THE REALISATION OF BEAUTY

Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our
minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and
therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming
burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering
vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our
recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our
own when it is a thing of joy to us.

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

But what is the function of our sense of beauty in this process
of the extension of our consciousness? Is it there to separate
truth into strong lights and shadows, and bring it before us in
its uncompromising distinction of beauty and ugliness? If that
were so, then we would have had to admit that this sense of
beauty creates a dissension in our universe and sets up a wall of
hindrance across the highway of communication that leads from
everything to all things.

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

In the early days of his history man took everything as a
phenomenon of life. His science of life began by creating a
sharp distinction between life and non-life. But as it is
proceeding farther and farther the line of demarcation between
the animate and inanimate is growing more and more dim. In the
beginning of our apprehension these sharp lines of contrast are
helpful to us, but as our comprehension becomes clearer they
gradually fade away.

The Upanishads have said that all things are created and
sustained by an infinite joy. To realise this principle of
creation we have to start with a division–the division into the
beautiful and the non-beautiful. Then the apprehension of beauty
has to come to us with a vigorous blow to awaken our
consciousness from its primitive lethargy, and it attains its
object by the urgency of the contrast. Therefore our first
acquaintance with beauty is in her dress of motley colours, that
affects us with its stripes and feathers, nay, with its
disfigurements. But as our acquaintance ripens, the apparent
discords are resolved into modulations of rhythm. At first we
detach beauty from its surroundings, we hold it apart from the
rest, but at the end we realise its harmony with all. Then the
music of beauty has no more need of exciting us with loud noise;
it renounces violence, and appeals to our heart with the truth
that it is meekness inherits the earth.

In some stage of our growth, in some period of our history, we
try to set up a special cult of beauty, and pare it down to a
narrow circuit, so as to make it a matter of pride for a chosen
few. Then it breeds in its votaries affections and
exaggerations, as it did with the Brahmins in the time of the
decadence of Indian civilisation, when the perception of the
higher truth fell away and superstitions grew up unchecked.

In the history of aesthetics there also comes an age of
emancipation when the recognition of beauty in things great and
small become easy, and when we see it more in the unassuming
harmony of common objects than in things startling in their
singularity. So much so, that we have to go through the stages
of reaction when in the representation of beauty we try to avoid
everything that is obviously pleasing and that has been crowned
by the sanction of convention. We are then tempted in defiance
to exaggerate the commonness of commonplace things, thereby
making them aggressively uncommon. To restore harmony we create
the discords which are a feature of all reactions. We already
see in the present age the sign of this aesthetic reaction, which
proves that man has at last come to know that it is only the
narrowness of perception which sharply divides the field of his
aesthetic consciousness into ugliness and beauty. When he has the
power to see things detached from self-interest and from the
insistent claims of the lust of the senses, then alone can he
have the true vision of the beauty that is everywhere. Then only
can he see that what is unpleasant to us is not necessarily
unbeautiful, but has its beauty in truth.

When we say that beauty is everywhere we do not mean that the
word ugliness should be abolished from our language, just as it
would be absurd to say that there is no such thing as untruth.
Untruth there certainly is, not in the system of the universe,
but in our power of comprehension, as its negative element. In
the same manner there is ugliness in the distorted expression of
beauty in our life and in our art which comes from our imperfect
realisation of Truth. To a certain extent we can set our life
against the law of truth which is in us and which is in all, and
likewise we can give rise to ugliness by going counter to the
eternal law of harmony which is everywhere.

Through our sense of truth we realise law in creation, and
through our sense of beauty we realise harmony in the universe.
When we recognise the law in nature we extend our mastery over
physical forces and become powerful; when we recognise the law in
our moral nature we attain mastery over self and become free. In
like manner the more we comprehend the harmony in the physical
world the more our life shares the gladness of creation, and our
expression of beauty in art becomes more truly catholic. As we
become conscious of the harmony in our soul, our apprehension of
the blissfulness of the spirit of the world becomes universal,
and the expression of beauty in our life moves in goodness and
love towards the infinite. This is the ultimate object of our
existence, that we must ever know that “beauty is truth, truth
beauty”; we must realise the whole world in love, for love gives
it birth, sustains it, and takes it back to its bosom. We must
have that perfect emancipation of heart which gives us the power
to stand at the innermost centre of things and have the taste of
that fullness of disinterested joy which belongs to Brahma.

Music is the purest form of art, and therefore the most direct
expression of beauty, with a form and spirit which is one and
simple, and least encumbered with anything extraneous. We seem
to feel that the manifestation of the infinite in the finite
forms of creation is music itself, silent and visible. The
evening sky, tirelessly repeating the starry constellations,
seems like a child struck with wonder at the mystery of its own
first utterance, lisping the same word over and over again, and
listening to it in unceasing joy. When in the rainy night of
July the darkness is thick upon the meadows and the pattering
rain draws veil upon veil over the stillness of the slumbering
earth, this monotony of the rain patter seems to be the darkness
of sound itself. The gloom of the dim and dense line of trees,
the thorny bushes scattered in the bare heath like floating heads
of swimmers with bedraggled hair, the smell of the damp grass and
the wet earth, the spire of the temple rising above the undefined
mass of blackness grouped around the village huts–everything
seems like notes rising from the heart of the night, mingling and
losing themselves in the one sound of ceaseless rain filling the
sky.

