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"Thus Have I Heard"

Leading Articles from "The Aryan Path" Signed "Shravaka"

B. P. Wadia

"False learning is rejected by the wise, and scattered to the winds by the Good Law. Its wheel revolves for all, the humble and the proud. 'The Doctrine of the Eye' is for the crowd; The 'Doctrine of the Heart' for the elect. The first repeat in pride: 'Behold, I know'; the last, they who in humbleness have garnered, low confess:

'Thus Have I Heard'."

Preface

Shri B. P. Wadia was a devoted student of Theosophy, of H. P. Blavatsky and W. Q. Judge. He made Theosophy a "living power" in his life. He was a prolific writer. His writings are a source of inspiration to all true students of Theosophy as they shed the light of Theosophy on all problems of life. They constitute one of the best products of his creative mind. As he was a student of the "Heart Doctrine," he was very humble and never claimed any originality. Hence, he chose the title "Thus Have I Heard," for a series of essays written in THE ARYAN PATH, which was founded in 1930. He signed these essays "Shravaka"—Listener.

The prime object of these essays was to throw the light of ancient wisdom or WISDOM-RELIGION on all problems of life so that the modern man can appreciate them and apply some of the truths in his daily life. The essays collected in this book, treat of the root of social problems, the best means of social reform and the true value and meaning of great festivals.

These essays were first published in book form, on the anniversary of his passing by The Indian Institute of World Culture (I.I.W.C.), which he nourished since its inception in 1945. This book has been out of print for a long time. We are happy to republish it now.

REVERING THE "GITA" IN LIFE

Holding the reins of the war-horses for Arjuna, Sri Krishna taught the way of work and worship. In our own yuga, Gandhiji, holding the reins of a great political struggle, also taught in his own way the way of work and worship. The Gita was reborn in our times through Gandhiji's mouth. Let us revere the teaching and not merely utter the words. True reverence to the Gita lies in daily sincere reflection over its substance and shaping mind and action accordingly.

These words were spoken by India's Governor-General. Rajaji, Speaking at the Gita-Jayanti Celebrations on the 4th of December at New Delhi, refuted the claim that the Gita supported the waging of war. It refers to the greatest of all wars, which takes place on the Field of Duty which is located in the mind of man. To do one's duty by every duty, avoiding the dangerous turn towards the performance of another's duty, and without calculating the profits resulting from such performance—that is the message of the ancient scripture.

He who fights his own animal nature finds neither time nor inclination to fight another man. And because the animal in each one of us does not want the Divine in us to fight it, it sneaks out to give battle to other lower selves, on one selfish pretext or another. Family feuds, class struggles, nationalistic wars—all spring from the lower nature of men. The constant enemy of Arjuna was his lower nature, not Duryodhana; that enemy surrounded Arjuna as smoke surrounds fire, while Duryodhana and his mighty Kauravas were standing at a distance. The teaching, which closes the third chapter of the great book, is often overlooked.

a few in number and often small in size, such books are archetypal— nourishing babes with milk and strong men with meat. They yield more than one meaning—one for the man of the senses, another for the man of learning, another for the disciple struggling on the Path to Holiness, and still another for the Enlightened Seer. W. Q. Judge, who made the Gita his constant and consistent companion, referred to it as the study of Adepts. It was Mr. Judge who was a very early, if not the first, modern expounder of the allegorical nature of the Gita, pointing to its symbols and interpreting them in his own inimitable way. In 1887, Mr. Judge wrote of the allegorical imagery of the Gita and stated:—

"Instead of the conflict being a blemish to the poem, it is a necessary and valuable portion. We see that the fight is to be fought by every human being, whether he lives in India or not, for it is raging on the sacred plain of our body. Each one of us, then, is Arjuna."

Gandhiji, and our spiritually-minded Governor-General after him, have followed the right interpretation of the Gita, deciphering a profound cipher, however elementary that deciphering be, making it clear that the Gita does not advocate war and murder and bloodshed but something else.

The Gita is the book for all who aspire to become good citizens, first of their own land and then of the world. But it must be interpreted correctly so that its message may be understood. Reiterated, that message will work its miracle. It is India's good Karma that it has at its head a man who values the Gita as a book of constructive power, and who endeavours to breathe its intellectual atmosphere and to apply its moral principles

in his own and his nation's life. May he find time to do so more and more! The spiritual education of our people is the most pressing need of the country. That Rajaji recognizes this is very clear from his message to the pacifists gathered at Santiniketan. He told them:—

"India is maintaining her army and other military forces up to the measure of her capacity. She cannot claim to be a nation pledged to pacifism without being guilty of hypocrisy. All the same, the genius of India and her ancient, as well as present-day ideals, are inspired by a love of peace. Mahatmaji's leadership has made India a place of pilgrimage to lovers of peace and haters of war all over the world."

That is why in these columns last month we suggested that the Pacifists should look for guidance not from present-day India, but from Gandhiji, who sowed the seeds of the Life of Peace for the whole world. To understand his life-work it is necessary to know the philosophy of the Gita which inspired him to action. The great Buddha spoke of this greatest of all wars and repeatedly asserted that he who conquered himself was greater than the conqueror of worlds. He recognized no other conquest.

"Salutations to the Prowess of Krishna! May it be with us in the fight, strengthening our hearts that they faint not in the gloomy night that follows in the path of the day."

THE GREATEST OF ALL WARS

A man's inability to moderate and control his passions I call servitude.
Most people seem to believe that they are free just in so far as they may obey their lusts. — SPINOZA

Today only a few are free from the fear of total loss of security. One part of humanity fears Stalin's totalitarianism and the loss of even so much of liberty as they now enjoy. The other part fears the passing of even so much of justice and equity as the Russian revolution gave them. All cry "We shall be slaves! we shall not be able to call our souls our own!"

The few who are free from fear, who feel security, who have the strength to call their souls their own, do so because they have seen that the roots of slavery and suffering are not in the State, totalitarian or democratic, but in man's own carnal nature.

More than half of our present troubles would vanish if men were to shed their thoughtlessness. Man's inhumanity to man would subside and we should not have wickedness to fight if our thoughtlessness were overcome.

The masses of men fear wars abroad because they are thoughtless. They will not perceive and admit that the real cause of international wars, underlying all economic and political causes, is the ghastly strife which is going on in their own brains and blood. The outer wars are but elongated shadows of the war within. The

cancerous disease of thoughtlessness is eating away the eye of spirit. Involved in this tragedy, man fears and declaims about the iniquity of neighbours and kin; all the while the trouble is within himself. He is suffering from the delirium tremens of consciousness, having drunk to the full of selfishness; pride rules his will; egotism energizes his conduct.

The proven truths of ancient psychology hold a sure remedy which the individual can and should apply to exorcise his own fear and egotism. Each government can and should make those truths the basis of its legislation and administration, especially its educational policy.

The weakness embedded in the present-day concept of a "high standard of living" is an ill common to both the Soviet and the Democratic ideologies. The masses should have sufficient food to eat, proper clothes to wear, fair and comfortable cottages to live in;—this is the truth, but only half the truth. Man does not live by bread alone; glittering raiment is not always a sign of well-being, any more than the cowl makes the monk, or the yellow robe the Bhikku; a palace containing a museum, or a flatlet equipped with gadgets, does not build the home.

In India poverty and false asceticism pass for spiritual conditions and exercises; these have been the great enemies of Truth and Wisdom for a thousand years and more in India and are as evil as the inordinate desire for possessions and power among the Occidental peoples. Total loss of respect and reverence for Nature and Nature's Life makes our days sordid and our nights restless. And who can deny that sordidness flourishes on both sides of the Iron Curtain?

humanity who see that the remedy lies in and with the individual. Among them are those who are aware of the proven truths of ancient psychology and who aspire to preach and promulgate its teachings so that men and women may endeavour to free themselves from slavery to their lower natures.

What are these teachings? Among the books of ancient and true psychology there is hardly any which equals in directness of instruction and depth of inspiration the Bhagavad-Gita. In the second chapter of this book is given a teaching of great practical value. It occurs in a passage which the great Gandhiji said was his favourite. What better way can his countrymen—and all who love him abroad— adopt to remember his martyrdom, which took place in this month, in 1948, on the 30th day, than to think upon what the Gita teaches?—

Inclination of the Senses is the Seed which sprouts as musings of the mind.
The mind becomes attentive to the inclination and the mischief begins.
The mind yokes itself to the inclination.
From this attachment arises passion, lust for possessions.
Frustration of the desire causes impatience, irritation, anger.
Anger begets delusion.
Delusion confuses and loss of memory results.
Loss of discernment follows the loss of memory.
And then — loss of all.

Small is the seed; giant the growth. It is possible, and easily possible, to control and direct sensuous inclinations. It is almost impossible to recover the loss of the soul. The fight is in the mind. It is the mind to which true knowledge should be presented. When the mind gazes on

the true ideas it attracts them to itself, as a shrine attracts the God. To attract a Shining One, the shrine must have a clean environment, a pure atmosphere, the fragrance of proper incense, the radiance of sacrificial light. So must the human mind be environed by clean senses, pure magnetism, the fragrance of gentle service and the light of true wisdom.

Man should raise his voice for spiritual freedom, and plead for enfranchisement from all tyranny—of science, of theology, of nationalism. When he is free as a Soul he has become divine in Nature; his first virtue is Fearlessness. He is safe in Security.

THE PERFECT LISTENER

We frequently come across in Buddhistic texts the opening affirmation "Thus Have I Heard." And yet the Master Gautama in more than one place deprecates blind acceptance of any teaching by anyone, including his devoted Bhikkhus. Thus, to give but one example: Journeying in Kosala, at Kesaputta, a suburb of the Kalama Nobles, He was asked by the Kalamas and very unequivocally the Master said:—

"Now, O Kalamas, do not ye go by hearsay, nor by what is handed down by others, nor by what people say, nor by what is stated on the authority of your traditional teachings. Do not go by reasoning, nor by inferring, nor by argument as to method, nor from reflection on and approval of an opinion, nor out of respect, thinking a recluse must be deferred to. But, Kalamas, when you know of yourselves: "These teachings are not good: they are blameworthy: they are condemned by the wise: these teachings, when followed out and put in practice, conduce to loss and suffering'—then reject them."

Every true teacher and sage has advocated strong search, fearless inquiry and condemned blind belief. And yet uniformly we come across the instruction, in one form or another, that he who desires to learn must listen. This patient and attentive hearing precedes practice. In the Pythagorean School, Akoustikoi or Hearers were allowed after a period to become Asketai, Practitioners; this is but an echo of the Indian Shravakas and Shramanas.

In the Bhagavad-Gita Arjuna is the ideal Shravaka or Listener. The Master Krishna in the Discourse on Wisdom, the Supreme Secret, once known, which had been lost, advises His Devotee and Friend to seek this Secret Wisdom by service, by strong search and questions, and by humility which implies the correct way of listening; and then Arjuna is promised that the Wise Seers of the Essence of things or Tattvas will "communicate" the Supreme Knowledge to him (Gita, IV. 34). Previously, in the second lecture, Krishna hints to Arjuna that the Esoteric Philosophy He is endeavouring to teach is higher and nobler than that which is to be found in the Vedas (II. 45) and again in the Fifteenth Discourse the Vedas are compared to leaves on the magnificent Tree of Wisdom (XV. I)—leaves which fall and flutter away, while new and fresh ones come to birth. Once again Krishna warns Arjuna and suggests a right attitude in listening; he has learnt lessons, he is about to hear new teachings (II. 52). Proceeding with His instruction Krishna comes to the end of His preaching and says: "Thus have I made known unto thee this knowledge which is a mystery more secret than secrecy itself; ponder it fully in thy mind; act as seemeth best unto thee" (XVIII. 63). Thus Arjuna is called upon to make his own decision before accepting the instructions and acting them out. The Disciple's answer is also unequivocal: "My delusion is destroyed, I am collected once more; I am free from doubt, firm, and will act according to thy bidding" (XVII. 73). This is not blind following. The mind and heart of Arjuna assent because they have assimilated the teachings of the eighteen lectures. Arjuna's duty as a Shravaka is accomplished. He is ready for fighting his own lower animal nature and is sure that he will triumph.

During this month Hindus will celebrate the Natal Day of Krishna—the orthodox in their own ritualistic way, the mystics in theirs—contemplation on the Light of all lights which Krishna is and which burns at the core of the Heart. There are many in the Occident who are students of the philosophy of the Gita and there are a few who are the intelligent Devotees who sense the value of the teachings of One who opened the Kali Yuga, 5000 years ago. But perhaps this year a few may like to contemplate on the perfect Shravaka, the patient, humble and resolute Listener, Arjuna, in his attitude to catch the Wisdom of Krishna amidst the din of the battlefield. The blowing of the conches, the loud orders of the captains to their regiments, the neighing of the horses and roarings of the elephants—nothing was allowed to interfere; Arjuna intent on the instructions of Krishna heard all, reflecting hour by hour on what he heard, assimilating what he understood and thus getting ready for divine action.

