Translation
Who says our Mother is a beggar-woman,
the whole universe is her foothold,
Her sons are the armies of Sikhs, Jats and Rajputs.
The song of Vande Mataram infuses strength into Bengal.
Even till today the glory of Shivaji is awake in Maharashtra.
Each mountain-rib of hers embodies millions of her invincible sons,
The band of the Bhils, Gonds and Kharwar and free Nepal,
Malias and Khesias and Garoshow to enumerate, all
The Mughals, Pathans and Nagas the sands of the beach.
There is no end to the treasure that is Mother's children,
Sindhu and Ganges and their sisters the Mother clad in paddy green.
Even today Riks and Samas resound in the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
Till this day our Mother remains unreachable to us in the high hills and spring-heads.
HYMNS OF GOTAMA RAHUGANA TO INDRA
Mandala I, Sukta 80
1. Rightly in the intoxicating Soma-wine the Priest of the word has made thy increase. O most puissant Thunderer, by thy might thou hast expelled from the earth the Serpent, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
2. That intoxicating Soma which was pressed, which was brought by the Falcon, had made thee drunk with rapture, by which thou smotest the Coverer out from the waters. O Thunderer, by thy might, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
3. Advance, approach, be violent; thy thunderbolt cannot be controlled. O Indra, for thy puissance1 is a god-might, slay the Coverer, conquer the waters, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
4. [Not translated]
5. Indra offended assails the height of Vritra where he lashes his body, and smites him with the thunderbolt, urging the waters to their flow, singing the word of illumination in the law of his self-empire.
6. On the height he smites him with his hundred-jointed thunderbolt; Indra, intoxicated with the Soma-food, desires a path of travel for his comrades, singing the word of illumination in the law of his self-empire.
7. O Indra, master of the thunder-stone, Thunderer, for thee an energy that cannot be moved, when thou slewest by thy wisdom
1 Or prowess.
that cunning one. the Beast, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
8. Thy thunderbolts set themselves abroad along the ninety rivers; great is thy energy; strength is established in thy two arms, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
9. The Thousand sang the word of illumination, the Twenty affirmed him, the Hundred moved2 in his wake, to Indra the Word was lifted up,singing the word of illumination in the law of his self-empire.
10. India smote out of him his energy, he slew3 force with force; great is his virile strength; when he had slain Vritra, he released the waters, singing the song of illumination in the law of his self-empire.
11. Lo, these two great goddesses tremble with fear to thy wrath, when, O Indra, O Thunderer, by thy might, having the Maruts in thee, thou hast smitten the Coverer, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
12. Vritra terrified thee not by his shaking, nor by his thundering; the adamant thousand-lustred thunderbolt sped against him singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
13. When thou warredst with thy thunderbolt against Vritra and his bolt. when. O Indra. thou wouldst slay the Python, thy puissance became a fixed mass in heaven, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
14. When, O master of the Stone, all that moves and all that is stable trembles with thy shouting, Twashtri even is shaken with fear before thy passion, - singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
2 Or Cried
3 Or smote
15. We cannot hold him by our thought; who is above Indra in energy? The Gods have set in him god-might and will and puissances, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
16. The thought to which Atharvan and our father Manu and Dadhichi gave shape, in him the Words and the Utterances meet together as of old in Indra, singing the word of illumination in the law of thy self-empire.
Mandala I, Sukta 81
1. Indra, the Slayer of the Enemy.1 has increased by his men2 for the. intoxication, for the puissance and Him we call in the great courses of battle and him in the little. May he foster us in the fullnesses of plenty.3
2. O Hero, thou art our Lord of hosts4 and thou art the giver over to us of the much, and thou art the increaser even of the little;5 and for the sacrificer who offers the Soma-wine thou bringest out6 thy much substance.
3. When the courses of battle arise, the wealth is held for the
1 Vrtraha. Sayana says Vritra may mean either the Coverer. cloud, the Asura Vritra or simply the human enemy. The fixed epithet vrtraha must surely have always the same meaning: it refers always to the Serpent. Ahi Vritra. The battles spoken of in the hymn are those between Indra and Aryan men on one side and Vritra and his hosts who oppose them.
2 Or Strong Ones.
Nrbhih. Sayana as usual renders "the leaders (of the sacrifice)", that is to say. the priests. More rarely he simply takes nr in the sense of man. Nr refers sometimes to the gods, sometimes to men. It meant originally, in all probability, "moving", "active", then "strong", and so "man" or "hero" वीर or the Strong Ones, the male Gods. Here I take it to refer to the Maruts, Indra's men, his Viras. Fighters or Strong Ones.
3 Sayana: May he protect us in battles. The hymn is rather for increase of wealth than protection, वाज besides does not mean battle; there is not a single passage of the Veda which compels this sense. Sayana takes it usually "food", sometimes "strength" But numerous passages can be quoted in which it is equivalent to dhana and this meaning gives good sense. I render it everywhere consistently by "plenty" or "plenitude".
4 Senyah. Sayana: equal to an army.
5 Sayana. curiously: of thy little worshipper.
6 Or winnest (givest)
violent one.7 Yoke thy bright horses that drip the intoxication.8 Whom shalt thou slay? Whom shalt thou enthrone in riches of thy substance? O Indra, us shalt thou enthrone in riches of thy substance.
4. The Terrible, who is great by will of action according to his law9 of nature has increased his puissance. The swift One of the mighty jaws who drives his bright horses has taken in his hands his adamant thunderbolt to win the glory.
5. He has filled the earthly region10 and made firm the luminous worlds11 in heaven; there is none like thee, O Indra, not one is born equal to thee nor shall be born. Thou hast carried beyond all that is12 thy course.
6. May Indra, our Warrior who gives over the mortal enjoyment to the giver of sacrifice, win for us his gifts.13 Divide thy much riches of substance ! let me have joy of thy opulence!
7. He who is the Straight in will has given us in each intoxication of the wine the herds of his shining cattle. Collect for us the many hundreds of thy substance with both thy hands full, and intensify and bring the felicities of thy riches.
7 Dhrsnave. Sayana: for the conqueror. But dhrsnu. the violent one. is a constant epithet and quality of Indra and his action. The wealth is won by Indra in the battle with the Vritras and Panis and given by him to the Aryan sacrificer.
8 Madacyuta. Sayana: overthrowing the pride of the enemy. Nowhere in the Veda can मद be shown to have the much later sense of pride. The gods' horses are called ghrtasnu, ghrtascyut, dripping the घृत. Why not then dripping the mada, i.e. the Soma, the vrsa madah somah of 1.80.2.
9 अनुष्वधम्. Sayana takes स्वधा as food, and understands "in the food (Soma) he increased his strength"; but there are passages in which Soma cannot mean food. स्व-धा is self-placing or holding and therefore the action of self-nature, स्वभाव, धर्म, अनुष्वधम् here is equivalent in idea to अनु स्वराज्यम्, "in the law of thy self-empire", in the last hymn. Indra is great by will or action. क्रतु, and in Verse 7 he is described as रुजुक्रतु. "straight in will or action". His nature like that of the other gods is the nature of the Truth, ऋतवृध्; the law of its action is the law of the truth सत्यधर्म. often figured in Vedic language by the idea of straightness.
