Ideal of Karmayogin

Author(s): Aurbindo Ghose
Publisher: Prabartak Publishing House
Catalog link: https://jainqq.org/explore/011100/1

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-- ane MI PUN

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN By Sri AUROBINDO GHOSE May, 1921 Prabartak Pooltahing House CHANDERNAGORE.

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Published by RAMESHWAR DE from the PRABARTAK PUBLISHING HOUSE CILANDERNAGORE. 3rd Impression. PRINTED BY A. C. Sarkar AT BRAUNO Mission PRESS, 11, CORNWALLIS ST., CALCUTTA.

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The articles contained in this book were first published in the weekly review "The Karmayogin" in the year 1909-10. These all, except two, which are Sister Nivedita's, are from the pen of Sri Aurobindo Ghose. The present edi tion has been thoroughly revised by the author.

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CONTENTS. The Ideal of the Karmayogin Karmayoga lo Either Case The Awakening Soul of India The Doctrine of Sacrifice The Process of Evolution Ths Strength of Stillness The Three Purusbas The Stress of the Hidden Spirit ... The Greatness of the Individual ... 97 The Laws of Thought .... 106 A Daily Aspiration for the Nationalist 112

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN nation is building in India to-day before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process and those who have sympathy and intuition, distinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture. This nation is not a new race raw from the workshop of Nature or created by modern circumstances. One of the oldest races and greatest civilisations on this earth, the most indomitable in vitality, the most fecund in greatness, the deepest in life, the most wonderful in potentiality, after taking into itself numerous sources of strength from foreiga strains of blood and other types of human

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN civilisation, is now seeking to lift itself for good into an organised national unity. Formerly a congeries of kindred nations with a single life and a single culture, always by the law of this essential oneness tending to unity, always by its excess of fecundity engendering fresh diversities and divisions, it has never yet been able to overcome permanently the almost insuperable obstacles to the organisation of a continent. The time has now come when those obstacles can be overcome. The attempt which our race has been making throughout its long history, it will now make under entirely new circumstances. A keen observer would predict its success because the only important obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world. This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle. The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all important, the dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of 3

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN history of our race, forward to the gran. diose history for which that destiny has prepared it. We do not believe that our political salvation can be attained by enlargement of Councils, introductions of the elective principle, colonial self-government or any other formula of European politics. We do not deny the use of some of these things as instruments, as weapons in a political struggle, but we deny their sufficiency whether as instruments or ideals and look bevond to an end which they do not serve except in a trilling degree. They might be sufficient if it were our ultimate destiny to be an outlying province of the British Empire or a dependent adjunct of Euroropean civilisation. That is a future which we do not think it worth making any sacrifice to accomplish. We believe on the other hand that India is destined to work out her own independent life and civilsasation, to stand in the forefront of the world and solve the political, social, econo

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN mical and moral problems which Europe has failed to solve, yet the pursuit of which and the feverish passage in that pursuit from experiment to experiment, from failure to failure she calls her progress. Our means must be as great as our ends and the strength to discover and use the means so as to attain the end can only be found by seeking the eternal source of strength in ourselves. We do not believe that by changing the machinery so as to make our society the ape of Europe we shall effect social renovation. Widow-remarriage, substitution of class for caste, adult marriage, intermarriages, interdining and the other nontrums of the social reformer are mechanical changes which, whatever their merits or demerits, cannot by themselves save the soul of the nation alive or stay the course of degradation and decline. It is the spirit alone that saves, and only by becoming great and free in heart can we become socially and politically great and free.

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN We do not believe that by multiplying new sects limited within the narrower and inferior ideas of religion imported from the West or by creating organizations for the perpetuation of the mere dress and body of Hinduism we can recover our spiritual health, energy and greatness. The world moves through an indispensable interregnum of free thought and materialism to a new synthesis of religious thought and experience, a new religious world-life free from intolerance, yet full of faith and fervour, accepting all forms of religion because it has an unshakeable faith in the One. The religion which embraces Science and faith, Theism, Christianity, Mahomedanism and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the World-Spirit moves. In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN knowledge,-that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dog. mas bat a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced turning it to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism we find the basis of the future world-religion. This sanatana dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita, Upanishad, Darshana, Puran, Tantra, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scrip. ture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga. Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanityt-this is the spirit of the Nationalism

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN which we profess and follow. We pay to humanity "The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external Nature. For that work the resurgence of Asia is necessary, therefore Asia rises. For that work the freedom and greatness of India is essential, therefore she claims her destined freedom and greatness, and it is to the interest of all humanity, not excluding England, that she should wholly establish her claim." We say to the nation, "It is God's will that we should be ourselves and not 10

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, "This is our dharma." We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we sball take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our 11

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours." We say to the individual and especially to the young who are now arising to do India's work, the world's work, God's work :-"You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strung, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it is 12

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Her's, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual-pre-eminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemopy of the world."

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KARMA YOGA TE have spoken of Karmayoga as the application of Vedanta and Yoga to life. To many who take their knowledge of Hinduism secondhand this may seem a doubtful definition. It is ordinarily supposed by "practical" minds that Vedanta as a guide to life and Yoga, as a method of spiritual communion are dangerous things which lead men away from action to abstraction. We leave aside those who regard all such beliefs as mysticism, self-delusion, or imposture ; but even those who reverence and believe in the high things of Hinduism have the impression that one mot remove vneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual 1+

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KARMA YOGA life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such an union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and he come mighty and divine. It is a delusion tu suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely metaphysical and quietistic. On the contrary, the highest morality of which humanity is capable finds its one perfect basis and justification in the teachings of the Upanishads and the Gita. The characteristic doctrines of the Gita are nothing it they are not a law of life, a dharma, and even the most transcendental aspirations of the Vedanta presuppose a preparation in lise, for it is only through life that one can reach to immortality. The opposite opinion is due to certain tendencies which have bulked large in the history and temperament of our race. The ultimate goal of our religion is emancipation from 15

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN the bondage of material Nature and freedom from individual rebirth, and certain souls, among the highest we have known, have been drawn by the attraction of the final hush and purity to dissociate themselves from life and bodily action in order more swiftly and easily to reach the goal. Standing like mountain-peaks above the common level, they have attracted all eyes and fixed this withdrawal as the highest and most commanding Hindu ideal. It is for this reason that Sri Krishna laid so much stress on the perfect Yogin's cleaving to life and human activity even after bis need of them were over, lest the people, following as they always do the example of their best, turn away from their dharma and bastard confusion reign. The ideal Yogin is no withdrawn and pent-up force, but ever engaged in doing good to all creatures, either by the flood of the divine energy that he pours on the world or by himself standing in the front of humanity, its leader in the march and the battle, but 16

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KARMA YOGA unbound by his works and superior to his personality. Moreover the word Vedanta is usually identified with the strict Monism and the peculiar theory of maya established by the lofty and ascetic intellect of Shankara. But it is the Upanishads themselves and not Shankara's writings, the text and not the commentary, that are the authoritative Scripture of the Vedantin. Shankara's, great and temporarily satisfying as it was, is still only one synthesis and interpretation of the Upanishads. There have been others in the past which have powerfully influenced the national mind and there is no reason why there should not be a yet more perfect synthesis in the future. It is such a synthesis embracing all life and action in its scope, that the teachings of Sri Ramkrishna and Vivekananda have been preparing. What is dimly beginning now is a repetition on a wider stage of what happened once before in India, more rapidly but to smaller issues, when the 17 2

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN Buddha lived and taught his philosophy and ethics to the Aryan nations. Then as now a mighty spirit, it matters not whether Avatar or Vibhuti, the full expression of God in man or a great outpouring of the divine energy, came down among men and brought into their daily life and practice the force and impulse of utter spirituality. And this time it is the full light and not a noble part, unlike Buddhism, which, expressing Vedantic morality, yet ignored a fundamental reality of Vedanta and was therefore expelled from its prime seat and cradle. The material result was then what it will be now, a great political, moral and social revolution which made India the Guru of the nations and carried the light she had to give all over the civilized world, moulding ideas and creating forms which are still extant and a living force. Already the Vedanta and the Yoga have exceeded their Asiatic limit and are beginning to influence the life and practice of America and 18

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KARMAYOGA Europe; and they have long been filtering into Western thought by a hundred indirect channels. But these are small rivers and underground streams. The world waits for the rising of India to receive the divine flood in its fullness.) communion with God for Yoga is knowledge, for love or for work. The Yogin puts himself into direct relation with that which is omniscient and omnipotent within man and without him. He is in tune with the infinite, he becomes a channel for the strength of God to pour itself out world whether upon the through calm benevolence or active beneficence. When a man rises by putting from him the slough of self and lives for others and in the joys and sorrows of others;-when he works perfectly and with love and zeal, but casts away the anxiety for results and is neither eager for victory nor afraid of defeat;-when he devotes all his works to God and lays every thought, word and deed as an offer19

