Essentially qualitative, like life itself, the Mind does not occupy space. For that very reason it has jio bounds in its mastery of space. Also, like Life, Mind has its meaning in freedom, which it missed in its earliest dealings with Life’s children. In the animal, though the mind is allowed to come out of the immediate limits of livelihood, its range is restricted, like the freedom of a child that might run out of its room but not out of the house; or, rather, like the foreign ships to which only a cer- tain port was opened in Japan in the beginning of 35 THE RELIGION OF MAN her contact with the West in fear of the danger that might befall if the strangers had their uncon- trolled opportunity of communication. Mind also is a foreign element for Life; its laws are different, its weapons powerful, its moods and manners most alien.
Like Eve of the Semitic mythology, the Spirit of Life risked the happiness of her placid seclusion to win her freedom. She listened to the whisper of a tempter who promised her the right to a new region of mystery, and was urged into a permanent alliance with the stranger. Up to this point the interest of life was the sole interest in her own kingdom, but another most powerfully parallel interest was created with the advent of this adven- turer Mind from an unknown shore. Their inter- ests clash, and complications of a serious nature arise. I have already referred to some vital organs of Man that are suffering from neglect. The only reason has been the diversion created by the Mind interrupting the sole attention which Life’s func- tions claimed in the halcyon days of her undisputed monarchy. It is no secret that Mind has the habit of asserting its own will for its expression against life’s will to live and enforcing sacrifices from her. When lately some adventurers accepted the dan- gerous enterprise to climb Mount Everest, it was solely through the instigation of the arch-rebel Mind. In this case Mind denied its treaty of co- 36 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT THE CREATIVE SPIRIT operation with its partner and ignored Life’s claim to help in her living. The immemorial privileges of the ancient sovereignty of Life are too often flouted by the irreverent Mind; in fact,' all through the course of this alliance there are constant cases of interference with each other’s functions, often with unpleasant and even fatal results. But in spite of this, or very often because of this antagonism, the new current of Man’s evo- lution is bringing a wealth to his harbour infinitely beyond the dream of the creatures of monstrous flesh.
The manner in which Man appeared in Life’s kingdom was in itself a protest and a challenge, the challenge of Jack to the Giant. He carried in his body the declaration of mistrust against the crowding of burdensome implements of physical progress. His Mind spoke to the naked man, “Fear not”; and he stood alone facing the menace of a heavy brigade of formidable muscles. His own puny muscles cried out in despair, and he had to invent for himself in a novel manner and in a new spirit of evolution. This at once gave him his promotion from the passive destiny of the animal to the aristocracy of Man. He began to create his further body, his outer organs — the workers which served him and yet did not directly claim a share of his life. Some of the earliest in his list were bows and arrows. Had this change been under- 37 THE RELIGION OF MAN taken by the physical process of evolution, modify- ing his arms in a slow and gradual manner, it might have resulted in burdensome and ungainly apparatus. Possibly, however, I am unfair, and the dexterity and grace which Life’s technical in- stinct possesses might have changed his arm into a shooting medium in a perfect manner and with a beautiful form. In that case our lyrical literature to-day would have sung in praise of its fascination, not only for a consummate skill in hunting victims, but also for a similar mischief in a metaphorical sense. But even in the service of lyrics it would show some limitation. For instance, the arms that would specialize in shooting would be awkward in wielding a pen or stringing a lute. But the great advantage in the latest method of human evolution lies in the fact that Man’s additional new limbs, like bows and arrows, have become detached. They never tie his arms to any exclusive advantage of efficiency.
The elephant’s trunk, the tiger’s paws, the claws of the mole, have combined their best expressions in- the human arms, which are much weaker in their original capacity than those limbs I have mentioned. It would have been a hugely cumber- some practical joke if the combination of animal limbs had had a simultaneous location in the hu- man organism through some overzeal in biological inventiveness.