10 Sayana: the air-world, Antariksha, belonging to the earth.
11 रोचना. Sayana: the shining (stars), a sense in which he sometimes takes the word. But what of the three रोचना दिवः? The रोचना which Indra वद्वधे दिवि must surely refer to these रोचना दिवः .
12 Sayana: He bore exceedingly all the world. अति विश्चम् surely means "beyond all that is" वह् can be used of riding in a chariot or driving a chariot. Indra fills heaven and earth and the रोचना दिवः and even these cannot contain him, he proceeds beyond them.
13 Or bring it for us
8. Make with us the intoxication of the Soma-juice, O hero, for strength, for opulence; for we know thee to be of a manifold substance of riches and we cast loose towards thee our desires; become the fosterer of our being.
9. Thine are these beings born, O Indra, who increase every desirable thing; for thou hast seen within the possession of knowledge14 of those who give not to thee, and thou art a noble warrior; bring to us the possession they guard.
Mandala I, Sukta 82, Rik 1
उपो षु शृणुही गिरो मधवन्मातथाइव |
यदा नः सूनृतावतः कर आदर्थयास इद्योजा न्विन्द्र ते हरी ||
upo su srnuhi giro maghavan matathaiva.
yada nah sunrtavatah kara adarthayasa idyoja nvindra te hari.
उप, उ अस्मान् प्रति अभिमुख एव सन् towards (us) verily सु सम्यक् well गिरः शृणुही उक्तीः शृणु hear (our) words मधवन् हे धनवन् मा अतथाः इव मा यथार्हसि तदन्यथेव किंवासत्य इव भव (be) not as if other than thou art यदा नः सूनृतावतः करः यदा त्वं नः सुसत्यवागन्वितान् सुसत्यबुद्धियुक्तान् वा करोषि when thou makest us possessed of the mind of truth आत् तदा अर्थयासे इत् अर्थं प्रति गच्छस्येव thou seekest the goal इन्द्र हरी ते योज नु हे इन्द्र तव दीप्तावश्चावधूना योजय O Indra, yoke now thy two bright horses.
Turn well thy ear of hearing towards us and hearken to our words; O master of riches, be not other than thy truth; when thou hast made us to have the word of truth, then thou movest to the goal of thy way. Yoke now, O Indra, thy bright horses.
उ=एव
अतथाः. Sayana: not as before. But I think it means either not right, not as thou ought to be, not giving the just response to our
14 वेदः "possession, gelling, having", from विद्, "to find", and "knowledge", from विद्, "to know" The Panis keep the herds of light in their cave. Vritra the waters of the Truth in his cloud; he is, as the old commentators suggested, the Coverer who hides and withholds all desirable things from man. What they have and refuse to give is the Vedic wealth, वेदः, which is also knowledge. Indra discovers it within man and by battle, as the noble warrior,अर्यः, wins and brings it out to him from the cave and the cloud.
words or else not as thou art really, ऋजुक्रतुः etc., straight of will, a warrior for the Aryan, a conqueror and giver of the riches of truth and its powers; do not seem to be something else. Cf. the force of तथा in याथातथ्यतः, aright, तथ्य, true.
सूनृतावतः, सूनृता is taken by Sayana in its latest sense, true and pleasant speech. The word is probably from सु and ऋत with an euphonic connecting न्. Other passages suggest true mind rather than true speech, but it may here mean speech, since it is the words, गिरः, of which the Rishi is speaking.
अर्थयासे. Sayana takes अर्थ in the sense of प्रार्थ्= याच्यसे, thou art prayed to or desired. I take the verb as a nominal from अर्थ = thou movest to the goal.
For the whole sense of the verse consult the parallel passage, I.10.3-4: युक्ष्वा हि केशिना हरी वृषणा कक्ष्यप्रा | अथा न इन्द्र सोमपा गिरामुपश्रुतिं चर || एहि स्तोमाँ अभि स्वराभि गृनीह्या रुव | "Yoke thy two maned bright horses (cf. below [I.82.6] युनज्मि ते केशिना हरी ) strong (males) which fill their girths, then, O Indra Soma-drinker, act the hearkening towards our words, come, give voice in answer to our hymns of praise, utter the word, cry aloud"; and [consult also] the previous verse, I.10.2: तदिन्द्रो अर्थं चेतति यूथेन वृष्णिरेजति | "Then Indra gives us knowledge of the goal, a bull with the herd (of his rays यूथा गवाम् ), he moves (towards the goal)."
Indra's hearing of the word उपश्रुति has a meaning as is shown by this parallel passage. His hearing is for a response, the divine Mind answering with its word of Truth गृणीहि आ रुव to the human word that seeks the Truth. This gives a connected sense to मातथाइव, "do not seem to give another than the right answer"; "do not confuse our minds with error" Why? Because it is when Indra makes men सूनृतावतः, that is, gives them possession of the mind and word of the Truth, that he leads them towards the अर्थ, तदिन्द्रो अर्थं चेतति, the goal of Truth, the supreme levels rising from height to height सानोः सानुमारुहत् (I.10.2).
The First Hymn of the Rig-veda
Mandala I, sukta 1
(1)
[A note on the word ratnadhatamam]
Sayana explains रत्न as equivalent in sense to रमणीय धनम्; it is that in which one takes delight, specifically wealth; but in order to establish this sense we must have clear instances in the Veda of passages in which रत्न, the object of delight, must mean specifically wealth. I hold that it means simply delight or, less probably, object of delight. रत्न is connected with रम् as यत्न, the effort, with यम् to put forth force on an object. So रम्, to play upon an object, take delight in it. रत्न the delight or else its object. But त्नम् seems to carry the verbal rather than the substantival sense.
(2)
1. The Flame I pray, the divine vicar of the sacrifice, the ordinant of the ritual, the Summoner who founds the ecstasy.
2. The Flame, desirable1 by the ancient seers and by the new, may he come hither with the gods.
3. By the Flame is won an energy that surely increases day by day, glorious and full of warrior-power.2
4. O Flame, the pilgrim-sacrifice that thou encompassest from every side, goes to the gods.
5. The Flame is our priest of the call, the seer-will true and brilliant in inspiration; may he come, a god with the gods.
6. The good that thou wilt create for the giver. O Flame, is that truth of thee, O Angiras.
7. To thee we come, O Flame, day by day in the dark and in the light bringing by the thought our obeisance:
8. To thee, the ruler of our pilgrim-sacrifices, the shining Guardian of the Truth, growing in thy own home.
9. O Flame, be easy of access to us like a father to his son. cleave to us for our weal.
1 Or adorable
2 Or hero-power
Chapter One: Section 1
1. Dawn is the head1 of the horse sacrificial.2 The sun is his eye,3 his breath is the wind, his wide open mouth is Fire, the master might universal.4 Time is the self of the horse sacrificial.5 Heaven is his back and the midworld his belly, earth is his footing, the regions are his flanks and the lesser regions their ribs, the seasons his members, the months and the half months are their joints, the days and nights are his standing place, the stars his bones and the sky is the flesh of his body. The strands are the food in his belly, the rivers are his veins, his liver and his lungs are the mountains, herbs and plants are his hairs, the rising is his front and the setting his hinder portion, when he stretches himself, then it lightens, when he shakes his frame, then it thunders, when he urines, then it rains. Speech, verily, is the sound of him.