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN ing on the divine altar ;-when he gets rid of fear and hatred, repulsion and disgust and attachment, and works like the forces of Nature, unhasting, unresting, inevitably, perfectly ;-when he rises above the thought that he is the body or the heart or the mind or the sum of these and finds his own and true self;-when he becomes aware of his immortality and the unreality of death ;-when he experiences the advent of knowledge and feels himself passive and the divine force working unresisted through his mind, his speech, his senses and all his organs ;-when having thus abandoned whatever he is, does or bas, to the Lord of all, the Lover and Helper of mankind, he dwells permanently in Him and becomes incapable of grief, disquiet or false excitement,--that is Yoga. Pradayam and Asans, concentration, worship, ceremonies, religious practice are not themselves Yoga but only a means, towards Yoga. Nor is Yoga a difficult or dangerous path, it is safe and easy to all who

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KARMA YOGA take refuge with the Inner Guide and Teacher. All men are potentially capable of it, for there is no man who has not strength or faith or love developed or latent in his sature, and any one of these is a sufficient staff for the Yogin. All cannot, indeed, reach in a single life the highest in this path, but all can go forward ; and in proportion as a man advances be gets peace, strength and joy. And even a little of this dharma delivers man or na. tion out of great fear. _ "sarapama basa pakhavAvate mahatomavAra / ' It is an error, we repeat, to think that spirituality is a thing divorced from life. "Abandon all" says the laba Upanishad "that thou mayst enjoy all, neither covet any man's possession. But verily do thy deeds in this world and wish to live thy hundred years ; no other way is given thee than this to escape the bondage of thy acts." Hje an error to think that the heights of religion are above the struggles of this world. The recurrent cry of Sri 21

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN Krishna to Arjuna insists on the struggle; "Fight and overthrow thy opponents !" "Remember me and fight!" "Give up all thy works to me with a heart full of spirituality, and free from craving, free from selfish claims, fight ! let the fever of thy soul pass from thee". It is an error to imagine that even when the religious man does not give up his ordinary activities, he yet becomes too sattwic, too saintly, too loving or too passionless for the rough work of the world. Nothing can be more extreme and uncompromising than the reply of the Gita in the opposite sense, "Whosoerer has his temperament purged from egoism, whosoever suffers not his soul to receive the impress of the deed, though he slay the whole world yet he slays not and is not bound." The Charioteer of Kurukshetra driving the car of Arjuna over that field of ruin is the image and description of Karmayoga ; for the body is the chariot and the senses are the horses of the driving and it is through the bloodstained 22

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KARMAYOGA and miresunk ways of the world that Sri Krishna pilots the soul of man to Vaicuntha.

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IN EITHER CASE THERE are two movements of humanity, upward and downward, and both are irresistible. It may seem for a moment that the downward movement is arrested and an upward lift may for a while rejoice the hearts that are attached to a cause forsaken by God and Destiny. The majestic or impetuous rise of a religion, an idea, a nation may for a fleeting period be held back by main force and with a fierce and infinite labour the wheel may be driven back for the space of an inch or even two. But God cannot be deceived and God cannot be conquered by violence. Where He is the Chrrioteer, victory is certain and if He wheels 24

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IN EITHER CASE back, it is only to leave ground which is no longer advantageous to Him and shift the conflict to terrain fixed beforehand for the victory. Often He forces His adversaries to drive Him from ground conquered and occupied inorder that they may exhaust their strength on a position never meant to be permanently held and by their very triumph prepare a more decisive overthrow. Minute minds fix themselves on details and say "Here we have failed, there we have prevailed;" and if the record of defeats seems to be long and ill-balanced by doubtful successes, they grow dicouraged and apprehend the ruin of their cause. So men deceive themselves as to the trend of events by not keeping their eyes open to the great stream of inevitable tendency which prevails over all backwashes and petty currents. And where defeat is predestined for a season, their want of faith leads to the very calamity which they apprehended. The eye of faith is not one with 25

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN the eye of knowledge ;-Faith divines in the large what knowledge sees distinctly and clearly ; but in the main thing Faith and Knowledge are one and the wisdom of the Lover is justified and supported by the wisdom of the Seer. Faith fights for God, while knowledge is waiting for fulfilment, and so long as the latter is withheld, the former is necessary. For with. out indomitable Faith or inspired Wisdom no great cause can conquer. We must look therefore to the great tendency of things and interpret in their light the minute events that are passing at the moment. Is the main tendency of things upward or downward ? If it is downward, even then we must strive, for the man who abandons a cause which is right because it is denied success, is despicable, and he inflicts a wound on mankind in the present and the future. Great causes which are fought out boldly to the end are made sacred by courage and suffering and their resurrection and final victory is inevitable. 26

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T IN EITHER CASE are Only those which are supported by cowards and meanly abandoned, erased from the books of the future. The mediaeval movement of civic liberty in France and Italy failed and gave place to Teutonic despotism, but it revived with a hundredfold force in the French Revolution and it was the impetuous rush earthwards of the souls that had fought for it hundreds of years before that shattered to pieces the once victorious feudal system. But if, as we are assured, the movement is upward, then we may persist in absolute confidence, sure that reverses in details are only meant to prepare and point the true way to victory) Persistence does not imply persistence in methods that have proved to be infructuous or from which, though temporarily fruitful, God has withdrawn His sanction. We must remember that we are a nation not yet trained in the vaster movements of modern politics. Not only our rank and file, but our captains and our strategists 27

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN need the training of events, the wisdom of experience to make them perfect. Fire, im petuosity, self-sacrifice, intellectual vigour subtlety, wealth of ideas, fertility of resource to meet unexpected happenings. these have been given to us in abundance. But the perfect experience of the veteran in great battles, the acute political intelligence which comes of long familiarity with the handling of high affairs and national destinies, these are yet in us immature and in a state of pupilage. But God Himself is our master and teacher, for He would give to His chosen nation a faultless training and a perfect capacity. Only we must be ready to acknowledge our mistakes, to change our path, to learn. Then only shall we victoriously surmount all obstacles and move steadily, impetously, but without stumbling or swerving, to our goal. Moreover, we have weakpossess that are still rampant and uncorrected in our midst. It is our first duty to purge these 28

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IN EITHER CASE out of our hearts with a merciless surgery. If the intellectual equipment is deficient, the spiritual equipment is also far from perfect. Our leaders and our followers both require a deeper sadhana, a more direct communion with the Divine Guru and Captain of our movement, an inward uplifting, a grander and more impetuous force behind thought and deed. It has been driven home to us by experience after experience, that not in the strength of a raw unmoralised European enthusiasm shall we conquer. Indians, it is the spirituality of India, the sadhana of India, tapasya, jnanam, shakti that must make us free and great. And these great things of the East are ill-rendered by their inferior English equivalents, discipline, philosophy, strength. Tapasya is more than discipline; it is the materialisation in ourselves by spiritual means of the divine energy creative, preservative and destructive. Joanam is more than philosophy, it is the inspired and direct knowledge which comes * 29

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN of what our ancients called drishti, spiritual sight. Shakti is more than strength, it is the universal energy which moves the stars, made individual. It is the East that must conquer in India's uprising. It is the Yogin who must stand behind the political leader or manifest within him ; Ramadas must be born in one body with Shivaji, Mazzini mingle with Cavour. The divorce of intellect and spirit, strength and purity may help i a European revolution, but by a European strength we shall not conquer. The movements of the last century failed because they were too purely intellectual and had not an enlightened heart behind them. Nationalism has striven to supply the deficiency; it has poured the inspirations of the heart into a swifter and more discerning intellectual activity. But Nationalism also has been defective; it has been Indian in sentiment and aspiration, European in practice and actuality. It has helped itself with the 30

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IN EITHER CASE intellect, rejoicing in its own lightness, clearness, accuracy, shrewd insight, but it has not been sufficiently supported by inspired wisdom. It has attached itself to imaginations and idealisms, but has not learned to discern the deeper Truth and study the will of God. It has been driven by ardent and vehement emotions, but was detective in clear will-power and the pure energy that is greater and more istipetuous than any passionate feeling. Either Nationalism will purify itself, learn a more sacred truth and command a diviner impulse or it will have to abandon utterly its old body and get itself a new. The pressure of events seems to be pointing in the latter direction. But in either case defeat cannot be the end, victory must be the end. In all the events of the last year and a half the voice of the divine Teacher can be heard crying to us, "Abandon that you may possess ; 'do my will and know yourselves, parify yourselves, cease to follow 31

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN your fancies." He that has ears, let him hear. Knowledge will not come without self-communion, without light from within, not even the knowledge of the practical steps that can lead to success. Every step that is taken in the light of a lower wisdom will fail until the truth is driven home. The work that was begun at Dakshineshwar is far from finished, it is not even understood. That which Vivekananda received and strove to develop, has not yet materialised. The truth of the future that Bijoy Goswami hid within himself, has not yet been revealed utterly to his disciples. A less discreet revelation prepares, a more concrete force manifests, but where it comes, when it comes, none knoweth.

