We have seen that evolution has no other meaning except the evolution of consciousness and that no new species are necessary for future evolution which can now be continued indefinitely by man. Consciousness having once obtained its freedom in the human form of life is now able to add to this freedom as much as it likes. It is also clear that the evolution of consciousness means the evolution of the knowledge of consciousness about itself. Whenever consciousness gains in freedom, it gains also in self-knowledge and vice versa. Self-consciousness means the freedom of consciousness to know itself. For consciousness, freedom is knowledge and knowledge is freedom.

 

Self-consciousness is, moreover, synonymous with the knowledge of Beauty. Consciousness knows itself in proportion as it knows Beauty and it knows Beauty in proportion as it knows itself. Self-knowledge and the knowledge of Beauty progress simultaneously. With every fresh knowledge of Beauty the self is able to give a further expression to its urge of love, to gain in its own freedom and to unfold or evolve itself a little more. The higher the standard of Beauty of a person’s ideal, the greater is his self-consciousness. Further evolution depends upon our giving a fuller and fuller expression to the urge for ideals.

 

Self-consciousness grows in man through a knowledge of what is other than the self.

 

When a child comes into the world he has but a vague knowledge of himself and his surroundings. Gradually, he begins to feel around him the presence of some objects and also of some persons who come most into contact with him. It is then that he knows of his own existence and can say “I”. This knowledge of “I” is the beginning of self-consciousness. With the first knowledge of “I” the urge of self begins to press itself. The child becomes curious and inquisitive as if he is searching for something which he likes or loves but which is not visible to him at the time. “There is surely something around here which is very good for me and which I shall like very much to have”—that is his attitude. He wants to know other things not really for the sake of those things but in order to know himself in relation to them, to know what is it that he really likes or loves. As he gains in his knowledge of things other than himself, he gains in his knowledge of himself.

 

In the beginning the child’s urge of self finds an expression in his attachment to objects capable of satisfying his instinctive desires of which the most important is the desire for eating. This is the first stage in the growth of his self-consciousness. After some time—and this marks the beginning of the second stage in the growth of his self-consciousness—he begins to appreciate, at first unconsciously and later on consciously, the greatness and goodness of some people around him, who are at the outset his parents and teachers. These people become the ideal of his self. He loves to become like them. He is happy when he is able to win their approval and love, and unhappy when he is unable to do so. As he grows in years, the circle of his acquaintances is enlarged and he is able to get a more general notion of greatness and goodness based on the opinions of those people in the extended circle of his society, whom he admires or loves consciously or unconsciously. Then he begins to seek the approval of such persons and feels happy when he achieves it and miserable when he is unable to do so. With every extension of social relations his idea of Beauty is refined, improved and enlarged a little more and his self- consciousness is correspondingly developed. This process of the growth of self-consciousness, with an improved knowledge of social relations, goes on for ever, sometimes slowly and at others quickly. At every step in the development of his self-consciousness the individual has an ideal, which is at the same time the idea of the highest Beauty known to him. But no ideal is able to meet the full requirements of the urge of self. Every ideal, therefore, yields place to another one after some time. The individual really loves something the beauty of which excels that of every one of the ideals chosen by him from time to time. For some time he identifies the ideal chosen by him with the object of his real desire but he is soon disillusioned. As soon as one ideal loses its charm, the individual chooses another ideal more beautiful. than the previous one, in the hope that it will satisfy his desire completely. In this way his ideal rises in the scale of Beauty step by step till he reaches the Right Ideal which is the real desire of his self. The knowledge of the Right Ideal, as we shall presently see, has also a course of evolution. This means that a person’s idea of Beauty continues to evolve for ever.

 

The evolution of ideals proceeds generally in accordance with the following principles.

 

The self has a tendency to discard all ideals except one. It has many ideals in the beginning. For the child every instinctive desire is an ideal. It is only gradually that the approval of parents is valued by him in such a way that he feels the necessity of controlling some of his instinctive desires not liked by them. When the child grows in years, he feels that there are other persons besides his parents, e.g. his teachers, whom he can admire or love. A grown-up person too remains under the influence of many ideals for some time. In the beginning, these ideals are conflicting and inharmonious with one another. Gradually, they come into comparison with each other in the light of his internal desire for Beauty with the ultimate result that they are more and more superseded and controlled by a single all-powerful idea, which becomes the ideal of the self. A person feeling the influence of more than one ideal is very low in the standard of his self-consciousness.

 

The ideal shifts from the concrete to the abstract. The self yearns for something of which the beauty is permanent and unlimited. A man whose ideal is his child, for example, must feel that he is sure to be miserable in case he should die. Therefore, in his saner moments he tries to fix his attention on something more permanent as a source of joy or consolation for himself. This joy or consolation can never be complete unless the ideal becomes completely abstract. In the above case the reason for the man’s dissatisfaction with his ideal is quite obvious but there is a lack of satisfaction in the case of all concrete ideals even if the ideal is concrete-general, e.g. the love of children generally. The reason is that a concrete ideal, however much we may extend it, still remains limited. No ideal except the Right Ideal is completely abstract. Since the self is a social self and owes the knowledge of its very existence to its social relations, its ideal must always have a clear or vague, conscious or unconscious, reference to a person. Ultimately its ideal takes the form of an approval of some person or persons. The self cannot love anything outside its concrete social relations, although its tendency is to love the abstract and to love it all the more, the more abstract it is. Plato was right when he said that the more abstract the beautiful, the more beautiful it is. When we love persons, we really love their abstract qualities. When their qualities fail to satisfy us, we turn to other models with more perfect qualities. Thus even in the concrete the self loves the abstract.

 

The ideal shifts also from the less perfect to the more perfect. An ideal must be perfectly satisfactory to us whether it has intrinsic perfection or whether we attribute perfection to it owing to an error, otherwise it will not be chosen by us as an ideal at all. Whenever we are dissatisfied with an ideal, we turn our love to another idea, guided by our desire for perfection. Love is a function of the self which the self must always perform. The self desires to love as permanently and as completely as it has the capacity to love. It changes to a new ideal only when the existing ideal is unable to give full scope to this craving of the self, that is, when the ideal is found to be lacking in perfection. Love wants to persist and grow and the self is, therefore, compelled to abandon an ideal which does not permit the continuous growth of love. Permanence is also a quality of perfection. An ideal which lacks permanence lacks perfection.

