Part Three. Writings from the Arya (1914 – 1921
Heraclitus
Heraclitus – 7
The ideas of Heraclitus on which I have so far laid
stress, are general, philosophical, metaphysical; they glance at those first
truths of existence, devānāṃ prathamā vratāni,[[The
first laws of working of the Gods.]] for which philosophy first seeks because
they are the key to all other truths. But what is their practical effect on
human life and aspiration? For that is in the end the real value of philosophy
for man, to give him light on the nature of his being, the principles of his
psychology, his relations with the world and with God, the fixed lines or the
great possibilities of his destiny. It is the weakness of most European
philosophy – not the ancient – that it lives too much in the clouds and seeks
after pure metaphysical truth too exclusively for its own sake; therefore it has
been a little barren because much too indirect in its bearing on life. It is the
great distinction of Nietzsche among later European thinkers to have brought
back something of the old dynamism and practical force into philosophy, although
in the stress of this tendency he may have neglected unduly the dialectical and
metaphysical side of philosophical thinking. No doubt, in seeking Truth we must
seek it for its own sake first and not start with any preconceived practical aim
and prepossession which would distort our disinterested view of things; but when
Truth has been found, its bearing on life becomes of capital importance and is
the solid justification of the labour spent in our research. Indian philosophy
has always understood its double function; it has sought the Truth not only as
an intellectual pleasure or the natural dharma of the reason, but in order to
know how man may live by the Truth or strive after it; hence its intimate
influence on the religion, the social ideas, the daily life of the people, its
immense dynamic power on the mind and actions
of Indian humanity. The Greek thinkers, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics
and Epicureans, had also this practical aim and dynamic force, but it acted only
on the cultured few. That was because Greek philosophy, losing its ancient
affiliation to the Mystics, separated itself from the popular religion; but as
ordinarily Philosophy alone can give light to Religion and save it from
crudeness, ignorance and superstition, so Religion alone can give, except for a
few, spiritual passion and effective power to Philosophy and save it from
becoming unsubstantial, abstract and sterile. It is a misfortune for both when
the divine sisters part company.
But when we seek among Heraclitus’ sayings for the
human application of his great fundamental thoughts, we are disappointed. He
gives us little direct guidance and on the whole leaves us to draw our own
profit from the packed opulence of his first ideas. What may be called his
aristocratic view of life, we might regard possibly as a moral result of his
philosophical conception of Power as the nature of the original principle. He
tells us that the many are bad, the few good and that one is to him equal to
thousands, if he be the best. Power of knowledge, power of character,–
character, he says, is man’s divine force,– power and excellence generally are
the things that prevail in human life and are supremely valuable, and these
things in their high and pure degree are rare among men, they are the difficult
attainment of the few. From that, true enough so far as it goes, we might deduce
a social and political philosophy. But the democrat might well answer that if
there is an eminent and concentrated virtue, knowledge and force in the one or
the few, so too there is a diffused virtue, knowledge and force in the many
which acting collectively may outweigh and exceed isolated or rare excellences.
If the king, the sage, the best are Vishnu himself, as old Indian thought also
affirmed, to a degree to which the ordinary man, prākṛto
janaḥ, cannot pretend, so also are “the five”, the group, the people. The
Divine is samaṣṭi as well as
vyaṣṭi, manifested in the collectivity as well as in the individual, and
the justice on which Heraclitus insists demands that both should have their
effect and their value; they depend indeed and
draw on each other for the effectuation of their excellences.
Other sayings of Heraclitus are interesting enough, as
when he affirms the divine element in human laws,– and that is also a profound
and fruitful sentence. His views on the popular religion are interesting, but
move on the surface and do not carry us very far even on the surface. He rejects
with a violent contempt the current degradation of the old mystic formulas and
turns from them to the true mysteries, those of Nature and of our being, that
Nature which, as he says, loves to be hidden, is full of mysteries, ever occult.
It is a sign that the lore of the early Mystics had been lost, the spiritual
sense had departed out of their symbols, even as in Vedic India; but there took
place in Greece no new and powerful movement which could, as in India, replace
them by new symbols, new and more philosophic restatements of their hidden
truths, new disciplines, schools of Yoga. Attempts, such as that of Pythagoras,
were made; but Greece at large followed the turn given by Heraclitus, developed
the cult of the reason and left the remnants of the old occult religion to
become a solemn superstition and a conventional pomp.
