The most fundamental need of the self is not knowledge but action. It acquires knowledge for the sake of action. Conation and not cognition is the essential nature of the self. Cognition arises in the service of conation The self is like an arrow perpetually flying towards its target. It must act and act always. It wants to push forward, and the ideal is simply the direction towards which it happens to be pushing itself at any time. The reaching-forward tendency of the self presses and persists under all circumstances, because there is always some direction in which the self is moving. Knowledge arises, develops and improves in the service of this tendency. It has no other purpose except to guide the self’s urge for action ; it is acquired in, for, and because of this urge.

 

The innumerable ideals chosen by the self from time to time are the channels which this urge wears out for itself. The best ideal, the Right Ideal, is that ideal which is able to organise this urge rightly and best of all, which permits it the fullest and the most continuous expression. The self’s urge for the Right Ideal is really its urge for action as intense and as free and forceful as possible. An ideal is wrong when it does not give any scope for a continued action of this kind. The self is a force for action and this force is at its best and maximum when it is being utilised by the Right Ideal, like a car which runs at the greatest speed on a smooth, free and straight road. The self is like a sword and the Right Ideal is like a whet-stone which renders it sharp and penetrating.

 

The relation of the ideal to the self is not the relation of a theory to the intellect. An ideal is not a theory but an urge for action. It is a pressure on the self to change the actual conditions in the world to suit itself and to suit its ideal which becomes a part of itself. The Right Ideal, like every other ideal, is not a statement or a proposition but it is a call for action, which in its case reaches the highest intensity and force. As long as an ideal is a theory or a proposition it is not an ideal at all. Action and ideal cannot be separated. Ultimately your ideal is what you act. The Right Ideal raises the acting power of the self to a maximum because it is able to monopolise the whole of the self’s love and thereby to concentrate its power. Because it inspires the self with a single purpose, the whole of its energy flows into a single channel ; no part of it is wasted. The whole of it is utilised by a single desire as there are no other desires to share it or to divide it among themselves. The Right Love becomes such a strong desire that every other desire is worsted when it comes into conflict with it. It gives the instinctive impulses and emotions their proper place, controls them so that they are not only rendered incapable of encroaching upon the self’s love but are also pressed into its service. Under its influence the self is completely delivered from mental conflicts and complexes. Thus all factors which weaken the will power are eliminated. The Right Ideal alone gives an unlimited scope for the development of love and as love develops, more and more of the power of self becomes available to it till finally the whole of it is placed at its disposal. It conquers all other desires completely.

 

A wrong ideal may also enable us to achieve a concentration of purpose and a high degree of love when we erroneously and unconsciously attribute to it the qualities of the Right Ideal. But a wrong ideal can never succeed in attaching to itself the whole of the self’s love, and that is why it is a wrong ideal. Its love can never reach that limit of intensity which can be achieved by the Right Ideal. The reason is that owing to its inability to conform to our inner standards of beauty we remain unconsciously dissatisfied with it. Moreover, when this dissatisfaction becomes conscious and known, as it must in the long run, the illusion is over and we are forced to give up the ideal. Thus we can love a wrong ideal neither completely nor constantly. We change over to another ideal because the limit upto which we can love such an ideal is reached much sooner than we desire. It becomes apparent before long that we cannot love it to the fullest extent.

 

It is by action that life has evolved in the past and it is by action that it will evolve in the future. The evolution of self depends upon action so much that even where action is wrong and misdirected, provided it embodies a rare effort, it enables the self to enhance its power. Persons who act honestly and wrongly rather than think morally and rightly are ultimately more efficient servants of truth. A wrong ideal that can intoxicate a person with the love of action is far more conducive to the ultimate evolution of the self than a Right Ideal which is in his mind no more than a theory incapable of inducing action and effort. The best lover of a wrong ideal must ultimately prove to be the best lover of the Right Ideal.

 

Action is creation; it is evolution. All creation and evolution is the creation and evolution of the self. Evolution has no other meaning except this that the World-Self is creating the human self through its various stages and the human self is creating itself through them and thus collaborating with the World-Self, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. We can look upon the Universe from two points of view—as activity of the World-Self and as activity of the human self. As activity of the World-Self it is always creative, that is, the sum total of its result is always creation, improvement and evolution. As activity of the human self it is directly and consciously creative only when it is moral. Creation is action in the service of the ideal. It means to seek a beloved; it means self-display and self-assertion.

