i LIBRARY 
 
 ijKvmT* OB 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 I SANDKGO
 
 PERSONALITY
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
 
 AT SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA 
 
 Frontispiece.
 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED 
 IN AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE 
 
 . 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1917
 
 COPYRIGHT
 
 TO 
 
 C. F. ANDREWS
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. WHAT is ART? 
 II. THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 
 
 III. THE SECOND BIRTH 
 
 IV. MY SCHOOL 
 V. MEDITATION 
 
 VI. WOMAN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 77 
 in 
 
 151 
 169 
 
 ILLUSTKATIONS 
 
 FACE PAGE 
 
 AT SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA . . Frontispiece 
 
 SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND W. W. PEARSON AT 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA . . . .41 
 
 AT SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA . . -77 
 
 AT THE SAN DIEGO EXPOSITION . . . in 
 
 AT COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO r~~ . 151 
 
 SIR RABINDRANATH TAGORE . . . .169 
 
 Vll
 
 WHAT IS ART? 
 
 B
 
 WHAT IS ART? 
 
 WE are face to face with this great world and 
 our relations to it are manifold. One of these 
 is the necessity we have to live, to till the 
 soil, to gather food, to clothe ourselves, to get 
 materials from nature. We are always making 
 things that will satisfy our need, and we come 
 in touch with Nature in our efforts to meet 
 these needs. Thus we are always in touch 
 with this great world through hunger and thirst 
 and all our physical needs. 
 
 Then we have our mind ; and mind seeks its 
 own food. Mind has its necessity also. It 
 must find out reason in things. It is faced with 
 a multiplicity of facts, and is bewildered when 
 it cannot find one unifying principle which 
 simplifies the heterogeneity of things. Man's 
 constitution is such that he must not only find 
 facts, but also some laws which will lighten the 
 burden of mere number and quantity.
 
 4 PERSONALITY 
 
 There is yet another man in me, not the 
 physical, but the personal man ; which has its 
 likes and dislikes, and wants to find something 
 to fulfil its needs of love. This personal man is 
 found in the region where we are free from all 
 necessity, above the needs, both of body and 
 mind, above the expedient and useful. It is 
 the highest in man, this personal man. And 
 it has personal relations of its own with the 
 great world, and comes to it for something to 
 satisfy personality. 
 
 The world of science is not a world of reality, 
 it is an abstract world of force. We can use it 
 by the help of our intellect but cannot realize 
 it by the help of our personality. It is like 
 a swarm of mechanics who though producing 
 things for ourselves as personal beings, are mere 
 shadows to us. 
 
 But there is another world which is real to 
 us. We see it, feel it ; we deal with it with all 
 our emotions. Its mystery is endless because 
 we cannot analyse it or measure it. We can 
 but say, " Here you are." 
 
 This is the world from which Science turns 
 away, and in which Art takes its place. 
 And if we can answer the question as to 
 what art is, we shall know what this world
 
 WHAT IS ART ? 5 
 
 is with which art has such intimate relation- 
 ship. 
 
 It is not an important question as it stands. 
 For Art, like life itself, has grown by its own 
 impulse, and man has taken his pleasure hi it 
 without definitely knowing what it is. And 
 we could safely leave it there, in the subsoil of 
 consciousness, where things that are of life are 
 nourished in the dark. 
 
 But we live in an age when our world is 
 turned inside out and when whatever lies at 
 the bottom is dragged to the surface. Our 
 very process of living, which is an unconscious 
 process, we must bring under the scrutiny of 
 our knowledge, even though to know is to kill 
 our object of research and to make it a museum 
 specimen. 
 
 The question has been asked, " What is Art ? " 
 and answers have been given by various persons. 
 Such discussions introduce elements of conscious 
 purpose into the region where both our faculties 
 of creation and enjoyment have been spontaneous 
 and half-conscious. They aim at supplying us 
 with very definite standards by which to guide 
 our judgment of art productions. Therefore we 
 have heard judges in the modern time giving 
 verdict, according to some special rules of their
 
 6 PERSONALITY 
 
 own making, for the dethronement of im- 
 mortals whose supremacy has been unchallenged 
 for centuries. 
 
 This meteorological disturbance in the atmo- 
 sphere of art criticism, whose origin is in the 
 West, has crossed over to our own shores in 
 Bengal, bringing mist and clouds in its wake, 
 where there was a clear sky. We have begun 
 to ask ourselves whether creations of art should 
 not be judged either according to their fitness 
 to be universally understood, or their philo- 
 sophical interpretation of life, or their usefulness 
 for solving the problems of the day, or their 
 giving expression to something which is peculiar 
 to the genius of the people to which the artist 
 belongs. Therefore when men are seriously 
 engaged in fixing the standard of value in art 
 by something which is not inherent in it, or, in 
 other words, when the excellence of the river is 
 going to be judged by the point of view of a 
 canal, we cannot leave the question to its fate, 
 but must take our part in the deliberations. 
 
 Should we begin with a definition ? But 
 definition of a thing which has a life growth is 
 really limiting one's own vision in order to be 
 able to see clearly. And clearness is not 
 necessarily the only, or the most important,
 
 WHAT IS ART? 7 
 
 aspect of a truth. A bull's-eye lantern view is 
 a clear view, but not a complete view. If we 
 are to know a wheel in motion, we need not 
 mind if all its spokes cannot be counted. When 
 not merely the accuracy of shape, but velocity 
 of motion, is important, we have to be content 
 with a somewhat imperfect definition of the 
 wheel. Living things have far-reaching relation- 
 ships with their surroundings, some of which are 
 invisible and go deep down into the soil. In 
 our zeal for definition we may lop off branches 
 and roots of a tree to turn it into a log, which is 
 easier to roll about from classroom to classroom, 
 and therefore suitable for a text- book. But 
 because it allows a nakedly clear view of itself, 
 it cannot be said that a log gives a truer view of 
 a tree as a whole. 
 
 Therefore I shall not define Art, but question 
 myself about the reason of its existence, and try 
 to find out whether it owes its origin to some 
 social purpose, or to the need of catering for 
 our aesthetic enjoyment, or whether it has come 
 out of some impulse of expression, which is the 
 impulse of our being itself. 
 
 A fight has been going on for a long time round 
 the saying, " Art for Art's sake," which seems to 
 have fallen into disrepute among a section of
 
 8 PERSONALITY 
 
 Western critics. It is a sign of the recurrence 
 of the ascetic ideal of the puritanic age, when 
 enjoyment as an end in itself was held to be 
 sinful. But all puritanism is a reaction. It 
 does not represent truth in its normal aspect. 
 When enjoyment loses its direct touch with life, 
 growing fastidious and fantastic in its world of 
 elaborate conventions, then comes the call for 
 renunciation which rejects happiness itself as a 
 snare. I am not going into the history of your 
 modern art, which I am not at all competent 
 to discuss ; yet I can assert, as a general truth, 
 that when a man tries to thwart himself in his 
 desire for delight, converting it merely into his 
 desire to know, or to do good, then the cause 
 must be that his power of feeling delight has 
 lost its natural bloom and healthiness. 
 
 The rhetoricians in old India had no hesitation 
 in saying, that enjoyment is the soul of litera- 
 ture, the enjoyment which is disinterested. 
 But the word " enjoyment " has to be used with 
 caution. When analysed, its spectrum shows 
 an endless series of rays of different colours 
 and intensity throughout its different worlds of 
 stars. The art world contains elements which 
 are distinctly its own and which emit lights that 
 have their special range and property. It is
 
 WHAT IS ART? 9 
 
 our duty to distinguish them and arrive at their 
 origin and growth. 
 
 The most important distinction between the 
 animal and man is this, that the animal is very 
 nearly bound within the limits of its necessities, 
 the greater part of its activities being necessary 
 for its self-preservation and the preservation of 
 race. Like a retail shopkeeper, it has no large 
 profit from its trade of life ; the bulk of its earn- 
 ings must be spent in paying back the interest 
 to its bank. Most of its resources are employed 
 in the mere endeavour to live. But man, in 
 life's commerce, is a big merchant. He earns 
 a great deal more than he is absolutely com- 
 pelled to spend. Therefore there is a vast ex- 
 cess of wealth in man's life, which gives him 
 the freedom to be useless and irresponsible to a 
 great measure. There are large outlying tracts, 
 surrounding his necessities, where he has objects 
 that are ends in themselves. 
 
 The animals must have knowledge, so that 
 their knowledge can be employed for useful pur- 
 poses of their life. But there they stop. They 
 must know their surroundings in order to be able 
 to take their shelter and seek their food, some 
 properties of things in order to build their dwell- 
 ings, some signs of the different seasons to be
 
 10 PERSONALITY 
 
 able to get ready to adapt themselves to the 
 changes. Man also must know because he 
 must live. But man has a surplus where he 
 can proudly assert that knowledge is for the 
 sake of knowledge. There he has the pure 
 enjoyment of his knowledge, because there 
 knowledge is freedom. Upon this fund of 
 surplus his science and philosophy thrive. 
 
 Then again, there is a certain amount of 
 altruism in the animal. It is the altruism of 
 parenthood, the altruism of the herd and the 
 hive. This altruism is absolutely necessary for 
 race preservation. But in man there is a great 
 deal more than this. Though he also has to 
 be good, because goodness is necessary for his 
 race, yet he goes far beyond that. His good- 
 ness is not a small pittance, barely sufficient 
 for a hand-to-mouth moral existence. He 
 can amply afford to say that goodness is for 
 the sake of goodness. And upon this wealth 
 of goodness, where honesty is not valued for 
 being the best policy, but because it can afford 
 to go against all policies, man's ethics are 
 founded. 
 
 The idea of " Art for Art's sake " also has its 
 origin in this region of the superfluous. Let 
 us, therefore, try to ascertain what activity
 
 WHAT IS ART? 11 
 
 it is, whose exuberance leads to the production 
 of Art. 
 
 For man, as well as for animals, it is necessary 
 to give expression to feelings of pleasure and 
 displeasure, fear, anger and love. In animals, 
 these emotional expressions have gone little 
 beyond their bounds of usefulness. But in man, 
 though they still have roots in their original 
 purposes, they have spread their branches far 
 and wide in the infinite sky high above their 
 soil. Man has a fund of emotional energy 
 which is not all occupied with his self-pre- 
 servation. This surplus seeks its outlet in the 
 creation of Art, for man's civilisation is built 
 upon his surplus. 
 
 A warrior is not merely content with fighting, 
 which is needful, but, by the aid of music and 
 decorations, he must give expression to the 
 heightened consciousness of the warrior in him, 
 which is not only unnecessary, but in some cases 
 suicidal. The man who has a strong religious 
 feeling not only worships his deity with all 
 care, but his religious personality craves, for 
 its expression, the splendour of the temple, the 
 rich ceremonials of worship. 
 
 When a feeling is aroused in our hearts which 
 is far in excess of the amount that can be com-
 
 12 PERSONALITY 
 
 pletely absorbed by the object which has pro- 
 duced it, it comes back to us and makes' us con- 
 scious of ourselves by its return waves. When 
 we are in poverty, all our attention is fixed out- 
 side us, upon the objects which we must 
 acquire for our need. But when our wealth 
 greatly surpasses our needs, its light is reflected 
 back upon us, and we have the exultation of 
 feeling that we are rich persons. This is the 
 reason why, of all creatures, only man knows 
 himself, because his impulse of knowledge comes 
 back to him in its excess. He feels his per- 
 sonality more intensely than other creatures, 
 because his power of feeling is more than can 
 be exhausted by his objects. This efflux of 
 the consciousness of his personality requires 
 an outlet of expression. Therefore, in Art, 
 man reveals himself and not his objects. His 
 objects have their place in books of information 
 and science, where he has completely to conceal 
 himself. 
 
 I know I shall not be allowed to pass un- 
 challenged when I use the word " personality," 
 which has such an amplitude of meaning. 
 These loose words can be made to fit ideas 
 which have not only different dimensions, but 
 shapes also. They are like raincoats, hanging
 
 WHAT IS ART? 13 
 
 in the hall, which can be taken away by absent- 
 minded individuals who have no claim upon them. 
 
 Man, as a knower, is not fully himself, his 
 mere information does not reveal him. But, as 
 a person, he is the organic man, who has the 
 inherent power to select things from his sur- 
 roundings in order to make them his own. He 
 has his forces of attraction and repulsion by 
 which he not merely piles up things outside 
 him, but creates himself. The principal creative 
 forces, which transmute things into our living 
 structure, are emotional forces. A man, where 
 he is religious, is a person, but not where he is 
 a mere theologian. His feeling for the divine is 
 creative. But his mere knowledge of the divine 
 cannot be formed into his own essence because 
 of this lack of the emotional fire. 
 
 Let us here consider what are the contents of 
 this personality and how it is related to the outer 
 world. This world appears to us as an individ- 
 ual, and not merely as a bundle of invisible 
 forces. For this, as everybody knows, it is 
 greatly indebted to our senses and our mind. 
 This apparent world is man's world. It has 
 taken its special features of shape, colour and 
 movement from the peculiar range and quali- 
 ties of our perception. It is what our sense
 
 14 PERSONALITY 
 
 limits have specially acquired and built for us 
 and walled up. Not only the physical and 
 chemical forces, but man's perceptual forces, 
 are its potent factors, because it is man's 
 world, and not an abstract world of physics or 
 metaphysics. 
 
 This world, which takes its form in the mould 
 of man's perception, still remains only as the 
 partial world of his senses and mind. It is like 
 a guest and not like a kinsman. It becomes 
 completely our own when it comes within the 
 range of our emotions. With our love and 
 hatred, pleasure and pain, fear and wonder, 
 continually working upon it, this world be- 
 comes a part of our personality. It grows 
 with our growth, it changes with our changes. 
 We are great or small, according to the magni- 
 tude and littleness of this assimilation, accord- 
 ing to the quality of its sum total. If this 
 world were taken away, our personality would 
 lose all its content. 
 
 Our emotions are the gastric juices which 
 transform this world of appearance into the 
 more intimate world of sentiments. On the 
 other hand, this outer world has its own juices, 
 having their various qualities which excite our 
 emotional activities. This is called in our
 
 WHAT IS ART? 15 
 
 Sanskrit rhetoric rasa, which signifies outer 
 juices having their response in the inner juices 
 of our emotions. And a poem, according to it, 
 is a sentence or sentences containing juices, 
 which stimulate the juices of emotion. It 
 brings to us ideas, vitalized by feelings, ready 
 to be made into the life-stuff of our nature. 
 
 Bare information on facts is not literature, 
 because it gives us merely the facts which are 
 independent of ourselves. Repetition of the 
 facts that the sun is round, water is liquid, fire 
 is hot, would be intolerable. But a description 
 of the beauty of the sunrise has its eternal 
 interest for us, because there, it is not the 
 fact of the sunrise, but its relation to ourselves, 
 which is the object of perennial interest. 
 
 It is said in the Upanishad, that " Wealth is 
 dear to us, not because we desire the fact of 
 the wealth itself, but because we desire our- 
 selves." This means that we feel ourselves in 
 our wealth, and therefore we love it. The 
 things which arouse our emotions arouse our 
 own self - feeling. It is like our touch upon 
 the harp-string : if it is too feeble, then we are 
 merely aware of the touch, but if it is strong, 
 then our touch comes back to us in tunes and 
 our consciousness is intensified.
 
 16 PERSONALITY 
 
 There is the world of science, from which 
 the elements of personality have been carefully 
 removed. We must not touch it with our feel- 
 ings. But there is also the vast world, which is 
 personal to us. We must not merely know it, 
 and then put it aside, but we must feel it, 
 because, by feeling it, we feel ourselves. 
 
 But how can we express our personality, 
 which we only know by feeling ? A scientist 
 can make known what he has learned by analysis 
 and experiment. But what an artist has to say, 
 he cannot express by merely informing and 
 explaining. The plainest language is needed 
 when I have to say what I know about a rose, 
 but to say what I feel about a rose is different. 
 There it has nothing to do with facts, or with 
 laws, it deals with taste, which can be realized 
 only by tasting. Therefore the Sanskrit rhetori- 
 cians say, in poetry we have to use words which 
 have got the proper taste, which do not merely 
 talk, but conjure up pictures and sing. For 
 pictures and songs are not merely facts, they 
 are personal facts. They are not only them- 
 selves, but ourselves also. They defy analysis 
 and they have immediate access to our hearts. 
 
 It has to be conceded, that man cannot help 
 revealing his personality, also, in the world of
 
 WHAT IS ART? 17 
 
 use. But there self-expression is not his primary 
 object. In everyday life, when we are mostly 
 moved by our habits, we are economical in our 
 expression ; for then our soul-consciousness is at 
 its low level, it has just volume enough to glide 
 on in accustomed grooves. But when our heart 
 is fully awakened in love, or in other great 
 emotions, our personality is in its flood-tide. 
 Then it feels the longing to express itself for 
 the very sake of expression. Then comes Art, 
 and we forget the claims of necessity, the thrift 
 of usefulness, the spires of our temples try to 
 kiss the stars and the notes of our music to 
 fathom the depth of the ineffable. 
 
 Man's energies, running on two parallel lines, 
 that of utility and of self-expression tend to 
 meet and mingle. By constant human associa- 
 tions sentiments gather around our things of 
 use and invite the help of art to reveal them- 
 selves, as we see the warrior's pride and love 
 revealed in the ornamental sword-blade, and the 
 comradeship of festive gatherings in the wine 
 goblet. 
 
 The lawyer's office, as a rule, is not a thing 
 of beauty, and the reason is obvious. But in a 
 city, where men are proud of their citizenship, 
 public buildings must in their structure express
 
 18 PERSONALITY 
 
 this love for the city. When the British capital 
 was removed from Calcutta to Delhi, there 
 was discussion about the style of architecture 
 which should be followed in the new buildings. 
 Some advocated the Indian style of the Moghal 
 period, the style which was the joint produc- 
 tion of the Moghal and the Indian genius. The 
 fact that they lost sight of was that all true 
 art has its origin in sentiment. Moghal Delhi 
 and Moghal Agra show their human personality 
 in their buildings. Moghal emperors were men, 
 they were not mere administrators. They lived 
 and died in India, they loved and fought. The 
 memorials of their reigns do not persist in the 
 ruins of factories and offices, but in immortal 
 works of art, not only in great buildings, but 
 in pictures and music and workmanship in stone 
 and metal, in cotton and wool fabrics. But the 
 British government in India is not personal. It 
 is official and therefore an abstraction. It has 
 nothing to express in the true language of art. 
 For law, efficiency and exploitation cannot sing 
 themselves into epic stones. Lord Lytton, who 
 unfortunately was gifted with more imagination 
 than was necessary for an Indian Viceroy, tried 
 to copy one of the state functions of the 
 Moghals, the Durbar ceremony. But state
 
 WHAT IS ART? 19 
 
 ceremonials are works of art. They naturally 
 spring from the reciprocity of personal relation- 
 ship between the people and their monarch. 
 When they are copies, they show all the signs 
 of the spurious. 
 
 How utility and sentiment take different 
 lines in their expression can be seen in the dress 
 of a man compared with that of a woman. A 
 man's dress, as a rule, shuns all that is un- 
 necessary and merely decorative. But a woman 
 has naturally selected the decorative, not only 
 in her dress, but in her manners. She has to 
 be picturesque and musical to make manifest 
 what she truly is, because, in her position in 
 the world, woman is more concrete and personal 
 than man. She is not to be judged merely by 
 her usefulness, but by her delightfulness. There- 
 fore she takes infinite care in expressing, not her 
 profession, but her personality. 
 
 The principal object of art, also, being the 
 expression of personality, and not of that which 
 is abstract and analytical, it necessarily uses the 
 language of picture and music. This has led to 
 a confusion in our thought that the object of art 
 is the production of beauty ; whereas beauty in 
 art has been the mere instrument and not its 
 complete and ultimate significance.
 
 20 PERSONALITY 
 
 As a consequence of this, we have often heard 
 it argued whether manner, rather than matter, 
 is the essential element in art. Such arguments 
 become endless, like pouring water into a vessel 
 whose bottom has been taken away. These 
 discussions owe their origin to the idea that 
 beauty is the object of art, and, because mere 
 matter cannot have the property of beauty, it 
 becomes a question whether manner is not the 
 principal factor in art. 
 
 But the truth is, analytical treatment will not 
 help us in discovering what is the vital point in 
 art. For the true principle of art is the principle 
 of unity. When we want to know the food- 
 value of certain of our diets, we find it in their 
 component parts ; but its taste-value is in its 
 unity, which cannot be analysed. Matter, 
 taken by itself, is an abstraction which can be 
 dealt with by science ; while manner, which is 
 merely manner, is an abstraction which comes 
 under the laws of rhetoric. But when they are 
 indissolubly one, then they find their harmonics 
 in our personality, which is an organic complex 
 of matter and manner, thoughts and things, 
 motives and actions. 
 
 Therefore we find all abstract ideas are out 
 of place in true art, where, in order to gain
 
 WHAT IS ART? 21 
 
 admission, they must come under the disguise 
 of personification. This is the reason why 
 poetry tries to select words that have vital 
 qualities, words that are not for mere informa- 
 tion, but have become naturalized in our hearts 
 and have not been worn out of their shapes by 
 too constant use in the market. For instance, 
 the English word " consciousness " has not yet 
 outgrown the cocoon stage of its scholastic 
 inertia, therefore it is seldom used in poetry ; 
 whereas its Indian synonym "chetana" is a 
 vital word and is of constant poetical use. On 
 the other hand the English word "feeling" 
 is fluid with life, but its Bengali synonym 
 "anuphuti" is refused in poetry, because it 
 merely has a meaning and no flavour. And 
 likewise there are some truths, coming from 
 science and philosophy, which have acquired life's 
 colour and taste, and some which have not. Until 
 they have done this, they are, for art, like un- 
 cooked vegetables, unfit to be served at a feast. 
 History, so long as it copies science and deals 
 with abstractions, remains outside the domain 
 of literature. But, as a narrative of facts, it 
 takes its place by the side of the epic poem. 
 For narration of historical facts imparts to the 
 time to which they belong a taste of personality.
 
 22 PERSONALITY 
 
 Those periods become human to us, we feel 
 their living heart-beats. 
 
 The world and the personal man are face 
 to face, like friends who question one another 
 and exchange their inner secrets. The world 
 asks the inner man, " Friend, have you seen 
 me? Do you love me? not as one who 
 provides you with foods and fruits, not as one 
 whose laws you have found out, but as one 
 who is personal, individual ? " 
 
 The artist's answer is, " Yes, I have seen you, 
 I have loved and known you, not that I have 
 any need of you, not that I have taken you and 
 used your laws for my own purposes of power. 
 I know the forces that act and drive and lead 
 to power, but it is not that. I see you, where 
 you are what I am." 
 
 But how do you know that the artist has 
 known, has seen, has come face to face with 
 this Personality ? 
 
 When I first meet any one who is not yet my 
 friend, I observe all the numberless unessential 
 things which attract the attention at first sight : 
 and in the wilderness of that diversity of facts 
 the friend who is to be my friend is lost. 
 
 When our steamer reached the coast of 
 Japan, one of our passengers, a Japanese, was
 
 WHAT IS ART? 23 
 
 coming back home from Rangoon ; we on the 
 other hand were reaching that shore for the first 
 time in our life. There was a great difference 
 in our outlook. We noted every little pecul- 
 iarity, and innumerable small things occupied 
 our attention. But the Japanese passenger 
 dived at once into the personality, the soul of 
 the land, where his own soul found satisfaction. 
 He saw fewer things, we saw more things ; but 
 what he saw was the soul of Japan. It could 
 not be gauged by any quantity or number, but 
 by something invisible and deep. It could not 
 be said, that because we saw those innumerable 
 things, we saw Japan better, but rather the 
 reverse. 
 