Doubly interesting is his condemnation of animal
sacrifice; it is, he says, a vain attempt at purification by defilement of
oneself with blood, as if we were to cleanse mud-stained feet with mud. Here we
see the same trend of revolt against an ancient and universal religious practice
as that which destroyed in India the sacrificial system of the Vedic religion,–
although Buddha’s great impulse of compassion was absent from the mind of
Heraclitus: pity could never have become a powerful motive among the old
Mediterranean races. But the language of Heraclitus shows us that the ancient
system of sacrifice in Greece and in India was not a mere barbaric propitiation
of savage deities, as modern inquiry has falsely concluded; it had a
psychological significance, purification of the soul as well as propitiation of
higher and helpful powers, and was therefore in all probability mystic and
symbolical; for purification was, as we know, one of the master ideas of the
ancient Mysteries. In India of the Gita, in the development of Judaism by the
prophets and by Jesus, while the old physical
symbols were discouraged and especially the blood-rite, the psychological idea
of sacrifice was saved, emphasised and equipped with subtler symbols, such as
the Christian Eucharist and the offerings of the devout in the Shaiva or
Vaishnava temples. But Greece with its rational bent and its insufficient
religious sense was unable to save its religion; it tended towards that sharp
division between philosophy and science on one side and religion on the other
which has been so peculiar a characteristic of the European mind. Here too
Heraclitus was, as in so many other directions, a forerunner, an indicator of
the natural bent of occidental thought.
Equally striking is his condemnation of idol-worship,
one of the earliest in human history,– “he who prays to an image is chattering
to a stone wall.” The intolerant violence of this protestant rationalism and
positivism makes Heraclitus again a precursor of a whole movement of the human
mind. It is not indeed a religious protest such as that of Mahomed against the
naturalistic, Pagan and idolatrous polytheism of the Arabs or of the Protestants
against the aesthetic and emotional saint-worship of the Catholic Church, its
Mariolatry and use of images and elaborate ritual; its motive is philosophic,
rational, psychological. Heraclitus was not indeed a pure rationalist. He
believes in the Gods, but as psychological presences, cosmic powers, and he is
too impatient of the grossness of the physical image, its hold on the senses,
its obscuration of the psychological significance of the godheads to see that it
is not to the stone, but to the divine person figured in the stone that the
prayer is offered. It is noticeable that in his conception of the gods he is kin
to the old Vedic seers, though not at all a religious mystic in his temperament.
The Vedic religion seems to have excluded physical images and it was the
protestant movements of Jainism and Buddhism which either introduced or at least
popularised and made general the worship of images in India. Here too Heraclitus
prepares the way for the destruction of the old religion, the reign of pure
philosophy and reason and the void which was filled up by Christianity; for man
cannot live by reason alone. When it was too late, some attempt was made to
re-spiritualise the old religion, and there was
the remarkable effort of Julian and Libanius to set up a regenerated Paganism
against triumphant Christianity; but the attempt was too unsubstantial, too
purely philosophic, empty of the dynamic power of the religious spirit. Europe
had killed its old creeds beyond revival and had to turn for its religion to
Asia.
Thus, for the general life of man Heraclitus has
nothing to give us beyond his hint of an aristocratic principle in society and
politics,– and we may note that this aristocratic bent was very strong in almost
all the subsequent Greek philosophers. In religion his influence tended to the
destruction of the old creed without effectively putting anything more profound
in its place; though not himself a pure rationalist, he prepared the way for
philosophic rationalism. But even without religion philosophy by itself can give
us at least some light on the spiritual destiny of man, some hope of the
infinite, some ideal perfection after which we can strive. Plato who was
influenced by Heraclitus, tried to do this for us; his thought sought after God,
tried to seize the ideal, had its hope of a perfect human society. We know how
the Neo-platonists developed his ideas under the influence of the East and how
they affected Christianity. The Stoics, still more directly the intellectual
descendants of Heraclitus, arrived at very remarkable and fruitful ideas of
human possibility and a powerful psychological discipline,– as we should say in
India, a Yoga,– by which they hoped to realise their ideal. But what has
Heraclitus himself to give us? Nothing directly; we have to gather for ourselves
whatever we can from his first principles and his cryptic sentences.
Heraclitus was regarded in ancient times as a
pessimistic thinker and we have one or two sayings of his from which we can, if
we like, deduce the old vain gospel of the vanity of things. Time, he says, is
playing draughts like a child, amusing itself with counters, building castles on
the sea-shore only to throw them down again. If that is the last word, then all
human effort and aspiration are vain. But on what primary philosophical
conception does this discouraging sentence depend? Everything turns on that; for in itself this is no more than an assertion of a
self-evident fact, the mutability of things and the recurrent transiency of
forms. But if the principles which express themselves in forms are eternal or if
there is a Spirit in things which finds its account in the mutations and
evolutions of Time and if that Spirit dwells in the human being as the immortal
and infinite power of his soul, then no conclusion of the vanity of the world or
the vanity of human existence arises. If indeed the original and eternal
principle of Fire is a purely physical substance or force, then, truly, since
all the great play and effort of consciousness in us must sink and dissolve into
that, there can be no permanent spiritual value in our being, much less in our
works. But we have seen that Heraclitus’ Fire cannot be a purely physical or
inconscient principle. Does he then mean that all our existence is merely a
continual changeable Becoming, a play or Lila with no purpose in it except the
playing and no end except the conviction of the vanity of all cosmic activity by
its relapse into the indistinguishable unity of the original principle or
substance? For even if that principle, the One to which the many return, be not
merely physical or not really physical at all, but spiritual, we may still, like
the Mayavadins, affirm the vanity of the world and of our human existence,
precisely because the one is not eternal and the other has no eventual aim
except its own self-abolition after the conviction of the vanity and unreality
of all its temporal interests and purposes. Is the conviction of the world by
the one absolute Fire such a conviction of the vanity of all the temporal and
relative values of the Many?
