To
the Self Through the Not-self
Turn from him to the
seeker for the Self through the Not- Self. This is the way of the
scientist, of the man who uses the concrete, active Manas, in order
scientifically to understand the universe; he has to find the real
among the unreal, the eternal among the changing, the Self amid
the diversity of forms. How is he to do it? By a close and rigorous
study of every changing form in which the Self has veiled himself.
By studying the Not-Self around him and in him, by understanding
his own nature, by analysing in order to understand, by studying
nature in others as well as in himself, by learning to know himself
and to gain knowledge of others; slowly, gradually, step by step,
plane after plane, he has to climb upwards, rejecting one form of
matter after another, finding not in these the Self he seeks. As
he learns to conquer the physical plane, he uses the keenest senses
in order to understand, and finally to reject. He says: "This
is not my Self. This changing panorama, these obscurities, these
continual transformations, these are obviously the antithesis of
the eternity, the lucidity, the stability of the Self. These cannot
be my Self." And thus he constantly rejects them. He climbs
on to the astral plane and, using there the finer astral senses,
he studies the astral world, only to find that that also is changing
and manifests not the changelessness of the Self.
After the astral world
is conquered and rejected, he climbs on into the mental plane, and
there still studies the ever-changing forms of that Manasic world,
only once more to reject them: "These are not the Self."
Climbing still higher, ever following the track of forms, he goes
from the mental to the Buddhic plane, where the Self begins to show
his radiance and beauty in manifested union. Thus by studying diversity
he reaches the conception of unity, and is led into the understanding
of the One. To him the realisation of the Self comes through the
study of the Not-Self, by the separation of the Not-Self from the
Self. Thus he does by knowledge and experience what the other does
by pure thinking and by faith. In this path of finding the Self
through the Not-Self, the so-called Siddhis are necessary. Just
as you cannot study the physical world without the physical senses,
so you cannot study the astral world without the astral senses,
nor the mental world without the mental senses. Therefore, calmly
choose your ends, and then think out your means, and you will not
'be in any difficulty about the method you should employ, the path
you should tread.
Thus we see that there
are two methods, and these must be kept separate in your thought.
Along the line of pure thinking--the metaphysical line--you may
reach the Self. So also along the line of scientific observation
and experiment--the physical line, in the widest sense of the term
physical--you may reach the Self. Both are ways of Yoga. Both are
included in the directions that you may read in the Yoga Sutras
of Patanjali. Those directions will cease to be self-contradictory,
if you will only separate in your thought the two methods. Patanjali
has given, in the later part of his Sutras, some hints as to the
way in which the Siddhis may be developed. Thus you may find your
way to the Supreme.