ... God knows those who know Him; He rewards those who serve Him, and He protects those who follow Him. ³

Scholars today view these epithets as merely an exceptionally early expression of monotheistic theory, predating that of the Judaic scriptures; but the mystic recognizes the author of these words, not as a theoretician, but as a person who has realized the ultimate Reality through direct experience, who has "seen" the Unity in the clarity of mystical vision.  It is because his knowledge came of a God-given revelation that he was able to speak with such authority and conviction, and for that reason also his words endured to so deeply effect the religious sentiment of ancient Egypt and very likely that of the early Jews of Israel as well.

THE EARLY JEWS

Around the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. a small group of people left the city of Ur of Chaldea in Babylonia ( present-day Iraq), led by a man named Terah and his son, Abraham, and traveled northward across the Euphrates river.  These were the first people to later become known as Ivriim, or Hebrews, "the people who crossed over the river."  Later, Abraham, at the age of seventy-five, told his few fellow tribesmen that he had heard the voice of God speaking to him from on High, and the voice told him that they would become God's "chosen people" if they would follow the commandments God had given to him.  Abraham told them that God would lead His people south into the land of Canaan (the "promised"land which now comprises Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) if they would agree to the circumcision of all their male descendents.  His followers agreed to this covenant, and the Judaic religion was born.

For several centuries thereafter, Abraham's descendants wandered as nomads in the land of Canaan, worshipping their God, whom they called JHVH ("Yahweh"), perhaps as a variant of Jahu, originally the name of a tribal god of rain.  Then, in the 16th century B.C.E., Joseph, a descendant of Abraham, led some of the Hebrew tribe into Egypt, and eventual slavery, while some others remained in the "promised land" of Canaan.  Those Hebrews who had endured slavery in Egypt returned to Canaan in the 12th century B.C.E., led by a new leader named Moses, who, with his code of social conduct, helped to establish a lawful and integrated society.  However, in the four hundred years of their absence, the Canaanites (those who had remained behind) had evolved their own religious culture, borrowing much from their ancient Babylonian roots and other indigenous influences.

They had embraced the mystical concept of the two Divine aspects of the one Truth:  They called the one aspect, which was transcendent and Male, El ("the First") or Ba'al ("the Lord"); and the other aspect, which was the creative Energy manifest as the world, they depicted as immanent and Female, and called Her Elat (the feminine form of El), or Ba'ala (the feminine form of Ba'al).  She was also known as Anath, Athirat, or Asherah—all variants of the Syrian Astarte or the Babylonian Ishtar.  This cult of Ashera, the Mother-Goddess, was anathema to the newly arrived Hebrews however.  The Hebrew Bible contains more than 40 references to Her in which the newly united peoples of Israel were warned against Her worship.

Nonetheless, it is clear that some segments of the Hebrews adopted the concept of the Goddess; for, in 1975 of the Current Era, at a site in the Sinai desert called Kuntillet Ajrud, archaeologists found fragments of a storage jar dating from the 8th century B.C.E., which contained three figures, one a female playing a lyre, with an inscription referring to "Yahweh of Samaria and His Asherah."¹ The Asherah, or goddess, is also represented on these fragments by Her icons: the sacred tree, symbol of Nature's bounty; and the lion, Her frequent mount in representations from ancient Sumeria to India.

Between the 10th and 6th centuries B.C.E., the Canaanite cult of Ashera continued to resurface, as evidenced by the recurring injunctions against Her worship in many of the Old Testament books written during that time.  And, eventually, the conflict between the Canaanite worshippers of the One in Its dual aspects which they called Baal and Asherah, and the Hebrew worshippers of the One in Its dual aspects which they called Yahweh and Chokmah resulted in the systematic slaughter of many of the Canaanites by the Hebrews.  Ba'al was replaced by Yahweh, and Asherah was replaced by Chokmah. Chokmah (pronounced Hoke-mah), which means "Wisdom," was the Hebrew version of the creative Power of Yahweh, synonymous with Prthivi of the Vedas.  Later, in the Jewish rabbinical tradition, She would become Shekinah; and the Greek seers of a later time-notably the Stoics, and the Gnostics as well, would call Her Sophia, their own word for "Wisdom."  By both Jews and Greeks alike, She was regarded, not only as the creative aspect of God, but also as the principle of Intelligence inherent in mankind who is Her embodiment.

In the book of Proverbs, in the Old Testament of the Bible, She is made to say:

God made me [Wisdom] in the beginning of His works, as the first of His acts. ... Before God made the earth and the fields or the first dust of the world, when He set up the heavens, I was there; ... When He laid the foundations of the earth, I existed as His instrument.  I was His delight every day, playing always before Him, playing on His inhabited earth, and my delights are with human 
beings. ²

She was regarded as coeternal with the unmanifested God, being His Power of manifestation by which the universe came into existence:

Chokmah [Wisdom] is from the Lord; She is with Him   eternally.  ... It is He who created Her, ... and infused Her into all His works. ³

She is the vibratory Energy from which all matter is produced, a vibratory Energy, which emanates from God, as the sound of a word emanates from a person's mouth:

Hear the praise of Chokmah from Her own mouth: 'I am the Word which was spoken by the Most High'. ⁴

In the 1st century B.C.E., an unknown Alexandrian Jew wrote a book, later incorporated into the Hebrew Bible, entitled The Wisdom of Solomon, wherein he stated:

Wisdom [Sophia] is the breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; hence nothing impure can find a way into her.  She is a reflection of the eternal Light; she is the untarnished mirror that is God's active Power, the image of His Goodness. ⁵

Yet, while the early seers of Judaism recognized the dual-facetedness of the One, they were also keenly aware of the danger of the hypostatization of the creative Principle as a second and separate Divinity, and the consequent error of philosophical Dualism.  For this reason, they continually hearkened back to the declaration of the singularity and unity of God:

I am the one Lord; there is no other beside Me.  I form the light and create the darkness; I make peace and create  evil.  I, the one Lord, do all these things. ⁶

This great declaration of Nondualism is perhaps the most significant statement in all of the Hebrew Bible.  It acknowledges the singleness of God, and stands as a bulwark against those who would divide the responsibility for the nature of things between a good Principle and an evil Principle, as has been done so often throughout history.  Dualism—the doctrine which asserts that there are two independent and contrary Principles at work in the universe is a belief which perennially resurfaces among the unlearned segments of the populace as a means of explaining the apparent injustice and suffering in the world.  God is good and just, they reason; and so these things could not have originated with Him, but had to have been produced by some other.

Such a creed of Dualism existed during Biblical times as well, and required frequent reminders from the Hebrew prophets and seers that all that is comes from the one Lord.  The creative Power, usually symbolized as a female Goddess, never was a separate and independent Divinity, but is merely a symbol of the creative Power of the One; they were never two.  It is that one Lord who is the source of the creative Power from whom comes both good and evil; all such opposites: the light and the darkness, pleasure and pain, life and death, composition and decomposition, are complementary aspects of the one Life force, while He, the transcendent God, is beyond all dualities, and is unaffected by the appearance of duality.

As those who have seen the Truth in the "mystical vision" tell us, He is always pure, always unaffected by the play of opposites which we experience as the world.  Just as our own personal consciousness remains clear and unstained by the millions of thoughts and images which have paraded across it, or just as the sky remains clear and unmarred even though millions of thunder clouds have passed across its face, so He is ever pure, ever-unchanged and unaffected by the manifestation of the countless thought-forms which constitute this universe.

To be sure, He is solely responsible for the existence of this universe; He is its sole Source and animating power.  And yet, as is evident from the analogy with the human consciousness, He, in His own being, remains uninvolved, unaffected by the immensely complex activities and evolutions taking place within the cosmic drama.  This is not to say, of course, that He is not as close as our own breath; we, and the objects of our world, are nothing else but His existence, and He is the Source and inner Self (Soul) of everyone.  He is the voice of reason, He is the fire of song within the heart; He is the compassion that stirs the soul, He is the light of wisdom shining, full of joy, within us all.  It is He who, in the very creation of this world of opposites, has placed the dust of blindness before our inner eye, and concealed Himself in the fog of our ignorance.  And it is He, also, who increases His own light in the soul, causing it to yearn for total illumination, and then reveals Himself within as the Light of all lights, the Self of all selves.

Of all the various prophets and authors of the Hebrew Bible who yearned for a clear vision of God, the nameless author of the book of Psalms seems best qualified to be regarded as a true mystic.  These noble and poetically beautiful songs of God-longing and praise have been attributed to David, king of Palestine (ca. 1000 B.C.E.), but it is very unlikely that they really were penned by that famous warrior-king.  Whoever their author was, it is clear that he had experienced the yearning for God, and had received the grace of mystical "vision."  His Psalms, apparently recorded around the same time as some of the songs of the Rig Veda, bear some similarity to those Vedic Hymns.  His world, like that of the Vedic authors, was a harsh one of mysterious, unexplained forces, and violent, warlike men.  He calls on his God to defeat them and to favor him and his own.  In his plaintive songs to God, he oftentimes cries out in anguish at God's slowness in vanquishing the wicked, and granting victory to the righteous.

Like the Vedas, the Psalms run the gamut of human emotions, from humility to rage, from prayer for righteousness to prayer for conquest.  They are songs from an obviously difficult time of savage and brutal struggle, and yet, it seems that, during the time of the Psalmist, there was a strong movement toward the path of devotion, and many who sought, through solitary contemplation, to know God.  It was the Psalmist, who gave voice to this movement, saying: "This is the generation of them that seek after Him, that seek Thy Face, O God." ⁷ His one desire was to see God face to face; "As for me," he says in the 17th Psalm, "let me behold Thy Face through righteousness."  Like Jesus, who was to come long after him, he declared that it is the pure in heart who shall see God:  "The Lord loves righteousness; it is the righteous who shall behold His Face." ⁸

Wherever we find a literature of loving devotion to God, we may expect also to find a seer of God.  The Psalmist was just such a lover and seer.  In his Songs of longing for the embrace of God, we find the forerunners of the songs of devotion written much later by the saints of the Bhakti movement in India.  In the period of his most intense longing, he sings:  "As a deer pants for the cool stream, so my soul longs for Thee, O God."⁹ And in his anguish, he cries out, "How long, O Lord?  Wilt Thou forget me forever?  How long wilt Thou hide thy Face from me?"¹⁰ And then, when at last he attains the vision he sought, and realizes the oneness and all-pervasiveness of God, he sings:

O Lord, Thou art behind me and before me, and Thy hand is ever upon me.  This is a knowledge  too wonderful for me to grasp!  Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit?  Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?  If I take the wings of the morning, or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall uphold me. ¹¹

In such utterances, we are able to hear the perennial song of unity sung by the later mystic seers. The Psalmist clearly recognizes, at least briefly, the all-pervasiveness of God, the all-inclusiveness of God, and knows in that moment that even his own life is but an expression of God's manifold being.  But it is too wonderful, too subtle, for him to grasp. And besides, the Psalmist is little concerned with establishing a consistent philosophical worldview; his songs are prayers to God, songs of rejoicing, praise, or wails of distress.  Like the Vedas, they originate from the primitive heart, which seeks in all simplicity to know and follow the ways of the mysterious God who holds in His hands the fate of all men.  To their author, the formulation of a 'philosophy of Unity' was unthinkable; he was a lover, and he knew only that his beloved God had shown him His grace.

Whether it was king David or some other who wrote the Psalms, their author was a man who had undoubtedly received a profound experience of God within himself, and who, because of that grace, was able to provide inspiration and strength to men of many later generations through his songs in praise of God.  To be sure, those ancient songs are mixed with the stain of bigotry, violence, and other human weaknesses; but we must remember the time and circumstances under which they were written.  Their author stood alone in a time of barbarism and stupidity, and fearlessly sang of his God, and upheld the banner of truth and righteousness for his people to follow.  Today, so many centuries removed from his times and trials, we may still catch a glimpse of the greatness of the Psalmist, and hear the echo of his mighty voice across the mountainous years, resounding in praise of the ancient and everlasting God.

THE UPANISHADIC SEERS

In India, sometime during the first millennium B.C.E., the Vedas were finally collected and put into an organized written form; and an additional, much later, collection of philosophical writings by the rishis, or seers, who had known God, were appended to those earlier hymns and religious precepts, and thereafter regarded as an integral part of the Vedas.  These philosophical appendages, addressed to a more learned and intellectually sophisticated audience, were called the Upanishads. The Sanskrit word, upanishad, means "sitting beneath," and refers to those teachings which are received at the feet of a spiritual Master, or Guru.  The Upanishads are also "sitting beneath" the Vedas as the final portion of the collection, and are therefore known as the Vedanta: the end (anta) of the Vedas.

Of the one hundred and eight Upanishads said to exist, twelve are regarded as of primary importance and merit.  In philosophical purity and persuasiveness, these few represent what, for most of us, are the Upanishads.  Their names are the Isha, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka, Aitareya, Taitiriya, Svetasvatara and Maitri  Upanishads. The authors and exact date of authorship of these separate spiritual treatises are unknown; we know only that they were written, by various anonymous sages who had realized that Truth of which they speak, sometime between ca. 1200 and 400 B.C.E.  While they vary in length and in style, their one common theme is the inner realization of the identity of the Atman (Self) and Brahman (the one universal Consciousness).  We may strive to know God, or we may strive to know our Self; but, say the Upanishads, when you find the one, you shall also find the other; and it is this discovery which constitutes Enlightenment.

It has long been recognized as a fact of mystical psychology that, as a man comes to know God in the unitive vision, he knows in that some moment, his own true Self.  This intriguing fact is expressed most succinctly in a passage from the ancient Indian epic, the Ramayana; in it, Rama, who represents the Godhead incarnate, asks his servant, Hanuman, "How do you regard me?"  And Hanuman replies:

dehabhavena daso'smi
jivabhavena twadamshakah
atmabhave twamevaham

(When I identify with the body, I am Thy servant;
When I identify with the soul, I am a part of Thee;
But when I identify with the Self, I am truly Thee.)  ¹

These three attitudes represent progressively subtler stages of self-identification: from the identification with the body, to identification with the soul, until, finally, one comes to know the Divine, and thereby one's eternal Self.  While each of these three relational attitudes finds expression as the prevailing attitude within various individual religious traditions, they are essentially representative of the viewpoint from these different stages of self-awareness.

