Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our
minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and
therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming
burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering
vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our
recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our
own when it is a thing of joy to us.
The greater part of this world is to us as if it were nothing.
But we cannot allow it to remain so, for thus it belittles our
own self. The entire world is given to us, and all our powers
have their final meaning in the faith that by their help we are
to take possession of our patrimony.
But what is the function of our sense of beauty in this process
of the extension of our consciousness? Is it there to separate
truth into strong lights and shadows, and bring it before us in
its uncompromising distinction of beauty and ugliness? If that
were so, then we would have had to admit that this sense of
beauty creates a dissension in our universe and sets up a wall of
hindrance across the highway of communication that leads from
everything to all things.
But that cannot be true. As long as our realisation is
incomplete a division necessarily remains between things known
and unknown, pleasant and unpleasant. But in spite of the dictum
of some philosophers man does not accept any arbitrary and
absolute limit to his knowable world. Every day his science is
penetrating into the region formerly marked in his map as
unexplored or inexplorable. Our sense of beauty is similarly
engaged in ever pushing on its conquests. Truth is everywhere,
therefore everything is the object of our knowledge. Beauty is
omnipresent, therefore everything is capable of giving us joy.
In the early days of his history man took everything as a
phenomenon of life. His science of life began by creating a
sharp distinction between life and non-life. But as it is
proceeding farther and farther the line of demarcation between
the animate and inanimate is growing more and more dim. In the
beginning of our apprehension these sharp lines of contrast are
helpful to us, but as our comprehension becomes clearer they
gradually fade away.
The Upanishads have said that all things are created and
sustained by an infinite joy. To realise this principle of
creation we have to start with a division--the division into the
beautiful and the non-beautiful. Then the apprehension of beauty
has to come to us with a vigorous blow to awaken our
consciousness from its primitive lethargy, and it attains its
object by the urgency of the contrast. Therefore our first
acquaintance with beauty is in her dress of motley colours, that
affects us with its stripes and feathers, nay, with its
disfigurements. But as our acquaintance ripens, the apparent
discords are resolved into modulations of rhythm. At first we
detach beauty from its surroundings, we hold it apart from the
rest, but at the end we realise its harmony with all. Then the
music of beauty has no more need of exciting us with loud noise;
it renounces violence, and appeals to our heart with the truth
that it is meekness inherits the earth.
In some stage of our growth, in some period of our history, we
try to set up a special cult of beauty, and pare it down to a
narrow circuit, so as to make it a matter of pride for a chosen
few. Then it breeds in its votaries affections and
exaggerations, as it did with the Brahmins in the time of the
decadence of Indian civilisation, when the perception of the
higher truth fell away and superstitions grew up unchecked.
In the history of aesthetics there also comes an age of
emancipation when the recognition of beauty in things great and
small become easy, and when we see it more in the unassuming
harmony of common objects than in things startling in their
singularity. So much so, that we have to go through the stages
of reaction when in the representation of beauty we try to avoid
everything that is obviously pleasing and that has been crowned
by the sanction of convention. We are then tempted in defiance
to exaggerate the commonness of commonplace things, thereby
making them aggressively uncommon. To restore harmony we create
the discords which are a feature of all reactions. We already
see in the present age the sign of this aesthetic reaction, which
proves that man has at last come to know that it is only the
narrowness of perception which sharply divides the field of his
aesthetic consciousness into ugliness and beauty. When he has the
power to see things detached from self-interest and from the
insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone can he
have the true vision of the beauty that is everywhere. Then only
can he see that what is unpleasant to us is not necessarily
unbeautiful, but has its beauty in truth.
When we say that beauty is everywhere we do not mean that the
word ugliness should be abolished from our language, just as it
would be absurd to say that there is no such thing as untruth.
Untruth there certainly is, not in the system of the universe,
but in our power of comprehension, as its negative element. In
the same manner there is ugliness in the distorted expression of
beauty in our life and in our art which comes from our imperfect
realisation of Truth. To a certain extent we can set our life
against the law of truth which is in us and which is in all, and
likewise we can give rise to ugliness by going counter to the
eternal law of harmony which is everywhere.
Through our sense of truth we realise law in creation, and
through our sense of beauty we realise harmony in the universe.
When we recognise the law in nature we extend our mastery over
physical forces and become powerful; when we recognise the law in
our moral nature we attain mastery over self and become free. In
like manner the more we comprehend the harmony in the physical
world the more our life shares the gladness of creation, and our
expression of beauty in art becomes more truly catholic. As we
become conscious of the harmony in our soul, our apprehension of
the blissfulness of the spirit of the world becomes universal,
and the expression of beauty in our life moves in goodness and
love towards the infinite. This is the ultimate object of our
existence, that we must ever know that "beauty is truth, truth
beauty"; we must realise the whole world in love, for love gives
it birth, sustains it, and takes it back to its bosom. We must
have that perfect emancipation of heart which gives us the power
to stand at the innermost centre of things and have the taste of
that fullness of disinterested joy which belongs to Brahma.
Music is the purest form of art, and therefore the most direct
expression of beauty, with a form and spirit which is one and
simple, and least encumbered with anything extraneous. We seem
to feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the finite
forms of creation is music itself, silent and visible. The
evening sky, tirelessly repeating the starry constellations,
seems like a child struck with wonder at the mystery of its own
first utterance, lisping the same word over and over again, and
listening to it in unceasing joy. When in the rainy night of
July the darkness is thick upon the meadows and the pattering
rain draws veil upon veil over the stillness of the slumbering
earth, this monotony of the rain patter seems to be the darkness
of sound itself. The gloom of the dim and dense line of trees,
the thorny bushes scattered in the bare heath like floating heads
of swimmers with bedraggled hair, the smell of the damp grass and
the wet earth, the spire of the temple rising above the undefined
mass of blackness grouped around the village huts--everything
seems like notes rising from the heart of the night, mingling and
losing themselves in the one sound of ceaseless rain filling the
sky.
Therefore the true poets, they who are seers, seek to express the
universe in terms of music.
They rarely use symbols of painting to express the unfolding of
forms, the mingling of endless lines and colours that goes on
every moment on the canvas of the blue sky.
They have their reason. For the man who paints must have canvas,
brush and colour-box. The first touch of his brush is very far
from the complete idea. And then when the work is finished the
artist is gone, the windowed picture stands alone, the incessant
touches of love of the creative hand are withdrawn.
