SADHANA

THE REALISATION OF LIFE

By

Rabindranath Tagore

Author of 'Gitanjali'

1916

To

Ernest Rhys

Author's Preface

Perhaps it is well for me to explain that the subject-matter ofthe papers published in this book has not been philosophicallytreated, nor has it been approached from the scholar's point ofview. The writer has been brought up in a family where texts ofthe Upanishads are used in daily worship; and he has had beforehim the example of his father, who lived his long life in theclosest communion with God, while not neglecting his duties tothe world, or allowing his keen interest in all human affairs tosuffer any abatement. So in these papers, it may be hoped, western readers will have an opportunity of coming into touchwith the ancient spirit of India as revealed in our sacred textsand manifested in the life of to-day. 

All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by theletter but by the spirit--the spirit which unfolds itself withthe growth of life in history. We get to know the real meaningof Christianity by observing its living aspect at the presentmoment--however different that may be, even in importantrespects, from the Christianity of earlier periods. 

For western scholars the great religious scriptures of India seemto possess merely a retrospective and archaelogical interest; butto us they are of living importance, and we cannot help thinkingthat they lose their significance when exhibited in labelledcases--mummied specimens of human thought and aspiration, preserved for all time in the wrappings of erudition. 

The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiencesof great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system oflogical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained bythe commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an addedmystery in each new revelation. To me the verses of theUpanishads and the teachings of Buddha have ever been things ofthe spirit, and therefore endowed with boundless vital growth;and I have used them, both in my own life and in my preaching, asbeing instinct with individual meaning for me, as for others, andawaiting for their confirmation, my own special testimony, whichmust have its value because of its individuality. 

I should add perhaps that these papers embody in a connectedform, suited to this publication, ideas which have been culledfrom several of the Bengali discourses which I am in the habit ofgiving to my students in my school at Bolpur in Bengal; and Ihave used here and there translations of passages from these doneby my friends, Babu Satish Chandra Roy and Babu Ajit KumarChakravarti. The last paper of this series, "Realisation inAction, " has been translated from my Bengali discourse on "Karma-yoga" by my nephew, Babu Surendra Nath Tagore. 

I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to ProfessorJames H. Woods, of Harvard University, for his generousappreciation which encouraged me to complete this series ofpapers and read most of them before the Harvard University. AndI offer my thanks to Mr. Ernest Rhys for his kindness in helpingme with suggestions and revisions, and in going through theproofs. 

A word may be added about the pronouncing of Sadhana: the accentfalls decisively on the first a, which has the broad sound of theletter. 

CONTENTS

I. THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSEII. SOUL CONSCIOUSNESSIII. THE PROBLEM OF EVILIV. THE PROBLEM OF SELFV. REALISATION IN LOVEVI. REALISATION IN ACTIONVII. THE REALISATION OF BEAUTYVIII. THE REALISATION OF THE INFINITE

I

THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE

The civilisation of ancient Greece was nurtured within citywalls. In fact, all the modern civilisations have their cradlesof brick and mortar. 

These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They setup a principle of "divide and rule" in our mental outlook, whichbegets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifyingthem and separating them from one another. We divide nation andnation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in usa strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we havebuilt, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into ourrecognition. 

When the first Aryan invaders appeared in India it was a vastland of forests, and the new-comers rapidly took advantage ofthem. These forests afforded them shelter from the fierce heatof the sun and the ravages of tropical storms, pastures forcattle, fuel for sacrificial fire, and materials for buildingcottages. And the different Aryan clans with their patriarchalheads settled in the different forest tracts which had somespecial advantage of natural protection, and food and water inplenty. 

Thus in India it was in the forests that our civilisation had itsbirth, and it took a distinct character from this origin andenvironment. It was surrounded by the vast life of nature, wasfed and clothed by her, and had the closest and most constantintercourse with her varying aspects. 

Such a life, it may be thought, tends to have the effect ofdulling human intelligence and dwarfing the incentives toprogress by lowering the standards of existence. But in ancientIndia we find that the circumstances of forest life did notovercome man's mind, and did not enfeeble the current of hisenergies, but only gave to it a particular direction. Havingbeen in constant contact with the living growth of nature, hismind was free from the desire to extend his dominion by erectingboundary walls around his acquisitions. His aim was not toacquire but to realise, to enlarge his consciousness by growingwith and growing into his surroundings. He felt that truth isall-comprehensive, that there is no such thing as absoluteisolation in existence, and the only way of attaining truth isthrough the interpenetration of our being into all objects. Torealise this great harmony between man's spirit and the spirit ofthe world was the endeavour of the forest-dwelling sages ofancient India. 

In later days there came a time when these primeval forests gaveway to cultivated fields, and wealthy cities sprang up on allsides. Mighty kingdoms were established, which hadcommunications with all the great powers of the world. But evenin the heyday of its material prosperity the heart of India everlooked back with adoration upon the early ideal of strenuousself-realisation, and the dignity of the simple life of theforest hermitage, and drew its best inspiration from the wisdomstored there. 

The west seems to take a pride in thinking that it is subduingnature; as if we are living in a hostile world where we have towrest everything we want from an unwilling and alien arrangementof things. This sentiment is the product of the city-wall habitand training of mind. For in the city life man naturally directsthe concentrated light of his mental vision upon his own life andworks, and this creates an artificial dissociation betweenhimself and the Universal Nature within whose bosom he lies. 

But in India the point of view was different; it included theworld with the man as one great truth. India put all heremphasis on the harmony that exists between the individual andthe universal. She felt we could have no communication whateverwith our surroundings if they were absolutely foreign to us. Man's complaint against nature is that he has to acquire most ofhis necessaries by his own efforts. Yes, but his efforts are notin vain; he is reaping success every day, and that shows there isa rational connection between him and nature, for we never canmake anything our own except that which is truly related to us. 

We can look upon a road from two different points of view. Oneregards it as dividing us from the object of our desire; in thatcase we count every step of our journey over it as somethingattained by force in the face of obstruction. The other sees itas the road which leads us to our destination; and as such it ispart of our goal. It is already the beginning of our attainment, and by journeying over it we can only gain that which in itselfit offers to us. This last point of view is that of India withregard to nature. For her, the great fact is that we are inharmony with nature; that man can think because his thoughts arein harmony with things; that he can use the forces of nature forhis own purpose only because his power is in harmony with thepower which is universal, and that in the long run his purposenever can knock against the purpose which works through nature. 

In the west the prevalent feeling is that nature belongsexclusively to inanimate things and to beasts, that there is asudden unaccountable break where human-nature begins. Accordingto it, everything that is low in the scale of beings is merelynature, and whatever has the stamp of perfection on it, intellectual or moral, is human-nature. It is like dividing thebud and the blossom into two separate categories, and puttingtheir grace to the credit of two different and antitheticalprinciples. But the Indian mind never has any hesitation inacknowledging its kinship with nature, its unbroken relation withall. 

The fundamental unity of creation was not simply a philosophicalspeculation for India; it was her life-object to realise thisgreat harmony in feeling and in action. With mediation andservice, with a regulation of life, she cultivated herconsciousness in such a way that everything had a spiritualmeaning to her. The earth, water and light, fruits and flowers, to her were not merely physical phenomena to be turned to use andthen left aside. They were necessary to her in the attainment ofher ideal of perfection, as every note is necessary to thecompleteness of the symphony. India intuitively felt that theessential fact of this world has a vital meaning for us; we haveto be fully alive to it and establish a conscious relation withit, not merely impelled by scientific curiosity or greed ofmaterial advantage, but realising it in the spirit of sympathy, with a large feeling of joy and peace. 

The man of science knows, in one aspect, that the world is notmerely what it appears to be to our senses; he knows that earthand water are really the play of forces that manifest themselvesto us as earth and water--how, we can but partially apprehend. Likewise the man who has his spiritual eyes open knows that theultimate truth about earth and water lies in our apprehension ofthe eternal will which works in time and takes shape in theforces we realise under those aspects. This is not mereknowledge, as science is, but it is a preception of the soul bythe soul. This does not lead us to power, as knowledge does, butit gives us joy, which is the product of the union of kindredthings. The man whose acquaintance with the world does not leadhim deeper than science leads him, will never understand what itis that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these naturalphenomena. The water does not merely cleanse his limbs, but itpurifies his heart; for it touches his soul. The earth does notmerely hold his body, but it gladdens his mind; for its contactis more than a physical contact--it is a living presence. When aman does not realise his kinship with the world, he lives in aprison-house whose walls are alien to him. When he meets theeternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for thenhe discovers the fullest significance of the world into which heis born; then he finds himself in perfect truth, and his harmonywith the all is established. In India men are enjoined to befully awake to the fact that they are in the closest relation tothings around them, body and soul, and that they are to hail themorning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth, as themanifestation of the same living truth which holds them in itsembrace. Thus the text of our everyday meditation is the_Gayathri_, a verse which is considered to be the epitome of allthe Vedas. By its help we try to realise the essential unity ofthe world with the conscious soul of man; we learn to perceivethe unity held together by the one Eternal Spirit, whose powercreates the earth, the sky, and the stars, and at the same timeirradiates our minds with the light of a consciousness that movesand exists in unbroken continuity with the outer world. 

It is not true that India has tried to ignore differences ofvalue in different things, for she knows that would make lifeimpossible. The sense of the superiority of man in the scale ofcreation has not been absent from her mind. But she has had herown idea as to that in which his superiority really consists. Itis not in the power of possession but in the power of union. Therefore India chose her places of pilgrimage wherever there wasin nature some special grandeur or beauty, so that her mind couldcome out of its world of narrow necessities and realise its placein the infinite. This was the reason why in India a wholepeople who once were meat-eaters gave up taking animal food tocultivate the sentiment of universal sympathy for life, an eventunique in the history of mankind. 

India knew that when by physical and mental barriers we violentlydetach ourselves from the inexhaustible life of nature; when webecome merely man, but not man-in-the-universe, we createbewildering problems, and having shut off the source of theirsolution, we try all kinds of artificial methods each of whichbrings its own crop of interminable difficulties. When manleaves his resting-place in universal nature, when he walks onthe single rope of humanity, it means either a dance or a fallfor him, he has ceaselessly to strain every nerve and muscle tokeep his balance at each step, and then, in the intervals of hisweariness, he fulminates against Providence and feels a secretpride and satisfaction in thinking that he has been unfairlydealt with by the whole scheme of things. 

But this cannot go on for ever. Man must realise the wholenessof his existence, his place in the infinite; he must know thathard as he may strive he can never create his honey within thecells of his hive; for the perennial supply of his life food isoutside their walls. He must know that when man shuts himselfout from the vitalising and purifying touch of the infinite, andfalls back upon himself for his sustenance and his healing, thenhe goads himself into madness, tears himself into shreds, andeats his own substance. Deprived of the background of the whole, his poverty loses its one great quality, which is simplicity, andbecomes squalid and shamefaced. His wealth is no longermagnanimous; it grows merely extravagant. His appetites do notminister to his life, keeping to the limits of their purpose;they become an end in themselves and set fire to his life andplay the fiddle in the lurid light of the conflagration. Then itis that in our self-expression we try to startle and not toattract; in art we strive for originality and lose sight of truthwhich is old and yet ever new; in literature we miss the completeview of man which is simple and yet great, but he appears as apsychological problem or the embodiment of a passion that isintense because abnormal and because exhibited in the glare of afiercely emphatic light which is artificial. When man'sconsciousness is restricted only to the immediate vicinity of hishuman self, the deeper roots of his nature do not find theirpermanent soil, his spirit is ever on the brink of starvation, and in the place of healthful strength he substitutes rounds ofstimulation. Then it is that man misses his inner perspectiveand measures his greatness by its bulk and not by its vital linkwith the infinite, judges his activity by its movement and not bythe repose of perfection--the repose which is in the starryheavens, in the ever-flowing rhythmic dance of creation. 

The first invasion of India has its exact parallel in theinvasion of America by the European settlers. They also wereconfronted with primeval forests and a fierce struggle withaboriginal races. But this struggle between man and man, and manand nature lasted till the very end; they never came to anyterms. In India the forests which were the habitation of thebarbarians became the sanctuary of sages, but in America thesegreat living cathedrals of nature had no deeper significance toman. The brought wealth and power to him, and perhaps at timesthey ministered to his enjoyment of beauty, and inspired asolitary poet. They never acquired a sacred association in thehearts of men as the site of some great spiritual reconcilementwhere man's soul has its meeting-place with the soul of theworld. 

I do not for a moment wish to suggest that these things shouldhave been otherwise. It would be an utter waste of opportunitiesif history were to repeat itself exactly in the same manner inevery place. It is best for the commerce of the spirit thatpeople differently situated should bring their different productsinto the market of humanity, each of which is complementary andnecessary to the others. All that I wish to say is that India atthe outset of her career met with a special combination ofcircumstances which was not lost upon her. She had, according toher opportunities, thought and pondered, striven and suffered, dived into the depths of existence, and achieved something whichsurely cannot be without its value to people whose evolution inhistory took a different way altogether. Man for his perfectgrowth requires all the living elements that constitute hiscomplex life; that is why his food has to be cultivated indifferent fields and brought from different sources. 

Civilisation is a kind of mould that each nation is busy makingfor itself to shape its men and women according to its bestideal. All its institutions, its legislature, its standard ofapprobation and condemnation, its conscious and unconsciousteachings tend toward that object. The modern civilisation ofthe west, by all its organised efforts, is trying to turn out menperfect in physical, intellectual, and moral efficiency. Therethe vast energies of the nations are employed in extending man'spower over his surroundings, and people are combining andstraining every faculty to possess and to turn to account allthat they can lay their hands upon, to overcome every obstacle ontheir path of conquest. They are ever disciplining themselves tofight nature and other races; their armaments are getting moreand more stupendous every day; their machines, their appliances, their organisations go on multiplying at an amazing rate. Thisis a splendid achievement, no doubt, and a wonderfulmanifestation of man's masterfulness which knows no obstacle, andwhich has for its object the supremacy of himself over everythingelse. 

The ancient civilisation of India had its own ideal of perfectiontowards which its efforts were directed. Its aim was notattaining power, and it neglected to cultivate to the utmost itscapacities, and to organise men for defensive and offensivepurposes, for co-operation in the acquisition of wealth and formilitary and political ascendancy. The ideal that India tried torealise led her best men to the isolation of a contemplativelife, and the treasures that she gained for mankind bypenetrating into the mysteries of reality cost her dear in thesphere of worldly success. Yet, this also was a sublimeachievement, --it was a supreme manifestation of that humanaspiration which knows no limit, and which has for its objectnothing less than the realisation of the Infinite. 

There were the virtuous, the wise, the courageous; there were thestatesmen, kings and emperors of India; but whom amongst allthese classes did she look up to and choose to be therepresentative of men?

They were the rishis. What were the rishis? _They who havingattained the supreme soul in knowledge were filled with wisdom, and having found him in union with the soul were in perfectharmony with the inner self; they having realised him in theheart were free from all selfish desires, and having experiencedhim in all the activities of the world, had attained calmness. The rishis were they who having reached the supreme God from allsides had found abiding peace, had become united with all, hadentered into the life of the Universe. _ [Footnote:/** Samprapyainam rishayo jnanatripatah Kritatmano vitaragah pracantah te sarvagam sarvatah prapya dhirah Yuktatmanah sarvamevavicanti. */]

Thus the state of realising our relationship with all, ofentering into everything through union with God, was consideredin India to be the ultimate end and fulfilment of humanity. 

Man can destroy and plunder, earn and accumulate, invent anddiscover, but he is great because his soul comprehends all. Itis dire destruction for him when he envelopes his soul in a deadshell of callous habits, and when a blind fury of works whirlsround him like an eddying dust storm, shutting out the horizon. That indeed kills the very spirit of his being, which is thespirit of comprehension. Essentially man is not a slave eitherof himself or of the world; but he is a lover. His freedom andfulfilment is in love, which is another name for perfectcomprehension. By this power of comprehension, this permeationof his being, he is united with the all-pervading Spirit, who isalso the breath of his soul. Where a man tries to raise himselfto eminence by pushing and jostling all others, to achieve adistinction by which he prides himself to be more than everybodyelse, there he is alienated from that Spirit. This is why theUpanishads describe those who have attained the goal of humanlife as "_peaceful_" [Footnote: Pracantah] and as "_at-one-with-God_, " [Footnote: Yuktatmanah] meaning that they are in perfectharmony with man and nature, and therefore in undisturbed unionwith God. 

We have a glimpse of the same truth in the teachings of Jesuswhen he says, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eyeof a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven"--which implies that whatever we treasure for ourselves separatesus from others; our possessions are our limitations. He who isbent upon accumulating riches is unable, with his ego continuallybulging, to pass through the gates of comprehension of thespiritual world, which is the world of perfect harmony; he isshut up within the narrow walls of his limited acquisitions. 

Hence the spirit of the teachings of Upanishad is: In order tofind him you must embrace all. In the pursuit of wealth youreally give up everything to gain a few things, and that is notthe way to attain him who is completeness. 

Some modern philosophers of Europe, who are directly orindirectly indebted to the Upanishads, far from realising theirdebt, maintain that the Brahma of India is a mere abstraction, anegation of all that is in the world. In a word, that theInfinite Being is to be found nowhere except in metaphysics. Itmay be, that such a doctrine has been and still is prevalent witha section of our countrymen. But this is certainly not in accordwith the pervading spirit of the Indian mind. Instead, it is thepractice of realising and affirming the presence of the infinitein all things which has been its constant inspiration. 

We are enjoined to see _whatever there is in the world as beingenveloped by God. _[Footnote: Icavasyamidam sarvam yat kincha jagatyan jagat. ]

_I bow to God over and over again who is in fire and in water, whopermeates the whole world, who is in the annual crops as well asin the perennial trees. _ [Footnote: Yo devo'gnau y'opsu y'ovicvambhuvanamaviveca ya oshadhishu yo vanaspatishu tasmai devayanamonamah. ]

Can this be God abstracted from the world? Instead, it signifiesnot merely seeing him in all things, but saluting him in all theobjects of the world. The attitude of the God-conscious man ofthe Upanishad towards the universe is one of a deep feeling ofadoration. His object of worship is present everywhere. It isthe one living truth that makes all realities true. This truthis not only of knowledge but of devotion. '_Namonamah_, '--we bowto him everywhere, and over and over again. It is recognised inthe outburst of the Rishi, who addresses the whole world in asudden ecstasy of joy: _Listen to me, ye sons of the immortalspirit, ye who live in the heavenly abode, I have known theSupreme Person whose light shines forth from beyond the darkness. _[Footnote: Crinvantu vicve amritasya putra a ye divya dhamanitasthuh vedahametam purusham mahantam aditya varnam tamasahparastat. ] Do we not find the overwhelming delight of a directand positive experience where there is not the least trace ofvagueness or passivity?

Buddha who developed the practical side of the teaching ofUpanishads, preached the same message when he said, _Witheverything, whether it is above or below, remote or near, visibleor invisible, thou shalt preserve a relation of unlimited lovewithout any animosity or without a desire to kill. To live insuch a consciousness while standing or walking, sitting or lyingdown till you are asleep, is Brahma vihara, or, in other words, is living and moving and having your joy in the spirit ofBrahma. _

What is that spirit? The Upanishad says, _The being who is inhis essence the light and life of all, who is world-conscious, isBrahma. _ [Footnote: Yacchayamasminnakace tejomayo'mritamayahpurushah sarvanubhuh. ] To feel all, to be conscious ofeverything, is his spirit. We are immersed in his consciousnessbody and soul. It is through his consciousness that the sunattracts the earth; it is through his consciousness that thelight-waves are being transmitted from planet to planet. 

Not only in space, but _this light and life, this all-feelingbeing is in our souls. _ [Footnote: Yacchayamasminnatmanitejomayo'mritamayah purushah sarvanubhuh. ] He is all-consciousin space, or the world of extension; and he is all-conscious insoul, or the world of intension. 