 

To act is to attack and overcome resistance. Resistance is essential for action and evolution. Life has been overcoming resistance from the very beginning and it will continue to overcome it till the end of the world. There would have been no evolution without resistance or obstacles in the way of life. Life is a process of struggle. Effort is life’s method by which it develops and attains to higher and higher levels. By effort at each stage life acquires the powers that enable it to appear at the next higher stage. To offer resistance to life is to compel it to overcome resistance, to make it exert itself and thereby to add to its powers. Obstruction to the activities of life stimulates its energies. It leads to a clearer definition of the end of the activity and of the means to that end. It creates for the creature the necessity to exert itself and to concentrate its powers in a manner which would have been otherwise impossible. When a river is obstructed by a narrow passage in the mountains it flows with such a force that the hardest of rocks are worn away. The birds grew wings because they made an effort to fly. Our animal ancestors began to walk on two legs because they made an effort to do so. To have a purpose and to make effort for its achievement is a characteristic of life. Effort is the result of impediments in the way of life’s purposes and the result of effort is, firstly, the enlargement of powers of life in order to overcome the impediments and, secondly, the development of its capacity to have higher purposes and overcome new impediments. Resistance must be welcomed. It must be faced and crushed at all costs, because that is the way in which we can advance. We cannot make a compromise with resistance. If we do so we recede on the road of progress and come back to death and annihilation.

 

The evolution of consciousness may be compared to the gradual development of a seed into a flower. The seed contains within it the flower but it takes time to unfold itself and reveal the flower. As long as it is a seed the flower is enclosed in it. When the seed grows into a branch the flower is still buried and enfolded in the branch. When it pushes itself out of the branch it appears in the form of a bud. The bud is finally unfolded by the morning breeze one day and we have the beautiful flower in full bloom. Just as the seed must grow into a flower so the originally created material energy which has evolved so far into the present shape of the Universe must continue its evolution till fully blooming self-consciousness makes its appearance.

 

Consciousness has already covered most of its journey and a time is soon coming when a human society of the highest self-consciousness will make its appearance. The earliest form of life developed into the shape of matter with its laws in the course of ages. It was a preparation for the future evolution of life. Thus when life advanced to the final stage of matter it travelled some distance towards its freedom. When life appeared in the form of the amoeba it became clear that while the final stage of matter was a stage of freedom for life as compared with its previous stages, it was a necessity and a compulsion for it as compared with the stage of the amoeba that was to follow. When life reached the highest point of evolution in the animal stage below man, it was a great advancement towards freedom as compared with the stage of the amoeba but it was yet a stage of slavery as compared with the human stage that came next. Thus life grew and evolved at every stage by breaking the resistance of its own present. Every stage in its development in the past was a stage of its freedom as well as of its slavery—freedom when we looked to its past and slavery when we looked to its future. Life was in a way encircled by innumerable rings of resistance which it had to break one by one in order to advance. Action or conscious activity is the method by which life breaks these rings. Action, therefore, takes the form of aggression and attack.

 

In the earlier stages of its development life evolved through the conscious activity of the World Consciousness, or through the forward-pressing tendency of consciousness which became manifest at the animal stage as the elan vital of Bergson. But as life became more and more conscious of itself it increased its freedom and developed its powers of action. It became more and more consciously a sharer in the activity of the World-Self. The activity of the living creature was its own from one point of view and it was that of the World-Consciousness from another point of view. By means of action the creature was able to draw on to itself more and more of the powers of consciousness for its own conscious employment of them. The creature’s effort and action enabled consciousness to manifest more and more of itself, of its capacities and potentialities, in the creature. Consciousness became active in the animal through it and for the sake of the future evolution of the animal as well as its own. At the animal stage the animal’s action enabled consciousness to express itself in the form of a further complication and multiplication of instincts. When this process reached its end we had the human form where a new kind of urge—the urge of the self—became manifest. The future progress and evolution of man depends upon action no less than the evolution of the animal depended upon it. Just as the effort and action of the animal were nothing but the expression of the urge of instincts, so human action is nothing but the expression of the urge of the self.

 

Life came to have a conscious purpose first of all as soon as it reached the animal stage. It was a fixed, inflexible, imperative purpose over which the creature had no control. It was the urge for the preservation of life, the earliest form of which was the desire for food. As the creature indulged in its activity for the satisfaction of its urge for food, it met with resistance from matter. All its activity was no other than its effort to break this resistance. The effort resulted in the satisfaction of this urge but that was not the only result of it. Another and a more important result of it was that the creature was able to enlarge its powers, to increase its capacity for movement, and to extend its sphere of activity and its scope for the satisfaction of its fundamental urge of hunger.

 

By overcoming resistance in the way of its desire for food the creature gradually drew upon itself more and more of the powers of consciousness which resulted in the multiplication of instincts and the appearance of higher and higher forms of life ending in man. Thus in the animal stage, nature’s method of evolution was to compel the creature to act and make effort by putting the resistance of matter in the way of its urge for the preservation of life.

 

At the human stage of evolution, life has developed a higher kind of urge which is due to the fact that consciousness has obtained a certain measure of freedom in the human form of life. But the whole of our consciousness is not yet free ; the major part of it is still covered up by the instincts or by our animal nature and is continually meeting resistance from it. We have to make further freedom for ourselves by struggling with the help of our enlarged powers to break through the resistance of the instincts. On the one hand our animal nature still demands a struggle with matter for the preservation of our life, on the other hand, our higher nature demands a struggle with our instincts for keeping up our future evolution. We have to satisfy the urge of the self as well as the urge of instincts simultaneously—the urge of the self for its own sake and the urge of instincts for the preservation of our life—and we are always doing it, sometimes cleverly and sometimes clumsily. When we satisfy these two different demands of our nature in such a way that the lower urge does not encroach upon the higher one, but on the other hand, supports and helps it (thus performing the function for which it is really meant), we are clever and progressive. This happens when we choose the Right Ideal. When we give too much importance to the urge of instincts forgetting that it is but the servant of the urge of the self, our progress is retarded.