 If you ask me to draw some particular tree, 
 and I am no artist, I try to copy every detail, 
 lest I should otherwise lose the peculiarity of 
 the tree, forgetting that the peculiarity is not 
 the personality. But when the true artist 
 comes, he overlooks all details and gets into the 
 essential characterization. 
 
 Our rational man also seeks to simplify things 
 into their inner principle ; to get rid of the 
 details ; to get to the heart of things where 
 things are One. But the difference is this, 
 the scientist seeks an impersonal principle of
 
 24 PERSONALITY 
 
 unification, which can be applied to all things. 
 For instance he destroys the human body which 
 is personal in order to find out physiology, which 
 is impersonal and general. 
 
 But the artist finds out the unique, the 
 individual, which yet is in the heart of the 
 universal. When he looks on a tree, he looks 
 on that tree as unique, not as the botanist who 
 generalizes and classifies. It is the function 
 of the artist to particularize that one tree. 
 How does he do it ? Not through the pecul- 
 iarity which is the discord of the unique, but 
 through the personality which is harmony. 
 Therefore he has to find out the inner con- 
 cordance of that one thing with its outer sur- 
 roundings of all things. 
 
 The greatness and beauty of Oriental art, 
 especially in Japan and China, consist in this, 
 that there the artists have seen this soul of 
 things and they believe in it. The West may 
 believe in the soul of Man, but she does not 
 really believe that the universe has a soul. Yet 
 this is the belief of the East, and the whole 
 mental contribution of the East to mankind is 
 filled with this idea. So, we, in the East, need 
 not go into details and emphasize them ; for 
 the most important thing is this universal soul,
 
 WHAT IS ART? 25 
 
 for which the Eastern sages have sat in medita- 
 tion, and Eastern artists have joined them in 
 artistic realization. 
 
 Because we have faith in this universal soul, 
 we in the East know that Truth, Power, Beauty, 
 lie in Simplicity, where it is transparent, where 
 things do not obstruct the inner vision. There- 
 fore, all our sages have tried to make their lives 
 simple and pure, because thus they have the 
 realization of a positive Truth, which, though 
 invisible, is more real than the gross and the 
 numerous. 
 
 When we say that art only deals with those 
 truths that are personal, we do not exclude 
 philosophical ideas which are apparently ab- 
 stract. They are quite common in our Indian 
 literature, because they have been woven with 
 the fibres of our personal nature. I give here 
 an instance which will make my point clear. 
 The following is a translation of an Indian 
 poem written by a woman poet of mediaeval 
 India, its subject is Life. 
 
 I salute the Life which is like a sprouting seed, 
 
 With its one arm upraised in the air, and the other down in 
 
 the soil ; 
 
 The Life which is one in its outer form and its inner sap ; 
 The Life that ever appears, yet ever eludes. 
 The Life that comes I salute, and the Life that goes ;
 
 26 PERSONALITY 
 
 I salute the Life that is revealed and that is hidden ; 
 
 I salute the Life in suspense, standing still like a mountain, 
 
 And the Life of the surging sea of fire ; 
 
 The Life that is tender like a lotus, and hard like a thunder- 
 bolt. 
 
 I salute the Life which is of the mind, with its one side in 
 the dark and the other in the light. 
 
 I salute the Life in the house and the Life abroad in the 
 unknown, 
 
 The Life full of joy and the Life weary with its pains, 
 
 The Life eternally moving, rocking the world into stillness, 
 
 The Life deep and silent, breaking out into roaring waves. 
 
 This idea of life is not a mere logical deduc- 
 tion ; it is as real to the poetess as the air to 
 the bird who feels it at every beat of its wings. 
 Woman has realized the mystery of life in her 
 child more intimately than man has done. This 
 woman's nature in the poet has felt the deep stir 
 of life in all the world. She has known it to be 
 infinite, not through any reasoning process, but 
 through the illumination of her feeling. There- 
 fore the same idea, which is a mere abstraction 
 to one whose sense of the reality is limited, 
 becomes luminously real to another whose sensi- 
 bility has a wider range. We have often heard 
 the Indian mind described by Western critics 
 as metaphysical, because it is ready to soar in 
 the infinite. But it has to be noted that the 
 infinite is not a mere matter of philosophical
 
 WHAT IS ART? 27 
 
 speculation to India ; it is as real to her as the sun- 
 light. She must see it, feel it, make use of it in 
 her life. Therefore it has come out so profusely 
 in her symbolism of worship, in her literature. 
 The poet of the Upanishad has said that the 
 slightest movement of life would be impossible if 
 the sky were not filled with infinite joy. This 
 universal presence was as much of a reality to 
 him as the earth under his feet, nay, even more. 
 The realization of this has broken out in a song 
 of an Indian poet who was born in the fifteenth 
 century : 
 
 There falls the rhythmic beat of life and death : 
 Rapture wells forth, and all space is radiant with light. 
 There the unstruck music is sounded ; it is the love music of 
 
 three worlds. 
 
 There millions of lamps of sun and moon are burning ; 
 There the drum beats and the lover swings in play. 
 There love songs resound, and light rains in showers. 
 
 In India, the greater part of our literature is 
 religious, because God with us is not a distant 
 God ; He belongs to our homes, as well as to 
 our temples. We feel His nearness to us in all 
 the human relationship of love and affection, and 
 in our festivities He is the chief guest whom we 
 honour. In seasons of flowers and fruits, in the 
 coming of the rain, in the fulness of the autumn, 
 we see the hem of His mantle and hear His foot-
 
 28 PERSONALITY 
 
 steps. We worship Him in all the true objects 
 of our worship and love Him wherever our love 
 is true. In the woman who is good we feel Him, 
 in the man who is true we know Him, in our 
 children He is born again and again, the Eternal 
 Child. Therefore religious songs are our love 
 songs, and our domestic occurrences, such as the 
 birth of a son, or the coming of the daughter 
 from her husband's house to her parents and her 
 departure again, are woven in our literature as a 
 drama whose counterpart is in the divine. 
 
 It is thus that the domain of literature has 
 extended into the region which seems hidden in 
 the depth of mystery and made it human and 
 speaking. It is growing, keeping pace with the 
 conquest made by the human personality in the 
 realm of truth. It is growing, not only into 
 history, science and philosophy, but, with our 
 expanding sympathy, into our social conscious- 
 ness. The classical literature of the ancient time 
 was only peopled by saints and kings and heroes. 
 It threw no light upon men who loved and 
 suffered in obscurity. But as the illumination of 
 man's personality throws its light upon a wider 
 space, penetrating into hidden corners, the world 
 of art also crosses its frontiers and extends its 
 oundaries into unexplored regions. Thus art
 
 WHAT IS ART? 29 
 
 is signalizing man's conquest of the world by its 
 symbols of beauty, springing up in spots which 
 were barren of all voice and colours. It is supply- 
 ing man with his banners, under which he marches 
 to fight against the inane and the inert, proving 
 his living claims far and wide in God's creation. 
 Even the spirit of the desert has owned its kin- 
 ship with him, and the lonely pyramids are there 
 as memorials of the meeting of Nature's silence 
 with the silence of the human spirit. The dark- 
 ness of the caves has yielded its stillness to man's 
 soul, and in exchange has secretly been crowned 
 with the wreath of art. Bells are ringing in 
 temples, in villages and populous towns to pro- 
 claim that the infinite is not a mere emptiness to 
 man. This encroachment of man's personality 
 has no limit, and even the markets and fac- 
 tories of the present age, even the schools where 
 children of man are imprisoned and jails where are 
 the criminals, will be mellowed with the touch of 
 art, and lose their distinction of rigid discordance 
 with life. For the one effort of man's personality 
 is to transform everything with which he has any 
 true concern into the human. And art is like 
 the spread of vegetation, to show how far man 
 has reclaimed the desert for his own. 
 
 We have said before that where there is an
 
 80 PERSONALITY 
 
 element of the superfluous in our heart's relation- 
 ship with the world, Art has its birth. In other 
 words, where our personality feels its wealth it 
 breaks out in display. What we devour for our- 
 selves is totally spent. What overflows our 
 need becomes articulate. The stage of pure 
 utility is like the state of heat which is dark. 
 When it surpasses itself, it becomes white heat 
 and then it is expressive. 
 
 Take, for instance, our delight in eating. It 
 is soon exhausted, it gives no indication of the 
 infinite. Therefore, though in its extensiveness 
 it is more universal than any other passion, it is 
 rejected by art. It is like an immigrant coming 
 to these Atlantic shores, who can show no cash 
 balance in his favour. 
 
 In our life we have one side which is finite, 
 where we exhaust ourselves at every step, and 
 we have another side, where our aspiration, en- 
 joyment and sacrifice are infinite. This infinite 
 side of man must have its revealments in some 
 symbols which have the elements of immortality. 
 There it naturally seeks perfection. Therefore it 
 refuses all that is flimsy and feeble and incon- 
 gruous. It builds for its dwelling a paradise, 
 where only those materials are used that have 
 transcended the earth's mortality.
 
 WHAT IS ART? 81 
 
 For men are the children of light. Whenever 
 they fully realize themselves they feel their im- 
 mortality. And, as they feel it, they extend 
 their realm of the immortal into every region 
 of human life. 
 
 This building of man's true world, the living 
 world of truth and beauty, is the function 
 of Art. 
 
 Man is true, where he feels his infinity, where 
 he is divine, and the divine is the creator in 
 him. Therefore with the attainment of his truth 
 he creates. For he can truly live in his own 
 creation and make out of God's world his own 
 world. This is indeed his own heaven, the heaven 
 of ideas shaped into perfect forms, with which he 
 surrounds himself; where his children are born, 
 where they learn how to live and to die, how to 
 love and to fight, where they know that the real 
 is not that which is merely seen and wealth is not 
 that which is stored. If man could only listen 
 to the voice that rises from the heart of his own 
 creation, he would hear the same message that 
 came from the Indian sage of the ancient time : 
 
 " Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal, 
 dwellers of the heavenly worlds, I have known 
 the Supreme Person who comes as light from the 
 dark beyond."
 
 32 PERSONALITY 
 
 Yes, it is that Supreme Person, who has made 
 himself known to man and made this universe 
 so deeply personal to him. Therefore, in India, 
 our places of pilgrimage are there, where in 
 the confluence of the river and the sea, in 
 the eternal snow of the mountain peak, in the 
 lonely seashore, some aspect of the infinite is 
 revealed which has its great voice for our heart, 
 and there man has left in his images and temples, 
 in his carvings of stone, these words, " Hearken 
 to me, I have known the Supreme Person." In 
 the mere substance and law of this world we do 
 not meet the person, but where the sky is blue, 
 and the grass is green, where the flower has its 
 beauty and fruit its taste, where there is not 
 only perpetuation of race, but joy of living 
 and love of fellow-creatures, sympathy and self- 
 sacrifice, there is revealed to us the Person who 
 is infinite. There, not merely are facts pelted 
 down upon our heads, but we feel the bond of 
 the personal relationship binding our hearts with 
 this world through all time. And this is Reality, 
 which is truth made our own, truth that has 
 its eternal relation with the Supreme Person. 
 This world, whose soul seems to be aching for 
 expression in its endless rhythm of lines and 
 colours, music and movements, hints and
 
 WHAT IS ART ? 33 
 
 whispers, and all the suggestion of the in- 
 expressible, finds its harmony in the ceaseless 
 longing of the human heart to make the Person 
 manifest in its own creations. 
 
 The desire for the manifestation of this Person 
 makes us lavish with all our resources. When 
 we accumulate wealth, we have to account for 
 every penny ; we reason accurately and we act 
 with care. But when we set about to express 
 our wealthiness, we seem to lose sight of all 
 lines of limit. In fact, none of us has wealth 
 enough fully to express what we mean by 
 wealthiness. When we try to save our life 
 from an enemy's attack, we are cautious in 
 our movements. But when we feel impelled to 
 express our personal bravery, we willingly take 
 risks and go to the length of losing our lives. 
 We are careful of expenditure in our everyday 
 life, but on festive occasions, when we express 
 our joy, we are thriftless even to the extent of 
 going beyond our means. For when we are 
 intensely conscious of our own personality, we 
 are apt to ignore the tyranny of facts. We are 
 temperate in our dealings with the man with 
 whom our relation is the relationship of prudence. 
 But we feel we have not got enough for those 
 whom we love. The poet says of the beloved : 
 
 D
 
 34 PERSONALITY 
 
 " It seems to me that I have gazed at your 
 beauty from the beginning of my existence, 
 that I have kept you in my arms for countless 
 ages, yet it has not been enough for me." 
 
 He says, "Stones would melt in tenderness, 
 if touched by the breeze of your mantle." 
 
 He feels that his "eyes long to fly like birds 
 to see his beloved." 
 
 Judged from the standpoint of reason these 
 are exaggerations, but from that of the heart, 
 freed from limits of facts, they are true. 
 
 Is it not the same in God's creation ? There, 
 forces and matters are alike mere facts they 
 have their strict accounts kept and they can be 
 accurately weighed and measured. Only beauty 
 is not a mere fact ; it cannot be accounted for, 
 it cannot be surveyed and mapped. It is an 
 expression. Facts are like wine-cups that carry 
 it, they are hidden by it, it overflows them. It 
 is infinite in its suggestions, it is extravagant 
 in its words. It is personal, therefore, beyond 
 science. It sings as does the poet, " It seems 
 to me that I have gazed at you from the 
 beginning of my existence, that I have kept 
 you in my arms for countless ages, yet it has 
 not been enough for me." 
 
 So we find that our world of expression does
 
 WHAT IS ART? 35 
 
 not accurately coincide with the world of facts, 
 because personality surpasses facts on every side. 
 It is conscious of its infinity and creates from 
 its abundance ; and because, in art, things are 
 challenged from the standpoint of the immortal 
 Person, those which are important in our 
 customary life of facts become unreal when 
 placed on the pedestal of art. A newspaper 
 account of some domestic incident in the life 
 of a commercial magnate may create agitation 
 in Society, yet would lose all its significance if 
 placed by the side of great works of art. We 
 can well imagine how it would hide its face in 
 shame, if by some cruel accident it found itself 
 in the neighbourhood of Keats's "Ode on a 
 Grecian Urn." 
 
 Yet the very same incident, if treated deeply, 
 divested of its conventional superficiality, might 
 have a better claim in art than the negotiation 
 for raising a big loan for China, or the defeat of 
 British diplomacy in Turkey. A mere house- 
 hold event of a husband's jealousy of his wife, 
 as depicted in one of Shakespeare's tragedies, has 
 greater value in the realm of art than the code 
 of caste regulations in Manu's scripture or the 
 law prohibiting inhabitants of one part of the 
 world from receiving human treatment in another.
 
 36 PERSONALITY 
 
 For when facts are looked upon as mere facts, 
 having their chain of consequences in the world 
 of facts, they are rejected by art. 
 
 When, however, such laws and regulations as 
 I have mentioned are viewed in their application 
 to some human individual, in all their injustice, 
 insult and pain, then they are seen in their 
 complete truth and they become subjects for 
 art. The disposition of a great battle may be a 
 great fact, but it is useless for the purpose of 
 art. But what that battle has caused to a single 
 individual soldier, separated from his loved ones 
 and maimed for his life, has a vital value for art 
 which deals with reality. 
 
 Man's social world is like some nebulous 
 system of stars, consisting largely of a mist of 
 abstractions, with such names as society, state, 
 nation, commerce, politics and war. In their 
 dense amorphousness man is hidden and truth 
 is blurred. The one vague idea of war covers 
 from our sight a multitude of miseries, and 
 obscures our sense of reality. The idea of the 
 nation is responsible for crimes that would be 
 appalling, if the mist could be removed for a 
 moment. The idea of society has created forms 
 of slavery without number, which we tolerate 
 simply because it has deadened our consciousness
 
 WHAT IS ART? 37 
 
 of the reality of the personal man. In the name 
 of religion deeds have been done that would ex- 
 haust all the resources of hell itself for punish- 
 ment, because with its creeds and dogmas it has 
 applied an extensive plaster of anaesthetic over 
 a large surface of feeling humanity. Every- 
 where in man's world the Supreme Person is 
 suffering from the killing of the human reality 
 by the imposition of the abstract. In our 
 schools the idea of the class hides the reality of 
 the school children ; they become students and 
 not individuals. Therefore it does not hurt us 
 to see children's lives crushed, in their classes, 
 like flowers pressed between book leaves. In 
 government, the bureaucracy deals with general- 
 izations and not with men. And therefore it 
 costs it nothing to indulge in wholesale cruelties. 
 Once we accept as truth such a scientific maxim 
 as "Survival of the Fittest" it immediately 
 transforms the whole world of human personality 
 into a monotonous desert of abstraction, where 
 things become dreadfully simple because robbed 
 of their mystery of life. 
 
 In these large tracts of nebulousness Art is 
 creating its stars, stars that are definite in 
 their forms but infinite in their personality. 
 Art is calling us the " children of the immortal,"
 
 38 PERSONALITY 
 
 and proclaiming our right to dwell in the 
 heavenly worlds. 
 
 What is it in man that asserts its immortality 
 in spite of the obvious fact of death ? It is not 
 his physical body or his mental organization. 
 It is that deeper unity, that ultimate mystery in 
 him, which, from the centre of his world, radiates 
 towards its circumference ; which is in his body, 
 yet transcends his body ; which is in his mind, 
 yet grows beyond his mind ; which, through the 
 things belonging to him, expresses something 
 that is not in them ; which, while occupying 
 his present, overflows its banks of the past and 
 the future. It is the personality of man, con- 
 scious of its inexhaustible abundance ; it has the 
 paradox in it that it is more than itself; it is 
 more than as it is seen, as it is known, as it 
 is used. And this consciousness of the infinite, 
 in the personal man, ever strives to make its 
 expressions immortal and to make the whole 
 world its own. In Art the person in us is send- 
 ing its answers to the Supreme Person, who 
 reveals Himself to us in a world of endless 
 beauty across the lightless world of facts.
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 
 
 39
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 
 
 "THE night is like a dark child just born of her 
 mother day. Millions of stars crowding round 
 its cradle watch it, standing still, afraid lest it 
 should wake up." 
 
 I am ready to go on in this strain, but I am 
 interrupted by Science laughing at me. She 
 takes objection to my statement that stars are 
 standing still. 
 
 But if it is a mistake, then apology is not 
 due from me but from those stars themselves. 
 It is quite evident that they are standing still. 
 It is a fact that is impossible to argue away. 
 
 But science will argue, it is her habit. She 
 says, " When you think that stars are still, that 
 only proves that you are too far from them." 
 
 I have my answer ready, that when you say 
 that stars are rushing about, it only proves that 
 you are too near them. 
 
 Science is astonished at my temerity. 
 
 41
 
 42 PERSONALITY 
 
 But I obstinately hold my ground and say 
 that if Science has the liberty to take the side 
 of the near and fall foul of the distant, she 
 cannot blame me when I take the opposite side 
 and question the veracity of the near. 
 
 Science is emphatically sure that the near view 
 is the most reliable view. 
 
 But I doubt whether she is consistent in her 
 opinions. For when I was sure that the earth 
 was flat under my feet, she corrected me by 
 saying that the near view was not the correct 
 view, that to get at the complete truth it is 
 necessary to see it from a distance. 
 
 I am willing to agree with her. For do we 
 not know that a too near view of ourselves is 
 the egotistical view, which is the flat and the 
 detached view but that when we see ourselves 
 in others, we find that the truth about us is 
 round and continuous ? 
 
 But if Science has faith at all in the whole- 
 someness of distance then she must give up her 
 superstition about the restlessness of the stars. 
 We the children of the earth attend our night 
 school to have a glimpse of the world as a whole. 
 Our great teacher knows that the complete 
 view of the universe is as much too awful for 
 our sight as that of the midday sun. We must
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 43 
 
 see it through a smoked glass. Kind Nature has 
 held before our eyes the smoked glass of the 
 night and of the distance. And what do we see 
 through it ? We see that the world of stars is 
 still. For we see these stars in their relation to 
 each other, and they appear to us like chains of 
 diamonds hanging on the neck of some god of 
 silence. But Astronomy like a curious child 
 plucks out an individual star from that chain 
 and then we find it rolling about. 
 
 The difficulty is to decide whom to trust. 
 The evidence of the world of stars is simple. 
 You have but to raise your eyes and see their 
 face and you believe them. They do not set 
 before you elaborate arguments, and to my mind, 
 that is the surest test of reliability. They do 
 not break their hearts if you refuse to believe 
 them. But when some one of these stars singly 
 comes down from the platform of the universe 
 and slyly whispers its information into the 
 ears of mathematics, we find the whole story 
 different. 
 
 Therefore let us boldly declare that both 
 facts are equally true about the stars. Let us 
 say that they are unmoved in the plane of the 
 distant and they are moving in the plane of the 
 near. The stars in their one relation to me are
 
 44 PERSONALITY 
 
 truly still and in their other relation are truly 
 moving. The distant and the near are the 
 keepers of two different sets of facts, but they 
 both belong to one truth which is their master. 
 Therefore when we take the side of the one 
 to revile the other, we hurt the truth which 
 comprehends them both. 
 
 About this truth the Indian sage of Isho- 
 panishat says : " It moves. It moves not. It 
 is distant. It is near." 
 
 The meaning is, that when we follow truth in 
 its parts which are near, we see truth moving. 
 When we know truth as a whole, which is 
 looking at it from a distance, it remains still. 
 As we follow a book in its chapters the book 
 moves, but when we have known the whole 
 book, then we find it standing still, holding all 
 the chapters in their interrelations. 
 
 There is a point where in the mystery of 
 existence contradictions meet ; where movement 
 is not all movement and stillness is not all still- 
 ness ; where the idea and the form, the within 
 and the without, are united ; where infinite be- 
 comes finite, without losing its infinity. If this 
 meeting is dissolved, then things become unreal. 
 
 When I see a rose leaf through a microscope, 
 I see it in a more extended space than it usually
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 45 
 
 occupies for me. The more I extend the space 
 the more vague it becomes. So that in the 
 pure infinite it is neither rose leaf nor anything 
 at all. It only becomes a rose leaf where the 
 infinite reaches finitude at a particular point. 
 When we disturb that point towards the small 
 or the great, the rose leaf begins to assume 
 unreality. 
 
 It is the same with regard to time. If by 
 some magic I could remain in my normal plane 
 of time while enhancing its quickness with 
 regard to the rose leaf, condensing, let us say, 
 a month into a minute, then it would rush 
 through its point of first appearance to that 
 of its final disappearance with such a speed that 
 I would hardly be able to see it. One can be 
 sure that there are things in this world which 
 are known by other creatures, but which, since 
 their time is not synchronous with ours, are 
 nothing to us. The phenomenon which a dog 
 perceives as a smell does not keep its time with 
 that of our nerves, therefore it falls outside our 
 world. 
 