38 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT The first great economy resulting from the new programme was the relief of the physical burden, which means the maximum efficiency with the minimum pressure of taxation upon the vital re- sources of the body. Another mission of benefit was this, that it absolved the Spirit of Life in Man’s case from the necessity of specialization for the sake of limited success. This has encouraged Man to dream of the possibility of combining in his single person the fish, the bird and the fleet- footed animal that walks on land. Man desired in his completeness to be the one great representative of multiform life, not through wearisome subjec- tion to the haphazard gropings of natural selection, but by the purposeful selection of opportunities with the help of his reasoning mind. It enables the schoolboy who is given a pen-knife on his birthday to have the advantage over the tiger in the fact that it does not take him- a million years to obtain its possession, nor another million years for its removal, when the instrument proves un- necessary or dangerous. The human mind has compressed ages into a few years for the acquisi- tion of steel-made claws. The only cause of anxiety is that the instrument and the temperament which uses it may not keep pace in perfect harmony. In the tiger, the claws and the temperament which only a tiger should possess have had a synchronous development, and in no single tiger is any malad- 39 THE RELIGION OF MAN justment possible between its nails and its tigerli- ness. But the human boy, who grows a claw in the form of a pen-knife, may not at the same time develop the proper temperament necessary for its use which only a man ought to have. The new organs that to-day are being added as a supple- ment to Man’s original vital stock are too quick and too numerous for his inner nature to develop its own simultaneous concordance with them, and thus we see everywhere innumerable schoolboys in human society playing pranks with their own and other people’s lives and welfare by means of newly acquired pen-knives which have not had time to become humanized.
One thing, I am sure, must have been noticed — that the original plot of the drama is changed, and the mother Spirit of Life has retired into the back- ground, giving full prominence, in the third act, to the Spirit of Man — though the dowager queen, from her inner apartment, still renders necessary help. It is the consciousness in Man of his own creative personality which has ushered in this new regime in Life’s kingdom. And from now onwards Man’s attempts are directed fully to capture the government and make his own Code of Legislation prevail without a break. We have seen in India those who are called mystics, impatient of the con- tinued regency of mother Nature in their own 40 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT THE CREATIVE SPIRIT body, winning for their will by a concentration of inner forces the vital regions with which our mas- terful minds have no direct path of communi- cation.
But the most important fact that has come into prominence along with the change of direction in our evolution, is the possession of a Spirit which has its enormous capital with a surplus far in excess of the requirements of the biological animal in Man. Some overflowing influence led us over the strict boundaries of living, and offered to us an open space where Man’s thoughts and dreams could have their holidays. Holidays are for gods who have their joy in creation. In Life’s primitive paradise, where the mission was merely to live, any luck which came to the creatures entered in from outside by the donations of chance; they lived on perpetual charity, by turns petted and kicked on the back by physical Providence. Beg- gars never can have harmony among themselves; they are envious of one another, mutually suspi- cious, like dogs living upon their master’s favour, showing their teeth, growling, barking, trying to tear one another. This is what Science describes as the struggle for existence. This beggars’ para- dise lacked peace; I am sure the suitors for special favour from fate lived in constant preparedness, inventing and multiplying armaments.
41 THE RELIGION OF MAN But above the din of the clamour and scramble rises the voice of the Angel of Surplus, of leisure, of detachment from the compelling claim of physical need, saying to men, “Rejoice”. From his original serfdom as a creature Man takes his right seat as a creator. Whereas, before, his incessant appeal has been to get, now at last the call comes to him to give. His God, whose help he was in the habit of asking, now stands Himself at his door and asks for his offerings. As an animal, he is still dependent upon Nature; as a Man, he is a sover- eign who builds his world and rules it.
And there, at this point, comes his religion, whereby he realizes himself in the perspective of the infinite. There is a remarkable verse in the Atharva Veda which says: “Righteousness, truth, great endeavours, empire, religion, enterprise, heroism and prosperity, the past and the future, dwell in the surpassing strength of the sur- plus.”
What is purely physical has its limits like the shell of an egg; the liberation is there in the atmos- phere of the infinite, which is indefinable, invisible. Religion can have no meaning in the enclosure of mere physical or material interest; it is in the sur- plus we carry around our personality — the surplus which is like the atmosphere of the earth, bringing to her a constant circulation of light and life and delightfulness.