 

In any case, whenever we satisfy an instinctive desire we never satisfy it in its natural form like an animal. Although we inherit all our instincts from the animals, yet the manner in which we satisfy any one of them is never determined entirely by the natural biological force of the instinct itself. It is always coloured, influenced or modified by the urge of the self to make it suit its own purpose. The urge of the self gives the demand of every instinct that definite form and that particular importance which the ideal requires. In fact, that ultimate way in which we satisfy our instinctive desires depends entirely upon the nature and the force of the ideal. Whenever an instinctive desire is also the ideal, it gains in force tremendously. Since our action is motivated by two forces—the urge of instinct and the urge of the self—it so happens that whenever we satisfy an instinctive impulse we act upon both matter and instinct at the same time—upon matter for the sake of the instinct and upon instinct for the sake of the ideal. We satisfy all our needs harmoniously and consistently with the deepest aspirations of the Universe as well as our own nature only when we act under the influence of the Right Ideal. When we do so we march towards freedom and continue our progress.

 

The fact that instincts offer resistance to the urge of the self and have to be combated by it does not lessen the importance of instincts in any way. Rather, it proves their importance, because the self could not progress without opportunities of effort and action which the resistance of instincts is offering. The object of the self’s fight with instincts is not to suppress them and neglect them completely but only to keep them within proper limits so that they do not obstruct the urge of the self but rather aid it and allow it to have a continued satisfaction. Neither must we nor can we discard the instincts. On the other hand, we must see that they are pressed into the service of the Right Ideal because their proper satisfaction is demanded by the urge of the self. If the full-grown self is a blooming flower, our animal nature is the branch that bears it. There can be no flower unless the branch is kept fresh and green and the whole plant is watered and manured and generally looked after. But the branch, although it must be kept fresh and green, is not our end. At the point where the bud has just peeped out, the branch should loosen its stiffness sufficiently to permit the whole of the bud to come out and then bloom in full beauty. The branch is the instinct and the bud is the growing self. To satisfy the demands of instincts in ourselves as well as in others is to help evolution and, therefore, to perform a highly moral and creative deed. This fact explains the value of charity in religion. But un-proportionate charity is as bad as miserliness because it is as bad to starve the instinctive desires in myself as it is to starve them in others.

 

Self-consciousness, once enclosed in our animal nature, breaks the resistance of the latter and comes out of it while still retaining contact with it exactly as the flower breaks the resistance of the branch, comes out of it and hangs by it. Just as the freshness of the branch is essential for the growth of the rose, the health of the body, which means the proper satisfaction of the instincts, is essential for the growth of the  self. Instincts are a means to an end and have to be satisfied as a means and not as an end in the interests of our freedom and evolution.

 

There can be no evolution without the continuation of life. Our instincts preserve the life of the individual and the race and thus continue the process of evolution. Thus they serve the interests of the self in more than one way. As they compel activity for the maintenance of life they take away much of the burden of self which otherwise may have neglected a part of this duty. The compulsion of instincts is an advantage from this point of view but it is a disadvantage because it weighs on the liberty of the self. It is again an advantage because it offers resistance, induces effort and makes evolution possible.

 

The urge of the self always looks to its own needs. Its principal object is to strive for the ideal, but it also looks to the urge of the instincts as a means to this end. It makes sure that the demand of the instincts is receiving due attention—neither more nor less. Whenever it receives more attention or less attention, it thwarts the urge of the self. When it is receiving more attention than necessary, it is encroaching upon the self’s love for the ideal and, therefore, retarding the evolution of self. When it is receiving less attention than it should, it is a grave situation and requires and actually calls forth the whole effort of the self to set it right because anything that threatens the preservation of life is also a threat to the urge of the ideal unless the ideal itself demands a sacrifice of life. In such a case, therefore, the self appears to leave the ideal and to attend solely to the needs of the body, but, as a matter of fact, it does not leave the ideal even for a single moment. It attends to the body as a means to its own end, i.e. as a step in the achievement of its ideal.

 

Instinct is a form of automatism and hence bears a resemblance to matter. It is a fixed and, in a way, materialised consciousness. It may be regarded as a form of matter in comparison with consciousness. Matter helped the animal in two ways:

 

(1)      By offering resistance and inducing effort, it enlarged the powers of the animal.

(2)      By behaving automatically, it met halfway the effort of the animal to satisfy its hunger and other needs.

 

Similarly, instincts help consciousness at the human stage in two ways:

 

(1)      By offering resistance and compelling effort, they evolve the self.

(2)      By functioning automatically, they meet the consciousness half-way in its efforts to continue its own evolution by preserving the life of the individual and the race.

