Letters on Yoga - I

Chapter III

Brahman

The Impersonal Brahman

You speak of the Impersonal as if it were a Person. The Impersonal is not He, it is It. How can an It guide or help? The Impersonal Brahman is inactive, aloof, indifferent, not concerned with what happens in the universe. Buddha's Permanent is the same.

There is no thought in the pure Impersonal, it is silent—but it is true that divine Truth can manifest in the background of the silence. This is of course the truth of things up to the Overmind.

The Inactive Brahman and the Active Brahman

The inactive Brahman and the active personal Brahman are two aspects of the Divine. In the Supreme these are fused into each other, not separate.

There are two aspects of the Divine—the static Peace and the dynamic Force. In the end they unite.

It is in the inactive Brahman that one merges if one seeks laya or Moksha. One can dwell in the Personal Divine but does not merge in Him. As for the Supreme, He holds in Himself the world-existence and it is in His Consciousness that it moves; so by entering into the Supreme one rises above subjection to Nature, but one does not disappear from all consciousness of world-existence.

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The immutable Brahman is only a base for the transcendent action which comes down into its peace and silence and fills it with power also and Ananda and the light of knowledge.

Spirit and Life

In the sphere of the Spirit are only the eternal truths—all is eternally itself there, there is no development, nothing unrealised or striving to be fulfilled. There are no such things as possibilities therefore.

In life on the other hand all is a play of possibilities—nothing is realised, all is seeking to be realised—or if not yet seeking, then waiting behind the veil for that. Nothing is realised in its highest form, in its truth or completeness, but all is possible. All these possibilities are derived from the truths above—e.g., the possibility of knowledge, the possibility of love, the possibility of joy etc.

Intellect, will etc. are intermediaries which try to catch something of the hidden higher truths and bring them into life or else raise life to them—so that the possibilities of life here may become the complete realities that are already there above.

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