rowing the treasure of the past from all quarters of the world. He dwells in a universe of history, in an environment of continuous remembrance. The animal occupies time only through the multi- plication of its own race, but man through the memorials of his mind, raised along the pilgrim- age of progress. The stupendousness of his knowl- edge and wisdom is due to their roots spreading into and drawing sap from the far-reaching area of history.
Man has his other dwelling place in the realm of inner realization, in the element of an imma- terial value. This is a world where from the sub- terranean soil of his mind his consciousness often, like a seed, unexpectedly sends up sprouts into the heart of a luminous freedom, and the individual is made to realize his truth in the universal Man. I hope it may prove of interest if I give an account of my own personal experience of a sudden spir- itual outburst from within me which is like the underground current of a perennial stream unex- pectedly welling up on the surface.
I was born in a family which, at that time, was earnestly developing a monotheistic religion based upon the philosophy of the Upanishad. Somehow my mind at first remained coldly aloof, absolutely uninfluenced by any religion whatever. It was through an idiosyncrasy of my temperament thal I refused to accept any religious teaching merely 89 THE RELIGION OF MAN because people in my surroundings believed it to be true. I could not persuade myself to imagine that I had a religion because everybody whom I might trust believed in its value.
Thus my mind was brought up in an atmos- phere of freedom — freedom from the dominance of any creed that had its sanction in the definite authority of some scripture, or in the teaching of some organized body of worshippers. And, there- fore, the man who questions me has every right to distrust my vision and reject my testimony. In such a case, the authority of some particular book venerated by a large number of men may have greater weight than the assertion of an individ- ual, and therefore I never claim any right to preach.
When I look back upon those days, it seems to me that unconsciously I followed the path of my Vedic ancestors, and was inspired by the tropical sky with its suggestion of an uttermost Beyond. The wonder of the gathering clouds hanging heavy with the unshed rain, of the sudden sweep of storms arousing vehement gestures along the line of coconut trees, the fierce loneliness of the blaz- ing summer noon, the silent sunrise behind the dewy veil of autumn morning, kept my mind with the intimacy of a pervasive companionship.
Then came my initiation ceremony of Brahmin- hood when the gayatri verse of meditation was 90 THE VISION given to me, whose meaning, according to the ex- planation I had, runs as follows: “Let me contemplate the adorable splendour of Him who created the earth, the air and the starry spheres, and sends the power of comprehension within our minds.’^ This produced a sense of serene exaltation in me, the daily meditation upon the infinite being which unites in one stream of creation my mind and the outer world. Though to-day I find no difficulty in realizing this being as an infinite personality in whom the subject and object are perfectly reconciled, at that time the idea to me was vague. Therefore the current of feeling that it aroused in my mind was indefinite, like the circulation of air — an atmosphere which needed a definite world to complete itself and satisfy me. For it is evident that my religion is a poet’s religion, and neither that of an orthodox man of piety nor that of a theologian. Its touch comes to me through the same unseen and trackless channel as does the in- spiration of my songs. My religious life has fol- lowed the same mysterious line of growth as has my poetical life. Somehow they are wedded to each other and, though their betrothal had a long period of ceremony, it was kept secret to me.
When I was eighteen, a sudden spring breeze of religious experience for the first time came to my life and passed away leaving in my memory a 91 THE RELIGION OF MAN direct message of spiritual reality. One day while I stood watching at early dawn the sun sending out its rays from behind the trees, I suddenly felt as if some ancient mist had in a moment lifted from my sight, and the morning light on the face of the world revealed an inner radiance of joy. The invisible screen of the commonplace was re- moved from all things and all men, and their ulti- mate significance was intensified in my mind; and this is the definition of beauty. That which was memorable in this experience was its human mes- sage, the sudden expansion of my consciousness in the super-personal world of man. The poem I wrote on the first day of my surprise was named “The Awakening of the Waterfall”. The water- fall, whose spirit lay dormant in its ice-bound iso- lation, was touched by the sun and, bursting in a cataract of freedom, it found its finality in an unending sacrifice, in a continual union with the sea. After four days the vision passed away, and the lid hung down upon my inner sight. In the dark, the world once again put on its disguise of the obscurity of an ordinary fact.