 

Life thus employed the resistance of matter as a means to further its own ends at the animal level. It employs instincts as a means to further its own ends at the human level. Matter at once resisted life and helped it to maintain and evolve itself at the animal stage. Similarly, the instincts at once resist life and help it to maintain and evolve itself at the human stage. Matter subserves the urge of instincts and the instincts subserve the urge of the self.

 

The real progress of consciousness begins just above the stage of instincts, that is, as soon as it obtains its freedom in man and extends far beyond that point.

 

When our ideal is the satisfaction of our instinctive desires, we are living not on the animal plane of life but much below it. We are opposing only matter. The force of the ideal and the force of the instincts are acting in the same direction and their resultant is equal to their sum total. In this case our life is worse than that of the animals because while the animal, on account of the absence of any other urge besides the urge of instincts, satisfies its urge up to its natural limits prescribed by the natural strength of the instincts, we, by adding the urge of the self to the urge of the instincts, give the latter an unnatural and exaggerated importance and force. The result is not only a dissatisfaction and a mental pain in the long run, for starving the desires of the self, but also physical injury and disease. We satisfy an instinct as an ideal or as a means to the achievement of an ideal. But the ultimate motivating force of our life is always the urge for an ideal. Although the urge of the instincts is compelling in its nature and we appear to be satisfying it for its own sake, yet, really, our ideal is always fixing the limit and specifying the manner of its satisfaction. Thus its satisfaction becomes a means to an end. The ideal and not the instinct is the urge of our life.

 

Man will evolve by action and effort in future as the animal evolved by action and effort in the past. Resistance is a blessing for us as it quickens our progress. We must meet it and destroy it. When a man acts for the Right Ideal, he is consciously and directly evolving himself. The real gain to him is not that he is reaching nearer the ideal but that he is reaching nearer to himself.  Ultimately, the goal of man is man himself because when a man acts for his ideal he evolves his own self.

 

Action is really the action of the self and not that of the body. The physical body of the human being is only an instrument of action at the disposal of the self and benefits the self. It changes the self even when it is directly intended to change the outside world. The reality of the real outside world with which the self is dealing in its action is within the self. Therefore, when the self is acting and changing the real, actual world outside itself it is changing itself. By action, the self approaches the ideal which is within itself, it comes nearer to itself, to its own meaning. It improves, evolves, or unfolds itself by means of action. But the actions of the self must naturally go waste and fail to evolve it to the extent to which its ideal is unreal, wrong or illusory. The destination of man is the unfolding of his own nature. This destination he can reach if he acts in accordance with his nature which consists of a powerful urge for the Right Ideal. When he acts in accordance with his nature consciously, he is sharing the conscious activity of the World-Self in the Universe. His activity is in a way the activity of the Divine Self. It has the whole power of the Divine Self behind it. It is in the direction of his activity that the World-Self is already acting. It is such a person who conquers determinism and becomes a co-worker of the Creator.

 

New-creating the Universe from moment to moment as activity of the Divine Self is free activity. All events and happenings in the world reflect this creative activity. We feel as if these events put limitations on our own freedom, but, by becoming sharers in the free creative activity of the Divine Self, we can outgrow and rule these limitations. We can control and change the events and happenings in the world so as to bring them nearer to their end as well as our own. As consciousness evolves through its three stages of matter, animal and man, and approaches the source of consciousness more and more, it gets more and more of freedom till at the highest stage of its evolution it achieves its highest freedom. The stones are less free than the animals and the animals are less free than the human beings and among human beings too it is the saints and the prophets who are the most free people. A highly self-conscious man is very near the source of consciousness and, therefore, suffers very little from the limitations of determinism. He becomes a sharer in the purposes of the Creator. The free activity of the Creator manifests itself in him. He does for the Creator what the Creator would have done for Himself. His actions are as much of the Creator and for the Creator as they are his own and for himself. His actions, since they carry out the purpose of the Creator, have all His support and power behind them. By favouring the potentialities of consciousness they establish a contact with and utilise the powers of consciousness which consciousness is too ready to expend for the purpose of actualising its own potentialities. A man who has reached the highest stage of self-consciousness, therefore, decrees on behalf of the Creator and the Creator decrees on his behalf. He and the Creator both rule the Universe together since the purpose of neither is in conflict with that of the other.

 

Every obstacle in the way of love is meant to be conquered—such is the demand of love. Love cannot grow without hatred. The path of love can never be clear unless we conquer the obstacles in its way. Obstacles offer resistance, call forth action and lead to a greater realisation of love and the evolution of the self. They are essential for the growth of love. A man who is aggressive against his obstacles is fighting the forces of the Devil. The Devil understood in this sense is essential for evolution. He serves a spiritual purpose.

 

What is known as a non-spiritual, wrong, or sinful life is simply that part of it which is involved in a struggle and undergoing the hardships of evolution. Its stagnation is temporary and it must move forward ultimately as soon as it has the opportunity to do so. Sometimes the opportunity comes only in the next life; the struggle, that is, continues beyond death. We denote this condition as Hell. Hell, therefore, exists in this world as well as in the next. Of course, in the same way Paradise must exist in this world as well as in the next. That individual self which is unable to conquer its obstacles now will have to conquer them in future. The desire of its nature is permanent and it must struggle to achieve it in the next life if it cannot achieve it here. Hell is nothing but a continuation beyond death of those battles of the self with its obstacles, which it was unable to win in this life.