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

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

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

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

Therefore though music has to wait for its completeness like any
other art, yet at every step it gives out the beauty of the
whole. As the material of expression even words are barriers,
for their meaning has to be constructed by thought. But music
never has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it expresses what
no words can ever express.

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

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

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

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

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

REALISATION IN ACTION

It is only those who have known that joy expresses itself through
law who have learnt to transcend the law. Not that the bonds of
law have ceased to exist for them–but that the bonds have become
to them as the form of freedom incarnate. The freed soul
delights in accepting bonds, and does not seek to evade any of
them, for in each does it feel the manifestation of an infinite
energy whose joy is in creation.

As a matter of fact, where there are no bonds, where there is the
madness of license, the soul ceases to be free. There is its
hurt; there is its separation from the infinite, its agony of
sin. Whenever at the call of temptation the soul falls away from
the bondage of law, then, like a child deprived of the support of
its mother’s arms, it cries out, _Smite me not!_ [Footnote: Ma ma
himsih.] “Bind me,” it prays, “oh, bind me in the bonds of thy
law; bind me within and without; hold me tight; let me in the clasp
of thy law be bound up together with thy joy; protect me by thy
firm hold from the deadly laxity of sin.”

As some, under the idea that law is the opposite of joy, mistake
intoxication for joy, so there are many in our country who
imagine action to be opposed to freedom. They think that
activity being in the material plane is a restriction of the free
spirit of the soul. But we must remember that as joy expresses
itself in law, so the soul finds its freedom in action. It is
because joy cannot find expression in itself alone that it
desires the law which is outside. Likewise it is because the
soul cannot find freedom within itself that it wants external
action. The soul of man is ever freeing itself from its own
folds by its activity; had it been otherwise it could not have
done any voluntary work.

The more man acts and makes actual what was latent in him, the
nearer does he bring the distant Yet-to-be. In that
actualisation man is ever making himself more and yet more
distinct, and seeing himself clearly under newer and newer
aspects in the midst of his varied activities, in the state, in
society. This vision makes for freedom.

Freedom is not in darkness, nor in vagueness. There is no
bondage so fearful as that of obscurity. It is to escape from
this obscurity that the seed struggles to sprout, the bud to
blossom. It is to rid itself of this envelope of vagueness that
the ideas in our mind are constantly seeking opportunities to
take on outward form. In the same way our soul, in order to
release itself from the mist of indistinctness and come out into
the open, is continually creating for itself fresh fields of
action, and is busy contriving new forms of activity, even such
as are not needful for the purposes of its earthly life. And
why? Because it wants freedom. It wants to see itself, to
realise itself.

When man cuts down the pestilential jungle and makes unto himself
a garden, the beauty that he thus sets free from within its
enclosure of ugliness is the beauty of his own soul: without
giving it this freedom outside, he cannot make it free within.
When he implants law and order in the midst of the waywardness of
society, the good which he sets free from the obstruction of the
bad is the goodness of his own soul: without being thus made free
outside it cannot find freedom within. Thus is man continually
engaged in setting free in action his powers, his beauty, his
goodness, his very soul. And the more he succeeds in so doing,
the greater does he see himself to be, the broader becomes the
field of his knowledge of self.

The Upanishad says: _In the midst of activity alone wilt thou
desire to live a hundred years._ [Footnote: Kurvanneveha
karmani jijivishet catam samah.] It is the saying of those who
had amply tasted of the joy of the soul. Those who have fully
realised the soul have never talked in mournful accents of the
sorrowfulness of life or of the bondage of action. They are not
like the weakling flower whose stem-hold is so light that it
drops away before attaining fruition. They hold on to life with
all their might and say, “never will we let go till the fruit is
ripe.” They desire in their joy to express themselves
strenuously in their life and in their work. Pain and sorrow
dismay them not, they are not bowed down to the dust by the
weight of their own heart. With the erect head of the victorious
hero they march through life seeing themselves and showing
themselves in increasing resplendence of soul through both joys
and sorrows. The joy of their life keeps step with the joy of
that energy which is playing at building and breaking throughout
the universe. The joy of the sunlight, the joy of the free air,
mingling with the joy of their lives, makes one sweet harmony
reign within and without. It is they who say, _In the midst of
activity alone wilt thou desire to live a hundred years._

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

It is not the truth that man is active on compulsion. If there
is compulsion on one side, on the other there is pleasure; on the
one hand action is spurred on by want, on the other it hies to
its natural fulfilment. That is why, as man’s civilisation
advances, he increases his obligations and the work that he
willingly creates for himself. One should have thought that
nature had given him quite enough to do to keep him busy, in fact
that it was working him to death with the lash of hunger and
thirst,–but no. Man does not think that sufficient; he cannot
rest content with only doing the work that nature prescribes for
him in common with the birds and beasts. He needs must surpass
all, even in activity. No creature has to work so hard as man;
he has been impelled to contrive for himself a vast field of
action in society; and in this field he is for every building up
and pulling down, making and unmaking laws, piling up heaps of
material, and incessantly thinking, seeking and suffering. In
this field he has fought his mightiest battles, gained continual
new life, made death glorious, and, far from evading troubles,
has willingly and continually taken up the burden of fresh
trouble. He has discovered the truth that he is not complete in
the cage of his immediate surroundings, that he is greater than
his present, and that while to stand still in one place may be
comforting, the arrest of life destroys his true function and the
real purpose of his existence.