We have seen, in the Vedas, how religious thought progressed from a primitive sort of nature-worship to monotheism, and finally to a monistic conception of reality.  This progression of understanding is a duplication of the progression of understanding that takes place in the mind of every individual as well.  We all begin as materialists, taking for granted that the phenomenal world before us is the sole reality.  The idea of a transcendent God, or a unifying Principle inherent in the world, seems but a remote and hazy notion.  Then, as our religious sense awakens, perhaps through some shocking reminder of our mortality, or a dawning clarity of mind while viewing the starry heavens or some quiet stretch of seacoast, we begin to reflect.  And some inner logic seems to demand a Creator for so vast and mysterious a universe.  We begin to sense an Intelligence beyond our own, an Intelligence with whom we can communicate, and of whom we are increasingly aware in all our thoughts and actions.

The second stage of our religious development comes when, after some deliberation and inner probing, we come to the conclusion that there is something within ourselves, a moral spirit, a guiding light, which is, itself, Divine, and partakes of God Himself.  We call it our "soul," and we sense the longing of that soul to rejoin the Divine beauty and goodness from which, like a spark from a blazing fire, it emanated.

Finally, we experience the third stage in our journey when, in a moment of longing, contemplating our Divine Source, we know "the peace that passes all understanding," and suddenly, in a moment of unprecedented clarity of Intelligence, we know that one Divinity face to face.  In that clear knowing, we realize that the seeker and the Goal, the knower and That which it sought to know, are one.  Like the king of a vast kingdom, awakening from a dream in which he is poor and lost, we awake to the realization that we were never separate from the One, but only imagined a separateness where none existed.  Then we know who we have always been:  the one all-pervading Being, who, while transcending this world of light and shadow, is Itself the substratum and essence of all being.

It is in the Upanishads that we first hear from those fully illumined seers who have reached the final stage of knowledge regarding God and the Self, declaring to us that the Self and God are one:

Even by the mind this truth is to be learned:
There are not many, but only ONE. ²

We are easily able to understand the idea of an underlying Unity intellectually, but that remains an imperfect and ultimately unsatisfactory knowledge so long as we do not directly experience that Unity as I.   Our very knowledge stands in the way of experiencing the Truth, because we retain the limited awareness of "I know".  That very intellect which knows establishes a separation between the knower and what is known.  Hear what the seers of the Upanishads say on this point:

He is known by those who know Him beyond thought, not to those who imagine He can be attained by thought.  ... If you think, "I know Him well," you do not know the Truth. You only perceive that appearance of Brahman produced by the inner senses.  Continue to meditate. ³

What cannot be thought with the mind, but That whereby the mind thinks:  know That alone to be Brahman. ... It is not what is thought that we should wish to know; we should know the thinker.  "He is my Self!"  This one should know.  "He is my Self!"  This one should know. ⁴

And that knowledge, of the Self, or Atman, is obtained only through the direct experience that occurs when the knowing mind is transcended, and the knower and the known are directly realized to be one. No amount of reasoning, no amount of philosophical understanding, can approach this directly apprehended knowledge:

He cannot be seen by the eye, and words cannot reveal Him.  He cannot be realized by the senses, or by austerity or the performance of rituals.  By the grace of wisdom and purity of mind, He can be seen in the silence of contemplation. ⁵

When a sage sees this great Unity, and realizes that his Self has become all beings, what delusion and what sorrow could ever approach him? ⁶

When awake to the vision of one's own Self, when a man in truth can say:  "I  am He," what desires could lead him to grieve in fever for the body?

... When a man sees the Atman, his own Self, the one God, the Lord of what was and of what shall be, then he fears no more. ⁷

This "vision" of the Self is described in the Upanishads as Liberation (moksha).  It is a freedom, a release, from doubt, from uncertainty, from the fears attending ignorance, forever.  All questions are answered; all desires and causes for sorrow are put to rest; for thereafter, a man knows the secret of all existence.  All previous notions of limitation and mortality, all darkness of ignorance, is swept away in the all-illuminating light of Truth:

When the wise man knows that it is through the great and omnipresent Spirit in us that we are conscious in waking or in dreaming, then he goes beyond all sorrow.  When he knows the Self, the inner Life, who enjoys like a bee the sweetness of the flowers of the senses, the Lord of what was  and what will be, then he goes beyond all fear. ⁸

When a man has seen the truth of the Spirit, he is one with Him; the aim of his life is fulfilled, and he is ever beyond sorrow.

... When a man knows God, he is free; his sorrows have an end, and birth and death are no more.  When in inner union he is beyond the world of the body, then the third world, the world of the Spirit, is found, where man possesses all—for he is one with the ONE. ⁹

It is these truths, that "Brahman (God) is the Atman (the Self)," ¹⁰ "Atman is Brahman,"¹¹ and that the realization of Atman/Brahman is man's ultimate "Liberation," which constitute the great message of the Upanishads.  But a further question remains:  "How is this realization to be attained?"  In answer to that question, the various authors of the Upanishads offer various answers, which to a perplexed student may appear contradictory and mutually exclusive.  But, with a little explanation, it can be easily understood that their directives are not contradictory at all, but complementary.  For example, in the Katha Upanishad, we are given three different explanations of the way to know God.  The first is "by the grace of God":

The man who surrenders his human will leaves sorrows behind, and beholds the glory of the Self by the grace of God.

... Not through much learning is the Atman reached, nor through the intellect and the sacred teachings.  It is reached by those whom He chooses; to His chosen the Self reveals His
glory. ¹²

The second is "by purity of heart":

He is seen by a pure heart and by a mind whose thoughts are pure.  ... When all desires that cling to the heart are surrendered, then a mortal becomes immortal, and even in this world he is one with Brahman. ¹³

The third is by "one-pointed contemplation":

Not even through deep knowledge can the Self be reached, unless evil ways are abandoned, and there is rest in the senses, concentration in the mind, and peace in one's heart.

... When the wise man rests his mind in contemplation on our God beyond time, who invisibly dwells in the mystery of things and in the heart of man, then he rises above both pleasures and sorrows. ¹⁴

These three, apparently diverse, methods or means to attain the realization of God appear in one form or another throughout all the Upanishads.  And, in order to understand the integral relationship of these three apparently different "paths," we must examine them in the light of the experience of those who have reached the goal of Self-realization.  First, let us understand what is meant by "the grace of God."

Those who have known that absolute Self realize that whatever exists, and whatever occurs in this universe, is His doing. There is nothing whatsoever that is apart from Him.  This the sages have clearly seen.  Where, then, is that which is outside of His doing?  Can we suppose that the awakening of our understanding about God is something apart from His doing?  Or that our efforts, our devotion to Truth, our desire for knowledge, is something other than His own activity within ourselves?  It is God's grace which inspires within us the effort, the desire.  The vision of God is not attained without effort, but the effort itself is a manifestation of His grace.  And the revelation of Himself—could that be accomplished without His doing it?  We are within God, and everything—even our doubting, our rejection, our foolishness—is He.  Can that inward journey to Self-realization be inspired by someone other than He?

Regardless of what steps we take toward the realization of God, it is God Himself who is playing out the drama.  The light that fills a room is nothing but light; how could we find a portion of that light that is acting independently from the rest?  Likewise, all this universe is the glory of God, and nothing but Him.  What, then, is not Himself?  What is not a manifestation of His grace?  The authors of the Upanishads, like all true seers of God who have come after them, have acknowledged the fact that, ultimately, their turning to God, their thirst for Him, and their eventual Self-realization, are all inspired and accomplished by His grace.  "He is indeed the Lord supreme whose grace moves the hearts of men.  He leads us unto His own joy and to the glory of His light."¹⁵

Now, in the light of this understanding, let us examine the qualification of "purity of heart."  Though it is a vague and broadly generalized phrase, it is one used repeatedly by the sages of the past and present, including Jesus of Nazareth, to describe the state of mind prerequisite to the "vision" of God.  Pure-heartedness suggests guilelessness, simplicity and childlike humility.  "He is unknown by the learned, and known by the simple." ¹⁶ It implies tenderness, compassion, sincerity, and all those qualities we associate with "goodness."  It is the state of the heart of one who knows that God is universally present, and who regards nothing in this world as divorced from, or other than, God.

"Purity" suggests a single, uncontaminated, element or quality.  "Purity of heart," therefore, is an undeviating regard to God alone, who has become the center and focus of all one's thoughts, words and actions.  Only by such purity of heart is the mind of man readied and prepared for the perfect concentration of mind, which is known as contemplation.

The mind of man is of two kinds: pure and impure.  It is impure when in the grip of worldly desire, and pure when free from such desire.  ... If men thought of God as much as they think of the world, who would not attain liberation? ¹⁷

Contemplation, the third stipulated precondition, is the result of mental purity, and the open gateway to the experience of the Eternal.  It is not attained by allowing the mind to dwell on sense-pleasures, nor by the calculating of philosophers, nor by the proud and complacent; it is attained by the mind that dwells solely and intently on God, who knows its own darkness, and longs solely and purely for the light of clear vision.

When a wise man has withdrawn his mind from all things without, and when his spirit has peacefully left all inner sensations, let him rest in peace, free from the movement of will and desire. 
... For it has been said:  There is something beyond our mind, which abides in silence within our mind.  It is the supreme mystery beyond thought.  Let one's mind and subtle spirit rest upon that and nothing else.

... When the mind is silent, beyond weakness and distraction, then it can enter into a world, which is far beyond the mind: the supreme Destination.  ... Then one knows the joy of Eternity.

... Words cannot describe the joy of the soul whose impurities are washed away in the depths of contemplation, who is one with the Atman, his own Self.  Only those who experience this joy know what   it is.

... As water becomes one with water, fire with fire, and air with air, so the mind becomes one with the infinite Mind and thus attains Freedom. ¹⁸

If we are to know that Freedom, say the authors of the Upanishads, we must leave behind the world of speculation and philosophizing, and enter into the devout life of grace, purity of heart and contemplation.  Thus, they assure us, with a full trust in His loving guidance, with a sincere and naked surrender of all thoughts not of God, and all actions not in His service, and finally in the constant flow of the mind to Him in the intimacy of silent contemplation, we shall enter the depths of our being, and know the glory of our own eternal Self.

When first one discovers these exalted thoughts in the Upanishads, one is startled and wonderstruck that such sublime thoughts were penned so many hundreds of years ago—long before anyone in the West had come near to such heights of knowing.  We discover that the knowledge of the Spirit is not dependent upon the so-called "progress of civilization," but has always been the same for all humanity in every age.

In the annals of spiritual knowledge, the testimonies of the rishis who authored the Upanishads may perhaps be equaled, but they have never been, nor will ever be, surpassed.  They have the last as well as the original say in spiritual knowledge.  All that has been said since regarding the Source, nature, and final Goal of man is but so many footnotes to the Upanishads; for, in them, the furthest reaches of knowledge have been explored.  They have reduced all existence to One, the final number beyond which there is no more reduction.  And they have shown the path whereby this supernal knowledge may be attained.  Whatever came after the Upanishads, in the way of spiritual knowledge, is only the echoing cries of those who have rediscovered the same Truth, by the same path, and have raised their voices to sing the same joyous song.

KAPILA

The seers who authored the Upanishads had known in themselves the great Unity, and had declared for all to come thereafter that the soul of man and the Lord of all creation were one and the same; Tat twam asi! was their repeated cry: "Thou art That!"  And more, "All this universe is That!"

"But how," the uncomprehending mind questions, "can this be so?  How can the Unmoving be identical with the incessantly fluctuating universe?  How can this world of transient phenomena, where all things and beings are born, suffer and die, be identical to  the God who is said to be formless, unchanging, and eternally One? And how is it possible to reconcile that eternal Self with what we experience as our separate transient selves existing in the world?  Are there two selves, or is our personal self merely an illusion that we are experiencing in this world of birth, suffering, and death?"

"It cannot be understood through reasoning or subtlety of intellect," reply the sages of the Upanishads; "only those who see It in the depths of contemplation know the secret."  And yet, still, the uncomforted mind strives to grasp it with the intellect, and those sages who have seen It continue in their steadfast endeavor to describe It, in order to provide to those who have not seen It some idea of just what It is like. One such sage, named Kapila, who lived around the 8th or 9th century B.C.E. in the northeastern part of India, after realizing in himself the Truth of existence, made a valiant and brilliant attempt to explain the mysterious Unity-in-duality to the satisfaction of those who had not known It.  Like all attempts before or since, it failed to accomplish its purpose, and mainly served only to foster more misconceptions and misinterpretations.  Still, it is a perfectly true and simple description from the vantagepoint of one who has seen the Truth, and for that reason, Kapila's beautifully formulated description of Reality has lived on for centuries and centuries, providing the foundation and framework for description by the many seers of the Truth who came after him.

Kapila's explanation of Reality came to be known as the philosophy of Samkhya, a word which, like Veda, means "knowledge" or "wisdom."  To designate the Eternal, Kapila used the word, Purusha; it is a word, which had appeared previously in the Vedas to mean the universal Soul or Self, the universal  "Person."  And to designate the creative Energy, which emanates from Purusha and manifests as the phenomenal world, he used the word, Prakrti.  Prakrti is identical with Shiva's Shakti, Brahman's Maya, or Prthivi, the earth Mother of the Vedas.  It is Prakrti which appears as atoms, molecules, and all the sentient and insentient world.

These two, Purusha and Prakrti, are what we today might call "spirit" and "matter," except that Prakrti is more than what we regard as matter; it is the substance of all forms, including thought-forms, dream-images, and the individual psyche.  It is everything that is experienced as "the world"—on both the subtle and gross levels.  Purusha, on the other hand, is the Eternal, the unmanifested Essence, the unstained and unchanging Consciousness.  It is the light of conscious Awareness, which not only illumines but also allows us to perceive the world of Prakrti.  Purusha is the one cosmic Consciousness; Prakrti is the Thought-production of that Consciousness.  Our own individual consciousness mirrors Purusha; and our power of thought-production mirrors Prakrti.

