Realising the Whole Self, and not just a Bit

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More Than A Bit*

 

In the Bhagavad Gita the Lord speaks of the individual soul as being a fragment

of Himself, when He says that, in creating man and placing him in the empirical

world, He projects a fragment of Himself as the jiva, the conscious individual:

 

A fragment of My own Self, having become the living soul (jiva) in the world

of jivas, (yet notwithstanding its changing empirical personality, intrinsically

eternal by nature), draws to itself the (five) senses and the mind (which is the

sixth), which rest in nature (prakriti).

When the Lord takes up a body and when He leaves it, He takes these (senses and

the mind) with Him and goes, even as the wind carries perfumes from their

places. (Gita 15.7-8)

 

In other words, there is a flavour, a quality or essence peculiar to each

personality which depends on the qualities of mind with which that personality

is associated, and there is also a spiritual element beyond the qualities,

changeless and eternal, which is at the core of the personality and is

intrinsically divine by nature.

 

There are two implications to this doctrine: one is that man is only a fragment,

in some way incomplete and separated from that whole of which he is merely a

part, and the second implication is that he is, at least in part, a

representative of something greater than himself and that he can only reach

complete fulfilment by realising his unity with that whole.

 

Some years ago when the speaker and his wife paid a brief visit to China, we

brought back some glass figures of Chinese horses and, rather than leaving them

to lie unseen in some box or drawer, we recently decided to put them out where

they could be seen and enjoyed on the mantelpiece. The other day we returned

home to find a mournful little mound of fragments, collected by the good lady

who cleans for us. Even a cursory glance at these fragments showed that the form

of the horse had disintegrated into at least twenty or thirty pieces. The shape

of the horse could no longer be seen, and it was difficult to identify which bit

of it came from which part of the horse's anatomy. Besides, the head appeared to

be altogether missing. As a work of art, the horse was effectively destroyed,

and only a painstaking reconstitution, carried out over a long period of

infinite patience, comparable to that used on the Portland vase in the British

Museum when a madman shattered it with his umbrella some years ago, could have

had any chance of reconstituting the horse. Until that was done, the fragments

were nothing more than an ugly lot of debris. Yet they were each a fragment of a

work of art, and to the one who knew the form of the horse and was willing to

take the trouble to reconstitute it, they could in principle be reassembled.

There are people who devote their life to such work. But it is easier to destroy

than to create, and in the empirical world as we know it, fragmentation usually

condemns one to joining the flotsam and jetsam of ordinary life.

 

It is the same with man. Most of us are mere fragments of what we could be and,

as a consequence, we are condemned to drift about a world largely made up of

half-damaged goods. But that is not the necessary fate of man. There is a means

of escaping from this fragmentary life and achieving wholeness again. Indeed,

according to the doctrine of Plato, man has a dim memory of his unfragmented

state, and his undying urge for happiness and freedom is a result of that dimly

remembered possiblity.

 

Fragmentation involves a sense of isolation, of being cut off from the whole of

which one is a part. If we are to believe the psychologists and the

psycho-analysts, a great many of man's mental problems arise from lack of

integration in our thinking, and there is an important school of current

psychiatry which regards madness as a process of fragmentation of the self.

This, of course, is quite an old idea in the case of schizophrenia, the

so-called 'split personality', but this modern school would explain other forms

of psychiatric disorder too on the same basis. From the point of view of Yoga,

the idea has a much wider significance, because it is precisely the sense of

fragmentation of the individual, feeling himself to be a separate bit of the

world around him, in confrontation with it and with a conflict of his own

interests and those of others, which leads to the feeling of narrow selfishness

and all the ills that flow from it. These ills are not limited to the individual

life, but can be seen operating also socially, nationally and internationally.

Yet, if what the Lord says is true, each and every individual is also

potentially divine and universal, capable of realising his true identity as a

spiritual being, at one with the inner life of the whole universe and at peace

with himself and all other beings because he is awake to the inner unity of all.

 

In the modern world our life is increasingly dominated by information

technology. And that technology is in turn based on the unit of the bit. What is

a bit? It is, in fact, an abbreviation for the word 'binit', and it is so called

because it is the primary binary digit, which exists in only two states, as a

nought or a one. All the information which is carried in computers, whether

verbal or mathematical, is registered in the form of the bit. And one might say,

from the yogic point of view, that the bit is the fundamental register of

duality. It is the primary division of things into this or that, into nothing or

something, into yes and no, in a word, into the primary pairs of opposites. From

this technology of the bit register, we develop the whole modern technology of

the computer and the word processor. And our life nowadays is becoming

increasingly dominated by the computer and the word processor. No wonder our

life seems bitty!