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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA NTO national awakening is really vital and enduring which confines itself to a single field. It is when the soul awakens that a nation is really alive, and the life will then manifest itself in all the manifold forms of activity in which man seeks to express the strength and the delight of the expansive spirit within. It is for ananda that the world exists; for joy that the Self pats Himself into the great and serious game of life; and the joy which He sees is the joy of various self-expression. For this reason it is that ne two men are alike, no two nations are alike. Each has its own separate nature over and above the 33

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN common nature of humanity and it is not only the common human impulses and activities but the satisfaction and development of its own separate character and capacities that a nation demands. Denied that satisfaction and development, it perishes. By two tests, therefore, the vitality of a national movement can be judged. If it is imitative, imported, artificial, then, whatever temporary success it may have, the nation is moving towards self-sterilisation and death; even so the nations of ancient Europe perished when they gave up their own individuality as the price of Roman civilisation, Roman peace, Roman prosperity. If, on the other hand, the peculiar individuality of a race stamps itself on the movement in its every part and seizes on every new development as a means of self-expression, then the nation wakes, lives and grows and whatever the revolutions and changes of political, social or intellectual forms and institations, it is assured of its purvival and aggrandise 84

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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA ment. The nineteenth century in India was imitative, self-forgetful, artificial. It aimed at a succtssful reproduction of Europe in India, forgetting the deep saying of the Gita-"Better the law of one's own being though it be badly done than an alien dharma well followed; death in one's own dharma is better, it is a dangerous thing to follow the law of another's nature.") For death in one's own dharma brings new birth, success in an alien path means only successful suicide. If we bad succeeded in Europeanising ourselves we would have lost for ever our spiritual capacity, our intellectual force, our national elasticity and power of self-renovation. That tragedy has been enacted more than once in history, only the worst and most mournful example of all would have been added. Had the whole activity of the country been of the derivative and alien kind, that result would have supervened. But the life-breath of the nation still moved in the religious movements of 85

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN Bengal and the Punjab, in the political aspirations of Maharastra and in the literary activity of Bengal. . Even here it was an undercurrent; the peculiar temperament and vitality of India struggling for self-preservation under a load of foreign ideas and foreign forms, and it was not till in the struggle between these two elements the balance turned in the favour of the national dharma that the salvation of India was assured. The resistance of the conservative element in Hinduism, tamasic, inert, ignorant, uncreative though it was, saved the country. by preventing an even more rapid and thorough disintegration than actually took place and by giving respite and time for the persistent national self to emerge and find itself. It was in religion first that the soul of India awoke and triumphed. There were always indications, always great forerunners, but it was when the flower of the educated youth of Calcutta bowed down at the feet of an 36

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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA illiterate Hindu ascetic; a self-illuminated ecstatic and "mystic" without a single trace or touch of the alien thought or education upon him that the battle was won. The going forth of Vivekananda, marked out by the Master as the heroic soul destined to take the world between his two hands and change it, was the first visible sign to the world that India was awake not only to survive but to conquer. Afterwards when the awakening was complete a section of the nationalist movement turned in imagination to a reconstruction of the recent pre-British past in all its details. This could not be inertia, the refusal to expand and alter is what our philosophy calls "tamas," and an excess of "tamas" tends to disintegration and disappearance. Aggression is necessary for self-preservation and when a force ceases to conquer, it ceases to live-that which remains stationary and stands merely on the defensive, that which retires into and keeps within its own Kot or base as 37

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN the now defunct "Sandhya" used graphically to pat it, is doomed to defeat, diminution and final elimination from the living things of the world. Hinduism has always been pliable and aggressive; it has thrown itself on the attacking force, carried its positions, plundered its treasares, made its own everything of value it had and ended either in wholly annexing it or driving it out by rendering its further continuation in the country purposeless and therefore impossible. Whenever it has stood on the defensive, it has contracted within narrower' limits and shown temporary signs of decay. Once the soul of the nation was awake in religion, it was only a matter of time and opportunity for it to throw itself on all spiritual and intellectual activities in the national existence and take possession of them. The outburst of anti-European feeling which followed on the Partition gave the required opportunity. Anger, vindictiveness and antipathy are not in 38

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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA themselves laudable feelings, but God uses them for His parposes and brings good out of evil. They drove listlessness and apathy away and replaced them by energy and a powerful emotion; and that energy and emotion were seized upon by the aational self and turned to the uses of the future. The anger against Europeans, the vengeful turning upon their commerce and its productions, the antipathy to everything associated with them engendered a powerful stream of tendency turning away from the immediate Anglicised past, and the spirit which had already declared itself in our religious life entered in by this broad doorway into politics, and substituted a positive powerful yearning towards the national past, a still more mighty and dynamic yearning towards a truly national future. The Indian spirit has not yet conquered the whole field of our politics in actuality, but it is there victoriously in sentiment; the rest is a matter of time, and every thing which is now 39

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN happening in politics, is helping to prepare for its true and potent expression. The future is now assured. Religion and politics, the two most effective and vital expressions of the nation's self having been nationalised, the rest will follow in due course. The needs of our religious and political life are now vital and real forces and it is these needs which will reconstruct our society, recreate and remould our industrial and commercial life and found a new and victorious art, literature, science and philosophy which will be not European but Indian. The impulse is already working in Bengali art and literature. The need of self-expression for the national spirit in politics suddenly brought back Bengali literature to its essential and eternal self and it was in our recent national songs that this self-realisation came. The lyric and the lyrical spirit, the spirit of simple, direct and poignant expression, of deep, passionate, straight-forward emotion, of

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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA a frank and exalted enthusiasm, the dominant note of love and "Bhakti" of a mingled sweetness and strength, the potent intellect, dominated by the self-illuminated heart, a mystical exaltation of feeling and spiritual insight expressing itself with a plain concreteness and practically - this is the soul of Bengal. All our literature, in order to be wholly alive must start from this base and whatever variations it may indulge in, never lose touch with it. In Bengal again, the national spirit is seeking to satisfy itself in art and for the first time since the decline of the Moguls, a new school of national art is developing itself, the school of which Abanindranath Tagore is the founder and master. It is still troubled by the foreign though Asiatic influence from which its master started, and has something of an exotic appearance, but the development and self-emancipation of the national self from this temporary domination can already be watched and followed. There again, it is the 41

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN spirit of Bengal that expresses itself. The attempt to express in form and limit something of that which is formless and illimitable is the attempt of Indian art. The Greeks aiming at a smaller and more easily attainable end, achieved a more perfect success. Their instinct for physical form was greater than ours, our instinct for psychic shape and colour was superior. Our future art must solve the problem of expressing the soul in the object, the great Indian aim, while achieving anew the triumphant combination of perfect interpretative form and colour. No Indian has so strong an instinct for form as the Bengali. In addition to the innate Vedantism of all Indian races, he has an all-powerful impluse towards delicacy, grace and strength, and it is these qualities to which the new school of art has instinctively turned in its first inception. Unable to find a perfect model in the Acanty relics of old Indian art, it was only natural that it should turn to Japan for

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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA help, for delicacy and grace are there, triumphant. But Japan has not the secret of expressing the deepest soul in the object, it has not the aim. And the Bengali spirit means more than the union of delicacy, grace and strength; it has the lyrical mystic impulse; it has the passion for clarity and concreteness and as in our literature, so in our art we see these tendencies emerging-an emotion of beauty, a. nameless sweetness and spirituality, pervading the clear line and form. Here too it is the free spirit of the nation beginning to emancipate itself from the foreign limitations and shackles. No department of our life can escape this great regenerating and reconstructing force. There is not the slightest doubt that our society will have to undergo a reconstruction which may amount to revolution, but it will not be for Europeanisation as the average reformer blindly hopes, but for a greater and more perfect realisation of the national spirit in

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN society. Not individual selfishness and mutually consuming struggle but love and the binding of individuals into a single inseparable life is the national impulse. It sought to fulfil itself in the past by the bond of blood in the joint family, by the bond of a partial communism in the village system, by the bond of birth and a corporate sense of honour in the caste. It may seek a more perfect and spiritual bond in the future. In commerce also so long as we follow the European spirit and European model, the individual competitive selfishness, the bond of mere interest in the joint-stock company or that worst and most dangerous development of cooperative Capitalism, the giant Octopuslike Trust and Syndicate, we shall never succeed in rebuilding a healthy industrial life. It is not these bonds which can wield Indians together. India moves to a deeper and greater life than the world has yet imagined possible and it is when she has found the secret of expressing herself 44

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THE AWAKENING SOUL OF INDIA in those various activities that her industrial and social life will become strong and expansive. Nationalism has been hitherto largely a revolt against the tendency to shape ourselves into the mould of Europe ; but it must also be on its guard against any tendency to cling to every detail that has been Indian. That has not been the spirit of Hinduism in the past, there is no reason why it should be so in the future. In all life there are three elements, the fixed and permanent spirit, the developing yet constant soul and the brittle changeable body. The spirit we cannot change, we can only obscure or lose ; the soul must not be rashly meddled with, must neither be tortured into a shape alien to it, nor obstructed in its free expansion ; and the body must be used as a means, not overcherished as a thing valuable for its own sake. We will sacrifice no ancient form to an unreasoning love of change, we will keep none which the national spirit desires 45

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN to replace by one that is a still better and truer expression of the undying soul of the nation. 46

