The Realisation of the Infinite

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The Realisation of the Infinite

 

The Upanishads say: " Man becomes true if in this life he can apprehend God; if

not, it is the greatest calamity for him. "

 

But what is the nature of this attainment of God? It is quite evident that the

infinite is not like one object among many, to be definitely classified and kept

among our possessions, to be used as an ally specially favouring us in our

politics, warfare, money-making, or in social competitions. We cannot put our

God in the same list with our summer-houses, motor-cars, or our credit at the

bank, as so many people seem to want to do.

 

We must try to understand the true character of the desire that a man has when

his soul longs for his God. Does it consist of his wish to make an addition,

however valuable, to his belongings? Emphatically no! It is an endlessly

wearisome task, this continual adding to our stores. In fact, when the soul

seeks God she seeks her final escape from this incessant gathering and heaping

and never coming to an end. It is not an additional object that she seeks, but

it is the nityo 'nityanam, the permanent in all that is impermanent, the rasanam

rasatamah, the highest abiding joy unifying all enjoyments. Therefore when the

Upanishads teach us to realise everything in Brahma, it is not to seek something

extra, not to manufacture something new.

 

Know everything that there is in the universe as enveloped by God. (v.55) Enjoy

whatever is given by him and harbour not in your mind the greed for wealth which

is not your own. (v.56)

 

When you know that whatever there is is filled by him and whatever you have is

his gift, then you realise the infinite in the finite, and the giver in the

gifts. Then you know that all the facts of the reality have their only meaning

in the manifestation of the one truth, and all your possessions have their only

significance for you, not in themselves but in the relation they establish with

the infinite.

 

So it cannot be said that we can find Brahma as we find other objects; there is

no question of searching from him in one thing in preference to another, in one

place instead of somewhere else. We do not have to run to the grocer's shop for

our morning light; we open our eyes and there it is; so we need only give

ourselves up to find that Brahma is everywhere.

 

This is the reason why Buddha admonished us to free ourselves from the

confinement of the life of the self. If there were nothing else to take its

place more positively perfect and satisfying, then such admonition would be

absolutely unmeaning. No man can seriously consider the advice, much less have

any enthusiasm for it, of surrendering everything one has for gaining nothing

whatever.

 

So our daily worship of God is not really the process of gradual acquisition of

him, but the daily process of surrendering ourselves, removing all obstacles to

union and extending our consciousness of him in devotion and service, in

goodness and in love.

 

The Upanishads say: Be lost altogether in Brahma like an arrow that has

completely penetrated its target. Thus to be conscious of being absolutely

enveloped by Brahma is not an act of mere concentration of mind. It must be the

aim of the whole of our life. In all our thoughts and deeds we must be conscious

of the infinite. Let the realisation of this truth become easier every day of

our life, that none could live or move if the energy of the all-pervading joy

did not fill the sky. (v. 57) In all our actions let us feel that impetus of the

infinite energy and be glad.

 

It may be said that the infinite is beyond our attainment, so it is for us as if

it were naught. Yes, if the word attainment implies any idea of possession, then

it must be admitted that the infinite is unattainable. But we must keep in mind

that the highest enjoyment of man is not in the having but in a getting, which

is at the same time not getting. Our physical pleasures leave no margin for the

unrealised. They, like the dead satellite of the earth, have but little

atmosphere around them. When we take food and satisfy our hunger it is a

complete act of possession. So long as the hunger is not satisfied it is a

pleasure to eat. For then our enjoyment of eating touches at every point the

infinite. But, when it attains completion, or in other words, when our desire

for eating reaches the end of the stage of its non-realisation, it reaches the

end of its pleasure. In all our intellectual pleasures the margin is broader,

the limit is far off. In all our deeper love getting and non-getting run ever

parallel. In one of our Vaishnava lyrics the lover says to his beloved: " I feel

as if I have gazed upon the beauty of thy face from my birth, yet my eyes are

hungry still: as if I have kept thee pressed to my heart for millions of years,

yet my heart is not satisfied. "

 

This makes it clear that it is really the infinite whom we seek in our

pleasures. Our desire for being wealthy is not a desire for a particular sum of

money but it is indefinite, and the most fleeting of our enjoyments are but the

momentary touches of the eternal. The tragedy of human life consists in our vain

attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited,--to

reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.