When I grew older and was employed in a responsible work in some villages I took my place in a neighbourhood where the current of time ran slow and joys and sorrows had their simple and elemental shades and lights. The day which had its special significance for me came with all its 92 THE VISION drifting trivialities of the commonplace life. The ordinary work of my morning had come to its close and before going to take my bath I stood for a moment at my window, overlooking a market place on the bank of a dry river bed, welcoming the first flood of rain along its channel. Suddenly I became conscious of a stirring of soul within me. My world of experience in a moment seemed to become lighted, and facts that were detached and dim found a great unity of meaning. The feel- ing which I had was like that which a man, grop- ing through a fog without knowing his destination, might feel when he suddenly discovers that he stands before his own house.
I still remember the day in my childhood when I was made to struggle across my lessons in a first primer, strewn with isolated words smothered under the burden of spelling. The morning hour appeared to me like a once-illumined page, grown dusty and faded, discoloured into irrelevant marks, smudges and gaps, wearisome in its moth-eaten meaninglessness. Suddenly I came to a rhymed sentence of combined words, which may be trans- lated thus — ^“It rains, the leaves tremble”. At once I came to a world wherein I recovered my full meaning. My mind touched the creative realm of expression, and at that moment I was no longer a mere student with his mind muffled by spelling lessons, enclosed by classroom. The rhyAmic pic- 93 THE RELIGION OF MAN ture of the tremulous leaves beaten by the rain opened before my mind the world which does not merely carry information, but a harmony with my being. The unmeaning fragments lost their indi- vidual isolation and my mind revelled in the unity of a vision. In a similar manner, on that morning in the village, the facts of my life suddenly ap- peared to me in a luminous unity of truth. All things that had seemed like vagrant waves were revealed to my mind in relation to a boundless sea. I felt sure that some Being who comprehended me and my world was seeking his best expression in all my experiences, uniting them into an ever- widening individuality which is a spiritual work of art.
To this Being I was responsible; for the creation in me is his as well as mine. It may be that it was the same creative Mind that is shaping the uni- verse to its eternal idea; but in me as a person it had one of its special centres of a personal relation- ship growing into a deepening consciousness. I had my sorrows that left their memory in a long burning track across my days, but I felt at that moment that in them I lent myself to a travail of creation that ever exceeded my own personal bounds like stars which in their individual fire- bursts are lighting the history of the universe. It gave me a great joy to feel in my life detachment at the idea of a mystery of a meeting of the two in 94 THE VISION a creative comradeship. I felt that I had found my religion at last, the religion of Man, in which the infinite became defined in humanity and came close to me so as to need my love and co-opera- tion.
This idea of mine found at a later date its ex- pression in some of my poems addressed to what I called Jivan devata, the Lord of my life. Fully aware of my awkwardness in dealing with a for- eign language, with some hesitation I give a trans- lation, being sure that any evidence revealed through the self-recording instrument of poetry is more authentic than answers extorted through conscious questionings: Thou who art the innermost Spirit of my being, art thou pleased, Lord of my life?
For I gave to thee my cup filled with all the pain and delight that the crushed grapes of my heart had surrendered, I wove with the rhythm of colours and songs the cover for thy bed, and with the molten gold of my desires I fashioned playthings for thy passing hours.
I know not why thou chosest me for thy partner, Lord of my life!
Didst thou store my days and nights, my deeds and dreams for the alchemy of thy art, and string in the chain of thy music my songs of autumn and spring, and gather the flowers from my mature moments for thy crown?
95 THE RELIGION OF MAN I see thine eyes gazing at the dark of my heart, Lord of my life, I wonder if my failures and wrongs are forgiven.
