The Hour of God

The Hour of God

There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty.

Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction.

In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected.

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Certitudes

In the deep there is a greater deep, in the heights a greater height. Sooner shall man arrive at the borders of infinity than at the fullness of his own being. For that being is infinity, is God.

I aspire to infinite force, infinite knowledge, infinite bliss. Can I attain it? Yes, but the nature of infinity is that it has no end. Say not therefore that I attain it. I become it. Only so can man attain God by becoming God.

But before attaining he can enter into relations with Him. To enter into relations with God is Yoga, the supreme object and the noblest utility. There are relations within the compass of the humanity we have developed. These are called prayer, worship, adoration, sacrifice, thought, faith, science, philosophy. There are other relations beyond our developed capacity, but within the compass of the humanity we have yet to develop. Those are the relations that are attained by the various practices we usually call Yoga.

We may not know Him as God, we may know Him as Nature, our Higher Self, Infinity, some ineffable Goal. It was so that Buddha approached Him; so approaches Him the rigid Adwaitin. He is accessible even to the Atheist. To the Materialist He disguises Himself in matter. For the Nihilist He waits ambushed in the bosom of Annihilation.

Ye yathā mām prapadyante tānstathaiva bhajāmyaham.

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Hymn to the Mother of Radiances

An inner fullness has come in like the coming in of light in dark caves. It fills, it illumines, it vibrates the multiple strings of life; it has found the contact with the forgotten achievements of the past to enable me to start the new ones of the future on the basis of the changing formations of the present. The currents of life well up to meet the descending rays light from the upper heavens for transmutation of the base and the dark into the luminous and the true, for transmutation of the ugly and the wrong into the beautiful and the right.

O Mother of Radiances, you have dawned in the narrow horizons of my mind. Out of its depthless rigidities, in the midst of its walled-up spaces you have created a heart-like something that will live its eternal life. You have revealed to me a chamber alive and warm within the mind's substanceless polar regions and there I can safely retire and find in you my refuge.

The lower network of moving forces remains, but I feel your presence in its midst. The higher network of moving forces remains, and here you have stepped in also shedding a warmth of life that was not there before, you have turned the dull grey luminosity into a brilliance of living waters. Your active and living presence is everywhere; you have heeded my words of aspiration, the fire of my demand for your omnipresence. More than what I ignorantly sought for, you have revealed to me. You are intimate and one with me when in truth and law and yet away and far off from me when in error and in falsehood.

When there are no more darkening shadows about me; when you see me bared of all shams and shows in every part of the being; when you see in every cell of my body an eternal home for you and an eternal temple; when you see me one with you in identity and still worshipping you; when you melt the compact gold of knowledge in the living and running waters of devotion; when you break my earth and release the energies; when you turn my pride into power in your hands and my ignorance into

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light, my narrowness into wideness, my selfishness into a true gathering together of forces in one centre, my greed into a capacity of untiring search after the truth for the attainment of its substances, my egoism into the true and conscious instrumental centre, my mind into a channel for you to descend, my heart into your hearth of pure fire and flame, my life into a pure and translucent substance for your handling, my body into a conscious vessel for holding what of you is meant for me; then, O Mother of Radiances, my aim in life now and hereafter will be fulfilled in the true and right and vast way. Aspiration wakes in me! Achieve in me all that I flame for!

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Man a Transitional Being

Man is a transitional being; he is not final. For in man and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees that climb to a divine supermanhood. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring but troubled and limited mundane existence.

We mean by man mind imprisoned in a living body. But mind is not the highest possible power of consciousness; for mind is not in possession of Truth, but only its ignorant seeker. Beyond mind is a supramental or gnostic power of consciousness that is in eternal possession of Truth. This supermind is at its source the dynamic consciousness, in its nature at once and inseparably infinite wisdom and infinite will of the divine Knower and Creator. Supermind is superman; a gnostic supermanhood is the next distinct and triumphant evolutionary step to be reached by earthly nature.

The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner Spirit and the logic of Nature's process.

The appearance of a human possibility in a material and animal world was the first glint of some coming divine Light, the first far-off promise of a godhead to be born out of Matter. The appearance of the superman in the human world will be the fulfilment of this divine promise. Out of the material consciousness in which our mind works as a chained slave is emerging the disk of a secret sun of Power and Joy and Knowledge. The supermind will be the formed body of that radiant effulgence.

Supermanhood is not man climbed to his own natural zenith, not a superior degree of human greatness, knowledge, power, intelligence, will, character, genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. Supermind is something beyond mental man and his limits; it is a greater consciousness than the highest consciousness proper to human nature.

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Man is a mental being whose mentality works here involved, obscure and degraded in a physical brain. Even in the highest of his kind it is baulked of its luminous possibilities of supreme force and freedom by this dependence, shut off even from its own divine powers, impotent to change our life beyond certain narrow and precarious limits; it is an imprisoned and checked force, most often nothing but a servitor or caterer of interests or a purveyor of amusement to the life and the body. But divine superman will be a gnostic spirit. Supermind in him will lay hands on the mental and physical instruments and, standing above and yet penetrating our lower already manifested parts, it will transform mind, life and body.

Mind is the highest force in man. But mind in man is an ignorant, clouded and struggling power. And even when most luminous it is possessed only of a thin, reflected and pallid light. A supermind free, master, expressive of divine glories will be the superman's central instrument. Its untrammelled movement of self-existent knowledge, spontaneous power and untainted delight will impress the harmony of the life of the gods on the earthly existence.

Man in himself is little more than an ambitious nothing. He is a littleness that reaches to a wideness and a grandeur that are beyond him, a dwarf enamoured of the heights. His mind is a dark ray in the splendours of the universal Mind. His life is a striving, exulting, suffering, an eager passion-tossed and sorrow-stricken or a blindly and dumbly longing petty moment of the universal Life. His body is a labouring perishable speck in the material universe. This cannot be the end of the mysterious upward surge of Nature. There is something beyond, something that mankind shall be; it is seen now only in broken glimpses through rifts in the great wall of limitations that deny its possibility and existence. An immortal soul is somewhere within him and gives out some sparks of its presence; above an eternal spirit overshadows him and upholds the soul-continuity of his nature. But this greater spirit is obstructed from descent by the hard lid of his constructed personality; and that inner luminous soul is wrapped, stifled, oppressed in dense outer coatings. In all but a few the soul is seldom active, in most hardly perceptible. The

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soul and spirit in man seem rather to exist above and behind his nature than to be a part of his external and visible reality. They are in course of birth rather than born in Matter; they are for human consciousness possibilities rather than things realised and present.

Man's greatness is not in what he is, but in what he makes possible. His glory is that he is the closed place and secret workshop of a living labour in which supermanhood is being made ready by a divine Craftsman. But he is admitted too to a yet greater greatness and it is this that, allowed to be unlike the lower creation, he is partly an artisan of this divine change; his conscious assent, his consecrated will and participation are needed that into his body may descend the glory that will replace him. His aspiration is earth's call to the supramental creator.

If earth calls and the Supreme answers, the hour can be even now for that immense and glorious transformation.

But what shall be the gain to be won for the Earth-consciousness we embody by this unprecedented ascent from mind to supermind and what the ransom of the supramental change? To what end should man leave his safe human limits for this hazardous adventure?

First consider what was gained when Nature passed from the brute inconscience and inertia of what seems inanimate Matter to the vibrant awakening of sensibility of plant range. Life was gained; the gain was the first beginnings of a mite groping and involved, reaching a consciousness that stretches out dumbly for growth, towards sense vibration, to a preparation for vital yearnings, a living joy and beauty. The plant achieved a first form of life but could not possess it, because this first organised life-consciousness had feeling and seeking but blind, dumb, deaf, chained to the soil and was involved in its own nerve and tissue; it could not get out of them, could not get behind its nerve self as does the vital mind of the animal; still less could it turn down from above upon it to know and realise and control its own motions as does the observing and thinking mind in man. This was an imprisoned gain, for there was still a gross oppression of the first Inconscience which had covered up with the brute phenomenon of Matter and of Energy of Matter all signs of the

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Spirit. Nature could in no wise stop here, because she held much in her that was still occult, potential, unexpressed, unorganised, latent; the evolution had perforce to go farther. The animal had to replace the plant at the head and top of Nature.

And what then was gained when Nature passed from the obscurity of the plant kingdom to the awakened sense, desire and emotion and the free mobility of animal life? The gain was liberated sense and feeling and desire and courage and cunning and the contrivance of the objects of desire, passion and action and hunger and battle and conquest and the sex-call and play and pleasure, and all the joy and pain of the conscious living creature. Not only the life of the body which the animal has in common with the plant but a life-mind that appeared for the first time in the earth-story and grew from form to more organised form till it reached in the best the limit of its own formula.

The animal achieved a first form of mind, but could not possess it, because this first organised mind-consciousness was enslaved to a narrow scope, tied to the full functioning of the physical body and brain and nerve, tied to serve the physical life and its desires and needs and passions, limited to the insistent uses of the vital urge, to material longing and feeling and action, bound in its own inferior instrumentation, its spontaneous combinings of association and memory and instinct. It could not get away from them, could not get behind them as man's intelligence gets behind them to observe them; still less could it turn down on them from above as do human reason and will to control, enlarge, re-order, exceed, sublimate.

At each capital step of Nature's ascent there is a reversal of consciousness in the evolving spirit. As when a climber turns on a summit to which he has laboured and looks down with an exalted and wider power of vision on all that was once above or on a level with him but is now below his feet, the evolutionary being not only transcends his past self, his former now exceeded status, but commands from a higher grade of self-experience and vision, with a new apprehending feeling or a new comprehending sight and effectuating power in a greater system of values, all that was once his own consciousness but is now below him and belongs to an inferior creation. This reversal is the sign of a decisive

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victory and the seal of a radical progress in Nature.

The new consciousness attained in the spiritual evolution is always higher in grade and power, always larger, more comprehensive, wider in sight and feeling, richer and finer in faculties, more complex, organic, dominating than the consciousness that was once our own but is now left behind us. There are greater breadth and space, heights before impassable, unexpected depths and intimacies. There is a luminous expansion that is the very sign-manual of the Supreme upon his work.

Mark that each of the great radical steps forward already taken by Nature has been infinitely greater in its change, incalculably vaster in its consequences than its puny predecessor. There is a miraculous opening to an always richer and wider expression, there is a new illuminating of the creation and a dynamic heightening of its significances. There is in this world we live in no equality of all on a flat level, but a hierarchy of ever-increasing precipitous superiorities pushing their mountain shoulders upwards towards the Supreme.

Because man is a mental being, he naturally imagines that mind is the one great leader and actor and creator or the indispensable agent in the universe. But this is an error; even for knowledge mind is not the only or the greatest possible instrument, the one aspirant and discoverer. Mind is a clumsy interlude between Nature's vast and precise subconscient action and the vaster infallible superconscient action of the Godhead.

There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's immobility and thought-free stillness.

When mind is still, then Truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.

Truth cannot be attained by the Mind's thought but only by identity and silent vision. Truth lives in the calm wordless Light of the eternal spaces; she does not intervene in the noise and cackle of logical debate.

Thought in the mind can at most be Truth's brilliant and transparent garment; it is not even her body. Look through the robe, not at it and you may see some hint of her form. There can be a thought-body of Truth, but that is the spontaneous supramental Thought and Word that leap fully formed out of the

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Light, not any difficult mental counterfeit and patchwork. The Supramental Thought is not a means of arriving at Truth, but a way of expressing her; for Truth in the Supermind is self-found or self-existent. It is an arrow from the Light, not a bridge to reach it.

Cease inwardly from thought and word, be motionless within you, look upward into the light and outward into the vast cosmic consciousness that is around you. Be more and more one with the brightness and the vastness. Then will Truth dawn on you from above and flow in you from all around you.

But only if the mind is no less intense in its purity than its silence. For in an impure mind the silence will soon fill with misleading lights and false voices, the echo or sublimation of its own vain conceits and opinions or the response to its secret pride, vanity, ambition, lust, greed or desire. The Titans and the Demons will speak to it more readily than the divine Voices.

Silence is indispensable, but also there is needed wideness. If the mind is not silent, it cannot receive the lights and voices of the supernal Truth or receiving mixes with them its own flickering tongues and blind pretentious babble. Active, arrogant, noisy it distorts and disfigures what it receives. If it is not wide, it cannot house the effective power and creative force of the Truth. Some light may play there but it becomes narrow, confined and sterile: the Force that is descending is cabined and thwarted and withdraws again to its vast heights from this rebellious foreign plane. Or even if something comes down and remains it is a pearl in the mire; for no change takes place in the nature or else there is formed only a thin intensity that points narrowly upward to the summits, but can hold little and diffuse less upon the world around it.

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Evolution

A progressive evolution of the visible and invisible instruments of the Spirit is the whole law of the earth nature; that too is the fundamental value which underlies all the other values of its existence and its process and gives them their significance.

Spirit has concealed itself in inconscient matter. It evolves, for itself first of all and as if that were its only preoccupation, forms of matter by the working of matter forces. It is only when this has been sufficiently done, that it thinks of life.

And yet a subconscient life and its imprisoned forces were there all the time in matter and its forces and are there even in its most apparently inanimate forms....

Afterwards came an evolution of mind in many forms by the working of liberated mind-forces. In those life-forces in matter and even in the very substance of matter mind was latent. An evolution of mind in the living form by a working of liberated mind-forces was the third chapter of the story. The third chapter is not completed, neither will it be the end of the narrative.

The evolution of the earth nature is not finished because it has manifested only three powers out of the seven-fold scale of consciousness that is involved in manifested Nature. It has brought out from its apparent inconscience only the three powers of Mind and Life and Matter.

Mind emerges out of life in matter; it is incapable of manifesting directly in the material form. It is there, but it acts mechanically in the somnambulism of an original force of inconscience and inertia. This and no more is what we mean by the inconscience of Matter; for although consciousness is there, it is involved, inorganic, mechanical in its action; it supports the works of Force by its inherent presence, but not by its light of active intelligence. This is why material Nature does the works of a

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supreme and miraculous intelligence and yet there seems to be no intervention of any indwelling Seer or Thinker.

Ether and material space are different names for the same thing. Space, in its origin at least if not in its universal character, is an extension of the substance of consciousness in which motion of energy can take place for the relations of being with being or force with force and for the building up of symbolic forms on which this interchange can be supported. Ether is space supporting the works of material energy and the symbolic forms it creates; it is, speaking paradoxically but to the point, immaterial or essential matter.

I

Evolution is the one eternal dynamic law and hidden process of the earth-nature.

An evolution of the instruments of the spirit in a medium of Matter is the whole fundamental significance of the values of the earth-existence. All its other laws are its values of operation and process; this spiritual evolution is its own pervading secret sense.

The history of the earth is first an evolution of organised forms by the working of material forces.

There follows on this initial stage an evolution of life in the form and an organisation of a hierarchy of living forms by the working of the liberated life-forces. The next step is an evolution of mind in living bodies and an organisation of more and more conscious lives by the process of developing mind-forces. But this is not the end; for there are higher powers of consciousness beyond mind which await their turn and must have their act in the great play, their part of the creative Lila.

Matter, the medium of all this evolution, is seemingly inconscient and inanimate; but it appears to us so only because we are unable to sense consciousness outside a certain limited range, a fixed scale or gamut to which we have access. Below us there are lower ranges to which we are insensible and these we call subconscience or inconscience. Above us are higher ranges which are, to our inferior nature, an unseizable superconscience.

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The difficulty of Matter is not an absolute inconscience, but an obscured consciousness limited by its own movement—vaguely, dumbly, blindly self-aware, not really responsive to anything outside its own form and forces. At its worst it can be called not so much inconscience as nescience. The awakening of a greater and yet greater consciousness in this Nescience is the miracle of the universe of Matter.

This nescience of Matter is a veiled, an involved or somnambulist consciousness which contains all the latent powers of the Spirit. In every particle, atom, molecule, cell of Matter there lives hidden and works unknown all the omniscience of the Eternal and all the omnipotence of the Infinite.

The evolution of forms and powers by which Matter will become more and more conscious until passing beyond form and life and mind it becomes aware, with the supernal awareness, of the eternal and infinite Spirit in his own highest ranges, this is the meaning of earth-existence. The slow self-manifesting birth of God in Matter is the purpose of the terrestrial Lila.

Matter is at once a force and a substance. Matter is original being, Brahman, made concrete in atomic division. Matter is original substance-force, Brahman-Shakti, made active in an obscure involution of the Spirit's powers in a self-forgetful nescience. Matter-force casts matter-substance, material Shakti casts Matter Brahman into form expressive of its own most characteristic powers. When that has been done, the physical world is ready for the splendid intrusion of conscious Life into the force-driven inertia of material substance.

Matter is not the only force, not the only substance. For Life and Mind and what is beyond Mind are also forces that are substances, but of another kind and degree. Spirit is the original force-substance; all these others are kinds and derivations of the force of Spirit, degrees and modifications of the substance of Spirit. Matter too is nothing but a power and degree of the Spirit; Matter too is substance of the Eternal.

The Matter that we see and sense is only an outermost sheath and crating; behind it are other subtler degrees of physical substance which are less dense with the atomic nescience,

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and it is easier for life, mind and other powers to enter into them and operate. If the finer invisible physical layers or couches did not exist supporting this gross visible physical world, that world could not abide; for then the fine operations of transmission between Spirit and Matter could not be executed at all and it is these that render the grosser visible operations possible. The evolution would be impossible; life and mind and beyond-mind would be unable to manifest in the material universe.

There is not only this material plane of being that we see, there is a physical life-plane proper to the vital physical operation of Nature. There is a physical mind-plane proper to a mental physical operation of Nature. There is a physical supermind plane proper to the supramental physical operation of Nature. There is too a plane of physical spirit-power or infinite physical Being-Consciousness-Force-Bliss proper to the spiritual physical operations of Nature. It is only when we have discovered and separated these planes of Nature and of our physical being and analysed the synthesis of their contributions to the whole play that we shall discover how the evolution of vital, mental and spiritual consciousness became possible in inconscient Matter.

But there is more; for beyond these many couches of the physical existence are other supra-physical degrees, many layers of Life, many layers of Mind, planes of Supermind, of Bliss, of Consciousness-Force and of infinite Being on which the physical existence depends for its origination and its continuance. It is the higher planes that constantly unfold unseen energies which have raised its evolution from the obscurity in which it began to the splendour of a light of consciousness to which the highest human mind shall only be the feeble glimmer of a glow-worm fire before the sun in its flaming glories.

This is the stupendous hierarchy of the grades of consciousness between the darkest Matter and the most luminous Spirit. Consciousness in Matter has to go on climbing to the very top of the series and return with all it has to give us before the evolution can utterly fulfil its purpose.

Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind or Gnosis, and beyond these the quadruple power of a supreme Being-Consciousness-Force-Bliss:

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these are the grades of the evolutionary ascent from Inconscience to the Superconscience.

Life does not wholly come into the earth from outside it; its principle is there always in material things. But, imprisoned in the apparent inanimate inertia of Matter, it is bound by its movements and unable to manifest its own independent or dominant existence.

Life is there in the earth, rock, metal, gas, atom, electron and the other more subtle yet undiscovered forces and particles that constitute material energy and form. It is in everything, but at first a hardly detectable presence, organised. only to support secretly material energies, processes, formations and transformations; it is there as an involved power for the building and expression of form of Matter, not for the expression of Life. It is not in possession of itself, not self-conscious in the form, not pushed towards self-manifestation; a helpless tool and instrument, not a free agent, it is a servant of Matter and a slave of the Form, not the master of the house.

But above the material world there is a plane of dominant Life that presses down upon this material universe and seeks to pour into it whatever it can of its own types, powers, forces, impulsions, manifesting creative godheads. When in the material world form is ready, the Gods and the Life-Daemons of this higher plane are attracted to put their creative touch upon Matter. Then there comes a rapid and sudden efflorescence of Life; the plant, the animalcule, the insect, the animal appear. A life-soul and a life-force with its many and always more complex movements are manifested in what seemed once to be inert and inanimate substance. Life-souls, life-minds, animal existences are born and evolve; a new world appears that is born and contained in this world of Matter and yet surpasses it in its true dynamic nature.

II

Involution of a superconscient Spirit in inconscient Matter is the secret of this visible and apparent world and the evolution

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of this Superconscient out of inconscient Nature is the keyword of the earth's riddle. Earth-life is the self-chosen habitation of a great Divinity and his aeonic will is to change it from a blind prison into his splendid mansion and high heaven-reaching temple.

The nature of the Divinity in the world is the immutable stability of an eternal existence that puts on superficial mutable forms, the indivisible light of an infinite consciousness that breaks out into multiform detail and groping of knowledge, the illimitable movement of an omnipotent force that works out its marvels in self-imposed limits, the calm and ecstasy of an immeasurable Delight that creates waves and rhythms of the outward-going and inward-drawing intensities of its own all-possessing and self-possessing bliss. This will be the nature of our own fourfold experience when it will work in us in its unveiled nature; and if that manifestation had been from the beginning there would have been no problem of terrestrial existence.

But this Godhead here, whether within us or outside us in things and forces and creatures, started from an involution in inconscient Nature and began by the manifestation of its apparent opposites. In Non-existence, discontinuity and void, the appearance of a blind inconscient Force, in the creations of that Force a principle of difficult labour and suffering and pain: out of these opposites the Spirit in Matter has chosen to evolve its might and light and infinity and beatitude.

III

Before there could be any evolution, there must needs be an involution of the Divine. Otherwise there would be not an evolution but a successive creation of things new, not contained in their antecedents, not their inevitable consequences or processes in a sequence, but arbitrarily willed or miraculously conceived by an inexplicable Chance, a stumbling fortunate Force or an external Creator. All that is to change.

The long process of terrestrial formation and creation, the ambiguous miracle of life, the struggle of mind to appear and

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grow in an apparent vast Ignorance and to reign there as interpreter and creator and master, the intimations of a greater something that passes beyond the finite marvel of Mind to the infinite marvels of the Spirit, are not a meaningless and fortuitous passing result of some cosmic Chance with its huge combination of coincidences; they are not the lucky play of some blind material Force. These things are and can be only because of something eternal and divine that concealed itself in energy and form of Matter.

The secret of the terrestrial evolution is the slow and progressive liberation of this latent indwelling spirit, the difficult appearance of Something or Someone already involved with all its potential forces in a first formal basis of supporting substance, its greater slowly emerging movements locked up in an initial expressive power of Matter.

Man the thinker and seeker could not be here if he were not an embodied portion of an all-conscious Infinite that is superconscient above him but lies also hidden in the inconscience of the material universe.

Matter is the apparent beginning of the evolution but it is not its end. The development of form is not the most important or the most significant part of the evolutionary process; it is one sign of the thing that is being done, but it is not its essence. Material form is only a support and means for the progressive manifestation of the Spirit.

If all were chance or play of inconscient or inconsequent Force, there would be no reason why man with all his imperfections should not be the last word of this feat of unconscious intelligence or this haphazard miracle. It is because the Divine Spirit is there and his manifestation, the meaning of the movement is that a new power must emerge in the series that started from Matter.

The material universe would be a waste of wonderful desert if Life had not appeared as the first index to some marvellous utility and an ultimate profound and moving significance. But life too by itself would be a movement without sequence to its purposeful initiation or light to its own mystery if in Life there were not concealed an interpretative or at least a seeking power

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of consciousness that could turn upon its powers and way to grasp and direct them towards their own realised issue.

Because this infinite Spirit and eternal Divinity is here concealed in the process of material Nature, the evolution of a power beyond Mind is not only possible, but inevitable. If all were result of cosmic Chance there need be no necessity of its appearance, even as there was no necessity for any embarrassing emergence of a stumbling and striving vital consciousness in the mechanical whirl of Matter. And if all were the works of a mechanical Force, then too mind need not have unexpectedly appeared as a superior mechanism labouring to deal with Nature's grosser first machine and supermind would be still more a superfluity and a luminous insolence. Or, if a limited experimenting external Creator were the inventor of this universe, there would be no reason why he should not stop short at mind, content with the ingenuity of his labour. But since the Divinity is involved here and is emerging, it is inevitable that all his powers or degrees of power should emerge one after the other till the whole glory is embodied and visible.

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Psychology

Psychology is the science of consciousness and its states and operations in Nature and, if that can be glimpsed or experienced, its states and operations beyond what we know as Nature.

It is not enough to observe and know the movements of our surface nature and the superficial nature of other living creatures, just as it is not enough for Science to observe and know as electricity only the movements of lightning in the clouds or for the astronomer to observe and know only those movements and properties of the stars that are visible to the unaided eye. Here as there a whole world of occult phenomena have to be laid bare and brought under control before the psychologist can hope to be master of his province.

Our observable consciousness, that which we call ourselves, is only the little visible part of our being. It is a small field below which are depths and farther depths and widths and ever wider widths which support and supply it but to which it has no visible access. All that is our self, our being; what we see at the top is only our ego and its visible nature.

Even the movements of this little surface nature cannot be understood nor its true law discovered until we know all that is below or behind and supplies it—and know too all that is around it and above.

For below this conscient nature is the vast Inconscient out of which we come. The Inconscient is greater, deeper, more original, more potent to shape and govern what we are and do than our little derivative conscient nature. Inconscient to us, to our surface view, but not inconscient in itself or to itself, it is a sovereign guide, worker, determinant, creator. Not to know it is not to know our nether origins and the origin of the most part of what we are and do. And the Inconscient is not all.

For behind our little frontal ego and nature is a whole subliminal kingdom of inner consciousness with many planes and

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provinces. There are in that kingdom many powers, movements, personalities which are part of ourselves and help to form our little surface personality and its powers and movements. This inner self, these inner persons we do not know, but they know us and observe and dictate our speech, our thoughts, feelings, doings even more directly than the Inconscient below us.

Around us too is a circumconscient Universal of which we are a portion. This circumconscience is pouring its forces, suggestions, stimuli, compulsions into us at every moment of our existence.

Around us is a universal Mind of which our mind is a formation and our thoughts, feelings, will, impulses are continually little more than a personally modified reception and transcription of its thought-waves, its force-currents, its foam of emotion and sensation, its billows of impulse.

Around us is a permanent universal Life of which our petty flow of life-formation that begins and ceases is only a small dynamic wave.

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Consciousness - Psychology

All that exists or can exist in this or any other universe can be rendered into terms of consciousness; there is nothing that cannot be known. This knowing need not be always a mental knowledge. For the greater part of existence is either above or below mind, and mind can know only indirectly what is above or what is below it. But the one true and complete way of knowing is by direct knowledge.

All can be rendered into terms of consciousness because all is either a creation of consciousness or else one of its forms. All exists in an infinite conscious existence and is a part or a form of it. In proportion as one can share directly or indirectly, completely or incompletely in the eternal awareness of this Infinite, or momentarily contact or enter into, or formulate some superior or inferior power of its consciousness or knowledge, one can know what it knows in part or whole, by a direct knowing or an indirect coming to knowledge. A conscious, half-conscious or subconscious participation in the awareness of the Infinite is the basis of all knowledge.

All things are inhabited by this consciousness, even the things that seem to us inconscient, and the consciousness in one form can communicate or contact with the consciousness in another or else penetrate or contain or identify with it. This in one form or another is the true process of all knowledge; the rest is ignorant appearance.

All things are one self; it is the one Knower who knows himself everywhere, from one centre or another in the multiplicity of his play. Otherwise no knowledge would be possible.

The sense of a greater or even of an ultimate Self need not be limited to a negative and empty wideness whose one character is to be without limitations or features. The first extreme push of our recoil from what we now are or think ourselves to be may and does often at first carry us over into this annihilating experience. A negation of our present error, a release from our petty

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irksome aching bonds may seem to be the only thing worth having, the only thing true. The rest is infinity, freedom, peace. We feel an Infinite that needs nothing but its own infinite to fill it. We rejoice in a freedom of which any form, name or description, any creative activity, any movement, any impulse would be a disturbing denial and the beginning of a relapse into the error of will and desire, the ignorance of the illusory finite. To accept nothing but the bare bliss of infinity is the condition of this peace. The mind escaping from itself denies all thought, all form-making, all motion or play of any kind; for that would be a grievous return to itself, a miserable imprisonment and renewed hard-labour. The life released from the toil of labouring and striving and living demands only immobility and no more to be, a sleep of force, the surety and rest of an immutable status. The body accepts denial and dissolution, for to be dissolved is to cease to breathe and suffer. A bodiless, lifeless, mindless infinite breadth and supreme silence shows to us that we are in contact with the Absolute....

All existence,—as the mind and sense know existence,—is manifestation of an Eternal and Infinite which is to the mind and sense unknowable but not unknowable to its own self-awareness.

Whatever the manifestation may be, spiritual or material or other, it has behind it something that is beyond itself, and even if we reached the highest possible heights of the manifested existence there would be still beyond that even an Unmanifested from which it came.

The Unmanifested Supreme is beyond all definition and description by mind or speech; no definition the mind can make, affirmative or negative, which can be at all expressive of it or adequate.

To the mind this Unmanifest can present itself as a Self, a supreme Nihil (Tao or Sunyam), a featureless Absolute, an Indeterminate, a blissful Nirvana of manifested existence, a Non-Being out of which Being came or a Being of silence out of which a world-illusion came. But all these are mental formulas expressing the mind's approach to it, not That but impressions which fall

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from That upon the receiving consciousness, not the true essence or nature (Swarupa) of the Eternal and Infinite. Even the words Eternal and Infinite are only symbolic expressions through which the mind feels without grasping some vague impression of this Supreme.

If we say of it neti neti, this can mean nothing except that nothing in the world or beyond it of which the mind can take cognisance is the Supreme in its entirety or its essence. If we say of it iti iti, this can mean at the most that what we see of it in the world or beyond is some indication of something that is there beyond and by travelling through all these indications to their absolutes we may get a step or two nearer to the Absolute of all absolutes, this Supreme. Both formulas have a truth in them, but neither touches the secret truth of the Supreme.

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The Supermind

There are three layers of the Supermind corresponding to three activities of the intuitive mind:

1) Interpretative Supermind

First is what I call Interpretative Supermind, corresponding to Intuition. I call it interpretative, because what is a possibility on the mental plane becomes a potentiality on the supramental plane and the Interpretative puts all the potentialities before you. It shows the root cause of events that may become true on the physical plane. When Intuition is changed into its supramental value, it becomes Interpretative Supermind.

2) Representative Supermind

Next comes what I call the Representative Supermind. It represents the actual movements of potentialities and shows what is in operation. When Inspiration is changed into its supramental value, then it becomes this Representative Supermind. Even this is not the highest. There you know certain potentialities in thought and action working and you can in many cases say what would happen or how a certain thing happened if it does.

3) Imperative Supermind

There is the Imperative Supermind which corresponds to Revelation. That is always true. Nothing can stand against it. It is knowledge fulfilling itself by its own inherent power.

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The Seven Suns of the Supermind

1) The Sun of Supramental Truth,—Knowledge-Power originating the supramental creation.

Descent into the Sahasradala.

2) The Sun of Supramental Light and Will-Power, transmitting the Knowledge-Power as dynamic vision and command to create, found and organise the supramental creation.

Descent into the Ajna Chakra, the centre between the eyes.

3) The Sun of Supramental Word, embodying the Knowledge-Power, empowered to express and arrange the supramental creation.

Descent into the Throat Centre.

4) The Sun of Supramental Love, Beauty, and Bliss, releasing the Soul of the Knowledge-Power to vivify and harmonise the supramental creation.

Descent into the Heart-Lotus.

5) The Sun of Supramental Force dynamised as a power and source of life to support the supramental creation.

Descent into the Navel Centre.

6) The Sun of Life-Radiances (Power-Rays) distributing the dynamis and pouring it into concrete formations.

Descent into the Penultimate Centre.

7) The Sun of Supramental Substance-Energy and Form-Energy empowered to embody the supramental life and stabilise the creation.

Descent into the Muladhara.

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The Divine Plan

A

The Supreme Self-Contained Absolute

FIRST ABSOLUTE—TAT
The Absolute Transcendent, the Supreme, parātpara (containing all, limited by nothing).

SECOND ABSOLUTE—SAT
The supreme self-contained absolute Existence, Sachchidananda, (Ananda uniting Sat and Chit), holding in its absolute unity the dual Principle (He and She, saḥ and sā) and the four-fold Principle, OM with its four statuses as one.

THIRD ABSOLUTE—ADITI
Aditi is the indivisible conscious-force and Ananda of the Supreme; the Mother, its living dynamis, the supreme Love, Wisdom, Power. ādyā śakti = parabrahman of the Tantra.

FOURTH ABSOLUTE—PARAMESHWARA (of the Gita) = Parameshwari (of the Tantra)

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B

The Manifestation

I

FIRST ABSOLUTE
The concealed—avyakta—Supreme, selfinvolved Sachchidananda, Parabrahman (Parameshwara-ishwari).

SECOND ABSOLUTE
Aditi. The Mother, containing in herself the Supreme. The Divine Consciousness, Force, Ananda upholding all the universes. Para Shakti, Para Prakriti Mahamaya (yayedam dhāryate jagat).

THIRD ABSOLUTE
The Eternal Manifestation (The Supreme Satyaloka, Chaitanyaloka, Tapoloka, Anandaloka—not those of the mental series).

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II

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Overmind takes all Truth that comes down to it from the Supermind, but sets up each Truth as a separate force and idea capable of conflicting with the others as well as cooperating with them. Each overmental being has his own world, each force has its own play and throws itself out to realise its own fulfilment in the cosmic play. All is possible; and from this separative seat of conflicting and even mutually negating possibilities comes too, as soon as mind, life and matter are thrown out into play the possibility of ignorance, unconsciousness, falsehood, death and suffering.

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OVERMIND GRADATION TO MIND

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The Tangle of Karma

Obviously we must leave far behind us the current theory of Karma and its shallow attempt to justify the ways of the Cosmic Spirit by forcing on them a crude identity with the summary notions of law and justice, the crude and often savagely primitive methods of reward and punishment, lure and deterrent dear to the surface human mind. There is here a more authentic and spiritual truth at the base of Nature's action and a far less mechanically calculable movement. Here is no rigid and narrow ethical law bound down to a petty human significance, no teaching of a child soul by a mixed system of blows and lollipops, no unprofitable wheel of a brutal cosmic justice automatically moved in the traces of man's ignorant judgments and earthly desires and instincts. Life and rebirth do not follow these artificial constructions, but a movement spiritual and intimate to the deepest intention of Nature. A cosmic Will and Wisdom observant of the ascending march of the soul's consciousness and experience as it emerges out of subconscient Matter and climbs to its own luminous divinity, fixes the norm and constantly enlarges the lines—or, let us say, since law is a too mechanical conception, the truth of Karma.

For what we understand by law is a single immutably habitual movement or recurrence in Nature fruitful of a determined sequence of things and that sequence must be clear, precise, limited to its formula, invariable. If it is not that, if there is too much flexibility of movement, if there intervenes too embarrassing a variety or criss-cross of action and reaction, a too rich complex of forces, the narrow uncompromising incompetence of our logical intelligence finds there not law but an incertitude and a chaos. Our reason must be allowed to cut and hew and arbitrarily select its suitable circumstances, isolate its immutable data, skeletonise or mechanise life; otherwise it stands open-mouthed at a loss unable to think with precision or act with effect in a field of subtle and indefinite measures. It must be allowed to deal

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with mighty Nature as it deals with human society, politics, ethics, conduct; for it can understand and do good work only where it is licensed to build and map out its own artificial laws, erect a clear, precise, rigid, infallible system and leave as little room as possible for the endless flexibility and variety and complexity that presses from the Infinite upon our mind and life. Moved by this need we endeavour to forge for our own souls and for the cosmic Spirit even such a single and inflexible law of Karma as we would ourselves have made had the rule of the world been left to us. Not this mysterious universe would we have made, but the pattern of a rational cosmos fitted to our call for a simple definite guidance in action and for a well-marked thumb rule facile and clear to our limited intelligence. But this force we call Karma turns out to be no such precise and invariable mechanism as we hoped; it is rather a thing of many planes that changes its face and walk and very substance as it mounts from level to higher level, and on each plane even as it is not one movement but an indefinite complex of many spiral movements hard enough for us to harmonise together or to find out whatever secret harmony unknown to us and incalculable these complexities are weaving out in this mighty field of the dealings of the soul with Nature.

Let us then call Karma no longer a Law, but rather the many-sided dynamic truth of all action and life, the organic movement here of the Infinite. That was what the ancient thinkers saw in it before it was cut and shredded by lesser minds and turned into an easy and misleading popular formula. Action of Karma follows and takes up many potential lines of the spirit, into its multitudinous surge, many waves and streams of combining and disputing world-forces; it is the processus of the creative Infinite; it is the long and multiform way of the progression of the individual and the cosmic soul in Nature. Its complexities cannot be unravelled by our physical mind ever bound up in the superficial appearance, nor by our vital mind of desire stumbling forward in the cloud of its own instincts and longings and rash determinations through the maze of these myriad favouring and opposing forces that surround and urge and drive and hamper us from the visible and invisible worlds.

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Nor can it be perfectly classified, accounted for, tied up in bundles by the precisions of our logical intelligence in its inveterate search for clear-cut dogmas. On that day only shall we perfectly decipher what is now to us Nature's obscure hieroglyph of Karma when there rises in our enlarged consciousness the supramental way of knowledge. The supramental eye can see a hundred meeting and diverging motions in one glance and envelop in the largeness of its harmonising vision of Truth all that to our minds is clash and opposition and the collision and interlocked strife of numberless contending truths and powers. Truth to the supramental sight is at once single and infinite and the complexities of its play serve to bring out with an abundant ease the rich significance of the Eternal's many-sided oneness.

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The Way

First be sure of the call and of thy soul's answer. For if the call is not true, not the touch of God's powers or the voice of his messengers, but the lure of thy ego, the end of thy endeavour will be a poor spiritual fiasco or else a deep disaster.

And if not the soul's fervour, but only the mind's assent or interest replies to the divine summons or only the lower life's desire clutches at some side attraction of the fruits of Yoga-power or Yoga-pleasure or only a transient emotion leaps like an unsteady flame moved by the intensity of the Voice or its sweetness or grandeur, then too there can be little surety for thee in the difficult path of Yoga.

The outer instruments of mortal man have no force to carry him through the severe ardours of this spiritual journey and Titanic inner battle or to meet its terrible or obstinate ordeals or nerve him to face and overcome its subtle and formidable dangers. Only his spirit's august and steadfast will and the quenchless fire of his soul's invincible ardour are sufficient for this difficult transformation and this high improbable endeavour.

Imagine not the way is easy; the way is long, arduous, dangerous, difficult. At every step is an ambush, at every turn a pitfall. A thousand seen or unseen enemies will start up against thee, terrible in subtlety against thy ignorance, formidable in power against thy weakness. And when with pain thou hast destroyed them, other thousands will surge up to take their place. Hell will vomit its hordes to oppose and enring and wound and menace; Heaven will meet thee with its pitiless tests and its cold luminous denials.

Thou shalt find thyself alone in thy anguish, the demons furious in thy path, the Gods unwilling above thee. Ancient and powerful, cruel, unvanquished and close and innumerable are the dark and dreadful Powers that profit by the reign of Night and Ignorance and would have no change and are hostile.

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Aloof, slow to arrive, far-off and few and brief in their visits are the Bright Ones who are willing or permitted to succour. Each step forward is a battle. There are precipitous descents, there are unending ascensions and ever higher peaks upon peaks to conquer. Each plateau climbed is but a stage on the way and reveals endless heights beyond it. Each victory thou thinkest the last triumphant struggle proves to be but the prelude to a hundred fierce and perilous battles....

But thou sayst God's hand will be with me and the Divine Mother near with her gracious smile of succour? And thou knowest not then that God's Grace is more difficult to have or to keep than the nectar of the Immortals or Kuvera's priceless treasures? Ask of his chosen and they will tell thee how often the Eternal has covered his face from them, how often he has withdrawn from them behind his mysterious veil and they have found themselves alone in the grip of Hell, solitary in the horror of the darkness, naked and defenceless in the anguish of the battle. And if his presence is felt behind the veil, yet is it like the winter sun behind clouds and saves not from the rain and snow and the calamitous storm and the harsh wind and the bitter cold and the atmosphere of a sorrowful grey and the dun weary dullness. Doubtless the help is there even when it seems to be withdrawn, but still is there the appearance of total night with no sun to come and no star of hope to please in the darkness.

Beautiful is the face of the Divine Mother, but she too can be hard and terrible. Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine life a prize without effort or the crown for a weakling? Strive rightly and thou shalt have; trust and thy trust shall in the end be justified; but the dread Law of the Way is there and none can abrogate it.

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The Web of Yoga

I

To be one in all ways of thy being with that which is the Highest, this is Yoga.

To be one in all ways of thy being with that which is the All, this is Yoga.

To be one in thy spirit and with thy understanding and thy heart and in all thy members with the God in humanity, this is Yoga.

To be one with all Nature and all beings, this is Yoga.

All this is to be one with God in his transcendence and his cosmos and all that he has created in his being. Because from him all is and all is in him and he is all and in all and because he is thy highest Self and thou art one with him in thy spirit and a portion of him in thy soul and at play with him in thy nature, and because this world is a scene in his being in which he is thy secret Master and lover and friend and the lord and sustainer of all thou art, therefore is oneness with him the perfect way of thy being.

THE EVOLUTIONARY AIM OF YOGA

The human being on earth is God playing at humanity in a world of matter under the conditions of a hampered density with the ulterior intention of imposing law of spirit on matter and nature of deity upon human nature. Evolution is nothing but the progressive unfolding of Spirit out of the density of material consciousness and the gradual self-revelation of God out of this apparent animal being.

Yoga is the application, for this process of divine self-revelation, of the supreme force of Tapas by which God created the world, supports it and will destroy it. It substitutes always some direct action of an infinite divine force for the limited workings of our fettered animal humanity. It uses divine means in order to rise to divinity.

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All Yoga is Tapasya and all Siddhi of Yoga is accomplishment of godhead either by identity or by relation with the Divine Being—in its principles or its personality or in both—or simultaneously by identity and relation.

Identity is the principle of Adwaita, relation of Dwaita, relation in a qualified identity of Vishishtadwaita. But entire perfection comes by identity with God in essential experience and relation of difference with Him in experience of manifestation.

The Infinite Being in rest aware of its own eternal oneness. There is the everlasting silence of the Absolute.

The infinite Conscious Power in movement aware of its own eternal many-ness—the everlasting movement and creation of the Supreme.

As in the immobile ether arises, first sign of the creative impulse of Nature, vibration, Shabda, and this vibration is a line of etheric movement, is ether contacting ether in its own field of mobile self-force and that primal stir is sufficient to initiate all forms and forces, even such is the original movement of the Infinite.

But this vibration is not the stir of any material force or substance and this contact is not material contact. This is a vibration of consciousness in spiritual essence; this is the contact of consciousness with itself in spiritual substance.

This original movement, not original or first in time, for it was from ever and continues for ever, but original in that action of consciousness which is an eternal repetition of all things in an eternal present, or, if you will, an eternal past-present-future, the three simultaneous times of that ever packed Time of the Infinite that translates to our blind finite conception as the vast timelessness of the Absolute.

Matter is but a form of consciousness; nevertheless solve not the object entirely into its subjectivity. Reject not the body of God, O God lover, but keep it for thy joy; for His body too is delightful even as His spirit.

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Perishable and transitory delight is always the symbol of the eternal Ananda, revealed and rapidly concealed, which seeks by increasing recurrence to attach itself to some typal form of experience in material consciousness. When the particular form has been perfected to express God in the type, its delight will no longer be perishable, but an eternally recurrent possession of man and beings in matter manifest in their periods and often in their movements of felicity.

II

All existence is Brahman, Atman and Ishwara, three names for one unnameable reality which alone exists. We shall give to this sole real existence the general name of God, because we find it ultimately to be not an abstract state of Existence, not conscious of itself, but a supreme and self-aware One who exists—absolutely in Himself, infinitely in the world with an appearance of the finite in His various manifestations in the world.

God in Himself apart from all world manifestation or realisable relation to world-manifestation is called the Paratpara Brahman, and is not knowable either to the knowledge that analyses or the knowledge that synthetically conceives. We can neither say of Him that He is personal or impersonal, existence or non-existence, pure or impure, Atman or un-Atman. We can only say to every attempt to define Him positively or negatively, neti neti not this, not this. We can pass into the Paratpara Brahman, but we cannot know the Paratpara Brahman.

God in the world is Brahman-Ishwara-Atman, Prakriti or Shakti and Jiva. These are the three terms of His world-manifestation.

INITIAL DEFINITIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS

Yoga has four powers and objects, purity, liberty, beatitude and perfection. Whosoever has consummated these four mightinesses in the being of the transcendental, universal, līlāmaya and individual God is the complete and absolute Yogin.

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All manifestations of God are manifestations of the absolute Parabrahman.

The Absolute Parabrahman is unknowable to us, not because It is the nothingness of all that we are, for rather whatever we are in truth or in seeming is nothing but Parabrahman, but because It is pre-existent and supra-existent to even the highest and purest methods and the most potent and illimitable instruments of which soul in the body is capable.

In Parabrahman knowledge ceases to be knowledge and becomes an inexpressible identity. Become Parabrahman, if thou wilt and if That will suffer thee, but strive not to know It; for thou shalt not succeed with these instruments and in this body.

In reality thou art Parabrahman already and ever wast and ever wilt be. To become Parabrahman in any other sense, thou must depart utterly out of world-manifestation and out even of world-transcendence.

Why shouldst thou hunger after departure from manifestation as if the world were an evil? Has not That manifested itself in thee and in the world and art thou wiser and purer and better than the Absolute, O mind-deceived soul in the mortal? When That withdraws thee, then thy going hence is inevitable; until Its force is laid in thee, thy going is impossible, cry thy mind never so fiercely and wailingly for departure. Therefore neither desire nor shun thy world, but seek the bliss and purity and freedom and greatness of God in whatsoever state or experience or environment.

So long as thou hast any desire, be it the desire of non-birth or the desire of liberation, thou canst not attain to Parabrahman. For That has no desires, neither of birth nor of non-birth, nor of world, nor of departure from world. The Absolute is unlimited by thy desire as It is inaccessible to thy knowledge.

If thou wouldst know Paratpara Brahman, then know It as It chooses to manifest Itself in world and transcending it,—for transcendence also is a relation to world and not the sheer Absolute,—since otherwise It is unknowable. This is the simultaneous knowing and not knowing spoken of in the Vedanta.

Of Parabrahman we should not say that "It" is world-transcendent

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or world-immanent or related or non-related to the world; for all these ideas of world and not-world, of transcendence and immanence and relation are expressions of thought by which mind puts its own values on the self-manifestation of Parabrahman to its own principle of knowledge and we cannot assert any, even the highest of them to be the real reality of that which is at once all and beyond all, nothing and beyond nothing. A profound and unthinking silence is the only attitude which the soul manifested in world should adopt towards the Absolute.

We know of Parabrahman that It Is, in a way in which no object is and shall be in the world, because whenever and in whatever direction we go to the farthest limits of soul-experience or thought-experience or body-experience or any essential experience whatsoever, we come to the brink of That and perceive It to be unknowable, without any capacity of experiencing about it any further truth whatsoever.

When thy soul retiring within from depth to depth and widening without from vastness to vastness stands in the silence of its being before an unknown and unknowable from which and towards which world is seen to exist as a thing neither materially real nor mentally real and yet not to be described as a dream or a falsehood, then know that thou art standing in the Holy of Holies, before the Veil that shall not be rent. In this mortal body thou canst not rend it, nor in any other body; nor in the state of self in body nor in the state of pure self, nor in waking nor in sleep nor in trance, nor in any state or circumstances whatsoever; for thou must be beyond state before thou canst enter into the Paratpara Brahman.

That is the unknown God to whom no altar can be raised and no worship offered; universe is His only altar, Existence is His only worship. That we are, feel, think, act or are but do not feel, do not think, do not act is for That enough. To That, the saint is equal with the sinner, activity with inactivity, man with the mollusc, since All are equally Its manifestations. These things at least are here of the Parabrahman and Para Purusha, which is the Highest that we know and the nearest to the Absolute. But what That is behind the veil or how behind the veil It regards Itself and its manifestation is a thing no mind can assume

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to tell or know; and he is equally ignorant and presumptuous who raises and inscribes to It an altar or who pretends to declare the Unknown to those who know that they can know It not. Confuse not thought, bewilder not the soul of man in its forward march, but turn to the universe and know That in this, tadeva etat, for so only and in these terms It has set itself out to be known to those who are in the universe. Be not deceived by Ignorance, be not deceived by Knowledge; there is none bound and none free and none seeking freedom but only God playing at these things in the extended might of His self-conscious being, parā māyā, mahimānam asya, which we call the universe.

III

The boon that we have asked from the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter, the supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material world and an integral transformation down to the very principle of Matter. Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle.

The supreme Power has descended into the most material consciousness but it has stood there behind the density of the physical veil, demanding before manifestation, before its great open workings can begin, that the conditions of the supreme Grace shall be there, real and effective.

A total surrender, an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice of the Truth and rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made. But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any evasion or pretence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical consciousness and its workings.

To be one with the Eternal is the object of Yoga; there is no other object. All other aims are included in this one divine perfection.

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To be one with the Eternal is to be one with him in being, consciousness, power and delight. All that is is summed in these four terms of the infinite, for all else are but their workings.

To be one with the Eternal is also to live in the Eternal and from him and in his presence and from his infinite nature,—sāyujya, sālokya, sāmīpya, sādṛśya. These four together are one way of being and one perfection.

To live in the Eternal is also to live with the Eternal within us. Whosoever consciously inhabits his being, his conscious presence inhabits. God lives and moves and acts in us when we live and move and act in him.

One that is Two that are Many,—this is the formula of the eternal and timeless manifestation in the worlds of Sachchidananda.

One who is Two and becomes the Two who become Many,—this is the formula of the perpetual manifestation in time in the three worlds of Mind, Life and Matter.

One who is in himself for ever the Two and for ever innumerably All and Eternal and Infinite, this is the indication of the Supreme who is beyond Time and Timelessness in the highest Absolute.

The One is Four for ever in his supramental quaternary of Being, Consciousness, Force and Ananda.

Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, these are the eternal Four, the quadruple Infinite.

Brahma is the Eternal's Personality of Existence, from him all is created, by his presence, by his power, by his impulse.

Vishnu is the Eternal's Personality of Consciousness; in him all is supported, in his wideness, in his stability, in his substance.

Shiva is the Eternal's Personality of Force; through him all is created, through his passion, through his rhythm, through his concentration.

Krishna is the Eternal's Personality of Ananda; because of him all creation is possible, because of his play, because of his delight, because of his sweetness.

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Brahma is Immortality, Vishnu is Eternity, Shiva is Infinity; Krishna is the Supreme's eternal, infinite, immortal Self-play—self-issuing, self-manifestation, self-finding.

Nothing can arise from Nothing. Asat, nothingness, is a creation of our mind; where it cannot see or conceive, where its object is something beyond its grasp, too much beyond to give even the sense of a vague intangible, then it cries out, "Here there is nothing." Out of its own incapacity it has created the conception of a zero. But what in truth is this zero? It is an incalculable Infinite.

Our sense by its incapacity has invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but Light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision's limited range.

For do not imagine that light is created by the Suns. The Suns are only physical concentrations of Light, but the splendour they concentrate for us is self-born and everywhere.

God is everywhere and wherever God is, there is Light. Jñānaṁ caitanyaṁ jyotir brahma.

Of all that we know we know only the outside; even when we imagine that we have intimately seized the Innermost thing, we have touched only an inner external. It is still a sheath of the covering, only it is a second or third or even a seventh sheath, not the most outward and visible.

It is the same when we think we know God or have possession of our highest inmost Self or have entered intimately into the inmost and supreme Spirit. What we know and possess is a power or some powers of God, an aspect or appearance or formulation of the Self; what we have entered into is only one wideness and one depth of the Spirit.

This is because we know and possess by the mind or even what is below the mind, and when we find ourselves most spiritual, it is the mind spiritualised that conceives of itself as Spirit. Imagining that we have left mind behind us, we take it with us into its own spiritual realms and cover with it the Supramental

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Mystery. The result is something to us wonderful and intense; but compared with That Intensity and Wonder, it is something thin and inadequate.

IV

TWO AIMS OF OUR SADHANA

That Yoga is full or perfect which enables us to fulfil entirely God's purpose in us in this universe.

All Yoga which takes the soul entirely out of world-existence, is a high but narrow specialisation of divine Tapasya.

God's purpose in us is that we should fulfil His divine being in world-consciousness under the conditions of the Lila.

With regard to the universe God manifests Himself triply, in the individual, in the universe, in that which transcends the universe.

In order to fulfil God in the individual, we must exceed the individual. The removal of limited ego and the possession of cosmic consciousness is the first aim of our Sadhana.

In order to fulfil God in the cosmos, individually, we must transcend the universe. The ascension into transcendent consciousness is the second aim of our Sadhana.

THE OBJECT OF OUR YOGA

The object of our Yoga is self-perfection, not self-annulment.

There are two paths set for the feet of the Yogin, withdrawal from the universe and perfection in the universe; the first comes by asceticism, the second is effected by Tapasya; the first receives us when we lose God in Existence, the second is attained when we fulfil Existence in God. Let ours be the path of perfection, not of abandonment; let our aim be victory in the battle, not the escape from all conflict.

Buddha and Shankara supposed the world to be radically false and miserable; therefore escape from the world was to them the only wisdom. But this world is Brahman, the world is God, the world is Satyam, the world is Ananda; it is our misreading

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of the world through mental egoism that is a falsehood and our wrong relation with God in the world that is a misery. There is no other falsity and no other cause of sorrow.

God created the world in Himself through Maya; but the Vedic meaning of Maya is not illusion, it is wisdom, knowledge, capacity, wide extension in consciousness, prajñā prasṛtā purāṇī. Omnipotent Wisdom created the world, it is not the organised blunder of some Infinite Dreamer; omniscient Power manifests or conceals it in Itself for Its own delight, it is not a bondage imposed by His own ignorance on the free and absolute Brahman.

If the world were Brahman's self-imposed nightmare, to awake from it would be the natural and only goal of our supreme endeavour; or if life in the world were irrevocably bound to misery, a means of escape from this bondage would be the sole secret worth discovering. But perfect truth in world-existence is possible; for God here sees all things with the eye of truth; and perfect bliss in the world is possible; for God enjoys all things with the sense of unalloyed freedom. We also can enjoy this truth and bliss, called by the Veda amṛtam. Immortality, if by casting away our egoistic existence into perfect unity with His being we consent to receive the divine perception and the divine freedom.

The world is a movement of God in His own being; we are the centres and knots of divine consciousness which sum up and support the processes of His movement. The world is His play with His own self-conscious delight, He who alone exists, infinite, free and perfect; we are the self-multiplications of that conscious delight, thrown out into being to be His playmates. The world is a formula, a rhythm, a symbol-system expressing God to Himself in His own consciousness,—it has no material existence but exists only in His consciousness and self-expression; we, like God, are in our inward being That which is expressed, but in our outward being terms of that formula, notes of that rhythm, symbols of that system. Let us lead forward God's movement, play out His play, work out His formula, execute His harmony, express Him through our selves in His system. This is our joy and our self-fulfilment; to this end we who transcend and exceed the universe, have entered into universe-existence.

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Perfection has to be worked out, harmony has to be accomplished. Imperfection, limitation, death, grief, ignorance, matter, are only the first terms of the formula—unintelligible till we have worked out the wider terms and reinterpreted the formulary; they are the initial discords of the musician's tuning. Out of imperfection we have to construct perfection, out of limitation to discover infinity, out of death to find immortality, out of grief to recover divine bliss, out of ignorance to rescue divine self-knowledge, out of matter to reveal spirit. To work out this end for ourselves and for humanity is the object of our Yogic practice.

PURUSHA AND PRAKRITI

The self which we have to perfect, is neither the Jivatman which is ever perfect nor the ego which is the cause of imperfection, but the divine self manifested in the shifting stream of Nature.

Existence is composed of Prakriti and Purusha, the consciousness that sees and the consciousness that executes and formalises what we see. The one we call Soul, the other Nature. These are the first double terms from which our Yoga has to start. When we come to look in at our selves instead of out at the world and begin to analyse our subjective experience, we find that there are two parts of our being which can be, to all appearance, entirely separated from each other, one a consciousness which is still and passive and supports, and the other a consciousness which is busy and creative and is supported. The passive and fundamental consciousness is the Soul, the Purusha, Witness or sākṣī, the active and superstructural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative energy of the sākṣī. But the two seem at first to stand apart and distinct as if they had no share in each other.

The Purusha, still and silent witness of whatever Prakriti chooses to create, not interfering with her works, but reflecting only whatever forms, names and movements she casts on the pure mirror of his eternal existence and the Prakriti restlessly creating, acting, forming and effecting things for the delight of the Purusha,

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compose the double system of the Sankhyas. But as we continue analysing their relations and accumulate more and more experience of our subjective life, we find that this seeing of the Purusha is in effect a command. Whatever Prakriti perceives it to be the pleasure of the Purusha to see, she tends to preserve in his subjective experience or to establish; whatever she perceives it to be his pleasure to cease to see, she tends to renounce and abolish. Whatever he consents to in her, she forces on him and is glad of her mastery and his submission but whenever he insists, she is bound eventually to obey. Early found to be true in our subjective experience, this ultimate principle of things is eventually discovered by the Yogin to determine even objective phenomena. The Purusha and Prakriti are therefore not only the Witness and the Activity witnessed, but the Lord and his executive energy. The Purusha is Ishwara, the Prakriti is His Shakti. Their play with each other is both the motive and the executive force of all existence in the universe.

V

The aim put before itself by Yoga is God; its method is tapasyā. God is the All and that which exceeds, transcends the All; there is nothing in existence which is not God but God is not anything in that existence, except symbolically, in image to His own consciousness. Humanity also is symbol or eidolon of God, we are made in His image; and by that is meant, not a formal image, but in the image of His being and personality, the essence of divinity, its quality, the divine being and divine knowledge.

There are in everything existing phenomenally or, as we shall say, symbolically, two parts, the thing in itself and the symbol, Self and Nature, res (thing that is) and factum (thing that is made), immutable being and mutable becoming, that which is supernatural in it and that which is natural.

Everything in existence has something in it which seeks to transcend itself; Matter moves towards becoming Life, Life moves towards becoming Mind, Mind moves towards becoming ideal Truth, ideal Truth rises to become divine and infinite Spirit.

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The reason is that every symbol, being a partial expression of God, reaches out to and seeks to become its own entire reality; it aspires to become its real self by transcending its apparent self. Thing that is made is attracted towards thing that is, becoming towards being, the natural to the supernatural, symbol towards thing in itself, Nature towards God.

The upward movement is the means towards fulfilment of existence in the world; downward movement is destruction, Hell, perdition. Everything tends¹ upward; once it is assured of its actual existence it seeks the supernatural. Every nature is a step towards some supernature, something natural to itself but supernatural to what is below it. Life is supernatural to Matter, Mind supernatural to Life, ideal being supernatural to mental being, infinite being supernatural to ideal being. So too man is supernatural to the animal, God is supernatural to man. Man too as soon as he has assured his natural existence, must insist on his upward movement towards God. The upward movement is towards Heaven, the downward movement towards Hell.

The animal soul fulfils itself when it transcends animality and becomes human. Humanity also fulfils itself when it transcends humanity and becomes God.

By yielding to Nature, we fall away both from Nature and from God; by transcending Nature we at once fulfil all the possibilities of Nature and rise towards God. The human touches first the divine and then becomes divine.

There are those who seek to kill Nature in order to become the self; but that is not God's intention in humanity. We have to transcend Nature, not to kill it.

Every movement of humanity which seeks to deny Nature however religious, lofty, austere, of whatever dazzling purity or etheriality, is doomed to failure, sick disappointment, disillusion or perversion. It is in its nature transient, because it contradicts God's condition for us. He has set Nature there as a condition of His self-fulfilment in the world.

Every movement of humanity which bids us be satisfied with Nature, dwell upon the earth and cease to look upwards, however rational, clear-sighted, practical, effective, comfortable

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it may be is doomed to weariness, petrification and cessation. It is in its nature transient because it contradicts God's intention in us. He dwells secret in Nature and compels us towards Him by His irresistible attraction.

Materialistic movements are as unnatural and abnormal as ascetic and negatory religions and philosophy. Under the pretence of bringing us back to Nature, they take us away from her entirely; for they forget that Nature is only phenomenally Nature but in reality she is God. The divine element in her is that which she most really is; the rest is only condition, process and stage in her development of the secret divinity.

Not to be immersed, emmeshed and bound by Nature, not to hate and destroy her, is the first thing we must learn if we would be complete Yogins and proceed towards our divine perfection.

Being still natural in the world to transcend Nature internally, so that both internally and externally we may master and use her as free and lord, svarāṭ samrāṭ, is our fulfilment.

Being still the symbol to reach through it the being that symbolises itself, to realise the symbol, is our fulfilment.

Being still a figure of humanity, man among men, a living body among living bodies, though housed in life and matter yet a mental being among mental beings, being and remaining all this that we are apparently, yet to exceed all this apparent manhood and become in the body what we are really, God, Spirit supreme and infinite, pure Bliss, pure Force, pure Light, this is our fulfilment.

Our whole apparent life is a becoming, but all becoming has for its goal and fulfilment being—and God is the only being; to become divine in the nature of the world, in the symbol of our humanity is our fulfilment.

Yoga practised may be in its aim either perfect or partial, either selective or comprehensive. Perfect and comprehensive Yoga avoids limitation by aspects and leads to entire divinity.

In order to exceed our Nature and become divine, we must first get God; for we are the lower imperfect term of our being, He its higher perfect term. The finite, to become infinite, must know, love and touch infinity; the symbol being in order to become its own reality, must know, love and perceive that Reality.

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This necessarily is the imperative justification of religion; not of a church, creed or theology,—for all these things are religiosity, not religion,—but that personal and intimate religious temper and spirit which moves man to worship, to aspire to or to pant after his own idea of the Supreme; for without such worship in the heart or such aspiration in the will or such thirst in the emotions, we shall not have the impulse or the strength for this great difficult and supreme effort of human nature to transcend itself and climb to its super-nature. Therefore have the prophets spoken and the Avatars come to inspire man to that great call upon his upward straining energies. The aim of rationalism and Science is to make man content with his humanity and thus contradict Nature, baffling her evolution; the aim of religion,—but not unhappily of the creeds and churches,—is to further the great aim of Nature by pushing man towards his evolution.

The attainment of God is the true object of all human effort for which all the other efforts political, social, literary, intellectual, are only a necessary condition and preparation of the race; but there are both differences in the state of the attainment, differences in its range and effectivity. These states of divine attainment may usefully be distinguished: touch with God, indwelling in Him, and becoming He. The first is initial and elementary; unless passing the veil of our ordinary nature we touch the divine Being or He leaning down imposes His touch on us, unless we come first into contact with Him either in our heart, our mind, our works or our being, we cannot go into² Him. If we are strong in spirit, the touch may indeed be rapid and summary, we may wake at once and stride forward to the state of divine indwelling, soul of man in the Soul of God, the individual in the universal; but the touch must be there. To enforce this preliminary step, to bring man into some kind of contact with God, is the common and...the sole preoccupation of human religions. It does not matter greatly for its purpose how it is done; in however crude and elementary a way, through whatever intellectual errors and emotional blunders or ethical outrages, the touch must be established; this imperatively and above all things the religious spirit demands. Nature, as always

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her way, presses on to her all-important, immediate steps and is willing to purchase a single great and general gain by any number of particular losses. Man, besides, is so various in the arrangement of his human qualities; the master spring as well as the peculiar temperament differs so greatly or so subtly in each individual that there can never be for this purpose of nature's, too many sects, disciplines or different religions. Swami Vivekananda has well seen the consummation of religion in a stage when each human individual has his own religion dictated by his own spiritual needs and nature; for collective creeds, churches and theologies, in spite of their temporary necessity and some undeniable permanent advantages, help to formalise the upward effort and deprive it of its adaptability, freedom and perfect individual sincerity. The priest and dogma will seldom leave God and the soul free to reach each other in that solitude and spontaneity which gives the union its highest force and delight. They are always pressing in to control and preside at the marriage and legitimise it with formulas, Riks and official registration.

Moreover the intellect of natural man is narrow, his effort soon exhausted and easily satisfied with imperfection. If he is led to think that his way of contact with the Divine is the only way, his own freedom of higher development is fettered or entirely taken away from him and in his intellectual and religious egoism he militates against the freedom of others. Most religions tend easily to believe that the contact with God once established, no matter with what limitations or of what kind, all is done that needs to be done, all fulfilled that God demands of us. Popular religions tend naturally to be dualistic and to preserve trenchant distinction between man and God dividing the symbol being from that which expresses itself in him; while with one hand they raise man towards his super-nature, with the other they hold him down to his ordinary nature. The lower is suffused with the glow of the heights and touched with its power and rapture, but it does not itself rise into and dwell within it. At its lowest the dualistic soul keeps³ the taint of its imperfections; at its highest, unless in rare self-transcending moments, keeps itself distinct in awe and reverence from the divine Lover; worships

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at His feet but cannot hide itself in His bosom.

Therefore Nature still following his upward surge, has provided a mightier rank of human souls who are capable of going forward beyond this preliminary effort and, having entered into the very being of God, of dwelling there in beatitude. Entering into the consciousness of the Infinite, feeling it all around them and in them, ever thrilling with its touch, aware of identity with it in nature, joy and inner awareness, they yet preserve a constant separateness of their special being in that identity. They do not plunge themselves wholly into that divine ocean or, if they go slowly into it they keep hold on a fathom line which will preserve their touch with the surface. In nature such men are Vishishtadwaitins, souls not drawn towards entire oneness. But unless man plunges himself wholly into God caring not whether he re-emerge, unless the human sacrifices himself wholly to the divinity, keeping back no particle of his being, not even the last particle of separateness of the individual ego, the divine purpose in man cannot be utterly accomplished. Therefore Nature or the Will of God—for Nature is nothing but the Will of God in action—has provided that some having indwelt in God, human soul in divine soul, shall be irresistibly called immediately, with brief respite or at long last to the utter immersion. They go inward and throwaway the last trace of ego into God. Some of them, it has been said by a great teacher, are jīvakoṭis, human beings leaning so pre-eminently to the symbol-nature, that, if they had lost it albeit for a while in the Reality, they lose themselves; once immersed, they cannot return; they are lost in God to humanity; others are īśvarakoṭis, human beings whose centre has already been shifted upwards or from the beginning elevated in the superior planes of conscious existence, was established in God rather than Nature. Such men are already leaning down from God to Nature; they therefore may, in losing themselves in Him yet keep themselves and live in Man-God; they do not depart from their centre but rather go through it; arrived they are able to lean down again to humanity. Those who can thus emerge from their truth of God are the final helpers of humanity and are chosen by God and Nature to prepare the type of supernatural men to which our humanity is rising.