 

It is evident from this that the real desire of our soul is to get beyond all

our possessions. Surrounded by things she can touch and feel, she cries, " I am

weary of getting; ah, where is he who is never to be got? "

 

We see everywhere in the history of man that the spirit of renunciation is the

deepest reality of the human soul. When the soul says of anything, " I do not

want it, for I am above it, " she gives utterance to the highest truth that is in

her. When a girl's life outgrows her doll, when she realises that in every

respect she is more than her doll is, then she throws it away. By the very act

of possession we know that we are greater than the things we possess. It is a

perfect misery to be kept bound up with things lesser than ourselves. This it is

that Maitreyi felt when her husband gave her his property on the eve of leaving

home. She asked him, " Would these material things help one to attain the

highest? " --or, in other words, " Are they more than my soul to me? " When her

husband answered, " They will make you rich in worldly possessions, " she said at

once, " then what am I to do with these? " It is only when a man truly realises

what his possessions are that he has no more illusions about them; then he knows

his soul is far above these things and he becomes free from their bondage. Thus

man truly realises his soul by outgrowing his possessions, and man's progress in

the path of eternal life is through a series of renunciations.

 

That we cannot absolutely possess the infinite being is not a mere intellectual

proposition. It has to be experienced, and this experience is bliss. The bird,

while taking its flight in the sky, experiences at every beat of its wings that

the sky is boundless, that its wings can never carry it beyond. Therein lies its

joy. In the cage the sky is limited; it may be quite enough for all the purposes

of the bird's life, only it is not more than is necessary. The bird cannot

rejoice within the limits of the necessary. It must feel that what it has is

immeasurably more than it ever can want or comprehend, and then only can it be

glad.

 

Thus our soul must soar in the infinite, and she must feel every moment that in

the sense of not being able to come to the end of her attainment is her supreme

joy, her final freedom.

 

Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in giving himself up to

what is greater than himself, to ideas which are larger than his individual

life, the idea of his country, of humanity, of God. They make it easier for him

to part with all that he has, not expecting his life. His existence is miserable

and sordid till he finds some great idea which can truly claim his all, which

can release him from all attachment to his belongings. Buddha and Jesus, and all

our great prophets, represent such great ideas. They hold before us

opportunities for surrendering our all. When they bring forth their divine

alms-bowl we feel we cannot help giving, and we find that in giving is our

truest joy and liberation, for it is uniting ourselves to that extent with the

infinite.

 

Man is not complete; he is yet to be. In what he is he is small, and if we could

conceive him stopping there for eternity we should have an idea of the most

awful hell that man can imagine. In his to be he is infinite, there is his

heaven, his deliverance. His is occupied every moment with what it can get and

have done with; his to be is hungering for something which is more than can be

got, which he never can lose because he never has possessed.

 

The finite pole of our existence has its place in the world of necessity. There

man goes about searching for food to live, clothing to get warmth. In this

region--the region of nature--it is his function to get things. The natural man

is occupied with enlarging his possessions.

 

But this act of getting is partial. It is limited to man's necessities. We can

have a thing only to the extent of our requirements, just as a vessel can

contain water only to the extent of its emptiness. Our relation to food is only

in feeding, our relation to a house is only in habitation. We call it a benefit

when a thing is fitted only to some particular want of ours. Thus to get is

always to get partially, and it never can be otherwise. So this craving for

acquisition belongs to our finite self.

 

But that side of our existence whose direction is towards the infinite seeks not

wealth, but freedom and joy. There the reign of necessity ceases, and there our

function is not to get but to be. To be what? To be one with Brahma. For the

region of the infinite is the region of unity. Therefore the Upanishads say: If

man apprehends God he becomes true. Here it is becoming, it is not having more.

Words do not gather bulk when you know their meaning; they become true by being

one with the idea.

 

Though the West has accepted as its teacher him who boldly proclaimed his

oneness with his Father, and who exhorted his followers to be perfect as God, it

has never been reconciled to this idea of our unity with the infinite being. It

condemns, as a piece of blasphemy, any implication of man's becoming God. This

is certainly not the idea that Christ preached, nor perhaps the idea of the

Christian mystics, but this seems to be the idea that has become popular in the

Christian west.

 

But the highest wisdom in the East holds that it is not the function of our soul

to gain God, to utilise him for any special material purpose. All that we can

ever aspire to is to become more and more one with God. In the region of nature,

which is the region of diversity, we grow by acquisition; in the spiritual

world, which is the region of unity, we grow by losing ourselves, by uniting.

Gaining a thing, as we have said, is by its nature partial, it is limited only

to a particular want; but being is complete, it belongs to our wholeness, it

springs not from any necessity but from our affinity with the infinite, which is

the principle of perfection that we have in our soul.

 

Yes, we must become Brahma. We must not shrink to avow this. Our existence is

meaningless if we never can expect to realise the highest perfection that there

is. If we have an aim and yet can never reach it, then it is no aim at all.

 

But can it then be said that there is no difference between Brahma and our

individual soul? Of course the difference is obvious. Call it illusion or

ignorance, or whatever name you may give it, it is there. You can offer

explanations but you cannot explain it away. Even illusion is a true illusion.

