रवींद्र का दलित विमर्श-एक
मनुष्यता ही मनुष्य का धर्म, मनुष्यता ही इतिहास भूगोल
पलाश विश्वास
(सत्ता की राजनीति हमारे इतिहास,जीवन दर्शन,संस्कृति,मातृभाषा,लोक,जनपद और जीवन यापन पर हावी है।जिन शाश्वत मूल्यों पर आधारित है भारत की सभ्यता,उन्हें सिरे से बदलने की कोशिश हो रही है।ब्रिटिश हुकूमत के साम्राज्यवाद के खिलाफ भारतीय जनता के एकताबद्ध महासंग्राम ने इस देश को एकसूत्र में बांधा है।इससे पहले भारत अलग अलग राष्ट्रीयताओं के खंडित भूगोल का समूह मात्र था।स्वतंत्रता,संप्रभुता और लोकतंत्र की दिशा में भारतीय स्वतंत्रता संग्राम की विरासत हमारी नींव है।भारतीय रेलवे नेटवर्क,इंडियन स्टैंडर्ड टाइम,भारतीय सिनेमा,भारतीय रंगकर्म,भारतीय संविधान के साथ साथ भारत की संत फकीर बाउल गुरु परंपरा में विविधता,बहुलता के मध्य एकता और सहिष्णुता के भारत का निर्माण हुआ जिसका इतिहास पिर बौद्धमय है।हड़प्पा मोहनजोदोड़ो की सिंधुसभ्यता,वैदिकी सभ्यता और बौद्धमय भारत के इतिहास और विकास के मध्य भारतीय जीवन दर्शन का लोकतंत्र है।रवींद्र साहित्य की भावभूमि यही है,जो दरअसल आधुनिक भारत की परिकल्पना है,जिसका अंतिम लक्ष्य समानता और न्याय है।असहिष्णुता,घृणा,हिंसा की मुक्तबाजारी कारपोरेट नरसंहार संस्कृति में जब भारतीय सभ्यता,इतिहास,विरासत और लोकतंत्र,स्वतंत्रता और संप्रभुता के साथ राष्ट्रीय एकता और अखंडता के लिए गंभीर चुनौतियां हैं,तब रवींद्र के व्यक्तित्व और कृतित्व को मिटाने के लिए विभाजनकारी धर्मोन्मादी अंध राष्ट्रवाद की सुनामी चली है।
मैंने अस्पृश्यता,असमानता और अन्याय के खिलाफ मनुष्यता और भारतीयता के रवींद्र दर्शन पर एक पुस्तक 2002-2003 के दौरान लिखी थी,जो प्रकाशित नहीं हो सकी।इस बीच मैंने अपनी तमाम प्रकाशित अप्रकाशित रचनाओं और संदर्भ पुस्तकों को पैक अप की तैयारी में कबाड़ीवाले को दे दिया है क्योंकि बहुत जल्दी किराये का यह दड़बा छोड़ना है।संजोग से रवींद्र का दलित विमर्श की पांडिलिपि की कुछ टुकड़े बचे हुए मिल गये हैं,जो अधूरे हैं।नये संदर्भों और सवालों के परिप्रेक्ष्य में मैं कोशिश कर रहा हूं कि वह विमर्श कमसकम मेरे ब्लागों के जरिये आपको शेयर करुं।उम्मीद है कि आप इस विमर्श में सहभागी बनेंगे।यह उपक्रम अमेरिका से सावधान की तरह इंटरएक्टिव हो,मेरी कोशिश यही रहेगी।मेरे पास फिलहाल कोई काम नहीं है तो मैंने वक्त बिताने का यह बहाना खोज लिया है,ऐसा समझकर विद्वतजन मेरे दुस्साहस का अन्यथा नहीं लेंगे,उम्मीद है।)
आर्यावर्त का भूगोल भारत का भूगोल नहीं है।भारत के भूगोल को बदलने में गुरखा और डोगरा शासकों की जैसी भूमिका रही है,जैसे तमिलराजाओं का दक्षिण पूर्व एशिया तक साम्राज्य विस्तार रहा है,जैसे कनिष्क और समद्र गुप्त के समय भारत का भूगोल रहा है या सम्राट अशोक या चंद्रगुप्त के समय भारत का भूगोल रहा है या पठानों की सल्तनत और मुगलिया हिंदुस्तान का भूगोल रहा है,वैसा कोई भूगोल उसीतरह भारत का नक्शा नहीं है जैसे सिंधु सभ्यता में रेशम पथ के समूचे भूखंड,भूमध्य सागर, मध्यएशिया और डेनमार्क नार्वे तक विस्तृत भारत के इतिहास का भूगोल बारत का नक्शा नहीं है।आर्यावर्त में तो समूचा गायपट्टी भी नहीं है।विंध्य और अरावली के उत्तर तक आर्यावर्त सीमाबद्ध रहा है,जिसमें बंगाल,ओड़ीशा समेत पूर्वोत्तर भारत कभी नहीं रहा है।वैदिकी सभ्यता का भूगोल यही रहा है।जबकि बौद्धमय भारत का भूगोल लगभग समूचा भारत और तिब्बत चीन से लेकर दक्षिण पूर्व एशिया तक विस्तृत रहा है और इसीतरह तमिल अनार्य राजाओं का साम्राज्य लगभग समूचे दक्षिण पूर्व एशिया है,जो कंबोडिया और वियतनाम तक विस्तृत है।
जाहिर है कि भारतीय इतिहास सिर्फ वैदिकी और आर्य सभ्यता का इतिहास नहीं है।यह सिर्फ रामायण महाभारत का भूगोल भी नहीं है और न वेदों,उपनिषदों,पुराणों,स्मृतियों तक सीमाबद्ध है भारत,जैसा कि अब इतिहास बदलने वाले लोग साबित करने का उपक्रम चला रहे हैं।इस इतिहास का एक बड़ा हिस्सा प्राचीन भारत की सिंधु सभ्यता है तो बौद्धमय भारत के बिना यह इतिहास भूगोल अधूरा है।
वेद, उपनिषद, पुराण और स्मृतियां बेशक भरतीय इतिहास और संस्कृति के महत्वपूर्ण अध्याय हैं,लेकिन वह अनार्य, द्रविड़, तमिल, शक, हुण, कुषाण, खस, गुरखा, डोगरी, अहमिया,बंग,उत्कल सभ्यताओं की विविधताओं के बिना अधूरा है।
रवींद्रनाथ विविधता और बहुलता,सहिष्णुता,मनुष्यता,सभ्यता,संस्कृति और विश्वबंधुत्व के शायद सबसे बड़े प्रवक्ता रहे हैं और वैसे ही वे भारतीयता के सबसे बड़े भविष्यद्रष्टा भी थे।जिस धर्मोन्मादी राष्ट्रवाद और अस्मिता राजनीति के तहत उन्हें अस्पृश्य बहिस्कृत करने का कार्यक्रम है,वह कोई नया उपक्रम भी नहीं है।
बंगाल के नवजागरण के समय से यथास्थिति की जन्मजात मनुस्मृति स्थाई बंदोबस्त प्रगति के खिलाफ लगातार सक्रिय है,उन्होंने रवींद्र नाथ को शुरु से अस्पृश्य बना रखा है।
पश्चिम ने रवींद्रनाथ को नोबेल पुरस्कार देने के तुरंत बाद उन्हें भारतीय सभ्यता की संत परंपरा में शामिल किया हुआ है।गीतांजलि के लिए उन्हें मिले नोबेल पुरस्कार के बाद यूरोप के तमाम अखबारों में एक भारतीय संत रवींद्रनाथ की चर्चा होती रही है,जिनका धर्म मनुष्यता है।
रवींद्रनाथ के व्यक्तित्व और कृतित्व को समझने के लिए मनुष्यता के इस धर्म को समझना बेहद जरुरी है,जिसकी जड़ें मनुस्मृति विरोधी निराकार एकेश्वरवादी ब्रहमसमाज आंदोलन और बंगाल में सतीप्रथा,बाल विवाह,बहुविवाह जैसी कुरीतियों का अंत करने वाले पितृसत्ता के विरुद्ध स्त्री मुक्ति आंदोलन के साथ साथ जल जंगल जमीन के हकहकूक के लिए भारत के आदिवासियों,बहुजनों,किसानों के जनविद्रोहों और भारत की एकताबद्ध साम्राज्यवाद विरोधी स्त्रतंत्रता संग्राम और साधु, संत,फकीर,बाउल की सामंतवाद विरोधी मनुष्यता के दर्शन और बौद्धमयभारत में हैं।
1930 में आक्सफोर्ड विश्वविद्यालय में मनुष्य के धर्म शीर्षक से हिबर्ट लेक्चर में विश्वकवि गुरुदेव रवींद्रनाथ ने विशवबंधुत्व के इस मनुष्यता के धर्म पर विस्तार से अपना वक्तव्य रखा है,जिसे बाद में उन्होंने पुस्तकाकर में प्रकशाति किया है।भारतीय इतिहास,साहित्य और संस्कृति के छात्रों के लिए यह एक अनिवार्य पाठ है।
विकीपीडिया के मुताबिकः
The Religion of Man (Manusher Dhormo) (1931) is a compilation of lectures by Rabindranath Tagore, edited by him and drawn largely from his Hibbert Lectures given at Oxford University in May 1930.[1] A Brahmo playwright and poet of global renown, Tagore deals with largely universal themes of God, divine experience, illumination, and spirituality. A brief conversation between him and Albert Einstein, "Note on the Nature of Reality", is included as an appendix.
बांग्ला में इस पुस्तक की भूमिका में रवींद्रनाथ ने भारतीय धर्म क्रम के आध्यात्मिक शाश्वत मूल्यों की ही चर्चा की हैः
মানুষের ধর্ম
ভূমিকা
মানুষের একটা দিক আছে যেখানে বিষয়বুদ্ধি নিয়ে সে আপন সিদ্ধি খোঁজে। সেইখানে আপন ব্যক্তিগত জীবনযাত্রানির্বাহে তার জ্ঞান, তার কর্ম, তার রচনাশক্তি একান্ত ব্যাপৃত। সেখানে সে জীবরূপে বাঁচতে চায়।
কিন্তু মানুষের আর-একটা দিক আছে যা এই ব্যক্তিগত বৈষয়িকতার বাইরে। সেখানে জীবনযাত্রার আদর্শে যাকে বলি ক্ষতি তাই লাভ, যাকে বলি মৃত্যু সেই অমরতা। সেখানে বর্তমান কালের জন্যে বস্তু সংগ্রহ করার চেয়ে অনিশ্চিত কালের উদ্দেশে আত্মত্যাগ করার মূল্য বেশি। সেখানে জ্ঞান উপস্থিত-প্রয়োজনের সীমা পেরিয়ে যায়, কর্ম স্বার্থের প্রবর্তনাকে অস্বীকার করে। সেখানে আপন স্বতন্ত্র জীবনের চেয়ে যে বড়ো জীবন সেই জীবনে মানুষ বাঁচতে চায়।
স্বার্থ আমাদের যে-সব প্রয়াসের দিকে ঠেলে নিয়ে যায় তার মূল প্রেরণা দেখি জীবপ্রকৃতিতে; যা আমাদের ত্যাগের দিকে, তপস্যার দিকে নিয়ে যায় তাকেই বলি মনুষ্যত্ব, মানুষের ধর্ম।
কোন্ মানুষের ধর্ম। এতে কার পাই পরিচয়। এ তো সাধারণ মানুষের ধর্ম নয়, তা হলে এর জন্যে সাধনা করতে হত না।
আমাদের অন্তরে এমন কে আছেন যিনি মানব অথচ যিনি ব্যক্তিগত মানবকে অতিক্রম করে 'সদা জনানাং হৃদয়ে সন্নিবিষ্টঃ'। তিনি সর্বজনীন সর্বকালীন মানব। তাঁরই আকর্ষণে মানুষের চিন্তায় ভাবে কর্মে সর্বজনীনতার আবির্ভাব। মহাত্মারা সহজে তাঁকে অনুভব করেন সকল মানুষের মধ্যে, তাঁর প্রেমে সহজে জীবন উৎসর্গ করেন। সেই মানুষের উপলব্ধিতেই মানুষ আপন জীবসীমা অতিক্রম করে মানবসীমায় উত্তীর্ণ হয়। সেই মানুষের উপলব্ধি সর্বত্র সমান নয় ও অনেক স্থলে বিকৃত বলেই সব মানুষ আজও মানুষ হয় নি। কিন্তু তাঁর আকর্ষণ নিয়ত মানুষের অন্তর থেকে কাজ করছে বলেই আত্মপ্রকাশের প্রত্যাশায় ও প্রয়াসে মানুষ কোথাও সীমাকে স্বীকার করছে না। সেই মানবকেই মানুষ নানা নামে পূজা করেছে, তাঁকেই বলেছে 'এষ দেবো বিশ্বকর্মা মহাত্মা'। সকল মানবের ঐক্যের মধ্যে নিজের বিচ্ছিন্নতাকে পেরিয়ে তাঁকে পাবে আশা করে তাঁর উদ্দেশে প্রার্থনা জানিয়েছে-
স দেবঃ
স নো বুদ্ধ্যা শুভয়া সংযুনক্তু।
সেই মানব, সেই দেবতা, য একঃ, যিনি এক, তাঁর কথাই আমার এই বক্তৃতাগুলিতে আলোচনা করেছি।
শান্তিনিকেতন রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর
১৮ মাঘ, ১৩৩৯
रवींद्रे के व्यक्तित्व कृतित्व पर किसी विमर्श से पहले यह भाषण पूरा पढ़ लेंः
THE HIBBERT LECTURES FOR 1930
THE RELIGION OF MAN
RABINDRANATH TAGORJS
THE RELIGION
BEING
THE HIBBERT LECTURES FOR 1930
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1931
COPYRIGHT, 1931,
BY THE MACM1LLAN COMPANY.
All rights reserved no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Set up and elcctrotypcd Published February, 193
8T W BY MAWtf WKmiRltS WKOTVWtfl
MIHTBri IK TI1K UNITXD MATft tif A V1RU'A
TO
DOROTHY ELMHIRST
PREFACE
THE chapters included in this book, which com-
prises the Hibbert Lectures delivered in Oxford,
at Manchester College, during the month of May
1930, contain also the gleanings of my thoughts on
the same subject from the harvest of many lectures
and addresses delivered in different countries of
the world over a considerable period of my life.
The fact that one theme runs through all only
proves to me that the Religion of Man has been
growing within my mind as a religious experience
and not merely as a philosophical subject In fact,
a very large portion of my writings, beginning
from the earlier products of my immature youth
down to the present time, carry an almost con-
tinuous trace of the history of this growth. To-day
I am made conscious of the fact that the works
that I have started and the words that I have
uttered are deeply linked by a unity of inspiration
whose proper definition has often remained un-
revealed to me.
In the present volume I offer the evidence of
my own personal life brought into a definite focus.
To some of my readers this will supply matter of
psychological interest; but for others I hope it
will carry with It its own ideal value important for
such a subject as religion.
7
PREFACE
My sincere thanks are due to the Hibbert Trus-
tees, and especially to Dr. W. H. Drummond,
with whom I have been in constant correspond-
ence, for allowing me to postpone the delivery of
these Hibbert Lectures from the year 1928, when
I was too ill to proceed to Europe, until the sum-
mer of 1930. I have also to thank the Trustees for
their very kind permission given to me to present
the substance of the lectures in this book in an
enlarged form by dividing the whole subject into
chapters instead of keeping strictly to the lecture
form in which they were delivered in Oxford*
May I add that the great kindness of my hostess*
Mrs. Drummond, in Oxford, will always remain
in my memory along with these lectures as inti-
mately associated with them?
In the Appendix I have gathered together from
my own writings certain parallel passages which
bring the reader to the heart of my main theme.
Furthermore, two extracts, which contain histori-
cal material of great value, are from the pen of my
esteemed colleague and friend, Professor KshitI
Mohan Sen, To him I would express my gratitude
for the help he has given me in bringing before me
the religious ideas of medieval India which* touch
the subject of my lectures.
RABINDMNATH TAGORE
September 1930
8
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 7
CHAPTER
I. MAN'S UNIVERSE n
II. THE CREATIVE SPIRIT * 3
III. THE SURPLUS IN MAN 49
IV, SPIRITUAL UNION 63
V. THE PROPHET 7 z
VI. THE VISION 88
VII. THE MAN OF MY HEART 107
VIII. THE MUSIC MAKER 117
IX. THE ARTIST 127
X. MAN'S NATURE 141
XL THE MEETING 154
XII. THE TEACHER 163
XIII. SPIRITUAL FREEDOM 179
XIV. THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE 189
XV. CONCLUSION 202
APPENDIX
I. THE BAtJL SINGERS OF BENGAL 207
II- NOTE ON THE NATURE OF REALITY aa*
IIL DADU AND THE MYSTERY OF FORM 226
IV. NIGHT AND MORNING 333
INDEX 43
The eternal Dream
is borne on the wings of ageless Light
that rends the veil of the vague
and goes across Time
weaving ceaseless patterns of Being.
The mystery remains dumb,
the meaning of this pilgrimage,
the endless adventure of existence
whose rush along the sky
flames up into innumerable rings of paths,
till at last knowledge gleams out from the dusk
in the infinity of human spirit,
and in that dim lighted dawn
she speechlessly gazes through the break in the mist
at the vision of Life and of Love
rising from the tumult of profound pain and joy,
Santiniketan
September 16, 1939
(Composed for the Opening Day Celebrations of the Indian College,
Montpelier, France.)
THE RELIGION OF MAN.
CHAPTER I
MAN'S UNIVERSE
LIGHT, as the radiant energy of creation, started
the ring-dance of atoms in a diminutive sky, and
also the dance of the stars in the vast, lonely theatre
of time and space* The planets came out of their
bath of fire and basked in the sun for ages. They
were the thrones of the gigantic Inert, dumb and
desolate, which knew not the meaning of its own
blind destiny and majestically frowned upon a
future when its monarchy would be menaced.
Then came a time when life was brought into
the arena in the tiniest little monocycle of a cell.
With its gift of growth and power of adaptation
it faced the ponderous enormity of things, and
contradicted the unmeaningness of their bulk. It
was made conscious not of the volume but of the
value of existence, which it ever tried to enhance
and maintain in many-branched paths of creation,
overcoming the obstructive inertia of Nature by
obeying Nature's law*
But the miracle of creation did not stop here in
this isolated speck of life launched on a lonely
voyage to the Unknown. A multitude of cells were
bound together into a larger unit, not through
IX
THE RELIGION OF MAN
aggregation, but through a marvellous quality of
complex inter-relationship maintaining a perfect
co-ordination of functions. This is the creative
principle of unity, the divine mystery of existence,
that baffles all analysis. The larger co-operative
units could adequately pay for a greater freedom
of self-expression, and they began to form and
develop in their bodies new organs of power, ne\v
instruments of efficiency. This was the march of
evolution ever unfolding the potentialities of life,
But this evolution which continues on the physi-
cal plane has its limited range. All exaggeration
in that direction becomes a burden that breaks the
natural rhythm of life, and those creatures that
encouraged their ambitious flesh to grow in dimen-
sions have nearly all perished of their cumbrous
absurdity.
Before the chapter ended Man appeared and
turned the course of this evolution from an indefi-
nite march of physical aggrandisement to a free-
dom of a more subtle perfection. This has made
possible his progress to become unlimited, and has
enabled him to realize the boundless in his power,
The fire is lighted, the hammers are working,
and for laborious days and nights amidst dirt and
discordance the musical instrument is being made,
We may accept this as a detached fact and follow
its evolution* But when the music is revealed, we
know that the whole thing is a part of the manifes*
12
MAN'S UNIVERSE
tation of music in spite of its contradictory charac-
ter. The process of evolution, which after ages has
reached man, must be realized in its unity with
him; though in him it assumes a new value and
proceeds to a different path. It is a continuous
process that finds its meaning in Man ; and we must
acknowledge that the evolution which Science
talks of is that of Man's universe. The leather
binding and title-page are parts of the book itself ;
and this world that we perceive through our senses
and mind and life's experience is profoundly one
with ourselves.
The divine principle of unity has ever been that
of an inner inter-relationship. This is revealed in
some of its earliest stages in the evolution of multi-
cellular life on this planet. The most perfect in-
ward expression has been attained by man in his
Wn body. But what is most important of all is the
( f act that man has also attained its realization in a
,more subtle body outside his physical system. He
'misses himself when isolated; he finds his own
larger and truer self in his wide human relation-
Ship, His multicellular body is born and it dies;
his multi-personal humanity is immortal In this
ideal of unity he realizes the eternal in his life and
the boundless in his love. The unity becomes not a
mere subjective idea, but an energizing truth.
Whatever name may be given to it, and whatever
form it symbolizes, the consciousness of this unity
13
THE RELIGION OF MAN
is spiritual, and our effort to be true to it is our
religion. It ever waits to be revealed in our history
in a more and more perfect illumination.
We have our eyes, which relate to us the vision
of the physical universe. We have also an inner
faculty of our own which helps us to find our rela-
tionship with the supreme self of man, the universe
of personality. This faculty is our luminous imagi-
nation, which in its higher stage is special to man.
It offers us that vision of wholeness which for the
biological necessity of physical survival is super-
fluous; its purpose is to arouse in us the sense of
perfection which is our true sense of immortality.
For perfection dwells ideally in Man the Eternal,
inspiring love for this ideal in the individual, urg-
ing him more and more to realize it
The development of intelligence and physical
power is equally necessary in animals and men for
their purposes of living; but what is unique in man
is the development of his consciousness which
gradually deepens and widens the realization of
his immortal being, the perfect, the eternal. It
inspires those creations of his that reveal the divin-
ity in him which is his humanity in the varied
manifestations of truth, goodness and beauty, in
the freedom of activity which is not for his use but
for his ultimate expression* The individual man
must exist for Man the great, and must express him
in disinterested works, in science and philosophy,
14
MAN' S UNIVERSE
in literature and arts, in service and worship. This
is his religion, which is working in the heart of all
his religions in various names and forms. He
knows and uses this world where it is endless and
thus attains greatness, but he realizes his own
truth where it is perfect and thus finds his ful-
filment,
The idea of the humanity of our God, or the
divinity of Man the Eternal, is the main subject of
this book. This thought of God has not grown in
my mind through any process of philosophical rea-
soning* On the contrary, it has followed the cur-
rent of my temperament from early days until it
suddenly flashed into my consciousness with a
direct vision. The experience which I have de-
scribed in one of the chapters which follow con-
vinced me that on the surface of our being we have
the ever-changing phases of the individual self,
but in the depth there dwells the Eternal Spirit of
human unity beyond our direct knowledge. It very
often contradicts the trivialities of our daily life,
and upsets the arrangements made for securing our
personal exclusiveness behind the walls of indi-
vidual habits and superficial conventions. It in-
spires in us works that are the expressions of a
Universal Spirit; it invokes unexpectedly in the
midst of a self-centred life a supreme sacrifice. At
its call, we hasten to dedicate our lives to the cause
15
THE RELIGION OF MAN
of truth and beauty, to unrewarded service of
others, in spite of our lack of faith in the positive
reality of the ideal values.
During the discussion of my own religious
experience I have expressed my belief that the
first stage of my realization was through my feel-
ing of intimacy with Nature not that Nature
which has its channel of information for our mind
and physical relationship with our living body,
but that which satisfies our personality with mani-
festations that make our life rich and stimulate our
imagination in their harmony of forms, colours,
sounds and movements. It is not that world which
vanishes into abstract symbols behind its own testi-
mony to Science, but that which lavishly displays
its wealth of reality to our personal self having its
own perpetual reaction upon our human nature.
I have mentioned in connection with my per-
sonal experience some songs which I had often
heard from wandering village singers, belonging
to a popular sect of Bengal, called Baiiis,' who
have no images, temples, scriptures, or ceremo-
nials, who declare in their songs the divinity of
Man, and express for him an intense feeling of
love. Coming from men who are unsophisticated,
living a simple life in obscurity, it gives us a clue
to the inner meaning of all religions. For it sug*
gests that these religions are never about a God of
* Se Appendix I,
16
MAN'S UNIVERSE
cosmic force, but rather about the God of human
personality.
At the same time it must be admitted that even
the impersonal aspect of truth dealt with by
Science belongs to the human Universe. But men
of Science tell us that truth, unlike beauty and
goodness, is independent of our consciousness.
They explain to us how the belief that truth is
independent of the human mind is a mystical
belief, natural to man but at the same time inex-
plicable. But may not the explanation be this, that
ideal truth does not depend upon the individual
mind of man, but on the universal mind which
comprehends the individual? For to say that truth,
as we see it, exists apart from humanity is really to
contradict Science itself; because Science can only
organize into rational concepts those facts which
man can know and understand, and logic is a
machinery of thinking created by the mechanic
man.
The table that I am using with all its varied
meanings appears as a table for man through his
special organ of senses and his special organ of
thoughts* When scientifically analysed the same
table offers an enormously different appearance to
him from that given by his senses. The evidence
of his physical senses and that of his logic and his
scientific instruments are both related to his own
power of comprehension; both are true and true
THE RELIGION OF MAN
for him. He makes use of the table with full confi-
dence for his physical purposes, and with equal
confidence makes intellectual use of it for his scien-
tific knowledge. But the knowledge is his who is a
man. If a particular man as an individual did not
exist, the table would exist all the same, but still
as a thing that is related to the human mind. The
contradiction that there is between the table of
our sense perception and the table of our scientific
knowledge has its compon centre of reconciliation
in human personality.
The same thing holds true in the realm of idea.
In the scientific idea of the world there is no gap
in the universal law of causality. Whatever hap-
pens could never have happened otherwise. This
is a generalization which has been made possible
by a quality of logic which is possessed by the
human mind. But this very mind of Man has its
immediate consciousness of will within him which
is aware of its freedom and ever struggles for it
Every day in most of our behaviour we acknowl-
edge its truth; in fact, our conduct finds its best
value in its relation to its truth. Thus this has its
analogy in our daily behaviour with regard to a
table. For whatever may be the conclusion that
Science has unquestionably proved about the table,
we are amply rewarded when we deal with it as a
solid fact and never as a crowd of fluid elements
that represent a certain kind of energy. We can
18
MAN'S UNIVERSE
also utilize this phenomenon of the measurement
The space represented by a needle when magnified
by the microscope may cause us no anxiety as to
the number of angels who could be accommo-
dated on its point or camels which could walk
through its eye. In a cinema-picture our vision of
time and space can be expanded or condensed
merely according to the different technique of the
instrument. A seed carries packed in a minute
receptacle a future which is enormous in its con-
tents both in time and space. The truth, which is
Man, has not emerged out of nothing at a certain
point of time, even though seemingly it might
have been manifested then. But the manifestation
of Man has no end in itself not even now.
Neither did it have its beginning in- any particular
time we ascribe to it The truth of Man is in the
heart of eternity, the fact of it being evolved
through endless ages. If Man's manifestation has
round it a background of millions of light-years,
still it is his own background. He includes in him-
self the time, however long, that carries the process
of his becoming, and he is related for the very
truth of his existence to all things that surround
him.
Relationship is the fundamental truth of this
world of appearance. Take, for instance, a piece
of coal When we pursue the fact of it to its ulti-
mate composition, substance which seemingly is
THE RELIGION OF MAN
the most stable element in it vanishes in centres of
revolving forces. These are the units, called the
elements of carbon, which can further be analysed
into a certain number of protons and electrons.
Yet these electrical facts are what they are, not in
their detachment, but in their inter-relationship,
and though possibly some day they themselves may
be further analysed, nevertheless the pervasive
truth of inter-relation which is manifested in them
will remain.
We do not know how these elements, as carbon,
compose a piece of coal ; all that we can say is that
they build up that appearance through a unity of
inter-relationship, which unites them not merely
in an individual piece of coal, but in a comrade-
ship of creative co-ordination with the entire
physical universe.
Creation has been made possible through the
continual self-surrender of the unit to the universe.
And the spiritual universe of Man is also ever
claiming self-renunciation from the individual
units. This spiritual process is not so easy as the
physical one in the physical world, for the intelli-
gence and will of the units have to be tempered
to those of the universal spirit
It is said in a verse of the Upanishad that this
world which is all movement is pervaded by one
supreme unity, and therefore true enjoyment can
never be had through the satisfaction of greed, but
20
MAN'S UNIVERSE
only through the surrender of our individual self
to the Universal Self.
There are thinkers who advocate the doctrine
of the plurality of worlds, which can only mean
that there are worlds that are absolutely unrelated
to each other. Even if this were true it could never
be proved. For our universe is the sum total of
what Man feels, knows, imagines, reasons to be,
and of whatever is knowable to him now or in
another time. It affects him differently in its dif-
ferent aspects, in its beauty, its inevitable sequence
of happenings, its potentiality; and the world
proves itself to him only in its varied effects upon
his senses, imagination and reasoning mind.
I do not imply that the final nature of the world
depends upon the comprehension of the individual
person* Its reality is associated with the universal
human rnind which comprehends all time and all
possibilities of realization. And this is why for the
accurate knowledge of things we depend upon
Science that represents the rational mind of the
universal Man, and not upon that of the individual
who dwells in a limited range of space and time
and the immediate needs of life. And this is why
there is such a thing as progress in our civiliza-
tion; for progress means that there is an ideal per-
fection which the individual seeks to reach by
extending his limits in knowledge, power, love,
enjoyment, thus approaching the universal. The
21
THE RELIGION OF MAN
most distant star, whose faint message touches the
threshold of the most powerful telescopic vision,
has its sympathy with the understanding mind of
man, and therefore we can never cease to believe
that we shall probe further and further into the
mystery of their nature. As we know the truth of
the stars we know the great comprehensive mind
of man.
We must realize not only the reasoning mind,
but also the creative imagination, the love and wis-
dom that belong to the Supreme Person, whose
Spirit is over us all, love for whom comprehends
love for all creatures and exceeds in depth and
strength all other loves, leading to difficult en-
deavours and martyrdoms that have no other gain
than the fulfilment of this love itself.
The Isha of our Upanishad, the Super Soul,
which permeates all moving things, is the God of
this human universe whose mind we share in all
our true knowledge, love and service, and whom
to reveal in ourselves through renunciation of self
is the highest end of life.
CHAPTER II
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
ONCE, during the improvisation of a story by a
young child, I was coaxed to take my part as the
hero. The child imagined that I had been shut in
a dark room locked from the outside. She asked
me, "What will you do for your freedom?" and I
answered, "Shout for help". But, however desir-
able that might be if it succeeded immediately, it
would be unfortunate for the story. And thus she
in her imagination had to clear the neighbourhood
of all kinds of help that my cries might reach. I
was compelled to think of some violent means of
kicking through this passive resistance ; but for the
sake of the story the door had to be made of steel.
I found a key, but it would not fit, and the child
was delighted at the development of the story
jumping over obstructions.
Life's story of evolution, the main subject of
which is the opening of the doors of the dark dun-
geon, seems to develop in the same manner. Diffi-
culties were created, and at each offer of an answer
the story had to discover further obstacles in order
to carry on the adventure. For to come to an abso-
lutely satisfactory conclusion is to come to the end
of all things, and in that case the great child would
33
THE RELIGION OF MAN
have nothing else to do but to shut her curtain and
go to sleep.
The Spirit of Life began her chapter by intro-
ducing a simple living cell against the tremen-
dously powerful challenge of the vast Inert. The
triumph was thrillingly great which still refuses to
yield its secret She did not stop there, but defi-
antly courted difficulties, and in the technique of
her art exploited an element which still baffles our
logic.
This is the harmony of self-adjusting inter-rela-
tionship impossible to analyse. She brought close
together numerous cell units and, by grouping
them into a self-sustaining sphere of co-operation,
elaborated a larger unit It was not a mere agglom-
eration. The grouping had its caste system in the
division of functions and yet an intimate unity of
kinship. The creative life summoned a larger
army of cells under her command and imparted
into them, let us say, a communal spirit that fought
with all its might whenever its integrity was
menaced.
This was the tree which has its inner harmony
and inner movement of life in its beauty, its
strength, its sublime dignity of endurance, its pil-
grimage to the Unknown through the tiniest gates
of reincarnation. It was a sufficiently marvellous
achievement to be a fit termination to the creative
venture. But the creative genius cannot stop
24
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
exhausted ; more windows have to be opened ; and
she went out of her accustomed way and brought
another factor into her work, that of locomotion.
Risks of living were enhanced, offering opportuni-
ties to the daring resourcefulness of the Spirit of
Life. For she seems to revel in occasions for a fight
against the giant Matter, which has rigidly pro-
hibitory immigration laws against all new-comers
from Life's shore. So the fish was furnished with
appliances for moving in an element which offered
its density for an obstacle. The air offered an even
more difficult obstacle in its lightness; but the
challenge was accepted, and the bird was gifted
with a marvellous pair of wings that negotiated
with the subtle laws of the air and found in it a
better ally than the reliable soil of the stable earth.
The Arctic snow set up its frigid sentinel; the
tropical desert uttered in its scorching breath a
gigantic "No" against all life's children. But those
peremptory prohibitions were defied, and the
frontiers, though guarded by a death penalty, were
triumphantly crossed.
This process of conquest could be described as
progress for the kingdom of life. It journeyed on
through one success to another by dealing with the
laws of Nature through the help of the invention
of new instruments. This field of life's onward
march is a field of ruthless competition. Because
the material world is the world of quantity, where
25
THE RELIGION OF MAN
resources are limited and victory waits for those
who have superior facility in their weapons, there-
fore success in the path of progress for one group
most often runs parallel to defeat in another.
