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<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><b>
<FONT FACE="Times New Roman,sans-serif" size="4">The
Parting of the Way</FONT></b></p>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;"><BR>
To be divine or to remain human <font face="Times New Roman">—</font> this is the one
choice that is now before Nature in her upward march of evolution.
What is the exact significance of this choice?</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">To remain human means to continue the fundamental nature
of man. In what consists the humanity of man? We can ascertain it by
distinguishing what forms the animality of the animal, since that will give us 
the differentia that nature has evolved to raise man over the animal. The 
animal, again, has a characteristic differentiating it from the vegetable world, 
which latter, in its turn, has something to mark it off from the inorganic 
world. The inorganic, the vegetable, the animal and finally man </span>
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">—</font></span><span style="font-size:12pt;"> these
are the four great steps of Nature's evolutionary course.</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">The differentia, in each case, lies in the degree and
nature of consciousness, since it is consciousness that forms the
substance and determines the mode of being. Now, the inorganic is
characterised by un-consciousness, the vegetable by
sub-consciousness, the animal by consciousness and man by
self-consciousness. Man knows that he knows, an animal only knows; a
plant does not even know, it merely feels or senses; matter cannot do
that even, it simply acts or rather is acted upon. We are not
concerned here, however, with the last two forms of being; we will
speak of the first two only.</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">We say, then, that man is distinguished from the 
animal by his having consciousness as it has, but added to it the consciousness 
of self. Man acts and feels and knows as much as the animal does; but also he 
knows that he acts, he knows that he feels, he knows that he knows — and this is a thing the animal
cannot do. It is the awakening of the sense of selfin every mode of
being that characterises man, and it is owing to this consciousness</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Page - 42</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">of an ego behind, of a permanent unit of reference, which has
modified even the functions of knowing and feeling and acting, has
refashioned them in a mould which is not quite that of the animal, in
spite of a general similarity.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">So the humanity of man consists in his consciousness of
the self or ego. Is there no other higher mode of consciousness?
Or is self-consciousness the acme, the utmost limit to which
consciousness can raise itself? If it is so, then we are bound
to conclude that humanity will remain eternally human in its
fundamental nature; the only progress, if progress at all we choose
to call it, will consist perhaps in accentuating this consciousness
of the self and in expressing it through a greater variety of
stresses, through a richer combination of its colour and light and shade and 
rhythm. But also, this may not be so </span>
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><font face="Times New Roman">—</font></span><span style="font-size:12pt;">there may be
the possibility of a further step, a transcending of the
consciousness of the self. It seems unnatural and improbable that
having risen from un-consciousness to self-consciousness through a
series of continuous marches, Nature should suddenly stop and
consider what she had achieved to be her final end. Has Nature become
bankrupt of her creative genius, exhausted of her upward drive? Has
she to remain content with only a clever manipulation, a mere
shuffling and re-arranging of the materials already produced?</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">As a matter of fact it is not so. The glimpses of a
higher form of consciousness we can see even now present in
self-consciousness. We have spoken of the different stages of
evolution as if they were separate and distinct and incommensurate
entities. They may be described as such for the purpose of a logical
understanding, but in reality they form a single progressive
continuum in which one level gradually fuses into another. And as the
higher level takes up the law of the lower and evolves out of it a
characteristic function, even so the law of the higher level with its
characteristic function is already involved and envisaged in the law
of the lower level and its characteristic function. It cannot be
asserted positively that because man's special virtue is
self-consciousness, animals cannot have that quality on any account.
We do see, if we care to observe closely and dispassionately, that
animals of the higher order, as they approach the level of humanity,
show more and more evident signs of something which is very much</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Page - 43</span></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">akin
to, if not identical with the human characteristic of
self-consciousness.</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">So, in man also, especially of that order which 
forms the crown of humanity — in poets and artists and
seers and great men of action-can be observed a certain
characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than,
greater than</span><FONT STYLE="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></FONT><span style="font-size:12pt;">the
consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to
characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of
the self to something which is beyond itself-it is the cosmic self,
the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Turiya, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">it
is </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">satchid-ananda — in </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">
so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The 
consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it — 
Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be 
noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, 
the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme 
Reality-the Brahman-in its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; 
it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, 
the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-world — </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Ritam 
—
</span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">the</span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;"> </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">domain of typal 
realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level 
of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between 
self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to 
give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative name-since being as yet 
human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function — the </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">super-consciousness.</span></I></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">The inflatus of something vast and transcendent,
something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and
yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel
sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality,
lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a
reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of
ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a
life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says,
&quot;there is this incalculable element in human life influencing us
from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is
satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still
uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental
sphere to 
</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Page - 44</span></P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">which
the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there
at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot.&quot; —
(A.E.)</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">This passage from the self-conscient to the
super-conscient does not imply merely a shifting of the focus of
consciousness. The transmutation of consciousness involves a purer
illumination, a surer power and a wider compass; it involves
also a fundamental change in the very mode of being and living. It
gives quite a different life-intuition and a different life-power.
The change in the motif brings about a new form altogether, a
re-casting and te-shaping and re-energising of the external materials
as well. As the lift from mere consciousness to self-consciousness
meant all the difference between an animal and a man, so the lift
again from self-consciousness to super-consciousness will mean
the difference of a whole world between man and the divine creature
that is to be.</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Indeed it is a divine creature that should
be envisaged on the next level of evolution. The mental and the
moral, the psychical and the physical transfigurations which must
follow the change in the basic substratum do imply such a mutation,
the birth of a new species, as it were, fashioned in the nature of
the gods. The vision of angels and </span><I><span style="font-size:12pt;">Siddhas, </span></I><span style="font-size:12pt;">which man is
having ceaselessly since his birth, may be but a prophecy of the
future actuality.</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">This then, it seems to us, is the immediate problem that
Nature has set before herself. She is now at the parting of the ways.
She has done with man as an essentially human being, she has brought
out the fundamental possibilities of humanity and perfected it, so
far as perfection may be attained within the cadre by which she chose
to limit herself; she is now looking forward to another kind of
experiment-the evolving of another life, another being out of her
entrails, that will be greater than the humanity we know today, that
will be superior even to the supreme that has yet been actualised.</span></P>
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&nbsp;</P>
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<span style="font-size:12pt;">Nature has marched from the unconscious to the
sub-conscious, from the sub-conscious to the conscious and from
the conscious to the self-conscious; she has to rise yet again from
the self-conscious to the super-conscious. The mineral gave place to
the plant, the plant gave place to the animal and the animal gave
place to man; let man give place to and bring out the divine.</span></P>
<P ALIGN="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><span style="font-size:12pt;">Page - 45</span></P>
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