 

The self can delay the struggle at its own cost, which may be very huge because just as every display of strength strengthens the self, every display of weakness weakens it with the result that the struggle becomes harder and more difficult with every slip. A sinner finds it increasingly difficult for him to return to good life till, ultimately, he is separated from it by a huge barrier which it is extremely difficult for him to conquer. The struggle can be thus delayed and made extremely difficult, but it cannot he avoided. The self cannot escape it. It must ultimately steer clear of all its obstacles. That is the path ordained for it by its own nature. It is not an imposition from outside nor is it due to the tyranny of a creator. But every self must ultimately rise to the stage of Paradise because it is life that dominates ultimately and not the Devil. The obstacles may have the better of life temporarily and partially but never permanently and completely. Life never loses the final battle of its struggle.

 

The continued evolution of life is the very object of creation. We can be always sure of its having a victorious career throughout. If it had been possible for life to be worsted by its obstacles man would have never appeared on this earth—so great were the dangers which life had to face in the past. When no opposition was strong enough to overcome it completely in the past, certainly no opposition will be strong enough to overcome it in the future. We can be confident, therefore, of a glorious future for man on this earth. As life has the better of its obstacles in this world, it must have the better of them also in the next world.

 

Hell is the state of the self’s separation from Consciousness and Heaven is the state of its union with it. Both Hell and Heaven, therefore, must have their grades in such a way that the higher grades of Hell gradually merge into the lower grades of Heaven. There must be also a middle stage belonging neither to Hell nor to Heaven and corresponding to the state when the self feels that it is neither in Union with the Beloved nor far away from Him. The stages of Hell and the stages of Heaven are thus like the rungs of a single ladder which every self has to mount starting from a point which is high or low in accordance with the approach it had made towards the Beloved till the end of its earthly life. Every state of Hell or Heaven must be transitory yielding place to a higher state as soon as the self has qualified for it, because every self is compelled by its nature to continue to approach its destination which is the Consciousness of the Universe. But the greater the distance of a self from its destination, the more difficult it will be for it to approach it or to qualify for a higher state. Thus there will be some selves (those that have deliberately chosen to love wrong ideals and do wrong deeds and thereby spoiled the urge of their nature) for whom it will be extremely difficult to make any progress in the next life.

 

On the definition of Hell and Heaven given above, both the Hell and the Heaven must exist here as well as in the hereafter. There are two Hells, one in this world and the other in the next, as there are two Heavens, one in this world and the other in the next. In fact, the Hell and the Heaven of the next world are but the continuation of the Hell and the Heaven of this world. The Hell of this world is not painful but rather agreeable because in this world the self is rarely conscious of its separation from its Beloved, the Consciousness of the Universe. In the actual state of its separation from the Beloved, it is generally able to console itself by means of the Beloved’s substitutes, the wrong ideals, each of which it takes for the Beloved Himself. It imagines, for the time its wrong love is having a smooth course, that it is enjoying the Beloved’s union to the fullest extent. Its Hell in this world has, therefore, the appearance of a Heaven. But whenever the substitutes of consciousness play false, as they must sooner or later, the self experiences a Hell on this earth in the form of grief, fear, anxiety and sorrow which, however acute and unbearable they may be, are yet never at their worst because they have always a silver lining of hope, conscious or unconscious. A new ideal is always at hand to take the place of the lost friend and to deliver the self from its worry.

 

The real Hell is experienced by the self when it has the misfortune to carry the state of its separation from Consciousness over to the next life. Then the grief, fear, sorrow and anxiety of the self are at their worst, because all wrong ideals, all substitutes of the Beloved, all imaginary and deceptive sources of consolation have disappeared. For the first time in its life the self becomes conscious of its utter loss, that is, of its complete and incurable separation from the Beloved. It must, therefore, experience a torture that knows no bounds. Our deepest misfortunes, miseries and tortures in this life cannot be in the least comparable to this experience. The experience most akin to this sense of utter separation from Consciousness is that of being consumed in a fire. It is not in vain that the lovers of all times and places have compared the anguish of the Beloved’s separation to the pain of burning in a fire. The self will, therefore, actually feel that it is burning in the hottest of fires from which all avenues of escape are closed. Its mental state in that world will take the form of an objective reality as an objective reality takes the form of a mental state in this world.