It appears that such scramble and fight for
opportunities of living among numerous small
combatants suggested at last an imperialism of big
bulky flesh a huge system of muscles and bones,
thick and heavy coats of armour and enormous
tails. The idea of such indecorous massiveness
must have seemed natural to life's providence; for
the victory in the world of quantity might reason-
ably appear to depend upon the bigness of dimen-
sion. But such gigantic paraphernalia of defence
and attack resulted in an utter defeat, the records
of which every day are being dug up from the des-
ert sands and ancient mud flats. These represent
the fragments that strew the forgotten paths of a
great retreat in the battle of existence. For the
heavy weight which these creatures carried was
mainly composed of bones, hides, shells, teeth and
claws that were non-living, and therefore imposed
its whole huge pressure upon life that needed free-
dom and growth for the perfect expression of its
own vital nature. The resources for living which
the earth offered for her children were recklessly
spent by these megalomaniac monsters of an im-
moderate appetite for the sake of maintaining a
cumbersome system of dead burdens that thwarted
26
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
them in their true progress. Such a losing game
has now become obsolete. To the few stragglers
of that party, like the rhinoceros or the hippopota-
mus, has been allotted a very small space on this
earth, absurdly inadequate to their formidable
strength and magnitude of proportions, making
them look forlornly pathetic in the sublimity of
their incongruousness. These and their extinct
forerunners have been the biggest failures in life's
experiments. And then, on some obscure dusk of
dawn, the experiment entered upon a completely
new phase of a disarmament proposal, when little
Man made his appearance in the arena, bringing
with him expectations and suggestions that are
unfathomably great.
We must know that the evolution process of the
world has made its progress towards the revelation
of its truth that is to say some inner value which
is not in the extension in space and duration in
time. When life came out it did not bring with it
any new materials into existence. Its elements are
the same which are the materials for the rocks and
minerals. Only it evolved a value in them which
cannot be measured and analysed. The same thing
is true with regard to mind and the consciousness
of self ; they are revelations of a great meaning, the
self-expression of a truth. In man this truth has
made its positive appearance, and is struggling to
make its manifestation more and more clear. That
27
THE RELIGION OF MAN
which is eternal is realizing itself in history
through the obstructions of limits.
The physiological process in the progress of
Life's evolution seems to have reached its finality
in man. We cannot think of any noticeable addi-
tion or modification in our vital instruments which
we are likely to allow to persist. If any individual
is born, by chance, with an extra pair of eyes or
ears, or some unexpected limbs like stowaways
without passports, we are sure to do our best to
eliminate them from our bodily organization. Any
new chance of a too obviously physical variation is
certain to meet with a determined disapproval
from man, the most powerful veto being expected
from his aesthetic nature, which peremptorily re-
fuses to calculate advantage when its majesty is
offended by any sudden license of form. We all
know that the back of our body has a wide surface
practically unguarded. From the strategic point of
view this oversight is unfortunate, causing us
annoyances and indignities, if nothing worse,
through unwelcome intrusions. And this could
reasonably justify in our minds regret for retrench-
ment in the matter of an original tail, whose
memorial we are still made to carry in secret But
the least attempt at the rectification of the policy
of economy in this direction is indignantly re-
sented. I strongly believe that the idea of ghosts
had its best chance with our timid imagination in
28
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
our sensitive back a field of dark ignorance; and
yet it is too late for me to hint that one of our eyes
could profitably have been spared for our burden-
carrier back, so unjustly neglected and haunted by
undefined fears.
Thus, while all innovation is stubbornly op-
posed, there is every sign of a comparative care-
lessness about the physiological efficiency of the
human body. Some of our organs are losing their
original vigour. The civilized life, within walled
enclosures, has naturally caused in man a weaken-
ing of his power of sight and hearing along with
subtle sense of the distant. Because of our habit of
taking cooked food we give less employment to
our teeth and a great deal more to the dentist.
Spoilt and pampered by clothes, our skin shows
lethargy in its function of adjustment to the atmos-
pheric temperature and in its power of quick
recovery from hurts.
The adventurous Life appears to have paused
at a crossing in her road before Man came. It
seems as if she became aware of wastefulness in
carrying on her experiments and adding to her
inventions purely on the physical plane. It was
proved in Life's case that four is not always twice
as much as two. In living things it is necessary to
keep to the limit of the perfect unit within which
the inter-relationship must not be inordinately
strained* The ambition that seeks power in the
29
THE RELIGION OF MAN
augmentation of dimension is doomed; for that
perfection which is in the inner quality of harmony
becomes choked when quantity overwhelms it in
a fury of extravagance. The combination of an
exaggerated nose and arm that an elephant carries
hanging down its front has its advantage. This
may induce us to imagine that it would double the
advantage for the animal if its tail also could grow
into an additional trunk. But the progress which
greedily allows Life's field to be crowded with an
excessive production of instruments becomes a
progress towards death. For Life has its own nat-
ural rhythm which a multiplication table has not;
and proud progress that rides roughshod over
Life's cadence kills it at the end with encum-
brances that are unrhythmic. As I have already
mentioned, such disasters did happen in the history
of evolution.
The moral of that tragic chapter is that if the
tail does not have the decency to know where to
stop, the drag of this dependency becomes fatal to
the body's empire.
Moreover, evolutionary progress on the physical
plane inevitably tends to train up its subjects into
specialists. The camel is a specialist of the desert
and is awkward in the swamp. The hippopotamus
which specializes in the mudlands of the Nile is
helpless in the neighbouring desert Such one-
sided emphasis breeds professionalism in Life's
30
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
domain, confining special efficiencies in narrow
compartments. The expert training in the aerial
sphere is left to the bird ; that in the marine is par-
ticularly monopolized by the fish. The ostrich is
an expert in its own region and would look utterly
foolish in an eagle's neighbourhood. They have to
remain permanently content with advantages that
desperately cling to their limits. Such mutilation
of the complete ideal of life for the sake of
some exclusive privilege of power is inevitable;
for that form of progress deals with materials
that are physical and therefore necessarily lim-
ited.
To rescue her own career from such a multiply-
ing burden of the dead and such constriction of
specialization seems to have been the object of the
Spirit of Life at one particular stage. For it does
not take long to find out that an indefinite pursuit
of quantity creates for Life, which is essentially
qualitative, complexities that lead to a vicious cir-
cle. These primeval animals that produced an
enormous volume of flesh had to build a gigantic
system of bones to carry the burden. This required
in its turn a long and substantial array of tails to
give it balance. Thus their bodies, being com-
pelled to occupy a vast area, exposed a very large
surface which had to be protected by a strong,
heavy and capacious armour. A progress which
represented a congress of dead materials required
THE RELIGION OP MAN
a parallel organization of teeth and claws, or horns
and hooves, which also were dead.
In its own manner one mechanical burden links
itself to other burdens of machines, and Life grows
to be a carrier of the dead, a mere platform for
machinery, until it is crushed to death by its inter-
minable paradoxes. We are told that the greater
part of a tree is dead matter; the big stem, except
for a thin covering, is lifeless. The tree uses it as a
prop in its ambition for a high position and the life-
less timber is the slave that carries on its back the
magnitude of the tree. But such a dependence upon
a dead dependant has been achieved by the tree at
the cost of its real freedom. It had to seek the
stable alliance of the earth for the sharing of its
burden, which it did by the help of secret under-
ground entanglements making itself permanently
stationary.
But the form of life that seeks the great privilege
of movement must minimize its load of the dead
and must realize that life's progress should be a
perfect progress of the inner life itself and not of
materials and machinery; the non-living must not
continue outgrowing the living, the armour dead-
ening the skin, the armament laming the arms.
At last, when the Spirit of Life found her form
in Man, the effort she had begun completed its
cycle, and the truth of her mission glimmered into
suggestions which dimly pointed to some direction
32
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
of meaning across her own frontier. Before the
end of this cycle was reached, all the suggestions
had been external. They were concerned with
technique, with life's apparatus, with the efficiency
of the organs. This might have exaggerated itself
into an endless boredom of physical progress. It
can be conceded that the eyes of the bee possessing
numerous facets may have some uncommon advan-
tage which we cannot even imagine, or the glow-
worm that carries an arrangement for producing
light in its person may baffle our capacity and com-
prehension. Very likely there are creatures having
certain organs that give them sensibilities which
we cannot have the power to guess.
All such enhanced sensory powers merely add
to the mileage in life's journey on the same road
lengthening an indefinite distance. They never
take us over the border of physical existence.
The same thing may be said not only about life's
efficiency, but also life's ornaments. The colouring
and decorative patterns on the bodies of some of
the deep sea creatures make us silent with amaze-
ment The butterfly's wings, the beetle's back, the
peacock's plumes, the shells of the crustaceans, the
exuberant outbreak of decoration in plant life,
have reached a standard of perfection that seems
to be final. And yet if it continues in the same
physical direction, then, however much variety of
surprising excellence it may produce, it leaves out
33
THE RELIGION OF MAN
some great element of unuttered meaning. These
ornaments are like ornaments lavished upon a cap-
tive girl, luxuriously complete within a narrow
limit, speaking of a homesickness for a far away
horizon of emancipation, for an inner depth that
is beyond the ken of the senses. The freedom in
the physical realm is like the circumscribed free-
dom in a cage. It produces a proficiency which is
mechanical and a beauty which is of the surface.
To whatever degree of improvement bodily
strength and skill may be developed they keep life
tied to a persistence of habit It is closed, like a
mould, useful though it may be for the sake of
safety and precisely standardized productions. For
centuries the bee repeats its hive, the weaver-bird
its nest, the spider its web; and instincts strongly
attach themselves to some invariable tendencies of
muscles and nerves never being allowed the privi-
lege of making blunders. The physical functions,
in order to be strictly reliable, behave like some
model schoolboy, obedient, regular, properly re-
peating lessons by rote without mischief or mistake
in his conduct, but also without spirit and initia-
tive. It is the flawless perfection of rigid limits, a
cousin possibly a distant cousin of the inani-
mate.
Instead of allowing a full paradise of perfection
to continue its tame and timid rule of faultless
regularity the Spirit of Life boldly declared for
34
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
a further freedom and decided to eat of the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge. This time her struggle
was not against the Inert, but against the limitation
of her own overburdened agents. She fought
against the tutelage of her prudent old prime min-
ister, the faithful instinct She adopted a novel
method of experiment, promulgated new laws, and
tried her hand at moulding Man through a his-
tory which was immensely different from that
which went before. She took a bold step in throw-
ing open her gates to a dangerously explosive fac-
tor which she had cautiously introduced into her
council the element of Mind. I should not say
that it was ever absent, but only that at a certain
stage some curtain was removed and its play was
made evident, even like the dark heat which in its
glowing intensity reveals itself in a contradiction
of radiancy.
Essentially qualitative, like life itself, the Mind
does not occupy space. For that very reason it has
jio bounds in its mastery of space. Also, like Life,
Mind has its meaning in freedom, which it missed
in its earliest dealings with Life's children. In the
animal, though the mind is allowed to come out of
the immediate limits of livelihood, its range is
restricted, like the freedom of a child that might
run out of its room but not out of the house; or,
rather, like the foreign ships to which only a cer-
tain port was opened in Japan in the beginning of
33
THE RELIGION OF MAN
her contact with the West in fear of the danger
that might befall if the strangers had their uncon-
trolled opportunity of communication. Mind also
is a foreign element for Life; its laws are different,
its weapons powerful, its moods and manners most
alien.
Like Eve of the Semitic mythology, the Spirit
of Life risked the happiness of her placid seclusion
to win her freedom. She listened to the whisper
of a tempter who promised her the right to a new
region of mystery, and was urged into a permanent
alliance with the stranger. Up to this point the
interest of life was the sole interest in her own
kingdom, but another most powerfully parallel
interest was created with the advent of this adven-
turer Mind from an unknown shore. Their inter-
ests clash, and complications of a serious nature
arise. I have already referred to some vital organs
of Man that are suffering from neglect. The only
reason has been the diversion created by the Mind
interrupting the sole attention which Life's func-
tions claimed in the halcyon days of her undisputed
monarchy. It is no secret that Mind has the habit
of asserting its own will for its expression against
life's will to live and enforcing sacrifices from hen
When lately some adventurers accepted the dan-
gerous enterprise to climb Mount Everest, it was
solely through the instigation of the arch-rebel
Mind. In this case Mind denied its treaty of co-
36
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
operation with its partner and ignored Life's
claim to help in her living. The immemorial
privileges of the ancient sovereignty of Life are
too often flouted by the irreverent Mind; in fact,-
all through the course of this alliance there are
constant cases of interference with each other's
functions, often with unpleasant and even fatal
results. But in spite of this, or very often because
of this antagonism, the new current of Man's evo-
lution is bringing a wealth to his harbour infinitely
beyond the dream of the creatures of monstrous
flesh.
The manner in which Man appeared in Life's
kingdom was in itself a protest and a challenge,
the challenge of Jack to the Giant. He carried in
his body the declaration of mistrust against the
crowding of burdensome implements of physical
progress. His Mind spoke to the naked man,
"Fear not" ; and he stood alone facing the menace
of a heavy brigade of formidable muscles. His
own puny muscles cried out in despair, and he had
to invent for himself in a novel manner and in a
new spirit of evolution. This at once gave him his
promotion from the passive destiny of the animal
to the aristocracy of Man* He began to create his
further body, his outer organs the workers which
served him and yet did not directly claim a share
of his life. Some of the earliest in his list were
bows and arrows. Had this change been under-
37
THE RELIGION OF MAN
taken by the physical process of evolution, modify-
ing his arms in a slow and gradual manner, it
might have resulted in burdensome and ungainly
apparatus. Possibly, however, I am unfair, and
the dexterity and grace which Life's technical in-
stinct possesses might have changed his arm into
a shooting medium in a perfect manner and with
a beautiful form. In that case our lyrical literature
to-day would have sung in praise of its fascination,
not only for a consummate skill in hunting victims,
but also for a similar mischief in a metaphorical
sense. But even in the service of lyrics it would
show some limitation. For instance, the arms that
would specialize in shooting would be awkward in
wielding a pen or stringing a lute. But the great
advantage in the latest method of human evolution
lies in the fact that Man's additional new limbs,
like bows and arrows, have become detached. They
never tie his arms to any exclusive advantage of
efficiency.
The elephant's trunk, the tiger's paws, the claws
of the mole, have combined their best expressions
in' the human arms, which are much weaker in
their original capacity than those limbs I have
mentioned. It would have been a hugely cumber-
some practical joke if the combination of animal
limbs had had a simultaneous location In the hu-
man organism through some overzeal in biological
inventiveness.
38
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
The first great economy resulting from the new
programme was the relief of the physical burden,
which means the maximum efficiency with the
minimum pressure of taxation upon the vital re-
sources of the body. Another mission of benefit
was this, that it absolved the Spirit of Life in
Man's case from the necessity of specialization for
the sake of limited success. This has encouraged
Man to dream of the possibility of combining in
his single person the fish, the bird and the fleet-
footed animal that walks on land. Man desired in
his completeness to be the one great representative
of multiform life, not through wearisome subjec-
tion to the haphazard gropings of natural selection,
but by the purposeful selection of opportunities
with the help of his reasoning mind. It enables
the schoolboy who is given a pen-knife on his
birthday to have the advantage over the tiger in
the fact that it does not take him- a million years
to obtain its possession, nor another million years
for its removal, when the instrument proves un-
necessary or dangerous. The human mind has
compressed ages into a few years for the acquisi-
tion of steel-made claws. The only cause of anxiety
is that the instrument and the temperament which
uses it may not keep pace in perfect harmony. In
the tiger, the claws and the temperament which
only a tiger should possess have had a synchronous
development, and in no single tiger is any malad-
THE RELIGION OF MAN
justment possible between its nails and its tigerli-
ness. But the human boy, who grows a claw in the
form of a pen-knife, may not at the same time
develop the proper temperament necessary for its
use which only a man ought to have. The new
organs that to-day are being added as a supple-
ment to Man's original vital stock are too quick
and too numerous for his inner nature to develop
its own simultaneous concordance with them, and
thus we see everywhere innumerable schoolboys in
human society playing pranks with their own and
other people's lives and welfare by means of newly
acquired pen-knives which have not had time to
become humanized.
One thing, I am sure, must have been noticed
that the original plot of the drama is changed, and
the mother Spirit of Life has retired into the back-
ground, giving full prominence, in the third act,
to the Spirit of Man though the dowager queen,
from her inner apartment, still renders necessary
help. It is the consciousness in Man of his own
creative personality which has ushered in this new
regime in Life's kingdom. And from now onwards
Man's attempts are directed fully to capture the
government and make his own Code of Legislation
prevail without a break. We have seen in India
those who are called mystics, impatient of the con-
tinued regency of mother Nature in their own
40
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
body, winning for their will by a concentration of
inner forces the vital regions with which our mas-
terful minds have no direct path of communi-
cation.
But the most important fact that has come into
prominence along with the change of direction
in our evolution, is the possession of a Spirit which
has its enormous capital with a surplus far in
excess of the requirements of the biological animal
in Man. Some overflowing influence led us over
the strict boundaries of living, and offered to us an
open space where Man's thoughts and dreams
could have their holidays. Holidays are for gods
who have their joy in creation. In Life's primitive
paradise, where the mission was merely to live,
any luck which came to the creatures entered in
from outside by the donations of chance; they
lived on perpetual charity, by turns petted and
kicked on the back by physical Providence. Beg-
gars never can have harmony among themselves;
they are envious of one another, mutually suspi-
cious, like dogs living upon their master's favour,
showing their teeth, growling, barking, trying to
tear one another. This is what Science describes
as the struggle for existence. This beggars' para-
dise lacked peace ; I am sure the suitors for special
favour from fate lived in constant preparedness,
inventing and multiplying armaments.
41
THE RELIGION OF MAN
But above the din of the clamour and scramble
rises the voice of the Angel of Surplus, of leisure,
of detachment from the compelling claim of
physical need, saying to men, "Rejoice". From his
original serfdom as a creature Man takes his right
seat as a creator. Whereas, before, his incessant
appeal has been to get, now at last the call comes
to him to give. His God, whose help he was in
the habit of asking, now stands Himself at his door
and asks for his offerings. As an animal, he is still
dependent upon Nature; as a Man, he is a sover-
eign who builds his world and rules it
And there, at this point, comes his religion,
whereby he realizes himself in the perspective of
the infinite. There is a remarkable verse in the
Atharva Veda which says: "Righteousness, truth,
great endeavours, empire, religion, enterprise,
heroism and prosperity, the past and the future,
dwell in the surpassing strength of the sur-
plus."
What is purely physical has its limits like the
shell of an egg ; the liberation is there in the atmos-
phere of the infinite, which is indefinable, invisible.
Religion can have no meaning in the enclosure of
mere physical or material interest; it is in the sur-
plus we carry around our personality the surplus
which is like the atmosphere of the earth, bringing
to her a constant circulation of light and life and
delightfulness*
42
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
I have said in a poem of mine that when the
child is detached from its mother's womb it finds
its mother in a real relationship whose truth is in
freedom. Man in his detachment has realized him-
self in a wider and deeper relationship with the
universe. In his moral life he has the sense of his
obligation and his freedom at the same time, and
this is goodness. In his spiritual life his sense of
the union and the will which is free has its cul-
mination in love. The freedom of opportunity he
wins for himself in Nature's region by uniting his
power with Nature's forces. The freedom of social
relationship he attains through owning responsi-
bility to his community, thus gaining its collective
power for his own welfare. In the freedom of con-
sciousness he realizes the sense of his unity with
his larger being, finding fulfilment in the dedicated
life of an ever-progressive truth and ever-active
love.
The first detachment achieved by Man is physi-
cal. It represents his freedom from the aecessity
of developing the power of his senses and limbs
in the limited area of his own physiology, having
for itself an unbounded background with an im-
mense result in consequence. Nature's original
intention was that Man should have the allowance
of his sight-power ample enough for his surround-
ings and a little over. But to have to develop an
astronomical telescope on our skull would cause
43
THE RELIGION OF MAN
a worse crisis of bankruptcy than it did to the
Mammoth whose densely foolish body indulged in
an extravagance of tusks. A snail carries its house
on its back and therefore the material, the shape
and the weight have to be strictly limited to the
capacity of the body. But fortunately Man's house
need not grow on the foundation of his bones and
occupy his flesh. Owing to this detachment, his
ambition knows no check to its daring in the di-
mension and strength of his dwellings. Since his
shelter does not depend upon his body, it survives
him. This fact greatly affects the man who builds
a house, generating in his mind a sense of the eter-
nal in his creative work. And this background of
the boundless surplus of time encourages architec-
ture, which seeks a universal value overcoming the
miserliness of the present need.
I have already mentioned a stage which Life
reached when the units of single cells formed them-
selves into larger units, each consisting of a multi-
tude. It was not merely an aggregation, but had
a mysterious unity of inter-relationship, complex
in character, with differences within of forms and
function. We can never know concretely what this
relation means, There are gaps between the units,
but they do not stop the binding force that per-
meates the whole. There is a future for the whole
which is in its growth, but in order to bring this
44
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
about each unit works and dies to make room for
the next worker. While the unit has the right to
claim the glory of the whole, yet individually it
cannot share the entire wealth that occupies a his-
tory yet to be completed.
Of all creatures Man has reached that multicel-
lular character in a perfect manner, not only in his
body but in his personality. For centuries his evo-
lution has been the evolution of a consciousness
that tries to be liberated from the bonds of indi-
vidual separateness and to comprehend in its rela-
tionship a wholeness which may be named Man.
This relationship, which has been dimly instinc-
tive, is ever struggling to be fully aware of itself.
Physical evolution sought for efficiency in a per-
fect communication with the physical world; the
evolution of Man's consciousness sought for truth
in a perfect harmony with the world of personality.
There are those who will say that the idea of
humanity is an abstraction, subjective in character*
It must be confessed that the concrete objective-
ness of this living truth cannot be proved to its
own units. They can never see its entireness from
outside; for they are one with it The individual
cells of our body have their separate lives; but they
never have the opportunity of observing the body
as a whole with its past, present and future. If
these cells have the power of reasoning (which
45
THE RELIGION OF MAN
they may have for aught we know) they have the
right to argue that the idea of the body has no
objective foundation in fact, and though there is
a mysterious sense of attraction and mutual influ-
ence running through them, these are nothing posi-
tively real ; the sole reality which is provable is in
the isolation of these cells made by gaps that can
never be crossed or bridged.
We know something about a system of explosive
atoms whirling separately in a space which is im-
mense compared to their own dimension. Yet we
do not know why they should appear to us a solid
piece of radiant mineral. And if there is an
onlooker who at one glance can have the view of
the immense time and space occupied by innumer-
able human individuals engaged in evolving a
common history, the positive truth of their solidar-
ity will be concretely evident to him and not the
negative fact of their separateness.
The reality of a piece of iron is not provable
if we take the evidence of the atom ; the only proof
is that I see it as a bit of iron, and that it has cer-
tain reactions upon my consciousness. Any being
from, say, Orion, who has the sight to see the atoms
and not the iron, has the right to say that we human
beings suffer from an age-long epidemic of hallu-
cination. We need not quarrel with him but go
on using the iron as it appears to us. Seers there
have been who have said "Vedahametam", "I see",
46
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT
and lived a life according to that vision. f And
though our own sight may be blind we have ever
bowed our head to them in reverence.
However, whatever name our logic may give to
the truth of human unity, the fact can never be
ignored that we have our greatest delight when
we realize ourselves in others, and this is the defi-
nition of love. This love gives us the testimony of
the great whole, which is the complete and final
truth of man. It offers us the immense field where
we can have our release from the sole monarchy
of hunger, of the growling voice, snarling teeth and
tearing claws, from the dominance of the limited
material means, the source of cruel envy and
ignoble deception, where the largest wealth of the
human soul has been produced through sympathy
and co-operation ; through disinterested pursuit of
knowledge that recognizes no limit and is unafraid
of all time-honoured tabus; through a strenuous
cultivation of intelligence for service that knows
no distinction of colour and clime. The Spirit of
Love, dwelling in the boundless realm of the sur-
plus, emancipates our consciousness from the illu-
sory bond of the separateness of self; it is ever
trying to spread its illumination in the human
world. This is the spirit of civilization, which in
all its best endeavour invokes our supreme Being
for the only bond of unity that leads us to truth,
namely, that of righteousness:
47
THE RELIGION OF MAN
Ya efco varno bahudha saktiyogat
varnan anekan nihitartho dadhati
vichaitti chante viavamadau sa devah
sa no budhya subhaya samyunaktu.
"He who is one, above all colours, and who with his manifold
power supplies the inherent needs of men of all colours, who
is in the beginning and in the end of the world, is divine, and
may he unite us in a relationship of good will."
CHAPTER III
THE SURPLUS IN MAN
THERE are certain verses from the Atharva Veda
in which the poet discusses his idea of Man, indi-
cating some transcendental meaning that can be
translated as follows :
"Who was it that imparted form to man, gave him majesty,
movement, manifestation and character, inspired him with wis-
dom, music and dancing? When his body was raised upwards
he found also the oblique sides and all other directions in him
he who is the Person, the citadel of the infinite being."
Tasmad vai vidvan purushamidan brahmeti manyate.
"And therefore the wise man knoweth this person as Brahma."
Sanatanam enam ahur utadya syat punarnavah.
"Ancient they call him, and yet he is renewed even now
to-day."
In the very beginning of his career Man asserted
in his bodily structure his first proclamation of
freedom against the established rule of Nature.
At a certain bend in the path of evolution he
refused to remain a four-footed creature, and the
position which he made his body to assume carried
with it a permanent gesture of insubordination.
For there could be no question that it was Nature's
49
THE RELIGION OF MAN
own plan to provide all land-walking mammals
with two pairs of legs, evenly distributed along
their lengthy trunk heavily weighted with a head
at the end. This was the amicable compromise
made with the earth when threatened by its con-
servative downward force, which extorts taxes for
all movements. The fact that man gave up such an
obviously sensible arrangement proves his inborn
mania for repeated reforms of constitution, for
pelting amendments at every resolution proposed
by Providence.
If we found a four-legged table stalking about
upright upon two of its stumps, the remaining two
foolishly dangling by its sides, we should be afraid
that it was either a nightmare or some supernormal
caprice of that piece of furniture, indulging in a
practical joke upon the carpenter's idea of fitness.
The like absurd behaviour of Man's anatomy
encourages us to guess that he was born under the
influence of some comet of contradiction that
forces its eccentric path against orbits regulated by
Nature. And it is significant that Man should per-
sist in his foolhardiness, in spite of the penalty he
pays for opposing the orthodox rule of animal
locomotion. He reduces by half the help of an easy
balance of his muscles. He is ready to pass his
infancy tottering through perilous experiments in
making progress upon insufficient support, and
followed all through his life by liability to sudden
50
THE SURPLUS IN MAN
downfalls resulting in tragic or ludicrous conse-
quences from which law-abiding quadrupeds are
free. This was his great venture, the relinquish-
ment of a secure position of his limbs, which he
could comfortably have retained in return for
humbly salaaming the all-powerful dust at every
step.
This capacity to stand erect has given our body
its freedom of posture, making it easy for us to
turn on all sides and realize ourselves at the centre
of things. Physically, it symbolizes the fact that
while animals have for their progress the prolonga-
tion of a narrow line Man has the enlargement of
a circle. As a centre he finds his meaning in a wide
perspective, and realizes himself in the magnitude
of his circumference.
As one freedom leads to another, Man's eyesight
also found a wider scope. I do not mean any
enhancement of its physical power, which in many
predatory animals has a better power of adjust-
ment to light But from the higher vantage of our
physical watch-tower we have gained our view,
which is not merely information about the location
of things but their inter-relation and their unity*
But the best means of the expression of his physi-
cal freedom gained by Man in his vertical position
is through the emancipation of his hands. In our
bodily organization these have attained the high-
est dignity for their skill) their grace, their useful
Si
THE RELIGION OF MAN
activities, as well as for those that are above all
uses. They are the most detached of all our limbs.
Once they had their menial vocation as our car-
riers, but raised from their position as shudras,
they at once attained responsible status as our
helpers. When instead of keeping them under-
neath us we offered them their place at our side,
they revealed capacities that helped us to cross the
boundaries of animal nature.
This freedom of view and freedom of action
have been accompanied by an analogous mental
freedom in Man through his imagination, which
is the most distinctly human of all our faculties. It
is there to help a creature who has been left unfin-
ished by his designer, undraped, undecorated,
unarmoured and without weapons, and, what is
worse, ridden by a Mind whose energies for the
most part are not tamed and tempered into some
difficult ideal of completeness upon a background
which is bare. Like all artists he has the freedom
to make mistakes, to launch into desperate adven-
tures contradicting and torturing his psychology
or physiological normality. This freedom is a
divine gift lent to the mortals who are untutored
and undisciplined ; and therefore the path of their
creative progress is strewn with debris of devasta-
tion, and stages of their perfection haunted by
apparitions of startling deformities. But, all the
same, the very training of creation ever makes
5*
THE SURPLUS IN MAN
clear an aim which cannot be in any isolated freak
of an individual mind or in that which is only
limited to the strictly necessary.
Just as our eyesight enables us to include the
individual fact of ourselves in the surrounding
view, our imagination makes us intensely conscious
of a life we must live which transcends the indi-
vidual life and contradicts the biological meaning
of the instinct of self-preservation. It works at
the surplus, and extending beyond the reservation
plots of our daily life builds there the guest cham-
bers of priceless value to offer hospitality to the
world-spirit of Man. We have such an honoured
right to be the host when our spirit is a free spirit
not chained to the animal self. For free spirit is
godly and alone can claim kinship with God.
Every true freedom that we may attain in any
direction broadens our path of self-realization,
which is in superseding the self. The unimagina-
tive repetition of life within a safe restriction im-
posed by Nature may be good for the animal, but
never for Man, who has the responsibility to out-
live his life in order to live in truth.
And freedom in its process of creation gives rise
to perpetual suggestions of something further than
its obvious purpose. For freedom is for expressing
the infinite; it imposes limits in its works, not to
keep them in permanence but to break them over
and over again, and to reveal the endless in unend-
53
THE RELIGION OF MAN
Ing surprises. This implies a history of constant
regeneration, a series of fresh beginnings and con-
tinual challenges to the old in order to reach a more
and more perfect harmony with some fundamental
ideal of truth.
Our civilization, in the constant struggle for
a great Further, runs through abrupt chapters of
spasmodic divergences. It nearly always begins
its new ventures with a cataclysm ; for its changes
are not mere seasonal changes of ideas gliding
through varied periods of flowers and fruit They
are surprises lying in ambuscade provoking revo-
lutionary adjustments. They are changes in the
dynasty of living ideals the ideals that are active
in consolidating their dominion with strongholds
of physical and mental habits, of symbols, cere-
monials and adornments* But however violent
may be the revolutions happening in whatever
time or country, they never completely detach
themselves from a common centre. They find their
places in a history which is one.
The civilizations evolved in India or China,
Persia or Judaea, Greece or Rome, are like several
mountain peaks having different altitude, tempera-
ture, flora and fauna, and yet belonging to the
same chain of hills. There are no absolute barriers
of communication between them; their foundation
is the same and they affect the meteorology of an
atmosphere which is common to us all. This is at
54
THE SURPLUS IN MAN
the root of the meaning of the great teacher who
said he would not seek his own salvation if all
men were not saved ; for we all belong to a divine
unity, from which our great-souled men have
their direct inspiration; they feel it immediately
in their own personality, and they proclaim in their
life, "I am one with the Supreme, with the Death-
less, with the Perfect".
Man, in his mission to create himself, tries to
develop in his mind an image of his truth accord-
ing to an idea which he believes to be universal,
and is sure that any expression given to it will per-
sist through all time. This is a mentality abso-
lutely superfluous for biological existence. It rep-
resents his struggle for a life which is not limited
to his body. For our physical life has its thread of
unity in the memory of the past, whereas this ideal
life dwells in the prospective memory of the
future* In the records of past civilizations, un-
earthed from the closed records of dust, we find
pathetic efforts to make their memories uninter-
rupted through the ages, like the effort of a child
who sets adrift on a paper boat his dream of reach-
ing the distant unknown. But why is this desire?
Only because we feel instinctively that in our ideal
life we must touch all men and all times through
the manifestation of a truth which is eternal and
universal. And in order to give expression to it
materials are gathered that are excellent and a
55
THE RELIGION O MAN
manner of execution that has a permanent value*
For we mortals must offer homage to the Man of
the everlasting life. In order to do so, we are ex-
pected to pay a great deal more than we need for
mere living, and in the attempt we often exhaust
our very means of livelihood, and even life itself.
The ideal picture which a savage imagines of
himself requires glaring paints and gorgeous finer-
ies, a rowdiness in ornaments and even grotesque
deformities of over-wrought extravagance* He
tries to sublimate his individual self into a mani-
festation which he believes to have the majesty of
the ideal Man. He is not satisfied with what he is
in his natural limitations ; he irresistibly feels some-
thing beyond the evident fact of himself which
only could give him worth. It is the principle of
power, which, according to his present mental
stage, is the meaning of the universal reality
whereto he belongs, and it is his pious duty to give
expression to it even at the cost of his happiness.
In fact, through it he becomes one with his God,
for him his God is nothing greater than power.