But the singer has everything within him. The notes come out
from his very life. They are not materials gathered from
outside. His idea and his expression are brother and sister;
very often they are born as twins. In music the heart reveals
itself immediately; it suffers not from any barrier of alien
material.
Therefore though music has to wait for its completeness like any
other art, yet at every step it gives out the beauty of the
whole. As the material of expression even words are barriers,
for their meaning has to be constructed by thought. But music
never has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it expresses what
no words can ever express.
What is more, music and the musician are inseparable. When the
singer departs, his singing dies with him; it is in eternal union
with the life and joy of the master.
This world-song is never for a moment separated from its singer.
It is not fashioned from any outward material. It is his joy
itself taking never-ending form. It is the great heart sending
the tremor of its thrill over the sky.
There is a perfection in each individual strain of this music,
which is the revelation of completion in the incomplete. No one of
its notes is final, yet each reflects the infinite.
What does it matter if we fail to derive the exact meaning of
this great harmony? Is it not like the hand meeting the string
and drawing out at once all its tones at the touch? It is the
language of beauty, the caress, that comes from the heart of the
world straightway reaches our heart.
Last night, in the silence which pervaded the darkness, I stood
alone and heard the voice of the singer of eternal melodies.
When I went to sleep I closed my eyes with this last thought in
my mind, that even when I remain unconscious in slumber the dance
of life will still go on in the hushed arena of my sleeping body,
keeping step with the stars. The heart will throb, the blood
will leap in the veins, and the millions of living atoms of my
body will vibrate in tune with the note of the harp-string that
thrills at the touch of the master.
THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY
REALISATION IN ACTION
It is only those who have known that joy expresses itself through
law who have learnt to transcend the law. Not that the bonds of
law have ceased to exist for them--but that the bonds have become
to them as the form of freedom incarnate. The freed soul
delights in accepting bonds, and does not seek to evade any of
them, for in each does it feel the manifestation of an infinite
energy whose joy is in creation.
As a matter of fact, where there are no bonds, where there is the
madness of license, the soul ceases to be free. There is its
hurt; there is its separation from the infinite, its agony of
sin. Whenever at the call of temptation the soul falls away from
the bondage of law, then, like a child deprived of the support of
its mother's arms, it cries out, _Smite me not!_ [Footnote: Ma ma
himsih.] "Bind me," it prays, "oh, bind me in the bonds of thy
law; bind me within and without; hold me tight; let me in the clasp
of thy law be bound up together with thy joy; protect me by thy
firm hold from the deadly laxity of sin."
As some, under the idea that law is the opposite of joy, mistake
intoxication for joy, so there are many in our country who
imagine action to be opposed to freedom. They think that
activity being in the material plane is a restriction of the free
spirit of the soul. But we must remember that as joy expresses
itself in law, so the soul finds its freedom in action. It is
because joy cannot find expression in itself alone that it
desires the law which is outside. Likewise it is because the
soul cannot find freedom within itself that it wants external
action. The soul of man is ever freeing itself from its own
folds by its activity; had it been otherwise it could not have
done any voluntary work.
The more man acts and makes actual what was latent in him, the
nearer does he bring the distant Yet-to-be. In that
actualisation man is ever making himself more and yet more
distinct, and seeing himself clearly under newer and newer
aspects in the midst of his varied activities, in the state, in
society. This vision makes for freedom.
Freedom is not in darkness, nor in vagueness. There is no
bondage so fearful as that of obscurity. It is to escape from
this obscurity that the seed struggles to sprout, the bud to
blossom. It is to rid itself of this envelope of vagueness that
the ideas in our mind are constantly seeking opportunities to
take on outward form. In the same way our soul, in order to
release itself from the mist of indistinctness and come out into
the open, is continually creating for itself fresh fields of
action, and is busy contriving new forms of activity, even such
as are not needful for the purposes of its earthly life. And
why? Because it wants freedom. It wants to see itself, to
realise itself.
When man cuts down the pestilential jungle and makes unto himself
a garden, the beauty that he thus sets free from within its
enclosure of ugliness is the beauty of his own soul: without
giving it this freedom outside, he cannot make it free within.
When he implants law and order in the midst of the waywardness of
society, the good which he sets free from the obstruction of the
bad is the goodness of his own soul: without being thus made free
outside it cannot find freedom within. Thus is man continually
engaged in setting free in action his powers, his beauty, his
goodness, his very soul. And the more he succeeds in so doing,
the greater does he see himself to be, the broader becomes the
field of his knowledge of self.
The Upanishad says: _In the midst of activity alone wilt thou
desire to live a hundred years._ [Footnote: Kurvanneveha
karmani jijivishet catam samah.] It is the saying of those who
had amply tasted of the joy of the soul. Those who have fully
realised the soul have never talked in mournful accents of the
sorrowfulness of life or of the bondage of action. They are not
like the weakling flower whose stem-hold is so light that it
drops away before attaining fruition. They hold on to life with
all their might and say, "never will we let go till the fruit is
ripe." They desire in their joy to express themselves
strenuously in their life and in their work. Pain and sorrow
dismay them not, they are not bowed down to the dust by the
weight of their own heart. With the erect head of the victorious
hero they march through life seeing themselves and showing
themselves in increasing resplendence of soul through both joys
and sorrows. The joy of their life keeps step with the joy of
that energy which is playing at building and breaking throughout
the universe. The joy of the sunlight, the joy of the free air,
mingling with the joy of their lives, makes one sweet harmony
reign within and without. It is they who say, _In the midst of
activity alone wilt thou desire to live a hundred years._
This joy of life, this joy of work, in man is absolutely true.
It is no use saying that it is a delusion of ours; that unless we
cast it away we cannot enter upon the path of self-realisation.
It will never do the least good to attempt the realisation of the
infinite apart from the world of action.
It is not the truth that man is active on compulsion. If there
is compulsion on one side, on the other there is pleasure; on the
one hand action is spurred on by want, on the other it hies to
its natural fulfilment. That is why, as man's civilisation
advances, he increases his obligations and the work that he
willingly creates for himself. One should have thought that
nature had given him quite enough to do to keep him busy, in fact
that it was working him to death with the lash of hunger and
thirst,--but no. Man does not think that sufficient; he cannot
rest content with only doing the work that nature prescribes for
him in common with the birds and beasts. He needs must surpass
all, even in activity. No creature has to work so hard as man;
he has been impelled to contrive for himself a vast field of
action in society; and in this field he is for every building up
and pulling down, making and unmaking laws, piling up heaps of
material, and incessantly thinking, seeking and suffering. In
this field he has fought his mightiest battles, gained continual
new life, made death glorious, and, far from evading troubles,
has willingly and continually taken up the burden of fresh
trouble. He has discovered the truth that he is not complete in
the cage of his immediate surroundings, that he is greater than
his present, and that while to stand still in one place may be
comforting, the arrest of life destroys his true function and the
real purpose of his existence.