 

Just as Hell is immensely more painful and tortuous in the next life than it is here, so Heaven is immensely more pleasant and agreeable in the next life than it is here. A self that has attained to a high stage of self-consciousness and has established the contact of a wholehearted love with Consciousness enjoys the bliss of Paradise on earth, but its bliss is rarely of the highest degree. Frequently, the path of Love is beset with obstacles and difficulties. There are so many objects and ideas ready to encroach upon the self’s love, to distract its attention and to share its regards. Matter, that is to say, the compulsion of our animal instincts, is always weighing heavily upon the self’s liberty and pulling it down. The result is that the devoted self is always anxious and always struggling to keep its love one-sided, unmixed, clean and sincere. Its Heaven in this world has, therefore, the appearance of a prison. But when the loving self passes on to the next life, all obstacles in the path of love disappear at once. The moment the dying lover has a glimpse of the other world, he is animated by a sudden joy on account of which his countenance often breaks into a smile. The immediate assurance of a great and unexpected peace and happiness, that lay in store for him, is reflected in his face and it can be taken as a sure sign of a true lover that when he dies his face is calm, tranquil or smiling. Thenceforward since the self’s love has a smooth sailing, the self experiences a joy that goes on increasing automatically and without any struggle or anxiety. This joy is Paradise. To have this joy is to have everything; it is to have all possible desires and wishes satisfied at once. We know that the human self has only one desire—to win the pleasure or the approval of its Beloved, the Consciousness of the Universe, and all its other desires are included in it; they are its servants. When, therefore, the self is assured of the pleasure of the Beloved itself, it secures all that it wants; it can want nothing more. All that it can still desire is an ever greater and greater amount of the Beloved’s pleasure and approval which it will, no doubt, continue to have. Every new glimpse of the Beloved’s unlimited beauty will enrich the self and will qualify it for a still fresh glimpse of Him. Every approach that it will make towards the Beloved will enable it to make a further approach towards Him.

 

The question whether a complete, ultimate union of the self with the Creator is compatible with its permanent individual existence presents no difficulty. The devoted self will enjoy a complete union with the Creator and yet maintain its independent existence for ever. My idea is a part of myself and yet has an independent existence of its own. We shall live forever as realised ideas in the mind of the Creator becoming the source of a permanent joy for Him as a realised idea lives forever in the mind of an artist being the source of a permanent pleasure for him.

 

The transcendent joy of Paradise results from the self’s consciousness of the success of its love (ingrained in its very nature) for a personality of the highest beauty and perfection,  that is, for Consciousness. It cannot be described nor imagined in this life for reasons already explained. The only joy of this life that comes nearest to and is most akin to the joy of Paradise is the joy, before it gets mixed up with the lower, inferior kind of pleasure derived from sex indulgence, which a young man or a young woman feels in the affectionate association of a young beautiful person of the opposite sex. This is, of course, on account of the fact that the sex urge is carved out of the attraction of consciousness for Beauty, and sex love begins by a love which is of a spiritual character. (See Chapter 7, pp. 197 to 199.) We can, therefore, assume quite reasonably that the self will actually see in its state of Paradise that it is enjoying the loving company of young, beautiful persons of the opposite sex, although their company will be incomparably sweeter and more enjoyable than that of any earthly sweethearts. The reason is that the self must represent its conscious states in the next life by means of objects which are the fittest and the most suitable for representing them. Philosophers like Berkeley, Hegel, Croce and Gentile and scientists like Eddington have justly maintained that our conscious experience is the only reality of which we are assured. As in this life, so in the next, nothing is real, nothing exists except our own conscious experience. Just as the outside world in this life is a representation of our own mental experience, so the outside world in the next life will be also a representation of our own mental experience. In other words, we shall actually create the objects of the outside world in the next life to suit our mental states. We have an imperfect and yet very suggestive analogy of it in our creation of the world of dreams. The fire of Hell and the sweethearts of Paradise in the next world will represent, what we shall experience mentally and they will be in no way less tangible, less visible or real than this world of matter, because this world too has no existence apart from our mind. The outside objects of the next world will be real in every sense of the word “real”. The next world, whether it takes the shape of Hell or Heaven, will not be, therefore, a mere mental state. It will be a mental state that will take the form of a place which will be as real as any place that we can know of in this physical world.

 

Since the conscious experiences or the mental states of different selves will vary in the next life, the nature and quality of the outside objects will also vary. Each self will live in a world of its own mental creation; each self will enter a different Hell and a different Heaven which it was making for itself in this life. The temperature of fire in which each self will be burning in Hell as well as the beauty and the love of sweethearts in the company of each self in Heaven will be different and will continue to change, depending upon the stage of the self’s evolution and the nature of its mental experience. We shall create not only the fire of Hell and the sweethearts of Paradise but all sorts of agreeable or disagreeable objects and their groups which will be capable of symbolising our mental states exactly. Because Hell and Heaven will be the representations or the projections of the mental states of the self, therefore, naturally, the tortures of Hell will become less and less and the pleasures of Heaven will increase more and more as the self will make its advancement.

 

Throughout our lives we are either advancing towards Consciousness or receding from It. When we are moving forwards we are acting rightly and gaining in life freedom and beauty. When we are receding from It we are acting wrongly and, therefore, losing in life freedom and beauty. The progress or regress of the self is the result of its actions which consist of the self’s response towards outside events made, of course, always with a full sense of responsibility. Every action is either a Hell or a Heaven; every action is a state of the self’s separation from or union with the Consciousness of the World.