This _mahati vinashtih–this great destruction_ he cannot bear,
and accordingly he toils and suffers in order that he may gain in
stature by transcending his present, in order to become that
which he yet is not. In this travail is man’s glory, and it is
because he knows it, that he has not sought to circumscribe his
field of action, but is constantly occupied in extending the
bounds. Sometimes he wanders so far that his work tends to lose
its meaning, and his rushings to and fro create fearful eddies
round different centres–eddies of self-interest, of pride of
power. Still, so long as the strength of the current is not lost,
there is no fear; the obstructions and the dead accumulations of
his activity are dissipated and carried away; the impetus corrects
its own mistakes. Only when the soul sleeps in stagnation do its
enemies gain overmastering strength, and these obstructions become
too clogging to be fought through. Hence have we been warned by
our teachers that to work we must live, to live we must work; that
life and activity are inseparably connected.

It is very characteristic of life that it is not complete within
itself; it must come out. Its truth is in the commerce of the
inside and the outside. In order to live, the body must maintain
its various relations with the outside light and air–not only to
gain life-force, but also to manifest it. Consider how fully
employed the body is with its own inside activities; its heart-
beat must not stop for a second, its stomach, its brain, must be
ceaselessly working. Yet this is not enough; the body is
outwardly restless all the while. Its life leads it to an
endless dance of work and play outside; it cannot be satisfied
with the circulations of its internal economy, and only finds the
fulfilment of joy in its outward excursions.

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

The real truth is, we cannot live if we divide him who is truth
itself into two parts. We must abide in him within as well as
without. In whichever aspect we deny him we deceive ourselves
and incur a loss. _Brahma has not left me, let me not leave
Brahma._ [Footnote: Maham brahma nirakuryyam ma ma brahma
nirakarot.] If we say that we would realise him in introspection
alone and leave him out of our external activity, that we would
enjoy him by the love in our heart, but not worship him by
outward ministrations; or if we say the opposite, and overweight
ourselves on one side in the journey of our life’s quest, we
shall alike totter to our downfall.

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

They fail to realise that while the infinite is always greater
than any assignable limit, it is also complete; that on the one
hand Brahma is evolving, on the other he is perfection; that in
the one aspect he is essence, in the other manifestation–both
together at the same time, as is the song and the act of singing.
This is like ignoring the consciousness of the singer and saying
that only the singing is in progress, that there is no song.
Doubtless we are directly aware only of the singing, and never at
any one time of the song as a whole; but do we not all the time
know that the complete song is in the soul of the singer?

It is because of this insistence on the doing and the becoming
that we perceive in the west the intoxication of power. These
men seem to have determined to despoil and grasp everything by
force. They would always obstinately be doing and never be done–
they would not allow to death its natural place in the scheme of
things–they know not the beauty of completion.

In our country the danger comes from the opposite side. Our
partiality is for the internal world. We would cast aside with
contumely the field of power and of extension. We would realise
Brahma in mediation only in his aspect of completeness, we have
determined not to see him in the commerce of the universe in his
aspect of evolution. That is why in our seekers we so often find
the intoxication of the spirit and its consequent degradation.
Their faith would acknowledge no bondage of law, their
imagination soars unrestricted, their conduct disdains to offer
any explanation to reason. Their intellect, in its vain attempts
to see Brahma inseparable from his creation, works itself stone-
dry, and their heart, seeking to confine him within its own
outpourings, swoons in a drunken ecstasy of emotion. They have
not even kept within reach any standard whereby they can measure
the loss of strength and character which manhood sustains by thus
ignoring the bonds of law and the claims of action in the
external universe.

But true spirituality, as taught in our sacred lore, is calmly
balanced in strength, in the correlation of the within and the
without. The truth has its law, it has its joy. On one side of
it is being chanted the _Bhayadasyagnistapati_ [Footnote: “For
fear of him the fire doth burn,” etc], on the other the
_Anandadhyeva khalvimani bhutani jayante._ [Footnote: “From Joy
are born all created things,” etc.] Freedom is impossible of
attainment without submission to law, for Brahma is in one aspect
bound by his truth, in the other free in his joy.

