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that. The manifested world forms but a small portion of His being;
in main He is unmanifest and
*The Three Principle of the Divine Essence, Jacob Boehme, K. W. Schiebler, Leipzig, 1922.
TRANSCENDENCE, GENIUS, AND PSYCHIC POWERS 187
immortal. Taittiriya Aranyaka (x.II) presents the same view thus:
He transcends the whole world, and also manifests Himself as the
whole world. He is the eternal Being, the support of all, the
remover of evil. The existence of the whole world depends on
Him. He is the master of the world, the supreme Self, the eternal,
the permanent good, the changeless, the Cosmic Being, the great
goal of knowledge, the Self of the universe and the supreme
refuge. . . . The transformed consciousness, cognizant now of its
infinite nature, immeasurably superior to the universe known by
the senses, which continues to abide in its finite form, transcends
and overshadows it, calming the unrest of the intellect convinced
now beyond the least shadow of a doubt that the All-Pervading
Knower and not the conditioned Known is the substratum of the
universe.
Through divine dispensation, for some purpose which only the
future can disclose, this frail, human creature, with a limited span
of life, which some birds, fishes, and other lowly creatures exceed,
with a body so delicate that even one blow at a vulnerable spot is
sufficient to cause death, and a mind and memory so restricted that
it cannot grasp more than an infinitesimal fraction of the cosmos,
by the favour of Destiny with but a slight alteration in the vital
energy feeding the brain, overcoming the limitations imposed by
the senses, can soar to a state of Existence where the ruthless,
colossal world becomes a fleeting shadow and he the Effulgent
Sun. Death and fear then lose their hold, for what can harm the
Ocean of Everlasting Life beyond the farthest reach of any profane
material influence? It is in this sense of achieving a State of
Consciousness, characterized by immortality and infinitude that it
is said in the ancient works on Kundalini Yoga that the
accomplished Sadhaka can create, preserve, and destroy the world
at will. The underlying idea is that in the transcendent state which
he attains with full lucidity, the world image which first dominated
his unreal, sense-bound consciousness, recedes into insignificance.
Transcendence is as far removed from the hallucinatory states
188 THE SECRET OF YOGA
of mind brought about by drugs, autohypnosis, autointoxication,
and changes in body chemistry as the consciousness of absolute
power and incomparable dignity in an anointed king, ruling over a
vast empire, is removed from the delusive state of a psychotic who,
disorderly and unkempt, raves at the top of his voice about his
kingdom and his court. The general ignorance prevailing among
the people, including even scholars, about the real nature of the
beatific state is at the root of the present confusion, resulting in the
waste of precious lives of those who fall prey to the delusion that
drugs and other artificial methods can lead to the exalted state in
which man for the first time steps over the rigid boundaries of
mortal consciousness. It is not merely a change in the brilliance of
colours of the objects seen, nor alteration or distortion in their
shape, nor the revelation of a new significance in them, nor the
transitory awareness of a new insight that is decisive in
determining the genuineness of a mystical experience, but the
change that occurs in the Fount of personality or, in other words, in
the Knower, which is the distinguishing feature of the
phenomenon. The Knower undergoes a complete metamorphosis;
from a drop he becomes an ocean and from a point of awareness an
infinite circle of sovereign consciousness.
Shankaracarya in Vivekacudamani (389 and 394) expresses the
state of transcendence in these words: The Self is within, and the
Self is without, the Self is before and the Self is behind, the Self is
in the south, and the Self is in the north; the Self likewise is above
as below. . . . What is the use of dilating on this subject? The Jiva
(embodied consciousness) is no other than Brahman (Universal
Consciousness), this whole extended universe is Brahman Itself,
the Shruti inculcates the Brahman without a Second, and it is an
indubitable fact that people of enlightened minds who know their
identity with Brahman and have given up their connection with the
objective world, live palpably united with Brahman as Eternal
Knowledge and Bliss. The Knower, surpassing now both the
material universe and the world of thoughts or, in other words,
merging in itself the process of knowing and
TRANSCENDENCE, GENIUS, AND PSYCHIC POWERS 189
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