43 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT I have said in a poem of mine that when the child is detached from its mother’s womb it finds its mother in a real relationship whose truth is in freedom. Man in his detachment has realized him- self in a wider and deeper relationship with the universe. In his moral life he has the sense of his obligation and his freedom at the same time, and this is goodness. In his spiritual life his sense of the union and the will which is free has its cul- mination in love. The freedom of opportunity he wins for himself in Nature’s region by uniting his power with Nature’s forces. The freedom of social relationship he attains through owning responsi- bility to his community, thus gaining its collective power for his own welfare. In the freedom of con- sciousness he realizes the sense of his unity with his larger being, finding fulfilment in the dedicated life of an ever-progressive truth and ever-active love.
The first detachment achieved by Man is physi- cal. It represents his freedom from the necessity of developing the power of his senses and limbs in the limited area of his own physiology, having for itself an unbounded background with an im- mense result in consequence. Nature’s original intention was that Man should have the allowance of his sight-power ample enough for his surround- ings and a little over. But to have to develop an astronomical telescope on our skull would cause 43 THE RELIGION OF MAN a worse crisis of bankruptcy than it did to the Mammoth whose densely foolish body indulged in an extravagance of tusks. A snail carries its house on its back and therefore the material, the shape and the weight have to be strictly limited to the capacity of the body. But fortunately Man’s house need not grow on the foundation of his bones and occupy his flesh. Owing to this detachment, his ambition knows no check to its daring in the di- mension and strength of his dwellings. Since his shelter does not depend upon his body, it survives him. This fact greatly affects the man who builds a house, generating in his mind a sense of the eter- nal in his creative work. And this background of the boundless surplus of time encourages architec- ture, which seeks a universal value overcoming the miserliness of the present need.
I have already mentioned a stage which Life reached when the units of single cells formed them- selves into larger units, each consisting of a multi- tude. It was not merely an aggregation, but had a mysterious unity of inter-relationship, complex in character, with differences within of forms and function. We can never know concretely what this relation means. There are gaps between the units, but they do not stop the binding force that per- meates the whole. There is a future for the whole which is in its growth, but in order to bring this 44 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT THE CREATIVE SPIRIT about each unit works and dies to make room for the next worker. While the unit has the right to claim the glory of the whole, yet individually it cannot share the entire wealth that occupies a his- tory yet to be completed.
Of all creatures Man has reached that multicel- lular character in a perfect manner, not only in his body but in his personality. For centuries his evo- lution has been the evolution of a consciousness that tries to be liberated from the bonds of indi- vidual separateness and to comprehend in its rela- tionship a wholeness which may be named Man. This relationship, which has been dimly instinc- tive, is ever struggling to be fully aware of itself. Physical evolution sought for efficiency in a per- fect communication with the physical world; the evolution of Man’s consciousness sought for truth in a perfect harmony with the world of personality.
There are those who will say that the idea of humanity is an abstraction, subjective in character. It must be confessed that the concrete objective- ness of this living truth cannot be proved to its own units. They can never see its entireness from outside; for they are one with it. The individual cells of our body have their separate lives; but they never have the opportunity of observing the body as a whole with its past, present and future. If these cells have the power of reasoning (which 45 THE RELIGION OF MAN they may have for aught we know) they have the right to argue that the idea of the body has no objective foundation in fact, and though there is a mysterious sense of attraction and mutual influ- ence running through them, these are nothing posi- tively real; the sole reality which is provable is in the isolation of these cells made by gaps that can never be crossed or bridged.
We know something about a system of explosive atoms whirling separately in a space which is im- mense compared to their own dimension. Yet we do not know why they should appear to us a solid piece of radiant mineral. And if there is an onlooker who at one glance can have the view of the immense time and space occupied by innumer- able human individuals engaged in evolving a common history, the positive truth of their solidar- ity will be concretely evident to him and not the negative fact of their separateness.
The reality of a piece of iron is not provable if we take the evidence of the atom; the only proof is that I see it as a bit of iron, and that it has cer- tain reactions upon my consciousness. Any being from, say, Orion, who has the sight to see the atoms and not the iron, has the right to say that we human beings suffer from an age-long epidemic of hallu- cination. We need not quarrel with him but go on using the iron as it appears to us. Seers there have been who have said ‘‘V edahametam", “I see”, 46 THE CREATIVE SPIRIT and lived a life according to that vision. And though our own sight may be blind we have ever bowed our head to them in reverence.