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There are, then, these three divine conditions, states separately conceived of humanity's God-attainment. Man being limited in energy and discrimination rather than catholic in intellect, fastens usually on this separate conception and limits himself to one or other of these conditions; Yogic method, also, being careful of the different natures of men, suits itself to their limitations, becomes selective and concentrates upon one of these conditions or another. Or even it becomes partial as well as selective; for in its contact with God, it relates itself to a part of divine quality rather than the perfect divinity, to a God of mercy, a God of justice, the Divine Master, the Divine Friend, or else with some aspect of divine impersonal being, to Infinite Rapture, to Infinite Force or to Infinite Calm and Purity. In the indwelling there may be the same limitations, in the becoming also they may persist. There is no fault to be found with this selective process or with this partiality. They are necessary; human limitations demand this device; human perfectibility itself finds its account in these concessions. Nature knows her task and she proceeds to it with a wide, flexible and perfect wisdom which smiles at our impatient logical narrowness and rigid, one-sighted consistencies. She knows she has an infinitely complex and variable material to deal with and must be infinitely complex and variable in her methods. We only consider precise method and ultimate fulfilment; she has to reckon on her way with thousand-armed struggles and infinite possibilities.

Nevertheless, the ultimate aim and the perfect and comprehensive Yoga is that which embraces rather than selects. We are meant to be within the symbol of humanity what God is in Himself and Universally. Now God is free, absolute from these limitations and all-comprehensive. He is always one in his being, yet both one with and separate from his symbols and in that differentiated oneness able to stand quite apart from them. So we too in our ultimate divine realisation when we have become one with our divine Self, may and should be able also to stand out as the self at once of all things and beings, yet differentiated in the symbol, so as to enjoy a blissful divided closeness such as that of the Lover and Beloved mingling yet separate in their rapture; and may and should even be able to stand away from God

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with a sort of entire separateness holding His hand still, unlike the pure dualist, but still standing away from Him so that we may enjoy that infinity of human relation with God which is the wonder and beauty and joy of dualistic religions. To accomplish this is the full or the Purna Yoga and the Sadhak who can attain to it is in his condition the complete Yogin.

Is such a triune condition of the soul possible? Logically, it would seem impossible; logically, all trinities are chimeras and a thing must be one thing at a time and cannot combine three such divergent states as oneness, differentiated oneness and effective duality. But in these matters an inch of experience goes farther than a yard of logic, and experience, you will find, affirms that the triune God-state is perfectly possible and simple once you have attained God's fullness. We must not apply to the soul a logic which is based on the peculiarities of matter. It is true of a clod that it cannot be at the same time a clod hanging up or posted on some bough, a clod protruding from the earth or a shapeless mass trodden into the mother soil. But this is because the clod is divided from the earthly form. The soul is not divided from God by these barriers of material dimension. What is true of matter is not true of spirit, nor do the standards of form apply to the formless. For matter is conscious being confined in form, the spirit is conscious being using form but not confined in it; and it is the privilege of spirit that though indivisible in its pure being, it is freely self-divisible in its conscious experience and can concentrate itself in many states at a time. It is by this Tapas, by this varied concentration of self-knowledge that Divine Existence creates and supports the world and is at once the same God and Nature and World, Personal and Impersonal, Pure and Varied, Qualitied and without Qualities, Krishna and Kali, and Shiva and Brahma and Vishnu, man and animal and vegetable and stone, all aspects of Himself and all symbols. We need not doubt therefore that we, recovering our divine reality, shall not be bound to a single condition or aspect but can command a triune or even a multiple soul-experience. We, becoming God, become that which is the All and exceeds and transcends the All, sarvabhūtāni ātmaivābhūd vijānataḥ. The soul of the perfect knower

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becomes all existent things and That transcendental in which all things have their existence, ihaiva, without ceasing to possess a human centre of separate experience. For this is the entire divinity that is the result of the perfect and comprehensive Yoga.

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Purna Yoga

The Entire Purpose Of Yoga

By yoga we can rise out of falsehood into truth, out of weakness into force, out of pain and grief into bliss, out of bondage into freedom, out of death into immortality, out of darkness into light, out of confusion into purity, out of imperfection into perfection, out of self-division into unity, out of Maya into God. All other utilisation of Yoga is for special and fragmentary advantages not always worth pursuing. Only that which aims at possessing the fullness of God is Purna Yoga; the Sadhaka of the Divine Perfection is the Purna Yogin.

Our aim must be to be perfect as God in His being and bliss is perfect, pure as He is pure, blissful as He is blissful, and, when we are ourselves siddhas in Purna Yoga, to bring all mankind to the same divine perfection. It does not matter if for the present we fall short of our aim, so long as we give ourselves whole-heartedly to the attempt and by living constantly in it and for it move forward even two inches upon the road; even that will help to lead humanity out of struggle and twilight in which it now dwells into the luminous joy which God intends for us. But whatever our immediate success, our unvarying aim must be to perform the whole journey and not lie down content in any wayside stage or imperfect resting place.

All Yoga which takes us entirely away from the world, is a high but narrow specialisation of divine tapasyā. God in His perfection embraces everything; we also must become all-embracing.

God in His ultimate existence beyond all manifestation and all knowledge, is the Absolute Parabrahman; in relation to the world He is that which transcends all universal existence while regarding it or in turning away from it; He is that which contains and upholds the universe, He is that which becomes the universe and He is the universe and everything which it contains.

He is also Absolute and Supreme Personality playing in the

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universe and as the universe; in the universe He appears to be its Soul and Lord, as the universe He appears to be the motion or process of the Will of the Lord and to become all the subjective and objective results of the motion. All the states of the Brahman, the transcendent, the continent, the universal, the individual are informed and sustained by the divine Personality. He is both the Existent and the state of existence. We call the state of existence the Impersonal Brahman, the Existent the Personal Brahman. There is no difference between them except to the play of our consciousness; for every impersonal state depends upon a manifest or secret Personality and can reveal the Personality which it holds and veils, and every Personality attaches to itself and can plunge itself into an impersonal existence. This they can do because Personality and Impersonality are merely different states of self-consciousness in our Absolute Being.

Philosophies and religions dispute about the priority of different aspects of God and different Yogins, Rishis and Saints have preferred this or that philosophy or religion. Our business is not to dispute about any of them, but to realise and become all of them, not to follow after any aspect to the exclusion of the rest, but to embrace God in all His aspects and beyond aspect.

God descending into the world in various forms has consummated on this earth the mental and bodily form which we call humanity.

He has manifested in the world through the play of all-governing Soul with its own formative Will or Shakti, a rhythm of existence of which Matter is the lowest term and pure being the highest. Mind and Life stand upon Matter (manas and prāṇa on annam) and make the lower half of world-existence (aparārdha); pure Consciousness and pure Bliss proceed out of pure Being (cit and ānanda out of sat) and make the upper half of world-existence (parārdha). Pure Idea. (vijñāna) stands as the link between the two. These seven principles or terms of existence are the basis of the sevenfold world of the Puranas (Satyaloka, Tapas, Jana, Mahar, Swar, Bhuvar and Bhur).

The lower hemisphere in this arrangement of consciousness consists of the three vyāhṛtis of the Veda, "Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar"; they are states of consciousness in which the principles of the

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upper world are expressed or try to express themselves under different conditions. Pure in their own homes, they are in this foreign country subject to perverse, impure and disturbing combinations and workings. The ultimate object of life is to get rid of the perversity, impurity and disturbance and express them perfectly in these other conditions. Our life on this earth is a divine poem that we are translating into earthly language or a strain of music which we are rendering into words.

Being in Sat is one in multiplicity, one that regards its multiplicity without being lost or confused in it and multiplicity that knows itself as one without losing the power of multiple play in the universe. Under the conditions of mind, life and body, ahaṁkāra is born, the subjective or objective form of consciousness is falsely taken for self-existent being, the body for an independent reality and the ego for an independent personality; the one loses itself in us in its multiplicity and it recovers its unity, finds it difficult, owing to the nature of mind, to preserve its play of multiplicity. Therefore when we are absorbed in the world, we miss God in Himself, when we see God, we miss Him in the world. Our business is to break down and dissolve the mental ego and get back to our divine unity without losing our power of individual and multiple existence in the universe.

Consciousness in Chit is luminous, free, illimitable and effective; that which it is aware of as Chit (jñāna-śakti) it fulfils infallibly as Tapas (kriyā-śakti); for Jnana Shakti is only the stable and comprehensive, Kriya Shakti only the motional and intensive form of one self-luminous Conscious Being. They are one power of conscious force of God (Chit-Shakti of Sat-Purusha). But in the lower hemisphere, under the conditions of mind, life and body, the luminousness becomes divided and broken up into uneven rays, the freedom trammelled by egoism and unequal forms, the effectiveness veiled by the uneven play of forces. We have, therefore, states of consciousness, non-consciousness and false consciousness, knowledge and ignorance and false knowledge, effective force and inertia and ineffective force. Our business is by renouncing our divided and unequal individual force of action and thought into the one, undivided universal Chit-Shakti of Kali to replace our egoistic activities by

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the play in our body of the universal Kali and thus exchange blindness and ignorance for knowledge and ineffective human strength for the divine effective Force.

Delight in Ananda is pure, unmixed, one and yet multitudinous. Under the conditions of mind, life and body it becomes divided, limited, confused and misdirected and owing to shocks of unequal forces and uneven distribution of Ananda subject to the duality of positive and negative movements, grief and joy, pain and pleasure. Our business is to dissolve these dualities by breaking down their cause and plunge ourselves into the ocean of divine bliss, one, multitudinous, evenly distributed (sama), which takes delight from all things and recoils painfully from none.

In brief, we have to replace dualities by unity, egoism by divine consciousness, ignorance by divine wisdom, thought by divine knowledge, weakness, struggle and effort by self-contented divine force, pain and false pleasure by divine bliss. This is called in the language of Christ bringing down the kingdom of heaven on earth, or in modern language, realising and effectuating God in the world.

Humanity is, upon earth, the form of life chosen for this human aspiration and divine accomplishment; all other forms of life either do not need it or are ordinarily incapable of it unless they change into humanity. The divine fullness is therefore the sole real aim of humanity. It has to be effected in the individual in order that it may be effected in the race.

Humanity is a mental existence in a living body; its basis is matter, its centre and instrument mind and its medium life. This is the condition of average or natural humanity.

In every human being there is concealed (avyakta) the four higher principles. Mahas, pure ideality in vijñāna, is not a vyāhṛti but the source of the vyāhṛtis, the bank upon which mental, vital and bodily action draw and turn its large and infinite wealth into small coin of the lower existence. Vijnana being the link between the divine state and the human animal is the door of escape for man into the supernatural or divine humanity.

Inferior mankind gravitates downward from mind towards life and body; average mankind dwells constant in mind limited

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by and looking towards life and body; superior mankind levitates upward either to idealised mentality or to pure idea, direct truth of knowledge and spontaneous truth of existence; supreme mankind rises to divine beatitude and from that level either goes upward to pure Sat and Parabrahman or remains to beatify its lower members and raise to divinity in itself and others this human existence.

The man who dwells in the higher or divine and now hidden hemisphere of his consciousness, having rent the veil, is the true superman and the last product of that progressive self-manifestation of God in world, Spirit out of matter, which is now called the principle of evolution.

To rise into divine existence, force, light and bliss and recast in that mould all mundane existence is the supreme aspiration of religion and the complete practical aim of Yoga. The aim is to realise God in the universe, but it cannot be done without realising God transcendent of the universe.

II
Parabrahman, Mukti And Human Thought Systems

Parabrahman is the Absolute, and because It is the Absolute, it cannot be reduced into terms of knowledge. You can know the Infinite in a way, but you cannot know the Absolute.

All things in existence or non-existence are symbols of the Absolute created in self-consciousness (Chid-Atman); by its symbols the Absolute can be known so far as the symbols reveal or hint at it, but even the knowledge of the whole sum of symbols does not amount to real knowledge of the Absolute. You can become Parabrahman; you cannot know Parabrahman. Becoming Parabrahman means going back through self-consciousness into Parabrahman, for you already are That, only you have projected yourself forward in self-consciousness into its terms or symbols, Purusha and Prakriti through which you uphold the universe. Therefore, to become Parabrahman void of terms or symbols you must cease out of the universe.

By becoming Parabrahman void of Its self-symbols you do

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not become anything you are not already, nor does the universe cease to operate. It only means that God throws back out of the ocean of manifest consciousness one stream or movement of Himself into that from which all consciousness proceeded.

All who go out of universe consciousness, do not necessarily go into Parabrahman. Some go into undifferentiated Nature (avyākṛta prakṛti), some lose themselves in God, some pass into a dark state of non-recognition of universe, (asat, śūnya) some into a luminous state of non-recognition of universe,—Pure undifferentiated Atman, Pure Sat or Existence-Basis of universe,—some into a temporary state of deep sleep (suṣupti) in the impersonal principles of Ananda, Chit or Sat. All these are forms of release and the ego gets from God by His Maya or Prakriti the impulse towards any one of them to which the supreme Purusha chooses to direct him. Those whom He wishes to liberate, yet keep in the world, He makes jīvanmuktas or sends them out again as His vibhūtis, they consenting to wear for the divine purposes a temporary veil of Avidya, which does not at all bind them and which they can rend or throw off very easily.

Therefore to lust after becoming Parabrahman is a sort of luminous illusion or sattwic play of Maya; for in reality there is none bound or none free and none needing to be freed and all is only God's Lila, Parabrahman's play of manifestation. God uses this sattwic Maya in certain egos in order to draw them upwards in the line of His special purpose and for these egos it is the only right and possible path.

But the aim of our Yoga is Jivanmukti in the universe; we have to live released in the world, not released out of the world, not because we need to be freed or for any other reason, but because that is God's will in us.

The Jivanmukta has, for perfect knowledge and self-fulfilment, to stand on the threshold of Parabrahman, but not to cross the threshold. The statement he brings back from the threshold is that That is and we are That, but what That is or is not, words cannot describe, nor mind discriminate.

Parabrahman being the Absolute is indescribable by any name or definite conception. It is not Being or Non-Being, but something of which Being and Non-Being are primary symbols;

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not Atman or un-Atman or Maya; not Personality or Impersonality; not Quality or Non-Quality; not Consciousness or Non-Consciousness; not Bliss or Non-Bliss; not Purusha or Prakriti; not god nor man nor animal; not release nor bondage; but something of which all these are primary or derivative, general or particular symbols. Still, when we say Parabrahman is not this or that, we mean that It cannot in its essentiality be limited to this or that symbol or any sum of symbols; in a sense Parabrahman is all this and all this is Parabrahman. There is nothing else which all this can be. Parabrahman being Absolute is not subject to logic, for logic applies only to the determinate. We talk confusion if we say that the Absolute cannot manifest the determinate and therefore the universe is false or non-existent. The very nature of the Absolute is that we do not know what it is or is not, what it can do or cannot do; we have no reason to suppose that there is anything it cannot do or that its Absoluteness is limited by any kind of impotency. We experience spiritually that when we go beyond everything else we come to something Absolute; we experience spiritually that the universe is in the nature of a manifestation proceeding, as it were, from the Absolute; but all these words and phrases are merely intellectual terms trying to express the inexpressible. We must state what we see as best we can, but need not dispute what others see or state; rather we must accept and in our own system locate and account for what they have seen and stated. Our only dispute is with those who deny credit to the vision or freedom and value to the statements of others; not with those who are content with stating their own vision.

A philosophical or religious system is only a statement of that arrangement of existence in universe which God has revealed to us as our status of being. It is given in order that the mind may have something to stand upon while we act in Prakriti. But our vision need not be precisely the same in arrangement as the vision of others, nor is the form of thought that suits our mentality bound to suit a mentality differently constituted. Firmness, without dogmatism, in our own system, toleration, without weakness, of all other systems should therefore be our intellectual outlook.

You will find disputants questioning your system on the

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ground that it is not consistent with this or that Shastra or this or that great authority, whether philosophers, saints or Avatars. Remember then that realisation and experience are alone of essential importance. What Shankara argued or Vivekananda conceived intellectually about existence or even what Ramakrishna stated from his multitudinous and varied realisations, is only of value to you so far as you are moved by God to accept and renew it in your own experience. The opinions of thinkers and saints and Avatars should be accepted as hints but not as fetters. What matters to you is what you have seen or what God in His universal personality or impersonally or again personally in some teacher, Guru or path-finder undertakes to show to you in the path of Yoga.

III

God or Parapurusha is Parabrahman unmanifest and inexpressible turned towards a certain kind of manifestation or expression, of which the two eternal terms are Atman and Jagati, Self and Universe. Atman becomes in self-symbol all existences in the universe; so too, the universe when known, resolves all its symbols into Atman. God being Parabrahman is Himself Absolute, neither Atman nor Maya nor un-Atman, neither Being nor not-being, (sat, asat), neither Becoming nor non-Becoming (sambhūti, asambhūti), neither Quality nor non-Quality (saguṇa, nirguṇa); neither Consciousness nor non-Consciousness (caitanya, jaḍa); neither Soul nor Nature (puruṣa, prakṛti), neither Bliss nor non-Bliss; neither man, nor god nor animal; He is beyond all these things, He maintains and contains all these things in Himself as world; He is and becomes all these things.

The only difference between Parabrahman and Parapurusha is that we think of the first as something beyond our universe-existence, expressed here indeed, but still inexpressible, and of the second as something approaching our universe-existence, inexpressible indeed, but still here expressed. It is as if, in reading a translation of the Ramayana or Homer's Iliad, we were to look at the unapproachable something no translator can seize and

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say "This is not the Ramayana", "This is not the Iliad" and yet, looking at the comparative adequacy of the expressions which do succeed in catching something of the original spirit and intention, were at the same time to say "This is Valmikie", "This is Homer". There is no other difference except this of standpoint. The Upanishads speak of the Absolute Parabrahman as Tat; they say Sa when they speak of the Absolute Parapurusha.

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The Supramental Yoga

All Yoga done through the mind alone or through the heart or the will or the vital force or the body ends in some one aspect of the infinite and eternal Existence and rests satisfied there, as the mind imagines for ever. Not through these alone shall thy Yoga move, but through all these at once and, supremely, through that which is beyond them. And the end of thy Yoga shall be the integrality of thy entrance not into one aspect, but into all the Infinite, all the Eternal, all the Divine in all its aspects indivisibly unified together.

Whatever is beyond mind and life and body is spirit. But spirit can be realised even on these lower levels, in the spiritualised mind, in the spiritualised life-force, even in the spiritualised physical consciousness and body. But if thou rise not up beyond the mind-level, then in these realisations the spirit must needs be modified by the medium through which thou attainest to it, and its supreme truth can only be seized in a reflection, partial even in widest apparent universality, and the utmost essential integrality will escape thy seizure.

Rise rather into the supramental levels and then all the rest shall remain a part of thy experience, but wonderfully changed, transfigured by a supreme alchemy of consciousness into an element of the supramental glory. All that other Yogas can give thee, thou shalt have, but as an experience overpassed, put in its place in the Divine Whole and delivered from the inadequacy of an exclusive state or experience.

The Supramental Yoga is at once an ascent towards God and a descent of Godhead into the embodied nature.

The ascent can only be achieved by a one-centred all-gathering upward aspiration of the soul and mind and life and body; the descent can only come by a call of the whole being towards the infinite and eternal Divine. If this call and this aspiration are

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there, or if by any means they can be born and grow constantly and seize all the nature, then and then only a supramental uplifting and transformation becomes possible.

The call and the aspiration are only first conditions; there must be along with them and brought by their effective intensity an opening of all the being to the Divine and a total surrender.

This opening is a throwing wide of all the nature on all its levels and in all its parts to receive into itself without limits the greater divine Consciousness which is there already above and behind and englobing this mortal half-conscious existence.

In the receiving there must be no inability to contain, no breaking down of anything in the system, mind or life or nerve or body under the transmuting stress. There must be an endless receptivity, an always increasing capacity to bear an ever stronger and more and more insistent action of the divine Force. Otherwise nothing great or permanent can be done; the Yoga will end in a breakdown or an inert stoppage or a stultifying or a disastrous arrest in a process which must be absolute and integral if it is not to be a failure.

But since no human system has this endless receptivity and unfailing capacity, the supramental Yoga can succeed only if the Divine Force, as it descends, increases the personal power and equates the strength that receives with the Force that enters from above to work in the nature. This is only possible if there is on our part a progressive surrender of the being into the hands of the Divine; there must be a complete and never-failing assent, a willingness to let the Divine Power do with us whatever is needed for the work that has to be done.

Man cannot by his own effort make himself more than man; the mental being cannot by his own unaided force change himself into a supramental spirit. A descent of the Divine Nature can alone divinise the human receptacle.

For the powers of our mind, life and body are bound to their own limitations and, however high they may rise or however widely expand, they cannot rise above their natural ultimate limits or expand beyond them. But still, mental man can open to what is beyond him and call down a supramental Light, Truth and Power to work in him and do what the mind cannot do. If

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mind cannot by effort become what is beyond mind, Supermind can descend and transform mind into its own substance.

If the Supramental Power is allowed by man's discerning assent and vigilant surrender to act according to its own profound and subtle insight and flexible potency, it will bring about slowly or swiftly a divine transformation of our fallen and imperfect nature.

This descent, this working is not without its possibility of calamitous fall and danger. If the human mind or the vital desire seizes hold on the descending force and tries to use it according to its own limited and erring ideas or flawed and egoistic impulses,—and this is inevitable in some degree until this lower mortal has learned something of the way of that greater immortal nature,—stumblings and deviations, hard and seemingly insuperable obstacles and wounds and suffering cannot be escaped and even death or utter downfall are not impossible. Only when the conscious integral surrender to the Divine has been learned by mind and life and body, can the way of the Yoga become easy, straight, swift and safe.

And it must be a surrender and an opening to the Divine alone and to no other. For it is possible for an obscure mind or an impure life-force in us to surrender to undivine and hostile forces and even to mistake them for the Divine. There can be no more calamitous error. Therefore our surrender must be no blind and inert passivity to all influences or any influence, but sincere, conscious, vigilant, pointed to the One and the Highest alone.

Self-surrender to the divine and infinite Mother, however difficult, remains our only effective means and our sole abiding refuge,—self-surrender to her means that our nature must be an instrument in her hands, the soul a child in the arms of the Mother.

This divinisation of the nature of which we speak is a metamorphosis, not a mere growth into some kind of super-humanity, but a change from the falsehood of our ignorant nature into the truth of God-nature. The mental or vital demi-God, the

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Asura, Rakshasa and Pisacha,—Titan, vital giant and demon,—are superhuman in the pitch and force and movement and in the make of their characteristic nature, but these are not divine and these are not supremely divine, for they live in a greater mind-power or life-power only, but they do not live in the supreme Truth, and only the supreme Truth is divine. Only those who live in a supreme Truth-Consciousness and embody it are inwardly made or else remade in the Divine image.

The aim of the supramental Yoga is to change into this supreme Truth-Consciousness, but this truth is something beyond mind and this consciousness is far above the highest mind-consciousness. For truth of mind is always relative, uncertain and partial, but this greater Truth is peremptory and whole. Truth of mind is a representation, always an inadequate, most often a misleading representation, and even when most accurate, only a reflection, Truth's shadow and not its body. Mind does not live in Truth or only seeks after it and grasps at best some threads from its robe; the Supermind lives in Truth and its native substance, form and expression; it has not to seek after it, but possesses it always automatically and is what it possesses. This is the very heart of the difference.

The change that is effected by the transition from mind to Supermind is not only a revolution in knowledge or in our power for knowledge. If it is to be complete and stable, it must be a divine transmutation of our will too, our emotions, our sensations, all our power of life and its forces, in the end even of the very substance and functioning of our body. Then only can it be said that the Supermind is there upon earth, rooted in its very earth-substance and embodied in. a new race of divinised creatures.

Supermind at its highest reach is the divine Gnosis, the Wisdom-Power-Light-Bliss of God by which the Divine knows and upholds and governs and enjoys the universe.

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The Divine Superman

This is thy work and the aim of thy being and that for which thou art here, to become the divine superman and a perfect vessel of the Godhead. All else that thou hast to do, is only a making thyself ready or a joy by the way or a fall from the purpose. But the goal is this and the purpose is this and not in the power of the way or the joy by the way but in the joy of the goal is the greatness and the delight of thy being. The joy of the way is because that which is drawing thee is also with thee on thy path and the power to climb was given thee that thou mightest mount to thy own summits.

If thou hast a duty, this is thy duty; if thou askest what shall be thy aim, let this be thy aim; if thou demandest pleasure, there is no greater joy, for all other joy is broken or limited, the joy of a dream or the joy of a sleep or the joy of the self-forgetting. But this is the joy of thy whole being. For if thou sayest what is thy being, this is thy being, the Divine, and all else is only its broken or its perverse appearance. If thou seekest the Truth, this is the Truth. Place it before thee and in all things be faithful to it.

It has been well said by one who saw but through a veil and mistook the veil for the face that thy aim is to become thyself; and he said well again that the nature of man is to transcend himself. This is indeed his nature and that is indeed the divine aim of his self-transcending.

What then is the self that thou hast to transcend and what is the Self that thou hast to become? For it is here that thou shouldst make no error; for this error, not to know thyself, is the fountain of all thy grief and the cause of all thy stumbling.

That which thou hast to transcend is the self that thou appearest to be, and that is man as thou knowest him, the apparent Purusha. And what is this man? He is a mental being enslaved to life and matter; and where he is not enslaved to life and matter, he is the slave of his mind. But this is a great and heavy

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servitude; for to be the slave of mind is to be the slave of the false, the limited and the apparent.

The Self that thou hast to become is that self that thou art within behind the veil of mind and life and matter. It is to be the spiritual, the divine, the superman, the real Purusha. For that which is above the mental being is the superman. It is to be the master of thy mind, thy life and thy body; it is to be a king over Nature of whom thou art now the tool, lifted above her who now has thee under her feet. It is to be free and not a slave, to be one and not divided, to be immortal and not obscured by death, to be full of light and not darkened, to be full of bliss and not the sport of grief and suffering, to be uplifted into power and not cast down into weakness. It is to live in the Infinite and possess the finite. It is to live in God and be one with him in his being. To become thyself is to be this and all that flows from it.

Be free in thyself, and therefore free in thy mind, free in thy life and thy body. For the Spirit is freedom.

Be one with God and all beings; live in thyself and not in thy little ego. For the Spirit is unity.

Be thyself immortal, and put not thy faith in death; for death is not of thyself, but of thy body. For the Spirit is immortality.

To be immortal is to be infinite in being and consciousness and bliss; for the Spirit is infinite and that which is finite lives only by his infinity.

These things thou art, therefore thou canst become all these; but if thou art not these things, then thou couldst never become them. What is within thee, that alone can be revealed in thy being. Thou appearest indeed to be other than this, but wherefore shouldst thou enslave thyself to appearances?

Rather arise, transcend thyself, become thyself. Thou art man and the whole nature of man is to become more than himself. He was the man-animal, he has become more than the animal man. He is the thinker, the craftsman, the seeker after beauty. He shall be more than the thinker, he shall be the seer of knowledge; he shall be more than the craftsman, he shall be the creator and master of his creation; he shall be more than the seeker of beauty, for he shall enjoy all beauty and all delight.

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Physical he seeks for this immortal substance; vital he seeks after immortal life and the infinite power of his being; mental and partial in knowledge, he seeks after the whole light and the utter vision.

To possess these is to become the superman; for he is to rise out of mind into the Supermind. Call it the divine mind or Knowledge or the Supermind; it is the power and light of the divine will and the divine consciousness. By the Supermind the Spirit saw and created himself in the worlds, by that he lives in them and governs them. By that he is Swarat Samrat, self-ruler and all-ruler.

Supermind is superman; therefore to rise beyond mind is the condition.

To be the superman is to live the divine life, to be a god; for the gods are the powers of God. Be a power of God in humanity.

To live in the divine Being and let the consciousness and bliss, the will and knowledge of the Spirit possess thee and play with thee and through thee, this is the meaning.

This is the transfiguration of thyself on the mountain. It is to discover God as thyself and reveal him to thyself in all things. Live in his being, shine with his light, act with his power, rejoice with his bliss. Be that Fire and that Sun and that Ocean. Be that joy and that greatness and that beauty.

When thou hast done this even in part, thou hast attained to the first steps of supermanhood.

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Jnana

There are two allied powers in man: Knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by groping; Wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.

Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge; it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.

When I speak, the reason says, "This will I say"; but God takes the word out of my mouth and the lips say something else at which reason trembles.

I am not a Jnani, for I have no knowledge except what God gives me for His work. How am I to know whether what I see be reason or folly? Nay, it is neither; for the thing seen is simply true and neither folly nor reason.

If mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature to forbid the turning away of our feet from less ordinary pastures.

Late, I learned that when reason died then Wisdom was born; before that liberation, I had only knowledge.

What men call knowledge is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees. Reason fixes details and contrasts them. Reason divides, Wisdom marries contrasts in a single harmony.

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Either do not give the name of knowledge to your beliefs only, and of error, ignorance or charlatanism to the beliefs of others; or do not rail at the dogmas of the sects and their intolerance.

What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

My soul knows that it is immortal. But you take a dead body to pieces and cry triumphantly, "Where is your soul and where is your immortality?"

Immortality is not the survival of the mental personality after death, though that also is true, but the waking possession of the unborn and deathless Self of which body is only an instrument and a shadow.

They proved to me by convincing reasons that God does not exist, and I believed them. Afterwards I saw God, for He came and embraced me. And now which am I to believe, the reasonings of others or my own experience?

They told me, "These things are hallucinations." I inquired what was a hallucination and found that it meant a subjective or psychical experience which corresponds to no objective or no physical reality. Then I sat and wondered at the miracles of the human reason.

Hallucination is the term of Science for those irregular glimpses we still have of truths shut out from us by our preoccupation with matter; coincidence for the curious touches of the artist,—in the work of that supreme and universal Intelligence which in its conscious being, as on a canvas, has planned and executed the world.

That which men term a hallucination is the reflection in the mind and senses of that which is beyond our ordinary mental and sensory perception and superstition arises from the mind's wrong understanding of these reflections. There is no other hallucination.

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Do not like so many modern disputants smother thought under polysyllables or charm inquiry to sleep by the spell of formulas and cant words. Search always. Find out the reason for things which seem to the hasty glance to be mere chance or illusion.

Someone was laying down that God must be this or that or He would not be God. But it seemed to me that I can only know what God is and I do not see how I can tell Him what He ought to be. For what is the standard by which we can judge Him? These judgments are the follies of our egoism.

Chance is not in this universe; the idea of illusion is itself an illusion. There was never illusion yet in the human mind that did not conceal and disfigure a truth.

When I had the dividing reason I shrank from many things; after I had lost it in sight, I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellent, but I could no longer find them.

God had opened my eyes; for I saw the nobility of the vulgar, the attractiveness of the repellent, the perfection of the maimed and the beauty of the hideous.

Forgiveness is praised by the Christian and the Vaishnava, but for me, I ask, "What have I to forgive and whom?"

God struck me with a human hand; shall I say then, "I pardon Thee thy insolence, O God?"

God gave me good in a blow. Shall I say, "I forgive thee, O Almighty One, the harm and the cruelty, but do it not again?"

When I pine at misfortune and call it evil, or am jealous and disappointed, then I know that there is awake in me again the eternal fool.

When I see others suffer, I feel that I am unfortunate, but the wisdom that is not mine, sees the good that is coming and approves.

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Sir Philip Sidney said of the criminal led out to be hanged, "There, but for the grace of God, goes Sir Philip Sidney." Wiser, had he said, "There, by the grace of God, goes Sir Philip Sidney."

God is a great and cruel Torturer because he loves. You do not understand this, because you have not seen and played with Krishna.

One called Napoleon a tyrant and imperial cut-throat; but I saw God armed striding through Europe.

I have forgotten what vice is and what virtue; I can only see God, His play in the world and His will in humanity.

I saw a child wallowing in the dirt and the same child cleaned by his mother and resplendent, but each time I trembled before his utter purity.

What I wished or thought to be the right thing does not come about; therefore it is clear that there is no All-Wise one who guides the world but only blind Chance or a brute Causality.

The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.

O Thou that lovest, strike! If Thou strike me not now, I shall know that Thou lovest me not.

O Misfortune, blessed be thou; for through thee I have seen the face of my Lover.

Men are still in love with grief; when they see one who is too high for grief or joy, they curse him and cry, "O thou insensible!" Therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.

Men are in love with sin; when they see one who is too high for

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vice or virtue, they curse him and cry, 'O thou breaker of bonds; thou wicked and immoral one!' Therefore Sri Krishna does not live as yet in Brindavan.

Some say Krishna never lived, he is a myth. They mean on earth; for if Brindavan existed nowhere, the Bhagavat could not have been written.

Strange! the Germans have disproved the existence of Christ; yet his crucifixion remains still a greater historic fact than the death of Caesar.

Sometimes one is led to think that only those things really matter which have never happened; for beside them most historic achievements seem almost pale and ineffective.

There are four very great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindavan and the colloquy with Arjuna on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindavan created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanised Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity. Yet it is said that none of these four events ever happened.

They say that the gospels are forgeries and Krishna a creation of the poets. Thank God then for the forgeries and bow down before the inventors.

If God assigns to me my place in Hell, I do not know why I should aspire to Heaven. He knows best what is for my welfare.

If God draw me towards Heaven, then, even if His other hand strive to keep me in Hell, yet must I struggle upwards.

Only those thoughts are true the opposite of which is also true in its own time and application; indisputable dogmas are the most dangerous kind of falsehoods.

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Logic is the worst enemy of Truth, as self-righteousness is the worst enemy of virtue; for the one cannot see its own errors nor the other its own imperfections.

When I was asleep in the Ignorance, I came to a place of meditation full of holy men and I found their company wearisome and the place a prison; when I awoke, God took me to a prison and turned it into a place of meditation and His trysting ground.

When I read a wearisome book through and with pleasure, yet perceived all the perfection of its wearisomeness, then I knew that my mind was conquered.

I knew my mind to be conquered when it admired the beauty of the hideous, yet felt perfectly why other men shrank back or hated.

To feel and love the God of beauty and good in the ugly and the evil, and still yearn in utter love to heal it of its ugliness and its evil, this is real virtue and morality.

To hate the sinner is the worst sin, for it is hating God; yet he who commits it glories in his superior virtue.

When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at man's capacity for self-deception.

This is a miracle that men can love God, yet fail to love humanity. With whom are they in love then?

The quarrels of religious sects are like the disputing of pots, which shall be alone allowed to hold the immortalising nectar. Let them dispute, but the thing for us is to get at the nectar in whatever pot and obtain immortality.

You say that the flavour of the pot enters the liquor. That is taste; but what can deprive it of its immortalising faculty?

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Be wide in me, O Varuna; be mighty in me, O Indra; O Sun, be very bright and luminous; O Moon, be full of charm and sweetness. Be fierce and terrible, O Rudra; be impetuous and swift, O Maruts; be strong and bold, O Aryama; be voluptuous and pleasurable, O Bhaga; be tender and kind and loving and passionate, O Mitra. Be bright and revealing, O Dawn; O Night, be solemn and pregnant. O Life, be full, ready and buoyant; O Death, lead my steps from mansion to mansion. Harmonise all these, O Brahmanaspati. Let me not be subject to these gods, O Kali.

When, O eager disputant, thou hast prevailed in a debate, then art thou greatly to be pitied, for thou hast lost a chance of widening knowledge.

Because the tiger acts according to his nature and knows not anything else, therefore he is divine and there is no evil in him. If he questioned himself, then he would be a criminal.

The animal, before he is corrupted, has not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the god has abandoned it for the tree of eternal life; man stands between the upper heaven and the lower nature.

One of the greatest comforts of religion is that you can get hold of God sometimes and give him a satisfactory beating. People mock at the folly of savages who beat their gods when their prayers are not answered; but it is the mockers who are the fools and the savages.

There is no mortality. It is only the Immortal who can die; the mortal could neither be born nor perish.

There is nothing finite. It is only the Infinite who can create for himself limits. The finite can have no beginning nor end, for the very act of conceiving its beginning and end declares its infinity.

I heard a fool discoursing utter folly and wondered what God

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meant by it; then I considered and saw a distorted mask of truth and wisdom.

God is great, says the Mahomedan. Yes, He is so great that He can afford to be weak, whenever that too is necessary.

God often fails in His workings; it is the sign of His illimitable godhead.

Because God is invincibly great, He can afford to be weak; because He is immutably pure, He can indulge with impunity in sin; He knows eternally all delight, therefore He tastes also the delight of pain; He is inalienably wise, therefore He has not debarred Himself from folly.

Sin is that which was once in its place, persisting now it is out of place; there is no other sinfulness.

There is no sin in man, but a great deal of disease, ignorance and misapplication.

The sense of sin was necessary in order that man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was God's corrective for egoism. But man's egoism meets God's device by being very dully alive to its own sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others.

Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret.

Examine thyself without pity, then thou wilt be more charitable and pitiful to others.

A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther.

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The sign of dawning Knowledge is to feel that as yet I know little or nothing; and yet, if I could only know my knowledge, I already possess everything.

When Wisdom comes, her first lesson is, "There is no such thing as knowledge; there are only aperҫus of the Infinite Deity."

Practical knowledge is a different thing; that is real and serviceable, but it is never complete. Therefore to systematise and codify it is necessary but fatal.

Systematise we must, but even in making and holding the system, we should always keep firm hold on this truth that all systems are in their nature transitory and incomplete.

Europe prides herself on her practical and scientific organisation and efficiency. I am waiting till her organisation is perfect; then a child shall destroy her.

Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius. It is dangerous for an army to be led by veterans; for on the other side God may place Napoleon.

When knowledge is fresh in us, then it is invincible; when it is old, it loses its virtue. This is because God moves always forward.

God is infinite Possibility. Therefore Truth is never at rest; therefore, also, Error is justified of her children.

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs; Heine was nearer the mark when he found in Him the divine Aristophanes.

God's laughter is sometimes very coarse and unfit for polite ears; He is not satisfied with being Moliere, He must needs also be Aristophanes and Rabelais.

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If men took life less seriously, they could very soon make it more perfect. God never takes His works seriously; therefore one looks out on this wonderful Universe.

Shame has admirable results and both in aesthetics and in morality we could ill spare it; but for all that it is a badge of weakness and the proof of ignorance.

The supernatural is that the nature of which we have not attained or do not yet know, or the means of which we have not yet conquered. The common taste for miracles is the sign that man's ascent is not yet finished.

It is rationality and prudence to distrust the supernatural; but to believe in it is also a sort of wisdom.

Great saints have performed miracles; greater saints have railed at them; the greatest have both railed at them and performed them.

***

Open thy eyes and see what the world really is and what God; have done with vain and pleasant imaginations.

This world was built by Death that he might live. Wilt thou abolish death? Then life too will perish. Thou canst not abolish death, but thou mayst transform it into a greater living.

This world was built by Cruelty that she might love. Wilt thou abolish cruelty? Then love too will perish. Thou canst not abolish cruelty, but thou mayst transfigure it into its opposite, into a fierce Love and Delightfulness.

This world was built by Ignorance and Error that they might know. Wilt thou abolish ignorance and error? Then knowledge too will perish. Thou canst not abolish ignorance and error, but thou mayst transmute them into the utter and effulgent reason.¹

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If Life alone were and not death, there could be no immortality; if love were alone and not cruelty, joy would be only a tepid and ephemeral rapture; if reason were alone and not ignorance, our highest attainment would not exceed a limited rationality and worldly wisdom.

Death transformed becomes Life that is Immortality; Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; Ignorance transmuted becomes Light that leaps beyond wisdom and knowledge.

Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.

All renunciation is for a greater joy yet ungrasped. Some renounce for the joy of duty done, some for the joy of peace, some for the joy of God and some for the joy of self-torture, but renounce rather as a passage to the freedom and untroubled rapture beyond.

Only by perfect renunciation of desire or by perfect satisfaction of desire can the utter embrace of God be experienced, for in both ways the essential precondition is effected,—desire perishes.

Experience in thy soul the truth of the Scripture; afterwards, if thou wilt, reason and state thy experience intellectually and even then distrust thy statement, but distrust never thy experience.

When thou affirmest thy soul-experience and deniest the different soul-experience of another, know that God is making a fool of thee. Dost thou not hear His self-delighted laughter behind thy soul's curtains?

Revelation is direct sight, the direct hearing or inspired memory of Truth, dṛṣṭi, śruti, smṛti; it is the highest experience and always accessible to renewed experience. Not because God spoke it,

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but because the soul saw it, is the word of the Scriptures our supreme authority.

The word of Scripture is infallible; it is in the interpretation the heart and reason put upon the Scripture that error has her portion.

Shun all lowness, narrowness and shallowness in religious thought and experience. Be wider than the widest horizons, be loftier than the highest Kanchanjungha, profounder than the deepest oceans.

In God's sight there is no near or distant, no present, past or future. These things are only a convenient perspective for His world-picture.

To the senses it is always true that the sun moves round the earth; this is false to the reason. To the reason it is always true that the earth moves round the sun; this is false to the supreme vision. Neither earth moves nor sun; there is only a change in the relation of sun-consciousness and earth-consciousness.

Vivekananda, exalting Sannayasa, has said that in all Indian history, there is only one Janaka. Not so, for Janaka is not the name of a single individual, but a dynasty of self-ruling kings and the triumph-cry of an ideal.

In all the lakhs of ochre-clad Sannyasins, how many are perfect? It is the few attainments and the many approximations that justify an ideal.

There have been hundreds of perfect Sannyasins, because Sannyasa has been widely preached and numerously practised; let it be the same with the ideal freedom and we shall have hundreds of Janakas.

Sannyasa has a formal garb and outer tokens; therefore men think they can easily recognise it; but the freedom of a Janaka

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does not proclaim itself and it wears the garb of the world; to its presence even Narada was blinded.

Hard is it to be in the world, free, yet living the life of ordinary men; but because it is hard, therefore it must be attempted and accomplished.

When he watched the actions of Janaka, even Narada the divine sage thought him a luxurious worldling and libertine. Unless thou canst see the soul, how shalt thou say that a man is free or bound?

All things seem hard to man that are above his attained level and they are hard to his unaided effort; but they become at once easy and simple when God in man takes up the contract.

To see the composition of the sun or the lines of Mars is doubtless a great achievement; but when thou hast the instrument that can show thee a man's soul as thou seest a picture, then thou wilt smile at the wonders of physical Science as the playthings of babies.

Knowledge is a child with its achievements; for when it has found out something, it runs about the streets whooping and shouting; Wisdom conceals hers for a long time in a thoughtful and mighty silence.

Science talks and behaves as if it had conquered all knowledge. Wisdom, as she walks, hears her solitary tread echoing on the margin of immeasurable Oceans.

Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God's play in His creature.

Selfishness is the only sin, meanness the only vice, hatred the only criminality. All else can easily be turned into good, but these are obstinate resisters of deity.

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The world is a long recurring decimal with Brahman for its integer. The period seems to begin and end, but the fraction is eternal; it will never have an end and never had any real beginning.

The beginning and end of things is a conventional term of our experience; in their true existence these terms have no reality, there is no end and no beginning.

"Neither is it that I was not before nor thou nor these kings nor that all we shall not be hereafter." Not only Brahman, but beings and things in Brahman are eternal; their creation and destruction is a play of hide and seek with our outward consciousness.

The love of solitude is a sign of the disposition towards knowledge; but knowledge itself is only achieved when we have a settled perception of solitude in the crowd, in the battle and in the mart.

If when thou art doing great actions and moving giant results, thou canst perceive that THOU art doing nothing, then know that God has removed His seal on thy eyelids.

If when thou sittest alone, still and voiceless on the mountain-top, thou canst perceive the revolutions thou art conducting, then hast thou the divine vision and art freed from appearances.

The love of inaction is folly and the scorn of inaction is folly; there is no inaction. The stone lying inert upon the sands which is kicked away in an idle moment, has been producing its effect upon the hemispheres.

If thou wouldst not be the fool of Opinion, first see wherein thy thought is true, then study wherein its opposite and contradiction is true; last, discover the cause of these differences and the key of God's harmony.

An opinion is neither true nor false, but only serviceable for life

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or unserviceable; for it is a creation of Time and with time it loses its effect and value. Rise thou above opinion and seek wisdom everlasting.

Use opinion for life; but let her not bind thy soul in her fetters.

Every law, however embracing or tyrannous, meets somewhere a contrary law by which its operation can be checked, modified, annulled or eluded.

The most binding Law of Nature is only a fixed process which the Lord of Nature has framed and uses constantly; the Spirit made it and the Spirit can exceed it, but we must first open the doors of our prison-house and learn to live less in Nature than in the Spirit.

Law is a process or a formula; but the soul is the user of processes and exceeds formulas.

Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what Nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body? This first we ought to determine.

O son of Immortality, live not thou according to Nature, but according to God; and compel her also to live according to the deity within thee.

Fate is God's foreknowledge outside Space and Time of all that in Space and Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen, Power and Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.

Because God has willed and foreseen everything, thou shouldst not therefore sit inactive and wait upon His providence, for thy action is one of His chief effective forces. Up then and be doing, not with egoism, but as the circumstance-instrument and apparent cause of the event that He has predetermined.

When I knew nothing, then I abhorred the criminal, sinful and

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impure, being myself full of crime, sin and impurity; but when I was cleansed and my eyes unsealed, then I bowed down in my spirit before the thief and the murderer and adored the feet of the harlot; for I saw that these souls had accepted the terrible burden of evil and drained for all of us the greater portion of the churned poison of the world-ocean.

The Titans are stronger than the gods because they have agreed with God to front and bear the burden of His wrath and enmity; the gods were able to accept only the pleasant burden of His love and kindlier rapture.

When thou art able to see how necessary is suffering to final delight, failure to utter effectiveness and retardation to the last rapidity, then thou mayst begin to understand something, however faintly and dimly, of God's workings.

All disease is a means towards some new joy of health, all evil and pain a tuning of Nature for some more intense bliss and good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is God's secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.

Why is thy mind or thy body in pain? Because thy soul behind the veil wishes for the pain or takes delight in it; but if thou wilt—and perseverest in thy will—thou canst impose the spirit's law of unmixed delight on thy lower members.

There is no iron or ineffugable law that a given contact shall create pain or pleasure; it is the way thy soul meets the rush or pressure of Brahman upon the members from outside them that determines either reaction.

The force of soul in thee meeting the same force from outside cannot harmonise the measures of the contact in values of mind-experience and body-experience; therefore thou hast pain, grief or uneasiness. If thou canst learn to adjust the replies of the force in thyself to the questions of world-force, thou shalt find pain becoming pleasurable or turning into pure delightfulness.

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Right relation is the condition of blissfulness, ṛtam the key of, Ananda.

Who is the superman? He who can rise above this matter-regarding broken mental human unit and possess himself universalised and deified in a divine force, a divine love and joy and a divine knowledge.

If thou keepest this limited human ego and thinkest thyself the superman, thou art but the fool of thy own pride, the plaything of thy own force and the instrument of thy own illusions.

Nietzsche saw the superman as the lion-soul passing out of camelhood, but the true heraldic device and token of the superman is the lion seated upon the camel which stands upon the cow of plenty. If thou canst not be the slave of all mankind, thou art not fit to be its master, and if thou canst not make thy nature as Vasishtha's cow of plenty with all mankind to draw its wish from her udders, what avails thy leonine supermanhood?

Be to the world as the lion in fearlessness and lordship, as the camel in patience and service, as the cow in quiet, forbearing and maternal beneficence. Raven on all the joys of God as a lion over its prey, but bring also all humanity into that infinite field of luxurious ecstasy to wallow there and to pasture.

Art

If Art's service is but to imitate Nature, then burn all the picture galleries and let us have instead photographic studios. It is because Art reveals what Nature hides that a small picture is worth more than all the jewels of the millionaires and the treasures of the princes.

If you only imitate visible Nature, you will perpetrate either a corpse, a dead sketch or a monstrosity; Truth lives in that which goes behind and beyond the visible and sensible.

O Poet, O Artist, if thou but holdest up the mirror to Nature, thinkest thou Nature will rejoice in thy work? Rather she will

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turn away her face. For what dost thou hold up to her there? Herself? No, but a lifeless outline and reflection, a shadowy mimicry. It is the secret soul of Nature thou hast to seize, thou hast to hunt eternally after the truth in the eternal symbol, and that no mirror will hold for thee, nor for her whom thou seekest.

I find in Shakespeare a far greater and more consistent universalist than the Greeks. All his creations are universal types from Lancelot Gobbo and his dog up to Lear and Hamlet.

The Greeks sought universality by omitting all finer individual touches; Shakespeare sought it more successfully by universalising the rarest individual details of character. That which Nature uses for concealing from us the Infinite, Shakespeare used for revealing the Anantaguna in man to the eye of humanity.

Shakespeare who invented the figure of holding up the mirror to Nature, was the one poet who never condescended to a copy, a photograph or a shadow. The reader who sees in Falstaff, Macbeth, Lear or Hamlet imitations of Nature, has either no inner eye of the soul or has been hypnotised by a formula.

Where in material Nature wilt thou find Falstaff, Macbeth or Lear? Shadows and hints of them she possesses, but they themselves tower above her.

There are two for whom there is hope, the man who has felt God's touch and been drawn to it and the sceptical seeker and self-convinced atheist; but for the formularists of all the religions aI1d the parrots of free thought, they are dead souls who follow a death that they call living.

A man came to a scientist and wished to be instructed; this instructor showed him the revelations of the microscope and telescope, but the man laughed and said, "These are obviously hallucinations inflicted on the eye by the glass which you use as a medium; I will not believe till you show these wonders to my naked seeing." Then the scientist proved to him by many collateral facts and experiments the reliability of his knowledge but the

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man laughed again and said, "What you term proofs, I term coincidences, the number of coincidences does not constitute proof; as for your experiments, they are obviously effected under abnormal conditions and constitute a sort of insanity of Nature." When confronted with the results of mathematics, he was angry and cried out, "This is obviously imposture, gibberish and superstition; will you try to make me believe that these absurd cabalistic figures have any real force and meaning?" Then the scientist drove him out as a hopeless imbecile; for he did not recognise his own system of denials and his own method of negative reasoning. If we wish to refuse an impartial and open-minded enquiry, we can always find the most respectable polysyllables to cover our refusal or impose tests and conditions which stultify the inquiry.

When our minds are involved in matter, they think matter the only reality; when we draw back into immaterial consciousness, then we see matter a mask and feel existence in consciousness alone having the touch of reality. Which then of these two is the truth? Nay, God knoweth; but he who has had both experiences, can easily tell which condition is the more fertile in knowledge, the mightier and more blissful.

I believe immaterial consciousness to be truer than material consciousness. Because I know in the first what in the second is hidden from me and also can command what the mind knows in matter.

Hell and Heaven exist only in the soul's consciousness. Ay, but so does the earth and its lands and seas and fields and deserts and mountains and rivers. All world is nothing but arrangement of the Soul's seeing.

There is only one soul and one existence; therefore we all see one objectivity only; but there are many knots of mind and ego in the one soul-existence, therefore we all see the one Object in different lights and shadows.

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***

The Idealist errs; it is not Mind which created the worlds but that which created mind has created them. Mind only mis-sees, because it sees partially and by details what is created.

Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.

What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality. And what was Vivekananda? A radiant glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze from which he came and Shiva himself and Brahma and Vishnu and OM all-exceeding.

He who recognises not Krishna, the God in man, knows not God entirely; he who knows Krishna only, knows not even Krishna. Yet is the opposite truth also wholly true that if thou canst see all God in a little pale, unsightly and scentless flower, then hast thou hold of His supreme reality.

Shun the barren snares of an empty metaphysics and the dry dust of unfertile intellectuality. Only that knowledge is worth having which can be made use of for a living delight and put out into temperament, action, creation and being.

Become and live the knowledge thou hast; then is thy knowledge the living God within thee.

Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.

The power to observe law rigidly is the basis of freedom; therefore in most disciplines the soul has to endure and fulfil the law in its lower members before it can rise to the perfect freedom of its

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divine being. Those disciplines which begin with freedom are only for the mighty ones who are naturally free or in former lives have founded their freedom.

Those who are deficient in the free, full and intelligent observation of a self-imposed law, must be placed in subjection to the will of others. This is one principal cause of the subjection of nations. After their disturbing egoism has been trampled under the feet of a master, they are given or, if they have force in them, attain a fresh chance of deserving liberty by liberty.

To observe the law we have imposed on ourselves rather than the law of others is what is meant by liberty in our unregenerate condition. Only in God and by the supremacy of the spirit can we enjoy a perfect freedom.

The double law of sin and virtue is imposed on us because we have not that ideal life and knowledge within which guides the soul spontaneously and infallibly to its self-fulfilment. The law of sin and virtue ceases for us when the sun of God shines upon the soul in truth and love with its unveiled splendour. Moses is replaced by Christ, the Shastra by the Veda.

God within is leading us always aright even when we are in the bonds of the ignorance; but then, though the goal is sure, it is attained by circlings and deviations.

The Cross is in Yoga the symbol of the soul and nature in their strong and perfect union, but because of our fall into the impurities of ignorance it has become the symbol of suffering and purification.

Christ came into the world to purify, not to fulfil. He himself foreknew the failure of his mission and the necessity of his return with the sword of God into a world that had rejected him.

Mahomed's mission was necessary, else we might have ended by thinking, in the exaggeration of our efforts at self-purification,

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that earth was meant only for the monk and the city created as a vestibule for the desert.

When all is said, Love and Force together can save the world eventually, but not Love only or Force only. Therefore Christ had to look forward to a second advent and Mahomed's religion, where it is not stagnant, looks forward through the Imams to a Mehdi.

Law cannot save the world, therefore Moses' ordinances are dead for humanity and the Shastra of the Brahmin is corrupt and dying. Law released into freedom is the liberator. Not the Pandit, but the Yogin, not monasticism, but the inner renunciation of desire and ignorance and egoism.

Even Vivekananda once in the stress of emotion admitted the fallacy that a personal God would be too immoral to be suffered and it would be the duty of all good men to resist Him. But if an omnipotent supra-moral Will and Intelligence governs the world, it is surely impossible to resist Him; our resistance would only serve His ends and really be dictated by Him. Is it not better then, instead of condemning or denying, to study and understand Him?

If we would understand God, we must renounce our egoistic and ignorant human standards or else ennoble and universalise them.

Because a good man dies or fails and the evil live and triumph, is God therefore evil? I do not see the logic of the consequence. I must first be convinced that death and failure are evil; I sometimes think that when they come, they are our supreme momentary good. But we are the fools of our hearts and nerves and argue that what they do not like or desire, must of course be an evil!

When I look back on my past life, I see that if I had not failed and suffered, I would have lost my life's supreme blessings; yet

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at the time of the suffering and failure, I was vexed with the sense of calamity. Because we cannot see anything but the one fact under our noses, therefore we indulge in all these snifflings and clamours. Be silent, ye foolish hearts! Slay the ego, learn to see and feel vastly and universally.

The perfect cosmic vision and cosmic sentiment is the cure of all error and suffering; but most men succeed only in enlarging the range of their ego.

Men say and think "For my country!", "For humanity!", "For the world!", but they really mean "For myself seen in my country!", "For myself seen in humanity!", "For myself imaged to my fancy as the world!". That may be an enlargement, but it is not liberation. To be at large and to be in a large prison are not one condition of freedom.

Live for God in thy neighbour, God in thyself, God in thy country and the country of thy foeman, God in humanity, God in tree and stone and animal, God in the world and outside the world, then art thou on the straight path to liberation.

There are lesser and larger eternities; for eternity is a term of the soul and can exist in Time as well as exceeding it. When the Scriptures say "śāśvatiḥ samāḥ", they mean for a long space and permanence of time or a hardly measurable aeon; only God Absolute has the absolute eternity. Yet when one goes within, one sees that all things are really eternal; there is no end, neither was there ever a beginning.

When thou callest another a fool, as thou must sometimes, yet do not forget that thou thyself hast been the supreme fool in humanity.

God loves to play the fool in season; man does it in season and out of season. It is the only difference.

In the Buddhists' view to have saved an ant from drowning is

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greater work than to have founded an empire. There is a truth in the idea, but a truth that can easily be exaggerated.

To exalt one virtue,—compassion even,—unduly above all others is to cover up with one's hand the eyes of wisdom. God moves always towards a harmony.

Pity may be reserved, so long as thy soul makes distinctions, for the suffering animals; but humanity deserves from thee something nobler, it asks for love, for understanding, for comradeship, for the help of the equal and brother.

The contributions of evil to the good of the world and the harm sometimes done by the virtuous are distressing to the soul enamoured of good. Nevertheless be not distressed nor confounded, but study rather and calmly understand God's ways with humanity.

In God's providence there is no evil, but only good or its preparation.

Virtue and vice were made for thy soul's struggle and progress; but for results they belong to God, who fulfils himself beyond vice and virtue.

Live within; be not shaken by outward happenings.

Fling not thy alms abroad everywhere in an ostentation of charity; understand and love where thou helpest. Let thy soul grow within thee.

Help the poor while the poor are with thee; but study also and strive that there may be no poor for thy assistance.

The old Indian social ideal demanded of the priest voluntary simplicity of life, purity, learning and the gratuitous instruction of the community, of the prince, war, government, protection of the weak and the giving up of his life in the battlefield, of the

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merchant, trade, gain and the return of his gains to the community by free giving, of the serf, labour for the rest and material havings. In atonement for his serfhood, it spared him the tax of self-denial, the tax of blood and the tax of his riches.

The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening of the conscience of a robber.

Valmikie, our ancient epic poet, includes among the signs of a just and enlightened state of society not only universal education, morality and spirituality but this also that there shall be none who is compelled to eat coarse food, none uncrowned and un-anointed, or who lives a mean and petty slave of luxuries.

The acceptance of poverty is noble and beneficial in a class or an individual, but it becomes fatal and pauperises life of its richness and expansion if it is perversely organised into a general or national ideal.

Poverty is no more a necessity of social life than disease of the natural body; false habits of life and an ignorance of our true organisation are in both cases the peccant causes of an avoidable disorder.

Athens, not Sparta, is the progressive type for mankind. Ancient India with its ideal of vast riches and vast spending was the greatest of nations. Modern India with its trend towards national asceticism has fully become poor in life and sunk into weakness and degradation.

Do not dream that when thou hast got rid of material poverty, men will ever so be happy or satisfied or society freed from ills, troubles and problems. This is only the first and lowest necessity. While the soul within remains defectively organised there will always be outward unrest, disorder and revolution.

Disease will always return to the body if the soul is flawed; for

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the sins of the mind are the secret cause of the sins of the body. So too poverty and trouble will always return on man in society, so long as the mind of the race is subjected to egoism.

Religion and philosophy are best to rescue man from his ego; then the kingdom of heaven within will be spontaneously reflected in an external divine city.

Mediaeval Christianity said to the race, "Man, thou art in thy earthly life an evil thing and a worm before God; renounce then egoism, live for the future state and submit thyself to God and His priest." The results were not over-good for humanity. Modern knowledge says to the race, "Man, thou art an ephemeral animal and no more to Nature than the ant and the earthworm, a transitory speck only in the universe. Live then for the State and submit thyself antlike to the trained administrator and the scientific expert." Will this gospel succeed any better than the other?

Vedanta says rather, "Man, thou art of one nature and substance with God, one soul with thy fellow-men. Awake and progress then to thy utter divinity, live for God in thyself and in others." This gospel which was given only to the few, must now be offered to all mankind for its deliverance.

The human race always progresses most when most it asserts its importance to Nature, its freedom and its universality.

Animal man is the obscure starting-point, the present natural man, varied and tangled, the mid-road, but supernatural man the luminous and transcendent goal of our human journey.

Life and action culminate, are eternally crowned for thee when thou hast attained the power of symbolising and manifesting in every thought and act, in art, literature and life, in home and government and society, in wealth-getting, wealth-having or wealth-spending the One Immortal in His lower mortal being.

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Karma

God leads man while man is misleading himself; the higher nature watches over the stumblings of the lower mortality: this is the tangle and contradiction out of which we have to escape into a clear knowledge, the self-unity to which alone is possible a faultless action.

That thou shouldst have pity on creatures is well, but not well, if thou art a slave to thy pity. Be a slave to nothing except to God, not even to His most luminous angels.

Beatitude is God's aim for humanity; get this supreme good for thyself first that thou mayst distribute it entirely to thy fellow-beings.

He who acquires for himself alone, acquires ill though he may call it heaven and virtue.

In my ignorance I thought anger could be noble and vengeance grandiose; but now when I watch Achilles in his epic fury, I see a very fine baby in a very fine rage and I am pleased and amused.

Power is noble, when it overtops anger; destruction is grandiose, but it loses caste when it proceeds from vengeance. Leave these things, for they belong to a lower humanity.

Poets make much of death and external afflictions, but the only tragedies are the soul's failures and the only epic man's triumphant ascent towards godhead.

The tragedies of the heart and the body are the weeping of children over their little griefs and their broken toys. Smile within thyself, but comfort the children; join also, if thou canst, in their play.

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"There is always something abnormal and eccentric about men of genius." And why not? For genius itself is an abnormal birth and out of man's ordinary centre.

Genius is Nature's first attempt to liberate the imprisoned god out of her human mould; the mould has to suffer in the process. It is astonishing that the cracks are so few and unimportant.

Nature sometimes gets into a fury with her own resistance, then she damages the brain in order to free the inspiration; for in this effort the equilibrium of the average material brain is her chief opponent. Pass over the madness of such and profit by their inspiration.

Who can bear Kali rushing into the system in her fierce force and burning godhead? Only the man whom Krishna already possesses.

Hate not the oppressor, for, if he is strong, thy hate increases his force of resistance; if he is weak, thy hate was needless.

Hatred is a sword of power, but its edge is always double. It is like the Kriya of the ancient magicians which, if baulked of its prey, returned in fury to devour its sender.

Love God in thy opponent, even while thou strikest him; so shall neither have hell for his portion.

Men talk of enemies, but where are they? I only see wrestlers of one party or the other in the great arena of the universe.

The saint and the angel are not the only divinities; admire also the Titan and the Giant.

The old writings call the Titans the elder gods. So they still are, nor is any god entirely divine unless there is hidden in him also a Titan.

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If I cannot be Rama, then I would be Ravana; for he is the dark side of Vishnu.

Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice always, but for the sake of God and humanity, not for the sake of sacrifice.

Selfishness kills the soul; destroy it. But take care that your altruism does not kill the souls of others.

Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness.

He who will not slay when God bids him, works in the world an incalculable havoc.

Respect human life as long as you can; but respect more the life of humanity.

Men slay out of uncontrollable anger, hatred or vengeance; they shall suffer the rebound now or hereafter; or they slay to serve a selfish end, coldly; God shall not pardon them. If men slay, first let their soul have known death for a relief and seen God in the stricken, the stroke and the striker.

Courage and love are the only indispensable virtues; even if all the others are eclipsed or fall asleep, these two will save the soul alive.

Meanness and selfishness are the only sins that I find it difficult to pardon; yet they alone are almost universal. Therefore these also must not be hated in others, but in ourselves annihilated.

Nobleness and generosity are the soul's ethereal firmament; without them, one looks at an insect in a dungeon.

Let not thy virtues be such as men praise or reward, but such as make for thy perfection and God in thy nature demands of thee.

Altruism, duty, family, country, humanity are the prisons of the soul when they are not its instruments.

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Our country is God the Mother; speak not evil of her unless thou canst do it with love and tenderness.

Men are false to their country for their own profit; yet they go on thinking they have a right to turn in horror from the matricide.

Break the moulds of the past, but keep safe its genius and its spirit, or else thou hast no future.

Revolutions hew the past to pieces and cast it into a cauldron, but what has emerged is the old Aeson with a new visage.

The world has had only half a dozen successful revolutions and most even of these were very like failures; yet it is by great and noble failures that humanity advances.

***

Atheism is a necessary protest against the wickedness of the Churches and the narrowness of creeds. God uses it as a stone to smash these soiled card-houses.

How much hatred and stupidity men succeed in packing up decorously and labelling "Religion"!

God guides best when He tempts worst, loves entirely when He punishes cruelly, helps perfectly when violently He opposes.

If God did not take upon Himself the burden of tempting men, the world would very soon go to perdition.

Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.

If you leave it to God to purify, He will exhaust the evil in you subjectively; but if you insist on guiding yourself, you will fall into much outward sin and suffering.

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Call not everything evil which men call evil, but only that reject which God has rejected; call not everything good which men call good, but accept only what God has accepted.

Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God's will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.

Not to cull the praises of men has God made thee His own, but to do fearlessly His bidding.

Accept the world as God's theatre; be thou the mask of the Actor and let Him act through thee. If men praise or hiss thee, know that they too are masks; and take God within for thy only critic and audience.

If Krishna be alone on one side and the armed and organised world with its hosts and its shrapnel and its maxims on the other, yet prefer thy divine solitude. Care not if the world passes over thy body and its shrapnel tear thee to pieces and its cavalry trample thy limbs into shapeless mire by the wayside; for the mind was always a simulacrum and the body a carcass. The spirit liberated from its casings ranges and triumphs.

If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not for the fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning.

I have failed, thou sayest. Say rather that God is circling about towards His object.

Foiled by the world, thou turnest to seize upon God. If the world is stronger than thou, thinkest thou God is weaker? Turn to Him rather for His bidding and for strength to fulfil it.