 

Only that object or idea becomes the ideal of which the beauty is actually felt and realized by the self and not merely understood by it intellectually or remembered on the authority of another person. The ideal is Beauty and Beauty can be known by feeling and not by intellect. It is quite possible that we may understand intellectually the greatness and excellence of one object and may feel and experience the greatness and excellence of a different object. The ideal develops in perfection through the self’s performance of its function of loving. Because the self loves, it comes to know more and more what it should love. The self’s knowledge of itself and the knowledge of Beauty grow simultaneously. The growth of the self-knowledge consists in the self getting to know ever more and more what it is that is worthy of its love or capable of conducing to its greatest happiness and completeness.

 

Society is an indispensable instrument in the growth of self-consciousness. Social contacts engender and improve the idea of Beauty. Culture is the result of a refined idea of Beauty, developed through the extended knowledge of social surroundings. In the absence of society a human being will surely sink to the level of a brute.

 

The transition of the self from one ideal to another may be either sudden or gradual. Many ideas exist side by side with the ideal competing for the place of the ideal. But as long as an idea attracts the self most of all, it remains the ideal and all other ideas subserve it. Whenever the ideal begins to lose its attractiveness, some other idea begins to encroach upon the self’s love and to appear more and more beautiful till the ideal is made to abandon the position of a ruling idea in its favour and to assume a subordinate role. If the rising of one idea and the lowering of another in the self’s estimate of Beauty is not simultaneous the condition is known as a shock or, in mild cases, a worry. It is due to the fact that the urge of the self is thwarted and is unable to have the expression that it was having. As long as a person is unable to get an equally attractive substitute for a discarded ideal or for an ideal that has lost its charm, he feels dejected and depressed and may suffer from nervous diseases.

 

Every ideal prescribes a law which becomes the effective moral code of the individual. Every person has to observe a code of do’s and dont’s in order to achieve the ideal chosen by him. He follows this code willingly urged by his love for the ideal which is internal. He requires no external compulsion to submit to the rigid moral discipline imposed by the ideal. As there is no escape from an ideal, so there is no escape from a moral code for any human being.

 

The nature of the law prescribed by the ideal depends, of course, on the nature and the quality of the ideal. In vain some of us condemn Machiavelli and Lenin for their advocacy of irreligious morality. Each one of them emphasises the moral code prescribed by his own ideal. Machiavelli favoured treachery, perfidy and cruelty on the part of a king, because that alone could serve adequately his ideal which was the state. Lenin believed Communism to be the greatest good for humanity. Hence the correctness and incorrectness of human conduct were, according to him, determined by this one ideal. Cruelty and immorality, in the ordinary sense of the words, were perfectly right if they could facilitate a Communist revolution.

 

The change from one ideal to another is due to the internal desire of consciousness for Beauty which serves as an ultimate criterion of the ideal’s beauty. If an ideal satisfies this desire perfectly and permanently, it is beautiful otherwise it is lacking in beauty. Sometimes, no doubt, it is the external events that prove to the self that the ideal is unworthy of it. But what gives meaning to the external events is the self’s desire for perfection which ultimately acts as an unfailing touchstone for testing the satisfactory or unsatisfactory character of an ideal. Gradually, as the mutual relationship of the self and the ideal develops, the self is able to discover whether its companion is worthy of friendship or not. If the ideal is wrong, it contains its own contradiction which is revealed to the self in the course of time.

 

The disillusionment of the self is caused by the urge of its nature which cannot be satisfied with anything except perfection. The external causes, if there are any, determine the self in favour of a change only because there is an internal attitude which gives them an import.

 

The third stage promising an unlimited growth of self-consciousness begins as soon as the self begins to feel the presence and beauty of its most important other, the World-Self. The way for it is prepared by the second stage in which the tendencies of the self press already towards an abstract, single, universal and Perfect Ideal and now by loving the World-Self the self finds it possible to give a complete expression to all these tendencies and add to its satisfaction thereby. The self’s idea of its own existence is the outcome of its relation with society; therefore, while it remains in the second stage of self-consciousness, it cannot have an abstract ideal of this kind because by having such an ideal it would at once lose contact with its social surroundings which is an impossibility. The World-Consciousness alone provides us with an ideal which is abstract, single, universal and perfect and at the same time social, personal and living. This is the only ideal which satisfies completely the urge of the self. The self, if it remains true to its nature, discovers very soon that it is its own ideal, that it is the only ideal which is capable of giving it the greatest happiness and satisfaction.

 

Because the World-Self is hidden from our view, it is not, for this reason, the less knowable than other-selves known to us. The way in which I can know it, is not essentially different from the way in which I can know, for example, one of my best friends. Every self is invisible to the eyes of our physical body, eyes which can see the physical objects, and the World-Self is no exception to this rule. The physical body of the human self is not the self; it is simply an expression and an instrument of the self. I know my friend to be what he is not because I see him, that is, his self, with these eyes, which I cannot do, but because I see the signs of the activity of his self and get a feeling or an intuition (not a perfectly rational, logical or scientific knowledge) that he is a self like me, capable of thinking, behaving, responding, creating, loving and hating and not merely a robot or an automaton. Thus my friend is hidden from my view as well as manifest to me; he is one and yet multiple by reason of the multiple ways in which he expresses himself. I know that which is one and hidden by means of that which is manifest and multiple. Such is the case with the World-Self too. It is one and hidden, it is manifest and multiple, and we know the one and hidden by means of that which is manifest and multiple in the form of nature or Universe.

