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THE ROAR OF AWAKENING
in the recurrent cosmic comedy that is enacted whenever a spark of supernal uuth, drawn down by the misery of creatures and the imminence of chaos, is made manifest on the phenomenal plane.
"It is the same with our spirit," states Paul Valéry, "as with our flesh: both hide in mystery what they feel to be most important. They conceal it from themselves. They single it out and protect it by this profundity in which they ensconce it. Everything that really counts is well veiled; testimony and docunients only render it the more obscure; decds and works are designed expressly to misrepresent it."
The chief aim of Indian thought is to unveil and integrale into consciousness what has been thus resisted and hidden by the forces of life-not to explore and describe the visible world. The supreme and characteristic achievement of the Brāhman mind (and this has been decisive, not only for the course of Indian philosophy, but also for the history of Indian civilization) was its discovery of the Self (ātman) as an independent, imperishablc entity, underlying the conscious personality and bodily frame. Everything that we normally know and express about ourselves belongs to the sphere of change, the sphere of time and space, but this Sell (ātman) is forever changeless, beyond time. beyond space and the veiling net of causality, beyond measure, beyond the dominion of the eye. The effort of Indian philosophy has been, for millenniums, to know this adamantine Self and make the knowledge effective in human life. And this enduring concern is what has been responsible for the supreme morning calm that pervades the terrible histories of the Oriental
1 "Il en est de notre esprit comme de notre chair; ce qu'ils se sentent de plus important, ils l'enveloppent de mystère, ils se le cachent à eux-mêmes; ils le désignent et le défendent par cette profondeur où ils le placent. Tout ce qui compte est bien voilé; les témoins et les documents l'obscurcissent; les actes et les ocuvres sont faits expressément pour le travestir" (Paul Valéry, Variété I, "Au sujet d'Adonis," p. 68).