As for ourselves, it is only when we wholly submit to the bonds
of truth that we fully gain the joy of freedom. And how? As
does the string that is bound to the harp. When the harp is
truly strung, when there is not the slightest laxity in the
strength of the bond, then only does music result; and the string
transcending itself in its melody finds at every chord its true
freedom. It is because it is bound by such hard and fast rules
on the one side that it can find this range of freedom in music
on the other. While the string was not true, it was indeed
merely bound; but a loosening of its bondage would not have been
the way to freedom, which it can only fully achieve by being
bound tighter and tighter till it has attained the true pitch.

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

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

O thou distraught wanderer, thou _Sannyasin_, drunk in the wine of
self-intoxication, dost thou not already hear the progress of the
human soul along the highway traversing the wide fields of
humanity–the thunder of its progress in the car of its
achievements, which is destined to overpass the bounds that
prevent its expansion into the universe? The very mountains are
cleft asunder and give way before the march of its banners waving
triumphantly in the heavens; as the mist before the rising sun,
the tangled obscurities of material things vanish at its
irresistible approach. Pain, disease, and disorder are at every
step receding before its onset; the obstructions of ignorance are
being thrust aside; the darkness of blindness is being pierced
through; and behold, the promised land of wealth and health, of
poetry and art, of knowledge and righteousness is gradually being
revealed to view. Do you in your lethargy desire to say that
this car of humanity, which is shaking the very earth with the
triumph of its progress along the mighty vistas of history, has
no charioteer leading it on to its fulfilment? Who is there who
refuses to respond to his call to join in this triumphal progress?
Who so foolish as to run away from the gladsome throng and seek
him in the listlessness of inaction? Who so steeped in untruth as
to dare to call all this untrue–this great world of men, this
civilisation of expanding humanity, this eternal effort of man,
through depths of sorrow, through heights of gladness, through
innumerable impediments within and without, to win victory for his
powers? He who can think of this immensity of achievement as an
immense fraud, can he truly believe in God who is the truth? He
who thinks to reach God by running away from the world, when and
where does he expect to meet him? How far can he fly–can he fly
and fly, till he flies into nothingness itself? No, the coward
who would fly can nowhere find him. We must be brave enough to
be able to say: We are reaching him here in this very spot, now
at this very moment. We must be able to assure ourselves that as
in our actions we are realising ourselves, so in ourselves we are
realising him who is the self of self. We must earn the right to
say so unhesitatingly by clearing away with our own effort all
obstruction, all disorder, all discords from our path of activity;
we must be able to say, “In my work is my joy, and in that joy
does the joy of my joy abide.”

Whom does the Upanishad call _The chief among the knowers of
Brahma?_ [Footnote: Brahmavidamvaristhah.] He is defined as _He
whose joy is in Brahma, whose play is in Brahma, the active one._
[Footnote: Atmakrirha atmaratih kriyavan.] Joy without the play
of joy is no joy at all–play without activity is no play.
Activity is the play of joy. He whose joy is in Brahma, how can
he live in inaction? For must he not by his activity provide
that in which the joy of Brahma is to take form and manifest
itself? That is why he who knows Brahma, who has his joy in
Brahma, must also have all his activity in Brahma–his eating
and drinking, his earning of livelihood and his beneficence.
Just as the joy of the poet in his poem, of the artist in his
art, of the brave man in the output of his courage, of the wise
man in his discernment of truths, ever seeks expression in their
several activities, so the joy of the knower of Brahma, in the
whole of his everyday work, little and big, in truth, in beauty,
in orderliness and in beneficence, seeks to give expression to
the infinite.

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

In this very thing does our own true meaning lie, in this is our
likeness to our father. We must also give up ourselves in many-
sided variously aimed activity. In the Vedas he is called _the
giver of himself, the giver of strength._ [Footnote: Atmada
balada.] He is not content with giving us himself, but he gives
us strength that we may likewise give ourselves. That is why the
seer of the Upanishad prays to him who is thus fulfilling our
wants, _May he grant us the beneficent mind_ [Footnote: Sa no
buddhya cubhaya samyunaktu.], may he fulfil that uttermost want
of ours by granting us the beneficent mind. That is to say, it
is not enough he should alone work to remove our want, but he
should give us the desire and the strength to work with him in
his activity and in the exercise of the goodness. Then, indeed,
will our union with him alone be accomplished. The beneficent
mind is that which shows us the want (_swartha_) of another self
to be the inherent want (_nihitartha_) of our own self; that
which shows that our joy consists in the varied aiming of our
many-sided powers in the work of humanity. When we work under
the guidance of this beneficent mind, then our activity is
regulated, but does not become mechanical; it is action not
goaded on by want, but stimulated by the satisfaction of the
soul. Such activity ceases to be a blind imitation of that of
the multitude, a cowardly following of the dictates of fashion.
Therein we begin to see that _He is in the beginning and in the
end of the universe_ [Footnote: Vichaiti chante vicvamadau.],
and likewise see that of our own work is he the fount and the
inspiration, and at the end thereof is he, and therefore that all
our activity is pervaded by peace and good and joy.