 

Our contemplation of nature, which is, of course unavoidable on account of our very close association with it, supplies us with the very first knowledge of a Creator, a knowledge which forms the basis of our further knowledge about Him. It is indeed a blessing that nature affords us with a glimpse of the beautiful and the real, literally for nothing, every time that we contemplate it. The heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars, the mountains, the landscape, the vast oceans, the twilight and the dawn, the clouds, the rivers, the streams, the winds, the change of day and night, the rotation of seasons, the animal and vegetable life in all its variety, complexity and richness, create in us the idea, however vague and unconscious it may be in the case of some of us, of a Creator, of His greatness, His beauty and power. Nature is only one of the names we give to this Creator, though we may not be conscious of it. Imperceptibly, this idea enters our heart and lingers there, whether we know it or not. Sometimes we become conscious of the idea and then it grows in clearness and force. At other times we are unconscious of it, and it is so suppressed that we forget it and even deny that we have it. We may even condemn it or oppose and disprove it with the help of logic or science but it is always there and rises to the surface of consciousness at times, particularly when we are in difficulties or happen to be overtaken by a misfortune. Then we express it in the form of prayers.

 

All men pray, although some men pray for a short time or on rare occasions in their lives. Atheism, if it ever exists, exists only on the lips but never in the hearts of men. The reason why we come to have the idea of a Creator is not only external to us, being attributable to our contact with the Universe around us, but it is also internal. As already mentioned, we carry with us latent in our nature a desire for a being great and beautiful which is the search of our consciousness. Thus the indication of external nature and the internal desire find a contact with each other and corroborate each other. The more we are conscious of this contact or corroboration the more do we feel at home in this world and the greater is our happiness and joy on account of being assured of our own reality. As a matter of fact, the reason why we believe in a Creator is more internal than external. Without an internal desire for a perfect being, we would have never been able to admire nature or to imbibe the idea of a Creator from its contemplation. All knowledge of Reality lies within us. Nature only awakens it and then, if it is permitted to have its natural course, it goes on adding to itself. It is perfectly right to say that every knowledge of Divine-Consciousness that we achieve is also the knowledge of our own consciousness. To believe in the Creator is to believe in one’s own self.

 

The Universe or Nature is alive and conscious because it is the conscious activity of the World-Self. It is dynamic and progressive and not static or finished because change is a property of conscious activity. Yet the Creator is not immanent in the Universe nor is a part or the whole of the Universe identical with Him. Just as I am apart from the book I am writing, the Creator is apart from the Universe of His creation. I express myself in this book but I am not this book because I can write many other books and do many other things besides. The Universe, however old it may be and however long it may continue to exist, is but a moment in the life-history of the Creator who can and will create, for aught that we can understand of Him, innumerable such or different worlds in future. His qualities are eternal and must function eternally.

 

Yet, when I am writing the book and the book is evolving, my thought, my creative desire, my consciousness, in fact, I myself with all my attributes and qualities, happen to be flowing in the book and pushing forward the process of its evolution. Similarly, as the Creator is evolving the Universe, His thought, His desire, His consciousness, indeed He Himself, with all His qualities and attributes is there in the Universe pushing forward the process of its evolution. As I am in the book that I am writing with all my attributes in spite of being apart from the book, so the Creator is in the Universe with all His attributes in spite of being apart from the Universe. It is in this sense that I have talked of the creative flow of consciousness in the Universe throughout in this book. This point, a fuller elucidation of which will be found in the analogy of the artist and the picture given in Chapter 5 of this book, resolves the controversy of the immanence and the transcendence of the Creator.

 

The whole of our knowledge of Divine-Consciousness, like our knowledge of human consciousness, is not scientific or rational knowledge in the current sense of the word “rationality”. It is of the nature of a feeling, a sensitiveness, an intuition, a faith or a direct vision. Feeling is not only knowledge but it is also the highest kind of knowledge. Reason, no doubt, gives a spur to feeling but feeling knows much more than mere reason can know. Reason can know only a part but feeling grasps the whole of an object or an idea. How little is it realised that knowledge under the influence of which we mould the whole of our life is never purely logical, rational or intellectual! It is of the nature of a feeling although intellect serves to direct this feeling more or less. We do what we like to do and not what is reasonable or rationally or mathematically correct. Love and not logic is the guiding principle of our life. The urge of human life, as we have seen, is love or the feeling of Beauty. Intellect cannot become an urge because it cannot feel or know Beauty. A scientist can tell us how sound is produced but he cannot tell us why a symphony is beautiful. He can calculate exactly the area covered by a picture, can explain what part is played by the rays of light, the retina, the optical nerve or the brain in observing it, or enumerate to the minutest details the shades of colours used in it, but he cannot say in what does the beauty of the picture consist. He may himself feel its beauty but he cannot demonstrate it logically or scientifically. The knowledge of Beauty is open to feeling alone. It is outside the approach of rationality.

 

Feeling is the activity of the self as a whole; intellect is only an aspect of it. The self sees the whole while the intellect sees only a part. Recently the configuration or the gestalt school of psychology has laid stress on the importance of “the whole”, “an all” or “a totality” as knowable only by a direct vision or sensitiveness. A picture or a symphony constitutes a whole which is much more than the sum of its parts and parts alone fall within the province of reason.

 

There is no doubt that intuition errs but that does not detract from its value because, finally, it is only intuition that does not err, since it alone is capable of reaching the regions of that knowledge which the self is ever demanding. The self wants and loves Beauty (mistaken or real) and to know Beauty we can only depend upon feeling ultimately. Reason accompanies us for some time but our final destination, the ideal, wrong or right, can be reached only by feeling.

 

Because reason goes with us a part of the way, we are simple enough to forget when we reach the end of our path, that it had left us long ago and that the more important part of the journey was traversed by us in the company of feeling. It is faith, feeling or intuition which stimulates the philosopher and even the scientist to embark on the search for truth. Intellect gives a spur to intuition and makes it active in a particular direction, but the truth is first of all felt, intuited or believed, however vaguely it may be, and then discovered or rather demonstrated logically by reason as far as possible and what is possible for reason to demonstrate, in this way, never amounts to the whole of that which is intuited by the self directly. Conversely, what we consider as scientific or rational knowledge is never rational to a perfection and contains a good deal of the admixture of faith, intuition or feeling. That is one reason why scientific knowledge is always changing and altering itself.

