Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/46

 of still solitude into life, into the concrete present, into concrete self-consciousness. With this, all life and all relations of concrete actual life to the One are to be renounced. The entire living Present, whether that of natural life or of spiritual life, of the family, of the State, of art, of religion, is dissolved in the pure negativity of abstract selflessness.

The highest point which is thus attained to in worship is that union with God which consists in the annihilation and stupefaction of self-consciousness. This is not affirmative liberation and reconciliation, but is, on the contrary, wholly negative, complete abstraction. It is that complete emptying which makes renunciation of all consciousness, will, emotions, needs. Man, so long as he persists in remaining within his own consciousness, is, according to the Hindu idea, ungodly. But the freedom of man justs consists in being with himself—not in emptiness, but in willing, knowing, acting. To the Hindu, on the contrary, the complete submergence and stupefaction of the consciousness is what is highest, and he who maintains himself in this abstraction and has died to the world is called a yogi.

This state is found existing among the people of India, because many Hindus, who are not Brahmans, undertake and accomplish the task of making themselves into the “I” which is in a completely abstract condition. They renounce all movement, all interests, all inclination, and give themselves up to a still abstraction; they are reverenced and supported by others, they remain speechless in rigid torpor, looking toward the sun or having their eyes closed. Some remain thus during their whole life, others for twenty or thirty years. It is related of one of these Hindus that he had travelled for ten years without ever lying down, having slept standing; during the following ten years he had held his hands above his head, and then he intended to have himself suspended by the feet to swing for three hours and three-quarters over a