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So long as a Cause has on its side one soul that is intangible in faith, it cannot perish.

Reason gives me no basis for this faith, thou murmurest. Fool! if it did, faith would not be needed or demanded of thee.

Faith in the heart is the obscure and often distorted reflection of a hidden knowledge.

The believer is often more plagued by doubt than the most inveterate sceptic. He persists because there is something subconscient in him which knows. That tolerates both his blind faith and twilit doubts and drives towards the revelation of that which it knows.

The world thinks that it moves by the light of reason, but it is really impelled by its faiths and instincts.

Reason adapts itself to the faith or argues out a justification of the instincts; but it receives the impulse subconsciously, therefore men think that they act rationally.

The only business of reason is to arrange and criticise the perceptions. It has neither in itself any means of positive conclusion nor any command to action. When it pretends to originate or impel, it is masking other agencies.

Until Wisdom comes to thee, use the reason for its God-given purposes and faith and instinct for theirs. Why shouldst thou set thy members to war upon each other?

Perceive always and act in the light of thy increasing perceptions but not those of the reasoning brain only. God speaks to the heart when the brain cannot understand him.

If thy heart tell thee, Thus and by such means and at such a time it will happen, believe it not. But if it gives thee the purity and wideness of God's command, hearken to it.

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When thou hast the command, care only to fulfil it. The rest is God's will and arrangement which men call chance and luck and fortune.

If thy aim be great and thy means small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee.

Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.

There are three forms in which the command may come, the will and faith in thy nature, thy ideal on which heart and brain are agreed and the voice of Himself or His angels.

There are times when action is unwise or impossible; then go into Tapasya in some physical solitude or in the retreats of thy soul and await whatever divine word or manifestation.

Leap not too quickly at all voices, for there are lying spirits ready to deceive thee, but let thy heart be pure and afterwards listen.

There are times when God seems to be sternly on the side of the past; then what has been and is, sits firm as on a throne and clothes itself with an irrevocable "I shall be." Then persevere, though thou seem to be fighting the Master of all; for this is His sharpest trial.

All is not settled when a cause is humanly lost and hopeless; all is settled, only when the soul renounces its effort.

He who would win high spiritual degrees, must pass endless tests and examinations. But most are anxious only to bribe the examiner.

Fight, while thy hands are free, with thy hands and thy voice and thy brain and all manner of weapons. Art thou chained in thy enemy's dungeons and have his gags silenced thee? Fight with

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thy silent all-besieging soul and thy wide-ranging will-power and when thou art dead, fight still with the world-encompassing force that went out from God within thee.

Thou thinkest the ascetic in his cave or on his mountain-top a stone and a do-nothing. What dost thou know? He may be filling the world with the mighty currents of his will and changing it by the pressure of his soul-state.

That which the liberated sees in his soul on its mountain-tops, heroes and prophets spring up in the material world to proclaim and accomplish.

The Theosophists are wrong in their circumstances but right in the essential. If the French Revolution took place, it was because a soul on the Indian snows dreamed of God as freedom, brother-hood and equality.

All speech and action comes prepared out of the eternal Silence.

There is no disturbance in the depths of the Ocean, but above there is the joyous thunder of its shouting and its racing shoreward; so is it with the liberated soul in the midst of violent action. The soul does not act; it only breathes out from itself over-whelming action.

O soldier and hero of God, where for thee is sorrow or shame or suffering? For thy life is a glory, thy deeds a consecration, victory thy apotheosis, defeat thy triumph.

Do thy lower members still suffer the shock of sin and sorrow? but above, seen of them or unseen, thy soul sits royal, calm, free and triumphant. Believe that the Mother will ere the end have done her work and made the very earth of thy being a joy and a purity.

If thy heart is troubled within thee, if for long seasons thou makest no progress, if thy strength faint and repine, remember

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always the eternal word of our Lover and Master, "I will free thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve."

Purity is in thy soul; but for actions, where is their purity or impurity?

O Death, our masked friend and maker of opportunities, when thou wouldst open the gate, hesitate not to tell us beforehand; for we are not of those who are shaken by its iron jarring.

Death is sometimes a rude valet, but when he changes this robe of earth for that brighter raiment, his horseplay and impertinences can be pardoned.

Who shall slay thee, O soul immortal? Who shall torture thee, O God ever-joyous?

Think this when thy members would fain. make love with depression and weakness, "I am Bacchus and Ares and Apollo; I am Agni pure and invincible; I am Surya ever burning mightily."

Shrink not from the Dionysian cry and rapture within thee, but see that thou be not a straw upon those billows.

Thou hast to learn to bear all the gods within thee and never stagger with their inrush or break under their burden.

Mankind have wearied of strength and joy and called sorrow and weakness virtue, wearied of knowledge and called ignorance holiness, wearied of love and called heartlessness enlightenment and wisdom.

There are many kinds of forbearance. I saw a coward hold out his cheek to the smiter. I saw a physical weakling struck by a strong and self-approving bully look quietly and intently at the aggressor; I saw God incarnate smile lovingly on those who stoned him. The first was ridiculous, the second terrible, the third divine and holy.

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It is noble to pardon thine own injurers, but not so noble to pardon wrongs done to others. Nevertheless pardon these too, but when needful, calmly avenge.

When Asiatics massacre, it is an atrocity; when Europeans, it is a military exigency. Appreciate the distinction and ponder over this world's virtues.

Watch the too indignantly righteous. Before long you will find them committing or condoning the very offence which they have so fiercely censured.

"There is very little real hypocrisy among men." True, but there is a great deal of diplomacy and still more self-deceit. The last is of three varieties, conscious, subconscious and half-conscious; but the third is the most dangerous.

Be not deceived by men's shows of virtue, neither disgusted by their open or secret vices. These things are the necessary shufflings in a long transition-period of humanity.

Be not repelled by the world's crookedness; the world is a wounded and venomous snake wriggling towards a destined off-sloughing and perfection. Wait, for it is a divine wager; and out of this baseness, God will emerge brilliant and triumphant.

Why dost thou recoil from a mask? Behind its odious, grotesque or terrible seemings Krishna laughs at thy foolish anger, thy more foolish scorn or loathing and thy most foolish terror.

When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly.

Avoid vain disputing; but exchange views freely. If dispute thou must, learn from thy adversary; for even from a fool, if thou listen not with the ear and the reasoning mind but the soul's light, thou canst gather much wisdom.

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Turn all things to honey; this is the law of divine living.

Private dispute should always be avoided; but shrink not from the public battle; yet even there appreciate the strength of thy adversary.

When thou hearest an opinion that displeases thee, study and find out the truth in it.

The mediaeval ascetics hated women and thought they were created by God for the temptation of monks. One may be allowed to think more nobly both of God and of woman.

If a woman has tempted thee, is it her fault or thine? Be not a fool and a self-deceiver.

There are two ways of avoiding the snare of woman, one is to shun all women and the other to love all beings.

Asceticism is no doubt very healing, a cave very peaceful and the hill-tops wonderfully pleasant; nevertheless do thou act in the world as God intended thee.

Three times God laughed at Shankara, first, when he returned to burn the corpse of his mother, again, when he commented on the Isha Upanishad, and the third time when he stormed about India preaching inaction.

Men labour only after success and if they are fortunate enough to fail, it is because the wisdom and force of Nature overbear their intellectual cleverness. God alone knows when and how to blunder wisely and fail effectively.

Distrust the man who has never failed and suffered; follow not his fortunes, fight not under his banner.

There are two who are unfit for greatness and freedom, the man who has never been a slave to another and the nation that has never been under the yoke of foreigners.

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Fix not the time and the way in which thy ideal shall be fulfilled. Work and leave time and way to God all-knowing.

Work as if the ideal had to be fulfilled swiftly and in thy life-time; persevere as if thou knewest it not to be unless purchased by a thousand years yet of labour. That which thou darest not expect till the fifth millennium, may bloom out with tomorrow's dawning and that which thou hopest and lustest after now, may have been fixed for thee in thy hundredth advent.

Each one of us has a million lives yet to fulfil upon earth. Why then this haste and clamour and impatience?

Stride swiftly, for the goal is far; rest not unduly, for thy Master is waiting for thee at the end of thy journey.

I am weary of the childish impatience which cries and blasphemes and denies the ideal because the Golden Mountains cannot be reached in our little day or in a few momentary centuries.

Fix thy soul without desire upon the end and insist on it by the divine force within thee; then shall the end itself create the means, nay, it shall become its own means. For the end is Brahman and already accomplished; see it always as Brahman, see it always in thy soul as already accomplished.

Plan not with the intellect, but let thy divine sight arrange thy plans for thee. When a means comes to thee as the thing to be done, make that thy aim; as for the end, it is, in the world, accomplishing itself and, in thy soul, already accomplished.

Men see events as unaccomplished, to be striven for and effected. This is false seeing. Events are not effected, they develop. The event is Brahman, already accomplished from of old, it is now manifesting.

***

As the light of a star reaches the earth hundreds of years after the star has ceased to exist, so the event already accomplished in

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Brahman at the beginning manifests itself now in our material experience.

Governments, societies, kings, police, judges, institutions, churches, laws, customs, armies are temporary necessities imposed on us for a few groups of centuries, because God has concealed His face from us. When it appears to us again in its truth and beauty, then in that light they will vanish.

The anarchic is the true divine state of man in the end as in the beginning; but in between it would lead us straight to the devil and his kingdom.

The communistic principle of society is intrinsically as superior to the individualistic as is brotherhood to jealousy and mutual slaughter; but all the practical schemes of Socialism invented in Europe are a yoke, a tyranny and a prison.

If communism ever re-establishes itself successfully upon earth, it must be on a foundation of soul's brotherhood and the death of egoism. A forced association and a mechanical comradeship would end in a world-wide fiasco.

Vedanta realised is the only practicable basis for a communistic society. It is the kingdom of the saints dreamed of by Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism.

"Freedom, equality, brotherhood", cried the French revolutionists, but in truth freedom only has been practised with a dose of equality; as for brotherhood, only a brotherhood of Cain was founded—and of Barabbas. Sometimes it calls itself a Trust or Combine and sometimes the Concert of Europe.

"Since liberty has failed," cries the advanced thought of Europe, "let us try liberty cum equality or, since the two are a little hard to pair, equality instead of liberty. For brotherhood, it is impossible; therefore we will replace it by industrial association." But this time also, I think, God will not be deceived.

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India had three fortresses of a communal life, the village community, the larger joint family and the order of the Sannyasins; all these are broken or breaking with the stride of egoistic conceptions of social life; but is not this after all only the breaking of these imperfect moulds on the way to a larger and diviner communism?

The individual cannot be perfect until he has surrendered all he now calls himself to the divine Being. So also, until mankind gives all it has to God, never shall there be a perfected society.

There is nothing small in God's eyes; let there be nothing small in thine. He bestows as much labour of divine energy on the formation of a shell as on the building of an empire. For thyself it is greater to be a good shoemaker than a luxurious and incompetent king.

Imperfect capacity and effect in the work that is meant for thee is better than an artificial competency and a borrowed perfection.

Not result is the purpose of action, but God's eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing.

God's world advances step by step fulfilling the lesser unit before it seriously attempts the larger. Affirm free nationality first, if thou wouldst ever bring the world to be one nation.

A nation is not made by common blood, a common tongue or a common religion; these are only important helps and powerful conveniences. But wherever communities of men not bound by family ties are united in one sentiment and aspiration to defend a common inheritance from their ancestors or assure a common future for their posterity, there a nation is already in existence.

Nationality is a stride of the progressive God passing beyond the stage of the family; therefore the attachment to clan and tribe must weaken or perish before a nation can be born.

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Family, nationality, humanity are Vishnu's three strides from an isolated to a collective unity. The first has been fulfilled, we yet strive for the perfection of the second, towards the third we are reaching out our hands and the pioneer work is already attempted.

With the present morality of the human race a sound and durable human unity is not yet possible; but there is no reason why a temporary approximation to it should not be the reward of strenuous aspiration and untiring effort. By constant approximations and by partial realisations and temporary successes Nature advances.

Imitation is sometimes a good training-ship; but it will never fly the flag of the admiral.

Rather hang thyself than belong to the horde of successful imitators.

Tangled is the way of works in the world. When Rama the Avatar murdered Vali, or Krishna, who was God Himself, assassinated, to liberate his nation, his tyrant uncle Kansa, who shall say whether they did good or did evil? But this we can feel that they acted divinely.

Reaction perfects and hastens progress by increasing and purifying the force within it. This is what the multitude of the weak cannot see who despair of their port when the ship is fleeing helplessly before the storm-wind, but it flees, hidden by the rain and the ocean furrow, towards God's intended haven.

Democracy was the protest of the human soul against the allied despotisms of autocrat, priest and noble; Socialism is the protest of the human soul against the despotism of a plutocratic democracy; Anarchism is likely to be the protest of the human soul against the tyranny of a bureaucratic Socialism. A turbulent and eager march from illusion to illusion and from failure to failure is the image of European progress.

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Democracy in Europe is the rule of the Cabinet minister, the corrupt deputy or the self-seeking capitalist masqued by the occasional sovereignty of a wavering populace. Socialism in Europe is likely to be the rule of the official and policeman masqued by the theoretic sovereignty of an abstract State. It is chimerical to enquire which is the better system; it would be difficult to decide which is the worse.

The gain of democracy is the security of the individual's life, liberty and goods from the caprices of the tyrant one or the selfish few; its evil is the decline of greatness in humanity.

This erring race of human beings dreams always of perfecting their environment by the machinery of government and society; but it is only by the perfection of the soul within that the outer environment can be perfected. What thou art within, that outside thee thou shalt enjoy; no machinery can rescue thee from the law of thy being.

Be always vigilant against thy human proneness to persecute or ignore the reality while thou art worshipping its semblance or token. Not human wickedness but human fallibility is the opportunity of Evil.

Honour the garb of the ascetic, but look also at the wearer, lest hypocrisy occupy the holy places and inward saintliness become a legend.

So many strive after competence or riches, the few embrace poverty as a bride; but, for thyself, strive after and embrace God only. Let Him choose for thee a king's palace or the bowl of the beggar.

What is vice but an enslaving habit and virtue but a human opinion? See God and do His will, walk in whatever path He shall trace for thy goings.

In the world's conflicts espouse not the party of the rich for their

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riches, nor of the poor for their poverty, of the king for his power and majesty nor of the people for their hope and fervour, but be on God's side always. Unless indeed He has commanded thee to war against Him! then do that with thy whole heart and strength and rapture.

How shall I know God's will with me? I have to put egoism out of me, hunting it from every lair and burrow and bathe my purified and naked soul in His infinite workings; then He himself will reveal it to me.

Only the soul that is naked and unashamed can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity.

Boast not thy riches, neither seek men's praise for thy poverty and self-denial; both these things are the coarse or the fine food of egoism.

Altruism is good for man, but less good when it is a form of supreme self-indulgence and lives by pampering the selfishness of others.

By altruism thou canst save thy soul, but see that thou save it not by indulging in the perdition of thy brother.

Self-denial is a mighty instrument for purification; it is not an end in itself nor a final law of living. Not to mortify thyself but to satisfy God in the world must be thy object.

It is easy to distinguish the evil worked by sin and vice, but the trained eye sees also the evil done by self-righteous or self-regarding virtue.

The Brahmin first ruled by the book and the ritual, the Kshatriya next by the sword and the buckler; now the Vaishya governs by machinery and the dollar, and the Sudra, the liberated serf, presses in with his doctrine of the kingdom of associated labour. But neither priest, king, merchant nor labourer is the true governor

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of humanity; the despotism of the tool and the mattock will fail like all the preceding despotisms. Only when egoism dies and God in man governs his own human universality, can this earth support a happy and contented race of beings.

Men run after pleasure and clasp feverishly that burning bride to their tormented bosoms; meanwhile a divine and faultless bliss stands behind them waiting to be seen and claimed and captured.

Men hunt after petty successes and trivial masteries from which they fall back into exhaustion and weakness; meanwhile all the infinite force of God in the universe waits vainly to place itself at their disposal.

Men burrow after little details of knowledge and group them into bounded and ephemeral thought-systems; meanwhile all infinite wisdom laughs above their heads and shakes wide the glory of her iridescent pinions.

Men seek laboriously to satisfy and complement the bounded little being made of the mental impressions they have grouped about a mean and grovelling ego; meanwhile the spaceless and timeless Soul is denied its joyous and splendid manifestation.

O Soul of India, hide thyself no longer with the darkened Pandits of the Kaliyuga in the kitchen and the chapel, veil not thyself with the soulless rite, the obsolete law and the unblessed money of the Dakshina, but seek in thy soul, ask of God and recover thy true Brahminhood and Kshatriyahood with the eternal Veda; restore the hidden truth of the Vedic sacrifice, return to the fulfilment of an older and mightier Vedanta.

Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.

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This is not according to my Shastra or my Science, say the men of rule, the formalists. Fool! is God then only a book that there should be nothing true and good except what is written?

By which standard shall I walk, the word that God speaks to me, saying, "This is My will, O my servant", or the rules that men who are dead, have written? Nay, if I have to fear and obey any, I will fear and obey God rather and not the pages of a book or the frown of a Pandit.

Thou mayst be deceived, wilt thou say, it may not be God's voice leading thee? Yet do I know that He abandons not those who have trusted Him even ignorantly, yet have I found that He leads wisely even when He seems to deceive utterly, yet would I rather fall into the snare of the living God than be saved by trust in a dead formulary.

Act according to the Shastra rather than thy self-will and desire, so shalt thou grow stronger to control the ravener in thee; but act according to God rather than the Shastra, so shalt thou reach to His highest which is far above rule and limit.

The Law is for the bound and those whose eyes are sealed; if they walk not by it, they will stumble; but thou who art free in Krishna or hast seen his living light, walk holding the hand of thy Friend and by the lamp of eternal Veda.

The Vedanta is God's lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in the eternal sunlight.

What is the use of only knowing? I say to thee, Act and be, for therefore God sent thee into this human body.

What is the use of only being? I say to thee, Become, for therefore wast thou established as a man in this world of matter.

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The path of works is in a way the most difficult side of God's triune causeway; yet is it not also, in this material world at least, the easiest, widest and most delightful? For at every moment we clash against God the worker and grow into His being by a thousand divine touches.

This is the wonder of the way of works that even enmity to God can be made an agency of salvation. Sometimes God draws and attaches us most swiftly to Him by wrestling with us as our fierce, invincible and irreconcilable enemy.

Shall I accept death or shall I turn and wrestle with him and conquer? That shall be as God in me chooses. For whether I live or die, I am always.

What is this then thou callest death? Can God die? O thou who fearest death, it is Life that has come to thee sporting with a death-head and wearing a mask of terror.

There is a means to attain physical immortality and death is by our choice, not by Nature's compulsion. But who would care to wear one coat for a hundred years or be confined in one narrow and changeless lodging unto a long eternity?

Fear and anxiety are perverse forms of will. What thou fearest and ponderest over, striking that note repeatedly in thy mind, thou helpest to bring about; for, if thy will above the surface of waking repels it, it is yet what thy mind underneath is all along willing, and the subconscious mind is mightier, wider, better equipped to fulfil than thy waking force and intellect. But the spirit is stronger than both together; from fear and hope take refuge in the grandiose calm and careless mastery of the spirit.

God made the infinite world by Self-knowledge which in its works is Will-Force self-fulfilling. He used ignorance to limit His infinity; but fear, weariness, depression, self-distrust and consent to weakness are the instruments by which He destroys what He created. When these things are turned on what is evil or harmful and ill-regulated within thee, then it is well; but if they attack

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thy very sources of life and strength, then seize and expel them or thou diest.

Mankind has used two powerful weapons to destroy its own powers and enjoyment, wrong indulgence and wrong abstinence.

Our mistake has been and is always to flee from the ills of Paganism to asceticism as a remedy and from the ills of asceticism back to Paganism. We swing for ever between two false opposites.

It is well not to be too loosely playful in one's games or too grimly serious in one's life and works. We seek in both a playful freedom and a serious order.

For nearly forty years I suffered constantly from the smaller and the greater ailments, behind the wholly good I was weakly in constitution and mistook their cure for a burden that Nature had laid upon me. When I renounced the aid of medicines, then they began to depart from me like disappointed parasites. Then only I understood what a mighty force was the natural health within me and how much mightier yet the Will and Faith exceeding mind which God meant to be the divine support of our life in the body.

Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our incurable barbarism. If we must encase ourselves in a bewildering multitude of comforts and trappings, we must needs do without Art and its methods; for to dispense with simplicity and freedom is to dispense with beauty. The luxury of our ancestors was rich and even gorgeous, but never encumbered.

I cannot give to the barbarous comfort and encumbered ostentation of European life the name of civilisation. Men who are not free in their souls and nobly rhythmical in their appointments are not civilised.

Art in modern times and under European influence has become an excrescence upon life or an unnecessary menial; it should

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have been its chief steward and indispensable arranger.

Disease and Medical Science

Disease is needlessly prolonged and ends in death oftener than is inevitable, because the mind of the patient supports and dwells upon the disease of his body.

Medical Science has been more a curse to mankind than a blessing. It has broken the force of epidemics and unveiled a marvellous surgery, but, also, it has weakened the natural health of man and multiplied individual diseases; it has implanted fear and dependence in the mind and body; it has taught our health to repose not on natural soundness but a rickety and distasteful crutch compact from the mineral and vegetable kingdoms.

The doctor aims a drug at a disease; sometimes it hits, sometimes misses. The misses are left out of account, the hits treasured up, reckoned and systematised into a science.

We laugh at the savage for his faith in the medicine-man; but how are the civilised less superstitious who have faith in the doctors? The savage finds that when a certain incantation is repeated, he often recovers from a certain disease; he believes. The civilised patient finds that when he doses himself according to a certain prescription, he often recovers from a certain disease; he believes. Where is the difference?

The north-country Indian herdsman, attacked by fever, sits in the chill stream of a river for an hour or more and rises up free and healthy. If the educated man did the same, he would perish, not because the same remedy in its nature kills one and cures another, but because our bodies have been fatally indoctrinated by the mind into false habits.

It is not the medicine that cures so much as the patient's faith in the doctor and the medicine. Both are a clumsy substitute for the natural faith in one's own self-power which they have themselves destroyed.

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The healthiest ages of mankind were those in which there were the fewest material remedies.

The most robust and healthy race left on earth were the African savages; but how long can they so remain after their physical consciousness has been contaminated by the mental aberrations of the civilised?

We ought to use the divine health in us to cure and prevent diseases; but Galen and Hippocrates and their tribe have given us instead an armoury of drugs and a barbarous Latin hocuspocus as our physical gospel.

Medical Science is well-meaning and its practitioners often benevolent and not seldom self-sacrificing; but when did the well-meaning of the ignorant save them from harm-doing?

If all remedies were really and in themselves efficacious and all medical theories sound, how would that console us for our lost natural health and vitality? The upas-tree is sound in all its parts, but it is still an upas-tree.

The spirit within us is the only all-efficient doctor and submission of the body to it the one true panacea.

God within is infinite and self-fulfilling Will. Unaffected by the fear of death canst thou leave to Him, not as an experiment, but with a calm and entire faith thy ailments? Thou shalt find that in the end He exceeds the skill of a million doctors.

Health protected by twenty-thousand precautions is the gospel of the doctor; but it is not God's evangel for the body, nor Nature's.

Man was once naturally healthy and could revert to that primal condition if he were suffered; but Medical Science pursues our body with an innumerable pack of drugs and assails the imagination with ravening hordes of microbes.

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I would rather die and have done with it than spend life in defending myself against a phantasmal siege of microbes. If that is to be barbarous, unenlightened, I embrace gladly my Cimmerian darkness.

Surgeons save and cure by cutting and maiming. Why not rather seek to discover Nature's direct all-powerful remedies?

It should take long for self-cure to replace medicine, because of the fear, self-distrust and unnatural physical reliance on drugs which Medical Science has taught to our minds and bodies and made our second nature.

Medicine is necessary for our bodies in disease only because our bodies have learned the art of not getting well without medicines. Even so, one sees often that the moment Nature chooses for recovery is that in which the life is abandoned as hopeless by the doctors.

Distrust of the curative power within us was our physical fall from Paradise. Medical Science and a bad heredity are the two angels of God who stand at the gates to forbid our return and re-entry.

Medical Science to the human body is like a great Power which enfeebles a smaller State by its protection or like a benevolent robber who knocks his victim flat and riddles him with wounds in order that he may devote his life to healing and serving the shattered body.

Drugs cure the body when they do not merely trouble or poison it, but only if their physical attack on the disease is supported by the force of the spirit; if that force can be made to work freely, drugs are superfluous.

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Bhakti

I am not a Bhakta, for I have not renounced the world for God. How can I renounce what He took from me by force and gave back to me against my will? These things are too hard for me.

I am not a Bhakta, I am not a Jnani, I am not a worker for the Lord. What am I then? A tool in the hands of my Master, a flute blown upon by the divine Herd-Boy, a leaf driven by the breath of the Lord.

Devotion is not utterly fulfilled till it becomes action and knowledge.

If thou pursuest God and canst overtake Him, let Him not go till thou hast His reality. If thou hast hold of His reality, insist on having also His totality. The first will give thee divine knowledge, the second will give thee divine works and a free and perfect joy in the universe.

Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God, it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him.

After I knew that God was a woman, I learned something from far-off about love; but it was only when I became a woman and served my Master and Paramour that I knew love utterly.

To commit adultery with God is the perfect experience for which the world was created.

To fear God really is to remove oneself to a distance from Him, but to fear Him in play gives an edge to utter delightfulness.

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The Jew invented the God-fearing man; India the God-knower and God-lover.

The servant of God was born in Judaea, but he came to maturity among the Arabs. India's joy is in the servant-lover.

Perfect love casts out fear; but still keep thou some tender shadow and memory of the exile and it will make the perfection more perfect.

Thy soul has not tasted God's entire delight, if it has never had the joy of being His enemy, opposing His designs and engaging with Him in mortal combat.

If you cannot make God love you, make Him fight you. If He will not give you the embrace of the lover, compel Him to give you the embrace of the wrestler.

My soul is the captive of God, taken by Him in battle; it still remembers the war, though so far from it, with delight and alarm and wonder.

Most of all things on earth I hated pain till God hurt and tortured me, then it was revealed to me that pain is only a perverse and recalcitrant shape of excessive delight.

There are four stages in the pain God gives to us: when it is only pain; when it is pain that causes pleasure; when it is pain that is pleasure, and when it is purely a fierce form of delight.

Even when one has climbed up into those levels of bliss where pain vanishes, it still survives disguised as intolerable ecstasy.

When I was mounting upon ever higher crests of His joy, I asked myself whether there was no limit to the increase of bliss and almost I grew afraid of God's embraces.

The next greatest rapture to the love of God, is the love of God in men; there, too, one has the joy of multiplicity.

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For monogamy may be the best for the body, but the soul that loves God in men dwells here always as the boundless and ecstatic polygamist; yet all the time—that is the secret—it is in love with only one being.

The whole world is my seraglio and every living being and inanimate existence in it is the instrument of my rapture.

I did not know for sometime whether I loved Krishna best or Kali; when I loved Kali, it was loving myself, but when I loved Krishna, I loved another and still it was myself with whom I was in love. Therefore I came to love Krishna better even than Kali.

What is the use of admiring Nature or worshipping her as a Power, a Presence and a goddess? What is the use either of appreciating her aesthetically or artistically? The secret is to enjoy her with the soul as one enjoys a woman with the body.

When one has the vision in the heart, everything, Nature and Thought and Action, ideas and occupations and tastes and objects become the Beloved and are a source of ecstasy.

The philosophers who reject the world as Maya, are very wise and austere and holy, but I cannot help thinking sometimes that they are also just a little stupid and allow God to cheat them too easily.

For my part, I think I have a right to insist on God giving Himself away in the world as well as out of it. Why did He make it at all, if He wanted to escape that obligation?

The Mayavadin talks of my Personal God as a dream and prefers to dream of Impersonal Being; the Buddhist puts that aside too as a fiction and prefers to dream of Nirvana and the bliss of nothingness. Thus all the dreamers are busy reviling each other's visions and parading their own as the panacea. What the soul utterly rejoices in, is for thought the ultimate reality.

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Beyond Personality the Mayavadin sees indefinable Existence; I followed him there and found my Krishna beyond in indefinable Personality.

When I first met Krishna, I loved Him as a friend and playmate till he deceived me; then I was indignant and could not forgive Him. Afterwards I loved Him as a lover and He still deceived me; I was again and much more indignant, but this time I had to pardon.

After offending, He forced me to pardon Him not by reparation, but by committing fresh offences.

So long as God tried to repair His offences against me, we went on periodically quarrelling; but when He found out His mistake, the quarrelling stopped, for I had to submit to Him entirely.

When I saw others than Krishna and myself in the world, I kept secret God's doings with me; but since I began to see Him and myself everywhere, I have become shameless and garrulous.

All that my Lover has, belongs to me. Why do you abuse me for showing off the ornaments He has given to me?

My Lover took His crown and royal necklace from His head and neck and clothed me with them; but the disciples of the saints and the prophets abused me and said, "He is hunting after Siddhis."

I did my Lover's command in the world and the will of my Captor; but they cried, "Who is this corruptor of youth, this destroyer of morals?"

If I cared even for your praise, O ye saints, if I cherished my reputation, O ye prophets, my Lover would never have taken me into His bosom and given me the freedom of His secret chambers.

I was intoxicated with the rapture of my Lover and I threw the

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robe of the world from me even in the world's highways. Why should I care that the worldlings mock and the Pharisees turn their faces?

To thy lover, O Lord, the railing of the world is wild honey and the pelting of stones by the mob is summer rain on the body. For is it not Thou that railest and peltest, and is it not Thou in the stones that strikest and hurtest me?

There are two things in God which men call evil, that which they cannot understand at all and that which they misunderstand and, possessing, misuse: it is only what they grope after half vainly and dimly understand that they call good and holy. But to me all things in Him are lovable.

They say, O my God, that I am mad because I see no fault in Thee; but if I am indeed mad with Thy love, I do not wish to recover my sanity.

"Errors, falsehoods, stumblings!" they cry. How bright and beautiful are Thy errors, O Lord ! Thy falsehoods save Truth alive; by Thy stumblings the world is perfected.

Life, Life, Life, I hear the passions cry; God, God, God, is the soul's answer. Unless thou seest and lovest Life as God only, then is Life itself a sealed joy to thee.

"He loves her," the senses say; but the soul says, "God, God, God." That is the all-embracing formula of existence.

If thou canst not love the vilest worm and the foulest of criminals, how canst thou believe that thou hast accepted God in thy spirit?

To love God, excluding the world, is to give Him an intense but imperfect adoration.

Is love only a daughter or handmaid of jealousy? If Krishna loves Chandrabali, why should I not love her also?

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Because thou lovest God only, thou art apt to claim that He should love thee rather than others; but this is a false claim contrary to right and the nature of things. For He is the One, but thou art of the many. Rather become one in heart and soul with all beings, then there will be none in the world but thou alone for Him to love.

My quarrel is with those who are foolish enough not to love my Lover, not with those who share His love with me.

In those whom God loves, have delight; on those whom He pretends not to love, take pity.

Dost thou hate the atheist because he does not love God? Then shouldst thou be disliked because thou dost not love God perfectly.

There is one thing especially in which creeds and churches surrender themselves to the devil, and that is in their anathemas. When the priest chants Anathema Maranatha, then I see a devil praying.¹

No doubt when the priest curses, he is crying to God; but it is the God of anger and darkness to whom he devotes himself along with his enemy; for as he approaches God, so shall God receive him.

I was much plagued by Satan, until I found that it was God who was tempting me; then the anguish of him passed out of my soul for ever.

I hated the devil and was sick with his temptations and tortures; and I could not tell why the voice in his departing words was so sweet that when he returned often and offered himself to me, it was with sorrow I refused him. Then I discovered it was Krishna at His tricks and my hate was changed into laughter.

They explained the evil in the world by saying that Satan had

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prevailed against God; but I think more proudly of my Beloved. I believe that nothing is done but by His will in heaven or hell, on earth or on the waters.

In our ignorance we are like children proud of our success in walking erect and unaided and too eager to be a ware of the mother's steadying touch on the shoulder. When we wake, we look back and see that God was leading and upholding us always.

At first whenever I fell back into sin I used to weep and rage against myself and against God for having suffered it. Afterwards it was as much as I could dare to ask, "Why hast thou rolled me again in the mud, O my playfellow?" Then even that came to my mind to seem too bold and presumptuous; I could only get up in silence, look at him out of the comer of my eyes and clean myself.

God has so arranged life that the world is the soul's husband; Krishna its divine paramour. We owe a debt of service to the world and are bound to it by a law, a compelling opinion, and a common experience of pain and pleasure, but our heart's worship and our force and secret joy are for our Lover.

The joy of God is secret and wonderful; it is a mystery and a rapture at which common sense makes mouths of mockery, but the soul that has once tasted it, can never renounce, whatever worldly disrepute, torture and affliction it may bring us.

God, the world Guru, is wiser than thy mind; trust Him and not that eternal self-seeker and arrogant sceptic.

The sceptic mind doubts always because it cannot understand, but the faith of the God-lover persists in knowing although it cannot understand. Both are necessary to our darkness, but there can be no doubt which is the mightier. What I cannot understand now, I shall some day master but if I lose faith and love, I fall utterly from the goal which God has set before me.

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I may question God, my guide and teacher, and ask Him "Am I right or hast Thou in thy love and wisdom suffered my mind to deceive me?" Doubt thy mind, if thou wilt, but doubt not that God leads thee.

Because thou wert given at first imperfect conceptions about God, now thou ragest and deniest Him. Man, dost thou doubt thy teacher because he gave not the whole of knowledge at the beginning? Study rather that imperfect truth and put it in its place, so that thou mayst pass on safely to the wider knowledge that is now opening before thee.

This is how God in His love teaches the child soul and the weakling, taking them step by step and withholding the vision of His ultimate and yet unattainable mountain-tops. And have we not all some weakness? Are we not all in His sight but as little children?

This I have seen that whatever God has withheld from me, He withheld in His love and wisdom. Had I grasped it then, I would have turned some great good into a great poison. Yet sometimes when we insist, He gives us poison to drink that we may learn to turn from it and taste with knowledge His ambrosia and His nectar.

Even the atheist ought now to be able to see that creation marches towards some infinite and mighty purpose which evolution in its very nature supposes. But infinite purpose and fulfilment presupposes an infinite wisdom that prepares, guides, shapes, protects and justifies. Revere then that Wisdom and worship it with thoughts in thy soul if not with incense in a temple, and even though thou deniest the heart of infinite Love and the mind of infinite Self-effulgence. Then though thou know it not, it is still Krishna whom thou reverest and worshippest.

The Lord of Love has said, "They who follow after the Unknowable and Indefinable follow after Me and I accept them." He has justified by His word the Illusionist and the Agnostic.

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Why then, O devotee, dost thou rail at him whom thy Master has accepted?

Calvin who justified eternal Hell, knew not God but made one terrible mask of Him His eternal reality. If there were an unending Hell, it could only be a seat of unending rapture; for God is Ananda and than the eternity of His bliss there is no other eternity.

Dante, when he said that God's perfect love created eternal Hell, wrote perhaps wiselier than he knew; for from stray glimpses I have sometimes thought there is a Hell where our souls suffer aeons of intolerable ecstasy and wallow as if for ever in the utter embrace of Rudra the sweet and terrible.

Discipleship to God the Teacher, sonship to God the Father, tenderness of God the Mother, clasp of the hand of the divine Friend, laughter and sport with our Comrade and boy-Play-fellow, blissful servitude to God the Master, rapturous love of our divine Paramour, these are the seven beatitudes of life in the human body. Canst thou unite all these in a single supreme and rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin.

When will the world change into the model of heaven? When all mankind becomes boys and girls together with God revealed as Krishna and Kali, the happiest boy and strongest girl of the crowd, playing together in the garden of Paradise. The Semitic Eden was well enough, but Adam and Eve were too grown up and its God himself too old and stern and solemn for the offer of the Serpent to be resisted.

The Semites have afflicted mankind with the conception of a God who is a stern and dignified king and solemn judge and knows not mirth. But we who have seen Krishna, know Him for a boy fond of play and a child full of mischief and happy laughter.

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A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe.

God took a child to fondle him in His bosom of delight, but the mother wept and would not be consoled because her child no longer existed.

When I suffer from pain or grief or mischance, I say, "So, my old Playfellow, thou hast taken again to bullying me," and I sit down to possess the pleasure of the pain, the joy of the grief, the good fortune of the mischance; then He sees He is found out and takes His ghosts and bugbears away from me.

The seeker after divine knowledge finds in the description of Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis one of the deepest parables of God's ways with the soul, the devotee a perfect rendering in divine act of his heart's mystic experiences, the prurient and the puritan (two faces of one temperament) only a lustful story. Men bring what they have in themselves and see it reflected in the Scriptures.

My lover took away my robe of sin and I let it fall, rejoicing; then he plucked at my robe of virtue, but I was ashamed and alarmed and prevented him. It was not till he wrested it from me by force that I saw how my soul had been hidden from me.

Sin is a trick and a disguise of Krishna to conceal Himself from the gaze of the virtuous. Behold, O Pharisee, God in the sinner, sin in thyself purifying thy heart, clasp thy brother.

Love of God, charity towards men is the first step towards perfect wisdom.

He who condemns failure and imperfection, is condemning God; he limits his own soul and cheats his own vision. Condemn not, but observe Nature, help and heal thy brothers and strengthen by sympathy their capacities and their courage.

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Love of man, love of woman, love of things, love of thy neighbour, love of thy country, love of animals, love of humanity are all the love of God reflected in these living images. To love and grow mighty to enjoy all, to help all and to love for ever.

If there are things that absolutely refuse to be transformed or remedied into God's more perfect image, they may be destroyed with tenderness in the heart, but ruthlessness in the smiting. But make sure first that God has given thee thy sword and thy mission.

I should love my neighbour not because he is neighbourhood,—for what is there in neighbourhood and distance? nor because the religions tell me he is my brother,—for where is the root of that brotherhood? but because he is myself. Neighbourhood and distance affect the body, the heart goes beyond them. Brotherhood is of blood or country or religion or humanity, but when self-interest clamours what becomes of this brotherhood? It is only by living in God and turning mind and heart and body into the image of his universal unity that that deep, disinterested and unassailable love becomes possible.

When I live in Krishna, then ego and self-interest vanish and only God himself can qualify my love bottomless and illimitable.

Living in Krishna, even enmity becomes a play of love and the wrestling of brothers.

To the soul that has hold of the highest beatitude, life cannot be an evil or a sorrowful illusion; rather all life becomes the rippling love and laughter of a divine Lover and Playfellow.

Canst thou see God as the bodiless Infinite and yet love Him as a man loves his mistress? Then has the highest truth of the Infinite been revealed to thee. Canst thou also clothe the Infinite in one secret embraceable body and see Him in each and all of these bodies that are visible and seizable? Then has its widest and profoundest truth come also into thy possession.

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Divine Love has simultaneously a double play, an universal movement, deep, calm and bottomless like the nether Ocean, which broods upon the whole world and each thing that is in it as upon a level bed with an equal pressure, and a perennial movement, forceful, intense and ecstatic like the dancing surface of the same Ocean, which varies the might and force of its billows and chooses the objects it shall fall upon with the kiss of its foam and spray and the clasp of its engulfing waters.

I used to hate and avoid pain and resent its infliction; but now I find that had I not suffered, I would not now possess, trained and perfected, this infinitely and multitudinously sensible capacity of delight in my mind, heart and body. God justifies himself in the end even when He has masked Himself as a bully and a tyrant.

I swore that I would not suffer from the world's grief and the world's stupidity and cruelty and injustice and I made my heart as hard in endurance as the nether millstone and my mind as a polished surface of steel. I no longer suffered, but enjoyment had passed away from me. Then God broke my heart and ploughed up my mind. I rose through cruel and incessant anguish to a blissful painlessness and through sorrow and indignation and revolt to an infinite knowledge and a settled peace.

When I found that pain was the reverse side and the training of delight, I sought to heap blows on myself and multiply suffering in all my members; for even God's tortures seemed to me slow and slight and inefficient. Then my Lover had to stay my hand and cry, "Cease; for my stripes are enough for thee."

The self-torture of the old monks and penitents was perverse and stupid; yet was there a secret soul of knowledge behind their perversities.

God is our wise and perfect Friend, because he knows when to smite as well as when to fondle, when to slay us no less than when to save and to succour.

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The divine Friend of all creatures conceals His friendliness in the mask of an enemy till He has made us ready for the highest heavens; then, as in Kurukshetra, the terrible form of the Master of strife, suffering and destruction is withdrawn and the sweet face, the tenderness, the oft-clasped body of Krishna shine out on the shaken soul and purified eyes of his eternal comrade and playmate.

Suffering makes us capable of the full force of the Master of delight; it makes us capable also to bear the other play of the Master of Power. Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude.

Yet, O Soul of man, seek not after pain, for that is not His will, seek after His joy only; as for suffering, it will come to thee surely in His providence as often and as much as is needed for thee. Then bear it that thou mayst find out at last its heart of rapture.

Neither do thou inflict pain, O man, on thy fellow; God alone has the right to inflict pain; or those have it whom He has commissioned. But deem not fanatically, as did Torquemada, that thou art one of these.

In former times there was a noble form of asseveration for souls compact merely of force and action, "As surely as God liveth." But for our modern needs another asseveration would suit better, "As surely as God loveth."

Service is chiefly useful to the God-lover and the God-knower because it enables Him to understand in detail and admire the curious wonders of His material workmanship. The one learns and cries, "Behold how the Spirit has manifested itself in matter"; the other, "Behold, the touch of my Lover and Master, the perfect Artist, the hand omnipotent."

O Aristophanes of the universe, thou watchest thy world and laughest sweetly to thyself. But wilt thou not let me too see with divine eyes and share in thy world-wide laughters?

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Kalidasa says in a daring image that the snow-rocks of Kailasa are Shiva's loud world-laughters piled up in utter whiteness and pureness on the mountain-tops. It is true; and when their image falls on the heart, then the world's cares melt away like the clouds below into their real nothingness.

The strangest of the soul's experiences is this, that it finds, when it ceases to care for the image and threat of troubles, then the troubles themselves are nowhere to be found in one's neighbourhood. It is then that we hear from behind those unreal clouds God laughing at us.

Has thy effort succeeded, O thou Titan? Dost thou sit, like Ravana and Hiranyakashipu, served by the gods and the world's master? But that which thy soul was really hunting after, has escaped from thee.

Ravana's mind thought it was hungering after universal sovereignty and victory over Rama; but the aim his soul kept its vision fixed upon all the time was to get back to its heaven as soon as possible and be again God's menial. Therefore, as the shortest way, it hurled itself against God in a furious clasp of enmity.

The greatest of joys is to be, like Narada, the slave of God; the worst of Hells being abandoned of God, to be the world's master. That which seems nearest to the ignorant conception of God, is the farthest from him.

God's servant is something; God's slave is greater.

To be master of the world would indeed be supreme felicity, if one were universally loved; but for that one would have to be at the same time the slave of all humanity.

After all, when thou countest up thy long service to God, thou wilt find thy supreme work was the flawed and little good thou didst in love for humanity.

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There are two works that are perfectly pleasing to God in his servant; to sweep in silent adoration His temple-floors and to fight in the world's battlefield for His divine consummation in humanity.

He who has done even a little good to human beings, though he be the worst of sinners, is accepted by God in the ranks of His lovers and servants. He shall look upon the face of the Eternal.

O fool of thy weakness, cover not God's face from thyself by a veil of awe, approach Him not with a suppliant weakness. Look! thou wilt see on His face not the solemnity of the King and Judge, but the smile of the Lover.

Until thou canst learn to grapple with God as a wrestler with his comrade, thy soul's strength shall always be hid from thee.

Sumbha first loved Kali with his heart and body, then was furious with her and fought her, at last prevailed against her, seized her by the hair and whirled her thrice round him in the heavens; the next moment he was slain by her. These are the Titan's four strides to immortality and of them all the last is the longest and the mightiest.

Kali is Krishna revealed as dreadful Power and wrathful Love. She slays with her furious blows the self in body, life and mind in order to liberate it as spirit eternal.

Our parents fell, in the deep Semitic apologue, because they tasted the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Had they taken at once of the tree of eternal life, they would have escaped the immediate consequence; but God's purpose in humanity would have been defeated. His wrath is our eternal advantage.

***

If Hell were possible, it would be the shortest cut to the highest heaven. For verily God loveth.

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God drives us out of every Eden that we may be forced to travel through the desert to a diviner Paradise. If thou wonder why should that parched and fierce transit be necessary, then art thou befooled by thy mind and hast not studied thy soul behind and its dim desires and secret raptures.

A healthy mind hates pain; for the desire of pain that men sometimes develop in their minds is morbid and contrary to Nature. But the soul cares not for the mind and its sufferings any more than the iron-master for the pain of the ore in the furnace; it follows its own necessities and its own hunger.

Indiscriminate compassion is the noblest gift of temperament; not to do even the least hurt to one living thing is the highest of all human virtues; but God practises neither. Is man therefore nobler and better than the All-loving?

To find that saving a man's body or mind from suffering is not always for the good of either soul, mind or body is one of the bitterest of experiences for the humanly compassionate.

Human pity is born of ignorance and weakness; it is the slave of emotional impressions. Divine compassion understands, discerns and saves.

Pity is sometimes a good substitute for love; but it is always no more than a substitute.

Self-pity is always born of self-love; but pity for others is not always born of love for its object. It is sometimes a self-regarding shrinking from the sight of pain; sometimes the rich man's contemptuous dole to the pauper. Develop rather God's divine compassion than human pity.

Not pity that bites the heart and weakens the inner members, but a divine masterful and untroubled compassion and helpfulness is the virtue that we should encourage.

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Love and serve men, but beware lest thou desire their approbation. Obey rather God within thee.

Not to have heard the voice of God and His angels is the world's idea of sanity.

See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is a truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret and violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly and unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see and experience the All-true, Almighty and All-blissful.

Human love fails by its own ecstasy, human strength is exhausted by its own effort, human knowledge throws a shadow that conceals half the globe of truth from its own sunlight; but divine knowledge embraces opposite truths and reconciles them, divine strength grows by the prodigality of its self-expenditure, divine love can squander itself utterly, yet never waste or diminish.

The rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking utter truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which has masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error.

The whole truth about any object is a rounded and all-embracing globe which for ever circles around but never touches the only subject and object of knowledge, God.

There are many profound truths which are like weapons dangerous to the unpractised wielder. Rightly handled, they are the most precious and potent in God's armoury.

The obstinate pertinacity with which we cling to our meagre, fragmentary, night-besieged and grief-besieged individual existence even while the unbroken bliss of our universal life calls to us, is one of the most amazing of God's mysteries. It is only

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equalled by the infinite blindness with which we cast a shadow of our ego over the whole world and call that the universal being. These two darknesses are the very essence and potency of Maya.

Atheism is the shadow or dark side of the highest perception of God. Every formula we form about God, though always true as a symbol, becomes false when we accept it as a sufficient formula. The Atheist and Agnostic come to remind us of our error.

God's negations are as useful to us as His affirmations. It is He who as the Atheist denies His own existence for the better perfecting of human knowledge. It is not enough to see God in Christ and Ramakrishna and hear His words, we must see Him and hear Him also in Huxley and Haeckel.

Canst thou see God in thy torturer and slayer even in thy moment of death or thy hours of torture? Canst thou see Him in that which thou art slaying, see and love even while thou slayest? Thou hast thy hand on the supreme knowledge. How shall he attain to Krishna who has never worshipped Kali?

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Words of the Master - I

To do works in a close union and deep communion with the Divine in us, the Universal around us and the Transcendent above use not to be shut up any longer in the imprisoned and separative human mind, the slave of its ignorant dictates and narrow suggestions, this is Karmayoga.

To work in obedience to a divine command, an eternal Will, a universal impulse initiated by a transcendent compulsion, not to run under the whips of ego and need and passion and desire, and not to be guided by the pricks of mental and vital and physical preference, but to be moved by God only, by the highest Truth only, this is Karmayoga.

To live and act no longer in the human ignorance, but in divine Knowledge, conscient of individual nature and universal forces and responsive to a transcendent governance, this is Karmayoga.

To live, be and act in a divine, illimitable and luminous universal consciousness open to that which is more than universal, no longer to grope and stumble in the old narrowness and darkness, this is Karmayoga.

Whosoever is weary of the littlenesses that are, whosoever is enamoured of the divine greatnesses that shall be, whosoever has any glimpse of the Supreme within him or above him or around him let him hear the call, let him follow the path. The way is difficult, the labour heavy and arduous and long, but its reward is habitation in an unimaginable glory, a fathomless felicity, a happy and endless vastness.

Find the Guide secret within you or housed in an earthly body, hearken to his voice and follow always the way that he points. At the end is the Light that fails not, the Truth that deceives not,

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the Power that neither strays nor stumbles, the wide freedom, the ineffable Beatitude.

The heavens beyond are great and wonderful, but greater and more wonderful are the heavens within you. It is these Edens that await the divine worker.

All that is is the manifestation, even as all that is not is the self-reservation, of a Supreme, an Infinite who veils himself in the play of impersonal forces, in the recesses of a mysterious Inconscience and will at last rediscover here his most intimate presence, his most integral power, light, beauty, Ananda and all vast and ineffable being through a growing illumination of the still ignorant consciousness now evolving in Matter, a consciousness of which Man is only a stage, at once the summit of an ascent that is finished and the starting-point of a far greater ascension that is still only preparing its commencement.

All manifestation that is not evolution is a play and self-formulation of the One Infinite in one term or another of his existence, consciousness, force, Ananda, his self-knowledge, self-power, self-delight, for the glory, joy and beauty of the play and for no other reason.

All evolution is the progressive self-revelation of the One to himself in the terms of the Many out of the lnconscience through the Ignorance towards self-conscient perfection.

The evolution has a purpose, but it is a purpose in a circle. It is not a straight line of progression from the not to the is, from the less to the more.

There is no beginning or end of the universe in space or time; for the universe is the manifestation of the Eternal and Infinite.

Manifestation is not an episode of the Eternal. It is his face and body of glory that is imperishable, it is the movement of his joy and power that needs not to sleep and rest as do finite things for their labour.

In the beginning, it is said, was the Eternal, the Infinite, the One. In the middle, it is said, is the finite, the transient, the Many. In the end, it is said, shall be the One, the Infinite, the Eternal.

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For when was the beginning? At no moment in Time, for the beginning is at every moment; the beginning always was, always is and always shall be. The divine beginning is before Time, in Time and beyond Time for ever. The Eternal, Infinite and One is an endless beginning.

And where is the middle? There is no middle; for there is only the junction of the perpetual end and the eternal beginning; it is the sign of a creation which is new at every moment. The creation was for ever, is for ever, shall be for ever. The Eternal, Infinite and One is the magical middle-term of his own existence; it is he that is the beginningless and endless creation.

And when is the end? There is no end. At no conceivable moment can there be a cessation. For all end of things is the beginning of new things which are still the same One in an ever developing and ever recurring figure. Nothing can be destroyed, for all is He who is for ever. The Eternal, Infinite and One is the unimaginable end that is never closing upon new interminable vistas of his glory.

Who knows the beginning of things or what mind has ever embraced their end? When we have said a beginning, do we not behold spreading out beyond it all the eternity of Time when that which has begun was not? So also when we imagine an end our vision becomes wise of endless space stretching out beyond the terminus we have fixed. Do even forms begin and end? Or does eternal Form only disappear from one of its canvases?

The experiment of human life on an earth is not now for the first time enacted. It has been conducted a million times before and the long drama will again a million times be repeated. In all that we do now, our dreams, our discoveries, our swift or difficult attainments we profit subconsciously by the experience of innumerable precursors and our labour will be fecund in planets unknown to us and in worlds yet uncreated. The plan, the peripeteia, the dénouement differ continually, yet are always governed by the conventions of an eternal Art. God, Man, Nature are the three perpetual symbols.

The idea of eternal recurrence affects with a shudder of

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God alarm the mind entrenched in the minute, the hour, the years, the centuries, all the finite's unreal defences. But the strong soul conscious of its own immortal stuff and the inexhaustible ocean of its ever-flowing energies is seized by it with the thrill of an inconceivable rapture. It hears behind the thought the childlike laughter and ecstasy of the Infinite.

God, Man, Nature, what are these three? Whence flow their divergences? To what ineffable union advances the ever-increasing sum of their contacts? Let us look beyond the hours and moments, let us tear down the hedge of the years and the concept-wall of centuries and millenniums and break out beyond the limits of our prison-house. For all things seek to concentrate our view on the temporal interests, conceptions and realisations of our humanity. We have to look beyond them to know that which they serve and represent. Nothing in the world can be understood by itself, but only by that which is beyond it. If we would know all, we must turn our gaze to that which is beyond all. That being known all else is comprehended.

A beginningless and endless eternity and infinity in which divisible Time and Space manage to subsist is the mould of existence. They succeed in subsisting because they are upheld by God's view of Himself in things.

God is all existence. Existence is a representation of ineffable Being. Being is neither eternal nor temporary, neither infinite nor limited, neither one nor many; it is nothing that any word of our speech can describe nor any thought of our mentality can conceive. The word existence unduly limits it; eternity and infinity are too petty conceptions; the term Being is an X representing not an unknown but an unknowable value. All values proceed from the Brahman, but it is itself beyond all values.

This existence is an incalculable Fact in which all possible opposites meet; its opposites are in truth identities.

It is neither one nor many and yet both one and many. Numberlessness increases in it and extends till it reaches unity; unity broken cannot stop short of numberlessness.

It is neither personal nor impersonal and yet at once personal and impersonal. Personality is a fiction of the impersonal; impersonality

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the mask of a Person. That impersonal Brahman Was all the time a world-transcendent Personality and universal Person, is the truth of things as it is represented by life and consciousness. "I am" is the eternal assertion. Analytic thought gets rid of the I, but the Am remains and brings it back. Materialism changes "I am" into "It is", and when it has done so, has changed nothing. The Nihilist gets rid of both Am and Is only to find them waiting for him beyond on either side of his negation.

When we examine the Infinite and the Finite, Form and the Formless, the Silence and the Activity, our oppositions are equally baffled. Try however hard we will, God will not allow us to exclude any of them from His fathomless universality. He carries all Himself with Him into every transcendence.

All this is Infinity grasped by the finite and the finite lived by the Infinite.

The finite is a transience or a recurrence in the Infinite, therefore Infinity alone is utterly real. But since that Real casts always this shadow of itself and since it is by the finite that its reality becomes conceivable, we must suppose that the phenomenon also is not a fiction.

The Infinite defines itself in the finite, the finite conceives itself in the Infinite. Each is necessary to the other's complete joy of being.

The Infinite pauses always in the finite; the finite arrives always in the Infinite. This is the wheel that circles for ever through Time and Eternity.

If there were nothing to be transcended, the Transcendent would be incomplete in its own conception.

What is the value of the Formless unless it has stooped to Form? And on the other hand what truth or value has any form except to represent as in a mask the Indefinable and Invisible?

From what background have all these numberless forms started out, if not from the termless profundities of the Incommensurable? He who has not lost his knowledge in the Unknowable, knows nothing. Even the world he studies so sapiently, cheats and laughs at him.

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When we have entered into the Unknowable, then all this other knowledge becomes valid. When we have sacrificed all forms into the Formless, then all forms become at once negligible and infinitely precious.

For the rest, that is true of all things. What we have not renounced, has no worth. Sacrifice is the great revealer of values.

As all words come out of the Silence, so all forms come out of the Infinite.

When the word goes back into the silence is it extinct for ever or does it dwell in the eternal harmony? When a soul goes back to God is it blotted out from existence or does it know and enjoy that into which it enters?

Does universe ever end? Does it not exist eternally in God's total idea of His own being?

Unless the Eternal is tired out by Time as by a load, unless God suffers loss of memory, how can universe cease from being?

Neither for soul nor universe is extinction the goal, but for one it is infinite self-possessing and for the other the endless pursuit of its own immutably mutable rhythms.

Existence, not annihilation is the whole aim and pursuit of existence.

If Nothing were the beginning Nothing also would be the end; but in that case Nothing also would be the middle.

If indiscriminable unity were the beginning it would also be the end. But then what middle term could there be except indiscriminable unity?

There is a logic in existence from which our Thought tries to escape by twisting and turning against its own ultimate necessity, as if a snake were to try to get away from itself by coiling round its own body. Let it cease coiling and go straight to the root of the whole matter, that there is no first nor last, no beginning nor ending, but only a representation of successions and dependences.

Succession and dependence are laws of perspective; they cannot be made a true measure of that which they represent.

Precisely because God is one, indefinable and beyond form,

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therefore He is capable of infinite definition and quality, realisation in numberless forms and the joy of endless self-multiplication. These two things go together and they cannot really be divided.

Words of the Master - II

Ours is an integral mission, essentially religious and spiritual, but whose field for application is the whole of life. Our aim of aims is to change the whole normal human being into its divine type.

Our Sadhana stands upon Karmayoga with Jnana and Bhakti.

We have to get rid of the past Karma in ourselves and others which stands in our way and helps the forces of kaliyuga to baffle our efforts.

Success must not elate our minds nor failure discourage us.

We are working for a general renovation of the world, by which the present European civilisation shall be replaced by a spiritual civilisation.

In that change, the resurrection of the Asiatic races and specially of India is an essential point.

It is only by a wide Vedantic movement...that the work of regeneration can be done.

A strong spiritual foundation is necessary.

What we are within, our karmas and kriyās will be without.

The Mother demands a pure ādhāra for her works.

Let us not try to hurry her by rājasika impatience; that will only delay the success instead of hastening it.

Try to see God in all and the Self in all.

Every ascetic movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker and for a very obvious reason.

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Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life greater and more divine is another.

You cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening the other.

You cannot take away the best souls from life and yet leave life stronger and greater.

Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the teaching of our Yoga—no other renunciation.

Put faith in God and act.

The first and supreme object now is to put forward the Adhyatma Yoga for practice in life.

The spread of the idea is not sufficient; we must have real Yogins.

A collective Yoga is not like a solitary one; it has a collective soul.

The first discipline necessary is self-discipline, ātma-saṁyama.

The first element in that is obedience to the law of the Yoga.

All difficulties can be conquered, but only on condition of fidelity to the Way.

There is no obligation on any one to take it; but once taken, it must be followed or there can be no progress or success.

Difficult and trying is the Path—it is the way for heroes and strong souls, not for weaklings.

Remember the true basis of the Yoga.

It is not founded upon the vehement emotionalism of the current bhakti-mārga—though it has a different kind of bhakti, but it is established on samatā and ātma-samarpaṇa.

Obedience to the divine Will, not assertion of self-will is the very first mantra.

There can be no complete utsarga, if there is any kind of revolt or vehement impatience.

Revolt and impatience means always that there is a part of

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the being or something in the being which does not submit, has not given itself to God, but insists on God going out of His way to obey it.

All that may be very well in the ordinary bhakti-mārga, but it will not do in the adhyātma yoga.

The revolt and impatience may come and will come in the heart or the Prana, when these are still subject to imperfection and impurity; but it is then for the Will and the Faith in the buddhi to reject them, not to act upon them.

If the Will consents, approves and supports them, it means that you are siding with the inner enemy; and every time it is done, the enemy is strengthened and the Shuddhi postponed.

This is a difficult lesson to learn, but every Yogin must learn it, thoroughly.

It is hard, very hard indeed to know even the principle well enough; it is a hundred times harder still to master the lower nature in this respect.

Only do not associate yourself with the enemy 'Desire'!

Only consciously and fully assist the Master in the work of purification.

These are the keywords of our Yoga.

Shuddhi is the most difficult part of the whole Yoga; it is the condition of all the rest.

If that is once conquered, the real conquest is accomplished. The rest becomes a comparatively easy building on an assured basis,—it may take longer or shorter time, but it can be done tranquilly and steadily.

To prevent the śuddhi the lower nature in you and around you, will exhaust all its efforts, and even when it cannot prevent, it will try to retard.

And its strong weapon then is, when you think you have got it, suddenly to break in on you and convince you that you have not got it, that it is far away, and so arouse disappointment, grief, loss of faith, discouragement, depression and revolt, the whole army of troubles that wait upon impure Desire.

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When you have once found calm, peace of mind, firm faith, equality and been able to live in it for some time, then and only then, you may be sure that śuddhi is founded; but you must not think it will not be disturbed.

It will be, so long as your heart and Prana are still capable of responding to the old movements, have still any memory and habit of vibrating to the old chords.

The one thing necessary when the renewed trouble comes, is to stand back in your mind and will from it, refuse it the sanction of your higher being, even when it is raging in the lower nature.

As that habit of refusal forces itself—at first that may not be successfully done, the Buddhi may be lost in the storm—gradually it will be found that the aśuddhi, even though it still returns becomes less violent, more and more external, until it ceases to be anything more than a faint and short-lived touch from outside and finally comes no more.

Thus have the pioneers to hew their way through the jungle of the lower Prakriti.

Thus, have they to prepare themselves, who dare share the spiritual burden of the Master and are chosen in any degree to lead, help and guide others on the same way.

These must not be cowards and shirkers who refuse the burden and clamour for everything to be made quick and easy for them.

The master demands strong men and not emotional children.

The master demands endurance, firmness, heroism—true spiritual heroism;—demands manhood and then divine-man-hood too.

Words of the Master - III

Shraddha is necessary in two things:—śaktyam bhagavatī ca, in the Lord and his Shakti. There must be faith in the love and wisdom of God, fulfilling Himself through us, fulfilling our life work,

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working out all for our good even when it is apparently veiled in evil; and there must be faith in the power of the Shakti manifested by Him in this ādhāra to sustain, work out and fulfil the divine knowledge, power and joy in the Yoga and in the life. Without Shraddha, there is no Shakti; imperfect Shraddha means imperfect Shakti.

Imperfection may be either in the force of the faith or in its illumination. It is sufficient at first to have full force of the faith, for we cannot from the beginning of the Yoga have full illumination. Then, however we err or stumble, our force of faith will sustain us. When we cannot see, we shall know that God withholds the light, imposing on us error as a step towards knowledge, just as he imposes on us defeat as a step towards victory.

There is no reason for....I never nowadays act on reasons, but only as an automation in the hands of another; sometimes He lets me know the reasons of my action, sometimes He does not, but I have to act or refrain from action—all the same, according as He wills.

The light of reason always fails with me, or if it succeeds momentarily, brings some coarse result afterwards.

It must be understood, that my mission is not to create maṭhs, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna and Kali.

The present struggle is to make the spirit prevail over matter and circumstances.

Our progress is like the advance of a modern regiment under fire in which we have to steal a few yards at a run and then lie down under cover and let the storm of bullets sweep by. Every forward step to be made is violently combated and obstinately obstructed.

The real difficulty is to bring force, sureness and rapidity into the application of power and knowledge to life,—specially sureness, for it is possible to bring the sureness and rapidity, but if not

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attended by unfailing sureness of working, they may lead to great errors in knowledge and great stumbles and disasters in action which counteract the successes.

On the other hand, there is only a slow preparation for further progress. It is so likely to be slow, if sureness has to be gained only by not stepping except where everything is sure. This is a dilemma which has to be solved.

How indeed should we think the nations of Europe could have carried their war to an end, if they had grown too impatient of the fatigue of the trenches, suffering, disturbance, scarcity continual postponement of the result and declared that either they must have victory in a given time or throw up the struggle? We must not expect the inner war with our lower selves, the personal habit of thousands of lives and the human inheritance of ages, to be less arduous or to be carried out by a rapid and easy miracle.

You cannot expect the śuddhi or any part of the siddhi to be simultaneous and complete at once in all of you. One may attain, others progress, others linger. You must not expect a sudden collective miracle.

I have not come here to accomplish miracles, but to show, lead the way, help, in the road to a great inner change of our human nature,—the outer change in the world is only possible if and when that inner transmutation is effected and extends itself. You must not expect to establish a perfect saṁgha all at once and by a single leap.

Go forward calmly and firmly, not attached to success, not disturbed by unsuccess; my divine help will then never fail you.

Outer work is bound to be much embarrassed by difficulties, it is at best only a preparatory thing, until we are inwardly and spiritually ready.

That is no reason why it should not be done. Work done in

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the right spirit will itself become a means of the inner siddhi.

Specially get rid of the aham kartā element, which usually disguises itself under the idea, "I am the chosen Yantra". Despise no one, see and feel God in all and the Self in all. The Shakti in you will then act better on your materials and environment.

If you could make yourselves entirely pure instruments, things would go better.

The work can only succeed if I find noble and worthy helpers, fitted for it by the same struggles and the same endurance.