Thus to attain our world-consciousness, we have to unite ourfeeling with this all-pervasive infinite feeling. In fact, theonly true human progress is coincident with this widening of therange of feeling. All our poetry, philosophy, science, art andreligion are serving to extend the scope of our consciousnesstowards higher and larger spheres. Man does not acquire rightsthrough occupation of larger space, nor through external conduct, but his rights extend only so far as he is real, and his realityis measured by the scope of his consciousness. 

We have, however, to pay a price for this attainment of thefreedom of consciousness. What is the price? It is to giveone's self away. Our soul can realise itself truly only bydenying itself. The Upanishad says, _Thou shalt gain by givingaway_ [Footnote: Tyaktena bhunjithah], _Thou shalt not covet. _[Footnote: Ma gridhah]

In Gita we are advised to work disinterestedly, abandoning alllust for the result. Many outsiders conclude from this teachingthat the conception of the world as something unreal lies at theroot of the so-called disinterestedness preached in India. Butthe reverse is true. 

The man who aims at his own aggrandisement underrates everythingelse. Compared to his ego the rest of the world is unreal. Thusin order to be fully conscious of the reality of all, one has tobe free himself from the bonds of personal desires. Thisdiscipline we have to go through to prepare ourselves for oursocial duties--for sharing the burdens of our fellow-beings. Every endeavour to attain a larger life requires of man "to gainby giving away, and not to be greedy. " And thus to expandgradually the consciousness of one's unity with all is thestriving of humanity. 

The Infinite in India was not a thin nonentity, void of allcontent. The Rishis of India asserted emphatically, "To know himin this life is to be true; not to know him in this life is thedesolation of death. " [Footnote: Iha chet avedit athasatyamasti, nachet iha avedit mahati vinashtih. ] How to know himthen? "By realising him in each and all. " [Footnote: Bhuteshubhuteshu vichintva. ] Not only in nature but in the family, insociety, and in the state, the more we realise the World-conscious in all, the better for us. Failing to realise it, weturn our faces to destruction. 

It fills me with great joy and a high hope for the future ofhumanity when I realise that there was a time in the remote pastwhen our poet-prophets stood under the lavish sunshine of anIndian sky and greeted the world with the glad recognition ofkindred. It was not an anthropomorphic hallucination. It wasnot seeing man reflected everywhere in grotesquely exaggeratedimages, and witnessing the human drama acted on a gigantic scalein nature's arena of flitting lights and shadows. On thecontrary, it meant crossing the limiting barriers of theindividual, to become more than man, to become one with the All. It was not a mere play of the imagination, but it was theliberation of consciousness from all the mystifications andexaggerations of the self. These ancient seers felt in theserene depth of their mind that the same energy which vibratesand passes into the endless forms of the world manifests itselfin our inner being as consciousness; and there is no break inunity. For these seers there was no gap in their luminous visionof perfection. They never acknowledged even death itself ascreating a chasm in the field of reality. They said, _Hisreflection is death as well as immortality. _ [Footnote: Yasyachhayamritam yasya mrityuh. ] They did not recognise anyessential opposition between life and death, and they said withabsolute assurance, "It is life that is death. " [Footnote: Pranomrityuh. ] They saluted with the same serenity of gladness "lifein its aspect of appearing and in its aspect of departure"--_That which is past is hidden in life, and that which is to come. _[Footnote: Namo astu ayate namo astu parayate. Prane ha bhutambhavyancha. ] They knew that mere appearance and disappearance areon the surface like waves on the sea, but life which is permanentknows no decay or diminution. 

_Everything has sprung from immortal life and is vibrating withlife_, [Footnote: Yadidan kincha prana ejati nihsritam. ] _for lifeis immense. _ [Footnote: Prano virat. ]

This is the noble heritage from our forefathers waiting to beclaimed by us as our own, this ideal of the supreme freedom ofconsciousness. It is not merely intellectual or emotional, ithas an ethical basis, and it must be translated into action. Inthe Upanishad it is said, _The supreme being is all-pervading, therefore he is the innate good in all. _ [Footnote: Sarvavyapisa bhagavan tasmat sarvagatah civah. ] To be truly united inknowledge, love, and service with all beings, and thus torealise one's self in the all-pervading God is the essence ofgoodness, and this is the keynote of the teachings of theUpanishads: _Life is immense!_ [Footnote: Prano virat. ]

II

SOUL CONSCIOUSNESS

We have seen that it was the aspiration of ancient India to liveand move and have its joy in Brahma, the all-conscious and all-pervading Spirit, by extending its field of consciousness overall the world. But that, it may be urged, is an impossible taskfor man to achieve. If this extension of consciousness be anoutward process, then it is endless; it is like attempting tocross the ocean after ladling out its water. By beginning to tryto realise all, one has to end by realising nothing. 

But, in reality, it is not so absurd as it sounds. Man has everyday to solve this problem of enlarging his region and adjustinghis burdens. His burdens are many, too numerous for him tocarry, but he knows that by adopting a system he can lighten theweight of his load. Whenever they feel too complicated andunwieldy, he knows it is because he has not been able to hit uponthe system which would have set everything in place anddistributed the weight evenly. This search for system is reallya search for unity, for synthesis; it is our attempt to harmonisethe heterogeneous complexity of outward materials by an inneradjustment. In the search we gradually become aware that to findout the One is to possess the All; that there, indeed, is ourlast and highest privilege. It is based on the law of that unitywhich is, if we only know it, our abiding strength. Its livingprinciple is the power that is in truth; the truth of that unitywhich comprehends multiplicity. Facts are many, but the truth isone. The animal intelligence knows facts, the human mind haspower to apprehend truth. The apple falls from the tree, therain descends upon the earth--you can go on burdening your memorywith such facts and never come to an end. But once you get holdof the law of gravitation you can dispense with the necessity ofcollecting facts _ad infinitum_. You have got at one truthwhich governs numberless facts. This discovery of truth is purejoy to man--it is a liberation of his mind. For, a mere fact islike a blind lane, it leads only to itself--it has no beyond. But a truth opens up a whole horizon, it leads us to theinfinite. That is the reason why, when a man like Darwindiscovers some simple general truth about Biology, it does notstop there, but like a lamp shedding its light far beyond theobject for which it was lighted, it illumines the whole region ofhuman life and thought, transcending its original purpose. Thuswe find that truth, while investing all facts, is not a mereaggregate of facts--it surpasses them on all sides and points tothe infinite reality. 

As in the region of knowledge so in that of consciousness, manmust clearly realise some central truth which will give him anoutlook over the widest possible field. And that is the objectwhich the Upanishad has in view when it says, _Know thine ownSoul_. Or, in other words, realise the one great principal ofunity that there is in every man. 

All our egoistic impulses, our selfish desires, obscure our truevision of the soul. For they only indicate our own narrow self. When we are conscious of our soul, we perceive the inner beingthat transcends our ego and has its deeper affinity with the All. 

Children, when they begin to learn each separate letter of thealphabet, find no pleasure in it, because they miss the realpurpose of the lesson; in fact, while letters claim our attentiononly in themselves and as isolated things, they fatigue us. Theybecome a source of joy to us only when they combine into wordsand sentences and convey an idea. 

Likewise, our soul when detached and imprisoned within the narrowlimits of a self loses its significance. For its very essence isunity. It can only find out its truth by unifying itself withothers, and only then it has its joy. Man was troubled and helived in a state of fear so long as he had not discovered theuniformity of law in nature; till then the world was alien tohim. The law that he discovered is nothing but the perception ofharmony that prevails between reason which is of the soul of manand the workings of the world. This is the bond of union throughwhich man is related to the world in which he lives, and he feelsan exceeding joy when he finds this out, for then he realiseshimself in his surroundings. To understand anything is to findin it something which is our own, and it is the discovery ofourselves outside us which makes us glad. This relation ofunderstanding is partial, but the relation of love is complete. In love the sense of difference is obliterated and the human soulfulfils its purpose in perfection, transcending the limits ofitself and reaching across the threshold of the infinite. Therefore love is the highest bliss that man can attain to, forthrough it alone he truly knows that he is more than himself, andthat he is at one with the All. 

This principal of unity which man has in his soul is ever active, establishing relations far and wide through literature, art, andscience, society, statecraft, and religion. Our great Revealersare they who make manifest the true meaning of the soul by givingup self for the love of mankind. They face calumny andpersecution, deprivation and death in their service of love. They live the life of the soul, not of the self, and thus theyprove to us the ultimate truth of humanity. We call them_Mahatmas, _ "the men of the great soul. "

It is said in one of the Upanishads: _It is not that thou lovestthy son because thou desirest him, but thou lovest thy sonbecause thou desirest thine own soul. _ [Footnote: Na va areputrasya kamaya putrah priyo bhavati, atmanastu kamaya putrahpriyo bhavati. ] The meaning of this is, that whomsoever we love, in him we find our own soul in the highest sense. The finaltruth of our existence lies in this. _Paramatma_, the supremesoul, is in me, as well as in my son, and my joy in my son is therealisation of this truth. It has become quite a commonplacefact, yet it is wonderful to think upon, that the joys andsorrows of our loved ones are joys and sorrows to us--nay theyare more. Why so? Because in them we have grown larger, inthem we have touched that great truth which comprehends the wholeuniverse. 

It very often happens that our love for our children, ourfriends, or other loved ones, debars us from the furtherrealisation of our soul. It enlarges our scope of consciousness, no doubt, yet it sets a limit to its freest expansion. Nevertheless, it is the first step, and all the wonder lies inthis first step itself. It shows to us the true nature of oursoul. From it we know, for certain, that our highest joy is inthe losing of our egoistic self and in the uniting with others. This love gives us a new power and insight and beauty of mind tothe extent of the limits we set around it, but ceases to do so ifthose limits lose their elasticity, and militate against thespirit of love altogether; then our friendships become exclusive, our families selfish and inhospitable, our nations insular andaggressively inimical to other races. It is like putting aburning light within a sealed enclosure, which shines brightlytill the poisonous gases accumulate and smother the flame. Nevertheless it has proved its truth before it dies, and madeknown the joy of freedom from the grip of darkness, blind andempty and cold. 

According to the Upanishads, the key to cosmic consciousness, toGod-consciousness, is in the consciousness of the soul. To knowour soul apart from the self is the first step towards therealisation of the supreme deliverance. We must know withabsolute certainty that essentially we are spirit. This we cando by winning mastery over self, by rising above all pride andgreed and fear, by knowing that worldly losses and physical deathcan take nothing away from the truth and the greatness of oursoul. The chick knows when it breaks through the self-centeredisolation of its egg that the hard shell which covered it so longwas not really a part of its life. That shell is a dead thing, it has no growth, it affords no glimpse whatever of the vastbeyond that lies outside it. However pleasantly perfect androunded it may be, it must be given a blow to, it must be burstthrough and thereby the freedom of light and air be won, and thecomplete purpose of bird life be achieved. In Sanskrit, the birdhas been called the twice-born. So too the man who has gonethrough the ceremony of the discipline of self-restraint and highthinking for a period of at least twelve years; who has come outsimple in wants, pure in heart, and ready to take up all theresponsibilities of life in a disinterested largeness of spirit. He is considered to have had his rebirth from the blindenvelopment of self to the freedom of soul life; to have comeinto living relation with his surroundings; to have become at onewith the All. 

I have already warned my hearers, and must once more warn themagainst the idea that the teachers of India preached arenunciation of the world and of self which leads only to theblank emptiness of negation. Their aim was the realisation ofthe soul, or, in other words, gaining the world in perfect truth. When Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inheritthe earth, " he meant this. He proclaimed the truth that when mangets rid of his pride of self then he comes into his trueinheritance. No more has he to fight his way into his positionin the world; it is secure for him everywhere by the immortalright of his soul. Pride of self interferes with the properfunction of the soul which is to realise itself by perfecting itsunion with the world and the world's God. 

In his sermon to Sadhu Simha Buddha says, _It is true, Simha, that I denounce activities, but only the activities that lead tothe evil in words, thoughts, or deeds. It is true, Simha, that Ipreach extinction, but only the extinction of pride, lust, evilthought, and ignorance, not that of forgiveness, love, charity, and truth. _

The doctrine of deliverance that Buddha preached was the freedomfrom the thraldom of _Avidya_. _Avidya_ is the ignorance thatdarkens our consciousness, and tends to limit it within theboundaries of our personal self. It is this _Avidya_, thisignorance, this limiting of consciousness that creates the hardseparateness of the ego, and thus becomes the source of allpride and greed and cruelty incidental to self-seeking. When aman sleeps he is shut up within the narrow activities of hisphysical life. He lives, but he knows not the varied relationsof his life to his surroundings, --therefore he knows nothimself. So when a man lives the life of _Avidya_ he isconfined within his self. It is a spiritual sleep; hisconsciousness is not fully awake to the highest reality thatsurrounds him, therefore he knows not the reality of his ownsoul. When he attains _Bodhi_, i. E. The awakenment from thesleep of self to the perfection of consciousness, he becomesBuddha. 

Once I met two ascetics of a certain religious sect in a villageof Bengal. "Can you tell me, " I asked them, "wherein lies thespecial features of your religion?" One of them hesitated for amoment and answered, "It is difficult to define that. " The othersaid, "No, it is quite simple. We hold that we have first of allto know our own soul under the guidance of our spiritual teacher, and when we have done that we can find him, who is the SupremeSoul, within us. " "Why don't you preach your doctrine to all thepeople of the world?" I asked. "Whoever feels thirsty will ofhimself come to the river, " was his reply. "But then, do youfind it so? Are they coming?" The man gave a gentle smile, andwith an assurance which had not the least tinge of impatience oranxiety, he said, "They must come, one and all. "

Yes, he is right, this simple ascetic of rural Bengal. Man isindeed abroad to satisfy needs which are more to him than foodand clothing. He is out to find himself. Man's history is thehistory of his journey to the unknown in quest of the realisationof his immortal self--his soul. Through the rise and fall ofempires; through the building up gigantic piles of wealth and theruthless scattering of them upon the dust; through the creationof vast bodies of symbols that give shape to his dreams andaspirations, and the casting of them away like the playthings ofan outworn infancy; through his forging of magic keys with whichto unlock the mysteries of creation, and through his throwingaway of this labour of ages to go back to his workshop and workup afresh some new form; yes, through it all man is marching fromepoch to epoch towards the fullest realisation of his soul, --thesoul which is greater than the things man accumulates, the deedshe accomplishes, the theories he builds; the soul whose onwardcourse is never checked by death or dissolution. Man's mistakesand failures have by no means been trifling or small, they havestrewn his path with colossal ruins; his sufferings have beenimmense, like birth-pangs for a giant child; they are the preludeof a fulfilment whose scope is infinite. Man has gone throughand is still undergoing martyrdoms in various ways, and hisinstitutions are the altars he has built whereto he brings hisdaily sacrifices, marvellous in kind and stupendous in quantity. All this would be absolutely unmeaning and unbearable if allalong he did not feel that deepest joy of the soul within him, which tries its divine strength by suffering and proves itsexhaustless riches by renunciation. Yes, they are coming, thepilgrims, one and all--coming to their true inheritance of theworld; they are ever broadening their consciousness, ever seekinga higher and higher unity, ever approaching nearer to the onecentral Truth which is all-comprehensive. 

Man's poverty is abysmal, his wants are endless till he becomestruly conscious of his soul. Till then, the world to him is in astate of continual flux-- a phantasm that is and is not. For aman who has realised his soul there is a determinate centre ofthe universe around which all else can find its proper place, andfrom thence only can he draw and enjoy the blessedness of aharmonious life. 

There was a time when the earth was only a nebulous mass whoseparticles were scattered far apart through the expanding force ofheat; when she had not yet attained her definiteness of form andhad neither beauty nor purpose, but only heat and motion. Gradually, when her vapours were condensed into a unified roundedwhole through a force that strove to bring all straggling mattersunder the control of a centre, she occupied her proper placeamong the planets of the solar system, like an emerald pendant ina necklace of diamonds. So with our soul. When the heat andmotion of blind impulses and passions distract it on all sides, we can neither give nor receive anything truly. But when we findour centre in our soul by the power of self-restraint, by theforce that harmonises all warring elements and unifies those thatare apart, then all our isolated impressions reduce themselves towisdom, and all our momentary impulses of heart find theircompletion in love; then all the petty details of our life revealan infinite purpose, and all our thoughts and deeds unitethemselves inseparably in an internal harmony. 

The Upanishads say with great emphasis, _Know thou the One, theSoul. _ [Footnote: Tamevaikam janatha atmanam. ] _It is the bridgeleading to the immortal being. _ [Footnote: Amritasyaisha setuh. ]

This is the ultimate end of man, to find the _One_ which is inhim; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which heopens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom. Hisdesires are many, and madly they run after the varied objects ofthe world, for therein they have their life and fulfilment. Butthat which is _one_ in him is ever seeking for unity--unity inknowledge, unity in love, unity in purposes of will; its highestjoy is when it reaches the infinite one within its eternal unity. Hence the saying of the Upanishad, _Only those of tranquil minds, and none else, can attain abiding joy, by realising within theirsouls the Being who manifests one essence in a multiplicity offorms. _ [Footnote: Ekam rupam bahudha yah karoti * * tamatmastham ye anupacyanti dihrah, tesham sukham cacvatamnetaresham. ]

[Transcriber's note: The above footnote contains the * mark inthe original printed version. This has been retained as is. ]

Through all the diversities of the world the one in us isthreading its course towards the one in all; this is its natureand this is its joy. But by that devious path it could neverreach its goal if it had not a light of its own by which it couldcatch the sight of what it was seeking in a flash. The vision ofthe Supreme One in our own soul is a direct and immediateintuition, not based on any ratiocination or demonstration atall. Our eyes naturally see an object as a whole, not bybreaking it up into parts, but by bringing all the parts togetherinto a unity with ourselves. So with the intuition of our Soul-consciousness, which naturally and totally realises its unity inthe Supreme One. 

Says the Upanishad: _This deity who is manifesting himself in theactivities of the universe always dwells in the heart of man asthe supreme soul. Those who realise him through the immediateperception of the heart attain immortality. _ [Footnote: Eshadevo vishvakarma mahatma sada jananam hridaye sannivishtah. Hrida manisha manasabhiklripto ya etad viduramritaste bhavanti. ]

He is _Vishvakarma_; that is, in a multiplicity of forms andforces lies his outward manifestation in nature; but his innermanifestation in our soul is that which exists in unity. Ourpursuit of truth in the domain of nature therefore is throughanalysis and the gradual methods of science, but our apprehensionof truth in our soul is immediate and through direct intuition. We cannot attain the supreme soul by successive additions ofknowledge acquired bit by bit even through all eternity, becausehe is one, he is not made up of parts; we can only know him asheart of our hearts and soul of our soul; we can only know him inthe love and joy we feel when we give up our self and standbefore him face to face. 