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

O giver of thyself! at the vision of thee as joy let our souls
flame up to thee as the fire, flow on to thee as the river,
permeate thy being as the fragrance of the flower. Give us
strength to love, to love fully, our life in its joys and
sorrows, in its gains and losses, in its rise and fall. Let us
have strength enough fully to see and hear thy universe, and to
work with full vigour therein. Let us fully live the life thou
hast given us, let us bravely take and bravely give. This is our
prayer to thee. Let us once for all dislodge from our minds the
feeble fancy that would make out thy joy to be a thing apart from
action, thin, formless, and unsustained. Wherever the peasant
tills the hard earth, there does thy joy gush out in the green of
the corn, wherever man displaces the entangled forest, smooths
the stony ground, and clears for himself a homestead, there does
thy joy enfold it in orderliness and peace.

O worker of the universe! We would pray to thee to let the
irresistible current of thy universal energy come like the
impetuous south wind of spring, let it come rushing over the vast
field of the life of man, let it bring the scent of many flowers,
the murmurings of many woodlands, let it make sweet and vocal the
lifelessness of our dried-up soul-life. Let our newly awakened
powers cry out for unlimited fulfilment in leaf and flower and
fruit.

THE RELATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE UNIVERSE

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

These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set
up a principle of “divide and rule” in our mental outlook, which
begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying
them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and
nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us
a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have
built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our
recognition.

When the first Aryan invaders appeared in India it was a vast
land of forests, and the new-comers rapidly took advantage of
them. These forests afforded them shelter from the fierce heat
of the sun and the ravages of tropical storms, pastures for
cattle, fuel for sacrificial fire, and materials for building
cottages. And the different Aryan clans with their patriarchal
heads settled in the different forest tracts which had some
special advantage of natural protection, and food and water in
plenty.

Thus in India it was in the forests that our civilisation had its
birth, and it took a distinct character from this origin and
environment. It was surrounded by the vast life of nature, was
fed and clothed by her, and had the closest and most constant
intercourse with her varying aspects.

Such a life, it may be thought, tends to have the effect of
dulling human intelligence and dwarfing the incentives to
progress by lowering the standards of existence. But in ancient
India we find that the circumstances of forest life did not
overcome man’s mind, and did not enfeeble the current of his
energies, but only gave to it a particular direction. Having
been in constant contact with the living growth of nature, his
mind was free from the desire to extend his dominion by erecting
boundary walls around his acquisitions. His aim was not to
acquire but to realise, to enlarge his consciousness by growing
with and growing into his surroundings. He felt that truth is
all-comprehensive, that there is no such thing as absolute
isolation in existence, and the only way of attaining truth is
through the interpenetration of our being into all objects. To
realise this great harmony between man’s spirit and the spirit of
the world was the endeavour of the forest-dwelling sages of
ancient India.

In later days there came a time when these primeval forests gave
way to cultivated fields, and wealthy cities sprang up on all
sides. Mighty kingdoms were established, which had
communications with all the great powers of the world. But even
in the heyday of its material prosperity the heart of India ever
looked back with adoration upon the early ideal of strenuous
self-realisation, and the dignity of the simple life of the
forest hermitage, and drew its best inspiration from the wisdom
stored there.

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

But in India the point of view was different; it included the
world with the man as one great truth. India put all her
emphasis on the harmony that exists between the individual and
the universal. She felt we could have no communication whatever
with our surroundings if they were absolutely foreign to us.
Man’s complaint against nature is that he has to acquire most of
his necessaries by his own efforts. Yes, but his efforts are not
in vain; he is reaping success every day, and that shows there is
a rational connection between him and nature, for we never can
make anything our own except that which is truly related to us.

We can look upon a road from two different points of view. One
regards it as dividing us from the object of our desire; in that
case we count every step of our journey over it as something
attained by force in the face of obstruction. The other sees it
as the road which leads us to our destination; and as such it is
part of our goal. It is already the beginning of our attainment,
and by journeying over it we can only gain that which in itself
it offers to us. This last point of view is that of India with
regard to nature. For her, the great fact is that we are in
harmony with nature; that man can think because his thoughts are
in harmony with things; that he can use the forces of nature for
his own purpose only because his power is in harmony with the
power which is universal, and that in the long run his purpose
never can knock against the purpose which works through nature.

In the west the prevalent feeling is that nature belongs
exclusively to inanimate things and to beasts, that there is a
sudden unaccountable break where human-nature begins. According
to it, everything that is low in the scale of beings is merely
nature, and whatever has the stamp of perfection on it,
intellectual or moral, is human-nature. It is like dividing the
bud and the blossom into two separate categories, and putting
their grace to the credit of two different and antithetical
principles. But the Indian mind never has any hesitation in
acknowledging its kinship with nature, its unbroken relation with
all.

The fundamental unity of creation was not simply a philosophical
speculation for India; it was her life-object to realise this
great harmony in feeling and in action. With mediation and
service, with a regulation of life, she cultivated her
consciousness in such a way that everything had a spiritual
meaning to her. The earth, water and light, fruits and flowers,
to her were not merely physical phenomena to be turned to use and
then left aside. They were necessary to her in the attainment of
her ideal of perfection, as every note is necessary to the
completeness of the symphony. India intuitively felt that the
essential fact of this world has a vital meaning for us; we have
to be fully alive to it and establish a conscious relation with
it, not merely impelled by scientific curiosity or greed of
material advantage, but realising it in the spirit of sympathy,
with a large feeling of joy and peace.