 Let me give an instance. We have heard of 
 prodigies in mathematics who can do difficult 
 sums in an incredibly short time. With regard 
 to mathematical calculations their minds are
 
 46 PERSONALITY 
 
 acting in a different plane of time, not only 
 from ours, but also from their own in other 
 spheres of life. As if the mathematical part of 
 their minds were living in a comet, while the 
 other parts were the inhabitants of this earth. 
 Therefore the process through which their minds 
 rush to their results is not only invisible to us, it 
 is not even seen by themselves. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that our dreams often 
 flow in a measure of time different from that of 
 our waking consciousness. The fifty minutes of 
 our sundial of dreamland may be represented 
 by five minutes of our clock. If from the 
 vantage of our wakeful time we could watch 
 these dreams, they would rush past us like an 
 express train. Or if from the window of our 
 swift-flying dreams we could watch the slower 
 world of our waking consciousness, it would 
 seem receding away from us at a great speed. 
 In fact if the thoughts that move in other minds 
 than our own were open to us, our perception 
 of them would be different from theirs, owing 
 to our difference of mental time. If we could 
 adjust our focus of time according to our whims, 
 we should see the waterfall standing still and 
 the pine forest running fast like the waterfall of 
 a green Niagara.
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 47 
 
 So that it is almost a truism to say that the 
 world is what we perceive it to be. We imagine 
 that our mind is a mirror, that it is more or less 
 accurately reflecting what is happening outside 
 us. On the contrary, our mind itself is the 
 principal element of creation. The world, while 
 I am perceiving it, is being incessantly created 
 for myself in time and space. 
 
 The variety of creation is due to the mind 
 seeing different phenomena in different foci of 
 time and space. When it sees stars in a space 
 which may be metaphorically termed as dense, 
 then they are close to each other and motionless. 
 When it sees planets, it sees them in much less 
 density of sky and then they appear far apart 
 and moving. If we could have the sight to see 
 the molecules of a piece of iron in a greatly 
 different space, they could be seen in movement. 
 But because we see things in various adjustments 
 of time and space therefore iron is iron, water is 
 water, and clouds are clouds for us. 
 
 It is a well-known psychological fact that by 
 adjustment of our mental attitude things seem 
 to change their properties, and objects that were 
 pleasurable become painful to us and vice versa. 
 Under a certain state of exultation of mind 
 mortification of the flesh has been resorted to
 
 48 PERSONALITY 
 
 by men to give them pleasure. Instances of 
 extreme martyrdom seem to us superhuman 
 because the mental attitude under the influence 
 of which they become possible, even desirable, 
 has not been experienced by us. In India, cases 
 of fire - walking have been observed by many, 
 though they have not been scientifically investi- 
 gated. There may be differences of opinion 
 about the degree of efficacy of faith cure, which 
 shows the influence of mind upon matter, but 
 its truth has been accepted and acted upon by 
 men from the early dawn of history. The 
 methods of our moral training have been based 
 upon the fact that by changing our mental focus, 
 our perspective, the whole world is changed and 
 becomes in certain respects a different creation 
 with things of changed value. Therefore what 
 is valuable to a man when he is bad becomes 
 worse than valueless when he is good. 
 
 Walt Whitman shows in his poems a great 
 dexterity in changing his position of mind and 
 thus changing his world with him from that 
 of other people, rearranging the meaning of 
 things in different proportions and forms. Such 
 mobility of mind plays havoc with things whose 
 foundations lie fixed in convention. Therefore 
 he says in one of his poems :
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 49 
 
 I hear that it was charged against me that I sought to destroy 
 
 institutions ; 
 
 But really I am neither for nor against institutions ; 
 (What indeed have I in common with them 
 Or what with the destruction of them ?) 
 Only I will establish in thee Mannahatta, and in every city 
 
 of these States, inland and seaboard, 
 And in the fields and woods, and above every keel, little or 
 
 large, that dents the water, 
 
 Without edifices, or rules, or trustees or any argument, 
 This institution of dear love of comrades. 
 
 Institutions which are so squarely built, so 
 solid and thick, become like vapour in this poet's 
 world. It is like a world of Rontgen rays, for 
 which some of the solid things of the world 
 have no existence whatever. On the other 
 hand, love of comrades, which is a fluid thing 
 in the ordinary world, which seems like clouds 
 that pass and repass the sky without leaving 
 a trace of a track, is to the poet's world more 
 stable than all institutions. Here he sees things 
 in a time in which the mountains pass away like 
 shadows, but the rain-clouds with their seeming 
 transitoriness are eternal. He perceives in his 
 world that this love of comrades, like clouds 
 that require no solid foundation, is stable and 
 true, is established without edifices, rules, 
 trustees or arguments. 
 
 When the mind of a person like Walt 
 
 E
 
 50 PERSONALITY 
 
 Whitman moves in a time different from that 
 of others, his world does not necessarily come 
 to ruin through dislocation, because there in the 
 centre of his world dwells his own personality. 
 All the facts and shapes of this world are related 
 to this central creative power, therefore they 
 become interrelated spontaneously. His world 
 may be like a comet among stars, different in 
 its movements from others, but it has its own 
 consistency because of the central personal force. 
 It may be a bold world or even a mad world, 
 with an immense orbit swept by its eccentric 
 tail, yet a world it is. 
 
 But with Science it is different. For she 
 tries to do away altogether with that central 
 personality, in relation to which the world is a 
 world. Science sets up an impersonal and 
 unalterable standard of space and time which 
 is not the standard of creation. Therefore at 
 its fatal touch the reality of the world is so 
 hopelessly disturbed that it vanishes in an ab- 
 straction where things become nothing at all. 
 For the world is not atoms and molecules or 
 radio-activity or other forces, the diamond is 
 not carbon, and light is not vibrations of ether. 
 You can never come to the reality of creation 
 by contemplating it from the point of view of
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 51 
 
 destruction. Not only the world but God Him- 
 self is divested of reality by Science, which 
 subjects Him to analysis in the laboratory of 
 reason outside our personal relationship, and 
 then describes the result as unknown and un- 
 knowable. It is a mere tautology to say that 
 God is unknowable, when we leave altogether 
 out of account the person who can and who 
 does know Him. It is the same thing as saying 
 that food is uneatable when the eater is absent. 
 Our dry moralists also play the same tricks with 
 us in order to wean away our hearts from their 
 desired objects. Instead of creating for us a 
 world in which moral ideals find their natural 
 places in beauty, they begin to wreck the world 
 that we have built ourselves, however imperfectly. 
 They put moral maxims in the place of human 
 personality and give us the view of things in 
 their dissolution to prove that behind their 
 appearances they are hideous deceptions. But 
 when you deprive truth of its appearance, it 
 loses the best part of its reality. For appear- 
 ance is a personal relationship ; it is for me. 
 Of this appearance, which seems to be of the 
 surface, but which carries the message of the 
 inner spirit, your poet has said :
 
 52 PERSONALITY 
 
 Beginning my studies, the first step pleased me so much, 
 The mere fact, consciousness these forms the power of 
 
 motion, 
 
 The least insect or animal the senses eyesight love ; 
 The first step, I say, aw'd me and pleased me so much, 
 I have hardly gone, and hardly wished to go, any farther, 
 But stop and loiter all the time, and sing it in ecstatic songs. 
 
 Our scientific world is our world of reasoning. 
 It has its greatness and uses and attractions. 
 We are ready to pay the homage due to it. 
 But when it claims to have discovered the real 
 world for us and laughs at the worlds of all 
 simple - minded men, then we must say it is 
 like a general grown intoxicated with his power, 
 usurping the throne of his king. For the 
 reality of the world belongs to the personality 
 of man and not to reasoning, which, useful and 
 great though it be, is not the man himself. 
 
 If we could fully know what a piece of music 
 was in Beethoven's mind we could ourselves 
 become so many Beethovens. But because we 
 cannot grasp its mystery we may altogether 
 distrust the element of Beethoven's personality 
 in his Sonata though we are fully aware that 
 its true value lies in its power of touching the 
 depth of our own personality. But it is simpler 
 to keep observation of the facts when that 
 sonata is played upon the piano. We can
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 53 
 
 count the black and white keys of the key- 
 board, measure the relative lengths of the 
 strings, the strength, velocity and order of 
 sequence in the movements of fingers, and 
 triumphantly assert that this is Beethoven's 
 Sonata. Not only so, we can predict the 
 accurate production of the same sonata wherever 
 and whenever our experiment is repeated accord- 
 ing to those observations. By constantly deal- 
 ing with the sonata from this point of view we 
 may forget that both in its origin and object 
 dwells the personality of man, and however 
 accurate and orderly may be the facts of the 
 interactions of the fingers and strings they do 
 not comprehend the ultimate reality of the 
 music. 
 
 A game is a game where there is a player to 
 play it. Of course, there is a law of the game 
 which it is of use to us to analyse and to master. 
 But if it be asserted that in this law is its reality, 
 then we cannot accept it. For the game is 
 what it is to the players. The game changes 
 its aspects according to the personality of its 
 players : for some its end is the lust of gain, in 
 others that of applause ; some find in it the 
 means for whiling away time and some the 
 means for satisfying their social instinct, and
 
 54 PERSONALITY 
 
 there are others who approach it in the spirit 
 of disinterested curiosity to study its secrets. 
 Yet all through its manifold aspects its law 
 remains the same. For the nature of Reality 
 is the variedness of its unity. And the world 
 is like this game to us it is the same and yet 
 not the same to us all. 
 
 Science deals with this element of sameness, 
 the law of perspective and colour combination, 
 and not with the pictures the pictures which 
 are the creations of a personality and which 
 appeal to the personality of those who see 
 them. Science does this by eliminating from its 
 field of research the personality of creation and 
 fixing its attention only upon the medium of 
 creation. 
 
 What is this medium ? It is the medium 
 of finitude which the Infinite Being sets before 
 him for the purpose of his self-expression. It 
 is the medium which represents his self-imposed 
 limitations the law of space and time, of form 
 and movement. This law is Reason, which is 
 universal Reason which guides the endless 
 rhythm of the creative idea, perpetually mani- 
 festing itself in its ever-changing forms. 
 
 Our individual minds are the strings which 
 catch the rhythmic vibrations of this universal
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 55 
 
 mind and respond in music of space and time. 
 The quality and number and pitch of our mind 
 strings differ and their tuning has not yet come 
 to its perfection, but their law is the law of the 
 universal mind, which is the instrument of fini- 
 tude upon which the Eternal Player plays his 
 dance music of creation. 
 
 Because of the mind instruments which we 
 possess we also have found our place as creators. 
 We create not only art and social organizations, 
 but our inner nature and outer surroundings, the 
 truth of which depends upon their harmony with 
 the law of the universal mind. Of course, our 
 creations are mere variations upon God's great 
 theme of the universe. When we produce dis- 
 cords, they either have to end in a harmony or 
 in silence. Our freedom as a creator finds its 
 highest joy in contributing its own voice to the 
 concert of the world-music. 
 
 Science is apprehensive of the poet's sanity. 
 She refuses to accept the paradox of the infinite 
 assuming finitude. 
 
 I have nothing to say in my defence except 
 that this paradox is much older than I am. It 
 is the paradox which lies at the root of existence. 
 It is as mysterious yet as simple as the fact that
 
 56 PERSONALITY 
 
 I am aware of this wall, which is a miracle that 
 can never be explained. 
 
 Let me go back to the sage of Ishopanishat 
 and hear what he says about the contradiction of 
 the infinite and the finite. He says : 
 
 " They enter the region of the dark who are 
 solely occupied with the knowledge of the finite, 
 and they into a still greater darkness who are 
 solely occupied with the knowledge of the 
 infinite." 
 
 Those who pursue the knowledge of finite for 
 its own sake cannot find truth. For it is a dead 
 wall obstructing the beyond. This knowledge 
 merely accumulates but does not illuminate. It 
 is like a lamp without its light, a violin without 
 its music. You cannot know a book by measur- 
 ing and weighing and counting its pages, by 
 analysing its paper. An inquisitive mouse may 
 gnaw through the wooden frame of a piano, may 
 cut all its strings to pieces, and yet travel farther 
 and farther away from the music. This is the 
 pursuit of the finite for its own sake. 
 
 But according to the Upanishat the sole pur- 
 suit of the infinite leads to a deeper darkness. 
 For the absolute infinite is emptiness. The finite 
 is something. It may be a mere cheque-book 
 with no account in the bank. But the absolute
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 57 
 
 infinite has no cash and not even a cheque-book. 
 Profound may be the mental darkness of the 
 primitive man who lives in the conviction that 
 each individual apple falls to the ground accord- 
 ing to some individual caprice, but it is nothing 
 compared to the blindness of him who lives in 
 the meditation of the law of gravitation which 
 has no apple or anything else that falls. 
 
 Therefore Ishopanishat in the following verse 
 says : 
 
 " He who knows that the knowledge of the 
 finite and the infinite is combined in one, crosses 
 death by the help of the knowledge of the finite 
 and achieves immortality by the help of the 
 knowledge of the infinite." 
 
 The infinite and the finite are one as song and 
 singing are one. The singing is incomplete ; by 
 a continual process of death it gives up the song 
 which is complete. The absolute infinite is like a 
 music which is devoid of all definite tunes and 
 therefore meaningless. 
 
 The absolute eternal is timelessness, and that 
 has no meaning at all, it is merely a word. 
 The reality of the eternal is there, where it con- 
 tains all times in itself. 
 
 Therefore Upanishat says : " They enter the 
 region of darkness who pursue the transitory.
 
 58 PERSONALITY 
 
 But they enter the region of still greater dark- 
 ness who pursue the eternal. He who knows 
 the transitory and the eternal combined together 
 crosses the steps of death by the help of the 
 transitory and reaches immortality by the help 
 of the eternal." 
 
 We have seen that forms of things and their 
 changes have no absolute reality at all. Their 
 truth dwells in our personality, and only there 
 is it real and not abstract. We have seen that a 
 mountain and a waterfall would become some- 
 thing else, or nothing at all to us, if our move- 
 ment of mind changed in time and space. 
 
 We have also seen that this relational world 
 of ours is not arbitrary. It is individual, yet it 
 is universal. My world is mine, its element is 
 my mind, yet it is not wholly unlike your world. 
 Therefore it is not in my own individual per- 
 sonality that this reality is contained, but in an 
 infinite personality. 
 
 When in its place we substitute law, then the 
 whole world crumbles into abstractions ; then it 
 is elements and force, ions and electrons ; it loses 
 its appearance, its touch and taste ; the world 
 drama with its language of beauty is hushed, 
 the music is silent, the stage mechanism 
 becomes a ghost of itself in the dark, an un-
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 59 
 
 imaginable shadow of nothing, standing before 
 no spectator. 
 
 In this connection I quote once again your 
 poet-seer, Walt Whitman : 
 
 When I heard the learned astronomer, 
 
 When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before 
 
 me, 
 When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide 
 
 and measure them, 
 When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with 
 
 much applause in the lecture room, 
 How soon unaccountably I became tired and sick, 
 Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself, 
 In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time, 
 Looked up in perfect silence at the stars. 
 
 The prosody of the stars can be explained in 
 the classroom by diagrams, but the poetry of 
 the stars is in the silent meeting of soul with 
 soul, at the confluence of the light and the dark, 
 where the infinite prints its kiss on the forehead 
 of the finite, where we can hear the music of the 
 Great I AM pealing from the grand organ of 
 creation through its countless reeds in endless 
 harmony. It is perfectly evident that the world 
 is movement. (The Sanskrit word for the world 
 means "the moving one.") All its forms are 
 transitory, but that is merely its negative side. 
 All through its changes it has a chain of relation- 
 ship which is eternal. In a story - book the
 
 60 PERSONALITY 
 
 sentences run on, but the positive element of the 
 book is the relation of the sentences in the story. 
 This relation reveals a will of personality in its 
 author which establishes its harmony with the 
 personality of the reader. If the book were a 
 collection of disjointed words of no movement 
 and meaning, then we should be justified in 
 saying that it was a product of chance, and in 
 that case it would have no response from the 
 personality of the reader. In like manner the 
 world through all its changes is not to us a mere 
 runaway evasion, and because of its movements 
 it reveals to us something which is eternal. 
 
 For revealment of idea, form is absolutely 
 necessary. But the idea which is infinite cannot 
 be expressed in forms which are absolutely finite. 
 Therefore forms must always move and change, 
 they must necessarily die to reveal the deathless. 
 The expression as expression must be definite, 
 which it can only be in its form ; but at the same 
 time, as the expression of the infinite, it must 
 be indefinite, which it can only be in its move- 
 ment. Therefore when the world takes its shape 
 it always transcends its shape ; it carelessly runs 
 out of itself to say that its meaning is more than 
 what it can contain. 
 
 The moralist sadly shakes his head and says
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 61 
 
 that this world is vanity. But that vanity is not 
 vacuity truth is in that vainness itself. If the 
 world remained still and became final, then it 
 would be a prison-house of orphaned facts which 
 had lost their freedom of truth, the truth that 
 is infinite. Therefore what the modern thinker 
 says is true in this sense, that in movement lies 
 the meaning of all things because the meaning 
 does not entirely rest in the things themselves 
 but in that which is indicated by their outgrow- 
 ing of their limits. This is what Ishopanishat 
 means when it says that neither the transitory 
 nor the eternal has any meaning separately. 
 When they are known in harmony with each 
 other, only then through help of that harmony 
 we cross the transitory and realize the immortal. 
 
 Because this world is the world of infinite 
 personality it is the object of our life to establish 
 a perfect and personal relationship with it, is the 
 teaching of Ishahpanishat. Therefore it begins 
 with the following verse : 
 
 " Know that all that moves in this moving 
 world is held by the infinity of God ; and enjoy 
 by that which he renounces. Desire not after 
 other possessions." 
 
 That is to say, we have to know that these 
 world movements are not mere blind movements,
 
 62 PERSONALITY 
 
 they are related to the will of a Supreme Person. 
 A mere knowledge of truth is imperfect be- 
 cause impersonal. But enjoyment is personal 
 and the God of my enjoyment moves ; he is 
 active ; he is giving himself. In this act of 
 giving the infinite has taken the aspect of the 
 finite, and therefore become real, so that I can 
 have my joy in him. 
 
 In our crucible of reason the world of appear- 
 ance vanishes and we call it illusion. This is the 
 negative view. But our enjoyment is positive. 
 A flower is nothing when we analyse it, but 
 it is positively a flower when we enjoy it. 
 This joy is real because it is personal. And 
 perfect truth is only perfectly known by our 
 personality. 
 
 And therefore Upanishat has said : " Mind 
 comes back baffled and words also. But he 
 who realizes the joy of Brahma fears nothing." 
 
 The following is the translation of another 
 verse in which Ishopanishat deals with the 
 passive and the active aspects of the infinite : 
 
 '* He who is without a stain, without a body, 
 and therefore without bodily injury or bodily 
 organs of strength, without mixture and without 
 any touch of evil, enters into everywhere. He 
 who is the poet, the ruler of mind, the all-
 
 becoming, the self-born, dispenses perfect fulfil- 
 ment to the endless years." 
 
 Brahma, in his negative qualities, is quiescent. 
 Brahma, in his positive qualities, acts upon all 
 time. He is the poet, he uses mind as his 
 instrument, he reveals himself in limits, the 
 revelation which comes out of his abundance of 
 joy and not from any outside necessity. There- 
 fore it is he who can fulfil our needs through 
 endless years by giving himself. 
 
 From this we find our ideal. Perpetual giving 
 up is the truth of life. The perfection of this 
 is our life's perfection. We are to make this 
 life our poem in all its expressions ; it must be 
 fully suggestive of our soul which is infinite, not 
 merely of our possessions which have no meaning 
 in themselves. The consciousness of the infinite 
 in us proves itself by our joy in giving ourselves 
 out of our abundance. And then our work is 
 the process of our renunciation, it is one with 
 our life. It is like the flowing of the river, 
 which is the river itself. 
 
 Let us live. Let us have the true joy of life, 
 which is the joy of the poet in pouring himself 
 out in his poem. Let us express our infinity in 
 everything round us, in works we do, in things 
 we use, in men with whom we deal, in the
 
 64 PERSONALITY 
 
 enjoyment of the world with which we are 
 surrounded. Let our soul permeate our sur- 
 roundings and create itself in all things, and 
 show its fulness by fulfilling needs of all times. 
 This life of ours has been filled with the gifts of 
 the divine giver. The stars have sung to it, it 
 has been blessed with the daily blessing of the 
 morning light, the fruits have been sweet to it, 
 and the earth has spread its carpet of grass so 
 that it may have its rest. And let it like an 
 instrument fully break out in music of its soul in 
 response to the touch of the infinite soul. 
 
 And this is why the poet of the Ishopanishat 
 says : 
 
 " Doing work in this world thou shouldst wish 
 to live a hundred years. Thus it is with thee 
 and not otherwise. Let not the work of man 
 cling to him." 
 
 Only by living life fully can you outgrow it. 
 When the fruit has served its full term, drawing 
 its juice from the branch as it dances with the 
 wind and matures in the sun, then it feels in its 
 core the call of the beyond and becomes ready for 
 its career of a wider life. But the wisdom of 
 living is in that which gives you the power to give 
 it up. For death is the gate of immortality. 
 Therefore it is said, Do your work, but let not
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 65 
 
 your work cling to you. For the work expresses 
 your life so long as it flows with it, but when it 
 clings, then it impedes, and shows, not the life, 
 but itself. Then like the sands carried by the 
 stream it chokes the soul-current. Activity of 
 limbs is in the nature of physical life ; but when 
 limbs move in convulsion, then the movements 
 are not in harmony with life, but become a 
 disease, like works that cling to a man and kill 
 his soul. 
 
 No, we must not slay our souls. We must 
 not forget that life is here to express the eternal 
 in us. If we smother our consciousness of the 
 infinite either by slothfulness or by passionate 
 pursuit of things that have no freedom of great- 
 ness in them, then like the fruit whose seed has 
 become dead we go back into the primal gloom 
 of the realm of the unformed. Life is perpetual 
 creation ; it has its truth when it outgrows itself 
 in the infinite. But when it stops and accumu- 
 lates and turns back to itself, when it has lost 
 its outlook upon the beyond, then it must die. 
 Then it is dismissed from the world of growth and 
 with all its heaps of belongings crumbles into the 
 dust of dissolution. Of them Isha Upanishat 
 has said : " Those who slay their souls pass from 
 hence to the gloom of the sunless world." 
 
 F
 
 66 PERSONALITY 
 
 The question, " What is this soul," has thus 
 been answered by the Isha Upanishat : 
 
 "It is one, and though unmoving is swifter 
 than mind ; organs of sense cannot reach it ; 
 while standing it progresses beyond others that 
 run ; in it the life inspiration maintains the fluid 
 forces of life." 
 
 The mind has its limitations, the sense organs 
 are severally occupied with things that are before 
 them, but there is a spirit of oneness in us which 
 goes beyond the thoughts of its mind, the move- 
 ments of its bodily organs, which carries whole 
 eternity in its present moment, while through 
 its presence the life inspiration ever urges the 
 life forces onward. Because we are conscious of 
 this One in us which is more than all its belong- 
 ings, which outlives the death of its moments, 
 we cannot believe that it can die. Because it is 
 one, because it is more than its parts, because it 
 is continual survival, perpetual overflow, we feel 
 it beyond all boundaries of death. 
 
 This consciousness of oneness beyond all 
 boundaries is the consciousness of soul. And of 
 this soul Isha Upanishat has said : " It moves. 
 It moves not. It is in the distant. It is in the 
 near. It is within all. It is outside all." 
 
 This is to know the soul across the boundaries
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 67 
 
 of the near and the distant, of the within and 
 the without. I have known this wonder of 
 wonders, this one in myself which is the centre 
 of all reality for me. But I cannot stop here. 
 I cannot say that it exceeds all boundaries, 
 and yet is bounded by myself. Therefore Isha 
 Upanishat says : 
 
 " He who sees all things in the soul and the 
 soul in all things is nevermore hidden." 
 
 We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth 
 hidden in isolated facts. When we know that 
 this One in us is One in all, then our truth is 
 revealed. 
 