What Arjuna saw when his chariot stood between the two armies made him despondent; what he heard energized and inspired him to proceed to victory in the greatest of all wars.

ELEMENTS AND GODS

Men of modern science know only a very little about what they themselves have called the correlation of forces. The imponderables of the invisible cosmos are substantial and produce results. Some of these effects have come under the notice of the great physicists, but even they do not suspect that these correlations of forces are effects and occur according to a law which the ancient Seers have called the Law of Transmutation among Forces. The imponderables are the basis of the old Greek and the older Aryan classification of the material elements into Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Æther. The visible counterparts of the invisible great Elements are effects of the working of intelligent forces called Elementals, which are described as the nerves of Nature. The Hindu Puranas speak of Devatas and Devas— Godlings or Elementals and Devas or Gods presiding over them.

Still more obscure is the working of the imponderables in the mental and moral spheres of our being. The Law of Transmutation among Forces causes remarkable changes in a man's character and circumstances, quite beyond us at present. But all the same these play a real part in the precipitation of human destiny, of the individual or of nations.

Man lives not only on the surface of the Earth, nourished by Water, but affects and is affected by the atmosphere and by heat; similarly his emotions, his thoughts and his volitions also affect and are affected by the subtler aspects of the great elements and the

correlations of their forces. A man's thought, colliding with another man's thought, may cause a gale or a zephyr or a tranquil light and a brightness of the air. A woman's anger or jealousy produces detrimental emotional reactions in more than one human being. A child's laughter may save an empire or avert a world war; also, its screams may draw forth howls of mobs. All these instances may sound exaggerated as expressed, but a thoughtful examination of them will reveal a profound, a stupendous, underlying truth.

Our personal make-up is intimately connected with the Elements of the ancients—Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Æther. It is through these that the embodied Spirit works, identifying itself with the material aspect of Nature, which Krishna calls his lower nature— aparaprakriti (Gita, VII. v); dominated and guided by the constituents of this lower nature, it becomes the lower man.

But Krishna has a higher nature—paraprakriti (VII. 5); it constitutes in man the Thinker and the Knower. This higher man is the controller of the lower wandering mind, the drifting, prowling heart and the exploited will, swayed by the notion of the false egotistic "I" and its lethal tendency to the dire heresy of separateness. This higher nature is the Light or the Wisdom of Krishna. While the lower nature is enveloped by avidya—ignorance—creating illusion which degenerates into delusion, the higher is energized by Vidya— Knowledge—creating Wisdom and rising to Compassion.

Because of his attraction and response to the outer darkness of the rigid material universe, man overlooks the Light side of the higher nature of the universe. Therefore he fails to benefit from "the sweet smell in the earth,"

from the living "taste (rasa) in water," from "the brilliance in the fire," from "the sound in Æther." The two Natures, Light and Darkness, conjointly working according to Law, benefit each other and the Supreme Spirit of which they are manifestations.

Man has been taught to live independently, and so, in the struggle for existence, he has competed against his fellows and become selfish and violent. Has not the time come for man to learn that living need not be a struggle? And also that Liberty can be possessed only by the man of Love, that Freedom and Hatred cannot live together? Nature is the Great Totalitarian State, very unlike that which Stalin is trying to create; also it is the Mighty Commonwealth whose riches are for the enjoyment of all, for there are no foes to fear; all are friends to be loved; further it is the True Welfare State in which all men and women, children and adolescents flourish, as flourish also in their own right the animals, the vegetation, the coal, the oil, the minerals. Many are the bodies of Gods which nourish us and, nourishing each other, all obtain the highest felicity. (Gita, III. 11) The Gita promises us the enjoyment of our wishes (III. 12) if we observe the Law of Interdependence. He who practises the law of selfish independence exploits Nature and earns for himself the epithet of "thief' (III. 12). The World is One and the Universe is a Plenum—the grains of dust are akin to the myriad stars of the firmament; and man cannot live or evolve without either. How true it is that

"Back of the Bread is the
Flour And back of the Flour is the Mill,
Back of the Mill is the Sun and the Shower
And the Wind and the Father's Will."

OUR REAL FRIENDS

Their very hearts and minds are in me; enlightening one another and constantly speaking of me, they are full of enjoyment and satisfaction. To them thus always devoted to me, who worship me with love, I give that mental devotion by which they come to me. For them do I out of my compassion, standing within their hearts, destroy the darkness which springs from ignorance by the brilliant lamp of spiritual discernment.

—Bhagavad-Gita, X. 9-11.

During this month the Hindu religionists and mystics of discerning heart of every faith will celebrate Krishna's Nativity. He is called Shabda Brahman, which the ancient Greeks designated as the Logos, the Christians as the Word made Flesh.

Does the Divine Incarnation recognized by followers of every faith, whether as Krishna, Christos, or by any other name, and whether His Natal Day is observed in August, in December or at any other time, give us an intimation of the Great Reality—the effect of the cause which is concealed, but which can be sensed and realized?

How should we think of the Ever-Living Divine Presence, the Incomprehensible Omniscience, the Mysterious Impersonality, ever invisible, intangible, indescribable and yet omnific? Instinct and reason alike compel us to regard Deity as the Unavoidable; while Intuition, or Pure and Compassionate Reason, illumines the whole field of our ideation by revealing the magical activity of the Deity, which express the purposeful fitness of all things. It is the Necessity without which right living becomes impossible.

offers in a simple way a profound truth. He says to Arjuna that he has communicated to him the Ancient, Secret Wisdom, because "thou art my devotee and my friend."

Enveloped by fear of decay and destruction, men and women seek a sense of security. Most of them miss out the one sure source of security, viz., the immortal nature of the human soul. Our civilization and modern learning teach a false philosophy, a twisted psychology, about the soul. We have at the core of our being an innate "something" which prompts us to a belief in the soul. Our bringing up makes short work of that belief. The results are disastrous.

Devotion and friendship of the highest order manifest as a trinity: subsisting between (1) our mortal mind and its immortal counterpart, the Shining One; (2) our personal mind-soul as a learner and the Gracious Guru, embodiment of pure love and true knowledge; and (3) between all learners of the True, co-disciples, who are pilgrims to the Sacred City of Light.

Krishna loves his alter ego Arjuna as his friend because he finds Arjuna's heart full of devotion. Those who are Kshatriya souls, fortune's favoured soldiers, have their Divinity close to them; fighting the carnal nature which is the constant enemy of man on earth, they find the Constant Friend close at hand. Nearer than hands and feet is Krishna—the Christos.

Krishna also represents the Gracious Guru, the Teacher, prepared to deliver us "from all transgressions." But the qualifications are most difficult of attainment; Arjuna gains them at the very end, in the Eighteenth Chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita. Not those who merely say "Krishna, Krishna" are the disciples but those who place their hearts

upon Him as He has declared Himself to be. Most "devotees" have their fanciful image of the Guru. What is it that is taught to the pupil? It is a Secret which must never be revealed.

A Guru has numerous disciples—true learners, intelligent devotees, intimate friends. Such are only a few and they form a Fellowship, a Companionship, and of such co-disciples it is said that their attention is concentrated on the Guru and that with every breath they inhale the vital magnetism and with every exhalation speak the wisdom of the Guru, and feel full of Beatitude and Bliss.

Thus the intimation of the Most High brings to us along three ways the sure sense of security from fears —of disease, decay, death. This knowledge is what men need, but how many know that it is available? Let us seek within the heart the light of the purified mind. In our attempt to do this we are aided and encouraged by fellow soldiers, who, fighting their own battles, are achieving their own successes. And the Great Chain called the Guru-parampara reveals our true Gurus—Lovers and Benefactors of the human race.

BUDDHA AND SHANKARA

Thou hast to live and breathe in all, as all that thou perceivest breathes in thee; to feel thyself abiding in all things, all things in Self.

Be in full accord with all that lives; bear love to men as though they were thy brother-pupils, disciples of one Teacher, the sons of one sweet mother.

Of teachers there are many; the MASTER-SOUL is one, Alaya, the Universal Soul. Live in that MASTER as ITS ray in thee. Live in thy fellows as they live in IT.

—The Voice of the Silence

During this month the Triple Festival of Buddhism will be celebrated by all who honour Gautama Buddha. It represents the birth-date of the body of Prince Siddhartha who renounced his crown for the beggingbowl and his Kingdom for the Sangha of monks and nuns; also the day of his attainment to supreme Wisdom at Gaya under the Bodhi Tree; and on that day, after forty-five years of magnificent service of souls, he cast away the body in and through which he had laboured. But tradition has it that He, the Compassionate One, remains to bless Humanity through his ideation in the sphere of Paranirvana.

In later times orthodox Brahmanas included him in the pantheon of Avataras of Vishnu. But his many reforms did not succeed fully in purifying Hinduism. Like him, the illustrious Adi Shankara, whose anniversary also falls in this month of May, did not fully succeed in his mission of religious reformation. He was called by the orthodox a "Buddha in disguise" and in his teachings, metaphysical and ethical, Shankara was that!

humanity by incarnating in Hindu bodies some 2,500 years after the starting of the Kali Yuga at the death of Krishna? Both Buddha and Shankara were metaphysicians and grand philosophers, but both emphasized the life of purity and piety and of service to humanity. While Buddha, speaking the language of the people, preached to very large masses, Shankara used Sanskrit, the tongue of the learned leaders of the people. The aim of both was the purgation from Hinduism of the corruption of priestcraft and the emphasizing of individual effort in the war against the evils rooted in human nature. Both offered a philosophical basis for high ethics, but pointed to the truth that noble morality was the real enlightener of human minds. In more than one way both pointed out that by intuition alone could universal ultimates be understood and the final problems of matter, mind and spirit be solved. Each was a logician who reasoned superbly, confuting learned minds; even today materialistic reasoners are unable to comprehend the profound doctrines of both these Teachers because the philosophical logicians are not capable of using their own Divine Intuition. Without that Soul faculty, the truths of life cannot be lived. The development of Intuition demands the purification and elevation of man's moral nature. A character clogged with egotism and vanity beclouds the thinking mind and disables it from catching the truths of Living Ideas.

Both Buddha and Shankara, going straight to the Heart of Religion, reproclaimed the teachings of Sanatana Dharma, Eternal Religion, the Perennial Philosophy, Theosophy. Buddha cut across Sruti and Smriti—Revelation and Tradition—and proclaimed the age-old moral and metaphysical truths in as simple and straightforward a language as was possible for the race mind to appreciate. Shankara who followed used the old texts

but by writing commentaries on them gave a fresh reinterpretation and called the attention of the learned to the importance of living the life, building not temples however beautiful, of stone and rock, but erecting the Living Temple of the Living God.

Great sages have uniformly called attention to the Bodhi Dharma, the Wisdom Religion, which antedates the Vedas. Its central and most fundamental doctrine is Universal Unity rooted in the One Spirit, which manifests as the Law of Brotherhood in the human kingdom. The truth of Advaita taught by Shankara demands that each man recognise the Divine Presence in every human heart which in its turn requires us to practise the great truth of the Buddha—

"Never in this world does Hatred cease by Hatred. Hatred ceases by Love. This is the Law Eternal."

Commenting on the Gita VI. 32, Shankara remarks—"Seeing that that which is pleasure and pain to him self is likewise pleasure and pain to all beings, he causes pain to no being; he is harmless. Doing no harm and devoted to right knowledge, he is regarded as the highest among Yogins."

THE SPIRIT OF GOODWILL

Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation. Never will I enter into final peace alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and strive for the redemption of every creature throughout the world.

—Pledge of Kwan-Yin

The world aspires to establish peace while many of its leaders prepare for war. This is a gigantic shadow of what is taking place in the heart of almost every person. Man wishes and prays for tranquillity of mind while he engages in the struggle to possess power, longs for lucre, and allows that very mind to be exploited by the senses and the passions.

There is a great deal of talk and effort, often sincere, to render service to our neighbour and our next of kin. The desire to be friendly and kindly is wide-spread and that concretizes in a variety of organizations for the service of men. Thus individuals project organizations on the screen of civilization.

Personal service is darkened by ambition and by egotism and brings on frustration. Selfishness, ambition, competition, also vitiate the service when it is organized; and salaried workers overlook sacrifice with gaze fixed on salaries. Service and sacrifice are a necessity of soul-progress. They create the future Helper and Master, the Bodhisattva and Nirmanakaya. Present-day organized service deprives the individual of that mystical experience of interdependence implicit in the metaphysical doctrine of Causation, as the individual contacts in sacrifice others and all, in an ever-widening sphere. The summation of this mystical experience is in the sublime Pledge of Kwan-

The point of good neighbourliness is missed by many a person and by most of the nations because the doctrines of psychology and philosophy underlying these aspirations and endeavours are false. In the modern world, governed by modern knowledge, the real origin and nature of human mind and human morals are not known. The roots of egotism and pride, of passion and prejudice, are hidden alike from the physicist, the physiologist, the chemist, the biologist and the psychologist. Often neighbourliness, goodwill, friendliness, are shadowy feelings, leading people astray, to frustration and failure. The League of Nations failed because its legislators and administrators tried to fashion goodwill out of false concepts; co-operative actions do not arise from competitive thoughts, howsoever human ingenuity plan to create and implement handsome blue prints.