2. Day was the grandeur that was borne before the horse as he galloped, the eastern ocean gave it birth; night was the grandeur that was borne behind him and its birth was from the other waters. These are the grandeurs that came into being on either side of the horse. He became Haya and bore the gods, Vaja and bore the Gandharvas, Arvan and bore the Titans, Ashwa and bore mankind. The sea was his brother and the sea was his birthplace.
Chapter One: Section 2
1. Formerly there was nothing here; this was concealed by Death
1 Because it is the front and beginning.
2 Ashwa meant originally "being, existence, substance". From the sense of speed and strength it came to mean "horse". The word is therefore used to indicate material existence and the horse (the image usually conveyed by this name) is taken as the symbol of universal existence in annam.
The horse is symbolic and the sacrifice is symbolic. We have in it an image of the Virat Purusha, of Yajniya Purusha, God expressing himself in the material universe.
3 Because the sun is the master of sight.
4 Air is the basis of life, Fire of strength and expansion.
5 Time is that which upholds existence in material space and is the soul of it.
by Hunger, for it is Hunger that is Death. That created Mind, and he said, "Let me have substance." He moved about working and as he worked the waters were born and he said, "Felicity was born to me as I worked." This verily is the activity in action. Therefore felicity cometh to him who thus knoweth this soul of activity in action.
2. The waters verily (in their movement) are action; that which was a lake of waters was contracted and became compact. This became earth; upon earth he grew weary; in his weariness he was heated and the Essence of energy went out from him, even Fire.
3. Fire divided himself into three the sun one of the three and Vayu one of the three; this is that force of life arranged triply. The east is his head and the northeast and the southeast are his arms. Now the west is his seat and the southwest and the northwest are his thighs; his sides are the south and the north; heaven is his back and the middle region is his belly; this earth is his bosom. This is he that is established in the waters wheresoever thou turn. And as that is he established who thus knoweth.
4. He desired, "Let a second self be born to me." He by mind had intercourse with speech, even Hunger that is Death; the seed that was of that union became Time. For before this Time was not (period of Time) but so long He had borne him in Himself. So long as is Time's period, after so long He gave it birth. He yearned upon him as soon as it was born; it cried out and that became speech.
5. He saw, "If I devour this, I shall diminish food"; therefore by that speech and by that self he created all this that we see, the Riks and the Yajus and the Samas and the rhythms and sacrifices and animals and these nations. Whatsoever he created, that he set about devouring, verily he devoureth all; this is the substantiality of being in substance (that it can be destroyed6). He becometh the Eater of all the world and everything
6 Destroyed, i.e. enjoyed by absorption.
becometh his food who thus knoweth the substantiality of being in substance.
6. He desired, "Let me sacrifice more richly with richer sacrifice." He laboured and put forth heat of force, and of him thus laboured and heated splendour and strength came forth. The life-forces are that splendour and strength, therefore when the life-forces go forth, the body sets about to rot, yet in his body even so mind was.
7. He desired, "Let this have sacrificial capacity for me. by this let me be provided with a body. That which has expressed power and being, that is fit for the sacrifice. This verily is the secret of the Ashwamedha and he knoweth indeed the Ashwamedha who thus knoweth it. He gave him free course and thought, then after a year (a fixed period of time) he dedicated him to the self. [. . .]7
Chapter One: Section 3
1. Two were the races of the Sons of God, the gods and the Titans. Thereafter the gods were weaker, mightier the Titans. They in these worlds strove together, and the gods said. "Let us by this udgitha overpass the Titans in the Yajna."
2. They said to Speech, "Do thou go upward (by the udgitha) for us." "So be it." said Speech and he went upward for them: the enjoyment that is in speech, he reached for the gods, the good that it speaks, he reached for the self. They thought it was by this singer they would overpass them, but they ran at him and penetrated him with evil. The evil that one speaketh. this that hath no correspondence (to the thing in fact to be expressed). this is that evil.
Incomplete
7 Rest of passage not translated.
Chapter III
We have, then, to choose between two methods, one historic and modern, in possession of the field, easily applied in its fullness, the other ancient, difficult to employ, impossible indeed for us to utilise safely except by an inversion of the process of knowledge known to the Rishis. According as we choose the one or the other, we shall arrive at a logical and symmetrical result, a private room hired for ourselves- in the mansion of Truth and marked out by us as her sole temple, or shall be free to range in all her domain, gleaning wide and various results, but not soon or easily sure of possessing her entirety. I have indicated the disadvantages of the intellectual and logical method for the interpretation of Vedanta, but, in view of its long dominion and wide acceptance, it will be as well to consider and convince ourselves of the more important of them clearly and in some detail before we proceed.
In the first place, by the method of intellectual reasoning we are compelled to apply the processes of logic to entities which are beyond the grasp of logic. A single instance will suffice. We find, as a matter of experience, that existence is one and yet existence is multiple: everywhere, to whatever nook or corner of being we penetrate, we find this riddle presenting itself, undeniable and ineffugable, of a multiplicity which appears, a unity concealed which yet the mind insists on as the sole truth of the multiplicity. Nor is the unity which our mind thus asks us to perceive a sum of factors; that oneness exists, but behind it there is an essential unity out of which both the sum and its factors emerge. Yet. divorce that essential unity from all notion of multiplicity expressed or latent, and it ceases to be unity; it becomes something else of which unity and multiplicity are mutually related aspects. But when we have arrived at this coexistent and coincident unity and multiplicity, before we can proceed to the something else which is neither one nor many, logic has already taken alarm. It cannot be. it says, that two opposites really coexist and coincide as the nature of Being. If we ask why not. since, after all, it is an universal experience. the answer is that the thing is illogical
and irrational; unintelligible and contradictory to the view of logic and reason, it is, therefore, to them impossible of credence. A sum and its factors may and must coexist, but not a thing which is at once one and many. Therefore Logic sets to work to get rid of one or both of the two irreconcilable, yet strangely reconciled opposites. Buddhism dismisses the Many as phenomena of sensation, the One as an ideative illusion of sensation; it gets rid of the unity in sum as a mere combination of sensational factors in the figure of the chariot and its parts, having no existence apart from the factors, no real existence at all; it gets rid of the essential unity as a mere illusion of continuity created by the uninterrupted succession of sensations, in the figure of the flame and the wick. It drives by logical process towards a Nullity, although not all its schools are bold enough to arrive at that void and yawning haven. For the rest, its final conclusion is illogical, for though it claims to be the pure concept of Nullity, it is in reality, when examined, a something that is nothing. Therefore, originally, Buddha seems to have turned aside from the problem and declared to his disciples, Seek not to know, for to know, even if it be possible, helps not at all and leads to no useful result. Buddhism was satisfied with having got rid of the original, actual and pressing contradiction in this world here and now which it had set out to destroy. Adwaita asserts the One on the ground of ultimate experience; it dismisses the Many as an illusion; yet since both are ineffugable, since the soul escaping from the illusion, escapes from it merely and does not destroy it, it has to be admitted that the substratum of multiplicity exists eternally. Here again we are led by logical process to a result which is illogical; we have, in the end, a Maya that at once exists and does not exist. This difficulty is at once put aside as beyond enquiry; the contradiction exists, inexplicable but true; we need not enquire farther, for we have got rid of the original contradiction in which we were entangled and cutting through this Gordian knot of Nature, we have released the individual soul from the illusion of multiplicity and therefore from the necessity of phenomenal existence. In both cases the process and result are similar and a like subterfuge is utilised. In both cases Logic, like Cato at Utica, has committed suicide in order to assert its rights and liberties; but it has died, as the patients of Moliere's doctors had the felicity of dying, according to the rules of the science; therefore it is satisfied. It is not, however,
Buddhism and Adwaita alone, but every logical philosophy that arrives at a similar result; we find always that when we would explain existence in an ultimate term which shall be subject to logic, we fail; we arrive either at a term which is plainly illogical, cr at an explanation which fails to explain, or a success which seems to succeed only because it ignores or suppresses or juggles away an important part of the data. The suggestion irresistibly arises whether this is not so, whether it must not be always so merely because the formulae of logic, a creature as it is and a limited movement of intellectual ideation, which is itself a creature and a limited movement of existence, useful enough within the sphere of their birth and movement and in the circle of their jurisdiction, cannot control that which is beyond and wider than ideation, yet farther beyond and wider than its creature logic? Invaluable in relating correctly the particulars of the universe and purging our ideas about them, it may be of less sovereign efficacy in dealing with the fundamental things which underlie phenomena and of no efficacy at all in discovering the Reality which lies farther back behind phenomena.