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THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE THE genius of self-sacrifice is not com mon to all nations and to all indivi duals; it is rare and precious, it is the flowering of mankind's ethical growth, the evidence of our gradual rise from the self-regarding animal to the selfless divinity. A man capable of self-sacrifice, whatever his other sins, has left the animal behind him; he has the stuff in him of a future and higher humanity. A nation capable of a national act of self-sacrifice ensures its future. Self-sacrifice involuntary or veiled by forms of selfishness is, however, the condition of our existence. It has been a gradual growth in humanity. The first 47

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN sacrifices are always selfish-they involve the sacrifice of others for one's own advancement. The first step forward is taken by the instinct of animal love in the mother who is ready to sacrifice her life for the young, by the instinct of protection in the male who is ready to sacrifice his life for his mate. The growth of this instinct is the sign of an enlargement in the conception of the self. So long as there is identification of self only with one's own body and its desires, the state of the jiva is unprogressive and animal. It is only when the self enlarges to include the mate and the children that advancement becomes possible. This is the first human state but the animal lingers in it in the view of the wife and children as chattels and possessions meant for one's own pleasure, strength, dignity, comfort. The family even so viewed becomes the basis of civilisation because it makes social life possible. But the real development of the god in man does not begin 48

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THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE until the family becomes so much dearer than the life of the body that a man is ready to sacrifice himself for it and give up his ease or even his life for its welfare or its protection. To give up one's ease for the family, that is a state which most men have attained; to give up one's life for the honour of the wife or the safety of the home is an act of a higher nature of which man is capable in individuals, in classes, but not in the mass. Beyond the family comes the community and the next step in the enlargement of the self is when the indentification with the self in the body and the self in the family gives way to the indentification with the self in the community. To recognise that the community has a larger claim on a man than his family is the first condition of the advance to the social condition. It corresponds to the growth of the tribe out of the patriarchal family and to the perfection of those communal institutions of which our village community was a 49 4

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN type. Here again, to be always prepared to sacrifice the family interest to the larger interest of the community must be the first condition of communal life and to give one's life for the safety of the community, the act of divinity which marks the consummation of the enlarging self in the communal idea. The next enlargement is the self in the nation. The evolution of the nation is the growth which is most important now to humanity, because human selfishness, family selfishness, class selfishness having still deep roots in the past must learn to efface themselves in the larger national self in order that the God in humanity may grow. Therefore it is that Nationalism is the dharma of the age, and God reveals himself to us in our common Mother. The first attempts to form a nationality were the Greek city, the Semitic or Mongolian monarchy, the Celtic clan, the Aryan kula or jati. It was the mixture of all these ideas which went to the formation of ,50

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THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE the medieval nation and evolved the modern peoples. Here again, it is the readiness to sacrifice self-interest, family interest, class interest to the larger national interest which is the condition of humanity's fulfilment in the nation and to die for its welfare or safety is the supreme act of self-consummation in the larger national ego. There is a yet higher fulfilment for which only a few individuals have shown themselves ready, the enlargement of the self to include all humanity. A step forward has been taken in this direction by the self-immolation of a few to humanitarian ideals, but to sacrifice the interests of the nation to the larger interest of humanity is an act of which humanity in the mass is not yet capable. God prepares, but He does not hasten the ripening of the fruit before its season. A time will come when this also will be possible, but the time is not yet. Nor would it be well for humanity if it came before the other and lesser identification 51

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN were complete ; for that would necessitate retrogression in order to secure the step which has been omitted. The advance of humanity is a steady progress and there is no great gain in rushing positions far ahead, while important points in the rear are uncaptured. The national ego may easily mean nothing more than collective selfishness. I may be ready to sacrifice money and ease for the country in order to secure my wealth, fame or position and property which depend upon her security and greatness. I may be ready to sacrifice these and more for her because of the safety of the home and the hearth which her safety ensures. I may be ready to sacrifice much for her because her greatness, wealth, ease mean the greatness, wealth, ease of my community or my class. Or I may be ready to sacrifice everything to secure her greatness because of my pride in her and my desire to see my nation dominant and imperial. All these are forms of selfishness 52 cuiu

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THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE pursuing man into the wider life which is meant to assist in liberating him from selfishness. The curse of capitalism, the curse of Imperialism which afflict modern nations are due to this insistence. It is the source of that pride, insolence and injustice which affect a nation in its prosperity and by that fatal progression which the Greeks with their acute sense for these things so clearly demarcated, it leads from prosperity to insolence and outrage and from insolence and outrage to that ate, that blind infatuation, which is God's instrument for the destruction of men and nations. There is only one remedy for this pursuing evil and it is to regard the nation as a necessary unit but no more in a common humanity. There are two stages in the life of a nation, first, when it is forming itself or new-forming itself, secondly, when it is formed, organised and powerful. The first is the stage when Nationalism makes rightly its greatest demands on the in 53

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN dividual, in the second it should abate its demands and, having satisfied, should preserve itself in Cosmopolitanism somewhat as the individual preserves itself in the family, the family in the class, the class in the nation, not destroying itself needlessly but recognising a larger interest. In the struggles of a subject-nation to realise its separate existence, the larger interest can only be viewed in prospect and as a higher inspiration to a broadminded and generous patriotism. No. sacrifice of the nation to the larger interest is possible, for the nation must exist before it can sacrifice its interests for a higher good. We are at present in the first or formative stage, and in this stage the demand of Nationalism is imperative. It is only by the sacrifices of the individual, the family and the class to the supreme object of building up the nation that under such adverse circumstances Nationalism can secure the first conditions for its existence. C 54

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THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE Every act of the new Nationalism has been a call for suffering and self-sacrifice. Swadeshi was such a call, arbitration was such a call, national education was such a. call, above all, passive resistance was such a call. None of these things can be secured except by a general readiness to sacrifice the individual and the family to the interests of the nation. Now-a-days a new call is visibly forming, the call on the higher classes to sacrifice their privileges and prejudices, as the Japanese Samurai did, for the raising up of the lower. The spread of a general spirit of ungrudging self-sacrifice is the indispensable prelude to the creation of the Indian nation. This truth is not only evident from the very nature of the movement we have initiated, but it is borne out by the tests of history and experience to which we have been recently asked to refer in each individual case before the act of sacrifice is decided. It is by the appeal to history and experience that the Nationalist party 55

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN has convinced the intellect, just as by its inspiring ideals and readiness to suffer, it has carried with it the heart of the nation. The demand that we should in every individual case go into a review of the whole question is excessive and impossible. It is enough if we are generally convinced of the utility and necessity of sacrifice and feel the individual call. It must be remembered that we cannot argue from the condition of a people formed, free and prospering to that of a people subject, struggling and miserable. In the first case the individual is not called to frequent acts of self-sacrifice, but only to those regularly demanded by the nation and to a general readiness for especial sacrifice in case of necessity, but in the second the necessity is a constant quantity. Nor is it a sound principle to demand in such circumstances an adequate value for every individual act of courage and self-denial. It would indeed be singular for the individuals of a subject nation asked for the price of their 56

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THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE liberty to say to the Dispenser of Karma, "You shall give me so much in return for every individual sacrifice and we must know your terms beforehand. We will not trust you to the extent of a single pice worth of result for our sufferings." Not by such men or such a spirit have subject nations been delivered.

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THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION. THE end of a stage of evolution is 1 usually marked by a powerful recrude scence of all that has to go out of the evolution. It is a principle of Nature that in order to get rid of any powerful tendency or deep-seated association in humanity, whether in the mass or in the individual, it has first to be exhausted by bhoga or enjoyment, afterwards to be dominated and weakened by nigraha or control and, final. ly, when it is weak to be got rid of by sanyama, rejection or self-dissociation. The difference between nigraha and sanyama is that in the first process there is a violent struggle to put down, coerce and, if possible, crush the tendency, the reality 58

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THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION of which is not questioned, but in the second process it is envisaged as a dead or dying force, its occasional return marked with disgust, then with impatience, finally with indifference as a mere ghost, vestige or faint echo of that which was once real but is now void of significance. Such a return is part of the process of Nature for getting rid of this undesirable and disappearing quantity. Sanyama is udseasonable and would be fruitless when a force, quality or tendency is in its infancy or vigour, before it has had the enjoyment and full activity which is its due. When once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment, life and final decay and death ; when once an impetus has been given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease. To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha, which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is said in the Gita that 59

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN all things are ruled by their nature, to their nature they return and Nigraha or repression is fruitless. What happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence is not really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordinary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil Sanskaras or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga. If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually unsatisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion return upon us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment. There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the better of the passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by substitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite quality, anger by thoughts 60

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THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our own defects or nothingness ; this is the method of Rajayoga but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the ancient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery, have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the thing they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution, slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or halfconsciously used, that the character of a man changes and develops from life to life or even in the bounds of a single life-time. It does not destroy things in their seed and the seed which is not reduced to ashes by Yoga is always capable of sprouting again and growing into the complete and mighty tree. The second method is to give bhoga or enjoyment to the passion so 61