For many were my days without service and nights of forgetfulness; futile were the flowers that faded in the shade not offered to thee.
Often the tired strings of my lute slackened at the strain of thy tunes.
And often at the ruin of wasted hours my desolate evenings were filled with tears.
But have my days come to their end at last, Lord of my life, while my arms round thee grow limp, my kisses losing their truth?
Then break up the meeting of this languid day.
Renew the old in me in fresh forms of delight; and let the wedding come once again in a new ceremony of life.
You will understand from this how unconsciously I had been travelling towards the realization which I stumbled upon in an idle moment on a day in July, when morning clouds thickened on the east- ern horizon and a caressing shadow lay on the tremulous bamboo branches, while an excited group of village boys was noisily dragging from the bank an old fishing boat; and I cannot tell how at that moment an unexpected train of thoughts ran across my mind like a strange caravan carry- ing the wealth of an unknown kingdom.
From my infancy I had a keen sensitiveness which kept my mind tingling with consciousness 96 THE VISION of the world around me, natural and human. We had a small garden attached to our house; it was a fairyland to me, where miracles of beauty were of everyday occurrence.
Almost every morning in the early hour of the dusk, I would run out from my bed in a great hurry to greet the first pink flush of the dawn through the shivering branches of the palm trees which stood in a line along the garden boundary, while the grass glistened as the dew-drops caught the earliest tremor of the morning breeze. The sky seemed to bring to me the call of a personal companionship, and all my heart — my whole body in fact — used to drink in at a draught the over- flowing light and peace of those silent hours. I was anxious never to miss a single morning, be- cause each one was precious to me, more precious than gold to the miser. I am certain that I felt a larger meaning of my own self when the barrier vanished between me and what was beyond myself.
I had been blessed with that sense of wonder which gives a child his right of entry into the treasure house of mystery in the depth of exist- ence. My studies in the school I neglected, because they rudely dismembered me from the context of my world and I felt miserable, like a caged rabbit in a biological institute. This, perhaps, will ex- plain the meaning of my religion. This world was living to me, intimately close to my life, perme- 97 97 THE RELIGION OF MAN ated by a subtle touch of kinship which enhanced the value of my own being.
It is true that this world also has its impersonal aspect of truth which is pursued by the man of impersonal science. The father has his personal relationship with his son; but as a doctor he may detach the fact of a son from that relationship and let the child become an abstraction to him, only a living body with its physiological functions. It cannot be said that if through the constant pursuit of his vocations he altogether discards the personal element in his relation to his son he reaches a greater truth as a doctor than he does as a father. The scientific knowledge of his son is information about a fact, and not the realization of a truth. In his intimate feeling for his son he touches an ulti- mate truth — the truth of relationship, the truth of a harmony in the universe, the fundamental principle of creation. It is not merely the number of protons and electrons which represents the truth of an element; it is the mystery of their relation- ship which cannot be analysed. We are made con- scious of this truth of relationship immediately within us in our love, in our joy; and from this experience of ours we have the right to say that the Supreme One, who relates all things, compre- hends the universe, is all love — the love Aat is the highest truth being the most perfect relationship. 98 THE VISION THE VISION I Still remember the shock of repulsion I re- ceived as a child when some medical student brought to me a piece of a human windpipe and tried to excite my admiration for its structure. He tried to convince me that it was the source of the beautiful human voice. But I could not bear the artisan to occupy the throne that was for the artist who concealed the machinery and revealed the creation in its ineffable unity. God does not care to keep exposed the record of his power written in geological inscriptions, but he is proudly glad of the expression of beauty which he spreads on the green grass, in the flowers, in the play of the col- ours on the clouds, in the murmuring music of run- ning water.
I had a vague notion as to who or what it was that touched my heart’s chords, like the infant which does not know its mother’s name, or who or what she is. The feeling which I always had was a deep satisfaction of personality that flowed into my nature through living channels of communica- tion from all sides.