Much of the luminous confusion of Metaphysics is due to the self-satisfied content with which it leans upon words and abstract ideas and uses them not merely as instruments, but as data, forgetting that these are merely useful to symbolise and formulate very imperfectly truths of experience and perception. Therefore in dealing with abstract ideas and conceptions we are unsafe unless we insist always on returning to the thing itself which they symbolise. Otherwise we lose ourselves in facile words or in confusing abstractions. For instance, in order to get rid of the anomaly of a Maya that exists and exists not, we say sometimes that the Many have a relative reality, but no essential reality. But what have we said, after all? Merely this, that we do not find the Many existing except in some relation to a unity behind, established in that unity and, as far as we can see, existent by that unity, as indeed the unity itself exists in a certain relation to the eternally existent Many either in their manifestation or in their substratum of Maya. How much farther have we got by this manipulation of words? We have found a fresh formula which expresses the difficulty, but does not solve the difficulty. We have taken refuge in a disingenuous phrase which suggests [to] us that phenomena are unreal, but tries to escape from the consequences
of its admission. As well may we say that water is in any sense unreal because it only exists by the mixture of oxygen and hydrogen; oxygen and hydrogen unreal because they only exist by the congregation of atoms; atoms unreal because they only exist by some obscure principle of the transformation of energy into forms; energy unreal because it exists to us only in its works and manifestations. In all this we are playing with words, we are making an argument of our own ideative limitations. So again, in a different way, with the question of the Personality and Impersonality of God. Personality is to us a word which we use too lightly without fathoming the depth of the thing which it indicates. We confuse it perhaps with the idea of a separate ego. we imagine God in His personality as one Ego among millions, separate from all the others, superior and anterior to them; we refuse to extend or to subtilise our conception, and according to our personal predilections we argue that such a Personal God cannot exist or that He must exist. But the whole method was illegitimate. We ought rather to fathom in experience ail the possibilities of human personality and of divine personality, if such a thing exists, in order to know them and arrive at some results about them instead of battling over a verbal symbol or an arbitrary abstraction and ending only in an eternal war of ill-grounded opinions.
This danger of intellectual predilections thrusting out Truth is the third disadvantage of the logical method. Logic claims and even honestly attempts to get rid of predilection and to see things in the sure light of truth, but it is not equal to its task; our nature is full of subtle disguises and, the moment we form an opinion, attaches itself to it and secretly takes it under its protection under pretence of an exclusive attachment to Truth or a militant zeal for reason and the right opinion. We come to our subject with a predisposition towards a particular kind of solution established either in our feelings, in our previous education and formed ways of thinking or in our temperament and very cast of character. We seize passionately or we select deliberately and reasonably the arguments that favour our conclusion; we reject, whether with impatience or after scrupulous and fair attention, the arguments that would shake it. Logic, a malleable and pliant servitor behind all its air of dry and honest rigidity, asks only that it should be provided with suitable premises, unsuitable premises excluded or explained away, and its conscience is entirely satisfied.
We perform the comedy with perfect sincerity, but it is still a comedy which Nature plays with us; our garb of intellectual stoicism has concealed from ourselves, the epicure of his own dish of thoughts, the mind enamoured of its favourite ideas. Shankara comes to the Upanishads with a judgment already formed; he is an Adwaitin, his temperament predisposes him to Mayavada. But the Sruti does not contain the Mayavada, at least explicitly; it does contain, side by side with the fundamental texts of Adwaita, a mass of texts which foster the temper and views of the Dualist. But the Sruti is the supreme and infallible authority; it contains nothing but truth; it can inculcate, therefore, nothing but Adwaita. Obviously, then, these dualistic texts must have a meaning and a bearing different from their surface meaning or their apparent bearing; it is Shankara's business, as a commentator in search of truth, to put always the right, that is to say always the Adwaitic interpretation on Sruti. Watch him then seize the text in his mighty hands and, with a swift effort, twist and shape and force it to assume a meaning or a bearing which will either support or at least be consistent with Adwaita, a giant victoriously wrestling with and twisting into a shape a mass of obstinate iron! There is no insincerity in the process, rather the fervour of a too passionate sincerity. Still, Truth often veils her face with a tear or a smile when Shankara comments on the Sruti. He is the greatest; the others are not likely to escape from the snare into which he casts himself headlong. Nor do I think the philosopher has yet been born who has escaped from these original meshes of intellectual preference, predestined belief and ineffugable personal temperament.