The deepest and the most earnest prayer that has ever risen fromthe human heart has been uttered in our ancient tongue: _O thouself-revealing one, reveal thyself in me. _ [Footnote:Aviravirmayedhi. ] We are in misery because we are creatures ofself--the self that is unyielding and narrow, that reflects nolight, that is blind to the infinite. Our self is loud with itsown discordant clamour--it is not the tuned harp whose chordsvibrate with the music of the eternal. Sighs of discontent andweariness of failure, idle regrets for the past and anxieties forthe future are troubling our shallow hearts because we have notfound our souls, and the self-revealing spirit has not beenmanifest within us. Hence our cry, _O thou awful one, save mewith thy smile of grace ever and evermore. _ [Footnote: Rudrayat te dakshinam mukham tena mam pahi nityam. ] It is a stiflingshroud of death, this self-gratification, this insatiable greed, this pride of possession, this insolent alienation of heart. _Rudra, O thou awful one, rend this dark cover in twain and letthe saving beam of thy smile of grace strike through this nightof gloom and waken my soul. _

_From unreality lead me to the real, from darkness to the light, from death to immortality. _ [Footnote: Asatoma sadgamaya, tamasoma jyotirgamaya, mrityorma mritangamaya. ] But how can onehope to have this prayer granted? For infinite is the distancethat lies between truth and untruth, between death anddeathlessness. Yet this measureless gulf is bridged in a momentwhen the self revealing one reveals himself in the soul. Therethe miracle happens, for there is the meeting-ground of thefinite and infinite. _Father, completely sweep away all mysins!_ [Footnote: Vishvanideva savitar duratani parasuva. ] Forin sin man takes part with the finite against the infinite thatis in him. It is the defeat of his soul by his self. It is aperilously losing game, in which man stakes his all to gain apart. Sin is the blurring of truth which clouds the purity ofour consciousness. In sin we lust after pleasures, not becausethey are truly desirable, but because the red light of ourpassions makes them appear desirable; we long for things notbecause they are great in themselves, but because our greedexaggerates them and makes them appear great. Theseexaggerations, these falsifications of the perspective of things, break the harmony of our life at every step; we lose the truestandard of values and are distracted by the false claims of thevaried interests of life contending with one another. It is thisfailure to bring all the elements of his nature under the unityand control of the Supreme One that makes man feel the pang ofhis separation from God and gives rise to the earnest prayer, _O God, O Father, completely sweep away all our sins. _[Footnote: Vishvani deva savitar duritani parasuva. ] _Giveunto us that which is good_ [Footnote: Yad bhadram tannaasuva. ], the good which is the daily bread of our souls. In ourpleasures we are confined to ourselves, in the good we are freedand we belong to all. As the child in its mother's womb gets itssustenance through the union of its life with the larger life ofits mother, so our soul is nourished only through the good whichis the recognition of its inner kinship, the channel of itscommunication with the infinite by which it is surrounded andfed. Hence it is said, "Blessed are they which do hunger andthirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. " Forrighteousness is the divine food of the soul; nothing but thiscan fill him, can make him live the life of the infinite, canhelp him in his growth towards the eternal. _We bow to theefrom whom come the enjoyments of our life. _ [Footnote: Namahsambhavaya. ] _We bow also to thee from whom comes the good ofour soul. _ [Footnote: Namah cankarayacha. ] _We bow to theewho art good, the highest good [Footnote: Namah civayacha, civataraya cha. ], in whom we are united with everything, that is, in peace and harmony, in goodness and love. 

Man's cry is to reach his fullest expression. It is this desirefor self-expression that leads him to seek wealth and power. Buthe has to discover that accumulation is not realisation. It isthe inner light that reveals him, not outer things. When thislight is lighted, then in a moment he knows that Man's highestrevelation is God's own revelation in him. And his cry is forthis--the manifestation of his soul, which is the manifestationof God in his soul. Man becomes perfect man, he attains hisfullest expression, when his soul realises itself in the Infinitebeing who is _Avih_ whose very essence is expression. 

The real misery of man is in the fact that he has not fully comeout, that he is self-obscured, lost in the midst of his owndesires. He cannot feel himself beyond his personalsurroundings, his greater self is blotted out, his truth isunrealised. The prayer that rises up from his whole being istherefore, _Thou, who art the spirit of manifestation, manifestthyself in me. _ [Footnote: Aviravirmayedhi. ] This longing forthe perfect expression of his self is more deeply inherent inman than his hunger and thirst for bodily sustenance, his lustfor wealth and distinction. This prayer is not merely one bornindividually of him; it is in depth of all things, it is theceaseless urging in him of the _Avih_, of the spirit of eternalmanifestation. The revealment of the infinite in the finite, which is the motive of all creation, is not seen in itsperfection in the starry heavens, in the beauty of flowers. Itis in the soul of man. For there will seeks its manifestation inwill, and freedom turns to win its final prize in the freedom ofsurrender. 

Therefore, it is the self of man which the great King of theuniverse has not shadowed with his throne--he has left it free. In his physical and mental organism, where man is related withnature, he has to acknowledge the rule of his King, but in hisself he is free to disown him. There our God must win hisentrance. There he comes as a guest, not as a king, andtherefore he has to wait till he is invited. It is the man'sself from which God has withdrawn his commands, for there hecomes to court our love. His armed force, the laws of nature, stand outside its gate, and only beauty, the messenger of hislove, finds admission within its precincts. 

It is only in this region of will that anarchy is permitted; onlyin man's self that the discord of untruth and unrighteousnesshold its reign; and things can come to such a pass that we maycry out in our anguish, "Such utter lawlessness could neverprevail if there were a God!" Indeed, God has stood aside fromour self, where his watchful patience knows no bounds, and wherehe never forces open the doors if shut against him. For thisself of ours has to attain its ultimate meaning, which is thesoul, not through the compulsion of God's power but through love, and thus become united with God in freedom. 

He whose spirit has been made one with God stands before man asthe supreme flower of humanity. There man finds in truth what heis; for there the _Avih_ is revealed to him in the soul of man asthe most perfect revelation for him of God; for there we see theunion of the supreme will with our will, our love with the loveeverlasting. 

Therefore, in our country he who truly loves God receives suchhomage from men as would be considered almost sacrilegious in thewest. We see in him God's wish fulfilled, the most difficult ofall obstacles to his revealment removed, and God's own perfectjoy fully blossoming in humanity. Through him we find the wholeworld of man overspread with a divine homeliness. His life, burning with God's love, makes all our earthly love resplendent. All the intimate associations of our life, all its experience ofpleasure and pain, group themselves around this display of thedivine love, and from the drama that we witness in him. Thetouch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and thefamiliar, making it break out into ineffable music. The treesand the stars and the blue hills appear to us as symbols achingwith a meaning which can never be uttered in words. We seem towatch the Master in the very act of creation of a new world whena man's soul draws her heavy curtain of self aside, when her veilis lifted and she is face to face with her eternal lover. 

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, variedin its life and beauty, yet one and entire. When a man's liferescued from distractions finds its unity in the soul, then theconsciousness of the infinite becomes at once direct and naturalto it as the light is to the flame. All the conflicts andcontradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and actionharmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment andrenunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite andthe infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carriesits message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in theform of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up inhis arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend. It isonly the soul, the One in man which by its very nature canovercome all limits, and finds its affinity with the Supreme One. While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and thewholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. Theworld still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where itis useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and neverto be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physicalnature and in its spiritual life and beauty. 

III

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

The question why there is evil in existence is the same as whythere is imperfection, or, in other words, why there is creationat all. We must take it for granted that it could not beotherwise; that creation must be imperfect, must be gradual, andthat it is futile to ask the question, Why we are?

But this is the real question we ought to ask: Is thisimperfection the final truth, is evil absolute and ultimate? Theriver has its boundaries, its banks, but is a river all banks? orare the banks the final facts about the river? Do not theseobstructions themselves give its water an onward motion? Thetowing rope binds a boat, but is the bondage its meaning? Doesit not at the same time draw the boat forward?

The current of the world has its boundaries, otherwise it couldhave no existence, but its purpose is not shown in the boundarieswhich restrain it, but in its movement, which is towardsperfection. The wonder is not that there should be obstacles andsufferings in this world, but that there should be law and order, beauty and joy, goodness and love. The idea of God that man hasin his being is the wonder of all wonders. He has felt in thedepths of his life that what appears as imperfect is themanifestation of the perfect; just as a man who has an ear formusic realises the perfection of a song, while in fact he is onlylistening to a succession of notes. Man has found out the greatparadox that what is limited is not imprisoned within its limits;it is ever moving, and therewith shedding its finitude everymoment. In fact, imperfection is not a negation of perfectness;finitude is not contradictory to infinity: they are butcompleteness manifested in parts, infinity revealed withinbounds. 

Pain, which is the feeling of our finiteness, is not a fixture inour life. It is not an end in itself, as joy is. To meet withit is to know that it has no part in the true permanence ofcreation. It is what error is in our intellectual life. To gothrough the history of the development of science is to gothrough the maze of mistakes it made current at different times. Yet no one really believes that science is the one perfect modeof disseminating mistakes. The progressive ascertainment oftruth is the important thing to remember in the history ofscience, not its innumerable mistakes. Error, by its nature, cannot be stationary; it cannot remain with truth; like a tramp, it must quit its lodging as soon as it fails to pay its score tothe full. 

As in intellectual error, so in evil of any other form, itsessence is impermanence, for it cannot accord with the whole. Every moment it is being corrected by the totality of things andkeeps changing its aspect. We exaggerate its importance byimagining it as a standstill. Could we collect the statistics ofthe immense amount of death and putrefaction happening everymoment in this earth, they would appal us. But evil is evermoving; with all its incalculable immensity it does noteffectually clog the current of our life; and we find that theearth, water, and air remain sweet and pure for living beings. All statistics consist of our attempts to represent statisticallywhat is in motion; and in the process things assume a weight inour mind which they have not in reality. For this reason a man, who by his profession is concerned with any particular aspect oflife, is apt to magnify its proportions; in laying undue stressupon facts he loses his hold upon truth. A detective may havethe opportunity of studying crimes in detail, but he loses hissense of their relative places in the whole social economy. Whenscience collects facts to illustrate the struggle for existencethat is going on in the kingdom of life, it raises a picture inour minds of "nature red in tooth and claw. " But in these mentalpictures we give a fixity to colours and forms which are reallyevanescent. It is like calculating the weight of the air on eachsquare inch of our body to prove that it must be crushingly heavyfor us. With every weight, however, there is an adjustment, andwe lightly bear our burden. With the struggle for existence innature there is reciprocity. There is the love for children andfor comrades; there is the sacrifice of self, which springs fromlove; and this love is the positive element in life. 

If we kept the search-light of our observation turned upon thefact of death, the world would appear to us like a huge charnel-house; but in the world of life the thought of death has, wefind, the least possible hold upon our minds. Not because it isthe least apparent, but because it is the negative aspect oflife; just as, in spite of the fact that we shut our eyelidsevery second, it is the openings of the eye that count. Life asa whole never takes death seriously. It laughs, dances andplays, it builds, hoards and loves in death's face. Only when wedetach one individual fact of death do we see its blankness andbecome dismayed. We lose sight of the wholeness of a life ofwhich death is part. It is like looking at a piece of cloththrough a microscope. It appears like a net; we gaze at the bigholes and shiver in imagination. But the truth is, death is notthe ultimate reality. It looks black, as the sky looks blue; butit does not blacken existence, just as the sky does not leave itsstain upon the wings of the bird. 

When we watch a child trying to walk, we see its countlessfailures; its successes are but few. If we had to limit ourobservation within a narrow space of time, the sight would becruel. But we find that in spite of its repeated failures thereis an impetus of joy in the child which sustains it in itsseemingly impossible task. We see it does not think of its fallsso much as of its power to keep its balance though for only amoment. 

Like these accidents in a child's attempts to walk, we meet withsufferings in various forms in our life every day, showing theimperfections in our knowledge and our available power, and inthe application of our will. But if these revealed our weaknessto us only, we should die of utter depression. When we selectfor observation a limited area of our activities, our individualfailures and miseries loom large in our minds; but our life leadsus instinctively to take a wider view. It gives us an ideal ofperfection which ever carries us beyond our present limitations. Within us we have a hope which always walks in front of ourpresent narrow experience; it is the undying faith in theinfinite in us; it will never accept any of our disabilities as apermanent fact; it sets no limit to its own scope; it dares toassert that man has oneness with God; and its wild dreams becometrue every day. 

We see the truth when we set our mind towards the infinite. Theideal of truth is not in the narrow present, not in our immediatesensations, but in the consciousness of the whole which give us ataste of what we _should_ have in what we _do_ have. Consciouslyor unconsciously we have in our life this feeling of Truth whichis ever larger than its appearance; for our life is facing theinfinite, and it is in movement. Its aspiration is thereforeinfinitely more than its achievement, and as it goes on it findsthat no realisation of truth ever leaves it stranded on thedesert of finality, but carries it to a region beyond. Evilcannot altogether arrest the course of life on the highway androb it of its possessions. For the evil has to pass on, it hasto grow into good; it cannot stand and give battle to the All. If the least evil could stop anywhere indefinitely, it would sinkdeep and cut into the very roots of existence. As it is, mandoes not really believe in evil, just as he cannot believe thatviolin strings have been purposely made to create the exquisitetorture of discordant notes, though by the aid of statistics itcan be mathematically proved that the probability of discord isfar greater than that of harmony, and for one who can play theviolin there are thousands who cannot. The potentiality ofperfection outweighs actual contradictions. No doubt there havebeen people who asserted existence to be an absolute evil, butman can never take them seriously. Their pessimism is a merepose, either intellectual or sentimental; but life itself isoptimistic: it wants to go on. Pessimism is a form of mentaldipsomania, it disdains healthy nourishment, indulges in thestrong drink of denunciation, and creates an artificial dejectionwhich thirsts for a stronger draught. If existence were an evil, it would wait for no philosopher to prove it. It is likeconvicting a man of suicide, while all the time he stands beforeyou in the flesh. Existence itself is here to prove that itcannot be an evil. 

An imperfection which is not all imperfection, but which hasperfection for its ideal, must go through a perpetualrealisation. Thus, it is the function of our intellect torealise the truth through untruths, and knowledge is nothing butthe continually burning up of error to set free the light oftruth. Our will, our character, has to attain perfection bycontinually overcoming evils, either inside or outside us, orboth; our physical life is consuming bodily materials everymoment to maintain the life fire; and our moral life too has itsfuel to burn. This life process is going on--we know it, we havefelt it; and we have a faith which no individual instances to thecontrary can shake, that the direction of humanity is from evilto good. For we feel that good is the positive element in man'snature, and in every age and every clime what man values most ishis ideals of goodness. We have known the good, we have lovedit, and we have paid our highest reverence to men who have shownin their lives what goodness is. 

The question will be asked, What is goodness; what does our moralnature mean? My answer is, that when a man begins to have anextended vision of his self, when he realises that he is muchmore than at present he seems to be, he begins to get consciousof his moral nature. Then he grows aware of that which he is yetto be, and the state not yet experienced by him becomes more realthan that under his direct experience. Necessarily, hisperspective of life changes, and his will takes the place of hiswishes. For will is the supreme wish of the larger life, thelife whose greater portion is out of our present reach, most ofwhose objects are not before our sight. Then comes the conflictof our lesser man with our greater man, of our wishes with ourwill, of the desire for things affecting our senses with thepurpose that is within our heart. Then we begin to distinguishbetween what we immediately desire and what is good. For good isthat which is desirable for our greater self. Thus the sense ofgoodness comes out of a truer view of our life, which is theconnected view of the wholeness of the field of life, and whichtakes into account not only what is present before us but what isnot, and perhaps never humanly can be. Man, who is provident, feels for that life of his which is not yet existent, feels muchmore that than for the life that is with him; therefore he isready to sacrifice his present inclination for the unrealisedfuture. In this he becomes great, for he realises truth. Evento be efficiently selfish one has to recognise this truth, andhas to curb his immediate impulses--in other words, has to bemoral. For our moral faculty is the faculty by which we knowthat life is not made up of fragments, purposeless anddiscontinuous. This moral sense of man not only gives him thepower to see that the self has a continuity in time, but it alsoenables him to see that he is not true when he is only restrictedto his own self. He is more in truth than he is in fact. Hetruly belongs to individuals who are not included in his ownindividuality, and whom he is never even likely to know. As hehas a feeling for his future self which is outside his presentconsciousness, so he has a feeling for his greater self which isoutside the limits of his personality. There is no man who hasnot this feeling to some extent, who has never sacrificed hisselfish desire for the sake of some other person, who has neverfelt a pleasure in undergoing some loss or trouble because itpleased somebody else. It is a truth that man is not a detachedbeing, that he has a universal aspect; and when he recognisesthis he becomes great. Even the most evilly-disposed selfishnesshas to recognise this when it seeks the power to do evil; for itcannot ignore truth and yet be strong. So in order to claim theaid of truth, selfishness has to be unselfish to some extent. Aband of robbers must be moral in order to hold together as aband; they may rob the whole world but not each other. To makean immoral intention successful, some of its weapons must bemoral. In fact, very often it is our very moral strength whichgives us most effectively the power to do evil, to exploit otherindividuals for our own benefit, to rob other people of theirrights. The life of an animal is unmoral, for it is aware onlyof an immediate present; the life of a man can be immoral, butthat only means that it must have a moral basis. What is immoralis imperfectly moral, just as what is false is true to a smallextent, or it cannot even be false. Not to see is to be blind, but to see wrongly is to see only in an imperfect manner. Man'sselfishness is a beginning to see some connection, some purposein life; and to act in accordance with its dictates requiresself-restraint and regulation of conduct. A selfish manwillingly undergoes troubles for the sake of the self, he suffershardship and privation without a murmur, simply because he knowsthat what is pain and trouble, looked at from the point of viewof a short space of time, are just the opposite when seen in alarger perspective. Thus what is a loss to the smaller man is again to the greater, and _vice versa_. 

To the man who lives for an idea, for his country, for the goodof humanity, life has an extensive meaning, and to that extentpain becomes less important to him. To live the life of goodnessis to live the life of all. Pleasure is for one's own self, butgoodness is concerned with the happiness of all humanity and forall time. From the point of view of the good, pleasure and painappear in a different meaning; so much so, that pleasure may beshunned, and pain be courted in its place, and death itself bemade welcome as giving a higher value to life. From these higherstandpoints of a man's life, the standpoints of the good, pleasure and pain lose their absolute value. Martyrs prove it inhistory, and we prove it every day in our life in our littlemartyrdoms. When we take a pitcherful of water from the sea ithas its weight, but when we take a dip into the sea itself athousand pitchersful of water flow above our head, and we do notfeel their weight. We have to carry the pitcher of self with ourstrength; and so, while on the plane of selfishness pleasure andpain have their full weight, on the moral plane they are so muchlightened that the man who has reached it appears to us almostsuperhuman in his patience under crushing trails, and hisforbearance in the face of malignant persecution. 

To live in perfect goodness is to realise one's life in theinfinitive. This is the most comprehensive view of life which wecan have by our inherent power of the moral vision of thewholeness of life. And the teaching of Buddha is to cultivatethis moral power to the highest extent, to know that our field ofactivities is not bound to the plane of our narrow self. This isthe vision of the heavenly kingdom of Christ. When we attain tothat universal life, which is the moral life, we become freedfrom the bonds of pleasure and pain, and the place vacated by ourself becomes filled with an unspeakable joy which springs frommeasureless love. In this state the soul's activity is all themore heightened, only its motive power is not from desires, butin its own joy. This is the _Karma-yoga_ of the _Gita_, the wayto become one with the infinite activity by the exercise of theactivity of disinterested goodness. 

When Buddha mentioned upon the way of realising mankind from thegrip of misery he came to this truth: that when man attains hishighest end by merging the individual in the universal, hebecomes free from the thraldom of pain. Let us consider thispoint more fully. 

A student of mine once related to me his adventure in a storm, and complained that all the time he was troubled with the feelingthat this great commotion in nature behaved to him as if he wereno more than a mere handful of dust. That he was a distinctpersonality with a will of his own had not the least influenceupon what was happening. 

I said, "If consideration for our individuality could sway naturefrom her path, then it would be the individuals who would suffermost. "

But he persisted in his doubt, saying that there was this factwhich could not be ignored--the feeling that I am. The "I" in usseeks for a relation which is individual to it. 

I replied that the relation of the "I" is with something which is"not-I. " So we must have a medium which is common to both, andwe must be absolutely certain that it is the same to the "I" asit is to the "not-I. "

This is what needs repeating here. We have to keep in mind thatour individuality by its nature is impelled to seek for theuniversal. Our body can only die if it tries to eat its ownsubstance, and our eye loses the meaning of its function if itcan only see itself. 