The savage takes immense trouble, and often suf-
fers tortures, in order to offer in himself a repre-
sentation of power in conspicuous colours and dis-
torted shapes, in acts of relentless cruelty and in-
temperate bravado of self-indulgence. Such an
appearance of rude grandiosity evokes a loyal rev-
erence in the members of his community and a
56
THE SURPLUS IN MAN
fear which gives them an aesthetic satisfaction
because it illuminates for them the picture of a
character which, as far as they know, belongs to
ideal humanity. They wish to see in him not an
individual, but the Man in whom they all are rep*
resented. Therefore, in spite of their sufferings,
they enjoy being overwhelmed by his exaggerations
and dominated by a will fearfully evident owing
to its magnificent caprice in inflicting injuries.
They symbolize their idea of unlimited wilfulness
in their gods by ascribing to them physical and
moral enormities in their anatomical idiosyncracy
and virulent vindictiveness crying for the blood of
victims, in personal preferences indiscriminate in
the choice of recipients and methods of rewards
and punishments. In fact, these gods could never
be blamed for the least wavering in their conduct
owing to any scrupulousness accompanied by the
emotion of pity so often derided as sentimentalism
by virile intellects of the present day.
However crude all this may be, it proves that
Man has a feeling that he is truly represented in
something which exceeds himself. He is aware
that he is not imperfect, but incomplete. He knows
that in himself some meaning has yet to be real-
ized. We do not feel the wonder of it, because it
seems so natural to us that barbarism in Man is
not absolute, that its limits are like the limits of
the horizon. The call is deep in his mind the
57
THE RELIGION OF MAN
call of his own inner truth, which is beyond his
direct knowledge and analytical logic. And indi-
viduals are born who have no doubt of the truth
of this transcendental Man. As our consciousness
more and more comprehends it, new valuations are
developed in us, new depths and delicacies of de-
light, a sober dignity of expression through elimi-
nation of tawdriness, of frenzied emotions, of all
violence in shape, colour, words, or behaviour, of
the dark mentality of Ku-Klux-Klanism.
Each age reveals its personality as dreamer in
its great expressions that carry it across surging
centuries to the continental plateau of permanent
human history. These expressions may not be con-
sciously religious, but indirectly they belong to
Man's religion. For they are the outcome of the
consciousness of the greater Man in the individual
men of the race. This consciousness finds its man-
ifestation in science, philosophy and the arts, in
social ethics, in all things that carry their ultimate
value in themselves. These are truly spiritual and
they should all be consciously co-ordinated in one
great religion of Man, representing his ceaseless
endeavour to reach the perfect in great thoughts
and deeds and dreams, in immortal symbols of art,
revealing his aspiration for rising in dignity of
being.
I had the occasion to visit the ruins of ancient
Rome, the relics of human yearning towards the
58
THE SURPLUS IN MAN
immense, the sight of which teases our mind out
of thought. Does it not prove that in the vision
of a great Roman Empire the creative imagination
of the people rejoiced in the revelation of its trans-
cendental humanity? It was the idea of an Empire
which was not merely for opening an outlet to the
pent-up pressure of over-population, or widening
its field of commercial profit, but which existed as
a concrete representation of the majesty of Roman
personality, the soul of the people dreaming of a
world-wide creation of its own for a fit habitation
of the Ideal Man. It was Rome's titanic endeavour
to answer the eternal question as to what Man
truly was, as Man. And any answer given in earn-
est falls within the realm of religion, whatever
may be its character ; and this answer, in its truth,
belongs not only to any particular people but to
us all. It may be that Rome did not give the most
perfect answer possible when she fought for her
place as a world-builder of human history, but she
revealed the marvellous vigour of the indomitable
human spirit which could say, "Bhumaiva suk-
hamf "Greatness is happiness itself". Her Em-
pire has been sundered and shattered, but her faith
in the sublimity of man still persists in one of the
vast strata of human geology. And this faith was
the true spirit of her religion, which had been dim
in the tradition of her formal theology, merely
supplying her with an emotional pastime and not
THE RELIGION OF MAN
with spiritual inspiration. In fact this theology
fell far below her personality, and for that reason
it went against her religion, whose mission was to
reveal her humanity on the background of the
eternal. Let us seek the religion of this and other
people not in their gods but in Man, who dreamed
of his own infinity and majestically worked for all
time, defying danger and death.
Since the dim nebula of consciousness in Life's
world became intensified into a centre of self in
Man, his history began to unfold its rapid chap-
ters ; for it is the history of his strenuous answers
in various forms to the question rising from this
conscious self of his, "What am I?" Man is not
happy or contented as the animals are ; for his hap-
piness and his peace depend upon the truth of his
answer. The animal attains his success in a physi-
cal sufficiency that satisfies his nature. When a
crocodile finds no obstruction in behaving like an
orthodox crocodile he grins and grows and has no
cause to complain. It is truism to say that Man
also must behave like a man in order to find his
truth. But he is sorely puzzled and asks in be-
wilderment: "What is it to be like a man? What
am I?" It is not left to the tiger to discover what
is his own nature as a tiger, nor, for the matter of
that, to choose a special colour for his coat accord-
ing to his taste.
But Man has taken centuries to discuss the ques-
60
THE SURPLUS IN MAN
tion of his own true nature and has not yet come
to a conclusion. He has been building up elab-
orate religions to convince himself, against his nat-
ural inclinations, of the paradox that he is not what
he is but something greater. What is significant
about these efforts is the fact that in order to know
himself truly Man in his religion cultivates the
vision of a Being who exceeds him in truth and
with whom also he has his kinship. These religions
differ in details and often in their moral signifi-
cance, but they have a common tendency. In them
men seek their own supreme value, which they call
divine, in some personality anthropomorphic in
character. The Mind, which is abnormally scien-
tific, scoffs at this ; but it should know that religion
is not essentially cosmic or even abstract; it finds
itself when it touches the Brahma in man; other-
wise it has no justification to exist.
It must be admitted that such a human element
introduces into our religion a mentality that often
has its danger in aberrations that are intellectually
blind, morally reprehensible and aesthetically
repellent But these are wrong answers; they dis-
tort the truth of man and, like all mistakes in
sociology, in economics or politics, they have to
be fought against and overcome. Their truth has
to be judged by the standard of human perfection
and not by some arbitrary injunction that refuses
to be confirmed by the tribunal of the human con-
6*
THE RELIGION OF MAN
science. And great religions are the outcome of
great revolutions in this direction causing funda-
mental changes of our attitude. These religions
invariably made their appearance as a protest
against the earlier creeds which had been unhu-
man, where ritualistic observances had become
more important and outer compulsions more im-
perious. These creeds were, as I have said before,
cults of power; they had their value for us, not
helping us to become perfect through truth, but to
grow formidable through possessions and magic
control of the deity.
But possibly I am doing injustice to our ances-
tors. It is more likely that they worshipped power
not merely because of its utility, but because they,
in their way, recognized it as truth with which
their own power had its communication and in
which it found its fulfilment They must have nat-
urally felt that this power was the power of will
behind nature, and not some impersonal insanity
that unaccountably always stumbled upon correct
results. For it would have been the greatest depth
of imbecility on their part had they brought their
homage to an abstraction, mindless, heartless and
purposeless; in fact, infinitely below them in its
manifestation.
CHAPTER IV
SPIRITUAL UNION
WHEN Man's preoccupation with the means of
livelihood became less insistent he had the leisure
to come to the mystery of his own self, and could
not help feeling that the truth of his personality
had both its relationship and its perfection in an
endless world of humanity. His religion, which in
the beginning had its cosmic background of power,
came to a higher stage when it found its back-
ground in the human truth of personality. It must
not be thought that in this channel it was narrow-
ing the range of our consciousness of the infinite.
The negative idea of the infinite is merely an
indefinite enlargement of the limits of things; in
fact, a perpetual postponement of infinitude. I am
told that mathematics has come to the conclusion
that our world belongs to a space which is limited.
It does not make us feel disconsolate. We do not
miss very much and need not have a low opinion
of space even if a straight line cannot remain
straight and has an eternal tendency to come back
to the point from which it started. In the Hindu
Scripture the universe is described as an egg; that
63
THB RELIGION OF MAN
is to say, for the human mind it has its circular
shell of limitation. The Hindu Scripture goes still
further and says that time also is not continuous
and our world repeatedly comes to an end to begin
its cycle once again. In other words, in the region
of time and space infinity consists of ever-revolving
finitude.
But the positive aspect of the infinite is in
advaitam, in an absolute unity, in which compre-
hension of the multitude is not as in an outer re-
ceptacle but as in an inner perfection that per-
meates and exceeds its contents, like the beauty in
a lotus which is ineffably more than all the con-
stituents of the flower. It is not the magnitude of
extension but an intense quality of harmony which
evokes in us the positive sense of the infinite in our
joy, in our love. For advaitam is anandam; the
infinite One is infinite Love. For those among
whom the spiritual sense is dull, the desire for
realization is reduced to physical possession, an
actual grasping in space. This longing for magni-
tude becomes not an aspiration towards the great,
but a mania for the big. But true spiritual realiza-
tion is not through augmentation of possession in
dimension or number. The truth that is infinite
dwells in the ideal of unity which we find in the
deeper relatedness. This truth of realization is not
in space, it can only be realized in one's own inner
spirit
64
SPIRITUAL UNION
Ekadhaivanudrashtavyam etat aprameyam dhruvam.
(This infinite and eternal has to be known as One.)
Para akasat aja atma "this birthless spirit is
beyond space". For it is Purushahj it is the
"Person".
The special mental attitude which India has in
her religion is made clear by the word Yoga, whose
meaning is to effect union. Union has its signifi-
cance not in the realm of to have, but in that of
to be. To gain truth is to admit its separateness,
but to be true is to become one with truth. Some
religions, which deal with our relationship with
God, assure us of reward if that relationship be
kept true. This reward has an objective value. It
gives us some reason outside ourselves for pursuing
the prescribed path. We have such religions also
in India. But those that have attained a greater
height aspire for their fulfilment in union with
Narayana, the supreme Reality of Man, which is
divine.
Our union with this spirit is not to be attained
through the mind. For our mind belongs to the
department of economy in the human organism.
It carefully husbands our consciousness for its own
range of reason, within which to permit our rela-
tionship with the phenomenal world* But it is the
object of Yoga to help us to transcend the limits
built up by Mind. On the occasions when these
are overcome, our inner self is filled with joy,
65
THE RELIGION OF MAN
which indicates that through such freedom we
come into touch with the Reality that is an end in
itself and therefore is bliss.
Once man had his vision of the infinite in the
universal Light, and he offered his worship to the
sun. He also offered his service to the fire with
oblations. Then he felt the infinite in Life, which
is Time in its creative aspect, and he said, "Yat
*kincha yadidam sarvam prana ejati nihsritam/* "all
that there is comes out of life and vibrates in it".
He was sure of it, being conscious of Life's mystery
immediately in himself as the principle of purpose,
as the organized will, the source of all his activi-
ties. His interpretation of the ultimate character
of truth relied upon the suggestion that Life had
brought to him, and not the non-living which is
dumb. And then he came deeper into his being
and said "Raso vai sah" 9 "the infinite is love itself ",
the eternal spirit of joy. His religion, which is
in his realization of the infinite, began its journey
from the impersonal dyaus, "the sky", wherein
light had its manifestation; then came to Life,
which represented the force of self-creation in
time, and ended in purushak, the "Person", in
whom dwells timeless love. It said, "Tarn vedyam
purusham ve-dah", "Know him the Person who is
to be realized", "Yatha ma vo mrityug parivya~
thah" "So that death may not cause you sorrow".
For this Person is deathless in whom the individual
66
S PIRITUAL UNION
person has his immortal truth. Of him it is said :
"Esha devo uisvakarma mahatma sada jananam
hridaye sannivishatah". "This is the divine being,
the world-worker, who is the Great Soul ever
dwelling inherent in the hearts of all people."
Ya etad vidur amritas te bhavanti. "Those who
realize him, transcend the limits of mortality"
not in duration of time, but in perfection of truth.
Our union with a Being whose activity is world-
wide and who dwells in the heart of humanity
cannot be a passive one. In order to be united with
Him we have to divest our work of selfishness and
become visvakarma, "the world-worker", we must
work for all. When I use the words "for all", I
do not mean for a countless number of individuals.
All work that is good, however small in extent, is
universal in character. Such work makes for a
realization of Fisvakarma, "the World-Worker"
who works for all. In order to be one with this
Mahatma, "the Great Soul", one must cultivate
the greatness of soul which identifies itself with
the soul of all peoples and not merely with that of
one's own. This helps us to understand what
Buddha has described as Brahmavihara, "living in
the infinite". He says:
"Do not deceive each other, do not despise any-
body anywhere, never in anger wish anyone to suf-
fer through your body, words or thoughts. Like a
mother maintaining her only son with her own
67
THE RELIGION OF MAN
life, keep thy immeasurable loving thought for all
creatures.
"Above thee, below thee, on all sides of thee,
keep on all the world thy sympathy and immeas-
urable loving thought which is without obstruc-
tion, without any wish to injure, without enmity.
"To be dwelling in such contemplation while
standing, walking, sitting or lying down, until
sleep overcomes thee, is called living in Brahma".
This proves that Buddha's idea of the infinite
was not the idea of a spirit of an unbounded cos-
mic activity, but the infinite whose meaning is in
the positive ideal of goodness and love, which
cannot be otherwise than human. By being chari-
table, good and loving, you do not realize the
infinite, in the stars or rocks, but the infinite re-
vealed in Man. Buddha's teaching speaks of Nir-
vana as the highest end. To understand its real
character we have to know the path of its attain-
ment, which is not merely through the negation of
evil thoughts and deeds but through the elimination
of all limits to love. It must mean the sublimation
of self in a truth which is love itself, which unites
in its bosom all those to whom we must offer our
sympathy and service.
When somebody asked Buddha about the orig-
inal cause of existence he sternly said that such
questioning was futile and irrelevant Did he not
mean that it went beyond the human sphere as
68
SPIRITUAL UNION
our goal that though such a question might
legitimately be asked in the region of cosmic phi-
losophy or science, it had nothing to do with man's
dharma, man's inner nature, in which love finds
its utter fulfilment, in which all his sacrifice ends
in an eternal gain, in which the putting out of the
lamplight is no loss because there is the all-pervad-
ing light of the sun. And did those who listened
to the great teacher merely hear his words and
understand his doctrines? No, they directly felt
in him what he was preaching, in the living lan-
guage of his own person, the ultimate truth of
Man.
It is significant that all great religions have their
historic origin in persons who represented in their
life a truth which was not cosmic and unmoral,
but human and good. They rescued religion from
the magic stronghold of demon force and brought
it into the inner heart of humanity, into a fulfil-
ment not confined to some exclusive good fortune
of the individual but to the welfare of all men.
This was not for the spiritual ecstasy of lonely
souls, but for the spiritual emancipation of all
races. They came as the messengers of Man to
men of all countries and spoke of the salvation that
could only be reached by the perfecting of our
relationship with Man the Eternal, Man the
Divine. Whatever might be their doctrines of
God, or some dogmas that they borrowed from
69
THE RELIGION OF MAN
their own time and tradition, their life and teach-
ing had the deeper implication of a Being who is
the infinite in Man, the Father, the Friend, the
Lover, whose service must be realized through
serving all mankind. For the God in Man de-
pends upon men's service and men's love for his
own love's fulfilment
The question was once asked in the shade of
the ancient forest of India :
Kasmai devaya havisha vidhema?
"Who is the God to whom we must bring our oblation?"
That question is still ours, and to answer it we
must know in the depth of our love and the
maturity of our wisdom what man is know him
not only in sympathy but in science, in the joy of
creation and in the pain of heroism ; tena tyaktena
bhunjitha, "enjoy him through sacrifice" the sac-
rifice that comes of love ; ma gridhah, "covet not" ;
for greed diverts your mind to that illusion in you
which is your separate self and diverts it from
truth in which you represent the parama purushah f
"the supreme Person".
Our greed diverts our consciousness to materials
away from that supreme value of truth which is
the quality of the universal being. The gulf thus
created by the receding stream of the soul we try
to replenish with a continuous stream of wealth,
which may have the power to fill but not the power
70
SPIRITUAL UNION
to unite and recreate. Therefore the gap is danger-
ously concealed under the glittering quicksand oi
things, which by their own weight cause a sudden
subsidence while we are in the depths of sleep.
The real tragedy, however, does not lie in the
risk of our material security but in the obscuration
of Man himself in the human world. In the crea-
tive activities of his soul Man realizes his sur-
roundings as his larger self, instinct with his own
life and love. But in his ambition he deforms and
defiles it with the callous handling of his voracity.
His world of utility assuming a gigantic propor-
tion, reacts upon his inner nature and hynotically
suggests to him a scheme of the universe which is
an abstract system. In such a world there can be
no question of mukti, the freedom in truth, because
it is a solidly solitary fact, a cage with no sky
beyond it. In all appearance our world is a closed
world of hard facts ; it is like a seed with its tough
cover. But within this enclosure is working our
silent cry of life for mukti, even when its possibil-
ity is darkly silent When some huge overgrown
temptation tramples into stillness this living aspi-
ration then does civilization die like a seed thai
has lost its urging for germination. And this mukh
is in the truth that dwells in the ideal man.
CHAPTER V
THE PROPHET
IN my introduction I have stated that the universe
to which we are related through our sense percep-
tion, reason or imagination, is necessarily Man's
universe- Our physical self gains strength and
success through its correct relationship in knowl-
edge and practice with its physical aspect. The
mysteries of all its phenomena are generalized by
man as laws which have their harmony with his
rational mind. In the primitive period of our his-
tory Man's physical dealings with the external
world were most important for the maintenance
of his life, the life which he has in common with
other creatures, and therefore the first expression
of his religion was physical it came from his
sense of wonder and awe at the manifestations of
power in Nature and his attempt to win it for him-
self and his tribe by magical incantations and rites.
In other words his religion tried to gain a perfect
communion with the mysterious magic of Nature's
forces through his own power of magic. Then came
the time when he had the freedom of leisure to
divert his mind to his inner nature and the mystery
72
THE PROPHET
of his own personality gained for him its highest
importance. And instinctively his personal self
sought its fulfilment in the truth of a higher per-
sonality. In the history of religion our realization
of its nature has gone through many changes even
like our realization of the nature of the material
world. Our method of worship has followed the
course of such changes, but its evolution has been
from the external and magical towards the moral
and spiritual significance.
The first profound record of the change of direc-
tion in Man's religion we find in the message of
the great prophet in Persia, Zarathustra, and as
usual it was accompanied by a revolution. In a
later period the same thing happened in India,
and it is evident that the history of this religious
struggle lies embedded in the epic Mahabharata
associated with the name of Krishna and the teach-
ings of Bhagavadgita.
The most important of all outstanding facts of
Iranian history is the religious reform brought
about by Zarathustra. There can be hardly any
question that he was the first man we know who
gave a definitely moral character and direction to
religion and at the same time preached the doctrine
of monotheism which offered an eternal founda-
tion of reality to goodness as an ideal of perfection.
All religions of the primitive type try to keep men
bound with regulations of external observances.
73
THE RELIGION OF MAN
Zarathustra was the greatest of all the pioneer
prophets who showed the path of freedom to man,
the freedom of moral choice, the freedom from the
blind obedience to unmeaning injunctions, the
freedom from the multiplicity of shrines which
draw our worship away from the single-minded
chastity of devotion.
To most of us it sounds like a truism to-day
when we are told that the moral goodness of a
deed comes from the goodness of intention. But
it is a truth which once came to Man like a revela-
tion of light in the darkness and it has not yet
reached all the obscure corners of humanity. We
still see around us men who fearfully follow, hop-
ing thereby to gain merit, the path of blind formal-
ism, which has no living moral source in the mind.
This will make us understand the greatness of
Zarathustra. Though surrounded by believers in
magical rites, he proclaimed in those dark days of
unreason that religion has its truth in its moral
significance, not in external practices of imagin-
ary value; that its value is in upholding man in
his life of good thoughts, good words and good
deeds.
"The prophet' *, says Dr. Geiger, "qualifies his
religion as 'unheard of words' (Yasna 31. i) or as
a "mystery" (Y. 48. 3.) because he himself regards
it as a religion quite distinct from the belief of the
people hitherto. The revelation he announces is
74
THE PROPHET
to him no longer a matter of sentiment, no longer
a merely undefined presentiment and conception
of the Godhead, but a matter of intellect, of spirit-
ual perception and knowledge. This is of great
importance, for there are probably not many re-
ligions of so high antiquity in which this funda-
mental doctrine, that religion is a knowledge or
learning, a science of what is true, is so precisely
declared as in the tenets of the Gathas. It is the
unbelieving that are unknowing; on the contrary,
the believing are learned because they have pene-
trated into this knowledge."
It may be incidentally mentioned here, as show-
ing the parallel to this in the development of In-
dian religious thought, that all through the Upan-
ishad spiritual truth is termed with a repeated
emphasis, vidya, knowledge, . which has for its
opposite avidya, acceptance of error born of un-
reason.
The outer expression of truth reaches its white
light of simplicity through its inner realization.
True simplicity is the physiognomy of perfection.
In the primitive stages of spiritual growth, when
man is dimly aware of the mystery of the infinite
in his life and the world, when he does not fully
know the inward character of his relationship with
this truth, his first feeling is either of dread, or of
greed of gain. This drives him into wild exag-
geration in worship, frenzied convulsions of cere-
75
THE RELIGION OF MAN
monialism. But in Zarathustra's teachings, which
are best reflected in his Gathas, we have hardly
any mention of the ritualism of worship. Con-
duct and its moral motives have there received
almost the sole attention.
The orthodox Persian form of worship in an-
cient Iran included animal sacrifices and offering
of haema to the daevas. That all these should be
discountenanced by Zarathustra not only shows
his courage, but the strength of his realization of
the Supreme Being as spirit. We are told that it
has been mentioned by Plutarch that "Zarathustra
taught the Persians to sacrifice to Ahura Mazda,
Vows and thanksgivings' ". The distance between
faith in the efficiency of the bloodstained magi-
cal rites, and cultivation of the moral and spiritual
ideals as the true form of worship is immense. It
is amazing to see how Zarathustra was the first
among men who crossed this distance with a cer-
tainty of realization which imparted such a fer-
vour of faith to his life and his words. The truth
which filled his mind was not a thing which he
borrowed from books or received from teachers;
he did not come to it by following a prescribed
path of tradition, but it came to him as an illu-
mination of his entire life, almost like a commu-
nication of his universal self to his personal self,
and he proclaimed this utmost immediacy of his
knowledge when he said:
76
THE PROPHET
When I conceived of Thee, O Mazda, as the very First and
the Last, as the most Adorable One, as the Father of the Good
Thought, as the Creator of Truth and Right, as the Lord Judge
of our actions in life, then I made a place for Thee in my very
eyes. Yasna 31,8 (Translation D. J. Irani).
It was the direct stirring of his soul which made
him say:
Thus do I announce the Greatest of all ! I weave my songs of
praise for him through Truth, helpful and beneficent of all that
live. Let Ahura Mazda listen to them with his Holy Spirit,
for the Good Mind instructed me to adore Him; by his wis-
dom let Him teach me about what is best. Yasna 45.6 (Trans-
lation D. J, Irani).
The truth which is not reached through the ana-
lytical process of reasoning and does not depend for
proof on some corroboration of outward facts or
the prevalent faith and practice of the people
the truth which comes like an inspiration out of
context with its surroundings brings with it an
assurance that it has been sent from an inner source
of divine wisdom, that the individual who has
realized it is specially inspired and therefore has
his responsibility as a direct medium of communi-
cation of Divine Truth.
As long as man deals with his God as the dis-
penser of benefits only to those of His worshippers
who know the secret of propitiating Him, he tries
to keep Him for his own self or for the tribe to
which he belongs* But directly the moral nature,
77
THE RELIGION OF MAN
that is to say, the humanity of God is apprehended,
man realizes his divine self in his religion, his God
is no longer an outsider to be propitiated for a
special concession. The consciousness of God
transcends the limitations of race and gathers to-
gether all human beings within one spiritual circle
of union. Zarathustra was the first prophet who
emancipated religion from the exclusive narrow-
ness of the tribal God, the God of a chosen people,
and offered it the universal Man, This is a great
fact in the history of religion. The Master said,
when the enlightenment came to him :
Verily I believed Thee, O Ahura Mazda, to be the Supreme
Benevolent Providence, when Sraosha came to me with the
Good Mind, when first I received and became wise with your
words. And though the task be difficult, though woe may come
to me, I shall proclaim to all mankind Thy message, which
Thou declarest to be the best. Yasna 43 (Translation D. J.
Irani).
He prays to Mazda :
This I ask Thee, tell me truly, O Ahura, the religion that
is best for all mankind, the religion, which based on truth,
should prosper in all that is ours, the religion which establishes
our actions in order and justice by the Divine songs of Perfect
Piety, which has for its intelligent desire of desires, the desire
for Thee, O Mazda* Yasna 44.10 (Translation D, J. Irani).
With the undoubted assurance and hope of one
who has got a direct vision of Truth he speaks to
the world ;
78
THE PROPHET
Hearken unto me, Ye who come from near and from far!
Listen for I shall speak forth now; ponder well over all things,
weigh my words with care and clear thought. Never shall the
false teacher destroy this world for a second time, for his tongue
stands mute, his creed exposed. Yasna 45.1 (Translation D.
J. Irani),
I think it can be said without doubt that such a
high conception of religion, uttered in such a
clear note of affirmation with a sure note of con-
viction that it is a truth of the ultimate ideal of
perfection which must be revealed to all humanity,
even at the cost of martyrdom, is unique in the
history of any religion belonging to such a remote
dawn of civilization.
There was a time when, along with other Aryan
peoples, the Persian also worshipped the elemental
gods of Nature, whose favour was not to be won
by any moral duty performed or service of love.
That in fact was the crude beginning of the scien-
tific spirit trying to unlock the hidden sources of
power in nature. But through it all there must
have been some current of deeper desire, which
constantly contradicted the cult of power and in-
dicated worlds of inner good, infinitely more
precious than material gain. Its voice was not
strong at first nor was it heeded by the majority
of the people ; but its influences, like the life within
the seed, were silently working.
Then comes the great prophet; and in his life
and mind the hidden fire of truth suddenly bursts
79
THE RELIGION OF MAN
out into flame. The best in the people works for
long obscure ages in hints and whispers till it finds
its voice which can never again be silenced. For
that voice becomes the voice of Man, no longer
confined to a particular time or people. It works
across intervals of silence and oblivion, depression
and defeat, and comes out again with its conquer-
ing call. It is a call to the fighter, the fighter
against untruth, against all that lures away man's
spirit from its high mission of freedom into the
meshes of materialism.
Zarathustra's voice is still a living voice, not
alone a matter of academic interest for historical
scholars who deal with the facts of the past; nor
merely the guide of a small community of men in
the daily details of their life. Rather, of all teach-
ers Zarathustra was the first who addressed his
words to all humanity, regardless of distance of
space or time. He was not like a cave-dweller who,
by some chance of friction, had lighted a lamp
and, fearing lest it could not be shared with all,
secured it with a miser's care for his own domestic
use. But he was the watcher in the night, who
stood on the lonely peak facing the East and broke
out singing the paeans of light to the sleeping world
when the sun came out on the brim of the horizon.
The Sun of Truth is for all, he declared its light
is to unite the far and the near. Such a message
So
THE PROPHET
always arouses the antagonism of those whose
habits have become nocturnal, whose vested in-
terest is in the darkness. And there was a bitter
fight in the lifetime of the prophet between his
followers and the others who were addicted to the
ceremonies that had tradition on their side, and
not truth.
We are told that "Zarathustra was descended
from a kingly family", and also that the first con-
verts to his doctrine were of the ruling caste. But
the priesthood, "the Kavis and the Karapans, often
succeeded in bringing the rulers over to their side".
So we find that, in this fight, the princes of the
land divided themselves into two opposite parties
as we find in India in the Kurukshetra War.
It has been a matter of supreme satisfaction to
me to realize that the purification of faith which
was the mission of the great teachers in both com-
munities, in Persia and in India, followed a similar
line. We have already seen how Zarathustra spir-
itualized the meaning of sacrifice, which in former
days consisted in external ritualism entailing
bloodshed. The same thing we find in the Gita,
in which the meaning of the word Yajna has been
translated into a higher significance than it had
in its crude form.
According to the Gita, the deeds that are done
solely for the sake of self fetter our soul; the
81
THE RELIGION OF MAN
disinterested action, performed for the sake of the
giving up of self, is the true sacrifice. For creation
itself comes of the self-sacrifice of Brahma, which
has no other purpose; and therefore, in our per-
formance of the duty which is self-sacrificing, we
realize the spirit of Brahma.
The Ideal of Zoroastrian Persia is distinctly
ethical. It sends its call to men to work together
with the Eternal Spirit of Good in spreading and
maintaining Kshathra, the kingdom of righteous-
ness, against all attacks of evil. This ideal gives
us our place as collaborators with God in distribu-
ting his blessings over the world.
Clear is this to the man of wisdom as to the man who care-
fully thinks;
He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power,
He who upholds Truth the utmost in his words and deed,
He, indeed, is Thy most valued helper, O Mazda Ahura!
Ifasna 31.22 (Translation D. J. Irani)
It is a fact of supreme moment to us that the
human world is in an incessant state of war be-
tween that which will save us and that which will
drag us into the abyss of disaster. Our one hope
lies in the fact that Ahura Mazda is on our side
if we choose the right course.
The active heroic aspect of this religion reflects
the character of the people themselves, who later
on spread conquests far and wide and built up
great empires by the might of their sword. They
82
THE PROP HEX
accepted this world in all seriousness. They had
their zest in life and confidence in their own
strength. They belonged to the western half of
Asia and their great influence travelled through
the neighbouring civilization of Judaea towards
the Western Continent Their ideal was the ideal
of the fighter. By force of will and deeds of sacri-
fice they were to conquer haurvatat welfare in
this world, and ameratat immortality in the
other. This is the best ideal in the West, the great
truth of fight. For paradise has to be gained
through conquest. That sacred task is for the
heroes, who are to take the right side in the battle,
and the right weapons.
There was a heroic period in Indian history,
when this holy spirit of fight was invoked by the
greatest poet of the Sanskrit Literature. It is not
to be wondered at that his ideal of fight was simi-
lar to the ideal that Zarathustra preached. The
problem with which his poem starts is that para-
dise has to be rescued by the hero from its invasion
by evil beings. This is the eternal problem of
man. The evil spirit is exultant and paradise is
lost when Sati, the spirit of Sat (Reality), is dis-
united from Siva, the Spirit of Goodness. The
Real and the Good must meet in wedlock if the
hero is to take his birth in order to save all that is
true and beautiful. When the union was attempted
through the agency of passion, the anger of God
83
THE RELIGION OF MAN
was aroused and the result was a tragedy of dis-
appointment At last, by purification through
penance, the wedding was effected, the hero was
born who fought against the forces of evil and
paradise was regained. This is a poem of the ideal
of the moral fight, whose first great prophet was
Zarathustra.
We must admit that this ideal has taken a
stronger hold upon the life of man in the West
than in India the West, where the vigour of life
receives its fullest support from Nature and the
excess of energy finds its delight in ceaseless
activities. But everywhere in the world, the un-
realized ideal is a force of disaster. It gathers its
strength in secret even in the heart of prosperity,
kills the soul first and then drives men to their
utter ruin. When the aggressive activity of will,
which naturally accompanies physical vigour, fails
to accept the responsibility of its ideal, it breeds
unappeasable greed for material gain, leads to
unmeaning slavery of things, till amidst a raging
conflagration of clashing interests the tower of am-
bition topples down to the dust
And for this, the prophetic voice of Zarathustra
reminds us that all human activities must have an
ideal goal, which is an end to itself, and therefore
is peace, is immortality. It is the House of Songs,
the realization of love, which comes through
strenuous service of goodness.
84
THE PROPHET
All the joys of life which Thou boldest, O Mazda, the joys
that were, the joys that are, and the joys that shall be, Thou
dost apportion all in Thy love for us.
We, on the other hand, in the tropical East, who
have no surplus of physical energy inevitably over-
flowing in outer activities, also have our own ideal
given to us. Our course is not so much through the
constant readiness to fight in the battle of the good
and evil, as through the inner concentration of
mind, through pacifying the turbulence of desire,
to reach that serenity of the infinite in our being
which leads to the harmony in the all. Here, like-
wise, the unrealized ideal pursues us with its
malediction. As the activities of a vigorous vitality
may become unmeaning, and thereupon smother
the soul with a mere multiplicity of material, so
the peace of the extinguished desire may become
the peace of death ; and the inner world, in which
we would dwell, become a world of incoherent
dreams.
The negative process of curbing desire and con-
trolling passion is only for saving our energy from
dissipation and directing it into its proper chan-
nel. If the path of the channel we have chosen
runs withinwards, it also must have its expression
in action, not for any ulterior reward, but for the
proving of its own truth. If the test of action is
removed, if our realization grows purely sub j Ac-
tive, then it may become like travelling in a desert
9s
THE RELIGION OF MAN
in the night, going round and round the same cir-
cle, imagining all the while that we are following
the straight path of purpose.
This is why the prophet of the Gita in the first
place says:
Who so forsakes all desires and goeth onwards free from yearn-
ings, selfless and without egoism, he goeth to peace.
But he does not stop here, he adds :
Surrendering all actions to me, with Thy thoughts resting on
the Supreme Self, from hope and egoism freed, and of mental
fever cured, engage in battle.