I am afraid that the scientist may remind me that to lose sight of the distinction between life and non-life, the human and the non-human, is a sign of the primitive mind. While admitting it, let me hope that it is not an utter condemnation, but rather the contrary. It may be a true instinct 99 THE RELIGION OF MAN of Science itself, an instinctive logic, which makes the primitive mind think that humanity has be- come possible as a fact only because of a universal human truth which has harmony with its reason, with its will. In the details of our universe there are some differences that may be described as non-human, but not in their essence. The bones are different from the muscles, but they are organi- cally one in the body. Our feeling of joy, our imagination, realizes a profound organic unity with the universe comprehended by the human mind. Without minimizing the differences that are in detailed manifestations, there is nothing wrong in trusting the mind, which is occasionally made intensely conscious of an all-pervading personality answering to the personality of man.
The details of reality must be studied in their differences by Science, but it can never know the character of the grand unity of relationship per- vading it, which can only be realized immediately by the human spirit. And therefore it is the primal imagination of man — the imagination which is fresh and immediate in its experiences — that exclaims in a poet’s verse: Wisdom and spirit of the universe!
Thou soul, that art the eternity of thought, And giv’st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion.
THE VISION And in another poet’s words it speaks of That light whose smile kindles the universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move.
The theologian may follow the scientist and shake his head and say that all that I have written is pantheism. But let us not indulge in an idolatry of name and dethrone living truth in its favour. When I say that I am a man, it is implied by that word that there is such a thing as a general idea of Man which persistently manifests itself in every particular human being, who is different from all other individuals. If we lazily label such a belief as “pananthropy” and divert our thoughts from its mysteriousness by such a title it does not help us much. Let me assert my faith by saying that this world, consisting of what we call animate and inanimate things, has found its culmination in man, its best expression. Man, as a creation, repre- sents the Creator, and this is why of all creatures it has been possible for him to comprehend this world in his knowledge and in his feeling and in his imagination, to realize in his individual spirit a union with a Spirit that is everywhere.
There is an illustration that I have made use of in which I supposed that a stranger from some other planet has paid a visit to our earth and hap- pens to hear the sound of a human voice on the gramophone. All that is obvious to him and most lOI THE RELIGION OF MAN seemingly active, is the revolving disc. He is un- able to discover the personal truth that lies behind, and so might accept the impersonal scientific fact of the disc as final — the fact that could be touched and measured. He would wonder how it could be possible for a machine to speak to the soul. Then, if in pursuing the mystery, he should suddenly come to the heart of the music through a meeting with the composer, he would at once understand the meaning of that music as a personal communi- cation.
That which merely gives us information can be explained in terms of measurement, but that which gives us joy cannot be explained by the facts of a mere grouping of atoms and molecules. Some- where in the arrangement of this world there seems to be a great concern about giving us delight, which shows that, in the universe, over and above the meaning of matter and forces, there is a mes- sage conveyed through the magic touch of person- ality. This touch cannot be analysed, it can only be felt. We cannot prove it any more than the man from the other planet could prove to the sat- isfaction of his fellows the personality which re- mained invisible, but which, through the machin- ery, spoke direct to the heart.
Is it merely because the rose is round and pink that it gives me more satisfaction than the gold which could buy me the necessities of life, or any THE VISION number of slaves? One may, at the outset, deny the truth that a rose gives more delight than a piece of gold. But such an objector must remem- ber that I am not speaking of artificial values. If we had to cross a desert whose sand was made of gold, then the cruel glitter of these dead particles would become a terror for us, and the sight of a rose would bring to us the music of paradise.
The final meaning of the delight which we find in a rose can never be in the roundness of its petals, just as the final meaning of the joy of music cannot be in a gramophone disc. Somehow we feel that through a rose the language of love reached our heart. Do we not carry a rose to our beloved because in it is already embodied a message which, unlike our language of words, cannot be analysed. Through this gift of a rose we utilize a universal language of joy for our own purposes of expres- sion.