This simple truth, missed by our modern politicians and priests, has ever been emphasized by seers and sages, from Krishna to Christ, from Gautama to Gandhiji.

In this month of May a few will honour the memory of the Great Enlightened One and once again derive inspiration from that fact. The whole world ought to honour that memory. One true way to do this is to reflect upon the Master's words on Metta, for which an adequate English term is almost impossible to coin. It implies goodwill, friendliness, neighbourliness, kindliness, generosity, sagacity, etc.

The Mettasutta praises a peaceful mind and goodwill towards all creatures. Listen:—

"Do you desire tranquillity of mind and a peaceful heart? Then you know what is good for yourself.

"The marks of one who has acquired that tranquillity and peace are these: he is able, upright and straight; he has right speech; he has no vain conceit of Self; he has few wants; he is of frugal appetites; his senses remain composed; he is not greedy after gifts; he is not mean."

"May every living thing, feeble or strong, tall or short, subtle or gross of form, seen or unseen, those dwelling near or far away, those who are born and those still to be born—may every living thing be full of bliss."

Thus he becomes even as a mother, who, as long as she doth live, watches over her only child. His is the all-embracing mind whose goodwill flows unhampered by any illfeeling, above, below, across, in every way.

O Bhikkhus, cultivate Metta, therefore. Standing or moving, sitting or lying down, free from sloth, establish this mindfulness of goodwill. Thus enter Brahma-Vihara.

ON THE "DHAMMAPADA"

Weeds are the bane of fields and hatred is the bane of this mankind; therefore offerings made to those free from hatred bring great reward.

—Dhammapada (verse 357)

The war of ideologies between Capitalism and Communism has brought about a change in the minds of large numbers who see the evil in both systems. If Capitalism creates and degrades the wage-slave, Communism makes the citizen a mindless machine, enslaved by a small hierarchy of autocrats headed by a political pope. People living under Stalin's rule have forgotten the boons of free speech and free thought and freedom of movement; but people in democracies enjoying these freedoms have their own problems—mental inhibitions, fear of insecurity, and gnawing discontent.

The Way of Life taught by such Princes of Peace as Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ has been made attractive and practicable for the modern world by Gandhiji. It is but natural, therefore, that there are now a desire and a demand for the teachings of Gautama in the West and for those of Jesus in the East.

The Gita can bring the modern man to an understanding of the phenomenon of wars in human history by pointing to their hidden but true cause, and explaining its import. They all have a single root—the psychological strife between the human individual and his constant enemy within himself. The Gita enables the modern man to apprehend the profound significance of the Sermon on the Mount; that significance is epitomized also in a single statement of the Buddha affirming the Eternal Law and Religion—dhammo sanantano—in Verse 5 of the

"Not at any time are enmities appeased here through enmity but they are appeased through non-enmity. This is the eternal law."

The moral philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount is looked upon by most as impracticable and even fantastic, because the logic, reasoning and intellectual arguments behind it and implicit in it are not expounded in the Sermon itself. People do want to cease from hatred and to live by love, but in trying to do so they meet with frustration. The preacher of the Sermon on the Mount did not offer— since time was not allowed to him to do so—a reasoned demonstration of the truths which his sweeping intuitions revealed. Gautama Buddha offered to the questioning minds of men adequate and satisfying answers to why and how the Eternal Law should be practised.

"Many of us have the religious sense and disposition, but are not clear as to the object to which this sense is directed. Devotion, to be reasonable, must be founded on truth.... In view of the variety of counsel he advised his disciples to test by logic and life the different programmes submitted to them and not to accept anything out of regard for their authors. He did not make an exception of himself."

These are the words of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who has rendered a further service to ancient thought by his new publication— The Dhammapada (Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, London, New York, Toronto. 12s. 6d.). He has already made a substantial contribution in popularizing Hindu lore in the Occident; and he has also helped his co-religionists to re-orient their

religious view-point. This particular publication will render help to the Hindus in ways other than does his volume on the Gita. This country most seriously needs quickly to revive her interest in the ethics founded upon the psycho-philosophy of her greatest Master in historical times. As Radhakrishnan rightly points out:—

"The effort to build one world requires a closer understanding among the peoples of the world and their cultures. This translation of the Dhammapada, the most popular and influential book of the Buddhist canonical literature, is offered as a small contribution to world understanding. The central thesis of the book, that human conduct, righteous behaviour, reflection, and meditation are more important than vain speculations about the transcendent—has an appeal to the modern mind."

Great books like the Gita and the Dhammapada need to be popularized. These are not sectarian books for Hindus and Buddhists. They offer instruction to all who are a-thirst for the immortal waters of Wisdom. The popularizing of the sermons and sayings of the Buddha in the West and of those of the Christ in the East will take us a long way towards the establishment of the one world of which Radhakrishnan speaks. But something more.

Comparative study of such teachings as those in the Gita, the Dhammapada and the Sermon on the Mount will unmistakably point to the Root Morality of Universal Wisdom. There is only one Way of true living; to walk that Way one needs conviction. Faith belongs to the mind enlightened by intuition. But "Intuition soars above the tardy processes of ratiocinative thought" and carries within it the benign influence of "the universal Buddhi

(the Mahâbuddhi or Mahat in Hindu philosophies) the spiritual, omniscient, and omnipotent root of divine intelligence, the highest anima mundi or the Logos," says The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky.

To practise in daily life the ideas of that universal ethics, the mind has to be educated in their value. The mind needs not only breadth but also depth; only a study of the universal philosophy can bring that gift to the mind. A new layer of the human mind has to be quickened. Study of and meditation of the Dhammapada will evoke such intuitions as we possess; simultaneously the mind will be purified and elevated by them so that it will become porous to more, and also profounder, intuitions; such intuitions possess the power to mould the mind to the sublime pattern of the Buddha mind. But how many will make the attempt? The Master has said:—

"Few amongst men are those who reach the farther shore: the other people here run along (this) shore."

ASOKA'S STATESMANSHIP

The modern state, totalitarian or democratic, large or small, is patterned on the business corporation. Marshal Stalin heads the Board of Directors of the capitalistic corporation known as Russia; President Truman heads the Board in that known as the U.S.A. To be sure, the latter Board is duly elected by the shareholders; the former is not. Through his vote the American citizen has, like the ordinary shareholder, some say-so as to how the business shall be run; and, if denied his rights can take his grievance to the highest court in the land. The Russian subject is not free even to protest, to say nothing of having no influence on policy; he has no rights; he can only take what he is given and do as he is told. The war of ideologies of which we hear so much is, from this point of view, primarily a war between the advocates of radically different methods of seeking the same professed ends—the economic well-being of the citizen and the political security of the state.

The primacy of these ends is commonly taken for granted. The economic "standard of living" receives more attention than the "standard of life," with its implication of moral values. There is no question that outer conditions of life in the United States—abundance of food, educational and employment opportunities, sanitation, etc., present a standard for other countries to emulate. But many problems remain unsolved in spite of economic prosperity. Wide-spread neurosis, juvenile delinquency, prostitution, veneral disease, alcohol, racial and creedal prejudice persist in the Democracies and no doubt also behind the Russian purdah, though

The fundamental reason for the failure of all modern nations to achieve the goal of an enlightened and responsible as well as prosperous body of citizens is to be found in the almost universal failure to put first things first. Neither totalitarian Russia nor democratic America will save themselves, to say nothing of saving the world, until their policy is changed and moral principles, moral values, receive the place in their consideration that politics and economics have long usurped.

It would not be a new experiment. Three centuries B.C., in the great Empire of Asoka, the primacy of moral values was recognized in principle and practice. Is it not time to consider some of the fundamental teachings found in Asoka's Edicts and to call the great Buddhist Emperor of ancient India in consultation for the erection of the new World State? For it can never stand if built on the competitive increase of armaments, which must inevitably lead to war. It can rest firmly only on the rock of tried and tested moral principles.

Asoka's chief concern was to promote Dharma, duty or the moral law, among his people. His Rock and Pillar Edicts set forth, in different languages of his time, the requirements of moral conduct in injunctions as valid today as when they were inscribed.

"Good is Dharma. But what does Dharma include? (It includes) freedom from self-indulgence, abundance of good deeds, kindness, liberality, truthfulness, and purity."¹

Asoka was a model king, even by modern material standards, in his solicitude for his people's physical well-being and comfort, causing shade-trees to be planted along the high-roads, having orchards planted, wells dug, rest-houses built; but after enumerating these benefactions he explains:—

"...that the people might strictly follow the path laid down by Dharma was this thus done by me."

Officers enforced the law, "being in a position to recall to duty the fickle-mined," but Asoka held outer conformity to the regulations to be less important for the advance of the people in Dharma than "inner meditation," which led them to applications beyond the requirements of the law. He sought to implant in his people regard and love for the moral law, by example as well as by precept:—

"Whatever good deeds have been done by me, these the people have followed and these they will imitate and thereby they have been made to progress, and will be made to progress."

By the breadth of his religious tolerance no less than by the universality of his sympathies is Asoka fitted to be chosen as one of the architects of the new World State. "Concord alone," he declares, "is commendable, in this sense, that all should listen and be willing to listen to the doctrines professed by others."

The breadth of his sympathies is proved by benefactions to neighbouring countries, in which as well as at home, he was responsible for instituting medical and veterinary treatment. The missions which he sent abroad to spread the ennobling teachings of the Buddha are well known and have had a potent influence on world

thought. The spirit which animated his efforts is reflected in his Rock and Pillar Edicts, which breathe a universality as much needed by the modern world as are his abjuring of war and his preaching of non-violence towards living beings. For Asoka declares:—

"All men are as my children; as, on behalf of my own children, I desire that they may be provided with complete welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, the same I desire also for all men....

"My highest duty is, indeed, the promotion of the good of all....There is no higher work than the promotion of the commonweal."

THE INNER CONVERSION OF TOJO

"The Sutra of the Endless Life" is really magnificent. "The Forty-Eight Vows" stands out among the others and its every phrase is edifying. This book should be read by every man in the Government today, so that the people may receive a new life. It deals with fundamentals. Things like the United Nations and World Peace can be attained only when man has lost his avarice. Human greed is instinctive; the formation of nations comes from greed, and beautiful words talking about "national existence," "Self-defence," and so on are simply expressions of the national greed which culminates in what is known as war. To do away with this greed, two Prophets, Sakya-Muni in the East and Jesus Christ in the West, came into the world, and have striven for thousands of years to save the souls of men. Unfortunately, their creeds have not been practised, and with the passage of time, things have degenerated. So I am convinced that statesmen and politicians could do themselves good by reading this book and thinking over its teachings. I am ashamed to say that I myself only discovered it here in Sugamo. The fact is that life cannot be seen objectively except from prison. Buddha is a Being so vast that It can neither be sculptured in wood nor painted in colours. But modern men do not know this. That shows how much our faith has changed from that of the past. We have become degenerate.

—Hideki Tojo

These words carry the conviction of the converted militarist, the Japanese General Tojo. He was tried, found guilty and executed on 23rd December 1948.

While a prisoner under trial he experienced an inner and real conversion. Born a Shinto, he had conducted himself as a patriot of Japan, worshipping the Mikado. The story of his remarkable conversion to a higher perception is to be found in a volume of outstanding merit, The Way of Deliverance, by Shinsho Hanayama, the Buddhist Chaplain who served for three years the

prisoners under trial as war criminals in Sugamo Prison. Among these was Hideki Tojo, who, in 1941, had formed his own government, holding the portfolios of Home and War Ministers as well as of the Premier, and who had started the Pacific War. He had held sway over the Japanese nation and may well be regarded as the Dictator of modern Japan. After the war he had tried to kill himself but failed.

The story of Tojo's imprisonment and his conversion, and that of other mind-souls, his fellow-prisoners, who, like him, went to their execution in serene submission and with steady hearts, full of good-will to all, makes The Way of Deliverance a book to be read by all who love the Cause of Peace. It indicates one way, perhaps the only way, by which martial ardour and a warlike spirit can be converted into the spiritual vision necessary for the Faith of Non-Violence and Peace.

The method adopted by the earnest and sincere practitioner of the Buddha Way of Compassion who preached and discussed spiritual matters with Tojo and others has its own message for educators of the public mind and morals. Shinsho Hanayama's book has a universal appeal for men of good-will, irrespective of their race or religion. The real human heart is neither Hindu nor Muslim, Buddhist nor Christian. The true helper of that heart must himself possess the light of peace to overcome the darkness of might in warriors like General Tojo.

