THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

VII. 5. The Stress of the Hidden Spirit363Force and Existence made one in Bliss, saccidÀnandam, this isthe eternal reality of things. But that Force is not motion, it isKnowledge or Idea. Knowledge is the source of motion, not motionof Knowledge. The Spirit therefore is all. It is alone. Idea orForce, Existence, Bliss are only its triune manifestations, existenceimplying idea which is force, force or idea implying bliss.The Spirit manifest as Intelligence is the basis of the world.Spirit as existence, sat, is one; as Intelligence it multiplies itselfwithout ceasing to be one. We see that tree and say, “Here is amaterial thing”; but if we ask how the tree came into existence,we have to say, it grew or evolved out of the seed. Butgrowth or evolution is only a term describing the sequence in aprocess. It does not explain the origin or account for the processitself. Why should the seed produce a tree and not someother form of existence? The answer is, because that is its nature.But why is that its nature? Why should it not be its natureto produce some other form of existence, or some otherkind of tree? That is the law, is the answer. But why is it thelaw? The only answer is that it is so because it is so; that ithappens, why, no man can say. In reality when we speak ofLaw, we speak of an idea, when we speak of the nature of athing, we speak of an idea. Nowhere can we lay our hands onan object, a visible force, a discernible momentum and say,“Here is an entity called Law or Nature”. The seed evolves atree because tree is the idea involved in the seed; it is a processof manifestation in form, not a creation. If there were noinsistent idea, we should have a world of chances and freaks,not a world of law — there would be no such idea as the natureof things, if there were not an originating and ordering intelligencemanifesting a particular idea in forms. And the formvaries, is born, perishes, the idea is eternal. The form is themanifestation or appearance, the idea is the truth. The form isphenomenon, the idea is reality.Therefore in all things the Hindu thinker sees the stress ofthe hidden Spirit. We see it as prajÜÀ, the universal Intelligence,conscious in things unconscious, active in things inert. The energyof prajÜÀ is what the Europeans call Nature. The tree doesnot and cannot shape itself, the stress of the hidden Intelligence