In fact, the supreme failing of the metaphysical method is that, owing to the paucity, abstract uncertainty and doubtful bearing of its most essential data, it becomes almost entirely a domain of opinion. The absolute contempt of scientific rationalism for metaphysics which for a long time past has conquered general opinion in Europe and put an end to fruitful philosophical thinking, is almost certainly exaggerated and unjustified. The emergence of a new metaphysical thinking, more practical and realistic than the old abstract philosophies, presaged by Nietzsche, fulfilled in James and Bergson, is a sign at once of the return of Europe upon this dangerous error and of a perception, subconscious perhaps, of that real defect in the character of metaphysics which gave a hold to the destructive criticisms
of modern realism. The long and imposing labours of the highest human intellects in the region of metaphysics, has not been a vain waste of priceless energy. Nature makes no such mistakes; her glance, though it seems to rove and fall at random and vary capriciously, is surer and more infallible in its selection than our human reason. Metaphysics have fulfilled a necessary and, when all has been said, a right and true function in our evolution; the materials of the great systems she has built have been general truths and not abstract errors. But the systems themselves are not final expressions of truth; they are the mould of the philosopher's personality, the stamp of his temperament and type of intellect. If we examine the method and substance of our own philosophies, we shall see why this must be so and cannot be otherwise. Their most important data are vast and vague conceptions, infinite in their nature, Being, Non-Being, Consciousness, Prakriti and Purusha (Nature and Soul), Mind, Matter. How can these entities be compelled to give us their secret except by a profound and exhaustive interrogatory such as modern Science has applied to the lowest principle of Being, analysing and experimenting in every possible way with Matter? But the metaphysician does not base his process on the sure steps of experience. He starts with an ideal definition of these great indefinables and he argues logically from the abstract idea to results which are faultless, indeed, in logic; but how can we be sure of an equal faultlessness in the reality of things which is after all our proper business? We cannot be; for each thinker handles according to his own light this vague and plastic material of ideas: there is nothing to check him; he asserts his opinion and his opinion is dominated by his education or his temperament. Shankara asserts that works are incompatible with salvation, Jaimini that works are indispensable to salvation. Who shall decide, when each proceeds with a perfect logic from his premises? Therefore, a second class of data has to be called in, the texts of the Sruti. But Jaimini and Shankara appeal equally to the texts of the Sruti; for there are some which, if pressed in their separate meaning, seem to declare the inutility of works, there are others which, if pressed in their separate meaning, seem to declare the indispensa-bility of works. It is a question of interpretation and, where different interpretations are possible, we interpret, again, according to our opinion, which is decided, as we have seen, by our education or our
temperament. Even when an interpretation in the sense of our opinion seems to be impossible, an ingenious scholarship, a curious and intrepid learning can make it possible. Sa atma tattvamasi svetaketo, cries Gautama to his son; "That is the Truth, that is the Self, that art thou, O Swetaketu." The evidence of Revealed Scripture seems to be conclusive for the Adwaitic view of existence. No, cries the Dualist, you have read it wrongly, you have separated atma tattvam into three distinct uncompounded words when there is really an euphonic combination of atma atat tvam, which gives us this result, "Thou art not that, O Swetaketu." Our inalienable perception of right, the satyam rtam in us, tells us that the Dualist's device is wrong, a desperate expedient only; but how shall we convince the Dualist, whose business it is, as a Dualist, not to be convinced? For grammatically, textually, he is within his rights. Nor can Shankara at least complain of this amazing tour de force; for he himself has used the very same device, in his commentary on the Isha Upanishad, in order to read, for the convenience of his philosophy, asambhutya, by the not coming into birth, where tradition, metre, sentence-structure and context demand sambhutya, by the coming into birth. In this confusion, is there any other class of data handled by metaphysics which will help us out of the difficulty? Certain psychological experiences are so handled; notably, the phenomena of sleep, the phenomena of samadhi, the phenomena of ultimate experience in consciousness. But how are we to know that these experiences bear the construction put on them or justify the conclusions drawn from them? how are we to know, for instance, that the experiences in consciousness which we find advanced as ultimate are really ultimate or even that they are not entirely illusory and deceptive? As metaphysics handles them, isolating them from each other, advancing them to demonstrate particular views and opinions, we cannot have any certainty. And, indeed, we find that each builder of a metaphysical system has a different formula of ultimate consciousness, ultimate to him, from which he starts; this difference of the ultimate step in experience which is also the starting-point for the chain of our logical systematising, is the strong foundation of all these age-long jarrings in religious sect and school of philosophy. Here again opinion is master, very clearly founded not on data, not on pure truth, but on truth as seen in the colouring and with the limitation of our education and temperament. We can see
from examples in modern Science how these differences work out and where their remedy is to be found. Physicists and geologists have disagreed in their view of the age of the earth; the geologists had certain data of experience before them which pointed to one conclusion, the physicists had a different set of data before them which pointed to a different conclusion. The difference here [is] a difference of education; the education of each had trained his mind to look only at a certain set of considerations, to move only in a certain way of thinking and reasoning. If physicist and geologist are combined in one mind, the age of the earth will not even then be indisputably fixed, for the necessary data are still wanting, but a juster perception will be gained, a better preparation for considering the problem, a superior chance of arriving as near to the truth as is now possible. Again, we see two scientists, absolutely agreed on all positive physical problems, confronted with the phenomena of the psychical world, partly true, partly the conscious or half-conscious frauds of exploiters and illusions of enthusiasts. One turns eagerly to the new subject, examines widely, believes readily, is discouraged by no disappointments; the other refuses contemptuously to investigate, or, if he investigates, hastens as rapidly as he can to the conclusion that the whole business is a sink of fraud, imposture and mystification. It is difference of temperament, not of the facts, that has determined these conflicting opinions. In the positive questions on which they are agreed, in the conclusions of their respective sciences where the geologist and physicist would not dream of disputing each other's conclusions, intellectual type and temperament are by no means entirely banished as factors, but their play is restricted, a mass of actual fact and experience is there to check them and keep them in order. It is this check that is wanting to the method of the metaphysicians.
If, then, our object is to take a number of general truths, a number of abstract conceptions, a few general statements of Vedanta and wide facts of consciousness, and out of these materials build ourselves a bright, aerial house of speculation in which our intellect can live satisfied with the sense of finality and our personal temperament assert itself as the ultimate truth of things, the method of abstract speculation supporting itself on logic will be sufficient for our purpose. But if we wish rather to know anything for certain about God and the ultimate reality of the world and the foundations of our life and
existence, it is not by logic and speculation that we shall arrive at our desire. Experience is the first necessity; an experiential method, not a speculative and logical method. What is the utility of logical discussion and the marshalling of Vedic texts to decide whether works are incompatible with salvation or indispensable to it or neither incompatible nor indispensable, but only useful and permissible? What we need is experience. If once it is established by the experience of the Jivanmuktas that works and salvation are compatible, by the experience of the Karmayogins that works also lead to freedom in the Infinite and Divine Existence, although they need not be the only path, nor the only requisite, although, even, it may be difficult to harmonise an active existence with the calm and peace of Infinity, then no amount of logic to the contrary can be of any avail. Nor will Vedic texts avail, since the bearing of the texts has itself to be first decided. And what is the use of proving by logic and a curious scholarship that tat tvam asi should be read atat tvam asi or that Vidya and Avidya in a particular Upanishad do not mean what they mean in every other Upanishad or that amrtatvam in one text means the state of the gods and in others the state of Brahman? We need rather to experience always, to experience our unity with the One Truth of things and our difference from it and the relations of the unity to the difference; having experienced we shall understand. We need by practice and experiment, under a fit human guide or guided by the Divinity within, if we have strength and faith in Him, to fathom the outer dissonances and the secret harmonies of Vidya and Avidya. to achieve and enjoy immortality instead of arguing about immortality, to realise the thing the Veda speaks instead of disputing about the words of the text. In the absence of knowledge of the object, touch with the object, direct experience of the object, argument tends to become a vain jangling and speculation a high-sounding jargon. These things may be useful to awaken our intellectual interest in the subject and move us to the acquisition of knowledge, but only if we become dissatisfied with them and see the necessity of proceeding farther. The Greek philosophers argued, of old, that the world was made out of water or made out of fire, and their speculations and the logical ingenuities of the sophists awakened a widespread curiosity on the subject; but the moment the experimental methods of physical science give us actual experience of the constituents of the material
world, such speculations become valueless; the simple relation of connected facts takes the place of abstract logic. No one would dream of trying to settle the constituents of water or the processes of water by speculative logic; the experiential method is there to forbid that inutility. Even if the right experiential method has to be found, it is still by progressive experience step after step aided by the eye of intuition that it has to be discovered. Argument from first principles can only be of a minor and almost an accidental assistance; its function is always to awaken the mind and attach it to the object, so that the intuition attracted by the mental demand may fall upon the point desired with its light and bright electric shock and its divinely illuminating swiftness.