"Well, everything comes back to Buddha, you know." He suddenly smiled. "I felt terrible about this at first," he said, glancing at the hand chained to that of the officer beside him. "But this is good too. When I raise my hand,

he raises his, you see. This is one of the ties of Buddha. Thinking of the matter in that light, recently I have felt good about it. When I exercise, he walks with me too. It's all so glorifying."

Below we print some of his last words to Shinsho Hanayama:— "For one thing, I can tender my apologies to the people. Next, I am

able to offer myself as a sacrifice to peace and become one stone in the foundation for the rebuilding of Japan. Thirdly, I can die in peace of mind because no trouble was brought upon the Emperor. Fourth, is the fact that I can die on the gallows—my death would have had no meaning if it had come through suicide....Last night, when the announcement was delivered, I felt very cheery at heart."

GOOD COMPANY — BUDDHA'S VIEW

"There is no companionship with a fool." (Verse 61)

"Let him keep noble friends whose lives are pure and who are not slothful." (Verse 376)

Such is the advice of the great Tathagata. Though the Master uttered it for his monks, it is useful for all who are striving for self-improvement.

There are other verses in the Dhammapada on the subject of Satsang or Good Company. No one doubts the truth of the homely adages that "Birds of a feather flock together," and "A man is known by the company he keeps." But there are aspects of the subject which are very little understood.

The Master Gautama's implications are numerous and some of them are worth reflecting on.

His words may be taken as referring also to the companionship of ideas, and so, nowadays, of books. Having instructed us to abjure the company of evildoers, and to have for friends the best of men, in Verse 79 he adds:—

"He who drinks in the Law lives happily, with a serene mind; the wise man ever rejoices in the Law as taught by the Ariyas."

This means the companionship of great and good ideas; for, if one does not desire the company of a fool he must grant that the wise and the holy do not desire his company, even though it be his wish to be with them, unless he has striven for knowledge and piety. A man is made of his thoughts; as he thinks, so he acts and so he is. It is evident that one's outer companions are people whose mind content and mind

Two other simple and forthright verses convey the truth about real companionship:—

"If a fool be associated with a Pandit, even all his life, he will perceive the truth as little as a spoon tastes the soup." (Verse 64)

"A keen-witted man who waits on a Pandit for one minute only will soon perceive the truth as the tongue tastes the soup." (Verse 65)

Only the mating of consubstantial hearts and minds forges the bonds of friendship. Between casual acquaintances and lasting friends the difference is due to the similarity or the lack of similarity of mental and moral substances. The substantial aspect of our psychic nature is little known. Through electro-magnetic matter psychic as well as noetic action takes place. Because this matter is invisible and subtle (sukshma) the part that it plays in human relationships is not understood. Its existence is not suspected and so it is ignored.

The principle of consubstantiality is at work among real friends, not only that of coadunation. The spoon and the soup are in coadunation but are not consubstantial. The tongue and the soup are in coadunation and further are consubstantial.

The Nectar of the Saints and of the Sages is for living men, not for passion-fraught "iron" men. The very existence of the Nectar is not suspected by the ambitious and the greedy, who are like spoons— very close to the soup but unable to taste it.

It is a sign of the dark age that Truth and Peace which are near at hand are not perceived by the mortal minds of this cycle. In the Chinese version of the Dhammapada

"On a certain occasion the Master came to know of an 80-year-old neighbour in Saravasti who had just built for himself a large house. Ananda was sent to enquire and to instruct the old gentleman about the certainty of death and the impermanence of things. After a few days, the old man suddenly "fell dead from a stroke received as he walked"—such was the news the Master received, whereupon He spoke the verses about the spoon, the tongue and the soup.

How can we make ourselves fit for and worthy of the company of the godly? The Master says that even the sight of Sadhus, Noble Ones, is good and that to abide with them is blessedness (Verse 206). How can we become alive to the taste of Amrita! How shall we recognize the virtuous and the holy? Appearances deceive and the claimants are many. What can a Sadhu, an Arhat of today, teach but what Sadhus and Arhats of all times have recorded? If Teachings are true they must be universal, and the first qualification of a true teacher is that he teaches nothing new, but only what has been experienced in realization by a long line of perfected Sadhus and Arhats. He uses new words clothing old ideas, adding only "Thus have I heard."

APPLYING THE DOCTRINE

The aspiration to enlighten the heart becomes a compelling urge with some men. To be, rather than to think only. Not sacrifices in mere deeds which are seen objectively as outside of the doer, but natural expressions of the man who is not aware that he is unselfish and sacrificing.

The desire to be good, helpful, charitable, is very common. But it is the way of the world that these desires are forced into expression by conscious effort; they have not the sweet natural fragrance of the rose but the scent of the attar of roses manufactured by men.

Belief in a religious creed is very different from the inner way of life which, discarding creed, seeks the security of Naturalness. The integration of inner perceptions to outer life, the harmonious fusion of inner attitude with outer conduct, does not depend on study but on application. The study of true principles of the science of the soul, Psychology, gives theoretical knowledge. Applied Psychology is another matter.

Our religious, social and other beliefs have to be tested by the painstakingly acquired knowledge which study yields. But to know himself man has to apply that knowledge—discarding unenlightened beliefs and habits. Our views have to stand the test of quiet knowledge and thus commences application in the art of becoming integrated. To live the doctrine, to be what we know, to be true to the perception of the educated mind, requires application. In the sphere of application there should not be the poser, of whom Hamlet is the

classical example. We must know and then determine what we aspire and plan to BE.

One of the greatest of psychologists, one who was a great master in the art of application and who certainly knew himself, has said:—

"Irrigators canalize the waters; fletchers bend the arrows; carpenters carve the wood; wise men fashion themselves." (The Dhammapada, Verse 80)

The Enlightened One repeats the same verse but uses the word "good," i.e., bent on fulfilling noble resolves, in place of the word "wise" (Verse 145). To fashion ourselves to BE noble means to become noble by exercise, by application. There is a difference between the scholar and the Sage; it is rooted in application. A scholar knows, a Sage embodies Wisdom. Master Gautama has illustrated the difference in Verses 51-52:—

"Like a beautiful flower, full of colour, but without scent, are the fair but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly."

"Like a beautiful flower, full of colour and full of scent, are the pure and fruitful words of him who acts accordingly."

Words and acts are integrated in the Sage. The Light of the Soul radiates in and through his sensorium. Exercise, practice, application make the Sage out of the scholar. Intellectual recognition becomes spiritual realization when the mind's knowledge passes through the fire of experience. Most of the few who seem determined to become truly good and wise lack perseverance, assiduity in devotion. The Master has said that "a lax ascetic only scatters the dust of his passions more

widely." (Verse 313). The persevering effort should not be spasmodic; strenuous should be the watch, daily the warding off of evil. The Dhammapada says:—

"Let a man guard himself. Let him be like a well guarded frontier fort, with defences within and without. Not a moment should escape his vigilance. He who allows the moment to slip from the right suffers grief, like unto the pain of hell." (Verse 315)

Another difficulty of the student who resolves to practise is his lack of correct philosophical knowledge. His studies are often materialistic and mechanistic and he pushes himself to the dangerous precipice of neurosis. There is a strange verse which at first sight seems exaggerated. The Master Gautama Says:—

"If a man has transgressed a single Rule, if he lies or scoffs at another world—there is no evil he will not do." (Verse 176)

The breaking of a single law and the scoffing at the existence of another world (the invisible is implied, of course) are put in the same class as falsehood. And these three seem to be wombs of evil deeds. There are some cogent verses in the Ninth Canto, which is about Evil, Sin, Vice, Papa.

The Dhammapada (Footfalls of the Law) proves a reliable Companion of the ardent practitioner. What inspiration is to be derived from this confessional verse by the Master!

"This mind of mine went formerly wandering about as it liked, as it listed, as it pleased; but I shall now control it perfectly as a rider controls with his hook a rutting elephant." (Verse 326)

THE SANCHI ENSHRINEMENT

It is not death, it is not life I welcome;
As the hireling his wage, so do I bide my time.
It is not death, it is not life I want;
Mindful and thoughtful do I bide my time.

Nagasena, answering a question of King Milinda, quotes the above as uttered by Sariputta, "the Commander of the faith." One's mind naturally runs to this verse on the occasion of the enshrining of the sacred relics of Sariputta and his co-disciple Moggallana. These relics have been biding their time to find their permanent home in the Motherland of the Master and His two great Bhikkhus. For a whole century the relics had been in London's Victoria and Albert Museum and now they are enshrined in the new Vihara on the top of Sanchi Hill.

Two events took place last month: the holding of the International Buddhist Conference and the ceremony of enshrining the sacred relics. Both at Sanchi. The first was presided over by Dr. Radhakrishnan, who spoke with his usual fervour on the significance of the message of the Buddha to India and the world. The enshrinement ceremony was made memorable by the earnest appeal of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru not only to the vast concourse of over 50,000 people but also to the whole world. He called upon the world to adopt the principles of love, tolerance and compassion for the solution of individual and international problems. Not ammunition but the winning of human hearts brought real triumph and so he hoped that Burma and Ceylon would co-operate with India in spreading the teachings of the Enlightened One.

The Sanchi Vihara will draw the pious believer and the itinerant traveller and sustain the devotion of the one and awaken the curiosity and even the interest of the other. But that will not serve the purpose underlying the appeal of our far-seeing Prime Minister, the builder of the Secular State on the foundation of Spirit and of the One World on that of Non-violence. To benefit the world, a better understanding of the Buddha's doctrines must be spread. To know them fully it is equally necessary to practise them in day-to-day living.

The import of the endeavours of Sariputta and Moggallana at living the life and of their active service of the faith needs to be understood. Who were they; how did they come to the Buddha; what did they attempt and accomplish? The Master recognized the worth of these disciples as they approached him for the first time. Seeing them coming, while still a long way off, he said:—

"There, O Bhikkhus, two companions arrive: Kolita (Moggallana) and Upatissa (Sariputta)—these will be a pair of pupils, a most distinguished auspicious pair."

The Master "made them ripe for supreme wisdom." But it was what they carried within themselves which enabled the Master to ripen them. Sariputta is reported to have said:—

"As the gourd, clambering up with tendrils, grows O'er the grass, or the thorn bush, or creeper widespread,
So the son of the Buddha on Arhatship bent, Climbs up o'er ideas, to perfection and peace."

Earnest in effort the aspirant should be. He must learn the art of climbing up over ideas—not possessing

them to be in turn possessed by them. To learn the ideas so as to use them. The priest as well as the politician is obsessed by his ideas; the real mystic and true statesman works through them, valuing each against the background of the archetypal Ideas.

There is another verse very useful to remember; the aspirant, the priest and the politician alike often succumb to the temptation against which it warns:—

"As the anchor floats not, but sinks down beneath the waves So be abased, not lifted up, by praise or gifts."

When the approbation of the world is strenuously sought, finding one's way by clear thinking to the heavenly heights of selfless Nirvana, to penetrate then with Its Light the murky atmosphere of this earth, becomes impossible.

"The elephant distinguishes good food
From bad, he knows what gives him sustenance,
And even when asleep he guards his trunk—
So let each Buddha's son, earnest in zeal,
Never do violence to the Conqueror's word,
Nor injury to his self-possession, best of gifts."

ON GETTING RICH

Ambition to amass wealth is almost universal. The base on which our civilization rests is finance. The citizen's power, even in a democratic state, lies in his money bags. All great sages, on the other hand, have referred to poverty as a virtue necessary for the higher life; and a new slant on the practice of poverty emerges from a contemplation of the ideal of the Rajarshis. The example of Janaka and others indicates that the Trusteeship idea stressed by the ideal Brahmana of the 20th century, Gandhiji, is not a new one. His favourite Ishopanishad verse, as explained by him, brings out the fact that a yogi and a rishi may dexterously allow the coins of gold and silver to roll for the good of the whole and all.

The amassing of wealth is an art which ordinarily cannot but be classified as a black art. The mighty magic of money is most often performed by those whose motives and methods are neither pure nor unselfish. "Get on, get honour and get honest"—is the accepted plan, and thousands of young men and women ruin themselves in advancing from the one to the next step at each of the three stages. When the last stage arrives, when a few of the rich are ready for living honestly, many among them find their hopes shattered and the fruits of their arduous sowing and reaping turn sour and bitter.