 But this knowledge of the unity of soul must 
 not be an abstraction. It is not that negative 
 kind of universalism which belongs neither to 
 one nor to another. It is not an abstract soul, 
 but it is my own soul which I must realize in 
 others. I must know that if my soul were 
 singularly mine, then it could not be true ; at 
 the same time if it were not intimately mine, it 
 would not be real. 
 
 Through the help of logic we never could 
 have arrived at the truth that the soul which 
 is the unifying principle in me finds its perfec- 
 tion in its unity in others. We have known it 
 through the joy of this truth. Our delight is in
 
 68 PERSONALITY 
 
 realizing ourselves outside us. When I love, in 
 other words, when I feel I am truer in some one 
 else than myself, then I am glad, for the One in 
 me realizes its truth of unity by uniting with 
 others, and there is its joy. 
 
 Therefore the spirit of One in God must have 
 the many for the realization of the unity. And 
 God is giving himself in love to all. Isha 
 Upanishat says : " Thou shouldst enjoy what 
 God is renouncing." He is renouncing ; and I 
 have my joy when I feel that he is renouncing 
 himself. For this joy of mine is the joy of 
 love which comes of the renouncing of myself 
 in him. 
 
 Where Isha Upanishat teaches us to enjoy 
 God's renunciation it says : " Desire not after 
 other man's possessions." 
 
 For desire is hindrance to love. It is the 
 movement towards the opposite direction of 
 truth, towards the illusion that self is our final 
 object. 
 
 Therefore the realization of our soul has its 
 moral and its spiritual side. The moral side 
 represents training of unselfishness, control of 
 desire ; the spiritual side represents sympathy 
 and love. They should be taken together and 
 never separated. The cultivation of the merely
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 69 
 
 moral side of our nature leads us to the dark 
 region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to 
 the intolerant arrogance of goodness ; and the 
 cultivation of the merely spiritual side of nature 
 leads us to a still darker region of revelry in 
 intemperance of imagination. 
 
 By following the poet of Isha Upanishat we 
 have come to the meaning of all reality, where 
 the infinite is giving himself out through finitude. 
 Reality is the expression of personality, like a 
 poem, like a work of art. The Supreme Being 
 is giving himself in his world and I am making 
 it mine, like a poem which I realize by rinding 
 myself in it. If my own personality leaves the 
 centre of my world, then in a moment it loses 
 all its attributes. From this I know that my 
 world exists in relation to me, and I know that 
 it has been given to the personal me by a personal 
 being. The process of the giving can be classi- 
 fied and generalized by science, but not the gift. 
 For the gift is the soul unto the soul, therefore 
 it can only be realized by the soul in joy, not 
 analysed by the reason in logic. 
 
 Therefore the one cry of the personal man 
 has been to know the Supreme Person. From 
 the beginning of his history man has been feel- 
 ing the touch of personality in all creation, and
 
 70 PERSONALITY 
 
 trying to give it names and forms, weaving it in 
 legends round his life and the life of his races, 
 offering it worship and establishing relations 
 with it through countless forms of ceremonial. 
 This feeling of the touch of personality has 
 given the centrifugal impulse in man's heart to 
 break out in a ceaseless flow of reaction, in songs 
 and pictures and poems, in images and temples 
 and festivities. This has been the centripetal 
 force which attracted men into groups and clans 
 and communal organizations. And while man 
 tills his soil and spins his cloths, mates and rears 
 his children, toils for wealth and fights for power, 
 he does not forget to proclaim in languages 
 of solemn rhythm, in mysterious symbols, in 
 structures of majestic stone, that in the heart 
 of his world he has met the Immortal Person. 
 In the sorrow of death, and suffering of 
 despair, when trust has been betrayed and love 
 desecrated, when existence becomes tasteless and 
 unmeaning, man standing upon the ruins of his 
 hopes stretches his hands to the heavens to feel 
 the touch of the Person across his darkened 
 world. 
 
 Man has also known direct communication of 
 the person with the Person, not through the 
 world of forms and changes, the world of ex-
 
 THE WORLD OF PERSONALITY 71 
 
 tension in time and space, but in the innermost 
 solitude of consciousness, in the region of the 
 profound and the intense. Through this meeting 
 he has felt the creation of a new world, a world of 
 light and love that has no language but of music 
 of silence. 
 
 Of this the poet has sung : 
 
 There is an endless world, O my Brother. 
 
 And there is a nameless Being of whom nought can be said. 
 
 Only he knows who has reached that region : 
 
 It is other than all that is heard and said. 
 
 No form, no body, no length, no breadth, is seen there : 
 
 How can I tell you that which it is ? 
 
 Kabir says : " It cannot be told by the words of the mouth, 
 
 it cannot be written on paper : 
 It is like a dumb person who tastes a sweet thing how shall 
 
 it be explained ? " 
 
 No, it cannot be explained, it has to be real- 
 ized ; and when man has done so, he sings : 
 
 The inward and the outward has become as one sky, 
 The infinite and the finite are united : 
 I am drunken with the sight of this All. 
 
 The poet in this has reached Reality which 
 is ineffable, where all contradictions have been 
 harmonized. For the ultimate reality is in the 
 Person and not in the law and substance. And 
 man must feel that if this universe is not the 
 manifestation of a Supreme Person, then it is a
 
 72 PERSONALITY 
 
 stupendous deception and a perpetual insult to 
 him. He should know that under such enor- 
 mous weight of estrangement his own personality 
 would have been crushed out of its shape in 
 the very beginning and have vanished in the 
 meaninglessness of an abstraction that had not 
 even the basis of a mind for its conception. 
 
 The poet of Isha Upanishat at the end of his 
 teachings suddenly breaks out in a verse which 
 in the depth of its simplicity carries the lyrical 
 silence of the wide earth gazing at the morning 
 sun. He sings : 
 
 " In the golden vessel is hidden the face of 
 truth. O thou Giver of Nourishment, remove 
 the cover for our sight, for us who must know 
 the law of truth. O thou giver of nourishment, 
 thou who movest alone, who dost regulate the 
 creation, who art the spirit of the lord of all 
 creatures, collect thy rays, draw together thy 
 light, let me behold in thee the most blessed of 
 all forms, the Person who is there, who is 
 there, he is I Am." 
 
 Then at the conclusion this poet of deathless 
 personality thus sings of death : 
 
 "Life breath is the breath of immortality. 
 The body ends in ashes. O my will, remember 
 thy deeds, O my will, remember thy deeds.
 
 O God, O Fire, thou knowest all deeds. Lead 
 us through good paths to fulfilment. Separate 
 from us the crooked sin. To thee we offer our 
 speech of salutation." 
 
 Here stops the poet of Isha Upanishat, who 
 has travelled from life to death and from death 
 to life again ; who has had the boldness to see 
 Brahma as the infinite Being and the finite 
 Becoming at the same moment ; who declares 
 that life is through work, the work that expresses 
 the soul ; whose teaching is to realize our soul in 
 the Supreme Being through our renunciation of 
 self and union with all. 
 
 The profound truth to which the poet of Isha 
 Upanishat has given expression is the truth of 
 the simple mind which is in deep love with 
 the mystery of reality and cannot believe in the 
 finality of that logic which by its method of 
 decomposition brings the universe to the brink 
 of dissolution. 
 
 Have I not known the sunshine to grow 
 brighter and the moonlight deeper in its tender- 
 ness when my heart was filled with a sudden 
 access of love assuring me that this world is one 
 with my soul ? When I have sung the coming 
 of the clouds, the pattering of rains has found 
 its pathos in my songs. From the dawn of our
 
 74 PERSONALITY 
 
 history the poets and artists have been infusing 
 the colours and music of their soul into the 
 structure of existence. And from this I have 
 known certainly that the earth and the sky are 
 woven with the fibres of man's mind, which is the 
 universal mind at the same time. If this were 
 not true, then poetry would be false and music 
 a delusion, and the mute world would compel 
 man's heart into utter silence. The Great 
 Master plays ; the breath is his own, but the 
 instrument is our mind through which he brings 
 out his songs of creation, and therefore I know 
 that I am not a mere stranger resting in the 
 wayside inn of this earth on my voyage of 
 existence, but I live in a world whose life is 
 bound up with mine. The poet has known that 
 the reality of this world is personal and has sung : 
 
 The earth is His joy : His joy is the sky ; 
 
 His joy is the flashing of the sun and the moon ; 
 
 His joy is the beginning, the middle, and the end ; 
 
 His joy is eyes, darkness and light. 
 
 Oceans and waves are His joy ; 
 
 His joy the Saraswati, the Jumana and the Ganges. 
 
 The Master is One : and life and death, 
 
 Union and separation are all His plays of joy.
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 
 
 75
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 
 
 FOR us inanimate nature is the outside view of 
 existence. We only know how it appears to 
 us, but we do not know what it is. For that 
 we can only know by sympathy. 
 
 But the curtain rises, life appears on the 
 stage, and the drama begins whose meaning 
 we come to understand through gestures and 
 language resembling our own. We know what 
 life is, not by outward features, not by analysis 
 of its parts, but by a more immediate per- 
 ception through sympathy. And this is real 
 knowledge. 
 
 We see a tree. It is separate from its sur- 
 roundings by the fact of its individual life. All 
 its struggle is to keep this separateness of its 
 creative individuality distinct from everything 
 else in the universe. Its life is based upon a 
 dualism, on one side this individuality of the 
 tree, and on the other the universe. 
 
 77
 
 78 PERSONALITY 
 
 But if it were a dualism of hostility and 
 mutual exclusion, then the tree would have no 
 chance to maintain its existence. The whole 
 league of giant forces would pull it to pieces. 
 It is a dualism of relationship. The more 
 perfect the harmony with its world of the sun 
 and the soil and the seasons, the more perfect 
 the tree becomes in its individuality. It is an 
 evil for it when this inter-relation is checked. 
 Therefore life, on its negative side, has to main- 
 tain separateness from all else, while, on its 
 positive side, it maintains unity with the universe. 
 In this unity is its fulfilment. 
 
 In the life of an animal on its negative side 
 this element of separateness is still more pro- 
 nounced, and on that account on its positive 
 side its relationship with the world is still wider. 
 Its food is more fully separated from it than 
 that of the tree. It has to seek it and know it 
 under the stimuli of pleasure and pain. There- 
 fore it has a fuller relationship with its world of 
 knowledge and feeling. The same is also true 
 in its case with regard to the separation of sex. 
 These separations, and the consequent efforts 
 after unity, have the effect of heightening the 
 consciousness of self in animals, making their 
 personality richer by their contact with unfore-
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 79 
 
 seen obstacles and unexpected possibilities. In 
 the trees the separation from their progeny ends 
 in complete detachment, whereas in animals it 
 leads to a further relationship. Thus the vital 
 interest of animals is still more enlarged in its 
 scope and intensity, and their consciousness is 
 spread over a larger area. This wider kingdom 
 of their individuality they have constantly to 
 maintain through a complex relationship with 
 their world. All obstacles to this are evils. 
 
 In man, this dualism of physical life is still 
 more varied. His needs are not only greater in 
 number and therefore requiring larger field for 
 search, but also more complex, requiring deeper 
 knowledge of things. This gives him a greater 
 consciousness of himself. It is his mind which 
 more fully takes the place of the automatic 
 movements and instinctive activities of trees 
 and animals. This mind also has its negative 
 and positive aspects of separateness and unity. 
 For, on the one hand, it separates the objects of 
 knowledge from their knower, and then again 
 unites them in a relationship of knowledge. To 
 the vital relationship of this world of food and 
 sex is added the secondary relation which is 
 mental. Thus we make this world doubly our 
 own by living in it and by knowing it
 
 80 PERSONALITY 
 
 But there is another division in man, which 
 is not explained by the character of his physical 
 life. It is the dualism in his consciousness of 
 what is and what ought to be. In the animal 
 this is lacking, its conflict is between what is 
 and what is desired ; whereas, in man, the 
 conflict is between what is desired and what 
 should be desired. What is desired dwells in the 
 heart of the natural life, which we share with 
 animals ; but what should be desired belongs to 
 a life which is far beyond it. 
 
 So, in man, a second birth has taken place. 
 He still retains a good many habits and instincts 
 of his animal life ; yet his true life is in the 
 region of what ought to be. In this, though 
 there is a continuation, yet there is also a 
 conflict. Many things that are good for the one 
 life are evil for the other. This necessity of a 
 fight with himself has introduced an element 
 into man's personality which is character. From 
 the life of desire it guides man to the life of 
 purpose. This life is the life of the moral 
 world. 
 
 In this moral world we come from the world 
 of nature into the world of humanity. We live 
 and move and have our being in the universal 
 man. A human infant is born into the material
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 81 
 
 universe and into the universe of man at the 
 same time. This latter is a world of ideas and 
 institutions, of stored knowledge and trained 
 habits. It has been built by strenuous en- 
 deavours of ages, by martyrdoms of heroic men. 
 Its strata are deposits of the renunciations of 
 countless individuals in all ages and countries. 
 It has its good and evil elements, the in- 
 equalities of its surface and its temperature 
 making the flow of life full of surprises. 
 
 This is the world of man's second birth, the 
 extra-natural world, where the dualism of the 
 animal life and the moral makes us conscious of 
 our personality as man. Whatever hinders this 
 life of man from establishing perfect relation- 
 ship with its moral world is an evil. It is 
 death, a far greater death than the death of 
 the natural life. 
 
 In the natural world, with the help of science, 
 man is turning the forces of matter from tyranny 
 into obedience. 
 
 But in his moral world he has a harder task 
 to accomplish. He has to turn his own passions 
 and desires from tyranny into obedience. And 
 continual efforts have been directed towards this 
 end in all times and climates. Nearly all our 
 institutions are the outcome of these endeavours. 
 
 G
 
 82 PERSONALITY 
 
 They are giving directions to our will and dig- 
 ging channels for it in order to allow its course 
 to run easily without useless waste of power. 
 
 We have seen that the physical life had its 
 gradual expansion into the mental. The mind 
 of animals is fully engrossed in the search for 
 and knowledge of the immediate necessaries of 
 life. In man's case these objects were more 
 varied and therefore a greater mind-power was 
 requisite. Thus we became aware that our 
 world of present needs is one with a world that 
 infinitely transcends our present needs. We 
 came to know that this world not only provides 
 us with food, but with thoughts in a greater 
 measure ; that there is a subtle relationship of 
 all things with our mind. 
 
 What the intellect is in the world of Nature 
 our will is in the moral world. The more it is 
 freed and widened, the more our moral relation- 
 ship becomes true, varied and large. Its outer 
 freedom is the freedom from the guidance of 
 pleasure and pain, its inner freedom is from the 
 narrowness of self-desire. We know that when 
 intellect is freed from the bondage of interest 
 it discovers the world of universal reason, with 
 which we must be in harmony fully to satisfy 
 our needs ; in the same manner when will is
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 83 
 
 freed from its limitations, when it becomes 
 good, that is to say, when its scope is extended 
 to all men and all time, it discerns a world tran- 
 scending the moral world of humanity. It finds 
 a world where all our disciplines of moral life 
 find their ultimate truth, and our mind is roused 
 to the idea that there is an infinite medium of 
 truth through which goodness finds its meaning. 
 That I become more in my union with others 
 is not a simple fact of arithmetic. We have 
 known that when different personalities combine 
 in love, which is the complete union, then it is 
 not like adding to the horse power of efficiency, 
 but it is what was imperfect finding its perfection 
 in truth, and therefore in joy ; what was mean- 
 ingless, when unrelated, finding its full meaning 
 in relationship. This perfection is not a thing 
 of measurement or analysis, it is a whole which 
 transcends all its parts. It leads us into a 
 mystery, which is in the heart of things, yet 
 beyond it, like the beauty of a flower which is 
 infinitely more than its botanical facts ; like the 
 sense of humanity itself which cannot be con- 
 tained in mere gregariousness. 
 
 This feeling of perfection in love, which is 
 the feeling of the perfect oneness, opens for us 
 the gate of the world of the Infinite One, who
 
 84 PERSONALITY 
 
 is revealed in the unity of all personalities ; who 
 gives truth to sacrifice of self, to death which 
 leads to a larger life, and to loss which leads 
 to a greater gain ; who turns the emptiness of 
 renunciation into fulfilment by his own fulness. 
 Here we come to the realm of the greatest 
 division in us, the division of the finite and 
 the infinite. In this we become conscious of 
 the relationship between what is in us and what 
 is beyond us ; between what is in the moment 
 and what is ever to come. 
 
 The consciousness of relationship dawned in 
 us with our physical existence, where there was 
 separation and meeting between our individual 
 life and the universal world of things ; it took 
 a deeper hue in our mental life, where there 
 was a separation and continual reunion between 
 our individual mind and the universal world of 
 reason ; it widened where there was a separation 
 and combination between the individual will and 
 the universal world of human personalities ; it 
 came to its ultimate meaning where there was 
 the separation and harmony between the in- 
 dividual One in us and the universal One in 
 infinity. And at this point of the everlasting 
 parting and meeting of the One with the One 
 breaks out the wonderful song of man
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 85 
 
 That is the Supreme Path of This, 
 That is the Supreme Treasure of This, 
 That is the Supreme World of This, 
 That is the Supreme Joy of This. 1 
 
 Life is the relationship of the That and the 
 This. In the world of things and men, this 
 rhythm of That and This flows on in countless 
 channels of metres ; but the meaning of it is 
 absent, till the realization is made perfect in 
 the Supreme That and This. 
 
 The relation of the unborn child to its 
 surroundings in the mother's womb is intimate, 
 but it is without its final meaning. There 
 its wants are ministered to in all their details, 
 but its greatest want remains unfulfilled. It 
 must be born into the world of light and space 
 and freedom of action. That world is so entirely 
 different in every respect from that of the 
 mother's womb, that, if the unborn child had 
 the power to think, it could never imagine 
 what that wider world was. Yet it has limbs, 
 which have their only meaning in the freedom 
 of the air and light. 
 
 In the same manner in the natural world 
 
 1 Eshasya parama gatih, 
 Eshasya parama sampat, 
 Esho'sya paramo lokah, 
 Esho'sya parama anandah.
 
 86 PERSONALITY 
 
 man has all the preparations for the nourish- 
 ment of his self. There his self is his principal 
 concern, the self which is detached in its 
 interests from other selves. As is his self, so 
 are the things of his world ; they have no other 
 connection in themselves than that of his use. 
 But some faculties grow in him, like the limbs 
 in the unborn child, which give him the power 
 to realize the unity of the world, the unity 
 which is the property of soul, and not of things. 
 He has the faculty of taking joy in others, in 
 beauty and love, even more than the joy in 
 himself. The faculty which makes him spurn 
 pleasure and accept pain and death, makes him 
 refuse to acknowledge any limit to his progress, 
 and leads him towards knowledge and action 
 that are of no apparent use to him. This causes 
 conflict with the laws of the natural world, and 
 the principle of the survival of the fittest changes 
 its meaning. 
 
 Here comes the greatest suffering of the 
 dualism in man, the dualism of the world of nature 
 and the world of soul. The evil which hurts the 
 natural man is pain, but that which hurts his soul 
 has been given a special name, it is sin. For it 
 may not be at all realized in pain, yet it is evil, 
 just as blindness or lameness is of no consequence
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 87 
 
 to the embryo, yet becomes a great evil if it con- 
 tinues after birth, for it hinders life's ultimate 
 purpose. Crime is against man, sin is against 
 the divine in us. 
 
 What is this divine ? It is that which has its 
 right and true meaning in the infinite, which does 
 not believe in the embryonic life of self as the 
 ultimate truth. The travail of birth is upon all 
 humanity its history is the history of suffering 
 such as no animal can ever realize. All its 
 energies are urging it forward ; it has no rest. 
 When it goes to sleep upon its prosperity, binds 
 its life in codes of convention, begins to scoff at 
 its ideals, and wants to withdraw all its forces 
 towards the augmentation of self, then it shows 
 signs of death ; its very power becomes the power 
 of destruction, the power which makes huge 
 preparations for death, not believing in the im- 
 mortal life. 
 
 For all other creatures nature is final. To 
 live, to propagate their race and to die is their 
 end. And they are content. They never cry 
 for salvation, for emancipation from the limits of 
 life ; they never feel stifled for breath and knock 
 with all their forces against the boundary walls 
 of their world ; they never know what it is to re- 
 nounce their life of plenty and through privations
 
 88 PERSONALITY 
 
 to seek entrance into the realm of blessedness. 
 They are not ashamed of their desires, they 
 are pure in their appetites ; for these belong 
 to their complete life. They are not cruel in 
 their cruelties, not greedy in their greeds ; for 
 these end in their objects, which are final in 
 themselves. But man has a further life, and 
 therefore those passions are despised by him 
 which do not acknowledge his infinity. 
 
 In man, the life of the animal has taken a 
 further bend. He has come to the beginning of 
 a world, which has to be created by his own will 
 and power. The receptive stage is past, in which 
 the self tries to draw all surrounding things to- 
 wards its own centre and gives nothing. Man 
 is now upon his career of creative life ; he is 
 to give from his abundance. By his incessant 
 movement of renunciation he is to grow. What- 
 ever checks that freedom of endless growth is 
 sin, which is the evil that works against man's 
 eternity. This creative energy in man has shown 
 itself from the beginning of his chapter of life. 
 Even his physical needs are not supplied to him 
 ready-made in nature's nursery. From his primi- 
 tive days he has been busy creating a world of 
 his own resources from the raw materials that lie 
 around him. Even the dishes of his food are his
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 89 
 
 own creation and, unlike animals, he is born 
 naked and has to create his own clothes. This 
 proves that man has been born from the world 
 of nature's purpose to the world of freedom. 
 
 For creation is freedom. It is a prison, to 
 have to live in what is ; for it is living in what is 
 not ourselves. There we helplessly allow nature 
 to choose us and choose for us, and thus we come 
 under the law of natural selection. But in our 
 creation we live in what is ours, and there more 
 and more the world becomes a world of our own 
 selection ; it moves with our movement and gives 
 way to us according to the turn we take. Thus 
 we find that man is not content with the world 
 that is given to him ; he is bent upon making it 
 his own world. And he is taking to pieces the 
 mechanism of the universe to study it and to refit 
 it according to his own requirements. He is 
 restless under the restrictions of nature's arrange- 
 ments of things. These impede the freedom of 
 his course at every step, and he has to tolerate 
 the tyranny of matter, which his nature refuses 
 to believe final and inevitable. 
 
 Even in his savage days he would change 
 things by magical powers. He dreamed, as no 
 animal ever does, of Aladdin's lamp and of the 
 obedient forces of genii to turn the world upside
 
 90 PERSONALITY 
 
 down as it suited him, because his free spirit, in 
 its movements, stumbled against things arranged 
 without consideration for him. He was obliged 
 to behave as if he must follow the arrangement 
 of nature, which had not his consent, or die. But 
 this, in spite of hard facts against him, he never 
 could believe in his heart of hearts. Therefore 
 he dreamed of the paradise where he could be 
 free, of the fairy land, of the epic age when man 
 had constant cooperation with gods, of the philo- 
 sopher's stone, of the elixir of life. Though he 
 saw no gate opening out anywhere, he groped 
 for it, he fretted, he desired and prayed with 
 all his might for an entrance to freedom. For 
 instinctively he felt that this world was not his 
 final world, and unless he had another world his 
 soul was to him a meaningless torment. 
 