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN as to get rid of it quickly. When it is satiated and surfeited by excessive enjoyment, it becomes weak and spent and a reaction ensues which establishes for a time the opposite force, tendency or quality. If that moment is seized by the Yogin for nigraha, the nigraha so repeated at every suitable opportunity becomes so far effective as to reduce the strength and vitality of the vritti sufficiently for the application of the final Sanyama. This method of enjoyment and reaction is also a favourite and universal method of Nature, but it is never complete in itself and if applied to permanent forces or qualities, tends to establish a seesaw of opposite tendencies, extremely useful to the operations of Prakriti but from the point of view of self-mastery useless and inconclusive. It is only when this method is followed up by the use of sanyama that it becomes effective. The Yogin regards the vritti merely as a play of Nature with which he is not concerned and of which he 62

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THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION is merely the spectator ; the anger, lust or pride is not his, it is the universal Mother's and she works it and stills it for her own purposes. When, however, the vritti is strong, mastering and unspent this attitude cannot be maintained in sincerity and to try to hold it intellectually without sincerely feeling it, is mithyachara, false discipline or hypocrisy. It is only when it is somewhat exhausted by repeated enjoyment and coercion that Prakriti or Nature at the command of the soul or Purusha can really deal with her own creation. She deals with it first by vairagya in its crudest form of disgust, but this is too violent a feeling to be permanent; yet it leaves its mark behind in a deepseated wish to be rid of its cause, which survives the return and temporary reign of the passion. Afterwards its return is viewed with impatience but without any acute feeling of intolerance. Finally supreme indifference or udasinata is gained and the final going out of the

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN tendency by the ordinary process of Nature is watched in the true spirit of the sanyami who has the knowledge that he is the witnessing soul and has only to dissociate himself from a phenomenon for it to cease. The highest stage leads either to mukti in the form of laya or disappearance, the vritti vanishing altogether and for good, or else in another kind of freedom when the Soul knows that it is God's lila and leaves it to Him whether He shall throw out the tendency or use it for His own purposes. This is the attitude of the Karmayogin who puts himself in God's hands and does work for His sake only, knowing that it is God's force that works in him. The result of that attitude of self-surrender is that the Lord of all takes charge and according to the promise of the Gita delivers his servant and lover from all sin and evil, the vrittis working in the bodily machine without affecting the soul and working only when He raises them up for His purposes. This is nirliptata,

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THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION the state of absolute freedom within the lila. The law is the same for the mass as for the individual. The process of human evolution has been seen by the eye of inspired observation to be that of working out the tiger and the ape. The forces of cruelty, lust, mischievous destruction, pain-giving, folly, brutality, ignorance were once rampant in humanity, they had full enjoyment; then by the growth of religion and philosophy they began in periods of satiety such as the beginning of the Christian era in Europe to be partly replaced, partly put under control. As is the law of such things, they have always reverted again with greater or less virulence and sought with more or less success to re-establish themselves. Finally in the nineteenth century it seemed for a time as if some of these forces had, for the time at least, ex. hausted themselves and the hour for sanyama and gradual dismissal from the 65 FO

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN evolution had really arrived. Such hopes always recur and in the end they are likely to bring about their own fulfilment, but before that happens another recoil is in. evitable. We see plenty of signs of it in the reeling back into the beast which is in progress in Europe and America behind the fair outside of Science, progress, civilisation and humanitarianism, and we are likely to see more signs of it in the era that is coming upon us. A similar law holds in politics and society. The political evolution of the human race follows certain lines of which the most recent formula has been given in the watch-words of the French Revolution, freedom, equality and brotherhood. But the forces of the old world, the forces of despotism, the forces of traditional privilege and selfish exploitation, the forces of unfraternal strife and passionate self-regarding competition are always struggling to re-seat themselves on the thrones of the earth. A determined movement of reaction is evident in many 66

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THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION parts of the world and nowhere perhaps more than in England which was once one of the self-styled champions of progress and liberty. The attempt to go back to the old spirit is one of those necessary returns without which it cannot be so utterly exhausted as to be blotted out from the evolution. It rises only to be defeated and crushed again. On the other hand the force of the democratic tendency is not a force which is spent but one which has not yet arrived, not a force which has had the greater part of its enjoyment but one which is still vigorous, unsatisfied and eager for fulfilment. Every attempt to coerce it in the past reacted eventually on the coercing force and brought back the democratic spirit fierce, hungry and unsatisfied, joining to its fair motto of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" the terrible addition of "Death." It is not likely that the immediate future of the democratic tendency will satisfy the utmost dreams of the lover of liberty who 67

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN seeks an anarchist freedom, or of the lover of equality who tries to establish a socialistic dead level or of the fraternity who dreams of a world-embracing communism. But some harmonisation of this great ideal is undoubtedly the immediate future of the human race. On the old forces of despotism, inequality and unbridled competition, after they have been once more overthrown, a process of gradual sanyama will be performed by which what has to remain of them will be regarded as the disappearing vestiges of a dead reality and without any further violent coercion be transformed slowly and steadily out of existence. 68

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THE STRENGTH OF STILLNESS. HERE two forces in the Tuniverse, silence and speech, Silence prepares, speech creates. Silence acts, speech gives the impulse to action. Silence compels, speech persuades. The immense and inscrutable processes of the world all perfect themselves within, in a deep and august silence, covered by a noisy and misleading surface of sound-the stir of innumerable waves above, the fathomless resistless mass of the ocean's waters below. Men see the waves, they hear the rumour and the thousand voices and by these they judge the course of the future and the heart of God's intention; but in nine cases out of ten they 69

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN misjudge. Therefore it is said that in History it is always the unexpected that happens. But it would not be the unexpected if men could turn their eyes from superficies and look into substance, if they accustomed themselves to put aside appearances and penetrate beyond them to the secret and disguised reality, if they ceaseed listening to the noise of life and listened rather to its silence. The greatest exertions are made with the breath held in; the faster the breathing, the more the dissipation of energy. He who in action can cease from breathing,naturally, spontaneously,-is the master of Prana, the energy that acts and creates throughout the universe. It is a common experience of the Yogin that when thought ceases, breathing ceases,--the entire kumbhak effected by the Hathayogin with infinite trouble and gigantic effort, establishes itself easily and happily,--but when thought begins again, the breath resumes its activity. But when the thought flows 70

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THE STRENGTH OF STILLNESS without the resumption of the inbreathing and outbreathing, then the Prana is truly conquered. This is a law of Nature. When we strive to act, the forces of nature do their will with us; when we grow still, we become their master. But there are two kinds of stillness-the helpless stillness of inertia, which heralds dissolution, and the stillness of assured sovereignty which commands the harmony of life. It is the sovereign stillness which is the calm of the Yogin. The more complete the calm, the mightier the yogic power, the greater the force in action. In this calm, right knowledge comes. The thoughts of men are a tangle of truth and falsehood, satyam and anritam. (True perception is marred and clouded by fales perception, true judgment lamed by false judgment, true imagination distored by false imagination, true memory deceived by false memory. The activity of the mind must coase, the chitta be purified, a silence fall upon the restlessness of 71

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN Prakriti, then in that calm, in that voiceless stillness illumination comes upon the mind, error begins to fall away and, so long as desire does not stir again, clarity establishes itself in the higher stratum of the consciousness compelling peace and joy in the lower. Right knowledge becomes the infallible source of right action. Yogah karmasu kaushalam. The knowledge of the Yogin is not the knowledge of the average desire-driven mind. Neither is it the knowledge of the scientific or of the worldly-wise reason which anchors itself on surface facts and leans upon experience and probability. The Yogin knows God's way of working and is aware that the improbable often happens, that facts mislead. He rises above reason to that direct and illuminated knowledge which we call vijnanam. The desire-driven mind is emmeshed in the intricate tangle of good and evil, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, of happiness and misfortune. It strives to bave the 72

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THE STRENGTH OF STILLNESS good always, the pleasant always, the happiness always. It is elated by fortunate happenings, disturbed and unnerved by their opposite. But the illuminated eye of the seer perceives that all leads to good; for God is all and God is sarvamangalam. He knows that the apparent evil is often the shortest way to the good, the unpleasant indispensable to prepare the pleasant, misfortune the condition of obtaining a more perfect happiness. His intellect is delivered from enslavement to the dualities. Therefore the action of the Yogin will not be as the action of the ordinary man. He will often seem to acquiesce in evil, to. avoid the chance of relieving misfortune, to refuse his assent to the efforts of the noblehearted who withstand violence and wickedness; he will seem to be acting pisachavat. Or men will think him jada, inert, a stone, a block, because he is passive, where activity appears to be called for; silent, where men expect voicefulness ; 73

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN unmoved, where there is reason for deep and passionate feeling. When he acts, men will call him unmatta, a mad-man, eccentric or idiot; for his actions will often seem to have no definite result or purpose, to be wild, unregulated, regardless of sense and probability or inspired by a purpose and a vision which is not for this world. And it is true that he follows a light which other men do not possessro would even call darkness, that what is a dream to them, is to him a reality; that their night is his day. And this is the root of the difference that, while they reason, he knows. To be capable of silence, stillness, illuminated passivity is to be fit for immortality -amritatwaya kalpate. It is to be dhira, the ideal of our ancient civilisation, which does not mean to be tamasic, inert and a block. The inaction of the tamasic man is a stumbling block to the energies around him, the inaction of the Yogin creates, preserves and destroys; his action 74