This _mahati vinashtih--this great destruction_ he cannot bear,
and accordingly he toils and suffers in order that he may gain in
stature by transcending his present, in order to become that
which he yet is not. In this travail is man's glory, and it is
because he knows it, that he has not sought to circumscribe his
field of action, but is constantly occupied in extending the
bounds. Sometimes he wanders so far that his work tends to lose
its meaning, and his rushings to and fro create fearful eddies
round different centres--eddies of self-interest, of pride of
power. Still, so long as the strength of the current is not lost,
there is no fear; the obstructions and the dead accumulations of
his activity are dissipated and carried away; the impetus corrects
its own mistakes. Only when the soul sleeps in stagnation do its
enemies gain overmastering strength, and these obstructions become
too clogging to be fought through. Hence have we been warned by
our teachers that to work we must live, to live we must work; that
life and activity are inseparably connected.
It is very characteristic of life that it is not complete within
itself; it must come out. Its truth is in the commerce of the
inside and the outside. In order to live, the body must maintain
its various relations with the outside light and air--not only to
gain life-force, but also to manifest it. Consider how fully
employed the body is with its own inside activities; its heart-
beat must not stop for a second, its stomach, its brain, must be
ceaselessly working. Yet this is not enough; the body is
outwardly restless all the while. Its life leads it to an
endless dance of work and play outside; it cannot be satisfied
with the circulations of its internal economy, and only finds the
fulfilment of joy in its outward excursions.
The same with the soul. It cannot live on its own internal
feelings and imaginings. It is ever in need of external objects;
not only to feed its inner consciousness but to apply itself in
action, not only to receive but also to give.
The real truth is, we cannot live if we divide him who is truth
itself into two parts. We must abide in him within as well as
without. In whichever aspect we deny him we deceive ourselves
and incur a loss. _Brahma has not left me, let me not leave
Brahma._ [Footnote: Maham brahma nirakuryyam ma ma brahma
nirakarot.] If we say that we would realise him in introspection
alone and leave him out of our external activity, that we would
enjoy him by the love in our heart, but not worship him by
outward ministrations; or if we say the opposite, and overweight
ourselves on one side in the journey of our life's quest, we
shall alike totter to our downfall.
In the great western continent we see that the soul of man is
mainly concerned with extending itself outwards; the open field
of the exercise of power is its field. Its partiality is
entirely for the world of extension, and it would leave aside--
nay, hardly believe in--that field of inner consciousness which
is the field of fulfilment. It has gone so far in this that the
perfection of fulfilment seems to exist for it nowhere. Its
science has always talked of the never-ending evolution of the
world. Its metaphysic has now begun to talk of the evolution of
God himself. They will not admit that he _is_; they would have
it that he also is _becoming._
They fail to realise that while the infinite is always greater
than any assignable limit, it is also complete; that on the one
hand Brahma is evolving, on the other he is perfection; that in
the one aspect he is essence, in the other manifestation--both
together at the same time, as is the song and the act of singing.
This is like ignoring the consciousness of the singer and saying
that only the singing is in progress, that there is no song.
Doubtless we are directly aware only of the singing, and never at
any one time of the song as a whole; but do we not all the time
know that the complete song is in the soul of the singer?
It is because of this insistence on the doing and the becoming
that we perceive in the west the intoxication of power. These
men seem to have determined to despoil and grasp everything by
force. They would always obstinately be doing and never be done--
they would not allow to death its natural place in the scheme of
things--they know not the beauty of completion.
In our country the danger comes from the opposite side. Our
partiality is for the internal world. We would cast aside with
contumely the field of power and of extension. We would realise
Brahma in mediation only in his aspect of completeness, we have
determined not to see him in the commerce of the universe in his
aspect of evolution. That is why in our seekers we so often find
the intoxication of the spirit and its consequent degradation.
Their faith would acknowledge no bondage of law, their
imagination soars unrestricted, their conduct disdains to offer
any explanation to reason. Their intellect, in its vain attempts
to see Brahma inseparable from his creation, works itself stone-
dry, and their heart, seeking to confine him within its own
outpourings, swoons in a drunken ecstasy of emotion. They have
not even kept within reach any standard whereby they can measure
the loss of strength and character which manhood sustains by thus
ignoring the bonds of law and the claims of action in the
external universe.
But true spirituality, as taught in our sacred lore, is calmly
balanced in strength, in the correlation of the within and the
without. The truth has its law, it has its joy. On one side of
it is being chanted the _Bhayadasyagnistapati_ [Footnote: "For
fear of him the fire doth burn," etc], on the other the
_Anandadhyeva khalvimani bhutani jayante._ [Footnote: "From Joy
are born all created things," etc.] Freedom is impossible of
attainment without submission to law, for Brahma is in one aspect
bound by his truth, in the other free in his joy.
As for ourselves, it is only when we wholly submit to the bonds
of truth that we fully gain the joy of freedom. And how? As
does the string that is bound to the harp. When the harp is
truly strung, when there is not the slightest laxity in the
strength of the bond, then only does music result; and the string
transcending itself in its melody finds at every chord its true
freedom. It is because it is bound by such hard and fast rules
on the one side that it can find this range of freedom in music
on the other. While the string was not true, it was indeed
merely bound; but a loosening of its bondage would not have been
the way to freedom, which it can only fully achieve by being
bound tighter and tighter till it has attained the true pitch.
The bass and treble strings of our duty are only bonds so long as
we cannot maintain them steadfastly attuned according to the law
of truth; and we cannot call by the name of freedom the loosening
of them into the nothingness of inaction. That is why I would
say that the true striving in the quest of truth, of _dharma_,
consists not in the neglect of action but in the effort to attune
it closer and closer to the eternal harmony. The text of this
striving should be, _Whatever works thou doest, consecrate them
to Brahma._ [Footnote: Yadyat karma prakurvita tadbrahmani
samarpayet.] That is to say, the soul is to dedicate itself to
Brahma through all its activities. This dedication is the song
of the soul, in this is its freedom. Joy reigns when all work
becomes the path to the union with Brahma; when the soul ceases
to return constantly to its own desires; when in it our self-
offering grows more and more intense. Then there is completion,
then there is freedom, then, in this world, comes the kingdom of
God.