Action there must be, fight we must have not
the fight of passion and desire, or arrogant self-
assertion, but of duty done in the presence of the
Eternal, the disinterested fight of the serene soul
that helps us in our union with the Supreme
Being.
In this, the teaching of Zarathustra, his sacred
gospel of fight finds its unity. The end of the fight
he preaches is in the House of Songs, in the
symphony of spiritual union. He sings :
Ye, who wish to be allied to the Good Mind, to be friend with
Truth, Ye who desire to sustain the Holy Cause, down with
all anger and violence, away with all ill-will and strife! Such
benevolent men, O Mazda, I shall take to the House of Songs !
The detailed facts of history, which are the battle-
ground of the learned, are not my province. I am
86
THE PROP HEX
a singer myself, and I am ever attracted by the
strains that come forth from the House of Songs.
When the streams of ideals that flow from the
East and from the West mingle their murmur in
some profound harmony of meaning it delights
my soul.
In the realm of material property men are jeal-
ously proud of their possessions and their exclusive
rights. Unfortunately there are quarrelsome men
who bring that pride of acquisition, the worldli-
ness of sectarianism, even into the region of spirit-
ual truth. Would it be sane, if the man in China
should lay claim to the ownership of the sun be-
cause he can prove the earlier sunrise in his own
country?
For myself, I feel proud whenever I find that
the best in the world have their fundamental
agreement. It is their function to unite and to
dissuade the small from bristling-up, like prickly
shrubs, in the pride of the minute points of their
differences, only to hurt one another.
87
CHAPTER VI
THE VISION
I HOPE that my readers have understood, as they
have read these pages, that I am neither a scholar
nor a philosopher. They should not expect from
me fruits gathered from a wide field of studies or
wealth brought by a mind trained in the difficult
exploration of knowledge. Fortunately for me the
subject of religion gains in interest and value by
the experience of the individuals who earnestly
believe in its truth. This is my apology for offer-
ing a part of the story of my life which has always
realized its religion through a process of growth
and not by the help of inheritance or importation.
Man has made the entire geography of the earth
his own, ignoring the boundaries of climate ; for,
unlike the lion and the reindeer, he has the power
to create his special skin and temperature, includ-
ing his unscrupulous power of borrowing the skins
of the indigenous inhabitants and misappropriat-
ing their fats.
His kingdom is also continually extending in
time through a great surplus in his power of mem-
ory, to which is linked his immense facility of bor-
88
V1OJ.V/JN
rowing the treasure of the past from all quarters
of the world. He dwells in a universe of history,
in an environment of continuous remembrance.
The animal occupies time only through the multi-
plication of its own race, but man through the
memorials of his mind, raised along the pilgrim-
age of progress. The stupendousness of his knowl-
edge and wisdom is due to their roots spreading
into and drawing sap from the far-reaching area
of history.
Man has his other dwelling place in the realm
of inner realization, in the element of an imma-
terial value. This is a world where from the sub-
terranean soil of his mind his consciousness often,
like a seed, unexpectedly sends up sprouts into the
heart of a luminous freedom, and the individual
is made to realize his truth in the universal Man.
I hope it may prove of interest if I give an account
of my own personal experience of a sudden spir-
itual outburst from within me which is like the
underground current of a perennial stream unex-
pectedly welling up on the surface.
I was born in a family which, at that time, was
earnestly developing a monotheistic religion based
upon the philosophy of the Upanishad, Somehow
my mind at first remained coldly aloof, absolutely
uninfluenced by any religion whatever. It was
through an idiosyncrasy of my temperament thai
I refused to accept any religious teaching merelj
89
THE RELIGION" OF MAN
because people in my surroundings believed it to
be true. I could not persuade myself to imagine
that I had a religion because everybody whom I
might trust believed in its value.
Thus my mind was brought up in an atmos-
phere of freedom freedom from the dominance
of any creed that had its sanction in the definite
authority of some scripture, or in the teaching of
some organized body of worshippers. And, there-
fore, the man who questions me has every right to
distrust my vision and reject my testimony. In
such a case, the authority of some particular book
venerated by a large number of men may have
greater weight than the assertion of an individ-
ual, and therefore I never claim any right to
preach.
When I look back upon those days, it seems to
me that unconsciously I followed the path of my
Vedic ancestors, and was inspired by the tropical
sky with its suggestion of an uttermost Beyond.
The wonder of the gathering clouds hanging heavy
with the unshed rain, of the sudden sweep of
storms arousing vehement gestures along the line
of coconut trees, the fierce loneliness of the blaz-
ing summer noon, the silent sunrise behind the
dewy veil of autumn morning, kept my mind with
the intimacy of a pervasive companionship.
Then came my initiation ceremony of Brahmin-
hood when the gayatri verse of meditation was
90
THE VISION
given to me, whose meaning, according to the ex-
planation I had, runs as follows:
"Let me contemplate the adorable splendour of Him who
created the earth, the air and the starry spheres, and sends the
power of comprehension within our minds."
This produced a sense of serene exaltation in me,
the daily meditation upon the infinite being which
unites in one stream of creation my mind and the
outer world. Though to-day I find no difficulty
in realizing this being as an infinite personality
in whom the subject and object are perfectly
reconciled, at that time the idea to me was vague.
Therefore the current of feeling that it aroused in
my mind was indefinite, like the circulation of air
an atmosphere which needed a definite world to
complete itself and satisfy me. For it is evident
that my religion is a poet's religion, and neither
that of an orthodox man of piety nor that of a
theologian. Its touch comes to me through the
same unseen and trackless channel as does the in-
spiration of my songs. My religious life has fol-
lowed the same mysterious line of growth as has
my poetical life. Somehow they are wedded to
each other and, though their betrothal had a long
period of ceremony, it was kept secret to me.
When I was eighteen, a sudden spring breeze
of religious experience for the first time came to
my life and passed away leaving in my memory a
91
THE RELIGION OF MAN
direct message of spiritual reality. One day while
I stood watching at early dawn the sun sending
out its rays from behind the trees, I suddenly felt
as if some ancient mist had in a moment lifted
from my sight, and the morning light on the face
of the world revealed an inner radiance of joy.
The invisible screen of the commonplace was re-
moved from all things and all men, and their ulti-
mate significance was intensified in my mind ; and
this is the definition of beauty. That which was
memorable in this experience was its human mes-
sage, the sudden expansion of my consciousness
in the super-personal world of man. The poem I
wrote on the first day of my surprise was named
"The Awakening of the Waterfall". The water-
fall, whose spirit lay dormant in its ice-bound iso-
lation, was touched by the sun and, bursting in
a cataract of freedom, it found its finality in an
unending sacrifice, in a continual union with the
sea. After four days the vision passed away, and
the lid hung down upon my inner sight In the
dark, the world once again put on its disguise of
the obscurity of an ordinary fact
When I grew older and was employed in a
responsible work in some villages I took my place
in a neighbourhood where the current of time ran
slow and joys and sorrows had their simple and
elemental shades and lights. The day which had
its special significance for me came with all its
92
THE VISION
drifting trivialities of the commonplace life. The
ordinary work of my morning had come to its
close and before going to take my bath I stood for
a moment at my window, overlooking a market
place on the bank of a dry river bed, welcoming
the first flood of rain along its channel. Suddenly
I became conscious of a stirring of soul within
me. My world of experience in a moment seemed
to become lighted, and facts that were detached
and dim found a great unity of meaning. The feel-
ing which I had was like that which a man, grop-
ing through a fog without knowing his destination,
might feel when he suddenly discovers that he
stands before his own house.
I still remember the day in my childhood when
I was made to struggle across my lessons in a first
primer, strewn with isolated words smothered
under the burden of spelling. The morning hour
appeared to me like a once-illumined page, grown
dusty and faded, discoloured into irrelevant marks,
smudges and gaps, wearisome in its moth-eaten
meaninglessness. Suddenly I came to a rhymed
sentence of combined words, which may be trans-
lated thus "It rains, the leaves tremble". At once
I came to a world wherein I recovered my full
meaning. My mind touched the creative realm
of expression, and at that moment I was no longer
a mere student with his mind muffled by spelling
lessons, enclosed by classroom. The rhythmic pic-
93
THE RELIGION OF MAN
ture of the tremulous leaves beaten by the rain
opened before my mind the world which does not
merely carry information, but a harmony with my
being. The unmeaning fragments lost their indi-
vidual isolation and my mind revelled in the unity
of a vision. In a similar manner, on that morning
in the village, the facts of my life suddenly ap-
peared to me in a luminous unity of truth. All
things that had seemed like vagrant waves were
revealed to my mind in relation to a boundless sea.
I felt sure that some Being who comprehended me
and my world was seeking his best expression in
all my experiences, uniting them into an ever-
widening individuality which is a spiritual work
of art.
To this Being I was responsible ; for the creation
in me is his as well as mine. It may be that it was
the same creative Mind that is shaping the uni-
verse to its eternal idea; but in me as a person it
had one of its special centres of a personal relation-
ship growing into a deepening consciousness. I
had my sorrows that left their memory in a long
burning track across my days, but I felt at that
moment that in them I lent myself to a travail of
creation that ever exceeded my own personal
bounds like stars which in their individual fire-
bursts are lighting the history of the universe. It
gave me a great joy to feel in my life detachment
at the idea of a mystery of a meeting of the two in
94
THE VISION
a creative comradeship. I felt that I had found my
religion at last, the religion of Man, in which the
infinite became defined in humanity and came
close to me so as to need my love and co-opera-
tion.
This idea of mine found at a later date its ex-
pression in some of my poems addressed to what I
called Jivan devata, the Lord of my life. Fully
aware of my awkwardness in dealing with a for-
eign language, with some hesitation I give a trans-
lation, being sure that any evidence revealed
through the self-recording instrument of poetry is
more authentic than answers extorted through
conscious questionings :
Thou who art the innermost Spirit of my being,
art thou pleased,
Lord of my life?
For I gave to thee my cup
filled with all the pain and delight
that the crushed grapes of my heart had surrendered,
I wove with the rhythm of colours and songs the cover
for thy bed,
and with the molten gold of my desires
I fashioned playthings for thy passing hours.
I know not why thou chosest me for thy partner,
Lord of my life !
Didst thou store my days and nights,
my deeds and dreams for the alchemy of thy art,
and string in the chain of thy music my songs of autumn
and spring,
and gather the flowers from my mature moments for thy
crown?
95
THE RELIGION OF MAN
I see thine eyes gazing at the dark of my heart,
Lord of my life,
I wonder if my failures and wrongs are forgiven.
For many were my days without service
and nights of f orgetf ulness ;
futile were the flowers that faded in the shade not
offered to thee.
Often the tired strings of my lute
slackened at the strain of thy tunes.
And often at the ruin of wasted hours
my desolate evenings were filled with tears.
But have my days come to their end at last,
Lord of my life,
while my arms round thee grow limp,
my kisses losing their truth?
Then break up the meeting of this languid day.
Renew the old in me in fresh forms of delight;
and let the wedding come once again
in a new ceremony of life.
You will understand from this how unconsciously
I had been travelling towards the realization which
I stumbled upon in an idle moment on a day in
July, when morning clouds thickened on the east-
ern horizon and a caressing shadow lay on the
tremulous bamboo branches, while an excited
group of village boys was noisily dragging from
the bank an old fishing boat ; and I cannot tell how
at that moment an unexpected train of thoughts
ran across my mind like a strange caravan carry-
ing the wealth of an unknown kingdom.
From my infancy I had a keen sensitiveness
which kept my mind tingling with consciousness
96
THE VISION
of the world around me, natural and human. We
had a small garden attached to our house ; it was
a fairyland to me, where miracles of beauty were
of everyday occurrence.
Almost every morning in the early hour of the
dusk, I would run out from my bed in a great
hurry to greet the first pink flush of the dawn
through the shivering branches of the palm trees
which stood in a line along the garden boundary,
while the grass glistened as the dew-drops caught
the earliest tremor of the morning breeze. The
sky seemed to bring to me the call of a personal
companionship, and all my heart my whole body
in fact used to drink in at a draught the over-
flowing light and peace of those silent hours. I
was anxious never to miss a single morning, be-
cause each one was precious to me, more precious
than gold to the miser. I am certain that I felt a
larger meaning of my own self when the barrier
vanished between me and what was beyond myself.
I had been blessed with that sense of wonder
which gives a child his right of entry into the
treasure house of mystery in the depth of exist-
ence. My studies in the school I neglected, because
they rudely dismembered me from the context of
my world and I felt miserable, like a caged rabbit
in a biological institute. This, perhaps, will ex-
plain the meaning of my religion. This world was
living to me, intimately close to my life, perme-
97
THE RELIGION OF MAN
ated by a subtle touch of kinship which enhanced
the value of my own being.
It is true that this world also has its impersonal
aspect of truth which is pursued by the man of
impersonal science. The father has his personal
relationship with his son ; but as a doctor he may
detach the fact of a son from that relationship and
let the child become an abstraction to him, only a
living body with its physiological functions. It
cannot be said that if through the constant pursuit
of his vocations he altogether discards the personal
element in his relation to his son he reaches a
greater truth as a doctor than he does as a father.
The scientific knowledge of his son is information
about a fact, and not the realization of a truth. In
his intimate feeling for his son he touches an ulti-
mate truth the truth of relationship, the truth
of a harmony in the universe, the fundamental
principle of creation. It is not merely the number
of protons and electrons which represents the truth
of an element; it is the mystery of their relation-
ship which cannot be analysed. We are made con-
scious of this truth of relationship immediately
within us in our love, in our joy; and from this
experience of ours we have the right to say that
the Supreme One, who relates all things, compre-
hends the universe, is all love the love that is the
highest truth being the most perfect relationship.
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THE VISION
I still remember the shock of repulsion I re-
ceived as a child when some medical student
brought to me a piece of a human windpipe and
tried to excite my admiration for its structure. He
tried to convince me that it was the source of the
beautiful human voice. But I could not bear the
artisan to occupy the throne that was for the artist
who concealed the machinery and revealed the
creation in its ineffable unity. God does not care
to keep exposed the record of his power written in
geological inscriptions, but he is proudly glad of
the expression of beauty which he spreads on the
green grass, in the flowers, in the play of the col-
ours on the clouds, in the murmuring music of run-
ning water.
I had a vague notion as to who or what it was
that touched my heart's chords, like the infant
which does not know its mother's name, or who
or what she is. The feeling which I always had was
a deep satisfaction of personality that flowed into
my nature through living channels of communica-
tion from all sides.
I am afraid that the scientist may remind me
that to lose sight of the distinction between life
and non-life, the human and the non-human, is a
sign of the primitive mind. While admitting it,
let me hope that it is not an utter condemnation,
but rather the contrary. It may be a true instinct
99
THE RELIGION OF MAN
of Science itself, an instinctive logic, which makes
the primitive mind think that humanity has be-
come possible as a fact only because of a universal
human truth which has harmony with its reason,
with its will. In the details of our universe there
are some differences that may be described as
non-human, but not in their essence. The bones
are different from the muscles, but they are organi-
cally one in the body. Our feeling of joy, our
imagination, realizes a profound organic unity
with the universe comprehended by the human
mind. Without minimizing the differences that
are in detailed manifestations, there is nothing
wrong in trusting the mind, which is occasionally
made intensely conscious of an all-pervading
personality answering to the personality of
man.
The details of reality must be studied in their
differences by Science, but it can never know the
character of the grand unity of relationship per-
vading it, which can only be realized immediately
by the human spirit. And therefore it is the
primal imagination of man the imagination
which is fresh and immediate in its experiences
that exclaims in a poet's verse:
Wisdom and spirit of the universe!
Thou soul, that art the eternity of thought,
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion.
100
THE VISION
And in another poet's words it speaks of
That light whose smile kindles the universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move.
The theologian may follow the scientist and shake
his head and say that all that I have written is
pantheism. But let us not indulge in an idolatry
of name and dethrone living truth in its favour.
When I say that I am a man, it is implied by that
word that there is such a thing as a general idea
of Man which persistently manifests itself in every
particular human being, who is different from all
other individuals. If we lazily label such a belief
as "pananthropy" and divert our thoughts from
its mysteriousness by such a title it does not help
us much. Let me assert my faith by saying that
this world, consisting of what we call animate and
inanimate things, has found its culmination in
man, its best expression. Man, as a creation, repre-
sents the Creator, and this is why of all creatures
it has been possible for him to comprehend this
world in his knowledge and in his feeling and in
his imagination, to realize in his individual spirit a
union with a Spirit that is everywhere.
There is an illustration that I have made use of
in which I supposed that a stranger from some
other planet has paid a visit to our earth and hap-
pens to hear the sound of a human voice on the
gramophone. All that is obvious to him and most
IOI
THE RELIGION OF MAN
seemingly active, is the revolving disc. He is un-
able to discover the personal truth that lies behind,
and so might accept the impersonal scientific fact
of the disc as final the fact that could be touched
and measured. He would wonder how it could be
possible for a machine to speak to the soul. Then,
if in pursuing the mystery, he should suddenly
come to the heart of the music through a meeting
with the composer, he would at once understand
the meaning of that music as a personal communi-
cation.
That which merely gives us information can be
explained in terms of measurement, but that which
gives us joy cannot be explained by the facts of a
mere grouping of atoms and molecules. Some-
where in the arrangement of this world there seems
to be a great concern about giving us delight,
which shows that, in the universe, over and above
the meaning of matter and forces, there is a mes-
sage conveyed through the magic touch of person-
ality. This touch cannot be analysed, it can only
be felt. We cannot prove it any more than the
man from the other planet could prove to the sat-
isfaction of his fellows the personality which re-
mained invisible, but which, through the machin-
ery, spoke direct to the heart
Is it merely because the rose is round and pink
that it gives me more satisfaction than the gold
which could buy me the necessities of life, or any
102
THE VISION
number of slaves? One may, at the outset, deny
the truth that a rose gives more delight than a
piece of gold. But such an objector must remem-
ber that I am not speaking of artificial values. If
we had to cross a desert whose sand was made of
gold, then the cruel glitter of these dead particles
would become a terror for us, and the sight of a
rose would bring to us the music of paradise.
The final meaning of the delight which we find
in a rose can never be in the roundness of its
petals, just as the final meaning of the joy of music
cannot be in a gramophone disc. Somehow we feel
that through a rose the language of love reached
our heart. Do we not carry a rose to our beloved
because in it is already embodied a message which,
unlike our language of words, cannot be analysed.
Through this gift of a rose we utilize a universal
language of joy for our own purposes of expres-
sion.
Fortunately for me a collection of old lyrical
poems composed by the poets of the Vaishnava
sect came to my hand when I was young. I became
aware of some underlying idea deep in the obvious
meaning of these love poems. I felt the joy of an
explorer who suddenly discovers the key to the
language lying hidden in the hieroglyphs which
are beautiful in themselves. I was sure that these
poets were speaking about the supreme Lover,
whose touch we experience in all our relations of
103
THE RELIGION OF MAN
love the love of nature's beauty, of the animal,
the child, the comrade, the beloved, the love that
illuminates our consciousness of reality. They
sang of a love that ever flows through numerous
obstacles between men and Man the Divine, the
eternal relation which has the relationship of
mutual dependence for a fulfilment that needs
perfect union of individuals and the Universal.
The Vaishnava poet sings of the Lover who has
his flute which, with its different stops, gives out
the varied notes of beauty and love that are in
Nature and Man. These notes bring to us our
message of invitation. They eternally urge us to
come out from the seclusion of our self-centred
life into the realm of love and truth. Are we deaf
by nature, or is it that we have been deafened by
the claims of the world, of self-seeking, by the
clamorous noise of the market-place? We miss the
voice of the Lover, and we fight, we rob, we ex-
ploit the weak, we chuckle at our cleverness, when
we can appropriate for our use what is due to
others; we make our lives a desert by turning away
from our world that stream of love which pours
down from the blue sky and wells up from the
bosom of the earth.
In the region of Nature, by unlocking the secret
doors of the workshop department, one may come
to that dark hall where dwells the mechanic and
help to attain usefulness, but through it one can
104
THE VISION
never attain finality. Here is the storehouse of
innumerable facts and, however necessary they
may be, they have not the treasure of fulfilment in
them. But the hall of union is there, where dwells
the Lover in the heart of existence. When a man
reaches it he at once realizes that he has come to
Truth, to immortality, and he is glad with a glad-
ness which is an end, and yet which has no end.
Mere information about facts, mere discovery
of power, belongs to the outside and not to the
inner soul of things. Gladness is the one criterion
of truth, and we know when we have touched
Truth by the music it gives, by the joy of greeting
it sends forth to the truth in us. That is the true
foundation of all religions. It is not as ether waves
that we receive light; the morning does not wait
for some scientist for its introduction to us. In
the same way we touch the infinite reality immedi-
ately within us only when we perceive the pure
truth of love or goodness, not through the explana-
tions of theologians, not through the erudite dis-
cussion of ethical doctrines.
I have already made the confession that my
religion is a poet's religion. All that I feel about
it is from vision and not from knowledge. Frankly,
I acknowledge that I cannot satisfactorily answer
any questions about evil, or about what happens
after death. Nevertheless, I am sure that there
have come moments in my own experience when
105
THE RELIGION OF MAN
my soul has touched the infinite and has become
intensely conscious of it through the illumination
of joy. It has been said in our Upanishad that our
mind and our words come away baffled from the
Supreme Truth, but he who knows truth through
the immediate joy of his own soul is saved from
all doubts and fears.
In the night we stumble over things and become
acutely conscious of their individual separateness.
But the day reveals the greater unity which em-
braces them. The man whose inner vision is
bathed in an illumination of his consciousness at
once realizes the spiritual unity reigning supreme
over all differences. His mind no longer awk-
wardly stumbles over individual facts of separate-
ness in the human world, accepting them as final.
He realizes that peace is in the inner harmony
which dwells in truth and not in any outer adjust-
ments. He knows that beauty carries an eternal
assurance of our spiritual relationship to reality,
which waits for its perfection in the response of
our love.
106
CHAPTER VII
THE MAN OF MY HEART
AT the outburst of an experience which is unusual,
such as happened to me in the beginning of my
youth, the puzzled mind seeks its explanation in
some settled foundation of that which is usual,
trying to adjust an unexpected inner message to an
organized belief which goes by the general name
of a religion. And, therefore, I naturally was
glad at that time of youth to accept from my father
the post of secretary to a special section of the
monotheistic church of which he was the leader. I
took part in its services mainly by composing
hymns which unconsciously took the many-
thumbed impression of the orthodox mind, a com-
posite smudge of tradition. Urged by my sense of
duty I strenuously persuaded myself to think that
my new mental attitude was in harmony with that
of the members of our association, although I con-
stantly stumbled upon obstacles and felt con-
straints that hurt me to the quick.
At last I came to discover that in my conduct I
was not strictly loyal to my religion, but only to
the religious institution. This latter represented
an artificial average, with its standard of truth at
107
THE RELIGION OF MAN
its static minimum, jealous of any vital growth
that exceeded its limits. I have my conviction that
in religion, and also in the arts, that which is com-
mon to a group is not important Indeed, very
often it is a contagion of mutual imitation. After a
long struggle with the feeling that I was using a
mask to hide the living face of truth, I gave up my
connection with our church.
About this time, one day I chanced to hear a
song from a beggar belonging to the Baiil * sect
of Bengal We have in the modern Indian Re-
ligion deities of different names, forms and mythol-
ogy, some Vedic and others aboriginal. They
have their special sectarian idioms and associations
that give emotional satisfaction to those who are
accustomed to their hypnotic influences. Some of
them may have their aesthetic value to me and
others philosophical significance overcumbered by
exuberant distraction of legendary myths. But what
struck me in this simple song was a religious ex-
pression that was neither grossly concrete, full of
crude details, nor metaphysical in its rarified trans-
cendentalism. At the same time it was alive with
an emotional sincerity. It spoke of an intense
yearning of the heart for the divine which is in
Man and not in the temple, or scriptures, in
images and symbols. The worshipper addresses
his songs to the Man the ideal, and says:
1 See Appendix I.
108
THE MAN OF MY HEART
Temples and mosques obstruct thy path,
and I fail to hear thy call or to move,
when the teachers and priest angrily crowd round me.
He does not follow any tradition of ceremony, but
only believes in love. According to him
Love is the magic stone, that transmutes by its touch greed into
sacrifice.
He goes on to say:
For the sake of this love heaven longs to become earth and gods
to become man.
Since then I have often tried to meet these people,
and sought to understand them through their songs,
which are their only form of worship. One is often
surprised to find in many of these verses a striking
originality of sentiment and diction; for, at their
best, they are spontaneously individual in their
expressions. One such song is a hymn to the Ever
Young. It exclaims:
O my flower buds, we worship the Young ;
for the Young is the source of the holy Ganges of life ;
from the Young flows the supreme bliss.
And it says:
We never offer ripe corn in the service of the Young,
nor fruit, nor seed,
but only the lotus bud which is of our own mind.
The young hour of the day, the morning,
is our time for the worship of Him.
from whose contemplation has sprung the Universe*
109
THE RELIGION OF MAN
It calls the Spirit of the Young the Brahma
Kamal, "the infinite lotus". For it is something
which has perfection in its heart and yet ever
grows and unfolds its petals.
There have been men in India who never wrote
learned texts about the religion of Man but had
an overpowering desire and practical training for
its attainment They bore in their life the testi-
mony of their intimacy with the Person who is in
all persons, of Man the formless in the individual
forms of men. Rajjab, a poet-saint of medieval
India, says of Man:
God-man (nara-narayand) is thy definition, it is not a delusion
but truth. In thee the infinite seeks the finite, the perfect knowl-
edge seeks love, and when the form and the Formless (the indi-
vidual and the universal) are united love is fulfilled in devotion.
Ravidas, another poet of the same age, sings:
Thou seest me, O Divine Man (narahari}> and I see thee, and
our love becomes mutual.
Of this God-man a village poet of Bengal says:
He is within us, an unfathomable reality. We know him when
we unlock our own self and meet in a true love with all others.
A brother poet of his says:
Man seeks the man in me and I lose myself and run out.
And another singer sings of the Ideal Man, and
says:
no
THE MAN OF MY HEART
How could the scripture know the meaning of the Lord who has
his play in the world of human forms?
Listen, O brother man (declares Chandidas), the truth of
man is the highest truth, there is no other truth above it.
All these are proofs of a direct perception of
humanity as an objective truth that rouses a pro-
found feeling of longing and love. This is very
unlike what we find in the intellectual cult of
humanity, which is like a body that has tragically
lost itself in the purgatory of shadows.
Wordsworth says:
We live by admiration, hope and love,
And ever as these are well and wisely fixed
In dignity of being we ascend.
It is for dignity of being that we aspire through
the expansion of our consciousness in a great real-
ity of man to which we belong. We realize it
through admiration and love, through hope that
soars beyond the actual, beyond our own span of
life into an endless time wherein we live the life of
all men.
This is the infinite perspective of human per-
sonality where man finds his religion. Science may
include in its field of knowledge the starry world
and the world beyond it; philosophy may try to
find some universal principle which is at the root
of all things, but religion inevitably concentrates
itself on humanity, which illumines our reason,
inspires our wisdom, stimulates our love, claims
in
THE RELIGION OF MAN
our intelligent service. There is an impersonal
idea, which we call law, discoverable by an imper-
sonal logic in its pursuit of the fathomless depth of
the hydrogen atom and the distant virgin worlds
clothed in eddying fire. But as the physiology of
our beloved is not our beloved, so this impersonal
law is not our God, the Pitritamah pitrinam, the
Father who is ultimate in all fathers and mothers,
of him we cannot say:
Tad viddhi pranipatena pariprasnena sevaya-
( Realize him by obeisance, by the desire to know, by service )
For this can only be relevant to the God who is
God and man at the same time; and if this faith be
blamed for being anthropomorphic, then Man is
to be blamed for being Man, and the lo^er for
loving his dear one as a person instead of as a
principle of psychology. We can never go beyond
Man in all that we know and feel, and a mendicant
singer of Bengal has said:
Our world is as it is in our comprehension; the thought and
existence are commingled. Everything would be lost in uncon-
sciousness if man were nought ; and when response comes to your
own call you know the meaning of reality.
According to him, what we call nature is not a
philosophical abstraction, not cosmos, but what is
revealed to man as nature. In fact it is included in
himself and therefore there is a commingling of
his mind with it, and in that he finds his <jwn
112
THE MAN OF MY HEART
being. He is truly lessened in humanity if he can-
not take it within him and through it feel the ful-
ness of his own existence. His arts and literature
are constantly giving expression to this intimate
communion of man with his world- And the Vedic
poet exclaims in his hymn to the sun :
Thou who nourishest the earth, who walkest alone, O Sun,
withdraw thy rays, reveal thy exceeding beauty to me and let
me realize that the Person who is there is the One who I am.
It is for us to realize the Person who is in the
heart of the All by the emancipated consciousness
of our own personality. We know that the highest
mission of science is to find the universe enveloped
by the human comprehension ; to see man's visva-
rupa, his great mental body, that touches the
extreme verge of time and space, that includes the
whole world within itself.
The original Aryans who came to India had for
their gods the deities of rain, wind, fire, the cosmic
forces which singularly enough found no definite
shapes in images. A time came when it was recog-
nized that individually they had no separate, un-
related power of their own, but there was one
infinite source of power which was named Brahma.
The cosmic divinity developed into an impersonal
idea ; what was physical grew into a metaphysical
abstraction, even as in modern science matter
vanishes into mathematics. And Brahma, accord-
113
THE RELIGION OF MAN
ing to those Indians, could neither be apprehended
by mind nor described by words, even as matter in
its ultimate analysis proves to be.
However satisfactory that idea might be as the
unknowable principle relating to itself all the
phenomena that are non-personal, it left the per-
sonal man in a void of negation. It cannot be gain-
said that we can never realize things in this world
from inside, we can but know how they appear to
us. In fact, in all knowledge we know our own
self in its condition of knowledge. And religion
sought the highest value of man's existence in this
self. For this is the only truth of which he is
immediately conscious from within. And he said :
Purushanna para kinchit
sa kashthta sa para gatih
(Nothing is greater than the Person; he
is the supreme, he is the ultimate goal.)
It is a village poet of East Bengal who preaches in
a song the philosophical doctrine that the universe
has its reality in its relation to the Person, which I
translate in the following lines:
The sky and the earth are born of mine own eyes,
The hardness and softness, the cold and the heat are the products
of mine own body,
The sweet smell and the bad are of my own nostrils.
This poet sings of the Eternal Person within him,
coming out and appearing before his eyes, just as
114
THE MAN OF MY HEART
the Vedic Rishi speaks of the Person, who is in
him, dwelling also in the heart of the sun :
I have seen the vision,
the vision of mine own revealing itself,
coming out from within me.
In India, there are those whose endeavour is to
merge completely their personal self in an imper-
sonal entity which is without any quality or defini-
tion ; to reach a condition wherein mind becomes
perfectly blank, losing all its activities. Those who
claim the right to speak about it say that this is the
purest state of consciousness, it is all joy and with-
out any object or content This is considered to
be the ultimate end of Yoga, the cult of union, thus
completely to identify one's being with the infinite
Being who is beyond all thoughts and words. Such
realization of transcendental consciousness accom-
panied by a perfect sense of bliss is a time-honoured
tradition in our country, carrying in it the positive
evidence which cannot be denied by any negative
argument of refutation. Without disputing its
truth I maintain that it may be valuable as a great
psychological experience but all the same it is not
religion, even as the knowledge of the ultimate state
of the atom is of no use to an artist who deals in
images in which atoms have taken forms. A cer-
tain condition of vacuum is needed for studying
the state of things in its original purity, and the
THE RELIGION OF MAN
same may be said of the human spirit; but the
original state is not necessarily the perfect state*
The concrete form is a more perfect manifestation
than the atom, and man is more perfect as a man
than where he vanishes in an original indefinite-
ness. This is why the Ishopanishat says : "Truth is
both finite and infinite at the same time, it moves
and yet moves not, it is in the distant, also in the
near, it is within all objects and without them."
This means that perfection as the ideal is im-
movable, but in its aspect of the real it constantly
grows towards completion, it moves. And I say of
the Supreme Man, that he is infinite in his essence,
he is finite in his manifestation in us the individu-
als. As the Ishopanishat declares, a man must live
his full term of life and work without greed, and
thus realize himself in the Being who is in all
beings. This means that he must reveal in his own
personality the Supreme Person by his disinterested
activities.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MUSIC MAKER
A PARTICLE of sand would be nothing if it did not
have its background in the whole physical world.
This grain of sand is known in its context of the
universe where we know all things through the
testimony of our senses. When I say the grain of
sand is f the whole physical world stands guarantee
for the truth which is behind the appearance of
the sand.
But where is that guarantee of truth for this
personality of mine that has the mysterious faculty
of knowledge before which the particle of sand
offers its credential of identification? It must be
acknowledged that this personal self of mine also
has for its truth a background of personality
where knowledge, unlike that of other things, can
only be immediate and self-revealed.
What I mean by personality is a self-conscious
principle of transcendental unity within man which
comprehends all the details of facts that are indi-
vidually his in knowledge and feeling, wish and
will and work. In its negative aspect it is limited
to the individual separateness, while in its posi-
117
THE RELIGION OF MAN
tive aspect it ever extends itself in the infinite
through the increase of its knowledge, love and
activities.