 

If nature were to leave man to his intellect and take away faith from him, all his activities would come to a dead stop everywhere. If faith did not enter into my knowledge of my friend, I could have taken him easily for an automaton rather than a human being like myself. A person, who makes up his mind to believe only in facts which can be established scientifically or rationally, will be able to do nothing in this world. Without faith I cannot even believe that the sun will rise tomorrow or that a stone will fall to the ground when dropped from my hand any time today. Yet I act actually taking such things for hard facts. Faith is the spur of life. If we take up the attitude that what cannot be proved rationally belongs to the realm of the supernatural, the superstitious or the unseen, then it is a fact that we are (everyone of us is) believing in the supernatural, the superstitious or the unseen every moment of our life, in spite of this scientific age, and shall continue to do so in future whatever science may have to say or do. To depend upon faith for most of our beliefs and actions is not our weakness but rather our strength. We are strong only when we are true to our nature. We desire Beauty and strive after Beauty, and Beauty can be known by means of faith, feeling or intuition alone.

 

The activity of feeling or intuition to know Beauty or Consciousness is known as prayer. Prayer is the contemplation of Beauty. It makes its first natural and unavoidable beginnings in the case of every man in the form of his contemplation of the beauty of nature. All men pray to their Creator but few of them know that they do so. When the feeling or the desire for Beauty has been awakened in a natural way by our contemplation of the beauty of the Universe around us, we need to express it and there is no other way of expressing it except by praying. The feeling, the love or the desire for Beauty becomes stronger and grows without a limit if we continue to give it an adequate expression by praying regularly. If we do not express it in this way, which is the right way, then, since it must have an expression of some kind, it is perverted and diverted to wrong channels. The result is that sooner or later we suffer from all the harm that must come to us as a consequence of suppressing and misdirecting this desire of our nature.

 

It was said above that atheism is impossible. A passage of Professor James’, the well-known psychologist, throws some light on this point. “It seems”, says Professor James, “that in spite of all that Science may say or do to the contrary, men will continue to pray to the end of time, unless their mental nature changes in a manner which nothing we know should lead us to expect. The impulse to pray is a necessary consequence of the fact that whilst the innermost of the empirical selves of a man is a self of the social sort, yet it can find its adequate socius (its great companion) in an ideal world. Most men either continuously or occasionally carry a reference to it in their breasts. The humblest outcast on this earth can feel himself to be real and valid by means of this higher recognition. And, on the other hand, for most of us, a world with no such inner refuge, when the outer social self failed and dropped from us, would be the abyss of horror. I say for most of us because it is probable that men differ a good deal in the degree in which they are haunted by this sense of an ideal spectator. It is a much more essential part of the consciousness of some men than of others. Those who have the most of it are possibly the most religious men. But I am sure that even those who say they are altogether without it deceive themselves and really have it in some degree.”

 

What is prayer if not an expression of the feeling of the greatness, goodness and power or, to use only one word, the beauty of a Creator. All men pray at one time or another in their lives. All men, therefore, possess this feeling. That the impulse to pray is universal is again an indication that it has its root in something which is a part of our nature.

 

Unfortunately, we have not yet understood the real significance of our desire for prayer. It is the most powerful and the most important urge of human life making its first push for an outlet along the only channel that can offer it a free, full and continued expression. It is the desire for Beauty pressing for satisfaction. It is the crossroad sign of nature leading to the road of happiness. It is the voice of nature calling man to freedom, progress and power. If we listen to this voice, it becomes louder, more eloquent and more explicit and talks out to us the secrets of existence, the meaning of human life and the purpose of the Universe. If we stifle this voice, we give ourselves up to error and ultimate distress and sorrow which must persist so long as we do not listen to it again. We cannot escape from ourselves; It is impossible for us to shed our own nature.

 

In our ignorance, we deprive our initial feeling or desire for Beauty, which is the result of our necessary contact with and contemplation of Nature, of its adequate, natural expression in the form of prayers. We suppress it and try to kill it but it cannot be killed. It only diverts itself into other channels. No desire of our nature can be killed altogether unless it may be in the service of a really strong desire of a higher order. When we refuse to express a desire naturally, without seeking a substitute gratification in a higher desire, it is frustrated only in its natural form but manages to find expression in other perverted ways which are unnatural and injurious. A desire is a flow of energy; checked at one point it must (like a current of water) seek an outlet at some other point. If, on account of the check, the energy of the impulse stops its flow and accumulates like a pool of water, it is known as a repression or a complex which is still more injurious. The desire for Beauty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of a higher desire, since we have no desire higher than this. When it is denied its natural expression in the form of prayers, it is compelled to satisfy itself by means of substitutes, i.e., we take to other ideals leaving aside our own ideal, the ideal of Beauty. As we violate our nature, we prepare the way for our own future disappointments and miseries and, when they come, we return to praying once more. A man who does not pray leads an unnatural and abnormal life. He is either depriving his strongest desire of all satisfaction or is else feeling unreasonably interested, over-interested in certain things in which the urge of his self is wrongly finding an expression. He is either already worried and anxious or worries and anxieties are preparing to over-take him.

 

Why do we pray when surrounded by difficulties and disappointments? The desire to pray is the natural desire of the self for its own ideal. It is not caused by a disappointment or a misfortune. It is always there but becomes attached to wrong ideals. Whenever these wrong ideals play us false, as they must on account of their unreal character and their incompatibility with our nature, the desire for prayer is disengaged and set free We had misused and misdirected it and now it finds the opportunity to go its own way. Misfortune consists in the inevitable, forced detachment of this desire from an idea which proves unsatisfactory to the self and the consolation and the satisfaction that we derive from prayers is due to its reattachment to an idea that is most satisfactory to the self, that is, to the idea of the Divine Consciousness. Every misfortune is at bottom a sense of loneliness on the part of self, caused by the failure of wrong ideals— faithless companions always. Whenever the self, having lost contact with its only “adequate socius” the Divine Consciousness or the Right Ideal, seeks the company of a wrong ideal, its urge remains unsatisfied, but this fact is discovered by the self only when the wrong, faithless companion has actually deserted it. The self calls this discovery a misfortune and feels it hard to bear. At this juncture it has no course left open to it except to return to its own companion whom it had deserted in the beginning, owing to an error. Thus we find a man in distress engaged in prayers. Misfortune is nothing to a man who does not break company with the True Companion. Such a man has other companions too, but he always gives them their proper place. Their faithless character is already known and, therefore, when they fail him, he takes the event as a matter of course and is neither pained nor disappointed unduly.