 

But it is worth remembering that the same descent into duality and bittiness is

implied in the teaching of the Gita that the jiva is a fragment of the Lord

projected into the world of duality. And the mind is in a sense, not a word

processor, but a world processor, a device dealing only in the pairs of

opposites, registering its information in the form of love and hate, hope and

despair, hot and cold, sweet and sour, pleasure and pain. The senses are like

the terminals of the computer, into which the passing impressions are

continually being imputted, while the mind tries to make of impressions a

coherent story by editing, transposing and interpreting what it senses. And in

trying to make those coherent stories out of the raw material, it adds a good

deal of its own fantasies and prejudices to the interpretation. Indeed the mind,

in its raw state, is a most unreliable guide. Not all the stories that it tells

are true, and many - even if there is a grain of truth in them - are grossly

biased by our own predilections. Consequently we spend most of our life watching

this world processor and seeing a whole succession of fantasies, some romances,

some high tragedies, some horrors and some funny stories, but, all in all,

constituting a great deal of fiction and a relatively little history, although

there are a few reliable documentaries scattered here and there in the

programame!

 

But like the television screen, the raw mind all too easily edges us gradually

into the position of a passive and impotent spectator, taking what we are given

by experience and feeling powerless to do anything about it. In return for being

diverted and distracted, we lose any sense of responsibility for our own states,

and fall back on blaming fate or the world or others for our sense of

dissatisfaction.

 

Yet the mind, like the rest of our modern technology, is simply an instrument,

which we can use as a good servant to achieve our end, or as an instrument of

our own downfall. Just as the computer and the word processor can be used

creatively to increase our knowledge and understanding of events, so can the

mind be used as a friend (as the Gita emphasises) to deepen our understanding of

life and our own nature.

 

As long as man remains a fragment, feeling himself to be the impotent, isolated,

selfish individual, desperately trying to ensure his own survival and to promote

his own egotistical interests, he will remain a fractional man, not realising

anything of his higher potentialities. As Rama Tirtha says:

 

The very fact that nobody wants to die, that every man considers himself to be

wisdom personified or desires to remain independent, and that he loves peace and

desires permanent happiness, go to prove to the hilt that there is an underlying

and essential unity in the fundamental psychology of man.... since we all

emanate and are manifested from the same unmanifested Self (Atman), we have

inherited its basic nature, just as the seeds of the fruit of a plant or a tree

inherit basic qualities of the original seed. The nature of Brahman, call it

God, is absolute truth (eternity), absolute consciousness (wisdom personified)

and absolute bliss (everlasting happiness). In the Vedantic terminology, it is

sat-chit-ananda. This nature is, therefore, inherent in us. Why should we, then,

desire death? Why should we not ignore death, which is associated with our gross

body alone? We are not the body after all. We are the Atman. Why should we then

worry about death? Fundamentally our real Self is truth, the eternal Self which

is indestructible and immortal.

 

....Unfortunately the pity is that you, through your own ignorance, have

forgotten your limitless Self and have wrongly identified yourself with your

limited body, mind and intellect, with the result that you have to feel all the

sufferings associated with them. It is really sad that you do not realise that

you yourself are the happiness incarnate. Happiness is not found in sense

objects. It is you who bestow happiness on the worldy objects. In spite of your

identification with your body (antahkarana), your real Self which is

indestructible and immortal asserts itself to remind you of your true nature

(truth, consciousness and bliss) which is common to all. This explains our

fundamental inner unity with all, the all-pervading universal Self which we

really are.

 

In this passage, Swami Rama puts in a nutshell the aim and object of Yoga. It is

to reawaken man to his real nature, not as an isolated segment, but as an

integrated part of the divine reality which lies behind the appearance of the

universe. This inner reality is beyond duality, it is ever unfragmented. It is

'ekam advaitam', one without a second. Any bit, any fragmentary one has a

second, and its opposite is zero, but the spiritual truth is beyond the finite,

the fragmented. And it is also beyond death, which affects only the finite

fragments. As Shelley says in 'Adonais':

 

The One remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity,

Until death tramples it to fragments.

 

Man can awaken to this reality, because it is his own nature, his own real Self,

hidden behind the personality. As the Lord says in the Gita, 'I abide deep in

the hearts of all beings'. It is in this sense that we should understand the

words of St. Paul:

 

For now we see as through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face: now I know in

part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (I Corinthians 13.12)

 

*A lecture given at Shanti Sadan on 25th May 1984.

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 15-21