That is one sense in which we can understand the
thought of Heraclitus. His idea of all things as born of war and existing by
strife might, if it stood by itself, lead us to adopt, even if he himself did
not clearly arrive at, that conclusion. For if all is a continual struggle of
forces, its best aspect only a violent justice and the highest harmony only a
tension of opposites without any hope of a divine reconciliation, its end a
conviction and destruction by eternal Fire, all our ideal hopes and aspirations
are out of place; they have no foundation in the truth of things. But there is
another side to the thought of Heraclitus. He
says indeed that all things come into being “according to strife”, by the clash
of forces, are governed by the determining justice of war. He says farther that
all is utterly determined, fated. But what then determines? The justice of a
clash of forces is not fate; forces in conflict determine indeed, but from
moment to moment, according to a constantly changing balance always modifiable
by the arising of new forces. If there is predetermination, an inevitable fate
in things, then there must be some power behind the conflict which determines
them, fixes their measures. What is that power? Heraclitus tells us; all indeed
comes into being according to strife, but also all things come into being
according to Reason, kat’ erin but also kata ton logon. What is
this Logos? It is not an inconscient reason in things, for his Fire is not
merely an inconscient force, it is Zeus and eternity. Fire, Zeus is Force, but
it is also an Intelligence; let us say then that it is an intelligent Force
which is the origin and master of things. Nor can this Logos be identical in its
nature with the human reason; for that is an individual and therefore relative
and partial judgment and intelligence which can only seize on relative truth,
not on the true truth of things, but the Logos is one and universal, an absolute
reason therefore combining and managing all the relativities of the many. Was
not then Philo justified in deducing from this idea of an intelligent Force
originating and governing the world, Zeus and Fire, his interpretation of the
Logos as “the divine dynamic, the energy and the self-revelation of God”?
Heraclitus might not so have phrased it, might not have seen all that his
thought contained, but it does contain this sense when his different sayings are
fathomed and put together in their consequences.
We get very near the Indian conception of Brahman, the
cause, origin and substance of all things, an absolute Existence whose nature is
consciousness (Chit) manifesting itself as Force (Tapas, Shakti) and moving in
the world of his own being as the Seer and Thinker, kavir
manīṣī, an immanent Knowledge-Will in all,
vijñānamaya puruṣa, who is the Lord or Godhead, īś,
īśvara, deva, and has ordained all things
according to their nature from years
sempiternal,– Heraclitus’ “measures” which the Sun is forced to observe, his
“things are utterly determined.” This Knowledge-Will is the Logos. The Stoics
spoke of it as a seed Logos, spermatikos, reproduced in conscious beings
as a number of seed Logoi; and this at once reminds us of the Vedantic
prājña puruṣa, the supreme Intelligence who is the Lord and dwells in the
sleep-state holding all things in a seed of dense consciousness which works out
through the perceptions of the subtle Purusha, the mental Being. Vijnana is
indeed a consciousness which sees things, not as the human reason sees them in
parts and pieces, in separated and aggregated relations, but in the original
reason of their existence and law of their existence, their primal and total
truth; therefore it is the seed Logos, the originative and determinant conscious
force working as supreme Intelligence and Will. The Vedic seers called it the
Truth-consciousness and believed that men also could become truth-conscious,
enter into the divine Reason and Will and by the Truth become immortals,
anthrōpoi athanatoi.