Those who have known the experience of Unity realize these two to be complementary aspects of one indivisible Reality; but, as both of these aspects of the One possess mutually exclusive qualities, it is necessary—in order to differentiate them by quality—to give them separate and distinct names.  This division of names and qualities gives the impression of an ultimate duality; but that is an impression due merely to the nature of language.  These two must, in language at least, remain apparently distinct simply in order to explain their unity.  And that unity is realized only in the transcendent "vision" of the mystic, who knows them to be, beyond all doubt, inseparably One.

Kapila's categorization and analysis of the two aspects of Existence, Purusha and Prakrti, had a vast influence on later thinkers, yet many who had not experienced that Unity for themselves corrupted his vision into a Dualistic philosophical system wherein the two came to be regarded, not as complementary aspects of the One, but as two eternally separate and irreconcilable Principles at odds with one another.  It was just such a dualistic view, which was also espoused by the followers of Zoroaster in Persia, and later by the Manichaean Gnostics.  It seems there has never been a scarcity of unenlightened men and women at the ready in this world to corrupt the words of the enlightened to fit their own pitiably childish views.  Today we see the same delusion upheld by those who see existence as an eternal struggle between Jehovah and Satan.

While these two terms, Purusha and Prakrti, may appear foreign to the Western mind, we must recognize that Kapila's conception of Reality is the essence of all mystical philosophy, past and present.  We find it echoed, at least implicitly, in the conceptions of Reality formulated by all the mystics and teachers of spiritual life.  This, for example, from the Bible, expresses a distinction between "the Father" and "the world":

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father, but of the world. ¹

Similarly, in the earlier Upanishads, these two aspects of the One, corresponding to Purusha and Prakrti, were not referred to by name, but were merely inferred:

The Immortal is veiled by the world.  The Spirit of Life is the Immortal.  Name and form are the world, and by them the Spirit is veiled. ² Behold the glory of God in the universe and all that lives and moves on earth.  Leaving the transient, find joy in the Eternal. ³

But in the later Upanishads, written after the time of Kapila, such as the Svetasvatara, the Samkhya terminology is used:

Prakrti is changing and passing; but Purusha is eternal.  ... By meditation on Him, by contemplation of Him, and by communion with Him, there comes in the end destruction of earthly delusion. ⁴

In the same Upanishad, the author refers to the names used by the older Vedic tradition for these two to show that they are synonymous terms:

With Maya, His mysterious power, He made all things, and by Maya the human soul is bound.  Know therefore that Prakrti is Maya, and Purusha is Rudra (Shiva), the ruler of Maya.  All beings in our universe are contained in His infinite splendor. ⁵ ... He is the Eternal among things that pass away, pure Consciousness of conscious beings, the One who fulfills the prayers of many.  By the wisdom of Samkhya and the practice of yoga (contemplation), a man knows the Eternal; and when a man knows the Eternal, he is free from all fetters.⁶

The great contribution which Kapila made to philosophical thought was to define and examine in unprecedented detail the nature and qualities of each of the two aspects of Reality, so that the mind could easily distinguish between them. Prakrti, he tells us, is the undifferentiated field of Energy, which transmutes itself into the elements that make up the entire world of forms.  The primary process of this transmutation is described by Kapila as a self-division into three separate modes of Energy, which he calls gunas (strands).  These correspond to what scientists today would call "positive," "negative," and "neutral" energy-charges.  Kapila calls them rajas, tamas, and sattva. They are the three "strands" which, woven together, constitute the fabric of Prakrti; and which, by their incessant interaction, form the manifold universe, including all sentient and insentient beings.

We experience these three modes of energy in the following ways:  rajas as passion, restlessness and assertive activity; tamas as dullness, lassitude and inertia; and sattva as clarity, refinement of intellect, and tranquility.  Sattva, rajas, and tamas are constantly alternating, which accounts for the changes we experience in mood and functional ability.  Thus, Prakrti, composed of the three gunas, is both the cause and the substance of the entire vast range of experiential phenomena, which we call "the world."  Yet, while this transient and ephemeral drama of thought, form and movement goes on, there is a steady, unchanging and eternal Consciousness, which remains ever aloof as the Witness of the drama; that is Purusha.  Purusha is the universal Self, the light of Consciousness, which illumines Prakrti and which, standing distinguishably separate from Prakrti, exists as the unchanging witness-consciousness in every individual being.

All suffering, according to Kapila, is simply the result of forgetfulness of one's true Self, or Purusha, while identifying with the ever-changing world of Prakrti, and thereby being caught up in the play of light and shadow, believing that to be one's self.  And the means of deliverance from suffering is, first of all, to distinguish between the two, and to cease to identify with Prakrti.   Since Prakrti is a mere display, intrinsically transient, it is, in the final analysis, unreal.  The real is Purusha, the eternal, unchanging Self.  Kapila condenses this philosophy into four principle "truths":

1.       That from which we want to be delivered is pain.
2.       Deliverance (liberation) is the cessation of pain.
3.       The cause of pain is the lack of discrimination between Prakrti and Purusha.
4.       The means of deliverance is discrimination [between these two]. ⁷

In other words, according to Kapila, all suffering in this life is the result of wrong identification:  identifying with Prakrti instead of Purusha. Suffering is inherent in Prakrti, but does not exist in Purusha.  Purusha is our eternal, and therefore real, Self.  When we discriminate between them, we realize that all suffering belongs only to Prakrti, and cannot touch our true Self.  It is this vision of Kapila's which, as we shall see, provided the framework for that great spiritual masterpiece, the Bhagavad Gita.

THE BHAGAVAD GITA

Sometime between the 10th and 5th centuries B.C.E., the great epic classic, the Mahabharata, was written by an unknown poet or poets.  It told the story of a great war between two rival clans of ancient India, and was no doubt based in part on ancient historical events.  Throughout its complex allegorical fabric of moral tales within tales, it wove the philosophical precepts of Kapila's Samkhya.  By this time, the culture of India had become completely permeated and greatly influenced by Kapila's vision and terminology.

Within the marvelous poetic drama of the Mahabharata is found the Bhagavad Gita, "The Song Of God."  It is a philosophical dialogue, written by some illumined sage of the time (and attributed to the legendary sage, Vyasa), which offers the most comprehensive and definitive expression of the Samkhya philosophy ever written.  While it forms a segment of the Mahabharata story, it is also a separate and complete work in itself.  We can only surmise that it was written by an independent seer, in such a way that it would fit comfortably into the Mahabharata story as a philosophical discussion between two of its characters, in order to assure it a place in that immortal work.  Indeed, since the time of its composition, it has become the Bible of India, and one of the most sacred of holy books for students of philosophy and religion throughout the world.

In the first chapter of the Gita, we find Arjuna, a warrior of the Pandava clan, on the battlefield with Krishna, his chariot-driver, who happens also to be an incarnation of God.  Krishna, who is only incidentally Arjuna's cousin and the king of Dwarka, represents, throughout this dialogue, the Divine Spirit  in man; he is literally "the driver of the chariot" of the body.  And the dialogue begins between Arjuna and Krishna as a dialogue between man and his indwelling Spirit, or Self.  Arjuna, faced with the task before him, of battling to the death against his own vices and wrong notions, allegorically represented in the story as those whom he has known from childhood as friends and relatives, faces the battle of life which all men face; and he feels overwhelmed and utterly despondent.  "Letting fall his bow and arrows, he sank down in his chariot, his soul overcome by despair and grief." ¹

But Krishna, the voice of the Eternal in him, prods him from his weakness and dejection, by reminding him of his unconquerable Soul.  He brings to Arjuna's mind the remembrance that all this world is but a drama, a play of opposites, wherein heat and cold, pleasure and pain alternate, but can never touch the eternal Soul of man.  "He dwells in these bodies, beyond time, and though these bodies have an end in time, He remains infinite and eternal.  Therefore, great warrior, carry on your fight."  ²

This dialogue, though set on a battlefield and forming an integral part in the story of the great war between the two factions, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, is quite evidently intended as an allegorical parable of man's struggle to conquer his own illusions and weaknesses, and to realize the Divine in himself.  It is the perennial battle of life:  the struggle between the darkness of ignorance, which sees only the frightening appearance of the world, and the light of wisdom, which sees the eternal Spirit in and behind all appearance.  Krishna, the light of wisdom, explains to Arjuna the truth of the Spirit and exhorts him to take up his arms once again and to struggle toward the awareness of his own eternal Soul.  He begins to teach him the wisdom of Samkhya and the path of yoga.

Samkhya, as we have seen, is the knowledge of Prakrti and Purusha, and the discrimination between the two; and yoga is the effort to realize the eternal Truth through the practice of serenity, steadfastness, meditation and contemplation on the Self.  Says Krishna:  "When your mind, confused by the apparent contradictions of the scriptures, becomes steady in contemplation of the Divine, then the goal of yoga is yours." ³ Through Samkhya, Krishna tells him, he will learn to understand his true Self; and through yoga, the practice of contemplating that Self, he will attain the direct realization of Truth.  These two, says Krishna, go hand in hand; understanding leads to practice, or application, and the application of knowledge leads to realization.

Samkhya is the path of knowledge, what Krishna calls jnan yoga, "the yoga of knowledge";  and the application of this knowledge in thought, word and deed is the path of action, or karma yoga. We are all bound to act, Krishna reminds Arjuna; there is no way to escape from the world of action.  But through knowledge, a man learns that he exists beyond Prakrti as the eternal Purusha, the constant Self, who remains unstained by the actions which he must perform in this world:

All actions take place in time by the interweaving of  the gunas of Prakrti, and the deluded man thinks that he is the doer of the actions.

But the man who knows the relation between the gunas of Prakrti and actions understands that actions are only gunas acting upon other gunas, and that he is not their slave. ⁴

In other words, the man who identifies with actions, thinking he is only the body and mind, is entirely swayed by the desire for pleasures of the body and mind, and suffers through this wrong identification; but one who identifies with the Eternal, the Purusha, is not swayed by these desires, and thereby remains free of the suffering that accompanies this mistaken identification.

In the Fourth chapter, Krishna strips away the last vestiges of pretense in this thinly disguised parable, and openly declares that his character represents the Atman, the Divine Self in all men.  He is the Avatar, the manifestation of God, appearing within His own drama in order to give concrete utterance to the unspoken wisdom that teaches itself from within all men.  By this literary device, he becomes the voice, not of Krishna, the king of Dwarka, but of the all-pervading, all-inclusive God.  "By whatever path men love Me," he tells Arjuna, "by that path they come to Me.  Many are the paths of men, but they all in the end come to Me." ⁵ By "Me,"  he refers, of course, to the one supreme Self of all.

Krishna, now speaking as the Divine Reality, explains to Arjuna that, while He acts in the world (as Prakrti), He is ever beyond action (as Purusha).  He works, but He is ever beyond work, in the freedom of eternity.  And He asks Arjuna to perform all his actions in the same spirit, understanding that he must continue to do actions for the good of all, while remaining aware that he is entirely unaffected by his actions.  In this way, says Krishna, you will remain unattached to and unaffected by the success or failure of your actions.  You will enjoy the peace and freedom of your eternal Self even while engaging in actions.

Arjuna is not yet clear on this point, however, and he questions Krishna further, just as all men deliberate with themselves on the facts of life and how they must behave in accordance with the Truth.  Krishna explains to Arjuna that it is not action that is to be renounced, but wrong identification that is to be renounced; for it is wrong identification which causes a man to be attached to desire for the fruits of his actions:

When a man knows himself to be Brahman, his reason is steady, and all delusion is gone from him.  When pleasures come, he is not moved; and when pain comes, he is unmoved.

He is not bound by things without; within himself he enjoys happiness.  His soul is one with Brahman, and so he enjoys eternal bliss. ⁶

This perfect state is attained through understanding and through practice.  "Such a man is a yogi," says Krishna; "he is one with Brahman and lives in Brahman."  ⁷

Krishna then explains to Arjuna the practice of yoga, by which the realization of his unity with Brahman is to be attained.  Now that Arjuna has learned the renunciation of attachment and desire, he is ready to learn the path of meditation.  Says Krishna:

When the mind of the yogi is in peace, focused on the Self within, and beyond all restless desires, then he experiences Unity.   His mind becomes still, like the flame of a lamp sheltered from the winds.

When the mind rests in the prayerful stillness of yoga, by the grace of the One, he knows the One, and attains fulfillment.  Then he knows the joy of Eternity; he sees beyond the intellect   and the senses.  He becomes the Unmoving, the Eternal. ⁸

... In this experience of Unity, the yogi is liberated, delivered from all suffering forever.  ... The yogi whose heart is still, whose passions are dissolved, and who is pure of sin, experiences this supreme bliss and knows his oneness with Brahman. ⁹

Krishna then goes on, in the Seventh chapter, to describe the ways that He (the supreme Self) appears in this world:

I am the fragrance of the earth and the light of the fire; I am the life of all beings, and the austerity of the yogis.  ... I am the intelligence of the intelligent, and the beauty of all things beautiful. ... I am the strength of the strong, ... and the purity of the pure. ¹⁰

And yet again, Krishna reminds us that while all these exist in Him,  He remains ever beyond all manifestation:

The three gunas comprising Prakrti come from Me, but I am not in them; they are in Me.  The whole world is under the delusion of My Maya (appearance), and know not Me, the Eternal.  This Maya of Mine is difficult to penetrate, but those who know Me go beyond My Maya. ¹¹

Here again, the author is presenting that most difficult of truths to comprehend: that the universe is the "appearance" of God, His Prakrti, or Maya, and not God Himself.  The world is His "glory," but it is merely an appearance; He exists beyond His appearance, as the pure Absolute:

I am hidden by My veil of Maya, and the deluded   people of the world do not know Me, the Beginningless, the Eternal. ¹² ... But the man of vision and I are one.  His Self is Myself, and I am his sole trust.

