The Not-Self as Known

The Self whose " nature is knowledge " finds mirrored within himself a vast number of forms, and learns by experience that he cannot know and act and will in and through them. These forms, he discovers, are not amenable to his control as is the form of which he first becomes conscious, and which he (mistakenly, and yet necessarily) learns to identify with himself. He knows, and they do not think; he wills, and they show no desire; he energises, and there is no responsive movement in them. He cannot say in them, " I know", "I act", "I will"; and at length he recognises them as other selves, in mineral, vegetable, animal, human, and super-human forms, and he generalises all these under one comprehensive term, the Not-Self, that in which he, as a separated Self, is not, in which he does not know, and act, and will. He thus answers for a long time the question:

" What is the Not-Self? " with

" All in which I do not know and will and act."

And although truly he will find, on successive analyses, that his vehicles, one after another—save indeed, the finest film that makes him a Self—are parts of the Not-Self, are objects of knowledge, arc the Known, not the Knower, for all practical purposes his answer is correct. In fact he can never know, as divisible from himself, this finest film that makes him a separated Self, since its presence is necessary to that separation, and to know it as the Not-Self would be to merge in the All.