There are, however, hints in the sayings of the sages which teach that the amassing of wealth can be a practice of the art of white magic. Thus in the Chinese Canon of the celebrated Dhammapada we come upon

the advice of one of the most practical minds in the history of humanity, who moved his fellow men to Noble Living. In Canto XIX of the Chinese Text entitled "Old Age" this subject is handled by the Master with his usual consummate skill. Here is the story:—

"The Enlightened One was residing in the Jetavana. In a nearby village there was a Brahmana school where 500 youths were training themselves in the secret lore of their caste. They were full of disdain for all others and spoke of the Buddha slightingly—"His talents reach but a little way compared with ours; we ought to challenge him to come and debate with us." So the Master responded and came with his Bhikkhus. While they were waiting there arrived on the scene an old Brahmana and his wife, begging for food. The Master knew the couple of old; he asked the youths if they knew who the old man was. "We know perfectly. He was formerly rich. But took no care of his money, was foolish in using it and now look at him. Fool!"

Thereupon the Buddha spoke:— "There are four things difficult to do. Those who can do them will certainly obtain merit and escape poverty. What are the four? They are related to the four ages of men:

In the prime of life—don't seek sense pleasures. Learn to acquire wealth and not squander it.

In middle age—be Mindful of Charity. It is not easy to dispense Charity righteously.

In old age—seek the Wise in the art of becoming a Trustee of all your possessions.

old Brahmana gentleman has come to his present condition and is like an old stork sitting beside a dried up pond.

Again, continued the Master, there are four opportunities given to every one to enrich life:

In the prime of life—seize the opportunity to plan for a just distribution of riches.

In middle age—seize the opportunity of widening your capacity for gaining more merit.

In old age—seize the opportunity to gain knowledge of the Three Honourable Ones."

HUNGER AND HAPPINESS

Hunger is the worst of diseases; personal existence the worst of suffering. To him who has known this truly, Nirvana is the highest bliss.

Health is the greatest of gifts; contentment is the greatest of wealth; trust is the best of relationships. Nirvana is the highest happiness.

—The Dhammapada (Verse 203-204)

India has been ailing with the disease of hunger for long decades; the poverty of our villages has compelled millions to adapt themselves to labouring on empty stomachs. Today the whole world is facing the problem of shortage of food.

Numerous plans are being made to fight the oncoming of "the worst of diseases." In the eyes of some a too large population is the cause and the remedy of family planning is suggested. This is bound to prove futile. Others hope that industrialization will increase the production of food; but citizens of highly industrialized countries like Great Britain are continuing to tighten their belts while "grow more food" campaigns are a suggested remedy. In the U.S.A, there is plenty of food, and also the shops are full of luxury goods, but all the striking prosperity of that country has not brought to its citizens "the greatest of gifts" and "the greatest of wealth" which the Buddha names as "health" and "contentment."

Could it not be that our modern planners—social reformers, industrialists, economists and politicians— are looking in the wrong direction for the real roots of the world-wide disease? In the above quoted verses, the greatest of philosophers and of philanthropists links

hunger with our routine of personal living. He not only names hunger as the worst of diseases but also our ordinary modes of sensuous living as the worst of suffering. On the positive side he names health as the greatest of gifts in the cornucopia of Mother Nature.

Gautama Buddha is a master psychologist. He has presented to us an analysis of the constitution of man—the functions of the senses and the organs of the body, the cravings of the flesh, the desires of the mind, the aspirations of the Soul. He has described the nature of the war among the members of man's constitution—bodily, psychic, noetic and purely spiritual. He has offered remedies which must appeal to the reason of any dispassionate thinker as offering a cogent and convincing synthesis. One such prescription is implicit in the Dhammapada verses quoted at the beginning of this article.

Hunger and health are defined respectively as "the worst of diseases" and "the greatest of gifts." Money, almost universally worshipped as the one power which can bestow on personal existence health and happiness, prosperity and plenty, is not so regarded by the Prince who gave up his kingdom to gain the Light of Wisdom and the Peace of Contentment. Not existence but personal, i.e., separative, selfish existence is productive of the worst of suffering. Insight into this truth leads one to evaluate properly the nature and attainment of true and lasting happiness. Man is born alone and also dies alone, but he does not and cannot live alone. In all directions he has relationships, not only with his fellow men, but also with the whole of Nature. Trust is named as the power which creates kinship, friendship, brotherliness and unity. In the ordinary world of today not trust

but doubt—consideration of self-interest, cautious reckoning that others do not take us in—forms the basis of personal existence. And so we have the present situation and the pressing problems of Hunger and Health.

But the Great Teacher who showed the Way to the supreme Light and Peace indicates that bodily hunger is only one kind of hunger, the lowest, and is but a reflection of inner hungers. Bodily hunger unsatisfied not only results in weakness of the body but also brings on ailments and so it is pointed to as the worst of diseases. Thought hunger is created by unsatisfied or badly and wrongly satisfied inner hunger of man's psychic nature. The uncared-for mind, enveloping itself in ignorance and illusion, falls prey to the hunger of the animal man who exploits that mind till it becomes deluded and then suffering and sorrow crush the whole man. The psychic hunger of man is even less understood; we do not know how to nourish the hungry body; much less do we know how to nourish our psychic nature. The psychic nature suffers, in its turn, because our minds are badly fed, wrongly nourished. Only our spiritual soul can nourish our minds correctly; a properly nourished mind can cope with our psychic hunger.

This knowledge would make the whole man healthy, truly wealthy because of the contentment born of understanding. Hungry men need the food of Soul-Wisdom more than they need rice and wheat and corn. Given true knowledge a man becomes strong in body, trustful in character, wise in mind. Following the teaching of the Buddha he becomes integrated, whole, truly healthy.

Should not our leaders and planners, if not all over the world then at least in India, on whose soil this Tree of Enlightenment grew, take heed and examine the philosophical and psychological proposition of this Elder Brother?

LEARNING BY COMPASSION

"Of me, if of anyone, it can be truly affirmed that, in me, a being without delusion has arisen in the world, for the weal and welfare of many, out of Compassion towards the world, for the good, the weal and welfare of gods and men."

In modern times the teaching of Buddha is looked upon as abstruse, cold, highly metaphysical, soulless, stern in its conception of Karma or Justice. It is said that there is no hope, no comfort, no consolation for any one save for the man himself who must seek peace and salvation by striving to realize Nirvana. Buddhism is said to be a religion of pessimism, very prosaic, stressing self-effort to gain redemption—at best a religious philosophy in which penance and prayer are but for the purpose of obtaining salvation—a higher form of selfishness! It is said to lack tenderness, mercy, pity, love. This is not accurate.

It is true that Gautama taught that "Rigid Justice rules the World." It is a hard saying that "A harsh word uttered in past lives is not destroyed, but ever comes again." It is also true that self-immolation—the destruction of Tanha, the thirst for earthly life, is recommended for attaining the Peace of the self-less Self. But what is not understood is that the acquiring of the wisdom that leads to the summum bonum, demands the practice of Compassion. No Compassion, no Wisdom. One may gain knowledge without Compassion; but not Wisdom, divine and eternal, which leads to the realization of Peace, Bliss and Light. Compassion is then not only

the supreme end; it is also the means by which the darkness of ignorance is dispersed; the glamour of world-deception is overcome; the machinations of the egotistic self are defeated; the ugliness of evil is pierced and the beauty of the supreme Unity is perceived.

In the above quoted words of the Master, Compassion is the motive—the good of others and not only of himself. Immediately after his reaching Enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, he was tempted by Mara not to waste his wealth of Wisdom on the hoi polloi but to enjoy the fruits of his efforts in Nirvana. Then it is said Brahma spoke to him, beseeching him to preach to the worlds of men and gods and share with all the fruit of his attainment. And the text says:—

"Heeding Brahma's entreaties and moved by Compassion for all beings, I surveyed the world with the Eye of Enlightenment and I proclaimed—Nirvana's gates stand open wide to all."

It was not therefore knowledge but Compassion which was the starting point of his noble mission; and Compassion became his abiding purpose. It was indeed Compassion practised in previous lives (as allegorized in the Jataka Tales) which brought Gautama to seek Wisdom and on attaining Emancipation from the round of samsara to renounce living in the Land of Bliss and to accept the "woes of birth" for the sake of suffering, selfish and deluded mortals.

Pity, love compassion form the very soul of Buddha's teachings— the Pancha Sila, (the Five Precepts), and the Four Noble Truths about the crushing force of suffering, the healing of human ills rooted in longings, the seeking and the treading of the Noble Eight-fold

Path. Without the Virtue of Compassion neither these nor other philosophical truths can be fully or truly comprehended. As compassion grows and deepens insight into philosophical and psychological doctrines also deepens. Buddhistic tradition tells us that, when in his incarnation as Sumedha he had met the Buddha Dipankara, he began the search for ways and means to Buddhahood. "Come let me search the Buddha-making conditions," he said "this way and that, above, below, to the ten points, even to the primary elemental foundation (dhamma-dhatus) of all things."

Our modern civilization badly needs this neglected, almost unknown method of gaining true knowledge. We all recognize that knowledge assimilated leads to the acquisition of greater knowledge and that the Mind is the instrument for gaining knowledge. But our civilization has yet to learn that knowledge may grow from more to more without becoming Wisdom, while the practice of Compassion not only makes the heart compassionate but also kindles the flame of true insight. Compassion is like the air we breathe; only a few appreciate its true value, its strength and beauty. As we exhale Compassion we inhale purer compassion and it is the growth of Compassion which can raise us to the Terrace of Pure Truth, Pure Light, Pure Bliss, Pure Life. The prayer of the follower of the Tathagata is:—

RIGHT LIVELIHOOD

One of the grave problems facing almost every government of the world is that of unemployment. To find suitable work for every citizen is a problem indeed. In the Welfare State the problem assumes a new aspect. The economic aspect of the problem occupies a very prominent place in the consideration of both the citizen and the State.

The Enlightened One, Gautama Buddha, was at pains to point out that a right mode of livelihood is necessary for the advancement of both the citizen and the State; He named it as one of the steps of the Noble Eightfold Path. Samma-ajivo is translated in different ways— as "Right Vocation"; "Right Occupation"; "Right Discipline"; as "to follow a Peaceful Calling"; "to earn a Right Livelihood."

"What is right self-discipline? Hear mendicant brothers, the discipline of the noble, who abandoning ill discipline, gets his living (jivikam) by right discipline (samma-ajivena)."

The Noble Eightfold Path is not only for the feet of the monk; the householder, the layman who respects the Dhamma of the Great One, is also expected to observe the eight practices. He also must possess the Right Outlook, the Right Will and the Right Speech, etc. The layman walks the path at a lower turn of the spiral; he is not expected to be so strict and thorough as the Bhikkhu. The latter's vocation and discipline and peaceful calling are of a different category. But the layman is also a wayfarer, and it seems that the Master meant that he should earn his bread not by begging but by a proper

means of livelihood. The implication is that the layman's vocation, or calling in life, should be counted and looked upon as a means to self-discipline.

Discipline is demanded by the modern employer. Every employee, whatever his vocation or occupation, is called upon to observe and honour the discipline of the organization to which he belongs. It is not always self-discipline but mostly a discipline imposed from without. The motive of the employee for observing the discipline is pay and other monetary considerations. A clerk, an accountant, a manager, or a spinner, a weaver, a factory foreman, do not look upon their occupations as avenues to mental and moral development. For the employee, the elevation of his mind and the improvement of his character are not vital considerations. The unfolding of consciousness through a proper recognition of one's own profession or trade or employment is hardly dreamt of. Such a thought would be ridiculed; if one presents it one is told, "Don't jest," "Don't be absurd."

The Man of Insight par excellence, one of the most practical of men of affairs, was the Buddha Gautama. He named the unlawful occupations for the layman: trade in swords, in human beings, in meat, in intoxicants and in poisons. Time, place and circumstance naturally make a difference; we are not living in 600 B.C. But the implication that moral principles are involved in choice of vocation or occupation or means of livelihood remains true for today.

Are we destructive or creative in and through our profession? Do we bring harm or health to others through our trade? Are we increasing the force of violence or spreading the beneficence of harmlessness through our occupation? Who among us today asks

these questions when selecting his means of livelihood, or in applying for a job, or in starting a career? Only thoughtful and responsible individuals sense and face the issue. And even among those only such as have freed themselves from the influence of our civilization are awake to the implications of this truth.

How many young persons seeking employment reflect upon the moral principles involved? The predominant motive is to earn money. People are willing to discipline themselves provided there is monetary compensation. In these days of the black market, commercial "honesty" and cut-throat competition, who bothers about the "Peaceful Callings" which the Great Master described, in the Maha Mangala Sutta, as one of the greatest blessings?

And yet we look for security in life and labour. We fear competition from others while we ourselves are competing. Are we making ourselves channels of security for others, our co-citizens? Are we raising our voices against our nation and our government making the existence of other States and peoples insecure? Do we not fool ourselves with the help of perverted ingenuity? Machinations of the mind for deluding others deteriorate our own mind, and we begin to live in delusions.