And for this reason the most human of all facts
about us is that we do dream of the limitless un-
attained the dream which gives character to what
is attained. Of all creatures man lives in an end-
less future. Our present is only a part of it. The
ideas unborn, the unbodied spirits, tease our imagi-
nation with an insistence which makes them more
real to our mind than things around us. The atmos-
phere of the future must always surround our
present in order to make it life-bearing and sugges-
tive of immortality. For he who has the healthy
vigour of humanity in him has a strong instinctive
faith that ideally he is limitless. That is why our
greatest teachers claim from us a manifestation that
touches the infinite. In this they pay homage to
the Supreme Man. And our true worship lies in
our indomitable courage to be great and thus to
represent the human divine and ever to keep open
the path of freedom towards the unattained.
We Indians have bad the sad experience in our
own part of the world how timid orthodoxy, its
irrational repressions and its accumulation of dead
centuries, dwarfs man through its idolatry of the
past. Seated rigid in the centre of stagnation, it
firmly ties the human spirit to the revolving wheels
pf habit till f aintness overwhelms her- Like a slug-
1x8
THE MUSIC MAKER
gish stream choked by rotting weeds, it is divided
into shallow slimy pools that shroud their dumb-
ness in a narcotic mist of stupor. This mechanical
spirit of tradition is essentially materialistic, it is
blindly pious but not spiritual, obsessed by phan-
toms of unreason that haunt feeble minds in the
ghastly disguise of religion. For our soul is
shrunken when we allow foolish days to weave
repeated patterns of unmeaning meshes round all
departments of life. It becomes stunted when we
have no object of profound interest, no prospect of
heightened life, demanding clarity of mind and
heroic attention to maintain and mature it. It is
destroyed when we make fireworks of our animal
passions for the enjoyment of their meteoric sensa-
tions, recklessly reducing to ashes all that could
have been saved for permanent illumination. This
happens not only to mediocre individuals hugging
fetters that keep them irresponsible or hungering
for lurid unrealities, but to generations of insipid
races that have lost all emphasis of significance in
themselves, having missed their future.
The continuous future is the domain of our mil-
lennium, which is with us more truly than what
we see in our history in fragments of the present.
It is in our dream. It is in the realm of the faith
which creates perfection. We have seen the rec-
ords of man's dreams of the millennium, the ideal
reality cherished by forgotten races in their ad-
119
THE RELIGION OP MAN
miration, hope and love manifested in the dignity
of their being through some majesty in ideals and
beauty in performance. While these races pass
away one after another they leave great accom-
plishments behind them carrying their claim to
recognition as dreamers not so much as con-
querors of earthly kingdoms, but as the designers
of paradise. The poet gives us the best definition
of man when he says:
We are the music-makers,
We are the dreamers of dreams.
Our religious present for us the dreams of the ideal
unity which is man himself -as he manifests the
infinite. We suffer from the sense of sin, which is
the sense of discord, when any disruptive passion
tears gaps in our vision of the One in man, creat-
ing isolation in our self from the universal
humanity.
The Upanishad says, r Ma gridah, "covet not".
For coveting diverts attention from the infinite
value of our personality to the temptation of
materials. Our village poet sings: "Man will
brightly flash into your sight, my heart, if you
shut the door of desires."
We have seen how primitive man was occupied
with his physical needs, and thus restricted him-
self to the present which is the time boundary of
the animal; and he missed the urge of his con-
120
THE MUSIC MAKER
sciousness to seek its emancipation in a world of
ultimate human value.
Modern civilization for the same reason seems
to turn itself back to that primitive mentality.
Our needs have multiplied so furiously fast that
we have lost our leisure for the deeper realization
of our self and our faith in it It means that we
have lost our religion, the longing for the touch of
the divine in man, the builder of the heaven, the
music-maker, the dreamer of dreams. This has
made it easy to tear into shreds our faith in the
perfection of the human ideal, in its wholeness, as
the fuller meaning of reality. No doubt it is won-
derful that music contains a fact which has been
analysed and measured, and which music shares
in common with the braying of an ass or of a
motor-car horn. But it is still more wonderful that
music has a truth, which cannot be analysed into
fractions; and there the difference between it and
the bellowing impertinence of a motor-car horn is
infinite. Men of our own times have analysed the
human mind, its dreams, its spiritual aspirations,
most often caught unawares in the shattered state
of madness, disease and desultory dreams and
they have found to their satisf action that these are
composed of elemental animalities tangled into
various knots. This may be an important discov-
ery; but what is still more important to realize is
the fact that by some miracle of creation man
121
THE RELIGION OF MAN
infinitely transcends the component parts of his
own character.
Suppose that some psychological explorer sus-
pects that man's devotion to his beloved has at
bottom our primitive stomach's hankering for
human flesh, we need not contradict him ; for what-
ever may be its genealogy, its secret composition,
the complete character of our love, in its perfect
mingling of physical, mental and spiritual asso-
ciations, is unique in its utter difference from can-
nibalism. The truth underlying the possibility of
such transmutation is the truth of our religion. A
lotus has in common with a piece of rotten flesh
the elements of carbon and hydrogen. In a state
of dissolution there is no difference between them,
but in a state of creation the difference is immense ;
and it is that difference which really matters. We
are told that some of our most sacred sentiments
hold hidden in them instincts -contrary to what
these sentiments profess to be. Such disclosures
have the effect upon certain persons of the relief
of a tension, even like the relaxation in death of
the incessant strenuousness of life.
We find in modern literature that something like
a chuckle of an exultant disillusionment is becom-
ing contagious, and the knights-errant of the cult
of arson are abroad, setting fire to our time-
honoured altars of worship, proclaiming that the
images enshrined on them, even if beautiful, arc
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THE MUSIC MAKER
made of mud. They say that it has been found out
that the appearances in human idealism are decep-
tive, that the underlying mud is real. From such
a point of view, the whole of creation may be said
to be a gigantic deception, and the billions of re-
volving electric specks that have the appearance
of "you" or "me" should be condemned as bearers
of false evidence.
But whom do they seek to delude? If it be beings
like ourselves who possess some inborn criterion
of the real, then to them these very appearances in
their integrity must represent reality, and not their
component electric specks. For them the rose
must be more satisfactory as an object than its
constituent gases, which can be tortured to speak
against the evident identity of the rose. The rose,
even like the human sentiment of goodness, or
ideal of beauty, belongs to the realm of creation,
in which all its rebellious elements are reconciled
in a perfect harmony. Because these elements in
their simplicity yield themselves to our scrutiny,
we in our pride are inclined to give them the best
prizes as actors in that mystery-play, the rose. Such
an analysis is really only giving a prize to our own
detective cleverness.
I repeat again that the sentiments and ideals
which man in his process of self -creation has built
up, should be recognized in their wholeness. In all
our faculties or passions there is nothing which is
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
absolutely good or bad; they all are the constitu-
ents of the great human personality. They are
notes that are wrong when in wrong places ; our
education is to make them into chords that may
harmonize with the grand music of Man. The
animal in the savage has been transformed into
higher stages in the civilized man in other words
has attained a truer consonance with Man the
divine, not through any elimination of the original
materials, but through a magical grouping of them,
through the severe discipline of art, the discipline
of curbing and stressing in proper places, establish-
ing a balance of lights and shadows in the back-
ground and foreground, and thus imparting a
unique value to our personality in all its com-
pleteness.
So long as we have faith in this value, our energy
is steadily sustained in its creative activity that
reveals the eternal Man. This faith is helped on
all sides by literature, arts, legends, symbols, cere-
monials, by the remembrance of heroic souls who
have personified it in themselves,
Our religion is the inner principle that compre-
hends these endeavours and expressions and dreams
through which we approach Him in whose image
we are made. To keep alive our faith in the reality
of the ideal perfection is the function of civiliza-
tion, which is mainly formed of sentiments and the
images that represent that ideal. In other words,
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THE MUSIC MAKER
civilization is a creation of art, created for the
objective realization of our vision of the spiritually
perfect It is the product of the art of religion. We
stop its course of conquest when we accept the cult
of realism and forget that realism is the worst form
of untruth, because it contains a minimum of truth.
It is like preaching that only in the morgue can
we comprehend the reality of the human body
the body which has its perfect revelation when seen
in life. All great human facts are surrounded by
an immense atmosphere of expectation. They are
never complete if we leave out from them what
might be, what should be, what is not yet proven
but profoundly felt, what points towards the im-
mortal. This dwells in a perpetual surplus in the
individual, that transcends all the desultory facts
about him.
The realism in Man is the animal in him, whose
life is a mere duration of time; the human in him
is his reality which has life everlasting for its back-
ground. Rocks and crystals being complete defi-
nitely in what they are, can keep as "mute insen-
sate things" a kind of dumb dignity in their stol-
idly limited realism ; while human facts grow un-
seemly and diseased^ breeding germs of death,
when divested of their creative ideal the ideal of
Man the divine, The difference between the notes
as mere facts of sound and music as a truth of ex-
pression is immense. For music though it compre-
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
hends a limited number of notes yet represents the
infinite. It is for man to produce the music of the
spirit with all the notes which he has in his psy-
chology and which, through inattention or per*
versity, can easily be translated into a frightful
noise. In music man is revealed and not in a noise.
CHAPTER IX
THE ARTIST
THE fundamental desire of life is the desire to
exist. It claims from us a vast amount of training
and experience about the necessaries of livelihood.
Yet it does not cost me much to confess that the
food that I have taken, the dress that I wear, the
house where I have my lodging, represent a stu-
pendous knowledge, practice and organization
which I helplessly lack; for I find that I am not
altogether despised for such ignorance and ineffi-
ciency. Those who read me seem fairly satisfied
that I am nothing better than a poet or perhaps a
philosopher which latter reputation I do not
claim and dare not hold through the precarious
help of misinformation.
It is quite evident in spite of my deficiency that
in human society I represent a vocation, which
though superfluous has yet been held worthy of
commendation. In fact, I am encouraged in my
rhythmic futility by being offered moral and mate-
rial incentives for its cultivation. If a foolish
blackbird did not know how to seek its food, to
build its nest, or to avoid Its enemies, but special-
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
ized in singing, its fellow creatures, urged by their
own science of genetics, would dutifully allow it
to starve and perish. That I am not treated in a
similar fashion is the evidence of an immense dif-
ference between the animal existence and the civil-
ization of man. His great distinction dwells in the
indefinite margin of life in him which affords a
boundless background for his dreams and creations.
And it is in this realm of freedom that he realizes
his divine dignity, his great human truth, and is
pleased when I as a poet sing victory to him, to
Man the self-revealer, who goes on exploring ages
of creation to find himself in perfection.
Reality, in all its manifestations, reveals itself
in the emotional and imaginative background of
our mind. We know it, not because we can think
of it, but because we directly feel it. And there-
fore, even if rejected by the logical mind, it is not
banished from our consciousness. As an incident
it may be beneficial or injurious, but as a revelation
its value lies in the fact that it offers us an experi-
ence through emotion or imagination ; we feel our-
selves in a special field of realization. This feeling
itself is delightful when it is not accompanied by
any great physical or moral risk, we love to feel
even fear or sorrow if it is detached from all prac-
tical consequences. This is the reason of our enjoy-
ment of tragic dramas, in which the feeling of pain
rouses our consciousness to a white heat of intensity.
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THE ARTIST
The reality of my own self is immediate and
indubitable to me. Whatever else affects me in a
like manner is real for myself, and it inevitably
attracts and occupies my attention for its own sake,
blends itself with my personality, making it richer
and larger and causing it delight. My friend may
not be beautiful, useful, rich or great, but he is real
to me ; in him I feel my own extension and my joy.
The consciousness of the real within me seeks
for its own corroboration the touch of the Real
outside me. When it fails the self in me is de-
pressed. When our surroundings are monotonous
and insignificant, having no emotional reaction
upon our mind, we become vague to ourselves. For
we are like pictures, whose reality is helped by
the background if it is sympathetic. The punish-
ment we suffer in solitary confinement consists in
the obstruction to the relationship between the
world of reality and the real in ourselves, causing
the latter to become indistinct in a haze of inactive
imagination: our personality is blurred, we miss
the companionship of our own being through the
diminution of our self. The world of our knowl-
edge is enlarged for us through the extension of our
information ; the world of our personality grows in
its area with a large and deeper experience of our
personal self in our own universe through sym-
pathy and imagination.
As this world, that can be known through knowl-
THE RELIGION OF MAN
edge, is limited to us owing to our ignorance, so
the world of personality, that can be realized by
our own personal self, is also restricted by the
limit of our sympathy and imagination. In the
dim twilight of insensitiveness a large part of our
world remains to us like a procession of nomadic
shadows. According to the stages of our conscious-
ness we have more or less been able to identify our-
selves with this world, if not as a whole, at least
in fragments; and our enjoyment dwells in that
wherein we feel ourselves thus united. In art we
express the delight of this unity by which this
world is realized as humanly significant to us. I
have my physical, chemical and biological self ; my
knowledge of it extends through the extension of
my knowledge of the physical, chemical and bio-
logical world. I have my personal self, which has
its communication with our feelings, sentiments
and imaginations, which lends itself to be coloured
by our desires and shaped by our imageries.
Science urges us to occupy by our mind the
immensity of the knowable world; our spiritual
teacher enjoins us to comprehend by our soul the
infinite Spirit which is in the depth of the moving
and changing facts of the world ; the urging of our
artistic nature is to realize the manifestation of
personality in the world of appearance, the reality
of existence which is in harmony with the real
within us. Where this harmony is not deeply felt,
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THE ARTIST
there we are aliens and perpetually homesick. For
man by nature is an artist; he never receives
passively and accurately in his mind a physical
representation of things around him. There goes
on a continual adaptation, a transformation of facts
into human imagery, through constant touches of
his sentiments and imagination. The animal has
the geography of its birthplace ; man has his coun-
try, the geography of his personal self. The vision
of it is not merely physical ; it has its artistic unity,
it is a perpetual creation. In his country, his con-
sciousness being unobstructed, man extends his
relationship, which is of his own creative person-
ality. In order to live efficiently man must know
facts and their laws. In order to be happy he must
establish harmonious relationship with all things
with which he has dealings. Our creation is the
modification of relationship.
The great men who appear in our history remain
in our mind not as a static fact but as a living his-
torical image. The sublime suggestions of their
lives become blended into a noble consistency in
legends made living in the life of ages. Those men
with whom we live we constantly modify in our
minds, making them more real to us than they
would be in a bare presentation. Men's ideal of
womanhood and women's ideal of manliness are
created by the imagination through a mental
grouping of qualities and conducts according to
THE RELIGION OF MAN
our hopes and desires, and men and women con-
sciously and unconsciously strive- towards its attain-
ment. In fact, they reach a degree of reality for
each other according to their success in adapting
these respective ideals to their own nature. To say
that these ideals are imaginary and therefore not
true is wrong in man's case. His true life is in his
own creation, which represents the infinity of man.
He is naturally indifferent to things that merely
exist; they must have some ideal value for him,
and then only his consciousness fully recognizes
them as real. Men are never true in their isolated
self, and their imagination is the faculty that brings
before their mind the vision of their own greater
being.
We can make truth ours by actively modulating
its inter-relations. This is the work of art; for
reality is not based in the substance of things but
in the principal of relationship. Truth is the in-
finite pursued by metaphysics; fact is the infinite
pursued by science, while reality is the definition
of the infinite which relates truth to the person.
Reality is human ; it is what we are conscious of,
by which we are affected, that which we express.
When we are intensely aware of it, we are aware
of ourselves and it gives us delight. We live in it,
we always widen its limits. Our arts and literature
represent this creative activity which is fundamen-
tal in man.
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TH E ARTIST
But the mysterious fact about it is that though
the individuals are separately seeking their ex-
pression, their success is never individualistic in
character. Men must find and feel and represent
in all their creative works Man the Eternal, the
creator. Their civilization is a continual discovery
of the transcendental humanity. In whatever it
fails it shows the failure of the artist, which is the
failure in expression; and that civilization perishes
in which the individual thwarts the revelation of
the universal. For Reality is the truth of Man,
who belongs to all times, and any individualistic
madness of men against Man cannot thrive for
long.
Man is eager that his feeling for what is real to
him must never die ; it must find an imperishable
form. The consciousness of this self of mine is
so intensely evident to me that it assumes the
character of immortality, I cannot imagine that
it ever has been or can be non-existent- In a similar
manner all things that are real to me are for my-
self eternal, and therefore worthy of a language
that has a permanent meaning. We know indi-
viduals who have the habit of inscribing their
names on the walls of some majestic monument of
architecture. It is a pathetic way of associating
their own names with some works of art which
belong to all times and to all men. Our hunger for
reputation comes from our desire to make objec-
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
lively real that which is inwardly real to us. He
who is inarticulate is insignificant, like a dark star
that cannot prove itself. He ever waits for the
artist to give him his fullest worth, not for any-
thing specially excellent in him but for the won-
derful fact that he is what he certainly is, that he
carries in him the eternal mystery of being.
A Chinese friend of mine while travelling with
me in the streets of Peking suddenly exclaimed
with a vehement enthusiasm: "Look, here is a
donkey!" Surely it was an utterly ordinary don-
key, like an indisputable truism, needing no special
introduction from him. I was amused ; but it made
me think. This animal is generally classified as
having certain qualities that are not recommend-
able and then hurriedly dismissed. It was obscured
to me by an envelopment of commonplace associa-
tions ; I was lazily certain that I knew it and there-
fore I hardly saw it. But my friend, who pos-
sessed the artist mind of China, did not treat it
with a cheap knowledge but could see it afresh
and recognize it as real. When I say real, I mean
that it did not remain at the outskirt of his con-
sciousness tied to a narrow definition, but it easily
blended in his imagination, produced a vision, a
special harmony of lines, colours and life and
movement, and became intimately his own. The
admission of a donkey into a drawing-room is vio-
lently opposed ; yet there is no prohibition against
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THE ARTIST
its finding a place in a picture which may be ad-
miringly displayed on the drawing-room wall.
The only evidence of truth in art exists when it
compels us to say "I see". A donkey we may pass
by in Nature, but a donkey in art we must acknowl-
edge even if it be a creature that disreputably
ignores all its natural history responsibility, even
if it resembles a mushroom in its head and a palm-
leaf in its tail.
In the Upanishad it is said in a parable that
there are two birds sitting on the same bough,
one of which feeds and the other looks on. This is
an image of the mutual relationship of the infinite
being and the finite self. The delight of the bird
which looks on is great, for it is a pure and free
delight. There are both of these birds in man him-
self, the objective one with its business of life, the
subjective one with its disinterested joy of vision.
A child comes to me and commands me to tell
her a story. I tell her of a tiger which is disgusted
with the black stripes on its body and comes to my
frightened servant demanding a piece of soap.
The story gives my little audience immense
pleasure, the pleasure of a vision, and her mind
cries out, "It is here, for I see!" She knows a tiger
in the book of natural history, but she can see the
tiger in the story of mine.
I am sure that even this child of five knows that
it is an impossible tiger that is out on its untigerly
THE RELIGION OF MAN
quest of an absurd soap. The delightfulness of the
tiger for her is not in its beauty, its usefulness, or
its probability; but in the undoubted fact that she
can see it in her mind with a greater clearness of
vision than she can the walls around her the walls
that brutally shout their evidence of certainty
which is merely circumstantial. The tiger in the
story is inevitable, it has the character of a com-
plete image, which offers its testimonial of truth
in itself. The listener's own mind is the eye-wit-
ness, whose direct experience could not be contra-
dicted. A tiger must be like every other tiger in
order that it may have its place in a book of
Science; there it must be a commonplace tiger to
be at all tolerated. But in the story it is uncommon,
it can never be reduplicated. We know a thing
because it belongs to a class ; we see a thing because
it belongs to itself. The tiger of the story com-
pletely detached itself from all others of its kind
and easily assumed a distinct individuality in the
heart of the listener. The child could vividly see
it, because by the help of her imagination it became
her own tiger, one with herself, and this union of
the subject and object gives us joy. Is it because
there is no separation between them in truth, the
separation being the Maya, which is creation?
There come in our history occasions when the
consciousness of a large multitude becomes sud-
denly illumined with the recognition of a reality
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THE ARTIST
which rises far above the dull obviousness of daily
happenings. The world becomes vivid; we see,
we feel it with all our soul. Such an occasion there
was when the voice of Buddha reached distant
shores across physical and moral impediments.
Then our life and our world found their profound
meaning of reality in their relation to the central
person who offered us emancipation of love. Men,
in order to make this great human experience ever
memorable, determined to do the impossible ; they
made rocks to speak, stones to sing, caves to re-
member; their cry of joy and hope took immortal
forms along the hills and deserts, across barren
solitudes and populous cities. A gigantic creative
endeavour built up its triumph in stupendous
carvings, defying obstacles that were overwhelm-
ing. Such heroic activity over the greater part of
the Eastern continents clearly answers the question :
"What is Art?" It is the response of man's crea-
tive soul to the call of the Real.
Once there came a time, centuries ago in Bengal,
when the divine love drama that has made its
eternal playground in human souls was vividly
revealed by a personality radiating its intimate
realization of God. The mind of a whole people
was stirred by a vision of the world as an instru-
ment, through which sounded out invitation to the
meeting of bliss. The ineffable mystery of God's
love-call, taking shape in an endless panorama of
THE RELIGION OF MAN
colours and forms, inspired activity in music that
overflowed the restrictions of classical convention-
alism. Our Kirtan music of Bengal came to its
being like a star flung up by a burning whirlpool
of emotion in the heart of a whole people, and their
consciousness was aflame with a sense of reality
that must be adequately acknowledged.
The question may be asked as to what place
music occupies in my theory that art is for evoking
in our mind the deep sense of reality in its richest
aspect. Music is the most abstract of all the arts,
as mathematics is in the region of science. In fact
these two have a deep relationship with each other.
Mathematics is the logic of numbers and dimen-
sions. It is therefore employed as the basis of our
scientific knowledge. When taken out of its con-
crete associations and reduced to symbols, it re-
veals its grand structural majesty, the inevitable-
ness of its own perfect concord. Yet there is not
merely a logic but also a magic of mathematics
which works at the world of appearance, producing
harmony the cadence of inter-relationship. This
rhythm of harmony has been extracted from its
usual concrete context, and exhibited through the
medium of sound. And thus the pure essence of
expressiveness in existence is offered in music. Ex-
pressiveness finds the least resistance in sound, hav-
ing freedom unencumbered by the burden of facts
and thoughts. This gives it a power to arouse in
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THE ARTIST
us an intimate feeling of reality. In the pictorial,
plastic and literary arts, the object and our feelings
with regard to it are closely associated, like the
rose and its perfumes. In music, the feeling dis-
tilled in sound, becoming itself an independent
object It assumes a tune-form which is definite,
but a meaning which is undefinable, and yet which
grips our mind with a sense of absolute truth.
It is the magic of mathematics, the rhythm
which is in the heart of all creation, which moves
in the atom and, in its different measures, fashions
gold and lead, the rose and the thorn, the sun and
the planets. These are the dance-steps of numbers
in the arena of time and space, which weave the
maya, the patterns of appearance, the incessant
flow of change, that ever is and is not It is the
rhythm that churns up images from the vague and
makes tangible what is elusive. This is may a, this
is the art in creation, and art in literature, which
is the magic of rhythm.
And must we stop here? What we know as in-
tellectual truth, is that also not a rhythm of the
relationship of facts, that weaves the pattern of
theory, and produces a sense of convincingness to
a person who somehow feels sure that he knows the
truth? We believe any fact to be true because of
a harmony, a rhythm in reason, the process of
which is analysable by the logic of mathematics,
but not its result in me, just as we can count the
139
THE RELIGION OP MAN
notes but cannot account for the music. The mys-
tery is that I am convinced, and this also belongs
to the may a of creation, whose one important, in-
dispensable factor is this self-conscious personality
that I represent
And the Other? I believe it is also a self-con-
scious personality, which has its eternal harmony
with mine.
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CHAPTER X
MAN'S NATURE
FROM the time when Man became truly conscious
of his own self he also became conscious of a mys-
terious spirit of unity which found its manifesta-
tion through him in his society. It is a subtle
medium of relationship between individuals, which
is not for any utilitarian purpose but for its own
ultimate truth, not a sum of arithmetic but a value
of life. Somehow Man has felt that this compre-
hensive spirit of unity has a divine character which
could claim the sacrifice of all that is individual in
him, that in it dwells his highest meaning trans-
cending his limited self, representing his best
freedom,
Man's reverential loyalty to this spirit of unity
is expressed in his religion ; it is symbolized in the
names of his deities. That is why, in the begin-
ning, his gods were tribal gods, even gods of the
different communities belonging to the same tribe.
With the extension of the consciousness of human
unity his God became revealed to him as one and
universal, proving that the truth of human unity is
the truth of Man's God.
In the Sanskrit language, religion goes by the
name dharma, which in the derivative meaning im-
THE RELIGION OF MAN
plies the principle of relationship that holds us
firm, and in its technical sense means the virtue of
a thing, the essential quality of it; for instance, heat
is the essential quality of fire, though in certain
of its stages it may be absent
Religion consists in the endeavour of men to
cultivate and express those qualities which are in-
herent in the nature of Man the Eternal, and to
have faith in him. If these qualities were abso-
lutely natural in individuals, religion could have
no purpose. We begin our history with all the
original promptings of our brute nature which
helps us to fulfil those vital needs of ours that are
immediate. But deeper within us there is a current
of tendencies which runs in many ways in a con-
trary direction, the life current of universal hu-
manity. Religion has its function in reconciling
the contradiction, by subordinating the brute na-
ture to what we consider as the truth of Man.
This is helped when our faith in the Eternal Man,
whom we call by different names and imagine in
different images, is made strong. The contradic-
tion between the two natures in us is so great that
men have willingly sacrificed their vital needs and
courted death in order to express their dharma,
which represents the truth of the Supreme Man.
The vision of the Supreme Man is realized by
our imagination, but not created by our mind.
More real than individual men, he surpasses each
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MAN'S NATURE
of us in his permeating personality which is trans-
cendental. The procession of his ideas, following
his great purpose, is ever moving across obstruc-
tive facts towards the perfected truth. We, the
individuals, having our place in his composition,
may or may not be in conscious harmony with his
purpose, may even put obstacles in his path bring-
ing down our doom upon ourselves. But we gain
our true religion when we consciously co-operate
with him, finding our exceeding joy through suf-
fering and sacrifice. For through our own love for
him we are made conscious of a great love that
radiates from his being, who is Mahatma, the
Supreme Spirit.
The great Chinese sage Lao-tze has said : "One
who may die, but will not perish, has life ever-
lasting". It means that he lives in the life of the
immortal Man. The urging for this life induces
men to go through the struggle for a true survival.
And it has been said in our scripture: "Through
adharma (the negation of dharma] man prospers,
gains what appears desirable, conquers enemies,
but he perishes at the root." In this saying it is
suggested that there is a life which is truer for men
than their physical life which is transient.
Our life gains what is called "value" in those of
its aspects which represent eternal humanity in
knowledge, in sympathy, in deeds, in character
and creative works. And from the beginning of
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
our history we are seeking, often at the cost of
everything else, the value for our life and not
merely success; in other words, we are trying to
realize in ourselves the immortal Man, so that we
may die but not perish. This is the meaning of the
utterance in the Upanishad: "Tarn vedyam p<uru-
sham veda, yatha ma vo mrityuh parivyathah"
"Realize the Person so that thou mayst not suffer
from death."
The meaning of these words is highly paradoxi-
cal, and cannot be proved by our senses or our rea-
son, and yet its influence is so strong in men that
they have cast away all fear and greed, defied all
the instincts that cling to the brute nature, for the
sake of acknowledging and preserving a life which
belongs to the Eternal Person. It is all the more
significant because many of them do not believe
in its reality, and yet are ready to fling away for it
all that they believe to be final and the only positive
fact.
We call this ideal reality "spiritual". That word
is vague; nevertheless, through the dim light
which reaches us across the barriers of physical
existence, we seem to have a stronger faith in the
spiritual Man than in the physical ; and from the
dimmest period of his history, Man has a feeling
that the apparent facts of existence are not final ;
that his supreme welfare depends upon his being
able to remain in perfect relationship with some
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MAN'S NATURE
great mystery behind the veil, at the threshold of
a larger life, which is for giving him a far higher
value than a mere continuation of his physical life
in the material world.
Our physical body has its comprehensive reality
in the physical world, which may be truly called
our universal body, without which our individual
body would miss its function. Our physical life
realizes its growing meaning through a widening
freedom in its relationship with the physical
world, and this gives it a greater happiness than
the mere pleasure of satisfied needs. We become
aware of a profound meaning of our own self at
the consciousness of some ideal of perfection, some
truth beautiful or majestic which gives us an inner
sense of completeness, a heightened sense of our
own reality. This strengthens man's faith, effec-
tive even if indefinite his faith in an objective
ideal of perfection comprehending the human
world. His vision of it has been beautiful or dis-
torted, luminous or obscure, according to the stages
of development that his consciousness has attained.
But whatever may be the name and nature of his
religious creed, man's ideal of human perfection
has been based upon a bond of unity running
through individuals culminating in a supreme
Being who represents the eternal in human person-
ality. In his civilization the perfect expression of
this idea produces the wealth of truth which is for
THE RELIGION OF MAN
the revelation of Man and not merely for the suc-
cess of life. But when this creative ideal which
is dharma gives place to some overmastering pas-
sion in a large body of men civilization bursts out
in an explosive flame, like a star that has lighted
its own funeral pyre of boisterous brilliancy.
When I was a child I had the freedom to make
my own toys out of trifles and create my own games
from imagination. In my happiness my playmates
had their full share, in fact the complete enjoy-
ment of my games depended upon their taking part
in them. One day, in this paradise of our child-
hood, entered the temptation from the market
world of the adult. A toy brought from an English
shop was given to one of our companions; it was
perfect, it was big and wonderfully life-like. He
became proud of the toy and less mindful of the
game ; he kept that expensive thing carefully away
from us, glorying in his exclusive possession of it,
feeling himself superior to his playmates whose
toys were cheap. I am sure if he could use the
modern language of history he would say that he
was more civilized than ourselves to the extent of
his owning that ridiculously perfect toy.
One thing he failed to realize in his excitement
a fact which at the moment seemed to him insig-
nificant that this temptation obscured something
a great deal more perfect than his toy, the revela-
tion of the perfect child which ever dwells in the
146
MAN'S NATURE
heart of man, in other words, the dharma of the
child. The toy merely expressed his wealth but
not himself, not the child's creative spirit, not the
child's generous joy in his play, his identification
of himself with others who were his compeers in
his play world. Civilization is to express Man's
dharma and not merely his cleverness, power and
possession.
Once there was an occasion for me to motor
down to Calcutta from a place a hundred miles
away. Something wrong with the mechanism made
it necessary for us to have a repeated supply of
water almost every half-hour. At the first village
where we were compelled to stop, we asked the
help of a man to find water for us. It proved quite
a task for him, but when we offered him his re-
ward, poor though he was, he refused to accept it
In fifteen other villages the same thing happened.
In a hot country, where travellers constantly need
water and where the water supply grows scanty in
summer, the villagers consider it their duty to offer
water to those who need it They could easily make
a business out of it, following the inexorable law
of demand and supply. But the ideal which they
consider to be their dharma has become one with
their life. They do not claim any personal merit
for possessing it.
Lao-tze, speaking about the man who is truly
good, says: "He quickens but owns not He acts
THE RELIGION OF MAN
but claims not. Merit he accomplishes but dwells
not in it. Since he does not dwell in it, it will never
leave him." That which is outside ourselves we
can sell ; but that which is one with our being we
cannot sell. This complete assimilation of truth
belongs to the paradise of perfection ; it lies beyond
the purgatory of self-consciousness. To have
reached it proves a long process of civilization.
To be able to take a considerable amount of
trouble in order to supply water to a passing
stranger and yet never to claim merit or reward
for it seems absurdly and negligibly simple com-
pared with the capacity to produce an amazing
number of things per minute. A millionaire tour-
ist, ready to corner the food market and grow rich
by driving the whole world to the brink of starva-
tion, is sure to feel too superior to notice this sim-
ple thing while rushing through our villages at
sixty miles an hour.
Yes, it is simple, as simple as it is for a gentle-
man to be a gentleman ; but that simplicity is the
product of centuries of culture. That simplicity
is difficult of imitation. In a few years' time, it
might be possible for me to learn how to make
holes in thousands of needles simultaneously by
turning a wheel, but to be absolutely simple in
one's hospitality to one's enemy, or to a stranger,
requires generations of training. Simplicity takes
no account of its own value, claims no wages, and
148
MAN'S NATURE
therefore those who are enamoured of power do
not realize that simplicity of spiritual expression
is the highest product of civilization.
A process of disintegration can kill this rare
fruit of a higher life, as a whole race of birds pos-
sessing some rare beauty can be made extinct by
the vulgar power of avarice which has civilized
weapons. This fact was clearly proved to me when
I found that the only place where a price was
expected for the water given to us was a suburb at
Calcutta, where life was richer, the water supply
easier and more abundant and where progress
flowed in numerous channels in all directions. It
shows that a harmony of character which the peo-
ple once had was lost the harmony with the inner
self which is greater in its universality than the
self that gives prominence to its personal needs.
The latter loses its feeling of beauty and generos-
ity in its calculation of profit; for there it repre-
sents exclusively itself and not the universal Man.