 

Our conscious states of the next life which make our Hells and Heavens are only the real, correct versions of the conscious states of this life. A mental state of the self in this world may be compared to the “negative” of a photographic plate in which the shades of the real picture are reversed. When a mental state goes over to the next life it resembles the final photograph in which the various parts of the picture reappear in their proper shades. We are, as if, in a dream and awake to reality only in the next life. No experience of our life is real and permanent, as it is, except the joy which the self feels in devotion and service to its Beloved, the World-Self. This joy is celestial; it is Heaven on earth, and whoever has the good fortune to experience it and to maintain it till the end of his life on earth is sure to enter Paradise unscathed and untouched by the fire of Hell.

 

In short, our mental states of the next life are woven out of our actions in this life. An indelible, indestructible record of all actions is kept by each self and carried by it along with itself to the next life. This record remains buried in the depths of our unconscious mind which, one must conclude from the observations of Freud, does not forget even the smallest or the most insignificant events of our life.

 

Freud writes:

 

“Contradictory impulses exist side by side (in the id) without neutralizing each other or drawing apart. There is nothing in the id which can be compared to negation and we are astonished to find in it an exception to the philosophers’ assertion that space and time are necessary parts of our mental acts. In the id there is nothing corresponding to the idea of time, no recognition of the passage of time and (a thing which is very remarkable and awaits adequate attention in philosophic thought) no alteration of mental processes by the passage of time. Conative impulses which have never got beyond the id and even impressions which have been pushed down into the id by repression are virtually immortal and are preserved for whole decades as though they bad only recently occurred. They can only be recognized as belonging to the past, deprived of their significance and robbed of their charge of energy after they have been made conscious by the work of analysis and no small part of the therapeutic effect of analytic treatment rests upon this fact.

 

It is constantly being borne in upon me that we have made far too little use of our theory of the indubitable fact that the repressed remains unaltered by the passage of time. This seems to offer us the possibility of an approach to some really profound truths. But I myself have made no further progress here.”

 

The fact that the mental acts of the self are possible in the absence of space and time and there is “no alteration of mental processes by the passage of time” points only to the immortality of the self in as much as it becomes apparent that the self has the capacity to keep intact and to continue its mental states experienced in this life—the states that constitute a record of its actions—even when it has passed out of this world of space and time.

 

That all our mental states, all our actions, leave a mark on the self and remain preserved in the unconscious, is verified by the fact that some of the most insignificant, long forgotten events of our life, even those about which we did not bother in the least in our waking life, are recalled by us automatically in our dreams and form the woof and warp of dream symbolism. The hypnotist can revive the memory of any event in the life of his subject in a state of hypnotic trance by suitable questions.

 

The whole of the past of self preserved in the unconscious is unfolded before it in the next life as a series of mental states which the self has to re-live and re-experience one by one and bit by bit, not this time, in their disguised pleasantness or unpleasantness and with imaginary consolations or unavoidable anxieties which used to attend them in the material world, but in their real disagreeableness or agreeableness and deprived of all the pleasant coverings produced by the errors of the self or free from all the unpleasant accompaniments due to its struggles and anxieties. The self must re-experience its mental states of the earthly life not as a reward or punishment for its actions, decreed by a court of justice external to the self, but because the self has to move forward towards its unavoidable destination, it has to evolve. It is bound by the urge of its nature to advance but it cannot advance unless it has shed all the disabilities which cling to it, on account of the slips which it had the misfortune to make during its earthly life. It must re-acquire the positions from which it slipped in order to advance from them further. Its right actions in the earthly life which enabled it each time to make some progress towards Consciousness facilitate its efforts to regain those positions; they come to its help in its attempt to compensate for its errors. Thus the point from where the self begins, in effect, its career of Heaven or Hell is determined finally by reckoning the difference of the total of its approach towards and the total of its recession from  consciousness in this life. In this way some individuals begin their career of the next life in Heaven and the others begin it in Hell; some are fortunate and others are unfortunate, and this makes a huge difference.

 

In this account of the next world as built up by human actions, we have not so far taken into account the important fact that the actions of self, in so far as they are intended to change this  world and to change the self, do not end with the death of the physical body. A human self is not an isolated entity. It is a whole in itself but it is at the same time an indispensable part of a bigger whole which is the whole of the human society of the past and future. As a pebble thrown in a quiet lake creates waves that travel to its farthest limits long after the pebble has itself settled down at the bottom, so the conscious life of every self in this world leaves behind it influences and repercussions which continue to change the world for better or for worse or for both, as long as the world lasts. These changes are due to the actions of the self which actions, therefore, cannot be said to have come to an end. The self lives in the material world on account of these actions partly and, therefore, they must continue to build for it a Hell or a Heaven in the next world. But the final and the total value of these actions as forces that aid or retard the evolution of humanity can be assessed only when they have come to an end, in other words, when the material world has ceased to exist. Thus when the world will come to an end there will be a second reckoning of the actions of every self which will finally determine its position in Hell or Heaven.

