Page 42 - NAMAH-Jan-2020

Namah Vol. 27, Issue 4, 15th January 2020

consciousness of the self or ego. Is there no positively that because man’s special virtue is
other higher mode of consciousness? Or is self-consciousness, animals cannot have that
self-consciousness the acme, the utmost limit quality on any account. We do see, if we care
to which consciousness can raise itself? If it to observe closely and dispassionately, that
is so, then we are bound to conclude that animals of the higher order, as they approach
humanity will remain eternally human in the level of humanity, show more and more
its fundamental nature; the only progress, if evident signs of something which is very
progress at all we choose to call it, will consist much akin to, if not identical with the human
perhaps in accentuating this consciousness characteristic of self-consciousness.
of the self and in expressing it through a
greater variety of stresses, through a richer So, in man also, especially of that order which
combination of its colour and light and shade forms the crown of humanity — in poets and
and rhythm. But also, this may not be so — artists and seers and great men of action — can
there may be the possibility of a further step, be observed a certain characteristic form of
a transcending of the consciousness of the consciousness, which is something other than,
self. It seems unnatural and improbable that greater than the consciousness of the mere self.
having risen from un-consciousness to self- It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely
consciousness through a series of continuous what that thing is. It is the awakening of the
marches, Nature should suddenly stop and self to something which is beyond itself-it is the
consider what she had achieved to be her cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being;
final end. Has Nature become bankrupt of it is God, it is Turiya, it is Satchid-ananda — in
her creative genius, exhausted of her upward so many ways the thing has been sought to be
drive? Has she to remain content with only a envisaged and expressed. The consciousness
clever manipulation, a mere shuffling and re- of that level has also a great variety of names
arranging of the materials already produced? given to it — Intuition, Revelation, cosmic
consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be
As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses noted here, however, that the thing we are
of a higher form of consciousness we can referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the
see even now present in self-consciousness. One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the
We have spoken of the different stages of supreme Reality — the Brahman — in its static
evolution as if they were separate and distinct being, in its undivided and indivisible unity;
and incommensurate entities. They may be it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the
described as such for the purpose of a logical supreme Reality where creation, the diversity
understanding, but in reality they form a of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-world
single progressive continuum in which one — Ritam — the domain of typal realities. The
level gradually fuses into another. And as distinction is necessary, as there does seem to
the higher level takes up the law of the lower be such a level of consciousness intermediary,
and evolves out of it a characteristic function, again, between man and the Absolute,
even so the law of the higher level with its between self-consciousness and the supreme
characteristic function is already involved and consciousness. The simplest thing would be to
envisaged in the law of the lower level and its give that intermediate level of consciousness
characteristic function. It cannot be asserted a negative name —since being as yet human

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