Just as we find that the stronger the imagination the less is itmerely imaginary and the more is it in harmony with truth, so wesee the more vigorous our individuality the more does it widentowards the universal. For the greatness of a personality is notin itself but in its content, which is universal, just as thedepth of a lake is judged not by the size of its cavity but bythe depth of its water. 

So, if it is a truth that the yearning of our nature is forreality, and that our personality cannot be happy with afantastic universe of its own creation, then it is clearly bestfor it that our will can only deal with things by following theirlaw, and cannot do with them just as it pleases. This unyieldingsureness of reality sometimes crosses our will, and very oftenleads us to disaster, just as the firmness of the earthinvariably hurts the falling child who is learning to walk. Nevertheless it is the same firmness that hurts him which makeshis walking possible. Once, while passing under a bridge, themast of my boat got stuck in one of its girders. If only for amoment the mast would have bent an inch or two, or the bridgeraised its back like a yawning cat, or the river given in, itwould have been all right with me. But they took no notice of myhelplessness. That is the very reason why I could make use ofthe river, and sail upon it with the help of the mast, and thatis why, when its current was inconvenient, I could rely upon thebridge. Things are what they are, and we have to know them if wewould deal with them, and knowledge of them is possible becauseour wish is not their law. This knowledge is a joy to us, forthe knowledge is one of the channels of our relation with thethings outside us; it is making them our own, and thus wideningthe limit of our self. 

At every step we have to take into account others than ourselves. For only in death are we alone. A poet is a true poet when hecan make his personal idea joyful to all men, which he could notdo if he had not a medium common to all his audience. Thiscommon language has its own law which the poet must discover andfollow, by doing which he becomes true and attains poeticalimmortality. 

We see then that man's individuality is not his highest truth;there is that in him which is universal. If he were made to livein a world where his own self was the only factor to consider, then that would be the worst prison imaginable to him, for man'sdeepest joy is in growing greater and greater by more and moreunion with the all. This, as we have seen, would be animpossibility if there were no law common to all. Only bydiscovering the law and following it, do we become great, do werealise the universal; while, so long as our individual desiresare at conflict with the universal law, we suffer pain and arefutile. 

There was a time when we prayed for special concessions, weexpected that the laws of nature should be held in abeyance forour own convenience. But now we know better. We know that lawcannot be set aside, and in this knowledge we have become strong. For this law is not something apart from us; it is our own. Theuniversal power which is manifested in the universal law is onewith our own power. It will thwart us where we are small, wherewe are against the current of things; but it will help us wherewe are great, where we are in unison with the all. Thus, throughthe help of science, as we come to know more of the laws ofnature, we gain in power; we tend to attain a universal body. Our organ of sight, our organ of locomotion, our physicalstrength becomes world-wide; steam and electricity become ournerve and muscle. Thus we find that, just as throughout ourbodily organisation there is a principle of relation by virtue ofwhich we can call the entire body our own, and can use it assuch, so all through the universe there is that principle ofuninterrupted relation by virtue of which we can call the wholeworld our extended body and use it accordingly. And in this ageof science it is our endeavour fully to establish our claim toour world-self. We know all our poverty and sufferings are owingto our inability to realise this legitimate claim of ours. Really, there is no limit to our powers, for we are not outsidethe universal power which is the expression of universal law. Weare on our way to overcome disease and death, to conquer pain andpoverty; for through scientific knowledge we are ever on our wayto realise the universal in its physical aspect. And as we makeprogress we find that pain, disease, and poverty of power are notabsolute, but that is only the want of adjustment of ourindividual self to our universal self which gives rise to them. 

It is the same with our spiritual life. When the individual manin us chafes against the lawful rule of the universal man webecome morally small, and we must suffer. In such a conditionour successes are our greatest failures, and the very fulfilmentof our desires leaves us poorer. We hanker after special gainsfor ourselves, we want to enjoy privileges which none else canshare with us. But everything that is absolutely special mustkeep up a perpetual warfare with what is general. In such astate of civil war man always lives behind barricades, and in anycivilisation which is selfish our homes are not real homes, butartificial barriers around us. Yet we complain that we are nothappy, as if there were something inherent in the nature ofthings to make us miserable. The universal spirit is waiting tocrown us with happiness, but our individual spirit would notaccept it. It is our life of the self that causes conflicts andcomplications everywhere, upsets the normal balance of societyand gives rise to miseries of all kinds. It brings things tosuch a pass that to maintain order we have to create artificialcoercions and organised forms of tyranny, and tolerate infernalinstitutions in our midst, whereby at every moment humanity ishumiliated. 

We have seen that in order to be powerful we have to submit tothe laws of the universal forces, and to realise in practice thatthey are our own. So, in order to be happy, we have to submitour individual will to the sovereignty of the universal will, andto feel in truth that it is our own will. When we reach thatstate wherein the adjustment of the finite in us to the infiniteis made perfect, then pain itself becomes a valuable asset. Itbecomes a measuring rod with which to gauge the true value of ourjoy. 

The most important lesson that man can learn from his life is notthat there _is_ pain in this world, but that it depends upon himto turn it into good account, that it is possible for him totransmute it into joy. The lesson has not been lost altogetherto us, and there is no man living who would willingly be deprivedof his right to suffer pain, for that is his right to be a man. One day the wife of a poor labourer complained bitterly to methat her eldest boy was going to be sent away to a rich relative'shouse for part of the year. It was the implied kind intention oftrying to relieve her of her trouble that gave her the shock, fora mother's trouble is a mother's own by her inalienable right oflove, and she was not going to surrender it to any dictates ofexpediency. Man's freedom is never in being saved troubles, butit is the freedom to take trouble for his own good, to make thetrouble an element in his joy. It can be made so only when werealise that our individual self is not the highest meaning of ourbeing, that in us we have the world-man who is immortal, who isnot afraid of death or sufferings, and who looks upon pain as onlythe other side of joy. He who has realised this knows that it ispain which is our true wealth as imperfect beings, and has made usgreat and worthy to take our seat with the perfect. He knows thatwe are not beggars; that it is the hard coin which must be paidfor everything valuable in this life, for our power, our wisdom, our love; that in pain is symbolised the infinite possibility ofperfection, the eternal unfolding of joy; and the man who loses allpleasure in accepting pain sinks down and down to the lowest depthof penury and degradation. It is only when we invoke the aid ofpain for our self-gratification that she becomes evil and takes hervengeance for the insult done to her by hurling us into misery. For she is the vestal virgin consecrated to the service of theimmortal perfection, and when she takes her true place before thealtar of the infinite she casts off her dark veil and bares herface to the beholder as a revelation of supreme joy. 

IV

THE PROBLEM OF SELF

At one pole of my being I am one with stocks and stones. There Ihave to acknowledge the rule of universal law. That is where thefoundation of my existence lies, deep down below. Its strengthlies in its being held firm in the clasp of comprehensive world, and in the fullness of its community with all things. 

But at the other pole of my being I am separate from all. ThereI have broken through the cordon of equality and stand alone asan individual. I am absolutely unique, I am I, I amincomparable. The whole weight of the universe cannot crush outthis individuality of mine. I maintain it in spite of thetremendous gravitation of all things. It is small in appearancebut great in reality. For it holds its own against the forcesthat would rob it of its distinction and make it one with thedust. 

This is the superstructure of the self which rises from theindeterminate depth and darkness of its foundation into the open, proud of its isolation, proud of having given shape to a singleindividual idea of the architect's which has no duplicate in thewhole universe. If this individuality be demolished, then thoughno material be lost, not an atom destroyed, the creative joywhich was crystallised therein is gone. We are absolutelybankrupt if we are deprived of this specialty, thisindividuality, which is the only thing we can call our own; andwhich, if lost, is also a loss to the whole world. It is mostvaluable because it is not universal. And therefore only throughit can we gain the universe more truly than if we were lyingwithin its breast unconscious of our distinctiveness. Theuniversal is ever seeking its consummation in the unique. Andthe desire we have to keep our uniqueness intact is really thedesire of the universe acting in us. It is our joy of theinfinite in us that gives us our joy in ourselves. 

That this separateness of self is considered by man as his mostprecious possession is proved by the sufferings he undergoes andthe sins he commits for its sake. But the consciousness ofseparation has come from the eating of the fruit of knowledge. It has led man to shame and crime and death; yet it is dearer tohim than any paradise where the self lies, securely slumbering inperfect innocence in the womb of mother nature. 

It is a constant striving and suffering for us to maintain theseparateness of this self of ours. And in fact it is thissuffering which measures its value. One side of the value issacrifice, which represents how much the cost has been. Theother side of it is the attainment, which represents how much hasbeen gained. If the self meant nothing to us but pain andsacrifice, it could have no value for us, and on no account wouldwe willingly undergo such sacrifice. In such case there could beno doubt at all that the highest object of humanity would be theannihilation of self. 

But if there is a corresponding gain, if it does not end in avoid but in a fullness, then it is clear that its negativequalities, its very sufferings and sacrifices, make it all themore precious. That it is so has been proved by those who haverealised the positive significance of self, and have accepted itsresponsibilities with eagerness and undergone sacrifices withoutflinching. 

With the foregoing introduction it will be easy for me to answerthe question once asked by one of my audience as to whether theannihilation of self has not been held by India as the supremegoal of humanity?

In the first place we must keep in mind the fact that man isnever literal in the expression of his ideas, except in mattersmost trivial. Very often man's words are not a language at all, but merely a vocal gesture of the dumb. They may indicate, butdo not express his thoughts. The more vital his thoughts themore have his words to be explained by the context of his life. Those who seek to know his meaning by the aid of the dictionaryonly technically reach the house, for they are stopped by theoutside wall and find no entrance to the hall. This is thereason why the teachings of our greatest prophets give rise toendless disputations when we try to understand them by followingtheir words and not be realising them in our own lives. The menwho are cursed with the gift of the literal mind are theunfortunate ones who are always busy with their nets and neglectthe fishing. 

It is not only in Buddhism and the Indian religions, but inChristianity too, that the ideal of selflessness is preached withall fervour. In the last the symbol of death has been used forexpressing the idea of man's deliverance from the life which isnot true. This is the same as Nirvnana, the symbol of theextinction of the lamp. 

In the typical thought of India it is held that the truedeliverance of man is the deliverance from _avidya_, fromignorance. It is not in destroying anything that is positive andreal, for that cannot be possible, but that which is negative, which obstructs our vision of truth. When this obstruction, which is ignorance, is removed, then only is the eyelid drawn upwhich is no loss to the eye. 

It is our ignorance which makes us think that our self, as self, is real, that it has its complete meaning in itself. When wetake that wrong view of self then we try to live in such a manneras to make self the ultimate object of our life. Then we aredoomed to disappointment like the man who tries to reach hisdestination by firmly clutching the dust of the road. Our selfhas no means of holding us, for its own nature is to pass on; andby clinging to this thread of self which is passing through theloom of life we cannot make it serve the purpose of the clothinto which it is being woven. When a man, with elaborate care, arranges for an enjoyment of the self, he lights a fire but hasno dough to make his bread with; the fire flares up and consumesitself to extinction, like an unnatural beast that eats its ownprogeny and dies. 

In an unknown language the words are tyrannically prominent. They stop us but say nothing. To be rescued from this fetter ofwords we must rid ourselves of the _avidya_, our ignorance, andthen our mind will find its freedom in the inner idea. But itwould be foolish to say that our ignorance of the language canbe dispelled only by the destruction of the words. No, when theperfect knowledge comes, every word remains in its place, onlythey do not bind us to themselves, but let us pass through themand lead us to the idea which is emancipation. 

Thus it is only _avidya_ which makes the self our fetter bymaking us think that it is an end in itself, and by preventingour seeing that it contains the idea that transcends its limits. That is why the wise man comes and says, "Set yourselves freefrom the _avidya_; know your true soul and be saved from thegrasp of the self which imprisons you. "

We gain our freedom when we attain our truest nature. The manwho is an artist finds his artistic freedom when he finds hisideal of art. Then is he freed from laborious attempts atimitation, from the goadings of popular approbation. It is thefunction of religion not to destroy our nature but to fulfil it. 

The Sanskrit word _dharma_ which is usually translated intoEnglish as religion has a deeper meaning in our language. _Dharma_ is the innermost nature, the essence, the implicittruth, of all things. _Dharma_ is the ultimate purpose thatis working in our self. When any wrong is done we say that_dharma_ is violated, meaning that the lie has been given toour true nature. 

But this _dharma_, which is the truth in us, is not apparent, because it is inherent. So much so, that it has been held thatsinfulness is the nature of man, and only by the special graceof God can a particular person be saved. This is like sayingthat the nature of the seed is to remain enfolded within itsshell, and it is only by some special miracle that it can begrown into a tree. But do we not know that the _appearance_ ofthe seed contradicts its true nature? When you submit it tochemical analysis you may find in it carbon and proteid and agood many other things, but not the idea of a branching tree. Only when the tree begins to take shape do you come to see its_dharma_, and then you can affirm without doubt that the seedwhich has been wasted and allowed to rot in the ground has beenthwarted in its _dharma_, in the fulfilment of its true nature. In the history of humanity we have known the living seed in usto sprout. We have seen the great purpose in us taking shapein the lives of our greatest men, and have felt certain thatthough there are numerous individual lives that seem ineffectual, still it is not their _dharma_ to remain barren; but it is forthem to burst their cover and transform themselves into avigorous spiritual shoot, growing up into the air and light, andbranching out in all directions. 

The freedom of the seed is in the attainment of its_dharma_, its nature and destiny of becoming a tree; it is thenon-accomplishment which is its prison. The sacrifice by whicha thing attains its fulfilment is not a sacrifice which ends indeath; it is the casting-off of bonds which wins freedom. 

When we know the highest ideal of freedom which a man has, weknow his _dharma_, the essence of his nature, the real meaning ofhis self. At first sight it seems that man counts that asfreedom by which he gets unbounded opportunities of selfgratification and self-aggrandisement. But surely this is notborne out by history. Our revelatory men have always been thosewho have lived the life of self-sacrifice. The higher nature inman always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet isits deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes thissacrifice its own recompense. This is man's _dharma_, man'sreligion, and man's self is the vessel which is to carry thissacrifice to the altar. 

We can look at our self in its two different aspects. The selfwhich displays itself, and the self which transcends itself andthereby reveals its own meaning. To display itself it tries tobe big, to stand upon the pedestal of its accumulations, and toretain everything to itself. To reveal itself it gives upeverything it has; thus becoming perfect like a flower that hasblossomed out from the bud, pouring from its chalice of beautyall its sweetness. 

The lamp contains its oil, which it holds securely in its closegrasp and guards from the least loss. Thus is it separate fromall other objects around it and is miserly. But when lighted itfinds its meaning at once; its relation with all things far andnear is established, and it freely sacrifices its fund of oil tofeed the flame. 

Such a lamp is our self. So long as it hoards its possessions itkeeps itself dark, its conduct contradicts its true purpose. When it finds illumination it forgets itself in a moment, holdsthe light high, and serves it with everything it has; for thereinis its revelation. This revelation is the freedom which Buddhapreached. He asked the lamp to give up its oil. But purposelessgiving up is a still darker poverty which he never could havemeant. The lamp must give up its oil to the light and thus setfree the purpose it has in its hoarding. This is emancipation. The path Buddha pointed out was not merely the practice of self-abnegation, but the widening of love. And therein lies the truemeaning of Buddha's preaching. 

When we find that the state of _Nirvana_ preached by Buddha isthrough love, then we know for certain that _Nirvana_ is thehighest culmination of love. For love is an end unto itself. Everything else raises the question "Why?" in our mind, and werequire a reason for it. But when we say, "I love, " then thereis no room for the "why"; it is the final answer in itself. 

Doubtless, even selfishness impels one to give away. But theselfish man does it on compulsion. That is like plucking fruitwhen it is unripe; you have to tear it from the tree and bruisethe branch. But when a man loves, giving becomes a matter of joyto him, like the tree's surrender of the ripe fruit. All ourbelongings assume a weight by the ceaseless gravitation of ourselfish desires; we cannot easily cast them away from us. Theyseem to belong to our very nature, to stick to us as a secondskin, and we bleed as we detach them. But when we are possessedby love, its force acts in the opposite direction. The thingsthat closely adhered to us lose their adhesion and weight, and wefind that they are not of us. Far from being a loss to give themaway, we find in that the fulfilment of our being. 

Thus we find in perfect love the freedom of our self. That onlywhich is done for love is done freely, however much pain it maycause. Therefore working for love is freedom in action. This isthe meaning of the teaching of disinterested work in the _Gita_. 

The _Gita_ says action we must have, for only in action do wemanifest our nature. But this manifestation is not perfect solong as our action is not free. In fact, our nature is obscuredby work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The motherreveals herself in the service of her children, so our truefreedom is not the freedom _from_ action but freedom _in_ action, which can only be attained in the work of love. 

God's manifestation is in his work of creation and it is said inthe Upanishad, _Knowledge, power, and action are of his nature_[Footnote: "Svabhaviki jnana bala kriyacha. "]; they are notimposed upon him from outside. Therefore his work is hisfreedom, and in his creation he realises himself. The same thingis said elsewhere in other words: _From joy does spring all thiscreation, by joy is it maintained, towards joy does it progress, and into joy does it enter_. [Footnote: Anandadhyeva khalvimanibhutani jayante, anandena jatani jivanti, anandamprayantyabhisamvicanti. ] It means that God's creation hasnot its source in any necessity; it comes from his fullness ofjoy; it is his love that creates, therefore in creation is hisown revealment. 

The artist who has a joy in the fullness of his artistic ideaobjectifies it and thus gains it more fully by holding it afar. It is joy which detaches ourselves from us, and then gives itform in creations of love in order to make it more perfectly ourown. Hence there must be this separation, not a separation ofrepulsion but a separation of love. Repulsion has only the oneelement, the element of severance. But love has two, the elementof severance, which is only an appearance, and the element ofunion which is the ultimate truth. Just as when the fathertosses his child up from his arms it has the appearance ofrejection but its truth is quite the reverse. 

So we must know that the meaning of our self is not to be foundin its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaselessrealisation of _yoga_, of union; not on the side of the canvaswhere it is blank, but on the side where the picture is beingpainted. 

This is the reason why the separateness of our self has beendescribed by our philosophers as _maya_, as an illusion, becauseit has no intrinsic reality of its own. It looks perilous; itraises its isolation to a giddy height and casts a black shadowupon the fair face of existence; from the outside it has anaspect of a sudden disruption, rebellious and destructive; it isproud, domineering and wayward; it is ready to rob the world ofall its wealth to gratify its craving of a moment; to pluck witha reckless, cruel hand all the plumes from the divine bird ofbeauty to deck its ugliness for a day; indeed man's legend has itthat it bears the black mark of disobedience stamped on itsforehead for ever; but still all this _maya_, envelopment of_avidya_; it is the mist, it is not the sun; it is the blacksmoke that presages the fire of love. 

Imagine some savage who, in his ignorance, thinks that it is thepaper of the banknote that has the magic, by virtue of which thepossessor of it gets all he wants. He piles up the papers, hidesthem, handles them in all sorts of absurd ways, and then at last, wearied by his efforts, comes to the sad conclusion that they areabsolutely worthless, only fit to be thrown into the fire. Butthe wise man knows that the paper of the banknote is all _maya_, and until it is given up to the bank it is futile. It is only_avidya_, our ignorance, that makes us believe that theseparateness of our self like the paper of the banknote isprecious in itself, and by acting on this belief our self isrendered valueless. It is only when the _avidya_ is removed thatthis very self comes to us with a wealth which is priceless. For_He manifests Himself in forms which His joy assumes_. [Footnote:Anandarupamamritam yadvibhati. ] These forms are separate fromHim, and the value that these forms have is only what his joy hasimparted to them. When we transfer back these forms into thatoriginal joy, which is love, then we cash them in the bank and wefind their truth. 

When pure necessity drives man to his work it takes an accidentaland contingent character, it becomes a mere makeshiftarrangement; it is deserted and left in ruins when necessitychanges its course. But when his work is the outcome of joy, theforms that it takes have the elements of immortality. Theimmortal in man imparts to it its own quality of permanence. 