Who is there that, sitting in his corner, would deride this grand
self-expression of humanity in action, this incessant self-
consecration? Who is there that thinks the union of God and man
is to be found in some secluded enjoyment of his own imaginings,
away from the sky-towering temple of the greatness of humanity,
which the whole of mankind, in sunshine and storm, is toiling to
erect through the ages? Who is there that thinks this secluded
communion is the highest form of religion?
O thou distraught wanderer, thou _Sannyasin_, drunk in the wine of
self-intoxication, dost thou not already hear the progress of the
human soul along the highway traversing the wide fields of
humanity--the thunder of its progress in the car of its
achievements, which is destined to overpass the bounds that
prevent its expansion into the universe? The very mountains are
cleft asunder and give way before the march of its banners waving
triumphantly in the heavens; as the mist before the rising sun,
the tangled obscurities of material things vanish at its
irresistible approach. Pain, disease, and disorder are at every
step receding before its onset; the obstructions of ignorance are
being thrust aside; the darkness of blindness is being pierced
through; and behold, the promised land of wealth and health, of
poetry and art, of knowledge and righteousness is gradually being
revealed to view. Do you in your lethargy desire to say that
this car of humanity, which is shaking the very earth with the
triumph of its progress along the mighty vistas of history, has
no charioteer leading it on to its fulfilment? Who is there who
refuses to respond to his call to join in this triumphal progress?
Who so foolish as to run away from the gladsome throng and seek
him in the listlessness of inaction? Who so steeped in untruth as
to dare to call all this untrue--this great world of men, this
civilisation of expanding humanity, this eternal effort of man,
through depths of sorrow, through heights of gladness, through
innumerable impediments within and without, to win victory for his
powers? He who can think of this immensity of achievement as an
immense fraud, can he truly believe in God who is the truth? He
who thinks to reach God by running away from the world, when and
where does he expect to meet him? How far can he fly--can he fly
and fly, till he flies into nothingness itself? No, the coward
who would fly can nowhere find him. We must be brave enough to
be able to say: We are reaching him here in this very spot, now
at this very moment. We must be able to assure ourselves that as
in our actions we are realising ourselves, so in ourselves we are
realising him who is the self of self. We must earn the right to
say so unhesitatingly by clearing away with our own effort all
obstruction, all disorder, all discords from our path of activity;
we must be able to say, "In my work is my joy, and in that joy
does the joy of my joy abide."
Whom does the Upanishad call _The chief among the knowers of
Brahma?_ [Footnote: Brahmavidamvaristhah.] He is defined as _He
whose joy is in Brahma, whose play is in Brahma, the active one._
[Footnote: Atmakrirha atmaratih kriyavan.] Joy without the play
of joy is no joy at all--play without activity is no play.
Activity is the play of joy. He whose joy is in Brahma, how can
he live in inaction? For must he not by his activity provide
that in which the joy of Brahma is to take form and manifest
itself? That is why he who knows Brahma, who has his joy in
Brahma, must also have all his activity in Brahma--his eating
and drinking, his earning of livelihood and his beneficence.
Just as the joy of the poet in his poem, of the artist in his
art, of the brave man in the output of his courage, of the wise
man in his discernment of truths, ever seeks expression in their
several activities, so the joy of the knower of Brahma, in the
whole of his everyday work, little and big, in truth, in beauty,
in orderliness and in beneficence, seeks to give expression to
the infinite.
Brahma himself gives expression to his joy in just the same way.
_By his many-sided activity, which radiates in all directions,
does he fulfil the inherent want of his different creatures._
[Footnote: Bahudha cakti yogat varnananekan nihitartho dadhati.]
That inherent want is he himself, and so he is in so many ways,
in so many forms, giving himself. He works, for without working
how could he give himself. His joy is ever dedicating itself in
the dedication which is his creation.
In this very thing does our own true meaning lie, in this is our
likeness to our father. We must also give up ourselves in many-
sided variously aimed activity. In the Vedas he is called _the
giver of himself, the giver of strength._ [Footnote: Atmada
balada.] He is not content with giving us himself, but he gives
us strength that we may likewise give ourselves. That is why the
seer of the Upanishad prays to him who is thus fulfilling our
wants, _May he grant us the beneficent mind_ [Footnote: Sa no
buddhya cubhaya samyunaktu.], may he fulfil that uttermost want
of ours by granting us the beneficent mind. That is to say, it
is not enough he should alone work to remove our want, but he
should give us the desire and the strength to work with him in
his activity and in the exercise of the goodness. Then, indeed,
will our union with him alone be accomplished. The beneficent
mind is that which shows us the want (_swartha_) of another self
to be the inherent want (_nihitartha_) of our own self; that
which shows that our joy consists in the varied aiming of our
many-sided powers in the work of humanity. When we work under
the guidance of this beneficent mind, then our activity is
regulated, but does not become mechanical; it is action not
goaded on by want, but stimulated by the satisfaction of the
soul. Such activity ceases to be a blind imitation of that of
the multitude, a cowardly following of the dictates of fashion.
Therein we begin to see that _He is in the beginning and in the
end of the universe_ [Footnote: Vichaiti chante vicvamadau.],
and likewise see that of our own work is he the fount and the
inspiration, and at the end thereof is he, and therefore that all
our activity is pervaded by peace and good and joy.
The Upanishad says: _Knowledge, power, and action are of his
nature._ [Footnote: Svabhavikijnana bala kriya cha.] It is
because this naturalness has not yet been born in us that we tend
to divide joy from work. Our day of work is not our day of joy--
for that we require a holiday; for, miserable that we are, we
cannot find our holiday in our work. The river finds its holiday
in its onward flow, the fire in its outburst of flame, the scent
of the flower in its permeation of the atmosphere; but in our
everyday work there is no such holiday for us. It is because we
do not let ourselves go, because we do not give ourselves
joyously and entirely up to it, that our work overpowers us.
O giver of thyself! at the vision of thee as joy let our souls
flame up to thee as the fire, flow on to thee as the river,
permeate thy being as the fragrance of the flower. Give us
strength to love, to love fully, our life in its joys and
sorrows, in its gains and losses, in its rise and fall. Let us
have strength enough fully to see and hear thy universe, and to
work with full vigour therein. Let us fully live the life thou
hast given us, let us bravely take and bravely give. This is our
prayer to thee. Let us once for all dislodge from our minds the
feeble fancy that would make out thy joy to be a thing apart from
action, thin, formless, and unsustained. Wherever the peasant
tills the hard earth, there does thy joy gush out in the green of
the corn, wherever man displaces the entangled forest, smooths
the stony ground, and clears for himself a homestead, there does
thy joy enfold it in orderliness and peace.