 

The desire for prayer on the part of a man overtaken by a misfortune is not then the result of the misfortune. On the other hand, it is the misfortune that is the result of a repressed and frustrated desire for prayers which is a part of the nature of the self and which is always pressing for satisfaction. The cause of the misfortune is the nature of the self’s desire which cannot be satisfied by anything except by a perfect and permanent companion and which expresses itself normally and naturally in the form of prayers.

 

A misfortune is a blessing in disguise. If it is acute enough to compel a man to return to his own ideal, it should serve to open his eyes once and for all. But, unfortunately, we pray only in difficulties and do not keep up our contact with the Right Ideal continuously. We are too ready to take to wrong ideals not heeding for the call of the only friend that is a friend in need. This is an ungratefulness that harms nobody but ourselves and indeed we pay for it very dearly. Contact with Consciousness must be maintained and developed continuously by means of strictly regular habits of prayers. This is the only way in which we can protect ourselves from the attraction of wrong ideals which are always ready to mislead us into error and trouble.

 

Prayer is the highest and the most valuable experience of man. It is the communion of the human consciousness with its source, the Divine Consciousness. It is the journey of self towards its destination. It is the meeting of lovers long separated, lovers who have searched for each other long and hard through ages of evolution. The habit of praying, if continued, soon leads the self to a great revelation. The self feels calm, contented and peaceful as if it has found all that it had wanted. The communion of lovers develops into a permanent alliance animated, inspired and strengthened by an ever-increasing love and confidence. Every act of worship, in case it embodies an adequate expression of the existing feeling of Beauty, leads to a new glimpse of the beautiful and adds to the intensity and the strength of the feeling of Beauty. Love goes on increasing in this way till it develops into a powerful ideal swaying the whole life of the individual, reducing all previous ideals to mere subservient ideas and depriving them of power to interrupt the free movement of the self towards the Right Ideal. They are successfully combated and subdued by the growing love of the Right Ideal. The task is difficult and requires patience and effort, but this is a condition of every human achievement.

 

Prayer involves an attitude of self-negation which is really due to the self’s feeling of incompleteness in the presence of its beloved and the consequent desire for completeness. Self-negation is an effort for approach to the beloved and, therefore, results ultimately in self-affirmation, power and confidence. Nothing short of a sincere repentance expressed in an attitude of perfect humility, devotion and self-effacement and capable of bringing tears to the eyes as profusely as possible, can bring the self to its own, since it is only in this way that the self is able to shed the desires that are not its own, the desires that are out of harmony with its nature. This is the process of the self’s purification from the love of undesirable ideals with which it has associated itself for some time and which it has loved erroneously, much to its own loss. This process is necessary because the self’s store of love has to be made available for the Right Ideal. The most suitable time for such an ablution of tears is the last part of the night when conditions of quiet, seclusion and a complete detachment from the world are particularly favourable for concentration and inner effort.

 

The greater the self’s freedom from the love of ideals which are foreign to its real nature, the greater its approach to its own ideal of Beauty. With every fresh knowledge of Beauty the self not only adds to its own freedom but also to its own self-knowledge: it becomes more and more self conscious, emerges out of its material wrappings and regains itself bit by bit. The knowledge of the self and the knowledge of Beauty advance simultaneously, carrying forward the process of evolution, till self-consciousness achieves the loftiest heights possible to be achieved by the self in this physical world. When this happens the human consciousness feels an irresistible pull of attraction towards its beloved, the Divine Consciousness and for a time feels one with it, as a needle which is brought gradually towards a magnet is lifted by it automatically as soon as it is sufficiently close to it. As long as the self remains in this state—and it is only for a short time that it remains in this state—it forgets its own independence. It is no longer in touch with time and space because it is one with the Creator of both.

 

The experience is beyond all description. It marks the highest evolution and the fullest liberation of the self. It is the greatest, the most intoxicating and the most exhilarating joy known to man. Every other pleasure looks pale and insignificant by the side of it. A similar but lesser joy gradually increasing was being experienced by the evolving consciousness on its way behind, guiding it towards further effort by giving it hope and consolation and now here was its culmination. So great is the joy that sometimes the lover does not want to return from the state of bliss he has reached. But this is disobedience to the beloved and the result of it is the loss of mind. The self loses contact with the world of matter because it does not want to maintain this contact. The punishment is of its own choice. The true lover not only knows that his role is that of a servant but also that the highest realization of his love will come only through service. He submits to the beloved with the whole of his being, which includes his faculties for action. He approaches him not with a view to losing himself but in order to regain himself, to come to his own and to develop the best of his capacities for action. He would rather be at a distance from the beloved in order to maintain his independence than approach him and lose it because that is the way in which he can be true to his love. When the culminating point of evolution is, therefore, reached, he does not feel that he has passed away into the embrace of the beloved but he feels that the beloved has passed into his own embrace. With him the ultimate experience is not that of a complete self-effacement but that of a complete self-affirmation in which the independence of self is fully maintained. He is able to have such a feeling at the highest point of his progress because he maintains it and protects it carefully all along. This feeling is due to. his attitude of service and action which became fixed and unshakable in the course of the development of his self-consciousness, which of course took place by a gradual process. He looked upon his devotional exercises throughout not as a source of pleasure which was an incidental gain but as a source of power for action which was what he really desired. His principal source of pleasure was action and service. He was always acting with the whole of his ever-increasing strength to win the favour of the beloved and his attention was, therefore, concentrated throughout on the pleasure he derived from action in his service than from his mere company. In fact, with him action was the most pleasant form of company of the beloved. When such a true lover reaches the state of his highest self-development, it is not a state of complete self-obliviousness but rather that of a complete self-consciousness. So deeply is he absorbed in the love of the Creator, at certain times, that he cannot help feeling as if he is the Creator himself. But he does not identify himself with the Creator and always knows that such a feeling is no more than an error engendered by his intense love. A piece of iron kept in fire for sometime does not lose its identity but it becomes so hot and red that it is difficult to distinguish it from the fire in which it is placed. So, in the periods of its intense love for the Creator, the loving self does not lose its identity but still finds it difficult to distinguish itself from the Creator. Such periods are, however, not long. The lover wants to return to his real position as a devoted servant and, therefore, returns to it soon. The self in his case dives deeply into the sea of its own knowledge but rises to the surface again ready to direct the knowledge so gained to its end—the service of the beloved. Soaked with beauty and power he is urged to lead a dynamic life which becomes the wonder of humanity.