However, whatever name our logic may give to the truth of human unity, the fact can never be ignored that we have our greatest delight when we realize ourselves in others, and this is the defi- nition of love. This love gives us the testimony of the great whole, which is the complete and final truth of man. It offers us the immense field where we can have our release from the sole monarchy of hunger, of the growling voice, snarling teeth and tearing claws, from the dominance of the limited material means, the source of cruel envy and ignoble deception, where the largest wealth of the human soul has been produced through sympathy and co-operation; through disinterested pursuit of knowledge that recognizes no limit and is unafraid of all time-honoured tabus; through a strenuous cultivation of intelligence for service that knows no distinction of colour and clime. The Spirit of Love, dwelling in the boundless realm of the sur- plus, emancipates our consciousness from the illu- sory bond of the separateness of self; it is ever trying to spread its illumination in the human world. This is the spirit of civilization, which in all its best endeavour invokes our supreme Being for the only bond of unity that leads us to truth, namely, that of righteousness: 47 THE RELIGION OF MAN Ya efco varno bahudha saktfyogat varnan anekan nihitarthd dadhati vichaitti chante viavamadau sa devah sa no budhya subhaya samyunaktu.
‘^He who is one, above all colours, and who with his manifold power supplies the inherent needs of men of all colours, who is in the beginning and in the end of the world, is divine, and may he unite us in a relationship of good will.’^ 48 CHAPTER III THE SURPLUS IN MAN There are certain verses from the Atharva Veda in which the poet discusses his idea of Man, indi- cating some transcendental meaning that can be translated as follows: ‘*Who was It that imparted form to man, gave him majesty, movement, manifestation and character, inspired him with wis- dom, music and dancing? When his body was raised upwards he found also the oblique sides and all other directions in him — he who is the Person, the citadel of the infinite being/* Tasmad vai vidvan purushamidan brahmeti manyate. ^'And therefore the wise man knoweth this person as Brahma.** Sanatanam enam ahur utadya syat punarnavah.
^‘Ancient they call him, and yet he is renewed even now to-day.** In the very beginning of his career Man asserted in his bodily structure his first proclamation of freedom against the established rule of Nature. At a certain bend in the path of evolution he refused to remain a four-footed creature, and the position which he made his body to assume carried with it a permanent gesture of insubordination. For there could be no question that it was Nature’s 49 THE RELIGION OF MAN own plan to provide all land-walking mammals with two pairs of legs, evenly distributed along their lengthy trunk heavily weighted with a head at the end. This was the amicable compromise made with the earth when threatened by its con- servative downward force, which extorts taxes for all movements. The fact that man gave up such an obviously sensible arrangement proves his inborn mania for repeated reforms of constitution, for pelting amendments at every resolution proposed by Providence.
If we found a four-legged table stalking about upright upon two of its stumps, the remaining two foolishly dangling by its sides, we should be afraid that it was either a nightmare or some supernormal caprice of that piece of furniture, indulging in a practical joke upon the carpenter’s idea of fitness. The like absurd behaviour of Man’s anatomy encourages us to guess that he was born under the influence of some comet of contradiction that forces its eccentric path against orbits regulated by Nature. And it is significant that Man should per- sist in his foolhardiness, in spite of the penalty he pays for opposing the orthodox rule of animal locomotion. He reduces by half the help of an easy balance of his muscles. He is ready to pass his infancy tottering through perilous experiments in making progress upon insufficient support, and followed all through his life by liability to sudden 50 THE SURPLUS IN MAN downfalls resulting in tragic or ludicrous conse- quences from which law-abiding quadrupeds are free. This was his great venture, the relinquish- ment of a secure position of his limbs, which he could comfortably have retained in return for humbly salaaming the all-powerful dust at every step.
This capacity to stand erect has given our body its freedom of posture, making it easy for us to turn on all sides and realize ourselves at the centre of things. Physically, it symbolizes the fact that while animals have for their progress the prolonga- tion of a narrow line Man has the enlargement of a circle. As a centre he finds his meaning in a wide perspective, and realizes himself in the magnitude of his circumference.
As one freedom leads to another, Man’s eyesight also found a wider scope. I do not mean any enhancement of its physical power, which in many predatory animals has a better power of adjust- ment to light. But from the higher vantage of our physical watch-tower we have gained our view, which is not merely information about the location of things but their inter-relation and their unity.
