that way,
imagines no doubt that it is working all for itself, and yet it is
united down the stem at whose extremity it stands, with the life of the
whole madrepore or sponge to which it belongs. There is the common
life of the whole and the individual life of each, and while the little
creature at the end of the stem is thinking (if it is conscious at all)
that its whole energies are absorbed in its own maintenance, it really
is feeding the common life through the stem to which it belongs, and in
its turn it is being fed by that common life.

You have only to look at an ordinary tree to see the same thing going
on. Each little leaf on a tree may very naturally have sufficient
consciousness to believe that it is an entirely separate being
maintaining itself in the sunlight and the air, withering away and dying
when the winter comes on--and there is an end of it. It probably does
not realize that all the time it is being supported by the sap which
flows from the trunk of the tree, and that in its turn it is feeding
the tree, too--that its self is the self of the whole tree. If the leaf
could really understand itself, it would see that its self was deeply,
intimately connected, practically one with the life of the whole tree.
Therefore, I say that this Indian view is not unscientific. On the
contrary, I am sure that it is thoroughly scientific.

Let us take another passage, out of the 'Svetasvatara Upanishad,' which,
speaking of the self says: "He is the one God, hidden in all creatures,
all pervading, the self within all, watching over all works, shadowing
all creatures, the witness, the perceiver, the only one free from
qualities."

And now we can return to the point where we left the argument at the
beginning of this discourse. We said, you remember, that the Self is
certainly no mere bundle of qualities--that the very nature of the mind
forbids us thinking that. For however fine and subtle any quality or
group of qualities may be, we are irresistibly compelled by the
nature of the mind itself to look for the Self, not in any quality or
qualities, but in the being that PERCEIVES those qualities. The passage
I have just quoted says that being is "The one God, hidden in all
creatures, all pervading, the self within all... the witness, the
perceiver, the only one free from qualities." And the more you
think about it the clearer I think you will see that this passage is
correct--that there can be only ONE witness, ONE