 Science guides man's rebellion of freedom 
 against Nature's rule. She is working to give 
 into man's hand Nature's magic wand of power ; 
 she is to free our spirit from the slavery of things. 
 Science has a materialistic appearance, because 
 she is engaged in breaking the prison of matter 
 and working in the rubbish heap of the ruins. At 
 the invasion of a new country plunder becomes 
 the rule of the day. But when that country is 
 conquered, things become different, and those
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 91 
 
 who robbed act as policemen to restore peace 
 and security. Science is at the beginning of the 
 invasion of the material world and there goes 
 on a furious scramble for plunder. Often things 
 look hideously materialistic, and shamelessly belie 
 man's own nature. But the day will come when 
 some of the great powers of nature will be at the 
 beck and call of every individual, and at least the 
 prime necessaries of life will be supplied to all 
 with very little care and cost. To live will be 
 as easy to man as to breathe, and his spirit will 
 be free to create his own world. 
 
 In early days, when science had not found the 
 keys to nature's storehouses of power, man still 
 had the courage of stoicism to defy matter. He 
 said he could go without food, and clothes were 
 not absolutely necessary for him to save him 
 from extremes of temperature. He loved to 
 take pride in mortifying the flesh. It was his 
 pleasure openly to proclaim that he paid very 
 few of the taxes which nature claimed from him. 
 He proved that he utterly disdained the fear of 
 pain and death, with the help of which nature 
 exacted servitude from him. 
 
 Why was this pride ? Why has man always 
 chafed against the humiliation of bending his 
 neck to physical necessities ? Why could he
 
 92 PERSONALITY 
 
 never reconcile himself to accept the limitations 
 of nature as absolute ? Why could he, in his 
 physical and moral world, attempt impossibili- 
 ties that stagger imagination, and, in spite of 
 repeated disappointments, never accept defeat ? 
 
 Looked at from the point of view of nature 
 man is foolish. He does not fully trust the 
 world he lives in. He has been waging war 
 with it from the commencement of his history. 
 He seems so fond of hurting himself from all 
 directions. It is difficult to imagine how the 
 careful mistress of natural selection should leave 
 loopholes through which such unnecessary and 
 dangerous elements could find entrance into her 
 economy and encourage man to try to break the 
 very world that sustains him. But the chick 
 also behaves in the same unaccountably foolish 
 manner in pecking through the wall of its little 
 world. Somehow it has felt, with the accom- 
 plishment of an irresistible impulse, that there 
 is something beyond its dear prison of shell, 
 waiting to give it the fulfilment of its existence 
 in a manner it can never imagine. 
 
 In the same manner also man, in his instinct, 
 is almost blindly sure that, however dense be his 
 envelopment, he is to be born from Nature's 
 womb to the world of spirit, the world where
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 98 
 
 he has his freedom of creation ; where he is in 
 cooperation with the infinite, where his creation 
 and God's creation are to become one in harmony. 
 
 In almost all religious systems there is a large 
 area of pessimism, where life has been held to be 
 an evil, and the world a snare and a delusion ; 
 where man has felt himself to be furiously at 
 war with his natural surroundings. He has felt 
 the oppression of all things so intensely that it has 
 seemed to him there was an evil personality in 
 the world, which tempted him, and with all its 
 cunning wiles waylaid him into destruction. 
 In his desperation man has thought that he 
 would shut up all possible communication with 
 nature and utterly prove that he was sufficient 
 in himself. 
 
 But this is the intensely painful antagonism of 
 the child-life with the mother's life at the time 
 of birth. It is cruel and destructive ; it looks 
 at the moment like ingratitude. And all reli- 
 gious pessimism is an ingratitude of deepest dye. 
 It is a violent incitement to strike at that which 
 has so long borne us and fed us with its own life. 
 
 Yet that there could be such an impossible 
 paradox makes us pause and think. There are 
 times when we detach ourselves from our history 
 and believe that such pessimistic paroxysms were
 
 94 PERSONALITY 
 
 deliberate creations of certain monks and priests, 
 who lived under unnatural conditions in a time 
 of lawlessness. In such a belief we forget that 
 conspiracies are creations of history, but history 
 is no creation of conspiracies. There has been 
 a violent demand upon human nature from its 
 own depth to declare war against its own self. 
 And though its violence has subsided, the battle- 
 cry has not altogether ceased. 
 
 We must know that periods of transition have 
 their language which cannot be taken literally. 
 The first assertion of soul comes to man with 
 too violent an emphasis upon the separateness 
 from nature, against which it seems ready to 
 carry out war of extermination. But this is the 
 negative side. When the revolution for freedom 
 breaks out, it takes the aspect of anarchy. Yet 
 its true meaning is not the destruction of govern- 
 ment, but the freedom of government. 
 
 In like manner, the soul's birth in the spiritual 
 world is not the severance of relationship with 
 what we call nature, but freedom of relationship, 
 perfectness of realization. 
 
 In nature we are blind and lame like a child 
 before its birth. But in the spiritual life we 
 are born in freedom. And then because we are 
 freed from the blind bondage of nature she is
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 95 
 
 illuminated to us, and where we saw before mere 
 envelopment we now see the mother. 
 
 But what is the ultimate end of the freedom 
 which has come into man's life ? It must have 
 its meaning in something beyond which the 
 question need go no farther. The answer is 
 the same that we receive from the life of the 
 animal if we ask what is its final meaning. The 
 animals, by feeding and gratifying their desires, 
 realize their own selves. And that is the ulti- 
 mate end, to know that I am. The animal 
 knows it, but its knowledge is like the smoke, 
 not like the fire it comes with a blind feeling 
 but no illumination, and though it arouses the 
 truth it darkens it It is the consciousness 
 passing from the undistinguished non-self to the 
 distinct self. It has just enough circumference 
 to feel itself as the centre. 
 
 The ultimate end of freedom is also to know 
 that " I am." But it is the aberration of man's 
 consciousness from the separateness of the self 
 into its unity with all. This freedom is not per- 
 fect in its mere extension, but its true perfection 
 is in its intensity, which is love. The freedom 
 of the child's birth from its mother's womb is 
 not fulfilled in its fuller consciousness of its 
 mother, but in its intense consciousness of its
 
 96 PERSONALITY 
 
 mother in love. In the womb it was fed and 
 was warm, but it was narrowly self-contained 
 in its loneliness. After its birth, through the 
 medium of its freedom, the inter-communication 
 of the love of the mother and the child brings 
 to the child the joy of the fullest consciousness 
 of its personality. This mother's love gives to 
 it the meaning of all its world. If the child 
 were merely a feeding organism, then by fixing 
 its roots into its world it could thrive. But the 
 child is a person, and its personality needs its 
 full realization, which can never be in the 
 bondage of the womb. It has to be free, and 
 the freedom of personality has its fulfilment, not 
 in itself, but in other personality, and this is 
 love. 
 
 It is not true that animals do not feel love. 
 But it is too feeble to illuminate consciousness 
 to such a degree as to reveal the whole truth 
 of love to them. Their love has a glow which 
 brightens their selves but has not the flame 
 which goes beyond the mystery of personality. 
 Its range is too immediately near to indicate its 
 direction towards the paradox, that personality, 
 which is the sense of unity in one's own self, yet 
 finds its real truth in its relationship of unity 
 with others.
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 97 
 
 This paradox has led man to realize further 
 that Nature, into which we are born, is merely 
 an imperfect truth, like the truth of the womb. 
 But the full truth is, that we are born in the lap 
 of the infinite personality. Our true world is 
 not the world of the laws of matter and force, 
 but the world of personality. When we fully 
 realize it, our freedom is fulfilled. Then we 
 understand what the Upanishat says : 
 
 " Know all that moves in the moving world 
 as enveloped by God, and enjoy by what he 
 renounces." 
 
 We have seen that consciousness of personality 
 begins with the feeling of the separateness from 
 all and has its culmination in the feeling of the 
 unity with all. It is needless to say that with 
 the consciousness of separation there must be 
 consciousness of unity, for it cannot exist solely 
 by itself. But the life in which the conscious- 
 ness of separation takes the first place and of unity 
 the second place, and therefore where the per- 
 sonality is narrow and dim in the light of truth, 
 this is the life of self. But the life in which 
 the consciousness of unity is the primary and 
 separateness the secondary factor, and therefore 
 the personality is large and bright in truth, 
 this is the life of soul. The whole object of 
 
 H
 
 98 PERSONALITY 
 
 man is to free his personality of self into the 
 personality of soul, to turn his inward forces into 
 the forward movement towards the infinite, from 
 the contraction of self in desire into the expansion 
 of soul in love. 
 
 This personality, which is the conscious prin- 
 ciple of oneness, the centre of relationships, is 
 the reality, therefore the ultimate object of 
 attainment. I must emphasize this fact, that 
 this world is a real world only in its relation to a 
 central personality. When that centre is taken 
 away, then it falls to pieces, becomes a heap of 
 abstractions, matter and force, logical symbols, 
 and even those, the thinnest semblances of 
 reality, would vanish into absolute nothingness, 
 if the logical person in the centre, to whom 
 they are related in some harmony of reason, 
 were nowhere. 
 
 But these centres are innumerable. Each 
 creature has its own little world related to 
 its own personality. Therefore, the question 
 naturally comes to our mind, is the reality 
 many, irreconcilably different each from the 
 other ? 
 
 If we have to give an answer in the affirma- 
 tive, our whole nature rebels. For we know 
 that in us the principle of oneness is the basis of
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 99 
 
 all reality. Therefore, through all his question- 
 ings and imaginings from the dim dawn of his 
 doubtings and debates, man has come to the 
 truth, that there is one infinite centre to which 
 all the personalities, and therefore all the world 
 of reality, are related. He is "Mahantam 
 purusham," the one Supreme Person ; he is 
 " Satyam," the one Supreme Reality ; he is 
 " Jnanam," he has the knowledge in him of all 
 knowers, therefore he knows himself in all 
 knowings ; he is " Sarvanubhuh," he feels in him 
 the feelings of all creatures, therefore he feels 
 himself in all feelings. 
 
 But this Supreme Person, the centre of all 
 reality, is not merely a passive, a negatively 
 receptive being, Ananda-rupam amrtam yad 
 vibhati. He is the joy which reveals itself in 
 forms. It is his will which creates. 
 
 Will has its supreme response, not in the 
 world of law, but in the world of freedom, not in 
 the world of nature, but in the spiritual world. 
 
 This we know in ourselves. Our slaves do 
 our bidding, furnish us with our necessaries, but 
 in them our relation is not perfect. We have 
 our own freedom of will which can only find its 
 true harmony in the freedom of other wills. 
 Where we are slaves ourselves, in our selfish
 
 100 PERSONALITY 
 
 desires, we feel satisfaction in slaves. For slaves 
 reflect our own slavery, which comes back to us, 
 making us dependent. Therefore when America 
 freed her slaves she truly freed herself, not only 
 from the spiritual, but also from the material 
 slavery. Our highest joy is in love. For there 
 we realize the freedom of will in others. In 
 friends, the will meets our will in fulness of free- 
 dom, not in coercion of want or fear ; therefore, 
 in this love, our personality finds its highest 
 realization. 
 
 Because the truth of our will is in its free- 
 dom, therefore all our pure joy is in freedom. 
 We have pleasure in the fulfilment of our 
 necessity, but this pleasure is of a negative 
 nature. For necessity is a bondage, the fulfil- 
 ment of which frees us from it. But there 
 comes its end. It is different with our delight 
 in beauty. It is of a positive nature. In the 
 rhythm of harmony, whatever may be its reason, 
 we find perfection. There we see not the 
 substance, or the law, but some relationship 
 of forms which has its harmony with our 
 personality. From the bondage of mere lines 
 and matter comes out that which is above 
 all limitations it is the complete unity of 
 relationship. We at once feel free from the
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 101 
 
 tyranny of unmeaningness of isolated things, 
 they now give us something which is personal 
 to our own self. The revelation of unity in its 
 passive perfection, which we find in nature, is 
 beauty ; the revelation of unity in its active 
 perfection, which we find in the spiritual world, 
 is love. This is not in the rhythm of propor- 
 tions, but in the rhythm of wills. The will, 
 which is free, must seek for the realization of 
 its harmony other wills which are also free, and 
 in this is the significance of spiritual life. The 
 infinite centre of personality, which radiates its 
 joy by giving itself out in freedom, must create 
 other centres of freedom to unite with it in 
 harmony. Beauty is the harmony realized in 
 things which are bound by law. Love is the 
 harmony realized in wills which are free. 
 
 In man, these centres of freedom have been 
 created. It is not for him to be merely the 
 recipient of favours from nature ; he must fully 
 radiate himself out in his creation of power 
 and perfection of love. His movement must be 
 towards the Supreme Person, whose movement 
 is towards him. The creation of the natural 
 world is God's own creation, we can only receive 
 it and by receiving it make it our own. But in 
 the creation of the spiritual world we are God's
 
 102 PERSONALITY 
 
 partners. In this work God has to wait for our 
 will to harmonize with his own. It is not power 
 which builds this spiritual world ; there is no 
 passivity in its remotest corner, no coercion. 
 Consciousness has to be made clear of all mists 
 of delusion, will has to be made free from all 
 contrary forces of passions and desires, and then 
 we meet with God where he creates. There 
 can be no passive union, because he is not a 
 passive being. With him our relationship as 
 mere receivers of gifts is not fully true, for that 
 is a one-sided and therefore imperfect relation- 
 ship. He gives us from his own fulness and 
 we also give him from our abundance. And 
 in this there is true joy not only for us, but for 
 God also. 
 
 In our country the Vaishnavas have realized 
 this truth and boldly asserted it by saying that 
 God has to rely on human souls for the fulfil- 
 ment of his love. In love there must be freedom, 
 therefore God has not only to wait till our souls, 
 out of their own will, bring themselves into 
 harmony with his own, but also to suffer when 
 there are obstacles and rebellions. 
 
 Therefore in the creation of the spiritual 
 world, in which man has to work in union with 
 God, there have been sufferings of which animals
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 103 
 
 can have no idea. In the tuning of the instru- 
 ments discords have shrieked loud, and strings 
 have often snapped. When seen from this 
 aspect, such work of collaboration between man 
 and God has seemed as though meaninglessly 
 malevolent. Because of the ideal that there is 
 in the heart of this creation, every mistake and 
 misfit has come as a stab and the world of soul 
 has bled and groaned. Freedom has often taken 
 the negative course to prove that it is freedom, 
 and man has suffered and God with him, so 
 that this world of spirit might come out of its 
 bath of fire, naked and pure, radiating light in 
 all its limbs like a divine child. There have been 
 hypocrisies and lies, cruel arrogance angered at 
 the wounds it inflicts, spiritual pride that uses 
 God's name to insult man, and pride of power 
 that insults God by calling him its ally ; there 
 has been the smothered cry of centuries in pain 
 robbed of its voice, and children of men mutilated 
 of their right arms of strength to keep them 
 helpless for all time ; luxuries have been culti- 
 vated upon fields manured by the bloody sweat 
 of slavery, and wealth built upon the founda- 
 tions of penury and famine. But, I ask, has 
 this giant spirit of negation won ? Has it not 
 its greatest defeat in the suffering it has caused
 
 104 PERSONALITY 
 
 in the heart of the infinite ? and is not its callous 
 pride shamed by the very grass of the wayside 
 and flowers of the field every moment of its 
 bloated existence ? Does not the crime against 
 man and God carry its own punishment upon 
 its head in its crown of hideousness ? Yes, the 
 divine in man is not afraid of success, or of 
 organization ; it does not believe in the pre- 
 cautions of prudence and dimensions of power. 
 Its strength is not in the muscle or the machine, 
 neither in cleverness of policy nor in callousness 
 of conscience ; it is in its spirit of perfection. 
 The to-day scoffs at it, but it has the eternity 
 of to-morrow on its side. In appearance it 
 is helpless like a babe, but its tears of suffer- 
 ing in the night set in motion all the unseen 
 powers of heaven, the Mother in all creation is 
 awakened. Prison walls break down, piles of 
 wealth come tumbling to the dust under the 
 weight of its huge disproportion. The history 
 of the earth is the history of earthquakes and 
 floods and volcanic fires, and yet, through it all, 
 it is the history of the green fields and bubbling 
 streams, of beauty and of prolific life. The 
 spiritual world, which is being built of man's life 
 and that of God, will pass its infancy of helpless 
 falls and bruises, and one day will stand firm in
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 105 
 
 its vigour of youth, glad in its own beauty and 
 freedom of movement. 
 
 Our greatest hope is in this, that suffering is 
 there. It is the language of imperfection. Its 
 very utterance carries in it the trust in the perfect, 
 like the baby's cry which would be dumb, if it 
 had no faith in the mother. This suffering has 
 driven man with his prayer to knock at the gate 
 of the infinite in him, the divine, thus revealing 
 his deepest instinct, his unreasoning faith in the 
 reality of the ideal, the faith shown in the 
 readiness for death, in the renunciation of all 
 that belongs to the self. God's life flowing in its 
 outpour of self-giving has touched man's life which 
 is also abroad in its career of freedom. When 
 the discord rings out man cries, " Asato ma sad 
 gamaya " " Help me to pass through the unreal 
 to the real." It is the surrender of his self to be 
 tuned for the music of the soul. This surrender 
 is waited for, because the spiritual harmony 
 cannot be effected except through freedom. 
 Therefore man's willing surrender to the infinite 
 is the commencement of the union. Only then 
 can God's love fully act upon man's soul through 
 the medium of freedom. This surrender is our 
 soul's free choice of its life of cooperation with 
 God, cooperation in the work of the perfect
 
 106 PERSONALITY 
 
 moulding of the world of law into the world 
 of love. 
 
 In the history of man moments have come 
 when we have heard the music of God's life 
 touching man's life in perfect harmony. We 
 have known the fulfilment of man's personality 
 in gaining God's nature for itself, in utter self- 
 giving out of abundance of love. Men have 
 been born in this world of nature, with our 
 human limitations and appetites, and yet proved 
 that they breathed in the world of spirit, that 
 the highest reality was the freedom of personality 
 in the perfect union of love. They freed them- 
 selves pure from all selfish desires, from all 
 narrowness of race and nationality, from the fear 
 of man and the bondage of creeds and conven- 
 tions. They became one with their God in the 
 free active life of the infinite, in their unlimited 
 abundance of renunciation. They suffered and 
 loved. They received in their breasts the hurts 
 of the evil of the world and proved that the life 
 of the spirit was immortal. Great kingdoms 
 change their shapes and vanish like clouds, 
 institutions fade in the air like dreams, nations 
 play their parts and disappear in obscurity, but 
 these individuals carry in themselves the death- 
 less life of all humanity. Their ceaseless life
 
 THE SECOND BIRTH 107 
 
 flows like a river of a mighty volume of flood, 
 through the green fields and deserts, through 
 the long dark caverns of oblivion into the dancing 
 joy of the sunlight, bringing water of life to the 
 door of multitudes of men through endless years, 
 healing and allaying thirst and cleansing the 
 impurities of the daily dust, and singing, with 
 living voice, through the noise of the markets 
 the song of the everlasting life, the song which 
 runs thus : 
 
 That is the Supreme Path of This, 
 That is the Supreme Treasure of this, 
 That is the Supreme World of This, 
 That is the Supreme Joy of This.
 
 MY SCHOOL 
 
 109
 
 MY SCHOOL 
 
 I STARTED a school in Bengal when I was near- 
 ing forty. Certainly this was never expected 
 of me, who had spent the greater portion of my 
 life in writing, chiefly verses. Therefore people 
 naturally thought that as a school it might not 
 be one of the best of its kind, but it was sure 
 to be something outrageously new, being the 
 product of daring inexperience. 
 
 This is one of the reasons why I am often 
 asked what is the idea upon which my school is 
 based. The question is a very embarrassing one 
 for me, because to satisfy the expectation of my 
 questioners I cannot afford to be commonplace 
 in my answer. However, I shall resist the 
 temptation to be original and shall be content 
 with being merely truthful. 
 
 In the first place, I must confess it is difficult 
 for me to say what is the idea which underlies 
 
 my institution. For the idea is not like a fixed 
 
 111
 
 112 PERSONALITY 
 
 foundation upon which a building is erected. 
 It is more like a seed which cannot be separated 
 and pointed out directly it begins to grow into 
 a plant 
 
 And I know what it was to which this school 
 owes its origin. It was not any new theory of 
 education, but the memory of my school-days. 
 
 That those days were unhappy ones for me I 
 cannot altogether ascribe to my peculiar tempera- 
 ment or to any special demerit of the schools to 
 which I was sent. It may be that if I had been a 
 little less sensitive, I could gradually have accom- 
 modated myself to the pressure and survived 
 long enough to earn my university degrees. 
 But all the same schools are schools, though 
 some are better and some worse, according to 
 their own standard. 
 
 The provision has been made for infants to 
 be fed upon their mother's milk. They find 
 their food and their mother at the same time. 
 It is complete nourishment for them, body and 
 soul. It is their first introduction to the great 
 truth that man's true relationship with the world 
 is that of personal love and not that of the 
 mechanical law of causation. 
 
 The introduction and the conclusion of a 
 book have a similarity of features. In both
 
 MY SCHOOL 113 
 
 places the complete aspect of truth is given. 
 Only in the introduction it is simple because 
 undeveloped, and in the conclusion it becomes 
 simple again because perfectly developed. Truth 
 has the middle course of its career, where it 
 grows complex, where it hurts itself against 
 obstacles, breaks itself into pieces to find itself 
 back in a fuller unity of realization. 
 
 Similarly man's introduction to this world is 
 his introduction to his final truth in a simple 
 form. He is born into a world which to him 
 is intensely living, where he as an individual 
 occupies the full attention of his surroundings. 
 Then he grows up to doubt this deeply personal 
 aspect of reality, he loses himself in the com- 
 plexity of things, separates himself from his 
 surroundings, often in a spirit of antagonism. 
 But this shattering of the unity of truth, this 
 uncompromising civil war between his personality 
 and his outer world, can never find its meaning 
 in interminable discord. Thereupon to find the 
 true conclusion of his life he has to come back 
 through this digression of doubt to the simplicity 
 of perfect truth, to his union with all in an 
 infinite bond of love. 
 
 Therefore our childhood should be given its 
 full measure of life's draught, for which it has 
 
 i
 
 114 PERSONALITY 
 
 an endless thirst. The young mind should be 
 saturated with the idea that it has been born in 
 a human world which is in harmony with the 
 world around it. And this is what our regular 
 type of school ignores with an air of superior 
 wisdom, severe and disdainful It forcibly 
 snatches away children from a world full of the 
 mystery of God's own handiwork, full of the 
 suggestiveness of personality. It is a mere 
 method of discipline which refuses to take into 
 account the individual. It is a manufactory 
 specially designed for grinding out uniform 
 results. It follows an imaginary straight line 
 of the average in digging its channel of educa- 
 tion. But life's line is not the straight line, for 
 it is fond of playing the see-saw with the line of 
 the average, bringing upon its head the rebuke 
 of the school. For according to the school life 
 is perfect when it allows itself to be treated as 
 dead, to be cut into symmetrical conveniences. 
 And this was the cause of my suffering when I 
 was sent to school. For all of a sudden I found 
 my world vanishing from around me, giving 
 place to wooden benches and straight walls 
 staring at me with the blank stare of the blind. 
 I was not a creation of the schoolmaster, the 
 Government Board of Education was not con-
 
 MY SCHOOL 115 
 
 suited when I took birth in the world. But 
 was that any reason why they should wreak 
 their vengeance upon me for this oversight of 
 my creator ? 
 
 But the legend is that eating of the fruit of 
 knowledge is not consonant with dwelling in 
 paradise. Therefore men's children have to be 
 banished from their paradise into a realm of 
 death, dominated by the decency of a tailoring 
 department. So my mind had to accept the 
 tight-fitting encasement of the school which, 
 being like the shoes of a mandarin woman, 
 pinched and bruised my nature on all sides and 
 at every movement I was fortunate enough in 
 extricating myself before insensibility set in. 
 
