The Complete Works of Yogy Ramacharaka. William Walker Atkinson
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the thought.) The Absolute itself cannot be seen, or thought of clearly by man, and the mind must lay hold of the idea of one or more of the manifestations in order to carry the thought. When we think of The Absolute as Intelligence, we merely think of the manifestation of that name. When we think oi it as Force or Energy, or of it as doing something, we merely think of the manifestation of Energy. When we think of it as filling space, we can merely think of Matter in some of its forms, very ethereal forms perhaps, but still the manifestation of Substance or Matter.
The ordinary religious man may find it difficult to conceive of God as manifesting in Substance or Matter, in Force or Energy. He thinks of Him as making, of using these things, but is not accustomed to regarding Him as in them. The Gnani Yoga will help him to see God on all sides, and in all things. “Lift the stone and thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I.”
And, on the other hand, the materialist will not find it easy to accept these two forms of manifestations as expressions of The Absolute, for that would seem to imply that The Absolute is something akin to the religious man’s God, which the materialist has been denying. But Gnani Yoga brings these two brothers together in the truth, and tells them that they have been looking at the same thing from different view-points. The scientist may deny that the manifestation of Mind or Intelligence is a separate manifestation, hut that it is merely an incident of matter. The Gnani Yogi sees Intelligence in everything, from the mineral to man—in varying degrees. He realizes that the tiniest cell is possessed of a subconscious intelligence that allows it to perform work that is beyond the intellect of man. The smallest growing thing shows a great intelligence working in and through it, and man will never be able to duplicate its work, notwithstanding his pant intellect. In the growing of the blade of grass, God, or The Absolute, manifests in three forms, i. e., in Substance, or Matter; in Force, or Energy; in Intelligence, or Mind. The scientist may take the elements of the seed from the matter around him, may form it into a seed—may surround it with the proper soil and conditions—make apply to it all the forms of energy or force known to him—but the plant will not grow. It needs the third manifestation—Intelligence, or Mind, and that is beyond the power of man to bestow. Each little cell contains intelligence, or mind, which works along unconscious lines, and builds up the plant. Our bodies are built up in the same way. There is Intelligence in everything—and it all emanates from The Absolute.
Does man think that his intellect exhibits the highest form of intelligence manifested in the universe? Nonsense! He has but to look around him and see the adaptation of means to ends, in order to see how nature dovetails one thing into another. He cannot do these things with his intellect, and yet they were being done ages before he appeared. A greater Intelligence than man’s is at work, and the careful student may see signs of it on every hand, The study of the grain of wheat, the examination of the rabbit’s eye, will show wonderful design and intelligence. Let the doubter care for a hive of bees, and he will feel as did an acquaintance of ours who was a doubter until he began bee-culture, when his eyes were opened to the wonderful work of "Nature." He said that his thought when gazing at the workings of the hive was: “Nearer, m; God, to Thee.”
Man is not developing Intelligence—he is merely developing the power to receive and absorb Intelligence and Knowledge from the fountain head. He receives only as much as he is able to hold—God does not try to put a quart of Intelligence in a pint measure. A No. 3 man does not receive a No. 7 amount of knowledge.
And note this coincidence. As the soul develops and unfolds it begins to partake of more of each of the three attributes of The Absolute, It begins to know more—to have more power—to be able to master space and matter. And as the soul unfolds and grows it will continue to partake in an increasing ratio of the three attributes of The Absolute—Onmiscience, Omnipotence and Omnipresence.
We will not speak of our attitude toward Absolute—our duty toward God—in this lesson. This properly comes under the head of “Bhakti Yoga” in our next lesson, and will be touched upon there. this lesson we have spoken only of the philosophical side of the knowing of God—Gnani Yoga.
Now, right here, we must warn our students against a common mistake of students of the Eastern Philosophies—a mistake not alone common among student" but which also is apparent among some teachers. allude to the proper conception (or the lack of it) of the relation of the Centre to the Emanation. While Man is of God, he is not God—while he is a manifestation of The Absolute, he is not The Absolute itself. He is but the Finite expression of the Infinite. We hear Hindus, and Western students of the teachings of the East, running about crying aloud, “I am God.” They are so overpowered with the sense of the Oneness of All that has burst upon them—are so carried away with the consciousness of their relationship to The Absolute, that they think that they are equal with God, or are God himself. We wonder that the stranger to the teachings is shocked by the apparent impiety, and both his reason and his emotion—cause him to recoil from the statement. This is most subtle, insidious and dangerous perversion of the true teaching, and ice warn and caution all students against the same, no matter from hoiv high or apparently authoritative source this false teaching come. The advanced Hindu teachers do not make this mistake in thought, but some of their followers fall into the error. Some very good Oriental teachers have endeavored to express the Hindu thought in English terms, the result being that the English words not being fitted to express the fine shades of thought possible to the Sanscrit scholar, an entirely wrong idea has been promulgated. Many of the new cults in America and England have fallen into the same error, and their followers horrify and disgust their fellows by their assertions that verily they are God himself. If we are able to set this matter straight, we will feel that these lessons have had a purpose. The real basis of the Gnani Yoga Philosophy of Life is this:
All existence, conscious or unconscious, is an EMANATION of one Being.
Note the word “Emanation”—it gives the key to the problem. Webster defines the word as follows; “Emanate.– To issue forth from a source; to flow out from.” The word “Emanation,” then, is a thing that “issues forth from a source;" that "flows forth from.” Its root is the Latin word Manare, meaning “to Row.” And this word gives us as near a correct idea of the thought of the Gnanis as it is possible for us to obtain. Let us take a favorite Grani illustration—the Sun. The Sun is the Sun itself—the centre—the source of the vibrations that proceed from it, and which vibrations, under certain conditions, manifest in the form of light and heat. Strictly speaking, nothing outside of the Sun is the Sun, and yet each bit of vibration is an emanation from the Sun—a part of the Sun, as it were. And each ray of light or heat which we perceive through our senses is really “Sun,” in a way, and yet it is not the source. The ray is the Sun, in this sense, and yet the Sun is not the ray. Do you perceive our idea? In one sense man may be God (as a ray or emanation), but most assuredly God is not man. Man, and all of existence, is OF God, but is not God Himself. We trust that the student will go over and over these words, until be gets the thought clearly, as otherwise e landed in a morass of error from which he will have much trouble to extract himself later. Many are floundering n this swamp now, and are tired and weary of the struggle.
Some writers have attempted to convey this thought by the illustration of the physical body of Man. They compare each bit of life to a cell of the body, which possesses a certain intelligence, and often independent action. These cells form into cell—groups (See "Hatha Yoga,” Chapter xviii., The Little Lives of the Body), having certain centres of energy, but all are dependent upon the brain—the Master, The Central Mind of the man regulates all. These writers have spoken of The Absolute—of God—as corresponding of the Central Mind, controlling and directing and Mastering the individual cells. The illustration, although of necessity more or less imperfect, corresponds sufficienly well with the Gnani idea to mention it here. It may be a help to some student to get the proper mental conception of the idea. Swedenborg speaks of the individual, or thing, as but a form through which the Universe Rows like a stream—this is another expression of the same thought.
J. William Lloyd, in his excellent book, “Dawn Thought" The Lloyd Group, Westfield, N. J., U. S. A.), says: “When wv touch a man's fingernail we touch him. But it is not the same as touching a nerve. And it is not the same to touch the nerve as to touch the brain. According to the form, the in—dwelling life and divinity