This is an attempt to present in a sequential order certain ideas that may be said to appertain to an outlook of life which would adequately comprehend within itself the process of the envisagement of values that are supposed to form the structure of the general pattern of our existence. It is fairly obvious that we do not start thinking without a basis on which it has to found itself, an acceptance of what may be called indubitable and certain for all practical purposes. Usually, such a sheet-anchor of human enterprise goes by the name of a philosophy of life, a general concept of what things are, or what they ought to be, in the scheme of the universe. Not only do we not think in a vacuum and do have some substantiating factor remaining always there at the back of thoughts and actions, but also we conduct our life processes from what is considered as more primary and unavoidable to what is secondary or what follows from the original requirement as a corollary from a theorem. Effects follow causes, even as causes precede effects. While the effects are important enough to require necessary consideration, the causes have a precedence and determine all such considerations. The effects are often the visible and tangible things; the causes are not always direct objects of perception.

It is common knowledge that we occupy ourselves principally with visible phenomena, inasmuch as the immediate impact of the world is on our sensations, and even our thoughts seem to become operative after the senses receive impressions of things outside as cast in the moulds of their own individual areas of organisation. Rarely do we think before we see or hear; we seem to be mentally active after sensations stimulate psychic functions. This is an aspect of our life which has been excessively taken advantage of by the empiricist schools of philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics and politics, though it, indeed, remains as a valid segment of the way in which we acquire knowledge. There is, however, the other side of the story, namely, that knowledge is not a mere unsolicited import from a foreign land, and that there is an inner need that decides the nature of the product arising as the outcome of sense impressions. But the vehemence of sensory activity is often so impetuous and aggressive that there is mostly an acquiescence on the part of everyone in the belief that events take place only in the 'outer' world and human history is caused by the behaviour of 'other' people. That there has been latterly a gradual trend of thought along these lines in modern times does not need an explanation. Only it would show that humanity is drifting downwards into the more exteriorised, mechanised and devitalised forms of existence than what should be expected from an essentially self-conscious human individual whose very self cannot be other than an indivisible consciousness, a fact which all types of empiricism seem to be ignoring entirely. The rationalist emphasis, too, may not always be able to avoid the erroneous judgment of confining consciousness merely to intellectual activity, not paying sufficient attention to the nature of reality which sweeps over a much larger area than logic and reason.

The arrangement of thought in these essays can be viewed either from the point of view of the cause manifesting itself as its natural effects, or the effect evolving gradually into the substance of the cause. Perhaps the former impression may be created in the mind of a reader when the book is studied from the beginning to the end in the order of succession, and it may have the feature of the latter if the chapters are read in the reverse order especially from Chapter XVIII backwards, concluding with the themes of the initial chapters. Though the presentation has endeavoured to touch the furthermost and a kind of superlative externalisation of aims and values as one could see in the present-day world, such as the thoroughgoing artificial organisations of life as pure political expediency and involvement in a thoroughgoing visage of man's dependence on material and economic phenomena, the thesis, in its vision of the origin of things, does not start with any difficult assumptions such as what may be regarded as the logical grounding of the very way of thinking and the rationalistic foundation of any view of life, notwithstanding that a view of life which should reasonably be considered as acceptable on universal foundations has been portrayed in the essays in as much clarity and detail as could be possible. The position adopted is somewhat like the epic style of introducing the mind to what it may be able to receive even at the outset as something not only interesting but even exciting.

The wonder of creation is what generally stimulates the highest possible reaches of thought and feeling. The 'objective' universe, remaining, nevertheless, as a universal inclusiveness, encounters us as an intelligent and purposive operation motivated by a central aim arising from the very heart of all things. Such a fundamental essence has been called God in theological terms, as the Absolute in philosophy, as the very Substance that transcends even space and time. The manner in which the universal scheme presents itself to human understanding is the cosmology of creation, through which process the One becomes the many, and the indivisible reveals itself as the manifold variety. Yet, in all this multifariousness, there is the undying immanence of that unitary principle which holds together the infinite parts of creation in a single grasp of eternal cohesiveness. This pervading influence through the manifold is the manifestation of the well-known gods of religion, the divinities in heaven, the angels that see things from the high skies. The space-time complex, the electromagnetic background of matter, and the very substance of physicality are the components of creation.

The dramatic picture of life rises into the perceptive process when perception itself is not accountable without the perceiver being in a way segregated from the perceived world. The entire astronomical universe as viewed by the astronomer looks like an outside something, though the astronomer himself could not exist without his being substantially involved in the organism of the universe. The structure of the psyche in the individual of any species seems to be so oriented that the individualised mind in any of its stages of development cannot but assume the externality of the world and arrogate to its own self a subjectivity and conscious independence which it denies to the world of perception. Here commences the psychology of individual nature to which the world of physics, sociology and religion and everything of kindred nature, the world as a whole, stands apart as the obvious field of Nature and humanity, all which the mind attempts to study in a purely empirical fashion. It is here that the vitals of life seem to be rent asunder, and man lives in the world more like a moving corpse than anything that is vitally connected with the world. All things that proceed further, all activities of humanity, education, culture, politics, and every blessed thing, remain like ghosts presenting their last dance before they collapse dead, bereft of a living relation with the universal principle.

The centrality of the human consciousness as deciding everything that it knows or even what it feels it cannot know suggests an implication within itself that, when we find it impossible to avoid the conclusion of an absolute state of things, it is itself an indication of the Absolute. The nature of the world as it appears to the senses of perception and as it is cognised by the mind, has always been, invariably, taken to be the manner in which it has managed to present itself to human understanding. One of the features in which the world presents itself to conscious appreciation is the scheme of the degrees of manifestation, or the evolution of forms in levels of density, concretisation and expression. The only way in which this phenomenon can be explained is to follow the lead of reason in the manifestation of name and form.

Since whatever is the Absolute would not permit of even such basic essentials of creation as space and time to interfere with its indivisibility, the space-time complex which is the foundation for the very meaning of creation is necessarily forced into the process of knowledge. Space-time also becomes the field of vibration, motion and force, which is how the ancient teachers describe the coming of the temporal world from Eternal Being. A ubiquitous action of force is supposed to take place to evolve the potentials of forthcoming forms, the quantum of energy necessary to manifest the type of world that it is. The field of gases, liquids and solids, of light and heat, is the obvious form capable of sense contact arisen out of the supersensible potentials of force existing as the background of all sense data.

It is never possible to ignore the element of consciousness in any enthusiasm over the complexity of the world and the variegatedness of forms. There is, consequently, the indwelling presence of this consciousness in the variety. The different forms in which this consciousness is so manifest are actually the denizens of heaven, which religions adore, the gods whom devotees worship in ritual and prayer. The manyness of the gods is explained by the manifold way in which the universal consciousness is revealed through the degrees of reality. The One appears as the many, itself indwelling in everyone of them.

The cosmic structure is all great and grand. But the factor of there being an observer of the cosmos reduces this secure magnificence to an insecure bifurcation of the observer and the observed, the seer and the seen, the knower and the known. Who is it that knows the existence of a world outside? The answer implies the existence of something which is not itself the world of observation. It also suggests that the term does not include everything that exists, since the inclusiveness of the world would include also the knower thereof, in which latter case there would be no knower 'of' the world. The very fact of perception seems to involve a falsification of values, the creation of a situation which cannot be logically accounted for, and which cannot be regarded, in the end, as a tenable position. Yet, the world goes on in this way, and we seem to be living in such a world, in such a manner.