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THE STRENGTH OF STILLNESS is dynamic with the direct, stupendous driving-power of great natural forces. It is a stillness within often covered by a ripple of talk and activity without the ocean with its lively surface of waves. But even as men do not see the reality of God's workings from the superficial noise of the world and its passing events, for they are hidden beneath that cover, so also shall they fail to understand the action of the Yogin, for he is different within from what he is outside. The strength of noise and activity is, doubt. less, great,--did not the walls of Jericho fall by the force of noise ? But infinite is the strength of the stillness and the silence, in which great forces prepare for action. 75

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THE THREE PURUSHAS. THE greatest of all the philosophical problems which human thought has struggled to solve, is the exact nature and relation to us of the conscious Intelligence in the phenomenal existence around. The idealist denies the phenomenal existence, the materialist denies the conscious Intelligence. To the former, phenomenon is a passing shadow on the luminious calm of the single universal Spirit: to the latter, Intelligence is a temporary result of the motions of Matter. The idealist can give no satisfactory explanation of the existence of the shadow; he admits that it is inexplicable, a thing that is and yet is not; the materialist can 76

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THE THREE PURUSHAS give no satisfactory explanation of the existence of intelligence; he simply tries to trace the stages of its development and the methods of its workings, and covers over the want of an explanation by the abundant minuteness of his observations. But the soul of Man, looking out and in, is satisfied neither with Shankara nor with Haeckel. It sees the universal existence of phenomena, it sees the universal existence of Intelligence. It seeks a term which will admit both, cover both, indentify both; it demands, not an elimination of either, but a reconcilement. The Upanishads do not deny the reality of the world, but they identify it with Brahman who transcends it. He is One without a second; He is the All. If all is Brahman, then there can be nothing but Brahman, and therefore the existence of the All, sarvam idam, does not contradict the unity of Brahman, does not establish the reality of bheda, difference. It is one Intelligence looking at itself from a 77

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN hundred view-points, each point conscious of and enjoying the existence of the others. The shoreless stream of idea and thought, imagination and experience, name and form, sensation and vibration sweeps onward for ever, without beginning, without end, rising into view, sinking out of sight; through it the one Intelligence with its million self-expressions pours itself abroad, an ocean with innumerable waves. One particular self-expression may disappear into its source and continent, but that does not and cannot abolish the phenomenal universe. The One is for ever, and the Many are for ever because the One is for ever. So long as there is a sea, there will be waves. In the oceanic stir and change of universal Nature the soul or Purusha is the standing-point, stable,unmoving, unchanging, eternal,-nityah sarvagatah sthanur achaloyam sanatanah. In the whole, the Purusha or soul is one, there is One Spirit which supports the stir of the Universe, 78

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THE THREE PURUSHAS not many. In the individual the One Purusha has three stages of personality ; He is One, but triple, trivrit. The Upanishads speak of two birds on one tree, of which one eats the fruit of the tree, the other, seated on a higher branch, does not eat but watches its fellow ; one is isha or Lord of itself, the other is anisha, not lord of itself, and it is when the eater looks up and perceives the greatness of the watcher and fills himself with it that grief, death, subjection,-in one word maya, ignorance, and illusion, cease to touch him. There are two unborn who are male and one unborn who is female ; she is the tree with its sweet and bitter fruit, the two are the birds. One of the unborn enjoys her sweetness, the other has put it away from him. These are the two Purushas, the akshara or immutable spirit, and the kshara or apparently mutable, and the tree or woman is Prakriti, universal Energy which the Europeans call Nature. The kshara Purusha is the soul in nature and 79

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN enjoying Nature, the akshara Purusha is the soul above Nature and watching her. But there is One who is not seated on the tree but occupies and possesses it, who is not only lord of Himself, but lord of all that is ; He is higer than the kshara, higher than the akshara, He is Purushottama, the Soul one with God, with the All. . These three Purushas are described in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita. "There are two Purushas in the world, the akshara and the kshara,-the kshara is all creatures, the akshara is called Kutas tha, the one on the summit. There is another Purusha, the highest ( uttama ), called also the Paramatma or Supreme Spirit, who enters into the three worlds, ( the worlds of sushupti, swapna, jag rat, otherwise the causal, mental and physical planes of existence ), and sustains them as their imperishable lord." And in the thirteenth chapter, while drawing the distinction between the lower Purusha and the higher, Srikrishna defines 80

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THE THREE PURUSHAS more minutely the relations of God and the individual soul to Nature. "Prakriti is the basic source of cause, effect and agency ; the Purusha, of the sense of enjoyment, of happiness and grief ; for it is the soul in Nature ( Purusha in Prakriti ) that enjoys the threefold workings of things caused by Nature, ( the play of conservation, creation, and destruction; reception, reaction and resistance ; illumination, misconception and obscuration; calm, work and inertia ; all being different manifestations of three fundamental forces called the gunas or essential properties of Prakriti ), and it is the attachment of the soul to the gunas that is the cause of births in bodies, good and evil. The highest Purusha ip this body is the one who watches, who sanctions, who enjoys, who upholds, who is the mighty Lord and the Supreme Soul." The personality of the Supreme Soul is universal, not individual. Whatever is in all creatures, character, idea, imagination, 81

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMA YOGIN experience, sensation, motion, is contained by Him as an object of spiritual enjoyment without limiting or determining Him. He is all things at once. Such an universality is necessary to support and supply individual existence, but it cannot be the determining limit of individual existence. Something has to be reserved, something put forward, and this partial manifestation is the individual. "It is verily an eternal part of Me that in the world of individual existence becomes the Jiva or individual." The Jiva .or individual is kshara purusha, and between him and the Supreme stands the akshara purusha, the bird on the summit of the tree, joyous in his own bliss, undisturbed by the play of Nature, impartially watching it, receiving its image on his calm immovable existence without being for a moment bound or affected, eternally selfgathered, eternally free. This akshara purusha is our real self, our divine unity with God, our inalienable freedom from 82

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THE THREE PURUSHAS that which is transient and changing. If it did not exist, there would be no escape from the bondage of life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue ; we should be prisoners in a cage without a door, beating our wings against the bars in vain for an exit ; life and death, joy and grief, sin and virtue would be eternal, ineffugable realities, not temporary rules determining the great game of life, and we should be unwilling actors, not free playmates of God able to suspend and renew the game when we will. It is by realising our oneness with the akshara purusha that we get freedom from ignorance, freedom from the cords of desire, freedom from the imperative law of works. On the other hand, if the akshara purusha were all, as the Sankhya philosophy contends, there would be no basis for different experience, no varying personality, every individual existence would be precisely like every other individual experience, the development and experience of one soul in Nature, an exact 83

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN replica of the development and experience of another soul. It is the kshara purusha who is all creatures, and the variety of experience, character and development is effected by a particular part of the universal swabhava or nature of conscious existence in phenomena, being attached to a particular individual or jiva. This is what is meant by saying that it is a part of God which becomes the jiva. This swabhava, once determined, does not change ; but it manifests various parts of itself, at various times, under various circumstances, in various forms of action and various bodies suited to the action or development it has to enjoy. It is for this reason that the purusha in Nature is called kshara, fluid, shifting, although it is not in reality fluid or shifting, but constant, eternal and immutable, sanatana. It is the variety of its enjoyment in Time, Space and Causality that makes it kshara. The enjoyment of the akhsara purusha is self-existent, beyond Time, Space and 84

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THE THREE PURUSHAS Causality, aware of, but undisturbed by the continual multitudinous flux and reflux of Prakriti. The enjoyment of Purushottama is both in Prakriti and beyond it, it embraces and is the reality of all experience and enjoyment. Development is determined by the kshara purusha, but not conducted by him. It is Prakriti, the Universal Energy, that conducts development under the law of cause and effect and is the true agent. The soul is not the agent, but the lord who enjoys the results of the action of his agent, Prakriti or nature; only by his attachment to Prakriti he forgets himself and identifies himself with her so as to have the illusion of agency and, by thus forgetting himself, ceases to be lord of himself, becomes subject to Causality, imprisoned in Time and Space, bound by the work which he sanctions. He himself, being a part of God, is made in His image, of one nature with Him. Therefore what God is, he also is, only with limitation, subject 85

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN to Time, Space and Causality, because he has, of his own will, accepted that bondage. He is the witness, and if he ceased to watch, the drama would stop. He is the source of sanction, and what he declares null and void, drops away from the development. He is the enjoyer, and if he became indifferent, that individual development, would be arrested. He is the upholder, and if he ceased to sustain the adhara, the vehicle, it would fall and cease. He is the lord, and it is for his pleasure that Nature acts. He is the spirit; and matter is only his vehicle, his robe, his means of self-expression. But all his sanctions, refusals, behests act not at once, not there and then, not by imperative absolute compulsion, but subject to lapse of time, change of place, working of cause to effect. The lapse may be brief or long, a moment or centuries; the change small or great, here or in another world; the working direct or indirect, with the rapid concentration of processes which men call 86

