abolish the individuality, because prakriti seems to have tied itself into several knots
before it became what the human individual is. And every knot has to be untied, one
after the other.
There is a theory projected in the Aittariya Upanishad, for instance, which
corresponds exactly to the theory of the Samkhya, which is followed by the Yoga also.
The creation process is described. The universal purusha is said to have willed to
become many. And in this will of the cosmic, what happened was that there was a
gradual intensification of the density of the will—a concretisation of the substance of
consciousness—until there was so much weight in that density that it split itself into
the object and the subject. Here, the Aittareya Upanishad particularly, and certain
other Upanishads also, tell us that the individual that is so isolated, before whom the
world is set as an object, is not a qualitatively equal part of the original Cosmic Being,
so we cannot say that we as individuals are little ‘Gods’; it does not mean that.
Otherwise, if all of us think together, it will be like God thinking. That is not so. Even
if all the individuals put together think together, it will not be like God thinking. That
means there is a qualitative downfall taking place at the time of the splitting of this
Cosmic Being into the object and the subject. It is not merely a quantitative
difference, but also a qualitative fall. This is the reason, perhaps, that we are told that
there is a reflection taking place at the same time, together with the limitation by
means of bifurcation. The cutting off of the individual from the cosmic is the
limitation, which would mean we are little, small, minute parts of the cosmic,
qualitatively the same as the cosmic. But that does not appear to be so. We do not
think like God thinks. We have got a different way of thinking altogether.
Therefore, it is said that together with this limitation there is a kind of twisting,
distorting, and topsy-turvy process which takes place. This is very beautifully
described in the Aittariya Upanishad—how everything becomes topsy-turvy. The cart
is put before the horse, as it were. The cause becomes the effect, and the individual,
instead of being merely a quantitative limitation of the cosmic, becomes something
worse, and falls down to a level of qualitative inferiority by which it cannot think as
the cosmic thinks. This sort of description of the process of descent would make us
hesitate to believe that there is a sudden jump of the individual to the cosmic. The
qualitative fall of the individual would require the return of the individual to the
original quality before it rises to the supreme substance of which it has become a
part.
Thus, there are doctrines and doctrines in Vedanta and Yoga, which make out that
there is a gradual progressive evolution of the soul from the present condition of
reflection and limitation to the cosmic originality. There are people who believe that
we cannot go to the Absolute unless we pass through the Cosmic Being; we have to go
to Ishvara, or whatever it is. This is one school of thought. But there are others who
think that it is a trick of the mind which makes us think like this, and it is not really
so. The cosmic substance has become the individual, no doubt, and it may look, for
all practical purposes, that we are inferior, even qualitatively. We cannot gainsay
that. It is so. But in spite of this fact of the individual appearing as qualitatively
inferior, there is something peculiar in the individual which can set itself right in an
instant, if it wants to, and contact the Absolute directly. Also, there is no such thing
as a gradual rising. The progressive krama srishti is not a compulsive process,
though it is also a possible process. There are other processes, such as the sadyo
mukti, as it is called—not the krama mukti which the evolutionary process would