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Sat

What is Truth? said Pilate confronted with a mighty messenger of the truth, not jesting surely, not in a spirit of shallow lightness, but turning away from the Christ with the impatience of the disillusioned soul for those who still use high words that have lost their meaning and believe in great ideals which the test of the event has proved to be fallacious. What is truth,—this phantom so long pursued, so impossible to grasp firmly,—that a man young, beautiful, gifted, eloquent and admired should consent to be crucified for its sake? Have not circumstance and event justified the half-pitying, half-sorrowful question of the Roman governor? The Messenger suffered on the cross, and what happened to the truth that was his message? The Christ himself foresaw, it has never been understood even by its professors. For a hundred years it was a glorious mirage for which thousands of men and women willingly underwent imprisonment, torture and death in order that Christ's kingdom might come on earth and felicity possess the nations. But the kingdom that came was not Christ's; it was Constantine's, it was Hildebrand's, it was Alexander Borgia's. For another thirteen centuries the message was—what? Has it not been the chief support of fanaticism, falsehood, cruelty and hypocrisy, the purveyor of selfish power, the key-stone of a society that was everything Christ had denounced? Jesus died on the Cross, for the benefit, it would seem, of those who united to slay him, the Sadducee, atheist and high priest, the Pharisee, zealot or hypocrite and persecutor and the brutal, self-seeking, callous military Roman. Now in its last state, after such a lamentable career, Christ's truth stands finally rejected by the world's recent enlightenment as a hallucination or a superstition which sometimes helpfully, sometimes harmfully, amused the infancy of the human intellect. This history is written in too pronounced characters to be the exact type of all messages that the world has received, but is it not in some sort a type of the fate of all

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truth? What idea has stood successfully the test of a prolonged and pitiless enquiry? What ideal has stood successfully the test of time? Has not mankind been busy for the last fifty years and more denying almost all that it had formerly affirmed? And now that under the name of rationalism or materialism the denial has shaped itself into some form of workable practical affirmation, mankind is again at the work of denying its denial and rearranging—but this time doubtingly—its old affirmations. The scepticism of Pilate would therefore seem to have some excuse in a recurrent human experience. Is there, indeed, such a thing as truth,—beyond of course that practical truth of persistent and material appearances by which we govern our lives, the truth of death, birth, hunger, sexuality, pain, pleasure, commerce, money-making, ease, discomfort, ambition, failure and success? Has not indeed the loftiest of our philosophical systems declared all things here to be Maya? And if Maya is illusion, a deceit of the thinking consciousness, then indeed there can be no truth anywhere in the world except that indefinable Existence which we cannot comprehend and which, after all, Buddhism, not without logic and plausibility, setting it down as another and more generalised saṁskāra, a false sensation of consciousness in the eternal Void, denies. And yet man is so constituted that he must follow after truth whether it is attained or not; something in him secretly masterful, essential to his existence, forbids him to be satisfied with a falsehood; the moment it is perceived or even believed to be a falsehood, he rejects it and the thing begins to crumble. If he persists in his rejection, it cannot last. Yesterday it was, today we see it tottering, tomorrow we shall look for it and find that it is no longer. It has passed back into Prakriti; it has dissolved into that of which it was made. For śraddhā is the condition of all existence in consciousness and that in which śraddhā is denied, ceases to have existence, whether here or elsewhere, na caivāmutra no iha. It is not, neither in this world nor in another. We may not unreasonably infer from this importance and this imperative necessity that Truth does really exist and everything is not illusion. If then Truth is always escaping our hold and leaving us to disillusionment and derision, it may be because we have neither formed any clear conception of what

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Truth itself is nor taken hold of the right means by which it can be grasped. Let us leave aside, for a while, Buddha's world of saṁskāras; let us put aside, packed away in an accessible corner of the brain, Shankara's gospel of Maya, and start instead from the old Vedantic beginnings, OM TAT SAT, That (Brahman) is the thing that Is, and sarvam khalvidam brahma, verily, all this, everything of which we are aware, is Brahman. It is at least possible that we may return from this inquiry with a deeper idea both of Samskaras and of Maya and may find that we have answered Pilate's question, discovering the nature and conditions of Truth.

I am speaking of the fundamental truth, the truth of things and not merely the fact about particulars or of particulars only as their knowledge forms a basis or a help to the discovery of fundamental truth. The fact that a particular sort of contact makes me uncomfortable is nothing in itself except in so far as it throws light upon the general causes of pain; the nature, origin and purpose of pain is the fundamental truth that I seek about the sensational reaction to contact. This law of pain, moreover, is not so fundamental as the truth about the nature, origin and purpose of sensation and contact themselves of which pain is a particularity, an example or a modification. This more fundamental truth becomes again itself particular when compared with the truth about the nature, origin and purpose of Existence of which sensation and contact are only particular circumstances. In this we arrive at the one fundamental truth of all, and a little consideration will show that if we really and rightly know that, the rest ought and probably will reveal themselves at once and fall into their places. Yasmin vijñāte sarvam vijñātam, That being known, all is known. Our ancestors perceived this truth of the fundamental unity of knowledge and sought to know Sat first, confident that Sat being known,, the different tattvas, laws, aspects and particulars of Sat would more readily yield up their secret. The moderns follow another thought which, also has a truth of its own. They think that since being is one, the knowledge of the particulars must lead to the knowledge of the fundamental unity and they begin therefore at the bottom and climb upwards,—a slow but, one might imagine, a safe method of procession.

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"Little flower in the crannies", cries Tennyson addressing a pretty blossom in the wall in lines which make good thought but execrable poetry, "if I could but know what you are I should know what God and man is."¹ Undoubtedly; the question is whether, without knowing God, we can really know the flower,—know it, and not merely its name and form or all the details of its name and form. Rupa we can know and analyse by the aid of science, Nama by the aid of philosophy; but Swarupa? It would seem that some third instrument is needed for that consummation of knowledge. The senses and reason, even though aided by microscopes and telescopes, cannot show it to us. Na sandṛśe tiṣṭhati rūpam asya, the form of That stands not in the ken of sight. Mind and speech are not permitted to lead us to it, na vāk gacchati na manaḥ. Even the metaphysical logic of Shankara stops short of that final victory. Naiṣā tarkeṇa matir āpaneyā, this realisation in thought is not to be obtained by logic. All these various disabilities are due to one compelling cause; they are, because Sat, the truth of existence, Brahman, the reality of things which fills and supports their idea and form, is beyond the recognisable and analysable elements of idea and form. Aṇor aṇīyāṁsam atarkyam aṇupramāṇāt. It is subtler even than elemental subtlety and therefore not to be deduced, induced, inferred or discovered by a reasoning which proceeds from a consideration of the elements of name and form and makes that its standard. This is a truth which even the greatest philosophers, Vedantic or un-Vedantic, are apt to forget; but the Sruti insists on it always.

Nevertheless mankind has for some thousands of years been attempting obstinately and with passion to discover that Truth by the very means which the Sruti has forbidden. Such error is natural and inevitable to the human consciousness. For the Angel in man is one who has descended out of light and bliss into this darkness, twilight and half-light here, the darkness of matter,

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the twilight of vital consciousness, the broken half-lights of the mind, and the master impulse of his nature is to yearn passionately towards the light from which he has fallen. Unable to find it at once, too little dhīra (calm and discerning) to perfect himself patiently, it is natural that he in his eagerness should grasp at other instruments meant for a limited utility and straining them beyond their capacity compel them to serve this his supreme object,—which is always to recover the perfect light and by that recovery to recover also what dwells only in the perfect light,—the perfect and unfailing bliss. From this abuse of the parts of knowledge have resulted three illegitimate human activities, of which Philosophy, Religion and Science have severally made themselves guilty, the disputatious metaphysical philosophy of the schools, the theology of the churches and the scientific philosophy of the laboratories. Philosophy, Religion and Science have each their appointed field and dominion; each can help man in his great preoccupation, the attempt to know all that he can about Sat, about Brahman. The business of Philosophy is to arrange logically the eternal modes of Sat, the business of Religion is to arrange practically and vitally the personal relations of Sat, the business of Science is to arrange observantly and analytically the particular forms and movements of Sat. They are really necessary and ought to become so to each other; and, if they who recognised proper limitations and boundary marks could by their joint activity help man to his present attainable fullness; but by a sort of intellectual land hunger, they are perpetual invaders of each other's dominion, deny each other's positions and therefore remain unprofitably at war through human ages. Finally, all three after illegitimately occupying each other's fields insist on snatching at a knowledge of which they are all equally incapable,—the essential nature of the world, the secret reality of Sat, the uttamam rahasyam of the Brahman. This error, this confusion, this saṅkara or illegitimate mixing of different nature and function is the curse of the Kali and from it arises much, if not most, of the difficulty we experience as a race in escaping from this misery and darkness into bliss and light. It is part and a great part of kalikalila, the chaos of the Kali.

India has always attempted, though not, since the confusion

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of Buddhism, with any success, if not to keep the three to their proper division of labour—which, with the general growth of ignorance became impossible—at least, always to maintain or re-establish, if disturbed, some harmony between them. Of this attempt the Gita is the standing monument and the most perfect example. To see the confusion working in its untrammelled force, and it is only so, by isolating the disease from the modification of curative forces, that we can observe, diagnose and afterwards find its remedy,—we must go to the intellectual history of the European continent. There have been, properly speaking, two critical periods in this history, the Graeco-Roman era of philosophic illumination previous to Christianity and the era of modern scientific illumination which is still unexhausted. In the first we see the revolt of Philosophy (with Science concealed in her protecting embraces) against the usurpation of Religion. We find it, after achieving liberation, in its turn, denying Religion and usurping her sacred prerogative. In the modern era we see Science this time emerged and adult, keeping Philosophy behind her, in revolt against Religion, first liberate herself, then deny Religion and usurp her prerogatives, then, or as part of this final process of conquest, turn, deny and strike down her lofty ally and usurp also her ancient territory. For if Science has scorned and denied Religion, she has equally scorned and denied Metaphysics. If she has declared God to be a barbarous myth, a fiction of dreams and terrors and longings and denied us the right of communion with the Infinite, equally has she declared Metaphysics to be an aberration of the ideative faculty, a false extension of logic and denied our right to recognise any metaphysical existence or anything at all which cannot be judged by or inferred from the result of the test tube, the scalpel, the microscope and the telescope. Neither, however, has she herself hesitated to dogmatise about the essential nature of existence and the mutual relations of its general modes, matter, life, mind and spirit. But for our immediate purpose it is only necessary to note the result in either of these eras of these tremendous usurpations. The result of the usurpations of Philosophy was that mankind flung itself with an infinite sincerity, with a passionate sense of relief into the religion of an obscure Jewish sect and consented for a

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length of time which amazes us to every theological absurdity, even the most monstrous, so that it might once more be permitted to believe in something greater than earth and to have relations with God. The old philosophical spirit was torn to pieces with Hypatia in the blood-stained streets of Alexandria. Theology usurped her place and discoursed blindly and foolishly on transubstantiation and consubstantiality and one knows not what other barren mysteries. So far as philosophy was allowed an independent existence, she was compelled to do not her own work but the work of Science; so we find the schoolmen elaborately determining by logic and a priori word-fencing questions which could only be properly determined by observation and analysis. For Theology, for Mediaeval Religion herself did not care for this field of knowledge; she had no need for scientific truths, just as the Jacobin Republic had no need of chemists; in fact she guillotined Science wherever its presence attracted her attention. But all injustice—and that means at bottom all denial of truth, of the satyam and ṛtam—brings about its own punishment or, as Religion would put it, God's visitation and vengeance. Science liberated, given in her strenuous emergence the strength of the Titans, avenges herself today on her old oppressors, on Religion, on Philosophy, breaks their temples, scorns their gods and prophets and seeks to deprive them even of the right to existence. That was the result of the Graeco-Roman illumination. And what will be the result of the scientific illumination, the modern enlightenment, the fiery triumph and ardent intellectual bigotry of the materialist? It is too early to foresee the final denouement, but unformed lines of it show themselves, obscure masses arise. Mysticism is growing obscurely in strength as Science grew obscurely in strength in the Middle Ages. We see titanic and mystic figures striding out of the East, building themselves fortresses and points of departure, spreading among the half-intellectual, capturing even the intellectual—vague figures of Spiritualism, Mental Science, Psychical Research, NeoHinduism, Neo-Buddhism, Neo-Mahomedanism, Neo-Christianity. The priests of Isis, the adepts and illuminates of Gnosticism, denied their triumph by the intervention of St. Paul and the Pope, reborn into this latter age, claim now their satisfaction.

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Already some outworks of materialism are giving way, the attack grows more insistent, the defence more uncertain, less proudly self-confident, though not less angry, contemptuous, bitter and intolerant; the invaders increase their adherents, extend the number of their strongholds. If no wider and higher truth intervenes, it would almost seem as if the old confusion in a new form might replace the new. Perhaps an Esoteric Society or a Spiritualist Circle of High Mediums will in a few centuries be laying down for us what we shall think about this world and the next, what particular relations with Gods will be permitted us, what Influences or Initiates we shall worship. Who knows? The fires of Smithfield may yet reblaze to save heretics from perdition.

These are not mere fantastic speculations. The history of humanity and the peculiar capacities of that apparently incalculable and erratic thing, human nature, ought to warn us of their possibility or at least that they are not entirely impossible, in spite of the printing press, in spite of the clarities of Science. No doubt with so many Schools and Academies, such spread of education, never again would enlightenment be dimmed and the worship of gods and ghosts would in the end amuse none but the vulgar. We must accept these things as possible and examine why they are possible. This reaction is inevitable because Philosophy, though exceedingly high and luminous, tends to be exclusive and narrow and Science, though exceedingly patient, accurate and minute, tends to be limited, dry and purblind. They are both apt to be as dogmatic and intolerant in their own high way or in their own clear, dry way as Religion in her way which is not high but intense, not clear but enthusiastic; and they live on a plane of mentality on which humanity at large does not yet find itself at perfect ease, cannot live without a struggle and a difficulty in breathing. They both demand from man that he shall sacrifice his heart and his imagination to his intellect, shall deny his full human nature and live coldly and dryly. You might just as well ask him to live without free breathing. The mental world in which we are asked to live, resembles what the life of humanity would be if the warmth of the sun had diminished, the earth were growing chill and its atmosphere were already too

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rarefied for our comfort. It is no use saying that he ought to live in such an atmosphere, that it will improve his mental health and vigour. Perhaps he ought, though I do not think so, but he cannot. Or rather the individual may,—everything is possible to individual man,—but the race cannot. The demand can never be allowed; for it is a denial of Nature, a violation of the great Mother, a displacement of her eternal facts by the aridities of logic; it is a refusal of the Truth of things, of the satyam, ṛtam, and if it is persisted in, it will bring its own revenges. Philosophy and Science, if they are to help mankind without hurting it and themselves, must recognise that man is a complex being and his nature demands that every part of that complexity shall have its field of activity and every essential aspiration in him must be satisfied. It is his nature and his destiny to be āptakāma, satisfied in his desires, in the individual and in the race—though always in accordance with the satyam, the ṛtam, which is also the sukham and sundaram, not lawlessly and according to aberrations and caprices. It was the great virtue of the ancient Hinduism, before Buddhism upset its balance and other aberrations followed, that it recognised in principle at least this fundamental verity, did not deny what God insists upon but strove, it does not matter whether perfectly or imperfectly, to put everything in its place and create a natural harmony.

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The Secret of Life - Ananda

The world lives in and by Ananda. From Ananda, says the Veda, we were born, by Ananda we live, to Ananda we return, and it adds that no man could even have the strength to draw in his breath and throw it out again if there were not this heaven of Bliss embracing our existence as ether embraces our bodies, nourishing us with its eternal substance and strength and supporting the life and the activity. A world which is essentially a world of bliss—this was the ancient Vedantic vision, the dṛṣṭi of the Vedic draṣṭā, which differentiates Hinduism in its early virility from the cosmic sorrow of Buddhism and the cosmic disillusionment of Mayavada. But it is possible to fall from this Bliss, not to realise it with the lower nature in the Apara Prakriti, not to be able to grasp and possess it. Two things are necessary for the fullness of man's bliss,—the fullness of his being and the fullness of his knowledge creating by their union the fullness of the strength in all its manifestations, vīryam, balam, rajas, tejas, ojas. For Ananda, Sat and Chit make one reality, and Chit is in its outward working pure force to which our Rishis gave the name of Tapas. To attain even here upon earth this fullness of bliss dependent upon fullness of existence, illumination and force, must always be humanity's drift, man's collective endeavour. To attain it within himself here and beyond, iha ca amutra ca, must always be the drift of the human unit, the individual's endeavour. Wherever the knowledge in him thinks it can grasp this bliss, it will fix its heaven. This is Swarga, Vaikuntha, Goloka; this is Nirvana.

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Life

The object and condition of Life is Ananda; the means of Ananda is Tapas; the nature of Tapas is Chit; the continent and basis of Chit is Sat. It is therefore by a process of Sat developing its own Ananda through Tapas which is Chit that the Absolute appears as the extended, the eternal as the evolutionary, Brahman as the world. He who would live perfectly must know Life, he who would know Life, must know Sachchidananda.

Pleasure is not Ananda; it is a half-successful attempt to grasp at Ananda by means which ensure a relapse into pain. Therefore it is that pleasure can never be an enduring possession. It is in its nature transient and fugitive. Pain itself is obviously not Ananda; neither is it in itself anything positive, real and necessary. It has only a negative reality. It is a recoil caused by the inability to command pleasure from certain contacts which becomes habitual in our consciousness and, long ingrained in it, deludes us with the appearance of a law. We can rise above transitory pleasure; we can get rid of the possibility of pain.

Pleasure, therefore, cannot be the end and aim of life; for the true object and condition of Life is Ananda and Ananda is something in its nature one, unconditioned and infinite. If we make pleasure the object of life, then we also make pain the condition of life. The two go together and are inseparable companions. You cannot have one for your bedfellow without making a life-companion of the other. They are husband and wife and, though perpetually quarrelling, will not hear of divorce.

But neither is pain the necessary condition of life, as the Buddhists say, nor is extinction of sensation the condition of bliss.

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The Silence behind Life

There is a silence behind life as well as within it and it is only in this more secret, sustaining silence that we can hear clearly the voice of God. In the noise of the world we hear only altered and disturbed echoes of it; for the Voice comes always—who else speaks to us on our journey?—but the gods of the heart, the gods of the mind, the gods of desire, the gods of sense take up the divine cry, intercept it and alter it for their purposes. Krishna calls to us, but the first note, even the opening power or sweetness, awakes a very brouhaha of these echoes. It is not the fault of these poor gods. The accent of power is so desirable, the note of sweetness is so captivating that they must seize it, they would be dull and soulless, there would be no hope of their redemption if they did not at once leap at it and make it their own. But in becoming their own, it ceases to be entirely his. How many who have the religious faith and the religious temperament, are following the impulses of their heart, the cravings of their desire, the urgency of their senses, the dictates of their opinion when they fully imagine that their God is leading them ! And they do well, for God is leading them. It is the way He has chosen for them, and since He has chosen it, it is the best and wisest and most fruitful way for them. Still it is their God—not one they have made in their own image as the Atheist believes, but One who makes Himself in the image that they prefer, the image that best suits with their nature or their development. "In whatever way men come to me, in that way I love and cleave to them." It is a saying of fathomless depth which contains the seed of the whole truth about God and religion. After all it is only in this way that the conditioned can meet the Absolute, that which has a nature or Dharma of its own with that which is beyond all limit of nature or Dharma. After the meeting of the soul with God,—well, that is a different matter. The secrets of the nuptial chamber cannot all be spoken.

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Nevertheless, there is a higher way of meeting Him than that which leads us through subjection to the Gods. By perfect Love, by perfect Joy, by perfect satisfaction, by perfected mind one can hear what the Voice truly says, if not the Voice itself, catch the kernel of the message with a soul of ecstatic perfection, even if afterwards the Gods dilate on it and by attempting to amplify and complete it, load it with false corollaries or prevent some greater fullness of truth from coming to us. Therefore this way also, though it is high, cannot be the highest.

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The Secret Truth

All begins from the Divine, from the Eternal, from the Infinite, all abides in it alone and by it alone, all ends or culminates in the divine Eternal and Infinite. This is the first postulate indispensable for our spiritual seeking—for on no other base can we found the highest knowledge and the highest life.

All time moves in the Eternal; all space is spread in the Infinite; all creatures and creations live by that in them which is Divine. This is patently true of an inner spiritual but also proves in the end to be true of this outer space and time. It is known to our inmost being that it lives because it is part of the Divine, but it is true also of the external and phenomenal creature compounded of ignorant Mind, blind Life and subconscious Matter. A secret Self is the Alpha and Omega of this manifested existence; it is also the constant term, the omnipresent X into which all things resolve separately or together and which is their sum, their constituting material and their essence. All here is secretly the Divine, all is the Eternal, all is the Infinite.

But this secret truth of things is contradicted by the world's external appearances, it is denied by all the facts placed before us by our mind and senses, inconsistent with the sorrow and suffering of the world, incompatible with the imperfection of living beings and the unchangeable inconscience of things. What then pushes the mind to affirm it? What compels us to admit a seeing of things which is in conflict with our outer seeing and experience?

For on the surface of our consciousness and all around us there is only the temporal and transient, only the confined and finite. What seems largest to us finds its limit, what we assumed to be enduring comes to an end; even this vast universe with its masses of worlds upon worlds which seemed to stretch into infinity is convicted in the end of being only a boundless finite. Man claiming to be a divine soul and an all-discovering intellect is

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brought up short by Nature's rude proof of his ignorance and incompetence and exhibits constantly in his thoughts the proneness to self-confident error and faultiness, in his feelings and acts the pettiness, meanness and darkness or suddenly the abysses of falsehood or foulness or cruelty of his nature. In the management of this world the much that is undivine prevails easily over the little that is divine or they are inextricably mixed together. The ideal fails in practice, religion degenerates quickly into a militant sectarianism, fanaticism or formality, the triumphant good turns into an organised evil. The Christian doctrine of the fall, the Indian idea of the wandering of the Soul into a cosmic illusion or the sceptic affirmation of an inconscient material Nature producing the freak of consciousness seems often to be the kernel of the whole matter.

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The Real Difficulty

The real difficulty is always in ourselves, not in our surroundings. There are three things necessary in order to make men invincible, Will, Disinterestedness and Faith. We may have a will to emancipate ourselves, but sufficient faith may be lacking. We may have a faith in our ultimate emancipation, but the will to use the necessary means may be wanting. And even if there are will and faith, we may use them with a violent attachment to the fruit of our work or with passions of hatred, blind excitement or hasty forcefulness which may produce evil reactions. For this reason it is necessary, in a work of such magnitude, to have resort to a higher Power than that of mind and body in order to overcome unprecedented obstacles. This is the need of sādhanā.

God is within us, an Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient Power; we and He are of one nature and, if we get into touch with Him and put ourselves in His hands, He will pour into us His own force and we shall realise that we too have our share of godhead, our portion of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience. The path is long, but self-surrender makes it short; the way is difficult, but perfect trust makes it easy.

Will is omnipotent, but it must be divine will, selfless, tranquil, at ease about results. "If you had faith even as a grain of mustard-seed," said Jesus, "you would say to this mountain, Come, and it would come to you." What was meant by the word Faith, was really Will accompanied with perfect śraddhā. Śraddhā does not reason, it knows; for it commands sight and sees what God wills, and it knows that what is God's will, must happen. Śraddhā, not blind but using sight spiritual, can become omniscient.

Will is also omnipresent. It can throw itself into all with whom it comes into contact and give them temporarily or permanently a portion of its power, its thought, its enthusiasms. The thought of a solitary man can become, by exercise of selfless and

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undoubting will, the thought of a nation. The will of a single hero can breathe courage into the hearts of a million cowards.

This is the Sadhana that we have to accomplish. This is the condition of our emancipation. We have been using an imperfect will with imperfect faith and imperfect disinterestedness. Yet the task we have before us is not less difficult than to move a mountain.

The force that can do it, exists. But it is hidden in a secret chamber within us and of that chamber God holds the key. Let us find Him and claim it.

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Towards Unification

The progress of distance-bridging inventions, our modern facility for the multiplication of books and their copies and the increase of human curiosity are rapidly converting humanity into a single intellectual unit with a common fund of knowledge and ideas and a unified culture. The process is far from complete, but the broad lines of the plan laid down by the great Artificer of things already begin to appear. For a time this unification was applied to Europe only. Asia had its own triune civilisation, predominatingly spiritual, complex and meditative in India, predominatingly vital, emotional, active and simplistic in the regions of the Hindu Kush and Mesopotamia, predomina tingly intellectual, mechanical and organised in the Mongolian empires. East, West and South had their widely separate spirit and traditions, but one basis of spirituality, common tendencies and such commerce of art, ideas and information as the difficulties of communication allowed, preserved the fundamental unity of Asia. East and West only met at their portals, in war of kings than in peace, and through that shock and contact influenced but did not mingle with each other. It was the discovery of Indian philosophy and poetry which broke down the barrier. For the first time Europe discovered something in the East which she could study not only with the curiosity which she gave to Semitic and Mongolian ideas and origins, but with sympathy and even with some feeling of identity. This metaphysics, these epics and dramas, this formulated jurisprudence and complex society had methods and a form which, in spite of their diversity from her own, yet presented strong points of contact; she could recognise them, to a certain extent, she thought she could understand. The speculativeness of the German, the lucidity of the Gaul, the imagination and aesthetic emotionalism of the British Celt found something to interest them, something even to assist. In the teachings of Buddha, the speculation of Shankara, the poetry of Kalidasa, their souls could find pasture

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and refreshment. The alien form and spirit of Japanese and Arabian poetry and of Chinese philosophy which prevented such an approximation with the rest of Asia was not here to interfere with the comprehension of the human soul and substance. There was indeed a single exception which was supplied by Japanese Art. The art of India contradicted European notions too vitally to be admitted into the European consciousness; its charm and power were concealed by the uncouthness to Western eyes of its form and the strangeness of its motives. And it is only now, after the greatest living art critics in England had published sympathetic appreciations of Indian Art and energetic propagandists like Havell had persevered in their labour, that the European vision is opening to the secret of Indian painting and sculpture. But Japanese Art, though un-European in motives and methods, yet presented to them a form and technique which they could understand. Japanese painting had already begun to make its way into Europe even before. The victories of Japan and its acceptance of much of the outward circumstances of European civilisation opened a broad door into Europe for all in Japan that Europe can receive without unease or the feeling of an incompatible strangeness. Japanese painting, Japanese dress, Japanese decoration are not only accepted as a part of Western life by the select few and the cultured classes but known and allowed, without being adopted by the millions. Asiatic civilisation has entered into Europe as definitely though not so victoriously as European civilisation into Asia. It is only the beginning, but so was it only the beginning when a few scholars alone rejoiced in the clarity of Buddhistic Nihilism, Schopenhauer rested his soul on the Upanishads and Emerson steeped himself in the Gita. None could have imagined then that a Hindu monk would make converts in London and Chicago or that a Vedantic temple would be built in San Francisco and Anglo-Saxon Islamites erect a Mussalman mosque in Liverpool. It appears from a recent inquiry that the only reading, omitting works of fiction, which commands wide general interest among public library readers is either scientific works or books replete with Asiatic mysticism. How significant is this fact when we remember that these are the two powers, Europe and Asia, the victorious intellect and the insurgent spirit

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which are rising at this moment to struggle for the mastery of the unified world! Nevertheless it is not the public library reader, the man in the streets of the literary world, but the increasing circles of men of culture and a various curiosity through which the Orient and the Occident must first meet in a common humanity and the day dawn when some knowledge of the substance of the Upanishads will be as necessary to an universal culture as a knowledge of the substance of the Bible, Shankara's theories or the speculations of thinkers and Kalidasa, Valmikie and Vyasa as near and common in the subject matter of the European critical intellect as Dante or Homer.

It is the difficulties of presentation that prevent a more rapid and complete commingling....

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The Psychology of Yoga

This essay is incomplete.

As the Indian mind, emerging from its narrow mediaeval entrenchments, advances westward towards inevitable conquest, it must inevitably carry with it Yoga and Vedanta for its banners wherever it goes. Brahmajnana, Yoga and Dharma are the three essentialities of Hinduism; wherever it travels and finds harbourage and resting place, these three must spread. All else may help or hinder. Shankara's philosophy may compel the homage of the intellectual, Sankhya attract the admiration of the analytical mind, Buddha capture the rationalist in search of a less material synthesis than the modern scientist's continual Annam Brahma, Pranam Brahma, but these are only grandiose intellectualities. The world at large does not live by the pure intellect, concrete itself it stands by things concrete or practical, although immaterial in its origin¹ it bases practicality upon abstractions. A goal of life, a practice of perfection and a rational, yet binding law of conduct,—these are man's continual quests and in none of these demands is modern science able to satisfy humanity. In reply to all these quests and wants Science has only one cry, Society and again Society and always Society. But the nature of man knows that Society is only a means, not an end, that Society is not the whole of life. With the eye of the soul it finds Society a passing and changing outward phenomenon, not that fixed, clear and eternal inward standard and goal which we seek. Of Society as of all things Yagnavalkya's universal dictum stands: a man loves and serves Society for the sake of the Self and not for the sake of Society. That is his nature and whatever nature² it may denote³ to his nature he must always return. India offers what Science could not provide, Brahman for the eternal goal, Yoga for the means of perfection, Dharma (svabhāvaniyatam karma) as the rational yet binding law of conduct. Therefore, because it has something by which humanity can be satisfied and on which it can found itself, is the victory of the Indian mind assured.

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But in order that the victory may not be slow and stumbling in its progress and imperfect in its fulfilment, it is necessary that whatever India has to offer should be stated to the West in language that the West can understand and through a principle of knowledge which it has made its own. Europe will accept nothing which is not scientific, nothing, that is to say, which does not take up its stand on an assured, well-ordered and verifiable knowledge. Undoubtedly, for practical purposes the West is right; since only by establishing ourselves on such an assured foundation can we work with the utmost effectiveness and make the most of what we know. For Shastra is the true basis of all perfect action and Shastra means the full and careful teaching of the principles, relations and processes of every branch of knowledge, action or conduct with which the mind concerns itself. The Indian Knowledge possesses such a scientific basis but in those greater matters, unexpressed or expressed only in broad principles, compact aphorisms, implied logical conceits, not minutely treated in detail and fully with a patent logical development in the way to which the occidental intellect is now accustomed and which it has become its second nature to demand. The aphoristic method has great advantages. It prevents the mind from getting encrusted in details and fossilising there; it leaves a wide room and great latitude for originality and the delicate play of individuality in the details. It allows a science to remain elastic and full of ever new potentialities for the discoverer. No doubt it has disadvantages. It leaves much room for inaccuracy, for individual error, for the violences of the ill-trained and the freaks of the inefficient. For this among other more important reasons, the Indian mind has thought it wise to give a firm and absolute authority to the Guru and to insist that the disciple shall by precept and practice make his own all that the master has to teach him and so form and train his mind before it is allowed to play freely with his subject. In Europe the manual replaces the Guru; the mind of the learner is not less rigidly bound and dominated but it is by the written rules and details, not by the more adaptable and flexible word of the Guru.

Still, the age has its own demands and it is becoming imperatively necessary that Indian knowledge should reveal in the Western way its scientific foundations.

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China, Japan and India

It is significant of the tendencies of the twentieth century that all its great and typical events should have occurred no longer as in the last few centuries in Europe, but in Asia. The Russo-Japanese war, the Chinese Revolution, the constitutional changes in Turkey and Persia and last but most momentous the revival however indeterminate as yet of the soul of India, are the really significant events of the young century. In Europe except in only one Asiatic corner, there has been no event of corresponding magnitude and importance. The abortive orgy of revolutionary fury in Russia, the growth of enormous strikes, the failure of the peace movement, the increase of legislation stamped with the pressure of a materialistic Socialism, although they may hold in themselves germs of greater things are so far mere indistinct material symptoms of disorganisation and a disease vainly doctored with palliatives, not events of a definite movement of new birth and regeneration. The importance of this new tendency lies in the fact that great events in Europe, even when they are outwardly spiritual, have usually an intellectual or social trend and significance but great events in Asia have a spiritual significance even when they are outwardly intellectual, social or political. Therefore when Asia once more becomes the theatre of the world's chief events, it is a sure sign that a great spiritual revolution, perhaps a great age of spirituality is preparing for humanity.

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A Preface on National Education - I

The necessity and unmixed good of universal education has become a fixed dogma to the modern intelligence, a thing held to be beyond dispute by any liberal mind or awakened national conscience, and whether the tenet be or not altogether beyond cavil, it may at any rate be presumed that it answers to a present and imperative need of the intellectual and vital effort of the race. But there is not quite so universal an agreement or common attainment to a reasoned or luminous idea on what education is or practically or ideally should be. Add to this uncertainty the demand—naturally insistent and clamorous with the awakening of the spirit of independence in a country like our own which is peculiarly circumstanced not only by the clash of the Asiatic and the European or occidental consciousness and the very different civilisations they have created and the enforced meeting of the English and the Indian mind and culture, but by a political subjection which has left the decisive shaping and supreme control of education in the hands of foreigners,—add the demand for a national type of education, and in the absence of clear ideas on the subject we are likely to enter, as we have in fact entered into an atmosphere of great and disconcerting confusion.

For if we do not know very clearly what education in general truly is or should be, we seem still less to know what we mean by national education. All that appears to be almost unanimously agreed on is that the teaching given in the existing schools and universities has been bad in kind and in addition denationalising, degrading and impoverishing to the national mind, soul and character because it is overshadowed by a foreign hand and foreign in aim, method, substance and spirit. But this purely negative agreement does not carry us very far: it does not tell us what in principle or practice we desire or ought to put in its place. There may be much virtue in an epithet but to tag on the word "national" to a school or college or even a Council or

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Board of Education, to put that into the hands of an indigenous agency, mostly of men trained in the very system we are denouncing, to reproduce that condemned system with certain differences, additions, subtractions, modifications of detail and curriculum, to tack on a technical side and think we have solved the problem does not really change anything. To be satisfied with a trick of this kind is to perform a somersault round our centre of intellectual gravity, land ourselves where we were before and think we have got into quite another country,—obviously a very unsatisfactory proceeding. The institutions that go by the new name may or may not be giving a better education than the others, but in what they are more national, is not altogether clear even to the most willingly sympathetic critical intelligence.

The problem indeed is one of surpassing difficulty and it is not easy to discover from what point of thought or of practice one has to begin, on what principle to create or on what lines to map out the new building. The conditions are intricate and the thing that is to be created in a way entirely new. We cannot be satisfied with a mere resuscitation of some past principle, method and system that may have happened to prevail at one time in India, however great it was or in consonance with our past civilisation and culture. That reversion would be a sterile and impossible effort hopelessly inadequate to the pressing demands of the present and the far greater demands of our future. On the other hand to take over the English, German or American school and university or some variation on them with a gloss of Indian colour is a course attractively facile and one that saves the need of thinking and of new experiment; but in that case there is no call for this loud pother about nationalising education, all that is needed is a change of control, of the medium of instruction, of the frame and fitting of the curriculum and to some extent of the balance of subjects. I presume that it is something more profound, great and searching that we have in mind and that, whatever the difficulty of giving it shape, it is an education proper to the Indian soul and need and temperament and culture that we are in quest of, not indeed something faithful merely to the past, but to the developing soul of India, to her future need, to the greatness of her coming self-creation, to her eternal spirit. It is

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this that we have to get clear in our minds and for that we must penetrate down to fundamentals and make those firm before we can greatly execute. Otherwise nothing is easier than to start off on a false but specious cry or from an unsound starting-point and travel far away from the right path on a tangent that will lead us to no goal but only to emptiness and failure.

But first let us clear out of the way or at least put in its proper place and light the preliminary disabling objection that there is and can be no meaning at all or none worth troubling about in the idea of a national education and that the very notion is the undesirable and unprofitable intrusion of a false and narrow patriotism into a field in which patriotism apart from the need of a training in good citizenship has no legitimate place. And for that one purpose no special kind or form of education is needed, since the training to good citizenship must be in all essentials the same whether in the East or the West, England or Germany or Japan or India. Mankind and its needs are the same everywhere and truth and knowledge are one and have no country; education too must be a thing universal and without nationality or borders. What, for an instance, could be meant by a national education in Science, and does it signify that we are to reject modern truth and modern method of science because they come to us from Europe, and go back to the imperfect scientific knowledge of classical India, exile Galileo and Newton and all that came after and teach only what was known to Bhaskara, Aryabhatta and Varahamihira? Or how should the teaching of Sanskrit or the living indigenous tongues differ in kind and method from the teaching of Latin or the living modern tongues in Europe? Are we then to fetch back to the methods of the Tols of Nadiya or to the system, if we can find out what it was, practised in ancient Takshashila or Nalanda? At most what can be demanded is a larger place for the study of the past of our country, the replacement of English by the indigenous tongues as a medium and the relegation of the former to the position of a second language,—but it is possible to challenge the advisability even of these changes. After all we live in the twentieth century and cannot revive the India of Chandragupta or Akbar; we must keep abreast with the march of truth and knowledge, fit ourselves

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for existence under actual circumstances, and our education must be therefore up to date in form and substance and modern in life and spirit.

All these objections are only pertinent if directed against the travesty of the idea of national education which would make of it a means of an obscurantist retrogression to the past forms that were once a living frame of our culture but are now dead or dying things; but that is not the idea nor the endeavour. The living spirit of the demand for national education no more requires a return to the astronomy and mathematics of Bhaskara or the forms of the system of Nalanda than the living spirit of Swadeshi a return from railway and motor traction to the ancient chariot and the bullock-cart. There is no doubt plenty of retrogressive sentimentalism about and there have been some queer violences on common sense and reason and disconcerting freaks that prejudice the real issue, but these inconsequent streaks of fantasy give a false hue to the matter. It is the spirit, the living and vital issue that we have to do with, and there the question is not between modernism and antiquity, but between an imported civilisation and the greater possibilities of the Indian mind and nature, not between the present and the past, but between the present and the future. It is not a return to the fifth century but an initiation of the centuries to come, not a reversion but a break forward away from a present artificial falsity to her own greater innate potentialities that is demanded by the soul, by the Shakti of India.

The argument against national education proceeds in the first place upon the lifeless academic notion that the subject, the acquiring of this or that kind of information is the whole or the central matter. But the acquiring of various kinds of information is only one and not the chief of the means and necessities of education: its central aim is the building of the powers of the human mind and spirit, it is the formation or, as I would prefer to view it, the evoking of knowledge and will and of the power to use knowledge, character, culture,—that at least if no more. And this distinction makes an enormous difference. It is true enough that if all we ask for is the acquisition of the information put at our disposal by science, it may be enough to take over the science of the West whether in an undigested whole or in carefully packed

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morsels. But the major question is not merely what science we learn, but what we shall do with our science and how too, acquiring the scientific mind and recovering the habit of scientific discovery—I leave aside the possibility of the Indian mentality working freely in its own nature discovering new methods or even giving a new turn to physical science—we shall relate it to other powers of the human mind and scientific knowledge to other knowledge more intimate to other and not less light-giving and power-giving parts of our intelligence and nature. And there the peculiar cast of the Indian mind, its psychological tradition, its ancestral capacity, tum, knowledge bring in cultural elements of a supreme importance. A language, Sanskrit or another, should be acquired by whatever method is most natural, efficient and stimulating to the mind and we need not cling there to any past or present manner of teaching: but the vital question is how we are to learn and make use of Sanskrit and the indigenous languages so as to get to the heart and intimate sense of our own culture and establish a vivid continuity between the still living power of our past and the yet uncreated power of our future, and how we are to learn and use English or any other foreign tongue so as to know helpfully the life, ideas and culture of other countries and establish our right relations with the world around us. This is the aim and principle of a true national education, not, certainly, to ignore modern truth and knowledge, but to take our foundation on our own being, our own mind, our own spirit.

The second ground openly or tacitly taken by the hostile argument is that modern, that is to say, European civilisation is the thing that we have to acquire and fit ourselves for, so only can we live and prosper and it is this that our education must do for us. The idea of national education challenges the sufficiency of this assumption. Europe built up her ancient culture on a foundation largely taken from the East, from Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, India, but turned in a new direction and another life-idea by the native spirit and temperament, mind and social genius of Greece and Rome, lost and then recovered it, in part from the Arabs with fresh borrowings from the near East and from India and more widely by the Renaissance, but then too gave it a new

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turn and direction proper to the native spirit and temperament, mind and social genius of the Teutonic, and the Latin, the Celtic and Slav races. It is the civilisation so created that has long offered itself as the last and imperative word of the mind of humanity, but the nations of Asia are not bound so to accept it, and will do better, taking over in their turn whatever new knowledge or just ideas Europe has to offer, to assimilate them to their own knowledge and culture, their own native temperament and spirit, mind and social genius and out of that create the civilisation of the future. The scientific, rationalistic, industrial, pseudo-democratic civilisation of the West is now in process of dissolution and it would be a lunatic absurdity for us at this moment to build blindly on that sinking foundation. When the most advanced minds of the occident are beginning to turn in this red evening of the West for the hope of a new and more spiritual civilisation to the genius of Asia, it would be strange if we could think of nothing better than to cast away our own self and potentialities and put our trust in the dissolving and moribund past of Europe.

And, finally, the objection grounds itself on the implicit idea that the mind of man is the same everywhere and can everywhere be passed through the same machine and uniformly constructed to order. That is an old and effete superstition of the reason which it is time now to renounce. For within the universal mind and soul of humanity is the mind and soul of the individual with its infinite variation, its commonness and its uniqueness, and between them there stands an intermediate power, the mind of a nation, the soul of a people. And of all these three education must take account if it is to be, not a machine-made fabric, but a true building or a living evocation of the powers of the mind and spirit of the human being.

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A Preface on National Education - II

These preliminary objections made to the very idea of national education and, incidentally, the misconceptions they oppose once out of the way, we have still to formulate more positively what the idea means to us, the principle and the form that national education must take in India, the thing to be achieved and the method and turn to be given to the endeavour. It is here that the real difficulty begins because we have for a long time, not only in education but in almost all things, in our whole cultural life, lost hold of the national spirit and idea and there has been as yet no effort of clear, sound and deep thinking or seeing which would enable us to recover it and therefore no clear agreement or even clear difference of opinion on essentials and accessories. At the most we have been satisfied with a strong sentiment and a general but shapeless idea and enthusiasm corresponding to the sentiment and have given to it in the form whatever haphazard application chanced to be agreeable to our intellectual associations, habits or caprices. The result has been no tangible or enduring success, but rather a maximum of confusion and failure. The first thing needed is to make clear to our own minds what the national spirit, temperament, idea, need demands of us through education and apply it in its right harmony to all the different elements of the problem. Only after that is done can we really hope with some confidence and chance of utility and success to replace the present false, empty and mechanical education by something better than a poor and futile chaos or a new mechanical falsity, by a real, living and creative upbringing of the Indian manhood of the future.

But first it is necessary to disengage from all ambiguities what we understand by a true education, its essential sense, its fundamental aim and significance. For we can then be sure of our beginnings and proceed securely to fix the just place and whole bearing of the epithet we seek to attach to the word. I must be sure what education itself is or should be before I can be sure what a national education is or should be. Let us begin then

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with our initial statement, as to which I think there can be no great dispute that there are three things which have to be taken into account in a true and living education, the man, the individual in his commonness and in his uniqueness, the nation or people and universal humanity. It follows that that alone will be a true and living education which helps to bring out to full advantage, makes ready for the full purpose and scope of human life all that is in the individual man, and which at the same time helps him to enter into his right relation with the life, mind and soul of the people to which he belongs and with that great total life, mind and soul of humanity of which he himself is a unit and his people or nation a living, a separate and yet inseparable member. It is by considering the whole question in the light of this large and entire principle that we can best arrive at a clear idea of what we would have our education to be and what we shall strive to accomplish by a national education. Most is this largeness of view and foundation needed here and now in India, the whole energy of whose life purpose must be at this critical turning of her destinies directed to her one great need, to find and rebuild her true self in individual and in people and to take again, thus repossessed of her inner greatness, her due and natural portion and station in the life of the human race.

There are however very different conceptions possible of man and his life, of the nation and its life and of humanity and the life of the human race, and our idea and endeavour in education may well vary considerably according to that difference. India has always had her own peculiar conception and vision of these things and we must see whether it is not really, as it is likely to be, that which will be or ought to be at the very root of our education and the one thing that will give it its truly national character. Man has not been seen by the thought of India as a living body developed by physical Nature which has evolved certain vital propensities, an ego, a mind and a reason, an animal of the genus homo and in our case of the species homo indicus, whose whole life and education must be turned towards a satisfaction of these propensities under the government of a trained mind and reason and for the best advantage of the personal and the national ego. It has not been either the turn of her mind to regard man

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pre-eminently as a reasoning animal, or let us say, widening the familiar definition, a thinking, feeling and willing natural existence, a mental son of physical Nature, and his education as a culture of the mental capacities, or to define him as a political, social and economic being and his education as a training that will fit him to be an efficient, productive and well disciplined member of the society and the State. All these are no doubt aspects of the human being and she has given them a considerable prominence subject to her large vision, but they are outward things, parts of the instrumentation of his mind, life and action, not the whole or the real man.

India has seen always in man the individual a soul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and spirit. Always she has distinguished and cultivated in him a mental, an intellectual, an ethical, dynamic and practical, an aesthetic and hedonistic, a vital and physical being, but all these have been seen as powers of a soul that manifests through them and grows with their growth, and yet they are not all the soul, because at the summit of its ascent it arises to something greater than them all, into a spiritual being, and it is in this that she has found the supreme manifestation of the soul of man and his ultimate divine manhood, his paramārtha and highest puruṣārtha. And similarly India has not understood by the nation or people an organised State or an armed and efficient community well prepared for the struggle of life and putting all at the service of the national ego,—that is only the disguise of iron armour which masks and encumbers the national Purusha,—but a great communal soul and life that has appeared in the whole and has manifested a nature of its own and a law of that nature, a Swabhava and Swadharma, and embodied it in its intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, dynamic, social and political forms and culture. And equally then our cultural conception of humanity must be in accordance with her ancient vision of the universal manifesting in the human race, evolving through life and mind but with a high ultimate spiritual aim,—it must be the idea of the spirit, the soul of humanity advancing through struggle and concert towards oneness, increasing its experience and maintaining a needed diversity

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through the varied culture and life motives of its many peoples, searching for perfection through the development of the powers of the individual and his progress towards a diviner being and life, but feeling out too though more slowly after a similar perfectibility in the life of the race. It may be disputed whether this is a true account of the human or the national being, but if it is once admitted as a true description, then it should be clear that the only true education will be that which will be an instrument for this real working of the spirit in the mind and body of the individual and the nation. That is the principle on which we must build, that the central motive and the guiding ideal. It must be an education that for the individual will make its one central object the growth of the soul and its powers and possibilities, for the nation will keep first in view the preservation, strengthening and enrichment of the nation-soul and its Dharma and raise both into powers of the life and ascending mind and soul of humanity. And at no time will it lose sight of man's highest object, the awakening and development of his spiritual being.

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1. The Human Mind

The true basis of education is the study of the human mind, infant, adolescent and adult. Any system of education founded on theories of academic perfection, which ignores the instrument of study, is more likely to hamper and impair intellectual growth than to produce a perfect and perfectly equipped mind. For the educationist has to do, not with dead material like the artist or sculptor, but with an infinitely subtle and sensitive organism. He cannot shape an educational masterpiece out of human wood or stone; he has to work in the elusive substance of mind and respect the limits imposed by the fragile human body.

There can be no doubt that the current educational system of Europe is a great advance on many of the methods of antiquity, but its defects are also palpable. It is based on an insufficient knowledge of human psychology, and it is only safeguarded in Europe from disastrous results by the refusal of the ordinary student to subject himself to the processes it involves, his habit of studying only so much as he must to avoid punishment or to pass an immediate test, his resort to active habits and vigorous physical exercise. In India the disastrous effects of the system on body, mind and character are only too apparent. The first problem in a national system of education is to give an education as comprehensive as the European and more thorough, without the evils of strain and cramming. This can only be done by studying the instruments of knowledge and finding a system of teaching which shall be natural, easy and effective. It is only by strengthening and sharpening these instruments to their utmost capacity that they can be made effective for the increased work which modern conditions require. The muscles of the mind must be thoroughly trained by simple and easy means; then, and not till then, great feats of intellectual strength can be required of them.

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The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil's mind, he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface. The distinction that reserves this principle for the teaching of adolescent and adult minds and denies its application to the child, is a conservative and unintelligent doctrine. Child or man, boy or girl, there is only one sound principle of good teaching. Difference of age only serves to diminish or increase the amount of help and guidance necessary; it does not change its nature.

The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is he himself who must be induced to expand in accordance with his own nature. There can be no greater error than for the parent to arrange beforehand that his son shall develop particular qualities, capacities, ideas, virtues, or be prepared for a prearranged career. To force the nature to abandon its own dharma is to do it permanent harm, mutilate its growth and deface its perfection. It is a selfish tyranny over a human soul and a wound to the nation, which loses the benefit of the best that a man could have given it and is forced to accept instead something imperfect and artificial, second-rate, perfunctory and common. Every one has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.

The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be. The basis of a man's nature is almost always, in addition to his soul's past, his heredity, his surroundings, his nationality, his country, the soil

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from which he draws sustenance, the air which he breathes, the sights, sounds, habits to which he is accustomed. They mould him not the less powerfully because insensibly, and from that then we must begin. We must not take up the nature by the roots from the earth in which it must grow or surround the mind with images and ideas of a life which is alien to that in which it must physically move. If anything has to be brought in from outside, it must be offered, not forced on the mind. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development. There are souls which naturally revolt from their surroundings and seem to belong to another age and clime. Let them be free to follow their bent; but the majority languish, become empty, become artificial, if artificially moulded into an alien form. It is God's arrangement that they should belong to a particular nation, age, society, that they should be children of the past, possessors of the present, creators of the future. The past is our foundation, the present our material, the future our aim and summit. Each must have its due and natural place in a national system of education.

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2. The Powers of the Mind

The instrument of the educationist is the mind or antaḥkarṇa, which consists of four layers. The reservoir of past mental impressions, the citta or storehouse of memory, which must be distinguished from the specific act of memory, is the foundation on which all the other layers stand. All experience lies within us as passive or potential memory; active memory selects and takes what it requires from that storehouse. But the active memory is like a man searching among a great mass of locked-up material; sometimes he cannot find what he wants; often in his rapid search he stumbles across many things for which he has no immediate need; often too he blunders and thinks he has found the real thing when it is something else, irrelevant if not valueless, on which he has laid his hand. The passive memory or citta needs no training, it is automatic and naturally sufficient to its task; there is not the slightest object of knowledge coming within its field which is not secured, placed and faultlessly preserved in that admirable receptacle. It is the active memory, a higher but less perfectly developed function, which is in need of improvement.

The second layer is the mind proper or manas, the sixth sense of our Indian psychology, in which all the others are gathered up. The function of the mind is to receive the images of things translated into sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, the five senses and translate these again into thought-sensations. It receives also images of its own direct grasping and forms them into mental impressions. These sensations and impressions are the material of thought, not thought itself; but it is exceedingly important that thought should work on sufficient and perfect material. It is, therefore, the first business of the educationist to develop in the child the right use of the six senses; to see that they are not stunted or injured by disuse, but trained by the

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child himself under the teacher's direction to that perfect accuracy and keen subtle sensitiveness of which they are capable. In addition, whatever assistance can be gained by the organs of action, should be thoroughly employed. The hand, for instance, should be trained to reproduce what the eye sees and the mind senses. The speech should be trained to a perfect expression of the knowledge which the whole antaḥkaraṇa possesses.

The third layer is the intellect or buddhi, which is the real instrument of thought and that which orders and disposes of the knowledge acquired by the other parts of the machine. For the purpose of the educationist this is infinitely the most important of the three I have named. The intellect is an organ composed of several groups of functions, divisible into two important classes, the functions and faculties of the right-hand, the functions and faculties of the left-hand. The faculties of the right-hand are comprehensive, creative and synthetic; the faculties of the left-hand critical and analytic. To the right-hand belong judgment, imagination, memory, observation; to the left-hand comparison and reasoning. The critical faculties distinguish, compare, classify, generalise, deduce, infer, conclude; they are the component parts of the logical reason. The righthand faculties comprehend, command, judge in their own right, grasp, hold and manipulate. The right-hand mind is the master of the knowledge, the left-hand its servant. The left-hand touches only the body of knowledge, the right-hand penetrates its soul. The left-hand limits itself to ascertained truth, the right-hand grasps that which is still elusive or unascertained. Both are essential to the completeness of the human reason. These important functions of the machine have all to be raised to their highest and finest working-power, if the education of the child is not to be imperfect and one-sided.

There is a fourth layer of faculty which, not as yet entirely developed in man, is attaining gradually to a wider development and more perfect evolution. The powers peculiar to this highest stratum of knowledge are chiefly known to us from the phenomena of genius,—sovereign discernment, intuitive perception of truth, plenary inspiration of speech, direct vision of knowledge to an extent often amounting to revelation, making a man a prophet

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of truth. These powers are rare in their higher development, though many possess them imperfectly or by flashes. They are still greatly distrusted by the critical reason of mankind because of the admixture of error, caprice and a biased imagination which obstructs and distorts their perfect workings. Yet it is clear that humanity could not have advanced to its present stage if it had not been for the help of these faculties, and it is a question with which educationists have not yet grappled, what is to be done with this mighty and baffling element, the element of genius in the pupil. The mere instructor does his best to discourage and stifle genius, the more liberal teacher welcomes it. Faculties so important to humanity cannot be left out of our consideration. It is foolish to neglect them. Their imperfect development must be perfected, the admixture of error, caprice and biased fancifulness must be carefully and wisely removed. But the teacher cannot do it; he would eradicate the good corn as well as the tares if he interfered. Here, as in all educational operations, he can only put the growing soul into the way of its own perfection.

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3. The Moral Nature

In the economy of man the mental nature rests upon the moral, and the education of the intellect divorced from the perfection of the moral and emotional nature is injurious to human progress. Yet, while it is easy to arrange some kind of curriculum or syllabus which will do well enough for the training of the mind, it has not yet been found possible to provide under modern conditions a suitable moral training for the school and college. The attempt to make boys moral and religious by the teaching of moral and religious text-books is a vanity and a delusion, precisely because the heart is not the mind and to instruct the mind does not necessarily improve the heart. It would be an error to say that it has no effect. It throws certain seeds of thought into the antaḥkaraṇa and, if these thoughts become habitual, they influence the conduct. But the danger of moral text-books is that they make the thinking of high things mechanical and artificial, and whatever is mechanical and artificial is inoperative for good.

There are three things which are of the utmost importance in dealing with a man's moral nature, the emotions, the saṁskāras or formed habits and associations, and the svabhāva or nature. The only way for him to train himself morally is to habituate himself to the right emotions, the noblest associations, the best mental, emotional and physical habits and the following out in right action of the fundamental impulses of his essential nature. You can impose a certain discipline on children, dress them into a certain mould, lash them into a desired path, but unless you can get their hearts and natures on your side, the conformity to this imposed rule becomes a hypocritical and heartless, a conventional, often a cowardly compliance. This is what is done in Europe, and it leads to that remarkable phenomenon known as the sowing of wild oats as soon as the yoke of discipline

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at school and at home is removed, and to the social hypocrisy which is so large a feature of European life. Only what the man admires and accepts, becomes part of himself; the rest is a mask. He conforms to the discipline of society as he conformed to the moral routine of home and school, but considers himself at liberty to guide his real life, inner and private, according to his own likings and passions. On the other hand, to neglect moral and religious education altogether is to corrupt the race. The notorious moral corruption in our young men previous to the saving touch of the Swadeshi movement was the direct result of the purely mental instruction given to them under the English system of education. The adoption of the English system under an Indian disguise in institutions like the Central Hindu College is likely to lead to the European result. That it is better than nothing, is all that can be said for it.

As in the education of the mind, so in the education of the heart, the best way is to put the child into the right road to his own perfection and encourage him to follow it, watching, suggesting, helping, but not interfering. The one excellent element in the English boarding school is that the master at his best stands there as a moral guide and example, leaving the boys largely to influence and help each other in following the path silently shown to them. But the method practised is crude and marred by the excess of outer discipline, for which the pupils have no respect except that of fear and the exiguity of the inner assistance. The little good that is done is outweighed by much evil. The old Indian system of the guru commanding by his knowledge and sanctity the implicit obedience, perfect admiration, reverent emulation of the student was a far superior method of moral discipline. It is impossible to restore that ancient system; but it is not impossible to substitute the wise friend, guide and helper for the hired instructor or the benevolent policeman which is all that the European system usually makes of the pedagogue.

The first rule of moral training is to suggest and invite, not command or impose. The best method of suggestion is by personal example, daily converse and the books read from day to day. These books should contain, for the younger student, the lofty examples of the past given, not as moral lessons, but as

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things of supreme human interest, and, for the elder student, the great thoughts of great souls, the passages of literature which set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspirations, the records of history and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, noble emotions and aspiring ideals. This is a kind of good company, satsaṅga, which can seldom fail to have effect so long as sententious sermonising is avoided, and becomes of the highest effect if the personal life of the teacher is itself moulded by the great things he places before his pupils. It cannot, however, have full force unless the young life is given an opportunity, within its limited sphere, of embodying in action the moral impulses which rise within it. The thirst of knowledge, the self-devotion, the purity, the renunciation of the Brahmin,—the courage, ardour, honour, nobility, chivalry, patriotism of the Kshatriya,—the beneficence, skill, industry, generous enterprise and large open-handedness of the Vaisya,—the self-effacement and loving service of the Sudra,—these are the qualities of the Aryan. They constitute the moral temper we desire in our young men, in the whole nation. But how can we get them if we do not give opportunities to the young to train themselves in the Aryan tradition, to form by the practice and familiarity of childhood and boyhood the stuff of which their adult lives must be made?

Every boy should, therefore, be given practical opportunity as well as intellectual encouragement to develop all that is best in the nature. If he has bad qualities, bad habits, bad saṁskāras, whether of mind or body, he should not be treated harshly as a delinquent, but encouraged to get rid of them by the Rajayogic method of saṁyama, rejection and substitution. He should be encouraged to think of them, not as sins or offences, but as symptoms of a curable disease, alterable by a steady and sustained effort of the will,—falsehood being rejected whenever it rises into the mind and replaced by truth, fear by courage, selfishness by sacrifice and renunciation, malice by love. Great care will have to be taken that unformed virtues are not rejected as faults. The wildness and recklessness of many young natures are only the overflowings of an excessive strength, greatness and nobility. They should be purified, not discouraged.

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I have spoken of morality; it is necessary to speak a word of religious teaching. There is a strange idea prevalent that by merely teaching the dogmas of religion children can be made pious and moral. This is an European error, and its practice either leads to mechanical acceptance of a creed having no effect on the inner and little on the outer life, or it creates the fanatic, the pietist, the ritualist or the unctuous hypocrite. Religion has to be lived, not learned as a creed. The singular compromise made in the so-called National Education of Bengal making the teaching of religious beliefs compulsory, but forbidding the practice of anuṣṭhāna or religious exercise, is a sample of the ignorant confusion which distracts men's minds on this subject. The prohibition is a sop to secularism declared or concealed. No religious teaching is of any value unless it is lived, and the use of various kinds of sādhanā, spiritual self-training and exercise is the only effective preparation for religious living. The ritual of prayer, homage, ceremony is craved for by many minds as an essential preparation and, if not made an end in itself, is a great help to spiritual progress; if it is withheld, some other form of meditation, devotion or religious duty must be put in its place. Otherwise, religious teaching is of little use and would almost be better ungiven.

But whether distinct teaching in any form of religion is imparted or not, the essence of religion, to live for God, for humanity, for country, for others and for oneself in these, must be made the ideal in every school which calls itself national. It is this spirit of Hinduism pervading our schools which—far more than the teaching of Indian subjects, the use of Indian methods or formal instruction in Hindu beliefs and Hindu scriptures—should be the essence of Nationalism in our schools distinguishing them from all others.

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4. Simultaneous and Successive Teaching

A very remarkable feature of modern training which has been subjected in India to a reductio ad absurdum is the practice of teaching by snippets. A subject is taught a little at a time, in conjunction with a host of others, with the result that what might be well learnt in a single year is badly learned in seven and the boy goes out ill-equipped, served with imperfect parcels of knowledge, master of none of the great departments of human knowledge. The system of education adopted by the National Council, an amphibious and twy-natured creation, attempts to heighten this practice of teaching by snippets at the bottom and the middle and suddenly change it to a grandiose specialism at the top. This is to base the triangle on its apex and hope that it will stand.

The old system was to teach one or two subjects well and thoroughly and then proceed to others, and certainly it was a more rational system than the modern. If it did not impart so much varied information, it built up a deeper, nobler and more real culture. Much of the shallowness, discursive lightness and fickle mutability of the average modern mind is due to the vicious principle of teaching by snippets. The one defect that can be alleged against the old system was that the subject earliest learned might fade from the mind of the student while he was mastering his later studies. But the excellent training given to the memory by the ancients obviated the incidence of this defect. In the future education we need not bind ourselves either by the ancient or the modern system, but select only the most perfect and rapid means of mastering knowledge.

In defence of the modern system it is alleged that the attention of children is easily tired and cannot be subjected to the strain of long application to a single subject. The frequent change of subject gives rest to the mind. The question naturally arises:

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are the children of modern times then so different from the ancients, and, if so, have we not made them so by discouraging prolonged concentration? A very young child cannot, indeed, apply himself; but a very young child is unfit for school teaching of any kind. A child of seven or eight, and that is the earliest permissible age for the commencement of any regular kind of study, is capable of a good deal of concentration if he is interested. Interest is, after all, the basis of concentration. We make his lessons supremely uninteresting and repellent to the child, a harsh compulsion the basis of teaching and then complain of his restless inattention ! The substitution of a natural self-education by the child for the present unnatural system will remove this objection of inability. A child, like a man, if he is interested, much prefers to get to the end of his subject rather than leave it unfinished. To lead him on step by step, interesting and absorbing him in each as it comes, until he has mastered his subject is the true art of teaching.

The first attention of the teacher must be given to the medium and the instruments, and, until these are perfected, to multiply subjects of regular instruction is to waste time and energy. When the mental instruments are sufficiently developed to acquire a language easily and swiftly, that is the time to introduce him to many languages, not when he can only partially understand what he is taught and masters it laboriously and imperfectly. Moreover, one who has mastered his own language, has one very necessary facility for mastering another. With the linguistic faculty unsatisfactorily developed in one's own tongue, to master others is impossible. To study science with the faculties of observation, judgment, reasoning and comparison only slightly developed is to undertake a useless and thankless labour. So it is with all other subjects.

The mother-tongue is the proper medium of education and therefore the first energies of the child should be directed to the thorough mastering of the medium. Almost every child has an imagination, an instinct for words, a dramatic faculty, a wealth of idea and fancy. These should be interested in the literature and history of the nation. Instead of stupid and dry spelling and reading books, looked on as a dreary and ungrateful task, he

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should be introduced by rapidly progressive stages to the most interesting parts of his own literature and the life around him and behind him, and they should be put before him in such a way as to attract and appeal to the qualities of which I have spoken. All other study at this period should be devoted to the perfection of the mental functions and the moral character. A foundation should be laid at this time for the study of history, science, philosophy, art, but not in an obtrusive and formal manner. Every child is a lover of interesting narrative, a hero-worshipper and a patriot. Appeal to these qualities in him and through them let him master without knowing it the living and human parts of his nation's history. Every child is an inquirer, an investigator, analyser, a merciless anatomist. Appeal to those qualities in him and let him acquire without knowing it the right temper and the necessary fundamental knowledge of the scientist. Every child has an insatiable intellectual curiosity and turn for metaphysical enquiry. Use it to draw him on slowly to an understanding of the world and himself. Every child has the gift of imitation and a touch of imaginative power. Use it to give him the groundwork of the faculty of the artist.

It is by allowing Nature to work that we get the benefit of the gifts she has bestowed on us. Humanity in its education of children has chosen to thwart and hamper her processes and, by so doing, has done much to thwart and hamper the rapidity of its onward march. Happily, saner ideas are now beginning to prevail. But the way has not yet been found. The past hangs about our necks with all its prejudices and errors and will not leave us; it enters into our most radical attempts to return to the guidance of the all-wise Mother. We must have the courage to take up clearer knowledge and apply it fearlessly in the interests of posterity. Teaching by snippets must be relegated to the lumber-room of dead sorrows. The first work is to interest the child in life, work and knowledge, to develop his instruments of knowledge with the utmost thoroughness, to give him mastery of the medium he must use. Afterwards, the rapidity with which he will learn will make up for any delay in taking up regular studies, and it will be found that, where now he learns a few things badly, then he will learn many things thoroughly well.

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5. The Training of the Senses

There are six senses which minister to knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, mind, and all of these except the last look outward and gather the material of thought from outside through the physical nerves and their end-organs, eye, ear, nose, skin, palate. The perfection of the senses as ministers to thought must be one of the first cares of the teacher. The two things that are needed of the senses are accuracy and sensitiveness. We must first understand what are the obstacles to the accuracy and sensitiveness of the senses, in order that we may take the best steps to remove them. The cause of imperfection must be understood by those who desire to bring about perfection.

The senses depend for their accuracy and sensitiveness on the unobstructed activity of the nerves which are the channels of their information and the passive acceptance of the mind which is the recipient. In themselves the organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose the right smell. This can easily be understood if we study the action of the eye as a crucial example. A correct image is reproduced automatically on the retina, if there is any error in appreciating it, it is not the fault of the organ, but of something else.

The fault may be with the nerve currents. The nerves are nothing but channels, they have no power in themselves to alter the information given by the organs. But a channel may be obstructed and the obstruction may interfere either with the fullness or the accuracy of the information, not as it reaches the organ where it is necessarily and automatically perfect, but as it reaches the mind. The only exception is in case of a physical defect in the organ as an instrument. That is not a matter for the educationist, but for the physician.

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If the obstruction is such as to stop the information reaching the mind at all, the result is an insufficient sensitiveness of the senses. The defects of sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, anaesthesia in its various degrees, are curable when not the effect of physical injury or defect in the organ itself. The obstructions can be removed and the sensitiveness remedied by the purification of the nerve system. The remedy is a simple one which is now becoming more and more popular in Europe for different reasons and objects, the regulation of the breathing. This process inevitably restores the perfect and unobstructed activity of the channels and, if well and thoroughly done, leads to a high activity of the senses. The process is called in Yogic discipline nāḍī-śuddhi or nerve-purification.

The obstruction in the channel may be such as not absolutely to stop in however small a degree, but to distort the information. A familiar instance of this is the effect of fear or alarm on the sense action. The startled horse takes the sack on the road for a dangerous living thing, the startled man takes a rope for a snake, a waving curtain for a ghostly form. All distortions due to actions in the nervous system can be traced to some kind of emotional disturbance acting in the nerve channels. The only remedy for them is the habit of calm, the habitual steadiness of the nerves. This also can be brought about by nāḍī-śuddhi or nerve-purification, which quiets the system, gives a deliberate calmness to all the internal processes and prepares the purification of the mind.

If the nerve channels are quiet and clear, the only possible disturbance of the information is from or through the mind. Now the manas or sixth sense is in itself a channel like the nerves, a channel for communication with the buddhi or brain-force. Disturbance may happen either from above or from below. The information outside is first photographed on the end organ, then reproduced at the other end of the nerve system in the citta or passive memory. All the images of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are deposited there and the manas reports them to the buddhi. The manas is both a sense organ and a channel. As a sense organ it is as automatically perfect as the others, as a channel it is subject to disturbance resulting either in obstruction or distortion.