But the best means of the expression of his physi- cal freedom gained by Man in his vertical position is through the emancipation of his hands. In our bodily organization these have attained the high- est dignity for their skill, their grace, their useful SI THE RELIGION OF MAN activities, as well as for those that are above all uses. They are the most detached of all our limbs. Once they had their menial vocation as our car- riers, but raised from their position as shudras, they at once attained responsible status as our helpers. When instead of keeping them under- neath us we offered them their place at our side, they revealed capacities that helped us to cross the boundaries of animal nature.
This freedom of view and freedom of action have been accompanied by an analogous mental freedom in Man through his imagination, which is the most distinctly human of all our faculties. It is there to help a creature who has been left unfin- ished by his designer, undraped, undecorated, unarmoured and without weapons, and, what is worse, ridden by a Mind whose energies for the most part are not tamed and tempered into some difficult ideal of completeness upon a background which is bare. Like all artists he has the freedom to make mistakes, to launch into desperate adven- tures contradicting and torturing his psychology or physiological normality. This freedom is a divine gift lent to the mortals who are untutored and undisciplined; and therefore the path of their creative progress is strewn with debris of devasta- tion, and stages of their perfection haunted by apparitions of startling deformities. But, all the same, the very training of creation ever makes 52 THE SURPLUS IN MAN clear an aim which cannot be in any isolated freak of an individual mind or in that which is only limited to the strictly necessary.
Just as our eyesight enables us to include the individual fact of ourselves in the surrounding view, our imagination makes us intensely conscious of a life we must live which transcends the indi- vidual life and contradicts the biological meaning of the instinct of self-preservation. It works at the surplus, and extending beyond the reservation plots of our daily life builds there the guest cham- bers of priceless value to offer hospitality to the world-spirit of Man. We have such an honoured right to be the host when our spirit is a free spirit not chained to the animal self. For free spirit is godly and alone can claim kinship with God.
Every true freedom that we rnay attain in any direction broadens our path of self-realization, which is in superseding the self. The unimagina- tive repetition of life within a safe restriction im- posed by Nature may be good for the animal, but never for Man, who has the responsibility to out- live his life in order to live in truth.
And freedom in its process of creation gives rise to perpetual suggestions of something further than its obvious purpose. For freedom is for expressing the infinite; it imposes limits in its works, not to keep them in permanence but to break them over and over again, and to reveal the endless in unend- 53 THE RELIGION OF MAN ing surprises. This implies a history of constant regeneration, a series of fresh beginnings and con- tinual challenges to the old in order to reach a more and more perfect harmony with some fundamental ideal of truth.
Our civilization, in the constant struggle for a great Further, runs through abrupt chapters of spasmodic divergences. It nearly always begins its new ventures with a cataclysm; for its changes are not mere seasonal changes of ideas gliding through varied periods of flowers and fruit. They are surprises lying in ambuscade provoking revo- lutionary adjustments. They are changes in the dynasty of living ideals — the ideals that are active in consolidating their dominion with strongholds of physical and mental habits, of symbols, cere- monials and adornments. But however violent may be the revolutions happening in whatever time or country, they never completely detach themselves from a common centre. They find their places in a history which is one.
The civilizations evolved in India or China, Persia or Judaea, Greece or Rome, are like several mountain peaks having different altitude, tempera- ture, flora and fauna, and yet belonging to the same chain of hills. There are no absolute barriers of communication between them; their foundation is the same and they affect the meteorology of an atmosphere which is common to us all. This is at 54 THE SURPLUS IN MAN the root of the meaning of the great teacher who said he would not seek his own salvation if all men were not saved; for we all belong to a divine unity, from which our great-souled men have their direct inspiration; they feel it immediately in their own personality, and they proclaim in their life, “I am one with the Supreme, with the Death- less, with the Perfect”.
Man, in his mission to create himself, tries to develop in his mind an image of his truth accord- ing to an idea which he believes to be universal, and is sure that any expression given to it will per- sist through all time. This is a mentality abso- lutely superfluous for biological existence. It rep- resents his struggle for a life which is not limited to his body. For our physical life has its thread of unity in the memory of the past, whereas this ideal life dwells in the prospective memory of the future. In the records of past civilizations, un- earthed from the closed records of dust, we find pathetic efforts to make their memories uninter- rupted through the ages, like the effort of a child who sets adrift on a paper boat his dream of reach- ing the distant unknown. But why is this desire? Only because we feel instinctively that in our ideal life we must touch all men and all times through the manifestation of a truth which is eternal and universal. And in order to give expression to it materials are gathered that are excellent and a 55 THE RELIGION O MAN manner of execution that has a permanent value. For we mortals must offer homage to the Man of the everlasting life. In order to do so, we are ex- pected to pay a great deal more than we need for mere living, and in the attempt we often exhaust our very means of livelihood, and even life itself.