 Though I did not have to serve the full penal 
 term which men of my position have to undergo 
 to find their entrance into cultured society, I am 
 glad that 1 did not altogether escape from its 
 molestation. For it has given me knowledge 
 of the wrong from which the children of men 
 suffer. 
 
 The cause of it is this, that man's intention is 
 going against God's intention as to how children 
 should grow into knowledge. How we should 
 conduct our business is our own affair, and there- 
 fore in our offices we are free to create in the
 
 116 PERSONALITY 
 
 measure of our special purposes. But such 
 office arrangement does not suit God's creation. 
 And children are God's own creation. 
 
 We have come to this world to accept it, not 
 merely to know it. We may become power- 
 ful by knowledge, but we attain fulness by 
 sympathy. The highest education is that 
 which does not merely give us information but 
 makes our life in harmony with all existence. 
 But we find that this education of sympathy is 
 not only systematically ignored in schools, but 
 it is severely repressed. From our very child- 
 hood habits are formed and knowledge is 
 imparted in such a manner that our life is 
 weaned away from nature and our mind and 
 the world are set in opposition from the 
 beginning of our days. Thus the greatest of 
 educations for which we came prepared is 
 neglected, and we are made to lose our world 
 to find a bagful of information instead. We rob 
 the child of his earth to teach him geography, 
 of language to teach him grammar. His hunger 
 is for the Epic, but he is supplied with chronicles 
 of facts and dates. He was born in the human 
 world, but is banished into the world of living 
 gramophones, to expiate for the original sin of 
 being born in ignorance. Child-nature protests
 
 MY SCHOOL 117 
 
 against such calamity with all its power of suffer- 
 ing, subdued at last into silence by punishment. 
 
 We all know children are lovers of the dust ; 
 their whole body and mind thirst for sunlight 
 and air as flowers do. They are never in a 
 mood to refuse the constant invitations to 
 establish direct communication which come to 
 their senses from the universe. 
 
 But unfortunately for children their parents, 
 in the pursuit of their profession, in conformity 
 to their social traditions, live in their own 
 peculiar world of habits. Much of this can- 
 not be helped. For men have to specialize, 
 driven by circumstances and by need of social 
 uniformity. 
 
 But our childhood is the period when we have 
 or ought to have more freedom freedom from 
 the necessity of specialization into the narrow 
 bounds of social and professional conventionalism. 
 
 I well remember the surprise and annoyance 
 of an experienced headmaster, reputed to be a 
 successful disciplinarian, when he saw one of the 
 boys of my school climbing a tree and choosing 
 a fork of the branches for settling down to his 
 studies. I had to say to him in explanation that 
 "childhood is the only period of life when a 
 civilized man can exercise his choice between
 
 118 PERSONALITY 
 
 the branches of a tree and his drawing-room 
 chair, and should I deprive this boy of that 
 privilege because I, as a grown-up man, am 
 barred from it ? " What is surprising is to 
 notice the same headmaster's approbation of the 
 boys' studying botany. He believes in an im- 
 personal knowledge of the tree because that is 
 science, but not in a personal experience of it. 
 This growth of experience leads to forming in- 
 stinct, which is the result of nature's own method 
 of instruction. The boys of my school have ac- 
 quired instinctive knowledge of the physiognomy 
 of the tree. By the least touch they know where 
 they can find a foothold upon an apparently in- 
 hospitable trunk ; they know how far they can 
 take liberty with the branches, how to distribute 
 their bodies' weight so as to make themselves 
 least burdensome to branchlets. My boys are 
 able to make the best possible use of the tree 
 in the matter of gathering fruits, taking rest and 
 hiding from undesirable pursuers. I myself was 
 brought up in a cultured home in a town, and 
 as far as my personal behaviour goes I have 
 been obliged to act all through my life as if I 
 were born in a world where there are no trees. 
 Therefore I consider it as a part of education for 
 my boys to let them fully realize that they are
 
 
 MY SCHOOL 119 
 
 in a scheme of existence where trees are a sub- 
 stantial fact, not merely as generating chlorophyll 
 and taking carbon from the air, but as living 
 trees. 
 
 Naturally the soles of our feet are so made 
 that they become the best instruments for us 
 to stand upon the earth and to walk with. From 
 the day we commenced to wear shoes we mini- 
 mized the purpose of our feet. With the lessen- 
 ing of their responsibility they have lost their 
 dignity, and now they lend themselves to be 
 pampered with socks, slippers and shoes of all 
 prices and shapes and misproportions. For us 
 it amounts to a grievance against God for not 
 giving us hooves instead of beautifully sensitive 
 soles. 
 
 I am not for banishing foot-gear altogether 
 from men's use. But I have no hesitation in 
 asserting that the soles of children's feet should 
 not be deprived of their education, provided for 
 them by nature, free of cost. Of all the limbs 
 we have they are the best adapted for intimately 
 knowing the earth by their touch. For the 
 earth has her subtle modulations of contour 
 which she only offers for the kiss of her true 
 lovers the feet. 
 
 I have again to confess that I was brought
 
 120 PERSONALITY 
 
 up in a respectable household and my feet from 
 childhood have been carefully saved from all 
 naked contact with the dust. When I try to 
 emulate my boys in walking barefoot, I painfully 
 realize what thickness of ignorance about the 
 earth I carry under my feet. I invariably choose 
 the thorns to tread upon in such a manner as to 
 make the thorns exult. My feet have not the 
 instinct to follow the lines of least resistance. 
 For even the flattest of earth-surfaces has its 
 dimples of diminutive hills and dales only dis- 
 cernible by educated feet. I have often wondered 
 at the unreasonable zigzag of footpaths across 
 perfectly plain fields. It becomes all the more 
 perplexing when you consider that a footpath is 
 not made by the caprice of one individual. Un- 
 less most of the walkers possessed exactly the 
 same eccentricity such obviously inconvenient 
 passages could not have been made. But the 
 real cause lies in the subtle suggestions coming 
 from the earth to which our feet unconsciously 
 respond. Those for whom such communications 
 have not been cut off can adjust the muscles 
 of their feet with great rapidity at the least 
 indication. Therefore they can save themselves 
 from the intrusion of thorns, even while treading 
 upon them, and walk barefooted on a gravelly
 
 MY SCHOOL 121 
 
 path without the least discomfort. I know that 
 in the practical world shoes will be worn, roads 
 will be metalled, cars will be used. But during 
 their period of education should children not be 
 given to know that the world is not all drawing- 
 room, that there is such a thing as nature to 
 which their limbs are made beautifully to 
 respond ? 
 
 There are men who think that by the sim- 
 plicity of living, introduced in my school, I 
 preach the idealization of poverty which pre- 
 vailed in the mediaeval age. The full discussion 
 of this subject is outside the scope of my paper, 
 but seen from the point of view of education, 
 should we not admit that poverty is the school 
 in which man had his first lessons and his best 
 training? Even a millionaire's son has to be 
 born helplessly poor and to begin his lesson of 
 life from the beginning. He has to learn to walk 
 like the poorest of children, though he has means 
 to afford to be without the appendage of legs. 
 Poverty brings us into complete touch with life 
 and the world, for living richly is living mostly 
 by proxy, and thus living in a world of lesser 
 reality. This may be good for one's pleasure 
 and pride, but not for one's education. Wealth 
 is a golden cage in which the children of the
 
 122 PERSONALITY 
 
 rich are bred into artificial deadening of their 
 powers. Therefore in my school, much to the 
 disgust of the people of expensive habits, I had 
 to provide for this great teacher, this bareness 
 of furniture and materials, not because it is 
 poverty, but because it leads to personal experi- 
 ence of the world. 
 
 What I propose is that men should have some 
 limited period of their life specially reserved for 
 the life of the primitive man. Civilized busy- 
 bodies have not been allowed to tamper with the 
 unborn child. In the mother's womb it has 
 leisure to finish its first stage of the vegetative 
 life. But directly it is born, with all its instincts 
 ready for the next stage, which is the natural 
 life, it is at once pounced upon by the society 
 of cultivated habits, to be snatched away from 
 the open arms of earth, water and sky, from 
 the sunlight and air. At first it struggles and 
 bitterly cries, and then it gradually forgets that 
 it had for its inheritance God's creation ; then it 
 shuts its windows, pulls down its curtains, loses 
 itself among meaningless miscellanies and feels 
 proud of its accumulations at the cost of its 
 world and possibly of its soul. 
 
 The civilized world of conventions and things 
 comes in the middle career of man's progress.
 
 MY SCHOOL 123 
 
 It is neither in the beginning nor in the end. Its 
 enormous complexity and codes of decorum have 
 their uses. But when it takes these to be final, 
 and makes it a rule that no green spot should be 
 left in man's life away from its reign of smoke 
 and noise, of draped and decorated propriety, 
 then children suffer, and in the young men is pro- 
 duced world-weariness, while old men forget to 
 grow old in peace and beauty, merely becoming 
 dilapidated youths, ashamed of their shabbiness 
 of age, full of holes and patchwork. 
 
 However, it is certain that children did not 
 bargain for this muffled and screened world of 
 decency when they were ready to be born upon 
 this earth. If they had any idea that they were 
 about to open their eyes to the sunlight, only to 
 find themselves in the hands of the education 
 department till they should lose their freshness 
 of mind and keenness of sense, they would think 
 twice before venturing upon their career of 
 humanity. God's arrangements are never in- 
 solently special arrangements. They always 
 have the harmony of wholeness and unbroken 
 continuity with all things. Therefore what tor- 
 tured me in my school-days was the fact that the 
 school had not the completeness of the world. 
 It was a special arrangement for giving lessons.
 
 124 PERSONALITY 
 
 It could only be suitable for grown-up people 
 who were conscious of the special need of such 
 places and therefore ready to accept their teach- 
 ing at the cost of dissociation from life. But 
 children are in love with life, and it is their first 
 love. All its colour and movement attract their 
 eager attention. And are we quite sure of our 
 wisdom in stifling this love ? Children are not 
 born ascetics, fit to enter at once into the mon- 
 astic discipline of acquiring knowledge. At 
 first they must gather knowledge through their 
 love of life, and then they will renounce their 
 lives to gain knowledge, and then again they 
 will come back to their fuller lives with ripened 
 wisdom. 
 
 But society has made its own arrangements 
 for manipulating men's minds to fit its special 
 patterns. These arrangements are so closely 
 organized that it is difficult to find gaps through 
 which to bring in nature. There is a serial ad- 
 justment of penalties which follows to the end 
 one who ventures to take liberty with some part 
 of the arrangements, even to save his soul. 
 Therefore it is one thing to realize truth and 
 another to bring it into practice where the whole 
 current of the prevailing system goes against 
 you. This is why when I had to face the problem
 
 MY SCHOOL 125 
 
 of my own son's education I was at a loss to give 
 it a practical solution. The first thing that I 
 did was to take him away from the town sur- 
 roundings into a village and allow him the free- 
 dom of primeval nature as far as it is available 
 in modern days. He had a river, noted for its 
 danger, Avhere he swam and rowed without check 
 from the anxiety of his elders. He spent his 
 time in the fields and on the trackless sand-banks, 
 coming late for his meals without being ques- 
 tioned. He had none of those luxuries that are 
 not only customary but are held as proper for 
 boys of his circumstance. For which privations, 
 I am sure, he was pitied and his parents blamed 
 by the people for whom society has blotted out 
 the whole world. But I was certain that luxuries 
 are burdens to boys. They are the burdens of 
 other people's habits, the burdens of the vicarious 
 pride and pleasure which parents enjoy through 
 their children. 
 
 Yet, being an individual of limited resources, 
 I could do very little for my son in the way of 
 educating him according to my plan. But he had 
 freedom of movement, he had very few of the 
 screens of wealth and respectability between 
 himself and the world of nature. Thus he had 
 a better opportunity for a real experience of this
 
 126 PERSONALITY 
 
 universe than I ever had. But one thing 
 exercised my mind as more important than 
 anything else. 
 
 The object of education is to give man the 
 unity of truth. Formerly when life was simple 
 all the different elements of man were in com- 
 plete harmony. But when there came the separa- 
 tion of the intellect from the spiritual and the 
 physical, the school education put entire em- 
 phasis on the intellect and the physical side of 
 man. We devote our sole attention to giving 
 children information, not knowing that by this 
 emphasis we are accentuating a break between 
 the intellectual, physical and the spiritual life. 
 
 I believe in a spiritual world not as anything 
 separate from this world but as its innermost 
 truth. With the breath we draw we must always 
 feel this truth, that we are living in God. Born 
 in this great world, full of the mystery of the 
 infinite, we cannot accept our existence as a 
 momentary outburst of chance, drifting on the 
 current of matter towards an eternal nowhere. 
 We cannot look upon our lives as dreams of a 
 dreamer who has no awakening in all time. We 
 have a personality to which matter and force are 
 unmeaning unless related to something infinitely 
 personal, whose nature we have discovered, in
 
 MY SCHOOL 127 
 
 some measure, in human love, in the greatness of 
 the good, in the martyrdom of heroic souls, in 
 the ineffable beauty of nature, which can never 
 be a mere physical fact nor anything but an 
 expression of personality. 
 
 Experience of this spiritual world, whose 
 reality we miss by our incessant habit of ignoring 
 it from childhood, has to be gained by children 
 by fully living in it and not through the medium 
 of theological instruction. But how this is to be 
 done is a problem difficult of solution in the 
 present age. For nowadays men have managed 
 so fully to occupy their time that they do not 
 find leisure to know that their activities have 
 only movement but very little truth, that their 
 soul has not found its world. 
 
 In India we still cherish in our memory the 
 tradition of the forest colonies of great teachers. 
 These places were neither schools nor monasteries, 
 in the modern sense of the word. They consisted 
 of homes where with their families lived men 
 whose object was to see the world in God and to 
 realize their own life in him. Though they lived 
 outside society, yet they were to society what the 
 sun is to the planets, the centre from which it 
 received its life and light. And here boys grew 
 up in an intimate vision of eternal life before
 
 128 PERSONALITY 
 
 they were thought fit to enter the state of the 
 householder. 
 
 Thus in the ancient India the school was there 
 where was the life itself. There the students 
 were brought up, not in the academic atmosphere 
 of scholarship and learning, or in the maimed life 
 of monastic seclusion, but in the atmosphere of 
 living aspiration. They took the cattle to pasture, 
 collected firewood, gathered fruit, cultivated kind- 
 ness to all creatures, and grew in their spirit with 
 their own teachers' spiritual growth. This was 
 possible because the primary object of these 
 places was not teaching but giving shelter to 
 those who lived their life in God. 
 
 That this traditional relationship of the 
 masters and disciples is not a mere romantic 
 fiction is proved by the relic we still possess 
 of the indigenous system of education which 
 has preserved its independence for centuries, to 
 be about to succumb at last to the hand of 
 the foreign bureaucratic control. These chatus- 
 pathis, which is the Sanskrit name for the uni- 
 versity, have not the savour of the school about 
 them. The students live in their master's home 
 like the children of the house, without having to 
 pay for their board and lodging or tuition. The 
 teacher prosecutes his own study, living a life
 
 MY SCHOOL 129 
 
 of simplicity, and helping the students in their 
 lessons as a part of his life and not of his 
 profession. 
 
 This ideal of education through sharing a 
 life of high aspiration with one's master took 
 possession of my mind. The narrowness of our 
 caged-up future and the sordidness of our maimed 
 opportunities urged me all the more towards its 
 realization. Those who in other countries are 
 favoured with unlimited expectations of worldly 
 prospects can fix their purposes of education on 
 those objects. The range of their life is varied 
 and wide enough to give them the freedom 
 necessary for development of their powers. But 
 for us to maintain the self-respect which we owe 
 to ourselves and to our creator, we must make 
 the purpose of our education nothing short of 
 the highest purpose of man, the fullest growth 
 and freedom of soul. It is pitiful to have to 
 scramble for small pittances of fortune. Only let 
 us have access to the life that goes beyond death 
 and rises above all circumstances, let us find our 
 God, let us live for that ultimate truth which 
 emancipates us from the bondage of the dust 
 and gives us the wealth, not of things but of 
 inner light, not of power but of love. Such 
 emancipation of soul we have witnessed in our 
 
 K
 
 180 PERSONALITY 
 
 country among men devoid of book-learning and 
 living in absolute poverty. In India we have the 
 inheritance of this treasure of spiritual wisdom. 
 Let the object of our education be to open it 
 out before us and to give us the power to make 
 the true use of it in our life, and offer it to the 
 rest of the world when the time comes, as our 
 contribution to its eternal welfare. 
 
 I had been immersed in literary activities 
 when this thought struck my mind with pain- 
 ful intensity. I suddenly felt like one groaning 
 under the suffocation of nightmare. It was not 
 only my own soul, but the soul of my country 
 that seemed to be struggling for its breath 
 through me. I felt clearly that what was needed 
 was not any particular material object, not wealth 
 or comfort or power, but our awakening to full 
 consciousness in soul freedom, the freedom of the 
 life in God, where we have no enmity with those 
 who must fight, no competition with those who 
 must make money, where we are beyond all 
 attacks and above all insults. 
 
 Fortunately for me I had a place ready to my 
 hand where I could begin my work. My father, 
 in one of his numerous travels, had selected this 
 lonely spot as the one suitable for his life of com- 
 munion with God. This place, with a permanent
 
 MY SCHOOL 131 
 
 endowment, he dedicated to the use of those who 
 seek peace and seclusion for their meditation and 
 prayer. I had about ten boys with me when 
 I came here and started my new life with no 
 previous experience whatever. 
 
 All round our ashram is a vast open country, 
 bare up to the line of the horizon except for 
 sparsely-growing stunted date-palms and prickly 
 shrubs struggling with ant-hills. Below the level 
 of the field there extend numberless mounds 
 and tiny hillocks of red gravel and pebbles of 
 all shapes and colours, intersected by narrow 
 channels of rain-water. Not far away towards 
 the south near the village can be seen through 
 the intervals of a row of palm trees the gleaming 
 surface of steel-blue water, collected in a hollow 
 of the ground. A road used by the village 
 people for their marketing in the town goes 
 meandering through the lonely fields, with its 
 red dust staring in the sun. Travellers coming 
 up this road can see from a distance on the 
 summit of the undulating ground the spire of 
 a temple and the top of a building, indicating 
 the Shanti- Nike tan ashram, among its amalaki 
 groves and its avenue of stately sal trees. 
 
 And here the school has been growing up for 
 over fifteen years, passing through many changes
 
 132 PERSONALITY 
 
 and often grave crisis. Having the evil reputa- 
 tion of a poet, I could with great difficulty win 
 the trust of my countrymen and avoid the 
 suspicion of the bureaucracy. That at last I 
 have been able to accomplish it in some measure 
 is owing to my never expecting it, going on in 
 my own way without waiting for outside sym- 
 pathy, help or advice. My resources were ex- 
 tremely small, with the burden of a heavy debt 
 upon them. But this poverty itself gave me the 
 full strength of freedom, making me rely upon 
 truth rather than upon materials. 
 
 Because the growth of this school was the 
 growth of my life and not that of a mere 
 carrying out of my doctrines, its ideals changed 
 with its maturity like a ripening fruit that not 
 only grows in its bulk and deepens in its colour, 
 but undergoes change in the very quality of its 
 inner pulp. I started with the idea that I had 
 a benevolent object to perform. I worked hard, 
 but the only satisfaction I had came from 
 keeping count of the amount of sacrifice in 
 money, energy and time ; admiring my own 
 untiring goodness. But the result achieved was 
 of small worth. I went on building system 
 after system and then pulling them down. It 
 merely occupied my time, but at the heart my
 
 MY SCHOOL 133 
 
 work remained vacant. I well remember when 
 an old disciple of my father came and said to 
 me, "What I see about me is like a wedding 
 hall where nothing is wanting in preparation, 
 only the bridegroom is absent." The mistake I 
 made was in thinking that my own purpose was 
 that bridegroom. But gradually my heart found 
 its centre. It was not in the work, not in my 
 wish, but in truth. I sat alone on the upper 
 terrace of the Shanti-Niketan house and gazed 
 upon the tree tops of the sal avenue before me. 
 I withdrew my heart from my own schemes and 
 calculations, from my daily struggles, and held 
 it up in silence before the peace and presence 
 that permeated the sky ; and gradually my heart 
 was filled. I began to see the world around 
 me through the eyes of my soul. The trees 
 seemed to me like silent hymns rising from the 
 mute heart of the earth, and the shouts and 
 laughter of the boys mingling in the evening 
 sky came before me like trees of living sounds 
 rising up from the depth of human life. I found 
 my message in the sunlight that touched my 
 inner mind and felt a fulness in the sky that 
 spoke to me in the word of our ancient rishi, 
 " Ko hyevanyat, Kah pranyat yadesha akasha 
 anando no syat" "Who could ever move and
 
 134 PERSONALITY 
 
 strive and live in this world if the sky were not 
 filled with love?" Thus when I turned back 
 from the struggle to achieve results, from the 
 ambition of doing benefit to others, and came 
 to my own innermost need ; when I felt that 
 living one's own life in truth is living the life 
 of all the world, then the unquiet atmosphere 
 of the outward struggle cleared up and the 
 power of spontaneous creation found its way 
 through the centre of all things. Even now 
 whatever is superficial and futile in the working 
 of our institution is owing to distrust of the 
 spirit, lurking in our mind, to the ineradicable 
 consciousness of our self-importance, to the 
 habit of looking for the cause of our failures out- 
 side us, and the endeavour to repair all loose- 
 ness in our work by tightening the screws of 
 organization. From my experience I know that 
 where the eagerness to teach others is too 
 strong, especially in the matter of spiritual life, 
 the result becomes meagre and mixed with 
 untruth. All the hypocrisy and self-delusion in 
 our religious convictions and practices are the 
 outcome of the goadings of over-zealous activi- 
 ties of mentorship. In our spiritual attainment 
 gaining and giving are the same thing ; as in a 
 lamp, to light itself is the same as to impart
 
 MY SCHOOL 135 
 
 light to others. When a man makes it his 
 profession to preach God to others, then he will 
 raise the dust more than give direction to truth. 
 Teaching of religion can never be imparted in 
 the form of lessons, it is there where there is 
 religion in living. Therefore the ideal of the 
 forest colony of the seekers of God as the true 
 school of spiritual life holds good even in this 
 age. Religion is not a fractional thing that can 
 be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures 
 as one among various subjects in the school 
 syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, 
 the consciousness of our personal relationship 
 with the infinite ; it is the true centre of gravity 
 of our life. This we can attain during our child- 
 hood by daily living in a place where the truth 
 of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd 
 of necessities assuming artificial importance ; 
 where life is simple, surrounded by fulness of 
 leisure, by ample space and pure air and pro- 
 found peace of nature ; and where men live with 
 a perfect faith in the eternal life before them. 
 
