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ALL THE GODS WITHIN US In the lap of boundless dark, on Mahānirvāṇa's waves upborne, Peace flows serene and inexhaustible. Taking the form of the Void, in the robe of darkness wrapped, Who art Thou, Mother, seated alone in the shrine of samadhi? From the Lotus of Thy fcar-scattering Feet flash Thy love's
lightnings; Thy Spirit-Face shines forth with laughter terrible and loud.67
All the Gods within Us
IN THE Jaina and kindred teachings, matter is described as of an inert and lifeless (ajīva) character. The ruthless asceticism of the “naked philosophers” (the "gymnosophists” who astounded Alexander's Greeks) followed logically from their resolution to be sterilized of this dead material and thus rendered pristinepure, luminous, and perfect. Like balloons Icaving the earth below-the earth, its atmosphere, and even the ultimate stratospheric envelope-their life-monads were leaving beneath them, trait by trait, the universal bondages of lifeless "life.” As we have seen, the force in India of that pre-Aryan, dualistic, yogic point of vicw was so great that even the exuberant monism of the Brāhmans finally submitted to its life-searing influence. Gradually, the vigorous world-affirmation of the Vedic period underwent a strangely contradictory change, until, in what is generally regarded as the supreme nondualistic designation of Brahman as sat, cit, ānanda ("pure being, consciousness, and 67 1b., p. 692.
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