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Mandukya Upanishad says, Prakritis are of two kinds, Apara and Para; the former produces Karma and the latter Mukti. The one is Jad, the other Chaitanya. This is also the opinion of Bhagvat Gita, seventh chapter. Mandnkya Karika, third chapter, and Prasna Upanishad also speak of Maya and Prakriti—please see the Upanishads with Sankara's commentary. Vasishta, Vyasa, Ashtavakra and all great sages recommend the divorcement of this illusive Prakriti, and nowhere in their works do we find any sentence which says that this illusive Prakriti is to be known with God. If Brahma can, in your opinion, be knwon through Prakriti, then why not with all others but Tamasa only? According to Indian philosophy and the practical experience of hermits, this Mula-Sakti or Avidya, as you understand it, is not to be known in Brahman. Because it is illusive and false, moreover, it can be dissolved and made inactive. It loses itself in Turya when layaed, as the river into the ocean. But as long as you will be ignorant of this process, so long you have liberty to call it a protest of religion; but the thinking class, who understand this mysterious process, will laugh at your weakness of understanding. As you have purposely come to India for true esoteric knowledge, we always pray for your success, and entreat you to understand us a little hermitically.*[1] We explained to you Pranava according to the interpretation of Rama Gita, a chapter of esoteric Ramayana, but as you are not well acquainted with the laya theory, you could not accept it. It does not, however, matter much; practical Vedantists have accepted it before. We very gladly and without any apology quote a few lines from Max Muller's very able preface to "The Sacred Books of the East," as it bears on our subject. "This concentration of thought, Chagrata or one pointedness as the Hindus called it, is something to us
- ↑ * See Mr. T. Subba Row's reply. We thank again our kind adviser for the interest he displays in our spiritual welfare, and refer him, if he desires to learn the cause of our refusal, to our note at the end of his letter. We can also assure him that we have never and nowhere called Laya "a protest of religion."—Ed.