Our self, as a form of God's joy, is deathless. For his joy is_amritham_, eternal. This it is in us which makes us sceptical ofdeath, even when the fact of death cannot be doubted. Inreconcilement of this contradiction in us we come to the truth thatin the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know thatthe life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinitein its principle, must go through the portals of death in itsjourney to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, ithas no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance aswell as truth; and death is that appearance, that _maya_, which isan inseparable companion to life. Our self to live must go througha continual change and growth of form, which may be termed acontinual death and a continual life going on at the same time. Itis really courting death when we refuse to accept death; when wewish to give the form of the self some fixed changelessness; whenthe self feels no impulse which urges it to grow out of itself;when it treats its limits as final and acts accordingly. Then comesour teacher's call to die to this death; not a call to annihilationbut to eternal life. It is the extinction of the lamp in themorning light; not the abolition of the sun. It is really asking usconsciously to give effect to the innermost wish that we have in thedepths of our nature. 

We have a dual set of desires in our being, which it should beour endeavour to bring into a harmony. In the region of ourphysical nature we have one set of which we are conscious always. We wish to enjoy our food and drink, we hanker after bodilypleasure and comfort. These desires are self-centered; they aresolely concerned with their respective impulses. The wishes ofour palate often run counter to what our stomach can allow. 

But we have another set, which is the desire of our physicalsystem as a whole, of which we are usually unconscious. It isthe wish for health. This is always doing its work, mending andrepairing, making new adjustments in cases of accident, andskilfully restoring the balance wherever disturbed. It has noconcern with the fulfilment of our immediate bodily desires, butit goes beyond the present time. It is the principle of ourphysical wholeness, it links our life with its past and itsfuture and maintains the unity of its parts. He who is wiseknows it, and makes his other physical wishes harmonise with it. 

We have a greater body which is the social body. Society is anorganism, of which we as parts have our individual wishes. Wewant our own pleasure and license. We want to pay less and gainmore than anybody else. This causes scramblings and fights. Butthere is that other wish in us which does its work in the depthsof the social being. It is the wish for the welfare of thesociety. It transcends the limits of the present and thepersonal. It is on the side of the infinite. 

He who is wise tries to harmonise the wishes that seek for self-gratification with the wish for the social good, and only thuscan he realise his higher self. 

In its finite aspect the self is conscious of its separateness, and there it is ruthless in its attempt to have more distinctionthan all others. But in its infinite aspect its wish is to gainthat harmony which leads to its perfection and not its mereaggrandisement. 

The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self inattaining love. This last is what Buddha describes asextinction--the extinction of selfishness--which is the functionof love, and which does not lead to darkness but to illumination. This is the attainment of _bodhi_, or the true awakening; it isthe revealing in us of the infinite joy by the light of love. 

The passage of our self is through its selfhood, which isindependent, to its attainment of soul, which is harmonious. This harmony can never be reached through compulsion. So ourwill, in the history of its growth, must come throughindependence and rebellion to the ultimate completion. We musthave the possibility of the negative form of freedom, which islicence, before we can attain the positive freedom, which islove. 

This negative freedom, the freedom of self-will, can turn itsback upon its highest realisation, but it cannot cut itself awayfrom it altogether, for then it will lose its own meaning. Ourself-will has freedom up to a certain extent; it can know what itis to break away from the path, but it cannot continue in thatdirection indefinitely. For we are finite on our negative side. We must come to an end in our evil doing, in our career ofdiscord. For evil is not infinite, and discord cannot be an endin itself. Our will has freedom in order that it may find outthat its true course is towards goodness and love. For goodnessand love are infinite, and only in the infinite is the perfectrealisation of freedom possible. So our will can be free nottowards the limitations of our self, not where it is _maya_ andnegation, but towards the unlimited, where is truth and love. Our freedom cannot go against its own principle of freedom andyet be free; it cannot commit suicide and yet live. We cannotsay that we should have infinite freedom to fetter ourselves, forthe fettering ends the freedom. 

So in the freedom of our will, we have the same dualism ofappearance and truth--our self-will is only the appearance offreedom and love is the truth. When we try to make thisappearance independent of truth, then our attempt brings miseryand proves its own futility in the end. Everything has thisdualism of _maya_ and _satyam_, appearance and truth. Words are_maya_ where they are merely sounds and finite, they are _satyam_where they are ideas and infinite. Our self is _maya_ where itis merely individual and finite, where it considers itsseparateness as absolute; it is _satyam_ where it recognises itsessence in the universal and infinite, in the supreme self, in_paramatman_. This is what Christ means when he says, "BeforeAbraham was I am. " This is the eternal _I am_ that speaksthrough the _I am_ that is in me. The individual _I am_ attainsits perfect end when it realises its freedom of harmony in theinfinite _I am_. Then is it _mukti_, its deliverance from thethraldom of _maya_, of appearance, which springs from _avidya_, from ignorance; its emancipation in _cantam civam advaitam_, inthe perfect repose in truth, in the perfect activity in goodness, and in the perfect union in love. 

Not only in our self but also in nature is there thisseparateness from God, which has been described as _maya_ by ourphilosophers, because the separateness does not exist by itself, it does not limit God's infinity from outside. It is his ownwill that has imposed limits to itself, just as the chess-playerrestricts his will with regard to the moving of the chessmen. The player willingly enters into definite relations with eachparticular piece and realises the joy of his power by these veryrestrictions. It is not that he cannot move the chessmen just ashe pleases, but if he does so then there can be no play. If Godassumes his role of omnipotence, then his creation is at an endand his power loses all its meaning. For power to be a power mustact within limits. God's water must be water, his earth can neverbe other than earth. The law that has made them water and earthis his own law by which he has separated the play from the player, for therein the joy of the player consists. 

As by the limits of law nature is separated from God, so it isthe limits of its egoism which separates the self from him. Hehas willingly set limits to his will, and has given us masteryover the little world of our own. It is like a father's settlingupon his son some allowance within the limit of which he is freeto do what he likes. Though it remains a portion of the father'sown property, yet he frees it from the operation of his own will. The reason of it is that the will, which is love's will andtherefore free, can have its joy only in a union with anotherfree will. The tyrant who must have slaves looks upon them asinstruments of his purpose. It is the consciousness of his ownnecessity which makes him crush the will out of them, to make hisself-interest absolutely secure. This self-interest cannot brookthe least freedom in others, because it is not itself free. Thetyrant is really dependent on his slaves, and therefore he triesto make them completely useful by making them subservient to hisown will. But a lover must have two wills for the realisation ofhis love, because the consummation of love is in harmony, theharmony between freedom and freedom. So God's love from whichour self has taken form has made it separate from God; and it isGod's love which again establishes a reconciliation and unitesGod with our self through the separation. That is why our selfhas to go through endless renewals. For in its career ofseparateness it cannot go on for ever. Separateness is thefinitude where it finds its barriers to come back again and againto its infinite source. Our self has ceaselessly to cast off itsage, repeatedly shed its limits in oblivion and death, in orderto realise its immortal youth. Its personality must merge in theuniversal time after time, in fact pass through it every moment, ever to refresh its individual life. It must follow the eternalrhythm and touch the fundamental unity at every step, and thusmaintain its separation balanced in beauty and strength. 

The play of life and death we see everywhere--this transmutationof the old into the new. The day comes to us every morning, naked and white, fresh as a flower. But we know it is old. Itis age itself. It is that very ancient day which took up thenewborn earth in its arms, covered it with its white mantle oflight, and sent it forth on its pilgrimage among the stars. 

Yet its feet are untired and its eyes undimmed. It carries thegolden amulet of ageless eternity, at whose touch all wrinklesvanish from the forehead of creation. In the very core of theworld's heart stands immortal youth. Death and decay cast overits face momentary shadows and pass on; they leave no marks oftheir steps--and truth remains fresh and young. 

This old, old day of our earth is born again and again everymorning. It comes back to the original refrain of its music. Ifits march were the march of an infinite straight line, if it hadnot the awful pause of its plunge in the abysmal darkness and itsrepeated rebirth in the life of the endless beginning, then itwould gradually soil and bury truth with its dust and spreadceaseless aching over the earth under its heavy tread. Thenevery moment would leave its load of weariness behind, anddecrepitude would reign supreme on its throne of eternal dirt. 

But every morning the day is reborn among the newly-blossomedflowers with the same message retold and the same assurancerenewed that death eternally dies, that the waves of turmoil areon the surface, and that the sea of tranquillity is fathomless. The curtain of night is drawn aside and truth emerges without aspeck of dust on its garment, without a furrow of age on itslineaments. 

We see that he who is before everything else is the same to-day. Every note of the song of creation comes fresh from his voice. The universe is not a mere echo, reverberating from sky to sky, like a homeless wanderer--the echo of an old song sung once forall in the dim beginning of things and then left orphaned. Everymoment it comes from the heart of the master, it is breathed inhis breath. 

And that is the reason why it overspreads the sky like a thoughttaking shape in a poem, and never has to break into pieces withthe burden of its own accumulating weight. Hence the surprise ofendless variations, the advent of the unaccountable, theceaseless procession of individuals, each of whom is without aparallel in creation. As at the first so to the last, thebeginning never ends--the world is ever old and ever new. 

It is for our self to know that it must be born anew every momentof its life. It must break through all illusions that encase itin their crust to make it appear old, burdening it with death. 

For life is immortal youthfulness, and it hates age that tries toclog its movements--age that belongs not to life in truth, butfollows it as the shadow follows the lamp. 

Our life, like a river, strikes its banks not to find itselfclosed in by them, but to realise anew every moment that it hasits unending opening towards the sea. It is a poem that strikesits metre at every step not to be silenced by its rigidregulations, but to give expression every moment to the innerfreedom of its harmony. 

The boundary walls of our individuality thrust us back within ourlimits, on the one hand, and thus lead us, on the other, to theunlimited. Only when we try to make these limits infinite are welaunched into an impossible contradiction and court miserablefailure. 

This is the cause which leads to the great revolutions in humanhistory. Whenever the part, spurning the whole, tries to run aseparate course of its own, the great pull of the all gives it aviolent wrench, stops it suddenly, and brings it to the dust. Whenever the individual tries to dam the ever-flowing current ofthe world-force and imprison it within the area of his particularuse, it brings on disaster. However powerful a king may be, hecannot raise his standard or rebellion against the infinitesource of strength, which is unity, and yet remain powerful. 

It has been said, _By unrighteousness men prosper, gain what theydesire, and triumph over their enemies, but at the end they arecut off at the root and suffer extinction. _ [Footnote:Adharmenaidhate tavat tato bahdrani pacyati tatah sapatnan jayatisamulastu vinacyati. ] Our roots must go deep down into theuniversal if we would attain the greatness of personality. 

It is the end of our self to seek that union. It must bend itshead low in love and meekness and take its stand where great andsmall all meet. It has to gain by its loss and rise by itssurrender. His games would be a horror to the child if he couldnot come back to his mother, and our pride of personality will bea curse to us if we cannot give it up in love. We must know thatit is only the revelation of the Infinite which is endlessly newand eternally beautiful in us, and which gives the only meaningto our self. 

V

REALISATION IN LOVE

We come now to the eternal problem of co-existence of theinfinite and the finite, of the supreme being and our soul. There is a sublime paradox that lies at the root of existence. We never can go round it, because we never can stand outside theproblem and weigh it against any other possible alternative. Butthe problem exists in logic only; in reality it does not offer usany difficulty at all. Logically speaking, the distance betweentwo points, however near, may be said to be infinite because itis infinitely divisible. But we _do_ cross the infinite at everystep, and meet the eternal in every second. Therefore some of ourphilosophers say there is no such thing as finitude; it is but a_maya_, an illusion. The real is the infinite, and it is only_maya_, the unreality, which causes the appearance of the finite. But the word _maya_ is a mere name, it is no explanation. It ismerely saying that with truth there is this appearance which isthe opposite of truth; but how they come to exist at one and thesame time is incomprehensible. 

We have what we call in Sanskrit _dvandva_, a series of oppositesin creation; such as, the positive pole and the negative, thecentripetal force and the centrifugal, attraction and repulsion. These are also mere names, they are no explanations. They areonly different ways of asserting that the world in its essence isa reconciliation of pairs of opposing forces. These forces, likethe left and the right hands of the creator, are acting inabsolute harmony, yet acting from opposite directions. 

There is a bond of harmony between our two eyes, which makes themact in unison. Likewise there is an unbreakable continuity ofrelation in the physical world between heat and cold, light anddarkness, motion and rest, as between the bass and treble notesof a piano. That is why these opposites do not bring confusionin the universe, but harmony. If creation were but a chaos, weshould have to imagine the two opposing principles as trying toget the better of each other. But the universe is not undermartial law, arbitrary and provisional. Here we find no forcewhich can run amok, or go on indefinitely in its wild road, likean exiled outlaw, breaking all harmony with its surroundings;each force, on the contrary, has to come back in a curved line toits equilibrium. Waves rise, each to its individual height in aseeming attitude of unrelenting competition, but only up to acertain point; and thus we know of the great repose of the sea towhich they are all related, and to which they must all return ina rhythm which is marvellously beautiful. 

In fact, these undulations and vibrations, these risings andfallings, are not due to the erratic contortions of disparatebodies, they are a rhythmic dance. Rhythm never can be born ofthe haphazard struggle of combat. Its underlying principle mustbe unity, not opposition. 

This principle of unity is the mystery of all mysteries. Theexistence of a duality at once raises a question in our minds, and we seek its solution in the One. When at last we find arelation between these two, and thereby see them as one inessence, we feel that we have come to the truth. And then wegive utterance to this most startling of all paradoxes, that theOne appears as many, that the appearance is the opposite of truthand yet is inseparably related to it. 

Curiously enough, there are men who lose that feeling of mystery, which is at the root of all our delights, when they discover theuniformity of law among the diversity of nature. As ifgravitation is not more of a mystery than the fall of an apple, as if the evolution from one scale of being to the other is notsomething which is even more shy of explanation than a successionof creations. The trouble is that we very often stop at such alaw as if it were the final end of our search, and then we findthat it does not even begin to emancipate our spirit. It onlygives satisfaction to our intellect, and as it does not appeal toour whole being it only deadens in us the sense of the infinite. 

A great poem, when analysed, is a set of detached sounds. Thereader who finds out the meaning, which is the inner medium thatconnects these outer sounds, discovers a perfect law all through, which is never violated in the least; the law of the evolution ofideas, the law of the music and the form. 

But law in itself is a limit. It only shows that whatever is cannever be otherwise. When a man is exclusively occupied with thesearch for the links of causality, his mind succumbs to thetyranny of law in escaping from the tyranny of facts. Inlearning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws ofwords we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point, and only concern ourselves with the marvels of the formation of alanguage, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices, we do not reach the end--for grammar is not literature, prosodyis not a poem. 

When we come to literature we find that though it conforms torules of grammar it is yet a thing of joy, it is freedom itself. The beauty of a poem is bound by strict laws, yet it transcendsthem. The laws are its wings, they do not keep it weighed down, they carry it to freedom. Its form is in law but its spirit isin beauty. Law is the first step towards freedom, and beauty isthe complete liberation which stands on the pedestal of law. Beauty harmonises in itself the limit and the beyond, the law andthe liberty. 

In the world-poem, the discovery of the law of its rhythms, themeasurement of its expansion and contraction, movement and pause, the pursuit of its evolution of forms and characters, are trueachievements of the mind; but we cannot stop there. It is like arailway station; but the station platform is not our home. Onlyhe has attained the final truth who knows that the whole world isa creation of joy. 

This leads me to think how mysterious the relation of the humanheart with nature must be. In the outer world of activity naturehas one aspect, but in our hearts, in the inner world, itpresents an altogether different picture. 

Take an instance--the flower of a plant. However fine and daintyit may look, it is pressed to do a great service, and its coloursand forms are all suited to its work. It must bring forth thefruit, or the continuity of plant life will be broken and theearth will be turned into a desert ere long. The colour and thesmell of the flower are all for some purpose therefore; no sooneris it fertilised by the bee, and the time of its fruitionarrives, than it sheds its exquisite petals and a cruel economycompels it to give up its sweet perfume. It has no time toflaunt its finery, for it is busy beyond measure. Viewed fromwithout, necessity seems to be the only factor in nature forwhich everything works and moves. There the bud develops intothe flower, the flower into the fruit, the fruit into the seed, the seed into a new plant again, and so forth, the chain ofactivity running on unbroken. Should there crop up anydisturbance or impediment, no excuse would be accepted, and theunfortunate thing thus choked in its movement would at once belabelled as rejected, and be bound to die and disappear post-haste. In the great office of nature there are innumerabledepartments with endless work going on, and the fine flower thatyou behold there, gaudily attired and scented like a dandy, is byno means what it appears to be, but rather, is like a labourertoiling in sun and shower, who has to submit a clear account ofhis work and has no breathing space to enjoy himself in playfulfrolic. 

But when this same flower enters the heart of men its aspect ofbusy practicality is gone, and it becomes the very emblem ofleisure and repose. The same object that is the embodiment ofendless activity without is the perfect expression of beauty andpeace within. 

Science here warns us that we are mistaken, that the purpose of aflower is nothing but what is outwardly manifested, and that therelation of beauty and sweetness which we think it bears to us isall our own making, gratuitous and imaginary. 

But our heart replies that we are not in the least mistaken. Inthe sphere of nature the flower carries with it a certificatewhich recommends it as having immense capacity for doing usefulwork, but it brings an altogether different letter ofintroduction when it knocks at the door of our hearts. Beautybecomes its only qualification. At one place it comes as aslave, and at another as a free thing. How, then, should we givecredit to its first recommendation and disbelieve the second one?That the flower has got its being in the unbroken chain ofcausation is true beyond doubt; but that is an outer truth. Theinner truth is: _Verily from the everlasting joy do all objectshave their birth. _ [Footnote: Anandadhyeva khalvimani bhutanijayante. ]

A flower, therefore, has not its only function in nature, but hasanother great function to exercise in the mind of man. And whatis that function? In nature its work is that of a servant whohas to make his appearance at appointed times, but in the heartof man it comes like a messenger from the King. In the_Ramayana_, when _Sita, _ forcibly separated from her husband, wasbewailing her evil fate in _Ravana's_ golden palace, she was metby a messenger who brought with him a ring of her beloved_Ramachandra_ himself. The very sight of it convinced _Sita_ ofthe truth of tidings he bore. She was at once reassured that hecame indeed from her beloved one, who had not forgotten her andwas at hand to rescue her. 

Such a messenger is a flower from our great lover. Surroundedwith the pomp and pageantry of worldliness, which may be linkedto Ravana's golden city, we still live in exile, while theinsolent spirit of worldly prosperity tempts us with allurementsand claims us as its bride. In the meantime the flower comesacross with a message from the other shore, and whispers in ourears, "I am come. He has sent me. I am a messenger of thebeautiful, the one whose soul is the bliss of love. This islandof isolation has been bridged over by him, and he has notforgotten thee, and will rescue thee even now. He will draw theeunto him and make thee his own. This illusion will not hold theein thraldom for ever. "

If we happen to be awake then, we question him: "How are we toknow that thou art come from him indeed?" The messenger says, "Look! I have this ring from him. How lovely are its hues andcharms!"

Ah, doubtless it is his--indeed, it is our wedding ring. Now allelse passes into oblivion, only this sweet symbol of the touch ofthe eternal love fills us with a deep longing. We realise thatthe palace of gold where we are has nothing to do with us--ourdeliverance is outside it--and there our love has its fruitionand our life its fulfilment. 

What to the bee in nature is merely colour and scent, and themarks or spots which show the right track to the honey, is to thehuman heart beauty and joy untrammelled by necessity. They bringa love letter to the heart written in many-coloured inks. 