Does the thought of Heraclitus admit of any such hope
as the Vedic seers held and hymned with so triumphant a confidence? or does it
even give ground for any aspiration to some kind of a divine supermanhood such
as his disciples the Stoics so sternly laboured for or as that of which
Nietzsche, the modern Heraclitus, drew a too crude and violent figure? His
saying that man is kindled and extinguished as light disappears into night, is
commonplace and discouraging enough. But this may after all be only true of the
apparent man. Is it possible for man in his becoming to raise his present fixed
measures? to elevate his mental, relative, individual reason into direct
communion with or direct participation in the divine and absolute reason? to
inspire and raise the values of his human force to the higher values of the
divine force? to become aware like the gods of an absolute good and an absolute
beauty? to lift this mortal to the nature of immortality? Against his melancholy
image of human transiency we have that remarkable and cryptic sentence, “the
gods are mortals, men immortals”, which, taken literally, might mean that the
gods are powers that perish and replace each
other and the soul of man alone is immortal, but must at least mean that there
is in man behind his outward transiency an immortal spirit. We have too his
saying, “thou canst not find the limits of the soul”, and we have the
profoundest of all Heraclitus’ utterances, “the kingdom is of the child.” If man
is in his real being an infinite and immortal spirit, there is surely no reason
why he should not awaken to his immortality, arise towards the consciousness of
the universal, one and absolute, live in a higher self-realisation. “I have
sought for myself” says Heraclitus; and what was it that he found?
But there is one great gap and defect whether in his
knowledge of things or his knowledge of the self of man. We see in how many
directions the deep divining eye of Heraclitus anticipated the largest and
profoundest generalisations of Science and Philosophy and how even his more
superficial thoughts indicate later powerful tendencies of the occidental mind,
how too some of his ideas influenced such profound and fruitful thinkers as
Plato, the Stoics, the Neo-platonists. But in his defect also he is a
forerunner; it illustrates the great deficiency of later European thought, such
of it at least as has not been profoundly influenced by Asiatic religions or
Asiatic mysticism. I have tried to show how often his thought touches and is
almost identical with the Vedic and Vedantic. But his knowledge of the truth of
things stopped with the vision of the universal reason and the universal force;
he seems to have summed up the principle of things in these two first terms, the
aspect of consciousness, the aspect of power, a supreme intelligence and a
supreme energy. The eye of Indian thought saw a third aspect of the Self and of
Brahman; besides the universal consciousness active in divine knowledge, besides
the universal force active in divine will, it saw the universal delight active
in divine love and joy. European thought, following the line of Heraclitus’
thinking, has fixed itself on reason and on force and made them the principles
towards whose perfection our being has to aspire. Force is the first aspect of
the world, war, the clash of energies; the second aspect, reason, emerges out of
the appearance of force in which it is at first
hidden and reveals itself as a certain justice, a certain harmony, a certain
determining intelligence and reason in things; the third aspect is a deeper
secret behind these two, universal delight, love, beauty which taking up the
other two can establish something higher than justice, better than harmony,
truer than reason,– unity and bliss, the ecstasy of our fulfilled existence. Of
this last secret power Western thought has only seen two lower aspects, pleasure
and aesthetic beauty; it has missed the spiritual beauty and the spiritual
delight. For that reason Europe has never been able to develop a powerful
religion of its own; it has been obliged to turn to Asia. Science takes
possession of the measures and utilities of Force; rational philosophy pursues
reason to its last subtleties; but inspired philosophy and religion can seize
hold of the highest secret, uttamaṃ rahasyam.
Heraclitus might have seen it if he had carried his
vision a little farther. Force by itself can only produce a balance of forces,
the strife that is justice; in that strife there takes place a constant exchange
and, once this need of exchange is seen, there arises the possibility of
modifying and replacing war by reason as the determinant principle of the
exchange. This is the second effort of man, of which Heraclitus did not clearly
see the possibility. From exchange we can rise to the highest possible idea of
interchange, a mutual dependency of self-giving as the hidden secret of life;
from that can grow the power of Love replacing strife and exceeding the cold
balance of reason. There is the gate of the divine ecstasy. Heraclitus could not
see it, and yet his one saying about the kingdom of the child touches, almost
reaches the heart of the secret. For this kingdom is evidently spiritual, it is
the crown, the mastery to which the perfected man arrives; and the perfect man
is a divine child! He is the soul which awakens to the divine play, accepts it
without fear or reserve, gives itself up in a spiritual purity to the Divine,
allows the careful and troubled force of man to be freed from care and grief and
become the joyous play of the divine Will, his relative and stumbling reason to
be replaced by that divine knowledge which to the Greek, the rational man, is foolishness, and the laborious pleasure-seeking of
the bound mentality to lose itself in the spontaneity of the divine Ananda; “for
of such is the kingdom of heaven.” The Paramhansa, the liberated man, is in his
soul bālavat, even as if a child.
power on the mind and actions
of Indian humanity. The Greek thinkers, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, the Stoics
and Epicureans, had also this practical aim and dynamic force, but it acted only
on the cultured few. That was because Greek philosophy, losing its ancient
affiliation to the Mystics, separated itself from the popular religion; but as
ordinarily Philosophy alone can give light to Religion and save it from
crudeness, ignorance and superstition, so Religion alone can give, except for a
few, spiritual passion and effective power to Philosophy and save it from
becoming unsubstantial, abstract and sterile. It is a misfortune for both when
the divine sisters part company.
