The Sword of Song

SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 106 consciousness to consciousness by its eternity, while it fixes a great gulf between them by its changelessness. He states the knowable, states it accurately , and leaves it there. But there is a practical application of this analysis which I will treat of later. (See VIII. Maha- satipatthana.) We are told that the memory is a proof of some real “ I.” But how treacherous is this ground! Did a past event in my life not happen because I have forgotten it? O the analogy of the river water given above is most valid! I who write this am not I who read it over and correct it. Do I des ire to play with lead soldiers? Am I the doddering old cripple who must be wheeled about and fed on whisky and bread and milk? And is my difference from them so conspicuously less than from the body lying dead of which those who see it will say. “This was Aleister Crowley”? What rubbish it is to suppose that an eternal substance, sentient or not, omniscient or not, depends for its information on so absurd a series of bodies as are groups under that “Crowley”! Yet the Buddhist meets all arguments of the spiritual order with a sim ple statem ent which, if not certain, is at least not im prob- able. There is, he will tell y ou, a “ spiritual” world, or to avoid any (most unjustifiable) misunderstandings, let us say a world of subtler matter than the visible and tangible, which has its own laws (analogous to, if not identical with, those laws of matter with which we are acquainted) and whose inhabi- tants change, and die, and are re-born very much as ordinary mortal beings. But as they are of s ubtler matter, the cy cle is less rapid.1 As a nominalist, I hope not to be misunderstood when I compare this to the relative mutability of the individual and the species.2 We have enough examples free 1 Cf. Hu xley, cited supra, “possibly , thr ough modes of being of which we neither have a conception, nor are competent to form any. . . .” 2 Cf. “Evolution and Ethics,” note 1. from such possibility of misinterpretation in our own bodies. Compare the longevity of a bone with that of a cor puscle. But it is this “Substratum” universe, which must not be confounded with the substratum, the argu- ments for whose existence Berkeley so utterly shattered,1 which may conserve memory for a period greatly exceeding that of one of its particular avatars . Hence the “ Jataka.” But the doctrine is not very essential; its chief value is to show what serious difficulties confront us, and to supply a reason to struggle to some better state. For if nothing 1 W ithout an elabor ate analy sis of the ideas involved in the Ding an sich of Kant, and of H. Spencer’s definition of all things as M odes of the Unknowable, I may point out in passing that all these hypotheses are as sterile as the “vital principle” in biology , or “phlogiston” in chemistry. They lead literally nowhere. That the phenomenal world is an illusion is all very well; one girds up one’s loins to seek reality: but to prove reality unknowable is to shut all avenues to the truth-loving man, and open all to the sensualist. And, if we accept either of the above philosophies, it does not ma tter. That we feel it does m atter is sufficient refutation, for we must obey the sentence awarded on our own testimony, whether we like it or not. I am aware that this is a som ewhat cowardly way of dealing with the question; I prefer to insist that if we once adm it that the unknowable (by reason) to consciousness m ay be known ( by concentration) to super -consciousness, the difficulty vanishes. I think Huxley goes too far in speaking of a man “ self-hypnotised into cataleptic trances” without m edical evidence of a large number of cases. Edward Carpenter, who has met Yogis, and talked long and learnedly with them , tells a different story. Even had we a lar ge body of evidence fr om Anglo-Indian medical men, the proof would still be lacking. They might not be the r eal men. The Indian native would take intense delight in bringing round the village idiot to be inspected in the character of a holy m an by the “ Doctor Sahib.” The Anglo-Indian is a fool; a minimum medical education is in most cases insufficient to abate the symptoms to nil, though per haps it m ust alway s diminish them . T he Hindu is the Sphinx of civilisation; nearly all that has been written on him is worthless; those who know him best know this fact best.—A. C.