I was telling you, therefore, that however busy our active natureoutwardly may be, she has a secret chamber within the heart whereshe comes and goes freely, without any design whatsoever. Therethe fire of her workshop is transformed into lamps of a festival, the noise of her factory is heard like music. The iron chain ofcause and effect sounds heavily outside in nature, but in thehuman heart its unalloyed delight seems to sound, as it were, like the golden strings of a harp. 

It indeed seems to be wonderful that nature has these two aspectsat one and the same time, and so antithetical--one being ofthraldom and the other of freedom. In the same form, sound, colour, and taste two contrary notes are heard, one of necessityand the other of joy. Outwardly nature is busy and restless, inwardly she is all silence and peace. She has toil on one sideand leisure on the other. You see her bondage only when you seeher from without, but within her heart is a limitless beauty. 

Our seer says, "From joy are born all creatures, by joy they aresustained, towards joy they progress, and into joy they enter. "

Not that he ignores law, or that his contemplation of thisinfinite joy is born of the intoxication produced by anindulgence in abstract thought. He fully recognises theinexorable laws of nature, and says, "Fire burns for fear of him(i. E. By his law); the sun shines by fear of him; and for fear ofhim the wind, the clouds, and death perform their offices. " Itis a reign of iron rule, ready to punish the least transgression. Yet the poet chants the glad song, "From joy are born allcreatures, by joy they are sustained, towards joy they progress, and into joy they enter. "

_The immortal being manifests himself in joy-form. _ [Footnote:Anandarupamamritam yad vibhati. ] His manifestation in creationis out of his fullness of joy. It is the nature of thisabounding joy to realise itself in form which is law. The joy, which is without form, must create, must translate itself intoforms. The joy of the singer is expressed in the form of a song, that of the poet in the form of a poem. Man in his role of acreator is ever creating forms, and they come out of hisabounding joy. 

This joy, whose other name is love, must by its very nature haveduality for its realisation. When the singer has his inspirationhe makes himself into two; he has within him his other self asthe hearer, and the outside audience is merely an extension ofthis other self of his. The lover seeks his own other self inhis beloved. It is the joy that creates this separation, inorder to realise through obstacles of union. 

The _amritam_, the immortal bliss, has made himself into two. Our soul is the loved one, it is his other self. We areseparate; but if this separation were absolute, then there wouldhave been absolute misery and unmitigated evil in this world. Then from untruth we never could reach truth, and from sin wenever could hope to attain purity of heart; then all oppositeswould ever remain opposites, and we could never find a mediumthrough which our differences could ever tend to meet. Then wecould have no language, no understanding, no blending of hearts, no co-operation in life. But on the contrary, we find that theseparateness of objects is in a fluid state. Theirindividualities are even changing, they are meeting and merginginto each other, till science itself is turning into metaphysics, matter losing its boundaries, and the definition of life becomingmore and more indefinite. 

Yes, our individual soul has been separated from the supremesoul, but this has not been from alienation but from the fullnessof love. It is for that reason that untruths, sufferings, andevils are not at a standstill; the human soul can defy them, canovercome them, nay, can altogether transform them into new powerand beauty. 

The singer is translating his song into singing, his joy intoforms, and the hearer has to translate back the singing into theoriginal joy; then the communion between the singer and thehearer is complete. The infinite joy is manifesting itself inmanifold forms, taking upon itself the bondage of law, and wefulfil our destiny when we go back from forms to joy, from law tothe love, when we untie the knot of the finite and hark back tothe infinite. 

The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, fromdiscipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual. Buddha preached the discipline of self-restraint and moral life;it is a complete acceptance of law. But this bondage of lawcannot be an end by itself; by mastering it thoroughly we acquirethe means of getting beyond it. It is going back to Brahma, tothe infinite love, which is manifesting itself through the finiteforms of law. Buddha names it _Brahma-vihara_, the joy of livingin Brahma. He who wants to reach this stage, according to Buddha, "shall deceive none, entertain no hatred for anybody, and neverwish to injure through anger. He shall have measureless love forall creatures, even as a mother has for her only child, whom sheprotects with her own life. Up above, below, and all around himhe shall extend his love, which is without bounds and obstacles, and which is free from all cruelty and antagonism. Whilestanding, sitting, walking, lying down, till he fall asleep, heshall keep his mind active in this exercise of universal goodwill. "

Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is theperfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do notcomprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do notlove. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is atthe root of all creation. It is the white light of pureconsciousness that emanates from Brahma. So, to be one with this_sarvanubhuh_, this all-feeling being who is in the external sky, as well as in our inner soul, we must attain to that summit ofconsciousness, which is love: _Who could have breathed or movedif the sky were not filled with joy, with love?_ [Footnote: Kohyevanyat kah pranyat yadesha akaca anando na syat. ] It isthrough the heightening of our consciousness into love, andextending it all over the world, that we can attain_Brahma-vihara, _ communion with this infinite joy. 

Love spontaneously gives itself in endless gifts. But thesegifts lose their fullest significance if through them we do notreach that love, which is the giver. To do that, we must havelove in our own heart. He who has no love in him values thegifts of his lover only according to their usefulness. Bututility is temporary and partial. It can never occupy our wholebeing; what is useful only touches us at the point where we havesome want. When the want is satisfied, utility becomes a burdenif it still persists. On the other hand, a mere token is ofpermanent worth to us when we have love in our heart. For it isnot for any special use. It is an end in itself; it is for ourwhole being and therefore can never tire us. 

The question is, In what manner do we accept this world, which isa perfect gift of joy? Have we been able to receive it in ourheart where we keep enshrined things that are of deathless valueto us? We are frantically busy making use of the forces of theuniverse to gain more and more power; we feed and we clotheourselves from its stores, we scramble for its riches, and itbecomes for us a field of fierce competition. But were we bornfor this, to extend our proprietary rights over this world andmake of it a marketable commodity? When our whole mind is bentonly upon making use of this world it loses for us its truevalue. We make it cheap by our sordid desires; and thus to theend of our days we only try to feed upon it and miss its truth, just like the greedy child who tears leaves from a precious bookand tries to swallow them. 

In the lands where cannibalism is prevalent man looks upon man ashis food. In such a country civilisation can never thrive, forthere man loses his higher value and is made common indeed. Butthere are other kinds of cannibalism, perhaps not so gross, butnot less heinous, for which one need not travel far. Incountries higher in the scale of civilisation we find sometimesman looked upon as a mere body, and he is bought and sold in themarket by the price of his flesh only. And sometimes he gets hissole value from being useful; he is made into a machine, and istraded upon by the man of money to acquire for him more money. Thus our lust, our greed, our love of comfort result incheapening man to his lowest value. It is self deception on alarge scale. Our desires blind us to the _truth_ that there isin man, and this is the greatest wrong done by ourselves to ourown soul. It deadens our consciousness, and is but a gradualmethod of spiritual suicide. It produces ugly sores in the bodyof civilisation, gives rise to its hovels and brothels, itsvindictive penal codes, its cruel prison systems, its organisedmethod of exploiting foreign races to the extent of permanentlyinjuring them by depriving them of the discipline of self-government and means of self-defence. 

Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellousmachine and his mind an organ of wonderful efficiency. But he isa spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love. When we define a man by the market value of the service we canexpect of him, we know him imperfectly. With this limitedknowledge of him it becomes easy for us to be unjust to him andto entertain feelings of triumphant self-congratulation when, onaccount of some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out ofhim much more than we have paid for. But when we know him as aspirit we know him as our own. We at once feel that cruelty tohim is cruelty to ourselves, to make him small is stealing fromour own humanity, and in seeking to make use of him solely forpersonal profit we merely gain in money or comfort what we pay intruth. 

One day I was out in a boat on the Ganges. It was a beautifulevening in autumn. The sun had just set; the silence of the skywas full to the brim with ineffable peace and beauty. The vastexpanse of water was without a ripple, mirroring all the changingshades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a desolatesandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile of some antediluvianage, with its scales glistening in shining colours. As our boatwas silently gliding by the precipitous river-bank, riddled withthe nest-holes of a colony of birds, suddenly a big fish leapt upto the surface of the water and then disappeared, displaying onits vanishing figure all the colours of the evening sky. It drewaside for a moment the many-coloured screen behind which therewas a silent world full of the joy of life. It came up from thedepths of its mysterious dwelling with a beautiful dancing motionand added its own music to the silent symphony of the dying day. I felt as if I had a friendly greeting from an alien world in itsown language, and it touched my heart with a flash of gladness. Then suddenly the man at the helm exclaimed with a distinct noteof regret, "Ah, what a big fish!" It at once brought before hisvision the picture of the fish caught and made ready for hissupper. He could only look at the fish through his desire, andthus missed the whole truth of its existence. But man is notentirely an animal. He aspires to a spiritual vision, which isthe vision of the whole truth. This gives him the highestdelight, because it reveals to him the deepest harmony thatexists between him and his surroundings. It is our desires thatlimit the scope of our self-realisation, hinder our extension ofconsciousness, and give rise to sin, which is the innermostbarrier that keeps us apart from our God, setting up disunion andthe arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin is not one mere action, but it is an attitude of life which takes for granted that ourgoal is finite, that our self is the ultimate truth, and that weare not all essentially one but exist each for his own separateindividual existence. 

So I repeat we never can have a true view of man unless we have alove for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by theamount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolvedand given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the loveof humanity. The first question and the last which it has toanswer is, Whether and how far it recognises man more as a spiritthan a machine? Whenever some ancient civilisation fell intodecay and died, it was owing to causes which produced callousnessof heart and led to the cheapening of man's worth; when eitherthe state or some powerful group of men began to look upon thepeople as a mere instrument of their power; when, by compellingweaker races to slavery and trying to keep them down by everymeans, man struck at the foundation of his greatness, his ownlove of freedom and fair-play. Civilisation can never sustainitself upon cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone manis true can only be nourished by love and justice. 

As with man, so with this universe. When we look at the worldthrough the veil of our desires we make it small and narrow, andfail to perceive its full truth. Of course it is obvious thatthe world serves us and fulfils our needs, but our relation to itdoes not end there. We are bound to it with a deeper and truerbond than that of necessity. Our soul is drawn to it; our loveof life is really our wish to continue our relation with thisgreat world. This relation is one of love. We are glad that weare in it; we are attached to it with numberless threads, whichextend from this earth to the stars. Man foolishly tries toprove his superiority by imagining his radical separateness fromwhat he calls his physical world, which, in his blind fanaticism, he sometimes goes to the extent of ignoring altogether, holdingit at his direst enemy. Yet the more his knowledge progresses, the more it becomes difficult for man to establish thisseparateness, and all the imaginary boundaries he had set uparound himself vanish one after another. Every time we lose someof our badges of absolute distinction by which we conferred uponour humanity the right to hold itself apart from its surroundings, it gives us a shock of humiliation. But we have to submit tothis. If we set up our pride on the path of our self-realisationto create divisions and disunion, then it must sooner or latercome under the wheels of truth and be ground to dust. No, we arenot burdened with some monstrous superiority, unmeaning in itssingular abruptness. It would be utterly degrading for us tolive in a world immeasurably less than ourselves in the quality ofsoul, just as it would be repulsive and degrading to be surroundedand served by a host of slaves, day and night, from birth to themoment of death. On the contrary, this world is our compeer, nay, we are one with it. 

Through our progress in science the wholeness of the world andour oneness with it is becoming clearer to our mind. When thisperception of the perfection of unity is not merely intellectual, when it opens out our whole being into a luminous consciousnessof the all, then it becomes a radiant joy, an overspreading love. Our spirit finds its larger self in the whole world, and isfilled with an absolute certainty that it is immortal. It dies ahundred times in its enclosures of self; for separateness isdoomed to die, it cannot be made eternal. But it never can diewhere it is one with the all, for there is its truth, its joy. When a man feels the rhythmic throb of the soul-life of the wholeworld in his own soul, then is he free. Then he enters into thesecret courting that goes on between this beautiful world-bride, veiled with the veil of the many-coloured finiteness, and the_paramatmam_, the bridegroom, in his spotless white. Then heknows that he is the partaker of this gorgeous love festival, andhe is the honoured guest at the feast of immortality. Then heunderstands the meaning of the seer-poet who sings, "From love theworld is born, by love it is sustained, towards love it moves, andinto love it enters. "

In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves andare lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time. 

Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes itsplace till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But thisrest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescenceand unceasing energy meet at the same point in love. 

In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance-sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the same column, and gifts areadded to gains. In this wonderful festival of creation, thisgreat ceremony of self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantlygives himself up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is whatbrings together and inseparably connects both the act ofabandoning and that of receiving. 

In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, and at theother the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion--Here I am; at the other the equally strong denial--I am not. Without this ego what is love? And again, with only this ego howcan love be possible?

Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love ismost free and at the same time most bound. If God wereabsolutely free there would be no creation. The infinite beinghas assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him whois love the finite and the infinite are made one. 

Similarly, when we talk about the relative values of freedom andnon-freedom, it becomes a mere play of words. It is not that wedesire freedom alone, we want thraldom as well. It is the highfunction of love to welcome all limitations and to transcendthem. For nothing is more independent than love, and where else, again, shall we find so much of dependence? In love, thraldom isas glorious as freedom. 

The _Vaishnava_ religion has boldly declared that God has boundhimself to man, and in that consists the greatest glory of humanexistence. In the spell of the wonderful rhythm of the finite hefetters himself at every step, and thus gives his love out inmusic in his most perfect lyrics of beauty. Beauty is his wooingof our heart; it can have no other purpose. It tells useverywhere that the display of power is not the ultimate meaningof creation; wherever there is a bit of colour, a note of song, agrace of form, there comes the call for our love. Hunger compelsus to obey its behests, but hunger is not the last word for a man. There have been men who have deliberately defied its commands toshow that the human soul is not to be led by the pressure of wantsand threat of pain. In fact, to live the life of man we have toresist its demands every day, the least of us as well as thegreatest. But, on the other hand, there is a beauty in the worldwhich never insults our freedom, never raises even its littlefinger to make us acknowledge its sovereignty. We can absolutelyignore it and suffer no penalty in consequence. It is a call tous, but not a command. It seeks for love in us, and love cannever be had by compulsion. Compulsion is not indeed the finalappeal to man, but joy is. Any joy is everywhere; it is in theearth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky;in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence ofgrey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame;in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; inliving; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition ofknowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never canshare. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary;nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests ofnecessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only beexplained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is therealisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul withthe world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover. 

VI

REALISATION IN ACTION

It is only those who have known that joy expresses itself throughlaw who have learnt to transcend the law. Not that the bonds oflaw have ceased to exist for them--but that the bonds have becometo them as the form of freedom incarnate. The freed souldelights in accepting bonds, and does not seek to evade any ofthem, for in each does it feel the manifestation of an infiniteenergy whose joy is in creation. 

As a matter of fact, where there are no bonds, where there is themadness of license, the soul ceases to be free. There is itshurt; there is its separation from the infinite, its agony ofsin. Whenever at the call of temptation the soul falls away fromthe bondage of law, then, like a child deprived of the support ofits mother's arms, it cries out, _Smite me not!_ [Footnote: Ma mahimsih. ] "Bind me, " it prays, "oh, bind me in the bonds of thylaw; bind me within and without; hold me tight; let me in the claspof thy law be bound up together with thy joy; protect me by thyfirm hold from the deadly laxity of sin. "

As some, under the idea that law is the opposite of joy, mistakeintoxication for joy, so there are many in our country whoimagine action to be opposed to freedom. They think thatactivity being in the material plane is a restriction of the freespirit of the soul. But we must remember that as joy expressesitself in law, so the soul finds its freedom in action. It isbecause joy cannot find expression in itself alone that itdesires the law which is outside. Likewise it is because thesoul cannot find freedom within itself that it wants externalaction. The soul of man is ever freeing itself from its ownfolds by its activity; had it been otherwise it could not havedone any voluntary work. 

The more man acts and makes actual what was latent in him, thenearer does he bring the distant Yet-to-be. In thatactualisation man is ever making himself more and yet moredistinct, and seeing himself clearly under newer and neweraspects in the midst of his varied activities, in the state, insociety. This vision makes for freedom. 

Freedom is not in darkness, nor in vagueness. There is nobondage so fearful as that of obscurity. It is to escape fromthis obscurity that the seed struggles to sprout, the bud toblossom. It is to rid itself of this envelope of vagueness thatthe ideas in our mind are constantly seeking opportunities totake on outward form. In the same way our soul, in order torelease itself from the mist of indistinctness and come out intothe open, is continually creating for itself fresh fields ofaction, and is busy contriving new forms of activity, even suchas are not needful for the purposes of its earthly life. Andwhy? Because it wants freedom. It wants to see itself, torealise itself. 

When man cuts down the pestilential jungle and makes unto himselfa garden, the beauty that he thus sets free from within itsenclosure of ugliness is the beauty of his own soul: withoutgiving it this freedom outside, he cannot make it free within. When he implants law and order in the midst of the waywardness ofsociety, the good which he sets free from the obstruction of thebad is the goodness of his own soul: without being thus made freeoutside it cannot find freedom within. Thus is man continuallyengaged in setting free in action his powers, his beauty, hisgoodness, his very soul. And the more he succeeds in so doing, the greater does he see himself to be, the broader becomes thefield of his knowledge of self. 

The Upanishad says: _In the midst of activity alone wilt thoudesire to live a hundred years. _ [Footnote: Kurvannevehakarmani jijivishet catam samah. ] It is the saying of those whohad amply tasted of the joy of the soul. Those who have fullyrealised the soul have never talked in mournful accents of thesorrowfulness of life or of the bondage of action. They are notlike the weakling flower whose stem-hold is so light that itdrops away before attaining fruition. They hold on to life withall their might and say, "never will we let go till the fruit isripe. " They desire in their joy to express themselvesstrenuously in their life and in their work. Pain and sorrowdismay them not, they are not bowed down to the dust by theweight of their own heart. With the erect head of the victorioushero they march through life seeing themselves and showingthemselves in increasing resplendence of soul through both joysand sorrows. The joy of their life keeps step with the joy ofthat energy which is playing at building and breaking throughoutthe universe. The joy of the sunlight, the joy of the free air, mingling with the joy of their lives, makes one sweet harmonyreign within and without. It is they who say, _In the midst ofactivity alone wilt thou desire to live a hundred years. _

This joy of life, this joy of work, in man is absolutely true. It is no use saying that it is a delusion of ours; that unless wecast it away we cannot enter upon the path of self-realisation. It will never do the least good to attempt the realisation of theinfinite apart from the world of action. 

It is not the truth that man is active on compulsion. If thereis compulsion on one side, on the other there is pleasure; on theone hand action is spurred on by want, on the other it hies toits natural fulfilment. That is why, as man's civilisationadvances, he increases his obligations and the work that hewillingly creates for himself. One should have thought thatnature had given him quite enough to do to keep him busy, in factthat it was working him to death with the lash of hunger andthirst, --but no. Man does not think that sufficient; he cannotrest content with only doing the work that nature prescribes forhim in common with the birds and beasts. He needs must surpassall, even in activity. No creature has to work so hard as man;he has been impelled to contrive for himself a vast field ofaction in society; and in this field he is for every building upand pulling down, making and unmaking laws, piling up heaps ofmaterial, and incessantly thinking, seeking and suffering. Inthis field he has fought his mightiest battles, gained continualnew life, made death glorious, and, far from evading troubles, has willingly and continually taken up the burden of freshtrouble. He has discovered the truth that he is not complete inthe cage of his immediate surroundings, that he is greater thanhis present, and that while to stand still in one place may becomforting, the arrest of life destroys his true function and thereal purpose of his existence. 