At the end of many lives the man of vision comes to Me. "God is all," this great man declares.  But how rarely is such a man found!  ¹³

Krishna then explains to Arjuna how the world (His Maya) evolves into appearance and "involves" back into Himself.  The 'day' of world-manifestation lasts for eons upon eons, and alternates with the 'night' of dissolution:

When that 'day' comes, all visible creation arises from the Invisible; and when the 'night' of dissolution comes, all creation disappears. ¹⁴

Such a cyclic beginning and ending of the universe of appearance is no mere theory; in the experience of Unity, this recurrent creation and dissolution is seen quite clearly.  From the standpoint of Eternity, it occurs in the blinking of an eye; it is like the breathing in and breathing out of Prakrti; but from the viewpoint of time and mortals, it is a cycle that takes billions of years to complete.  Only now, the scientists who study the motions of the heavens are beginning to surmise from their observations that this is the case, but to one who has seen it and experienced it, there is not the slightest doubt about it.

In the experience of Unity, when one knows his eternal Self, this expansion and dissolution of the universe is recognized as only an appearance.  It is like a thought-production that exists for a while, and then is withdrawn.  The eternal Self is not affected in the least by it:

... Beyond this appearance and dissolution of the world, there is an invisible, higher, eternal Principle.  And when all things in the world pass away, THAT remains forever. ¹⁵

THAT remains pure and infinite, an eternal Consciousness, beyond all manifestation or non-manifestation.  "This invisible and supreme Self," says Krishna, "is everlasting.  ... This is My highest Being." ¹⁶

As a further explanation of how the cycle of universal creation and dissolution is a function of Prakrti, and not of Purusha, the Unchanging, Krishna continues:

At the end of the 'night' of time, all things return to My Prakrti;   and when the new 'day' of time begins, I bring them again into manifestation.  Thus, through My Prakrti, I bring forth all creation, and all these worlds revolve in the cycle of time.  But I am not bound by this vast display of creation; I exist alone, watching the drama of this play.  I watch, while Prakrti brings forth all    that moves and moves not; thus the worlds go on revolving.  But the fools of the world know Me not; ... they know not the supreme Spirit, the infinite God of all.

Still, there are a few great souls who know Me, and who take refuge in Me.  They love Me with a single love, knowing that I am the Source of all.  They praise Me with devotion; ... their spirit is one with Me, and they worship Me with their love.  They worship Me, and work for Me, surrendering themselves in My vision. They worship Me as the One and the many, knowing that all is contained in Me. ¹⁷

This is the sublime theme that one hears throughout the Gita, in which knowledge, action, love and contemplation, all are synthesized in one vision.  To love God is to dwell on Him.  For what else is love but the constant flow of thought and desire toward the object of love?  In the Gita, we find the summit of universality, an all-embracing concern for every tradition, every temperament, every degree of comprehension.  For those who require a tangible form of God for worship, the adoration of the loveable Krishna is offered; for those who seek Him in the world through good works, the path of karma yoga is proffered; for those who are determined to wend their way to Him through understanding and Self-knowledge, the path of jnan yoga is opened wide; and for those who, having understood, and whose actions are ever directed toward Him, and whose love is solely for Him, the path of meditation and contemplation is the royal road, the raja yoga, which leads to union with Him.  Of such devotees, Krishna says:

Their thoughts are on Me, their life is in Me, and they give light to all.  They speak always of Me, and in Me they find peace and joy.

To those who focus their minds on Me, who worship Me with their love, I give the yoga of vision whereby they come to Me. ¹⁸

Give Me your mind and give Me your heart; give Me your offerings and your adoration.  Thus, with your soul focused solely on Me as your supreme Goal, truly, you shall come to Me. ¹⁹

Throughout every chapter of the Gita, there is this interweaving of love, action, knowledge and contemplation, harmonized to comprise the full tapestry of the life of the spirit.  No one single thread of this finely woven fabric is emphasized or exalted above another, but all facets and needs of the human spirit are equally represented and interrelated.  We find precisely the same message in the Gita as was found in the Upanishads; but whereas the Upanishads shine as a single bright beacon of pure white light,  the Gita is refracted into a spectrum of living color and brilliant detail.

When Arjuna begs Krishna to reveal to his eyes the vision of His manifold splendor, Krishna consents, granting to him a divine eyesight whereby he can view the infinite creative effusion of God:

If the light of a thousand Suns suddenly arose in the sky, that splendor might be compared to the radiance of the supreme Spirit.  And Arjuna saw in that radiance the whole          universe in its infinite variety, standing in one vast Unity as the body of God. ²⁰

In this vision, Arjuna sees all the worlds and all the gods and demons and peoples of the universe rising up from the one Source and then being devoured by It.  Overwhelmed by this vision, and trembling in awe and terror, Arjuna bows before Krishna, and cries out:

Adoration unto Thee who art before me and behind me!  Adoration unto Thee who art on all sides, O God!  All-powerful God of immeasurable might, Thou art the Destination of all, and Thou
art all!  ²¹

Then, when Krishna had once again resumed his human form, he explained to Arjuna that His vision is not given to the religionists with their reverence for rituals and legal formulas, nor to the self-torturers, nor to those pious people who imagine that devotion consists merely of the dutiful giving of alms; but only to those who long for God with true love in their hearts:

Only by love can men see Me and know Me, and enter into Me.  He who works for Me, who loves Me, whose supreme Goal is Me, free from attachment to all things, and with true love for all creation, he, truly, becomes one with Me. ²²

The author of the Bhagavad Gita, who put these words into the mouth of Krishna, seems never to tire of repeating his explanation of the primal duality-in-unity; for once again he makes Krishna say:

Prakrti is the source of all material things; it is the creator, the creating, and the creation.  Purusha is the Source of consciousness.  ...The Purusha in man, united with Prakrti, experiences the ever-changing conditions of Prakrti.  When he identifies with the ever   changing, he is whirled through life and death to a good or evil fate.  But the Purusha in man is ever beyond fate.  ... He is the supreme Lord, the supreme Self.

That man who knows that he is the Purusha, and understands the changing conditions of Prakrti, is never whirled  around by fate, wherever he may be. ²³

This theme of Purusha and Prakrti is so crucial to the understanding of Reality and the spiritual life that it is explained again and again throughout the Gita.  In chapter Thirteen, Krishna attempts this explanation in a novel way, by introducing two new terms.  Here, Prakrti is referred to as kshetra ("the Field"), and Purusha is referred to as kshetrajna ("the Knower of the Field").  "Whatever is born in this world," says Krishna, "comes from the union of the Field and the Knower of the Field."  24   But when a man knows that he is the eternal Knower, the experiencer of the Field, and not the Field alone, he knows his eternal freedom:

He who knows that he is, himself, the Lord of all, and is ever the same in all, immortal though experiencing the Field of mortality, he knows the truth of existence. And when a man realizes that the Purusha in himself is the same Purusha in all, he does not hurt himself by hurting others.  This is the highest knowledge.  He who sees that all actions, everywhere, are only the actions of Prakrti, and that the Purusha is the witness of these actions, he sees the Truth.

... Those who, with the eye of inner vision, see the distinction between the Field and the Knower of the Field, and realize that the Purusha is free of Prakrti, they attain the Highest. ²⁵

As we shall see in later chapters of this book, the conception of these two Principles of existence is a perennially recurring one, not only in the religious and philosophical literature of India, but in every mystical tradition throughout the world, in every time.  And, in nearly every tradition in which these two Principles appear, the eternal, imperishable Principle is universally characterized as Male, the Father; and the Principle of creative energy, out of which is formed the world of matter, is universally characterized as His Female consort, the Mother.  Even today, in our own culture, we say that it is our "Father" in heaven who is our Source and Governor; but it is "Mother Nature" who feeds us and nourishes us in this phenomenal world.

These same appellations of gender are applied by the ancient seers of India to the two complements of Reality.  The very word, Purusha, means "the Man";  and Prakrti, like Prthivi before, is a noun of the female gender, as is Durga, Maya and Shakti. They are synonymous terms, though stemming from disparate traditions; and each represents the Goddess, the great Mother-Womb of all creation.  It is not surprising, therefore, to see that the author of the Gita has Krishna say:

Wherever a being may be born, Arjuna, know that   My Prakrti is his Mother, and I [Purusha] am the Father who gave him life. ²⁶

The suggestion that we are born of the union of Purusha and Prakrti, as a child is born of the union of a father and mother, may seem only an extension of a simile; but the Samkhya philosophy means by this "union" something more literal than figurative.  These two are really one Reality.  Prakrti and Purusha are merely abstractions designed to separate out these two aspects of the One in order to understand It in Its fullness.  Their "union" is in fact a "unity"; they overlap, as it were, like superimposed images on a photographic film.  We say at times that Purusha is "within" Prakrti, or that God is "within" Nature; but that is only a figure of speech.  They are locked in an embrace so absolute that they have never been, nor ever can be, separated.  Our existence is their interlocking existence.  It is in this sense that we are born of their union.

The author of the Bhagavad Gita has, through his character, Krishna, stated this truth in many ways to Arjuna, the disciple.  But in the Fifteenth chapter, in which Krishna speaks of Prakrti and Purusha as "the perishable" and "the Imperishable,"  he states in an unequivocal manner that the ultimate Reality (the supreme Self) is a Unity which, containing within Itself both of these complementary aspects, supercedes them both:

There exists two Principles in this world:  kshara (the perishable) and akshara (the imperishable).  The imperishable is the Unchanging, the Eternal.  But the highest Reality is something else; It is called Paramatman (the supreme Self).  It is both the Eternal and that which pervades and sustains all this universe. ²⁷

When one experiences the mystical vision of Unity, he experiences not merely Prakrti, the undifferentiated world-energy, nor merely Purusha, the unmanifested Absolute; he experiences the one Reality, which is both of these at once.  It is called Paramatman, "the supreme Self."  Here is seen no distinction between Prakrti and Purusha, the perishable and the imperishable; the ONE contains no such division.  By transcending Prakrti, one realizes the eternal Purusha, but in that realization, Prakrti and Purusha no longer have any separate, independent, existence.  They are one.

This great Unity cannot be easily explained; that is why It must be experienced to be known.  It is eternal and unchanging, yet It appears as the phenomenal world of change.  It is only as a means of explaining Its two aspects that the names, Prakrti and Purusha, are invented.  In fact, the creative Energy, of which this body and all this universe is composed, is just as imperishable and eternal as the one Consciousness which supports it.  They are the same; and in this one Imperishable, there is no differentiation between Energy and Consciousness, Prakrti and Purusha.

Nothing at all ever perishes—except the images and forms, which Prakrti constructs of herself.  And because we identify with the perishable body-form, we make a distinction between the perishable body and the "spirit" within us; we regard this body as the vessel or abode of the "spirit."  But when the realization of the ONE dawns, then one looks about in awe, declaring, "O my God, even this body is Thine own!"  And then one asks, "Which the Imperishable, which the abode?"

Because I am beyond the perishable, and even beyond the imperishable, in this world and in the Vedas I am known as "the Supreme."

One who, with a clear vision, sees Me as "the Supreme," knows all there is to be known; his soul is merged in Me.

I have revealed to you the most secret teaching, Arjuna.  He who has realized it has realized the Truth, and his task in this world is done. ²⁸

To one who knows his own supreme Self, there is no longer a witnessing subject and an acting object, no longer a Purusha and a Prakrti. All his actions are the actions of the ONE.  He can no longer say, "He guides me," or "He does everything through me."  His breathing is God's, his work is God's; there are no longer two.  "He is the only ONE in all, but it seems as if He were many." ²⁹

In the Eighteenth and last chapter, Krishna reiterates and sums up all that he has taught to Arjuna, with a special emphasis on the nature, necessity, and goal of all man's works.  It is a message of relevance to every man, but most especially to those who would learn the secret of spiritual harmony and happiness in this world.  It is the message of svadharma.

Dharma is, of course, translated as "duty," but svadharma is not simply the duty to perform works in the world, but the necessity of performing one's own special God-given duty.  It is not often easy to know exactly what one's svadharma is.  Is it simply to work at that occupation which brings the greatest material gain?  No.  Nor is it simply the serving of others.  Rather, it is the serving of God, the Self, who is the indwelling, guiding, joy of man.  No matter what a man might do in this world, no matter how respectable or charitable or unselfish, if it is not his svadharma, he will be miserable; he will feel frustrated, unfulfilled and dissatisfied.  This is especially true for the sincere aspirant to Truth, for he will feel most keenly the disharmony between his spirit and his actions.

Oftentimes, however, there are great obstacles, great temptations, in the way of performing one's svadharma.  Those whose svadharma is to do the work of God know this well.  The necessities of the body, the pressures of society, and the loneliness and effort involved in following our svadharma are often troublesome obstacles to the following of our God-ordained path.  Who cannot imagine how difficult was the path ordained for a Jesus or a Buddha, or for the author of the Bhagavad Gita?  To follow their svadharma required great sacrifice and surrender of all that men regard as good and wholesome in this world.  Yet it is to the great benefit of the world that they chose to surrender all else in order to perform their svadharma.  For them, having known their eternal Identity, there was no other course but to share that knowledge with all humanity.  No other duty could possibly hold sway over them.  Had they denied or suppressed their svadharma, how miserable, how wretched a life would they have had—even if they had been surrounded with all luxuries and wealth!

It is by this a spiritual man knows his svadharma; if his soul is happy and delighted in its performance, and if the very thought of diverting from that path makes him sick at heart and despondent, he may be sure that it is his svadharma.

It is not right to leave undone the holy work which ought to be done.  Such a surrender of action is a delusion of darkness.  And if a man abandons his svadharma out of fear of pain, truly, he has no reward. ³⁰

The reward of performing the work appropriate to one's own svadharma is the peace and joy of God.  By renouncing all other concerns but the performance of the work God has ordained for you, you will feel and know His confirmation within you.