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THE THREE PURUSHAS a miracle or with the careful and laboured evolution in which every step is visibly ordered and deliberate; but so long as the jiva is bound, his lordship is limited and constitutional, not despotic and absolute. His sanction and signature are necessary, but it is the Lords spiritual and temporal of his mind and body, the Commons in his external environment who do the work of the State, execute, administer, legislate. The first step in self-liberation is to get rid of the illusion of agency, to realise that Nature acts, not the soul. The second is to remove the siege of phenomenal associations, by surrendering lordship to God, leaving Him alone to uphold and sanction by the abdication of one's own independent use of these powers, offering up the privilege of the enjoyer to Him. All that is then left is the attitude of the akshara purusha, the free, blissful selfexistence watching the action of Prakriti, but outside .it. The kshara withdraws into the akshara. When the sakshi or 87

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN witness withdraws into God Himself, that is the utter liberation. 88

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THE STRESS OF THE HIDDEN SPIRIT. THE world is a great game of hide and 1 seek, in which the real hides behind the apparent, spirit behind matter. The apparent masquerades as real, the eal is seen dimly as if it were an unsubsantial shadow. The grandeur of the isible universe and its laws enslaves Den's imaginations. "This is a mighty nachine," we cry, "but it moves of its 'wn force and needs neither guide nor naker; for its motion is eternal." Blinded 'y a half truth we fail to see that, instead f a machine without a maker, there is cally only an existence and no machine. he Hindus have many images by which hey seek to convey their knowledge of 89

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN the relation between God and the world, but the idea of the machine does not figure largely among them. It is a spider and his web, a fire with many sparks, a pool of salt-water in which every particle is penetrated by the salt. The world is a waking dream, an embodied vision, a mass of knowledge arranged in corporeal appearances expressing so many ideas which are each only a part of one unchanging truth. Everything becomes, nothing is made. Everything is put out from latency, nothing is brought into existence. Only that which was, can be, not that which was not. And that which is, cannot perish ; it can only lose itself. All is eternal in the eternal spirit. What was from of old ? The Spirit. What is alone ? The Spirit. What shall be for ever? The Spirit. All that is in Space and Time, is He ; and whatever there may be beyond Space and Time, that too is He. Why should we think 90

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THE STRESS OF THE HIDDEN SPIRIT s8 ? Because of the eternal and invariable unity which gives permanence to the variability of the many. The sum of matter never changes by increase or diminution, although its component parts are continually shifting, so is it with the sum of energy in the world, so is it with the spirit. Matter is only so much mobile energy vibrating intensely into form. Energy is only so much spirit manifesting the motion that we call energy. Spirit is Force, Spirit Existence-matter and energy are only motions in spirit. Force and existence made one in Bliss, Sacchidanandam, this is the eternal reality of things. But that Force is not motion, it is Knowledge or Idea. Knowledge is the source of motion, not motion of Knowledge. The Spirit therefore is all. It is alone. Idea or Force, Existence, Bliss are only its triune manifestations, existence implying idea which is force, force or idea implying bliss. The Spirit manifest as Intelligence is 91

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN the basis of the world. Spirit as existence, Sat, is one ; as Intelligence it multiplies itself without ceasing to be one. We see that tree and say "Here is a material thing" ; but if we ask how the tree came into existence, we have to say, it grew or evolved out of the seed. But growth or evolution is only a term describing the sequence in a process. It does not explain the origin or account for the process itself. Why should the seed produce a tree and not some other form of existence! The answer is, because that is its nature. But why is that its nature ? Why should it not be its nature to produce some other form of existence, or some other kind of tree! That is the law, is the answer. But why is it the law ? The only answer is that it is so because it is so ; that it happens, why no man can say. In reality when we speak of Law, we speak of an idea, when we speak of the nature of a thing, we speak of an idea.. Nowhere can we lay our hands on an object, a visible 92

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THE STRESS OF THE HIDDEN SPIRIT force, a discernible momentum and say "Here is an entity called Law or Nature." The seed evolves a tree because tree is the idea involved in the seed ; it is a process of manifestation in form, not a creation. If there were no insistent idea we should have a world of chances and freaks, not a world of law-there would be no such idea as the nature of things, if there were not an originating and ordering intelligence manifesting a particular idea in forms. And the form varies, is born, perishes, the idea is eternal. The form is the manifestation or appearance, the idea is the truth. The form is phenomenon, the idea is reality. Therefore in all things the Hindu thinker sees the stress of the hidden spirit. We see it as Prajna, the universal Intelligence, conscious in things unconscious, active in things inert. The energy of Prajna is what the Europeans call Nature. The tree does not and cannot shape itself, the stress of the hidden Intelligence shapes 93

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN it. He is in the seed of man and in that little particle of matter carries habit, character, types of emotion into the unborn child. Therefore heredity is true; but if Prajna were not concealed in the seed, heredity would be false, inexplicable, impossible. We see the same stress in the mind, heart, body of man. Because the hidden spirit urges himself on the body, stamps himself on it, expresses himself in it, the body expresses the individuality of the man, the developing and conscious idea or varying type which is myself. Therefore no two faces, no two expressions, no two thumb-impressions even are entirely alike; every part of the body in some way or other expresses the man. The stress of the spirit shows itself in the mind and heart; therefore men, families, nations have individuality, run into particular habits of thought and feeling, therefore also they are both alike and dissimilar. Therefore men act and react, not only physically but spiritually, intellectually, 94

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THE STRESS OF THE HIDDEN SPIRIT morally on each other, because there is one self in all creatures expressing itself in various ideas and forms variously suitable to the idea. The stress of the hidden Spirit expresses itself again in events and the majestic course of the world. This is the Zeitgeist, this is the purpose that runs through the process of the centuries, the changes of the sups, this is tbat which makes evolution possible and provides it with a way, means and a goal. "This is He who from years sempiternal hath ordered perfectly all things." This is the teaching of the Vedanta as we have it in its oldest form in the Upanishads. Adwaita, Vishishtadwaita, Dwaita are merely various ways of looking at the relations of the One to the Many, and none of them have the right to monopolise the name Vedanta. Adwaita is true, because the Many are only manifestations of the One, Vishishtadwaita is true because ideas are eternal and having manifested, must have manifested before and will manifest 95

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN again,-the Many are eternal in the One, only they are sometimes manifest and sometimes unmanifest. Dwaita is true, because although from one point of view the One and the Many are eternally and essentially the same, yet, from another, the idea in its manifestation is eternally different from the Intelligence in which it manifests. If Unity is eternal and unchangeable, duality is persistently recurrent. The Spirit is infinite, illimitable, eternal; and infinite, illimitable, eternal is its stress towards manifestation, filling endless space with innumerable existences. 96

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THE GREATNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL. IN all movements, in every great mass of human action it is the Spirit of the Time, that which Europe calls the Zeitgeist and India Kala, who expresses himself. The very names are deeply significant. Kali, the mother of all and destroyer of all, is the Shakti that works in secret in the heart of humanity, manifesting herself in the perpetual surge of men, institutions and movements, Mahakala the Spirit within, whose energy goes abroad in her and moulds the progress of the world and the destiny of the nations. His is the impetus whicha fulfils itself in Time, and once there is movement, impetus from the Spirit 97

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN within, Time and the Mother take charge of it, prepare, ripen and fulfil. When the Zeitgeist, God in Time, moves in a settled direction, then the whole forces of the world are called in to swell the established current towards the purpose decreed. That which consciously helps, swells it, but that which hinders swells it still more, and like a wave on the windswept Ocean, now rising now falling, now high on the crest of victory and increase, now down in the trough of discouragement and defeat, the impulse from the hidden Source sweeps onwards to preordained fulfilment. Man may help or man may resist, but the Zeitgeist works, shapes, overbears, insists. The great and memorable vision of Kurukshetra when Srikrishna manifesting His world-form declared Himself as destroying Time, is significant of this deep perception of humanity. When Arjuna wished to cast aside his bow and quiver, when he said, "This is a sin we do and a 98

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THE GREATNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL great destruction of men and brothers, I will forbear," Srikrishna after convincing his intellect of error, proceeded by that marvellous vision described in the eleventh canto of the Gita to stamp the truth of things upon his imagination. Thus run the mighty stanzas: kAdo'si khokalayAta praharIkAma sahAmiha prachattaH / prinsfa cat sa facufarer To Asafyat; s tay ther: # tamAt tvamattiSTha yo bamakha nitvA pavana mukata rAjA smaam| maya vete nihatAH pUrvameva nimittamAtra bhava mabasAcin / "I am Time who waste and destroy the people; lo, I have arisen in my might, I am here to swallow up the nations. Even without thee all they shall not be, the men of war who stand arrayed in the opposing squadrons. Therefore do thou arise and get thee great glory, conquer thy foes and enjoy a great and wealthy empire. For these, they were slain even before and it is I who have slain them; be the occasion only, 0 Savyasachin." It is not as the slow process of Time 99