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As a sense organ the mind receives direct thought impressions from outside and from within. These impressions are in themselves perfectly correct, but in their report to the intellect they may either not reach the intellect at all or may reach it so distorted as to make a false or partially false impression. The disturbance may affect the impression which attends the information of eye, ear, nose, skin or palate, but it is very slightly powerful here. In its effect on the direct impressions of the mind, it is extremely powerful and the chief source of error. The mind takes direct impressions primarily of thought, but also of form, sound, indeed of all the things for which it usually prefers to depend on the sense organs. The full development of this sensitiveness of the mind is called in our Yogic discipline sūkṣmadṛṣṭi or subtle reception of images. Telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, presentiment, thought-reading, character-reading and many other modern discoveries are very ancient powers of the mind which have been left undeveloped, and they all belong to the manas. The development of the sixth sense has never formed part of human training. In a future age it will undoubtedly take a place in the necessary preliminary training of the human instrument. Meanwhile there is no reason why the mind should not be trained to give a correct report to the intellect so that our thought may start with absolutely correct if not with full impressions.

The first obstacle, the nervous emotional, we may suppose to be removed by the purification of the nervous system. The second obstacle is that of the emotions themselves warping the impression as it comes. Love may do this, hatred may do this, any emotion or desire according to its power and intensity may distort the impression as it travels. This difficulty can only be removed by the discipline of the emotions, the purifying of the moral habits. This is a part of moral training and its consideration may be postponed for the moment. The next difficulty is the interference of previous associations formed or ingrained in the citta or passive memory. We have a habitual way of looking at things and the conservative inertia in our nature disposes us to give every new experience the shape and semblance of those to which we are accustomed. It is only more developed minds which can receive first impressions without an unconscious bias against

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the novelty of novel experience. For instance, if we get a true impression of what is happening—and we habitually act on such impressions true or false—if it differs from what we are accustomed to expect, the old association meets it in the citta and sends a changed report to the intellect in which either the new impression is overlaid and concealed by the old or mingled with it. To go farther into this subject would be to involve ourselves too deeply into the details of psychology. This typical instance will suffice. To get rid of this obstacle is impossible without citta-śuddhi or purification of the mental and moral habits formed in the citta. This is a preliminary process of Yoga and was effected in our ancient system by various means, but would be considered out of place in a modern system of education.

It is clear, therefore, that unless we revert to our old Indian system in some of its principles, we must be content to allow this source of disturbance to remain. A really national system of education would not allow itself to be controlled by European ideas in this all-important matter. And there is a process so simple and momentous that it can easily be made a part of our system.

It consists in bringing about passivity of the restless flood of thought sensations rising of its own momentum from the passive memory independent of our will and control. This passivity liberates the intellect from the siege of old associations and false impressions. It gives it power to select only what is wanted from the storehouse of the passive memory, automatically brings about the habit of getting right impressions and enables the intellect to dictate to the citta what saṁskāras or associations shall be formed or rejected. This is the real office of the intellect,—to discriminate, choose, select, arrange. But so long as there is not citta-śuddhi, instead of doing this office perfectly, it itself remains imperfect and corrupt and adds to the confusion in the mind channel by false judgment, false imagination, false memory, false observation, false comparison, contrast and analogy, false deduction, induction and inference. The purification of the citta is essential for the liberation, purification and perfect action of the intellect.

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6. Sense-Improvement by Practice

Another cause of the inefficiency of the senses as gatherers of knowledge, is insufficient use. We do not observe sufficiently or with sufficient attention and closeness and a sight, sound, smell, even touch or taste knocks in vain at the door for admission. This tamasic inertia of the receiving instruments is no doubt due to the inattention of the buddhi, and therefore its consideration may seem to come properly under the training of the functions of the intellect, but it is more convenient, though less psychologically correct, to notice it here. The student ought to be accustomed to catch the sights, sounds, etc., around him, distinguish them, mark their nature, properties and sources and fix them in the citta so that they may be always ready to respond when called for by the memory.

It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments that the faculty of observation is very imperfectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the sense and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual occurrence. To get rid of this imperfection will go a long way towards the removal of error. It can be done by training the senses to do their work perfectly, which they will do readily enough if they know the buddhi requires it of them, and giving sufficient attention to put the facts in their right place and order in the memory.

Attention is a factor in knowledge, the importance of which has been always recognised. Attention is the first condition of right memory and of accuracy. To attend to what he is doing is the first element of discipline required of the student, and, as I have suggested, this can easily be secured if the object of attention is made interesting. This attention to a single thing is called concentration. One truth is, however, sometimes overlooked;

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that concentration on several things at a time is often indispensable. When people talk of concentration, they imply centring the mind on one thing at a time; but it is quite possible to develop the power of double concentration, triple concentration, multiple concentration. When a given incident is happening, it may be made up of several simultaneous happenings or a set of simultaneous circumstances, a sight, a sound, a touch or several sights, sounds, touches occurring at the same moment or in the same short space of time. The tendency of the mind is to fasten on one and mark others vaguely, many not at all or, if compelled to attend to all, to be distracted and mark none perfectly. Yet this can be remedied and the attention equally distributed over a set of circumstances in such a way as to observe and remember each perfectly. It is merely a matter of abhyāsa or steady natural practice.

It is also very desirable that the hand should be capable of coming to the help of the eye in dealing with the multitudinous objects of its activity so as to ensure accuracy. This is of a use so obvious and imperatively needed, that it need not be dwelt on at length. The practice of imitation by the hand of the thing seen is of use both in detecting the lapses and inaccuracies of the mind, in noticing the objects of sense and in registering accurately what has been seen. Imitation by the hand ensures accuracy of observation. This is one of the first uses of drawing and it is sufficient in itself to make the teaching of this subject a necessary part of the training of the organs.

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7. The Training of the Mental Faculties

The first qualities of the mind that have to be developed are those which can be grouped under observation. We notice some things, ignore others. Even of what we notice, we observe very little. A general perception of an object is what we all usually carry away from a cursory half-attentive glance. A closer attention fixes its place, form, nature as distinct from its surroundings. Full concentration of the faculty of observation gives us all the knowledge that the three chief senses can gather about the object, or if we touch or taste, we may gather all that the five senses can tell of its nature and properties. Those who make use of the sixth sense, the poet, the painter, the Yogin, can also gather much that is hidden from the ordinary observer. The scientist by investigation ascertains other facts open to a minuter observation. These are the components of the faculty of observation, and it is obvious that its basis is attention, which may be only close or close and minute. We may gather much even from a passing glance at an object, if we have the habit of concentrating the attention and the habit of sattwic receptivity. The first thing the teacher has to do is to accustom the pupil to concentrate attention.

We may take the instance of a flower. Instead of looking casually at it and getting a casual impression of scent, form and colour, he should be encouraged to know the flower—to fix in his mind the exact shade, the peculiar glow, the precise intensity of the scent, the beauty of curve and design in the form. His touch should assure itself of the texture and its peculiarities. Next, the flower should be taken to pieces and its structure examined with the same carefulness of observation. All this should be done not as a task, but as an object of interest by skilfully arranged questions suited to the learner which will draw him on to observe and investigate one thing after the other until he has

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almost unconsciously mastered the whole.

Memory and judgment are the next qualities that will be called upon, and they should be encouraged in the same unconscious way. The student should not be made to repeat the same lesson over again in order to remember it. That is a mechanical, burdensome and unintelligent way of training the memory. A similar but different flower should be put in the hands and he should be encouraged to note it with the same care, but with the avowed object of noting the similarities and differences. By this practice daily repeated the memory will naturally be trained. Not only so, but the mental centres of comparison and contrast will be developed. The learner will begin to observe as a habit the similarities of things and their differences. The teacher should take every care to encourage the perfect growth of this faculty and habit. At the same time, the laws of species and genus will begin to dawn on the mind and, by a skilful following and leading of the young developing mind, the scientific habit, the scientific attitude and the fundamental facts of scientific knowledge may in a very short time be made part of its permanent equipment. The observation and comparison of flowers, leaves, plants, trees will lay the foundations of botanical knowledge without loading the mind with names and that dry set acquisition of informations which is the beginning of cramming and detested by the healthy human mind when it is fresh from nature and unspoiled by unnatural habits. In the same way by the observation of the stars, astronomy, by the observation of earth, stones, etc., geology, by the observation of insects and animals, entomology and zoology may be founded. A little later chemistry may be started by interesting observation of experiments without any formal teaching or heaping on the mind of formulas and book knowledge. There is no scientific subject the perfect and natural mastery of which cannot be prepared in early childhood by this training of the faculties to observe, compare, remember and judge various classes of objects. It can be done easily and attended with a supreme and absorbing interest in the mind of the student. Once the taste is created, the boy can be trusted to follow it up with all the enthusiasm of youth in his leisure hours. This will prevent the necessity at a later age of teaching him everything in class.

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The judgment will naturally be trained along with the other faculties. At every step the boy will have to decide what is the right idea, measurement, appreciation of colour, sound, scent, etc., and what is the wrong. Often the judgments and distinctions made will have to be exceedingly subtle and delicate. At first many errors will be made, but the learner should be taught to trust his judgment without being attached to its results. It will be found that the judgment will soon begin to respond to the calls made on it, clear itself of all errors and begin to judge correctly and minutely. The best way is to accustom the boy to compare his judgments with those of others. When he is wrong, it should at first be pointed out to him how far he was right and why he went wrong; afterwards he should be encouraged to note these things for himself. Every time he is right, his attention should be prominently and encouragingly called to it so that he may get confidence.

While engaged in comparing and contrasting, another centre is certain to develop, the centre of analogy. The learner will inevitably draw analogies and argue from like to like. He should be encouraged to use this faculty while noticing its limitations and errors. In this way he will be trained to form the habit of correct analogy which is an indispensable aid in the acquisition of knowledge.

The one faculty we have omitted, apart from the faculty of direct reasoning, is Imagination. This is a most important and indispensable instrument. It may be divided into three functions, the forming of mental images, the power of creating thoughts, images and imitations or new combinations of existing thoughts and images, the appreciation of the soul in things, beauty, charm, greatness, hidden suggestiveness, the emotion and spiritual life that pervades the world. This is in every way as important as the training of the faculties which observe and compare outward things. But that demands a separate and fuller treatment.

The mental faculties should first be exercised on things, afterwards on words and ideas. Our dealings with language are much too perfunctory and the absence of a fine sense for words impoverishes the intellect and limits the fineness and truth of its operation. The mind should be accustomed first to notice the word

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thoroughly, its form, sound and sense; then to compare the form with other similar forms in the points of similarity and difference, thus forming the foundation of the grammatical sense; then to distinguish between the fine shades of sense of similar words and the formation and rhythm of different sentences, thus forming the formation of the literary and the syntactical faculties. All this should be done informally, drawing on the curiosity and interest, avoiding set teaching and memorising of rules. The true knowledge takes its base on things, arthas, and only when it has mastered the thing, proceeds to formalise its information.

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8. The Training of the Logical Faculty

The training of the logical reason must necessarily follow the training of the faculties which collect the material on which the logical reason must work. Not only so but the mind must have some development of the faculty of dealing with words before it can deal successfully with ideas. The question is, once this preliminary work is done, what is the best way of teaching the boy to think correctly from premises. For the logical reason cannot proceed without premises. It either infers from facts to a conclusion, or from previously formed conclusions to a fresh one, or from one fact to another. It either induces, deduces or simply infers. I see the sunrise day after day, I conclude or induce that it rises as a law daily after a varying interval of darkness. I have already ascertained that wherever there is smoke, there is fire. I have induced that general rule from an observation of facts. I deduce that in a particular case of smoke there is a fire behind. I infer that a man must have lit it from the improbability of any other cause under the particular circumstances. I cannot deduce it because fire is not always created by human kindling; it may be volcanic or caused by a stroke of lightning or the sparks from some kind of friction in the neighbourhood.

There are three elements necessary to correct reasoning: first, the correctness of the facts or conclusions I start from, secondly, the completeness as well as the accuracy of the data I start from, thirdly, the elimination of other possible or impossible conclusions from the same facts. The fallibility of the logical reason is due partly to avoidable negligence and looseness in securing these conditions, partly to the difficulty of getting all the facts correct, still more to the difficulty of getting all the facts complete, most of all, to the extreme difficulty of eliminating all possible conclusions except the one which happens to be right.

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No fact is supposed to be more perfectly established than the universality of the Law of Gravitation as an imperative rule, yet a single new fact inconsistent with it would upset this supposed universality. And such facts exist. Nevertheless by care and keenness the fallibility may be reduced to its minimum.

The usual practice is to train the logical reason by teaching the science of Logic. This is an instance of the prevalent error by which book knowledge of a thing is made the object of the study instead of the thing itself. The experience of reasoning and its errors should be given to the mind and it should be taught to observe how these work for itself; it should proceed from the example to the rule and from the accumulating harmony of rules to the formal science of the subject, not from the formal science to the rule, and from the rule to the example.

The first step is to make the young mind interest itself in drawing inferences from the facts, tracing cause and effect. It should then be led on to notice its successes and its failures and the reason of the success and of the failure; the incorrectness of the fact started from, the haste in drawing conclusions from insufficient facts, the carelessness in accepting a conclusion which is improbable, little supported by the data or open to doubt, the indolence or prejudice which does not wish to consider other possible explanations or conclusions. In this way the mind can be trained to reason as correctly as the fallibility of human logic will allow, minimising the chances of error. The study of formal logic should be postponed to a later time when it can easily be mastered in a very brief period, since it will be only the systematising of an art perfectly well-known to the student.

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The National Value of Art - I

There is a tendency in modern times to depreciate the value of the beautiful and overstress the value of the useful, a tendency curbed in Europe by the imperious insistence of an agelong tradition of culture and generous training of the aesthetic perceptions; but in India, where we have been cut off by a mercenary and soulless education from all our ancient roots of culture and tradition, it is corrected only by the stress of imagination, emotion and spiritual delicacy, submerged but not yet destroyed in the temperament of the people. The value attached by the ancients to music, art and poetry has become almost unintelligible to an age bent on depriving life of its meaning by turning earth into a sort of glorified ant-heap or beehive and confusing the lowest, though most primary in necessity, of the means of human progress with the aim of this great evolutionary process. The first and lowest necessity of the race is that of self-preservation in the body by a sufficient supply and equable distribution of food, shelter and raiment. This is a problem which the oldest communistic human societies solved to perfection, and without communism it cannot be solved except by a convenient but inequitable arrangement which makes of the majority slaves provided with these primary wants and necessities and ministering under compulsion to a few who rise higher and satisfy larger wants. These are the wants of the vital instincts, called in our philosophy the prāṇakoṣa, which go beyond and dominate the mere animal wants, simple, coarse and undiscriminating, shared by us with the lower creation. It is these vital wants, the hunger for wealth, luxury, beautiful women, rich foods and drinks, which disturbed the first low but perfect economy of society and made the institution of private property, with its huge train of evils, inequality, injustice, violence, fraud, civil commotion and hatred, class selfishness, family selfishness, and personal selfishness, an inevitable necessity of human progress. The Mother of All works through evil as well as good, and

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through temporary evil she brings about a better and lasting good. These disturbances were complicated by the heightening of the primitive animal emotions into more intense and complex forms. Love, hatred, vindictiveness, anger, attachment, jealousy and the host of similar passions,—the citta or mind-stuff suffused by the vital wants of the prāṇa, that which the Europeans call the heart—ceased to be communal in their application and, as personal wants, clamoured for separate satisfaction. It is for the satisfaction of the vital and emotional needs of humanity that modern nations and societies exist, that commerce grows and Science ministers to human luxury and convenience. But for these new wants, the establishment of private property, first in the clan or family, then in the individual, the institution of slavery and other necessary devices, the modern world would never have come into existence; for the satisfaction of the primary economic wants and bodily necessities would never have carried us beyond the small commune or tribe. But these primary wants and necessities have to be satisfied and satisfied universally, or society becomes diseased and states convulsed with sedition and revolution.

The old arrangement of a mass of slaves well fed and provided and a select class or classes enjoying in greater or less quantity the higher wants of humanity broke down in the mediaeval ages, because the heart began to develop too powerfully in humanity and, under the influence of philosophy, ethics and religion, began to spread its claim beyond the person, the class, the family, the clan to the nation and to humanity or to all creation. A temporary makeshift was invented to replace slavery, called free labour, by which men were paid and bribed to accept voluntarily the position of slaves, contenting themselves with the coarse satisfaction of the animal necessities and in return providing by their labour the higher wants of their masters now called superiors or higher classes. This also has become a solution which will no longer serve. The whole of humanity now demands not merely the satisfaction of the body, the anna, but the satisfaction also of the prāṇa and the citta, the vital and emotional desires. Wealth, luxury, enjoyment for oneself and those dear to us, participation in the satisfaction

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of national wealth, pride, lordship, rivalry, war, alliance, peace, once the privilege of the few, the higher classes, of prince, burgess and noble are now claimed by all humanity. Political, social and economic liberty and equality, two things difficult to harmonise, must now be conceded to all men and harmonised as well as the present development of humanity will allow. It is this claim that arose, red with fury and blinded with blood, in the French Revolution. This is Democracy, this Socialism, this Anarchism; and, however fiercely the privileged and propertied classes may rage, curse and denounce these forerunners of Demogorgon, they can only temporarily resist. Their interests may be hoary and venerable with the sanction of the ages, but the future is mightier than the past and evolution proceeds relentlessly in its course trampling to pieces all that it no longer needs. Those who fight against her fight against the will of God, against a decree written from of old, and are already defeated and slain in the kāraṇajagat, the world of types and causes where Nature fixes everything before she works it out in the visible world. Nihatāḥ pūrvameva.

The mass of humanity has not risen beyond the bodily needs, the vital desires, the emotions and the current of thought-sensations created by these lower strata. This current of thought-sensations is called in Hindu philosophy the manas or mind, it is the highest to which all but a few of the animals can rise, and it is the highest function that the mass of mankind has thoroughly perfected. Beyond the manas is the buddhi, or thought proper, which, when perfected, is independent of the desires, the claims of the body and the interference of the emotions. But only a minority of men have developed this organ, much less perfected it. Only great thinkers in their hours of thought are able to use this organ independently of the lower strata, and even they are besieged by the latter in their ordinary life and their best thought suffers continually from these lower intrusions. Only developed Yogins have a viśuddha-buddhi, a thought-organ cleared of the interference of the lower strata by cittaśuddhi or purification of the citta, the mind-stuff, from the prāṇa full of animal, vital and emotional disturbances. With most men the buddhi is full of manas and the manas of the lower strata. The majority of man kind

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do not think, they have only thought-sensations; a large minority think confusedly, mixing up desires, predilections, passions, prejudgments, old associations and prejudices with pure and disinterested thought. Only a few, the rare aristocrats of the earth, can really and truly think. That is now the true aristocracy, not the aristocracy of the body and birth, not the aristocracy of vital superiority, wealth, pride and luxury, not the aristocracy of higher emotions, courage, energy, successful political instinct and the habit of mastery and rule,—though these latter cannot be neglected,—but the aristocracy of knowledge, undisturbed insight and intellectual ability. It emerges, though it has not yet emerged, and in any future arrangement of human society this natural inequality will play an important part.

Above the buddhi are other faculties which are now broadly included in the term spirituality. This body of faculties is still rarer and more imperfectly developed even in the highest than the thought-organ. Most men mistake intellectuality, imaginative inspiration or emotional fervour for spirituality, but this is a much higher function, the highest of all, of which all the others are coverings and veils. Here we get to the fountain, the source to which we return, the goal of human evolution. But although spirituality has often entered into humanity in great waves, it has done so merely to create a temporary impetus and retire into the souls of a few, leaving only its coverings and shadows behind to compose and inform the thing which is usually called religion. Meanwhile the thought is the highest man has really attained and it is by the thought that the old society has been broken down. And the thought is composed of two separate sides, judgment or reason and imagination, both of which are necessary to perfect ideation. It is by science, philosophy and criticism on the one side, by art, poetry and idealism on the other, that the old state of humanity has been undermined and is now collapsing, and the foundations have been laid for the new. Of these science, philosophy and criticism have established their use to the mass of humanity by ministering to the luxury, comfort and convenience which all men desire and arming them with justification in the confused struggle of passions, interests, cravings and aspirations which are now working with solvent and

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corrosive effect throughout the world. The value of the other side, more subtle and profound, has been clouded to the mass of men by the less visible and sensational character of its workings.

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The National Value of Art - II

The activity of human thought divides itself broadly into two groups of functions, those of the righthand, contemplation, creation, imagination, the centres that see the truth, and those of the left-hand, criticism, reasoning, discrimination, inquiry, the centres that judge the truth when it is seen. In education the latter are fostered by scientific and manual training, but the only quality of the right-hand that this education fosters is observation. For this reason a purely scientific education tends to make thought keen and clearsighted within certain limits, but narrow, hard and cold. Even in his own sphere the man without any training of the right-hand can only progress in a settled groove; he cannot broaden the base of human culture or enlarge the bounds of science. Tennyson describes him as an eye well practised in Nature, a spirit bounded and poor, and the description is just. But a cultivated eye without a cultivated spirit makes by no means the highest type of man. It is precisely the cultivation of the spirit that is the object of what is well called a liberal education, and the pursuits best calculated to cultivate the growth of the spirit are language, literature, the Arts, music, painting, sculpture or the study of these, philosophy, religion, history, the study and understanding of man through his works and of Nature and man through the interpretative as well as through the analytic faculties. These are the pursuits which belong to the intellectual activities of the right-hand, and while the importance of most of these will be acknowledged, there is a tendency to ignore Art and poetry as mere refinements, luxuries of the rich and leisurely rather than things that are necessary to the mass of men or useful to life. This is largely due to the misuse of these great instruments by the luxurious few who held the world and its good things in their hands in the intermediate period of human progress. But the aesthetic faculties entering into the enjoyment of the world and the satisfaction of the vital instincts, the love of the beautiful in men and women, in food, in things, in articles of

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use and articles of pleasure, have done more than anything else to raise man from the beast, to refine and purge his passions, to ennoble his emotions and to lead him up through the heart and the imagination to the state of the intellectual man. That which has helped man upward, must be preserved in order that he may not sink below the level he has attained. For man intellectually developed, mighty in scientific knowledge and the mastery of gross and subtle nature, using the elements as his servants and the world as his footstool, but undeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only an inferior kind of asura using the powers of a demigod to satisfy the nature of an animal. According to dim traditions and memories of the old world, of such a nature was the civilisation of old Atlantis, submerged beneath the Ocean when its greatness and its wickedness became too heavy a load for the earth to bear, and our own legends of the asuras represent a similar consciousness of a great but abortive development in humanity.

The first and lowest use of Art is the purely aesthetic, the second is the intellectual or educative, the third and highest the spiritual. By speaking of the aesthetic use as the lowest, we do not wish to imply that it is not of immense value to humanity, but simply to assign to it its comparative value in relation to the higher uses. The aesthetic is of immense importance and until it has done its work, mankind is not really fitted to make full use of Art on the higher planes of human development. Aristotle assigns a high value to tragedy because of its purifying force. He describes its effect as katharsis, a sacramental word of the Greek mysteries, which, in the secret discipline of the ancient Greek Tantrics, answered precisely to our cittaśuddhi, the purification of the citta or mass of established ideas, feelings and actional habits in a man either by saṁyama, rejection, or by bhoga, satisfaction, or by both. Aristotle was speaking of the purification of feelings, passions and emotions in the heart through imaginative treatment in poetry but the truth the idea contains is of much wider application and constitutes the justification of the aesthetic side of art. It purifies by beauty. The beautiful and the good are held by many thinkers to be the same and, though the idea may be wrongly stated, it is, when put from the

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right standpoint, not only a truth but the fundamental truth of existence. According to our own philosophy the whole world came out of ānanda and returns into ānanda, and the triple term in which ānanda may be stated is Joy, Love, Beauty. To see divine beauty in the whole world, man, life, nature, to love that which we have seen and to have pure unalloyed bliss in that love and that beauty is the appointed road by which mankind as a race must climb to God. That is the reaching to vidyā through avidyā, to the One Pure and Divine through the manifold manifestation of Him, of which the Upanishad repeatedly speaks. But the bliss must be pure and unalloyed, unalloyed by self-regarding emotions, unalloyed by pain and evil. The sense of good and bad, beautiful and un-beautiful, which aftlicts our understanding and our senses, must be replaced by akhaṇḍa rasa, undifferentiated and unabridged delight in the delightfulness of things, before the highest can be reached. On the way to this goal full use must be made of the lower and abridged sense of beauty which seeks to replace the less beautiful by the more, the lower by the higher, the mean by the noble.

At a certain stage of human development the aesthetic sense is of infinite value in this direction. It raises and purifies conduct by instilling a distaste for the coarse desires and passions of the savage, for the rough, uncouth and excessive in action and manner, and restraining both feeling and action by a striving after the decent, the beautiful, the fit and seemly which received its highest expression in the manners of cultivated European society, the elaborate ceremonious life of the Confucian, the careful ācāra and etiquette of Hinduism. At the present stage of progress this element is losing much of its once all-important value and, when overstressed, tends to hamper a higher development by the obstruction of soulless ceremony and formalism. Its great use was to discipline the savage animal instincts of the body, the vital instincts and the lower feelings in the heart. Its disadvantage to progress is that it tends to trammel the play both of the higher feelings of the heart and the workings of originality in thought. Born originally of a seeking after beauty, it degenerates into an attachment to form, to exterior uniformity, to precedent, to dead authority. In the future development of humanity it must

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be given a much lower place than in the past. Its limits must be recognised and the demands of a higher truth, sincerity and freedom of thought and feeling must be given priority. Mankind is apt to bind itself by attachment to the means of its past progress forgetful of the aim. The bondage to formulas has to be outgrown, and in this again it is the sense of a higher beauty and fitness which will be most powerful to correct the lower. The art of life must be understood in more magnificent terms and must subordinate its more formal elements to the service of the master civilisers, Love and Thought.

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The National Value of Art - III

The work of purifying conduct through outward form and habitual and seemly regulation of expression, manner and action is the lowest of the many services which the artistic sense has done to humanity, and yet how wide is the field it covers and how important and indispensable have its workings been to the progress of civilisation! A still more important and indispensable activity of the sense of beauty is the powerful help it has given to the formation of morality. We do not ordinarily recognise how largely our sense of virtue is a sense of the beautiful in conduct and our sense of sin a sense of ugliness and deformity in conduct. It may easily be recognised in the lower and more physical workings, as for instance in the shuddering recoil from cruelty, blood, torture as things intolerably hideous to sight and imagination or in the aesthetic disgust at sensual excesses and the strong sense, awakened by this disgust, of the charm of purity and the beauty of virginity. This latter feeling was extremely active in the imagination of the Greeks and other nations not noted for a high standard in conduct, and it was purely aesthetic in its roots. Pity again is largely a vital instinct in the ordinary man associated with jugupsā, the loathing for the hideousness of its opposite, ghṛṇā, disgust at the sordidness and brutality of cruelty, hardness and selfishness as well as at the ugliness of their actions, so that a common word for cruel in the Sanskrit language is nirghṛṇa, the man without disgust or loathing, and the word ghṛṇā approximates in use to kṛpā, the lower or vital kind of pity. But even on a higher plane the sense of virtue is very largely aesthetic and, even when it emerges from the aesthetic stage, must always call the sense of the beautiful to its support if it is to be safe from the revolt against it of one of the most deepseated of human instincts. We can see the largeness of this element if we study the ideas of the Greeks, who never got beyond the aesthetic stage of morality. There were four gradations in Greek ethical thought,—the euprepēs, that which is seemly or outwardly decorous; the dikaion, that which is in accordance with dikē

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or nomos, the law, custom and standard of humanity based on the sense of fitness and on the codified or uncodified mass of precedents in which that sense has been expressed in general conduct,—in other words the just or lawful; thirdly, the agathon, the good, based partly on the seemly and partly on the just and lawful, and reaching towards the purely beautiful; then final and supreme, the kalon, that which is purely beautiful, the supreme standard. The most remarkable part of Aristotle's moral system is that in which he classifies the parts of conduct not according to our idea of virtue and sin, pāpa and puṇya, but by a purely aesthetic standard, the excess, defect and golden, in other words correct and beautiful, mean of qualities. The Greeks' view of life was imperfect even from the standpoint of beauty, not only because the idea of beauty was not sufficiently catholic and too much attached to a fastidious purity of form and outline and restraint, but because they were deficient in love. God as beauty, Sri Krishna in Brindavan, Śyāmasundara, is not only Beauty, He is also Love, and without perfect love there cannot be perfect beauty, and without perfect beauty there cannot be perfect delight. The aesthetic motive in conduct limits and must be exceeded in order that humanity may rise. Therefore it was that the Greek mould had to be broken and humanity even revolted for a time against beauty. The agathon, the good, had to be released for a time from the bondage of the kalon, the aesthetic sense of beauty, just as it is now struggling to deliver itself from the bondage of the euprepēs and the dikaion, mere decorousness, mere custom, mere social law and rule. The excess of this antiaesthetic tendency is visible in Puritanism and the baser forms of asceticism. The progress of ethics in Europe has been largely a struggle between the Greek sense of aesthetic beauty and the Christian sense of a higher good marred on the one side by formalism, on the other by an unlovely asceticism. The association of the latter with virtue has largely driven the sense of beauty to the side of vice. The good must not be subordinated to the aesthetic sense, but it must be beautiful and delightful, or to that extent it ceases to be good. The object of existence is not the practice of virtue for its own sake but ānanda, delight, and progress consists not in rejecting beauty and delight, but in rising

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from the lower to the higher, the less complete to the more complete beauty and to delight.

The third activity of the aesthetic faculty, higher than the two already described, the highest activity of the artistic sense before it rises to the plane of the intellect, is the direct purifying of the emotions. This is the katharsis of which Aristotle spoke. The sense of pleasure and delight in the emotional aspects of life and action, this is the poetry of life, just as the regulating and beautiful arrangement of character and action is the art of life. We have seen how the latter purifies, but the purifying force of the former is still more potent for good. Our life is largely made up of the eight rasas. The movements of the heart in its enjoyment of action, its own and that of others, may either be directed downwards, as is the case with the animals and animal men, to the mere satisfaction of the ten sense-organs and the vital desires which make instruments of the senses in the average sensual man, or they may work for the satisfaction of the heart itself in a predominatingly emotional enjoyment of life, or they may be directed upwards through the medium of the intellect, rational and intuitional, to attainment of delight through the seizing on the source of all delight, the Spirit, the satyam, sundaram, ānandam who is beyond and around, the source and the basis of all this world-wide activity, evolution and progress. When the heart works for itself, then it enjoys the poetry of life, the delight of emotions, the wonder, pathos, beauty, enjoyableness, lovableness, calm, serenity, clarity and also the grandeur, heroism, passion, fury, terror and horror of life, of man, of Nature, of the phenomenal manifestation of God. This is not the highest, but it is higher than the animal, vital and externally aesthetic developments. The large part it plays in life is obvious, but in life it is hampered by the demands of body and the vital passions. Here comes in the first mighty utility, the triumphant activity of the most energetic forms of art and poetry. They provide a field in which these pressing claims of the animal can be excluded and the emotions, working disinterestedly for the satisfaction of the heart and the imagination alone, can do the work of katharsis, emotional purification, of which Aristotle spoke. Cittaśuddhi, the purification of the heart, is the appointed road by

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which man arrives at his higher fulfilment, and, if it can be shown that poetry and art are powerful agents towards that end, their supreme importance is established. They are that, and more than that. It is only one of the great uses of these things which men nowadays are inclined to regard as mere ornaments of life and therefore of secondary importance.

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The National Value of Art - IV

We now come to the kernel of the subject, the place of art in the evolution of the race and its value in the education and actual life of a nation. The first question is whether the sense of the beautiful has any effect on the life of a nation. It is obvious, from what we have already written, that the manners, the social culture and the restraint in action and expression which are so large a part of national prestige and dignity and make a nation admired like the French, loved like the Irish or respected like the higher-class English, are based essentially on the sense of form and beauty, of what is correct, symmetrical, well-adjusted, fair to the eye and pleasing to the imagination. The absence of these qualities is a source of national weakness. The rudeness, coarseness and vulgar violence of the less cultured Englishman, the over-bearing brusqueness and selfishness of the Prussian have greatly hampered those powerful nations in their dealings with foreigners, dependencies and even their own friends, allies, colonies. We all know what a large share the manner and ordinary conduct of the average and of the vulgar Anglo-Indian has had in bringing about the revolt of the Indian, accustomed through ages to courtesy, dignity and the amenities of an equal intercourse, against the mastery of an obviously coarse and selfish community. Now the sense of form and beauty, the correct, symmetrical, well-adjusted, fair and pleasing is an artistic sense and can best be fostered in a nation by artistic culture of the perceptions and sensibilities. It is noteworthy that the two great nations who are most hampered by the defect of these qualities in action are also the least imaginative, poetic and artistic in Europe. It is the South German who contributes the art, poetry and music of Germany, the Celt and Norman who produce great poets and a few great artists in England without altering the characteristics of the dominant Saxon. Music is even more powerful in this direction than Art and by the perfect expression of harmony insensibly steeps the man in it. And it is noticeable that England has hardly produced a single musician

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worth the name. Plato in his Republic has dwelt with extraordinary emphasis on the importance of music in education; as is the music to which a people is accustomed, so, he says in effect, is the character of that people. The importance of painting and sculpture is hardly less. The mind is profoundly influenced by what it sees and, if the eye is trained from the days of childhood to the contemplation and understanding of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in line and colour, the tastes, habits and character will be insensibly trained to follow a similar law of beauty, harmony and just arrangement in the life of the adult man. This was the great importance of the universal proficiency in the arts and crafts or the appreciation of them which was prevalent in ancient Greece, in certain European ages, in Japan and in the better days of our own history. Art galleries cannot be brought into every home, but, if all the appointments of our life and furniture of our homes are things of taste and beauty, it is inevitable that the habits, thoughts and feelings of the people should be raised, ennobled, harmonised, made more sweet and dignified.

A similar result is produced on the emotions by the study of beautiful or noble art. We have spoken of the purification of the heart, the cittaśuddhi, which Aristotle assigned as the essential office of poetry, and have pointed out that it is done in poetry by the detached and disinterested enjoyment of the eight rasas or forms of emotional aestheticism which make up life unalloyed by the disturbance of the lower self-regarding passions. Painting and sculpture work in the same direction by different means. Art sometimes uses the same means as poetry but cannot do it to the same extent because it has not the movement of poetry; it is fixed, still, it expresses only a given moment, a given point in space and cannot move freely through time and region. But it is precisely this stillness, this calm, this fixity which gives its separate value to Art. Poetry raises the emotions and gives each its separate delight. Art stills the emotions and teaches them the delight of a restrained and limited satisfaction,—this indeed was the characteristic that the Greeks, a nation of artists far more artistic than poetic, tried to bring into their poetry. Music deepens the emotions and harmonises them with each

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other. Between them music, art and poetry are a perfect education for the soul; they make and keep its movements purified, self-controlled, deep and harmonious. These, therefore, are agents which cannot profitably be neglected by humanity on its onward march or degraded to the mere satisfaction of sensuous pleasure which will disintegrate rather than build the character. They are, when properly used, great educating, edifying and civilising forces.

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The National Value of Art - V

The value of art in the training of intellectual faculty is also an important part of its utility. We have already indicated the double character of intellectual activity, divided between the imaginative, creative and sympathetic or comprehensive intellectual centres on the one side and the critical, analytic and penetrative on the other. The latter are best trained by science, criticism and observation, the former by art, poetry, music, literature and the sympathetic study of man and his creations. These make the mind quick to grasp at a glance, subtle to distinguish shades, deep to reject shallow self-sufficiency, mobile, delicate, swift, intuitive. Art assists in this training by raising images in the mind which it has to understand not by analysis, but by self-identification with other minds; it is a powerful stimulator of sympathetic insight. Art is subtle and delicate, and it makes the mind also in its movements subtle and delicate. It is suggestive, and the intellect habituated to the appreciation of art is quick to catch suggestions, mastering not only, as the scientific mind does, that which is positive and on the surface, but that which leads to ever fresh widening and subtilising of knowledge and opens a door into the deeper secrets of inner nature where the positive instruments of science cannot take the depth or measure. This supreme intellectual value of Art has never been sufficiently recognised. Men have made language, poetry, history, philosophy agents for the training of this side of intellectuality, necessary parts of a liberal education, but the immense educative force of music, painting and sculpture has not been duly recognised. They have been thought to be by-paths of the human mind, beautiful and interesting, but not necessary, therefore intended for the few. Yet the universal impulse to enjoy the beauty and attractiveness of sound, to look at and live among pictures, colours, forms ought to have warned mankind of the superficiality and ignorance of such a view of these eternal and important occupations of human mind. The impulse, denied

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proper training and self-purification, has spent itself on the trivial, gaudy, sensuous, cheap or vulgar instead of helping man upward by its powerful aid in the evocation of what is best and highest in intellect as well as in character, emotion and the aesthetic enjoyment and regulation of life and manners. It is difficult to appreciate the waste and detriment involved in the low and debased level of enjoyment to which the artistic impulses are condemned in the majority of mankind.

But beyond and above this intellectual utility of Art, there is a higher use, the noblest of all, its service to the growth of spirituality in the race. European critics have dwelt on the close connection of the highest developments of art with religion, and it is undoubtedly true that in Greece, in Italy, in India, the greatest efflorescence of a national Art has been associated with the employment of the artistic genius to illustrate or adorn the thoughts and fancies or the temples and instruments of the national religion. This was not because Art is necessarily associated with the outward forms of religion, but because it was in the religion that men's spiritual aspirations centred themselves. Spirituality is a wider thing than formal religion and it is in the service of spirituality that Art reaches its highest self-expression. Spirituality is a single word expressive of three lines of human aspiration towards divine knowledge, divine love and joy, divine strength, and that will be the highest and most perfect Art which, while satisfying the physical requirements of the aesthetic sense, the laws of formal beauty, the emotional demand of humanity, the portrayal of life and outward reality, as the best European Art satisfies these requirements, reaches beyond them and expresses inner spiritual truth, the deeper not obvious reality of things, the joy of God in the world and its beauty and desirableness and the manifestation of divine force and energy in phenomenal creation. This is what Indian Art alone attempted thoroughly and in the effort it often dispensed, either deliberately or from impatience, with the lower, yet not negligible perfections which the more material European demanded. Therefore Art has flowed in two separate streams in Europe and Asia, so diverse that it is only now that the European aesthetic sense has so far trained, itself as to begin to appreciate the artistic conventions,

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aims and traditions of Asia. Asia's future development will unite these two streams in one deep and grandiose flood of artistic self-expression perfecting the aesthetic evolution of humanity.

But if Art is to reach towards the highest, the Indian tendency must dominate. The spirit is that in which all the rest of the human being reposes, towards which it returns and the final self-revelation of which is the goal of humanity. Man becomes God, and all human activity reaches its highest and noblest when it succeeds in bringing body, heart and mind into touch with spirit. Art can express eternal truth, it is not limited to the expression of form and appearance. So wonderfully has God made the world that a man using a simple combination of lines, an unpretentious harmony of colours, can raise this apparently insignificant medium to suggest absolute and profound truths with a perfection which language labours with difficulty to reach. What Nature is, what God is, what man is can be triumphantly revealed in stone or on canvas.

Behind a few figures, a few trees and rocks the supreme Intelligence, the supreme Imagination, the supreme Energy lurks, acts, feels, is, and, if the artist has the spiritual vision, he can see it and suggest perfectly the great mysterious Life in its manifestations brooding in action, active in thought, energetic in stillness, creative in repose, full of a mastering intention in that which appears blind and unconscious. The great truths of religion, science, metaphysics, life, development, become concrete, emotional, universally intelligible and convincing in the hands of the master of plastic Art, and the soul of man, in the stage when it is rising from emotion to intellect, looks, receives the suggestion and is uplifted towards a higher development, a diviner knowledge.

So it is with the divine love and joy which pulsates throughout existence and is far superior to alloyed earthly pleasure. Catholic, perfect, unmixed with repulsion, radiating through all things, the common no less than the high, the mean and shabby no less than the lofty and splendid, the terrible and the repulsive no less than the charming and attractive, it uplifts all, purifies all, turns all to love and delight and beauty. A little of

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this immortal nectar poured into a man's heart transfigures life and action. The whole flood of it pouring in would lift mankind to God. This too Art can seize on and suggest to the human soul, aiding it in its stormy and toilsome pilgrimage. In that pilgrimage it is the divine strength that supports. Śakti, Force, pouring through the universe supports its boundless activities, the frail and tremulous life of the rose no less than the flaming motions of sun and star. To suggest the strength and virile unconquerable force of the divine Nature in man and in the outside world, its energy, its calm, its powerful inspiration, its august enthusiasm, its wildness, greatness, attractiveness, to breathe that into man's soul and gradually mould the finite into the image of the Infinite is another spiritual utility of Art. This is its loftiest function, its fullest consummation, its most perfect privilege.

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The National Value of Art - VI

The enormous value of Art to human evolution has been made sufficiently apparent from the analysis, incomplete in itself, which we have attempted. We have also incidentally pointed out its value as a factor in education. It is obvious that no nation can afford to neglect an element of such high importance to the culture of its people or the training of some of the higher intellectual, moral and aesthetic faculties in the young. The system of education which, instead of keeping artistic training apart as a privilege for a few specialists, frankly introduces it as a part of culture no less necessary than literature or science, will have taken a great step forward in the perfection of national education and the general diffusion of a broad-based human culture. It is not necessary that every man should be an artist. It is necessary that every man should have his artistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense of beauty and insight into form and colour and that which is expressed in form and colour, made habitually active, correct and sensitive. It is necessary that those who create, whether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in the small common things of use that surround a man's daily life, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A nation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to contemplate and realises the fullness of the expanding Spirit in itself.

In the system of National education that was inaugurated in Bengal, a beginning was made by the importance attached to drawing and clay-modelling as elements of manual training. But the absence of an artistic ideal, the misconception of the true aim of manual training, the imperative financial needs of these struggling institutions making for a predominant commercial aim in the education given, the mastery of English ideas, English

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methods and English predilections in the so-called national education rendered nugatory the initial advantage. The students had faculty, but the teaching given them would waste and misuse the faculty. The nation and the individual can gain nothing by turning out figures in clay which faithfully copy the vulgarity and ugliness of English commercial production or by multiplying mere copies of men or things. A free and active imaging of form and hue within oneself, a free and self-trained hand reproducing with instinctive success not the form and measurement of things seen outside, for that is a smaller capacity easily mastered, but the inward vision of the relation and truth of things, an eye quick to note and distinguish, sensitive to design and to harmony in colour, these are the faculties that have to be evoked and the formal and mechanical English method is useless for this purpose.

In India the revival of a truly national Art is already an accomplished fact and the masterpieces of the school can already challenge comparison with the best work of other countries. Under such circumstances it is unpardonable that the crude formal teaching of English schools and the vulgar commercial aims and methods of the West should subsist in our midst. The country has yet to evolve a system of education which shall be really national. The taint of Occidental ideals and alien and unsuitable methods has to be purged out of our minds, and nowhere more than in the teaching which should be the foundation of intellectual and aesthetic renovation. The spirit of old Indian Art must be revived, the inspiration and directness of vision which even now subsists among the possessors of the ancient traditions, the inborn skill and taste of the race, the dexterity of the Indian hand and the intuitive gaze of the Indian eye must be recovered and the whole nation lifted again to the high level of the ancient culture—and higher.

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Elements

Elements

Astrology depends on three things, the position of the planets in the heavens and with regard to each other, the condition of the planets at the natal hour or at the moment of enquiry, and the general character or tout-ensemble of the horoscope. Any error or deficiency with regard to any of these three elements separately or with regard to their mutual relations will affect the work of the astrologer and vitiate its correctness or its completeness. To cast a horoscope completely is one of the most difficult operations known to science. The astrologer is born not made. It is as impossible to manufacture a perfect astrologer by education as to manufacture a poet. Hence the disrepute into which the profession of astrology too lightly and numerously followed, has fallen in the Kaliyuga. In addition sure truths of the true science are lost and the little that remains is replete with errors. Astrologers make lucky hits or stumble on the truth but it is only a rare genius here and there who can predict correctly and even he is never safe against error. For even when his intuition divines correctly his authorities mislead him.

The position of the planets in the heavens is determined by the sign of the zodiac through which they are passing, their relation to the ascendant sign, their precise position in the sign, reckoned by degrees and minutes; their relative position to each other by the distance of their signs from each other.

The condition of the planets is determined by the sign they are in according to which they are either elevated, fallen, ascending or descending or possibly at position-hour; by the direction of their motion at the time forward or backward, by the quality of their motion, swift, slow or normal; by their mutual relations of friendship, enmity or neutrality, by the conjunction, aspect, opposition or distance; by their nearness to the sun setting or rising, divergent or convergent; by their location in a sign friendly, neutral or hostile, fixed or moving, male or female,

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fiery, watery, aery, earthy or ethereal; by their relations with gentle, fierce or inconstant planets.

The character of the horoscope is determined by the number of elevated, fallen, ascending, descending or entrenched, progressive or retrogade, rapid, sluggish or moderate, well-housed or ill-housed or the rising, convergent or divergent planets; by the numbers and nature of the planetary relations, conjunctions, aspects, oppositions, by the character of the ascendant, its lord and its tenant, combinations, distributions. All these circumstances have to be considered in order to determine whether the horoscope is great, mediocre or petty, favourable or malign, strong or weak. The results have to be judged according to the character. The same details in a good horoscope will mean something very different from what they could mean in one that is petty or malign or even merely strong. Moreover, even if all the positions are the same, yet the infinitesimal shifting of a planet or a change in its character will often mean the difference between life and death, success or failure. This is the reason why twins sometimes have different destinies, one dying, another living, or pursue an identical course up to a certain point, then diverge. One hears astrologers say when the minute of birth is approximately stated, that is good enough. It is the speech of incompetence or ignorance. The first necessity is to determine the exact minute or second of birth. All the general results may be potentially true, yet owing to some accident depending on a few seconds' difference, none of these may have the occasion to come to pass. But if the exact details are obtainable, there is no chance of that comparatively rare but well-instanced fortuity.

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Premises of Astrology - II

The signs of the zodiac are twelve in number, beginning from the Ram, in which the Sun reaches its elevation, and arching back to it. They are, in order, the Ram, the Bull, the Twins, the Crab, the Lion, the Girl, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Archer or Bow, the Crocodile, the Jar and the Fish. The sixth sign is usually called the Virgin in Europe, but the word gives an idea of purity which is not the character of the sign and is therefore inappropriate. Each sign has a Devata, a god or spiritual being in charge of it. He is not its master, but its protector and the protector of all who are born in the sign. lndra (Zeus, Odin) protects the Ram, Agni (Moloch, Thor) the Bull, the Aswins (Castor and Pollux) the Twins, Upendra (Baal) the Crab, Varuna (Poseidon) the Lion, Savitri or Sita (Astarte, Aphrodite) the Girl, Yama (Hades) the Balance, Aryama (Ares) the Scorpion, Mitra or Bhava (Apollo, Phoebus) the Archer, Saraswati called also Ganga (Nais) the Crocodile, Parjanya (Apis) the Jar, Nara (Nereus) the Fish. All these gods have their own character and tend to imprint it on their protégé. Or it would be truer to say that men of particular characters tend to take birth under the protection of a congenial deity. Other gods stand behind the planets and the twelve houses and they also influence the temperament of the subject.

There are only two female signs, the Girl and the Crocodile; but the Twins, the Crab, the Balance, the Archer and the Fish are male with feminine tendencies. The rest are male.

There are three watery signs, the Crocodile, the Jar and the Fish; three fiery, the Bull, the Lion and the Scorpion; three earthy, the Twins, the Crab and the Girl; three aerial, the Ram, the Balance and the Archer. The only ethereal sign is the Ram and it is ethereal only when either the Sun or Jupiter occupy it.

Each alternate sign from the Ram is moving; each alternate sign beginning from the Bull is fixed.

The names of the signs have nothing to do with their character

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in any of these kinds, but are determined by the spiritual "totem", that is, the nervous type of the souls born in the signs. Those who are born in the Ram are brave, but mild and humane; in the Bull irascible, bold but not ferocious; in the Twins gentle, polite and worldly; in the Crab timid or anxious to please but formidable when angry, awkward but persevering and successful; in the Lion royal, bold and splendid; in the Girl amorous, charming and aesthetic; in the Balance just, mercantile, able; in the Scorpion fierce, quarrelsome and impetuous; in the Archer swift, brilliant and effective; in the Crocodile saturnine, brooding and dangerous; in the Jar thrifty, cautious and sensitive; in the Fish restless, light and inconstant. It is not always the sign of birth, however, that is most powerful in fixing the temperament, it is sometimes the sign in which the sun or the moon or else the lord of the horoscope is situated; and none of these signs can be neglected. If they are all taken into consideration according to their respective force in the horoscope, a correct idea of the character may be formed; but even then the position and mutual relations of their lords must be taken into the account. This is the reason why men born under the same sign vary so much in character.

I must, however, guard against the idea that the signs and planets determine a man's character or fate. They do not, they only indicate it, because they are the sensational, celestial and astral influences or nervous force in Nature which become the instruments of our Karma. That is why the European mystics gave the name of astral planes to the plane of sensational or nervous existence and astral fluid to the magnetic power or current of nervous vital force in a man. It is this same vital force which pours upon us from all parts of the solar system and of this physical universe. But man is mightier than his sensations or vitality or the sensational or vital forces of the universe. Our fate and our temperament have been built by our own wills and our own wills can alter them

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The Planets

The Planets

The word planets as applied to the celestial instruments of our fate in the modern astrology is something of a misnomer. It is more accurate of the planets of the mental worlds than of the material solar system; for in the spherical system of the sūkṣma jagat even the sun and the moon are planets, each circling in its own sphere round the central, fixed, but revolving earth. But a better term is the Indian word graha, those that have a hold on the earth. There are seven old planets, the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and two others in process of creation, Rahu and Ketu. In addition there are two dead planets corresponding to Uran us and Herschel and two others not yet discovered. They are called aprakāśita graha, unrevealed or unmanifest planets. The last four have inappreciable results except in certain physical and mental details. They may slightly affect the minute circumstances of an event, not its broad outlines. They may give certain kinks in thought, character and physique, but do not seriously modify them. They are known but ignored by Indian astrology.

Different names are given to the planets by the Indian astronomers and for astrological purposes they are much more appropriate. Mars is Mangal, the auspicious, euphemistically so termed because of his great malignancy; Mercury is Budha, the clever, intellectual god, son of the Moon and Tara, wife of Brihaspati; Jupiter is Brihaspati, Prime Minister of Indra, spiritual and political adviser of the Gods; Venus is Sukra, who occupies the same position to the Titans; Saturn is the malevolent Shani, child of the Sun. Rahu and Ketu are Titans of our mythology.

Each of these gods has his own character. Surya, the Sun is strong, splendid, bold, regal, warlike, victorious and energetic; Chandra, the Moon, is inconstant, amorous, charming, imaginative, poetical, artistic; Mangat is a politician, a soldier, crafty

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and ruse, unscrupulous, unmerciful, tyrannical; Budha is speculative, scientific, skilful, mercantile, eloquent, clever at all intellectual pursuits; Brihaspati is religious, learned, a philosopher, a Yogin, master of occult sciences, wise, statesmanlike, fortunate, successful, invincible, noble in mind and disposition; Sukra is self-willed, lustful, a master of statecraft, a poet, thinker, philosopher; Shani is cruel, vindictive, gloomy, immoral, criminal, unruly, destructive. Rahu is violent, headstrong, frank, furious and rapacious. Ketu is secret, meditative, unsocial, a silent doer of strong and selfish actions. Each planet has a powerful influence on the man if it shares in the governance of the horoscope.

The Sun, Mangal, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu are fierce planets. Brihaspati and Shukra, gentle and kindly; the Moon and Budha are one or the other, according to circumstances and company, they are mildly severe and hostile or tepidly kindly. The others are stronger planets. Nevertheless, the favour of the Moon or Budha, when they are wholly friendly, is a mighty influence.

The Sun is master of one sign, the Lion; the Moon, master of one sign, the Crab; all the others except Rahu and Ketu are masters of two signs each; Mangal of the Ram and the Scorpion; Mercury of the Twins and the Girl; Brihaspati of the Archer and the Fish; Shukra of the Bull and the Balance; Shani of the Crocodile and the Jar. These are their homes and, when they are entrenched in them, they are exceedingly powerful and auspicious. Rahu and Ketu are still wanderers, homeless.

But they are still more powerful and auspicious when elevated. The Sun is elevated in the Ram, dejected in the Balance; the Moon elevated in the Balance, dejected in the...; Mars elevated in the Jar, dejected in the Crab; Mercury elevated in the Balance, dejected in the Ram; Brihaspati elevated in the Crab, dejected in the Jar; Shukra elevated in the Twins, dejected in the Archer; Shani elevated in the Girl, dejected in the Fish; Rahu elevated in the Bull, dejected in the Scorpion; Ketu elevated in the Scorpion, dejected in the Bull. When dejected the planet is weak to help but strongly maleficent. Moving from elevation to dejection, a planet is descendent, from dejection to elevation, ascendant. A descendent planet tends towards weakness, an ascendant to strength, but it is better on the whole to have a planet just

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descendent than a planet only just ascendant. A good conjunction, helpful influence or favourable situation will go far to neutralise evil tendencies and vice versa.

When setting in the rays of the Sun or in opposition to the Sun, a planet tends to weakness, but not to maleficence. When it is convergent, coming from opposition to set, it grows in heat of force and is only eclipsed for the short period of its set, emerging full of energy. In its divergence it loses the energy. It never, however, forfeits by relation to the Sun its other sources of strength.

Forward motion brings fortune, devious motion delays, backward motion brings opposite results. According as the motion is swift, slow or normal, will be the pace of the good or evil fortune.

Beyond this the planets have certain mutual relations. A planet is in conjunction with another when in the same sign; in opposition when farthest away from it; in aspect when at a certain distance. Brihaspati when looking at a planet in the fifth or ninth house from it, starting from its own position, Mangal when looking at a planet in the fourth or eighth, Shani when looking at a planet in the third or tenth is said to have a full sight or aspect. All have otherwise full aspect when in opposition, three-quarters aspect on the third and tenth houses, half aspect on the fifth and ninth, quarter aspect on the fourth and eighth, no aspect, that is, absence of any relation on the second, sixth and eleventh.

Each planet has natural friends, enemies or neutrals. The Sun is friends with all planets except Rahu and Ketu who are enemies and Budha who is neutral. The Moon is friends with all planets except Rahu, Ketu and Brihaspati who are enemies; Mangal has as friends the Sun, Brihaspati, Rahu, Ketu and Shani, as enemies the Moon and Mercury, as a neutral Shukra. Budha has as friends the Sun, Moon, Brihaspati, Rahu, Ketu and Shukra, as enemies Mangal and Shani. Brihaspati has as friends the Sun, Mangal, Budha, Rahu and Ketu, as enemies the Moon and Shukra, as a neutral Shani. Shukra has as friends the Sun, Moon, Budha, Shani, Rahu and Ketu, as enemy Brihaspati, as a neutral Mangal. Shani has as friends the Sun,

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Moon and Budha, as enemies Mangal and Brihaspati, as neutral Rahu, Ketu and Shukra. Rahu and Ketu have common enemies, the Sun and Moon, friends in each other, Brihaspati, Shukra and Shani, neutrals in Budha and Mangal.

These relations are fixed by the past of the Devatas. But they have also occasional relations. A planet in conjunction with another or harbouring it in its house or harboured by it becomes its friend. There is no occasional neutrality; moreover it shares its host's or its partner's friendships and enmities, not its neutralities. It may have at the same time a neutral friendship and an occasional enmity to another. In that case it does not become neutral, but is sometimes friendly, sometimes inimical. The natural is the stronger feeling.

There are finally certain gods who stand behind these planets. Behind the Sun and Moon is Vishnu, behind Mangal and Shani Rudra, behind Shukra, Rahu and Ketu is Kali, behind Budha Lakshmi, and behind Brihaspati Durga. Vishnu gives royalty and victory, Rudra force and fortune, Kali subversive genius and destructive energy, Lakshmi wealth and ease, Durga wisdom, protection and glory.

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Note: These are some elementary notes made by Sri Aurobindo to refresh his memory when he was studying the subject with the idea of finding out what truth there might be in Astrology. Chapter IV, THE HOURS was left unwritten.

Mr. Tilak's Book on the Gita

In an interview with the representative of an Indian journal Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak has given a brief account of the work on the Gita which he has been writing during his six years internment in Mandalay. He begins:—

"You know that the Gita is regarded generally as a book inculcating quietistic Vedanta or Bhakti. For myself, I have always regarded it as a work expounding the principles of human conduct from a Vedantic ethical point of view, that is, reconciling the philosophy of active life with the philosophy of knowledge and the philosophy of devotion to God."

Mr. Tilak then expresses his belief that before Shankara and Ramanuja, the great Southern philosophers, wrote their commentaries, the Gita was understood in its natural sense, but from that time forward artificial and sectarian interpretations prevailed and the element of Karmayoga in the Song Celestial was disregarded. His book is intended to restore this natural sense and central idea of the famous Scripture. It will contain a word for word rendering preceded by an introduction of some fifteen chapters in which he discusses the Vedanta and the ethics of the Gita and compares the ethical philosophy of Western thinkers with that of the Indian schools of thought. Although the book will be published first in Marathi, we are promised a version also in English.

We look forward with interest to a work which, proceeding from a scholar of such eminence and so acute an intellect, one especially whose name carries weight with all Hindus, must be considered an event of no small importance in Indian religious thought. We welcome it all the more because it seems to be conceived in the same free and synthetic spirit as animates this Review. It is a fresh sign of the tendency towards an increasingly liberal movement of religious opinion in orthodox India, the dissolution of the old habit of unquestioning deference to great authorities and the consequent rediscovery of the true catholic

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sense of the ancient Scriptures.

Those who have studied the Gita with a free mind, still more those who have tried to live it, cannot doubt for a moment the justice of Mr. Tilak's point of view. But is not the tendency of the Gita towards a supra-ethical rather than an ethical activity? Ethics is, usually, the standardising of the highest current social ideas of conduct; the Song Celestial while recognising their importance, seeks to fix the principle of action deeper in the centre of a man's soul and points us ultimately to the government of our outward life by the divine self within.

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Hymns to the Goddess

Translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur and Ellen Avalon (Luzac and Co., London).

This is one of a series of publications by Mr. Arthur Avalon consisting of texts and translations of the Tantras. The hymns collected and translated in this volume are, however, taken from other sources besides the Tantras. Many of them are from the considerable body of devotional hymns attributed by tradition to the philosopher Shankaracharya, a few from the Mahabharata and the Puranas. Most are well-known stotras addressed to the various forms and names of the female Energy, Mother of the worlds, whose worship is an important part of that many-sided and synthetic whole which we call Hinduism.

The work of translation has been admirably done. The one slight defect is the preservation untranslated of Sanskrit words other than names which might well have been rendered into English. The translation is at once faithful, simple and graceful in style and rhythm. No English version can reproduce the majesty of the Sanskrit rhythms and the colour and power of the original, but within the limits of the possible the work could hardly have been better executed.

The translation is accompanied by brief but numerous notes. Mr. Avalon has made a principle of submission to the authority of Hindu commentators and learned men whom he has consulted or taken as his guides in the study of the Tantra. He writes, "It is necessary to study the Hindu commentators and to seek the oral aid of those who possess the traditional interpretation of the Shastra. Without this and an understanding of what Hindu worship is and means, absurd mistakes are likely to be made. I have thus, in addition to such oral aid, availed myself of the commentaries of Nilakantha on the Mahabharata, of Gopala Chakravarti and Nagoji Bhatta on Chandi, and of Nilakantha on the Devibhagavata. As regards the Tantra, the great Sadhana Shastra, nothing which is both of an understanding and accurate character can be achieved without a study of the original texts

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undertaken with the assistance of the Tantric Gurus and Pundits who are the authorised custodians of its traditions." This careful scrupulousness is undoubtedly the right attitude for the work which Mr. Avalon has set himself,—to present to the Englishreading public the philosophy and worship of the Tantra and the way of the Shaktas as they have been traditionally practised and understood in mediaeval and modern India. The method followed assures a sound basis free from the vagaries of learned ignorance and unfettered ingenuity which render so much of the work of European scholarship on Indian subjects fantastic, unsound and ephemeral. It cannot, we think, be the final attitude; an independent scrutiny of the ancient scriptures and forms of philosophy and religion is needed through the whole range of Indian thought and devotion both to recover their more ancient and original forms and principles often concealed by later accretions and crystallisings and to separate from them whatever is of imperishable worth and utility for the spiritual future of mankind. But meanwhile, and especially when a great and difficult subject is being for the first time brought forward in an adequate manner to general notice, the conservative method is undoubtedly the most desirable.

Commentators, however, even the most learned, are subject to error, as Mr. Avalon has had to recognise in his translation of the verse which declares that all women without exception are forms of the Great Mother. The Commentator would have us believe that the phrase striyaḥ samastāḥ sakalā jagatsu means all women who possess the. sixty-four arts and are devoted to their husbands, are modest, etc. The translator rightly rejects this conventional distortion of a great and profound philosophical truth; he translates "all women without exception throughout the world". We wonder whether the phrase does not admit of a different shade cutting deeper into the heart of things. The lines are,

Vidyāḥ samastāstava devi bhedāḥ
striyaḥ samastāḥ sakalā jagatsu.

Is there not a hint of a distinction between the simple bhedāḥ and sakalāḥ? "All sciences, O Goddess, are different parts of

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thee, all women entirely in the worlds." The sense would then be that wherever the feminine principle is found in the living personality, we have the entire presence of the world-supporting maternal soul of the Divinity. The Devi with all her aspects, kalās, is there in the Woman; in the Woman we have to see Durga, Annapurna, Tara, the Mahavidyas, and therefore it is said in the Tantra, in the line quoted by Mr. Avalon in his preface, "Wherever one sees the feet of Woman, one should give worship in one's soul even as to one's Guru." Thus this thought of the Shakta side of Hinduism becomes an uncompromising declaration of the divinity of woman completing the Vedantic declaration of the concealed divinity in man which we are too apt to treat in practice as if it applied only in the masculine. We put away in silence, even when we do not actually deny it, the perfect equality in difference of the double manifestation.

There are other instances in which the translators seem to us not to have escaped the misleading wiles of the commentator. We may instance the passage in the Hymn to Mahadevi in which the Goddess is described as being "both black and grey". "Smoke-coloured" would be a closer rendering of the epithet dhūmra. We are told in the note that it means "that which is with smoke, the sacrificial rite, here the knowledge of the rites". This is a scholastic interpretation which we cannot accept. The different hues of the Goddess are always psychologically symbolic and Mr. Avalon has himself an excellent passage to that effect in his Introduction. But, although occasionally provoking dissent, the notes are throughout interesting and instructive and often throw a new light on the implications of the text.

Mr. Avalon in his publications insists upon the greatness of the Tantra and seeks to clear away by a dispassionate statement of the real facts the cloud of misconceptions which have obscured our view of this profound and powerful system. We shall have occasion to deal with this aspect of his work when we come to speak of the Mahanirvana Tantra. In this volume he justifies against European prejudice the attribution of the feminine form and quality to God and against modern ignorance generally the image-worship which the Tantra in common with other Hindu systems makes part of the first stage in religious progress.

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On both points we are in general agreement with his standpoint, though we do not hold that religious evolution must necessarily follow the line laid down by the Tantra.

Human conceptions of the Divine divide themselves first into the worship of the formed and the aspiration towards the formless, secondly, into the adoration of the Qualified and the urge of the rarest spirits towards the Unqualified, the Absolute. For all these stages the Tantric worship and discipline provides. How can the Formless invest Himself with form, asks the religious rationalist. The universe is there to reply. Hinduism worships Narayana in the stone, the tree, the animal, the human being. That which the intellectual and spiritual pride or severity of other religions scorns, it makes its pride and turns into its own form of logical severity. Stocks and stones, the quadruped and the human being, all these are equals in God, our brothers in the Divine, forms that the Omnipresent has not disdained to assume. But beyond the material forms there are others that are ideal and symbolic, but not less, if anything more real, more full of divine power than any actual physical manifestation. These are the mental images in which we worship God. The Hindu believes that to whatever form he brings his devotion, the love of God is bound to assume and vivify it, and we cannot say that the belief is irrational. For if there is a Consciousness in the universe and transcending it which answers to the yearning of all these creatures and perhaps itself yearns towards them with the love of the Father, the Mother, the Friend, the Lover, and a love surpassing all these, then it is idle to suppose that It would assume or create for its own pleasure and glory the forms of the universe, but would disdain as an offence to Its dignity or purity those which the love of the worshipper offers to It and which after all Itself has formed fa his heart or his imagination. To these mental forms mental worship may be offered, and this is the higher way; or we may give the material foundation, the pratiṣṭhā, of a statue or pictured image to form a physical nodus for a physical act of worship.

In the formless also we worship God, in His qualities, in His Love, Power, Bliss, Wisdom, in the great cosmic Principles by which He manifests Himself to the eye of knowledge. We

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worship Him as the Impersonality manifested in these things or the Personality containing them. And we rise at the apex of the pinnacle into that which is not only formless, arūpa, but nirguṇa, qualityless, the indefinable, anirdeśyam, of the Gita. In our human ignorance, with our mental passion for degrees and distinctions, for superiorities and exclusions, we thus grade these things and say that this is superior, that is for ignorant and inferior souls. Do we know? The Theist looks down with reprobation on the form-adoring man-worshipping idolater and polytheist; the Adwaitin looks down with a calm and tolerant indulgence on the ignorance of the quality-adoring personality-bemused Theist. But it seems to us that God scorns nothing, that the Soul of all things may take as much delight in the prayer of a little child or the offerings of a flower or a leaf before a pictured image as in the philosopher's leap from the summit of thought into the indefinable and unknowable and that he does best who can rise and widen into the shoreless realisation and yet keep the heart of the little child and the capacity of the seer of forms.

