The World as Power: Power as Life (Pranashakti)

“He said ‘ / am Life ‘” \Sahovacha Prano’smi}. “The Life of all lives” [Sa n pranasya pranali] “Adore Me who am Life” (Prano’swi, Mam itpasasva}. Kaushitaki Up., 32; Kena-Up. f 2.

IN the West, matter is commonly divided into that which is organised and unorganised, the former being called living, and the latter non-living, substance, “brute” “inert” and “dead” matter. As is so characteristic of Western Thought, emphasis is thus laid on difference and discontinuity, these being apparent. An absolute gulf was created between the two; the greatest of all gulfs namely that between what is dead and what is alive. “Organisation” means more or less systematic arrangement of relatively separate parts in a whole suited to fulfil any sort of function. According to the old meaning of the term “organic,” an organic body is one, whether living or not, in which heterogeneous elements make up a composite whole. After Leibnitz two elements in the conception (that of composition of parts and of relation of means and end) are intimately connected and Kant welds them together in his definition of the organic, as that in which all the parts are reciprocally means and ends to one another and to the whole. Thus historically the identification of organic with the living comes last, and the term means that which has life whether animal or vegetable as opposed to inorganic or inanimate. Organism in biology means a discrete body of which the essential constituent is living protoplasm. The term originally indicated the recognition of organisation as essential to life and as opposite to unorganised or “dead” matter. An organism has the inherent principle of its own systematic process. It is thus common to speak of organised matter in connection with life. But all matter is now held to be in a state of organisation, that is systematic arrangement of relatively separate parts in a whole suited to fulfil any sort of function. It is said to be constituted of complicated structural elements, and the molecules and atoms are described in fact as miniature solar systems. The supposed, self-moving, electric units of these atoms constitute distinct structural arrangements, varying in number and position in the varied forms of so called elementary matter. And so it has been said that “as soon as we lift the veil of appearances, matter so inert in its outward aspect is seen to possess an extremely complicated organisation and an intense life 5 ‘. So again mineral being is characterised by its beautifully geometrical crystalline form as the living being is characterised by its anatomical one. In short all matter, every thing which exists is organised. It is therefore not organisation but degree and nature of organisation which distinguishes so called living and non-living substance.