The ideal picture which a savage imagines of himself requires glaring paints and gorgeous finer- ies, a rowdiness in ornaments and even grotesque deformities of over-wrought extravagance. He tries to sublimate his individual self into a mani- festation which he believes to have the majesty of the ideal Man. He is not satisfied with what he is in his natural limitations; he irresistibly feels some- thing beyond the evident fact of himself which only could give him worth. It is the principle of power, which, according to his present mental stage, is the meaning of the universal reality whereto he belongs, and it is his pious duty to give expression to it even at the cost of his happiness. In fact, through it he becomes one with his God, for him his God is nothing greater than power. The savage takes immense trouble, and often suf- fers tortures, in order to offer in himself a repre- sentation of power in conspicuous colours and dis- torted shapes, in acts of relentless cruelty and in- temperate bravado of self-indulgence. Such an appearance of rude grandiosity evokes a loyal rev- erence in the members of his community and a S6 THE SURPLUS IN MAN fear which gives them an aesthetic satisfaction because it illuminates for them the picture of a character which, as far as they know, belongs to ideal humanity. They wish to see in him not an individual, but the Man in whom they all are rep^ resented. Therefore, in spite of their sufferings, they enjoy being overwhelmed by his exaggerations and dominated by a will fearfully evident owing to its magnificent caprice in inflicting injuries. They symbolize their idea of unlimited wilfulness in their gods by ascribing to them physical and moral enormities in their anatomical idiosyncracy and virulent vindictiveness crying for the blood of victims, in personal preferences indiscriminate in the choice of recipients and methods of rewards and punishments. In fact, these gods could never be blamed for the least wavering in their conduct owing to any scrupulousness accompanied by the emotion of pity so often derided as sentimentalism by virile intellects of the present day.
However crude all this may be, it proves that Man has a feeling that he is truly represented in something which exceeds himself. He is aware that he is not imperfect, but incomplete. He knows that in himself some meaning has yet to be real- ized. We do not feel the wonder of it, because it seems so natural to us that barbarism in Man is not absolute, that its limits are like the limits of the horizon. The call is deep in his mind— the 57 THE RELIGION OF MAN call of his own inner truth, which is beyond his direct knowledge and analytical logic. And indi- viduals are born who have no doubt of the truth of this transcendental Man. As our consciousness more and more comprehends it, new valuations are developed in us, new depths and delicacies of de- light, a sober dignity of expression through elimi- nation of tawdriness, of frenzied emotions, of all violence in shape, colour, words, or behaviour, of the dark mentality of Ku-Klux-Klanism.
Each age reveals its personality as dreamer in its great expressions that carry it across surging centuries to the continental plateau of permanent human history. These expressions may not be con- sciously religious, but indirectly they belong to Man’s religion. For they are the outcome of the consciousness of the greater Man in the individual men of the race. This consciousness finds its man- ifestation in science, philosophy and the arts, in social ethics, in all things that carry their ultimate value in themselves. These are truly spiritual and they should all be consciously co-ordinated in one great religion of Man, representing his ceaseless endeavour to reach the perfect in great thoughts and deeds and dreams, in immortal symbols of art, revealing his aspiration for rising in dignity of being.