O worker of the universe! We would pray to thee to let the
irresistible current of thy universal energy come like the
impetuous south wind of spring, let it come rushing over the vast
field of the life of man, let it bring the scent of many flowers,
the murmurings of many woodlands, let it make sweet and vocal the
lifelessness of our dried-up soul-life. Let our newly awakened
powers cry out for unlimited fulfilment in leaf and flower and
fruit.
REALISATION IN LOVE
|
Circulated, compiled and edited by Sengupta Chandan, chandansenji@gmail.com
THE PROBLEM OF SELF
At one pole of my being I am one with stocks and stones. There I
have to acknowledge the rule of universal law. That is where the
foundation of my existence lies, deep down below. Its strength
lies in its being held firm in the clasp of comprehensive world,
and in the fullness of its community with all things.
But at the other pole of my being I am separate from all. There
I have broken through the cordon of equality and stand alone as
an individual. I am absolutely unique, I am I, I am
incomparable. The whole weight of the universe cannot crush out
this individuality of mine. I maintain it in spite of the
tremendous gravitation of all things. It is small in appearance
but great in reality. For it holds its own against the forces
that would rob it of its distinction and make it one with the
dust.
This is the superstructure of the self which rises from the
indeterminate depth and darkness of its foundation into the open,
proud of its isolation, proud of having given shape to a single
individual idea of the architect's which has no duplicate in the
whole universe. If this individuality be demolished, then though
no material be lost, not an atom destroyed, the creative joy
which was crystallised therein is gone. We are absolutely
bankrupt if we are deprived of this specialty, this
individuality, which is the only thing we can call our own; and
which, if lost, is also a loss to the whole world. It is most
valuable because it is not universal. And therefore only through
it can we gain the universe more truly than if we were lying
within its breast unconscious of our distinctiveness. The
universal is ever seeking its consummation in the unique. And
the desire we have to keep our uniqueness intact is really the
desire of the universe acting in us. It is our joy of the
infinite in us that gives us our joy in ourselves.
That this separateness of self is considered by man as his most
precious possession is proved by the sufferings he undergoes and
the sins he commits for its sake. But the consciousness of
separation has come from the eating of the fruit of knowledge.
It has led man to shame and crime and death; yet it is dearer to
him than any paradise where the self lies, securely slumbering in
perfect innocence in the womb of mother nature.
It is a constant striving and suffering for us to maintain the
separateness of this self of ours. And in fact it is this
suffering which measures its value. One side of the value is
sacrifice, which represents how much the cost has been. The
other side of it is the attainment, which represents how much has
been gained. If the self meant nothing to us but pain and
sacrifice, it could have no value for us, and on no account would
we willingly undergo such sacrifice. In such case there could be
no doubt at all that the highest object of humanity would be the
annihilation of self.
But if there is a corresponding gain, if it does not end in a
void but in a fullness, then it is clear that its negative
qualities, its very sufferings and sacrifices, make it all the
more precious. That it is so has been proved by those who have
realised the positive significance of self, and have accepted its
responsibilities with eagerness and undergone sacrifices without
flinching.
With the foregoing introduction it will be easy for me to answer
the question once asked by one of my audience as to whether the
annihilation of self has not been held by India as the supreme
goal of humanity?
In the first place we must keep in mind the fact that man is
never literal in the expression of his ideas, except in matters
most trivial. Very often man's words are not a language at all,
but merely a vocal gesture of the dumb. They may indicate, but
do not express his thoughts. The more vital his thoughts the
more have his words to be explained by the context of his life.
Those who seek to know his meaning by the aid of the dictionary
only technically reach the house, for they are stopped by the
outside wall and find no entrance to the hall. This is the
reason why the teachings of our greatest prophets give rise to
endless disputations when we try to understand them by following
their words and not be realising them in our own lives. The men
who are cursed with the gift of the literal mind are the
unfortunate ones who are always busy with their nets and neglect
the fishing.
It is not only in Buddhism and the Indian religions, but in
Christianity too, that the ideal of selflessness is preached with
all fervour. In the last the symbol of death has been used for
expressing the idea of man's deliverance from the life which is
not true. This is the same as Nirvnana, the symbol of the
extinction of the lamp.
In the typical thought of India it is held that the true
deliverance of man is the deliverance from _avidya_, from
ignorance. It is not in destroying anything that is positive and
real, for that cannot be possible, but that which is negative,
which obstructs our vision of truth. When this obstruction,
which is ignorance, is removed, then only is the eyelid drawn up
which is no loss to the eye.
It is our ignorance which makes us think that our self, as self,
is real, that it has its complete meaning in itself. When we
take that wrong view of self then we try to live in such a manner
as to make self the ultimate object of our life. Then we are
doomed to disappointment like the man who tries to reach his
destination by firmly clutching the dust of the road. Our self
has no means of holding us, for its own nature is to pass on; and
by clinging to this thread of self which is passing through the
loom of life we cannot make it serve the purpose of the cloth
into which it is being woven. When a man, with elaborate care,
arranges for an enjoyment of the self, he lights a fire but has
no dough to make his bread with; the fire flares up and consumes
itself to extinction, like an unnatural beast that eats its own
progeny and dies.
In an unknown language the words are tyrannically prominent.
They stop us but say nothing. To be rescued from this fetter of
words we must rid ourselves of the _avidya_, our ignorance, and
then our mind will find its freedom in the inner idea. But it
would be foolish to say that our ignorance of the language can
be dispelled only by the destruction of the words. No, when the
perfect knowledge comes, every word remains in its place, only
they do not bind us to themselves, but let us pass through them
and lead us to the idea which is emancipation.
Thus it is only _avidya_ which makes the self our fetter by
making us think that it is an end in itself, and by preventing
our seeing that it contains the idea that transcends its limits.
That is why the wise man comes and says, "Set yourselves free
from the _avidya_; know your true soul and be saved from the
grasp of the self which imprisons you."
We gain our freedom when we attain our truest nature. The man
who is an artist finds his artistic freedom when he finds his
ideal of art. Then is he freed from laborious attempts at
imitation, from the goadings of popular approbation. It is the
function of religion not to destroy our nature but to fulfil it.
The Sanskrit word _dharma_ which is usually translated into
English as religion has a deeper meaning in our language.
