The beauty that the sexes feel between each other is the glamour projected by this super-individual urge in the form of the sexes so that it may be safely said that sexual beauty which is visible to the male in the female and to the female in the male is the form of that lost identity of uni-sexuality which preceded the subsequent manifestation of the bi-sexual individuals. Then, what is sexual beauty? Does it really exist? Yes, it does, and it does not. It exists because it is seen; it does not exist because what is seen is not beauty but something else which is mistaken for what is known as beauty. The beauty of the sexes that is visible is the consequence of a similarity of vibration that takes place in the vital and physical organisms of the personality which gets pulled magnetically towards the opposite sex since it sees in the opposite sex not merely a person like oneself but a strange ‘meaning’ which is read into the body of the person, this meaning being the cause for the perception of beauty more than the person as such. This is very clearly observable in the fact that a youth is not sexually attracted towards a newly born baby or a centenarian. In fact the youth seeks only a youth and not anything else, because youth is the meaning that is sought by youth and beauty is mostly inseparable from youth. This would be a diagnosis of the cause whereby we discover that the sexual urge is the pressure of the species which is an ulterior motive behind the apparent attraction of the sexes, just as we say these days that students are made tools of revolutionary activities intended by tactful politicians whose purposes get fulfilled by the utilisation of students as stooges. This analysis of the sex-instinct does not, however, diminish the vehemency of its expression in personal life because while the analysis is ‘rational’, its expression is ‘affective’ working through the feelings which ordinarily do not go hand in hand with the understanding. Sexual characters are of two kinds: primary and secondary. The primary ones are respected mostly in primitive tribal life whereas modern civilisation goes after the secondary characters. The primary characters are those connected directly with the procreational act which is the main intention of the urge and which was naively given the primary importance in primitive civilisation. But modern man is more sophisticated and intentionally tries to hide the primary purpose of one’s sexual life and gives importance to the secondary sexual characters of the physical personality which are only external indications of the primary productive capacity of the individual in connection with procreation. This has made modern life more artificial, more removed from reality and so more unhappy, too. How could one hide fact and be at ease with oneself?

Self-preservation and self-reproduction are the spatio-temporal forms taken by the absolute character of the eternity of Consciousness. The ‘fall’ is a single act with the threefold downward pressure of psychic self-affirmation, physical self-affirmation and the urge for self-perpetuation. The threefold instinct acts simultaneously, only manifesting a particular phase at a particular time attended with favourable circumstances, so that the psycho-physical affirmation and the sex-urge, though they are present in the individual at all times hiddenly or expressedly, assume special emphasis under given conditions alone, even as a seed thrown into the soil germinates only when the conditions suited to its sprouting manifest themselves in course of time. Here is a crucial point which has to be taken notice of particularly by those who have dedicated their lives to tread the ‘path of return’ to the Absolute, on which subject a little dilation of understanding is called for.

The consciousness that has split itself into the knowing subject and the known object is linked together in its parts by a mediating feature which is known as the presiding deity (Devata) superintending over the individual’s functions in relation to their corresponding objects in the external world. Seekers of Truth, or students of yoga, have their own human weaknesses by which they quickly revert to giving a unjustifiable importance to the subjective feature of their personalities, not being able at the same time to keep a watch over the fact that their subjective personalities are inextricably interwoven with their objects as well as with the ‘presiding’ principles connecting them with the objects. This natural foible of human nature to be seen markedly even in advanced seekers and Yogis; becomes a cause for their fall from the aim which they have set before themselves originally, no doubt with a pious intention. But piety alone will not succeed in a world of impersonal forces. Good intentions are of course good enough, but the world is made up of such stuff that noble intentions alone will not cut ice with it. The world is not a friend of anyone in the sense of a father or a mother who would be expected to pardon even grave faults of their children, though sometimes it looks as if the world is often capable of being too lenient upon the behaviour of its contents. But this apparent affection of the world for its citizens is a mistaken view that one may take of the more sublime attitude of justice and fair play, not excluding the intention of goodness and kindness, which is discoverable in the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Which is more honourable: the mother’s love for her child or the judge’s love for his client? Has not the world relentlessly cast aside the sentimental affections of the public audience which craved the great men of history to be spared the pains of receiving its orders of exit from the grand scene of the role they were playing in the beautiful drama of human history? Where is an instance that one can cite in which the forces of cosmic history have showed sentimental pity over even the greatest of geniuses and the most beautiful souls that the world would like to adore in its hearts? Why should there be this travestied end of the magnificent performances of the heroes in the different fields of life? Is life a tragedy after all? Is there any such thing as love, friendship and perpetual cooperation between persons? Can history stand witness to any of these coveted ambitions of human emotion?