I had the occasion to visit the ruins of ancient Rome, the relics of human yearning towards the 58 THE SURPLUS IN MAN immense, the sight of which teases our mind out of thought. Does it not prove that in the vision of a great Roman Empire the creative imagination of the people rejoiced in the revelation of its trans- cendental humanity? It was the idea of an Empire which was not merely for opening an outlet to the pent-up pressure of over-population, or widening its field of commercial profit, but which existed as a concrete representation of the majesty of Roman personality, the soul of the people dreaming of a world-wide creation of its own for a fit habitation of the Ideal Man. It was Rome’s titanic endeavour to answer the eternal question as to what Man truly was, as Man. And any answer given in earn- est falls within the realm of religion, whatever may be its character; and this answer, in its truth, belongs not only to any particular people but to us all. It may be that Rome did not give the most perfect answer possible when she fought for her place as a world-builder of human history, but she revealed the marvellous vigour of the indomitable human spirit which could say, "Bhumaiva suk- ham/' “Greatness is happiness itself”. Her Em- pire has been sundered and shattered, but her faith in the sublimity of man still persists in one of the vast strata of human geology. And this faith was the true spirit of her religion, which had been dim in the tradition of her formal theology, merely supplying her with an emotional pastime and not SQ THE RELIGION OF MAN with spiritual inspiration. In fact this theology fell far below her personality, and for that reason it went against her religion, whose mission was to reveal her humanity on the background of the eternal. Let us seek the religion of this and other people not in their gods but in Man, who dreamed of his own infinity and majestically worked for all time, defying danger and death.
Since the dim nebula of consciousness in Life’s world became intensified into a centre of self in Man, his history began to unfold its rapid chap- ters; for it is the history of his strenuous answers in various forms to the question rising from this conscious self of his, “What am I?” Man is not happy or contented as the animals are; for his hap- piness and his peace depend upon the truth of his answer. The animal attains his success in a physi- cal sufficiency that satisfies his nature. When a crocodile finds no obstruction in behaving like an orthodox crocodile he grins and grows and has no cause to complain. It is truism to say that Man also must behave like a man in order to find his truth. But he is sorely puzzled and asks in be- wilderment: “What is it to be like a man? What am I?” It is not left to the tiger to discover what is his own nature as a tiger, nor, for the matter of that, to choose a special colour for his coat accord- ing to his taste.
But Man has taken centuries to discuss the ques- 6o THE SURPLUS IN MAN tion of his own true nature and has not yet come to a conclusion. He has been building up elab- orate religions to convince himself, against his nat- ural inclinations, of the paradox that he is not what he is but something greater. What is significant about these efforts is the fact that in order to know himself truly Man in his religion cultivates the vision of a Being who exceeds him in truth and with whom also he has his kinship. These religions differ in details and often in their moral signifi- cance, but they have a common tendency. In them men seek their own supreme value, which they call divine, in some personality anthropomorphic in •character. The Mind, which is abnormally scien- tific, scoffs at this; but it should know that religion is not essentially cosmic or even abstract; it finds itself when it touches the Brahma in man; other- wise it has no justification to exist.
It must be admitted that such a human element introduces into our religion a mentality that often has its danger in aberrations that are intellectually blind, morally reprehensible and aesthetically repellent But these are wrong answers; they dis- tort the truth of man and, like all mistakes in sociology, in economics or politics, they have to be fought against and overcome. Their truth has to be judged by the standard of human perfection and not by some arbitrary injunction that refuses to be confirmed by the tribunal of the human con- 61 THE RELIGION OF MAN science. And great religions are the outcome of great revolutions in this direction causing funda- mental changes of our attitude. These religions invariably made their appearance as a protest against the earlier creeds which had been unhu- man, where ritualistic observances had become more important and outer compulsions more im- perious. These creeds were, as I have said before, cults of power; they had their value for us, not helping us to become perfect through truth, but to grow formidable through possessions and magic control of the deity.
But possibly I am doing injustice to our ances- tors. It is more likely that they worshipped power not merely because of its utility, but because they, in their way, recognized it as truth with which their own power had its communication and in which it found its fulfilment. They must have nat- urally felt that this power was the power of will behind nature, and not some impersonal insanity that unaccountably always stumbled upon correct results. For it would have been the greatest depth of imbecility on their part had they brought their homage to an abstraction, mindless, heartless and purposeless; in fact, infinitely below them in its manifestation.
62 CHAPTER IV SPIRITUAL UNION When Man’s preoccupation with the means of livelihood became less insistent he had the leisure to come to the mystery of his own self, and could not help feeling that the truth of his personality had both its relationship and its perfection in an endless world of humanity. His religion, which in the beginning had its cosmic background of power, came to a higher stage when it found its back- ground in the human truth of personality. It must not be thought that in this channel it was narrow- ing the range of our consciousness of the infinite.