The teachings of the Divine Man of Compassionate Mind and Enlightened Heart have a practical application for men in Wall Street, in Fleet Street, in Harley Street and in every other, where capitalists or communists, priests or professionals, are busy plying their thoughts and making their plans. Those teachings can bring about an Inner Conversion among the residents of those streets. Thus the true Vaishya Dharma, the Religion of Pure Trade, will be followed. There is redemption

for modern civilization in this: man will not become transformed into a machine, but the machine will acquire a human, nay a divine, quality, because of the regenerate man.

TO BUDDHA, ON HIS BIRTHDAY

The world, seized by the fury of carnage,

writhes in the ceaseless grip of conflicts.

Crooked are its ways, tangled its coils of bondage.

Wearily waits the earth for a new birth of thine;

save her, Great Heart, utter thy eternal words,

let blossom love's lotus with its honey inexhaustible.

O Serene, O Free, thou Soul of infinite Sanctity,

cleanse this earth of her stains, O Merciful.

Thou great Giver of Self, initiate us in the penance of sacrifice,

take, Divine Beggar, our pride for thine alms.

Soothe the sorrowing worlds, scatter the mist of unreason,

light up Truth's sunrise;

let life become fulfilled,

the sightless find his vision.

O Serene, O Free, thou Soul of infinite Sanctity,

cleanse this earth of her stains, O Merciful.

Man's heart is anguished with the fever of unrest,

with the poison of self-seeking, with a thirst that knows no end.

Countries far and wide, flaunt on their foreheads the blood-red

mark of hatred.

Touch them with thy right hand, make them one in spirit,

bring harmony into their life,

bring rhythm of beauty.

O Serene, O Free, thou Soul of infinite Sanctity,

cleanse this earth of her stains, O Merciful.

—Rabindranath Tagore

In this month all the world, and India in particular, are celebrating the 2500th Anniversary of the Buddha's Passing. Today, there is a longing springing up in the hearts of many for the advent of Buddha with his living message. "Wearily waits the earth for a new birth of thine."

a devout appeal to the Master in the VisvaBharati Quarterly for April 1927. It was before the inhumanity of the second World War, and even more truly today the world is "seized by the fury of carnage," and the "grip of conflicts" is intense, and so it is appropriate to reprint the poet's Invocation.

There is a strange legend—and is there a legend without some truth implicit in it?—among the Buddhists, especially of Tibet, that descents from Nirvana of Gautama Buddha do take place, however rare they be. "Esoteric teachings claim that he renounced Nirvana and gave up the Dharmakaya vesture to remain a 'Buddha of compassion' within the reach of the miseries of this world," writes H. P. Blavatsky.

The appearance of what is called the Buddhachhaya takes place, but only for him whose mind is perfectly pure and who knows how to invoke that Luminous Appearance. There is the well-known case of the Chinese devotee who travelled to a certain cave where he had the blessed experience. It was in the sixth century that Hiouen-Thsang invoked the great Chhaya. It is recorded that when he arrived at the cavern all was dark and dreary. Hiouen-Thsang entered and began his devotions. He made 100 salutations, but neither saw nor heard anything. Then, thinking himself too sinful, he cried bitterly, and despaired. But, as he was about to give up all hope, he perceived on the eastern wall a feeble light, but it disappeared. He renewed his prayers, full of hope this time, and again he saw the light, which flashed and disappeared again. After this he made a solemn vow: he would not leave the cave till he had the vision of the "Venerable of the Age." After 200 prayers the dark cave was suddenly "bathed

in light, and the Shadow of Buddha, of a brilliant white colour, rose majestically on the wall, as when the clouds suddenly open, and, all at once, display the marvellous image of the 'Mountain of Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the features of the divine countenance." Hiouen-Thsang was lost in contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the sublime and incomparable object. Hiouen-Thsang adds in his own diary, See-yu-kee, that it is only when man prays with sincere faith, and if he has received from above a hidden impression, that he sees the shadow clearly, but he cannot enjoy the sight for any length of time.

WHEN THE PUPIL IS READY THE MASTER APPEARS

In this month of May India will celebrate the memory of two of her greatest Teachers—Gautama, the Buddha, and Shankara, the Acharya. Their names have been coupled for many centuries and for a good and valid reason. The Teachings, metaphysical and moral, of both are very similar if not exactly identical. Both were profound philosophers who preached the higher morality which makes a man a true devotee, a servant of human souls. Both were great Bhaktas, Devotees of the Impersonal Law, who had solved the mystery of the plenum and the vacuum, and had realized "the viodness of the seeming full and the fullness of the seeming void."

It is appropriate that this month we try and listen to the voice of these two Mighty Companions. On the 4th of May is the Birthday of Adi Shankara; on the 13th, the Triple Festival which calls us to remember the Kingly Glory of the Mendicant with his begging bowl who nourished and nourishes the minds and hearts of millions of mortals. If our minds' attention and our hearts' devotion copy the ardency of Pukkusati, we also may be also able to say, "I have found the Master."

It is narrated that once when the Master came to Rajagaha he requested the potter Bhaggava to permit him to pass the night in his cottage.

"I have no objection; but there has arrived a wayfarer who is in the hut; if he consents, do you, sir, stay as long as you please," said the potter.

It was Pukkusati, who had left his home, and was wandering to find his Home. The Master entered the

hut and said, "If it be agreeable to you, Brother, I will spend one night in this shed."

So, the Master spread a heap of straw in one corner and sat down to meditate. Likewise Pukkusati.

Then it occurred to the Great One: "I wonder if this brother is well disposed." So he spoke:

"Having faith in whom, Brother, did you leave home? For whom are you looking? Have you a teacher? Whose doctrine attracts you?"

"Friend, there is an Exalted One, Gautama by name, perfect in knowledge and practice; He is the tamer of souls, teacher not only of mortals but also of Gods. My faith is in Him; my mind approves of His teachings."

"No, Friend, I have never seen the Exalted One; if I saw Him, I should not know Him," said Pukkusati.

Thereupon the Master said, "Listen, Brother. I will give you a teaching. Be attentive." Then the Master expounded at length the doctrine of the Sixfold Man. When the preaching was over Pukkusati exclaimed: "I have found the Master; I have found the Master!" He fell at the feet of the Teacher and said:

"Mine is the fault, Lord; mine is the offence; pardon my conceit and thoughtlessness in calling you 'Friend.' Ordain me now, for I do not only approve the teaching; I have found the Teacher. Ordain me."

With Faith in the Doctrines he had learnt, Pukkusati practised, made himself ready, and the Master came where he was. The real Guru is always ready, willing and waiting for the disciple; it is the disciple who has to prepare himself by a purified Will, steadfastly seeking the Truth, humbly serving the Truth-seekers, and thus attract the Guru.

The Pandit of Pandits who wrote profound commentaries on the Gita, the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and Gaudapada's Karika, and preached the magnificent philosophy of the One and Indivisible—the Grand Object of Supreme Realization—was a Bhakta, a Devotee. He sang:

"There is no known comparison in all the three worlds for the venerable teacher who bestows knowledge."

Among his hymns and devotional treatises is Viveka-Chudamani (The Crest Jewel of Wisdom) which contains one specific programme of building the Hexagonal Temple whose foundation is Discrimination, whose plinth is Detachment and whose roof is the Longing for Freedom from the separative self, which holds mortals by the fetter of the dire heresy called by the Buddha Attavada. But what, in truth, does this fourfold, sometimes called ninefold, programme mean? That itself requires higher wisdom, arising out of right preparation. The ardent aspirant must handle first his mundane thoughts (Vichara), and cleanse his Chitta—mind-motion—by good works, in the routine of daily life. If the right foot does not take the first of the preliminary and preparatory steps and the left does not take the second, the Master, "who is a river of Compassion, and an excellent knower of the Eternal," will

not be found; and the hint is given that it is such a Guru who will give us the plan and the proportions for the construction of our Hexagonal Temple. To take the two preparatory steps we require the strength that comes from devotion, says the text:—

"Among all means of liberation, devotion verily is the most potent. The fixing of the attention on the true Master, the Divine Self, is declared to be devotion."

To know the nature and power of the Master within, the aspirant needs the guidance and instruction of the Guru—one of those "Rivers of Compassion" of whom Shankara says:—

"The mighty ones who have attained to peace dwell in righteousness, bringing life to the world like the coming of spring; they who have themselves crossed the dread sea of passional life, aid others to cross it through compassion that seeks no return.

"It is the essence of the very being of those of mighty soul to seek to heal the sorrows of others, as the nectar-rayed moon of itself cools the earth, scorched by the fierce fire of the sun."

There is little understanding of the Nature, Character or Function of the Guru; where and how is the Guru to be sought—"the Mahatma difficult to find" (Bhagavad-Gita, VII. 19)?

Hindu aspirants want to practise the third to the eighth step of Pantanjali, Postures (Asana), Breathing (Pranayama), etc., without any reference to the first two, Restraints (Yama) and Observances (Niyama); aspirants born in bodies following Christian, Muslim and other ways of sectarian thought and feeling commit

a similar blunder. Also the environment in which our mind and heart has to function, which is created by the running cycle of the day, is not taken into account and that is hazardous.

In the present-day cycle, when Indians of all communities are powerfully influenced by modern occidental materialistic psychology, physio-biology, psychosomatic medicine, behaviourism, Jung-ism, etc., everyone needs to be humble and to study before rushing into practice—"going into the silence," "awakening the chakras" and such other exercises.

The lure of the Occult is insidious. Instead of mastering our psycho-mystic urges, we allow them to master us. The Universal and Impersonal in Nature and in Man offer the key to the Secret Knowledge, Gupta-Vidya, and Teachers like Buddha and Shankara gave us the key, taught us the right use of it. Everyone's life has its purpose, but everyone does not know it. That purpose is expressed in a sutra—all life is probationary. At every turn life offers opportunities—not only in duties but also in recreations; in waking and in sleeping; in speech and in silence; in moods of elation or depression; in everything and at all times we are surrounded by opportunities. By their right use we pass our tests and trials, and fulfil the real purpose of life.

In this cycle the Path of Perfection has marked steps: Attention, Right Memory, True Knowledge, Correct Adaptability and the Right Use of Imagination. To be good we need knowledge; the practice of true knowledge leads to the Higher Life. The beauty of the Great Gurus, Mighty Masters like Gautama and Shankara, is that in Their instructions we find not only the steps of the Path of

Holiness but also the preparatory instruction which quickens us and points to the beginning of the Path of the Living.

At every turn we should say—"When the materials are ready the Architect will appear."

HEAVENLY CHARITY

The world is wrapt in darkness. Only a few can see here. Only a few birds escape the net. Only a few escape into the heavenly light.

There is no evil the man will not do who violates the Good Law, who speaks falsely, who scoffs at the existence of another world.

Verily the niggardly do not know heavenly bounty. Fools do not appreciate generosity. But the wise, rejoicing in charity, enjoy that world.

Thus spake the Great Gautama.

These verses are from the Dhammapada, which every man and woman should read and every boy and girl should be taught.

All, without exception, feel mental confusion, caused by events beyond their control. Also, who does not complain about the paucity of moral stamina and the display of ethical weaknesses in every walk of life? The followers blame the leaders for selfishness and complain that they are lining their fair and round bellies with capons produced by greed and ambition. The leaders sneer at the ignorant followers. The citizens get the government they deserve, it is said; also, the government deserves the citizens it has to educate. Also, it should not be overlooked that the citizens can and should educate and guide their legislators, administrators and teachers.

The leaders and the led alike, as also parents and children, are wrapt in darkness. Everyone desires to possess the heavenly light of Peace; but only a few perceive the need of seeking true Knowledge. People are caught in the net of selfishness, egotism and sensuality,

The very first step in knowledge is an adequate recognition of the "Slave State" of which they are citizens. Mother Earth is blamed for starving hungry and thirsty humanity. They who exploit and rob Nature precipitate on and for themselves a compensatory adjustment which often proves an awakener.

The World Invisible is dual—the lower psychic and the higher spiritual. The former is related to the impure evil mind of the selfish and the egotistical; the higher to the radiant Mind of the altruistic.

It is the way of ignorance to blame others. Adverse criticism of others dulls our own lucidity. All feel the absence of light in their minds, of peace in their hearts, but they ask not why. When one does, the second step in Right Knowledge reveals itself: Each one has been caught in the net of his own making. The Master refers to the violation of the Good Law. The purpose, method and action of the Good Law are awakeners of men's minds to the fact that each man makes his own suffering, builds his own dark cell of pain, and that the way out is the acceptance of responsibility for himself and for his environment, both immediate and distant. The Deity and the Devil within himself are the only agents responsible for his present bodily, mental and moral condition. We "speak falsely," influenced by the devil within; the same force makes us "scoff at the existence of another world."