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN that Srikrishna manifests Himself; it is as the Zeitgeist consummating in a moment the work carefully prepared for decades that He appears to Arjuna. All have been moving inevitably towards the catastrophe of Kurukshetra. Men did not know it; those who would have done everything possible to avert the calamity, helped its coming by their action or inaction; those who had a glimpse of it strove in vain to stop the wheels of Fate, Srikrishna Himself as the nishkama karmayogin who does His duty without regard to results, went on that hopeless embassy to Hastinapura; but the Zeitgeist overbore all. It was only afterwards that men saw how like rivers speeding towards the sea like moths winging towards the lighted flame all that splendid, powerful and arrogant Indian world with its clans of kings and its weapons and its chariots and its gigantic armies were rushing. towards the open mouths of the Destroyer to be lost 100

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THE GREATNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL in His mighty jaws, to be mangled between His gnashing teeth. In the lila of the Eternal, there are movements that are terrible as well as movements that are sweet and beautiful. The dance of Brindaban is not complete without the death-dance of Kurukshetra; for each is a part of that great harmonic movement of the world which progresses from discord to accord, from hatred and strife to love and brotherhood, from evil to the fulfilment of the evolution by the transformation of suffering and sin into beauty, bliss and good, shivam, shantam, suddham, anandam.' Who could resist the purpose of the Zeitgeist ? There were strong men in India then by the hundred, great philosophers and Yogins, subtle statesmen, leaders of men, kings of thought and action, the efflorescence of a mighty intellectual civilisation at its height. A little turning to the right instead of to the left on the part of a few of these would, it might seem, 101

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN have averted the whole catastrophe. So Arjuna thought when he flung aside his bow. He was the whole hope of the Pandavas and without him their victory must seem a mere dream and to fight an act of madness. Yet it is to him that the Zeitgeist proclaims the utter helplessness of the mightiest and the sure fulfilment of God's decree. "Even without thee all they shall not be, the men of war who stand arrayed in the opposing squadrons." For these men are only alive in the body ; in that which stands behind and fulfils itself, they are dead men. Whom God protects who shall slay? Whom God has slain who shall protect ? The man who slays is only the occasion, the instrument by which the thing done behind the veil becomes the thing done on this side of it. That which was true of the great slaying at Kurukshetra is true of all things that are done in this world, of all the creation, destruction and preservation that make up the lila. 102

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THE GREATNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL * The greatness of this teaching is for the great. Those who are commissioned to bring about mighty changes are full of the force of the Zeitgeist. Kali has entered into them and Kali when she enters into a man cares nothing for rationality and possibility. She is the force of Nature that whirls the stars in their orbits, lightly as a child might swing a ball, and to that force there is nothing impossible. She is aghatanaghatana-patiyasi, very skilful in bringing about the impossible. She is the devatma-shakti swaguneir nigudha, the Power of the Divine Spirit hidden in the modes of its own workings, and she needs nothing but time to carry out the purpose with which she is commissioned. She moves in Time and the very movement fulfils itself, creates its means, accomplishes its ends. It is not an accident that she works in one man more than in another. He is chosen because he is a likely vessel, and having chosen him she neither rejects him till the purpose is 103

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN fulfilled nor allows him to reject her. There fore Srikrishna tells Arjuna. Tu mafia tolygfa wargi miyara vyavasAya prakRtikA niyocAti / "The thought which thou thinkest and takes refuge in egoism saying, 'I will not fight,' this thy resolve is a vain thing; Nature will yoke thee to thy work." When a man seems to have rejected his work, it merely means that his work is over and Kali leaves him for another. When a man who has carried out a great work is destroyed, it is for the egoism by which he has misused the force within that the force itself breaks him to pieces as it broke Napoleon. Some instruments are treasured up, some are fung aside and shattered, but all are instruments. This is the greatness of great men, not that by their own strength they can determine great events, but that they are serviceable and specially forged instruments of the Power which determines them. Mirabeau helped to 104

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THE GREATNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL create the French Revolution, no man more. When he set himself against it and strove, becoming a prop of monarchy, to hold back the wheel, did the French Revolution stop for the back-sliding of France's mightiest ? Kali put her foot on Mirabeau and he disappeared ; but the Revolution went on, for the Revolution was the manifestation of the Zeitgeist, the Revolution was the will of God. So it is always. The men who prided themselves that great events were their work, because they seemed to have an initial hand in them, go down into the trench of Time and others march forward over their shattered reputations. Those who are swept forward by Kali within them and make no terms with Fate, they alone survive. The greatness of individuals is the greatness of the eternal Energy within. 105

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THE LAWS OF THOUGHT. HOUGHT builds the universe. The mind alone is real. All that is seen is but a dream. There is such a thing as the conscious holding of a thought. When this is done, all that opposes it, or seems contradictory to it, gradually melts away, and we wonder what has become of it, or why we were at one time under its illusion. Anything may be achieved by thought. Death, disease, poverty, humiliation, any or all of these may be overcome. The one thought, "I am the strong! I am the strong !" earnestly held, calmly, confidently held, calmly, confidently, unwaveringly, and yet silently asserted, "is enough. In the presence of one strong thought, all of 106

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THE LAWS OF THOUGHT a'contrary opinion or party become apologetic, and seek to defend themselves, or to explain why they cannot quite agree. And this without one word being said. Immense batteries may be made, by numbers of people uniting together to think a given thought. If the whole of India could agree to give, say ten minutes every evening, at the oncoming of darkness, to thinking a single thought, "we are one. We are one. Nothing can prevail against us to make us think we are divided. For we are one. We are one and all antagonisms amongst us are illusion,"the power that would be generated can hardly be measured. This force ought always to be used in constructive forms. We ought always to devote it to what are called positive ends. We ought never to use it for hatred or jealousy or anger, but always in love and faith, and for the upbuilding of something. Even when evil is to be destroyed, or a lie overcome, we must think of the truth that 107

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN is to be revealed or the good to be donie, and not the evil or the falsehood. The use of mental powers for directly destructive ends has always been regarded as accursed. It is what the West calls black magic, and certainly recoils upon the user in very terrible ways. A large beneficence should distinguish the man who knows the power of his own thought. He should not, indeed, assert two conflicting goods at the same time. But out of all that is possible, he should select that which, for reasons that he apprehends, is most admirable and desirable, and concentrate upon it. As this emerges into fact, he will find that all that opposes it is automatically banished or destroyed. The confusion of wishing this and that in opposite directions, is the ordinary way of the ordinary world. This way represents a clearing and rationalising of the ground, it means a dealing scientifically with our own desires, in such a way as to make them realisable by the world about us. 108

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THE LAWS OF THOUGHT *The less selfish the things we wish for, the greater and keener will be the accumulated and multiplied power of our thought battery. "Awake, awake, great India" is an ejaculation which, said within the mind quietly by hundreds of thousands of persons at a given hour, would produce immeasurable force, in proportion to the depth of their concentration on the thing itself. Our thought must be cleared and ordered. When this is done, we shall see, to our surprise, that it has become creative. The world without begins to reflect the world within. Men and women become incarnated ideas. Let us take the question of education, for instance. At this moment, it seems to be slipping out of our grasp. What we have to dread is being turned into a nation of coolies and peasants, like the people of Java and the process is making great headway. But what right have we to depend on anyone but ourselves, for the preventing of this ? What obstacle has 109

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THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN anyone to fear, in robbing us of knowledge, but the might of our own minds? Who is it that will sacrifice and labour and build and struggle till we have grasped and mastered our intellectual heritage ? Ourselves. Ourselves. Always ourselves. Because we know and with all our might will demonstrate the truth that knowledge is more precious than rubies, we cannot be effectively deprived of it. At whatever sacrifice, we shall insist upon it. We shall give our very lives for it. We must have knowledge at all costs. We must be educated men. As a nation, we must lead the culture of the world. In day when that culture was classical, literary, and psychological or mathematical, we led it. Now that it is scientific, with side issues in mechanical application, we must again lead it. We shall never be content with even a second place in these things. The whole history of the world shows that the Indian intellect is second to none. This must be proved by the perfor 110

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THE LAWS OF THOUGHT any mance of a task beyond the power of others, the seizing of the first place in the intellectual advance of the world. Is there inherent weakness that would make it impossible for us to do this? Are the countrymen of Bhashkaracharya and Sankaracharya inferior to the countrymen of Newton and Darwin? We trust not. It is for us, by the power of our thought to break down the iron walls of opposition that confront us, and to seize and enjoy the intellectual sovereignty of the world. 111 N.

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A DAILY ASPIRATION FOR THE NATIONALIST. I believe that India is one, indissoluble, indivisible. National unity is built on the common home, the common interest, and common love. I believe that the strength which spoke in the Vedas and Upanishads, in the making of religions and empires, in the learning of scholars, and the meditation of the saints, is born once more amongst us, and its name to-day is Nationality. I believe that the present of India is deep-rooted in her past, and that before her shines a glorious future. O Nationality, come thou to me as joy or sorrow, as honour or as shame! Make me thine own! N. 112

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