 

Brahma is Brahma, he is the infinite ideal of perfection. But we are not what we

truly are; we are ever to become true, ever to become Brahma. There is the

eternal play of love in the relation between this being and the becoming; and in

the depth of this mystery is the source of all truth and beauty that sustains

the endless march of creation.

 

In the music of the rushing stream sounds the joyful assurance, " I shall become

the sea. " It is not a vain assumption; it is true humility, for it is the truth.

The river has no other alternative. On both sides of its banks it has numerous

fields and forests, villages and towns; it can serve them in various ways,

cleanse them and feed them, carry their produce from place to place. But it can

have only partial relations with these, and however long it may linger among

them it remains separate; it never can become a town or a forest.

 

But it can and does become the sea. The lesser moving water has its affinity

with the great motionless water of the ocean. It moves through the thousand

objects on its onward course, and its motion finds its finality when it reaches

the sea.

 

The river can become the sea, but she can never make the sea part and parcel of

herself. If, by some chance, she has encircled some broad sheet of water and

pretends that she has made the sea a part of herself, we at once know that it is

not so, that her current is still seeking rest in the great ocean to which it

can never set boundaries.

 

In the same manner, our soul can only become Brahma as the river can become the

sea. Everything else she touches at one of her points, then leaves and moves on,

but she never can leave Brahma and move beyond him. Once our soul realises her

ultimate object of repose in Brahma, all her movements acquire a purpose. It is

this ocean of infinite rest which gives significance to endless activities. It

is this perfectness of being that lends to the imperfection of becoming that

quality of beauty which finds its expression in all poetry, drama and art.

 

There must be a complete idea that animates a poem. Every sentence of the poem

touches that idea. When the reader realises that pervading idea, as he reads on,

then the reading of the poem is full of joy to him. Then every part of the poem

becomes radiantly significant by the light of the whole. But if the poem goes on

interminably, never expressing the idea of the whole, only throwing off

disconnected images, however beautiful, it becomes wearisome and unprofitable in

the extreme. The progress of our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite

idea which once realised makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we

detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we do not see the infinite rest

and only see the infinite motion, then existence appears to us a monstrous evil,

impetuously rushing towards an unending aimlessness.

 

I remember in our childhood we had a teacher who used to make us learn by heart

the whole book of Sanskrit grammer, which is written in symbols, without

explaining their meaning to us. Day after day we went toiling on, but on towards

what, we had not the least notion. So, as regards our lessons, we were in the

position of the pessimist who only counts the breathless activities of the

world, but cannot see the infinite repose of the perfection whence these

activities are gaining their equilibrium every moment in absolute fitness and

harmony. We lose all joy in thus contemplating existence, because we miss the

truth. We see the gesticulations of the dancer, and we imagine these are

directed by a ruthless tyranny of chance, while we are deaf to the eternal music

which makes every one of these gestures inevitably spontaneous and beautiful.

These motions are ever growing into that music of perfection, becoming one with

it, dedicating to that melody at every step the multitudinous forms they go on

creating.

 

And this is the truth of our soul, and this is her joy, that she must ever be

growing into Brahma, that all her movements should be modulated by this ultimate

idea, and all her creations should be given as offerings to the supreme spirit

of perfection.

 

There is a remarkable saying in the Upanishads: I think not that I know him

well, or that I know him, or even that I know him not.

(v. 58)

 

By the process of knowledge we can never know the infinite being. But if he is

altogether beyond our reach, then he is absolutely nothing to us. The truth is

that we know him not, yet we know him.

 

This has been explained in another saying of the Upanishads: From Brahma words

come back baffled, as well as the mind, but he who knows him by the joy of him

is free from all fears. (v. 59)

 

Knowledge is partial, because our intellect is an instrument, it is only a part

of us, it can give us information about things which can be divided and

analysed, and whose properties can be classified part by part. But Brahma is

perfect, and knowledge which is partial can never be a knowledge of him.

 

But he can be known by joy, by love. For joy is knowledge in its completeness,

it is knowing by our whole being. Intellect sets us apart from the things to be

known, but love knows its object by fusion. Such knowledge is immediate and

admits no doubt. It is the same as knowing our own selves, only more so.

 

Therefore, as the Upanishads say, mind can never know Brahma, words can never

describe him; he can only be known by our soul, by her joy in him, by her love.

Or, in other words, we can only come into relation with him by union--union of

our whole being. We must be one with our Father, we must be perfect as he is.

 

But how can that be? There can be no grade in infinite perfection. We cannot

grow more and more into Brahma. He is the absolute one, and there can be no more

or less in him.