It might seem to follow that as the scientific method has been used to elucidate the problems of matter, so it should be used to elucidate the problems of mind and spirit. Certainly, in the absence of another, the scientific method would be the best, the method of patient and courageous experiment and observation aided by a scrupulous use of hypothesis and exact reasoning. A beginning has been made in this direction in Europe by the examination of the abnormal conditions of hypnosis, divided personality and rare mental and psychic phenomena as well as in the tendency of psychology towards the abandonment of the superficial, academic and unfruitful methods of the past. "But it is doubtful whether the scientific method will bear as great fruit in the things of mind as it has borne in the things of matter; it is certain that it is wholly unsuited to the investigation of the things of the spirit, because here we come into touch with Infinity and even cross the borders that divide the definite from the indefinable. The more we progress in that direction, the more the methods of scientific reasoning become inapplicable, unfruitful and misleading. Even the Mind gives a very limited hold to the scientist. In the first place, experiment is much more dangerous and difficult than in the physical sciences; in the latter we risk death and suffering, in the former we have to go out of the normal, face the dangers of the beyond from which man draws back shuddering, risk even the loss of that very reason which we have chosen for our instrument. The repugnance of mankind to take this step is much greater than that fear and repugnance which set the mass of mankind against the early experiments of science as diabolical sorcery and magic. Similarly,
we find denounced as quackery, dupery, hallucination, superstition, the modern attempts to deal with the obscure phenomena of mind, those in which observation of the familiar and normal is not enough and experiment with the abnormal is necessary. But the difficulty of convincing the ignorant or the reluctant is here infinitely greater, because of the elusive nature of mind as compared with matter. This is the second capital disadvantage of the scientific method, that our only field for full experiment is ourselves. In matter we can examine any object by bringing it sufficiently near to be within the vicinity of our senses; but in mind we are unable to see the movements and processes of the minds of others except in so far as we can judge them from their gestures, action and physical expression, indices unutterably perilous to the reasoner, inconceivably misleading. Unless, therefore, we can discover and use mental instruments answering to the microscope, telescope, retorts of the astronomer, chemist and physicist, by which we can see, study and analyse the mental processes of thought, feeling and sensation in others as well as in ourselves, we may know indeed the physical movements and organs corresponding to some of the motions of mind, but we shall never know-mind itself. It is an obscure perception of this truth that explains the powerful revival in our own day of the occult. Erratic and ignorant as much of it is, it was inevitable and it is salutary. Nature, unerring in her action, is filling mankind with an instinctive sense, a sort of dim subterranean intuition that, now that Science has almost completed its analysis of Matter, the next subject of inquiry must be Mind and Mind cannot be known except by as yet undiscovered or little used introscopic instruments. Even if these are found, the most dangerous, intricate, difficult and varied experiments will be necessary; for mind is infinitely more elusive and elastic than matter. Where physical Nature confines herself rigidly and stubbornly to a single process, psychical Nature uses, versatilely and intricately, a hundred. To have sufficient experience, to be sure of one's results, one must take oneself and others experimentally to pieces, combine and recombine, put in order and put in disorder one's mental and emotional functions in a way and to an extent which humanity of the present day would pronounce chimerical and impossible. Still our own philosophy founding itself on experiments repeated continually through many millenniums declares that it is possible. Our Yoga, if its pretensions
are true, enables us to do these things and, given certain difficult precautions, to do them with an eventual impunity; it separates the various functions, keeps some inactive while others are acting, experimentally analyses and creates new syntheses of mind and feeling, so that we are able to know the constituents, process and function, at least of our own internal forces, with some perfection. Certain forms of Yoga claim to develop faculties by which we can not only know and watch the internal processes of others, but silently control them. If these pretensions are found to be justified, if we can really master and use such methods and instruments, a scientific knowledge and control of the forces of mind may become as possible as our present scientific knowledge and control of the forces of Nature. But how much shall we have gained? A knowledge of constituents, processes, functions we shall have, not, any more than in physical nature, a knowledge of things in themselves. The reality and spirit of objects and forces will still escape us, leaving us only their forms and phenomena. Reason will once more find herself baffled; with regard to the one thing that really matters, the one thing humanity is driven eternally to seek as necessary, supreme and the highest good, we shall have to return, as now, to the sterile result of agnosticism.
Experience, yes; but experience illumined by Veda and vijnana. We must by experiment and experience develop those faculties which see the Truth face to face and do not have to approach it indirectly and by inference only. The results of experience will then be illumined by this higher truth; the truth acquired will be confirmed and enlarged by experience. We shall be able to recover our lost kingdoms of the spirit, know the unknowable, enter into relations with the Infinite, be ourselves the reality of the Infinite as well as, if we so choose, its expression in the apparent Finite. We shall not be confined to the silver and copper of mind and matter, but handle also the gold of the Spirit. We shall use indeed the smaller currency in which the Spirit makes itself negotiable in material form and mental impression, not despising even the most apparently insignificant cent or cowrie, since all are divine, but shall use them only as lesser symbols of the higher currency which is alone of a true and self-determined value. This knowledge and possession of the things of the Spirit is the promise of Veda and Vedanta, a promise not delayed for its fulfilment to another life and world, but offered ihaiva, in the present life and in this
perishable body, not only offered, but continually realised since prehistoric times by elect spirits in our Indian generations. Yoga, which offers us the knowledge and control of mental processes and forces in ourselves and others, offers us what is infinitely more valuable and the one thing worth pursuing for its own sake, the knowledge and possession of the truth of forms mental and material in the reality of the Self and the realisation of life in the world as the phenomena of a divine epiphany. We can know God, we can become the Brahman.
This promise long confined to the few, to the initiates in India, is once more being placed before the whole world for its acceptance. Of this supreme offer a life recently lived in an obscure corner of the earth seems to me to be the very incarnation and illuminating symbol, the life of the Paramhansa Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar. Not for any body of teachings that he left behind, not for any restricted type of living, peculiar system of ethics or religious panacea for the ills of existence, but because it brought once more into the world with an unexampled thoroughness and liberality the great Vedantic method of experience and inner revelation and showed us its possibilities. An illiterate, poor and obscure Bengali peasant, one who to the end of his life used a patois full of the most rustic forms and expressions, ignorant of Sanskrit, of any language but his own provincial dialect, ignorant of philosophy and science, ignorant of the world, yet realised in himself all the spiritual wisdom of the ages, shed in his brief sayings a light so full, so deep on the most difficult profundities of our inner being, the most abstruse questions of metaphysics that the most strenuous thinkers and the most learned Pandits were impressed by his superiority. By what process did he arrive at this great store of living knowledge? Never by any intellectual process, by any steps of reasoning. In all the things of the intellect, even the most elementary, he was as simple as a child, more unsophisticated than the most ignorant peasant of his native village. He could turn indeed an eye of infallible keenness on the hearts and intentions of men, but it was the eye of vision, not the eye of thought. Never indeed, in modern times or since the intellectualising of mankind began were reasoning and intellectual processes so rigidly excluded from the process of knowledge with such astonishing results. The secret of his success was that always he lived and saw; where most men only reason and translate thought into sentiment, feel and translate emotion into terms of
thinking, he saw with the heart or a higher faculty and threw out his vision into experience with a power of realisation of which modern men have long ceased to be capable; thus living everything to its full conclusion of mental and physical experience his soul opened more and more to knowledge, to direct truth, to the Satyam in things, until the depths hid nothing from him and the heights became accessible to his tread. He first has shown us clearly, entirely and without reserve or attenuating circumstance the supreme importance of being over thinking, but being, not in terms of the body and life merely, like the sensational and emotional man or the man of action, but in the soul as well and the soul chiefly, in the central entity of this complex human symbol. Therefore he was able to liberate us from the chains imposed by the makeshifts of centuries. He broke through the limitations of the Yogic schools, practised each of them in turn and would reach in three days the consummation which even to powerful Yogins is the accomplishment of decades or even of more lives than one; broke through the limitations of religion and fulfilled himself in experience as a worshipper of Christ and of Allah while all the time remaining in the individual part of him a Hindu of the sect of the Shaktas; broke through the limitations of the Guruparampara, and, while using human teachers for outward process and discipline, yet received his first and supreme initiation from the eternal Mother herself and all his knowledge from the World-Teacher within; broke through the logical limitations of the metaphysical schools and showed us Dwaita and Adwaita inextricably yet harmoniously one in experience, even as they are shown to us in Veda and Vedanta. All that at the time still governed our spiritual life he took typically into his soul and into his mental and physical experience, swallowed up its defects and imperfections in the infinite abyss of his personality and brought out through these masks and forms always the something beyond that is perfect and supreme. Thus establishing experience and inward revelation as the supreme means of the highest knowledge, his became one of the seed-lives of humanity; and the seed it held was the loosening of the bonds of the rational intellect and the return of humanity's journey from its long detour on the mid-plateaus of reason towards the footpath that winds up to the summits of the spirit.