A man attains perfection when his work is worship of God, from whom all things come and who exists within everyone.   Greater is your own work, even if it is meager, than the work of another, even if it is great.  When a man does the work that God gives him, no sin can touch him.  And a man should not abandon his work, even if he cannot achieve it in full perfection; because in all work there is some imperfection, as in all fire there is some smoke. ³¹ ... It is better to perish in your own work, than to flourish in another's. ³²

In earlier chapters, Krishna has already taught Arjuna the way that a man should work:

Set your heart upon your work, but never on its reward.  Work not for a reward; but never cease to do your work. 33   ... When a man surrenders  all desires that come to the heart, and by the grace of God finds the joy of God in himself, then his soul has indeed found peace. ³⁴

The man who has found the joy of the Spirit and in the Spirit has his satisfaction and his peace, that man is beyond the law of karma (actions and rewards).  He is beyond what is done and not done.  He is beyond the world of mortal beings.  In freedom from the bonds of attachment, do, therefore, the work to be done; for the man whose work is pure attains indeed the Supreme. ³⁵

Therefore, offer to Me all your works and rest your mind on the Supreme.  Be free from vain hopes and selfish thoughts, and with inner peace fight your fight. ³⁶

The Bhagavad Gita has stood the test of time, and is so beloved among men of all nations because its author was steeped in wisdom, a wisdom that is applicable to the seekers of God, the lovers of Truth, at every level of understanding.  The devotee finds in it the summit of devotion; the intelligent find in it the heights of wisdom; the servant of God finds in it the supreme path to victory; and in it the yogi reads the secrets of inner union.

Whoever the great sage was who wrote it, he was a man of truly universal and all-embracing wisdom.  He had attained both the height and breadth of Self-knowledge; he knew the supreme Reality, both at Its Source and in Its manifestation.  And his guidance, the sharing of his knowledge in the Bhagavad Gita, is now and for all time a source of life and joy for all who have the good fortune to read it.  When a book is truly inspired and filled by the grace of God, it shines so brightly into the hearts and minds of men that it becomes universally revered as a holy receptacle of God's word.  Such a book is the Bhagavad Gita, "the Song of God"; it is a never-failing wellspring of the water of life for all thirsty travelers on the road to Truth.

THE TAOIST SAGES

The vision of the Eternal was not confined merely to those living in India and the Middle East; we also find a few in ancient China who had experienced an identical realization, and spoke of the same infinite and eternal Principle underlying the manifested world.  However, That which the Indian sages called "Brahman" or "Purusha," what some others call "God," the Chinese sages called "Tao" (pronounced Dow).  We must not imagine, as some ignorant people do, that because the languages of various countries are different that there is a difference also in the absolute Reality connoted by these languages.  "Taoism" is simply the Chinese name for the one perennial philosophy of all mystics of all lands.

It is often seen that those who have only a cursory knowledge of mystical philosophy become confused by the many different terms used to connote the Absolute by peoples of differing languages, and fail to penetrate beyond linguistic differences to grasp the common significance of words like "Brahman," "Purusha," "Tao," "Godhead," etc.  But, just as, in various languages, the words, pani, jal, agua, eau, and water, all signify one common reality, so do the above words of various linguistic origins connote one common invisible Principle.  All of the mystics of whatever time or cultural tradition have experienced the same one, indivisible, Reality; yet, because language is infinitely variable, they have called this One by various appellations.

As we shall see, the sages of Taoism experienced and described the same mystical vision, which has been described by all other mystics; and have described the same mystical philosophy, which goes by the name of "Vedanta" in India, and by so many other names in other lands.  As the 15th century Islamic saint, Dadu, put it, in a statement used as the epigraph to this book, "All the enlightened have left one message; it is only those in the midst of their journey who hold diverse opinions."

Taoism traces its roots in China to sages living as far back as 3000 B.C.E.; but we know of those ancients only from hearsay recorded much later.  It was not until the 6th century B.C.E. that the precepts of Taoism were presented in a written form by that most famous of Taoists, Lao Tze, who is said to have been born in 601 B.C.E.  We know of his life only the barest of details.  It seems he served for some time as the Curator of the Imperial Library at K'au, and was therefore a learned man.  In later life, he found the burden of his duties and the decadence of city life incompatible with his spiritual needs, and he decided to withdraw from his duties and the city environs to a more peaceful existence in the countryside.

On his journey from the city, he rested for a short while at the pass of Hsien-ku, where he stayed with the Keeper of the pass, a Yin Hsi, who was himself a student of the spiritual life.  Before Lao left to continue his journey, Yin Hsi persuaded him to leave for his instruction some writings on the spiritual path, and so Lao wrote a short book of maxims for him.  It is this book, which has come down to us as the Tao Teh Ching. That is the last we hear of Lao's life; it is not known what became of him or where he died, but reports state that he lived to a ripe old age.

Lao's little book, the Tao Teh Ching, is one of the major classics of Taoism.  The word, Tao, in its title, refers to the Eternal aspect of reality-what we have already spoken of as Brahman, or Purusha.  Teh is Its power of manifestation, identical with Maya or Prakrti.  And the word, Ching, simply means "book."  So, we may interpret the title of the book as "The Book of The Eternal and Its Power of Manifestation."  Its simple and somewhat cryptic axioms regarding the Spirit, and the way that a man who has realized It lives his life, has become a favorite introduction to the spiritual life for peoples of both East and West.  To the beginning student, its apparent vagueness makes it easily digestible, yet as one learns to understand it more thoroughly, its vagueness disappears, and it reveals itself as a profound and explicit metaphysical guide.

Another great Taoist sage is the venerable Chuang Tze, who lived in the 3rd century B.C. E.  Very little is known of his life either; we have only the briefest of biographical information in a 'History' written in the 2nd century B.C.E. by Sze-ma Khien, which states that Chuang Tze was born in the kingdom of Wei, and held some sort of position in the city of Khi-yuan.  He grew up in the same part of China as Lao Tze, and had thoroughly studied and understood the writings of his great predecessor.  At some time during his life, Chuang attained the realization of the Self, the vision of Truth, and began writing books explaining what he had realized.  According to Khien's History, King Wei, having heard of Chuang Tze and perhaps having read some of his books, sent a messenger to Chuang with a quantity of silver and the offer of a position as chief minister at the king's court.  Chuang Tze, reportedly, only laughed, and sent back this word:

A thousand ounces of silver would be a great gain to me, and to be a high nobleman and minister is a most honorable position.  But have you not seen the victim-ox for the ceremonial sacrifice?  It is carefully fed for several years, and robed with rich embroidery that it may be fit to enter the Grand Temple.  Then, when the time comes for it to do so, it would prefer to be a little pig, but it cannot get to be so.   So, go away, and do not soil me with your presence.  I would rather amuse and enjoy myself in the midst of a filthy ditch than to be subject to the rules and restrictions in the court of a king.  I have determined never to take such an office, but prefer the enjoyment of    my own free will.¹

Chuang Tze, like Lao Tze, had seen the one Existence, and he lived his life in dedication to the freedom and joy of the Eternal.  In his writings, he told of his vision, and his spiritual knowledge.  What Lao Tze said in a cryptic and terse manner, Chuang Tze explained often in a lengthy, detailed manner, and sometimes in metaphorical and satirical stories.  He wrote large volumes in clear, explanatory prose to clarify what had only been hinted at by Lao Tze.  Much of what we know today as "Taoism" is derived from the combined writings of these two seers.

The understanding of the one Reality expressed by the authors of the Upanishads and the Gita is expressed in a remarkably similar manner by Lao Tze and Chuang Tze.  This should not be surprising, however, since everyone who is graced with the transcendent vision experiences the same eternal Unity.  What Lao Tze and Chuang Tze saw and wrote about is precisely what Kapila and the Upanishadic seers and all other mystics have seen and wrote about.  Their language is different, but their meaning is the same.  As Chuang Tze says, "Words are used to express meaning.  When you understand the meaning, you can forget about the words."

Lao Tze explains, in his Tao Teh Ching, that the eternal Reality is a Unity, which contains two aspects: the unmanifest Tao, and Teh, Its Power of manifestation.  The Tao is the Absolute, devoid of all qualities; nothing can be predicated about It, since It is beyond name and form.  Says Lao:

Before heaven and earth existed, there was something unformed, silent, alone, unchanging, constant and eternal; It could be called 'the Source of the Universe.'  I do not know Its name and simply call It "Tao." ²

... The Tao that can be spoken of is not the absolute Tao.  That Nameless [Tao] is the Father of heaven and earth; that which is named [Teh] is the Mother of all things. ³

Here we have the perennial vision of the mystic; the realization of the two-in-One.  The unmanifested Source Lao refers to as the Father of all; and Its Power of world-manifestation he calls the Mother of all things.  The two are the same One in Its dual aspects of Unmanifest and manifest.  They are not really separate; they are inextricably One.  But, in order to describe the One in both Its aspects, they must be given separate names:

These two are the same; they are given different names in order to distinguish between them.  Together, they constitute the Supreme Mystery. ⁴

Chuang Tze, from his own experience of Unity, corroborates what Lao Tze had said.  In one of his stories, he puts these words in the mouth of Lao Tze, when he is asked, "What is the Tao?"

If you want to know the Tao, said Lao, give a bath to your mind; wash your mind clean.  Throw out all your sage wisdom!  Tao is invisible, hard to hold, and difficult to describe.  However, I will   outline It for you:  The visible world is born of the Invisible; the world of forms is born of the Formless.  The creative Energy [Teh] is born from Tao, and all life forms are born of this creative Energy; thus all creation evolves into various forms.

... Life springs into existence without a visible source and is reabsorbed into that Infinite.  The world exists in and on the infinite Void; how it comes into being, is sustained and once again is dissolved, cannot be seen.

It is fathomless, like the Sea.  Wondrously, the cycle of world-manifestation begins again after every completion.  The Tao sustains all creation, but It is never exhausted.  ... That which gives life to all creation, yet which is, Itself, never drawn upon—that is the Tao.⁵

If we read for "Tao," Brahman or Purusha, and read for "creative Energy," Prakrti or Maya, we see that the vision of the mystics is ever one.  Lao Tze, in his own inimitable style, explained Tao and Teh in this way:

The Tao is an empty cup, yet It is inexhaustible; It is the   fathomless Fountainhead of all things. ⁶

That which gave birth to the universe may be regarded as the Mother of the universe [Teh]. ⁷

The Womb of creation is called the Mysterious Female; it is the root of heaven and earth. ⁸

The myriad objects of the world take form and rise to activity, but I have seen THAT to which they return, like the luxuriant growth of plants that return to the soil from which they spring. ⁹

That ONE called Tao is subtle, beyond vision, yet latent in It are all forms.  It is subtle, beyond vision, yet latent in It are all objects.  It is dark and obscure, yet latent in It is the creative Power of life [Teh]. ¹⁰

From the ancient days till now Its manifestation has never ceased; it is because of this [Teh] that we perceive the Father of all.  It is the manifestation of forms that reveals to us the Father [Tao]. ¹¹ The Tao is never the doer, yet through It everything is done. ¹²

The Tao fathers, and the Teh brings everything  forth as the world of form, time, and space. ¹³

Lao and Chuang extrapolate from this knowledge of the Tao the correct life for one who knows It.  Thus, Tao is not only the Unmanifest, It is also the guiding Path for the sage to whom It is revealed.  The Tao is both the Source of the universe and the eternal Soul of man; It is his life and the Way by which he lives.  He lives as the Tao beyond the world, while living as the Teh in the midst of it.  He identifies with and rests in the Eternal, even while living and acting in the temporal, ephemeral, world:

He who holds to the Eternal [Tao] while acting in the transient [Teh]; he knows the primal Source from which all things manifest. ¹⁴

Therefore, the sage may travel all day, yet he never leaves his  store of provisions. ¹⁵ He who remains aware of  the Male [Tao], while living as the Female [Teh], is a guide to all the people. ¹⁶

The noble man dwells in the Foundation of the form, and not in the form; he dwells in the fruit, and not in the flowering; thus he holds to the one, and ignores the other. ¹⁷

Therefore, he is not vulnerable to weapons of war; the horns of the buffalo cannot touch him; the claws of the tiger cannot rip him; the sword cannot cut him.  Why?  Because he is beyond  death. ¹⁸

As the Eternal, the Tao, gives birth to all things, "yet does not contain them," the sage, doing likewise, "does nothing, yet all things are accomplished."  Says Lao:

My teaching is very easy to understand and very easy to   practice; yet no one understands  it and no one practices  it; [it is this:]  the sage wears a tattered coat [Teh] and carries jade [Tao] within his breast. ¹⁹

Since the whole universe appears from the Unmoving, the Unchanging, by imitating or adopting the way of the universe, a man carries on his life in the most perfect manner.  By retaining his center of inactivity, his center of changelessness, all his actions take place effortlessly of themselves.  And, because he holds to the Unmoving, his energy is not dissipated, his mind is clear, and all that he does is done of a concentrated power and efficiency, and with great clarity of mind.  Says Lao:

Reach far enough toward the Void, hold fast enough to the Unmoving, and of the ten thousand things, none can resist you. ²⁰

And Chuang Tze says:

I guard my awareness of the One, and rest in harmony with externals.  ... My light is the light of the Sun and the moon.  My life is the life of heaven and earth.  Before me is the Undifferentiated [Teh], and behind me is the Unknowable [Tao].  Men may all die, but I endure forever. ²¹

Keep correct your form, concentrate your vision, and the heavenly harmony will come to you.  Control your mind, concentrate your attention, and the Spirit will reside in you.  Teh is your clothing, and Tao is your sanctuary. ²²

In the experience of Unity, one learns the nature of Reality, and at the same time, learns the nature of one's own mind; for, in an inexplicable way, the two are integrally related.  The mind, one dis-covers, creates thoughts and ideas in a way similar to the creation of waves on an ocean; they consist of contrary motions, so that for every wave, there's a trough; for every motion, an equal and opposite motion.  For example, if we love, in that very motion is contained its opposite, hatred.  Or if we experience peace, its corollary, mental agitation, is waiting to manifest.  Every movement of the mind contains its opposite, just as does the movement of a pendulum; thus, all that we think and experience mentally is but a play of self-produced opposites.   As Lao Tze put it:

When people recognize beauty, ugliness is also recognized.

When people recognize good, evil is also recognized. ²³

It is only when this alteration, this dual motion of the mind, is stilled, that we can experience that pure Consciousness which is the source of all thought.

In the very same way, the physical world is produced by the universal Mind.  It is produced by just such a movement of contrary impulses.  It is, from this perspective, a mere mirage; for every form that we see is but an image produced by the vibratory motions of the elementary Energy.  And when that cosmic Mind becomes stilled, the world-manifestation ceases, and Consciousness rests in Itself.  Then, once again, It remanifests the universe.  In a continuous cycle, of world-manifestation and de-manifestation, that one Consciousness lives forever, unmoved, unchanged.