Mortal men are niggardly, and so ungrateful to the Good Law that ever moves to Righteousness. Not perceiving the "heavenly bounty," we fail to appreciate

the generosity which obtains in this world. Only those who perceive the truth about Dana—Charity—given or received, are able to "enjoy the world." Thus teaches the Enlightened One, the Possessor of Heavenly Light, the Giver of Gifts—Peace and Wisdom—the Divine Beggar whose begging bowl encourages the power of charity even in the selfish and the miser.

LIGHT AND LIFE

The sun of His wisdom lights a thousand worlds;
His merciful clouds all creatures hide.
A myriad destinies are fulfilled in His love;
The Voice of His law—how it strikes my heart.

May is the month of several Holy Days in this ancient land of India. On the 3rd of May all devotees of Gautama Buddha and the many impressed by his sublime philosophy will salute with gratitude the Master, truly a Man among men! In fact every spiritual aspirant, and especially every Indian, should take advantage of the triple festival on the Full Moon Day of the Hindu-Buddhist month of Vaishakha.

Buddhas are Light-Bearers—and the Tathagata Light is the highest, the most supernal of all lights. Buddha Gautama is an historical figure whose acts and achievements are authentic. Truth and not poetic imagination or license is enshrined in the verse quoted above. Sung by a Japanese Empress of the eighth century, Shotuku by name, the verse is meaningful.

Prince Siddhartha exchanged the royal garments for the Yellow Robe and the power of royal munificence for the Begging Bowl. These acts are symbols—He exchanged Life for Light. Renouncing His throne, His queen, His father and son and mundane duties, He rose superior to fate or karma and by the power of free-will conquered the one vital principle of Life and so became Master of Immortality.

Mortals enjoy and suffer in life and know not why or how. From birth to death men and women hold fast to the Wheel of Life, which turns ceaselessly. Burne-

Jones has imparted a great lesson in his picture—the Wheel of Life turns, turns, turns, and on it are bound the rich and the poor, the great and the small. Karma or destiny brings everyone to the top of life by the motion of the Wheel, which then, moving further, brings him down.

It is said that Life is a school and that all men are learning, most of them unconsciously, but a few, having evolved further, do so deliberately and consciously. This learning provides to man's senses, to his mind and to his heart the light to understand the life of joys and sorrows. Bodily eyes are organs of light, but each pair of eyes is different from all other pairs. All men are not clear-sighted. There are diseases of the eyes. Also, there are differences in quality and sensitiveness of perception—the painter sees, the poet visions, what the business man does not see and the scientist is not able to perceive. The light of the mind also brings to each different types of knowledge. Still more important is the light of the heart. We observe, we understand, we assimilate the workings and processes of life. The peasant and the prince, the scholar and the artist, observe with what light each possesses; they also understand and assimilate and grow albeit at a snail's speed. In most men and women life denies the power of light; the conflicts of life, the struggles of existence, continue to confuse till we are compelled to perceive the truth that the light of the soul within is superior to the three lights of heart-feelings, mind-thoughts and bodily perceptions. The three lights give us contact with mundane affairs, but wordly experiences baffle the heart, confuse the mind and fail to produce Wholeness or Holiness in the body.

Samsara—we look inwards, we begin to glimpse the superior light of the human soul—the Thinker. We sense the existence of mystery and we seek the wisdom of the Inner Light. In the life of the Within we perceive the truth that there are Those who have solved the mystery. Lower lights represent different degrees of luminosity like candle light, the light of a kerosene lamp, electric light. But the higher Light of the Soul is a different kind of Light. It is not derivative; it is self-luminous. Scholars, scientists, philosophers, artists—these live by and radiate different degrees of light, but they are not able to enlighten life truly.

The human soul shines by its own light. It is the Man of Thought whose ideation is spiritual. The Wisdom of the Soul is one and the same, ever constant, and this constancy is its sublime power. That Wisdom is not of the past, the present, the future; it is of the Eternal Now. The Light of that Wisdom is called the Tathagata Light, the Light of the Illustrious Predecessors.

It is that Light which is the Sun of the Wisdom of the Buddha. It is merciful and hides within all—the thief and the harlot, the violent and the wrathful. From within the Soul that Light makes possible the fulfilment of destiny. When the clear voice of Dharma, the Law, strikes the heart we become men of light, and master life with speed and strength.

Every Form of Life moves, making life more and more complex, and wonderful indeed is the diversity of the kingdoms of matter, which are made up of the Forms of Life. The urge of the Divine Will functions in the worlds of Life, but it is not possible for lower forms of Life, not even for a diamond, not even for a pipala tree, not even for a sacrificing cow, to develop

Free Will and to become a Form of Light. It is man, the self-conscious being, the being conscious of himself, who can and should control and master the vital principle of Life and its myriad processes. Only a man can grow to be an Adept of the Good Law, the rare efflorescence of a civilization, and proceed to attain Buddhahood.

Man does not realize his grand privilege of having attained manhood because his sense of responsibility to Life is weak. It is not the religion of the temple and the Church but the Religion of Responsibility which man must practise in order so to transform himself, as to become a Man of Light streaming it forth for the helping of his fellow men. There are inspiration and energy in the words of the Buddha; says the Dhammapada:—

"Difficult it is to obtain birth as a human being. Difficult it is to live the life of a man. Difficult it is to get to hear the True Law. Difficult it is to attain to Enlightenment." (verse 182)

GOD AND MIND

The Path of the Superior Mind, the Avestan Vohu Mano, of which the Gathas sing, is the ancient way trodden by all true seekers of the Light who became the Buddhas and Christs of the race. It is a Path which we too can tread, and walking which we shall be filled with peace and power and glory.

There are several aspects of Vohu Mano, variously rendered as the Good Mind, the Loving Mind, the Sattvic or Pure Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Superior Mind—aspects not mutually contradictory but complementing one another. There is the hierarchical aspect enshrined in the appellation Amesha Spenta; there is the aspect of Universal Intelligence, Chaitanya or Cosmic Ideation, also called Mahat or Maha Buddhi; there is the human aspect, conferring on man the gift of self-consciousness, human reflective intelligence; and there are others.

What concerns us more than the function of Vohu Mano as the Divine Mind in Nature is its function connected specifically with man. The aspect of Vohu Mano at work in the human kingdom confers on man the gift of self-consciousness, with which is connected the power to reflect, to think, to compare, to contrast, to reason, to discriminate and to speak, thus liberating him from the kingdom of the speechless animal.

The power of Vohu Mano's ray which each of us carries within himself endows us with the capacity to ascend to heights of Wisdom and of Illumination; to unfold deeper Love and Compassion. But this can only be when we come out from among the Dead into the

Kingdom of the Living. In the human race the Dead are very many; the Living are the few. The really Living are those who have embodied in themselves the Power of the Man of Virtue. He comes to abide within us when the man of sin has been driven out. Vohu Mano incarnates fully in us when Ako Mano, the evil or animal mind, is conquered; this means the conquest over pride and egotism.

The surest way to purify the evil mind, to humble the proud mind, to soften the hard mind, to control the craving mind, and endow it with some love and philanthropy, is to imbibe the Ideas which the Master Minds of all ages have taught out of self-experience and self-realization. These Ideas are great purifiers. They are philanthropists. Treading the Path of Vohu Mano implies embodying within oneself these Living Ideas. Plato pictured them as dynamic spiritual entities. This embodying is the true Inner Conversion, the devotee's Second Birth. It is the Birth of Vohu Mano, whose father is Wisdom and whose mother is Compassion.

The Path of Vohu Mano is the Path of Devotion towards the High in Reverence, towards the lowly in Compassion, including our "younger brothers" belonging to the animal kingdom. Vohu Mano, the Amesha Spenta, presides over and protects the beast, the bird, the reptile, the insect. When selfishness is cured Vohu Mano's great Virtue, Love, begins to grow within us, from more to more, and supplements and augments whatever of Knowledge we have acquired. This Love, however, does not stop at mere pious intent; it must be translated into the active service of humanity.

difficult; it has to be translated into the love and service of "God, our Brother-Man." Those who serve their fellow men with zeal may be said to be engaged in the true service of God. Those whose actions are inspired by Wisdom, Love and a feeling of Brotherliness are rewarded with the gifts of Vohu Mano, which are described in the Gathas as "Life-Renewed and Spiritual Strength," "Perfection and Immortality." This, then, is the true meaning of bringing down the Grace of Vohu Mano into our lives.

Zarathushtra, whose birth anniversary Parsis will be celebrating on the 7th of this month, was, as the Gathas record, in constant communion with Vohu Mano. He had a fully devoted Superior Mind. By its aid He had lit in Himself the Fire of Truth; in Him the Flame of Love blazed, and He had attained to union with Ahura Mazda— Wisdom Incarnate. He is made to say in the first Gatha (XXXIV, 13)

The Path, O Ahura, of Vohu Man
That One Path hast Thou pointed out to me,
The ancient Teaching of all Saviours,—

That good deeds done for their own sake lead far,—
This Teaching leads mankind to Wisdom true,
That single Prize of Life—Thyself the Goal.

THE PATH OF PURITY

The sixth day of the first month in one of the Parsi calendars is assigned by communal tradition to mark the Natal Day of Zoroaster. This year the day falls on the 6th of September. Controversy about the era in which the Prophet of ancient Iran lived and taught continues to this day. According to their inclinations Avesta and Pahlavi, Pazend and Persian scholars have considered the teachings attributed to Zoroaster. The suggestion that not one but a long line of teachers instructed different generations of Iranians has not been seriously and sincerely considered; in a way, that would explain the variety and contradictory nature of teachings all of which are attributed to one and the same person. The passage of time from the exalted teachings of the Avestan Gathas to the folklore of Persian Rivayats can be measured not by centuries but by millennia. Again, it would be absurd to regard as of equal value all the thoughts they express—a vast conglomeration ranging from those of celestial inspiration to those of terrestrial origin. To examine the ideas and the teachings on their own merits and not trouble about their authors and their eras seems to us the best way.

All who desire to learn from the sayings of the great Prophets of the ancient world should utilize this occasion to read and reflect upon the teachings of the Prophet of ancient Iran. In them is to be found a spirit of universality and of impersonality. The Message of ancient Persia echoes for our ears truths which have a message

The teachings revolve round one word, Asha. Like the old-world term Dharma, Asha connotes a variety of ideas, among which Purity and Righteousness are the most prominent. To be pure and righteous is man's highest duty—his duty to his own Fravashi, the Human Spirit. Today the word "religious" has a low and mundane connotation; it means only bodily cleanliness, adherence to rites and customs and ordinary worldly and sectarian goodness. In the Zoroastrian scriptures great divine powers—Amesha Spentas and Yazatas—are said to fulfil their tasks according to the Law of Righteousness. The Gathas refer to man's life and his further progress as founded upon and guided by Righteousness. The whole of Nature, it is said, is unfolding on the Pattern of Righteousness:—

"There is but one Path—the Path of Asha—all others are false." "Through the best and the highest Asha, may we get a vision of

Thee the Supreme Spirit, the Most High; may we draw near unto Thee; may we attain perfect union with Thee."

Asha is the Divine Will, manifesting as the changeless, eternal Law of Life. It contains the Divine Pattern of the unfoldment of Nature. In several places Righteousness is referred to as the Godhead. Ahura Mazda is described as "He who is the highest in Asha" who is "of one accord with Asha"; it is the Ray of the Supreme; as Gandhiji once said, "The Law and the Law-giver are one." On earth Fire is the symbol of Asha.

Knowledge is necessary to tread the Path of Righteousness. To realize Asha requires the inner Wisdom. The most

sacred verse of Zoroastrianism—the Ahuna Vairya—asserts that the fully Illuminated One, He who possesses the highest Holiness and the Purest Power, has developed the Wisdom of Asha.

"Righteousness is the greatest wealth; it is Eternal Light (or Bliss); Eternal Light is for him who is righteous for the sake of the most supreme Righteousness."

Ordinarily material prosperity and progress are thought to be the highest good. Not so from the point of view of the soul. He whose thoughts are pure, whose words are true, whose acts are virtuous, is the custodian of the real, permanent wealth which is Righteousness. He is the best among men; he alone is truly happy. He is the true follower of the Religion of Zarathushtra—not he who is born of Parsi parents; or even he who performs all the outer rites and ceremonies which have been associated with the Zoroastrianism of today. It, like all other creeds, has lost its pristine purity and has become degraded.

Asha being the Law of Growth, everything in the universe is under its influence. We find a great deal in Zoroastrian texts about the purification of the Elements—Earth, Water, Air, Fire. As a self-conscious Thinker man has a grave responsibility towards living Nature. His own constitution is composed of these elements. But to elevate them he has first to purify his own being. Man should establish order and purity in his inner nature. With strict discipline, firm resolve and sustained effort he should subjugate his passions, eradicate evil thoughts and conquer the animal in him.

needs the aid of the Divine Good Mind, Vohu Mano, and of Armaiti the Goddess of Faith, who is the mother of Devotion. Wisdom Purifies and enlightens the mind; Devotion energizes and sanctifies the heart. They create out of mortal man the immortal Ashvan, the Righteous One.