At any rate, this is an attitude towards which these Hymns to the Goddess bring us very near. They are full of the glories of her form, her visible body; full of the thinker's perception of her in all the shapes of the universe; full of the power of her psychological aspects; pervaded too by a sense behind and often expressed of her final unity and transcendence. Mr. Avalon brings this out with great force and vividness in his Introduction. But it should be manifest even to a careless reader of the Hymns. Take the following passage:—

Reverence to her who is eternal, Raudra,
To Gauri and Dhatri, reverence and again reverence,
To Her who is moonlight and in the form of the moon,
To Her who is supreme bliss, reverence for ever.

This is from the famous hymn in the Chandi-Mahatmya, deservedly one of the best known in sacred literature; but everywhere we find the same crowding of different aspects. In a hymn of which the eleventh verse is a sensuous description of the physical goddess,—

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O Gauri ! with all my heart
I contemplate Thy form,
Beauteous of face,
With its weight of hanging hair,
With full breasts and rounded slender waist,
Holding in three hands a rosary, a pitcher and book
And with thy fourth hand making the Jnana-mudra,—

(mark how the close passes naturally into the psychological symbolism of the form), the ninth is a remarkable piece of Yogic imagery,—

O Mother! like the sleeping King of serpents
Residing in the centre of the first lotus,
Thou didst create the universe.
Thou dost ascend like a streak of lightning,
And attainest the ethereal region;—

and the opening is the highest philosophy expressed with great poetic force and interspersed with passages of the richest poetical colour,—

The cause and thinker of the World,
She whose form is that of the Shabdabrahman,
And whose substance is bliss.

Thou art the primordial One,
Mother of countless creatures,
Creatrix of the bodies of the Lotus-born, Vishnu and Shiva,
Who creates, preserves and destroys the worlds....
Although thou art the primordial cause of the world,
Yet art thou ever youthful.
Although thou art the Daughter of the Mountain-King,
Yet art thou full of tenderness.
Although thou art the Mother of the Vedas,
Yet they cannot describe Thee.
Although men must meditate upon Thee,
Yet cannot their mind comprehend Thee.

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This hymn is quoted as culled from a Tantric compilation, the Tantrasara. Its opening is full of the supreme meaning of the great Devi symbol, its close is an entire self-abandonment to the adoration of the body of the Mother. This catholicity is typical of the whole Tantric system, which is in its aspiration one of the greatest attempts yet made to embrace the whole of God manifested and unmanifested in the adoration, self-discipline and knowledge of a single human soul.

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South Indian Bronzes

By O. C. Gangoly. Published by the Indian Society of Oriental Arts, Calcutta. Sold by Thacker, Spink and Co., Calcutta, and Luzac and Co., 46, Great Russell Street, London.

The discovery of Oriental Art by the aesthetic mind of Europe is one of the most significant intellectual phenomena of the times. It is one element of a general change which has been coming more and more rapidly over the mentality of the human race and promises to culminate in the century to which we belong. This change began with the discovery of Eastern thought and the revolt of Europe against the limitations of the Graeco-Roman and the Christian ideals which had for some centuries united in an uneasy combination to give a new form to her mentality and type of life. The change, whose real nature could not be distinguished so long as the field was occupied by the battle between Science and Religion, now more and more reveals itself as an attempt of humanity to recover its lost soul. Long overlaid by the life of the intellect and the vital desires, distorted and blinded by a devout religious obscurantism the soul in humanity seems at last to be resurgent and insurgent. To desire to live, think, act, create from a greater depth in oneself, to know the Unknown, to express with sincerity all that is expressible of the Infinite, this is the trend of humanity's future. A philosophy, a literature, an Art, a society which shall correspond to that which is deepest and highest in man and realise something more than the satisfaction of the senses, the desire of the vital parts and the expediencies and efficiencies recognised by the intellect without excluding these necessary elements, these are the things humanity is turning to seek, though in the midst of a chaotic groping, uncertainty and confusion.

At such a juncture the value of Eastern Thought and Eastern Art to the world is altogether incalculable. For their greatness is that they have never yet fallen away from the ancient truth, the truth of the Soul; they have not gone out of the Father's house to live on the husks of the sense and the life

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and the body; they have always seen in the mind and body only instruments for the expression of that which is deeper and greater than its instruments. Even intellect and emotion had for them only a secondary value. Not to imitate Nature but to reveal that which she has hidden, to find significative forms which shall embody for us what her too obvious and familiar symbols conceal, has been the aim of the greatest Art, the Art of prehistoric antiquity and of those countries and ages whose culture has been faithful to the original truth of the Spirit. Greek culture, on the other hand, deviated on a path which led away from this truth to the obvious and external reality of the senses. The Greeks sought to use the forms of Nature as they saw and observed them, slightly idealised, a little uplifted, with a reproduction of her best achievement and not, like modern realism, of her deformities and failures; and though they at first used this form to express an ideal, it was bound in the end to turn to the simple service of the intellect and the senses. Mediaeval Art attempted to return to a deeper motive; but great as were its achievements, they dwelt in a certain dim obscurity, an unillumined mystery which contrasts strongly with the light of deeper knowledge that informs the artistic work of the East. We have now throughout the world a search, an attempt on various lines to discover some principle of significant form in Art which shall escape from the obvious and external and combine delight with profundity, the power of a more searching knowledge with the depth of suggestion, emotion and ecstasy which are the very breath of aesthetic creation. The search has led to many extravagances and cannot be said to have been as yet successful, but it may be regarded as a sure sign and precursor of a new and greater age of human achievement.

The Oriental Art recognised in Europe has been principally that of China and Japan. It is only recently that the aesthetic mind of the West has begun to open to the greatness of Indian creation in this field or at least to those elements of it which are most characteristic and bear the stamp of the ancient spiritual greatness. Indian Architecture has indeed been always admired, but chiefly in the productions of the Indo-Saracenic school which in spite of their extraordinary delicacy and beauty have not the

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old-world greatness and power of the best Hindu, Jain and Buddhistic work. But Indian sculpture and painting have till recently been scouted as barbarous and inartistic, and for this reason that they have, more than any other Oriental work, deliberately remained in the extreme of the ancient symbolic conception of the plastic Arts and therefore most entirely offended the rational and imitative eye which is Europe's inheritance from the Hellene. It is a curious sign of the gulf between the two conceptions that a European writer will almost always fix for praise precisely on those Indian sculptures which are farthest away from the Indian tradition,—as for instance the somewhat vulgar productions of the Gandhara or bastard Graeco-Indian school or certain statues which come nearest to a faithful imitation of natural forms but are void of inspiration and profound suggestion.

Recently, however, the efforts of Mr. Havell and the work of the new school of Indian artists have brought about or at least commenced something like a revolution in the aesthetic stand-point of Western critics. Competent minds have turned their attention to Indian work and assigned it a high place in the artistic creation of the East and even the average European writer has been partly compelled to understand that Indian statuary and Indian painting have canons of their own and cannot be judged either by a Hellenistic or a realistic standard. More salutary still, the mind of the educated Indian has received a useful shock and may perhaps now be lifted out of the hideous banality of unaesthetic taste into which it had fallen. Whatever benefits the laudable and well-meaning efforts of English educationists may have bestowed on this country, it is certain that, aided by the inrush of the vulgar, the mechanical and the commonplace from the commercial West, they have succeeded in entirely vulgarising the aesthetic mind and soul of the Indian people. Its innate and instinctive artistic taste has disappeared; the eye and the aesthetic sense have not been so much corrupted as killed. What more flagrant sign of this debacle could there be than the fact that all educated India hailed the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma, an incompetent imitation of the worst European styles, as the glory of a new dawn and that hideous and glaring reproductions of them still adorn its dwellings? A rebirth of Indian taste supporting

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a new Indian Art which shall inspire itself with the old spirit while seeking for fresh forms is now, however, possible and it is certainly a great desideratum for the future. For nothing can be more helpful towards the discovery of that which we are now vaguely seeking, a new Art which shall no longer labour to imitate Nature but strive rather to find fresh significant forms for the expression of the self.

It is necessary to this end that the wealth of their ancient Art should be brought before the eyes of the people, and it is gratifying to find that an increasing amount of pioneer work is being done in this respect, although still all too scanty. The book before us, Mr. O. C. Gangoly's South Indian Bronzes, must rank as one of the best of them all. Southern India, less ravaged than the North by the invader and the Vandal and profiting by the historic displacement of the centre of Indian culture southward, teems with artistic treasures. Mr. Gangoly's book gives us, in an opulent collection of nearly a hundred fine plates preceded by five chapters of letterpress, one side of the artistic work of the South,—its bronzes, chiefly representing the gods and devotees of the Shaiva religion,—for the Shaiva religion has been as productive of sublime and suggestive work in the plastic arts as has been the Vaishnava all over India of great, profound and passionate poetry. This book is a sumptuous production and almost as perfect as any work of the kind can be in the present state of our knowledge.

There are certain minor defects which we feel bound to point out to the author. The work abounds with useful quotations from unprinted Sanskrit works on the rules and conventions of the sculptural Art, works attributed to Agastya and others; but their value is somewhat lessened by the chaotic system of transliteration which Mr. Gangoly has adopted. He is writing for all India and Europe as well; why then adopt the Bengali solecism which neglects the distinction between the b and the v of the Sanskrit alphabet or that still more ugly and irrational freak by which some in Bengal insist on substituting for the aspirate bh the English v? Even in these errors the writer is not consistent; he represents the Sanskrit v sometimes by b and sometimes by v, and bh indifferently by v, vh or bh. Such vagaries are disconcerting

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and offend against the sense of order and accuracy. It is always difficult to read Sanskrit in the Roman alphabet which is entirely unsuited to that language, but this kind of system or want of system turns the difficulty almost into an impossibility. We hope that in the important works which he promises us on Pallava Sculpture and South Indian Sculptures Mr. Gangoly will remedy this imperfection of detail.

The first chapter of the letterpress deals with the legendary origins of South Indian art. It is interesting and valuable, but there are some startlingly confident statements against which our critical sense protests. For instance, "it is beyond doubt that the two divisions of the country indicated by the Vindhya ranges were occupied by people essentially different in blood and temperament." Surely the important theories which hold the whole Indian race to be Dravidian in blood or, without assigning either an "Aryan" or "non-Aryan" origin, believe it to be homogeneous—omitting some islander types on the southern coast and the Mongoloid races of the Himalaya,—cannot be so lightly dismissed. The question is full of doubt and obscurity. The one thing that seems fairly established is that there were at least two types of culture in ancient India, the "Aryan" occupying the Punjab and Northern and Central India, Afghanistan and perhaps Persia and distinguished in its cult by the symbols of the Sun, the Fire and the Soma sacrifice, and the un-Aryan occupying the East, South and West, the nature of which it is quite impossible to restore from the scattered hints which are all we possess.

Again we are astonished to observe that Mr. Gangoly seems to accept the traditional attribution of the so-called Agastya Shastras to the Vedic Rishi of that name. The quotations from these books are in classical Sanskrit of a fairly modern type, certainly later than the pre-Christian era though Mr. Gangoly on quite insufficient grounds puts them before Buddha. It is impossible to believe that they are the work of the Rishi, husband of Lopamudra, who composed the great body of hymns in an archaic tongue that close the first Mandala of the Rig-veda. Nor can we accept the astonishing identification of the Puranic Prajapati, Kashyapa, progenitor of creatures, with the father

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of the Kanada who founded the Vaisheshika philosophy. It distresses us to see Indian inquirers with their great opportunities simply following in the path of certain European scholars, accepting and adding to their unstable fantasies, their huge superstructures founded on weak and scattered evidence and their imaginative "history" of our prehistoric ages. There is better and sounder work to be done and Indians can do it admirably as Mr. Gangoly himself has shown in this book; for the rest of the work, where he has not to indulge in these obiter dicta, is admirable and flawless. There is a sobriety and reserve, a solidity of statement and a sort of sparing exhaustiveness which make it quite the best work of the kind we have yet come across. The chapters on the Shilpashastra and the review of the distribution of Shaivite and other work in Southern India are extremely interesting and well-written and the last brief chapter of criticism is perfect both in what it says and what it refrains from saying.

Mr Gangoly's collection of plates, 94 in number, illustrates Southern work in bronze in all its range. It opens with a fine Kalasamhara and a number of Dancing Shivas, the characteristic image of the Shaivite art, and contains a great variety of figures; there are among them some beautiful images of famous Shaivite Bhaktas. A few examples of Vaishnava art are also given. In a collection so ample and so representative it is obvious that there must be a good deal of work which falls considerably below the best, but the general impression is that of a mass of powerful, striking and inspired creations. And throughout there is that dominant note which distinguishes Indian art from any other whether of the Occident or of the Orient. All characteristic Oriental Art indeed seeks to go beyond the emotions and the senses; a Japanese landscape of snow and hill is as much an image of the soul as a Buddha or a flame-haired spirit of the thunderbolt. Nature will not see herself there as in a mirror, but rather herself transformed into something wonderfully not herself which is yet her own deeper reality. But still there is a difference, and it seems to lie in this that other Oriental Art, even though it goes beyond the external, usually remains in the cosmic, in the limits of Prakriti, but here there is a perpetual reaching beyond into something absolute, infinite, supernatural, the very

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ecstasy of the Divine. Even in work not of the best finish or most living inspiration there is this touch which gives it a greatness beyond its actual achievement; rarely indeed does the statuary fall into mere technique or descend entirely into the physical and external.

It is this tendency, as the author well explains, which causes and in a sense justifies the recoil and incomprehension of the average Occidental mind; for it comes to Art with a demand for the satisfaction of the senses, the human emotions, the imagination moving among familiar things. It does not ask for a god or for a symbol of the beyond, but for a figure admirably done with scrupulous fidelity to Nature and the suggestion of some vision, imagination, feeling or idea well within the normal range of human experience.¹ The Indian artist deliberately ignores all these demands. His technique is perfect enough; he uses sculptural line with a consummate mastery, often with an incomparable charm, grace and tenderness. The rhythm and movement of his figures have a life and power and perfection which conveys a deeper reality than the more intellectualised and less purely intuitive symmetries and groupings of the European styles. But these bodies are not, when we look close at them, bronze representations of human flesh and human life, but forms of divine life, embodiments of the gods. The human type is exceeded, and if sometimes one more subtly and psychically beautiful replaces it, at other times all mere physical beauty is contemptuously disregarded.

What these artists strive always to express is the soul and those pure and absolute states of the mind and heart in which the soul manifests its essential being void of all that is petty, transient, disturbed and restless. In their human figures it is almost always devotion that is manifested; for this in the Shaiva and Vaishnava religions is the pure state of the soul turned towards God. The power of the artist is extraordinary. Not only the face, the eyes, the pose but the whole body and every curve and every detail aid in the effect and seem to be concentrated into the

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essence of absolute adoration, submission, ecstasy, love, tenderness which is the Indian idea of bhakti. These are not figures of devotees, but of the very personality of devotion. Yet while the Indian mind is seized and penetrated to the very roots of its being by this living and embodied ecstasy, it is quite possible that the Occidental, not trained in the same spiritual culture, would miss almost entirely the meaning of the image and might only see a man praying.

The reason becomes evident when we study the images of the gods. These deities are far removed indeed from the Greek and the Christian conceptions; they do not live in the world at all, but in themselves, in the infinite. The form is, as it were, a wave in which the whole ocean of being expresses itself. The significance varies; sometimes it is unfathomable thought, sometimes the self-restraint of infinite power, sometimes the self-contained oceanic surge of divine life and energy, sometimes the absolute immortal ecstasy. But always one has to look not at the form, but through and into it to see that which has seized and informed it. The appeal of this art is in fact to the human soul for communion with the divine Soul and not merely to the understanding, the imagination and the sensuous eye. It is a sacred and hieratic art, expressive of the profound thought of Indian philosophy and the deep passion of Indian worship. It seeks to render to the soul that can feel and the eye that can see the extreme values of the suprasensuous.

And yet there is a certain difference one notes which distinguishes most of these southern bronzes from the sublime and majestic stone sculptures of the earlier periods. It is the note of lyrism in the form, the motive of life, grace, rhythm. To use the terms of Indian philosophy, most art expresses the play of Prakriti; Buddhistic art in its most characteristic creations expresses the absolute repose of the Purusha; Hindu art tends to combine the Purusha and Prakriti in one image. But in the earlier stone sculptures it is the sublime repose, tranquil power, majestic concentration of the Deity which the whole image principally represents even in poses expressive of violent movement; the movement is self-contained, subordinated to the repose. We find the same motive in some of these bronzes, notably in the wonderful

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majestically self-possessed thought and power of the Kalasamhara image of Shiva (Plate I); but for the most part it is life and rhythm that predominate in the form even when there is no actual suggestion of movement. This is the motive of the Natarajan, the Dancing Shiva, which seems to us to strike the dominant note of this art; the self-absorbed concentration, the motionless peace and joy are within, outside is the whole mad bliss of the cosmic movement. But even other figures that stand or sit seem often to represent only pauses of the dance; often the thought and repose are concentrated in the head and face, the body is quick with potential movement. This art seems to us to reflect in bronze the lyrical outburst of the Shaivite and Vaishnava devotional literature while the older sculpture had the inspiration of the spiritual epos of the Buddha or else reflects in stone the sublimity of the Upanishads. The aim of a renascent Indian Art must be to recover the essence of these great motives and to add the freedom and variety of the soul's self-expression in the coming age when man's search after the Infinite need no longer be restricted to given types or led along one or two great paths, but may at last be suffered to answer with a joyous flexibility the many-sided call of the secret Mystery behind Life to its children.

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About Astrology

Kalaprakasika: the Standard Book on the Election System by N. P. Subramania Iyer, Tanjore.

The subject of this book is one which stands nowadays put away under a sort of intellectual ban, placed on it some centuries ago by the scientific and rationalistic European mind and not yet lifted. Mr. N. P. Subramania Iyer has undertaken an astrological series which will deal with the various parts of astrology, and the present volume contains the text and translation of the Kalaprakasika, a treatise on the selection of the right times by astrological rule for undertaking any and every action of human life. The book is well printed and got up, the translation admirably done in a style free enough to avoid all awkwardness,—the author has a thorough control of the English tongue and an excellent style of his own,—but perfectly faithful to the matter of the text. But the most interesting part of the work for the ordinary reader is the introduction, in which he gives amidst other matter the psychological explanation of the influence of the planets and states for what they stand in relation to the Indian Vedantic philosophy of existence. I have not seen elsewhere any exposition of the subject equally original and illuminative.

Astrology is in the general mind associated with that class of subjects which goes under the name of the occult, and along with others of its class it has long been discredited by modern "enlightenment", one does not quite know on what grounds or with what rational justification. It has its psychic and mystical side, but that is not its ordinary presentation; there it claims to be a science like any other with fixed processes and an exact and definite system of rules which ought to be perfectly capable of verification or of disproof by experiment and induction like any other science. Its basis is astronomical and mathematical, its data perfectly open and positive and in no way hidden or occult, nor does it at all shrink back from the test or hide itself in secrecy and mystery.

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It does not indeed give ordinarily the why, but only the how of the causes and effects it professes to establish, but so it is with all other sciences; they do not give the reason of things, but only their processes. Yet astrology is supposed at some indefinite time in the march of human mind to have been exploded,—along with such things as witch-craft and demonology, not to speak of the existence of spirits and the immortality of the soul,—and there is a sort of idea that it has been disproved and therefore put aside as a superstition which no reasonable man can even look at except with a lofty disdain, much less stoop to investigate with an open mind its truth or falsity. Still the anathema of Science has not been able to destroy it; in Europe it has revived, even though its practice as a profession is punishable by the law, and in India it has always survived. It is not indeed the habit of educated Indians to profess explicitly their belief in it, they fight shy of that as a rule, but it is largely consulted by numbers of them, as also by many Europeans. This is an anomalous position which ought to be corrected. Either astrology is a true science and should be investigated, proved, improved where defective and generally rehabilitated in opinion, or else it is a pseudo-science and should be investigated and disproved so as to cut the ground away finally from all secret belief or open credulity.

As a matter of fact astrology has never been scientifically disproved, nor has any rational ground ever been advanced for treating it as a pseudo-science. It simply came to be assumed at a certain period and under certain intellectual influences that it was a childish superstition. Or if there were any grounds, then it was left aside because astrologers were charlatans, because many, perhaps most predictions went wrong, but most of all because it was thought that in the nature of things, in any rational theory of the universe the planets simply could not have any influence on our characters, lives and actions. None of those grounds are sufficient. If many astrologers are charlatans, so also have there been many quacks in the field of medicine; at one time indeed not only did they pullulate; but the system of medicine itself seemed so defective that there were plenty of clear and enlightened minds who were inclined with Moliere to denounce the whole thing as a gross pseudo-science, an elaborate and solemn

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system of ignorance, humbug and quackery. Supposing that view had prevailed,—it could not, merely because men are too vitally interested in healing their ailments and preserving their bodies and know no other way of doing it,—that would not have done away with the truth underlying the science.

That many predictions go wrong, proves nothing essentially, against astrology any more than the constant failure of doctors to heal diseases proves anything essential against their science. The first reason of this failure may be that a great number of practising astrologers are either charlatans who seek to please their clients rather than predict by scientific rule,—of that kind there are perhaps many,—or else inefficient and ignorant men who practise only by rule of thumb, perfunctorily and with a main eye upon their fees. But if even capable astrologers fail often, that also only proves that either the science or their way of treating it is largely empirical or that some of its rules and theories may be errors. But every science has to pass through its empirical stage and some—as, again, the science of medicine,—have hardly emerged from it, and every science too burdens itself in its progress with false generalisations, incorrect theories and imperfect rules which have afterwards to be discarded or amended. As the main point in medicine is whether herbs and metals and other remedies have or have not certain effects on the body and whether their workings can be substantiated by experience in a sufficient number of cases to establish a regular relation of cause and effect, so it is in astrology with the fundamental question of planetary influences upon earth and its creatures.

The a priori argument from the rational theory of the universe cannot stand. There is nothing essentially irrational in the idea that in this solar system, so closely linked together, there may be mutual influences of all the planets upon each other or that the beings of a particular planet are powerfully influenced or even dominated by influences from the others. The question remains, the a priori rationality being admitted or at least not summarily dismissed, first, whether it is so in fact and, secondly, how far those influences go and of what nature they are. Astrology affirms that they not only affect our bodies, but also our psychical being. If matter and mind were entirely independent entities

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having no influence or determining effect upon each other, then such a result could not be; but that is not the case. According to the materialistic view of the universe which claims to be the sole rationalistic view, mind is itself an effect of matter and all its states and movements are determined by matter. There is nothing then impossible, planetary influence being once admitted, in the action of material bodies producing psychical conditions on the earth and thereby determining our psychical states and movements. In a more truly rationalistic view mind and matter are always influencing and determining each other; here too, given a universal mind and matter so acting upon individual matter and mind, the movements of the planetary system may be one or even the first nodus of their activities, and the assertions of astrology become at least primarily credible.

Farther, astrology affirms that these influences determine the whole course of our lives and that the all-important element is time. That raises the major question of the influence of Time upon human beings and events; does Time determine the course of our lives and the states of our being and if so, how far and in what way? or to put the question more precisely, as it is raised by astrology, do or can the conditions reigning at a given critical time, in this case the moment of birth, determine our physical and psychological conditions and the whole course of our future lives, or determine them to any considerable extent? and are the relative movements and therefore the mutual positions of the sun and planets with regard to the earth and each other either the nodus or in some way the effective signs of these determinations? And, secondly, do the developing time conditions which come afterwards, by themselves or viewed in reference to the original conditions, determine from moment to moment, from time to time the subsequent evolution of our primary physical and psychological conditions and the course of linked and successive circumstances which make up the history of our lives? and if so, again, are the relative movements and mutual positions of the suns and planets at any given time the nodus or the effective signs of this later determination also? can they therefore be taken for all practical purposes as determinants, or at any rate as sure signs by which the determinations of our life and being can be

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discovered? That is the question which astrology raises, and it is evidently a perfectly legitimate and rational question: nor can we on a priori grounds condemn and put away an affirmative answer, which is based upon past experience systematised into rules and theories, as a superstition or a childish folly. Granted that in things here there is a chain of cause and effect—or at least, if causality is disputed, of antecedent condition leading up to subsequent condition—and that if and so far as we know that chain, scientific prediction becomes in that proportion possible,—two propositions which, unless we deny determination altogether, it would be difficult to dispute,—there is no inherent improbability in the clue to happenings human and other on the planets being found in the motions of those planets. Astronomy is in a sense the primary physical science, for the first facts which give all the others their field are astronomical facts; it may well be that in the psycho-physical field the same rule holds and that there the first facts may be astrological.

The a priori objections disappearing, the next step is to ask ourselves whether there is a sufficient prima facie empirical case for inquiring into the actual truth of astrology. This at present depends upon the experience of isolated individuals, a very unsatisfactory basis. But if this experience could be collected, sifted and published, I believe it would be found that a formidable prima facie case exists in favour of astrology, much stronger than that which encouraged the Society for Psychical Research to carry on its work in another psycho-physical field to such important conclusions. I may state my own experience in the matter in the belief, justified by many instances, that it is only typical of the experience of hundreds of others. My first accidental contact with an Indian astrologer was not encouraging. This gentleman was the most accomplished thought-reader I have ever seen; for he asked me to think my question without speaking it and not only successfully named the unspoken question I had fixed on, but three others which had crossed my mind, one of them only in the merest flash and without leaving any impression behind: this he pretended to do by mathematical calculation, an operation which I took leave to regard as humbug or professional parade. For when it came to his answers, I found that he was still doing

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thought-reading and not astrology; he simply echoed the hopes or thoughts in my mind and his predictions did not come within one hundred miles of the truth. Other practitioners I have found to belong, a few plainly to the class of mere flattering charlatans, but most to the inefficient who read by rule of thumb and have made no profound study of their science. On the other hand, with capable astrologers the results have been often of such a remarkable accuracy as to put quite aside any possibility of chance hit, mere coincidence, intelligent prevision or any of the current explanations. I may instance the father of a friend of mine, a deep student of the science but not a professional, who predicted accurately the exact year, month, day, hour and even minute of his own death. In my own case accuracy was hampered by the inability to fix the precise moment of my birth; still some of the results were extraordinary. Two may be mentioned, from one and the same astrologer, which related to my public career. One, given when I had not yet plunged into the political vortex and my then obscure personality was quite unknown to the astrologer, predicted as an inevitable certitude of the future a political struggle with powerful non-Indian adversaries during which for a time even my life would fall under the shadow of danger. The other, given at the time of my first prosecution in the Bande Mataram case, predicted three successive criminal trials in each of which the prosecution would fail. I may instance also two predictions by the book in which Slokas from Sanskrit astrological writings indicating the result of certain conjunctions or planetary positions were shown to be applicable to my horoscope. One foretold specific chronic illnesses for the body of which there was no sign at the time, but long afterwards they put in their unexpected appearance and persisted. Another indicated very precisely that one of my future activities would be to found a new spiritual philosophy and its discipline; at that time I had no knowledge of philosophy or Yoga and no turn or inclination in my mind which could make the realisation of this prediction at all probable. These are only the most precise examples out of a number. Supposing all well-authenticated evidence of the kind to be collected, I am convinced there would be an overwhelmingly strong prima facie case and even a body of sufficiently

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strong empirical proof to establish at least a nucleus of truth in astrology.

That would be the first step. For if astrology is a science and is to take its proper place, the first necessity is to dissipate by an appeal to the empirical mind of the general public as well as of the sceptical thinker the great mass of unenquiring prejudice which now exists against it. To publish the text and translation of the best authorities, as Mr. Iyer is now doing, with illuminating introductions is a preliminary need in this case so that we may know what we have to go upon. The second is to mass evidence of the empirical truth of the science, giving in each case the prediction in all its details, the more detailed the better, the astrological rules on which it was based and the event, each detail of the event being compared with the corresponding detail of the prediction. Only then would there be a clear field for the consideration of the scientific and philosophical doubts, questions and problems which would still arise; but this, though the most important aspect of the matter, I must leave for future handling.

An acceptance of the truth of astrology would not necessarily carry with it a complete determinism of Fate or mechanical law of Karma. In the Indian theory at least there is room for a determination by human will and endeavour, for Fate is mainly a determination by past action and a new will and action can cancel it; only a very strong Karma is imperative and irreducible. Even that may possibly be cancelled if one can enter into the freedom of the spiritual consciousness. One instance at any rate came to my knowledge in which the life had corresponded exactly with the pre-indications of the horoscope so long as the subject remained in the world but, as soon as he left it for a spiritual life, there was no longer any correspondence.

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Sanskrit Research

An Anglo-Sanskrit Quarterly, conducted by the Sanskrit Academy of India, Bangalore, and edited by Pundit Lingeca Mahabhagawat.

We regret that this review comes out very belated as it had to be held over last month for want of space.

The appearance of this Anglo-Sanskrit Quarterly "devoted to research work in all fields of Indian Antiquity" is a welcome sign of the recent development towards a wider culture, a more flexible and strenuous scholarship and a more original thinking which promises to lift the Indian mind out of the rut of second-hand provincialism and sterile repetition of commonplaces into which the vices of its school and university education had betrayed it and to equip it for the important contribution we may expect it to make to the world's increasing stock of knowledge. There has been a considerable expansion in this country, both in English and the vernaculars, of that ordinary periodical literature which caters for the popular mind and supplies it with snippets of knowledge, facile information and ready but not always very valuable opinions on all sorts of subjects. But there has been hitherto little or nothing corresponding to those more serious publications common in every European country which appeal to a more limited audience but succeed in popularising within those limits a more serious and original thinking and a more thorough knowledge in each branch of human enquiry. Attempts have been made but, outside the field of religion and philosophy, they have usually foundered in their inception for want of adequate support; they have not found, as they would have found elsewhere, an interested circle of readers. Now, however, there ought to be a sufficient number of cultivated minds interested and competent in Sanskrit scholarship and the research into Indian antiquity to ensure an adequate support and an increasing usefulness for this new Quarterly.

The second (October) number of the Quarterly is before me

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and its sound editing and the value and interest of its contents promise well for its future. There are especially two very solid articles, one by Mr. Tilak on "A Missing Verse in the Sankhya Karikas," and another by Professor R.D. Ranade of the Ferguson College headed "Greek and Sanskrit: a Comparative Study", but there is no article without its interest and value. I note that in this number all the contributors, with one exception, are either from Maharashtra or the Madras Presidency. It is to be hoped that the editor will be able to secure the co-operation of Sanskrit scholars in the north so that this Review may become an All-India organ of Indian research.

Mr. Tilak's article shows all the thoroughness and acuteness which that great scholar brings to his work great or small whether he is seeking for the original home of the Aryans in the cryptic mass of the Rig-veda or restoring with his rare powers of deduction a lost verse in the Karikas. The point he seeks to establish, though apparently a small one, has really a considerable importance. He points out that there is a consensus of authority for the existence of 70 verses in Ishwarakrishna's Sankhya-Karikas, but, if we exclude the last three which do not belong to the doctrinal part of the text, we have both in the Indian text and in the Chinese version only 69; at the same time he shows that both Gaudapada's Bhashya and the commentary in the Chinese version contain a passage developing a refutation of four possible subtler causes of the world, Ishwara, Purusha, Kala and Swabhava (God, the Soul, Time and Nature) rejected by the Sankhyas, a refutation which logically ought to be but is not found in the text itself. From the passage in the Bhashya he seeks to re-establish the sense and even the language of the missing verse. It seems to me that he has established both the fact of the missing verse and its substance. But the interesting point is the reason assigned by him for the loss of the verse; it was, he thinks, no accident, but a deliberate suppression made at a time when the Sankhya philosophy was being re-explained by thinkers like Vijnanabhikshu in a Vedantic sense. If so, the point made sheds a very interesting light on the historic course of philosophical thought in India.

The general line which that development followed arises

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more indirectly from an interesting and carefully reasoned article by Mr. Y. Subbarao on the question of the originality of Shankara's philosophy. Mr. Subbarao seeks to establish his point that it was no new system of thought which Shankara created, but only the restatement perhaps in a more developed form of a very ancient school of Vedantic interpretation. Certainly, it cannot be supposed that Shankara invented a new philosophy out of his own brain; he believed himself to be establishing against attack the real sense of the Vedantic philosophy founded on the original texts of its canon and supported by the best tradition. Nor does any greater thinker really invent a system new-born from his own intellect; what he does is to take up the material available to him in the past history of thought, to choose, select, reject; to present new light on old ideas, to develop latent suggestions, to bring into prominence what was before less prominent or not so trenchant and definite, to give a fresh, striking and illuminating sense to old terms, to combine what was before not at all or else ill combined; in doing so he creates; his philosophy, though not new in its materials, is new in the whole effect it produces and the more powerful light that in certain directions it conveys to the thinking mind. The question is whether Shankara's system was not new in this sense and, though the previous material still subsisting is insufficient to decide the question, it must, I think, be answered provisionally in the affirmative. Adwaitavada undoubtedly existed before, but it was the form Shankara gave it which made it a clear, well-thought-out and powerfully trenchant philosophy and put his name at the head of Indian metaphysicians.

Mr. Subbarao admits that it is impossible to establish an exclusive Adwaitavada, much less the Mayavada, from the Veda, Upanishads, Brahmasutras or the Gita. It is impossible not because the great thinkers who gave us these writings thought confusedly or without a clear grasp of principles, but because theirs was an entirely different method. India began with a synthetic and intuitive manner of thinking based not upon logical distinctions and verbal oppositions, but upon the facts of spiritual experience and vision. In such synthetic and intuitive philosophies truths are arranged according to the place of each

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in the actual fact of things, as different laws and generalisations are arranged in Science, each positive in its own field and each having its proper relation to the others. The perfection of this method is to be found in the Upanishads and the Gita; and that is the reason why all attempts to interpret these great works by the methods of logical debate and the rigorous exclusions dear to the analytic metaphysician always fail even in the strongest hands; they raise questions about the sense of these works which cannot be conclusively solved, but must necessarily lead to eternal debate, because the method is wrong and the original work itself never intended to cause or countenance such discussions. Only a synthetic method of interpretation can explain a synthetic and intuitive philosophy.

The analytical tendency began with the gradual divisions which ended in the establishment of the six philosophical schools. Each of them claims to be justified by the Veda and from its own point of view each is quite in the right, for the primary data of each are there in the sacred writings. It is where they press to exclusive conclusions and deny and refute each other that they can no longer truly claim Vedic authority. Even the Buddhists could, if they had chosen, have based themselves on the Veda, for there are passages which, if taken by themselves, seem to deny the Atman and attribute all to Karma or to assert the Non-Existent as the source of things. The perfect resort to the analytical method came later; it was employed with great effect though often rather naively by the Buddhists, but it was Shankara who applied rigorously the analytical method of the intellectual reason in all its trenchant clearness and force to metaphysics. Hence the greatness of his position in the history of Indian thought. From his time forward Indian metaphysics was bound to the wheels of the analytical and intellectual mind. Still, it is to be noted that while the philosophers thus split the catholicity of the ancient Truth into warring schools, the general Indian mind was always overpoweringly attracted by the synthetical tendency. The Gita seems to be in part the expression of such a synthetic reaction, the Puranas show constantly the same tendency and even into the philosophical schools it made its entry.

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Prof. Ranade's article on Greek and Sanskrit carries us into another field, that of Comparative Philology. His object is in a brief scope to establish the identical origin of Greek and Sanskrit in that which is most essential in the growth of a language, its grammatical forms and syntactical peculiarities. He has had to allow himself only a very small space for so large and important a subject, but within these narrow limits he has done his work with great thoroughness and, subject to a few minor reservations, with a minute accuracy. It is to be regretted that by printing the Greek words in their proper character instead of in Roman type Mr. Ranade has made this interesting essay unintelligible to all but a very few Indian readers. He lays down the principle that the words of each language should be printed in its own type and that anyone who wishes to study Comparative Philology must take the trouble to familiarise himself with the original alphabets. This is a counsel of perfection which is not practicable in India, nor indeed on any large scale in Europe either. If for instance a scholar were dealing with the philology of the Aryan languages and had to cite largely verbal forms both from the European tongues and from Sanskrit and its Indian descendants he would be compelled on this principle to require at least nine different types from the Press to which he entrusted his work. No Press would be able to meet the demand and very few even of his learned readers but would be baffled by the variety. Mr. Ranade himself gives us German words and a German sentence, but not in the Gothic character which alphabetical purism would demand.

There are three or four statements in the article to which objection can be taken and, since in philology even the smallest details are of importance, the learned writer will not object to my pointing them out with some emphasis; in one case at least he has fallen into a serious error by correcting which he may add an interesting and not unimportant subsection to his array of grammatical and syntactical identities between the two languages. I do not understand in the first place what is meant by the statement that "in Greek no difference is made between the dentals and the linguals and they are fused together". If it is meant that the Greek language possessed both dental and lingual sounds

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but expressed them by the same characters, I do not think this can be correct. The distribution of dentals and linguals in the various languages is one of the most curious phenomena in the history of linguistic phonetics and deserves a closer inquiry than has been accorded to it. The Latin and Celtic languages reject the lingual and use only the dental; English on the other hand prefers the linguals, though it uses occasionally the dental t, th and d, all of which it represents by th, as in with, thin, though,—a desperately clumsy device thoroughly in keeping with the chaotic wildness of English orthography. Everyone in India knows the difficulty an Englishman finds in pronouncing the Indian dentals; he turns them resolutely into linguals. On the contrary a Frenchman who has not educated himself into the right English pronunciation, will turn the English lingual into a dental; he will say feasth instead of feast, noth instead of not, and pronounce do as if it were the English though. A similar peculiarity is one of the chief features of the brogue, the Irish mispronunciation of English speech; for the natural Irish tongue cannot manage the hard lingual sound in such words as Peter and shoulder, it mollifies them into true dentals. I have noticed the same peculiarity in the pronunciation of a Spanish actress playing in English on a London stage; otherwise perfect, it produced a strange impression by its invariable transformation of the harder English into the softer Latin sound. Now Greek must certainly have belonged to the Latin-Celtic group in this phonetic peculiarity; otherwise the difference would have been too striking to escape the sensitive ear of the ancient poets and scholars. It seems to me therefore that in the comparative scheme of the two alphabets the Sanskrit linguals should be marked as absent in the Greek and, not as Mr. Ranade represents them, correspondent equally with the dentals to the Greek tau, theta, and delta.

In the comparison of the declensions Mr. Ranade asserts that Greek feminine nouns in long a like chôrâ correspond in their endings to Sanskrit nouns of the type of bhāryā and Greek nouns in long e like tîmê to Sanskrit nouns of the type of dāsī. Surely this is an error. The writer has fallen into it because he was looking only at the Attic dialect, but the Attic is only one

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variation of the Greek language and it is misleading to study it by itself. As a matter of fact, this â and this ê both represent the same original sound which must have been the feminine termination in â; only the Doric dialect prefers always the original â, the Ionic modifies it into ê, and the Attic standing between the Doric and the Ionic belts makes a compromise. In the Attic when this feminine â is preceded by a vowel it remains unmodified, as also usually when it is preceded by r, but if it is preceded by a consonant it becomes ê; thus philiâ, chôrâ, but tîmê, kômê. Ionic will say philiê and not philiâ; Doric tîmâ and not tîmê. This is enough to negative Mr. Ranade's identification of this Attic ê with the Sanskrit feminine î. Certainly there are cases in which Sanskrit uses this î termination where Attic has the ê, as in caturthī and tetartê; but this simply means that the Greek has rejected the Sanskrit deviation into the î form and kept to the more regular â which here too will appear in its pure form in the Doric.¹

In the comparison of tenses Mr. Ranade makes the rather curious assertion that the Sanskrit Conditional does not occur in any other language except perhaps German; but surely if the German "wurden getodet worden sein" corresponds to the Sanskrit abhaviṣyat, the French conditionals e.g. auraient été tués and the English "would have been killed" ought equally to be considered as parallel syntactical constructions; they have the same sense and with a slight difference the same form as the German.

Finally, Mr. Ranade tells us that there are no such compounds in Greek as in Sanskrit and again that there are no dvandva, karmadhāraya and bahuvrīhi compounds in Greek, although there are verbs compounded with prepositions. I am at a loss to understand how so sound a scholar can have come to make a statement so contrary to all the facts. The power of the Greek language to make compounds is one of its most not-able characteristics and its rich though never intemperate use is one of the great beauties of the Greek poetical style. When the Romans came into contact with Greek literature, their earlier poets tried to introduce this faculty into Latin and even

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Virgil describes the sea as velivolum, sail-flying, i.e. with sails flying over it like the wings of birds through the air, but the usage was too contrary to the Latin genius to succeed. Not only did the Greek compound prepositions with its verbs, but it compounded nouns and verbs together. Thus from nau-archos, ship-ruler, i.e. admiral, they made nauarchein, to be an admiral; nor did they hesitate before such forms as paidopoiein, to beget children, paidotribein, to train boys, mnêsikakein, to remember wrongs, neottotropheisthai, to be brought up like the young of a bird. In fact with the exception of nominal dvandvas the Greek illustrates all the main varieties of the Sanskrit compound. For it is capable of such compounds as pseudo-martus, a false witness, pseudo-christos, a false Christ, chauno-politês, a silly city; as andro-phonos, man-killing, paid-oletôr, a destroyer of one's children, phusi-zoos, life-producing, koruth-aiolos, helmet-glancing, lao-kataratos, cursed by the people, thumo-leon, heart-lion, as anabadên and katabadên answering to the Sanskrit avyayibhāva; as oxu-thumos, sharp-passioned, oxu-schoinos, having sharp reeds, polu-teknos, having many children, io-stephanos, violet-crowned. The language indeed pullulates with compounds. It is true that they are usually composed of two members only, but compounds of three members are found, as tris-kako-daimôn, thrice-evil-fated and Aristophanes even perpetrates such forms as glischr-antilog-exepitriptos and sphragid-onuch-argo-komêtês.

I have dwelt on these points because they leap to the eye in the perfection otherwise complete of an admirable essay which, I hope, is only the first sketch of a more important treatise. But with the exception of the last they are minor points and do not seriously detract from the completeness of the exposition. Especially new and interesting are the parallel between Greek and Vedic accents and the rearrangement of Greek conjugations according to the Sanskrit classification. The common origin of Greek and Sanskrit is apparent enough, but like other philologists Mr. Ranade is far too sure of the conclusion he draws from it. I believe him to be right in thinking that the Indian Aryans and the Greek came from one stock, but when he says that this has been proved beyond dispute by the discoveries of the philologist he is going much too fast. Common origin of language

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or even common language does not prove common ethnic origin. The French and Spaniards are not Latins nor the Irish of Dublin and Munster Anglo-Saxons. From the possible causes of linguistic similarity which the writer has given he has omitted one, conquest and cultural pressure. According to the theory of the Italian ethnologist, Sergi, all the Mediterranean races of Northern Africa and Southern Europe belong to one "Mediterranean" stock ancient and highly civilised which was conquered by Aryan savages and this accounts for their "Aryan" languages. It is the same theory that now prevails in a different form with regard to the Aryan conquest of a highly civilised Dravidian India. Philology can bring no sufficient argument to contradict it.

Mr. Ranade deprecates the scorn of the linguistically ignorant for philology, but we must not forget that in Europe it is not the ignorant alone who feel this contempt, but the scientists, and that there is a certain justification for their contempt; this was admitted by so great a philological scholar as Renan when in the evening of his days he had to apologise for his favourite pursuits as "our petty conjectural sciences". Philology is in fact not yet a science, but rather far too largely a structure of ingenuities and plausible conjectures. It set out with the hope of discovering the origin of language and the scientific laws of its development, but it has failed entirely; and it failed not because they are undiscoverable,—I believe the clue is there lying ready to our hands in the Sanskrit language,—but because it strayed off to the facile pursuit of obvious similarities and identities instead of delving patiently and scrupulously, as all true Science must do, behind the outward appearances of things to get back at origins and embryonic indices. And on its scanty and uncertain data it began to build up enormous structures of theory such as the common origin of Aryan-speaking races, their original habitat, their common form of culture before separation, etc. Such facile play of an ingenious imagination is still the failing of the scholar and justifies to a certain extent the scorn of the patient, accurate and scrupulous physical scientist for the freaks and pretentions of the "philolog".

Not altogether is it justified, for philology has made several interesting and useful discoveries, established a few minor generalisations

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and, above all, substituted a sounder though not yet entirely sound critical method for the fantastic licence of the old unscientific philology which, once it left the sure ground of grammar, was capable of anything and everything however absurd or impossible. But much has to be learned and a great deal more unlearned before we can measure ourselves with the physical scientist or deserve his approval. It is here that much is to be hoped from the Indian intellect which is more accustomed than the European to move with a penetrating subtlety and accuracy in the things of the mind. But to justify the hope it must first get rid on one side of its attachment to the methods of the Pundit and his subservience to traditional authority and on the other not give itself bound hand and foot to the method of the European scholar or imitate too freely that swiftly leaping ingenious mind of his which gives you in a trice a Scythian or a Persian Buddha, identifies conclusively Murghab and Maurya, Mayasura and Ahura Mazda and generally constructs with magical rapidity the wrong animal out of the wrong bone. We have to combine the laboriousness of the Pundit, the slow and patient conscientiousness of the physical scientist abhorrent of a too facile conclusion and the subtlety of the psychologist in order to deserve the same success in these other sciences and to lift them beyond the shifting field of conjecture.

Sanskrit Research gives us Sanskrit articles as well as English with the laudable object of bringing together with a view to mutual helpfulness the old and the new scholarship. Sanskrit ought still to have a future as a language of the learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient tongue ceases entirely to be written or spoken. But if it is to survive, it must get rid of the curse of the heavy pedantic style contracted by it in its decline with the lumbering impossible compounds and the overweight of hair-splitting erudition. The Sanskrit articles in this number are learned and laborious, but they suffer heavily from this defect of style. If the contact established by the Sanskrit Research can teach the new scholarship the patient thoroughness of the old and the old the flexibility and penetrating critical sense of the new, it will have done to both a great and much-needed service.

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Rupam

An illustrated quarterly journal of Oriental Art, chiefly Indian, edited by O. C. Gangoly.

The appearance of this superb quarterly admirable in its artistic get-up and its fine reproductions of Indian sculpture and painting, admirable in the accomplished excellence of its matter,—the name of the editor, Mr. O. C. Gangoly, the one man most especially fitted by his knowledge and capacity for this work, is of itself a sufficient guarantee of excellence,—is a significant indication of the progress that is being made in the revival of the aesthetic mind of India. Assailed and corrupted in a time of cultural decline and arrest of its creative and artistic faculty by an alien aesthesis and ideals antithetic to its own spirit, it is returning to a right view and understanding of its past greatness, and though much way has still to be made before there can be any universal recovery of the artistic eye and taste, the first steps have been taken with some rapidity and firmness and are all in the right direction. This new and fine effort of the Indian Society of Oriental Arts is likely to be of invaluable aid towards this reawakening; its magnificent illustrations are in themselves a revelation of the old beauty and greatness and, admirably selected and supported by illuminating articles, ought to be sufficient to open even the most blinded vision to the meaning and value of our ancient painting and sculpture.

The subjects of the four articles in this number are all of a considerable interest and touch points or raise and answer questions which have either a central importance or a vital though second-plane prominence in Indian art, and each article is a remarkably just, full, efficient and understanding interpretation of its subject. The frontispiece is a panel from a Pallava temple at Mahabalipuram intended to convey at once the essential character and appeal of Indian sculpture by an example which offers no difficulty of understanding or appreciation even to a non-Indian mind or to an uninstructed knowledge, and it is accompanied by a brief but clear and sufficient article. This example

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from one of the great styles and periods shows, as is justly said, and shows very perfectly, the Indian principle in the treatment of the human figure, the suppression of small particulars and trivial details in order to secure an extreme simplicity of form and contour,—the best condition for accomplishing the principal object of the Indian sculptor which was to fill the form with the utmost power of spiritual force and significance. The figure of this princely doorkeeper of the temple in its union of calm, grave, sweet and restful serenity with a latent and restrained heroic energy in its stillness, noted by the writer as the distinctive power of this creation, is indeed equal, as he suggests, in its dignity and repose to any Greek statue, but it carries in it a more profound and potent meaning; it is a perfect interpretation of the still and intense Godward feeling, seized in one deep mood, in one fixed moment of it, which was the soul of the great ages of Indian religion. There is here a perfection of form with a perfection of significance. This restraint in power, this contained fullness opening an amplitude of infinite suggestion, is not rare or exceptional, it is a frequent greatness in the art of India.

The second article on Garuda in Bengal and Java by Akshaya Kumar Maitreya, besides its interesting and discerning treatment of its subject, the inception and humanising of the Garuda figure and the artistic use of the mythus, touches an issue which has not yet, I think, received sufficient consideration, the place of the art of Gauda in the development of the spirit of Indian sculpture. The putting side by side of the two sculptures from Java and Varendra, on one side the heroic force, majesty, dignity and beauty of the ancient art in one of its finest developments, on the other the moved nobility, grace and loveliness and the fervour of spiritual emotion and tenderness of a time when the antique Aryan spirit was softening into the sweetness of the religions of Bhakti, makes of itself an illuminating suggestion. This sculpture is eloquent of that transition and the art of Gauda with its lyrical sweetness of emotion and, at its best, suggestive depths, begins the curve of the stream of spiritual feeling which came down through the Vaishnava art and poetry, found its most gracious and lucid embodiment in the poets of Bengal, has now taken, enriched by new elements, a large and living development

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in the lyrics of Tagore and the paintings of the Calcutta school and has yet a vital part to play in the spiritual future of India.

Another article contains a full and discriminating account, copiously illustrated by numerous figures, of the history of the Kirtimukha, a standing feature in Indian architecture, and the development of its use as a constant decorative element and in Java a prominent structural motive. The right understanding of these details is a necessary equipment for the complete comprehension of the art of India. The writer handles his subject with a consummate mastery and includes in a small compass all that is needed to give us a full idea about this "glory face". The one thing not included in his intention is its psychological significance, a question of great interest, for it is an evolution as the writer indicates from an element common to the ancient art of Asia and there were kindred things in Greece and mediaeval Europe. It is the result, I would suggest, of an imagination or an experience that has entered into the subtle worlds and found there a side of things dangerous and distorted and terrible that have yet to be compelled by the adventure of the self-conquering spirit into an element of divine harmony and significance.

The remaining article by Mr. E. Vredenburg on the continuity of pictorial tradition in the art of India treats a question of the most central importance and brings to it a fine aesthetic instinct even more necessary than historic and archaeological accuracy of information in such a discussion, for one may have the latter and yet miss the truth for lack of a more essential equipment of the art critic. Mr. Vredenburg enters a still much-needed protest against the constant tendency to attribute a foreign origin to whatever survives of Indian creation. The instances he gives are indeed evidences of an extraordinary perversity of judgment, such as the well-known refusal to leave the credit of the Tajmahal to India, "the numerous attempts that have been made to ascribe the Ajanta paintings to the Greeks, Persians or Chinese", and last but not least colossally absurd, "the truly astounding statement that the Kangra paintings are of European inspiration and that they were painted for the English market"! Only yesterday while reading Mr. Jouveau-Dubreuil's able historical

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monograph I found myself brought up short by the sweepingly positive but hardly judicial and certainly not judicious statement that "the Deccan like the North was inspired by the Greek and Roman arts and the marbles of Amaravati can be compared to the sculptures of Gandhara". The plain fact is that whatever outside influences there may or may not have been in India as elsewhere, even the earliest work shows a characteristic Indian mentality and touch; and as for Gandharan art, it has the air of an inefficient attempt of the Hellenistic mind to absorb this spirit rather than an effort of India to imitate Greece. And in any case the great characteristic work could no more have been the creation of a foreign mind or of its influence than the sculptures of Phidias can be attributed to an Assyrian, Egyptian or Chinese origin. A psychological insensibility to the spiritual significance of Indian work is probably at the root of these errors and, so long as that subsists, the most erudite knowledge will be no protection against gross misunderstandings.

Mr. Vredenburg is chiefly concerned in this article with filling up the gap between the Ajanta frescoes and the later art of India. He is able to do this up to the eleventh or twelfth century: for the beautiful coloured reproductions of exquisite Buddhist miniatures from an illuminated manuscript of that period which are the most attractive feature of this number, evidence a complete continuity of the Ajanta style. Most striking are the two enlargements which show at once and conclusively that these miniatures are in their whole spirit, method and every characteristic reductions of the old style of mural painting. He appeals also to the typically Ajantesque character of the coloured panels of Man Singh's palace which date from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It will be interesting to follow the farther development of this argument in the forthcoming number.

I could wish I had space for adequate comment on the many points of stimulating interest with which this number abounds, but I have, I think, indicated enough to show that every lover of Indian art and culture ought to possess "Rupam". He will find it one of the luxuries that are necessities.

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The Feast of Youth

Poems by Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras.

This is the first published book of a young poet whose name has recently and suddenly emerged under unusually favourable auspices. English poetry written by an Indian writer who uses the foreign medium as if it were his mother-tongue, with a spontaneous ease, power and beauty, the author a brother of the famous poetess Sarojini Naidu, one of a family which promises to be as remarkable as the Tagores by its possession of culture, talent and genius, challenging attention and sympathy by his combination of extreme youth and a high and early brilliance and already showing in his work, even though still immature, magnificent performance as well as a promise which makes it difficult to put any limits to the heights he may attain,—the book at once attracts interest and has come into immediate prominence amidst general appreciation and admiration. We have had already in the same field of achievement in Sarojini Naidu's poetry qualities which make her best work exquisite, unique and unmatchable in its kind. The same qualities are not to be found in this book, but it shows other high gifts which, when brought to perfection, must find an equal pitch with a greater scope. Here perhaps are the beginnings of a supreme utterance of the Indian soul in the rhythms of the English tongue.

That is a combination which, it may be well hoped for the sake of India's future, will not become too frequent a phenomenon. But at the present moment it serves both an artistic and a national purpose and seems to be part of the movement of destiny. In any case, whatever may be said of the made-in-India type of second-hand English verse in which men of great literary gift in southern India too often waste their talent, Mr. Chattopadhyay's production justifies itself by its beauty. This is not only genuine poetry, but the work of a young, though still unripe genius with an incalculable promise of greatness in it. As to the

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abundance here of all the essential materials, the instruments, the elementary powers of the poetical gift, there can be not a moment's doubt or hesitation. Even the first few lines, though far from the best, are quite decisive. A rich and finely lavish command of language, a firm possession of his metrical instrument, an almost blinding gleam and glitter of the wealth of imagination and fancy, a stream of unfailingly poetic thought and image and a high though as yet uncertain pitch of expression, are the powers with which the young poet starts. There have been poets of a great final achievement who have begun with gifts of a less precious stuff and had by labour within themselves and a difficult alchemy to turn them into pure gold. Mr. Chattopadhyay is not of these; he is rather overburdened with the favours of the goddess, comes like some Vedic Marut with golden weapons, golden ornaments, car of gold, throwing in front of him continual lightnings of thought in the midst of a shining rain of fancies, and a greater government and a more careful and concentrated use rather than an enhancement of his powers is the one thing his poetry needs for its perfection.

The name of the volume, taken from its first poem, The Feast of Youth, is an appropriate description of its spirit, though one is inclined to call it rather a riot or revel than a simple feast. It is the singing of a young bacchanal of the Muse drunk with a bright and heady wine. In his first poem he promises to himself,

O! I shall draw the blue out of the skies
And offer it like wine of paradise
To drunken Youth...

and the rest is an ample fulfilment of the promise. For the thought and sentiment are an eager, fine and fiery drinking of the joy of life and being, not in the pagan or physically sensuous kind of enjoyment, but with a spiritual and singularly pure intoxication of the thought, imagination and higher sense. The spiritual joy of existence, of its primal colour and symbolic subtleties, its essential sense, images, suggestions, a free and intense voluptuousness of light is the note. Occasionally there is the attempt to bring in an incidental tone of sorrow, but attacked

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by the glowing atmosphere of exultation, overcome and rendered unreal by the surrounding light and bliss, it fails to convince. Expression matches substance; there is here no holding back, no reticence, no idea of self-restraint, but rather a reckless ecstasy and outpouring. Suggestion chases suggestion, fancy runs after or starts away from fancy with no very exacting sequence; the exhilaration of self-utterance dominates. One is a little dazzled at first and has to accustom the eyes to the glitter, before one can turn to the heart of the meaning: excess, profusion, an unwearied lavishing of treasures creates the charm of the manner as well as its limitations, but this is often an excellent sign in a young poet, for it promises much richness in the hour of maturity; and here it is almost always,—not quite always, for there are lapses,—a fine, though not yet a sovereign excess, which continually attracts and stimulates the imagination, if it does not always quite take it captive.

There is here perhaps a side effect of one remarkable peculiarity of Mr. Chattopadhyay's poetical mentality. There is a background in it of Hindu Vedantic thought and feeling which comes out especially in "Fire", "Dusk", "Messages" and other poems, but will be found repeatedly elsewhere and runs through the whole as a sort of undercurrent; but the mould of the thought, the colour and tissue of the feeling betray a Moslem, a Persian, a Sufi influence. This source of inspiration appears in the title of some of the poems, and it has helped perhaps the tendency to lavishness. Sanskrit poetry, even when it clothes itself in the regal gold and purple of Kalidasa, or flows in the luscious warmth and colour of Jayadeva, keeps still a certain background of massive restraint, embanks itself in a certain firm solidity; the later poetry of the regional languages, though it has not that quality, is oftenest sparing at heart, does not give itself up to a curious opulence. But the Moslem mind has the tendency of mosaic and arabesque, loves the glow of many colours, the careful jewellery of image and phrase; its poetry is apparelled like a daughter of the Badshahs.

Her girdles and her fillets gleam
Like changing fires on sunset seas:

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Her raiment is like morning mist,
Shot opal, gold and amethyst.

Mr. Chattopadhyay's spirit and manner are too expansive for the carefully compressed artistry of the Persian poets, but the influence of the passion for decorative colour is there. But though the kinship is visible even in the external expression, what is more striking, is a certain idiosyncrasy of the fancy, the turn given to the thought, the colour of the vision, which are very often of the Sufi type. Something of the union of the two cultures appeared in the temperament of Mrs. Naidu's poetry, but here it is more subtly visible as part of the intellectual strain. This is however only one shaping influence behind: except in one or two poems, where we get some echo of his sister's manner and movement, this young poet is astonishingly original; it is himself that he utters in every line.

The thought-substance, the governing inspiration of this poetry is such as might well from a fusion of the Vedantic and the Sufi mentality. It is the utterance of a mystical joy in God and Nature, sometimes of the direct God-union,—but this is not quite so successful—more characteristically of God through Nature. Yet this is not usually the physical Nature that we feel with the outward bodily sense; it is a mystic life of light and ecstasy behind her, hidden in sun and moon and star, morning and noon and dusk and night, sea and sky and earth. It is to bring this remoter splendid vision near to us that image is strained and crowded, symbol multiplied. We get this mystic sense and aspiration in the poem, "Fire", in an image of love,—

I am athirst for one glimpse of your beautiful face, O Love!
Veiled in the mystical silence of stars and the purple of skies.

The closing lines of the "Hour of Rest" express it more barely,—I quote them only for their directness, though the expression stumbles and even lapses badly in the last two lines,—

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There is a sweetness in the world
That I have sometimes felt,
And oft in fragrant petals curl'd
His fragrance I have smelt...
And in sad notes of birds, unfurl'd
The kindness He hath dealt!

It is more beautifully and mystically brought out in another poem, "Worship",—

Like a rich song you chant your red-fire sunrise,
Deep in my dreams, and forge your white-flame moon...
You hide the crimson secret of your sunset,
And the pure, golden message of your noon.

You fashion cool-grey clouds within my body,
And weave your rain into a diamond mesh.
The Universal Beauty dances, dances
A glimmering peacock in my flowering flesh!

Spring lives as a symbol of inner experience, universal spring,—

The Spring-hues deepen into human Bliss!
The heart of God and man in scent are blended...
The sky meets earth and heaven in one transparent kiss...

Simple, moving, melodious and direct is its utterance in "Messages", with one image at least which deepens into intimate revelation,—

In my slumber and my waking
I can hear His sobbing flute...
Thro' the springtime and the autumn
Shaping every flower and fruit...
And His gleaming laughter colours
Orange hills and purple streams,
He is throbbing in the crystal,
Magic centre of my dreams...
Silver stars are visible twinkles

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Of His clear, transparent touch...
He is moving every moment
To the world He loves so much!

In the sea

God churns thy waters into silvern foam
And breathes His music into every shell...

Noon is the Master's "mystic dog with paws of fire" and "Behind the clouds some hidden Flutist plays His flute". These are some of the more overt and express phrasings of the predominant idea, exquisite in harmony, lovely and subtly penetrating in their thought. Elsewhere it is simply Nature and the bliss, light and wonder behind her that are expressed, the rest is concealed, yet suggested in the light. But there is always the same principle of a bright mystic vision and the transmutation of natural things into symbol values of the universal light, joy and beauty.

This poetry is an utterance of an ancient mystic experience with a new tone and burden of its own. Its very character brings in a certain limitation, it is empty of the touch of normal human life; our passion is absent, the warm blood of our emotion does not run through the veins of this Muse to flush her cheek with earthly colour. There is indeed a spiritual passion, a spiritual, not a physical sensuousness. Light and ecstasy there is, not the flame of earth's desire. Heaven takes up the symbols of the earth-life, but there is not the bringing of the Divine into the normal hues of our sight and our feeling which is the aim of Vaishnava poetry. Crystal is a favourite epithet of the poet, and there is here something crystalline, a rainbow prism of colours in the whiteness of shining stalactites. There is at first even some impression of a bright and fiery coldness of purity, as of a virgin rarity of the atmosphere of some high dawn, or as if that had happened which is imaged in "Dusk",

Ah God! my heart is turning crystalline
Seeing Thee play at crystal stars above!

or as if the poet had indeed, as he writes elsewhere, "put out the

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lamp of his love and desire, for their light is not real", and replaced them by the miraculous fire of this shining ideal. In the Sonnets, however, in some other poems and in the poet's later work there is the beginning of a greater warmth and a nearer sweetness.

The genius, power, newness of this poetry is evident. If certain reserves have to be made, it is because of a frequent immaturity in the touch which at times makes itself too sharply felt and is seldom altogether absent. I do not refer to the occasional lapses and carelessnesses of which I have noted one example,—for these are not very numerous, and the flagrant subjection of the expression to the necessity of the rhyme occurs only in that one passage,—but to the fact that the poet is still too much possessed by his gifts rather than their possessor, too easily carried away by the delight of brilliant expression and image to steep his word always in the deeper founts of his inspiration. The poetic expression is always brilliant, but never for long together quite sure,—lines of most perfect beauty too often alternate with others which are by no means so good. The image-maker's faculty is used with a radiant splendour and lavishness, but without discrimination; what begins as imaginative vision frequently thins away into a bright play of fancy, and there are lines which come dangerously near to prettiness and conceit. Especially there is not yet that sufficient incubation of the inspiration and the artistic sense which turns a poem into a perfectly satisfying artistic whole; even in the Sonnets, beautiful enough in themselves, there is an insufficient force of structure. The totality of effect in most of these poems is a diffusion, a streaming on from one idea and image to another, not a well-completed shapeliness. The rhythmic turn is always good, often beautiful and admirable, but the subtlest secrets of sound have not yet been firmly discovered, they are only as it were glimpsed and caught in passing.

These limitations however matter very little as they are natural in a first and early work and do not count in comparison with the riches disclosed. Moreover there is quite enough to show that they are likely to be rapidly outgrown. Young as he is, the poet has already almost all the secrets, and has only to use

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them more firmly and constantly. Already—in most of the poems, but I may instance "Memory", "My Unlaunched Boat", the three Sonnets and some of the "Songs of Sunlight,"—there is the frequency of a full and ripe expression and movement, sometimes varying from a mellow clarity to a concentrated force,—

        daylight dies
In silence on the bosom of the darkening skies
And with him, every note
Is crushed to silent sorrow in the song-bird's throat,—

sometimes in a soft, clear and magical beauty,—

The Spring hath come and gone with all her coloured hours.
The earth beneath her tread
Laughed suddenly a peal of blue and green and red...
And for her tender beauty wove a flowery bed...
She gathered all her touch-born blossoms from bright bowers...
And fled with all the laughter of earth's flowers...

sometimes in a delicate brightness and richness, constantly in a daring yet perfectly successful turn, suggestion or subtle correspondence of image. There is often an extraordinary and original felicity in the turning of the physical image to bring out some deep and penetrating psychological or psychical suggestion.

Since the appearance of this book Mr. Chattopadhyay has given to the public one or two separate poems of a still greater beauty which show a very swift development of his powers; he is already overcoming, almost though not yet quite entirely, the touch of unripeness which was apparent in his earlier poems. Sureness of expression, a thought in full possession of itself and using in admirable concordance its imaginative aids and means, subtler turns of melody and harmony, especially an approach to firmer structural power are now strongly visible and promise the doubling of the ecstatic poet with an impeccable artist. There is also a greater warmth and nearness, a riper stress, a deeper

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musing. We may well hope to find in him a supreme singer of the vision of God in Nature and Life, and the meeting of the divine and the human which must be at first the most vivifying and liberating part of India's message to a humanity that is now touched everywhere by a growing will for the spiritualising of the earth-existence.

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Shama'a

I was unable to greet duly the first appearance of this new magazine of art, literature and philosophy edited by Miss Mrinalini Chattopadhyay; I take the opportunity of the second number to repair the omission I had then unwillingly to make. The appearance of this quarterly is one of the signs as yet too few, but still carrying a sure promise, of a progressive reawakening of the higher thinking and aesthetic mentality in India after a temporary effacement in which the Eastern mind was attempting to assimilate in the wrong way elementary or second-rate occidental ideas. In that misguided endeavour it became on the intellectual and practical side ineffectively utilitarian and on the aesthetic content with the cheap, ugly and vulgar. The things of the West it assimilated were just the things the West had either left behind it or was already finishing and preparing to cast away. "Shama'a", like "Rupam", though less sumptuously apparelled, is distinguished by its admirable get-up and printing and is an evidence of the recovery of a conscience in the matter of form, a thing once universal in India but dead or dormant since the Western invasion. The plan of the review is designed to meet a very real need of the moment and the future: for its purpose is to bring together in its pages the mind of the Indian renaissance and the most recent developments of European culture. In India we as yet know next to nothing of what the most advanced minds of Europe are thinking and creating in the literary, artistic and philosophic field,—for that matter most of us, preoccupied with politics and domestic life, have a very inadequate information of what we ourselves are doing in these matters. It is to be hoped that this magazine will be an effective agent in curing these deficiencies. It has begun well: the editor, Miss Chattopadhyay, has the needed gift of attracting contributions of the right kind and there is in "Shama'a" as a result of her skill a pervading and harmonising atmosphere of great distinction and fineness.