In a previous chapter, we saw how Kapila described this world-manifestation as a play of the gunas of Prakrti, which consist of two opposing motions, and a state of neutrality resulting from the balancing of the two.  Lao Tze and Chuang Tze also recognize the nature of the creative Energy to be constituted of just such opposing movements; they are called by them yang, the positive, and yin, the negative.  The balance of these two opposites is called the "natural" state.  Here is how Chuang Tze describes this manifestory process:

In the beginning, even nothing did not exist.  There was only the Tao.  Then something unnamed which did not yet have form came into existence from the Tao.  This is Teh, from which all the world came into being.  Things had not yet received their forms, but the division of the yang (positive) and the yin (negative) Principles, which are intimately related, had already appeared.  This vibratory motion constitutes all creation.  When the yang and the yin become active, all things come into being.  It is in this way that Teh created all forms. ²⁴

This cosmology is, of course, identical to Kapila's if we substitute "Purusha" for Tao, "Prakrti" for Teh, and "rajas" and "tamas" for yang and yin. For Kapila, the balancing of rajas and tamas begets sattva, the state of repose, wherefrom one could enter into the realization of Purusha, the Eternal.  For the two Chinese sages, the balancing of yang and yin begets the "natural" state of repose, wherefrom one might enter into Tao, the Eternal.  The words are different, but the meaning is the same.

"The nature of water," said Chuang Tze, "is that it becomes clear when left alone, and becomes still when undisturbed. ²⁵ Likewise, the wise man rests in silence, and allows the mind to become pure.  In this way the mind reverts to its root, its Source.  "To return to the root is repose," said Lao Tze; "it is called 'going back to one's Origin."  Going back to one's Origin is to discover the Eternal.  And to know the Eternal is to be enlightened. ²⁶

"When water is still," says Chuang, "it becomes so clear that a man can see every hair of his beard in it.  ... If water is clear when it is still, how much more so the human spirit!  When the mind of the sage is calm, it becomes the mirror of the universe wherein he can see everything." ²⁷

Repose brings good fortune.  Without inner repose, your mind will be galloping about, even though you are sitting still.  Withdraw your senses within and cease all activity of the mind.

Concentrate your will.  Let your ears cease to hear; let your mind cease to imagine.  Let your spirit be blank, passively receptive.  In such receptivity, the Tao is revealed. ²⁸

Lao Tze offers similar advice:

The wise man shuts his senses, closes all doors, dulls his edges, unties all knots, softens his light, calms his turmoil—this is called the attainment of unity with the One.²⁹

In yet another passage from the Tao Teh Ching, Lao repeats this advice, in a slightly different way:

If you would reveal your original Self, if you would attain union with your true Being, give up your  ego, restrain your desires. ³⁰ By renouncing of desire, one sees the Secret of all     life; without renouncing of desires, one sees the world of manifested   forms.

Searching within for the ultimate Mystery of this mysterious life, one enters the gateway wherein is found the great Secret of all life. ³¹

In just a few simple words, Lao Tze gives the whole of mystical knowledge, and the path to the experience of it.  His message is the message of all who have seen the Truth, the Secret of life:  "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."  For only those who have understood the illusory nature of the world and have erased from their hearts all concern or desire for what it has to offer, can turn their hearts and minds wholeheartedly to the Source of the world.  It is a simple matter of attention; so long as thoughts continue to be focused on the world of name and form, the mind is not free to dwell singly and purely on the Source of all this manifestation.

He who holds fast to the Tao is able to manage very well in the   world, for he knows how, from the beginning, all things manifest from the Tao. ³² Thus the sage manages things without acting; teaches the Truth without words.  The world continues to arise before him, but he does not reject it.  He knows he is the Life of all things, but he does not own any of them.  Therefore, he continues to act, but he remains   unattached to his actions.  His work is accomplished, but he lays no claim to it.  The work is done, but he does not identify with it.  Thus, his strength is never depleted. ³³

How much this sounds like the teaching of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita regarding the path of karma yoga!  If we search the words of Lao Tze and Chuang Tze, we realize that they taught all the aspects of yoga:  karma (action), bhakti (devotion), jnan (discriminative knowledge), and raja (contemplation).  Jnan yoga, the discrimination between the real and the unreal, the Eternal and the Noneternal, is very well represented by Chuang and Lao Tze:

The pure man sees the One as One and the many as One.  So long as he sees the Unity, he is God; when he sees the distinctions, he is man.  What marks the pure man is the ability to distinguish between the human and the Divine. ³⁴

Do not ask whether the Tao is in this or in that; It is in all being.  It is for this very reason that we apply to It the title of "Supreme," "the  Highest."  All that It has made is limited, but It is, Itself, unlimited, infinite.  The Tao is the source of the activity of universal manifestation, but It is not this activity.  It is the Author of causes and effects, but It is not the causes and effects.  It is the Author   of universal manifestation and dissolution, but It is not the manifestation or dissolution.  Everything proceeds from It, and is governed by It; It is in all things, but is not identical with things, for It is neither divided nor limited. ³⁵ Only he who can see the Formless in the formed arrives at the Truth. ³⁶ He rejoices in THAT which can never be lost, but endures forever. ³⁷

The precepts of Lao Tze and Chuang Tze and all the later seers of the Tao are in perfect accord with the teachings of all men of spiritual vision.  Theirs is but another expression of the perennial wisdom that stems from the mystical vision of Unity.  They report what they have seen, and they offer advice on the means to attain that vision, and how to live in this world in accordance with it.  They are not mere Quietists, as some would have it, but are illumined sages who had experienced the truth of which they speak, and offer their insights as a guide to those who would follow in their footsteps.  And their words, for all these centuries, have served to bring solace and understanding to countless generations of seekers after Truth.

THE BUDDHA

In the 6th century B.C.E. the main center of Indian civilization was in the Ganges plain, or the 'middle country,' from what is now Delhi eastward to Bhagalpur.  From June to September, during the monsoon season, a river that is only a couple hundred feet wide in the preceding hot season becomes two miles wide.  The Ganges, having its source in the melting snows and glaciers of the Himalayas, never dwindles away; for that reason, the surrounding plain is always fertile.  And during the cooler winter months, from October to January, the Spring-harvested crops of wheat, barley, and linseed and mustard, for their oil, are grown in abundance.

During that time long ago, the land was far more fertile and the forests far more extensive than today.  Surrounding the villages were the cultivated fields; further outward were the pastures, and beyond them were the forests, deep and lush.  Accounts of the time speak of the forests as places of easy retreat, where mango, banana, date, jackfruit, and coconut trees were in bloom, and the banyan, palmyra, acacia and ebony trees housed the wild and colorful birds and monkeys.

The town of Kapilavastu (named for Kapila), in the kingdom of Koshala, lay just due north of Benares, and just west of the great capital city of Shravasti, containing 57,000 families.  It was positioned along a major trade route from Shravasti to Rajagriha, the capital city of the neighboring Magadhan kingdom.  It was therefore a center of business and trade, and also a place of much activity, culture, and entertainment.  Then, as now, cities were distinguished from the country villages by their sophistication and diversity of lifestyles.  It was here, in Kapilavastu, that Siddhartha of the Gautama clan, who was to become known as "the Buddha," was born to Suddhodana and his wife, Maya, around 586 B.C.E.

Suddhodana was the elected ruling citizen of the small republic of Shakya of which Kapilavastu was the capital.  He was a wealthy aristocrat, and lived in a sumptuous and elegant home, where he raised his son, Siddhartha, amid the splendor and wealth, which his position provided.  When Siddhartha was but sixteen, he was married to the princess, Yashodara; and by her he had a son, named Rahula.  But this life of comfort, wealth and pleasure was not to last.  At the age of twenty-nine, Siddhartha, who was of a philosophic turn of mind, having studied many doctrines and having reflected on the perplexities of life and death, resolved to quit the home of his father and the company of his wife and child, to enter into a life of solitude in the forests, where he might resolve his questions in the supreme inner knowledge of which the sages of old had spoken.

From that time, he became a homeless wanderer, one among many of the monks, ascetics and solitary hermits who frequented the forests and riversides.  He met, during his wandering, many brother-monks, sannyasins, and would-be teachers; and he experimented with many different practices, including austere penances and discursive reasonings; but he felt as empty, as unfulfilled, as before.

After six years of study and wandering, Siddhartha had become intensely focused on the attainment of his goal of knowing the ultimate Truth.  And so, one day, he took his seat beneath a peepul (Bo) tree on the banks of the Nairanjana river, near Uruvela, the present city of Bodh-Gaya, and resolved to meditate there, and not to leave his place until he had attained what he had come to the forest to attain.  Then, one morning, just before dawn, like a flash, enlightenment came.  According to the Dhammapada, which was written much later, Siddhartha exclaimed at that time:

Looking for the Maker of this temple (referring to his  body), I have run through a course of many births, not finding Him; and painful is birth again and again.  But now, Maker of this temple, Thou hast been seen; Thou shalt not construct this temple again.  All Thy rafters are broken, Thy ridgepole is sundered;  the mind, approaching the Eternal, has attained nirvana [the extinction of the ego illusion]. ¹

In that transcendent experience of Unity, which the Buddha refers to as nirvana, he knew himself to be the one Consciousness who is manifesting as the entire universe.  All forms, though transient, he knew as his own, with no division anywhere.  Yet, when his mind returned to its normal state, once again he was associated with a particular form within the transformative world, called samsara, "the ocean of phenomenal appearance."  As he sat beneath the Bo tree, Siddhartha reflected on what he had seen in that revelation, and perhaps mused within himself thusly:

From this state of limited consciousness, I appear once again to be a separate form within samsara; but from the state of expanded awareness, all of samsara is a manifestation of myself.  I am a single, undifferentiated Mind, yet I shine forth, like the radiant beams of the Sun, as a universe of countless living beings, all made of my light.  All beings are united in me, for I am their consciousness, their form, their very being.  Never are there any separate selves; that is only an illusion produced by the limiting of consciousness.  All are but players in the outflowing radiance of the one Being.  These transient forms live but for a moment, but I, the One, live forever.  Though I appear as many, I am forever One, forever serene."

'Yet, who would believe such a story?' he wondered.  'It is so implausible, so utterly fantastic and radical a revelation, so completely opposite to what men believe, that no one, unless they too had seen it, would be able to give any credence to it at all.'  Siddhartha realized that this transcendent knowledge could never be adequately communicated by words, but was attainable only through such diligent effort as he himself had put forth.  According to a later Buddhist text, called the Agama Sutras, he deliberated within himself at this time, questioning the wisdom of attempting to teach such knowledge:

My original vows are fulfilled; the Truth I have attained is too deep for the understanding [of men].  A Buddha alone is able to understand what is in the mind of another Buddha.  In this age of the five-fold ignorance, all beings are enveloped in greed, anger, folly, falsehood, arrogance, and flattery; they have few virtues and have not the understanding to comprehend the Truth I have attained.  Even if I revolve the wheel of Truth [by teaching it], they would surely be confused and incapable of accepting it.  they might, on the contrary, misinterpret it, and thereby fall into evil paths, and suffer therefore much pain.  It is best for me to remain quiet and enter [once again] into nirvana. ²

In the same vein, another Buddhist text has Siddhartha reflecting at this time:

Why should I attempt to make known to those who are consumed with lust and hate This which I've won through so much effort!  This Truth is not a truth that can be grasped; it goes against the grain of what people think; it is deep, subtle, difficult, delicate.  It will be cloaked in the murky ignorance of those slaves of passion who have not seen It. ³

All those who have experienced this amazing revelation of the true nature of Reality have recognized the impossibility of expressing to others what they had come to know, and have held serious doubts as to the wisdom of speaking of it at all.  Chuang Tze, the Chinese sage of the 3rd century B.C.E., for example, debated with himself on this same quandary, and wrote:

Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses.  And   now, as all the world is in error, how shall I, though I know the true path, how shall I guide?  If I, while knowing I cannot succeed, still attempt to force success, this would be but another source of error.  Better, then, to desist and strive no more.  Yet, if I do not strive, who will? ⁴

Siddhartha, pondering on these questions in his forest retreat, apparently reached the same conclusion, and, armed with a firm decision to serve as a guide to suffering mankind, set out on his illustrious teaching career.  To many hundreds of generations thereafter he would be known as the Buddha, "the enlightened"; the Tathagata, "the attainer of Truth"; the Shakyamuni, "sage of the Shakyas."

The Buddha, having grown up in an environment where the Vedantic mystical tradition had been subverted by the priestly class, saw around him only a ritualistic religion presided over by an unenlightened Brahmin priesthood.  He had seen how the talk of "God" by the unenlightened led men to a false understanding of the Divine Reality, and fostered a philosophical Dualism between man and God; and he determined, therefore,  to explain the knowledge of Unity in a way radically different from his Vedic predecessors.  He would eschew the old traditional terms for the One, such as "Brahman," "Shiva," "Purusha," etc.; for when one spoke of "the knowledge of God," a duality was implied between the knower and the object of knowledge, which was not in fact the case.  The very nature of language is such that it relies for meaning upon the normal subject/object relationships.  But, in the experience of Unity, there is no such separation.  Thus, simply by naming It, that Unity is misrepresented.

In the eyes of the Buddha, it was just such objectifications of the Reality in terms such as "Shiva," "Vishnu," etc., which fostered a mistaken notion of the Truth, and perpetuated the present degenerative state of religion.  For this reason, he refused to apply any name at all to the transcendent Reality; he preferred to refer to the experience of the eternal Unity, rather than apply to It an objective noun.  The experience of Unity he named nirvana, a word which signifies "extinction," or "non-being."  What was extinguished in this experience was the false sense of a separative ego, and hence the subject/object relationship.  Though misinterpretation was unavoidable in any case, the Buddha felt that the term, nirvana, was less likely to misrepresent his meaning than those many objectified nouns, which had been for so long used to signify the one Reality.

He was keenly aware of the inability of language either to express the Truth or to effect Its realization.  He had seen how little true knowledge was obtained by those proud Brahmin scholars who continually discussed and debated every fine point of metaphysical doctrine.  As for himself, the Buddha would refuse to engage in any metaphysical discussions at all, insisting that all such harangues were worthless to effect enlightenment, and that if one sincerely wished to know and understand the nature of Reality, it was necessary to engage oneself seriously in the practice of meditation and inner reflection.