On the Importance of Original Thinking
We have had recently in India a great abundance of speculations on the real causes of that gradual decline and final arrest which Indian civilisation no less than European suffered during the Middle Ages. The arrest was neither so sudden as in Europe nor so complete; but its effect on our nation, like the undermining activity of a slow poison, was all the more profoundly destructive, pervasive, hard to remedy, difficult to expel. At a certain period we entered into a decline, splendid at first like a long and gorgeous sunset, afterwards more and more sombre, till the darkness closed in, and if our sky was strewn with stars of a great number and brilliance, it was only a vast decay, confusion and inertia that they lighted and emphasised with their rays. We have, most of us, our chosen explanation of this dolorous phenomenon. The patriot attributes our decline to the ravages of foreign invasion and the benumbing influences of foreign rule; the disciple of European materialism finds out the enemy, the evil, the fount and origin of all our ills, in our religion and its time-honoured social self-expression. Such explanations, like most human thoughts, have their bright side of truth as well as their obscure side of error; but they are not, in any case, the result of impartial thinking. Man may be, as he has been defined, a reasoning animal, but it is necessary to add that he is, for the most part, a very badly reasoning animal. He does not ordinarily think for the sake of finding out the truth, but much more for the satisfaction of his mental preferences and emotional tendencies; his conclusions spring from his preferences, prejudices and passions; and his reasoning and logic paraded to justify them are only a specious process or a formal mask for his covert approach to an upshot previously necessitated by his heart or by his temperament. When we are awakened from our modern illusions, as we have been awakened from our mediaeval superstitions, we shall find that the intellectual conclusions of the rationalist, for all their [. . .]1 pomp and protest2 of
1 One illegible word.
2 Or apparatus.
scrupulous enquiry, were as much dogmas as those former dicta of Pope and theologian, which confessed without shame their simple basis in the negation of reason. Much more do all those current opinions demand scrutiny and modification, which express our personal view of things and rest patently on a partial and partisan view or have been justified by preferential selection of the few data that suited our foregone and desired conclusion. It is always best, therefore, to scrutinise very narrowly those bare, trenchant explanations which so easily satisfy the pugnacious animal in our intellect; when we have admitted that small part of the truth on which they seize, we should always look for the large part which they have missed. Especially is it right, when there are subjective movements and causes of a considerable extent and complexity behind the phenomena we have to observe, to distrust facile, simple and rapid solutions.
***
The attitude of mankind towards originality of opinion is marked by a natural hesitation and inconsistency. Admired for its rarity, brilliancy and potency, yet in practice and for the same qualities it is more generally dreaded, ridiculed or feared. There is no doubt that it tends to disturb what is established. Therefore tamasic men and tamasic states of society take especial pains to discourage independence of opinion. Their watchword is authority. Few societies have been so tamasic, so full of inertia and contentment in increasing narrowness as Indian society in later times; few have been so eager to preserve themselves in inertia. Few therefore have attached so great an importance to authority. Every detail of our life has been fixed for us by Shastra and custom, every detail of our thought by Scripture and its commentators, but much oftener by the commentators than by Scripture. Only in one field, that of individual spiritual experience, have we cherished the ancient freedom and originality out of which our past greatness sprang; it is from some new movement in this inexhaustible source that every fresh impulse and rejuvenated strength has arisen. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the grave where dead nations lie, with Greece and Rome of the Caesars, with Esarhaddon and the Chosroes. You will often hear it said that it was the forms of Hinduism which have given us so much national vitality.
I think rather it was its spirit. I am inclined to give more credit for the secular miracle of our national survival to Shankara, Ramanuja, Nanak and Kabir, Guru Govind, Chaitanya, Ramdas and Tukaram than to Raghunandan and the Pandits of Nadiya and Bhatpara.
The result of this well-meaning bondage has been an increasing impoverishment of the Indian intellect, once the most gigantic and original in the world. Hence a certain incapacity, atrophy, impotence have marked our later activities even at their best. The most striking instance is our continued helplessness in the face of the new conditions and new knowledge imposed on us by recent European contact. We have tried to assimilate, we have tried to reject, we have tried to select; but we have not been able to do any of these things successfully. Successful assimilation depends on mastery; but we have not mastered European conditions and knowledge, rather we have been seized, subjected and enslaved by them. Successful rejection is possible only if we have intelligent possession of that which we wish to keep. Our rejection too must be an intelligent rejection; we must reject because we have understood, not because we have failed to understand. But our Hinduism, our old culture are precisely the possessions we have cherished with the least intelligence: throughout the whole range of our life we do things without knowing why we do them, we believe things without knowing why we believe them, we assert things without knowing what right we have to assert them, or, at most, it is because some book or some Brahmin enjoins it, because Shankara thinks it, or because someone has so interpreted something that he asserts to be a fundamental Scripture of our religion. Nothing is our own. nothing native to our intelligence, all is derived. As little have we understood the new knowledge; we have only understood what the Europeans want us to think about themselves and their modern civilisation. Our English culture if culture it can be called has increased tenfold the evil of our dependence instead of remedying it.
More even than the other two processes successful selection requires the independent play of intellect. If we merely receive new ideas and institutions in the light in which they are presented to us, we shall, instead of selecting, imitate blindly, foolishly and inappropriately. If we receive them in the light given by our previous knowledge, which was on so many points nil, we shall as blindly and foolishly reject. Selection demands that we should see things not as the foreigner
sees them or as the orthodox Pandit sees them, but as they are in themselves. But we have selected at random, we have rejected at random, we have not known how to assimilate or choose. In the upshot we have merely suffered the European impact, overborne at points, crassly resisting at others, and, altogether, miserable, enslaved by our environments, able neither to perish nor to survive. We preserve indeed a certain ingenuity and subtlety; we can imitate with an appearance of brightness; we can play plausibly, even brilliantly with the minutiae of a subject; but we fail to think usefully, we fail to master the life and heart of things. Yet it is only by mastering the life and heart of things that we can hope, as a nation, to survive.