Fortunately for me a collection of old lyrical poems composed by the poets of the Vaishnava sect came to my hand when I was young. I became aware of some underlying idea deep in the obvious meaning of these love poems. I felt the joy of an explorer who suddenly discovers the key to the language lying hidden in the hieroglyphs which are beautiful in themselves. I was sure that these poets were speaking about the supreme Lover, whose touch we experience in all our relations of THE RELIGION OF MAN love — the love of nature’s beauty, of the animal, the child, the comrade, the beloved, the love that illuminates our consciousness of reality. They sang of a love that ever flows through numerous obstacles between men and Man the Divine, the eternal relation which has the relationship of mutual dependence for a fulfilment that needs perfect union of individuals and the Universal.
The Vaishnava poet sings of the Lover who has his flute which, with its different stops, gives out the varied notes of beauty and love that are in Nature and Man. These notes bring to us our message of invitation. They eternally urge us to come out from the seclusion of our self-centred life into the realm of love and truth. Are we deaf by nature, or is it that we have been deafened by the claims of the world, of self-seeking, by the clamorous noise of the market-place? We miss the voice of the Lover, and we fight, we rob, we ex- ploit the weak, we chuckle at our cleverness, when we can appropriate for our use what is due to others; we make our lives a desert by turning away from our world that stream of love which pours down from the blue sky and wells up from the bosom of the earth.
In the region of Nature, by unlocking the secret doors of the workshop department, one may come to that dark hall where dwells the mechanic and help to attain usefulness, but through it one can THE VISION never attain finality. Here is the storehouse of innumerable facts and, however necessary they may be, they have not the treasure of fulfilment in them. But the hall of union is there, where dwells the Lover in the heart of existence. When a man reaches it he at once realizes that he has come to Truth, to immortality, and he is glad with a glad- ness which is an end, and yet which has no end.
Mere information about facts, mere discovery of power, belongs to the outside and not to the inner soul of things. Gladness is the one criterion of truth, and we know when we have touched Truth by the music it gives, by the joy of greeting it sends forth to the truth in us. That is the true foundation of all religions. It is not as ether waves that we receive light; the morning does not wait for some scientist for its introduction to us. In the same way we touch the infinite reality immedi- ately within us only when we perceive the pure truth of love or goodness, not through the explana- tions of theologians, not through the erudite dis- cussion of ethical doctrines.
I have already made the confession that my religion is a poet’s religion. All that I feel about it is from vision and not from knowledge. Frankly, I acknowledge that I cannot satisfactorily answer any questions about evil, or about what happens after death. Nevertheless, I am sure that there have come moments in my own experience when THE RELIGION OF MAN my soul has touched the infinite and has become intensely conscious of it through the illumination of joy. It has been said in our Upanishad that our mind and our words come away baffled from the Supreme Truth, but he who knows truth through the immediate joy of his own soul is saved from all doubts and fears.
In the night we stumble over things and become acutely conscious of their individual separateness. But the day reveals the greater unity which em- braces them. The man whose inner vision is bathed in an illumination of his consciousness at once realizes the spiritual unity reigning supreme over all differences. His mind no longer awk- wardly stumbles over individual facts of separate- ness in the human world, accepting them as final. He realizes that peace is in the inner harmony which dwells in truth and not in any outer adjust- ments. He knows that beauty carries an eternal assurance of our spiritual relationship to reality, which waits for its perfection in the response of our love.
io6 CHAPTER VII THE MAN OF MY HEART AT the outburst of an experience which is unusual, such as happened to me in the beginning of my youth, the puzzled mind seeks its explanation in some settled foundation of that which is usual, trying to adjust an unexpected inner message to an organized belief which goes by the general name of a religion. And, therefore, I naturally was glad at that time of youth to accept from my father the post of secretary to a special section of the monotheistic church of which he was the leader. I took part in its services mainly by composing hymns which unconsciously took the many- thumbed impression of the orthodox mind, a com- posite smudge of tradition. Urged by my sense of duty I strenuously persuaded myself to think that my new mental attitude was in harmony with that of the members of our association, although I con- stantly stumbled upon obstacles and felt con- straints that hurt me to the quick.