There is an utterance in the Atharva Veda,
wherein appears the question as to who it was that
gave Man his music. Birds repeat their single
notes, or a very simple combination of them, but
Man builds his world of music and establishes ever
new rhythmic relationship of notes. These reveal
to him a universal mystery of creation which can-
not be described. They bring to him the inner
rhythm that transmutes facts into truths. They
149
THE RELIGION OF MAN
give him pleasure not merely for his sense of hear-
ing, but for his deeper being, which gains satisfac-
tion in the ideal of perfect unity. Somehow man
feels that truth finds its body in such perfection;
and when he seeks for his own best revelation he
seeks a medium which has the harmonious unity,
as has music. Our impulse to give expression to
Universal Man produces arts and literature. They
in their cadence of lines, colours, movements,
words, thoughts, express vastly more than what they
appear to be on the surface. They open the win-
dows of our mind to the eternal reality of man.
They are the superfluity of wealth of which we
claim our common inheritance whatever may be
the country and time to which we belong; for they
are inspired by the universal mind. And not merely
in his arts, but in his own behaviour, the individual
must for his excellence give emphasis to an ideal
which has some value of truth that ideally belongs
to all men. In other words, he should create a
music of expression in his conduct and surround-
ings which makes him represent the supreme Per-
sonality. And civilization is the creation of the
race, its expression of the universal Man.
When I first visited Japan I had the opportu-
nity of observing where the two parts of the human
sphere strongly contrasted ; one, on which grew up
the ancient continents of social ideal, standards of
beauty, codes of personal behaviour ; and the other
150
MAN'S NATURE
part, the fluid element, the perpetual current that
carried wealth to its shores from all parts of the
world. In half a century's time Japan has been
able to make her own the mighty spirit of progress
which suddenly burst upon her one morning in a
storm of insult and menace. China also has had
her rousing, when her self-respect was being
knocked to pieces through series of helpless years,
and I am sure she also will master before long the
instrument which hurt her to the quick. But the
ideals that imparted life and body to Japanese
civilization had been nourished in the reverent
hopes of countless generations through ages which
were not primarily occupied in an incessant hunt
for opportunities. They had those large tracts of
leisure in them which are necessary for the blos-
soming of Life's beauty and the ripening of her
wisdom.
On the one hand we can look upon the modern
factories in Japan with their numerous mechanical
organizations and engines of production and de-
struction of the latest type. On the other hand,
against them we may see some fragile vase, some
small piece of silk, some architecture of sublime
simplicity, some perfect lyric of bodily movement.
We may also notice the Japanese expression of
courtesy daily extracting from them a considerable
amount of time and trouble. All these have come
not from any accurate knowledge of things but
THE RELIGION OF MAN
from an intense consciousness of the value of real-
ity which takes time for its fullness. What Japan
reveals in her skilful manipulation of telegraphic
wires and railway lines, of machines for manufac-
turing things and for killing men, is more or less
similar to what we see in other countries which
have similar opportunity for training. But in her
art of living, her pictures, her code of conduct, the
various forms of beauty which her religious and
social ideals assume Japan expresses her own per-
sonality, her dharma, which, in order to be of any
worth, must be unique and at the same time repre-
sent Man of the Everlasting Life.
Lao-tze has said: "Not knowing the eternal
causes passions to rise ; and that is evil". He has
also said: "Let us die, and yet not perish". For
we die when we lose our physical life, we perish
when we miss our humanity. And humanity is the
dharma of human beings.
What is evident in this world is the endless pro-
cession of moving things; but what is to be real-
ized, is the supreme human Truth by which the
human world is permeated.
We must never forget to-day that a mere move-
ment is not valuable in itself, that it may be a
sign of a dangerous form of inertia. We must be
reminded that a great upheaval of spirit, a uni-
versal realization of true dignity of man once
caused by Buddha's teachings in India, started a
152
MAN'S NATURE
movement for centuries which produced illumina-
tion of literature, art, science and numerous efforts
of public beneficence. This was a movement whose
motive force was not some additional accession of
knowledge or power or urging of some overwhelm-
ing passion. It was an inspiration for freedom, the
freedom which enables us to realize dharma, the
truth of Eternal Man.
Lao-tze in one of his utterances has said : "Those
who have virtue (dharma) attend to their obliga-
tions; those who have no virtue attend to their
claims." Progress which is not related to an inner
dharma, but to an attraction which is external,
seeks to satisfy our endless claims. But civiliza-
tion, which is an ideal, gives us the abundant
power to renounce which is the power that realizes
the infinite and inspires creation.
This great Chinese sage has said : "To increase
life is called a blessing." For, the increase of life
realizes the eternal life and yet does not transcend
the limits of life's unity* The mountain pine
grows tall and great, its every inch maintains the
rhythm of an inner balance, and therefore even in
its seeming extravagance it has the reticent grace
of self-control. The tree and its productions belong
to the same vital system of cadence; the timber,
the flowers, leaves and fruits are one with the tree ;
their exuberance is not a malady of exaggeration,
but a blessing.
153
CHAPTER XI
THE MEETING
OUR great prophets in all ages did truly realize
in themselves the freedom of the soul in their con-
sciousness of the spiritual kinship of man which is
universal. And yet human races, owing to their
external geographical condition, developed in
their individual isolation a mentality that is ob-
noxiously selfish. In their instinctive search for
truth in religion either they dwarfed and deformed
it in the mould of the primitive distortions of their
own race-mind, or else they shut their God within
temple walls and scriptural texts safely away, espe-
cially from those departments of life where his
absence gives easy access to devil-worship in vari-
ous names and forms. They treated their God in
the same way as in some forms of government the
King is treated, who has traditional honour but no
effective authority. The true meaning of God has
remained vague in our minds only because our
consciousness of the spiritual unity has been
thwarted.
One of the potent reasons for this our geo-
graphical separation has now been nearly re-
moved. Therefore the time has come when we
154
THE MEETING
must, for the sake of truth and for the sake of that
peace which is the harvest of truth, refuse to allow
the idea of our God to remain indistinct behind
unrealities of formal rites and theological misti-
ness.
The creature that lives its life screened and
sheltered in a dark cave, finds its safety in the very
narrowness of its own environment. The economi-
cal providence of Nature curtails and tones down
its sensibilities to such a limited necessity. But
if these cave-walls were to become suddenly re-
moved by some catastrophe, then either it must
accept the doom of extinction, or carry on satis-
factory negotiations with its wider surroundings.
The races of mankind will never again be able
to go back to their citadels of high-walled exclu-
siveness. They are to-day exposed to one another,
physically and intellectually. The shells, which
have so long given them full security within their
individual enclosures have been broken, and by no
artificial process can they be mended again. So
we have to accept this fact, even though we have
not yet fully adapted our minds to this changed
environment of publicity, even though through it
we may have to run all the risks entailed by the
wider expansion of life's freedom.
A large part of our tradition is our code of
adjustment which deals with the circumstances
special to ourselves. These traditions, no doubt,
155
THE RELIGION OF MAN
variegate the several racial personalities with their
distinctive colours colours which have their
poetry and also certain protective qualities suitable
to each different environment We may come to
acquire a strong love for our own colourful race
speciality; but if that gives us fitness only for a
very narrow world, then, at the slightest variation
in our outward circumstances, we may have to
pay for this love with our life itself.
In the animal world there are numerous in-
stances of complete race-suicide overtaking those
who fondly clung to some advantage which later
on became a hindrance in an altered dispensation.
In fact the superiority of man is proved by his
adaptability to extreme surprises of chance
neither the torrid nor the frigid zone of his destiny
offering him insuperable obstacles.
The vastness of the race problem with which
we are faced to-day will either compel us to train
ourselves to moral fitness in the place of merely
external efficiency, or the complications arising
out of it will fetter all our movements and drag us
to our death. 1
When our necessity becomes urgently insistent,
when the resources that have sustained us so long
are exhausted, then our spirit puts forth all its
force to discover some other source of sustenance
deeper and more permanent. This leads us from
1 See Appendix iy,
156
THE MEETING
the exterior to the interior of our store-house*
When muscle does not fully serve us, we come to
awaken intellect to ask for its help and are then
surprised to find in it a greater source of strength
for us than physical power. When, in their turn,
our intellectual gifts grow perverse, and only help
to render our suicide gorgeous and exhaustive, our
soul must seek an alliance with some power which
is still deeper, yet further removed from the rude
stupidity of muscle.
Hitherto the cultivation of intense race egotism
is the one thing that has found its fullest scope at
this meeting of men. In no period of human his-
tory has there been such an epidemic of moral
perversity, such a universal churning up of jeal-
ousy, greed, hatred and mutual suspicion. Every
people, weak or strong, is constantly indulging in
a violent dream of rendering itself thoroughly
hurtful to others. In this galloping competition of
hurtfulness, on the slope of a bottomless pit, no
nation dares to stop or slow down. A scarlet fever
with a raging temperature has attacked the entire
body of mankind, and political passion has taken
the place of creative personality in all departments
of life.
It is well known that when greed has for its
object material gain then it can have no end. It
is like the chasing of the horizon by a lunatic. To
go on in a competition multiplying millions be-
J57
THE RELIGION OF MAN
comes a steeplechase of insensate futility that has
obstacles but no goal. It has for its parallel the
fight with material weapons weapons which
must perpetually be multiplied, opening up new
vistas of destruction and evoking new forms of
insanity in the forging of frightfulness. Thus
seems now to have commenced the last fatal ad-
venture of drunken Passion riding on an intellect
of prodigious power.
To-day, more than ever before in our history,
the aid of spiritual power is needed. Therefore, I
believe its resources will surely be discovered in
the hidden depths of our being. Pioneers will
come to take up this adventure and suffer, and
through suffering open out a path to that higher
elevation of life in which lies our safety.
Let me, in reference to this, give an instance
from the history of Ancient India, There was a
noble period in the early days of India when, to
a band of dreamers, agriculture appeared as a
great idea and not merely useful fact The heroic
personality of Ramachandra, who espoused its
cause, was sung in popular ballads, which in a
later age forgot their original message and were
crystallized into an epic merely extolling some
domestic virtues of its hero. It is quite evident,
however, from the legendary relics lying entombed
in the story, that a new age ushered in by the
spread of agriculture came as a divine voice to
158
those who could hear. It lifted up the primeval
screen of the wilderness, brought the distant near,
and broke down all barricades- Men who had
formed separate and antagonistic groups in their
sheltered seclusions were called upon to form a
united people.
In the Vedic verses, we find constant mention of
conflicts between the original inhabitants of An-
cient India and the colonists. There we find the
expression of a spirit that was one of mutual dis-
trust and a struggle in which was sought either
wholesale slavery or extermination for the oppo-
nents carried on in the manner of animals who
live in the narrow segregation imposed upon them
by their limited imagination and imperfect sym-
pathy. This spirit would have continued in all its
ferocious vigour of savagery had men failed tc
find the opportunity for the discovery that man's
highest truth was in the union of co-operation and
love.
The progress of agriculture was the first exter-
nal step which led to such a discovery* It not onl}
made a settled life possible for a large number oJ
men living in close proximity, but it claimed foi
its very purpose a life of peaceful co-operation
The mere fact of such a sudden change from
nomadic to an agricultural condition would no
have benefited Man if he had not developed there
with his spiritual sensitiveness to an inner principL
159
THE RELIGION OF MAN
of truth. We can realize, from our reading of the
Ramayana, the birth of idealism among a section
of the Indian colonists of those days, before whose
mind's eye was opened a vision of emancipation
rich with the responsibility of a higher life. The
epic represents in its ideal the change of the peo-
ple's aspiration from the path of conquest to that
of reconciliation.
At the present time, as I have said, the human
world has been overtaken by another vast change
similar to that which had occurred in the epic age
of India. So long men had been cultivating, almost
with a religious fervour, that mentality which is
the product of racial isolation; poets proclaimed,
in a loud pitch of bragging, the exploits of their
popular fighters; money-makers felt neither pity
nor shame in the unscrupulous dexterity of their
pocket-picking; diplomats scattered lies in order
to reap concessions from the devastated future of
their own victims. Suddenly the walls that sep-
arated the different races are seen to have given
way, and we find ourselves standing face to face.
This is a great fact of epic significance. Man,
suckled at the wolf's breast, sheltered in the
brute's den, brought up in the prowling habit of
depredation, suddenly discovers that he is Man,
and that his true power lies in yielding up his
brute power for the freedom of spirit.
The God of humanity has arrived at the gates
160
THE ME ETING
of the ruined temple of the tribe. Though he has
not yet found his altar, I ask the men of simple
faith, wherever they may be in the world, to bring
their offering of sacrifice to him, and to believe
that it is far better to be wise and worshipful than
to be clever and supercilious. I ask them to claim
the right of manhood to be friends of men, and
not the right of a particular proud race or nation
which may boast of the fatal quality of being the
rulers of men. We should know for certain that
such rulers will no longer be tolerated in the new
world, as it basks in the open sunlight of mind and
breathes life's free air.
In the geological ages of the infant earth the
demons of physical force had their full sway. The
angry fire, the devouring flood, the fury of the
storm, continually kicked the earth into frightful
distortions. These titans have at last given way
to the reign of life. Had there been spectators in
those days who were clever and practical they
would have wagered their last penny on these titans
and would have waxed hilariously witty at the
expense of the helpless living speck taking its
stand in the arena of the wrestling giants. Only
a dreamer could have then declared with unwaver-
ing conviction that those titans were doomed be-
cause of their very exaggeration, as are, to-day :
those formidable qualities which, in the parlance
of schoolboy science, are termed Nordic.
161
THE RELIGION OF MAN
I ask once again, let us, the dreamers of the East
and the West, keep our faith firm in the Life that
creates and not in the Machine that constructs
in the power that hides its force and blossoms in
beauty, and not in the power that bares its arms
and chuckles at its capacity to make itself obnox-
ious. Let us know that the Machine is good when
it helps, but not so when it exploits life; that
Science is great when it destroys evil, but not when
the two enter into unholy alliance.
162
CHAPTER XII
THE TEACHER
I HAVE already described how the nebulous idea
of the divine essence condensed in my conscious-
ness into a human realization. It is definite and
finite at the same time, the Eternal Person mani-
fested in all persons. It may be one of the numer-
ous manifestations of God, the one in which is com-
prehended Man and his Universe. But we can
never know or imagine him as revealed in any
other inconceivable universe so long as we remain
human beings. And therefore, whatever character
our theology may ascribe to him, in reality he is
the infinite ideal of Man towards whom men move
in their collective growth, with whom they seek
their union of love as individuals, in whom they
find their ideal of father, friend and beloved.
I am sure that it was this idea of the divine
Humanity unconsciously working in my mind,
which compelled me to come out of the seclusion
of my literary career and take my part in the world
of practical activities. The solitary enjoyment of
the infinite in meditation no longer satisfied me,
and the texts which I used for my silent worship
163
THE RELIGION OF MAN
lost their inspiration without my knowing it. I am
sure I vaguely felt that my need was spiritual self-
realization in the life of Man through some disin-
terested service. This was the time when I founded
an educational institution for our children in Ben-
gal. It has a special character of its own which
is still struggling to find its fulfilment; for it is a
living temple that I have attempted to build for
my divinity. In such a place education necessarily
becomes the preparation for a complete life of
man which can only become possible by living
that life, through knowledge and service, enjoy-
ment and creative work. The necessity was my
own, for I felt impelled to come back into a ful-
ness of truth from my exile in a dream-world.
This brings to my mind the name of another poet
of ancient India, Kalidasa, whose poem of Meg-
haduta reverberates with the music of the sorrow
of an exile.
It was not the physical home-sickness from
which the poet suffered, it was something far more
fundamental, the home-sickness of the soul. We
feel from almost all his works the oppressive at-
mosphere of the kings' palaces of those days,
dense with things of luxury, and also with the
callousness of self-indulgence, albeit an atmos-
phere of refined culture based on an extravagant
civilization.
The poet in the royal court lived in banishment
164
THE TEACHER
banishment from the immediate presence of the
eternal. He knew it was not merely his own ban-
ishment, but that of the whole age to which he was
born, the age that had gathered its wealth and
missed its well-being, built its storehouse of things
and lost its background of the great universe.
What was the form in which his desire for perfec-
tion persistently appeared in his drama and poems?
It was the form of the tapovana, the forest-dwell-
ing of the patriarchal community of ancient India.
Those who are familiar with Sanskrit literature
will know that this was not a colony of people with
a primitive culture and mind. They were seekers
after truth, for the sake of which they lived in an
atmosphere of purity but not of Puritanism, of the
simple life but not the life of self-mortification.
They never advocated celibacy and they had con-
stant intercommunication with other people who
lived the life of worldly interest. Their aim and
endeavour have briefly been suggested in the
Upanishad in these lines :
Te sarvagam sarvatah prapya dhira
yuktatmanah sarvamevavisanti.
(Those men of serene mind enter into the All, having realized
and being in union everywhere with the omnipresent Spirit.)
It was never a philosophy of renunciation of a
negative character, but a realization completely
comprehensive. How the tortured mind of Kali-
165
THE RELIGION OF MAN
dasa in the prosperous city of Ujjaini, and the
glorious period of Vikramaditya, closely pressed
by all-obstructing things and all-devouring self,
let his thoughts hover round the vision of a tapo-
vana for his inspiration of life!
It was not a deliberate copy but a natural coin-
cidence that a poet of modern India also had the
similar vision when he felt within him the misery
of a spiritual banishment In the time of Kalidasa
the people vividly believed in the ideal of tapo-
vana, the forest colony, and there can be no doubt
that even in the late age there were communities
of men living in the heart of nature, not ascetics
fiercely in love with a lingering suicide, but men
of serene sanity who sought to realize the spiritual
meaning of their life. And, therefore, when Kali-
dasa sang of the tapovana, his poems found their
immediate communion in the living faith of his
hearers. But to-day the idea has lost any definite
outline of reality, and has retreated into the far-
away phantom-land of legend. Therefore the
Sanskrit word in a modern poem would merely
be poetical, its meaning judged by a literary stand-
ard of appraisement. Then, again, the spirit of the
forest-dwelling in the purity of its original shape
would be a fantastic anachronism in the present
age, and therefore, in order to be real, it must find
its reincarnation under modern conditions of life.
It must be the same in truth, but not identical in
166
THE TEACHER
fact. It was this which made the modern poet's
heart crave to compose his poem in a language of
tangible words.
But I must give the history in some detail.
Civilized man has come far away from the orbit of
his normal life. He has gradually formed and in-
tensified some habits that are like those of the bees
for adapting himself to his hive-world. We often
see men suffering from ennui, from world-weari-
ness, from a spirit of rebellion against their envi-
ronment for no reasonable cause whatever. Social
revolutions are constantly ushered in with a sui-
cidal violence that has its origin in our dissatisfac-
tion with our hive-wall arrangement the too
exclusive enclosure that deprives us of the perspec-
tive which is so much needed to give us the proper
proportion in our art of living. All this is an indi-
cation that man has not been moulded on the model
of the bee and therefore he becomes recklessly
anti-social when his freedom to be more than social
is ignored.
In our highly complex modern condition
mechanical forces are organized with such effi-
ciency that materials are produced that grow far
in advance of man's selective and assimilative
capacity to simplify them into harmony with his
nature and needs.
Such an intemperate overgrowth of things, like
rank vegetation in the tropics, creates confinement
167
THE RELIGION OF MAN
for man. The nest is simple, it has an early rela-
tionship with the sky; the cage is complex and
costly ; it is too much itself excommunicated from
whatever lies outside. And man is building his
cage, fast developing his parasitism on the monster
Thing, which he allows to envelop him on all
sides. He is always occupied in adapting himself
to its dead angularities, limits himself to its limita-
tions, and merely becomes a part of it.
This may seem contrary to the doctrine of those
who believe that a constant high pressure of living,
produced by an artificially cultivated hunger of
things, generates and feeds the energy that drives
civilization upon its endless journey. Personally, I
do not believe that this has ever been the principal
driving force that has led to eminence any great
civilization of which we know in history.
I was born in what was once the metropolis of
British India. My own ancestors came floating to
Calcutta upon the earliest tide of the fluctuating
fortune of the East India Company. The uncon-
vential code of life for our family has been a
confluence of three cultures, the Hindu, Moham-
medan and British. My grandfather belonged to
that period when the amplitude of dress and cour-
tesy and a generous leisure were gradually being
clipped and curtailed into Victorian manners, eco-
nomical in time, in ceremonies, and in the dignity
of personal appearance. [This will show that I
168
THE TEACHER
came to a world in which the modern citybred
spirit of progress had just begun driving its trium-
phal car over the luscious green life of our ancient
village community. Though the trampling process
was almost complete round me, yet the wailing cry
of the past was still lingering over the wreckage.
Often I had listened to my eldest brother de-
scribing with the poignancy of a hopeless regret
a society hospitable, sweet with the old-world
aroma of natural kindliness, full of simple faith
and the ceremonial-poetry of life. But all this was
a vanishing shadow behind me in the dusky golden
haze of a twilight horizon the all-pervading fact
around my boyhood being the modern city newly
built by a company of western traders and the
spirit of the modern time seeking its unaccustomed
entrance into our life, stumbling against countless
anomalies.
But it always is a surprise to me to think that
though this closed-up hardness of a city was my
only experience of the world, yet my mind was
constantly haunted by the home-sick fancies of an
exile. It seems that the sub-conscious remem-
brance of a primeval dwelling-place, where, in
our ancestor's minds, were figured and voiced the
mysteries of the inarticulate rocks, the rushing
water and the dark whispers of the forest, was con-
stantly stirring my blood with its call. Some
shadow-haunting living reminiscence in me seemed
169
THE RELIGION OF MAN
to ache for the pre-natal cradle and playground it
shared with the primal life in the illimitable magic
of the land, water and air. The shrill, thin cry of
the high-flying kite in the blazing sun of the dazed
Indian midday sent to a solitary boy the signal of
a dumb distant kinship. The few coconut plants
growing by the boundary wall of our house, like
some war captives from an older army of invaders
of this earth, spoke to me of the eternal compan-
ionship which the great brotherhood of trees has
ever offered to man.
Looking back upon those moments of my boy-
hood days, when all my mind seemed to float
poised upon a large feeling of the sky, of the light,
and to tingle with the brown earth in its glistening
grass, I cannot help believing that my Indian
ancestry had left deep in my being the legacy of
its philosophy the philosophy which speaks of
fulfilment through our harmony with all things.
The founding of my school had its origin in the
memory of that longing for the freedom of con-
sciousness, which seems to go back beyond- the
skyline of my birth.
Freedom in the mere sense of independence has
no content, and therefore no meaning. Perfect
freedom lies in a perfect harmony of relationship,
which we realize in this world not through our
response to it in knowing, but in being. Objects of
knowledge maintain an infinite distance from us
170
THE TEACHER
are the knowers. For knowledge is not union.
Therefore the further world of freedom awaits us
there where we reach truth, not through feeling it
by our senses or knowing it by our reason, but
through the union of perfect sympathy.
Children with the freshness of their senses come
lirectly to the intimacy of this world. This is the
5rst great gift they have. They must accept it
laked and simple and must never again lose their
Dower of immediate communication with it. For
3ur perfection we have to be vitally savage and
nentally civilized ; we should have the gift to be
latural with nature and human with human
society. My banished soul sitting in the civilized
isolation of the town-life cried within me for the
enlargement of the horizon of its comprehension.
[ was like the torn-away line of a verse, always in
i state of suspense, while the other line, with which
it rhymed and which could give it fulness, was
smudged by the mist away in some undecipherable
listance. The inexpensive power to be happy,
which, along with other children, I brought to
this world, was being constantly worn away by
friction with the brick-and-mortar arrangement
3f life, by monotonously mechanical habits and the
customary code of respectability.
In the usual course of things I was sent to school,
but possibly my suffering was unusually greater
than that of most other children. The non-civilized
171
THE RELIGION OF MAN
in me was sensitive; it had the great thirst for
colour, for music, for movement of life. Our city-
built education took no heed of that living fact.
It had its luggage-van waiting for branded bales of
marketable result. The relative proportion of the
non-civilized to the civilized in man should be
in the proportion of the water and the land in our
globe, the former predominating. But the school
had for its object a continual reclamation of the
civilized. Such a drain in the fluid element causes
an aridity which may not be considered deplorable
under city conditions. But my nature never got ac-
customed to those conditions, to the callous decency
of the pavement The non-civilized triumphed in
me only too soon and drove me away from school
when I had just entered my teens. I found myself
stranded on a solitary island of ignorance, and had
to rely solely upon my own instincts to build up
my education from the very beginning.
This reminds me that when I was young I had
the great good fortune of coming upon a Bengali
translation of Robinson Crusoe. I still believe that
it is the best book for boys that has ever been
written. There was a longing in me when young
to run away from my own self and be one with
everything in Nature. This mood appears to be
particularly Indian, the outcome of a traditional
desire for the expansion of consciousness. One has
to admit that such a desire is too subjective in its
172
THE TEACHER
character ; but this is inevitable in the geographical
circumstances which we have to endure. We live
under the extortionate tyranny of the tropics, pay-
ing heavy toll every moment for the barest right of
existence. The heat, the damp, the unspeakable
fecundity of minute life feeding upon big life, the
perpetual sources of irritation, visible and invis-
ible, leave very little margin of capital for extrava-
gant experiments. Excess of energy seeks obstacles
for its self-realization. That is why we find so
often in Western literature a constant emphasis
upon the malignant aspect of Nature, in whom the
people of the West seem to be delighted to discover
an enemy for the sheer enjoyment of challenging
her to fight. The reason which made Alexander
express his desire to find other worlds to conquer,
when his conquest of the world was completed,
makes the enormously vital people of the West
desire, when they have some respite in their sub-
lime mission of fighting against objects that are
noxious, to go out of their way to spread their coat-
tails in other people's thoroughfares and to claim
indemnity when these are trodden upon. In order
to make the thrilling risk of hurting themselves
they are ready to welcome endless trouble to hurt
others who are inoffensive, such as the beautiful
birds which happen to know how to fly away, the
timid beasts, which have the advantage of inhabit-
ing inaccessible regions, and but I avoid the dis~
THE RELIGION OF MAN
courtesy of mentioning higher races in this con-
nection.
Life's fulfilment finds constant contradictions in
its path ; but those are necessary for the sake of its
advance. The stream is saved from the sluggish-
ness of its current by the perpetual opposition of
the soil through which it must cut its way. It is
this soil which forms its banks. The spirit of fight
belongs to the genius of life. The tuning of an
instrument has to be done, not because it reveals
a proficient perseverance in the face of difficulty,
but because it helps music to be perfectly realized.
Let us rejoice that in the West life's instrument is
being tuned in all its different chords owing to the
great fact that the West has triumphant pleasure
in the struggle with obstacles. The spirit of crea-
tion in the heart of the universe will never allow,
for its own sake, obstacles to be completely re-
moved. It is only because positive truth lies in that
ideal of perfection, which has to be won by our
own endeavour in order to make it our own, that
the spirit of fight is great But this does not imply
a premium for the exhibition of a muscular
athleticism or a rude barbarism of ravenous
rapacity.
In Robinson Crusoe, the delight of the union
with Nature finds its expression in a story of ad-
venture in which the solitary Man is face to face
with solitary Nature, coaxing her, co-operating
174
THE TEACHER
with her, exploring her secrets, using all his facul-
ties to win her help.
This is the heroic love-adventure of the West,
the active wooing of the earth. I remember how,
once in my youth, the feeling of intense delight
and wonder followed me in my railway journey
across Europe from Brindisi to Calais, when I
realized the chaste beauty of this continent every-
where blossoming in a glow of health and richness
under the age-long attention of her chivalrous
lover, Western humanity. He had gained her,
made her his own, unlocked the inexhaustible gen-
erosity of her heart. And I had intently wished
that the introspective vision of the universal soul,
which an Eastern devotee realizes in the solitude
of his mind, could be united with this spirit of its
outward expression in service, the exercise of will
in unfolding the wealth of beauty and well-being
from its shy obscurity to the light.
I remember the morning when a beggar woman
in a Bengal village gathered in the loose end of her
sari the stale flowers that were about to be thrown
away from the vase on my table; and with an
ecstatic expression of tenderness buried her face
in them, exclaiming, "Oh, Beloved of my Heart!"
Her eyes could easily pierce the veil of the outward
form and reach the realm of the infinite in these
flowers, where she found the intimate touch of her
Beloved, the great, the universal Human. But in
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
spite of it all she lacked that energy of worship,
that Western form of direct divine service, the
service of man, which helps the earth to bring out
her flowers and spread the reign of beauty on the
desolate dust. I refuse to think that the twin spirits
of the East and the West, the Mary and Martha,
can never meet to make perfect the realization of
truth. And in spite of our material poverty in the
East and the antagonism of time I wait patiently
for this meeting.
Robinson Crusoe's island conies to my mind
when I think of some institution where the first
great lesson in the perfect union of Man and
Nature, not only through love, but through active
communication and intelligent ways, can be had
unobstructed. We have to keep in mind the fact
that love and action are the only intermediaries
through which perfect knowledge can be obtained ;
for the object of knowledge is not pedantry but
wisdom. The primary object of an institution
should not be merely to educate one's limbs and
mind to be in efficient readiness for all emergen-
cies, but to be in perfect tune in the symphony of
response between life and world, to find the balance
of their harmony which is wisdom. The first im-
portant lesson for children in such a place would
be that of improvisation, the constant imposition
of the ready-made having been banished from
here. It is to give occasions to explore one's
176
THE TEACHER
capacity through surprises of achievement I must
make it plain that this means a lesson not in simple
life, but in creative life. For life may grow com-
plex, and yet if there is a living personality in its
centre, it will still have the unity of creation; it
will carry its own weight in perfect grace, and will
not be a mere addition to the number of facts that
only goes to swell a crowd.
I wish I could say that I had fully realized my
dream in my school. I have only made the first
introduction towards it and have given an oppor-
tunity to the children to find their freedom in
Nature by being able to love it. For love is free-
dom; it gives us that fulness of existence which
saves us from paying with our soul for objects that
are immensely cheap. Love lights up this world
with its meaning and makes life feel that it has that
"enough" everywhere which truly is its "feast".
I know men who preach the cult of simple life by
glorifying the spiritual merit of poverty. I refuse
to imagine any special value in poverty when it is a
mere negation. Only when the mind has the sensi-
tiveness to be able to respond to the deeper call of
reality is it naturally weaned away from the lure
of the fictitious value of things. It is callousness
which robs us of our simple power to enjoy, and
dooms us to the indignity of a snobbish pride in
furniture and the foolish burden of expensive
things. But the callousness of asceticism pitted
*77
THE RELIGION OF MAN
against the callousness of luxury is merely fighting
one evil with the help of another, inviting the piti-
less demon of the desert in place of the indiscrimi-
nate demon of the jungle,
I tried my best to develop in the children of my
school the freshness of their feeling for Nature,
a sensitiveness of soul in their relationship with
their human surroundings, with the help of litera-
ture, festive ceremonials and also the religious
teaching which enjoins us to come to the nearer
presence of the world through the soul,, thuscjo
gain it more than can be measured like gaining
an instrument in truth by bringing out its music.
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CHAPTER XIII
SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
THERE are injuries that attack our life; they hurt
the harmony of life's functions through which is
maintained the harmony of our physical self with
the physical world; and these injuries are called
diseases. There are also factors that oppress our
intelligence. They injure the harmony of relation-
ship between our rational mind and the universe
of reason; and we call them stupidity, ignorance
or insanity. They are uncontrolled exaggerations
of passions that upset all balance in our personal-
ity. They obscure the harmony between the spirit
of the individual man and the spirit of the uni-
versal Man; and we give them the name sin. In
all these instances our realization of the universal
Man, in his physical, rational and spiritual aspects,
is obstructed, and our true freedom in the realms
of matter, mind and spirit is made narrow or
distorted.
All the higher religions of India speak of the
training for Mukti, the liberation of the soul. In
this self of ours we are conscious of individuality
and all its activities are engaged in the expressior
179
THE RELIGION OF MAN
and enjoyment of our finite and individual nature.
In our soul we are conscious of the transcendental
truth in us, the Universal, the Supreme Man ; and
this soul, the spiritual self, has its enjoyment in the
renunciation of the individual self for the sake of
the supreme soul. This renunciation is not in the
negation of self, but in the dedication of it The
desire for it comes from an instinct which very
often knows its own meaning vaguely and gropes
for a name that would define its purpose. This
purpose is in the realization of its unity with some
objective ideal of perfections, some harmony of
relationship between the individual and the infinite
man. It is of this harmony, and not of a barren
isolation that the Upanishad speaks, when it says
that truth no longer remains hidden in him who
finds himself in the All.
Once when I was on a visit to a remote Bengali
village, mostly inhabited by Mahomedan culti-
vators, the villagers entertained me with an op r -
eratic performance the literature of which belonged
to an obsolete religious sect that had wide influence
centuries ago. Though the religion itself is dead,
its voice still continues preaching its philosophy to
a people, who, in spite of their different culture,
are not tired of listening. It discussed according
to its own doctrine the different elements, material
and transcendental, that constitute human person-
ality, comprehending the body, the self and the
180
SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
soul. Then came a dialogue, during the course of
which was related the incident of a person who
wanted to make a journey to Brindaban, the Gar-
den of Bliss, but was prevented by a watchman
who startled him with an accusation of theft. The
thieving was proved when it was shown that inside
his clothes he was secretly trying to smuggle into
the garden the self, which only finds its fulfilment
by its surrender. The culprit was caught with the
incriminating bundle in his possession which
barred for him his passage to the supreme goal.
Under a tattered canopy, supported on bamboo
poles and lighted by a few smoking kerosene
lamps, the village crowd, occasionally interrupted
by howls of jackals in the neighbouring paddy
fields, attended with untired interest, till the small
hours of the morning, the performance of a drama
that discussed the ultimate meaning of all things
in a seemingly incongruous setting of dance, music
and humorous dialogue.