The man of science knows, in one aspect, that the world is not
merely what it appears to be to our senses; he knows that earth
and water are really the play of forces that manifest themselves
to us as earth and water–how, we can but partially apprehend.
Likewise the man who has his spiritual eyes open knows that the
ultimate truth about earth and water lies in our apprehension of
the eternal will which works in time and takes shape in the
forces we realise under those aspects. This is not mere
knowledge, as science is, but it is a preception of the soul by
the soul. This does not lead us to power, as knowledge does, but
it gives us joy, which is the product of the union of kindred
things. The man whose acquaintance with the world does not lead
him deeper than science leads him, will never understand what it
is that the man with the spiritual vision finds in these natural
phenomena. The water does not merely cleanse his limbs, but it
purifies his heart; for it touches his soul. The earth does not
merely hold his body, but it gladdens his mind; for its contact
is more than a physical contact–it is a living presence. When a
man does not realise his kinship with the world, he lives in a
prison-house whose walls are alien to him. When he meets the
eternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then
he discovers the fullest significance of the world into which he
is born; then he finds himself in perfect truth, and his harmony
with the all is established. In India men are enjoined to be
fully awake to the fact that they are in the closest relation to
things around them, body and soul, and that they are to hail the
morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth, as the
manifestation of the same living truth which holds them in its
embrace. Thus the text of our everyday meditation is the
_Gayathri_, a verse which is considered to be the epitome of all
the Vedas. By its help we try to realise the essential unity of
the world with the conscious soul of man; we learn to perceive
the unity held together by the one Eternal Spirit, whose power
creates the earth, the sky, and the stars, and at the same time
irradiates our minds with the light of a consciousness that moves
and exists in unbroken continuity with the outer world.

It is not true that India has tried to ignore differences of
value in different things, for she knows that would make life
impossible. The sense of the superiority of man in the scale of
creation has not been absent from her mind. But she has had her
own idea as to that in which his superiority really consists. It
is not in the power of possession but in the power of union.
Therefore India chose her places of pilgrimage wherever there was
in nature some special grandeur or beauty, so that her mind could
come out of its world of narrow necessities and realise its place
in the infinite. This was the reason why in India a whole
people who once were meat-eaters gave up taking animal food to
cultivate the sentiment of universal sympathy for life, an event
unique in the history of mankind.

India knew that when by physical and mental barriers we violently
detach ourselves from the inexhaustible life of nature; when we
become merely man, but not man-in-the-universe, we create
bewildering problems, and having shut off the source of their
solution, we try all kinds of artificial methods each of which
brings its own crop of interminable difficulties. When man
leaves his resting-place in universal nature, when he walks on
the single rope of humanity, it means either a dance or a fall
for him, he has ceaselessly to strain every nerve and muscle to
keep his balance at each step, and then, in the intervals of his
weariness, he fulminates against Providence and feels a secret
pride and satisfaction in thinking that he has been unfairly
dealt with by the whole scheme of things.

But this cannot go on for ever. Man must realise the wholeness
of his existence, his place in the infinite; he must know that
hard as he may strive he can never create his honey within the
cells of his hive; for the perennial supply of his life food is
outside their walls. He must know that when man shuts himself
out from the vitalising and purifying touch of the infinite, and
falls back upon himself for his sustenance and his healing, then
he goads himself into madness, tears himself into shreds, and
eats his own substance. Deprived of the background of the whole,
his poverty loses its one great quality, which is simplicity, and
becomes squalid and shamefaced. His wealth is no longer
magnanimous; it grows merely extravagant. His appetites do not
minister to his life, keeping to the limits of their purpose;
they become an end in themselves and set fire to his life and
play the fiddle in the lurid light of the conflagration. Then it
is that in our self-expression we try to startle and not to
attract; in art we strive for originality and lose sight of truth
which is old and yet ever new; in literature we miss the complete
view of man which is simple and yet great, but he appears as a
psychological problem or the embodiment of a passion that is
intense because abnormal and because exhibited in the glare of a
fiercely emphatic light which is artificial. When man’s
consciousness is restricted only to the immediate vicinity of his
human self, the deeper roots of his nature do not find their
permanent soil, his spirit is ever on the brink of starvation,
and in the place of healthful strength he substitutes rounds of
stimulation. Then it is that man misses his inner perspective
and measures his greatness by its bulk and not by its vital link
with the infinite, judges his activity by its movement and not by
the repose of perfection–the repose which is in the starry
heavens, in the ever-flowing rhythmic dance of creation.