 

The true lover feels a joy in winning the beloved’s pleasure by means of service that is in striving to approach him rather than in approaching him actually and finally. A sense of actual approach means the end of further progress and further approach while really there can be no end to the lover’s progress or approach. The demand of his love is to seek the beloved for ever without reaching him. He knows that the actual approach, should it come, will diminish his joy and he, therefore, tries to keep apart from the beloved, so that he may ever have the unique joy of winning his pleasure and gaining his nearness by action and effort. He wants to keep apart in order that he may ever continue to approach, conflicting needs which he reconciles by finding ever fresh opportunities for service and action and such opportunities can never be lacking as long as the world does not reach its perfection or as long as there are other selves who have yet to attain to their highest self-consciousness.

 

A living cell in an organism has two capacities. Firstly, it is a complete individual, a complete organism by itself and must function for the maintenance of its own health and growth. Secondly, it is a part of a whole which is the whole organism. Its health depends upon the health of the organism and the health of the organism depends upon it. If it is sufficiently healthy itself it passes on its health to the organism and thereby gains in health itself. It cannot be perfectly healthy unless the whole organism is healthy. Similarly, every human self has two capacities. It is a complete individual by itself and at the same time it is a part of a whole which is ultimately the whole of the human society. A human self can, therefore, reach its ultimate perfection not individually but only in the whole of which it is a part. The ultimate destination of every self is not only its own highest evolution but also the highest evolution of the whole of the human race. An ardent lover, therefore, does not feel contented with his own individual achievements. He does not feel satisfied with himself unless he is doing all that he can, to aid the evolution of the whole of the human race. Every effort that he puts forth in order to aid the evolution of the rest of humanity enables him to satisfy a bit more of the urge of his consciousness and to add further to his own self-consciousness in his capacity as an individual, and this process can continue indefinitely.

 

The urge of human consciousness is not only to reach its own perfection but also to bring the whole of humanity to a perfection because the urge of human consciousness is the same as the urge of Divine Consciousness. The divine manifestation or realisation can never reach its completeness or perfection in a single isolated individual. The perfection of the whole of the human society and not that of a single individual is the ideal of the Creator. The true lover, therefore, changes the world by action so as to make it suit more and more the common purpose of his beloved as well as his own. His action is creative action like the action of his beloved, the Creator, because it is directly and consciously helpful to evolution and conforms to the purpose of creation. He functions in accordance with his proper role as the deputy of the Creator on earth. It is such a man who achieves a real union with the Creator because he acts in a way in which the Creator would act Himself. It is the purpose of the Creator that takes a human shape in his person and becomes active in the world. We shall come across such a person as a Moses, a Christ or a Mohammad. He appears as a reformer who knows where reform is needed or as a preacher struggling against ignorance or as a martyr sacrificing himself for the victory of truth or as a general fighting the war of justice and peace or as a political leader opposing the rule of tyranny and oppression or, more commonly, as an ordinary man of the world, not lesser than any of the heroes mentioned above, who sets a worthy example to other men by leading a life of industry, honesty, patience and righteousness in the face of difficulties. But a hero inspired by the love of his Creator is not to be confused with other heroes, who display their heroism in the service of wrong ideals. His sacrifices alone are directed to the right end and count for anything directly useful to humanity.

 

“Love” transforms the whole life of an individual. A lover feels real and immortal. He is filled with hope, courage and confidence. He feels perfectly at home in this world. In him alone can we find a high personality or even a genuinely good character. He is coloured deeply in the attributes of his Creator. He is kind and generous to all human beings of all colours, castes, creeds and nationalities. He is truthful, upright, brave, merciful, strong, independent, self-respecting, courteous, social, magnanimous and forbearing. The reason is that fear which is the cause of all vices leaves him once for all. What is the cause of fear? We fear when we think we may not get what we desire. When we are dominated by fear we resort to lies, treacheries, diplomacy, deceit, fraud, malice, flattery, theft, murder, cowardice and cruelty. The lover need have no fear since his only desire is the pleasure of the beloved. Like other human beings, he desires to have a nice share of the good things of this world but since all such desires are subordinate to his one desire —the pleasure of the beloved—he wants to get them by right methods, that is, methods consistent with the pleasure of the beloved or not at all. He alone, by the way, knows what is right and what is wrong. Without slackening his efforts he is confident that he will continue to get everything that the beloved desires and beyond that he wants nothing. The desire of the beloved is his own desire. So what should he fear except fear itself and the resulting vice. His only fear is the displeasure of the beloved and that relieves him of every other variety of fear. His only love is the pleasure of the beloved and that relieves him of all other loves. This is the true emancipation of the self and this alone can ennoble the character or raise the personality of the individual.

 

A self-conscious man cannot be a slave. Self-consciousness and slavery are terms incompatible with each other. Self-consciousness means a perfect freedom to act. It is possible only when the self is acting under the single, unmixed influence of its own ideal, while slavery imposes ideals of its own. As soon as a self-conscious man begins to act, or is restrained from acting, under the influence of another ideal, he is no longer self-conscious. He is a slave. He will maintain his freedom as well as his self-consciousness only if he comes into a conflict with the ideal which is foreign to his nature and which interferes with his activities in the service of his own ideal. In this conflict he must continue to fight till he wins a victory for himself even if it involves the loss of his life. The moment love ceases to grow, it ceases to exist. A lover who disobeys a definite demand of his love of which he has become conscious is not a lover at all. Love cannot grow and cannot even exist if it makes a compromise with any of its obstacles. It must meet and destroy them. The self wants to be ruled only by a single desire—that for its own ideal. With the exception of this desire, all other desires have to be combated and subdued. Whenever the self is able to rule for the sake of its ideal, a desire which was ruling it once, it grows in self-consciousness, evolves itself, becomes free and gains in strength. The freedom and the strength so gained are used again for overcoming more obstacles and thus by removing its bonds and fetters of slavery one after the other it grows in self-consciousness. The self evolves in order to rule everything except its own ideal by which it loves to be ruled itself because, as long as it continues to be ruled by other ideals, it is not free to love, adore and obey its own ideal.