This illustration will show how naturally, in
India, poetry and philosophy have walked hand in
hand, only because the latter has claimed its right
to guide men to the practical path of their life's
fulfilment. What is that fulfilment? It is our free-
dom in truth, which has for its prayer :
Lead us from the unreal to reality,
For satyam is anandam, the Real is Joy.
181
THE RELIGION OF MAN
In the world of art, our consciousness being
freed from the tangle of self interest, we gain an
unobstructed vision of unity, the incarnation of
the real, which is a joy for ever.
As in the world of art, so in the spiritual world,
our soul waits for its freedom from the ego to
reach that disinterested joy which is the source and
goal of creation. It cries for its mukti, its freedom
in the unity of truth. The idea of mukti has af-
fected our lives in India, touched the springs of
pure emotions and supplications; for it soars
heavenward on the wings of poesy. We constantly
hear men of scanty learning and simple faith sing-
ing in their prayer to Tara, the Goddess Re-
deemer :
"For what sin should I be compelled to remain
in this dungeon of the world of appearance?"
They are afraid of being alienated from the
world of truth, afraid of perpetual drifting amidst
the froth and foam of things, of being tossed about
by the tidal waves of pleasure and pain and never
reaching the ultimate meaning of life. Of these
men, one may be a carter driving his cart to mar-
ket, another a fisherman plying his net. They may
not be prompt with an intelligent answer if they
are questioned about the deeper import of the song
they sing, but they have no doubt in their^mind,
that the abiding cause of all misery is not so much
in the lack of life's furniture as in the obscurity
182
SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
of life's significance. It is a common topic with
such to decry an undue emphasis upon "me" and
"mine", which falsifies the perspective of truth.
For have they not often seen men, who are not
above their own level in social position or intellec-
tual acquirement, going out to seek Truth, leaving
everything that they have behind them?
They know that the object of these adventurers
is not betterment in worldly wealth and power
it is muktij freedom. They possibly know some
poor fellow villager of their own craft, who re-
mains in the world carrying on his daily vocation
and yet has the reputation of being emancipated in
the heart of the Eternal. I myself have come across
a fisherman singing with an inward absorption of
mind, while fishing all day in the Ganges, who was
pointed out to me by my boatman, with awe, as a
man of liberated spirit He is out of reach of the
conventional prices that are set upon men by so-
ciety, and which classify them like toys arranged
in the shop-windows according to the market
standard of value.
When the figure of this fisherman comes to my
mind, I cannot but think that their number is not
small who with their lives sing the epic of the
unfettered soul, but will never be known in his-
tory. These unsophisticated Indian peasants know
that an Emperor is merely a decorated slave, re-
maining chained to his Empire, that a millionaire
183
THE RELIGION OF MAN
is kept pilloried by his fate in the golden cage of
his wealth, while this fisherman is free in the realm
of light When, groping in the dark, we stumble
against objects, we cling to them believing them
to be our only hope.. When light comes, we slacken
our hold, finding them to be mere parts of the
All to which we are related. The simple man of
the village knows what freedom is freedom from
the isolation of self, from the isolation of things,
which imparts a fierce intensity to our sense of
possession. He knows that this freedom is not the
mere negation of bondage, in the bareness of our
belongings, but in some positive realization which
gives pure joy to our being, and he sings: "To
him who sinks into the deep, nothing remains
unattained." He says again:
Let my two minds meet and combine,
And lead me to the city Wonderful.
When that one mind of ours which wanders in
search of things in the outer region of the varied,
and the other which seeks the inward vision of
unity, are no longer in conflict, they help us to
realize the ajab, the anirvachaniya, the ineffable.
The poet saint Kabir has also the same message
when he sings :
By saying that Supreme Reality only dwells in the inner realm
of spirit, we shame the outer world of matter; and also when
we say that he is only in the outside, we do not speak the
truth.
184
SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
According to these singers, truth is in unity, and
therefore freedom is in its realization. The texts
of our daily worship and meditation are for train-
ing our mind to overcome the barrier of separate-
ness from the rest of existence and to realize
advaitam, the Supreme Unity which is anantam, in-
finitude. It is philosophical wisdom, having its
universal radiation in the popular mind in India,
that inspires our prayer, our daily spiritual prac-
tices. It has its constant urging for us to go beyond
the world of appearances, in which facts as facts
are alien to us, like the mere sounds of foreign
music; it speaks to us of an emancipation in the
inner truth of all things, where the endless Many
reveal the One.
Freedom in the material world has also the
same meaning expressed in its own language.
When nature's phenomena appeared to us as
irrelevant, as heterogeneous manifestations of an
obscure and irrational caprice, we lived in an alien
world never dreaming of our swaraj within'its ter-
ritory. Through the discovery of the harmony of
its working with that of our reason, we realize our
unity with it, and therefore our freedom.
Those who have been brought up in a mis-
understanding of this world's process, not knowing
that it is one with themselves through the relation-
ship of knowledge and intelligence, are trained as
cowards by a hopeless faith in the ordinance of
185
THE RELIGION OF MAN
a destiny darkly dealing its blows. They submit
without struggle when human rights are denied
them, being accustomed to imagine themselves
born as outlaws in a world constantly thrusting
upon them incomprehensible surprises of accidents.
Also in the social or political field, the lack of
freedom is based upon the spirit of alienation, on
the imperfect realization of the One. There our
bondage is in the tortured link of union. One may
imagine that an individual who succeeds in dis-
sociating himself from his fellow attains real free-
dom, inasmuch as all ties of relationship imply
obligation to others. But we know that, though it
may sound paradoxical, it is true that in the human
world only a perfect arrangement of interdepend-
ence gives rise to freedom. The most individualis-
tic of human beings who own no responsibility are
the savages who fail to attain their fulness of man-
ifestation. They live immersed in obscurity, like
an ill-lighted fire that cannot liberate itself from
its envelope of smoke. Only those may attain their
freedom from the segregation of an eclipsed life
who have the power to cultivate mutual under-
standing and co-operation. The history of the
growth of freedom is the history of the perfection
of human relationship.
It has become possible for men to say that exist-
ence is evil, only because in our blindness we have
missed something wherein our existence has its
186
SPIRITUAL FREEDOM
truth. If a bird tries to soar with only one of its
wings, it is offended with the wind for buffeting it
down to the dust All broken truths are evil. They
hurt because they suggest something they do not
offer. Death does not hurt us, but disease does,-
because disease constantly reminds us of health
and yet withholds it from us. And life in a half-
world is evil because it feigns finality when it is
obviously incomplete, giving us the cup but not
the draught of life. All tragedies result from truth
remaining a fragment, its cycle not being com-
pleted. That cycle finds its end when the indi-
vidual realizes the universal and thus reaches
freedom.
But because this freedom is in truth itself and
not in an appearance of it, no hurried path of suc-
cess, forcibly cut out by the greed of result, can be
a true path. And an obscure village poet, unknown
to the world of recognized respectability, sings:
O cruel man of urgent need, must you scorch with fire the
mind which still is a bud? You will burst it into bits, destroy
its perfume in your impatience. Do you not see that my Lord,
the Supreme Teacher, takes ages to perfect the flower and never
is in a fury of haste? But because of your terrible greed, you
only rely on force, and what hope is there for you, O man of
urgent need? "Prithi", says Madan the poet, "Hurt not the
mind of my Teacher. Know that only he who follows the
simple current and loses himself, can hear the voice, O man of
urgent need."
This poet knows that there is no external means of
187
THE RELIGION OF MAN
taking freedom by the throat. It is the inward
process of losing ourselves that leads to it Bondage
in all its forms has its stronghold in the inner self
and not in the outside world; it is in the dimming
of our consciousness, in the narrowing of our per-
spective, in the wrong valuation of things.
Let me conclude this chapter with a song of the
Baiil sect in Bengal, over a century old, in which
the poet sings of the eternal bond of union between
the infinite and the finite soul, from which there can
be no mukti, because love is ultimate, because it is
an inter-relation which makes truth complete, be-
cause absolute independence is the blankness of
utter servility. The song runs thus :
It goes on blossoming for ages, the soul-lotus, in which I am
bound, as well as thou, without escape. There is no end to the
opening of its petals, and the honey in it has so much sweetness
that thou, like an enchanted bee, canst never desert it, and
therefore thou art bound, and I am, and mukti is nowhere.
188
CHAPTER XIV
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE
I HAVE expressly said that I have concentrated my
attention upon the subject of religion which is
solely related to man, helping him to train his atti-
tude and behaviour towards the infinite in its hu-
man aspect. At the same time it should be under-
stood that the tendency of the Indian mind has
ever been towards that transcendentalism which
does not hold religion to be ultimate but rather to
be a means to a further end. This end consists in
the perfect liberation of the individual in the uni-
versal spirit across the furthest limits of humanity
itself.
Such an extreme form of mysticism may be ex-
plained to my Western readers by its analogy in
science. For science may truly be described as
mysticism in the realm of material knowledge. It
helps us to go beyond appearances and reach the
inner reality of things in principles which are
abstractions; it emancipates our mind from the
thraldom of the senses to the freedom of reason.
The commonsense view of the world that is ap-
parent to us has its vital importance for ourselves.
189
THE RELIGION OF MAN
For all our practical purposes the earth is flat, the
sun does set behind the western horizon and what-
ever may be the verdict of the great mathematician
about the lack of consistency in time's dealings we
should fully trust it in setting our watches right
In questions relating to the arts and our ordinary
daily avocations we must treat material objects as
they seem to be and not as they are in essence. But
the revelations of science even when they go far
beyond man's power of direct perception give him
the purest feeling of disinterested delight and a
supersensual background to his world. Science
offers us the mystic knowledge of matter which
very often passes the range of our imagination. We
humbly accept it following those teachers who
have trained their reason to free itself from the
trammels of appearance or personal preferences.
Their mind dwells in an impersonal infinity where
there is no distinction between good and bad, high
and low, ugly and beautiful, useful and useless,
where all things have their one common right of
recognition, that of their existence.
The final freedom of spirit which India aspires
after has a similar character of realization* It is
beyond all limits of personality, divested of all
moral, or aesthetic distinctions ; it is the pure con-
sciousness of Being, the ultimate reality which has
an infinite illumination of bliss. Though science
brings our thoughts to the utmost limit of mind's
190
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE
territory it cannot transcend its own creation made
of a harmony of logical symbols. In it the chick
has come out of its shell but not out of the defini-
tion of its own chickenhood. But in India it has
been said by the yogi that through an intensive
process of concentration and quietude our con-
sciousness does reach that infinity where knowledge
ceases to be knowledge, subject and object become
one, a state of existence that cannot be defined.
We have our personal self. It has its desires
which struggle to create a world where they could
have their unrestricted activity and satisfaction.
While it goes on we discover that our self-realiza-
tion reaches its perfection in the abnegation of self.
This fact has made us aware that the individual
finds his meaning in a fundamental reality compre-
hending all individuals the reality which is the
moral and spiritual basis of the realm of human
values. This belongs to our religion. As science is
the liberation of our knowledge in the universal
reason which cannot be other than human reason,
religion is the liberation of our individual person-
ality in the universal Person who is human all the
same.
The ancient explorers in psychology in India
who declare that our emancipation can be carried
still further into a realm where infinity is not
bounded by human limitations, are not content
with advancing this as a doctrine; they advocate
THE RELIGION OF MAN
its pursuit for the attainment of the highest goal of
man. And for its sake the path of discipline has
been planned which should be opened out across
our life through all its stages helping us to develop
our humanity to perfection so that we may surpass
it in a finality of freedom.
Perfection has its two aspects in man which can
to some extent be separated, the perfection in
being, and perfection in doing. It can be imagined
that through some training or compulsion good
works may possibly be extorted from a man who
personally may not be good. Activities that have
fatal risks are often undertaken by cowards even
though they are conscious of the danger. Such works
may be useful and may continue to exist beyond the
lifetime of the individual who produced them. And
yet where the question is not that of utility but of
moral perfection we hold it important that the
individual should be true in his goodness. His
outer good work may continue to produce good
results but the inner perfection of his personality
has its own immense value which for him is spirit-
ual freedom and for humanity is an endless asset
though we may not know it. For goodness repre-
sents the detachment of our spirit from the exclu-
siveness of our egoism; in goodness we identify
ourselves with the universal humanity. Its value
is not merely in some benefit for our fellow beings
but in its truth itself through which we realize
192
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE
within us that man is not merely an animal bound
by his individual passions and appetites but a spirit
that has its unfettered perfection. Goodness is the
freedom of our self in the world of man, as is love.
We have to be true within, not for worldly duties
but for that spiritual fulfilment, which is in har-
mony with the Perfect, in union with the Eternal.
If this were not true, then mechanical perfection
would be considered to be of higher value than the
spiritual. In order to realize his unity with the
universal, the individual man must live his perfect
life which alone gives him the freedom to tran-
scend it
Doubtless Nature, for its own biological pur-
poses, has created in us a strong faith in life, by
keeping us unmindful of death. Nevertheless, not
only our physical existence, but also the environ-
ment which it builds up around itself, may desert
us in the moment of triumph, the greatest pros-
perity comes to its end, dissolving into emptiness;
the mightiest empire is overtaken by stupor amidst
the flicker of its festival lights. All this is none the
less true because its truism bores us to be reminded
of it
And yet it is equally true that, though all our
mortal relationships have their end, we cannot
ignore them with impunity while they last If we
behave as if they do not exist, merely because they
will not continue forever, they will all the same
193
THE RELIGION OF MAN
exact their dues, with a great deal over by way of
penalty. Trying to ignore bonds that are real,
albeit temporary, only strengthens and prolongs
their bondage. The soul is great, but the self has
to be crossed over in order to reach it. We do not
attain our goal by destroying our path.
Our teachers in ancient India realized the soul
of man as something very great indeed. They saw
no end to its dignity, which found its consumma-
tion in Brahma himself. Any limited view of man
would therefore be an incomplete view. He could
not reach his finality as a mere Citizen or
Patriot, for neither City nor Country nor the bub-
ble called the World, could contain his eternal
soul.
Bhartrihari, who was once a king, has said :
What if you have secured the fountain-head of all desires ; what
if you have put your foot on the neck of your enemy, or by
your good fortune gathered friends around you? What, even,
if you have succeeded in keeping mortal bodies alive for ages
tatah kirn, what then?
That is to say, man is greater than all these ob-
jects of his desire. He is true in his freedom.
But in the process of attaining freedom one must
bind his will in order to save its forces from dis-
traction and wastage, so as to gain for it the veloc-
ity which comes from the bondage itself. Those
also, who seek liberty in a purely political plane,
constantly curtail it and reduce their freedom of
194
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE
thought and action to that narrow limit which is
necessary for making political power secure, very
often at the cost of liberty of conscience.
India had originally accepted the bonds of her
social system in order to transcend society, as the
rider puts reins on his horse and stirrups on his
own feet in order to ensure greater speed towards
his goal.
The Universe cannot be so madly conceived that
desire should be an interminable song with no
finale. And just as it is painful to stop in the mid-
dle of the tune, it should be as pleasant to reach its
final cadence.
India has not advised us to come to a sudden
stop while work is in full swing. It is true that the
unending procession of the world has gone on,
through its ups and downs, from the beginning of
creation till to-day; but it is equally obvious that
each individual's connection therewith does get
finished. Must he necessarily quit it without any
sense of fulfilment?
So, in the divisions of man's world-life which
we had in India, work came in the middle, and
freedom at the end. As the day is divided into
morning, noon, afternoon and evening, so India
had divided man's life into four parts, following
the requirements of his nature. The day has the
waxing and waning of its light; so has man the
waxing and waning of his bodily powers. Ac-
J9S
THE RELIGION OF MAN
knowledging this, India gave a connected meaning
to his life from start to finish.
First came brahmacharya, the period of disci-
pline in education; then garhasthya, that of the
world's work; then vanaprasthya, the retreat for
the loosening of bonds; and finally pravrajya, the
expectant awaiting of freedom across death.
We have come to look upon life as a conflict
with death, the intruding enemy, not the natural
ending, in impotent quarrel with which we spend
every stage of it. When the time comes for youth
to depart, we would hold it back by main force.
When the fervour of desire slackens, we would
revive it with fresh fuel of our own devising. When
our sense organs weaken, we urge them to keep up
their efforts. Even when our grip has relaxed we
are reluctant to give up possession. We are not
trained to recognize the inevitable as natural, and
so cannot give up gracefully that which has to go,
but needs must wait till it is snatched from us. The
truth comes as conqueror only because we have
lost the art of receiving it as guest
The stem of the ripening fruit becomes loose,
its pulp soft, but its seed hardens with provision
for the next life. Our outward losses, due to age,
have likewise corresponding inward gains. But,
in man's inner life, his will plays a dominant part,
so that these gains depend on his own disciplined
196
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE
striving; that is why, in the case of undisciplined
man, who has omitted to secure such provision for
the next stage, it is so often seen that his hair is
grey, his mouth toothless, his muscles slack, and
yet his stem-hold on life has refused to let go its
grip, so much so that he is anxious to exercise his
will in regard to worldly details even after death.
But renounce we must, and through renuncia-
tion gain, that is the truth of the inner world.
The flower must shed its petals for the sake of
fruition, the fruit must drop off for the re-birth of
the tree. The child leaves the refuge of the womb
in order to achieve the further growth of body and
mind in which consists the whole of the child life;
next, the soul has to come out of this self-contained
stage into the fuller life, which has varied relations
with kinsman and neighbour, together with whom
it forms a larger body; lastly comes the decline of
the body, the weakening of desire, and, enriched
with its experiences, the soul now leaves the nar-
rower life for the universal life, to which it dedi-
cates its accumulated wisdom and itself enters into
relations with the Life Eternal; so that, when
finally the decaying body has come to the very end
of its tether, the soul views its breaking away quite
simply and without regret, in the expectation of
its own entry into the Infinite.
From individual body to community, from com-
197
THE RELIGION OF MAN
munity to universe, from universe to Infinity,
this is the soul's normal progress.
Our teachers, therefore, keeping in mind the
goal of this progress, did not, in life's first stage
of education, prescribe merely the learning of
books or things, but brahmacharya, the living in
discipline, whereby both enjoyment and its renun-
ciation would come with equal ease to the strength-
ened character. Life being a pilgrimage, with lib-
eration in Brahma as its object, the living of it was
as a spiritual exercise to be carried through its dif-
ferent stages, reverently and with a vigilant deter-
mination. And the pupil, from his very initiation,
had this final consummation always kept in his
view.
Once the mind refuses to be bound by temperate
requirements, there ceases to be any reason why it
should cry halt at any particular limit; and so,
like trying to extinguish fire with oil, its acquisi-
tions only make its desires blaze up all the fiercer.
That is why it is so essential to habituate the mind,
from the very beginning, to be conscious of, and
desirous of, keeping within the natural limits; to
cultivate the spirit of enjoyment which is allied
with the spirit of freedom, the readiness for renun-
ciation.
After the period of such training comes the
period of world-life, the life of the householder.
Manu tells us:
198
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE
It is not possible to discipline ourselves so effectively if out of
touch with the world, as while pursuing the world-life with
wisdom.
That is to say, wisdom does not attain complete-
ness except through the living of life; and disci-
pline divorced from wisdom is not true discipline,
but merely the meaningless following of custom,
which is only a disguise for stupidity.
Work, especially good work, becomes easy only
when desire has learnt to discipline itself. Then
alone does the householder's state become a centre
of welfare for all the world, and instead of being
an obstacle, helps on the final liberation.
The second stage of life having been thus spent,
the decline of the bodily powers must be taken as
a warning that it is coming to its natural end. This
must not be taken dismally as a notice of dismissal
to one still eager to stick to his post, but joyfully
as maturity may be accepted as the stage of ful-
filment.
After the infant leaves the womb, it still has to
remain close to its mother for a time, remaining
attached in spite of its detachment, until it can
adapt itself to its new freedom. Such is the case
in the third stage of life, when man though aloof
from the world still remains in touch with it while
preparing himself for the final stage of complete
freedom. He still gives to the world from his store
of wisdom and accepts its support ; but this inter-
199
THE RELIGION OF MAN
change is not of the same intimate character as in
the stage of the householder, there being a new
sense of distance.
Then at last comes a day when even such free
relations have their end, and the emancipated soul
steps out of all bonds to face the Supreme Soul.
Only in this way can man's world-life be truly
lived from one end to the other, without being en-
gaged at every step in trying "conclusions with
death, not being overcome, when death comes in
due course, as by a conquering enemy.
For this fourfold way of life India attunes man
to the grand harmony of the universal, leaving no
room for untrained desires of a rampant individu-
alism to pursue their destructive career unchecked,
but leading them on to their ultimate modulation
in the Supreme.
If we really believe this, then we must uphold
an ideal of life in which everything else, the dis-
play of individual power, the might of nations,
must be counted as subordinate and the soul of man
must triumph and liberate itself from the bond of
personality which keeps it in an ever revolving
circle of limitation.
If that is not to be, tatah kirn, what then?
But such an ideal of the utter extinction of the
individual separateness has not a universal sanction
in India. There are many of us whose prayer is
for dualism so that for them the bond of devotion
200
THE FOUR STAGES OP LIFE
with God may continue forever. For them religion
is a truth which is ultimate and they refuse to envy
those who are ready to sail for the further shore of
existence across humanity. They know that human
imperfection is the cause of our sorrow but there
is a fulfilment in love within the range of our lim-
itation which accepts all sufferings and yet rises
above them.
201
CHAPTER XV
CONCLUSION
IN the Sanskrit Language the bird is described
as "twice-born" once in its limited shell and then
finally in the freedom of the unbounded sky. Those
of our community who believe in the liberation of
man's limited self in the freedom of the spirit re-
tain the same epithet for themselves. In all de-
partments of life man shows this dualism his
existence within the range of obvious facts and his
transcendence of it in a realm of deeper meaning.
Having this instinct inherent in his mind which
ever suggests to him the crossing of the border,
he has never accepted what is apparent as final and
his incessant struggle has been to break through
the shell of his limitations. In this attempt he
often goes against the instincts of his vital nature,
and even exults in his defiance of the extreme penal
laws of the biological kingdom. The best wealth
of his civilization has been achieved by his follow-
ing the guidance of this instinct in his ceaseless
adventure of the Endless Further, His achieve-
ment of truth goes far beyond his needs and the
realization of his self strives across the frontier
202
CONCLUSION
of its individual interest. This proves to him his
infinity and makes his religion real to him by his
own manifestation in truth and goodness. Only
for man there can be religion because his evolution
is from efficiency in nature towards the perfection
of spirit.
According to some interpretations of the Ve-
danta doctrine Brahman is the absolute Truth, the
impersonal It, in which there can be no distinction
of this and that, the good and the evil, the beauti-
ful and its opposite, having no other quality except
its ineffable blissfulness in the eternal solitude of
its consciousness utterly devoid of all things and
all thoughts. But, as our religion can only have its
significance in this phenomenal world compre-
hended by our human self, this absolute conception
of Brahman is outside the subject of my discussion.
What I have tried to bring out in this book is the
fact that whatever name may have been given to
the divine Reality it has found its highest place
in the history of our religion owing to its human
character, giving meaning to the idea of sin and
sanctity, and offering an eternal background to all
the ideals of perfection which have their harmony
with man's own nature.
We have the age-long tradition in our country,
as I have already stated, that through the process
of yoga man can transcend the utmost bounds of
his humanity and find himself in a pure state of
203
THE RELIGION OF MAN
consciousness of his undivided unity with Para-
brahman, There is none who has the right to con-
tradict this belief ; for it is a matter of direct ex-
perience and not of logic. It is widely known in
India that there are individuals who have the
power to attain temporarily the state of Samadhi,
the complete merging of the self in the infinite, a
state which is indescribable. While accepting their
testimony as true, let us at the same time have faith
in the testimony of others who have felt a profound
love, which is the intense feeling of union, for a
Being who comprehends in himself all things that
are human in knowledge, will and action. And he
is God, who is not merely a sum total of facts, but
the goal that lies immensely beyond all that is
comprised in the past and the present
204
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
THE BAttL SINGERS OF BENGAL
(The following account of the Baiils in Northern India has
been given in the Visvabharati Quarterly by my friend
and fellow-worker, Professor Kshiti Mohun Sen of
Santiniketan, to whom I am grateful for having kindly
allowed me to reproduce what he has written in this
Appendix. )
Baiil means madcap, from bayu (Skt. Vayu) in its
sense of nerve current, and has become the appel-
lation of a set of people who do not conform to
established social usage. This derivation is sup-
ported by the following verse of Narahari :
That is why, brother, I became a madcap Baiil.
No master I obey, nor injunctions, canons or custom.
Now no men-made distinctions have any hold on me,
And I revel only in the gladness of my own welling love.
In love there's no separation, but commingling always.
So I rejoice in song and dance with each and all.
These lines also introduce us to the main tenets of
the cult The freedom, however, that the Baiils
seek from all forms of outward compulsion goes
even further, for among such are recognized as
well the compulsions exerted by our desires and
antipathies. Therefore, according to this cult, in
order to gain real freedom, one has first to die to
the life of the world whilst still in the flesh for
only then can one be rid of all extraneous claims.
Those of the Baiils who have Islamic leanings call
such "death in life'* fana, a term -used by the Sufis
207
THE RELIGION OF MAN
to denote union with the Supreme Being. True
love, according to the Baiils, is incompatible with
any kind of compulsion. Unless the bonds of neces-
sity are overcome, liberation is out of the question.
Love represents the wealth of life which is in excess
of need. . . . From hard, practical politics touch-
ing our earth to the nebulous regions of abstract
metaphysics, everywhere India expressed the
power of her genius equally well. . , And yet
none of these, neither severally nor collectively,
constituted her specific genius; none showed the
full height to which she could raise herself, none
compassed the veritable amplitude of her inner-
most reality. It is when we come to the domain
of the Spirit, of God-realization, that we find the
real nature and stature and genius of the Indian
people ; it is here that India lives and moves as in
her own home of Truth.
The Baiil cult is followed by householders as
well as homeless wanderers, neither of whom ac-
knowledge class or caste, special deities, temples
or sacred places. Though they congregate on the
occasion of religious festivals, mainly of the Vaish-
navas, held in special centres, they never enter any
temple. They do not set uj> any images of divini-
ties, or religious symbols, in their own places of
worship or mystic realization. True, they some-
times maintain with care and reverence spots sacred
to some esteemed master or devotee, but they per-
form no worship there. Devotees from the lowest
strata of the Hindu and Moslem communities are
welcomed into their ranks, hence the Bauls are
looked down upon by both. It is possible that their
own contempt for temples had its origin in the
208
A PPENDICES
denial of admittance therein to their low class
brethren. What need, say they, have we of other
temples, is not this body of ours the temple where
the Supreme Spirit has His abode? The human
body, despised by most other religions, is thus for
them the holy of holies, wherein the Divine is
intimately enshrined as the Man of the Heart.
And in this wise is the dignity of Man upheld by
them.
Kabir, Nanak, Ravidas, Dadu and his followers
have also called man's body the temple of God
the microcosm in which the cosmic abode of the
all-pervading Supreme Being is represented.
Kabir says :
In this body is the Garden of Paradise; herein are comprised
the seven seas and the myriad stars ; here is the Creator mani-
fest (I. 101.)
Dadu says:
This body is my scripture; herein the All-Merciful has written
for me His message.
Rajjab (Dadu's chief Moslem disciple) says:
Within the devotee is the paper on which the scriptures are
written in letters of Life. But few care to read them; they
turn a deaf ear to the message of the heart.
Most Indian sects adopt some distinct way of keep-
ing the hair of head and face as a sign of their
sect or order. Therefore, so as to avoid being
dragged into any such distinctions, the Baiils allow
hair and beard and moustache to grow freely.
Thus do we remain simple, they say. The similar
practice of the Sikhs in this matter is to be noted.
209
THE RELIGION OF MAN
Neither do the Baiils believe that lack of clothing
or bareness of body conduce to religious merit
According to them the whole body should be kept
decently covered. Hence their long robe, for
which, if they cannot afford a new piece of cloth,
they gather rags and make it of patches. In this
they are different from the ascetic sanyasins, but
resemble rather the Buddhist monks*
The Baiils do not believe in aloofness from, or
renunciation of, any person or thing; their central
idea is yoga, attachment to and communion with
the divine and its manifestations, as the means of
realization. We fail to recognize the temple of
God in the bodily life of man, they explain, be-
cause its lamp is not alight The true vision must
be attained in which this temple will become mani-
fest in each and every human body, whereupon
mutual communion and worship will spontane-
ously arise. Truth cannot be communicated to
those on whom you look down. You must be able
to see the divine light that shines within them, for
it is your own lack of vision that makes all seem
dark.
Kabir says the same thing:
In every abode the light doth shine; it is you who are blind
that cannot see. When by dint of looking and looking you at
length can discern it, the veils of this world will be torn
asunder. (II. 33.)
It is because the devotee is not in communion that he says
the goal is far away. (II. 34.)
Many such similarities are to be observed between
the sayings of the B axils and those of the Upper
Indian devotees of the Middle Ages, but, unlike
the case of the followers of the latter, the Baiils
210
APPENDICES
did not become crystallized into any particular
order or religious organization. So, in the Baiils
of Bengal, there is to be found a freedom and in-
dependence of mind and spirit that resists all
attempt at definition. Their songs are unique in
courage and felicity of expression. But under
modern conditions they are becoming extinct, or
at best holding on to external features bereft of
their original speciality. It would be a great pity
if no record of their achievements should be kept
before their culture is lost to the world.
Though the Baiils count amongst their follow-
ing a variety of sects and castes, both Hindu and
Moslem, chiefly coming from the lower social
ranks, they refuse to give any other account of
themselves to the questioner than that they are
Baiils. They acknowledge none of the social or
religious formalities, but delight in the ever-chang-
ing play of life, which cannot be expressed in mere
words but of which something may be captured in
song, through the ineffable medium of rhythm
and tune.
Their songs are passed on from Master to disci-
ple, the latter when competent adding others of
his own, but, as already mentioned, they are never
recorded in book form. Their replies to questions
are usually given by singing appropriate selections
from these songs. If asked the reason why, they
say: "We are like birds. We do not walk on our
legs, but fly with our wings."
There was a Brahmin of Bikrampur, known as
Chhaku Thakur, who was the disciple of a Baiil
of the Namasudra caste (accounted one of the low-
est) and hence had lost his place in his own com-
2X1
THE RELIGION OF MAN
munity. When admonished to be careful about
what he uttered, so as to avoid popular odium, he
answered with the song:
Let them relieve their minds by saying what they will,
I pursue my own simple way, fearing none at all.
The Mango seed will continue to produce Mango trees, no
Jambolans.
This seed of mine will produce the real me all glory to my
Master !
Love being the main principle according to the
Baiils, a Vaishnava once asked a Baiil devotee
whether he was aware of the different kinds of
love as classified in the Vaishnava scriptures.
"What should an illiterate ignoramus like me
know of the scriptures?" was the reply. The
Vaishnava then offered to read and explain the
text, which he proceeded to do, while the Baul
listened with such patience as he could muster.
When asked for his opinion, after the reading was
over, he sang:
A goldsmith, methinks, has come into the flower garden.
He would appraise the lotus, forsooth,
By rubbing it on his touchstone!
Recruits from the higher castes are rare amongst
the Baiils. When any such do happen to come,
they are reduced to the level of the rest. Are the
lower planks of a boat of any lesser importance
than the upper? say they.
Once in Vikrampur, I was seated on the river
bank by the side of a Baiil. "Father", I asked him,
"why is it that you keep no historical record of
yourselves for the use of posterity?" "We follow
the sahaj (simple) way", he replied, "and so leave
no trace behind us." The tide had then ebbed, and
2X2
APPENDICES
there was but little water in the river bed. Only
a few boatmen were to be seen pushing their boats
along the mud. The Baxil continued : "Do the boats
that sail over the flooded river leave any mark?
What should these boatmen of the muddy track,
urged on by their need, know of the sahaj (sim-
ple) way? The true endeavour is to keep oneself
simply afloat in the stream of devotion that flows
through the lives of devotees to mingle one's own
devotion with theirs. There are many classes of
men amongst the Baiils, but they are all Baiils
they have no other achievement or history. All the
streams that fall into the Ganges become the
Ganges. So must we lose ourselves in the common
stream, else will it cease to be living."
On another Baiil being asked why they did not
follow the scriptures, "Are we dogs", he replied,
"that we should lick up the leavings of others?
Brave men rejoice in the output of their own
energy, they create their own festivals. These
cowards who have not the power to rejoice in them-
selves have to rely on what others have left. Afraid
lest the world should lack festivals in the future,
they save up the scraps left over by their predeces-
sors for later use. They are content with glorify-
ing their forefathers because they know not how
to create for themselves."
If you would know that Man,
Simple must fae your endeavour.
To the region of the simple must you fare.
Pursuers of the path of man's own handiwork,
Who follow the crowd, gleaning their f alsp leavings,
What news can they get of the Real?
It is hardly to be wondered at that people wH<
think thus should have no use for history I
213
THE RELIGION OF MAN
We have already noticed that, like all the fol-
lowers of the simple way, the Baiils have no faith
in specially sacred spots or places of pilgrimage,
but that they nevertheless congregate on the occa-
sion of religious festivals. If asked why, the Baiil
says:
We would be within hail of the other Boatmen, to hear their
calls,
That we may make sure our boat rightly floats on the sahaj
stream.
Not what men have said or done in the past, but
the living human touch is what they find helpful.