The first invasion of India has its exact parallel in the
invasion of America by the European settlers. They also were
confronted with primeval forests and a fierce struggle with
aboriginal races. But this struggle between man and man, and man
and nature lasted till the very end; they never came to any
terms. In India the forests which were the habitation of the
barbarians became the sanctuary of sages, but in America these
great living cathedrals of nature had no deeper significance to
man. The brought wealth and power to him, and perhaps at times
they ministered to his enjoyment of beauty, and inspired a
solitary poet. They never acquired a sacred association in the
hearts of men as the site of some great spiritual reconcilement
where man’s soul has its meeting-place with the soul of the
world.

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

Civilisation is a kind of mould that each nation is busy making
for itself to shape its men and women according to its best
ideal. All its institutions, its legislature, its standard of
approbation and condemnation, its conscious and unconscious
teachings tend toward that object. The modern civilisation of
the west, by all its organised efforts, is trying to turn out men
perfect in physical, intellectual, and moral efficiency. There
the vast energies of the nations are employed in extending man’s
power over his surroundings, and people are combining and
straining every faculty to possess and to turn to account all
that they can lay their hands upon, to overcome every obstacle on
their path of conquest. They are ever disciplining themselves to
fight nature and other races; their armaments are getting more
and more stupendous every day; their machines, their appliances,
their organisations go on multiplying at an amazing rate. This
is a splendid achievement, no doubt, and a wonderful
manifestation of man’s masterfulness which knows no obstacle, and
which has for its object the supremacy of himself over everything
else.

The ancient civilisation of India had its own ideal of perfection
towards which its efforts were directed. Its aim was not
attaining power, and it neglected to cultivate to the utmost its
capacities, and to organise men for defensive and offensive
purposes, for co-operation in the acquisition of wealth and for
military and political ascendancy. The ideal that India tried to
realise led her best men to the isolation of a contemplative
life, and the treasures that she gained for mankind by
penetrating into the mysteries of reality cost her dear in the
sphere of worldly success. Yet, this also was a sublime
achievement,–it was a supreme manifestation of that human
aspiration which knows no limit, and which has for its object
nothing less than the realisation of the Infinite.

There were the virtuous, the wise, the courageous; there were the
statesmen, kings and emperors of India; but whom amongst all
these classes did she look up to and choose to be the
representative of men?

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

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

Man can destroy and plunder, earn and accumulate, invent and
discover, but he is great because his soul comprehends all. It
is dire destruction for him when he envelopes his soul in a dead
shell of callous habits, and when a blind fury of works whirls
round him like an eddying dust storm, shutting out the horizon.
That indeed kills the very spirit of his being, which is the
spirit of comprehension. Essentially man is not a slave either
of himself or of the world; but he is a lover. His freedom and
fulfilment is in love, which is another name for perfect
comprehension. By this power of comprehension, this permeation
of his being, he is united with the all-pervading Spirit, who is
also the breath of his soul. Where a man tries to raise himself
to eminence by pushing and jostling all others, to achieve a
distinction by which he prides himself to be more than everybody
else, there he is alienated from that Spirit. This is why the
Upanishads describe those who have attained the goal of human
life as “_peaceful_” [Footnote: Pracantah] and as “_at-one-with-
God_,” [Footnote: Yuktatmanah] meaning that they are in perfect
harmony with man and nature, and therefore in undisturbed union
with God.

We have a glimpse of the same truth in the teachings of Jesus
when he says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye
of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven”–
which implies that whatever we treasure for ourselves separates
us from others; our possessions are our limitations. He who is
bent upon accumulating riches is unable, with his ego continually
bulging, to pass through the gates of comprehension of the
spiritual world, which is the world of perfect harmony; he is
shut up within the narrow walls of his limited acquisitions.

Hence the spirit of the teachings of Upanishad is: In order to
find him you must embrace all. In the pursuit of wealth you
really give up everything to gain a few things, and that is not
the way to attain him who is completeness.

Some modern philosophers of Europe, who are directly or
indirectly indebted to the Upanishads, far from realising their
debt, maintain that the Brahma of India is a mere abstraction, a
negation of all that is in the world. In a word, that the
Infinite Being is to be found nowhere except in metaphysics. It
may be, that such a doctrine has been and still is prevalent with
a section of our countrymen. But this is certainly not in accord
with the pervading spirit of the Indian mind. Instead, it is the
practice of realising and affirming the presence of the infinite
in all things which has been its constant inspiration.

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

_I bow to God over and over again who is in fire and in water, who
permeates the whole world, who is in the annual crops as well as
in the perennial trees._ [Footnote: Yo devo’gnau y’opsu y’o
vicvambhuvanamaviveca ya oshadhishu yo vanaspatishu tasmai devaya
namonamah.]

Can this be God abstracted from the world? Instead, it signifies
not merely seeing him in all things, but saluting him in all the
objects of the world. The attitude of the God-conscious man of
the Upanishad towards the universe is one of a deep feeling of
adoration. His object of worship is present everywhere. It is
the one living truth that makes all realities true. This truth
is not only of knowledge but of devotion. ‘_Namonamah_,’–we bow
to him everywhere, and over and over again. It is recognised in
the outburst of the Rishi, who addresses the whole world in a
sudden ecstasy of joy: _Listen to me, ye sons of the immortal
spirit, ye who live in the heavenly abode, I have known the
Supreme Person whose light shines forth from beyond the darkness._
[Footnote: Crinvantu vicve amritasya putra a ye divya dhamani
tasthuh vedahametam purusham mahantam aditya varnam tamasah
parastat.] Do we not find the overwhelming delight of a direct
and positive experience where there is not the least trace of
vagueness or passivity?