 

The Universe is similar to an organism or an individual. As there is a reckoning of the human individual at the death of his physical body, which is based on the whole of his life, so there will be a reckoning of the Universe at the end of its physical existence, which will take into consideration the whole life of the Universe, that is, all human beings who have lived in this world in the past and who will live in it in future till the end of the world.

 

Consciousness is interested fundamentally in the evolution of humanity as a whole. It is concerned with the evolution of the individual selves because they are the parts of the whole which is humanity, because they aid each other’s evolution and because their own individual evolution is a means to the evolution of this whole.

 

The evolution of the social organism of humanity is analogous to the growth of an individual organism. The human race is growing from generation to generation as an organism or an individual grows from year to year. The individuals of each generation of humanity are like innumerable cells of a growing organism that come into existence, live, act, grow and procreate and thereby feed, sustain and grow the organism. They are being constantly worn out and substituted by healthier and stronger cells which perform the same function in their turn and thereby continue the growth of the organism. Slowly, as one generation of cells dies away, another healthier and stronger generation arises to take its place. Similarly, the evolving social organism of humanity brings into existence innumerable human individuals who appear, live, act, grow and procreate and thereby feed, sustain and grow, this huge organism. In due course of time, every generation wears itself away leaving a better generation to take its place and in this way the organism of the Universe continues its evolution.

 

The human individual has a birth, an infancy, a childhood, a youth, a middle age, an old age, a death and an after-life. The physical body of the individual grows, decays and dies but his self-consciousness evolves continuously and the process of its evolution continues beyond the death of the physical body. At death, there is an automatic reckoning of the net progress of the individual which is followed by a continuous evolution of the self on account of which its Hell rises gradually into a Paradise and the Paradise continues to improve in perfection. So the organism of the Universe too has a birth, an infancy, a childhood, a youth, a middle age, an old age, a death, and an after-life, The physical body of the Universe will grow, decay and die but the self-consciousness of the Universe, that is, of the humanity as a whole, will evolve continuously and the process of its evolution will go on beyond the death of the Universe.

 

At the death of the Universe, since the actions of every self will come to a final end, there will be a reckoning of the net progress of humanity on account of which the total and ultimate share of every self in the evolution of the world as a whole will be reflected in an immediate deterioration or improvement of its position in Hell or Heaven. This final reckoning will be followed again by a course of evolution in which the Hell of humanity will rise gradually into a Paradise and the Paradise will achieve a higher and higher perfection till the Creator will realise His idea completely and turn his attention to the creation of the next Universe. We live and evolve as thoughts in the mind of the Creator in this life and we shall live and evolve as thoughts in His mind in the next life as well. When we have reached our highest evolution we shall live as realized ideas in the mind of the Creator for ever. The achievement will be a source of permanent joy for us as well as for the Creator; He will be pleased with us and we shall be pleased with Him and this will be an everlasting Paradise.

 

It will not be out of place here to mention that a modern development of Physics known as Carnot’s principle or the Second Law of Thermodynamics supports the idea of the death of the Universe by showing conclusively that the Universe must have a beginning as well as an end, that it came into existence at a definite time in the past and must come to an end at a definite time in the future.

 

Our dreams enable us to understand the nature of our life hereafter to some extent. We can, for example, understand that we, our unconscious minds or our selves have properties which make it possible for us to live, act, think and feel and to experience pain and pleasure and all sorts of emotions without a physical body and that we may transcend the boundaries of space and time.

 

Freud has imagined that dreams are efforts of the unconscious mind to fulfil in sleep those of its sexual wishes which it is unable to satisfy in waking life. He has tried to interpret a large number of the dreams of his patients from that point of view. But his interpretations are simply fantastic. It can be proved to the hilt by collecting facts and figures of dreams and the actual events of waking life following them in the case of thousands of persons that our dreams are the self’s interpretations of its own future experiences, i.e. its mental and emotional attitudes towards actual future events of its life. For such interpretations the self makes use of symbols derived from its past experiences, i.e. objects, ideas and persons embodying the self’s emotional reactions and attitudes towards events of the past. The self may dream the same event several times using different symbols each time. The choice of a particular set of symbols is influenced by the nature of the physical, biological or psychological stimuli immediately preceding the dream.

 

All dreams are images of future events but these images are sometimes blurred and sometimes vivid, depending upon our stimuli for the dream, with the result that some dreams are meaninglessly frightful and some others meaninglessly sweet, just as a person using various spectacles with uneven glasses of various colours and curvatures may make the same scene look more dreadful or more interesting than it really is.

 

The pre-vision of dreams can be explained by the fact that our unconscious mind is above time and for it future is as good as present and when the unconscious is at rest (and not divided into the conscious and the subconscious minds, not peeping into the outside world and not impelling the activity of our waking life through the conscious mind) as is the case when we are asleep, it is able to live the future events of its life which it interprets by means of appropriate symbols. As the self views such events in sleep in their real colour and from the point of view of their real importance to the self’s task of realising the ideal of its nature, it so happens, sometimes, that the symbols employed by the self are just the reverse of those which we would use for the event, as it actually takes place and looks to us in our waking life.