 

Indeed, the realisation of the paramatman, the supreme soul, within our

antaratman, our inner individual soul, is in a state of absolute completion. We

cannot think of it as non-existent and depending on our limited powers for its

gradual construction. If our relation with the divine were all a thing of our

own making, how should we rely on it as true, and how should it lend us support?

 

Yes, we must know that within us we have that where space and time cease to rule

and where the links of evolution are merged in unity. In that everlasting abode

of the ataman, the soul, the revelation of the paramatman, the supreme soul, is

already complete. Therefore the Upanishads say: He who knows Brahman, the true,

the all-conscious, and the infinite as hidden in the depths of the soul, which

is the supreme sky (the inner sky of consciousness), enjoys all objects of

desire in union with the all-knowing Brahman. (v. 60)

 

The union is already accomplished. The paramatman, the supreme soul, has himself

chosen this soul of ours as his bride and the marriage has been completed. The

solemn mantram has been uttered: Let thy heart be even as my heart is. (v. 61)

There is no room in this marriage for evolution to act the part of the master of

ceremonies. The eshah, who cannot otherwise be described than as 'This', the

nameless immediate presence, is ever here in our innermost being. " This eshah,

or This, is the supreme end of the other this " ; (v.62) " this This is the supreme

treasure of the other this " ; (v.63) " this This is the supreme dwelling of the

other this " ; (v.64) " this This is the supreme joy of the other this. " (v. 65)

Because the marriage of supreme love has been accomplished in timeless time. And

now goes on the endless lila, the play of love. He who has been gained in

eternity is now being pursued in time and space, in joys and sorrows, in this

world and in the worlds beyond. When the soul-bride understands this well, her

heart is blissful and at rest. She knows that she, like a river, has attained

the ocean of her fulfilment at one end of her being, and at the other end she is

ever attaining it; at one end it is eternal rest and completion, at the other it

is incessant movement and change. When she knows both ends as inseparably

connected, then she knows the world as her own household by the right of knowing

the master of the world as her own lord. Then all her services becomes services

of love, all the troubles and tribulations of life come to her as trials

triumphantly borne to prove the strength of her love, smilingly to win the wager

from her lover. But so long as she remains obstinately in the dark, lifts not

her veil, does not recognise her lover, and only knows the world dissociated

from him, she serves as a handmaid here, where by right she might reign as a

queen; she sways in doubt, and weeps in sorrow and dejection. She passes from

starvation to starvation, from trouble to trouble, and from fear to fear. (v.66)

 

I can never forget that scrap of a song I once heard in the early dawn in the

midst of the din of the crowd that had collected for a festival the night

before: " Ferryman, take me across to the other shore! "

 

In the bustle of all our work there comes out this cry, " Take me across. " The

carter in India sings while driving his cart, " Take me across. " The itinerant

grocer deals out his goods to his customers and sings, " Take me across " .

 

What is the meaning of this cry? We feel we have not reached our goal; and we

know with all our striving and toiling we do not come to the end, we do not

attain our object. Like a child dissatisfied with its dolls, our heart cries,

" Not this, not this. " But what is that other? Where is the further shore?

 

Is it something else than what we have? Is it somewhere else than where we are?

Is it to take rest from all our works, to be relieved from all the

responsibilities of life?

 

No, in the very heart of our activities we are seeking for our end. We are

crying for the across, even where we stand. So, while our lips utter their

prayer to be carried away, our busy hands are never idle.

 

In truth, thou ocean of joy, this shore and the other shore are one and the same

in thee. When I call this my own, the other lies estranged; and missing the

sense of that completeness which is in me, my heart incessantly cries out for

the other. All my this, and that other, are waiting to be completely reconciled

in thy love.

 

This " I " of mine toils hard, day and night, for a home which it knows as its

own. Alas, there will be no end of its sufferings so long as it is not able to

call this home thine. Till then it will struggle on, and its heart will ever

cry, " Ferryman, lead me across. " When this home of mine is made thine, that very

moment is it taken across, even while its old walls enclose it. This " I " is

restless. It is working for a gain which can never be assimilated with its

spirit, which it never can hold and retain. In its efforts to clasp in its own

arms that which is for all, it hurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries,

" Lead me across " . But as soon as it is able to say, " All my work is thine, "

everything remains the same, only it is taken across.

 

Where can I meet thee unless in this mine home made thine? Where can I join thee

unless in this my work transformed into thy work? If I leave my home I shall not

reach thy home; if I cease my work I can never join thee in thy work. For thou

dwellest in me and I in thee. Thou without me or I without thee are nothing.

 

Therefore, in the midst of our home and our work, the prayer rises, " Lead me

across! " For here rolls the sea, and even here lies the other shore waiting to

be reached--yes, here is this everlasting present, not distant, not anywhere

else.

 

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