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

What is that spirit? The Upanishad says, _The being who is in
his essence the light and life of all, who is world-conscious, is
Brahma._ [Footnote: Yacchayamasminnakace tejomayo’mritamayah
purushah sarvanubhuh.] To feel all, to be conscious of
everything, is his spirit. We are immersed in his consciousness
body and soul. It is through his consciousness that the sun
attracts the earth; it is through his consciousness that the
light-waves are being transmitted from planet to planet.

Not only in space, but _this light and life, this all-feeling
being is in our souls._ [Footnote: Yacchayamasminnatmani
tejomayo’mritamayah purushah sarvanubhuh.] He is all-conscious
in space, or the world of extension; and he is all-conscious in
soul, or the world of intension.

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

We have, however, to pay a price for this attainment of the
freedom of consciousness. What is the price? It is to give
one’s self away. Our soul can realise itself truly only by
denying itself. The Upanishad says, _Thou shalt gain by giving
away_ [Footnote: Tyaktena bhunjithah], _Thou shalt not covet._
[Footnote: Ma gridhah]

In Gita we are advised to work disinterestedly, abandoning all
lust for the result. Many outsiders conclude from this teaching
that the conception of the world as something unreal lies at the
root of the so-called disinterestedness preached in India. But
the reverse is true.

The man who aims at his own aggrandisement underrates everything
else. Compared to his ego the rest of the world is unreal. Thus
in order to be fully conscious of the reality of all, one has to
be free himself from the bonds of personal desires. This
discipline we have to go through to prepare ourselves for our
social duties–for sharing the burdens of our fellow-beings.
Every endeavour to attain a larger life requires of man “to gain
by giving away, and not to be greedy.” And thus to expand
gradually the consciousness of one’s unity with all is the
striving of humanity.

The Infinite in India was not a thin nonentity, void of all
content. The Rishis of India asserted emphatically, “To know him
in this life is to be true; not to know him in this life is the
desolation of death.” [Footnote: Iha chet avedit atha
satyamasti, nachet iha avedit mahati vinashtih.] How to know him
then? “By realising him in each and all.” [Footnote: Bhuteshu
bhuteshu vichintva.] Not only in nature but in the family, in
society, and in the state, the more we realise the World-
conscious in all, the better for us. Failing to realise it, we
turn our faces to destruction.

It fills me with great joy and a high hope for the future of
humanity when I realise that there was a time in the remote past
when our poet-prophets stood under the lavish sunshine of an
Indian sky and greeted the world with the glad recognition of
kindred. It was not an anthropomorphic hallucination. It was
not seeing man reflected everywhere in grotesquely exaggerated
images, and witnessing the human drama acted on a gigantic scale
in nature’s arena of flitting lights and shadows. On the
contrary, it meant crossing the limiting barriers of the
individual, to become more than man, to become one with the All.
It was not a mere play of the imagination, but it was the
liberation of consciousness from all the mystifications and
exaggerations of the self. These ancient seers felt in the
serene depth of their mind that the same energy which vibrates
and passes into the endless forms of the world manifests itself
in our inner being as consciousness; and there is no break in
unity. For these seers there was no gap in their luminous vision
of perfection. They never acknowledged even death itself as
creating a chasm in the field of reality. They said, _His
reflection is death as well as immortality._ [Footnote: Yasya
chhayamritam yasya mrityuh.] They did not recognise any
essential opposition between life and death, and they said with
absolute assurance, “It is life that is death.” [Footnote: Prano
mrityuh.] They saluted with the same serenity of gladness “life
in its aspect of appearing and in its aspect of departure”–
_That which is past is hidden in life, and that which is to come._
[Footnote: Namo astu ayate namo astu parayate. Prane ha bhutam
bhavyancha.] They knew that mere appearance and disappearance are
on the surface like waves on the sea, but life which is permanent
knows no decay or diminution.

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

This is the noble heritage from our forefathers waiting to be
claimed by us as our own, this ideal of the supreme freedom of
consciousness. It is not merely intellectual or emotional, it
has an ethical basis, and it must be translated into action. In
the Upanishad it is said, _The supreme being is all-pervading,
therefore he is the innate good in all._ [Footnote: Sarvavyapi
sa bhagavan tasmat sarvagatah civah.] To be truly united in
knowledge, love, and service with all beings, and thus to
realise one’s self in the all-pervading God is the essence of
goodness, and this is the keynote of the teachings of the
Upanishads: _Life is immense!_ [Footnote: Prano virat.]

Sengupta Sukumar Chandan

chandansenji@gmail.com
rceamsen@rediffmail.com