_Dharma_ is the innermost nature, the essence, the implicit
truth, of all things. _Dharma_ is the ultimate purpose that
is working in our self. When any wrong is done we say that
_dharma_ is violated, meaning that the lie has been given to
our true nature.
But this _dharma_, which is the truth in us, is not apparent,
because it is inherent. So much so, that it has been held that
sinfulness is the nature of man, and only by the special grace
of God can a particular person be saved. This is like saying
that the nature of the seed is to remain enfolded within its
shell, and it is only by some special miracle that it can be
grown into a tree. But do we not know that the _appearance_ of
the seed contradicts its true nature? When you submit it to
chemical analysis you may find in it carbon and proteid and a
good many other things, but not the idea of a branching tree.
Only when the tree begins to take shape do you come to see its
_dharma_, and then you can affirm without doubt that the seed
which has been wasted and allowed to rot in the ground has been
thwarted in its _dharma_, in the fulfilment of its true nature.
In the history of humanity we have known the living seed in us
to sprout. We have seen the great purpose in us taking shape
in the lives of our greatest men, and have felt certain that
though there are numerous individual lives that seem ineffectual,
still it is not their _dharma_ to remain barren; but it is for
them to burst their cover and transform themselves into a
vigorous spiritual shoot, growing up into the air and light, and
branching out in all directions.
The freedom of the seed is in the attainment of its
_dharma_, its nature and destiny of becoming a tree; it is the
non-accomplishment which is its prison. The sacrifice by which
a thing attains its fulfilment is not a sacrifice which ends in
death; it is the casting-off of bonds which wins freedom.
When we know the highest ideal of freedom which a man has, we
know his _dharma_, the essence of his nature, the real meaning of
his self. At first sight it seems that man counts that as
freedom by which he gets unbounded opportunities of self
gratification and self-aggrandisement. But surely this is not
borne out by history. Our revelatory men have always been those
who have lived the life of self-sacrifice. The higher nature in
man always seeks for something which transcends itself and yet is
its deepest truth; which claims all its sacrifice, yet makes this
sacrifice its own recompense. This is man's _dharma_, man's
religion, and man's self is the vessel which is to carry this
sacrifice to the altar.
We can look at our self in its two different aspects. The self
which displays itself, and the self which transcends itself and
thereby reveals its own meaning. To display itself it tries to
be big, to stand upon the pedestal of its accumulations, and to
retain everything to itself. To reveal itself it gives up
everything it has; thus becoming perfect like a flower that has
blossomed out from the bud, pouring from its chalice of beauty
all its sweetness.
The lamp contains its oil, which it holds securely in its close
grasp and guards from the least loss. Thus is it separate from
all other objects around it and is miserly. But when lighted it
finds its meaning at once; its relation with all things far and
near is established, and it freely sacrifices its fund of oil to
feed the flame.
Such a lamp is our self. So long as it hoards its possessions it
keeps itself dark, its conduct contradicts its true purpose.
When it finds illumination it forgets itself in a moment, holds
the light high, and serves it with everything it has; for therein
is its revelation. This revelation is the freedom which Buddha
preached. He asked the lamp to give up its oil. But purposeless
giving up is a still darker poverty which he never could have
meant. The lamp must give up its oil to the light and thus set
free the purpose it has in its hoarding. This is emancipation.
The path Buddha pointed out was not merely the practice of self-
abnegation, but the widening of love. And therein lies the true
meaning of Buddha's preaching.
When we find that the state of _Nirvana_ preached by Buddha is
through love, then we know for certain that _Nirvana_ is the
highest culmination of love. For love is an end unto itself.
Everything else raises the question "Why?" in our mind, and we
require a reason for it. But when we say, "I love," then there
is no room for the "why"; it is the final answer in itself.
Doubtless, even selfishness impels one to give away. But the
selfish man does it on compulsion. That is like plucking fruit
when it is unripe; you have to tear it from the tree and bruise
the branch. But when a man loves, giving becomes a matter of joy
to him, like the tree's surrender of the ripe fruit. All our
belongings assume a weight by the ceaseless gravitation of our
selfish desires; we cannot easily cast them away from us. They
seem to belong to our very nature, to stick to us as a second
skin, and we bleed as we detach them. But when we are possessed
by love, its force acts in the opposite direction. The things
that closely adhered to us lose their adhesion and weight, and we
find that they are not of us. Far from being a loss to give them
away, we find in that the fulfilment of our being.
Thus we find in perfect love the freedom of our self. That only
which is done for love is done freely, however much pain it may
cause. Therefore working for love is freedom in action. This is
the meaning of the teaching of disinterested work in the _Gita_.
The _Gita_ says action we must have, for only in action do we
manifest our nature. But this manifestation is not perfect so
long as our action is not free. In fact, our nature is obscured
by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother
reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true
freedom is not the freedom _from_ action but freedom _in_ action,
which can only be attained in the work of love.
God's manifestation is in his work of creation and it is said in
the Upanishad, _Knowledge, power, and action are of his nature_
[Footnote: "Svabhaviki jnana bala kriyacha."]; they are not
imposed upon him from outside. Therefore his work is his
freedom, and in his creation he realises himself. The same thing
is said elsewhere in other words: _From joy does spring all this
creation, by joy is it maintained, towards joy does it progress,
and into joy does it enter_. [Footnote: Anandadhyeva khalvimani
bhutani jayante, anandena jatani jivanti,
anandamprayantyabhisamvicanti.] It means that God's creation has
not its source in any necessity; it comes from his fullness of
joy; it is his love that creates, therefore in creation is his
own revealment.
The artist who has a joy in the fullness of his artistic idea
objectifies it and thus gains it more fully by holding it afar.
It is joy which detaches ourselves from us, and then gives it
form in creations of love in order to make it more perfectly our
own. Hence there must be this separation, not a separation of
repulsion but a separation of love. Repulsion has only the one
element, the element of severance. But love has two, the element
of severance, which is only an appearance, and the element of
union which is the ultimate truth. Just as when the father
tosses his child up from his arms it has the appearance of
rejection but its truth is quite the reverse.
So we must know that the meaning of our self is not to be found
in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless
realisation of _yoga_, of union; not on the side of the canvas
where it is blank, but on the side where the picture is being
painted.