 But the question will be asked whether I 
 have attained my ideal in this institution. My 
 answer is that the attainment of all our deepest 
 ideals is difficult to measure by outward 
 standards. Its working is not immediately
 
 136 PERSONALITY 
 
 perceptible by results. We have fully admitted 
 the inequalities and varieties of human life in 
 our ashram. We never try to gain some kind 
 of outward uniformity by weeding out the differ- 
 ences of nature and training of our members. 
 Some of us belong to the Brahma Samaj sect 
 and some to other sects of Hinduism ; and some 
 of us are Christians. Because we do not deal 
 with creeds and dogmas of sectarianism, there- 
 fore this heterogeneity of our religious beliefs 
 does not present us with any difficulty whatever. 
 This also I know, that the feeling of respect for 
 the ideal of this place and the life lived here 
 greatly varies in depth and earnestness among 
 those who have gathered in this ashram. I 
 know that our inspiration for a higher life has 
 not risen far above our greed for worldly goods 
 and reputation. Yet I am perfectly certain, 
 and proofs of it are numerous, that the ideal of 
 the ashram is sinking deeper and deeper into 
 our nature every day. The tuning of our life's 
 strings into purer spiritual notes is going on 
 without our being aware of it. Whatever 
 might be our original motive in coming here, 
 the call sounds without ceasing through all our 
 clamour of discords, the call of shantam, shivam, 
 advaitam, the All Peace, the All Good, and
 
 MY SCHOOL 137 
 
 the One. The sky here seems penetrated with 
 the voice of the infinite, making the peace of 
 its daybreak and stillness of its night profound 
 with meaning, and sending through the white 
 crowds of skiuli flowers in the autumn and 
 malati in the summer, the message of self- 
 dedication in the perfect beauty of worship. 
 
 It will be difficult for others than Indians 
 to realize all the associations that are grouped 
 round the word ashram, the forest sanctuary. 
 For it blossomed in India like its own lotus, 
 under a sky generous in its sunlight and starry 
 splendour. India's climate has brought ,to us 
 the invitation of the open air ; the language 
 of her mighty rivers is solemn in their chants ; 
 the limitless expanse of her plains encircles our 
 homes with the silence of the world beyond ; 
 there the sun rises from the marge of the green 
 earth like an offering of the unseen to the altar 
 of the Unknown, and it goes down to the west 
 at the end of the day like a gorgeous ceremony 
 of nature's salutation to the Eternal. In India 
 the shades of the trees are hospitable, the dust 
 of the earth stretches its brown arms to us, the 
 air with its embraces clothes us with warmth. 
 These are the unchanging facts that ever carry 
 their suggestions to our minds, and therefore
 
 138 PERSONALITY 
 
 we feel it is India's mission to realize the truth 
 of the human soul in the Supreme Soul through 
 its union with the soul of the world. This 
 mission had taken its natural form in the forest 
 schools in the ancient time. And it still urges 
 us to seek for the vision of the infinite in all 
 forms of creation, in the human relationships 
 of love ; to feel it in the air we breathe, in the 
 light in which we open our eyes, in the water 
 in which we bathe, in the earth on which we 
 live and die. Therefore I know and I know 
 it from my own experience, that the students 
 and the teachers who have come together in 
 this ashram are daily growing towards the 
 emancipation of their minds into the conscious- 
 ness of the infinite, not through any process 
 of teaching or outer discipline, but by the help 
 of an unseen atmosphere of aspiration that 
 surrounds the place and the memory of a 
 devoted soul who lived here in intimate com- 
 munion with God. 
 
 I hope I have been able to explain how the 
 conscious purpose that led me to found my 
 school in the ashram gradually lost its inde- 
 pendence and grew into unity with the purpose 
 that reigns in this place. In a word my work 
 found its soul in the spirit of the ashram. But
 
 MY SCHOOL 139 
 
 that soul has its outer form, no doubt, which is 
 its aspect of the school. And in the teaching 
 system of this school I have been trying all 
 these years to carry out my theory of education, 
 based upon my experience of children's minds. 
 
 I believe, as I suggested before, that children 
 have their subconscious mind more active than 
 their conscious intelligence. A vast quantity 
 of the most important of our lessons has been 
 taught to us through this. Experiences of 
 countless generations have been instilled into 
 our nature by its agency, not only without 
 causing us any fatigue, but giving us joy. This 
 subconscious faculty of knowledge is completely 
 one with our life. It is not like a lantern that 
 can be lighted and trimmed from outside, but 
 it is like the light that the glow-worm possesses 
 by the exercise of its life-process. 
 
 Fortunately for me I was brought up in a 
 family where literature, music and art had 
 become instinctive. My brothers and cousins 
 lived in the freedom of ideas, and most of them 
 had natural artistic powers. Nourished in these 
 surroundings, I began to think early and to 
 dream and to put my thoughts into expression. 
 In religion and social ideals our family was free 
 from all convention, being ostracized by society
 
 140 PERSONALITY 
 
 owing to our secession from orthodox beliefs 
 and customs. This made us fearless in our 
 freedom of mind, and we tried experiments in 
 all departments of life. This was the education 
 I had in my early days, freedom and joy in the 
 exercise of my mental and artistic faculties. 
 And because this made my mind fully alive to 
 grow in its natural environment of nutrition, 
 therefore the grinding of the school system 
 became so extremely intolerable to me. 
 
 I had only this experience of my early life to 
 help me when I started my school. I felt sure 
 that what was most necessary was the breath 
 of culture and no formal method of teaching. 
 Fortunately for me, Satish Chandra Roy, a 
 young student of great promise, who was get- 
 ting ready for his B.A. degree, became attracted 
 to my school and devoted his life to carry out 
 my idea. He was barely nineteen, but he had 
 a wonderful soul, living in a world of ideas, 
 keenly responsive to all that was beautiful and 
 great in the realm of nature and of human 
 mind. He was a poet who would surely have 
 taken his place among the immortals of world- 
 literature if he had been spared to live, but he 
 died when he was twenty, thus offering his 
 service to our school only for the period of
 
 MY SCHOOL 141 
 
 one short year. With him boys never felt 
 that they were confined in the limit of a teach- 
 ing class ; they seemed to have their access to 
 everywhere. They would go with him to the 
 forest when in the spring the sal trees were 
 in full blossom and he would recite to them 
 his favourite poems, frenzied with excitement. 
 He used to read to them Shakespeare and 
 even Browning, for he was a great lover of 
 Browning, explaining to them in Bengali with 
 his wonderful power of expression. He never 
 had any feeling of distrust for boys' capacity 
 of understanding ; he would talk and read to 
 them about whatever was the subject in which 
 he himself was interested. He knew that it 
 was not at all necessary for the boys to under- 
 stand literally and accurately, but that their 
 minds should be roused, and in this he was 
 always successful. He was not like other 
 teachers, a mere vehicle of text -books. He 
 made his teaching personal, he himself was the 
 source of it, and therefore it was made of life 
 stuff, easily assimilable by the living human 
 nature. The real reason of his success was 
 his intense interest in life, in ideas, in every- 
 thing around him, in the boys who came in 
 contact with him. He had his inspiration not
 
 142 PERSONALITY 
 
 through the medium of books, but through the 
 direct communication of his sensitive mind with 
 the world. The seasons had upon him the same 
 effect as they had upon the plants. He seemed 
 to feel in his blood the unseen messages of 
 nature that are always travelling through space, 
 floating in the air, shimmering in the sky, 
 tingling in the roots of the grass under the 
 earth. The literature that he studied had not 
 the least smell of the library about it. He had 
 the power to see ideas before him, as he could 
 see his friends, with all the distinctness of form 
 and subtlety of life. 
 
 Thus the boys of our school were fortunate 
 enough to be able to receive their lessons from 
 a living teacher and not from text-books. Have 
 not our books, like most of our necessaries, come 
 between us and our world ? We have got into 
 the habit of covering the windows of our minds 
 with their pages, and plasters of book phrases 
 have stuck into our mental skin, making it 
 impervious to all direct touches of truth. A 
 whole world of bookish truths have formed 
 themselves into a strong citadel with rings of 
 walls in which we have taken shelter, secured 
 from the communication of God's creation. Of 
 course, it would be foolish to underrate the
 
 MY SCHOOL 143 
 
 advantages of the book. But at the same time 
 we must admit that the book has its limitations 
 and its dangers. At any rate during the early 
 period of education children should come to 
 their lesson of truths through natural processes 
 directly through persons and things. 
 
 Being convinced of this, I have set all my 
 resources to create an atmosphere of ideas in 
 the ashram. Songs are composed, not specially 
 made to order for juvenile minds. They are 
 songs that a poet writes for his own pleasure. 
 In fact, most of my "Gitanjali" songs were 
 written here. These, when fresh in their first 
 bloom, are sung to the boys, and they come in 
 crowds to learn them. They sing them in their 
 leisure hours, sitting in groups, under the open 
 sky on moonlight nights, in the shadows of the 
 impending rain in July. All my latter-day plays 
 have been written here, and the boys have taken 
 part in their performance. Lyrical dramas have 
 been written for their season-festivals. They 
 have ready access to the room where I read to 
 the teachers any new things that I write in prose 
 or in verse, whatever the subject may be. And 
 this they utilize without the least pressure put 
 upon them, feeling aggrieved when not invited. 
 A few weeks before leaving India I read to them
 
 144 PERSONALITY , 
 
 Browning's drama " Luria," translating it into 
 Bengali as I went on. It took me two evenings, 
 but the second meeting was as full as the first 
 one. Those who have witnessed these boys 
 playing their parts in dramatic performances 
 have been struck with their wonderful power as 
 actors. It is because they are never directly 
 trained in the histrionic art. They instinctively 
 enter into the spirit of the plays in which they 
 take part, though these plays are no mere school- 
 boy dramas. They require subtle understanding 
 and sympathy. With all the anxiety and hyper- 
 critical sensitiveness of an author about the 
 performance of his own play I have never been 
 disappointed in my boys, and I have rarely 
 allowed teachers to interfere with the boys' own 
 representation of the characters. Very often 
 they themselves write plays or improvise them 
 and we are invited to their performance. They 
 hold meetings of their literary clubs and they 
 have at least three illustrated magazines con- 
 ducted by three sections of the school, the most 
 interesting of them being that of the infant 
 section. A number of our boys have shown 
 remarkable powers in drawing and painting, 
 developed not through the orthodox method of 
 copying models, but by following their own bent
 
 MY SCHOOL 145 
 
 and by the help of occasional visits from some 
 artists to inspire the boys with their own work. 
 
 When I first started my school my boys had 
 no evident love for music. The consequence is 
 that at the beginning I did not employ a music 
 teacher and did not force the boys to take music 
 lessons. I merely created opportunities when 
 those of us who had the gift could exercise 
 their musical culture. It had the effect of un- 
 consciously training the ears of the boys. And 
 when gradually most of them showed a strong 
 inclination and love for music I saw that they 
 would be willing to subject themselves to formal 
 teaching, and it was then that I secured a music 
 teacher. 
 
 In our school the boys rise very early in the 
 morning, sometimes before it is light. They 
 attend to the drawing of water for their bath. 
 They make up their beds. They do all those 
 things that tend to cultivate the spirit of self- 
 help. 
 
 I believe in the hour of meditation, and I set 
 aside fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen 
 minutes in the evening for that purpose. I insist 
 on this period of meditation, not, however, ex- 
 pecting the boys to be hypocrites and to make 
 believe they are meditating. But I do insist 
 
 L
 
 146 PERSONALITY 
 
 that they remain quiet, that they exert the 
 power of self-control, even though instead of 
 contemplating on God, they may be watching 
 the squirrels running up the trees. 
 
 Any description of such a school is necessarily 
 inadequate. For the most important element 
 of it is the atmosphere, and the fact that it is 
 not a school which is imposed upon the boys by 
 autocratic authorities. 1 always try to impress 
 upon their minds that it is their own world, 
 upon which their life ought fully and freely to 
 react. In the school administration they have 
 their place, and in the matter of punishment we 
 mostly rely upon their own court of justice. 
 
 In conclusion I warn my hearers not to carry 
 away with them any false or exaggerated picture 
 of this ashram. When ideas are stated in a 
 paper, they appear too simple and complete. 
 But in reality their manifestation through the 
 materials that are living and varied and ever 
 changing is not so clear and perfect. We have 
 obstacles in human nature and in outer circum- 
 stances. Some of us have a feeble faith in boys' 
 minds as living organisms, and some have the 
 natural propensity of doing good by force. On 
 the other hand, the boys have their different 
 degrees of receptivity and there are a good
 
 MY SCHOOL 147 
 
 number of inevitable failures. Delinquencies 
 make their appearance unexpectedly, making us 
 suspicious as to the efficacy of our own ideals. 
 We pass through dark periods of doubt and 
 reaction. But these conflicts and waverings 
 belong to the true aspects of reality. Living 
 ideals can never be set into a clockwork arrange- 
 ment, giving accurate account of its every 
 second. And those who have firm faith in their 
 idea have to test its truth in discords and 
 failures that are sure to come to tempt them 
 from their path. I for my part believe- in the 
 principle of life, in the soul of man, more than 
 in methods. I believe that the object of educa- 
 tion is the freedom of mind which can only be 
 achieved through the path of freedom though 
 freedom has its risk and responsibility as life 
 itself has. I know it for certain, though most 
 people seem to have forgotten it, that children 
 are living beings more living than grown-up 
 people, who have built their shells of habit 
 around them. Therefore it is absolutely neces- 
 sary for their mental health and development 
 that they should not have mere schools for 
 their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit 
 is personal love. It must be an ashram where 
 men have gathered for the highest end of life,
 
 148 PERSONALITY 
 
 in the peace of nature ; where life is not merely 
 meditative, but fully awake in its activities, 
 where boys' minds are not being perpetually 
 drilled into believing that the ideal of the self- 
 idolatry of the nation is the truest ideal for them 
 to accept ; where they are bidden to realize 
 man's world as God's Kingdom to whose citizen- 
 ship they have to aspire ; where the sunrise and 
 sunset and the silent glory of stars are not daily 
 ignored ; where nature's festivities of flowers and 
 fruit have their joyous recognition from man ; 
 and where the young and the old, the teacher 
 and the student, sit at the same table to partake 
 of their daily food and the food of their eternal 
 life.
 
 MEDITATION 
 
 149
 
 MEDITATION 
 
 THERE are things that we get from outside 
 and take to ourselves as possessions. But with 
 meditation, it is just the opposite. It is entering 
 into the very midst of some great truth, so that, 
 in the end, we are possessed by it. 
 
 Now let us see by contrast what wealth is. 
 Money represents so much labour. By its 
 means I can detach the labour from man and 
 make it my own possession. I acquire it from 
 outside and convert it to my own power. 
 
 Then there is knowledge. One kind of 
 knowledge is that which we gain from other 
 men. Then there is the other kind which we 
 acquire through observation, experiments and 
 the process of reasoning. 
 
 These are all efforts to take that which is 
 away from me, and get it to myself. In these 
 things our mental and physical energies are 
 employed in a manner quite contrary to that of 
 Meditation. 
 
 151
 
 152 PERSONALITY 
 
 The highest truth is that which we can only 
 realize by plunging into it. And when our 
 consciousness is fully merged in it, then we 
 know that it is no mere acquisition, but that we 
 are one with it 
 
 Thus through meditation, when our soul is in 
 its true relation to the Supreme Truth, then all 
 our actions, words, behaviour, become true. 
 
 Let me give you a text of meditation which 
 we have used in India. 
 
 Om bhur bhuvah svah 
 
 tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi 
 dhiyo yo nah prachodayat. 
 
 OM. That means completeness ; it is really 
 the symbolical word meaning the Infinite, the 
 Perfect, the Eternal. The very sound is com- 
 plete, representing the wholeness of all things. 
 
 All our meditations begin with OM and end 
 with OM. It is used so that the mind may be 
 filled with the sense of the infinite Completeness 
 and emancipated from the world of narrow 
 selfishness. 
 
 Bhur bhuvah svah 
 
 Bhur means this earth. 
 
 Bhuvah means the middle region, the sky. 
 
 Svah means the starry region.
 
 MEDITATION 153 
 
 The earth, the air, the starry region. You 
 have to set your mind in the heart of this 
 universe. You have to realize that you are 
 born in the Infinite, that you belong not merely 
 to a particular spot of this earth, but to the 
 whole world. 
 
 Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi. 
 
 I meditate upon that adorable energy of the 
 Creator of the Universe. The word " Creator " 
 has dulled in meaning by its constant use. But 
 you have to bring into your conscious vision the 
 vastness of the all, and then say that God creates 
 this world, from his infinite creative power, at 
 every moment of time continuously, not by a 
 single act. 
 
 All this represents the infinite will of the 
 Creator. It is not like the law of gravitation, 
 or some abstract thing which I cannot worship, 
 and which cannot claim our worship. But this 
 text says that the power is " adorable," that it 
 claims our worship because it belongs to a 
 supreme person, it is not a mere abstraction. 
 
 What is the manifestation of this power ? 
 
 On one side it is the Earth, the Sky, the 
 Starry Heavens; on the other side it is our 
 consciousness. 
 
 There is an eternal connection between
 
 154 PERSONALITY 
 
 myself and the world, because this world has its 
 other side in my consciousness. If there were 
 no conscious being and no Supreme Conscious- 
 ness at its source and centre, there could not be 
 a world. 
 
 God's power emanates and streams forth as 
 consciousness in me and also in the world out- 
 side. We ourselves generally divide it, but 
 really these two sides of creation are intimately 
 related as they proceed from the same source. 
 
 Thus this Meditation means that my con- 
 sciousness and the vast world outside me are 
 one. And where is that Unity ? 
 
 In that Great Power, who breathes out 
 Consciousness in me, and also in the world out- 
 side myself. 
 
 Meditation upon this is not taking anything 
 to myself, but renouncing myself, becoming one 
 with all creation. 
 
 This then is our text and we set our minds 
 to it, repeating it again and again till our mind 
 becomes settled and distractions leave us. There 
 is then no loss, no fear, no pain that can affect 
 us our relationship with men becomes simple, 
 natural we are free. This then 1 is the Medita- 
 tion to plunge into this truth, to live and move 
 and have our being in this.
 
 MEDITATION 155 
 
 Let me tell you about another text which we 
 use in our school for the boys to meditate upon 
 and to use for their daily prayer. 
 
 Om pita no'si, pita no bodhi. Namaste'stu. 
 Pita no' si. 
 
 Thou art our Father. 
 
 Pita no bodhi. Give us the bodh, the con- 
 sciousness, the awakening in this, that thou art 
 our Father. 
 
 Namaste'stu. 
 
 Namah has no proper synonym in English, 
 though perhaps " bow " or " salutation " gives its 
 meaning as nearly as may be. 
 
 My namah to thee Let it become true. 
 
 This is the first portion of the text, which 
 our boys use. 
 
 Let me explain what I understand by it. 
 
 Pita no si. The text begins with the assertion 
 that God is our Father. 
 
 But this truth has not yet been realized in 
 our life, and this is the cause of our imperfections, 
 miseries and sins. Therefore we pray that we 
 may be able to realize it in our consciousness, 
 and so we pray that we may be able to do so. 
 
 Then it ends with Namaste. Let my 
 Namah be true. Because that Namah is the
 
 156 PERSONALITY 
 
 true attitude. When I have fully realized this 
 great truth, Pita no'si, then my life expresses 
 its own truth by its Namah, by its humility, 
 by its self - surrender, in the meek feeling of 
 adoration. 
 
 In our prayers we sometimes use words 
 which satisfy us though we merely utter them 
 mechanically without applying our whole mind 
 to realize their fulness. " Father " is one of these 
 words. 
 
 Therefore in our meditation we have to under- 
 stand more deeply what it means and so to put 
 our heart in harmony with its truth. 
 
 We can take this world as it appears to us 
 through the medium of laws. We can have 
 the idea of the world in our mind, as a world 
 of force and matter, and then our relation to 
 it becomes merely the mechanical relation of 
 science. But, in that case, we miss the highest 
 truth that is in man. For what is man ? He 
 is a personal being. Law does not take account 
 of that. Law is about the physiology of our 
 body, the psychology of our minds, the mechan- 
 ism of our being. And when we come to our 
 personal nature, we do not know any law which 
 explains it. Therefore Science ignores the very 
 basis of truth about ourselves. The whole world
 
 MEDITATION 157 
 
 becomes a machine, and then there can be no 
 question of looking upon the Creator as Father, 
 or as we Indians often call him, " Mother." 
 
 If we look upon this world merely as a 
 combination of forces, then there can be no 
 question of worship. But we are not merely 
 physical or psychological. We are men and 
 women. And we must find out, in the whole 
 world, the infinite meaning of this, that we are 
 men. 
 
 That my body exists, Science explains by 
 universal laws. So that I find my body to be, 
 not an isolated fact of creation, but a part of a 
 great whole. Then I find that even my mind 
 thinks in harmony with all that happens in the 
 world ; and so I can find out by the help of my 
 mind all those great laws which govern the 
 universe. 
 
 But Science asks me to stop there. For 
 Science, the laws of body and mind have their 
 background in the universe, but personality has 
 none. But we feel that we cannot accept this. 
 For if this personality has no eternal relation 
 to truth as everything else has, then what 
 chimera of chance is it ? Why is it at all in 
 this world, and how ? This fact of my person 
 must have the truth of the infinite person to
 
 158 PERSONALITY 
 
 support it We have come to this great dis- 
 covery by the immediate perception of this " I " 
 in us, that there must be one infinite "I." 
 
 Then comes our question, "How are we 
 related to this Person ? " Man has got this 
 answer in his heart of heart, that it is the closest 
 of all relationships, the relationship of love. 
 
 It cannot be otherwise, because relationship 
 becomes perfect only when it is that of love. 
 
 The relation of king and subject, master and 
 servant, lawgiver and those who obey the law, 
 these are partial relations for one particular use. 
 The whole being is not involved. But this 
 personal " 1 " must have perfect relationship 
 with the Infinite Personality. It cannot be 
 otherwise. Because we have loved and find in 
 love the infinite satisfaction of our personality, 
 therefore we have come to know that our 
 relationship to the Infinite Personality is that 
 of love. And in this way man has learned to 
 say " Our Father," not merely King, or Master, 
 but Father. 
 
 That is to say, there is something in Him 
 which we share, something common between 
 this Eternal Person and this finite little person. 
 
 But still the question remains, Why should 
 I use the word " Father " which represents the
 
 MEDITATION 159 
 
 personal relation of human beings ? Why can- 
 not we invent another word ? Is it not too 
 finite and small ? 
 
 The word Father in our Sanskrit language in- 
 cludes Mother. Very often we use this word 
 in its dual form, Pitaru, meaning "father and 
 mother." Man is born in the arms of the Mother. 
 We have not come merely as the rain comes from 
 the cloud. The great fact is that I am ushered 
 into this life in the arms of my mother and father. 
 This shows that the idea of the personality is 
 already there. Herein we find our relation to 
 the Infinite Person. We know that we are 
 born of love our relationship is of love, and we 
 feel that our father and mother are the true 
 symbols of our eternal relationship with God. I 
 have to realize this truth every moment. I have 
 to know that I am eternally related to my Father. 
 Then I rise above the trivialities of things, and 
 the whole world acquires meaning for me. 
 
 Therefore the first prayer is to realize God 
 as Pita. Thou who Greatest the infinite world 
 of stars and worlds, Thou art beyond me, but 
 I know one thing intimately, Thou art Pita, 
 Father. 
 
 The baby does not know all about its mother's 
 activities, but it knows that she is its mother.
 
 160 PERSONALITY 
 
 So I do not know other things about God, 
 but I know this, Thou art my Father. 
 
 Let all my consciousness burn like fire with 
 this idea, Thou art my Father. Every day let 
 this be the one centre of all my thoughts, that 
 the Supreme Person ruling all the Universe is 
 my Father. 
 
 Pita no bodhi. Let me wake up in the light 
 of this great truth Thou art my Father. 
 
 Like a naked child let me place all my thoughts 
 in Thy arms for Thy care and protection through 
 the day. 
 
 And then Namah. 
 
 My complete self-surrender will become true. 
 This is the highest joy of man's love. 
 
 Namaste, namah to Thee let it be true. 
 
 I am related to the Infinite " I am " and so 
 my true attitude is not that of pride, or self- 
 satisfaction, but of self-surrender. Namaste stu. 
 