 

Slavery can be due only to a wrong love or, which is the same thing, to a wrong fear. Sometimes the wrong love may be only the love of the body and its desires and the wrong fear may be only the fear of death and physical inconvenience. Ultimately, all kinds of slavery are due to internal causes which means wrong loves and wrong fears. No one can be a slave unless he accepts to be a slave and no one can accept to be a slave unless he has the love of a wrong ideal. The love of every wrong ideal is a covering of matter which the self needs to outgrow.

 

The complete liberation or the highest consciousness of the self should not be considered as an achievement of some persons gifted with special faculties developed by special exercises and activities or as a peculiarity of certain mystics or religious-minded or eccentric people who devote their life to worship and prefer to remain out of touch with the world. It is the achievement of every self that functions normally and naturally. Every self is similar to every other self in its functions and qualities. Every self has the same urge for Beauty. Every self must, therefore, reach the same destination if it is able to have a smooth way for itself. The goal of the highest self-consciousness is the inevitable goal to which every self is driven consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly, by the forces of its own nature, which, since this nature is permanent, must continue to operate even beyond death. We can delay it, if we choose, at a huge cost to ourselves, but we cannot escape it ultimately. But why should we try to escape it? It is all that we really desire; everything else that we desire is only a mistaken, unsatisfactory substitute for it which we are bound to discard sooner or later, and the sooner we discard it the better.

 

Every self can attain to as much of its own consciousness and liberation as is possible for it to attain in this physical world. But just as the intellectual capacities of men vary, their capacities for love also vary. All men can learn and become educated but some are abler than others and some are geniuses gifted with originality and creative intellects. Similarly, in some gifted persons consciousness attains to such lofty heights of its own knowledge that through them it is able to dictate its own law to the world. These persons, known as prophets, are the spiritual leaders of our race in whom the liberation of consciousness achieves creative results. Their guidance is a great blessing for mankind because it puts a stagnating world once again on the road of progress and prosperity, spares it from the hardships of seeking the truth by the dangerous method of trial and error and inspires it with hope, power and confidence. It is only from such persons that we can acquire an adequate knowledge of human nature, of the real desires of the self and the ways and means of their satisfaction as well as of our errors and slips and the manner in which they may be avoided. The subject of prophethood will, however, be discussed more fully in another chapter of this book.

 

Men who attain to the highest liberation of the self are not peculiar unworldly people but they are, as a matter of fact, the real worldly-wise practical men who alone are able to make the most of their worldly life in all its aspects. They live the richest, the fullest and the most abundant life possible because they alone know the right and the wrong of everything not merely in theory but in practice. They are free from doubts and fears because they are inspired by a single ideal which they love with all the love of which they are capable. They alone are able to enjoy their worldly life to the fullest extent. They get the maximum out of it and make the most of it because their urge to love is completely and permanently satisfied. Love, permanent and full, alone is the joy of life.

 

In the state of its own highest consciousness the self becomes free from the shackles of what is known as determinism. Determinism is nothing but the purpose of the Creator working in man and the Universe. In the case of a man who is yet struggling for the freedom of his consciousness, the purpose of the Creator which is the cause of His free, creative activity in the Universe, is an external force acting on the will. But in the case of a man who has attained to the highest liberation of the self, the purpose of the World-Self ceases to be an external force and becomes identical with the will of the man himself. It becomes his own freely chosen and cherished desire. The man becomes a co-worker with the Divine-Self towards an end which is desired as much by him as by the Divine-Self. This does not mean that the human self merely submits to the compulsion of the Divine-Self willingly because it cannot do otherwise or that it makes this purpose its own because it finds that it has no alternative but to reconcile itself to it. It means much more than this. Not only does the human self reconcile itself to the purpose of the Creator, but the Creator too reconciles Himself to the purpose of the human self so that whatever it wills comes to pass. The human self at the highest stage of its self consciousness works not only with the purpose of the Creator but also with the power of the Creator behind it. It is the conscious activity of the Creator that flows into the channel of and assumes the form of the conscious activity of the human self and to the extent to which it is so, that is, to the extent the human self is carrying out the purpose of the Creator, the powers of the Creator lie at its disposal. The Divine-Self is, in a way, relieved by the human self of a portion of its task of creation. Yet it is the Creator who really acts through the agency of the human self. The human self does for the Creator what the Creator would have done for Himself and the Creator does for the human self what the human self would have done for itself.

 

The process of evolution is the process by means of which consciousness is expressing itself, that is, its powers and possibilities in creation. This process is pushed forward by the drive or the urge of consciousness. To the extent consciousness has not yet been able to express itself in matter at any time, it depends upon its own hidden powers to carry on the process of evolution, and to the extent it has been able to express itself in matter, it depends upon its powers, expressed in matter, to continue this process. Similar is the process of the evolution of consciousness at the animal as well as at the human stage. At the animal stage consciousness expresses itself in the form of living organisms and to the extent it is able to express itself in them and is represented by conscious creatures on earth, it makes use of those creatures, that is, of its own powers expressed or manifested in those creatures, to serve its purpose of future evolution. To the extent the creature serves this purpose, its efforts favour the potentialities of consciousness and coincide with its unseen efforts. To that extent, therefore, the creature progresses and evolves and thereby draws into itself and manifests in itself the hidden powers of consciousness. To the extent the creature’s efforts run counter to the potentialities of consciousness or to its secret purpose, it is unable to progress and evolve and is, therefore, left to perish gradually. The efforts of the creature only bring the latent urge of consciousness into play more and more so that the creature can evolve only in a direction which is consistent with the potentialities of consciousness.

 

In the human stage of evolution too, as the self-consciousness of a man develops, consciousness expresses itself in him more and more. To the extent consciousness has not yet been able to express itself in man it depends upon its own hidden powers to push on the process of evolution. But to the extent to which it expresses itself in the growing self-consciousness of man, it makes use of him, that is, of its own powers expressed in him to serve its purpose of future evolution. A man is able to serve this purpose to the extent to which he is self-conscious and to the extent to which he serves it, his efforts favour the potentialities or the purpose of consciousness and coincide with its unseen efforts. To that extent, therefore, he is able to evolve and make further additions to his self-consciousness. But to the extent he is unable to serve this purpose, he is unable to progress and evolve; he is acting immorally and his efforts run counter to the purpose of the Creator and to the potentialities of consciousness.