This is the reason why the separateness of our self has been
described by our philosophers as _maya_, as an illusion, because
it has no intrinsic reality of its own. It looks perilous; it
raises its isolation to a giddy height and casts a black shadow
upon the fair face of existence; from the outside it has an
aspect of a sudden disruption, rebellious and destructive; it is
proud, domineering and wayward; it is ready to rob the world of
all its wealth to gratify its craving of a moment; to pluck with
a reckless, cruel hand all the plumes from the divine bird of
beauty to deck its ugliness for a day; indeed man's legend has it
that it bears the black mark of disobedience stamped on its
forehead for ever; but still all this _maya_, envelopment of
_avidya_; it is the mist, it is not the sun; it is the black
smoke that presages the fire of love.
Imagine some savage who, in his ignorance, thinks that it is the
paper of the banknote that has the magic, by virtue of which the
possessor of it gets all he wants. He piles up the papers, hides
them, handles them in all sorts of absurd ways, and then at last,
wearied by his efforts, comes to the sad conclusion that they are
absolutely worthless, only fit to be thrown into the fire. But
the wise man knows that the paper of the banknote is all _maya_,
and until it is given up to the bank it is futile. It is only
_avidya_, our ignorance, that makes us believe that the
separateness of our self like the paper of the banknote is
precious in itself, and by acting on this belief our self is
rendered valueless. It is only when the _avidya_ is removed that
this very self comes to us with a wealth which is priceless. For
_He manifests Himself in forms which His joy assumes_. [Footnote:
Anandarupamamritam yadvibhati.] These forms are separate from
Him, and the value that these forms have is only what his joy has
imparted to them. When we transfer back these forms into that
original joy, which is love, then we cash them in the bank and we
find their truth.
When pure necessity drives man to his work it takes an accidental
and contingent character, it becomes a mere makeshift
arrangement; it is deserted and left in ruins when necessity
changes its course. But when his work is the outcome of joy, the
forms that it takes have the elements of immortality. The
immortal in man imparts to it its own quality of permanence.
Our self, as a form of God's joy, is deathless. For his joy is
_amritham_, eternal. This it is in us which makes us sceptical of
death, even when the fact of death cannot be doubted. In
reconcilement of this contradiction in us we come to the truth that
in the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that
the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite
in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its
journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it
has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as
well as truth; and death is that appearance, that _maya_, which is
an inseparable companion to life. Our self to live must go through
a continual change and growth of form, which may be termed a
continual death and a continual life going on at the same time. It
is really courting death when we refuse to accept death; when we
wish to give the form of the self some fixed changelessness; when
the self feels no impulse which urges it to grow out of itself;
when it treats its limits as final and acts accordingly. Then comes
our teacher's call to die to this death; not a call to annihilation
but to eternal life. It is the extinction of the lamp in the
morning light; not the abolition of the sun. It is really asking us
consciously to give effect to the innermost wish that we have in the
depths of our nature.
We have a dual set of desires in our being, which it should be
our endeavour to bring into a harmony. In the region of our
physical nature we have one set of which we are conscious always.
We wish to enjoy our food and drink, we hanker after bodily
pleasure and comfort. These desires are self-centered; they are
solely concerned with their respective impulses. The wishes of
our palate often run counter to what our stomach can allow.
But we have another set, which is the desire of our physical
system as a whole, of which we are usually unconscious. It is
the wish for health. This is always doing its work, mending and
repairing, making new adjustments in cases of accident, and
skilfully restoring the balance wherever disturbed. It has no
concern with the fulfilment of our immediate bodily desires, but
it goes beyond the present time. It is the principle of our
physical wholeness, it links our life with its past and its
future and maintains the unity of its parts. He who is wise
knows it, and makes his other physical wishes harmonise with it.
We have a greater body which is the social body. Society is an
organism, of which we as parts have our individual wishes. We
want our own pleasure and license. We want to pay less and gain
more than anybody else. This causes scramblings and fights. But
there is that other wish in us which does its work in the depths
of the social being. It is the wish for the welfare of the
society. It transcends the limits of the present and the
personal. It is on the side of the infinite.
He who is wise tries to harmonise the wishes that seek for self-
gratification with the wish for the social good, and only thus
can he realise his higher self.
In its finite aspect the self is conscious of its separateness,
and there it is ruthless in its attempt to have more distinction
than all others. But in its infinite aspect its wish is to gain
that harmony which leads to its perfection and not its mere
aggrandisement.
The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health,
of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in
attaining love. This last is what Buddha describes as
extinction--the extinction of selfishness--which is the function
of love, and which does not lead to darkness but to illumination.
This is the attainment of _bodhi_, or the true awakening; it is
the revealing in us of the infinite joy by the light of love.
The passage of our self is through its selfhood, which is
independent, to its attainment of soul, which is harmonious.
This harmony can never be reached through compulsion. So our
will, in the history of its growth, must come through
independence and rebellion to the ultimate completion. We must
have the possibility of the negative form of freedom, which is
licence, before we can attain the positive freedom, which is
love.
This negative freedom, the freedom of self-will, can turn its
back upon its highest realisation, but it cannot cut itself away
from it altogether, for then it will lose its own meaning. Our
self-will has freedom up to a certain extent; it can know what it
is to break away from the path, but it cannot continue in that
direction indefinitely. For we are finite on our negative side.
We must come to an end in our evil doing, in our career of
discord. For evil is not infinite, and discord cannot be an end
in itself. Our will has freedom in order that it may find out
that its true course is towards goodness and love. For goodness
and love are infinite, and only in the infinite is the perfect
realisation of freedom possible. So our will can be free not
towards the limitations of our self, not where it is _maya_ and
negation, but towards the unlimited, where is truth and love.
Our freedom cannot go against its own principle of freedom and
yet be free; it cannot commit suicide and yet live. We cannot
say that we should have infinite freedom to fetter ourselves, for
the fettering ends the freedom.
So in the freedom of our will, we have the same dualism of
appearance and truth--our self-will is only the appearance of
freedom and love is the truth. When we try to make this
appearance independent of truth, then our attempt brings misery
and proves its own futility in the end. Everything has this
dualism of _maya_ and _satyam_, appearance and truth. Words are
_maya_ where they are merely sounds and finite, they are _satyam_
where they are ideas and infinite. Our self is _maya_ where it
is merely individual and finite, where it considers its
separateness as absolute; it is _satyam_ where it recognises its
essence in the universal and infinite, in the supreme self, in
_paramatman_. This is what Christ means when he says, "Before
Abraham was I am." This is the eternal _I am_ that speaks
through the _I am_ that is in me. The individual _I am_ attains
its perfect end when it realises its freedom of harmony in the
infinite _I am_. Then is it _mukti_, its deliverance from the
thraldom of _maya_, of appearance, which springs from _avidya_,
from ignorance; its emancipation in _cantam civam advaitam_, in
the perfect repose in truth, in the perfect activity in goodness,
and in the perfect union in love.