How shall we recover our lost intellectual freedom and elasticity? By reversing, for a time at least, the process by which we lost it, by liberating our minds in all subjects from the thraldom to authority. That is not what reformers and the Anglicised require of us. They ask us, indeed, to abandon authority, to revolt against custom and superstition, to have free and enlightened minds. But they mean by these sounding recommendations that we should renounce the authority of Sayana for the authority of Max Muller, the Monism of Shankara for the Monism of Haeckel, the written Shastra for the unwritten law of European social opinion, the dogmatism of Brahmin Pandits for the dogmatism of European scientists, thinkers and scholars. Such a foolish exchange of servitude can receive the assent of no self-respecting mind. Let us break our chains, venerable as they are, but let it be in order to be free, in the name of truth, not in the name of Europe. It would be a poor bargain to exchange our old Indian illuminations, however dark they may have grown to us, for a derivative European enlightenment or replace the superstitions of popular Hinduism by the superstitions of materialistic Science.
Our first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed work in the world, is that the youth of India should learn to think, to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their surface, free of prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice asunder as with a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima. Let our brains no longer, like European infants, be swathed with swaddling clothes; let them recover the free and unbound motion of the gods; let them have not only the minuteness but the wide mastery
and sovereignty natural to the intellect of Bharata and easily recoverable by it if it once accustoms itself to feel its own power and be convinced of its own worth. If it cannot entirely shake off past shackles, let it at least arise like the infant Krishna bound to the wain, and move forward dragging with it wain and all and shattering in its progress the twin trees, the twin obstacles to self-fulfilment, blind mediaeval prejudice and arrogant modern dogmatism. The old fixed foundations have been broken up, we are tossing in the waters of a great upheaval and change. It is no use clinging to the old ice-floes of the past, they will soon melt and leave their refugees struggling in perilous waters. It is no use landing ourselves in the infirm bog, neither sea nor good dry land, of a secondhand Europeanism. We shall only die there a miserable and unclean death. No, we must learn to swim and use that power to reach the good vessel of unchanging truth; we must land again on the eternal rock of ages.
Let us not, either, select at random, make a nameless hotchpotch and then triumphantly call it the assimilation of East and West. We must begin by accepting nothing on trust from any source whatsoever, by questioning everything and forming our own conclusions. We need not fear that we shall by that process cease to be Indians or fall into the danger of abandoning Hinduism. India can never cease to be India or Hinduism to be Hinduism, if we really think for ourselves. It is only if we allow Europe to think for us that India is in danger of becoming an ill-executed and foolish copy of Europe. We must not begin by becoming partisans but know before we take our line. Our first business as original thinkers will be to accept nothing, to question everything. That means to get rid of all unexamined opinions old or new, all mere habitual samskaras in the mind, to have no preconceived judgments. Anityah sarvasamskarah, said the Buddha. I do not know that I quite agree. There are certain samskaras that seem to me as eternal as things can be. What is the Atman itself but an eternal and fundamental way of looking at things, the essentiality of all being in itself unknowable, neti, neti. Therefore the later Buddhists declared that the Atman itself did not exist and arrived at ultimate nothingness, a barren and foolish conclusion, since Nothingness itself is only a samskara. Nevertheless it is certain that the great mass of our habitual conceptions are not only temporary, but imperfect and misleading. We must escape from these imperfections and
take our stand on that which is true and lasting. But in order to find out what in our conceptions is true and lasting, we must question all alike rigorously and impartially. The necessity of such a process not for India, but for all humanity has been recognised by leading European thinkers. It was what Carlyle meant when he spoke of swallowing all formulas. It was the process by which Goethe helped to reinvigorate European thinking. But in Europe the stream is running dry before it has reached its sea. Europe has for some time ceased to produce original thinkers, though it still produces original mechanicians. Science preserves her freedom of enquiry in details, in the mint and anise and cummin of the world's processes, but, bound hand and foot in the formulas of the past, she is growing helpless for great ideas and sound generalisations. She sits contented with her treasuries; she has combed all the pebbles on the seashore and examined the shoreward gulfs and bays; of the oceans beyond and their undiscovered continents she cries scornfully, "They are a dream; there is nothing there but mist mistaken for land or a waste of the same waters that we have already examined here." Europe is becoming stereotyped and unprogressive; she is fruitful only of new and ever multiplying luxuries and of feverish, fiery and ineffective changes in her political and social machinery. China, Japan and the Mussulman states are sliding into a blind European imitativeness. In India alone there is self-contained, dormant, the energy and the invincible spiritual individuality which can yet arise and break her own and the world's fetters.
It is true that original thinking makes for original acting, and therefore a caution is necessary. We must be careful that our thinking is not only original but thorough before we even initiate action. To run away with an isolated original idea or, charmed with its newness and vigour, to ride it into the field of action is to make of ourselves cranks and eccentrics. This world, this society, these nations and their civilisation are not simple existences, but complex and intricate, the result of a great organic growth in many centuries, sometimes in many millenniums. We should not deal with them after snatching at a few hurried generalisations or in the gust and fury of a stiff fanaticism. We must first be sure that our new thought is wide and strong-winged enough; our thoughts large enough, our natures mighty enough to deal with those vastnesses. We must be careful, too, to comprehend
what we destroy. And destroy we must not unless we have a greater and more perfect thing to put in the place even of a crumbling and mouldering antiquity. To tear down Hindu society in the spirit of the social reformers or European society in the spirit of the philosophical or unphilosophical Anarchists would be to destroy order and substitute a licentious confusion. If we carefully remember these cautions, there is no harm in original thinking even of the boldest and most merciless novelty. I may, for example, attack unsparingly the prevailing system of justice and punishment as extraordinarily senseless and evil, even if I have no new system ready-made to put in as its successor; but I must have no wish to destroy it, senseless and evil though it be, until our new system is ready. For it fills a place the vacancy of which the Spirit that uplifts and supports our human welfare would greatly abhor. I may expose, too, the weaknesses and narrownesses of an existing form of religion, even if I have no new and better form to preach of my own, but I must not so rage against those weaknesses as to destroy all religious faith and I should remember before the end of my criticism that even a bad religion is better than no religion, that it is wiser to worship my surrounding energy in the clumsy fetish with the African savage than to be dead to all faith and all spirituality like the drunkards of a little knowledge for even in that animal and unintelligent worship there is a spark of the divine fire which keeps humanity living, while the cultured imperial Roman or the luxurious modern wealth-gatherer and body-worshipper drags his kind into a straight and well-built road which is so broad only to lead more easily to a mighty perditionna ced ihavedin mahati vinastih. Otherwise there is no harm in spreading dissatisfaction with fetish-worship or refusing praise to an ancient and cruel folly. We need not be troubled if our thinking is condemned as too radical or even as reckless and revolutionary, for the success of revolutionary thought always means that Nature has need of one of her cataclysms; even otherwise, she will make of it whatever modified use is best for our present humanity. In thought as in deeds, to the thinking we have a right, the result belongs to the wise and active Power of God that stands over us and in us originating, cherishing, indefatigably dissolving and remoulding man and spirit in the progressive harmonies of His universe. Let us only strive that our light should be clear, diffused and steady, not either darkness or a narrow glare and merely
violent lustre. And if we cannot compass that weal, still it is better to think than to cease from thinking. For even out of darkness the day is born and lightning has its uses!