At last I came to discover that in my conduct I was not strictly loyal to my religion, but only to the religious institution. This latter represented an artificial average, with its standard of truth at THE RELIGION OF MAN its Static minimum, jealous of any vital growth that exceeded its limits. I have my conviction that in religion, and also in the arts, that which is com- mon to a group is not important. Indeed, very often it is a contagion of mutual imitation. After a long struggle with the feeling that I was using a mask to hide the living face of truth, I gave up my connection with our church.
About this time, one day I chanced to hear a song from a beggar belonging to the Baiil * sect of Bengal. We have in the modern Indian Re- ligion deities of different names, forms and mythol- ogy, some Vedic and others aboriginal. They have their special sectarian idioms and associations that give emotional satisfaction to those who are accustomed to their hypnotic influences. Some of them may have their aesthetic value to me and others philosophical significance overcumbered by exuberant distraction of legendary myths. But what struck me in this simple song was a religious ex- pression that was neither grossly concrete, full of crude details, nor metaphysical in its ratified trans- cendentalism. At the same time it was alive with an emotional sincerity. It spoke of an intense yearning of the heart for the divine which is in Man and not in the temple, or scriptures, in images and S3rmbols. The worshipper addresses his songs to the Man the ideal, and says: * See Appendix I.
THE MAN OF MY HEART Temples and mosques obstruct thy path, and I fail to hear thy call or to move, when the teachers and priest angrily crowd round me.
He does not follow any tradition of ceremony, but only believes in love. According to him Love is the magic stone, that transmutes by its touch greed into sacrifice.
He goes on to say: For the sake of this love heaven longs to become earth and gods to become man.
Since then I have often tried to meet these people, and sought to understand them through their songs, which are their only form of worship. One is often surprised to find in many of these verses a striking originality of sentiment and diction; for, at their best, they are spontaneously individual in their expressions. One such song is a hymn to the Ever Young. It exclaims: O my flower buds, we worship the Young; for the Young is the source of the holy Ganges of life; from the Young flows the supreme bliss.
And it says: We never offer ripe corn in the service of the Young, nor fruit, nor seed, but only the lotus bud which is of our own loaind.
The young hour of the day, the morning, is our time for the worship of Him.
from whose contemplation has sprung the Universe.
THE RELIGION OF MAN It calls the Spirit of the Young the Brahma Kamal, “the infinite lotus”. For it is something which has perfection in its heart and yet ever grows and unfolds its petals.
There have been men in India who never wrote learned texts about the religion of Man but had an overpowering desire and practical training for its attainment. They bore in their life the testi- mony of their intimacy with the Person who is in all persons, of Man the formless in the individual forms of men. Rajjab, a poet-saint of medieval India, says of Man: God-man {nara-narayana) is thy definition, it is not a delusion but truth. In thee the infinite seeks the finite, the perfect knowl- edge seeks love, and when the form and the Formless (the indi- vidual and the universal) are united love is fulfilled in devotion.
Ravidas, another poet of the same age, sings: Thou seest me, O Divine Man (narahari), and I see thee, and our love becomes mutual.
Of this God-man a village poet of Bengal says: He is within us, an unfathomable reality. We know him when we unlock our own self and meet in a true love with all others.
A brother poet of his says: Man seeks the man in me and I lose myself and run out.
And another singer sings of the Ideal Man, and says: no THE MAN OF MY HEART How could the scripture know the meaning of the Lord who has his play in the world of human forms?