When asked by the idly curious such questions as, "Is the universe eternal or non-eternal?  Is it finite or infinite?  Is the soul real or unreal?" the Buddha would reply:

Such questions are not calculated to profit, and are not concerned with the attainment of Truth; they do not lead to the practice of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor to tranquilization of the heart, nor to real knowledge, nor to insight into the higher stages of the path, nor to nirvana.  This is why I express no opinion on them. ⁵

It is, perhaps, this reluctance on the part of the Buddha to describe the Reality in objective terms, or to engage in metaphysical discussions, which has led many to view the Buddhist and Vedantic perspectives as irreconcilably antagonistic, when, in fact, they are identical.  We are accustomed by unenlightened scholars and partisan religionists to think of Vedanta, Taoism, Buddhism, and the other "isms," as separate and distinct religious philosophies; but they are, in fact, but different names for the one perennial philosophy of the mystics.  Having originated independently in different lands and different times by different seers, each of these "isms" possesses its own idiosyncratic language, its own literary heritage; yet the message of the mystics remains undeviatingly the same.  All true mystics have accentuated the need for that personal enlightenment or realization by which the true nature of Reality becomes self-evident.  And all have stressed that this enlightenment is attainable, not through much learning, alms-giving, or through following the precepts of ritualized religion, but only through devotion to and contemplation of one's own essential Being.

Shortly after his enlightenment, and his subsequent decision to share his wisdom with other sincere seekers of Truth, the Buddha journeyed to a large deer park near Benares, where many of his fellow monks congregated.  And there he addressed his brothers, explaining to them that excessive asceticism, scriptural recitations, sacramental offerings, and other such practices were as futile to the attainment of freedom from suffering as were the opposite extremes of revelry, and the wanton gratification of the senses.  He spoke to them of a 'Middle Path' by which one could approach true knowledge and a harmonious life.  Like Kapila before him, he offered no religious platitudes, no fanciful gods, but spoke to his hearers of "what pain is, and the method by which one may reach the cessation of pain."

And when he spoke to them, the gathered monks recognized his attainment of enlightenment, and herded around him to listen to his teaching, his Sermon.  The Buddha's Sermon at Benares was the first of many to follow; and it contains for his followers the same profound meaning that the Sermon on the Mount holds for followers of Jesus.  It contains in brief form the entirety of the Buddha's message, the authentic version of which we may only assume has been passed down to us, as the Buddha wrote nothing himself.  What we possess of his teachings were handed down orally until they were committed to writing in the 2nd century B.C.E., nearly 300 years after his death.

Sitting before the gathering of monks, the Buddha began his Sermon by saying:

Whatever is originated will be dissolved again.  All worry about the self is vain; the ego is like a mirage, and all the tribulations that touch it will pass away.  They will vanish as a nightmare vanishes when a sleeper awakes. ⁶

This first statement of the Buddha's that "whatever is originated will be dissolved again," is particularly obvious to anyone in the 20th  or 21st century who is familiar with the findings of modern physics regarding the nature of matter.  All matter, we know, is constituted of one undifferentiated Energy, which 'condenses' or integrates into different congregate forms which then disintegrate once again, only to take on new forms.  This statement of the Buddha's is true on all levels of reality, from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, but here it is intended to refer to the ephemeral nature of the individual body and personality.

Bodies originate, and must one day be dissolved; therefore, "all worry about the self is vain," says the Buddha.  He had seen the Truth, and knew that the sense of an individual self, or ego, was an illusion, a mirage, and that all the troubles and worries that afflict one during the course of a life vanish when that false sense of ego vanishes.

One whose mind awakes to the realization that it is the one Mind, and is not in any way affected by the manifestation or de-manifestation of forms within this world of samsara, sees this world as a kind of dream.  And just as one no longer fears the evil monsters of a dream once he awakes and realizes that he is the dreamer, the awakened Buddha can never again be drawn to identify himself with the body or mental images that exist only in the world of samsara.

He who has awakened  is freed from fear; he has become a Buddha; he knows the vanity of all his cares, his ambitions, and also of his pains. ⁷

From the time we are infants and discover this body and mind that manipulates us and in turn is manipulated by us, we feel certain that this body and mind is ourself, is who we are.  That identification becomes so strongly rooted in us, that never once do we doubt that we are this particular mind and body limited in space and time, and any suggestion to the contrary strikes us as bizarre and absurd.  But, say the seers, the Buddhas, it is merely a case of mistaken identity; that which is born, thrives for awhile, and then decays, is not who you are.  You are the one Mind of the universe, which merely witnesses all this world of changing forms, but is never affected by it.  You are the Eternal, but you see this transient world of forms and think, "This is me!"  It is like a man who, dreaming that he is being roasted alive, suffers the pain from the heat of the imagined flames; or like a man who is frightened by a snake which, on closer inspection, turns out only to have been a piece of rope.

It sometimes happens that a man, when bathing in   the river, steps upon a wet rope and imagines that it is a snake.  Terror will overcome him, and he will shake with fear, anticipating in his mind all the agonies caused by the serpent's venomous bite.

What a relief does this man experience when he sees that the rope is no snake.  The cause of his fear lies in his error, his ignorance, his illusion.  If the true nature of the rope is recognized, his tranquility of mind will come back to him; he will feel relieved; he will be joyful and happy.  This is the state of mind of one who has recognized that there is no selfhood (ego), and that the cause of all his troubles, cares, and vanities is a mirage, a shadow, a dream. ⁸

Here, in his first Sermon, the Buddha gives the essence of his teaching, and the teaching of all the seers.  It should be apparent, of course, that the "selfhood" to which the Buddha here refers is not the Self (Atman) of the Upanishads, which is synonymous with the Eternal, but is the false sense of self, the ego.  When the Truth is realized, the false idea of an individual self is dissolved, like the idea of the snake which is really a rope.  Then it is seen that, in reality, no separate self exists or ever existed; it is a mirage, a mistaken interpretation of one's own awareness, which is really the immortal and eternal Self, the Absolute.  Only that One is real; It is the Self of the universe, the universal Being which manifests as all beings, all things.  It is the knowledge of this Self, which is the source of the joy and happiness of the enlightened.

Happy is he who has overcome his ego; happy is he who has attained peace; happy is he who has found the Truth.⁹

Some, when they hear of the Truth from one who has seen It, immediately recognize it as the truth, and are overjoyed to learn of It.  But some others who hear of It, say, "How unconvincing, how unappetizing!"  To them, the Buddha says:

Have confidence in the [eternal] Truth, although you may not be able to comprehend It, although you may suppose Its sweetness to be bitter, although you may shrink from It at first.  Trust in the Truth.  ... Have faith in the Truth and live [in accordance with] It. ¹⁰

Sooner or later, we must acknowledge that what keeps us from the enjoyment of peace, of happiness, of freedom, is the sense of selfhood, the false ego, by which all pain, all suffering, comes to us.  It is the mistaken identification with the transient that must eventually cause us much sorrow.

[The illusion of an individual] self is a fever; self is a transient illusion, a dream; but Truth is sublime, Truth is everlasting.  There is no immortality except in [the eternal] Truth.  For Truth alone abides forever. ¹¹

The Buddha explained his message as the way to the cessation of suffering.  He did not promise heavenly rewards, or a place at the right hand of the Lord, nor did he claim that he was sent from God; he claimed only that his was the way to the cessation of suffering:

He who recognizes the existence of suffering, its cause, its remedy, and its cessation, has fathomed the four noble truths.  He will walk in the right path. ¹²

Here, the Buddha introduces his formula of the "four noble truths":

1.  There is suffering; i.e., humans suffer.

2.  There is a cause of suffering; namely ignorance.

3. There is a remedy to suffering; namely enlightenment.

4.  The cessation of suffering results from the destruction of ignorance.

If we pay close attention to the words of the Buddha's Sermon in the above passage, his message is clear and unequivocal:  the cause of all suffering is the ignorance by which we believe we are an individual self, limited to a particular body and mind.  This ignorance is inherent in existence, and has no cause or beginning.  Yet it can be dispelled, and thus ended, by the realization of Truth.  In this sense, it is both real and unreal; while it exists, it is experienced as real, and when it is dispelled, it is recognized to be unreal, non-existent—like the snake in the rope.  Release from suffering, then, is attained by the direct realization of our eternal Being.  To understand this is to possess the right understanding:

Right understanding will be the torch to light the way of one who seeks to realize the Truth.  Right aims will be his guide.  Right speech will be his dwelling-place on the road.  His path will be straight, for it is right behavior.  His refreshments will be the right way of earning his livelihood.  Right efforts will be his steps; right thinking his breath; and peace will follow in his footsteps. ¹³

In this metaphor of the Buddha's, in which he likens the moving of a man's awareness toward enlightenment to a man walking toward his destination, he outlines the right means by which a man reaches to the realization of Truth.  "Right" simply means that which is conducive to success.  This "eight-fold path" of the Buddha reiterates, in its own way, the yogas of the Bhagavad Gita:  jnan, bhakti, karma, and raja.  As a man is a thinking, speaking, acting and contemplating being, all facets of his nature must be coordinated toward the attainment of his goal.

Following naturally from right knowledge, is the second means, right aims, which is to say, the aspiration to know the Truth, to renounce all other pursuits, which might detract from the single-minded pursuit of one's goal.  Without such unflagging determination, and utter disregard for all the trouble, opposition, and deprivation encountered, a man cannot hope to attain to it.  The Buddha's "right aspiration" is really not different from the Gita's "devotion to Truth."  Devotion to the Truth, or God, is devotion to the Eternal in oneself; aspiration toward the attainment of nirvana is also devotion to the Eternal in oneself.  The mental restraint, renunciation of self (ego), and inward attentiveness required by the one is the same as that required by the other. They are, in aspiration, practice, and result, identical.  Only the words are different.

The third means, right speech, is merely an extension of right thinking; it is that speech which is truthful, sincere, and cognizant of the oneness of all beings.  Untruthful speech betrays an untruthful mind, and is entirely incompatible with the mind's attainment of the ultimate Truth.  Never, in a million years, will untruthfulness lead to the Truth.  "Truth," says the Mundaka Upanishad, "is the way that leads to the region of Truth.  Sages travel therein free from desires and reach the supreme abode of Truth."

The fourth means, right action, is also simply an extension of right thought.  That action which is inspired by and leads to the awareness of Truth, is the right action.  It is action that stems from peace of mind, and whose result is peace of mind.  Whatever defiles and disturbs the quiet awareness of Truth cannot be right action.  This "right action" of the Buddha may be compared to the karma yoga of the Gita .  It is action whose sole aim is the awareness and promotion of Truth.  It is action that stems not from egoistic desire, but from the awareness that all this world of samsara and all beings in it are identical in the one Mind.  Such actions flow forth naturally as expressions of service to the One in all.

The fifth means, right livelihood, may be viewed in the same way that Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita, viewed the necessity of following one's own svadharma.  Men of differing stations in life are obliged by their differing aspirations to differing livelihoods.  The livelihood of the householder is in accordance with his aspirations; the livelihood of the student is in accordance with his aspirations, and the livelihood of the realized sage is in accordance with his aspiration.  For one, the "right" is not the same as the "right" for another.  What conduces harmoniously to one's aspirations is the right livelihood.  For the spiritual seeker, that work, which is conducive to the meditative life, is the "right" livelihood; and for the sage who has no aspiration but to share his knowledge to relieve the suffering of the world, the need for livelihood is not so great; he accepts what comes to him in the course of his mission.

Right effort is the sixth means, and it follows from right aspiration.  If right aspiration is determination to attain enlightenment, right effort is the application of that determination.  The conquest of the sense of selfhood requires great effort.  It is the most difficult of all battles.  According to the Dhammapada, "If one man conquers in battle a thousand men, and if another conquers himself, the second is the greatest of conquerors."¹⁴ Lao Tze, the great Chinese sage, said this as well:  "He who conquers others may be strong, but he who conquers himself is stronger."¹⁵ To conquer oneself is, in effect, to reduce oneself to nothing.  For, as the Buddha tells us, that self is not only an illusion, but an obstacle to the realization of Truth.  Only when it is reduced to nothing, shall we find that greater Self which is the one all-pervading Reality, the Buddha-Mind, the Truth.

The seventh means, right mindfulness, or recollection, is the mental aspect of right effort.  It means the continual watchfulness of the mind over itself.  The pure mind is itself nirvana; the illusions that continually becloud its surface serve only to obscure the Truth.  Right mindfulness is therefore the retention of the pure mind.  It might just as well be spoken of as surrender of the separative will, for it is just that will which obscures the awareness of Unity.  Jesus of Nazareth taught the surrender of the will to God; the Buddha taught the surrender of the will to Truth.  Who can find any difference between them?  That to which the will is surrendered is the one pure Mind.  Right mindfulness is simply the retention of the pure Mind.

Right concentration is the eighth and final means; it is an extension or intensification of right mindfulness, which can only be achieved during times of silent meditation.  It is the final step toward the threshold of nirvana.  What is the object of the mind's concentration?  Itself.  Let it become still and concentrated, and it reverts to its original, pure Mind, state.  In this state is all knowledge, all peace, all satisfaction.  It is this utter one-pointedness of mind which lifts it to its ultimate state, that state in which it knows itself as the one Mind of the universe.

The Buddha's message is so clear and straightforward that, to the wise, it needs no further clarification or elucidation.  But there has been, over the years, no dearth of clarification; for it is the delight of all who have attained the knowledge of Truth to speak of It.  Many brilliant followers of the Buddha, who lived much later, have offered their own insights into the Truth and Its attainment.  Among these, was an enlightened sage of the 2nd century of the Current Era, called Ashvagosha, whose poetic work, Buddha-Karita, tells, in a picturesque fashion, the life of the Buddha.  Ashvagosha also wrote a Mahayana treatise called, "The Awakening Of Faith," in which he offered his insights into the nature of Reality.  Like Kapila, the author of the Bhagavad Gita, and so many others, Ashvagosha attempted to explain the two, absolute and relative, aspects of the one universal Soul, or Self:

In the one Soul we may distinguish two aspects.  The one [aspect] is the Soul-as-Absolute (Tathata); the other is the Soul-as- relative-world (samsara).  Each in itself constitutes all things, and   both are so closely related that one cannot be separated from the other.