Here is a song giving their ideas about pilgrimage :
I would not go, my heart, to Mecca or Medina,
For behold, I ever abide by the side of my Friend.
Mad would I become, had I dwelt afar, not knowing Him.
There's no worship in Mosque or Temple or special holy day.
At every step I have my Mecca and Kashi; sacred is every
moment.
If a Baiil is asked the age of his cult whether it
comes before or after this one or that, he says,
"Only the artificial religions of the world are
limited by time. Our sahaj (simple, natural) reli-
gion is timeless, it has neither beginning nor end,
it is of all time." The religion of the Upanishads
and Puranas, even that of the Vedas, is, according
to them, artificial.
The followers of the sahaj cult believe only in
living religious experience. Truth, according to
them, has two aspects, inert and living. Confined
to itself truth has no value for man. It becomes
priceless when embodied in a living personality.
The conversion of the inert into living truth by the
214
APPENDICES
devotee they compare to the conversion into milk
by the cow of its fodder, or the conversion by the
tree of dead matter into fruit He who has this
power of making truth living, is the Guru or Mas-
ter. Such Gurus they hold in special reverence, for
the eternal and all-pervading truth can only be
brought to man's door by passing through his life.
The Baiils say that emptiness of time and space
is required for a playground. That is why God has
preserved an emptiness in the heart of man, for the
sake of His own play of Love. Our wise and
learned ones were content with finding in Brahma
the tat (lit. "that" the ultimate substance). The
Baiils, not being Pandits, do not profess to under-
stand all this fuss about thatness, they want a Per-
son. So their God is the Man of the Heart (maner
manush) sometimes simply the Man (purush).
This Man of the Heart is ever and anon lost in
the turmoil of things. Whilst He is revealed
within, no worldly pleasures can give satisfaction.
Their sole anxiety is the finding of this Man.
The Baiil sings:
Ah, where am I to find Him, the Man of my Heart?
Alas, since I lost Him, I wander in search of Him,
Thro* lands near and far.
The agony of separation from Him cannot be miti-
gated for them by learning or philosophy :
Oh, these words and words, my mind would none of them,
The Supreme Man it must and shall discover*
So long as Him I do not see, these mists slake not my thirst.
Mad am I ; for lack of that Man I madly run about ;
For his sake the world IVe left ; for Bisha naught eke will
serve,
THE RELIGION OF MAN
This Bisha was a bhuin-mali, by caste, disciple of
Bala, the Kaivarta,
This cult of the Supreme Man is only to be
found in the Vedas hidden away in the Purusha-
sukta (A.V. 19.6). It is more freely expressed by
the Upper Indian devotees of the Middle Ages.
It is all in all with the Bauls. The God whom
these illiterate outcastes seek so simply and natu-
rally in their lives is obscured by the accredited
religious leaders in philosophical systems and
terminology, in priestcraft and ceremonial, in in-
stitutions and temples.
Not satisfied with the avatars (incarnations of
God) mentioned in the scriptures, the Baiil sings:
As we look on every creature, we find each to be His avatar.
What can you teach us of His ways? In ever-new play He
wondrously revels.
And Kabir also tells us:
All see the Eternal One, but only the devotee, in his solitude,
recognizes him.
A friend of mine was once much impressed by the
reply of a Baiil who was asked why his robe was
not tinted with ascetic ochre:
Can the colour show outside, unless the inside is first tinctured?
Can the fruit attain ripe sweetness by the painting of its skin?
This aversion of the Baiil from outward marks of
distinction is also shared by the Upper Indian
devotees, as I have elsewhere noticed.
The age-long controversy regarding Jvaita
(dualism) and advaita (monism) is readily solved
by these wayfarers on the path of Love. Love is
216
APPENDICES
the simple striving, love the natural communion,
so believe the Baiils. "Ever two and ever one, of
this the name of Love", say they. In love, oneness
is achieved without any loss of respective self-
hood.
The same need exists for the reconcilement of the
antagonism between the outer call of the material
world and the inner call of the spiritual world, as
for the realization of the mutual love of the indi-
vidual and Supreme self. The God who is Love,
say the Baiils, can alone serve to turn the currents
of the within and the without in one and the same
direction.
Kabir says:
If we say He is only within, then the whole Universe is shamed.
If we say He is only without, then that is false.
He, whose feet rest alike on the sentient and on the inert,
fills the gap between the inner and the outer world.
The inter-relations of man's body and the Universe
have to be realized by spiritual endeavour. Such
endeavour is called Kaya Sadhan (Realization
through the body) .
One process in this Kaya Sadhan of the Baiils
is known as Urdha-srota (the elevation of the cur-
rent). Waters flow downwards according to the
ordinary physical law. But with the advent of>
Life the process is reversed. When the living seed
sprouts the juices are drawn upwards, and on the
elevation that such flow can attain depends the
height of the tree. It is the same in the life of man.
His desires ordinarily flow downward towards ani-
mality. The endeavour of the expanding spirit is
to turn their current upwards towards the light*
217
THE RELIGION OF MAN
The cu-rrents of jiva (animal life) must be con-
verted into the current of Shiva (God life). They
form a centre round the ego ; they must be raised
by the force of love.
Says Dadu's daughter, Nanimata :
My life is the lamp afloat on the stream.
To what bourne shall it take me ?
How is the divine to conquer the carnal,
The downward current to be upward turned?
As when the wick is lighted the oil doth upward flow,
So simply is destroyed the thirst of the body.
The Yoga Vasistha tells us :
Uncleansed desires bind to the world, purified desires give
liberation.
References to this reversal of current are also to be
found in the Atharva Veda (X. 2.9; 2.34). This
reversal is otherwise considered by Indian devotees
as the conversion of the sthula (gross) in the
sukshma (fine).
The Baiil sings:
Love is my golden touch it turns desire into service :
Earth seeks to become Heaven, man to become God.
Another aspect of the idea of reversal has been put
thus by Rabindranath Tagore in his Broken Ties:
"If I keep going in the same direction along which
He comes to me, then I shall be going further and
further away from Him. If I proceed in the oppo-
site direction, then only can we meet He loves
form, so He is continually descending towards
form. We cannot live by form alone, so we must
art
APPENDICES
ascend towards His formlessness. He is free, so
His play is within bonds. We are bound, so we
find our joy in freedom. All our sorrow is because
we cannot understand this. He who sings, proceeds
from his joy to the tune ; he who hears, from the
tune to joy. One comes from freedom into bond-
age, the other goes from bondage into freedom;
only thus can they have their communion. He
sings and we hear. He ties the bonds as He sings to
us, we untie them as we listen to Him."
This idea also occurs in our devotees of the
Middle Ages.
The "sahaj" folk endeavour to seek the bliss of
divine union only for its own sake. Mundane de-
sires are therefore accounted the chief obstacles in
the way. But for getting rid of them, the wise
Guru, according to the Bauls, does not advise
renunciation of the good things of the world, but
the opening of the door to the higher self. Thus
guided, says Kabir,
I close not my eyes, stop not my ears, nor torment my body*
But every path I then traverse becomes a path of pilgrimage,
whatever work I engage in becomes service.
This simple consummation is the best.
The simple way has led its votaries easily and nat-
urally to their living conception of Humanity.
Raj jab says:
All the world is the Veda, all creations the Koran. Why read
paper scriptures, O Rajjab.
Gather ever fresh wisdom from the Universe. The eternal wis-
dom shines within the concourse
of the millions of Humanity.
219
THE RELIGION OF MAN
The Baiil sings:
The simple has its thirty million strings whose mingled sym-
phony ever sounds.
Take all the creatures of the World into yourself. Drown your-
self in that eternal music.
I conclude with a few more examples of Baiil
songs, esoteric and otherwise, from amongst many
others of equal interest.
By Gangaram, the Namasudra
Realize how finite and unbounded are One,
As you breathe in and out.
Of all ages, then, you will count the moments,
In every moment find the ages,
The drop in the ocean, the ocean in the drop.
If your endeavour be but sahaj, beyond argument and cogita-
tion,
You will taste the precious quintessence.
Blinded are you by over-much journeying from bourne to
bourne,
O Gangaram, be simple! Then alone will vanish all your
doubts.
By Bisha, the disciple of Bala:
The Simple Man was in the Paradise of my heart,
Alas, how and when did I lose Him,
That now no peace I know, at home or abroad ?
By meditation and telling of beads, in worship and travail,
The quest goes on for ever ;
But unless the Simple Man comes of Himself,
Fruitless is it all ;
For he yields not to forge tfulness of striving.
Bisha's heart has understood right well,
That by His own simple way alone is its door unlocked.
"Listen, O brother man", declares Chandidas, "the
Truth of Man is the highest of truths ; there is no
other truth above it"
220
APPENDIX II
NOTE ON THE NATURE OF REALITY
(A conversation between Rabindranath Tagore and Professor
Albert Einstein, in the afternoon of July 14, 1930, at the
Professor's residence in Kaputh.)
E. : Do you believe in the Divine as isolated
from the world?
T. : Not isolated. The infinite personality of
Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be
anything that cannot be subsumed by the human
personality, and this proves that the truth of the
Universe is human truth. I have taken a scientific
fact to illustrate this Matter is composed of pro-
tons and electrons, with gaps between them; but
matter may seem to be solid. Similarly humanity
is composed of individuals, yet they have their
inter-connection of human relationship, which
gives living solidarity to man's world. The entire
universe is linked up with us in a similar manner,
it is a human universe. I have pursued this
thought through art, literature and the religious
consciousness of man.
E. : There are two different conceptions about
the nature of the universe: (i) The world as a
unity dependent on humanity. (2) The world as
a reality independent of the human factor.
T. : When our universe is in harmony with Man,
the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as
beauty.
221
THE RELIGION OF MAN
E,: This is a purely human conception of the
universe.
T.: There can be no other conception. This
world is a human world the scientific view of it
is also that of the scientific man. There is some
standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it
truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose ex-
periences are through our experiences.
E.: This is a realization of the human entity.
T. : Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize
it through our emotions and activities. We realize
the Supreme Man who has no individual limita-
tions through our limitations. Science is concerned
with that which is not confined to individuals; it
is the impersonal human world of truths. Religion
realizes these truths and links them up with our
deeper needs; our individual consciousness of
truth gains universal significance. Religion ap-
plies values to truth, and we know truth as good
through our own harmony with it.
E. : Truth, then, or Beauty, is not independent
of man?
T.:No.
E.: If there would be no human beings any
more, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be
beautiful.
T.:No.
E.: I agree with regard to this conception of
Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.
T,: Why not? Truth is realized through man.
E. : I cannot prove that my conception is right,
but that is my religion.
T.: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony
which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect
222
APPE NDI CES
comprehension of the Universal Mind. We indi-
viduals approach it through our own mistakes and
blunders, through our accumulated experience,
through our illumined consciousness *how, other-
wise, can we know Truth?
E. : I cannot prove scientifically that truth must
be conceived as a truth that is valid independent
of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for
instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geom-
etry states something that is approximately true,
independent of the existence of man. Anyway, if
there is a reality independent of man there is also
a truth relative to this reality; and in the same
way the negation of the first engenders a negation
of the existence of the latter.
T\: Truth, which is one with the Universal
Being, must essentially be human, otherwise what-
ever we individuals realize as true can never be
called truth at least the truth which is described
as scientific and can only be reached through the
process of logic, in other words, by an organ of
thoughts which is human. According to Indian
Philosophy there is Brahman the absolute Truth,
which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the
individual mind or described by words, but can
only be realised by completely merging the indi-
vidual in its infinity. But such a truth cannot be-
long to Science* The nature of truth which we are
discussing is an appearance that is to say what
appears to be true to the human mind and there-
fore is human, and may be called maya, or illusion,
E. : So according to your conception, which may
be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of
the individual, but of humanity as a whole.
223
THE RELIGION OF MAN
T. : In science we go through the discipline of
eliminating the personal limitations of our indi-
vidual minds and thus reach that comprehension
of truth which is in the mind of the Universal
Man.
E. : The problem begins whether Truth is inde-
pendent of our consciousness.
T. : What we call truth lies in the rational har-
mony between the subjective and objective aspects
of reality, both of which belong to the super-
personal man.
E. : Even in our everyday life we feel compelled
to ascribe a reality independent of man to the ob-
jects we use. We do this to connect the experiences
of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if
nobody is in this house, yet that table remains
where it is.
T. : Yes, it remains outside the individual mind,
but not outside the universal mind. The table
which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind
of consciousness which I possess.
E. : Our natural point of view in regard to the
existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be
explained or proved, but it is a belief which no-
body can lack no primitive beings even. We
attribute to Truth a. super-human objectivity; it is
indispensable for us, this reality which is inde-
pendent of our existence and our experience and
our mind though we cannot say what it means.
T. : Science has proved that the table as a solid
object is an appearance, and therefore that which
the human mind perceives as a table would not
exist if that mind were naught. At the same time
it must be admitted that the fact, that the ultimate
224
APPENDICES
physical reality of the table is nothing but a mul-
titude of separate revolving centres of electric
forces, also belongs to the human mind.
In the apprehension of truth there is an eternal
conflict between the universal human mind and the
same mind confined in the individual. The per-
petual process of reconciliation is being carried on
in our science and philosophy, and in our ethics.
In any case, if there be any truth absolutely unre-
lated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-
existing.
It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the
sequence of things happens not in space, but only
in time like the sequence of notes in music. For
such a mind its conception of reality is akin to the
musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry
can have no meaning. There is the reality of
paper, infinitely different from the reality of lit-
erature. For the kind of mind possessed by the
moth, which eats that paper, literature is abso-
lutely non-existent, yet for Man's mind literature
has a greater value of truth than the paper itself,
In a similar manner, if there be some truth which
has no sensuous or rational relation to the human
mind it will ever remain as nothing so long as we
remain human beings.
E,: Then I am more religious than you arel
T. : My religion is in the reconciliation of ^thc
Super-personal Man, the Universal human spirit
in my own individual being* This has been the
subject of my Hibbert Lectures, which I have
called "The Religion of Man".
225
APPENDIX III
DADU AND THE MYSTERY OF FORM
(From an article in the Vwuabharati Quarterly
by Professor Kshiti Mohan Sen.)
THE language of man has been mainly occupied
with telling us about the elements into which the
finite world has been analysed ; nevertheless, now
and again, it reveals glimpses of the world of the
Infinite as well ; for the spirit of man has discov-
ered rifts in the wall of Matter. Our intellect can
count the petals, classify the scent, and describe the
colour of the rose, but its unify finds its expression
when we rejoice in it.
The intellect at best can give us only a broken
view of things. The marvellous vision of the Seer,
in spite of the scoffing in which both Science and
Metaphysics so often indulge, can alone make
manifest to us the truth of a thing in its complete-
ness. When we thus gain a vision of unity, we are
no longer intellectually aware of detail, counting,
classifying, or distinguishing for them we have
found admittance into the region of the spirit,
and there we simply measure the truth of our
realization by the intensity of our joy.
What is the meaning of this unutterable joy?
That which we know by intellectual process is
something outside ourselves. But the vision of any-
thing in the fulness of its unity involves the reali-
226
APPENDI C ES
zation of the unity of the self within, as well as of
the relation between the two. The knowledge of
the many may make us proud, but it makes us glad
when our kinship with the One is brought home to
us. Beauty is the name that we give to this ac-
knowledgment of unity and of its relationship with
ourselves.
It is through the beauty of Nature, or of Human
Character, or Service, that we get our glimpses of
the Supreme Soul whose essence is bliss. Or rather,
it is when we become conscious of Him in Nature,
or Art, or Service, that Beauty flashes out And
whenever we thus light upon the Dweller-within,
all discord disappears and Love and Beauty are
seen inseparable from Truth. It is really the com-
ing of Truth to us as kinsman which floods our
being with Joy.
This realization in Joy is immediate, self-suffi-
cient, ultimate. When the self experiences Joy
within, it is completely satisfied and has nothing
more to ask from the outside world. Joy, as we
know it, is a direct, synthetic measure of Beauty
and neither awaits nor depends upon any analyti-
cal process. In our Joy, further, we behold not only
the unity, but also the origin, for the Beauty which
tells us of Him can be nothing but radiance re-
flected, melody re-echoed, from Him; else would
all this have been unmeaning indeed Society,
Civilization, Humanity. The progress of Man
would otherwise have ended in an orgy of the
gratification of his animal passions.
The power of realization, for each particular
individual, is limited. All do not attain the privi-
lege of directly apprehending the universal Unity.
227
THE RELIGION OF MAN
Nevertheless, a partial vision of it, say in a flower,
or in a friend, is a common experience; moreover,
the potentiality is inherent in every individual soul,
by dint of disciplined striving, to effect its own
expansion and thereupon eventually to achieve the
realization of the Supreme SouL
By whom, meanwhile, are these ineffable tidings
from the realm of the Spirit, the world of the In-
finite, brought to us? Not by potentates or phi-
losophers, but by the poor, the untutored, the
despised. And with what superb assurance do they
lead us out of the desert of the intellect into the
paradise of the Spirit!
When our metaphysicians, dividing themselves
into rival schools of Monism, Dualism or Monis-
tic-Dualism, had joined together in dismissing the
world as Maya, then, up from the depths of their
social obscurity, rose these cobblers, weavers, and
sewers of bags, proclaiming such theorems of the
intellect to be all nonsense; for the metaphysicians
had not seen with their own inner vision how the
world overflowed with Truth and Love, Beauty
and Joy.
Dadu, Ravidas, Kabir and Nanafc were not
ascetics; they bore no message of poverty, or re-
nunciation, for their own sake; they were poets
who had pierced the curtain of appearances and
had glimpses of the world of Unity, where God
himself is a poet Their wprds cannot stand the
glare of logical criticism; they babble, like babes,
of the joy of their vision of Him, of the ecstasy
into which His music has thrown them.
Nevertheless, it is they, not the scientists or phi-
losophers, who have taught us of reality. On the
228
APP E NDICES
one side the Supreme Soul is alone, on the other
my individual soul is alone. If the two do not come
together, then indeed there befalls the greatest of
all calamities, the utter emptiness of chaos. For
all the abundance of His inherent joy, God is in
want of my joy of Him; and Reality in its perfec-
tion only blossoms where we meet
"When I look upon the beauty of this Universe",
says Dadu, "I cannot help asking: 'How, O Lord,
did you come to create it? What sudden wave of
joy coursing through your being compelled its own
manifestation? Was it really due to desire for self-
expression, or simply on the impulse of emotion?
Or was it perhaps just your fancy to revel in the
play of form? Is this play then so delightful to
you ; or is it that you would see your own inborn
delight thus take shape?' Oh, how can these ques-
tions be answered in words?" cries Dadu. "Only
those who know will understand."
"Why not go to him who has wrought this mar-
vel", says Dadu elsewhere, "and ask: 'Cannot your
own message make clear this wondrous making of
the One into the many?' When I look on creation
as beauty of form, I see only Form and Beauty.
When I look on it as life, everywhere I see Life.
When I look on it as Brahma, then indeed is Dadu
at a loss for words. When I see it in relation, it is
of bewildering variety. When I see it in my own
soul, all its variousness is merged in the beauty of
the Supreme Soul. This eye of mine then becomes
also the eye of Brahma, and in this exchange of
mutual vision does Dadu behold Truth."
The eye cannot see the face for that purpose a
mirror is necessary. That is to say, either the face
229
THE RELIGION OF MAN
has to be put at a distance from the eye, or the eye
moved away from the face in any case what was
one has to be made into two. The image is not the
face itself, but how else is that to be seen?
So does God mirror Himself in Creation; and
since He cannot place Himself outside His own
Infinity, He can only gain a vision of Himself
and get a taste of His own joy through my joy in
Him and in His Universe. Hence the anxious
striving of the devotee to keep himself thoroughly
pure not through any pride of puritanism, but
because his soul is the playground where God
would revel in Himself. Had not God's radiance,
His beauty, thus found its form in the Universe,
its joy in the devotee, He would have remained
mere formless, colourless Being in the nothingness
of infinity.
This is what makes the Mystery so profound, so
inscrutable. Whether we say that only Brahma is
true, or only the universe is true, we are equally
far from the Truth, which can only be expressed
as both this and that, or neither this nor that.
And Dadu can only hint at it by saying: "Neither
death nor life is He; He neither goes out, nor does
He come in; nor sleeps, nor wakes; nor wants, nor
is satisfied. He is neither I nor you, neither One
nor Two, For no sooner do I say that all is One,
than I find us both ; and when I say there are two,
I see we're One. So, O Dadu, rest content to look
on Him just as He is, in the dee of your heart,
and give up wrestling with vain imaginings and
empty words."
"Words shower", Dadu goes on, "when spouts
the fount of the intellect; but where realization
230
APPENDICES
grows, there music has its seat" When the intellect
confesses defeat, and words fail, then, indeed, from
the depth of the heart wells up the song of the joy
of realization. What words cannot make clear,
melody can; to its strains one can revel in the
vision of God in His revels.
"That is why", cries Dadu, "your universe, this
creation of yours, has charmed me so your waters
and your breezes, and this earth which holds them,
with its ranges of mountains, its great oceans, its
snow-capped poles, its blazing sun, because,
through all the three regions of earth, sky and
heaven, amidst all their multifarious life, it is your
ministration, your beauty, that keeps me en-
thralled. Who can know you, O Invisible, Unap-
proachable, Unfathomable! Dadu has no desire
to know ; he is satisfied to remain enraptured with
all this beauty of yours, and to rejoice in it with
To look upon Form as the play of His love is not
to belittle it. In creating the senses God did not
intend them to be starved, "And so", says Dadu,
"the eye is feasted with colour, the ear with music,
the palate with flowers, wondrously provided."
And we find that the body longs for the spirit, the
spirit for the body; the flower for the scent the
scent for the flower ; our words for truth, the Truth
for words; form for its ideal, the ideal for form;
all thus mutual worship is but the worship of the
ineffable Reality behind, by whose Presence every
one of them is glorified. And Dadu struggles not,
but simply keeps his heart open to this shower of
love and thus rejoices in perpetual Springtime.
Every vessel of form the Formless fills with
THE RELIGION OF MAN
Himself, and in their beauty He gains them in re-
turn. With His love the Passionless fulfils every
devoted heart and sets it a-dance, and their love
streams back to the Colourless, variegated with the
tints of each. Beauteous Creation yields up her
charms, in all their purity, to her Lord. Need she
make further protestation, in words of their mutual
love? So Dadu surrenders his heart, mind and
soul at the feet of his Beloved. His one care is that
they be not sullied.
If any one should object that evanescent Form is
not worthy to represent the Eternal, Dadu would
answer that it is just because Form is fleeting that
it is a help, not a hindrance, to His worship. While
returning back to its Origin, it captures our mind
and takes it along with itself. The call of Beauty
tells us of the Unthinkable, towards whom it lies.
In passing over us, Death assures us of the truth
of Life,
232
APPENDIX IV
NIGHT AND MORNING
(An address in the Chapel of Manchester College, Oxford, on
Sunday, May 25, 1930, by Rabindranath Tagore.)
IN his early youth, stricken with a great sorrow at
the death of his grandmother, my father painfully
groped for truth when his world had darkened,
and his life lost its meaning. At this moment of
despair a torn page of a manuscript carried by a
casual wind was brought to his notice. The text it
contained was the first verse of the Ishopanishad :
Isavasyam fdam survam
Yat Kincha jagatyam jagat.
tena tyaktena bhunjitha
Ma grdhah Kasyasvitdhanam. -
It may be thus translated :
"Thou must know that whatever moves in this moving world
in enveloped by God. And therefore find thy enjoyment in
renunciation, never coveting what belongs to others."
In this we are enjoined to realize that all facts that
move and change have their significance in their
relation to one everlasting truth. For then we can
be rid of the greed of acquisition, gladly dedicat-
ing everything we have to that Supreme Truth.
The change in our mind is immense in its generos-
ity of expression when an utter sense of vanity and
vacancy is relieved at the consciousness of a per-
vading reality.
333
THE RELIGION OF MAN
I remember once while on a boat trip in a strange
neighbourhood I found myself unexpectedly at the
confluence of three great rivers as the daylight
faded and the night darkened over a desolation
dumb and inhospitable. A sense of dread pos-
sessed the crew and an oppressive anxiety bur-
dened my thoughts, with its unreasonable exag-
geration all through the dark hours. The morning
came and at once the brooding obsession vanished.
Everything remained the same only the sky was
filled with light.
The night had brought her peace, the peace of a
black ultimatum in which all hope ceased in an
abyss of nothingness, but the peace of the morning
appeared like that of a mother's smile, which in its
serene silence utters, "I am here". I realized why
birds break out singing in the morning, and felt
that their songs are their own glad answers to the
emphatic assurance of a Yes in the morning light
in which they find a luminous harmony of their
own existence. Darkness drives our being into an
isolation of insignificance and we are frightened
because in the dark the sense of our own truth
dwindles into a minimum. Within us we carry a
positive truth, the consciousness of our personality,
which naturally seeks from our surroundings its
response in a truth which is positive, and then in
this harmony we find our wealth of reality and arc
gladly ready to sacrifice. That which distinguishes
man from the animal is the fact that he expresses
himself not in his claims, in his needs, but in his
sacrifice, which has the creative energy that builds
his home, his society, his civilization. It proves
that his instinct acknowledges the inexhaustible
234
APPENDICES
wealth of a positive truth which gives highest value
to existence. In whatever we are mean, greedy
and unscrupulous, there are the dark bands in the
spectrum of our consciousness; they prove chasms
of bankruptcy in our realization of the truth that
the world moves, not in a blank sky of negation,
but in the bosom of an ideal spirit of fulfil-
ment.
Most often crimes are committed when it is
night. It must not be thought that the only reason
for this is that in the dark they are likely to remain
undetected. But the deeper reason is that in the
dark the negative aspect of time weakens the posi-
tive sense of our own humanity. Our victims, as
well as we ourselves, are less real to us in the
night, and that which we miss within we desper-
ately seek outside us. Wherever in the human
world the individual self forgets its isolation, the
light that unifies is revealed the light of the Ever-
lasting Yes, whose sound-symbol in India is OM.
Then it becomes easy for man to be good not be-
cause his badness is restrained, but because of his
joy in the positive background of his own reality,
because his mind no longer dwells in a fathomless
night of an anarchical world of denial.
Man finds an instance of this in the idea of his
own country, which reveals to him a positive truth,
the idea that has not the darkness of negation which
is sinister, which generates suspicion, exaggerates
fear, encourages uncontrolled greed ; for his own
country is an indubitable reality to him which
delights his soul. In such intense consciousness of
reality we discover our own greater self that
spreads beyond our physical life and immediate
235
THE RELIGION OF MAN
present, and offers us generous opportunities of
enjoyment in renunciation.
In the introductory chapter of our civilization
individuals by some chance found themselves to-
gether within a geographic enclosure. But a mere
crowd without an inner meaning of inter-relation
is negative, and therefore it can easily be hurtful.
The individual who is a mere component part of
an unneighbourly crowd, who in his exclusiveness
represents only himself, is apt to be suspicious of
others, with no inner control in hating and hitting
his fellow-beings at the very first sight This sav-
age mentality is the product of the barren spirit
of negation that dwells in the spiritual night But
when the morning of mutual recognition broke out,
the morning of co-operative life, that divine mys-
tery which is the creative spirit of unity, imparted
meaning to individuals in a larger truth named
"people". These individuals gladly surrendered
themselves to the realization of their true human-
ity, the humanity of a great wholeness composed of
generations of men consciously and unconsciously
building up a perfect future. They realized peace
according to the degree of unity which they at-
tained in their mutual relationship, and within
that limit they found the one sublime truth which
pervades time that moves, the things that change,
the life that grows, the thoughts that flow onwards.
They united with themselves the surrounding
physical nature in her hills and rivers, in the dance
of rhythm in all her forms and colours, in the blue
of her sky, the tender green of her corn shoots.
In gradual degrees men became aware that the
subtle intricacies of human existence find their per-
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APPENDICES
faction in the harmony of interdependence, never
in the vigorous exercise of elbows by a mutually
pushing multitude, in the arrogant assertion of
independence which fitly belongs to the barren
rocks and deserts grey with the pallor of death.
For rampant individualism is against what is
truly human that is to say spiritual it belongs
to the primitive poverty of the animal life, it is the
confinement of a cramped spirit, of restricted con-
sciousness.
The limited boundaries of a race or a country
within which the supreme truth of humanity has
been more or less realized in the past are crossed
to-day from the outside. The countries are physi-
cally brought closer to each other by science. But
science has not brought with it the light that helps
understanding. On the contrary science on its prac-
tical side has raised obstacles among them against
the development of a sympathetic knowledge.
But I am not foolish enough to condemn science
as materialistic. No truth can be that Science
means intellectual probity in our knowledge and
dealings with the physical world and such con-
scientiousness has a spiritual quality that encour-
ages sacrifice and martyrdom. But in science the
oft-used half-truth that honesty is the best policy
is completely made true and our mind's honesty
in this field never fails to bring us the best profit
for our living. Mischief finds its entry through
this back-door of utility, tempting the primitive
in man, arousing his evil passions. And through
this the great meeting of races has been obscured
of its great meaning. When I view it in my mind
I am reminded of the fearful immensity of the
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
meeting of the three mighty rivers where I found
myself unprepared in a blackness of universal
menace. Over the vast gathering of peoples the
insensitive night darkly broods, the night of un-
reality. The primitive barbarity of limitless suspi-
cion and mutual jealousy fills the world's atmos-
phere to-day the barbarity of the aggressive indi-
vidualism of nations, pitiless in its greed, un-
ashamed of its boastful brutality.
Those that have come out for depredation in this
universal night have the indecent audacity to say
that such conditions are eternal in man, that the
moral ideals are only for individuals but that the
race belongs to the primitive nature of the animal.
But when we see that in the range of physical
power man acknowledges no limits in his dreams,
and is not even laughed at when he hopes to visit
the neighbouring planet; must he insult his hu-
manity by proclaiming that human nature has
reached its limit of moral possibility? We must
work with all our strength for the seemingly im-
possible ; we must be sure that faith in the perfect
builds the path for the perfect that the external
fact of unity which has surprised us must be sub-
limated in an internal truth of unity which would
light up the Truth of Man the Eternal.
Nations are kept apart not merely by interna-
tional jealousy, but also by their Karma, their own
past, handicapped by the burden of the dead. They
find it hard to think that the mentality which they
fondly cultivated within the limits of a narrow
past has no continuance in a wider future, they are
never tired of uttering the blasphemy that warfare
is eternal, that physical might has its inevitable
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
right of moral cannibalism where the flesh is
weak. The wrong that has been done in the past
seeks to justify itself by its very perpetuation, like
a disease by its chronic malignity, and it sneers
and growls at the least proposal of its termi-
nation. Such an evil ghost of a persistent past, the
dead that would cling to life, haunts the night to-
day over mutually alienated countries, and men
that are gathered together in the dark cannot see
each other's faces and features.
We in India are unfortunate in not having the
chance to give expression to the best in us in creat-
ing intimate relations with the powerful nations,
whose preparations are all leading to an enormous
waste of resources in a competition of brow-beating
and bluff. Some great voice is waiting to be heard
which will usher in the sacred light of truth in the
dark hours of the nightmare of politics, the voice
which will proclaim that "God is over all", and
exhort us never to covet, to be great in renunciation
that gives us the wealth of spirit, strength of truth,
leads us from the illusion of power to the fullness
of perfection, to the Sdntam, who is peace eternal,
to the Advaltam who is the infinite One in the
heart of the manifold. But we in India have not
yet had the chance. Yet we have our own human
voice which truth demands. The messengers of
truth have ever joined hands across centuries,
across the seas, across historical barriers, and they
help to raise up the great continent of human
brotherhood from avidya, from the slimy bottom
of spiritual apathy. We individuals, however
small may be our power and whatever corner of
the world we may belong to, have a claim upon
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THE RELIGION OF MAN
us to add to the light of the consciousness that com-
prehends all humanity. And for this cause I ask
your co-operation, not only because co-operation
gives us strength in our work, but because co-
operation itself is the best aspect of the truth we
represent; it is an end and not merely the means.
Let us keep our faith firm in the objectivity of
the source of our spiritual ideal of unity, though
it cannot be proved by any mathematical logic. Let
us proclaim in our conduct that it has already been
given to us to be realized, like a song which has
only to be mastered and sung, like the morning
which has only to be welcomed by raising the
screens, opening the doors.
The idea of a millennium is treasured in our
ancient legends. The instinct cradled and nour-
ished in them has profound meaning. It is like
the instinct of a chick which dimly feels that an
infinite world of freedom is already given to it,
truer than the narrow fact of its immediate life
within the egg. An agnostic chick has the rational
right to doubt it, but at the same time it cannot
help pecking at its shell. The human soul, confined
in its limitation, has also dreamt of millennium,
and striven for a spiritual emancipation which
seems impossible of attainment, and yet it feels its
reverence for some ever-present source of inspira-
tion in which all its experience of the true, the
good and beautiful finds its reality.
And therefore it has been said by the Upani-
shad: "Thou must know that God pervades all
things that move and change in this moving world ;
find thy enjoyment in renunciation, covet not what
belongs to others."
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Ya eko varno bahudha saktiyogat
Varnan ariekan nihitartho dadhati.
Vichaiti chante visvamadau sa devah
Sa no buddhya subhaya samjrunaktu.
He who is one, and who dispenses the inherent
needs of all peoples and all times, who is in the
beginning and the end of all things, may he unite
us with the bond of truth, of common fellowship,
of righteousness.