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The frontispiece of this number is a portrait by a modern English artist, J. D. Ferguson, and an article on his work by Charles Marriot is the most interesting of the contributions. It sets out to discover on the basis of the real as opposed to the accidental differences between the Western and the Eastern methods of painting the inner meaning of their divergence. The attempt to create an illusion of reality to the eye, to copy Nature, which was so long a considerable part of the occidental theory is regarded as a passing phase for which the introduction of oil paint gave the occasion, an accidental and not at all an essential difference: European art at the beginning was free from it and is now rejecting this defect or this limitation. Nor are other details of method, such as the use of cast shadows as opposed to a reliance on outline, the real difference. None of these things involve necessarily an illusion of reality, and even where that inartistic fiction does not intervene, as in the Italian fresco and tempera painting and in oil painting that reduces shadow to a minimum and relies on outline, the fundamental difference between the East and the West remains constant and unalterable. The fundamental difference is that the Eastern artist paints in two and the European in three dimensions. Eastern painting suggests depth only by successive planes of distance; the Western artist uses perspective, and while the use of perspective to create an optical illusion is an error, its emphasis on depth as a mental conception extends the opportunities of expressing truth. It is in any case in the use of the third dimension that there comes in the true and essential difference.

The writer then attempts to link up this divergence with the concepts of the two continents with regard to life. He hazards the suggestion that the separate planes of a Chinese landscape correspond to "the doctrine of successive incarnations, of separate planes of existence, each the opportunity of its own virtues", and the occidental artist's "active exploration and exploitation of the ground between the planes of distance" corresponds to the West's view of this life as a continual discipline, the sole opportunity for salvation, a battle to be won now and here, and of "material facts not as evils in themselves and opportunities for asceticism and renunciation, but as tests of the spirit, good or

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bad according as they are used rightly or wrongly",—an active exploration as opposed to a passive acceptance. I find it impossible to accept this ingenious idea: it strikes me as a little fanciful in itself, but in any case it is based on a misunderstanding of the Eastern mind. The usual Western error is made of confusing one strong tendency of Eastern philosophy for the whole of its thinking and a view of reincarnation is attributed to the East that is not its real view. The successive rebirths are not to the Eastern mind separate planes of existence, each independently the opportunity of its own virtues, but a closely connected sequence and the action of each life determines the frame and basic opportunities of the following birth. It is a rhythm of progression in which the present is not cut out from but one with the past and future. Life and action are here too and not only in the West tests of the spirit, good or bad according as they are used rightly or wrongly, and it is and must be always this present life that is of immediate and immense importance, though it is not and cannot in reason be final or irreparable: for salvation may be won now, but if there is failure, the soul has still its future chances. As a matter of historical fact the great periods of Eastern art were not periods of a passive acceptance of life. In India, the cradle of these philosophies, they coincided with an active exploration of the material universe through physical science and a strong insistence on life, on its government, on the exploration of its every detail, on the call of even its most sensuous and physical attractions. The literature and art of India are not at all a dream of renunciation and the passive acceptance of things, but actively concerned with life, though not as exteriorly as the art of the West or with the same terrestrial limitation of the view. It is there that we have to seek for the root of the divergence, not so much in the intellectual idea as in a much subtler spiritual difference.

The difference is that the Western artist,—the Western mind generally,—is led to insist on the physical as the first fact and the determinant, as it is indeed in vital truth and practice, and he has got hold of that side of the truth and in relation to it sees all the rest. He not only stands firmly on the earth, but he has his head in the terrestrial atmosphere and looks up from it to higher planes. The Eastern has his foot on earth, but his head

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is in the psychical and spiritual realms and it is their atmosphere that affects his vision of the earth. He regards the material as the first fact only in appearance and not in reality: matter is to him real only as a mould and opportunity of spiritual being and the psychical region is an intermediary through which he can go back from the physical to the spiritual truth. This it is that conditions his whole artistic method and makes him succeed best in proportion as he brings the spiritual and psychical truth to illuminate and modify the material form. If he were to take to oil painting and the third dimension, I imagine that he would still before long break out of the physical limitations and try to make the use of the third a bridge to a fourth and psychical or to a fifth and spiritual dimension. That in fact seems to be very much what the latest Western art itself is trying to do. But it does not seem to me in some of its first efforts to have got very high beyond the earth attraction. The cubist and the futurist idea have the appearance of leaving the physical view only to wander astray among what one is tempted to call in theosophic language astral suggestions, a geometry or a movement vision of the world just above or behind ours. It is just so, one imagines, that a mind moving in those near supramaterial regions would distortedly half see physical persons and things. Mr. Ferguson's portrait is of another kind, but while perfectly though not terrestrially rational in its rhythm, seems to be inspired from a superior sphere of the same regions. It is a powerful work and there is a strong psychical truth of a kind but the spirit, the suggestions, the forms are neither of heaven nor of earth. The impression given is the materialisation of a strong and vivid astral dream. The difference between this and the psychic manner of the East will at once appear to anyone who turns to the much less powerful but gracious and subtle Indian painting in the first number.

Another article of some interest on "Art and History" by John M. Thorburn gives us much writing in an attractive style and some suggestive ideas, but there is a soft mistiness about both as yet too common in attempts at intuitive thinking and writing which makes it a little difficult to disentangle the ideas and get at their relation and sequence. The thought turns around rather than deals with national temperament and its shaping influence in art

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and there is a comparison in this respect between the French and English temperament on one side and the German or the Russian on the other. But the attempt does not get deep. The line taken is that the distinguishing characteristic of the French and English mind are the critical faculty, humour, a sense for character and for the common as well as the uncommon, for detail as well as principle, a power of social adaptation or readaptation, the instinct in the English to carry on, in the French to change and reconstruct, and all these are connected together and are the fruit of Graeco-Roman civilisation. The writer thinks that the Graeco-Roman tradition and its true development in the modern world is the only saving ethical and political ideal, at least for Europe,—a salutary saving clause. At the same time he has found his highest artistic satisfaction in German music and rates the relative power of Russian literature and possibly the music above the recent artistic work of Europe, and he is perplexed by the coexistence of this superiority with Russia's social instability and with Germany's lack of literary humour and of the sense for character. And, though this reserve is not expressly made, Germany cannot be taxed with lack of the social constructive faculty, seeing that it was the German who in far back times developed the feudal system and has more recently perfected the modern industrial order. And yet Germany is distinctly outside the Graeco-Roman tradition. He discovers that Germany lacks the reflective critical faculty, that there is "something in the German artistic and philosophical temperament at variance with social good", "Strangely hostile to the ethical and artistic ideal of Greece or the administrative and harmonising genius of Rome." Germany is entirely instinctive, at the mercy of her temperament, unable to liberate herself from it, instinctive in her music, her philosophy too an instinctive movement, reflection never able to get outside itself or even to feel the need to do so. As for Russia, hers is the kind of art that is an expression of the division and breaches of human society rather than of its wholeness or its peace, an art born of Nature's error and not like the French and English of her truth. It seems, however, that the art born of Nature's error, of her suffering and ill health is more wonderful and alluring than the art born of her ordered ways.

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After all is said, the truth of Nature is only a partial and defective truth and her error only a partial error: there is no necessary harmony at least in the finite between what we value as goodness and what we value as beauty. And the solution of all the contradiction is to be sought in the "experience of the effort of the finite spirit to come to a fuller consciousness of itself or of a universe that only uses that spirit as an instrument towards its own self-knowledge, self-perfection or self-interpretation". The conclusion is unexceptionable, but the line of thought leading to it stumbles needlessly in pursuit of a false clue.

The article is interesting chiefly as an indication of the perplexity of a certain type of European mind hesitating and held back in the grasp of the old that is dying and yet feeling the call of things that draw towards the future. The superstition of the perfect excellence of the Graeco-Roman tradition as rendered by England and France—more strictly the Latinised or semiLatinised mind and the Renaissance tradition—survives; but as a matter of fact that tradition or what remains of it is a dead shell. The Time-Spirit has left it, retaining no doubt what it needs for its ulterior aims, and is passing on to far other things. In that evolution Germany and Russia among European nations have taken a leading place. Germany has failed to go the whole way, because to a strong but coarse and heavy vital force and a strict systematising scientific intellect she could not successfully bring in the saving power of intuition. Her music indeed was very great and revolutionised the artistic mind of Europe, not because it was instinctive, but because it was intuitive,—because it brought in a profound intuitive feeling and vision to uplift through the conquered difficulties of a complex harmony a large and powerful intelligence. Her philosophy was at first a very great but too drily intellectual statement of truths that get their living meaning only in the intuitive experience, but afterwards in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as in Wagner it developed the intuitive vision and led to a deep change in European thinking. But the life of Germany remained still unaffected by her higher mind, well-organised, systematic but vitally and aesthetically crude, and she has failed to respond to the deepest forces of the future. The stream has turned aside to Russia, Russia deeply

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intuitive in her emotional and psychic being, moved through her sensibilities and aiding by a sensitive fineness there a yet imperfect but rapidly evolving intuitivity of the intelligence. It is clear enough that the labour of the soul and mind of Russia has not arrived at victory and harmony, but her malady is the malady and suffering of a great gestation, and her social instability the condition of an effort towards the principle of a greater order than the self-satisfied imperfection of the GraecoRoman tradition or of the modern social principle. The martyrdom of Russia might from this point of view be regarded as a vicarious sacrifice for the sin of obstinacy in imperfection, the sin of self-retardation of the entire race. It is at any rate by some large and harmonising view of this kind and not by any paradox of superior values of good and truth resulting in inferior values of beauty and negative values of no good and no truth flowering in superior values of beauty that we are likely best to understand both the effort of the finite spirit and the effort of the universe through it towards its own self-perception and self-interpretation.

The only other article of any length is a second instalment of Babu Bhagawan Das' "Krishna, a Study in the theory of A vataras", which contains much interesting matter and especially some very striking citations from that profound and beautiful work, the Bhagawat Purana: but the renderings given are rather modernising paraphrases than translations. There is a brief essay or rather the record of a reflection by Mr. Cousins on "Symbol and Metaphor in Art", quite the best thing in thought and style in the number: a translation by Mr. V. V. S. Aiyar of some verses of Tiruvalluvar done with grace and a fluid warmth and colour—perhaps too much fluidity and grace to render rightly the terse and pregnant force that is supposed, and surely with justice, to be the essential quality of the poetic style of the Kurral: a dialogue in poetic prose, "The Vision", by Harindranath Chattopadhyay, in which we get imagination, beauty and colour of phrase and a moving sentiment,—but not yet, I think, all the originality and sureness of touch of the poet when he uses his own already mastered instrument,—and another prose poem by V. Chakkarai inspired by Rabindranath and executed with a sufficient grace. All these together make up an

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admirable number.

The closing portion of the magazine is devoted to notes and criticisms. Several closely printed pages are given to a critical review of Professor S. Radhakrishnan's work on the Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore by Mr. J. B. Raju. The criticism gives unhappily, in spite of its interest, an impression of ability very badly used, for it is throughout what a criticism of this kind should not be, censorious, hostile, bitterly incisive and sometimes almost brutal in the inimical tone of its phrases. A philosophic discussion should surely be conducted in a graver and more impersonal tone. In addition there is a criticism by dissection so discursively and incoherently minute that it is impossible to form a coherent idea of the thought the work animadverted upon actually does develop. I have not read the book in question, but Professor Radhakrishnan is well-known as a perfectly competent philosophic critic and thinker and it is impossible to believe that anything he has written is, as this criticism constantly suggests, a mere mass of imbecile inconsequence. I gather that his offence is to have done exactly what he should have done, that is, to represent the thought of Tagore,—who is a poet and not a metaphysical dialectician but an intuitive seer,—as an intuitive whole: the dry-as-dust intellectual formalism of analysis demanded of him by his critic would have been in such a subject grotesquely out of place. A still greater offence is that he has endorsed the poet's exaltation of the claims of intuition as superior, at least in a certain field, to those of the intellect. Mr. Raju seems to think that this claim consecrates "a mistaken and obsolete psychology", the "infatuation of a certain glamour which in the popular imagination hangs round the ancient words, mysticism and intuition". Mistaken, if you choose to think so; but obsolete? What then are we to make of Bergson's intuition, James' cosmic consciousness, Eucken's superconscient, the remarkable trend towards mysticism of recent scientists, mathematicians, thinkers, the still more remarkable speculations of contemporary Russian philosophers? These men at least are not irresponsible poets or incompetent dupes of the imagination, but psychologists of the first rank and the most original contemporary thinkers in the philosophic field. Mr. Raju's defence of the

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claims of the reason is well enough written, but it is founded on contentions that once were commonplaces but are now very disputable assertions. Indeed, if the most recent thought has any value, he is himself open to the retort of his own remark that he is the victim of a mistaken and obsolete psychology. Mr. Raju may be right, the modern psychologists and philosophers may be wrong, but the time has passed when the claims of intuition could be dismissed with this high, disdainful lightness. The subject, however, is too large to be touched at all within my present limits: I hope to return to it hereafter.

The review contains some poetry but, Mr. R. C. Bonnerji's gracious and cultured verses apart, all is of the aggressively modern type. There are a number of poems taken or quoted from the American journal Poetry that are one and all of the same stereotyped kind of free verse. Eleanor Hammond's "Transition" turns upon a pretty emotion and Evelyn Scott's "Fear" on an idea with fine possibilities, but as usual in this kind the style has no trace of any poetic turn or power but only a tamely excited and childlikely direct primitive sincerity and the rhythm is more aggressively prosaic than any honest prose rhythm could manage to be. C. L.'s "All was his" is good in thought and conscientious in style but the rhythm is hopelessly stumbling and lame: but then perhaps it is written on some new metrical principle,—one never knows in these days. The noteworthy poem of the number is Henry Ruffy's "London Nocturne", placed, I presume as a study in significant contrasts, opposite Mukul Dey's drawing of Tagore. It is an admirable specimen of the now dominant vitalistic or "life" school of modern poetry. Personally, this school does not appeal to me. Its method seems to be to throw quite ordinary and obvious things violently at our eyes and their sense effects and suggestions at our midriffs and to underline the effects sometimes by an arresting baldness and poverty of presentation and sometimes on the contrary by a sensational exaggeration of image or phrase. Thus the poet tells us in one luminous line that

A policeman's clumsy tread goes slowly by,

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and in another makes us hear

Another policeman trying doors this way,

a "car of Juggernaut"

Tuff-tuffing, clattering, clashing, chaos-crowned,

a muddled clatter, voices confused, a shrieking whistle, solemn clock strokes "muttering ere they die," that

Fade like a halo or a dying sigh,

another motor "humming a bee refrain", with its snorting, trumping, disdainful speed horn

Striking the silence like a flash of flame,

a luckless harlot, a heavy horse hoof, the clank clank of a cab, silent wheels, jingling harness, and this succession of sounds leads up to the vision of a sly slinking white-face dawn, wan, thin and "sickly ill", a slight-formed sylph

Drawing her veil to show a death-pale form.

A feverishly acute impression of a London night is forced on the sense soul in me, but this poetry does not get beyond or give anything more: the poet's policemen and tuff-tuffing clattering crowned chaos of a motor car carry no meaning to me beyond the dreary fact of their existence and the suggestion of a sick melancholy of insomnia. But it seems to me that poetry ought to get beyond and should give something more. I do not deny the possibility of a kind of power in this style and am not blind to the aim at a strong identifying vision through something intuitive in the sense, a felt exactness of outward things, but an inartistic and often unpoetic method cannot be saved by a good intention. Still this is the kind of writing that holds the present in England and America and it demands its place in the purpose of the magazine. I hope however that we shall get often a relief in strains that go beyond the present to a greater poetic future,—

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let us say, like the exquisite rhythm and perfect form of beauty of Harindranath's poem in the first number.

All criticism of thought or personal preference apart, almost everything in this number is good in matter and interesting in its own kind. "Shama'a" already stands first among Indian magazines in the English tongue for sustained literary quality and distinction of tone and interest.

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God, the Invisible King

A remarkable book with this title by the well-known writer and thinker, Mr. H. G. Wells, has recently appeared, of which only a few extracts are before us, but these are sufficient to reveal its character and thought. It is on the part of the writer, speaking not for himself personally alone but as scribe to the spirit of his generation, a definite renunciation of the gospel of an all-sufficient rationalism, a discovery of God, a profession of faith in spirituality as the one lever by which mankind can rise out of the darkness and confusion of its present state into a more perfect living. He professes his faith in the God within, the invisible King, who is the immortal part of us, in a coming kingdom of God upon earth which shall not only be a spiritual state in the individual, but the open brotherhood of a divine rule among men, and in self-identification with God, service of him, absolute surrender to him as the whole rule of life for the enlightened modern man. This is, indeed, a remarkable change of spirit and change of mental outlook and, if Mr. Wells' claim is just that he is writing as a scribe to the spirit of his generation, it means a revolution in Europe far more important than the Russian with all its idealism and its hopes for a new and beneficent change in politics and society. It means the union of Eastern spiritual knowledge and religious faith with Western pragmatic idealism and their fusion into the basis of a new culture and, we will not say a new universal religion,—for religion must vary with the variations of human nature,—but a new practical spirituality in which all mankind can become one.

There is much in Mr. Wells' statement of his new-born belief that is imperfect, limited and a little crude, much that is grasped with an overhasty zeal, as was inevitable in the first light of an unripe awakening. Some of the old limitations of the rationalistic Western mind with its too external outlook upon things still cling about his new spiritual discovery. He tells us

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that the kingdom of God on earth is "not a metaphor, not a mere spiritual state, not a dream, not an uncertain project,... it is the close and inevitable destiny of mankind". This classing of the inner spiritual state, the kingdom of God within us, with a metaphor, a dream, an uncertain project reveals the lingering taint of an excessive pragmatism. The spiritual state is the one thing indispensable; until the mass of mankind can awaken into it, the dream of a perfect society, an open brotherhood of God's rule, must end in failure and disappointment. The kingdom of God within is the sole possible foundation for the kingdom of God without; for it is the spirit by which man lives that conditions the outer forms of his life.

Misled by this external view of things Mr. Wells, evidently, still believes that a political and social action is sufficient to bring about the millennium. He has discovered that this action must be driven by a spiritual motive, pursued in the passion of a true religious fervour, consecrated to the indwelling God, effective only by an absolute self-surrender to the Divine. But he has a limited vision of his God and brings to it all the aggressiveness and something of the fanaticism of all such limited religious conceptions. "The new conceptions," he writes, "do not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or democracies. Its implicit command to all its adherents is to make plain the way to the world theocracy. Its rule of life is the discovery and service of the will of God which dwells in the hearts of men and the performance of that will" in the life of the believer, the individual, and of the nation of which he is a part. "I give myself to God not only because I am so and so, but because I am mankind.... I become a knight in God's service.... I become a responsible minister of my king. I take sides against injustice, disorder, and against all those temporal kings, emperors, princes, landlords and owners who set themselves against God's rule and worship. Kings, owners and all who claim rule and decision in the world's affairs, must either show themselves clearly the fellow-servants of the believer or become the object of his steadfast antagonism."

All this is very forcibly said, but it shows that the writer has not grasped the whole spiritual truth; he has not gone deep enough inward. As once he dreamed of a class of scientific and

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rational superman establishing a perfect social rule upon earth, so now he thinks that by the action of his banded servants of the invisible King declaring political and social war upon godless Czars, Kaisers, rulers and capitalists the same end can be achieved. With them is God; in them God dwells, in the others, presumably, he does not dwell; those who have surrendered absolutely to him are the citizens of the kingdom and on them shall be peace; those who do not surrender or even fall short in their surrender, are interlopers, against them the sword. A very old kind of militant religionism in a very modern form. It ignores two ancient, two eternal spiritual truths; first, that God dwells in all and, secondly, that only by becoming conscious of the God within from within can humanity be saved. God dwells in all and not only in the believer who is conscious of him,—dwells disguised and veiled, and it is by helping others to awaken to the veiled Divine within them that we go to the straight way to the founding of his kingdom on earth. True, an outward battle also has to be fought, but against institutions which stand in the way of the spreading of the light and the reign of brotherhood, not against men as unbelievers,—in a spirit of understanding, of knowledge, of firm will, but also of charity for ignorance and of love for the misled. God, says Mr. Wells, is boundless love, but this boundless love, it seems, is not infinite enough to embrace those who do not believe with you; it rejects them with a steadfast antagonism, it banishes them as "interlopers" God's work least of all should be pursued in a spirit of partisan and sectarian antagonism, but rather with a remembrance that the battle is only a way to peace and the peace must come by the inner submission of the opponent through his recognition of the Divine, through his awakening. It is not enough that the believer should perform God's will and fight for the performance of that will "in the acts and order of the state and nation of which he is a part". The nation also must be brought not only to believe, but to know, to see, to live in God, otherwise the national performance of God's will, even if momentarily secured, will soon degenerate into a form. It is possible that what the old religions called "the rule of the saints" may be a preliminary step to the establishment of the full kingdom of God, but that rule

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can only become secure by the light and fire which is in them kindling itself in the hearts of all mankind.

These defects of outlook come from a defect in the conception of the Divine. It consists of "complete Agnosticism in the matter of God the Creator and entire faith in the matter of God the Redeemer". A distinction is made between the Veiled Being behind the universe and the living reality in our lives; the latter alone is the true God. He is a personal and intimate God. He is finite. He is a spirit, a single spirit and a single person. He has come, we know not whence, into the conflict of life. He has begun and will never end. And yet he is the immortal part and leader of mankind, our friend and brother and light of the world. And from these first principles is drawn a description of God as certain qualities, boundless love, boundless courage, boundless generosity, thought and steadfast will, and as having motives, characteristics, an aim. "This is the belief of the modern mind", read, the modern Western mind, "with regard to God".

We can see whence the crudities of this belief arise. The Western mind is still burdened with its scientific vision of the universe as a play of brute force, of life as a struggle, the world a material entity, and therefore of the Spirit of the world, if any there be, conceived agnostically or with a sort of materialistic Pantheism standing for these things only, the Breath of a physical universe, a sort of mechanical, inconscient Soul of things. Out of this pure materiality mind and soul inexplicably evolve. God appears only in man and his aspiration, his longings for a higher order of things, for love, universal sympathy, immortality. This God and the mechanical inconscient Spirit of the World the Western mind finds it difficult—and no wonder—to bring under the same term. The simple harmonious truth that God is veiled in the material universe which is only the lowest term, the first appearance of the cosmic Reality, that he unveils himself partially and progressively in man and to man, and that man by growth into self-knowledge and God-knowledge can grow into the whole truth of God and existence, which is one truth,—this seems still to be hidden from these wise men of the West. His partial unveiling in man seems to them a birth of the once non-existent Divine, a coming of God into the world, one knows not

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whence; and because man appears to be finite, God whom they conceive of as the sum of human aspiration to good, truth, beauty, immortality, is also conceived of as finite. But how is that which has begun in Time secure against ending in Time? and how can a finite God be infinite love, courage, strength? Only that which was from ever, can be for ever, and only that which is infinite in being, can be infinite in force and quality. We have here an echo of the inconsequent Christian paradox of a soul born by the birth of the body, yet immortal to all eternity, combined with the metaphysical dogma of a God existent, not in being, but in becoming. There is an element of truth and value in this belief, but it brings disabling limitations into our inner realisation of God and the practice of a divine life to which it gives a foundation.

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Dayananda

The Man and His Work

Among the great company of remarkable figures that will appear to the eye of posterity at the head of the Indian Renascence, one stands out by himself with peculiar and solitary distinctness, one unique in his type as he is unique in his work. It is as if one were to walk for a long time amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser altitude, but all with sweeping contours, green-clad, flattering the eye even in their most bold and striking elevation. But amidst them all, one hill stands apart, piled up in sheer strength, a mass of bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its summit, a solitary pine jutting out into the blue, a great cascade of pure, vigorous and fertilising water gushing out from its strength as a very fountain of life and health to the valley. Such is the impression created on my mind by Dayananda.

It was Kathiawar that gave birth to this puissant renovator and new-creator. And something of the very soul and temperament of that peculiar land entered into his spirit, something of Girnar and the rocks and hills, something of the voice and puissance of the sea that flings itself upon those coasts, something of that humanity which seems to be made of the virgin and unspoilt stuff of Nature, fair and robust in body, instinct with a fresh and primal vigour, crude but in a developed nature capable of becoming a great force of genial creation.

When I seek to give an account to myself of my sentiment and put into precise form the impression I have received, I find myself starting from two great salient characteristics of this man's life and work which mark him off from his contemporaries and compeers. Other great Indians have helped to make India of today by a self-pouring into the psychological material of the race, a spiritual infusion of themselves into the fluent and indeterminate mass which will one day settle into consistency and appear as a great formal birth of Nature. They have entered in as a sort

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of leaven, a power of unformed stir and ferment out of which forms must result. One remembers them as great souls and great influences who live on in the soul of India. They are in us and we would not be what we are without them. But of no precise form can we say that this was what the man meant, still less that this form was the very body of that spirit.

The example of Mahadev Govind Ranade presents itself to my mind as the very type of this peculiar action so necessary to a period of large and complex formation. If a foreigner were to ask us what this Mahratta economist, reformer, patriot precisely did that we give him so high a place in our memory, we should find it a little difficult to answer. We should have to point to those activities of a mass of men in which his soul and thought were present as a formless former of things, to the great figures of present-day Indian life who received the breath of his spirit. And in the end we should have to reply by a counter question, "What would Maharashtra of today have been without Mahadev Govind Ranade and what would India of today be without Maharashtra?" But even with those who were less amorphous and diffusive in their pressure on men and things, even with workers of a more distinct energy and action, I arrive fundamentally at the same impression. Vivekananda was a soul of puissance if ever there was one, a very lion among men, but the definite work he has left behind is quite incommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, "Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children." So it is with all. Not only are the men greater than their definite works, but their influence is so wide and formless that it has little relation to any formal work that they have left behind them.

Very different was the manner of working of Dayananda. Here was one who did not infuse himself informally into the indeterminate soul of things, but stamped his figure indelibly as in bronze on men and things. Here was one whose formal works are the very children of his spiritual body, children fair and robust

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and full of vitality, the image of their creator. Here was one who knew definitely and clearly the work he was sent to do, chose his materials, determined his conditions with a sovereign clairvoyance of the spirit and executed his conception with the puissant mastery of the born worker. As I regard the figure of this formidable artisan in God's workshop, images crowd on me which are all of battle and work and conquest and triumphant labour. Here, I say to myself, was a very soldier of Light, a warrior in God's world, a sculptor of men and institutions, a bold and rugged victor of the difficulties which matter presents to spirit. And the whole sums itself up to me in a powerful impression of spiritual practicality. The combination of these two words, usually so divorced from each other in our conceptions, seems to me the very definition of Dayananda.

Even if we leave out of account the actual nature of the work he did, the mere fact that he did it in this spirit and to this effect would give him a unique place among our great founders. He brings back an old Aryan element into the national character. This element gives us the second of the differentiae I observe and it is the secret of the first. We others live in a stream of influences; we allow them to pour through us and mould us; there is something shaped and out of it a modicum of work results, the rest is spilt out again in a stream of influence. We are indeterminate in our lines, we accommodate ourselves to circumstance and environment. Even when we would fain be militant and intransigent, we are really fluid and opportunist. Dayananda seized on all that entered into him, held it in himself, masterfully shaped it there into the form that he saw to be right and threw it out again into the forms that he saw to be right. That which strikes us in him as militant and aggressive, was a part of his strength of self-definition.

He was not only plastic to the great hand of Nature, but asserted his own right and power to use Life and Nature as plastic material. We can imagine his soul crying still to us with our insufficient spring of manhood and action, "Be not content, O Indian, only to be infinitely and grow vaguely, but see what God intends thee to be, determine in the light of His inspiration to what thou shalt grow. Seeing, hew that out of thyself, hew that out of Life.

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Be a thinker, but be also a doer; be a soul, but be also a man; be a servant of God, but be also a master of Nature!" For this was what he himself was; a man with God in his soul, vision in his eyes and power in his hands to hew out of life an image according to his vision. "Hew" is the right word. Granite himself, he smote out a shape of things with great blows as in granite.

In Dayananda's life we see always the puissant jet of this spiritual practicality. A spontaneous power and decisiveness is stamped everywhere on his work. And to begin with, what a master-glance of practical intuition was this to go back trenchantly to the very root of Indian life and culture, to derive from the flower of its first birth the seed for a radical new birth! And what an act of grandiose intellectual courage to lay hold upon this scripture defaced by ignorant comment and oblivion of its spirit, degraded by misunderstanding to the level of an ancient document of barbarism, and to perceive in it its real worth as a scripture which conceals in itself the deep and energetic spirit of the forefathers who made this country and nation,—a scripture of divine knowledge, divine worship, divine action. I know not whether Dayananda's powerful and original commentary will be widely accepted as the definite word on the Veda. I think myself some delicate work is still called for to bring out other aspects of this profound and astonishing Revelation. But this matters little. The essential is that he seized justly on the Veda as India's Rock of Ages and had the daring conception to build on what his penetrating glance perceived in it a whole education of youth, a whole manhood and a whole nationhood. Rammohan Roy, that other great soul and puissant worker who laid his hand on Bengal and shook her—to what mighty issues—out of her long, indolent sleep by her rivers and rice-fields—Rammohan Roy stopped short at the Upanishads. Dayananda looked beyond and perceived that our true original seed was the Veda. He had the national instinct and he was able to make it luminous,—an intuition in place of an instinct. Therefore the works that derive from him, however they depart from received traditions, must needs be profoundly national.

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To be national is not to stand still. Rather, to seize on a vital thing out of the past and throw it into the stream of modern life, is really the most powerful means of renovation and new-creation. Dayananda's work brings back such a principle and spirit of the past to vivify a modern mould. And observe that in the work as in the life it is the past caught in the first jet of its virgin vigour, pure from its sources, near to its root principle and therefore to something eternal and always renewable.

And in the work as in the man we find that faculty of spontaneous definite labour and vigorous formation which proceeds from an inner principle of perfect clearness, truth and sincerity. To be clear in one's own mind, entirely true and plain with one's self and with others, wholly honest with the conditions and materials of one's labour, is a rare gift in our crooked, complex and faltering humanity. It is the spirit of the Aryan worker and a sure secret of vigorous success. For always Nature recognises a clear, honest and recognisable knock at her doors and gives the result with an answering scrupulosity and diligence. And it is good that the spirit of the Master should leave its trace in his followers, that somewhere in India there should be a body of whom it can be said that when a work is seen to be necessary and right, the men will be forthcoming, the means forthcoming and that work will surely be done.

Truth seems a simple thing and is yet most difficult. Truth was the master-word of the Vedic teaching, truth in the soul, truth in vision, truth in the intention, truth in the act. Practical truth, ārjava, an inner candour and a strong sincerity, clearness and open honour in the word and deed, was the temperament of the old Aryan morals. It is the secret of a pure unspoilt energy, the sign that a man has not travelled far from Nature. It is the bar dexter of the son of Heaven, Divasputra. This was the stamp that Dayananda left behind him and it should be the mark and effigy of himself by which the parentage of his work can be recognised. May his spirit act in India pure, unspoilt, unmodified and help to give us back that of which our life stands especially in need, pure energy, high clearness, the penetrating eye, the masterful hand, the noble and dominant sincerity.

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Dayananda and the Veda

Dayananda accepted the Veda as his rock of firm foundation, he took it for his guiding view of life, his rule of inner existence and his inspiration for external work, but he regarded it as even more, the word of eternal Truth on which man's knowledge of God and his relations with the Divine Being and with his fellows can be rightly and securely founded. This everlasting rock of the Veda, many assert, has no existence, there is nothing there but the commonest mud and sand; it is only a hymnal of primitive barbarians, only a rude worship of personified natural phenomena, or even less than that, a liturgy of ceremonial sacrifice, half religion, half magic, by which superstitious animal men of yore hoped to get themselves gold and food and cattle, slaughter pitilessly their enemies, protect themselves from disease, calamity and demoniac influences and enjoy the coarse pleasures of a material Paradise. To that we must add a third view, the orthodox, or at least that which arises from Sayana's commentary; this view admits, practically, the ignobler interpretation of the substance of Veda and yet—or is it therefore?—exalts this primitive farrago as a holy Scripture and a Book of Sacred Works.

Now this matter is no mere scholastic question, but has a living importance, not only for a just estimate of Dayananda's work but for our consciousness of our past and for the determination of the influences that shall mould our future. A nation grows into what it shall be by the force of that which it was in the past and is in the present, and in this growth there come periods of conscious and subconscious stock-taking when the national soul selects, modifies, rejects, keeps out of all that it had or is acquiring whatever it needs as substance and capital for its growth and action in the future: in such a period of stock-taking we are still and Dayananda was one of its great and formative spirits. But among all the materials of our past the Veda is the most venerable and has been directly and indirectly the most potent. Even when its sense was no longer understood, even when its traditions were lost behind Pauranic forms, it was still held in honour, though without knowledge, as authoritative relation

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and inspired Book of Knowledge, the source of all sanctions and standard of all truth.

But there has always been this double and incompatible tradition about the Veda that it is a book of ritual and mythology and that it is a book of divine knowledge. The Brahmanas seized on the one tradition, the Upanishads on the other. Later, the learned took the hymns for a book essentially of ritual and works, they went elsewhere for pure knowledge; but the instinct of the race bowed down before it with an obstinate inarticulate memory of a loftier tradition. And when in our age the Veda was brought out of its obscure security behind the Purdah of a reverential neglect, the same phenomenon reappears. While Western scholarship extending the hints of Sayana seemed to have classed it for ever as a ritual liturgy to Nature-Gods, the genius of the race looking through the eyes of Dayananda pierced behind the error of many centuries and received again the intuition of a timeless revelation and a divine truth given to humanity. In any case, we have to make one choice or another. We can no longer securely enshrine the Veda wrapped up in the folds of an ignorant reverence or guarded by a pious self-deceit. Either the Veda is what Sayana says it is, and then we have to leave it behind for ever as the document of a mythology and ritual which have no longer any living truth or force for thinking minds, or it is what the European scholars say it is, and then we have to put it away among the relics of the past as an antique record of semi-barbarous worship; or else it is indeed Veda, a book of divine knowledge, and then it becomes of supreme importance to us to know and to hear its message.

It is objected to the sense Dayananda gave to the Veda that it is no true sense but an arbitrary fabrication of imaginative learning and ingenuity, to his method that it is fantastic and unacceptable to the critical reason, to his teaching of a revealed Scripture that the very idea is a rejected superstition impossible for any enlightened mind to admit or to announce sincerely. I will not now examine the solidity of Dayananda's interpretation of Vedic texts, nor anticipate the verdict of the future on his commentary, nor discuss his theory of revelation. I shall only state the broad principles underlying his thought about the Veda as

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they present themselves to me. For in the action and thought of a great soul or a great personality the vital thing to my mind is not the form he gave to it, but in his action the helpful power he put forth and in his thought the helpful truth he has added or, it may be, restored to the yet all too scanty stock of our human acquisition and divine potentiality.

To start with the negation of his work by his critics, in whose mouth does it lie to accuse Dayananda's dealings with the Veda of a fantastic or arbitrary ingenuity? Not in the mouth of those who accept Sayana's traditional interpretation. For if ever there was a monument of arbitrarily erudite ingenuity, of great learning divorced, as great learning too often is, from sound judgment and sure taste and a faithful, critical and comparative observation, from direct seeing and often even from plainest commonsense or of a constant fitting of the text into the Procrustean bed of preconceived theory, it is surely this commentary, otherwise so imposing, so useful as first crude material, so erudite and laborious, left to us by the Acharya Sayana. Nor does the reproach lie in the mouth of those who take as final the recent labours of European scholarship. For if ever there was a toil of interpretation in which the loosest rein has been given to an ingenious speculation, in which doubtful indications have been snatched at as certain proofs, in which the boldest conclusions have been insisted upon with the scantiest justification, the most enormous difficulties ignored and preconceived prejudice maintained in face of the clear and often admitted suggestions of the text, it is surely this labour, so eminently respectable otherwise for its industry, good will and power of research, performed through a long century by European Vedic scholarship.

What is the main positive issue in this matter? An interpretation of Veda must stand or fall by its central conception of the Vedic religion and the amount of support given to it by the intrinsic evidence of the Veda itself. Here Dayananda's view is quite clear, its foundation inexpugnable. The Vedic hymns are chanted to the One Deity under many names, names which are used and even designed to express His qualities and powers. Was this conception of Dayananda's an arbitrary conceit fetched out of his own too ingenious imagintion? Not at all; it is the explicit

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statement of the Veda itself: "One existent, sages"–not the ignorant, mind you, but the seers, the men of knowledge,—"speak of in many ways, as Indra, as Yama, as Matarishwan, as Agni". The Vedic Rishis ought surely to have known something about their own religion, more, let us hope, than Roth or Max Muller, and this is what they knew.

We are aware how modern scholars twist away from the evidence. This hymn, they say, was a late production, this loftier idea which it expresses with so clear a force rose up somehow in the later Aryan mind or was borrowed by those ignorant fire-worshippers, sun-worshippers, sky-worshippers from their cultured and philosophic Dravidian enemies. But throughout the Veda we have confirmatory hymns and expressions: Agni or Indra or another is expressly hymned as one with all the other gods. Agni contains all other divine powers within himself, the Maruts are described as all the gods, one deity is addressed by the names of others as well as his own, or, most commonly, he is given as Lord and King of the universe attributes only appropriate to the Supreme Deity. Ah, but that cannot mean, ought not to mean, must not mean, the worship of One; let us invent a new word, call it henotheism and suppose that the Rishis did not really believe Indra or Agni to be the Supreme Deity but treated any god or every god as such for the nonce, perhaps that he might feel the more flattered and lend a more gracious ear for so hyperbolic a compliment! But why should not the foundation of Vedic thought be natural monotheism rather than this new-fangled monstrosity of henotheism? Well, because primitive barbarians could not possibly have risen to such high conceptions and, if you allow them to have so risen, you imperil our theory of the evolutionary stages of the human development and you destroy our whole idea about the sense of the Vedic hymns and their place in the history of mankind. Truth must hide herself, commonsense disappear from the field so that a theory may flourish! I ask, in this point, and it is the fundamental point, who deals most straightforwardly with the text, Dayananda or the Western scholars?

But if this fundamental point of Dayananda's is granted, if the character given by the Vedic Rishis themselves to their gods

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is admitted, we are bound, whenever the hymns speak of Agni or another, to see behind that name present always to the thought of the Rishi the one Supreme Deity or else one of His powers with its attendant qualities or workings. Immediately the whole character of the Veda is fixed in the sense Dayananda gave to it; the merely ritual, mythological, polytheistic interpretation of Sayana collapses, the merely meteorological and naturalistic European interpretation collapses. We have instead a real Scripture, one of the world's sacred books and the divine word of a lofty and noble religion.

All the rest of Dayananda's theory arises logically out of this fundamental conception. If the names of the godheads express qualities of the one Godhead and it is these which the Rishis adored and towards which they directed their aspiration, then there must inevitably be in the Veda a large part of psychology of the Divine Nature, psychology of the relations of man with God and a constant indication of the law governing man's Godward conduct. Dayananda asserts the presence of such an ethical element, he finds in the Veda the law of life given by God to the human being. And if the Vedic godheads express the powers of a supreme Deity who is Creator, Ruler and Father of the universe, then there must inevitably be in the Veda a large part of cosmology, the law of creation and of cosmos. Dayananda asserts the presence of such a cosmic element, he finds in the Veda the secrets of creation and law of Nature by which the Omniscient governs the world.

Neither Western scholarship nor ritualistic learning has succeeded in eliminating the psychological and ethical value of the hymns, but they have both tended in different degrees to minimise it. Western scholars minimise because they feel uneasy whenever ideas that are not primitive seem to insist on their presence in these primeval utterances; they do not hesitate openly to abandon in certain passages interpretations which they adopt in others and which are admittedly necessitated by their own philological and critical reasoning because, if admitted always, they would often involve deep and subtle psychological conceptions which cannot have occurred to primitive minds! Sayana minimises because his theory of Vedic discipline was not

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ethical righteousness with a moral and spiritual result but mechanical performance of ritual with a material reward. But, in spite of these efforts of suppression, the lofty ideas of the Vedas still reveal themselves in strange contrast to its alleged burden of fantastic naturalism or dull ritualism. The Vedic godheads are constantly hymned as Masters of Wisdom, Power, Purity, purifiers, healers of grief and evil, destroyers of sin and falsehood, warriors for the truth; constantly the Rishis pray to them for healing and purification, to be made seers of knowledge, possessors of the truth, to be upheld in the divine law, to be assisted and armed with strength, manhood and energy. Dayananda has brought this idea of the divine right and truth into the Veda; the Veda is as much and more a book of divine Law as Hebrew Bible or Zoroastrian Avesta.

The cosmic element is not less conspicuous in the Veda; the Rishis speak always of the worlds, the firm laws that govern them, the divine workings in the cosmos. But Dayananda goes farther; he affirms that the truths of modern physical science are discoverable in the hymns. Here we have the sole point of fundamental principle about which there can be any justifiable misgivings. I confess my incompetence to advance any settled opinion in the matter. But this much needs to be said that his idea is increasingly supported by the recent trend of our knowledge about the ancient world. The ancient civilisations did possess secrets of science some of which modern knowledge has recovered, extended and made more rich and precise but others are even now not recovered. There is then nothing fantastic in Dayananda's idea that Veda contains truth of science as well as truth of religion. I will even add my own conviction that Veda contains other truths of a science the modern world does not at all possess, and in that case Dayananda has rather understated than overstated the depth and range of the Vedic wisdom.

Objection has also been made to the philological and etymological method by which he arrived at his results, especially in his dealings with the names of the godheads. But this objection, I feel certain, is an error due to our introduction of modern ideas about language into our study of this ancient tongue. We moderns use words as counters without any memory or appreciation

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of their original sense; when we speak we think of the object spoken of, not at all of the expressive word which is to us a dead and brute thing, mere coin of verbal currency with no value of its own. In early language the word was on the contrary a living thing with essential powers of signification; its root meanings were remembered because they were still in use, its wealth of force was vividly present to the mind of the speaker. We say "wolf" and think only of the animal, any other sound would have served our purpose as well, given the convention of its usage; the ancients said "tearer" and had that significance present to them. We say "agni" and think of fire, the word is of no other use to us; to the ancients "agni" means other things besides and only because of one or more of its root meanings was applied to the physical object fire. Our words are carefully limited to one or two senses, theirs were capable of a great number and it was quite easy for them, if they so chose, to use a word like Agni, Varuna or Vayu as a sound-index of a great number of connected and complex ideas, a key-word. It cannot be doubted that the Vedic Rishis did take advantage of this greater potentiality of their language,—note their dealings with such words as gau and candra. The Nirukta bears evidence to this capacity and in the Brahmanas and Upanishads we find the memory of this free and symbolic use of words still subsisting.

Certainly, Dayananda had not the advantage that a comparative study of languages gives to the European scholar. There are defects in the ancient Nirukta which the new learning, though itself sadly defective, still helps us to fill in and in future we shall have to use both sources of light for the elucidation of Veda. Still this only affects matters of detail and does not touch the fundamental principles of Dayananda's interpretation. Interpretation in detail is a work of intelligence and scholarship and in matters of intelligent opinion and scholarship men seem likely to differ to the end of the chapter, but in all the basic principles, in those great and fundamental decisions where the eye of intuition has to aid the workings of the intellect, Dayananda stands justified by the substance of Veda itself, by logic and reason and by our growing knowledge of the past of mankind. The Veda does hymn the one Deity of many names and powers; it does

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celebrate the divine Law and man's aspiration to fulfil it; it does purport to give us the law of the cosmos.

On the question of revelation I have left myself no space to write. Suffice it to say that here too Dayananda was perfectly logical and it is quite grotesque to charge him with insincerity because he held to and proclaimed the doctrine. There are always three fundamental entities which we have to admit and whose relations we have to know if we would understand existence at all, God, Nature and the Soul. If, as Dayananda held on strong enough grounds, the Veda reveals to us God, reveals to us the law of Nature, reveals to us the relations of the Soul to God and Nature, what is it but a revelation of divine Truth? And if, as Dayananda held, it reveals them to us with a perfect truth, flawlessly, he might well hold it for an infallible Scripture. The rest is a question of the method of revelation, of the divine dealings with our race, of man's psychology and possibilities. Modern thought, affirming Nature and Law but denying God, denied also the possibility of revelation; but so also has it denied many things which a more modern thought is very busy reaffirming. We cannot demand of a great mind that it shall make itself a slave to vulgarly received opinion or the transient dogmas of the hour; the very essence of its greatness is this, that it looks beyond, that it sees deeper.

In the matter of Vedic interpretation I am convinced that whatever may be the final complete interpretation, Dayananda will be honoured as the first discoverer of the right clues. Amidst the chaos and obscurity of old ignorance and age-long misunderstanding his was the eye of direct vision that pierced to the truth and fastened on that which was essential. He has found the keys of the doors that time had closed and rent asunder the seals of the imprisoned fountains.

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Rishi Bankim Chandra

There are many who, lamenting the by-gone glories of this great and ancient nation, speak as if the Rishis of old, the inspired creators of thought and civilisation, were a miracle of our heroic age, not to be repeated among degenerate men and in our distressful present. This is an error and thrice an error. Ours is the eternal land, the eternal people, the eternal religion, whose strength, greatness, holiness may be overclouded but never, even for a moment, utterly cease. The hero, the Rishi, the saint, are the natural fruits of our Indian soil; and there has been no age in which they have not been born. Among the Rishis of the later age we have at last realised that we must include the name of the man who gave us the reviving Mantra which is creating a new India, the Mantra Bande Mataram.

The Rishi is different from the saint. His life may not have been distinguished by superior holiness nor his character by an ideal beauty. He is not great by what he was himself but by what he has expressed. A great and vivifying message had to be given to a nation or to humanity, and God has chosen this mouth on which to shape the words of the message. A momentous vision had to be revealed; and it is his eyes which the Almighty first unseals. The message which he has received, the vision which has been vouchsafed to him, he declares to the world with all the strength that is in him, and in one supreme moment of inspiration expresses it in words which have merely to be uttered to stir men's inmost natures, clarify their minds, seize their hearts and impel them to things which would have been impossible to them in their ordinary moments. Those words are the Mantra which he was born to reveal and of that Mantra he is the seer.

What is it for which we worship the name of Bankim today? what was his message to us or what the vision which he saw and has helped us to see? He was a great poet, a master of beautiful language and a creator of fair and gracious dream-figures in the

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world of imagination; but it is not as a poet, stylist or novelist that Bengal does honour to him today. It is probable that the literary critic of the future will reckon Kapalkundala, Bishabriksha and Krishnakanter Will as his artistic masterpieces, and speak with qualified praise of Devi Chaudhurani, Ananda Math, Krishnacharit or Dharmatattwa. Yet it is the Bankim of these latter works and not the Bankim of the great creative masterpieces who will rank among the Makers of Modern India. The earlier Bankim was only a poet and stylist—the later Bankim was a seer and nation-builder.

But even as a poet and stylist Bankim did a work of supreme national importance, not for the whole of India, or only indirectly for the whole of India, but for Bengal which was destined to lead India and be in the vanguard of national development. No nation can grow without finding a fit and satisfying medium of expression for the new self into which it is developing—without a language which shall give permanent shape to its thoughts and feelings and carry every new impulse swiftly and triumphantly into the consciousness of all. It was Bankim's first great service to India that he gave the race which stood in its vanguard such a perfect and satisfying medium. He was blamed for corrupting the purity of the Bengali tongue; but the pure Bengali of the old poets could have expressed nothing but a conservative and unprogressing Bengal. The race was expanding and changing, and it needed a means of expression capable of change and expansion. He was blamed also for replacing the high literary Bengali of the Pundits by a mixed popular tongue which was neither the learned language nor good vernacular. But the Bengali of the Pundits would have crushed the growing richness, variety and versatility of the Bengali genius under its stiff inflexible ponderousness. We needed a tongue for other purposes than dignified treatises and erudite lucubrations. We needed a language which should combine the strength, dignity or soft beauty of Sanskrit with the nerve and vigour of the vernacular, capable at one end of the utmost vernacular raciness and at the other of the most sonorous gravity. Bankim divined our need and was inspired to meet it,—he gave us a means by which the soul of Bengal could express itself to itself.

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As he had divined the linguistic need of his country's future, so he divined also its political need. He, first of our great publicists, understood the hollowness and inutility of the method of political agitation which prevailed in his time and exposed it with merciless satire in his Lokarahasya and Kamalakanter Daptar. But he was not satisfied merely with destructive critism,—he had a positive vision of what was needed for the salvation of the country. He saw that the force from above must be met by a mightier reacting force from below,—the strength of repression by an insurgent national strength. He bade us leave the canine method of agitation for the leonine. The Mother of his vision held trenchant steel in her twice seventy million hands and not the bowl of the mendicant. It was the gospel of fearless strength and force which he preached under a veil and in images in Ananda Math and Devi Chaudhurani. And he had an inspired unerring vision of the moral strength which must be at the back of the outer force. He perceived that the first element of the moral strength must be tyāga, complete self-sacrifice for the country and complete self-devotion to the work of liberation. His workers and fighters for the motherland are political byrāgees who have no other thought than their duty to her and have put all else behind them as less dear and less precious and only to be resumed when their work for her is done. Whoever loves self or wife or child or goods more than his country is a poor and imperfect patriot; not by him shall the great work be accomplished. Again, he perceived that the second element of the moral strength needed must be self-discipline and organisation. This truth he expressed in the elaborate training of Devi Chaudhurani for her work, in the strict rules of the Association of the "Ananda Math" and in the pictures of perfect organisation which those books contain. Lastly, he perceived that the third element of moral strength must be the infusion of religious feeling into patriotic work. The religion of patriotism,—this is the master idea of Bankim's writings. It is already foreshadowed in Devi Chaudhurani. In Dharmatattwa the idea and in Krishnacharit the picture of a perfect and many-sided Karmayoga is sketched, the crown of which shall be work for one's country and one's kind. In Ananda Math this idea is the key-note of the whole

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book and received its perfect lyrical expression in the great song which has become the national anthem of United India. This is the second great service of Bankim to this country that he pointed out to it the way of salvation and gave it the religion of patriotism. Of the new spirit which is leading the nation to resurgence and independence, he is the inspirer and political Guru.

The third and supreme service of Bankim to his nation was that he gave us the vision of our Mother. The bare intellectual idea of the Motherland is not in itself a great driving force; the mere recognition of the desirability of freedom is not an inspiring motive. There are few Indians at present, whether loyalist, moderate or nationalist in their political views, who do not recognise that the country has claims on them or that freedom in the abstract is a desirable thing. But most of us, when it is a question between the claims of the country and other claims, do not in practice prefer the service of the country; and while many may have the wish to see freedom accomplished, few have the will to accomplish it. There are other things which we hold dearer and which we fear to see imperilled either in the struggle for freedom or by its accomplishment. It is not till the Motherland reveals herself to the eye of the mind as something more than a stretch of earth or a mass of individuals, it is not till she takes shape as a great Divine and Maternal Power in a form of beauty that can dominate the mind and seize the heart that these petty fears and hopes vanish in the all-absorbing passion for the Mother and her service, and the patriotism that works miracles and saves a doomed nation is born. To some men it is given to have that vision and reveal it to others. It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande Mataram. The Mantra had been given and in a single day a whole people had been converted to the religion of patriotism. The Mother had revealed herself. Once that vision has come to a people, there can be no rest, no peace, no further slumber till the temple has been made ready, the image installed and the sacrifice offered. A great nation which has had that vision can never again bend its neck in subjection to the yoke of a conqueror.

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Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Neither Mr. Tilak nor his speeches really require any presentation or foreword. His speeches are, like the featureless Brahman, self-luminous. Straightforward, lucid, never turning aside from the point which they mean to hammer in or wrapping it up in ornamental verbiage, they read like a series of self-evident propositions. And Mr. Tilak himself, his career, his place in Indian politics are also a self-evident proposition, a hard fact baffling and dismaying in the last degree to those to whom his name has been anathema and his increasing pre-eminence figured as a portent of evil. The condition of things in India being given, the one possible aim for political effort resulting and the sole means and spirit by which it could be brought about, this man had to come and, once in the field, had to come to the front. He could not but stand in the end where he stands today, as one of the two or three leaders of the Indian people who are in their eyes the incarnations of the national endeavour and the God-given captains of the national aspiration. His life, his character, his work and endurance, his acceptance by the heart and the mind of the people are a stronger argument than all the reasonings in his speeches, powerful as these are, for Swaraj, Self-government, Home Rule, by whatever name we may call the sole possible present aim of our effort, the freedom of the life of India, its self-determination by the people of India. Arguments and speeches do not win liberty for a nation; but where there is a will in the nation to be free and a man to embody that will in every action of his life and to devote his days to its realisation in the face of every difficulty and every suffering, and where the will of the nation has once said, "This man and his life mean what I have in my heart and in my purpose," that is a sure signpost of the future which no one has any excuse for mistaking.

That indomitable will and that unwavering devotion have been the whole meaning of Mr. Tilak's life; they are the reason of his immense hold on the people. For he does not owe his pre-eminent

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position to any of the causes which have usually made for political leading in India, wealth and great social position, professional success, recognition by Government, a power of fervid oratory or of fluent and taking speech; for he had none of these things to help him. He owes it to himself alone and to the thing his life has meant and because he has meant it with his whole mind and his whole soul. He has kept back nothing for himself or for other aims, but has given all himself to his country.

Yet is Mr. Tilak a man of various and no ordinary gifts, and in several lines of life he might have achieved present distinction or a pre-eminent and enduring fame. Though he has never practised, he has a close knowledge of law and an acute legal mind which, had he cared in the least degree for wealth and worldly position, would have brought him to the front at the bar. He is a great Sanskrit scholar, a powerful writer and a strong, subtle and lucid thinker. He might have filled a large place in the field of contemporary Asiatic scholarship. Even as it is, his Orion and his Arctic Home have acquired at once a worldwide recognition and left as strong a mark as can at all be imprinted on the ever-shifting sands of oriental research. His work on the Gita, no mere commentary but an original criticism and presentation of ethical truth, is a monumental work, the first prose writing of the front rank in weight and importance in the Marathi language, and likely to become a classic. This one book sufficiently proves that had he devoted his energies in this direction, he might easily have filled a large place in the history of Marathi literature and in the history of ethical thought, so subtle and comprehensive is its thinking, so great the perfection and satisfying force of its style. But it was psychologically impossible for Mr. Tilak to devote his energies in any great degree to another action than the one life-mission for which the Master of his works had chosen him. His powerful literary gift has been given up to a journalistic work, ephemeral as even the best journalistic work must be, but consistently brilliant, vigorous, politically educative through decades, to an extent seldom matched and certainly never surpassed. His scholastic labour has been done almost by way of recreation. Nor can anything be more significant than the fact that the works

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which have brought him a fame other than that of the politician and patriot, were done in periods of compulsory cessation from his life-work,—planned and partly, if not wholly, executed during the imprisonments which could alone enforce leisure upon this unresting worker for his country. Even these by-products of his genius have some reference to the one passion of his life, the renewal, if not the surpassing of the past greatness of the nation by the greatness of its future. His Vedic researches seek to fix its pre-historic point of departure; the Gita-rahasya takes the scripture which is perhaps the strongest and most comprehensive production of Indian spirituality and justifies to that spirituality, by its own authoritative ancient message, the sense of the importance of life, of action, of human existence, of man's labour for mankind which is indispensable to the idealism of the modern spirit.

The landmarks of Mr. Tilak's life are landmarks also in the history of his province and his country. His first great step associated him in a pioneer work whose motive was to educate the people for a new life under the new conditions,—on the one side a purely educational movement of which the fruit was the Ferguson College, fitly founding the reawakening of the country by an effort of which co-operation in self-sacrifice was the moving spirit, on the other the initiation of the Kesari newspaper, which since then has figured increasingly as the characteristic and powerful expression of the political mind of Maharashtra. Mr. Tilak's career has counted three periods each of which had an imprisonment for its culminating point. His first imprisonment in the Kolhapur case belongs to this first stage of self-development and development of the Maratha country for new ideas and activities and for the national future.

The second period brought in a wider conception and a profounder effort. For now it was to reawaken not only the political mind, but the soul of the people by linking its future to its past; it worked by a more strenuous and popular propaganda which reached its height in the organisation of the Shivaji and the Ganapati festivals. His separation from the social reform leader, Agarkar, had opened the way for the peculiar role which he has played as a trusted and accredited leader of conservative

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and religious India in the paths of democratic politics. It was this position which enabled him to effect the union of the new political spirit with the tradition and sentiment of the historic past and of both with the ineradicable religious temperament of the people of which these festivals were the symbol. The Congress movement was for a long time purely occidental in its mind, character and methods, confined to the English-educated few, founded on the political rights and interests of the people read in the light of English history and European ideals, but with no roots either in the past of the country or in the inner spirit of the nation. Mr. Tilak was the first political leader to break through the routine of its somewhat academical methods, to bridge the gulf between the present and the past and to restore continuity to the political life of the nation. He developed a language and a spirit and he used methods which Indianised the movement and brought into it the masses. To his work of this period we owe that really living, strong and spontaneously organised movement in Maharashtra which has shown its energy and sincerity in more than one crisis and struggle. This divination of the mind and spirit of his people and its needs and this power to seize on the right way to call it forth prove strikingly the political genius of Mr. Tilak; they made him the one man predestined to lead them in this trying and difficult period when all has to be discovered and all has to be reconstructed. What was done then by Mr. Tilak in Maharashtra has been initiated for all India by the Swadeshi movement. To bring in the mass of the people, to found the greatness of the future on the greatness of the past, to infuse Indian politics with Indian religious fervour and spirituality are the indispensable conditions for a great and powerful political awakening in India. Others, writers, thinkers, spiritual leaders, had seen this truth. Mr. Tilak was the first to bring it into the actual field of practical politics. This second period of his labour for his country culminated in a longer and harsher imprisonment which was, as it were, the second seal of the divine hand upon his work; for there can be no diviner seal than suffering for a cause.

A third period, that of the Swadeshi movement, brought Mr. Tilak forward prominently as an All-India leader; it gave

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him at last the wider field, the greater driving power, the larger leverage he needed to bring his life-work rapidly to a head, and not only in Maharashtra but throughout the country. The incidents of that period are too fresh in memory to need recalling. From the inception of the Boycott to the Surat catastrophe and his last and longest imprisonment, which was its sequel, the name and work of Mr. Tilak are a part of Indian history. These three imprisonments, each showing more clearly the moral stuff and quality of the man under the test and the revealing glare of suffering, have been the three seals of his career. The first found him one of a small knot of pioneer workers; it marked him out to be the strong and inflexible leader of a strong and sturdy people. The second found him already the inspiring power of a great reawakening of the Maratha spirit; it left him an uncrowned king in the Deccan and gave him that high reputation throughout India which was the foundation-stone of his present commanding influence. The last found him the leader of an All-India party, the foremost exponent and head of a thorough-going Nationalism: it sent him back to be one of the two or three foremost men of India adored and followed by the whole nation. He now stands in the last period of his life-long toil for his country. It is one in which for the first time some ray of immediate hope, some prospect of near success shines upon a cause which at one time seemed destined to a long frustration and fulfilment only perhaps after a century of labour, struggle and suffering.

The qualities which have supported him and given him his hard-earned success, have been comparatively rare in Indian politics. The first is his entirely representative character as a born leader for the sub-nation to which he belongs. India is a unity full of diversities and its strength as well as its weakness is rooted in those diversities: the vigour of its national life can exist only by the vigour of its regional life. Therefore in politics as in everything else a leader, to have a firm basis for his life-work, must build it upon a living work and influence in his own sub-race or province. No man was more fitted to do this than Mr. Tilak. He is the very type and incarnation of the Maratha character, the Maratha qualities, the Maratha spirit, but with the unified solidity in the character, the touch of genius in the qualities, the

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vital force in the spirit which make a great personality readily the representative man of his people. The Maratha race, as their soil and their history have made them, are a rugged, strong and sturdy people, democratic in their every fibre, keenly intelligent and practical to the very marrow, following in ideas, even in poetry, philosophy and religion the drive towards life and action, capable of great fervour, feeling and enthusiasm, like all Indian peoples, but not emotional idealists, having in their thought and speech always a turn for strength, sense, accuracy, lucidity and vigour, in learning and scholarship patient, industrious, careful, thorough and penetrating, in life simple, hardy and frugal, in their temperament courageous, pugnacious, full of spirit, yet with a tact in dealing with hard facts and circumventing obstacles, shrewd yet aggressive diplomatists, born politicians, born fighters. All this Mr. Tilak is with a singular and eminent completeness, and all on a large scale, adding to it all a lucid simplicity of genius, a secret intensity, an inner strength of will, a single-mindedness in aim of quite extraordinary force, which remind one of the brightness, sharpness and perfect temper of a fine sword hidden in a sober scabbard. As he emerged on the political field, his people saw more and more clearly in him their representative man, themselves in large, the genius of their type. They felt him to be of one spirit and make with the great men who had made their past history, almost believed him to be a reincarnation of one of them returned to carry out his old work in a new form and under new conditions. They beheld in him the spirit of Maharashtra once again embodied in a great individual. He occupies a position in his province which has no parallel in the rest of India.

On the wider national field also Mr. Tilak has rare qualities which fit him for the hour and the work. He is in no sense what his enemies have called him, a demagogue: he has not the loose suppleness, the oratorical fervour, the facile appeal to the passions which demagogy requires; his speeches are too much made up of hard and straight thinking, he is too much a man of serious and practical action. None more careless of mere effervescence, emotional applause, popular gush, public ovations. He tolerates them since popular enthusiasm will express itself in that way;

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but he has always been a little impatient of them as dissipative of serious strength and will and a waste of time and energy which might better have been solidified and devoted to effective work. But he is entirely a democratic politician, of a type not very common among our leaders, one who can both awaken the spirit of the mass and respond to their spirit, able to lead them, but also able to see where he must follow the lead of their predominant sense and will and feelings. He moves among his followers as one of them in a perfect equality, simple and familiar in his dealings with them by the very force of his temperament and character, open, plain and direct and, though capable of great reserve in his speech, yet, wherever necessary, admitting them into his plans and ideas as one taking counsel of them, taking their sense even while enforcing as much as possible his own view of policy and action with all the great strength of quiet will at his command. He has that closeness of spirit to the mass of men, that unpretentious openness of intercourse with them, that faculty of plain and direct speech which interprets their feelings and shows them how to think out what they feel, which are pre-eminently the democratic qualities. For this reason he has always been able to unite all classes of men behind him, to be the leader not only of the educated, but of the people, the merchant, the trader, the villager, the peasant. All Maharashtra understands him when he speaks or writes; all Maharashtra is ready to follow him when he acts. Into his wider field in the troubled Swadeshi times he carried the same qualities and the same power of democratic leadership.

It is equally a mistake to think of Mr. Tilak as by nature a revolutionary leader; that is not his character or his political temperament. The Indian people generally, with the possible exception of emotional and idealistic Bengal, have nothing or very little of the revolutionary temper; they can be goaded to revolution, like any and every people on the face of the earth, but they have no natural disposition towards it. They are capable of large ideals and fervent enthusiasms, sensitive in feeling and liable to gusts of passionate revolt which are easily appeased by even an appearance of concession; but naturally they are conservative in temperament and deliberate in action. Mr. Tilak,

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though a strong-willed man and a fighter by nature, has this much of the ordinary Indian temperament, that with a large mind open to progressive ideas he unites a conservative temperament strongly in touch with the sense of his people. In a free India he would probably have figured as an advanced Liberal statesman eager for national progress and greatness, but as careful of every step as firm and decided in it and always seeking to carry the conservative instinct of the nation with him in every change. He is besides a born Parliamentarian, a leader for the assembly, though always in touch with the people outside as the constant source of the mandate and the final referee in differences. He loves a clear and fixed procedure which he can abide by and use, even while making the most of its details,—of which the theory and practice would be always at his finger-ends,—to secure a practical advantage in the struggle of parties. He always set a high value on the Congress for this reason; he saw in it a centralising body, an instrument and a first, though yet shapeless, essay at a popular assembly. Many after Surat spoke of him as the deliberate breaker of the Congress, but to no one was the catastrophe so great a blow as to Mr. Tilak. He did not love the do-nothingness of that assembly, but he valued it both as a great national fact and for its unrealised possibilities and hoped to make it a central organisation for practical work. To destroy an existing and useful institution was alien to his way of seeing and would not have entered into his ideas or his wishes.

Moreover, though he has ideals, he is not an idealist by character. Once the ideal fixed, all the rest is for him practical work, the facing of hard facts, though also the overcoming of them when they stand in the way of the goal, the use of strong and effective means with the utmost care and prudence consistent with the primary need of as rapid an effectivity as will and earnest action can bring about. Though he can be obstinate and iron-willed when his mind is made up as to the necessity of a course of action or the indispensable recognition of a principle, he is always ready for a compromise which will allow of getting real work done, and will take willingly half a loaf rather than no bread, though always with a full intention of getting the whole loaf in good time. But he will not accept chaff or plaster in

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place of good bread. Nor does he like to go too far ahead of possibilities, and indeed has often shown in this respect a caution highly disconcerting to the more impatient of his followers. But neither would he mistake, like the born Moderate, the minimum effort and the minimum immediate aim for the utmost possibility of the moment. Such a man is no natural revolutionist, but a constitutionalist by temper, though always in such times necessarily the leader of an advanced party or section. A clear constitution he could use, amend and enlarge would have suited him much better than to break existing institutions and get a clear field for innovations which is the natural delight of the revolutionary temperament.