What is meant by "the Soul-as-Absolute" is the oneness of the totality of things, the great all-inclusive Whole. ... This essential nature of the Soul is uncreate and eternal.   Therefore all things in their fundamental nature are not nameable or explicable.  They cannot be adequately explained in any form of language.  ... They possess absolute sameness.  They are subject neither to transformation nor to   destruction.  They are nothing but the one Soul, for which "Absolute" is simply another designation.

The Soul-as-the-relative-world comes forth from the Womb of the Absolute; but the immortal Absolute and the mortal relative world coincide with one another.  Though they are not identical, they are not two. ¹⁶

It should be evident that, in this explanation by Ashvagosha, these two, Tathata and samsara, are precisely those same two aspects of Reality described in earlier chapters as Brahman & Maya, Purusha & Prakrti, Shiva & Shakti, Tao & Teh, etc.  They "coincide," as Ashvagosha says, in the experience of nirvana.

Another great sage of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition was Nagarjuna, who lived in the late 2nd century C.E.  He too placed great emphasis on the understanding of these two aspects of Reality, insisting, in his "Discourse On The Middle Way," that:

The Buddha's teaching rests on the discrimination between two aspects of Reality:  the Absolute and the relative.  Those who do not have any adequate  knowledge of them are unable to grasp the subtle and profound meaning of Buddhism. ¹⁷

Yet, in the same Discourse, he acknowledged the fact that,  "samsara is an activity of nirvana (in this sense, the Absolute) itself; not the slightest distinction exists between them."

It is only from the viewpoint of the enlightened that samsara and nirvana (or Tathata) no longer appear as two.  One who has seen the Truth sees only oneness everywhere.  He knows himself to be that One who exists eternally, beyond all manifestation of samsara; yet he knows also that samsara is his own appearance, a play of changing forms on the one ocean of Existence.  When a man awakes to nirvana, behold!  Suddenly he knows himself as the Absolute, the one eternally pure, unblemished Consciousness.  And there, also, shining forth from him is the world of samsara, with all its creatures and objects.  Like a movie shown on a screen, or like a fantasy-image on one's own mind, the two exist at once.  It is ONE, but It has these two aspects.

Those who have seen It realize better than anyone the impossibility of explaining this duality-in-unity to those who have not experienced It, yet they realize, too, that nothing can be said about enlightenment without referring to It.  Here, on this same subject, is the master, Padma-Shambhava, who took his Buddhism to Tibet in 747 C.E., and wrote a book entitled, "The Yoga Of Knowing The Mind, And Seeing The Reality, Which Is Called Self-Realization."  In it, he wrote:

Although the wisdom of nirvana and the ignorance of  samsara illusorily appear to be two things, they cannot truly be  differentiated.  It is an error to conceive them as other than one. ¹⁸

Those, like the Buddha, who have realized the Truth, tell of It to others and outline a path to that realization as a way of explaining what happened to themselves and describing the pattern of their progress to it.  They are practical scientists who say, in effect, 'This is what happened to me, and these are the mental refinements that lead to it.  You too, by doing likewise, will reach the same inner realization.'  When we examine the testimonies of those many who have described their experience of Unity and their progress to it, we have to be struck by the remarkable agreement evidenced in all their testimonies.  Their lives, their methods, their enlightenment, reveal so undeviating a sameness, so compelling a unanimity, that we must be convinced of the universality of their experience, and the universality of the path to it.  We must come to the conclusion that the Truth is one, that the way is clear, and that the choice is our own.

The Buddha continued to live and teach his disciples for forty-five years, moving about from place to place, proclaiming his wisdom to the people around Benares, Oudh, and Bihar.  He established a monastic Order, and accepted as gifts from his householder devotees many groves and monasteries where his liberating knowledge could be taught.  He died at the age of eighty in 486 B.C.E. at Kusinagara, the present city of Kasia, in northern Gorakhpur.  His last words to the disciples who gathered around him were: "All constituted forms pass away.  Diligently work out your own salvation."

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REFERENCES

Introduction

1.             Svetasvatara Upanishad, 3

2.             Mundaka Upanishad, 3:1

3.             Svetasvatara Upanishad, 1

4.             Saddharma bundarika, 15:21;

Radhakrishnan, S., 1962, p. 600.

5.             New Testament, Book of John:10:30

Pre-History Of Mysticism

1.             Langdon, S., 1909; p. 13

2.             Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: 1:4:1-5

3.             Edwin, Irwin, 1956; pp. 353-357

4.             Gimbutas, M., 1982,

Vedic Hymnists

1.             Rig Veda, x.82

2.             Rig Veda, v.84

3.             Tandya Maha Brahmana, xx.14.2

4.             Rig Veda, i.164.46

5.             Ibid., x.114

6.             Ibid., x.129.1

7.             Ibid., x.129.2-7

8.             Ibid., x.90.1-5;  Prabhavananda, S., 1963; p. 32.

Early Egyptians

1.             Budge, W., 1959; pp. 40-41

2.             Campbell, J., 1962; pp. 86-88

3.             Budge, W., 1959; pp. 37-40 (quoting Brusch, Dr. H., 1929;  pp.  96-99)

The Jews

1.             Hestrin, 1991; pp. 50-58

2.             Old Testament, Proverbs: 8:22-30

3.             Ibid., Ecclesiasticus: 1;1-6

4.             Ibid., Ecclesiasticus:  24

5.             Ibid., The Wisdom of Solomon: 7:25:26

6.             Ibid., Second Isaiah:: 45:4-7

7.             Ibid., Psalms: 24

8.             Ibid., Psalms: 11

9.             Ibid., Psalms: 42

10.           Ibid., Psalms: 13

11.           Ibid., Psalms: 139

The Upanishadic Seers

1.             Valmiki, Ramayana

2.             Katha Upanishad, IV; based on Mascaro, Juan, 1965

3.             Kena Upanishad, II; Ibid.

4.             Kaushitaki Upanishad, III.8; Ibid.

5.             Mundaka Upanishad, III.1; Ibid

6.             Isha Upanishad, I.7; Ibid.

7.             Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, IV.4.25;  Ibid.

8.             Katha Upanishad, IV; Ibid.

9.             Svetasvatara Upanishad, II.1; Ibid.

10.           Taittiriya Upanishad, I.5; Ibid.

11.           Ibid., II.6; Ibid.

12.           Katha Upanishad, II; Ibid.

13.           Ibid., VI; Ibid.

14.           Ibid., II; Ibid.

15.           Svetasvatara Upanishad, III; Ibid.

16.           Kena Upanishad, II; Ibid.

17.           Maitri Upanishad, VI.24; Ibid.

18.           Ibid., VI.19-23; Ibid.

Kapila

1              Old Testament, I John: 2:15-16

2.             Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, I.6

3.             Isha Upanishad, I.1

4.             Svetasvatara Upanishad, VI

5.             Ibid., IV

6.             Ibid., VI

7.             Samkhypravacana-bhasya,

Bhagavad Gita

1.             Bhagavad Gita, 1:47; based on Mascaro, Juan, 1962

2.             Ibid., 2:18

3.             Ibid., 2;53

4.             Ibid., 3:27-28

5.             Ibid., 4:11

6.             Ibid., 5:20-21

7.             Ibid., 5:24

8.             Ibid., 6:18-21

9.             Ibid., 6:23-27

10.           Ibid., 7:9-11

11.           Ibid., 7:12-14

12.           Ibid., 7:25

13.           Ibid., 7:18-19

14.           Ibid., 8:18

15.           Ibid., 8:20

16.           Ibid., 8:21-22

17.           Ibid., 9:7-15

18.           Ibid., 10:8-10

19.           Ibid., 9:34

20.           Ibid., 11:12-13

22.           Ibid., 11:54-55

23.           Ibid., 13:20-23

24.           Ibid., 13:26

25.           Ibid., 13:27-34

26.           Ibid., 14:4

27.           Ibid., 15:16-17

28.           Ibid., 15:18-20

29.           Ibid., 13:16

30.           Ibid., 18:7-8

31.           Ibid., 18:46-48

32.           Ibid., 3:35

33.           Ibid., 2:47

34.           Ibid., 2:55

35.           Ibid., 3:17-19

36.           Ibid., 3:30

Taoist Sages

1.             Legge, J., 1962; pp. 37-38, Intro.

2.             Lao Tze, Tao Teh Ching, 25

3.             Ibid., 1

4.             Ibid., 1

5.             Chuang Tze, 22

6.             Tao Teh ching, 4

7.             Ibid., 52

8.             Ibid., 6

9.             Ibid., 16

10.           Ibid., 21

11.           Ibid., 21

12.           Ibid., 37

13.           Ibid., 51

14.           Ibid., 14

15.           Ibid., 26

16.           Ibid., 28

17.           Ibid., 38

18.           Ibid., 50

19.           Ibid., 70

20.           Ibid., 16

21.           Chuang Tze, Ch. 11

22.           Ibid., Ch. 22

23.           Tao Teh ching, 2

24.           Chuang Tze, Ch. 12

25.           Ibid., Ch. 5

26.           Tao Teh Ching, 16

27.           Chuang Tze, Ch. 13

28.           Ibid., Ch. 4

29.           Tao Teh Ching, 56

30.           Ibid., 19

31.           Ibid., 1

32.           Ibid., 14

33.           Ibid., 2

34.           Chuang Tze, Ch. 6

35.           Ibid., Ch. 8

36.           Ibid., Ch. 23

37.           Ibid., Ch. 6

The Buddha

1.             Dhammapada,  Ch. 11, Babbitt, I., 1965;

2.             Sutra On Cause And Effect In The Past And Present, Suzuki, D.T., 1961; p. 49f.

3.             Ibid., p. 121

4.             Chuang Tze,

5.             Suzuki, D.T., op. cit.

6.             Buddha's Sermon at Benares, Stryck, L., 1968; pp. 52-53

7.             Ibid.

8.             Ibid.

9.             Ibid.

10.           Ibid.

11.           Ibid.

12.           Ibid.

13.           Ibid.

14.           Dhammapada, op. cit.

15.           Tao Teh Ching, 33

16.           Ashvagosha, Stryck, op. cit., p. 285

18.           Padma-Shambhava; Stryck, op. cit., p. 315


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Introduction

1.             Campbell, Joseph, The Masks Of God, Vol. I: Primitive Mythology, N.Y., Viking Press, 1959; Vol. II: Oriental Mythology, 1962

2.             Van Over, Raymond (ed.), Sun Songs: Myths From Around The World, N.Y., New American Library, Mentor Books, 1980

3.             Watts, Alan, The Two Hands Of God: Myths Of Polarity, N.Y., Macmillan Collier Books, 1969

Pre-History Of Mysticism

1.             Campbell, Joseph, Historical Atlas Of World Mythology, Vol. I, Part I: Mythologies Of The Primitive Hunters And Gatherers, N.Y., Harper & Row, 1988

2.             Gimbutas, Marija, The Goddesses And Gods Of Old Europe: Myths And Cult Images, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982

3.             Langdon, Stephen, Sumerian And Babylonian Psalms, Paris, Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1909

4.             Edwin, Irwin (ed.), The Works Of Plato: The Jowett Translation, N.Y., Modern Library, 1956

5.             Marshack, Alexander, Roots Of Civilization, New York; McGraw- Hill, 1972

Vedic Hymnists

1.             de Barry, William T. (ed.), Sources Of Indian Tradition, N.Y., Columbia Univ. Press, 1958

2.             Muller, Fredrich Max, The Vedas, Calcutta, Susil Gupta Ltd., 1956

3.             Prabhavananda, Swami, The Spiritual Heritage Of India, Holllywood, Vedanta Press, 1963

The Early Egyptians

1.             Budge, Sir Wallis, Egyptian Religion, N.Y., University Books, 1959

2.             Brusch, H., Religion Un Mythologie,1929

3.             Campbell, Joseph, Masks Of God:

Oriental Mythology, N.Y., Viking Press, 1962

The Jews

1.             Dimont, Max I., Jews, God, And History, N.Y., Penguin Books, 1962

2.             Hestrin, Ruth, "Understanding Asherah--Exploring Semitic Iconography, Biblical Archaeology Review, Sept./Oct., 1991 (Vol. XCII, No. 5), Washington  D.C.

3.             Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends Of The Jews, N.Y., Simon & Schuster, 1961

4. Potok, Chaim, Wanderings: History Of The Jews, N.Y., Alfred A. Knopf, 1978

Upanishadic Seers

1.             Mascaro, Juan, The Upanishads, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1965

2.             Nikhilananda, Swami, The Upanishads (Four Vols.), N.Y., Harper & Bros., 1956

3.             Radhakrishnan, S., Indian Philosophy (Vol. I), Longon, Geo. Allen & Unwin, 1962

Kapila

1.             Keith, A.B., The Samkhya System: A History Of Samkhya Philosophy, London, Oxford Univ. Press, undated

2.             Johnston, E.H., Early Samkhya, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidas, 1974

Bhagavad Gita

1.             Mascaro, Juan, The Bhagavad Gita,  Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1962

2.             Nikhilananda, Swami, The Bhagavad Gita, N.Y., 1964

3.             Tapasyananda, Swami, Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Mylapore, Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1984

Taoist Sages

1.             Legge, James, The Texts Of Taoism,

N.Y., Dover Books, 1962

2.             Waley, Arthur, The Way And Its Power, London, 1933

3.             Yutang, Lin, The Wisdom Of Lao Tze, N.Y., Modern Library, 1948

The Buddha

1.             Babbitt, Irving (tr.), The Dhammapada, N.Y., New Directions, 1965

2.             de Barry, Theodore (ed.), The Buddhist Tradition In India, China And Japan, N.Y., Modern Library,  1969

3.             Ling, Trevor, The Buddha, N.Y., Chas.Scribner's Sons, 1973

4.             Stryck, Lucien (ed.), The World Of The Buddha, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday,1968

5.             Suzuki, D.T., Essays In Zen Buddhism, 1st Series, N.Y., Grove Press, 1961

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