Not only in our self but also in nature is there this
separateness from God, which has been described as _maya_ by our
philosophers, because the separateness does not exist by itself,
it does not limit God's infinity from outside. It is his own
will that has imposed limits to itself, just as the chess-player
restricts his will with regard to the moving of the chessmen.
The player willingly enters into definite relations with each
particular piece and realises the joy of his power by these very
restrictions. It is not that he cannot move the chessmen just as
he pleases, but if he does so then there can be no play. If God
assumes his role of omnipotence, then his creation is at an end
and his power loses all its meaning. For power to be a power must
act within limits. God's water must be water, his earth can never
be other than earth. The law that has made them water and earth
is his own law by which he has separated the play from the player,
for therein the joy of the player consists.
As by the limits of law nature is separated from God, so it is
the limits of its egoism which separates the self from him. He
has willingly set limits to his will, and has given us mastery
over the little world of our own. It is like a father's settling
upon his son some allowance within the limit of which he is free
to do what he likes. Though it remains a portion of the father's
own property, yet he frees it from the operation of his own will.
The reason of it is that the will, which is love's will and
therefore free, can have its joy only in a union with another
free will. The tyrant who must have slaves looks upon them as
instruments of his purpose. It is the consciousness of his own
necessity which makes him crush the will out of them, to make his
self-interest absolutely secure. This self-interest cannot brook
the least freedom in others, because it is not itself free. The
tyrant is really dependent on his slaves, and therefore he tries
to make them completely useful by making them subservient to his
own will. But a lover must have two wills for the realisation of
his love, because the consummation of love is in harmony, the
harmony between freedom and freedom. So God's love from which
our self has taken form has made it separate from God; and it is
God's love which again establishes a reconciliation and unites
God with our self through the separation. That is why our self
has to go through endless renewals. For in its career of
separateness it cannot go on for ever. Separateness is the
finitude where it finds its barriers to come back again and again
to its infinite source. Our self has ceaselessly to cast off its
age, repeatedly shed its limits in oblivion and death, in order
to realise its immortal youth. Its personality must merge in the
universal time after time, in fact pass through it every moment,
ever to refresh its individual life. It must follow the eternal
rhythm and touch the fundamental unity at every step, and thus
maintain its separation balanced in beauty and strength.
The play of life and death we see everywhere--this transmutation
of the old into the new. The day comes to us every morning,
naked and white, fresh as a flower. But we know it is old. It
is age itself. It is that very ancient day which took up the
newborn earth in its arms, covered it with its white mantle of
light, and sent it forth on its pilgrimage among the stars.
Yet its feet are untired and its eyes undimmed. It carries the
golden amulet of ageless eternity, at whose touch all wrinkles
vanish from the forehead of creation. In the very core of the
world's heart stands immortal youth. Death and decay cast over
its face momentary shadows and pass on; they leave no marks of
their steps--and truth remains fresh and young.
This old, old day of our earth is born again and again every
morning. It comes back to the original refrain of its music. If
its march were the march of an infinite straight line, if it had
not the awful pause of its plunge in the abysmal darkness and its
repeated rebirth in the life of the endless beginning, then it
would gradually soil and bury truth with its dust and spread
ceaseless aching over the earth under its heavy tread. Then
every moment would leave its load of weariness behind, and
decrepitude would reign supreme on its throne of eternal dirt.
But every morning the day is reborn among the newly-blossomed
flowers with the same message retold and the same assurance
renewed that death eternally dies, that the waves of turmoil are
on the surface, and that the sea of tranquillity is fathomless.
The curtain of night is drawn aside and truth emerges without a
speck of dust on its garment, without a furrow of age on its
lineaments.
We see that he who is before everything else is the same to-day.
Every note of the song of creation comes fresh from his voice.
The universe is not a mere echo, reverberating from sky to sky,
like a homeless wanderer--the echo of an old song sung once for
all in the dim beginning of things and then left orphaned. Every
moment it comes from the heart of the master, it is breathed in
his breath.
And that is the reason why it overspreads the sky like a thought
taking shape in a poem, and never has to break into pieces with
the burden of its own accumulating weight. Hence the surprise of
endless variations, the advent of the unaccountable, the
ceaseless procession of individuals, each of whom is without a
parallel in creation. As at the first so to the last, the
beginning never ends--the world is ever old and ever new.
It is for our self to know that it must be born anew every moment
of its life. It must break through all illusions that encase it
in their crust to make it appear old, burdening it with death.
For life is immortal youthfulness, and it hates age that tries to
clog its movements--age that belongs not to life in truth, but
follows it as the shadow follows the lamp.
Our life, like a river, strikes its banks not to find itself
closed in by them, but to realise anew every moment that it has
its unending opening towards the sea. It is a poem that strikes
its metre at every step not to be silenced by its rigid
regulations, but to give expression every moment to the inner
freedom of its harmony.
The boundary walls of our individuality thrust us back within our
limits, on the one hand, and thus lead us, on the other, to the
unlimited. Only when we try to make these limits infinite are we
launched into an impossible contradiction and court miserable
failure.
This is the cause which leads to the great revolutions in human
history. Whenever the part, spurning the whole, tries to run a
separate course of its own, the great pull of the all gives it a
violent wrench, stops it suddenly, and brings it to the dust.
Whenever the individual tries to dam the ever-flowing current of
the world-force and imprison it within the area of his particular
use, it brings on disaster. However powerful a king may be, he
cannot raise his standard or rebellion against the infinite
source of strength, which is unity, and yet remain powerful.
It has been said, _By unrighteousness men prosper, gain what they
desire, and triumph over their enemies, but at the end they are
cut off at the root and suffer extinction._ [Footnote:
Adharmenaidhate tavat tato bahdrani pacyati tatah sapatnan jayati
samulastu vinacyati.] Our roots must go deep down into the
universal if we would attain the greatness of personality.
It is the end of our self to seek that union. It must bend its
head low in love and meekness and take its stand where great and
small all meet. It has to gain by its loss and rise by its
surrender. His games would be a horror to the child if he could
not come back to his mother, and our pride of personality will be
a curse to us if we cannot give it up in love. We must know that
it is only the revelation of the Infinite which is endlessly new
and eternally beautiful in us, and which gives the only meaning
to our self.