This character of Mr. Tilak's mind explains his attitude in social reform. He is no dogmatic reactionary. The Maratha people are incapable of either the unreasoning or too reasoning rigid conservatism or of the fiery iconoclasm which can exist side by side,—they are often only two sides of the same temper of mind,—in other parts of India. It is attached to its social institutions like all peoples who live close to the soil, but it has always shown a readiness to adapt, loosen and accommodate them in practice to the pressure of actual needs. Mr. Tilak shares this general temperament and attitude of his people. But there have also been other reasons which a strong political sense has dictated; and first, the clear perception that the political movement could not afford to cut itself off from the great mass of the nation or split itself up into warring factions by a premature association of the social reform question with politics. The proper time for that, a politician would naturally feel, is when the country has a free assembly of its own which can consult the needs or carry out the mandates of the people. Moreover, he has felt strongly that political emancipation was the one pressing need for the people of India and that all else not directly connected with it must take a second place; that has been the principle of his own life and he has held that it should be the principle of the national life at the present hour. Let us have first liberty and the organised control of the life of the nation, afterwards we can see how we should use it in social matters; meanwhile let us move on without noise and strife, only so far as actual

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need and advisability demand and the sense of the people is ready to advance. This attitude may be right or wrong; but, Mr. Tilak being what he is and the nation being what it is, he could take no other.

If, then, Mr. Tilak has throughout his life been an exponent of the idea of radical change in politics and during the Swadeshi agitation the head of a party which could be called extremist, it is due to that clear practical sense, essential in a leader of political action, which seizes at once on the main necessity and goes straight without hesitation or deviation to the indispensable means. There are always two classes of political mind: one is preoccupied with details for their own sake, revels in the petty points of the moment and puts away into the background the great principles and the great necessities, the other sees rather these first and always and details only in relation to them. The one type moves in a routine circle which may or may not have an issue; it cannot see the forest for the trees and it is only by an accident that it stumbles, if at all, on the way out. The other type takes a mountain-top view of the goal and all the directions and keeps that in its mental compass through all the deflections, retardations and tortuosities which the character of the intervening country may compel it to accept; but these it abridges as much as possible. The former class arrogate the name of statesman in their own day; it is to the latter that posterity concedes it and sees in them the true leaders of great movements. Mr. Tilak, like all men of pre-eminent political genius, belongs to this second and greater order of mind.

Moreover in India, owing to the divorce of political activity from the actual government and administration of the affairs of the country, an academical turn of thought is too common in our dealings with politics. But Mr. Tilak has never been an academical politician, a "student of politics" meddling with action; his turn has always been to see actualities and move forward in their light. It was impossible for him to view the facts and needs of current Indian politics of the nineteenth century in the pure serene or the dim religious light of the witenagemot and the Magna Charta and the constitutional history of England during the past seven centuries, or to accept the academic sophism of a

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gradual preparation for liberty, or merely to discuss isolated or omnibus grievances and strive to enlighten the darkness of the official mind by luminous speeches and resolutions, as was the general practice of Congress politics till 1905. A national agitation in the country which would make the Congress movement a living and acting force was always his ideal, and what the Congress would not do, he, when still an isolated leader of a handful of enthusiasts in a corner of the country, set out to do in his own strength and for his own hand. He saw from the first that for a people circumstanced like ours there could be only one political question and one aim, not the gradual improvement of the present administration into something in the end fundamentally the opposite of itself, but the early substitution of Indian and national for English and bureaucratic control in the affairs of India. A subject nation does not prepare itself by gradual progress for liberty; it opens by liberty its way to rapid progress. The only progress that has to be made in the preparation for liberty, is progress in the awakening of the national spirit and in the creation of the will to be free and the will to adopt the necessary means and bear the necessary sacrifices for liberty. It is these clear perceptions that have regulated his political career.

Therefore the whole of the first part of his political life was devoted to a vigorous and living propaganda for the reawakening and solidifying of the national life of Maharashtra. Therefore, too, when the Swadeshi agitation gave the first opportunity of a large movement in the same sense throughout India, he seized on it with avidity, while his past work in Maharashtra, his position as the leader of a small advanced section in the old Congress politics and his character, sacrifices and sufferings at once fixed the choice of the New Party on him as their predestined leader. The same master-idea made him seize on the four main points which the Bengal agitation had thrown into some beginning of practical form, Swaraj, Swadeshi, National Education and Boycott, and formulate them into a definite programme, which he succeeded in introducing among the resolutions of the Congress at the Calcutta session,—much to the detriment of the uniformity of sage and dignified impotence which had characterised

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the august, useful and calmly leisurely proceedings of that temperate national body. We all know the convulsion that followed the injection of this foreign matter; but we must see why Mr. Tilak insisted on administering annually so potent a remedy. The four resolutions were for him the first step towards shaking the Congress out of its torpid tortoise-like gait and turning it into a living and acting body.

Swaraj, complete and early self-government in whatever form, had the merit in his eyes of making definite and near to the national vision the one thing needful, the one aim that mattered, the one essential change that includes all the others. No nation can develop a living enthusiasm or accept great action and great sacrifices for a goal that is lost to its eye in the mist of far-off centuries; it must see it near and distinct before it, magnified by a present hope, looming largely and actualised as a living aim whose early realisation only depends on a great, sustained and sincere effort. National education meant for him the training of the young generation in the new national spirit to be the architects of liberty, if that was delayed, the citizens of a free India which had rediscovered itself, if the preliminary conditions were rapidly fulfilled. Swadeshi meant an actualising of the national self-consciousness and the national will and the readiness to sacrifice which would fix them in the daily mind and daily life of the people. In Boycott, which was only a popular name for passive resistance, he saw the means to give to the struggle between the two ideas in conflict, bureaucratic control and national control, a vigorous shape and body and to the popular side a weapon and an effective form of action. Himself a man of organisation and action, he knew well that by action most, and not by thought and speech alone, can the will of a people be vivified, trained and made solid and enduring. To get a sustained authority from the Congress for a sustained effort in these four directions seemed to him of capital importance; this was the reason for his inflexible insistence on their unchanged inclusion when the programme seemed to him to be in danger.

Yet also, because he is a practical politician and a man of action, he has always, so long as the essentials were safe, been ready to admit any change in name or form or any modification

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of programme or action dictated by the necessities of the time. Thus during the movement of 1905-1910 the Swadeshi leader and the Swadeshi party insisted on agitation in India and discouraged reliance on agitation in England, because the awaking and fixing of self-reliant national spirit and will in India was the one work for the hour and in England no party or body of opinion existed which would listen to the national claim, nor could exist,—as anybody with the least knowledge of English politics could have told,—until that claim had been unmistakably and insistently made and was clearly supported by the fixed will of the nation. The Home Rule leader and the Home Rule party of today, which is only the "New Party" reborn with a new name, form and following, insist on the contrary on vigorous and speedy agitation in England, because the claim and the will have both been partially, but not sufficiently recognised, and because a great and growing British party now exists which is ready to make the Indian ideal part of its own programme. So, too, they insisted then on Swaraj and rejected with contempt all petty botching with the administration, because so alone could the real issue be made a living thing to the nation; now they accept readily enough a fairly advanced but still half-and-half scheme, but always with the proviso that the popular principle receives substantial embodiment and the full ideal is included as an early goal and not put off to a far-distant future. The leader of men in war or politics will always distrust petty and episodical gains which, while giving false hopes, are merely nominal and put off or even endanger the real issue, but will always seize on any advantage which brings decisive victory definitely nearer. It is only the pure idealist,—but let us remember that he too has his great and indispensable uses,—who insists always on either all or nothing. Not revolutionary methods or revolutionary idealism, but the clear sight and the direct propaganda and action of the patriotic political leader insisting on the one thing needful and the straight way to drive at it, have been the sense of Mr. Tilak's political career.

The speeches in this book belong both to the Swadeshi and the Home Rule periods, but mostly to the latter. They show Mr. Tilak's mind and policy and voice with great force that will

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and political thought now dominant in the country which he has so prominently helped to create. Mr. Tilak has none of the gifts of the orator which many lesser men have possessed, but his force of thought and personality make him in his own way a powerful speaker. He is at his best in his own Marathi tongue rather than in English; for there he finds always the apt and telling phrase, the striking application, the vigorous figure which go straight home to the popular mind. But there is essentially the same power in both. His words have the directness and force—no force can be greater—of a sincere and powerful mind always going immediately to the aim in view, the point before it, expressing it with a bare, concentrated economy of phrase and the insistence of the hammer full on the head of the nail which drives it in with a few blows. But the speeches have to be read with his life, his character, his life-long aims as their surrounding atmosphere. That is why I have dwelt on their main points;—not that all I have said is not well-known, but the repetition of known facts has its use when they are important and highly significant.

Two facts of his life and character have to be insisted on as of special importance to the country because they give a great example of two things in which its political life was long deficient and is even now not sufficient. First, the inflexible will of the patriot and man of sincere heart and thorough action which has been the very grain of his character: for aspirations, emotion, enthusiasm are nothing without this; will alone creates and prevails. And wish and will are not the same thing, but divided by a great gulf: the one, which is all most of us get to, is a puny, tepid and inefficient thing and, even when most enthusiastic, easily discouraged and turned from its object; the other can be a giant to accomplish and endure. Secondly, the readiness to sacrifice and face suffering, not needlessly or with a useless bravado, but with a firm courage when it comes, to bear it and to outlive, returning to work with one's scars as if nothing had happened. No prominent man in India has suffered more for his country; none has taken his sacrifices and sufferings more quietly and as a matter of course.

The first part of Mr. Tilak's life-work is accomplished. Two

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great opportunities have hastened its success, of which he has taken full advantage. The lava-like flood of the Swadeshi movement fertilised the soil and did for the country in six years the work of six ordinary decades; it fixed the goal of freedom in the mind of the people. The sudden irruption of Mrs. Besant into the field with her unequalled gift,—born of her untiring energy, her flaming enthusiasm, her magnificent and magnetic personality, her spiritual force,—for bringing an ideal into the stage of actuality with one rapid whirl and rush, has been the second factor. Indeed the presence of three such personalities as Mr. Tilak, Mrs. Besant and Mr. Gandhi at the head and in the heart of the present movement, should itself be a sure guarantee of success. The nation has accepted the near fulfilment of his great aim as its own political aim, the one object of its endeavour, its immediate ideal. The Government of India and the British nation have accepted complete self-government as their final goal in Indian administration; a powerful party in England, the party which seems to command the future, has pronounced for its more speedy and total accomplishment. A handful of dissentients there may be in the country who still see only petty gains in the present and the rest in the dim vista of the centuries, but with this insignificant exception, all the Indian provinces and communities have spoken with one voice. Mr. Tilak's principles of work have been accepted; the ideas which he had so much trouble to enforce have become the commonplaces and truisms of our political thought. The only question that remains is the rapidity of a now inevitable evolution. That is the hope for which Mr. Tilak still stands, a leader of all India. Only when it is accomplished, will his life-work be done; not till then can he rest while he lives, even though age grows on him and infirmities gather,—for his spirit will always remain fresh and vigorous,—any more than a river can rest before the power of its waters has found their goal and discharged them into the sea. But whether that end,—the end of a first stage of our new national life, the beginning of a greater India reborn for self-fulfilment and the service of humanity,—come tomorrow or after a little delay, its accomplishment is now safe, and Mr. Tilak's name stands already for history as a nation-builder, one of the half-dozen greatest political personalities,

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memorable figures, representative men of the nation in this most critical period of India's destinies, a name to be remembered gratefully so long as the country has pride in its past and hope for its future.

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A Great Mind, a Great Will

This article which first appeared in The Independent on August 5, 1920, was sent by Sri Aurobindo in the form of a telegram at the request of that journal's editor Bipin Chandra Pal on the occasion of Lokamanya Tilak's death on August 1 of that year.

A great mind, a great will, a great and pre-eminent leader of men has passed away from the field of his achievement and labour. To the mind of his country Lokamanya Tilak was much more, for he had become to it a considerable part of itself, the embodiment of its past efforts and the head of its present struggle for a free and greater life. His achievement and personality have put him amidst the first rank of historic and significant figures. He was one who built much rapidly out of little beginnings, a creator of great things out of an unworked material. The creations he left behind him were a new and strong and self-reliant national spirit, the reawakened political mind and life of a people, a will to freedom and action, a great national purpose. He brought to his work extraordinary qualities, a calm, silent, unflinching courage, an unwavering purpose, a flexible mind, a forward-casting vision of possibilities, an eye for the occasion, a sense of actuality, a fine capacity of democratic leadership, a diplomacy that never lost sight of its aim and pressed towards it even in the most pliant turns of its movement, and guiding all, a single-minded patriotism that cared for power and influence only as a means of service to the Motherland and a lever for the work of her liberation. He sacrificed much for her and suffered for her repeatedly and made no ostentation of his suffering and sacrifices. His life was a constant offering at her altar and his death has come in the midst of an unceasing service and labour.

The passing of this great personality creates a large and immediate void that will be felt acutely for a time, but it is the virtue of his own work that this vacancy must very soon be filled by new men and new forces. The spirit he created in the country is of that sincere, real and fruitful kind that cannot consent to

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cease or to fail, but must always throw up minds and capacities that will embody its purpose. It will raise up others of his mould, if not of his stature, to meet its needs, its demands, its call for ability and courage. He himself has only passed behind the veil, for death and not life is the illusion. The strong spirit that dwelt within him ranges now freed from our human and physical limitations, and can still shed upon us, on those now at work, and those who are coming, a more subtle, ample and irresistible influence; and even if this were not so, an effective part of him is still with us. His will is left behind in many to make more powerful and free from hesitations the national will he did so much to create, the growing will whose strength and single wholeness are the chief conditions of the success of the national effort. His courage is left behind in numbers to fuse itself into and uplift and fortify the courage of his people; his sacrifice and strength in suffering are left with us to enlarge themselves, more even than in his life-time, and to heighten the fine and steeled temper our people need for the difficult share that still lies before their endeavour. These things are his legacy to his country, and it is in proportion as each man rises to the height of what they signify that his life will be justified and assured of its recompense.

Methods and policies may change but the spirit of what Lokamanya Tilak was and did remains and will continue to be needed, a constant power in others for the achievement of his own life's grand and single purpose. A great worker and creator is not to be judged only by the work he himself did, but also by the greater work he made possible. The achievement of the departed leader has brought the Nation to a certain point. Its power to go forward from and beyond that point, to face new circumstances, to rise to the more strenuous and momentous demand of its future will be the greatest and surest sign of the soundness of his labour. That test is being applied to the National Movement at the very moment of his departure.

The death of Lokamanya Tilak comes upon us at a time when the country is passing through most troubled and poignant hours. It occurs at a critical period, it coincides even with a crucial moment when questions are being put to the nation by the Master of Destiny, on the answer to which depends the whole

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spirit, virtue and meaning of its future. In each event that confronts us there is a divine significance, and the passing away at such a time of such a man, on whose thought and decision thousands hung, should make more profoundly felt by the people, by every man in the Nation, the great, the almost religious responsibility that lies upon him personally.

At this juncture it is not for me to prejudge the issue; each must meet it according to his light and conscience. This at least can be demanded of every man who would be worthy of India and of her great departed son that he shall put away from him in the decision of the things to be done in the future all weakness of will, all defect of courage, all unwillingness for sacrifice. Let each strive to see with that selfless impersonality, taught by one of our greatest scriptures, which can alone enable us to identify ourselves both with the Divine Will and with the Son of our Mother. Two things India demands, a farther future, the freedom of soul, life and action needed for the work she has to do for mankind; and the understanding by her children of that work and of her own true spirit that the future India may be indeed India. The first seems still the main sense and need of the present moment, but the second is also involved in them—a yet greater issue. On the spirit of our decisions now and in the next few years depends the truth, vitality and greatness of our future national existence. It is the beginning of a great Self-Determination not only in the external but in the spiritual. These two thoughts should govern our action. Only so can the work done by Lokamanya Tilak find its true continuation and issue.

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The Men that Pass

Romesh Chandra Dutt is dead. After a long life of the most manifold and untiring energy, famous, honoured, advanced in years, with a name known in England as well as in India, the man always successful, always favoured of Fortune, always striving to deserve her by skill and diligence, type of a race that passes, of a generation that to younger minds is fast losing the appearance of reality and possibility, has passed away at the height and summit of his career before his great capacities could justify themselves to the full in his new station, but also before the defects of his type could be thoroughly subjected to the severe ordeal of the times that have come upon us. The landmarks of the past fall one by one and none rise in their place. The few great survivors here and there become more and more dignified monuments of the last century and less and less creators of the living present. New ideals, new problems, new men, almost a new race wholly different in mind, character, temperament, feeling, rise swiftly and wait till they can open the gates of the future and occupy the field of action.

The official, the liberal Congress politician, the well-read litterateur, the Oriental scholar, the journalist proficient in English and fluent of Western ideas, the professional man successful and sleek, these were the foremost men of the old generation, those who were in the eyes of all śreṣṭha, the best, in whose footsteps, therefore, all strove to follow and on whose pattern all formed themselves. An active, self-confident, voiceful generation making up by these qualities for the lack of height, depth and breadth in their culture and atoning for the unoriginal imitativeness to which they were doomed by the fidelity in detail and framework of the imitation! In all but one of these lines of activity Romesh Dutt had achieved a high distinction among the men of his own generation, and we doubt whether another man could be pointed out among them so many-sided, so full of strength and hope and energy, so confident, so uniformly successful.

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Nature was liberal to him of her gifts, Fortune of her favours. A splendid physique, robust and massive, equipped him to bear the strain of an unceasing activity: a nature buoyant, sanguine, strong, as healthy as his frame, armed him against the shocks of life and commanded success by insisting upon it; an egoism natural to such a robust vitality seized on all things as its provender and enabled its possessor thoroughly to enjoy the good things of life which it successfully demanded; a great tact and savoir faire steered him clear of unnecessary friction and avoidable difficulties; an unrivalled quickness of grasp, absorption and assimilation, more facile than subtle or deep, helped him to make his own all that he heard or read; a rapid though not ingenious brain showed him how to use his material with the best effect and most practical utility; and a facile pen and speech which never paused for a thought or a word, could always be trusted to clothe what he wished to convey in a form respectable and effective and so well put as to conceal the absence of native literary faculty and intellectual distinction. These were Nature's presents to him at his birth. Fortune placed him in a wealthy, well-read and well-known family, gave him the best advantages of education the times could afford, sent him to England and opened the doors of the Civil Service, the pinnacle of the young Indian's aspiration in his days, and crowned him with the highest prizes that that highest of careers could yield to a man of his hue and blood. It is characteristic of his career that he should have died as Prime Minister of the Indian State which has been most successful in reproducing and improving upon the Anglo-Indian model of administration.

There were limits, as we have hinted, to the liberality of Nature. Of all the great Bengalis of his time Romesh Dutt was perhaps the least original. His administrative faculties were of the second order, not of the first; though he stood for a time foremost among the most active of Congress politicians and controversialists, he was neither a Ranade nor a Surendranath, had neither the gift of the organiser and political thinker nor the gift of the orator; he had literary talent of an imitative kind but no literary genius; he wrote well on scholastic subjects and translated pleasantly and effectively, but was no great Sanskrit

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scholar: he cannot rank with Ranade or even with Gokhale as an economist, and yet his are the most politically effective contributions to economic literature in India that recent years have produced. It must be admitted that his activity and dexterity of work were far in excess of his literary ability or scholastic conscientiousness. It is doubtful, therefore, whether any of his voluminous works in many kinds will be remembered, with the possible though not very certain exception of his Bengali historical novels in which he touched his creative highwater mark. His translation of the Rig-veda by its ease and crispness blinds the uninitiated reader to the fact that it may be a very pretty translation but it is not the Veda. His history of ancient Indian civilisation is a masterly compilation, void of original research, which is rapidly growing antiquated. In fact, the one art he possessed in the highest degree and in which alone it can be said that he did not only well but best, was the art of the journalist and pamphleteer. Originality and deep thought are not required of a journalist, nor delicacy, nor subtlety; his success would be limited rather than assisted by such qualities. To seize victoriously on the available materials, catch in them what will be interesting and effective and put it brightly and clearly, this is the dharma of the journalist, and, if we add the power of making the most of a case and enforcing a given view with irresistible energy, dexterity and apparent unanswerableness, we shall have added all that is necessary to turn the journalist into the pamphleteer. No man of our time has had these gifts to the same extent as Romesh Dutt. The best things he ever did were, in our view, his letters to Lord Curzon and his Economic History. The former fixed public opinion in India irretrievably and nobody cared even to consider Lord Curzon's answer. "That settles it" was the general feeling every ordinary reader contracted for good after reading this brilliant and telling indictment. Without the Economic History and its damning story of England's commercial and fiscal dealings with India we doubt whether the public mind would have been ready for the Boycott. In this one instance it may be said of him that he not only wrote history but created it. But all his works, with the exception of the historical novels, were rather pieces of successful

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journalism than literature. Still, even where it was most defective, his work was always useful to the world. For instance, his Ramayana and Mahabharata, though they are poor and commonplace poetry and do unpardonable violence to the spirit of the original, yet familiarised the average reader in England with the stories of the epics and thus made the way easy for future interpreters of the East to the West. In brief, this may be said in unstinted praise of Romesh Dutt, that he was a gigantic worker and did an immense amount of pioneer spadework by which the future will benefit.

We have dwelt on this interesting and vigorous personality as one of the most typical of the men that pass, much more typical than greater or more original contemporaries. The work they did is over and the qualities with which they were equipped for that work will no longer sufficiently serve our purpose. An education at once more subtle and more massive, a greater originality, force and range of intellectual activity, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, the glut of a giant for work and action, mighty qualities of soul, a superhuman courage, self-abnegation and power to embrace and practise almost impossible ideals, these are the virtues and gifts India demands from the greatest among her sons in the future so that they may be sufficient to her work and her destinies. But such gifts as Romesh Dutt possessed are not to be despised. Especially did his untiring capacity for work and his joyous vitality and indestructible buoyancy make him a towering reproach to the indolent, listless, sneering and anaemic generation that intervened between him and the recent renascence.

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Andal

The Vaishnava Poetess

Preoccupied from the earliest times with divine knowledge and religious aspiration the Indian mind has turned all forms of human life and emotion and all the phenomena of the universe into symbols and means by which the embodied soul may strive after and grasp the Supreme. Indian devotion has especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the Guru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences—for to us these are more than merely ideas,—it has carried to its extreme possibilities. But none of them has it pursued, embraced, sung with a more exultant passion of intimate realisation than the yearning for God the Lover, God the Beloved. It would seem as if this passionate human symbol were the natural culminating-point for the mounting flame of the soul's devotion: for it is found wherever that devotion has entered into the most secret shrine of the inner temple. We meet it in Islamic poetry; certain experiences of the Christian mystics repeat the forms and images with which we are familiar in the East, but usually with a certain timorousness foreign to the Eastern temperament. For the devotee who has once had this intense experience it is that which admits to the most profound and hidden mystery of the universe; for him the heart has the key of the last secret.

The work of a great Bengali poet has recently reintroduced this idea to the European mind, which has so much lost the memory of its old religious traditions as to welcome and wonder at it as a novel form of mystic self-expression. On the contrary it is ancient enough, like all things natural and eternal in the human soul. In Bengal a whole period of national poetry has been dominated by this single strain and it has inspired a religion and a philosophy. And in the Vaishnavism of the far South, in the songs of the Tamil Alwars we find it again in another form,

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giving a powerful and original turn to the images of our old classic poetry; for there it has been sung out by the rapt heart of a woman to the Heart of the Universe.

The Tamil word, Alwar, means one who has drowned, lost himself in the sea of the divine being. Among these canonised saints of Southern Vaishnavism ranks Vishnuchitta, Yogin and poet, of Villipattan in the land of the Pandyas. He is termed Perialwar, The Great Alwar. A tradition, which we need not believe, places him in the ninety-eighth year of the Kaliyuga. But these divine singers are ancient enough, since they precede the great saint and philosopher Ramanuja whose personality and teaching were the last flower of the long-growing Vaishnava tradition. Since his time Southern Vaishnavism has been a fixed creed and a system rather than a creator of new spiritual greatnesses.

The poetess Andal was the foster-daughter of Vishnuchitta, found by him, it is said, a new-born child under the sacred Tulsi-plant. We know little of Andal except what we can gather from a few legends, some of them richly beautiful and symbolic. Most of Vishnuchitta's poems have the infancy and boyhood of Krishna for their subject. Andal, brought up in that atmosphere, cast into the mould of her life what her foster-father had sung in inspired hymns. Her own poetry—we may suppose that she passed early into the Light towards which she yearned, for it is small in bulk,—is entirely occupied with her passion for the divine Being. It is said that she went through a symbolic marriage with Sri Ranganatha, Vishnu in his temple at Srirangam, and disappeared into the image of her Lord. This tradition probably conceals some actual fact, for Andal's marriage with the Lord is still celebrated annually with considerable pomp and ceremony.

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Nammalwar

The Supreme Vaishnava Saint and Poet

Màran, renowned as Nammalwar ("Our Saint") among the Vaishnavas and the greatest of their saints and poets, was born in a small town called Kuruhur, in the southernmost region of the Tamil country—Tiru-nel-veli (Tinnevelly). His father, Kàri, was a petty prince who paid tribute to the Pandyan King of Madura. We have no means of ascertaining the date of the Alwar's birth, as the traditional account is untrustworthy and full of inconsistencies. We are told that the infant was mute for several years after his birth. Nammalwar renounced the world early in life and spent his time singing and meditating on God under the shade of a tamarind tree by the side of the village temple.

It was under this tree that he was first seen by his disciple, the Alwar Madhura-kavi,—for the latter also is numbered among the great Twelve, "lost in the sea of Divine Love". Tradition says that while Madhura-kavi was wandering in North India as a pilgrim, one night a strange light appeared to him in the sky and travelled towards the South. Doubtful at first what significance this phenomenon might have for him, its repetition during three consecutive nights convinced him that it was a divine summons and where this luminous sign led he must follow. Night after night he journeyed southwards till the guiding light came to Kuruhur and there disappeared. Learning of Nammalwar's spiritual greatness he thought that it was to him that the light had been leading him. But when he came to him, he found him absorbed in deep meditation with his eyes fast closed and although he waited for hours the Samadhi did not break until he took up a large stone and struck it against the ground violently. At the noise Nammalwar opened his eyes, but still remained silent. Madhura-kavi then put to him the following enigmatical question, "If the little one (the soul) is born into the dead thing (Matter)¹

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what will the little one eat and where will the little one lie?" to which Nammalwar replied in an equally enigmatic style, "That will it eat and there will it lie."

Subsequently Nammalwar permitted his disciple to live with him and it was Madhura-kavi who wrote down his songs as they were composed. Nammalwar died in his thirty-fifth year, but he has achieved so great a reputation that the Vaishnavas account him an incarnation of Vishnu himself, while others are only the mace, discus, conch etc. of the Deity.

From the philosophical and spiritual point of view, his poetry ranks among the highest in Tamil literature. But in point of literary excellence, there is a great inequality; for while some songs touch the level of the loftiest world-poets, others, even though rich in rhythm and expression, fall much below the poet's capacity. In his great work known as the Tiru-vaymoli (The Sacred Utterance) which contains more than a thousand stanzas, he has touched all the phases of the life divine and given expression to all forms of spiritual experience. The pure and passionless Reason, the direct perception in the high solar realm of Truth itself, the ecstatic and sometimes poignant love that leaps into being at the vision of the "Beauty of God's face", the final Triumph where unity is achieved and "I and my Father are one" all these are uttered in his simple and flowing lines with a strength that is full of tenderness and truth.

The lines which we translate² below are a fair specimen of the great Alwar's poetry; but it has suffered considerably in the translation,—indeed the genius of the Tamil tongue hardly permits of an effective rendering, so utterly divergent is it from that of the English language.

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The French Revolution

The greatness of the French Revolution lies not in what it effected, but in what it thought and was. Its action was chiefly destructive. It prepared many things, it founded nothing. Even the constructive activity of Napoleon only built a half-way house in which the ideas of 1789 might rest until the world was fit to understand them better and really fulfil them. The ideas themselves were not new; they existed in Christianity and before Christianity they existed in Buddhism; but in 1789 they came out for the first time from the Church and the Book and sought to remodel government and society. It was an unsuccessful attempt, but even the failure changed the face of Europe. And this effect was chiefly due to the force, the enthusiasm, the sincerity with which the idea was seized upon and the thoroughness with which it was sought to be applied. The cause of the failure was the defect of knowledge, the excess of imagination. The basal ideas, the types, the things to be established were known; but there had been no experience of the ideas in practice. European society, till then, had been permeated, not with liberty, but with bondage and repression; not with equality, but with inequality; not with brotherhood, but with selfish force and violence. The world was not ready, nor is it even now ready for the fullness of the practice. It is the goal of humanity, and we are yet far off from the goal. But the time has come for an approximation being attempted. And the first necessity is the discipline of brotherhood, the organisation of brotherhood; for without the spirit and habit of fraternity neither liberty nor equality can be maintained for more than a short season. The French were ignorant of this practical principle; they made liberty the basis, brotherhood the superstructure, founding the triangle upon its apex. For owing to the dominance of Greece and Rome in their imagination they were saturated with the idea of liberty and only formally admitted the Christian and Asiatic principle of brotherhood. They built according to their

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knowledge, but the triangle has to be reversed before it can stand permanently.

***

The action of the French Revolution was the vehement death-dance of Kali trampling blindly, furiously on the ruins She made, mad with pity for the world and therefore utterly pitiless. She called the Yatudhani in her to her aid and summoned up the Rakshasi. The Yatudhani is the delight of destruction, the fury of slaughter, Rudra in the Universal Being, Rudra, who uses the Bhuta, the criminal, the lord of the animal in man, the lord of the demoniac, Pashupati, Pramathanatha. The Rakshasi is the unbridled, licentious self-assertion of the ego which insists on the gratification of all its instincts good and bad and furiously shatters all opposition. It was the Yatudhani and the Rakshasi who sent their hoarse cry over France, adding to the luminous Mantra, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the stern and terrible addition "or death". Death to the Asura, death to all who oppose God's evolution, that was the meaning. With these two terrible Shaktis Kali did Her work. She veiled Her divine knowledge with the darkness of wrath and passion, She drank blood as wine, naked of tradition and convention She danced over all Europe and the whole continent was filled with the war-cry and the carnage and ran with the huṅkāra and the aṭṭahāsyam. It was only when She found that She was trampling on Mahadeva, God expressed in the principle of Nationalism, that She remembered Herself, flung aside Napoleon, the mighty Rakshasa, and settled down quietly to her work of perfecting nationality as the outer shell within which brotherhood may be securely and largely organised.

***

The Revolution was also great in its men, filling them all with its vehemence, its passion, its fierce demand on the world, its colossal impetus. Through four of them chiefly it helped itself, through Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre and Napoleon. Mira-beau initiated, Danton inspired, Robespierre slew, Napoleon fulfilled. The first three appeared for the moment, the man in

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the multitude, did their work and departed. The pace was swift and, if they had remained, they would have outstayed their utility and injured the future. It is always well for the man to go the moment his work is done and not to outstay the Mother's welcome. They are fortunate who get that release or are wise enough, like Garibaldi, to take it. Not altogether happy is their lot who, like Napoleon or Mazzini, outstay the lease of their appointed greatness.

***

Mirabeau ruled the morning twilight, the sandhyā of the new age. Aristocratic tribune of the people, unprincipled champion of principles, lordly democrat,—a man in whom reflection was turbulent, prudence itself bold, unflinching and reckless, the man was the meeting-place of two ages. He had the passions of the past, not its courtly restraint; the turbulence, genius, impetuosity of the future, not its steadying attachment to ideas. There is an honour of the aristocrat which has its root in manners and respects the sanctity of its own traditions; that is the honour of the Conservative. There is an honour of the democrat which has its root in ideas and respects the sanctity of its own principles; that is the honour of the Liberal. Mirabeau had neither. He was the pure Egoist, the eternal Rakshasa. Not for the sake of justice and liberty did he love justice and liberty, but for the sake of Mirabeau. Had his career been fortunate, the forms of the old regime wide enough to satisfy his ambitions and passions, the upheaval of 1789 might have found him on the other side. But because the heart and senses of Mirabeau were unsatisfied, the French Revolution triumphed. So it is that God prepares the man and the moment, using good and evil with a divine impartiality for His mighty ends. Without the man the moment is a lost opportunity; without the moment the man is a force inoperative. The meeting of the two changes the destinies of nations and the poise of the world is altered by what seems to the superficial an accident.

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***

There are times when a single personality gathers up the temperament of an epoch or a movement and by simply existing ensures its fulfilment. It would be difficult to lay down the precise services which made the existence of Danton necessary for the success of the Revolution. There are certain things he did, and no man else could have done, which compelled destiny; there are certain things he said which made France mad with resolution and courage. These words, these doings ring through the ages. So live, so immortal are they that they seem to defy cataclysm itself and insist on surviving eternal oblivion. They are full of the omnipotence and immortality of the human soul and its lordship over fate. One feels that they will recur again in aeons unborn and worlds uncreated. The power from which they sprang, expressed itself rarely in deeds and only at supreme moments. The energy of Danton lay dormant, indolent, scattering itself in stupendous oratory, satisfied with feelings and phrases. But each time it stirred, it convulsed events and sent a shock of primal elemental force rushing through the consciousness of the French nation. While he lived, moved, spoke, felt, acted, the energy he did not himself use, communicated itself to the millions; the thoughts he did not utter, seized on minds which took them for their own; the actions he might have done better himself, were done worse by others. Danton was contented. Magnificent and ostentatious, he was singularly void of personal ambition. He was satisfied to see the Revolution triumph by his strength, but in the deeds of others. His fall removed the strength of victorious Terror from the movement within France, its impulse to destroy and conquer. For a little while the impetus gathered carried it on, then it faltered and paused. Every great flood of action needs a human soul for its centre, an embodied point of the Universal Personality from which to surge out upon others. Danton was such a point, such a centre. His daily thoughts, feelings, impulses gave an equilibrium to that rushing fury, a fixity to that pregnant chaos. He was the character of the Revolution personified,—its heart, while Robespierre was only its hand. History which, being European, lays much stress on events, a little on speech, but has never realised the importance of souls, cannot appreciate men like Danton. Only the eye of the

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seer can pick them out from the mass and trace to their source those immense vibrations.

***

One may well speak of the genius of Mirabeau, the genius of Danton; it is superfluous to speak of the genius of Napoleon. But one cannot well speak of the genius of Robespierre. He was empty of genius; his intellect was acute and well-informed but uninspired; his personality fails to impress. What was it then that gave him his immense force and influence? It was the belief in the man, his faith. He believed in the Revolution, he believed in certain ideas, he believed in himself as their spokesman and executor; he came to believe in his mission to slay the enemies of the idea and make an end. And whatever he believed, he believed implicitly, unfalteringly, invincibly and pursued it with a rigid fidelity. Mirabeau, Danton, Napoleon were all capable of permanent discouragement, could recognise that they were beaten, the hour unsuitable, fate hostile. Robespierre was not. He might recoil, he might hide his head in fear, but it was only to leap again, to save himself for the next opportunity. He had a tremendous force of śraddhā. It is only such men, thoroughly conscientious and well-principled, who can slay without pity, without qualms, without resting, without turning. The Yatudhani seized on him for her purpose. The conscientious lawyer who refused a judgeship rather than sacrifice his principle by condemning a criminal to death, became the most colossal political executioner of his or any age. As we have said, if Danton was the character of the French Revolution personified when it went forth to slay, Robespierre was its hand. But, naturally, he could not recognise that limitation; he aspired to think, to construct, to rule, functions for which he was unfit. When Danton demanded that the Terror should cease and Mercy take its place, Robespierre ought to have heard in his demand the voice of the Revolution calling on him to stay his sanguinary course. But he was full of his own blind faith and would not hear. Danton died because he resisted the hand of Kali, but his mighty disembodied spirit triumphed and imposed his last thought on the country. The Terror ceased;

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Mercy took its place. Robespierre, however, has his place of honour in history; he was the man of conscience and principle among the four, the man who never turned from the path of what he understood to be virtue.

***

Napoleon took up into himself the functions of the others. As Mirabeau initiated destruction, he initiated construction and organisation and in the same self-contradictory spirit; he was the Rakshasa, the most gigantic egoist in history, the despot of liberty, the imperial protector of equality, the unprincipled organiser of great principles. Like Danton, he shaped events for a time by his thoughts and character. While Danton lived, politics moved to a licentious democracy, war to a heroism of patriotic defence. From the time he passed, the spirit of Napoleon shaped events and politics moved to the rule first of the civil, then of the military dictator, war to the organisation of republican conquest. Like Robespierre he was the executive hand of destruction and unlike Robespierre the executive hand of construction. The fury of Kali became in him self-centred, capable, full of organised thought and activity, but nonetheless impetuous, colossal, violent, devastating.

Napoleon

The name of Napoleon has been a battlefield for the prepossessions of all sorts of critics, and, according to their predilections, idiosyncrasies and political opinions, men have loved or hated, panegyrised or decried the Corsican. To blame Napoleon is like criticising Mont Blanc or throwing mud at Kunchenjunga. This phenomenon has to be understood and known, not blamed or praised. Admire we must, but as minds, not as moralists. It has not been sufficiently perceived by his panegyrists and critics that Bonaparte was not a man at all, he was a force. Only

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the nature of the force has to be considered. There are some men who are self-evidently superhuman, great spirits who are only using the human body. Europe calls them supermen, we call them vibhūtis. They are manifestations of Nature, of divine power presided over by a spirit commissioned for the purpose, and the spirit is an emanation from the Almighty, who accepts human strength and weakness but is not bound by them. They are above morality and ordinarily without a conscience, acting according to their own nature. For they are not men developing upwards from the animal to the divine and struggling against their lower natures, but beings already fulfilled and satisfied with themselves. Even the holiest of them have a contempt for the ordinary law and custom and break them easily and without remorse, as Christ did on more than one occasion, drinking wine, breaking the sabbath, consorting with publicans and harlots; as Buddha did when he abandoned his self-accepted duties as a husband, a citizen and a father; as Shankara did when he broke the holy law and trampled upon custom and ācāra to satisfy his dead mother. In our literature they are described as Gods or Siddhas or Titans or Giants. Valmiki depicts Ravana as a ten-headed giant, but it is easy to see that this was only the vision of him in the world of imaginations, the "astral plane", and that in the terms of humanity he was a Vibhuti or superman and one of the same order of beings as Napoleon.

***

The Rakshasa is the supreme and thoroughgoing individualist, who believes life to be meant for his own untrammelled self-fulfilment and self-assertion. A necessary element in humanity, he is particularly useful in revolutions. As a pure type in man he is ordinarily a thing of the past; he comes now mixed with other elements. But Napoleon was a Rakshasa of the pure type, colossal in his force and attainment. He came into the world with a tremendous appetite for power and possession and, like Ravana, he tried to swallow the whole earth in order to glut his super-natural hunger. Whatever came in his way he took as his own, ideas, men, women, fame, honours, armies, kingdoms; and he

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was not scrupulous as to his right of possession. His nature was his right; its need his justification. The attitude may be expressed in some such words as these, "Others may not have the right to do these things, but I am Napoleon."

***

The Rakshasa is not an altruist. If by satisfying himself he can satisfy others, he is pleased; but he does not make that his motive. If he has to trample on others to satisfy himself, he does so without compunction. Is he not the strong man, the efficient ruler, the mighty one? The Rakshasa has Kama, he has no Prema. Napoleon knew not what love was; he had only the kindliness that goes with possession. He loved Josephine because she satisfied his nature, France because he possessed her, his mother because she was his and congenial, his soldiers because they were necessary to his glory. But the love did not go beyond his need of them. It was self-satisfaction and had no element in it of self-surrender. The Rakshasa slays all that opposes him and he is callous about the extent of the slaughter. But he is never cruel. Napoleon had no taint of Nero in him, but he flung away without a qualm whole armies as holocausts on the altar of his glory; he shot Hofer and murdered Enghien. What then is there in the Rakshasa that makes him necessary? He is individuality, he is force, he is capacity; he is the second power of God, wrath, strength, grandeur, rushing impetuosity, overbearing courage, the avalanche, the thunderbolt, he is Balaram, he is Jehovah, he is Rudra. As such we may admire and study him.

***

But the Vibhuti, though he takes self-gratification and enjoyment on his way, never comes for self-gratification and enjoyment. He comes for work, to help man on his way, the world in its evolution. Napoleon was one of the mightiest of Vibhuties, one of the most dominant. There are some of them who hold themselves back, suppress the force in their personality in order to put it wholly into their work. Of such were Shakespeare,

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Washington, Victor Emmanuel. There are others like Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Goethe, who are as obviously superhuman in their personality as in the work they accomplish. Napoleon was the greatest in practical capacity of all moderns. In capacity, though not in character, he resembles Bhisma of the Mahabharat. He had the same sovran, irresistible, world-possessing grasp of war, politics, government, legislation, society; the same masterly handling of masses and amazing glut for details. He had the iron brain that nothing fatigues, the faultless memory that loses nothing, the clear insight that puts everything in its place with spontaneous accuracy. It was as if a man were to carry Caucasus on his shoulders and with that burden race successfully an express engine, yet note and forecast every step and never falter. To prove that anything in a human body could be capable of such work is by itself a service to our progress for which we cannot be sufficiently grateful to Napoleon.

***

The work of Bonaparte was wholly admirable. It is true that he took freedom for a season from France, but France was not then fit for democratic freedom. She had to learn discipline for a while under the rule of the soldier of Revolution. He could not have done the work he did, hampered by an effervescent French Parliament ebullient in victory, discouraged in defeat. He had to organise the French Revolution so far as earth could then bear it, and he had to do it in the short span of an ordinary life-time. He had also to save it. The aggression of France upon Europe was necessary for self-defence, for Europe did not mean to tolerate the Revolution. She had to be taught that the Revolution meant not anarchy but a reorganisation so much mightier than the old that a single country so reorganised could conquer united Europe. That task Napoleon did effectively. It has been said that his foreign policy failed, because he left France smaller than he found it. That is true. But it was not Napoleon's mission to aggrandise France geographically. He did not come for France, but for humanity, and even in his failure he served God and prepared the future. The balance of Europe had to be

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disturbed in order to prepare new combinations and his gigantic operations disturbed it fatally. He roused the spirit of Nationalism in Italy, in Germany, in Poland, while he established the tendency towards the formation of great Empires; and it is the harmonised fulfilment of Nationalism and Empire that was the immediate future. He compelled Europe to accept the necessity of reorganisation, political and social.

***

The puṇya of overthrowing Napoleon was divided between England, Germany and Russia. He had to be overthrown, because, though he prepared the future and destroyed the past, he misused the present. To save the present from his violent hands was the work of his enemies, and this merit gave to these three countries a great immediate development and the possession of the nineteenth century. England and Germany went farthest because they acted most wholeheartedly and as nations, not as Governments. In Russia it was the Government that acted, but with the help of the people. On the other hand, the countries sympathetic to Napoleon, Italy, Ireland, Poland or those which acted weakly or falsely, such as Spain and Austria, have declined, suffered, struggled and, even when partially successful, could not attain their fulfilment. But the puṇya is now exhausted. The future with which the victorious nations made a temporary compromise, the future which Napoleon served and prepared its early movements demands possession, and those who can reorganise themselves most swiftly and perfectly under its pressure, will inherit the twentieth century; those who deny it, will perish. The first offer is made to the nations in present possession; it is withheld for a time from the others. That is the reason why Socialism is most insistent now in England, Germany and Russia; but in all these countries it is faced by an obstinate and unprincipled opposition. The early decades of the twentieth century will select the chosen nations of the future.

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***

There remains the question of Nationalism and Empire; it is put to all these nations, but chiefly to England. It is put to her in Ireland, in Egypt, in India. She has the best opportunity of harmonising the conflicting claims of Nationalism and Empire. In fighting against Nationalism she is fighting against her own chance of a future, and her temporary victory over Indian Nationalism is the one thing her guardian spirits have most to fear. For the recoil will be as tremendous as the recoil that over-threw Napoleon. The delusion that the despotic possession of India is indispensable to her retention of Empire, may be her undoing. It is indispensable to her, if she meditates, like Napoleon, the conquest of Asia and of the world; it is not necessary to her imperial self-fulfilment: for even without India she would possess an Empire greater than the Roman. Her true position in India is that of a trustee and temporary guardian; her only wise and righteous policy the devolution of her trust upon her ward with a view to alliance, not ownership. The opportunity of which Napoleon dreamed, a great Indian Empire, has been conceded to her and not to Napoleon. But that opportunity is a two-edged weapon which, if misused, is likely to turn upon and slay the wielder.

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Notes on Bergson

I

Bergson—"philosophy of change".

"It symbolises the protest of the modern impatient man of action against the great Platonic tradition in philosophy of reason or intellect and static reality."

"It substitutes force for inertia, life for death and liberty for fatalism." "Physics and logic are appropriate to the study of the inverse movement, matter, which is life or élan vital pulverised and its method is intellect and logic."

"Philosophy is the study of becoming in general and its method is intuition."

"Scrap the Platonic tradition and follow Plotinus. 'Ask me not but understand in silence as I (Nature) am silent and am not wont to speak'."

***

"A philosophy of evolution itself evolving", "positive and empirical", "moulded on experience, determined to base itself on solid grounds, a doctrine in no sense systematic, distinguishes different problems to examine them one by one ... enemy of conventionality ... antidote to the dogmatic finality of the traditional philosopher."

A short-cut through "the turning of the mind homeward, the coincidence of the human consciousness with the living principle."

"The destiny of man will be realised because it is the nature of the élan vital to triumph over matter and environment."

II

The office of intellect is not to fathom reality, but to fabricate and preside over action... intellect cannot comprehend life

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and reality. Intellect (logic) goes round the object, intuition enters into the object; one stops at the [absolute], the other enters into the absolute.

A philosophy of change? But what is change? In ordinary parlance change means passage from one condition to another and that would seem to imply passage from one status to another status. The shoot changes into a tree, passes from the status of shoot to the status of tree and there it stops; man passes from the status of young man to the status of old man and the only farther change possible to him is death or dissolution of his status. So it would seem that change is not something isolated which is the sole original and eternal reality, but it is something dependent on status, and if status were non-existent, change also could not exist. For we have to ask, when you speak of change as alone real, change of what, from what, to what? Without this "what" change could not be.

Change is evidently the change of some form or state of existence from one condition to another condition. Otherwise, what is it? Is it itself fundamental and absolute, not explicable or definable by any other term than itself, perceivable and intelligible as the sole reality by a naked intuition which feels and cries out "Change, reality" and then falls dumb and can say no more?

An object changes, a person changes, a condition of things changes. But can it be said that the object is no real object but only a continuity of change, or that a person is not a person but a continuity of change, a condition of things is not a condition and there are no things but there is only a continuity of change? This seems to be an illustration of the besetting sin of metaphysics—to exalt a word into a reality or an idea into a reality without fathoming what is the reality which it tries to indicate. For to label with a word or a name is not to fathom and to define, to erect a concept is not to fathom. Fathom for us then what is change before you ask us to accept it as the only reality. You may say, "I have fathomed it, I have seen it to be the one constant real, but do not ask me to define what it is; listen rather in silence to the silence of Nature and you too will fathom." But what if so listening, I fathom other realities than change—let us say, immutable being as well as mutable force, status as well as

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change? To prevent that you plunge into speech and not silence, into dialectics of the intellect instead of the undebatable certitudes of intuition, and so abandon your own methodology. If intuition alone is to be used, then you must give a place to my intuition as well as yours, and all, however contradictory in appearance, must stand until a greater intuition comes in to put all in their place, reconcile, include in a consistent whole.

In the world of our experience contradictories often complement and are necessary to each other's existence. Change is possible only if there is a status from which to change; but status again exists only as a step that pauses, a step in the continuous passage of change or a step on which change pauses before it passes into another step in its creative passage. And behind this relation is a duality of eternal status and eternal motion and behind this duality is something that is neither status nor change but contains both as its aspects—and That is likely to be the true Reality.

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"Arya" - Its Significance

What is the significance of the name, "Arya"?

The question has been put from more than one point of view. To most European readers the name¹ figuring on our cover is likely to be a hieroglyph which attracts or repels according to the temperament. Indians know the word, but it has lost for them the significance which it bore to their forefathers. Western Philology has converted it into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values. Now, even among the philologists, some are beginning to recognise that the word in its original use expressed not a difference of race, but a difference of culture. For in the Veda the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration. The Aryan gods were the supraphysical powers who assisted the mortal in his struggle towards the nature of the godhead. All the highest aspirations of the early human race, its noblest religious temper, its most idealistic velleities of thought are summed up in this single vocable.

In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness for knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure, rude, cruel or false, was termed un-Aryan. There is no word in human speech that has a nobler history.

In the early days of comparative Philology, when the scholars sought in the history of words for the prehistoric history of peoples, it was supposed that the word Arya came from the root

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ar, to plough, and that the Vedic Aryans were so called when they separated from their kin in the north-west who despised the pursuits of agriculture and remained shepherds and hunters. This ingenious speculation has little or nothing to support it. But in a sense we may accept the derivation. Whoever cultivates the field that the Supreme Spirit has made for him, his earth of plenty within and without, does not leave it barren or allow it to run to seed, but labours to exact from it its full yield, is by that effort an Aryan.

If Arya were a purely racial term, a more probable derivation would be ar, meaning strength or valour, from ar to fight, whence we have the name of the Greek war-god Ares, areios, brave or warlike, perhaps even aretê, virtue, signifying, like the Latin virtus, first, physical strength and courage and then moral force and elevation. This sense of the word also we may accept. "We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors." For Wisdom implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest, most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all things and charity and reverence for all things, even the most apparently mean, ugly or dark, for the sake of the universal Deity who chooses to dwell equally in all. But, also, the law of right action is a choice, the preference of that which expresses the godhead to that which conceals it. And the choice entails a battle, a struggle. It is not easily made, it is not easily enforced.

Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the śreṣṭha of the Gita.

Intrinsically, in its most fundamental sense, Arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature. He overcomes earth and the body and does not consent like ordinary men to their dullness, inertia, dead routine and

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tamasic limitations. He overcomes life and its energies and refuses to be dominated by their hungers and cravings or enslaved by their rajasic passions. He overcomes the mind and its habits, he does not live in a shell of ignorance, inherited prejudices, customary ideas, pleasant opinions, but knows how to seek and choose, to be large and flexible in intelligence even as he is firm and strong in his will. For in everything he seeks truth, in everything right, in everything height and freedom.

Self-perfection is the aim of his self-conquest. Therefore what he conquers he does not destroy, but ennobles and fulfils. He knows that the body, life and mind are given him in order to attain to something higher than they; therefore they must be transcended and overcome, their limitations denied, the absorption of their gratifications rejected. But he knows also that the Highest is something which is no nullity in the world, but increasingly expresses itself here,—a divine Will, Consciousness, Love, Beatitude which pours itself out, when found, through the terms of the lower life on the finder and on all in his environment that is capable of receiving it. Of that he is the servant, lover and seeker. When it is attained, he pours it forth in work, love, joy and knowledge upon mankind. For always the Aryan is a worker and warrior. He spares himself no labour of mind or body whether to seek the Highest or to serve it. He avoids no difficulty, he accepts no cessation from fatigue. Always he fights for the coming of that kingdom within himself and in the world.

The Aryan perfected is the Arhat. There is a transcendent Consciousness which surpasses the universe and of which all these worlds are only a side-issue and a by-play. To that consciousness he aspires and attains. There is a Consciousness which, being transcendent, is yet the universe and all that the universe contains. Into that consciousness he enlarges his limited ego; he becomes one with all beings and all inanimate objects in a single self-awareness, love, delight, all-embracing energy. There is a consciousness which, being both transcendental and universal, yet accepts the apparent limitations of individuality for work, for various standpoints of knowledge, for the play of the Lord with His creations; for the ego is there that it may finally convert itself into a free centre of the divine work and the divine

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play. That consciousness too he has sufficient love, joy and knowledge to accept; he is puissant enough to effect that conversion. To embrace individuality after transcending it is the last and divine sacrifice. The perfect Arhat is he who is able to live simultaneously in all these three apparent states of existence, elevate the lower into the higher, receive the higher into the lower, so that he may represent perfectly in the symbols of the world that with which he is identified in all parts of his being,—the triple and triune Brahman.

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The "Arya's" Second Year

The "Arya", born by a coincidence which might well have been entirely disastrous to its existence in the very month when there broke out the greatest catastrophe that has overtaken the modern world, has yet, though carried on under serious difficulties, completed its first year. We have been obliged unfortunately to discontinue the French edition from February last as our director M. Paul Richard was then recalled to join his class of the Reserve Army in France. We have to thank the indulgence of our French subscribers who have consented to receive the English edition in its stead.

We have been obliged in our first year for reasons we shall indicate in the preface to our August number to devote the review almost entirely to high philosophy and severe and difficult thinking. But the object we had in view is now fulfilled and we recognise that we have no right to continue to subject our readers to the severe strain of almost 64 pages of such strenuous intellectual labour. We shall therefore in the next year devote a greater part of our space to articles on less profound subjects written in a more popular style. Needless to say, our matter will always fall within the definition of a philosophical Review and centre around the fundamental thought which the "Arya" represents.

We shall continue the Life Divine, the Synthesis of Yoga and the Secret of the Veda; but we intend to replace the Selected Hymns by a translation of the Hymns of the Atris (the fifth Mandala of the Rig-veda) so conceived as to make the sense of the Vedic chants at once and easily intelligible without the aid of a commentary to the general reader. The same circumstance which obliged us to discontinue the French edition, will also prevent us from continuing the Wherefore of the Worlds. Happily, we have been able to bring it to a point where the writer's central idea appears, the new creation of our world by redeeming Love,—a fitting point for the faith and reason of man to pause upon

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at the moment of the terrible ordeal which that world is now undergoing.

Without the divine Will which knows best what to use and what to throw aside, no human work can come to the completion hoped for by our limited vision. To that Will we entrust the continuance and the result of our labours and we conclude the first year of the "Arya" with the aspiration that the second may see the speedy and fortunate issue of the great world-convulsion which still pursues us and that by the Power which brings always the greatest possible good out of apparent evil there may emerge from this disastrous but long-foreseen collapse of the old order a new and better marked by the triumph of higher principles of love, wisdom and unity and a sensible advance of the race towards our ultimate goal,—the conscious oneness of the Soul in humanity and the divinity of man.

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The "Arya's" Fourth Year

We close this month the fourth year of the "Arya", and bring to a conclusion at the same time the "Psychology of Social Development", the "Ideal of Human Unity" and the first series of the "Essays on the Gita." A few more chapters will complete the "Life Divine." We are therefore well in view of the completion of the first part of the work which we had proposed to ourselves in starting this philosophical monthly, and we take the opportunity to say a few words upon the principle which has governed our writing and which the difficulty of a serial exposition on several lines at a time, scattering and breaking up the total impression, may have prevented some of our readers from grasping in its entirety.

We had not in view at any time a review or magazine in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to say, a popular presentation or criticism of current information and current thought on philosophical questions. Nor was it, as in some philosophical and religious magazines in India, the restatement of an existing school or position of philosophical thought cut out in its lines and needing only to be popularised and supported. Our idea was the thinking out of a synthetic philosophy which might be a contribution to the thought of the new age that is coming upon us. We start from the idea that humanity is moving to a great change of its life which will even lead to a new life of the race,—in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope,—and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truth which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based, were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right to make the endeavour at all; but the complete intellectual statement of them and their results and issues had to be found. This meant a continuous thinking, a high and subtle and difficult thinking on several lines, and this strain, which we

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had to impose on ourselves, we were obliged to impose also on our readers. This too is the reason why we have adopted the serial form which in a subject like philosophy has its very obvious disadvantages, but was the only one possible.

Our original intention was to approach the synthesis from the starting-point of the two lines of culture which divide human thought and are now meeting at its apex, the knowledge of the West and the knowledge of the East; but owing to the exigencies of the war this could not be fulfilled. The "Arya" except for one unfinished series has been an approach to the highest reconciling truth from the point of view of the Indian mentality and Indian spiritual experience, and Western knowledge has been viewed from that standpoint. Here the main idea which has governed our writing, was imposed on us by the very conditions of the problem. All philosophy is concerned with the relations between two things, the fundamental truth of existence and the forms in which existence presents itself to our experience. The deepest experience shows that the fundamental truth is truth of the Spirit; the other is the truth of life, truth of form and shaping force and living idea and action. Here the West and East have followed divergent lines. The West has laid most emphasis on truth of life and for a time come to stake its whole existence upon truth of life alone, to deny the existence of Spirit or to relegate it to the domain of the unknown and unknowable; from that exaggeration it is now beginning to return. The East has laid most emphasis on truth of the Spirit and for a time came, at least in India, to stake its whole existence upon that truth alone, to neglect the possibilities of life or to limit it to a narrow development or a fixed status; the East too is beginning to return from this exaggeration. The West is reawaking to the truth of the Spirit and the spiritual possibilities of life, the East is reawaking to the truth of Life and tends towards a new application to it of its spiritual knowledge. Our view is that the antinomy created between them is an unreal one. Spirit being the fundamental truth of existence, life can be only its manifestation; Spirit must be not only the origin of life but its basis, its pervading reality and its highest and total result. But the forms of life as they appear to us are at once its disguises and its instruments of self-manifestation.

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Man has to grow in knowledge till they cease to be disguises and grow in spiritual power and quality till they become in him its perfect instruments. To grow into the fullness of the divine is the true law of human life and to shape his earthly existence into its image is the meaning of his evolution. This is the fundamental tenet of the philosophy of the Arya.

This truth had to be worked out first of all from the metaphysical point of view; for in philosophy metaphysical truth is the nucleus of the rest, it is the statement of the last and most general truths on which all the others depend or in which they are gathered up. Therefore we gave the first place to the "Life Divine". Here we start from the Vedantic position, its ideas of the Self and mind and life, of Sachchidananda and the world, of Knowledge and Ignorance, of rebirth and the Spirit. But Vedanta is popularly supposed to be a denial of life, and this is no doubt a dominant trend it has taken. Though starting from the original truth that all is the Brahman, the Self, it has insisted in the end that the world is simply not-Brahman, not-Self; it has ended in a paradox. We have attempted on the contrary to establish from its data a comprehensive Adwaita. We have shown that mind and life and matter are derivations from the Self through a spiritual mind or supermind which is the real support of cosmic existence and by developing mind into that man can arrive at the real truth of the spirit in the world and the real truth and highest law of life. The Self is Sachchidananda and there is no incurable antinomy between that and the world; only we see the world through the eyes of the Ignorance and we have to see it through the eyes of the Knowledge. Our Ignorance itself is only knowledge developing out of its involution in the apparent nescience of Matter and on its way to a return to its conscious integrality. To accomplish that return and manifest the spiritual life in the human existence is the opportunity given by the successions of rebirth. We accept the truth of evolution, not so much in the physical form given to it by the West as in its philosophical truth, the involution of life and mind and spirit here in matter and their progressive manifestation. At the summit of this evolution is the spiritual life, the life divine.

It was necessary to show that these truths were not inconsistent

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with the old Vedantic truth, therefore we included explanations from this point of view of the Veda, two of the Upanishads and the Gita. But the Veda has been obscured by the ritualists and the scholiasts. Therefore we showed in a series of articles, initially only as yet, the way of writing of the Vedic mystics, their system of symbols and the truths they figure. Among the Upanishads we took the Isha and the Kena; to be full we should have added the Taittiriya, but it is a long one and for it we had no space. The Gita we are treating as a powerful application of truth of spirit to the largest and most difficult part of the truth of life, to action, and a way by which action can lead us to birth into the Spirit and can be harmonised with the spiritual life. Truth of philosophy is of a merely theoretical value unless it can be lived, and we have therefore tried in the "Synthesis of Yoga" to arrive at a synthetical view of the principles and methods of the various lines of spiritual self-discipline and the way in which they can lead to an integral divine life in the human existence. But this is an individual self-development, and therefore it was necessary to show too how our ideal can work out in the social life of mankind. In the "Psychology of Social Development" we have indicated how these truths affect the evolution of human society. In the "Ideal of Human Unity" we have taken the present trend of mankind towards a closer unification and tried to appreciate its tendencies and show what is wanting to them in order that real human unity may be achieved.

Our plan has compelled us to deal mainly with first principles and work them out in their fullness. In future we do not propose to start any other long series of this kind, but to have more short articles with a broader, more direct and, as far as possible, more popular treatment. We shall also permit ourselves a freer range and diversity, so far as that is permissible in a philosophical review.

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The News of the Month

L'Idee Nouvelle

In close connection with the intellectual work of synthesis undertaken by this Review a Society has been founded in French India under the name of the New Idea, (L'Idée Nouvelle.) Its object is to group in a common intellectual life and fraternity of sentiment those who accept the spiritual tendency and idea it represents and who aspire to realise it in their own individual and social action.

The Society has already made a beginning by grouping together young men of different castes and religions in a common ideal. All sectarian and political questions are necessarily foreign to its idea and its activities. It is on a higher plane of thought superior to external differences of race, caste, creed and opinion and in the solidarity of the spirit that unity can be realised.

The Idée Nouvelle has two rules only for its members, first, to devote some time every day to meditation and self-culture, the second, to use or create daily at least one opportunity of being helpful to others. This is, naturally, only the minimum of initial self-training necessary for those who have yet to cast the whole trend of their thought and feeling into the mould of a higher life and to enlarge the egoistic into a collective consciousness.

The Society has its headquarters at Pondicherry with a reading-room and library. A section has been founded at Karikal and others are likely to be opened at Yanaon and Mahe.

An Indo-French Committee in Paris

An Indo-French Committee (Comité Franco-Hindou) has been founded in Paris and M. Pierre Loti has been invited to become its Honorary President. The Committee proposes to develop intellectual, scientific, artistic and economic relations between France and India. It is a good deal for one Committee! Let us at least hope that it will be able to carry out the first item of its

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programme. No doubt, everything that brings men and nations nearer to each other help in the formation of a general intelligence more synthetic and comprehensive than the old divided mind of humanity; but it is above all in the realm of thought and by the exchange of ideas and the deeper experiences that the best fruits are likely to be borne. Every new tie, especially every tie of the spirit between Europe and India, between the West of today and the East of yesterday and tomorrow, is a welcome sign of the times for those who know how much the world's progress depends on their union.

M. Pierre Loti, in a letter addressed to the President of the Committee, thus expresses his veneration for India:—

"And now I salute thee with awe, with veneration and wonder, ancient India of whom I am the adept, the India of the highest splendours of Art and Philosophy, the India also of monstrous mysteries that terrify, India our cradle, India where all that has been produced since her beginnings was ever impetuous and colossal. May thy awakening astonish that Occident, decadent, mean, daily dwindling, slayer of Nations, slayer of gods, slayer of souls, which yet bows down still, ancient India, before the prodigies of thy primordial conceptions."

We cannot but subscribe to the sentiment, if not to all the phrases, of this fine piece of literature.

But what are these monstrous and terrifying mysteries of which M. Loti speaks? Terror is no longer in the mode, the age of mysteries is over and the age of monstrosity has never been. Ignorance is the only monstrosity.

Arya, August 1914

The War

The "Arya", a Review of pure Philosophy, has no direct concern with political passions and interests and their results. But neither can it ignore the enormous convulsion which is at present in progress, nor at such a time can it affect to deal only with the pettier happenings of the intellectual world as if men were not dying in thousands daily, the existence of great empires threatened and the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

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The War has its aspects, of supreme importance to a synthetic Philosophy, with which we would have right to deal. But now is not the hour, now in this moment of supreme tension and widespread agony. Therefore, for the time, we suppress this heading in our Review and shall replace it by brief notes on subjects of philosophical interest, whether general or of the day. Meanwhile, with the rest of the world, we await in silence the predestined result.

Arya, September 1914

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Bibliographical Note

I, II,III. The writings in these three sections were collected from Sri Aurobindo's unrevised manuscripts. Under the title of the first article, The Hour of God, they were brought together in book-form in 1959. The same title has been given to this Volume No. XVII of the Centenary Edition.

IV. Thoughts and Aphorisms and Words of the Master are also from unrevised manuscripts. A few extracts culled from Sri Aurobindo's letters and published in the Standard Bearer in 1922 under the title Words of the Master have also been included here. THOUGHTS AND APHORISMS first appeared in book-form in 1958.

V. Except for The Real Difficulty which has been taken from the Standard Bearer (1920), the articles in this section too are from unrevised and incomplete manuscripts.

VI. A Preface on National Education appeared in the Arya in 1920 in two parts. A System of National Education and The National Value of Art were serialized in the Karmayogin in 1909-10. They have been in circulation in book-form since 1921 and 1922 respectively.

VII. Premises of Astrology are unrevised and incomplete notes. They are being published here for the first time.

VIII. These reviews of books and journals appeared in the Arya during 1914-20. In the book VIEWS AND REVIEWS which first appeared in 1941, five of these reviews were reprinted, viz. Hymns to the Goddess; South Indian Bronzes; God, the Invisible King; Rupam and About Astrology.

IX. Dayananda, Rishi Bankim Chandra, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and The Men That Pass appeared in book-form in 1940 under the title BANKIM - TILAK - DAYANANDA. The two articles on Dayananda were contributed to the Vedic Magazine in 1915 and 1916. Rishi Bankim Chandra was written for Bande Mataram in 1907. Bal Gangadhar Tilak appeared as Introduction to SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF TILAK, 1918. The Men That Pass appeared in the Karmayogin - 1909. A Great Mind, a Great Will was a message sent to New India on Tilak's passing away, at the request of Bipin Chandra Pal. Andal and Nammalwar are from the Arya (1915). They were written with the assistance of the Tamil poet Subramanya Bharathi.

X. Historical Impressions was originally written for the Karmayogin but first published in the Standard Bearer in 1920 and included in the book MAN - SLAVE OR FREE? in 1969.
Notes on Bergson are from unrevised manuscripts and were first included in the 1959 edition of The Hour of God.

XI. These notes are from the Arya (1914-20).