The answer seems to be simple enough. The universe is a vast arena of the work of powers which have the single aim of fulfilling the integrality of the structure of all creation: the ultimate indivisibility of the Absolute. The seeker of the Absolute, if he contents himself to remain merely in the human level of value-assessments, would prove himself to be an awful failure in his otherwise noble pursuits and praiseworthy attempts. The universe is not made up of personalities—men, women and children—or of things in the sense of objects that we would like to possess or avoid. The universe is differently made. It is not constituted of things or objects but of an urge or a tendency towards self-unification in the all-comprehensive infinitude of existence. More properly, we should say that the universe is a law that is operating rather than a thing that exists. And this law is like that of a State, which does dot regard its citizens as brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, but as subjects to its operation impersonally. Seekers who are endeavouring to direct their consciousness to the Absolute may miss this point and even, in sufficiently advanced stages of practice the subjective aspect of their being can gain an upper hand and put the cart before the horse, thus stultifying the main purpose in view. It is humanly impossible for anyone to bear in mind always the correlatedness of oneself with the outer atmosphere of the so-called persons and things around; it is always believed by instinct that the objects, whether persons or things, are to be ‘dealt with’ in some manner, that is, one always regards oneself as a totally isolated subject and thus it is that one comes a cropper in one’s attempt in any direction in one’s life. There seems to be failure everywhere without a hope of success anywhere, all because there is a basic misconstruing and misinterpretation of one’s relation to the objective world.

The subjective assessment of oneself is at the root of all troubles. One always refers to oneself as the ‘I’ and acts as such in all dealings. Unfortunately for this ‘I’, it does not really exist, for it is an upstart that has unwarrantedly arisen out of the confusion of characters between the subject and the object, just as a ‘nobody’ may suddenly become a leader of people when a state of anarchy prevails in the country. But the ‘I’ is merely a notion, it is not an existent something. It is a notion of there being some such a thing as a partitioned consciousness, the impossibility of which position has been already pointed out. But this false notion works by means of an artifice and enters the hearts of even Yogis, saints and sages so that not even a celestial can be said to be free from the notion of the ‘I’, the engenderer of all consequent errors and problems of life.

The notion of the ‘I’ not only posits an object of contemplation before itself but connects with this idea all the other corollaries that follow from this position, once it gains acceptance as validly established. The phenomenal urges of hunger, fame and sex can easily gain entry into this newly built mansion of even the ‘seeking’ soul which has somehow reconciled itself with the very view which it was originally its purpose to obviate and transcend. Consciousness which refuses itself to be segmented into parts of any kind sought freedom from the consequences of this fragmentation which it suffered from by means of resort to the practice of yoga and meditation on the Supreme Reality. But the fragmented consciousness does not so easily get freed from its basic notions which have originated from the accepted fact of there being such a fragmentation of itself. This interesting feature of the otherwise pious efforts of consciousness does not part company even with honestly dedicated seekers, this feature getting identified with their honesty itself! Thus it is that the love of name, fame and social recognition can become an organic part of the honesty of belief in one’s being really engaged in yoga and meditation of the great spiritual Reality, so that, that which is sought to be avoided has very intelligently managed to worm itself into the very aim that one is after. This is the manner in which other impulses also get themselves associated inseparably with the consciousness of the aspiration for ultimate freedom from the trammels and sufferings given rise to by a division in the divisionless consciousness. The impulses are many but as we have observed above they can be boiled down to the physical urge of hunger, the psychic urge for name and fame and the vital urge for sex. It is usually held that the desire for wealth is also a primary impulse. But on a careful examination of this question it will be seen that no one seeks wealth for its own sake: it is sought as an instrument of utilitarian value for the fulfilment of the major urges of hunger, social recognition and sex. One may feel surprised that such an enormous value of life as wealth should be suddenly reduced to the status of a simple working device of only three instincts. Yes; it will be seen that much of the importance that we give to the so-called valuable assets of the world is a child born of no parents but pretending to be an emperor’s heir-apparent. We can safely set aside the special significance of material wealth in the light of the fact that it has no meaning where society does not exist, that is, where the need for the mechanism of give-and-take does not arise. Even supposing that society is a self-existing something independent of the individual, its existence gets suffused into that of the individual since social values cannot be different from those associated with the needs of the human individual. And what are these needs? The instincts, the urges.