Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6.s2.9

c6.s2.9

Bergson also has stressed this point and insists on the withdrawal of the Mind from the world of Matter which "imposes upon it its spatial forms, and thus arrests the natural creativity, inwardness, and suppleness of conscious life". For, as he says, "Consciousness, in shaping itself into Intelligence, that is to say, in concentrating itself on Matter, seems to externalize itself" It is only when the Self "brackets" itself out from the realm of things that the psychic processes regain their normal ways. Such withdrawal, says Bergson, permits the fusion of the varied functions of life and mind into a unitary and concrete process—the Intuition. He further points out that "the individual's consciousness, delving downwards, reveals to him, the deeper he goes, his original personality, to which he may cling as something solid, as means of escape from a life of impulse, caprice, and regret. In our innermost selves, we may discover an equilibrium more desirable than the one on the surface. Certain aquatic plants, as they rise to the surface, are ceaselessly jostled by the current; their leaves, meeting above the water, interlace, thus imparting to them stability above. But still more stable are the roots which, firmly planted in the earth, support them from below" [*Morality and Religion*, p. 6]. The Upanishads also have a similar conception in which the Universe is likened to a peepul tree rooted in the universal consciousness (*ūrddhamūlam*), spreading its branches and leaves as the life and the phenomenal world (*guṇa-pravṛiddhā vishaya-pravālāḥ* . . . Karmānubandhīni manushya-loke).