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that other larger self, the society of our fellow men, revealed to us by the instincts of self-denial in service and of disinterestedness in loyalty and devotion.

It is such experiences that teach us the true nature of the mysticism of the prophets. It is such experiences to which we are helped and in them confirmed and strengthened more than by any other means by those holy souls into whom has entered more abundantly and in whom has remained in more abiding power that Holy Spirit which loves to make of men friends of God and prophets.

MYSTICISM IN INDIA

EDWARD WASHBURN HOPKINS

If mysticism included all that is mysterious, it were possible to find it in almost every Hindu cult and to trace it back to the earliest literature. There is, for example, the Vedic wild Muni, who probably reflects a mystic rapprochement with divinity, analogous to that of the dancing dervish; there is the mystic communion established by the Vedic sacrifices (especially to the Manes), in which the worshipper receives divine power through a commensal meal; there is the (epic) hypnotic trance, in which the operator compels the obedience of the subject by what is regarded as a mystic power; and finally there is the Brahmanic apocalyptic mysticism, which begins with a vision of the world to come and culminates in the visit of Naciketas to the realm of death. This last form is of some historical interest because it may have led eventually to the vision of Arda Virâf, which in turn has been supposed to be the (Sassanid) model of the Divina Commedia.1

But these forms of "mysticism" must here be passed over allusively; nor need we linger to explain the "pantheistic mystic speculation" of the Rig Veda poets, who in x. 29 have derived Being from Not-Being through the agency of heat and desire, which is the "primal seed of mind," and in x. 90 describe the world as caused by the sacrifice of the Divine Man, whose body in part is the world itself. Of

1In regard to the curious case of epic hypnotism see the writer's article on Yoga technique in the Jour. Am. Orient. Soc. XXII (1901). After RV. x. 135, the Taittirîya Brâhmana iii. 11, 8, gives a vision of the next world, later elaborated in the Kathâ Upanishad.

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such naïve (not profound) speculation there is a plenty in the Vedic age, early and late. For our purpose they are negligible, since the mysticism we are examining is of another sort, namely that which is exhibited in the ineffable but transient state of the soul at one with the divine (or with its supranormal equivalent), the soul being either intellectually or emotionally intuitive of, or identified with, the world

power.

Five divisions of the subject appear as the phenomena show themselves in history: First, in the mystics of the Upanishads. Second, in the early Buddhistic mystics. Third, in the scientific Yoga. Fourth, in a blending of Brahmanic and later Buddhistic mysticism. Fifth, in the mediæval emotional mystics.

In the first four of these divisions we have to do not so much with individuals as with schools, forms of religious faith, general, not, as in the isolated cases of mysticism known to us by the names Plotinus, Francis, etc., special abnormal phenomena, but systematically induced and perfectly controlled states. Even in the Theragâthâs of the early Buddhists, although they antedate our known systems, the individual appears to be working under a system, and the name attached to the special aññâ or gnosis, is without historical value.

The object of all Brahmanic and Buddhist mysticism is to escape from life as it is into a state mystically conceived as larger and better, to escape from the bonds of individuality into the unbound, from the limitation of time into the eternal, albeit that escape may bring with it the renunciation of personality. Theistically expressed, man seeks union with God not by going to him but by realizing him, the realization itself being identical with the attainment. He who knows Brahma becomes Brahma. This is perhaps no more than the logical extension of early Vedic identification of the microcosm with the macrocosm, but it expresses itself otherwise and indeed in

various ways. To reach God by immediacy often leads either to metaphysics or to magic. But the true mystic is neither a metaphysician nor a magician; he knows by an illumination, by intuition.

To begin with our first division. Early philosophical treatises from about the seventh century B. C. and known as Seances (Upanishads) with a connotation of the mysterious, show that their authors sought the changeless One and found him beyond reason, "not to be attained with the mind," a One of which can be posited only negation of attributes; he is within the heart smaller than a grain of mustard seed, yet he is without, greater than all the worlds; he is man, woman, fire; yet he is definable only with the words "not, not." Philosophically this Being is at first purely idealistic; nothing exists save as it exists in the individual. This pure idealism, confronted with the cold facts of life, material phenomena, was subsequently modified to the extent that phenomena were regarded not as unreal but as a form of the real. In either case the individual soul can by intuition based on knowledge but surpassing it, realize the immutable One, and in this intuition, which to the later writers is a special grace of God, man attains to oneness with the One. So far this is a noetic application of a reasoned philosophy; but the philosophers are poets (writing largely in verse) and as poets they become emotional mystics. The vision of the eternal is one that causes not only immortality, that is, conjoins them with the immutable immortal, but is the wellspring of ineffable joy. They feel the mystic rapture. Thus:

He who has realized th' immortal Brahm
As One without beginning, middle, end,
He enters into pure serenity

And everlasting peace (Mândukya Karikâ).

As God of all, All-god, maker of all things;
As be that in the heart of man abideth,

By the heart alone conceived, by mind and fancy-
Who thus know God, they have become immortal.
Within his light, nor night nor day existeth,
Being, Not-being; all is he, the blessed;
He is the treasure sought by Vedic poets;

From him was born all knowledge and all wisdom.
Above, below, across, or in the middle,
None hath grasped God; nor is there any image
Of him whose only name is this, Great Glory.
His form invisible is and always will be;

For he in mind and heart abides. Who know him
As their own soul, they have become immortal.

And again:

The soul of all things is the one controller
Who makes his one form manifold in many.
The wise that him as their own soul acknowledge,
They have eternal joy, but not so, others.
Among the transient he is the everlasting,
The only wise one he among the unwise,

The One mid many. Him perceive the sages

In their own souls and feel a peace eternal.

The sun shines not, nor moon nor stars nor lightning,
Nor earthly fire, within the All-soul's heaven;
For he alone is the light that all shines after,

And by his light is all the world illumined.2

The individual soul is here not imagined to be in a state of longing to merge itself with the All-Soul; it does not long for communion with God. It strives to realize that it is God; that there is no duality. Destroy the illusion of duality and you are immediately filled with the consciousness of oneness with the Absolute Power, Brahma, the World Soul, Atman. The so-called New Testament of India, the Bhagavad Gîtâ, is really only a theistic continuation of the Upanishads. It too lays stress upon the principle of nonduality; but it introduces a new element in stressing still more the grace of God as a God of love. Hence the devotee

2 India, Old and New, p. 85. From the Kâthaka Upanishad.

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