This _mahati vinashtih--this great destruction_ he cannot bear, and accordingly he toils and suffers in order that he may gain instature by transcending his present, in order to become thatwhich he yet is not. In this travail is man's glory, and it isbecause he knows it, that he has not sought to circumscribe hisfield of action, but is constantly occupied in extending thebounds. Sometimes he wanders so far that his work tends to loseits meaning, and his rushings to and fro create fearful eddiesround different centres--eddies of self-interest, of pride ofpower. Still, so long as the strength of the current is not lost, there is no fear; the obstructions and the dead accumulations ofhis activity are dissipated and carried away; the impetus correctsits own mistakes. Only when the soul sleeps in stagnation do itsenemies gain overmastering strength, and these obstructions becometoo clogging to be fought through. Hence have we been warned byour teachers that to work we must live, to live we must work; thatlife and activity are inseparably connected. 

It is very characteristic of life that it is not complete withinitself; it must come out. Its truth is in the commerce of theinside and the outside. In order to live, the body must maintainits various relations with the outside light and air--not only togain life-force, but also to manifest it. Consider how fullyemployed the body is with its own inside activities; its heart-beat must not stop for a second, its stomach, its brain, must beceaselessly working. Yet this is not enough; the body isoutwardly restless all the while. Its life leads it to anendless dance of work and play outside; it cannot be satisfiedwith the circulations of its internal economy, and only finds thefulfilment of joy in its outward excursions. 

The same with the soul. It cannot live on its own internalfeelings and imaginings. It is ever in need of external objects;not only to feed its inner consciousness but to apply itself inaction, not only to receive but also to give. 

The real truth is, we cannot live if we divide him who is truthitself into two parts. We must abide in him within as well aswithout. In whichever aspect we deny him we deceive ourselvesand incur a loss. _Brahma has not left me, let me not leaveBrahma. _ [Footnote: Maham brahma nirakuryyam ma ma brahmanirakarot. ] If we say that we would realise him in introspectionalone and leave him out of our external activity, that we wouldenjoy him by the love in our heart, but not worship him byoutward ministrations; or if we say the opposite, and overweightourselves on one side in the journey of our life's quest, weshall alike totter to our downfall. 

In the great western continent we see that the soul of man ismainly concerned with extending itself outwards; the open fieldof the exercise of power is its field. Its partiality isentirely for the world of extension, and it would leave aside--nay, hardly believe in--that field of inner consciousness whichis the field of fulfilment. It has gone so far in this that theperfection of fulfilment seems to exist for it nowhere. Itsscience has always talked of the never-ending evolution of theworld. Its metaphysic has now begun to talk of the evolution ofGod himself. They will not admit that he _is_; they would haveit that he also is _becoming. _

They fail to realise that while the infinite is always greaterthan any assignable limit, it is also complete; that on the onehand Brahma is evolving, on the other he is perfection; that inthe one aspect he is essence, in the other manifestation--bothtogether at the same time, as is the song and the act of singing. This is like ignoring the consciousness of the singer and sayingthat only the singing is in progress, that there is no song. Doubtless we are directly aware only of the singing, and never atany one time of the song as a whole; but do we not all the timeknow that the complete song is in the soul of the singer?

It is because of this insistence on the doing and the becomingthat we perceive in the west the intoxication of power. Thesemen seem to have determined to despoil and grasp everything byforce. They would always obstinately be doing and never be done--they would not allow to death its natural place in the scheme ofthings--they know not the beauty of completion. 

In our country the danger comes from the opposite side. Ourpartiality is for the internal world. We would cast aside withcontumely the field of power and of extension. We would realiseBrahma in mediation only in his aspect of completeness, we havedetermined not to see him in the commerce of the universe in hisaspect of evolution. That is why in our seekers we so often findthe intoxication of the spirit and its consequent degradation. Their faith would acknowledge no bondage of law, theirimagination soars unrestricted, their conduct disdains to offerany explanation to reason. Their intellect, in its vain attemptsto see Brahma inseparable from his creation, works itself stone-dry, and their heart, seeking to confine him within its ownoutpourings, swoons in a drunken ecstasy of emotion. They havenot even kept within reach any standard whereby they can measurethe loss of strength and character which manhood sustains by thusignoring the bonds of law and the claims of action in theexternal universe. 

But true spirituality, as taught in our sacred lore, is calmlybalanced in strength, in the correlation of the within and thewithout. The truth has its law, it has its joy. On one side ofit is being chanted the _Bhayadasyagnistapati_ [Footnote: "Forfear of him the fire doth burn, " etc], on the other the_Anandadhyeva khalvimani bhutani jayante. _ [Footnote: "From Joyare born all created things, " etc. ] Freedom is impossible ofattainment without submission to law, for Brahma is in one aspectbound by his truth, in the other free in his joy. 

As for ourselves, it is only when we wholly submit to the bondsof truth that we fully gain the joy of freedom. And how? Asdoes the string that is bound to the harp. When the harp istruly strung, when there is not the slightest laxity in thestrength of the bond, then only does music result; and the stringtranscending itself in its melody finds at every chord its truefreedom. It is because it is bound by such hard and fast ruleson the one side that it can find this range of freedom in musicon the other. While the string was not true, it was indeedmerely bound; but a loosening of its bondage would not have beenthe way to freedom, which it can only fully achieve by beingbound tighter and tighter till it has attained the true pitch. 

The bass and treble strings of our duty are only bonds so long aswe cannot maintain them steadfastly attuned according to the lawof truth; and we cannot call by the name of freedom the looseningof them into the nothingness of inaction. That is why I wouldsay that the true striving in the quest of truth, of _dharma_, consists not in the neglect of action but in the effort to attuneit closer and closer to the eternal harmony. The text of thisstriving should be, _Whatever works thou doest, consecrate themto Brahma. _ [Footnote: Yadyat karma prakurvita tadbrahmanisamarpayet. ] That is to say, the soul is to dedicate itself toBrahma through all its activities. This dedication is the songof the soul, in this is its freedom. Joy reigns when all workbecomes the path to the union with Brahma; when the soul ceasesto return constantly to its own desires; when in it our self-offering grows more and more intense. Then there is completion, then there is freedom, then, in this world, comes the kingdom ofGod. 

Who is there that, sitting in his corner, would deride this grandself-expression of humanity in action, this incessant self-consecration? Who is there that thinks the union of God and manis to be found in some secluded enjoyment of his own imaginings, away from the sky-towering temple of the greatness of humanity, which the whole of mankind, in sunshine and storm, is toiling toerect through the ages? Who is there that thinks this secludedcommunion is the highest form of religion?

O thou distraught wanderer, thou _Sannyasin_, drunk in the wine ofself-intoxication, dost thou not already hear the progress of thehuman soul along the highway traversing the wide fields ofhumanity--the thunder of its progress in the car of itsachievements, which is destined to overpass the bounds thatprevent its expansion into the universe? The very mountains arecleft asunder and give way before the march of its banners wavingtriumphantly in the heavens; as the mist before the rising sun, the tangled obscurities of material things vanish at itsirresistible approach. Pain, disease, and disorder are at everystep receding before its onset; the obstructions of ignorance arebeing thrust aside; the darkness of blindness is being piercedthrough; and behold, the promised land of wealth and health, ofpoetry and art, of knowledge and righteousness is gradually beingrevealed to view. Do you in your lethargy desire to say thatthis car of humanity, which is shaking the very earth with thetriumph of its progress along the mighty vistas of history, hasno charioteer leading it on to its fulfilment? Who is there whorefuses to respond to his call to join in this triumphal progress?Who so foolish as to run away from the gladsome throng and seekhim in the listlessness of inaction? Who so steeped in untruth asto dare to call all this untrue--this great world of men, thiscivilisation of expanding humanity, this eternal effort of man, through depths of sorrow, through heights of gladness, throughinnumerable impediments within and without, to win victory for hispowers? He who can think of this immensity of achievement as animmense fraud, can he truly believe in God who is the truth? Hewho thinks to reach God by running away from the world, when andwhere does he expect to meet him? How far can he fly--can he flyand fly, till he flies into nothingness itself? No, the cowardwho would fly can nowhere find him. We must be brave enough tobe able to say: We are reaching him here in this very spot, nowat this very moment. We must be able to assure ourselves that asin our actions we are realising ourselves, so in ourselves we arerealising him who is the self of self. We must earn the right tosay so unhesitatingly by clearing away with our own effort allobstruction, all disorder, all discords from our path of activity;we must be able to say, "In my work is my joy, and in that joydoes the joy of my joy abide. "

Whom does the Upanishad call _The chief among the knowers ofBrahma?_ [Footnote: Brahmavidamvaristhah. ] He is defined as _Hewhose joy is in Brahma, whose play is in Brahma, the active one. _[Footnote: Atmakrirha atmaratih kriyavan. ] Joy without the playof joy is no joy at all--play without activity is no play. Activity is the play of joy. He whose joy is in Brahma, how canhe live in inaction? For must he not by his activity providethat in which the joy of Brahma is to take form and manifestitself? That is why he who knows Brahma, who has his joy inBrahma, must also have all his activity in Brahma--his eatingand drinking, his earning of livelihood and his beneficence. Just as the joy of the poet in his poem, of the artist in hisart, of the brave man in the output of his courage, of the wiseman in his discernment of truths, ever seeks expression in theirseveral activities, so the joy of the knower of Brahma, in thewhole of his everyday work, little and big, in truth, in beauty, in orderliness and in beneficence, seeks to give expression tothe infinite. 

Brahma himself gives expression to his joy in just the same way. _By his many-sided activity, which radiates in all directions, does he fulfil the inherent want of his different creatures. _[Footnote: Bahudha cakti yogat varnananekan nihitartho dadhati. ]That inherent want is he himself, and so he is in so many ways, in so many forms, giving himself. He works, for without workinghow could he give himself. His joy is ever dedicating itself inthe dedication which is his creation. 

In this very thing does our own true meaning lie, in this is ourlikeness to our father. We must also give up ourselves in many-sided variously aimed activity. In the Vedas he is called _thegiver of himself, the giver of strength. _ [Footnote: Atmadabalada. ] He is not content with giving us himself, but he givesus strength that we may likewise give ourselves. That is why theseer of the Upanishad prays to him who is thus fulfilling ourwants, _May he grant us the beneficent mind_ [Footnote: Sa nobuddhya cubhaya samyunaktu. ], may he fulfil that uttermost wantof ours by granting us the beneficent mind. That is to say, itis not enough he should alone work to remove our want, but heshould give us the desire and the strength to work with him inhis activity and in the exercise of the goodness. Then, indeed, will our union with him alone be accomplished. The beneficentmind is that which shows us the want (_swartha_) of another selfto be the inherent want (_nihitartha_) of our own self; thatwhich shows that our joy consists in the varied aiming of ourmany-sided powers in the work of humanity. When we work underthe guidance of this beneficent mind, then our activity isregulated, but does not become mechanical; it is action notgoaded on by want, but stimulated by the satisfaction of thesoul. Such activity ceases to be a blind imitation of that ofthe multitude, a cowardly following of the dictates of fashion. Therein we begin to see that _He is in the beginning and in theend of the universe_ [Footnote: Vichaiti chante vicvamadau. ], and likewise see that of our own work is he the fount and theinspiration, and at the end thereof is he, and therefore that allour activity is pervaded by peace and good and joy. 

The Upanishad says: _Knowledge, power, and action are of hisnature. _ [Footnote: Svabhavikijnana bala kriya cha. ] It isbecause this naturalness has not yet been born in us that we tendto divide joy from work. Our day of work is not our day of joy--for that we require a holiday; for, miserable that we are, wecannot find our holiday in our work. The river finds its holidayin its onward flow, the fire in its outburst of flame, the scentof the flower in its permeation of the atmosphere; but in oureveryday work there is no such holiday for us. It is because wedo not let ourselves go, because we do not give ourselvesjoyously and entirely up to it, that our work overpowers us. 

O giver of thyself! at the vision of thee as joy let our soulsflame up to thee as the fire, flow on to thee as the river, permeate thy being as the fragrance of the flower. Give usstrength to love, to love fully, our life in its joys andsorrows, in its gains and losses, in its rise and fall. Let ushave strength enough fully to see and hear thy universe, and towork with full vigour therein. Let us fully live the life thouhast given us, let us bravely take and bravely give. This is ourprayer to thee. Let us once for all dislodge from our minds thefeeble fancy that would make out thy joy to be a thing apart fromaction, thin, formless, and unsustained. Wherever the peasanttills the hard earth, there does thy joy gush out in the green ofthe corn, wherever man displaces the entangled forest, smoothsthe stony ground, and clears for himself a homestead, there doesthy joy enfold it in orderliness and peace. 

O worker of the universe! We would pray to thee to let theirresistible current of thy universal energy come like theimpetuous south wind of spring, let it come rushing over the vastfield of the life of man, let it bring the scent of many flowers, the murmurings of many woodlands, let it make sweet and vocal thelifelessness of our dried-up soul-life. Let our newly awakenedpowers cry out for unlimited fulfilment in leaf and flower andfruit. 

VII

THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY

Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon ourminds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, andtherefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becomingburdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wanderingvagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of ourrecognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely ourown when it is a thing of joy to us. 

The greater part of this world is to us as if it were nothing. But we cannot allow it to remain so, for thus it belittles ourown self. The entire world is given to us, and all our powershave their final meaning in the faith that by their help we areto take possession of our patrimony. 

But what is the function of our sense of beauty in this processof the extension of our consciousness? Is it there to separatetruth into strong lights and shadows, and bring it before us inits uncompromising distinction of beauty and ugliness? If thatwere so, then we would have had to admit that this sense ofbeauty creates a dissension in our universe and sets up a wall ofhindrance across the highway of communication that leads fromeverything to all things. 

But that cannot be true. As long as our realisation isincomplete a division necessarily remains between things knownand unknown, pleasant and unpleasant. But in spite of the dictumof some philosophers man does not accept any arbitrary andabsolute limit to his knowable world. Every day his science ispenetrating into the region formerly marked in his map asunexplored or inexplorable. Our sense of beauty is similarlyengaged in ever pushing on its conquests. Truth is everywhere, therefore everything is the object of our knowledge. Beauty isomnipresent, therefore everything is capable of giving us joy. 

In the early days of his history man took everything as aphenomenon of life. His science of life began by creating asharp distinction between life and non-life. But as it isproceeding farther and farther the line of demarcation betweenthe animate and inanimate is growing more and more dim. In thebeginning of our apprehension these sharp lines of contrast arehelpful to us, but as our comprehension becomes clearer theygradually fade away. 

The Upanishads have said that all things are created andsustained by an infinite joy. To realise this principle ofcreation we have to start with a division--the division into thebeautiful and the non-beautiful. Then the apprehension of beautyhas to come to us with a vigorous blow to awaken ourconsciousness from its primitive lethargy, and it attains itsobject by the urgency of the contrast. Therefore our firstacquaintance with beauty is in her dress of motley colours, thataffects us with its stripes and feathers, nay, with itsdisfigurements. But as our acquaintance ripens, the apparentdiscords are resolved into modulations of rhythm. At first wedetach beauty from its surroundings, we hold it apart from therest, but at the end we realise its harmony with all. Then themusic of beauty has no more need of exciting us with loud noise;it renounces violence, and appeals to our heart with the truththat it is meekness inherits the earth. 

In some stage of our growth, in some period of our history, wetry to set up a special cult of beauty, and pare it down to anarrow circuit, so as to make it a matter of pride for a chosenfew. Then it breeds in its votaries affections andexaggerations, as it did with the Brahmins in the time of thedecadence of Indian civilisation, when the perception of thehigher truth fell away and superstitions grew up unchecked. 

In the history of aesthetics there also comes an age ofemancipation when the recognition of beauty in things great andsmall become easy, and when we see it more in the unassumingharmony of common objects than in things startling in theirsingularity. So much so, that we have to go through the stagesof reaction when in the representation of beauty we try to avoideverything that is obviously pleasing and that has been crownedby the sanction of convention. We are then tempted in defianceto exaggerate the commonness of commonplace things, therebymaking them aggressively uncommon. To restore harmony we createthe discords which are a feature of all reactions. We alreadysee in the present age the sign of this aesthetic reaction, whichproves that man has at last come to know that it is only thenarrowness of perception which sharply divides the field of hisaesthetic consciousness into ugliness and beauty. When he has thepower to see things detached from self-interest and from theinsistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone can hehave the true vision of the beauty that is everywhere. Then onlycan he see that what is unpleasant to us is not necessarilyunbeautiful, but has its beauty in truth. 

When we say that beauty is everywhere we do not mean that theword ugliness should be abolished from our language, just as itwould be absurd to say that there is no such thing as untruth. Untruth there certainly is, not in the system of the universe, but in our power of comprehension, as its negative element. Inthe same manner there is ugliness in the distorted expression ofbeauty in our life and in our art which comes from our imperfectrealisation of Truth. To a certain extent we can set our lifeagainst the law of truth which is in us and which is in all, andlikewise we can give rise to ugliness by going counter to theeternal law of harmony which is everywhere. 

Through our sense of truth we realise law in creation, andthrough our sense of beauty we realise harmony in the universe. When we recognise the law in nature we extend our mastery overphysical forces and become powerful; when we recognise the law inour moral nature we attain mastery over self and become free. Inlike manner the more we comprehend the harmony in the physicalworld the more our life shares the gladness of creation, and ourexpression of beauty in art becomes more truly catholic. As webecome conscious of the harmony in our soul, our apprehension ofthe blissfulness of the spirit of the world becomes universal, and the expression of beauty in our life moves in goodness andlove towards the infinite. This is the ultimate object of ourexistence, that we must ever know that "beauty is truth, truthbeauty"; we must realise the whole world in love, for love givesit birth, sustains it, and takes it back to its bosom. We musthave that perfect emancipation of heart which gives us the powerto stand at the innermost centre of things and have the taste ofthat fullness of disinterested joy which belongs to Brahma. 

Music is the purest form of art, and therefore the most directexpression of beauty, with a form and spirit which is one andsimple, and least encumbered with anything extraneous. We seemto feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the finiteforms of creation is music itself, silent and visible. Theevening sky, tirelessly repeating the starry constellations, seems like a child struck with wonder at the mystery of its ownfirst utterance, lisping the same word over and over again, andlistening to it in unceasing joy. When in the rainy night ofJuly the darkness is thick upon the meadows and the patteringrain draws veil upon veil over the stillness of the slumberingearth, this monotony of the rain patter seems to be the darknessof sound itself. The gloom of the dim and dense line of trees, the thorny bushes scattered in the bare heath like floating headsof swimmers with bedraggled hair, the smell of the damp grass andthe wet earth, the spire of the temple rising above the undefinedmass of blackness grouped around the village huts--everythingseems like notes rising from the heart of the night, mingling andlosing themselves in the one sound of ceaseless rain filling thesky. 

Therefore the true poets, they who are seers, seek to express theuniverse in terms of music. 

They rarely use symbols of painting to express the unfolding offorms, the mingling of endless lines and colours that goes onevery moment on the canvas of the blue sky. 

They have their reason. For the man who paints must have canvas, brush and colour-box. The first touch of his brush is very farfrom the complete idea. And then when the work is finished theartist is gone, the windowed picture stands alone, the incessanttouches of love of the creative hand are withdrawn. 

But the singer has everything within him. The notes come outfrom his very life. They are not materials gathered fromoutside. His idea and his expression are brother and sister;very often they are born as twins. In music the heart revealsitself immediately; it suffers not from any barrier of alienmaterial. 

Therefore though music has to wait for its completeness like anyother art, yet at every step it gives out the beauty of thewhole. As the material of expression even words are barriers, for their meaning has to be constructed by thought. But musicnever has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it expresses whatno words can ever express. 

What is more, music and the musician are inseparable. When thesinger departs, his singing dies with him; it is in eternal unionwith the life and joy of the master. 

This world-song is never for a moment separated from its singer. It is not fashioned from any outward material. It is his joyitself taking never-ending form. It is the great heart sendingthe tremor of its thrill over the sky. 

There is a perfection in each individual strain of this music, which is the revelation of completion in the incomplete. No one ofits notes is final, yet each reflects the infinite. 