 I have not finished the whole of the text which 
 my boys use for their prayer and meditation. 
 
 You must remember that this prayer has 
 been gathered from different places of our oldest 
 Scriptures the Vedas. They are not to be 
 found in one consecutive order in any one place. 
 But my father, who had dedicated his life to the 
 worship of God, collected these words from the
 
 MEDITATION 161 
 
 immortal storehouse of inexhaustible wisdom 
 the Vedas and Upanishads. 
 The next line is this : 
 
 Ma ma himsi. Do not smite me with death. 
 
 We shall have fully to understand what this 
 means. You have heard me say that in this first 
 line it has been said, " Thou art my Father." 
 This truth is everywhere. We have to be 
 born into this great idea of the Father. That 
 is the end and object of man, the fulfilment of 
 his life. 
 
 Though it is true that we are eternally related 
 to our Father, yet there is some barrier which 
 prevents the full realization of this truth, and 
 this is the greatest source of suffering to man. 
 The animals they have their pain, they suffer 
 from the attacks of enemies and physical imper- 
 fection, and this suffering urges them to strive 
 still more to fulfil the wants of their natural life 
 and struggle against these obstacles. This in 
 itself is a matter of joy. And we can be sure 
 that they truly enjoy their life, because through 
 this impulse they struggle against obstacles and 
 this rouses their whole vitality. Otherwise they 
 would be like the vegetable world. Life must for 
 its fulfilment have its obstacles, and by continual 
 
 M
 
 162 PERSONALITY 
 
 fighting against these obstacles of matter, life 
 realizes its own supremacy and dignity. But all 
 these obstacles come to animals with the accom- 
 paniment of the sensation of pain. 
 
 But with human beings there is another source 
 of suffering still deeper. We also have to seek 
 our livelihood and hold out against all the 
 enmities of nature and man. But that is not 
 all. The wonder of it is that man, being born 
 in the same world as the animals, and having 
 the same vital questions to deal with, still has 
 something else for which he struggles and cares, 
 though it is not quite definitely realized. It 
 comes to us in glimpses, and when we are in 
 wealth, wallowing in prosperity, or luxury or 
 ease, when we are surrounded by all the things 
 of the world, still men feel that these things 
 are not sufficient, and there rings out the prayer, 
 not to the natural forces of the earth, such as 
 air, fire, but to some being whom man has not 
 fully realized or known. The prayer rings out : 
 " Save me" " O do not smite me with death." 
 
 We do not mean physical death, because we all 
 know that we must die, and so the prayer to our 
 Father is not for our physical immortality. Man 
 has felt in himself instinctively that this life is 
 not final, that he must strive for the higher life.
 
 MEDITATION 163 
 
 And then he cries to God Do not leave me in 
 this region of death. It does not satisfy my soul. 
 I eat and sleep, but I am not satisfied. I do not 
 find my good in this I starve. As the child's 
 cry is for the mother's food, which she supplies 
 out of her own life, so we cry to the eternal 
 Mother, "Do not smite me with death," but 
 give me the life which comes out of thine own 
 nature. This is the cry I am starving. My 
 soul is smitten with death because it finds no 
 sustenance in its surroundings. 
 
 Vishvani deva saviiar duritani parasuva. 
 
 O God, my Father, the world of sins remove 
 from me. When this life of self wants to get 
 everything for itself, then it gets knock after 
 knock, because it is unnatural, because its true 
 life is the life of freedom, because it hurts its 
 wings against the prison cage. The Prison is 
 unmeaning to the soul. It cries out in its prison, 
 "I do not find my fulfilment." It knocks itself 
 against the prison bars and from these knocks 
 and pains our soul is fully aware that truth is 
 not of this life of self, but of the larger life of 
 soul. From this comes our suffering, and we 
 say : " Break open this prison. I do not want 
 this self." " Break all the sins, selfish desires,
 
 164 PERSONALITY 
 
 cravings of self, and own me as your child, your 
 child, not the child of this world of death." 
 
 This is the prayer we use when we want to 
 realize full consciousness of life in our Father. 
 The greatest obstacle is the selfish life. There- 
 fore the prayer of man to God is not for worldly 
 goods, but for the establishment of complete 
 relationship with the Father. 
 
 Yad bhadran tan na asuva. What is good give us. 
 
 We very often utter this prayer and ask our 
 Father to give us what is good, but we do not 
 know what a terrible prayer it is if we were to 
 receive its full answer. There are very few of us 
 who, when realizing what is the highest good, 
 can ask for it. Only he can do that who has 
 been able to make his life pure, free from the 
 shackles of evil, who can fearlessly ask God to 
 fulfil his work, who can say, "I have cleansed 
 my mind and got rid of impulses of selfish desire 
 and the fear and sorrow of the narrow life of self, 
 and now I can claim with fullest hope, 'Give 
 me what is good, in whatever form in sorrow, 
 loss, insult, bereavement I shall be glad to 
 receive it, for I know it comes from Thee.' ' 
 
 But however weak we may be we have to 
 utter this prayer. For we know that even
 
 MEDITATION 165 
 
 though we may be plunged into misery and 
 sorrow, yet he who realizes that he lives in his 
 Father will be glad to receive whatever comes 
 from His hands. That is freedom. For freedom 
 cannot be in mere pleasure. But when we can 
 defy danger and death, privation and sorrow, and 
 yet feel the freedom when we have not the 
 least doubt about the life in our Father then 
 everything comes with a message of gladness and 
 we can receive it with humility and joy and bow 
 our heads in gratitude. 
 
 Namak sambhavaya. 
 
 " I bow to Thee from whom come the enjoy- 
 ments of life." We gladly welcome these, all the 
 different streams of joy running through various 
 channels and for these we bow to Thee. 
 
 Mayobhavaya cha. 
 
 " I also bow to Thee from whom comes the 
 welfare of man." Welfare contains in it both 
 the joys and sorrows of life, loss and gain. To 
 Thee who givest pain, sorrow and bereavement 
 to Thee I bow. 
 
 Namah shivaya cha shivatardya cha. 
 
 " I bow to Thee who art good, who art the 
 highest good."
 
 166 PERSONALITY 
 
 This is the complete text The first part is 
 the prayer for consciousness that we are living 
 not merely in the world of earth, air and water, 
 but in the real world of personality, of love. 
 And when we realize we are in this love then 
 we feel the disharmony of our lives apart from 
 love. We do not feel it till we are conscious of 
 our relation to our Father. But when we are 
 conscious, we feel the discord so strongly that it 
 smites us and we feel it to be death. It becomes 
 intolerable when we are in the very slightest 
 degree conscious that we are surrounded by the 
 love of our Father. 
 
 Then comes the prayer for freedom from 
 things and for the highest good i.e. freedom in 
 God. 
 
 And then comes the conclusion. We bow to 
 Him in whom we all enjoy life, in whom is the 
 welfare of the soul, in whom is the good. 
 
 Om, Shantih, Shantih, Shantih. Om.
 
 WOMAN 
 
 167
 
 SIR RABINDRAXATH TAGORE
 
 WOMAN 
 
 WHEN male creatures indulge in their fighting 
 propensity to kill one another Nature connives 
 at it, because, comparatively speaking, females 
 are needful to her purpose, while males are 
 barely necessary. Being of an economic dis- 
 position she does not specially care for the 
 hungry broods who are quarrelsomely voracious 
 and who yet contribute very little towards the 
 payment of Nature's bill. Therefore in the 
 insect world we witness the phenomenon of 
 the females taking it upon themselves to keep 
 down the male population to the bare limit of 
 necessity. 
 
 But because greatly relieved of their responsi- 
 bility to Nature, the males in the human world 
 have had the freedom of their occupation and 
 adventures. The definition of the human being 
 is said to be that he is the tool-making animal. 
 This tool-making is outside of Nature's- scope. 
 
 169
 
 170 PERSONALITY 
 
 In fact, with our tool-making power we have 
 been able to defy Nature. The human male, 
 having the most part of his energies free, 
 developed this power, and became formidable. 
 Thus, though in the vital department of humanity 
 woman still occupies the throne given to her 
 by Nature, man in the mental department has 
 created and extended his own dominion. For 
 this great work detachment of mind and freedom 
 of movement were necessary. 
 
 Man took advantage of his comparative free- 
 dom from the physical and emotional bondage, 
 and marched unencumbered towards his exten- 
 sion of life's boundaries. In this he has travelled 
 through the perilous path of revolutions and 
 ruins. Time after time his accumulations have 
 been swept away and the current of progress has 
 disappeared at its source. Though the gain has 
 been considerable yet the waste in comparison 
 has been still more enormous, especially when 
 we consider that much of the wealth, when 
 vanished, has taken away the records with it. 
 Through this repeated experience of disasters man 
 has discovered, though he has not fully utilized, 
 the truth, that in all his creations the moral 
 rhythm has to be maintained to save them from 
 destruction ; that a mere unlimited augmenta-
 
 WOMAN 171 
 
 tion of power does not lead to real progress, and 
 there must be balance of proportion, must be 
 harmony of the structure with its foundation, to 
 indicate a real growth in truth. 
 
 This ideal of stability is deeply cherished in 
 woman's nature. She is never in love with 
 merely going on, shooting wanton arrows of 
 curiosity into the heart of darkness. All her 
 forces instinctively work to bring things to some 
 shape of fulness, for that is the law of life. 
 In life's movement though nothing is final yet 
 every step has its rhythm of completeness. 
 Even the bud has its ideal of rounded perfection, 
 so has the flower, and also the fruit. But an 
 unfinished building has not that ideal of whole- 
 ness in itself. Therefore if it goes on indefinitely 
 in its growth of dimensions, it gradually grows 
 out of its standard of stability. The masculine 
 creations of intellectual civilization are towers 
 of Babel, they dare to defy their foundations 
 and therefore topple down over and over again. 
 Thus human history is growing up over layers 
 of ruins ; it is not a continuous life growth. 
 The present war is an illustration of this. The 
 economic and political organizations, which 
 merely represent mechanical power, born of 
 intellect, are apt to forget their centres of
 
 172 PERSONALITY 
 
 gravity in the foundational world of life. The 
 cumulative greed of power and possession which 
 can have no finality of completeness in itself, 
 which has no harmony with the ideal of moral 
 and spiritual perfection, must at last lay a 
 violent hand upon its own ponderousness of 
 material. 
 
 At the present stage of history civilization 
 is almost exclusively masculine, a civilization of 
 power, in which woman has been thrust aside in 
 the shade. Therefore it has lost its balance 
 and it is moving by hopping from war to war. 
 Its motive forces are the forces of destruction, 
 and its ceremonials are carried through by an 
 appalling number of human sacrifices. This 
 one-sided civilization is crashing along a series 
 of catastrophes at a tremendous speed because 
 of its one-sidedness. And at last the time has 
 arrived when woman must step in and impart 
 her life rhythm to this reckless movement of 
 power. 
 
 For woman's function is the passive function 
 of the soil, which not only helps the tree to 
 grow but keeps its growth within limits. The 
 tree must have life's adventure and send up and 
 spread out its branches on all sides, but all its 
 deeper bonds of relation are hidden and held
 
 WOMAN 173 
 
 firm in the soil and this helps it to live. Our 
 civilization must also have its passive element, 
 broad and deep and stable. It must not be 
 mere growth but harmony of growth. It must 
 not be all tune but it must have its time also. 
 This time is not a barrier, it is what the banks 
 are to the river ; they guide into permanence 
 the current which otherwise would lose itself 
 in the amorphousness of morass. It is rhythm, 
 the rhythm which does not check the world's 
 movements but leads them into truth and 
 beauty. 
 
 Woman is endowed with the passive qualities 
 of chastity, modesty, devotion and power of self- 
 sacrifice in a greater measure than man is. It 
 is the passive quality in nature which turns its 
 monster forces into perfect creations of beauty 
 taming the wild elements into the delicacy 
 of tenderness fit for the service of life. This 
 passive quality has given woman that large and 
 deep placidity which is so necessary for the 
 healing and nourishing and storing of life. If 
 life were all spending, then it would be like a 
 rocket, going up in a flash and coming down 
 the next moment in ashes. Life should be like 
 a lamp where the potentiality of light is far 
 greater in quantity than what appears as the flame.
 
 174 PERSONALITY 
 
 It is in the depth of passiveness in woman's 
 nature that this potentiality of life is stored. 
 
 I have said elsewhere that in the woman of 
 the Western world a certain restlessness is noticed 
 which cannot be the normal aspect of her nature. 
 For women who want something special and 
 violent in their surroundings to keep their 
 interests active only prove that they have lost 
 touch with their own true world. Apparently, 
 numbers of women as well as men in the West 
 condemn the things that are commonplace. 
 They are always hankering after something 
 which is out of the common, straining their 
 powers to produce a spurious originality that 
 merely surprises though it may not satisfy. 
 But such efforts are not a real sign of vitality. 
 And they must be more injurious to women 
 than to men, because women have the vital 
 power more strongly in them than men have. 
 They are the mothers of the race, and they 
 have a real interest in the things that are 
 around them, that are the common things of 
 life ; if they did not have that, then the race 
 would perish. 
 
 If, by constantly using outside stimulation, 
 they form something like a mental drug habit, 
 become addicted to a continual dram-drinking
 
 WOMAN 175 
 
 of sensationalism, then they lose the natural 
 high sensibility which they have, and with it 
 the bloom of their womanhood, and their real 
 power to sustain the human race with what it 
 needs the most. 
 
 A man's interest in his fellow-beings becomes 
 real when he finds in them some special gift of 
 power or usefulness, but a woman feels interest 
 in her fellow - beings because they are living 
 creatures, because they are human, not because 
 of some particular purpose which they can serve, 
 or some power which they possess and for which 
 she has a special admiration. And because 
 woman has this power, she exercises such charm 
 over our minds ; her exuberance of vital interest 
 is so attractive that it makes her speech, her 
 laughter, her movement, everything graceful ; 
 for the note of gracefulness is in this harmony 
 with all our surrounding interests. 
 
 Fortunately for us, our everyday world has 
 the subtle and unobtrusive beauty of the 
 commonplace, and we have to depend upon 
 our own sensitive minds to realize its wonders 
 which are invisible because spiritual. If we can 
 pierce through the exterior, we find that the 
 world in its commonplace aspects is a miracle. 
 
 We realize this truth intuitively through our
 
 176 PERSONALITY 
 
 power of love ; and women, through this power, 
 discover that the object of their love and sym- 
 pathy, in spite of its ragged disguise of triviality, 
 has infinite worth. When women have lost the 
 power of interest in things that are common, 
 then leisure frightens them with its emptiness, 
 because, their natural sensibilities being deadened, 
 there is nothing in their surroundings to occupy 
 their attention. Therefore they keep themselves 
 frantically busy, not in utilizing the time, but 
 merely in filling it up. Our everyday world is 
 like a reed, its true value is not in itself, but 
 those who have the power and the serenity of 
 attention can hear the music which the Infinite 
 plays through its very emptiness. But when 
 women form the habit of valuing things for them- 
 selves, then they may be expected furiously to 
 storm your mind, to decoy your soul from her 
 love-tryst of the eternal and to make you try 
 to smother the voice of the Infinite by the 
 unmeaning rattle of ceaseless movement. 
 
 I do not mean to imply that domestic life 
 is the only life for a woman. I mean that 
 the human world is the woman's world, be it 
 domestic or be it full of the other activities of 
 life, which are human activities, and not merely 
 abstract efforts to organize.
 
 WOMAN 177 
 
 Wherever there is something which is con- 
 cretely personal and human, there is woman's 
 world. The domestic world is the world where 
 every individual finds his worth as an individual, 
 therefore his value is not the market value, but 
 the value of love ; that is to say, the value that 
 God in his infinite mercy has set upon all his 
 creatures. This domestic world has been the 
 gift of God to woman. She can extend her radi- 
 ance of love beyond its boundaries on all sides, 
 and even leave it to prove her woman's nature 
 when the call comes to her. But this is a truth 
 which cannot be ignored, that the moment she 
 is born in her mother's arms, she is born in the 
 centre of her own true world, the world of human 
 relationships. 
 
 Woman should use her power to break through 
 the surface and go to the centre of things, where 
 in the mystery of life dwells an eternal source of 
 interest. Man has not this power to such an 
 extent. But woman has it, if she does not kill 
 it, and therefore she loves creatures who are 
 not lovable for their uncommon qualities. Man 
 has to do his duty in a world of his own where he 
 is always creating power and wealth and organ- 
 izations of different kinds. But God has sent 
 woman to love the world, which is a world of 
 
 N
 
 178 PERSONALITY 
 
 ordinary things and events. She is not in the 
 world of the fairy tale where the fair woman 
 sleeps for ages till she is touched by the magic 
 wand. In God's world women have their magic 
 wands everywhere, which keep their hearts awake, 
 and these are not the golden wands of wealth 
 nor the iron rods of power. 
 
 All our spiritual teachers have proclaimed 
 the infinite worth of the individual. It is the 
 rampant materialism of the present age which 
 ruthlessly sacrifices individuals to the blood- 
 thirsty idols of organization. When religion was 
 materialistic, when men worshipped their gods 
 for fear of their malevolence, or for greed of 
 wealth and power, then the ceremonies of worship 
 were cruel and sacrifices were claimed without 
 number. With the growth of man's spiritual 
 life, our worship has become the worship of 
 love. 
 
 At the present stage of civilization, when the 
 mutilation of individuals is not only practised, 
 but glorified, women are feeling ashamed of their 
 own womanliness. For God, with his message 
 of love, has sent them as guardians of individuals, 
 and, in this their divine vocation, individuals are 
 more to them than army and navy and parlia- 
 ment, shops and factories. Here they have their
 
 WOMAN 179 
 
 service in God's own temple of reality, where 
 love is of more value than power. 
 
 But because men in their pride of power have 
 taken to deriding things that are living and 
 relationships that are human, a large number of 
 women are screaming themselves hoarse to prove 
 that they are not women, that they are true where 
 they represent power and organization. In the 
 present age they feel that their pride is hurt 
 when they are taken as mere mothers of the 
 race, as the ministers to the vital needs of its 
 existence, and to its deeper spiritual necessity of 
 sympathy and love. 
 
 Because men praise with pious unctuousness 
 the idolatry of their manufactured images of 
 abstractions, women in shame are breaking their 
 own true God, who is waiting for his worship of 
 self-sacrifice in love. 
 
 Changes have been going on for a long time 
 underneath the solid crust of society on which 
 woman's world has its foundation. Of late, 
 with the help of science, civilization has been 
 growing increasingly masculine, so that the 
 full reality of the individual is more and more 
 ignored. Organization is encroaching upon the 
 province of personal relationship, and sentiment 
 is giving way to law. In some societies, too
 
 180 PERSONALITY 
 
 much dominated by masculine ideals, infanticide 
 prevailed, which ruthlessly kept down the female 
 element of the population as low as possible. 
 The same thing in another form has taken place 
 in modern civilization. In its inordinate lust 
 for power and wealth it has robbed woman 
 of the most part of her world, and the home is 
 every day being crowded out by the office. It is 
 taking the whole world for itself, leaving hardly 
 any room for woman. It is not merely inflicting 
 injury but insult upon her. 
 
 But woman cannot be pushed back for good 
 into the mere region of the decorative by man's 
 aggressiveness of power. For she is not less 
 necessary in civilization than man but possibly 
 more so. In the geological history of earth the 
 periods of gigantic cataclysms have passed when 
 the earth had not attained that mellowness of 
 maturity which despises all violent exhibition 
 of force. And the civilization of competing 
 commerce and fighting powers must also make 
 room for that stage of perfection whose power 
 lies deep in beauty and beneficence. Too long 
 has ambition been at the helm of our history, 
 so that every right of the individual has had to 
 be wrenched by force from the party in power 
 and man has had to invoke the help of evil to
 
 WOMAN 181 
 
 attain what was good for him. But such an 
 arrangement cannot be lasting, but must give 
 way time after time ; for the seeds of violence 
 lie in wait in its cracks and crevices, and roots 
 of disruption spread in the dark and cause break- 
 down when it is least expected. 
 
 Therefore although in the present stage of 
 history man is asserting his masculine supremacy 
 and building his civilization with stone blocks, 
 ignoring the living principle of growth, he can- 
 not altogether crush woman's nature into dust 
 or into his dead building materials. Woman's 
 home may have been shattered, but woman is 
 not, and cannot, herself be killed. It is not 
 that woman is merely seeking her freedom of 
 livelihood, struggling against man's monopoly of 
 business, but against man's monopoly of civiliza- 
 tion where he is breaking her heart every day 
 and desolating her life. She must restore the 
 lost social balance by putting the full weight 
 of the woman into the creation of the human 
 world. The monster car of organization is 
 creaking and growling along life's highway, 
 spreading misery and mutilation, for it must 
 have speed before everything else in the world. 
 Therefore woman must come into the bruised 
 and maimed world of the individual ; she must
 
 182 PERSONALITY 
 
 claim each one of them as her own, the useless 
 and the insignificant. She must protect with 
 her care all the beautiful flowers of sentiment 
 from the scorching laughter of the science of 
 proficiency. The growing impurities, born of 
 the deprivation of its normal conditions imposed 
 upon life by the organized power of greed, she 
 must sweep away. The time has come when 
 woman's responsibility has become greater than 
 ever before, when her field of work has far 
 transcended the domestic sphere of life. The 
 world with its insulted individuals has sent its 
 appeal to her. These individuals must find their 
 true value, raise their heads once again in the 
 sun, and renew their faith in God's love through 
 her love. 
 
 Men have seen the absurdity of to-day's 
 civilization, which is based upon nationalism, 
 that is to say, on economics and politics and its 
 consequent militarism. Men have been losing 
 their freedom and their humanity in order to 
 fit themselves for vast mechanical organizations. 
 So the next civilization, it is hoped, will be 
 based not merely upon economical and political 
 competition and exploitation but upon world- 
 wide social co-operation ; upon spiritual ideals 
 of reciprocity, and not upon economic ideals of
 
 WOMAN 183 
 
 efficiency. And then women will have their 
 true place. 
 
 Because men have been building up vast and 
 monstrous organizations they have got into the 
 habit of thinking that this turning-out power 
 has something of the nature of perfection in 
 itself. The habit is ingrained in them, and it is 
 difficult for them to see where truth is missing 
 in their present ideal of progress. 
 
 But woman can bring her fresh mind and 
 all her power of sympathy to this new task of 
 building up a spiritual civilization, if she will be 
 conscious of her responsibilities. Of course, she 
 can be frivolous or very narrow in her outlook, 
 and then she will miss her great mission. And 
 just because woman has been insulated, has been 
 living in a sort of obscurity, behind man, I think 
 she will have her compensation in the civilization 
 which is waiting to come. 
 
 And these human beings who have been 
 boastful of their power, and aggressive in their 
 exploitation, who have lost faith in the real 
 meaning of the teaching of their Master, that 
 the meek shall inherit the earth, will be defeated 
 in the next generation of life. It is the same 
 thing that happened in the ancient days, in the 
 prehistoric times, to those great monsters like
 
 184 PERSONALITY 
 
 the mammoths and dinosaurs. They have lost 
 their inheritance of the earth. They had the 
 gigantic muscles for mighty efforts but they had 
 to give up to creatures who were much feebler 
 in their muscles and who took up much less 
 space with their dimensions. And in the future 
 civilization also, the women, the feebler creatures, 
 feebler at least in their outer aspects, who 
 are less muscular, and who have been behind- 
 hand, always left under the shadow of those 
 huge creatures, the men, they will have their 
 place, and those bigger creatures will have to 
 give way. 
 
 THE END 
 
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