 

When a man reaches the highest stage of his self-consciousness, consciousness expresses itself in him to such an extent that a part of its hidden powers becomes manifest in him. This stage is achieved generally during the time of prayers or contemplation for a short period of time, but has a tendency to recur as often as one makes an effort. Just as in the case of the Divine-Self, to think or to desire is to create, similarly in the case of a human self that has reached the highest stage of self-consciousness, that is, a stage where a man is able to share the purpose of the Creator consciously, to think or to desire is to create. This accounts for the miracles of Christ and other prophets as also for the efficacy of the prayers of those men who have attained to the highest degree of self-consciousness At this stage man becomes perfectly free. He outgrows the limitations of fate and determinism and whatever he desires comes to pass. But the desires of a self-conscious man are different from the desires of ordinary human beings.

 

We should not look upon praying as a curious, awkward or unfashionable sort of activity. It is an activity of the highest order since it is the search for Beauty. The activity of a scientist engaged in the search of truth is directed to the same end and is essentially of the same nature. The only difference between the worshipper and the scientist is that while the former comes into contact with the Reality as a whole, the latter sees only a fraction of it. Praying must be looked upon rather as an indication of culture and a mark of civilisation. The act of a man busy with his prayers is fundamentally of the same character as that of a man studying a beautiful picture. Only in the former case, since the act involves the contemplation of Ideal Beauty, the pleasure is capable of increasing to the highest point, while in the latter case it has a limit which is reached very soon. But this is true only of the highest form of prayer which is an expression of a genuine feeling of Beauty and which is not merely a sort of begging.

 

It is well known that the appreciation of Beauty in a concrete object, e.g., a picture, is an active process which itself contributes to the nature and intensity of the experience. This accounts for the great differences in the appreciation of the beauty of an object by the same person at different times or by different persons at the same time. When this activity of consciousness is directed towards understanding the source of beauty itself, it is known as prayer. You can increase your feeling of the Beauty of Consciousness or your love of Ideal Beauty by regular prayers just as you can intensify your appreciation of the beauty of a picture by contemplation. What you appreciate in a picture is not the physical object made up of the colour or canvas but the meaning behind it which is the total impression of beauty that the artist has achieved. The nearer you approach to this impression, the greater is your appreciation of Beauty. The meaning in the case of prayer is represented not by line or colour but by the words which express the attributes of Beauty. The appreciation of Beauty through the symbols of words should not be a less interesting affair than its appreciation through the symbols of line, curve or colour.

 

The attitude of submission or self-negation is a necessary part of the act of worship, but even this is not peculiar to worship. The contemplation of Beauty always involves an attitude of submission which is an automatic result of the attraction of the beautiful object and the desire to approach it or seek a closer contact with it. This attitude is easily discernible in our contemplation of the beauty of a picture.

 

In the case of prayer the attitude of submission or self-negation is amply rewarded by a sense of completeness, pride, power and confidence which is a direct result of it.

 

The Fourth Stage in the development of self-consciousness begins at the death of the physical body. The self is immortal. It cannot die because it is the only reality in the Universe. It is the self that creates the body and not the body that creates the self. The self incarnates itself in matter in order to find a scope for struggle which is its life. When it has conquered matter and achieved the maximum of its progress which it could have achieved by means of opposing matter, it no longer requires a body for its future progress. It becomes independent of the body just as at one time it became independent of a new species for its future development. There was a time in its evolution when it freed itself from the limitations of physical laws and appeared in the form of a living autonomous cell. In the next stage it freed itself from the compulsion of instincts. Finally, it may free itself entirely from matter and yet continue to progress. Death marks the beginning of a new stage, only one in millions of stages, in the career of life. It has passed through innumerable such stages in the past from the beginning of creation till the present times.

 

The self has ever gone on and on and there is no reason to think that it will stop its forward march at what is known as death. To do so will be contrary to its nature, as we have known it so far. And why should it stop? Much remains to be achieved yet. The Beauty that it was seeking all along is unlimited. It may have enriched itself much with that Beauty no doubt but it can continue to enrich itself with it more and more for ever. The self, however much it may have progressed in the world, has not yet reached the maximum of its own consciousness. It can assimilate more of light yet.

 

The progress achieved by the self in the third stage assures its smooth progress in the fourth stage. This smooth progress is the joy of Paradise. It is a continuation of that joy, due to a sense of completeness, which the devoted self was able to achieve in this world; only it is far superior to it. It is continuous and grows automatically and without suffering. There are two Heavens, one in this world and the other in the next, and the Heaven of the next world is a continuation of the Heaven of this world. The self in this stage will get all that it wants and we know that it will not want anything more than what it has ever wanted, that is, an ever-increasing intimacy with Beauty, a new glimpse of it every time, leading to an ever greater and greater sense of its own completeness and happiness. This will include all that it will desire. The self that has achieved this joy in the world knows that it can never go. Since the self is immortal, love, its function, is also immortal. Paradise is love having a smooth way.

 

All human selves live here and hereafter but all of them do not live equally. Life and death are relative terms. There is nothing that is absolutely dead and there is nothing that is absolutely alive except the Divine-Self. Absolute life belongs only to the Source of Consciousness. We live only in proportion as we are near to this Source. The higher our stage of evolution, the nearer we are to the Source of Consciousness and, therefore, to the quality of immortality. We live in this world as well as in the next in proportion to our self-consciousness. The stones are less alive than animals and the animals are less alive than men and among men too there are varying stages of life. The prophets, the saints and other highly self-conscious men are the only persons really and fully alive. Death of the physical body makes no difference to the lives of such persons. They live beyond death. They have a new glimpse of Beauty, that is to say, a new addition to their life every moment. Their self-consciousness continues to progress indefinitely and automatically without struggle or pain because they have no obstacles to conquer. Fear and grief, which are the result of obstacles in the way of love, do not exist for them. It is this state of bliss which we call Paradise. Hell, on the other hand, is the name of those battles of the self with its obstacles which continue beyond death.