Listen, O brother man (declares Chandidas), the truth of man is the highest truth, there is no other truth above it.
All these are proofs of a direct perception of humanity as an objective truth that rouses a pro- found feeling of longing and love. This is very unlike what we find in the intellectual cult of humanity, which is like a body that has tragically lost itself in the purgatory of shadows.
Wordsworth says: We live by admiration, hope and love, And ever as these are well and wisely fixed In dignity of being we ascend.
It is for dignity of being that we aspire through the expansion of our consciousness in a great real- ity of man to which we belong. We realize it through admiration and love, through hope that soars beyond the actual, beyond our own span of life into an endless time wherein we live the life of all men.
This is the infinite perspective of human per- sonality where man finds his religion. Science may include in its field of knowledge the starry world and the world beyond it; philosophy may try to find some universal principle which is at the root of all things, but religion inevitably concentrates itself on humanity, which illumines our reason, inspires our wisdom, stimulates our love, claims III THE RELIGION OF MAN our intelligent service. There is an impersonal idea, which we call law, discoverable by an imper- sonal logic in its pursuit of the fathomless depth of the hydrogen atom and the distant virgin worlds clothed in eddying fire. But as the physiology of our beloved is not our beloved, so this impersonal law is not our God, the Pitritamah pitrinam, the Father who is ultimate in all fathers and mothers, of him we cannot say: Tad viddhi pranipatena pariprasnena sevaya ( Realize him by obeisance, by the desire to know, by service ) For this can only be relevant to the God who is God and man at the same time; and if this faith be blamed for being anthropomorphic, then Man is to be blamed for being Man, and the lover for loving his dear one as a person instead of as a principle of psychology. We can never go beyond Man in all that we know and feel, and a mendicant singer of Bengal has said: Our world is as it is in our ccsnprehension; the thought and existence are commingled. Everything would be lost in uncon- sciousness if man were nought; and when response comes to your own call you know the meaning of reality.
According to him, what we call nature is not a philosophical abstraction, not cosmos, but what is revealed to man as nature. In fact it is included in himself and therefore there is a commingling of his mind with it, and in that he finds his Qwn THE MAN OP MY HEART being. He is truly lessened in humanity if he can- not take it within him and through it feel the ful- ness of his own existence. His arts and literature are constantly giving expression to this intimate communion of man with his world. And the Vedic poet exclaims in his hymn to the sun: Thou who nourishest the earth, who walkest alone, O Sun, withdraw thy rays, reveal thy exceeding beauty to me and let me realize that the Person who is there is the One who I am.
It is for US to realize the Person who is in the heart of the All by the emancipated consciousness of our own personality. We know that the highest mission of science is to find the universe enveloped by the human comprehension; to see man’s vtsva- rupa, his great mental body, that touches the extreme verge of time and space, that includes the whole world within itself.
The original Aryans who came to India had for their gods the deities of rain, wind, fire, the cosmic forces which singularly enough found no definite shapes in images. A time came when it was recog- nized that individually they had no separate, un- related power of their own, but there was one infinite source of power which was named Brahma. The cosmic divinity developed into an impersonal idea; what was physical grew into a metaphysical abstraction, even as in modern science matter vanishes into mathematics. And Brahma, accord- THE RELIGION OF MAN ing to those Indians, could neither be apprehended by mind nor described by words, even as matter in its ultimate analysis proves to be.
However satisfactory that idea might be as the unknowable principle relating to itself all the phenomena that are non-personal, it left the per- sonal man in a void of negation. It cannot be gain- said that we can never realize things in this world from inside, we can but know how they appear to us. In fact, in all knowledge we know our own self in its condition of knowledge. And religion sought the highest value of man’s existence in this self. For this is the only truth of which he is immediately conscious from within. And he said: Purushanna para kinchit sa kashthta sa para gatih (Nothing is greater than the Person; he is the supreme, he is the ultimate goal.)