What does it matter if we fail to derive the exact meaning ofthis great harmony? Is it not like the hand meeting the stringand drawing out at once all its tones at the touch? It is thelanguage of beauty, the caress, that comes from the heart of theworld straightway reaches our heart. 

Last night, in the silence which pervaded the darkness, I stoodalone and heard the voice of the singer of eternal melodies. When I went to sleep I closed my eyes with this last thought inmy mind, that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the danceof life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body, keeping step with the stars. The heart will throb, the bloodwill leap in the veins, and the millions of living atoms of mybody will vibrate in tune with the note of the harp-string thatthrills at the touch of the master. 

VIII

THE REALISATION OF THE INFINITE

The Upanishads say: "Man becomes true if in this life he canapprehend God; if not, it is the greatest calamity for him. "

But what is the nature of this attainment of God? It is quiteevident that the infinite is not like one object among many, tobe definitely classified and kept among our possessions, to beused as an ally specially favouring us in our politics, warfare, money-making, or in social competitions. We cannot put our Godin the same list with our summer-houses, motor-cars, or ourcredit at the bank, as so many people seem to want to do. 

We must try to understand the true character of the desire that aman has when his soul longs for his God. Does it consist of hiswish to make an addition, however valuable, to his belongings?Emphatically no! It is an endlessly wearisome task, thiscontinual adding to our stores. In fact, when the soul seeks Godshe seeks her final escape from this incessant gathering andheaping and never coming to an end. It is not an additionalobject the she seeks, but it is the _nityo 'nityanam_, thepermanent in all that is impermanent, the _rasanam rasatamah_, the highest abiding joy unifying all enjoyments. Therefore whenthe Upanishads teach us to realise everything in Brahma, it isnot to seek something extra, not to manufacture something new. 

_Know everything that there is in the universe as enveloped byGod. _ [Footnote: Ichavasyamdiam sarvam yat kinchajagatyanjagat. ] _Enjoy whatever is given by him and harbour notin your mind the greed for wealth which is not your own. _[Footnoe: Tena tyaktena bhunjitha ma gridhah kasyasviddhanam. ]

When you know that whatever there is is filled by him andwhatever you have is his gift, then you realise the infinite inthe finite, and the giver in the gifts. Then you know that allthe facts of the reality have their only meaning in themanifestation of the one truth, and all your possessions havetheir only significance for you, not in themselves but in therelation they establish with the infinite. 

So it cannot be said that we can find Brahma as we find otherobjects; there is no question of searching from him in one thingin preference to another, in one place instead of somewhere else. We do not have to run to the grocer's shop for our morning light;we open our eyes and there it is; so we need only give ourselvesup to find that Brahma is everywhere. 

This is the reason why Buddha admonished us to free ourselvesfrom the confinement of the life of the self. If there werenothing else to take its place more positively perfect andsatisfying, then such admonition would be absolutely unmeaning. No man can seriously consider the advice, much less have anyenthusiasm for it, of surrendering everything one has for gainingnothing whatever. 

So our daily worship of God is not really the process of gradualacquisition of him, but the daily process of surrenderingourselves, removing all obstacles to union and extending ourconsciousness of him in devotion and service, in goodness and inlove. 

The Upanishads say: _Be lost altogether in Brahma like an arrowthat has completely penetrated its target. _ Thus to be consciousof being absolutely enveloped by Brahma is not an act of mereconcentration of mind. It must be the aim of the whole of ourlife. In all our thoughts and deeds we must be conscious of theinfinite. Let the realisation of this truth become easier everyday of our life, that _none could live or move if the energy ofthe all-pervading joy did not fill the sky. _ [Footnote: Kohyevanyat kah pranyat yadesha akacha anando na syat. ] In all ouractions let us feel that impetus of the infinite energy and beglad. 

It may be said that the infinite is beyond our attainment, so itis for us as if it were naught. Yes, if the word attainmentimplies any idea of possession, then it must be admitted that theinfinite is unattainable. But we must keep in mind that thehighest enjoyment of man is not in the having but in a getting, which is at the same time not getting. Our physical pleasuresleave no margin for the unrealised. They, like the deadsatellite of the earth, have but little atmosphere around them. When we take food and satisfy our hunger it is a complete act ofpossession. So long as the hunger is not satisfied it is apleasure to eat. For then our enjoyment of eating touches atevery point the infinite. But, when it attains completion, or inother words, when our desire for eating reaches the end of thestage of its non-realisation, it reaches the end of its pleasure. In all our intellectual pleasures the margin is broader, thelimit is far off. In all our deeper love getting and non-gettingrun ever parallel. In one of our Vaishnava lyrics the lover saysto his beloved: "I feel as if I have gazed upon the beauty of thyface from my birth, yet my eyes are hungry still: as if I havekept thee pressed to my heart for millions of years, yet my heartis not satisfied. "

This makes it clear that it is really the infinite whom we seekin our pleasures. Our desire for being wealthy is not a desirefor a particular sum of money but it is indefinite, and the mostfleeting of our enjoyments are but the momentary touches of theeternal. The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attemptsto stretch the limits of things which can never becomeunlimited, --to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungsof the ladder of the finite. 

It is evident from this that the real desire of our soul is toget beyond all our possessions. Surrounded by things she cantouch and feel, she cries, "I am weary of getting; ah, where ishe who is never to be got?"

We see everywhere in the history of man that the spirit ofrenunciation is the deepest reality of the human soul. When thesoul says of anything, "I do not want it, for I am above it, " shegives utterance to the highest truth that is in her. When agirl's life outgrows her doll, when she realises that in everyrespect she is more than her doll is, then she throws it away. By the very act of possession we know that we are greater thanthe things we possess. It is a perfect misery to be kept boundup with things lesser than ourselves. This it is that Maitreyifelt when her husband gave her his property on the eve of leavinghome. She asked him, "Would these material things help one toattain the highest?"--or, in other words, "Are they more than mysoul to me?" When her husband answered, "They will make you richin worldly possessions, " she said at once, "then what am I to dowith these?" It is only when a man truly realises what hispossessions are that he has no more illusions about them; then heknows his soul is far above these things and he becomes free fromtheir bondage. Thus man truly realises his soul by outgrowinghis possessions, and man's progress in the path of eternal lifeis through a series of renunciations. 

That we cannot absolutely possess the infinite being is not amere intellectual proposition. It has to be experienced, andthis experience is bliss. The bird, while taking its flight inthe sky, experiences at every beat of its wings that the sky isboundless, that its wings can never carry it beyond. Thereinlies its joy. In the cage the sky is limited; it may be quiteenough for all the purposes of the bird's life, only it is notmore than is necessary. The bird cannot rejoice within thelimits of the necessary. It must feel that what it has isimmeasurably more than it ever can want or comprehend, and thenonly can it be glad. 

Thus our soul must soar in the infinite, and she must feel everymoment that in the sense of not being able to come to the end ofher attainment is her supreme joy, her final freedom. 

Man's abiding happiness is not in getting anything but in givinghimself up to what is greater than himself, to ideas which arelarger than his individual life, the idea of his country, ofhumanity, of God. They make it easier for him to part with allthat he has, not expecting his life. His existence is miserableand sordid till he finds some great idea which can truly claimhis all, which can release him from all attachment to hisbelongings. Buddha and Jesus, and all our great prophets, represent such great ideas. They hold before us opportunitiesfor surrendering our all. When they bring forth their divinealms-bowl we feel we cannot help giving, and we find that ingiving is our truest joy and liberation, for it is unitingourselves to that extent with the infinite. 

Man is not complete; he is yet to be. In what he _is_ he issmall, and if we could conceive him stopping there for eternitywe should have an idea of the most awful hell that man canimagine. In his _to be_ he is infinite, there is his heaven, his deliverance. His _is_ is occupied every moment with what itcan get and have done with; his _to be_ is hungering forsomething which is more than can be got, which he never can losebecause he never has possessed. 

The finite pole of our existence has its place in the world ofnecessity. There man goes about searching for food to live, clothing to get warmth. In this region--the region of nature--itis his function to get things. The natural man is occupied withenlarging his possessions. 

But this act of getting is partial. It is limited to man'snecessities. We can have a thing only to the extent of ourrequirements, just as a vessel can contain water only to theextent of its emptiness. Our relation to food is only infeeding, our relation to a house is only in habitation. We callit a benefit when a thing is fitted only to some particular wantof ours. Thus to get is always to get partially, and it nevercan be otherwise. So this craving for acquisition belongs to ourfinite self. 

But that side of our existence whose direction is towards theinfinite seeks not wealth, but freedom and joy. There the reignof necessity ceases, and there our function is not to get but tobe. To be what? To be one with Brahma. For the region of theinfinite is the region of unity. Therefore the Upanishads say:_If man apprehends God he becomes true. _ Here it is becoming, it is not having more. Words do no gather bulk when you knowtheir meaning; they become true by being one with the idea. 

Though the West has accepted as its teacher him who boldlyproclaimed his oneness with his Father, and who exhorted hisfollowers to be perfect as God, it has never been reconciled tothis idea of our unity with the infinite being. It condemns, asa piece of blasphemy, any implication of man's becoming God. This is certainly not the idea that Christ preached, nor perhapsthe idea of the Christian mystics, but this seems to be the ideathat has become popular in the Christian west. 

But the highest wisdom in the East holds that it is not thefunction of our soul to _gain_ God, to utilise him for anyspecial material purpose. All that we can ever aspire to is tobecome more and more one with God. In the region of nature, which is the region of diversity, we grow by acquisition; in thespiritual world, which is the region of unity, we grow by losingourselves, by uniting. Gaining a thing, as we have said, is byits nature partial, it is limited only to a particular want; but_being_ is complete, it belongs to our wholeness, it springs notfrom any necessity but from our affinity with the infinite, whichis the principle of perfection that we have in our soul. 

Yes, we must become Brahma. We must not shrink to avow this. Our existence is meaningless if we never can expect to realisethe highest perfection that there is. If we have an aim and yetcan never reach it, then it is no aim at all. 

But can it then be said that there is no difference betweenBrahma and our individual soul? Of course the difference isobvious. Call it illusion or ignorance, or whatever name you maygive it, it is there. You can offer explanations but you cannotexplain it away. Even illusion is true an illusion. 

Brahma is Brahma, he is the infinite ideal of perfection. But weare not what we truly are; we are ever to become true, ever tobecome Brahma. There is the eternal play of love in the relationbetween this being and the becoming; and in the depth of thismystery is the source of all truth and beauty that sustains theendless march of creation. 

In the music of the rushing stream sounds the joyful assurance, "I shall become the sea. " It is not a vain assumption; it istrue humility, for it is the truth. The river has no otheralternative. On both sides of its banks it has numerous fieldsand forests, villages and towns; it can serve them in variousways, cleanse them and feed them, carry their produce from placeto place. But it can have only partial relations with these, andhowever long it may linger among them it remains separate; itnever can become a town or a forest. 

But it can and does become the sea. The lesser moving water hasits affinity with the great motionless water of the ocean. Itmoves through the thousand objects on its onward course, and itsmotion finds its finality when it reaches the sea. 

The river can become the sea, but she can never make the sea partand parcel of herself. If, by some chance, she has encircledsome broad sheet of water and pretends that she has made the seaa part of herself, we at once know that it is not so, that hercurrent is still seeking rest in the great ocean to which it cannever set boundaries. 

In the same manner, our soul can only become Brahma as the rivercan become the sea. Everything else she touches at one of herpoints, then leaves and moves on, but she never can leave Brahmaand move beyond him. Once our soul realises her ultimate objectof repose in Brahma, all her movements acquire a purpose. It isthis ocean of infinite rest which gives significance to endlessactivities. It is this perfectness of being that lends to theimperfection of becoming that quality of beauty which finds itsexpression in all poetry, drama and art. 

There must be a complete idea that animates a poem. Everysentence of the poem touches that idea. When the reader realisesthat pervading idea, as he reads on, then the reading of the poemis full of joy to him. Then every part of the poem becomesradiantly significant by the light of the whole. But if the poemgoes on interminably, never expressing the idea of the whole, only throwing off disconnected images, however beautiful, itbecomes wearisome and unprofitable in the extreme. The progressof our soul is like a perfect poem. It has an infinite ideawhich once realised makes all movements full of meaning and joy. But if we detach its movements from that ultimate idea, if we donot see the infinite rest and only see the infinite motion, thenexistence appears to us a monstrous evil, impetuously rushingtowards an unending aimlessness. 

I remember in our childhood we had a teacher who used to make uslearn by heart the whole book of Sanskrit grammer, which iswritten in symbols, without explaining their meaning to us. Dayafter day we went toiling on, but on towards what, we had not theleast notion. So, as regards our lessons, we were in theposition of the pessimist who only counts the breathlessactivities of the world, but cannot see the infinite repose ofthe perfection whence these activities are gaining theirequilibrium every moment in absolute fitness and harmony. Welose all joy in thus contemplating existence, because we miss thetruth. We see the gesticulations of the dancer, and we imaginethese are directed by a ruthless tyranny of chance, while we aredeaf to the eternal music which makes every one of these gesturesinevitably spontaneous and beautiful. These motions are evergrowing into that music of perfection, becoming one with it, dedicating to that melody at every step the multitudinous formsthey go on creating. 

And this is the truth of our soul, and this is her joy, that shemust ever be growing into Brahma, that all her movements shouldbe modulated by this ultimate idea, and all her creations shouldbe given as offerings to the supreme spirit of perfection. 

There is a remarkable saying in the Upanishads: _I think not thatI know him well, or that I know him, or even that I know him not. _[Footnote: Naham manye suvedeti no na vedeti vedacha. ]

By the process of knowledge we can never know the infinite being. But if he is altogether beyond our reach, then he is absolutelynothing to us. The truth is that we know him not, yet we knowhim. 

This has been explained in another saying of the Upanishads:_From Brahma words come back baffled, as well as the mind, but hewho knows him by the joy of him is free from all fears. _[Footnote: Yato vacho nivartante aprapya manasa saha anandambrahmano vidvan na vibheti kutacchana. ]

Knowledge is partial, because our intellect is an instrument, itis only a part of us, it can give us information about thingswhich can be divided and analysed, and whose properties can beclassified part by part. But Brahma is perfect, and knowledgewhich is partial can never be a knowledge of him. 

But he can be known by joy, by love. For joy is knowledge in itscompleteness, it is knowing by our whole being. Intellect setsus apart from the things to be known, but love knows its objectby fusion. Such knowledge is immediate and admits no doubt. Itis the same as knowing our own selves, only more so. 

Therefore, as the Upanishads say, mind can never know Brahma, words can never describe him; he can only be known by our soul, by her joy in him, by her love. Or, in other words, we can onlycome into relation with him by union--union of our whole being. We must be one with our Father, we must be perfect as he is. 

But how can that be? There can be no grade in infiniteperfection. We cannot grow more and more into Brahma. He is theabsolute one, and there can be no more or less in him. 

Indeed, the realisation of the _paramatman_, the supreme soul, within our _antaratman_, our inner individual soul, is in astate of absolute completion. We cannot think of it as non-existent and depending on our limited powers for its gradualconstruction. If our relation with the divine were all a thingof our own making, how should we rely on it as true, and howshould it lend us support?

Yes, we must know that within us we have that where space andtime cease to rule and where the links of evolution are merged inunity. In that everlasting abode of the _ataman_, the soul, therevelation of the _paramatman_, the supreme soul, is alreadycomplete. Therefore the Upanishads say: _He who knows Brahman, the true, the all-conscious, and the infinite as hidden in thedepths of the soul, which is the supreme sky (the inner sky ofconsciousness), enjoys all objects of desire in union with theall-knowing Brahman. _ [Footnote: Satyam jnanam anantam brahma yoveda nihitam guhayam paramo vyoman so'cnute sarvan kaman sahabrahmana vipaschite. ]

The union is already accomplished. The _paramatman_, the supremesoul, has himself chosen this soul of ours as his bride and themarriage has been completed. The solemn _mantram_ has beenuttered: _Let thy heart be even as my heart is. _ [Footnote:Yadetat hridayam mama tadastu hridayan tava. ] There is no roomin this marriage for evolution to act the part of the master ofceremonies. The _eshah_, who cannot otherwise be described thanas _This_, the nameless immediate presence, is ever here in ourinnermost being. "This _eshah_, or _This_, is the supreme end ofthe other this"; [Footnote: Eshasya parama gatih] "this _This_ isthe supreme treasure of the other this"; [Footnote: Eshasya paramasampat. ] "this _This_ is the supreme dwelling of the other this";[Footnote: Eshasya paramo lokah] "this _This_ is the supreme joyof the other this. " [Footnote: Eshasya parama anandah] Becausethe marriage of supreme love has been accomplished in timelesstime. And now goes on the endless _lila_, the play of love. Hewho has been gained in eternity is now being pursued in time andspace, in joys and sorrows, in this world and in the worlds beyond. When the soul-bride understands this well, her heart is blissfuland at rest. She knows that she, like a river, has attained theocean of her fulfilment at one end of her being, and at the otherend she is ever attaining it; at one end it is eternal rest andcompletion, at the other it is incessant movement and change. When she knows both ends as inseparably connected, then she knowsthe world as her own household by the right of knowing the masterof the world as her own lord. Then all her services becomesservices of love, all the troubles and tribulations of life cometo her as trials triumphantly borne to prove the strength of herlove, smilingly to win the wager from her lover. But so long asshe remains obstinately in the dark, lifts not her veil, does notrecognise her lover, and only knows the world dissociated fromhim, she serves as a handmaid here, where by right she mightreign as a queen; she sways in doubt, and weeps in sorrow anddejection. _She passes from starvation to starvation, fromtrouble to trouble, and from fear to fear. _ [Footnote:Daurbhikshat yati daurbhiksham klecat klecam bhayat bhayam. ]

I can never forget that scrap of a song I once heard in the earlydawn in the midst of the din of the crowd that had collected fora festival the night before: "Ferryman, take me across to theother shore!"

In the bustle of all our work there comes out this cry, "Take meacross. " The carter in India sings while driving his cart, "Takeme across. " The itinerant grocer deals out his goods to hiscustomers and sings, "Take me across". 

What is the meaning of this cry? We feel we have not reached ourgoal; and we know with all our striving and toiling we do notcome to the end, we do not attain our object. Like a childdissatisfied with its dolls, our heart cries, "Not this, notthis. " But what is that other? Where is the further shore?

Is it something else than what we have? Is it somewhere elsethan where we are? Is it to take rest from all our works, to berelieved from all the responsibilities of life?

No, in the very heart of our activities we are seeking for ourend. We are crying for the across, even where we stand. So, while our lips utter their prayer to be carried away, our busyhands are never idle. 

In truth, thou ocean of joy, this shore and the other shore areone and the same in thee. When I call this my own, the otherlies estranged; and missing the sense of that completeness whichis in me, my heart incessantly cries out for the other. All mythis, and that other, are waiting to be completely reconciled inthy love. 

This "I" of mine toils hard, day and night, for a home which itknows as its own. Alas, there will be no end of its sufferingsso long as it is not able to call this home thine. Till then itwill struggle on, and its heart will ever cry, "Ferryman, lead meacross. " When this home of mine is made thine, that very momentis it taken across, even while its old walls enclose it. This"I" is restless. It is working for a gain which can never beassimilated with its spirit, which it never can hold and retain. In its efforts to clasp in its own arms that which is for all, ithurts others and is hurt in its turn, and cries, "Lead me across". But as soon as it is able to say, "All my work is thine, " everythingremains the same, only it is taken across. 

Where can I meet thee unless in this mine home made thine? Wherecan I join thee unless in this my work transformed into thy work?If I leave my home I shall not reach thy home; if I cease my workI can never join thee in thy work. For thou dwellest in me and Iin thee. Thou without me or I without thee are nothing. 

Therefore, in the midst of our home and our work, the prayerrises, "Lead me across!" For here rolls the sea, and even herelies the other shore waiting to be reached--yes, here is thiseverlasting present, not distant, not anywhere else.