JAMSHID-I-NAURUZ

The festival of the Spring Equinox has been universally celebrated and old historical records refer to it. Perhaps the most ancient, going back to periods of myth and legend, is the celebration of the festival in ancient Iran.

The festival, even today well known as Jamshid-i-Nauruz, is traditionally related to Shah Jamshid, the Divine King who taught humanity its arts and sciences.

"Mine is the Grace," he said, "I am both King
And archimage, I will restrain ill-doers
And make for souls a path toward the light."

His wonderful achievements are narrated in the Shahnama of Firdausi and the myth of the Avesta Vendidad also tells his tale. During his reign of seven hundred years he laid the foundations of human progress, continuing the work of his predecessors, Gaiumart, Siyamak and Hushang.

Hushang's wisdom imparted to the race lines of knowledge, and among these how to make and use fire—always considered a major achievement in human evolution.

That night he made a mighty blaze,
he stood Around it with his men and held the feast
Called Sada.

This celebration by Hushang is the primeval foundation on which Jamshid reared the festival of Nauruz. After his wonderous exploits

The world assembled round his throne in wonder
At his resplendent fortune, while on him
The people scattered jewels, and bestowed
Upon the day the name of New Year's Day.

And throughout long ages people have been reminded about the importance of the feast and festival of Nauruz.

Heed the presages—
The feast of Sada and the fanes of fire
With glorious Nauruz.

Flocked to the fire fanes, to the halls where
New Year's Day and Sada feast were kept.

The fire Fanes, the Sada Feast and Jamshid-i-Nauruz form a triad, and it is not without its significance. The Birth of Fire in the reign of Hushang and the establishment of the Sada Feast on that occasion were made to form part of the celebration of the New Year's Day— the Day of the Spring Equinox.

"Perpetual Spring is the Persian's notion of a perfect climate," it is said. And the Day of the Spring Equinox has remained sacred with the learned and favourite with the masses. It offered spiritual uplift to the former and joyous entertainment to the latter.

The poet and the mystic feel, while the philosopher and the Occultist know, that all physical-plane phenomena are reflections projected from psychic and spiritual worlds. Seasons are no exception, and the Spring season on earth connected with sowing and germination is an outward and visible sign of an inward psycho-spiritual motion: the flowering on the human plant of virtues— beautiful, colourful, fragrant—is natural to the Spring season.

Sri Krishna names the season of Spring as one of his divine excellences. The Christians celebrate the paschal season which begins with the month of May, "the month when nature decks herself with fruits and flowers, the harbinger of a bright harvest." And so the devout followers are told: "Let us, too, begin for a golden harvest. In this month the dead come up out of the earth, figuring the resurrection; so, when we are kneeling before the altar of the holy and immaculate Mary, let us remember that there should come forth from us the bud of promise, the flower of hope, and the imperishable fruit of sanctity."

"This is precisely the substratum of the Pagan thought, which, among other meanings, emblematized... the resurrection of all nature in spring, the germination of seeds that had been dead and sleeping during winter."

The Birth of Fire symbolizes the Promethean gift of self-consciousness to man by the Agnishwatta Pitris of the Hindu tradition. It represents the power of right resolve which the birth of self-consciousness implies; moral choice and responsibility, aspects of the free will in man, enable him to make the greatest of right resolves—to seek the Wisdom of the Spirit and of the Sages. This right resolve is the conception before the second birth is made at the time of the Winter Solstice and it has to be looked after and nourished.

This soul nourishment is what the Sada Feast, established by Hushang and accepted by Jamshid, represents. As at the festival of Christmas, mundane merry-making—the killing of turkeys, the making of puddings, etc.

—takes place at Jamshid-i-Nauruz; there is the drinking of faluda and the consuming of kulfi, etc. The nourishment of knowledge which sweetens the personal nature, the drink of love which creates the feeling of universal brotherliness, are overlooked today, but the ancient festival points to the truth.

On the day of the Spring Equinox, day and night are of equal duration; heat and cold are balanced and both are enjoyable and helpful.

The spiritual root of the seasons and its psychic projection are full of harmony and rhythm in Nature, and so would be the seasons on the physical plane; but man with his weak and misdirected free will, his lack of true knowledge, his attachment to sense life, his falling prey to world deceptions, exploits and robs Nature and she, ever compassionate, tries to restore the disturbed harmony through earthquakes and floods and snowstorms and hurricanes. Divine wisdom teaches that such cataclysms and catastrophes are man-made; modern knowledge laughs at this, but Gandhiji's intuition sensed this truth—"I want you to be superstitious enough with me to believe that the earthquake is a Divine chastisement for the great sin we have committed and are still committing."

The phenomenon of the Resurrection of the mortal into Immortality is a grand verity which the season of Spring signifies. The duty of man to his own Higher Self and to the Most High is to weed out the blemishes of his animal nature, to tend the growth and improvement of his human virtues, to be faithful to his spiritual pedigree and become the Immortal, wearing the Celestial Robe of Light and Glory. He may not be able to attain to it in this incarnation, but if he remembers that

Eternal Spring represents a verity he will endeavour to make himself worthy of inheriting it in the near future.

THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL

With December comes round the festival of Christmas, which the Christians celebrate as the Birthday of their Saviour. Many are not aware that Christmas is of Pagan origin and that the very early Christians did not celebrate this festival. As a festival, Christmas was derived from the Pagan world and began to be observed several centuries after the supposed birth of Jesus. Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chronicles the birth of Christmas thus (II. p. 383):—

"The Roman Christians, ignorant of the real date of the Christ's birth, fixed the solemn festival on the 25th of December, the Brumalia, or Winter Solstice, when the Pagans annually celebrated the birth of Sol."

It was the Birth of the Sun-God which the Pagans celebrated, and from them the newer Christian devotees borrowed it to celebrate the birth of their Saviour. Gibbon is supported by a high ecclesiastical authority. St. Chrysostom, who lived about 390 A.D., has stated:—

"On this day, also, the birth of Christ was lately fixed at Rome, in order that whilst the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their holy rites undisturbed."

What were those "profane" ceremonies? The Birth of the Sun-God—the Egyptian Horus, the Babylonian Adonis, the Mexican Quetzalcoutl, the Aztec Huitzilopochtli, and many others. All were Sun-Gods born at the Winter Solstice and born of Virgin Mothers. The Christians in performing "their holy rites" borrowed from the Pagans

and the Heathens. Even today Christmas festivities clearly point to some spiritual verities of the ancients; and among them all the most valuable to modern civilization is the truth about the Inner Birth of the Spirit of the Sun-God— the Divine Christos—in the heart of every pious and devout man and woman. He is a Christian who carries Christ within him, not he who only carries his body to a church.

The mission of Jesus (the real date of whose birth is not known) was the same as that of Buddha before him. Jesus said to His hearers, "Ye are the light of the world" (St. Matthew, V. 14), repeating an instruction of His Illustrious Predecessor: "Be ye lamps, O Bhikkhus." St. John's Gospel refers to "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" and which is the Light of Christos. This is very reminiscent of the Gita's Light of Wisdom (XIII-17)—"In the hearts of all it ever presideth." The old Psalmist says, "Ye are gods and all of you are children of the most High" (Psalm 82-6). And Paul advises the Corinthians to "glorify God in your body, and in your spirit."

Our civilization takes little notice of the God which man is in potentia. His bodily powers, on which even his mental perceptions are made to lean, are falsely and exaggeratedly valued; and sense-living is glorified. Our morality is tarnished by this point of view. Many do not trace the prevailing sense of irresponsibility among people to this wrong teaching of scientific and materialistic psycho-philosophy. The talk of rights and the neglect of duties; the spirit of competition evolving as the greed for money, power and possessions; the crass selfishness and egotism and other ills which flourish today; and the most

Only a few recognize, even intellectually, the possibility of Second-Birth. And yet everyone admires the spirit of sacrifice, the ideal of simple living and noble thinking and generosity of body and mind. Christmas is the festival of Second-Birth. If not in reality and experience, at least as an idea it should be recognized. That man can be born again while the body is alive in the mundane world should be thought of.

Christmas is observed as a holiday even in India, and it is right that it should be, but its observance should not be merely merry-making, though Joy—Ananda is of the essence of Second-Birth. The clue to that deeper and real Bliss is primarily in the knowing, to begin with theoretically, that man carries Divinity in the recesses of his heart. Each is a Christ, a Buddha, a Krishna. That Divinity is "nearer unto man than his own jugular vein," says the Koran. But:—

"Alas, alas, that all men should possess Alaya, be one with the Great Soul, and that possessing it, Alaya should so little avail them! Alas, that so few men should profit by the gift, the priceless boon of learning truth, the right perception of existing things, the knowledge of the non-existent!"

Right perception of all things means evaluating them correctly; not as the world does, seeing value in shades and shadows, fancying reality where it does not exist.

"To live and reap experience, the mind needs breadth and depth and points to draw it towards the Diamond Soul."

THE FESTIVAL OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE

"Vishwakarma, son of Bhuvana, first of all offered up all worlds in a Serva Medha (general sacrifice of all) and ended by sacrificing himself."

The closing month of the year. The festival of the Winter Solstice. The Sun begins to move northwards. The international world's calendar proclaims that 1951 will die and that the new year will be born.

The world is becoming one. Along many lines the pattern of Unity is being drawn. It is but meet, therefore, that it begins to learn about the real origin of related creedal festivals, like the Christmas of the Christians and Makara-Sankranti of the Hindus. They are creedal expressions, in which truth and falsehood mingle, of the Festival of Nature. From a contemplation of Nature the human mind proceeds to the contemplation of Nature's God; so also comparative study of different creedal festivals, prosecuted with an open mind, will enable us all to arrive at the universal truth underlying them. The Festival of the Winter Solstice is, in its turn, but a material expression of psychical truths. Seasons have their psychic natures and their souls. The poets' intuition has felt that truth; saints and sages have used it for their own beneficent purposes. Our humanity, growing into a cosmopolitan unit, will need to sustain its own psychic and spiritual nature by an appreciation of what is Good and True behind the beauty of the Seasons.

Whence the burgeoning beauty of Spring? Why the luscious largesse of Summer? What say the tints of Autumn? Whither wends hoary Winter, if not to the

paradise of Spring? The Gods and Devas function as the Myths proclaim; the Myths are truer than is man-made history.

The One World will need the unifying power of one true religion in which different creeds will find each its accommodating niche. Religion, which should be a truly binding force for the whole of the human race, should be ensouled by Wisdom. The rhythm of individual life depends on the person's Wisdom leading him to be sincere and true to the highest he perceives within himself. A man enriches his life in following the truth he knows, not in blindly believing that which he is told by priest or politician.

The enrichment of humanity in the coming years will depend fundamentally on its moral stamina to live and labour by the Law of Love. Moral stamina needs intellectual nourishment—universal Wisdom, which will enable each community and each nation to rise above the separative forces of creedalism in religion and of dogmatism about the type of political structure for a new social order.

In the season of the Winter Solstice the Law of Sacrifice takes on a deeper significance for the reflecting mind: Crucifixion is the Christian version of the ancient myth of Vishwakarma. He is the Architect of the Universe and is called Deva-Vardhika, "the builder of the Gods." Man, or Humanity, like that Ancient Carpenter Takshaka, has to sacrifice himself to himself to resurrect the many lives into the One Life—Omnificence. Duty, Dharma, is the Law of human life through which man feels his own divinity; but it is through the higher Law of Sacrifice, Yagna, that he realizes his brotherhood with humanity and his oneness with all Nature.

To attain such Nobility man has to follow the injunction to "become as the ripe mango fruit: as soft and sweet as its bright golden pulp for others' woes, as hard as that fruit's stone for thine own throes and sorrows."

ECCE HOMO

At the end of this month Christendom will celebrate the Nativity of its Master. It is not the day of the birth of Jesus. It is the day selected some centuries after his crucifixion. It was selected because it was a well known festival of the entire world of the wise pagans. In course of years the day has been solemnized and as the calendar now in greatest use in the secular world is the Christian one, the festival of Christmas has assumed some significance with non-Christian peoples also.

In the ancient world, this festival of the Winter Solstice pointed, among other things, to the power of renovation of Living Nature. It is appropriate that mystically inclined people try to use the subtle and mostly unknown but real influence of the psychic aspect of this Season. The period during which the Sun begins to move northwards was recognized as beneficent for making the spiritual resolution—to be born again. In the language of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (Chapter IV), we all must attempt to "put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt" (22) to "be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (23) and to "put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." (24)

The Birth of the New Man is spoken of by Paul in explaining the teaching of Jesus to Nicodemus—the need "to be born again." The carnal man should be starved—not an easy task to be accomplished merely by a resolve however solemn. The resolve is only the beginning, the attainment is far away. Between the resolve and the attainment lies hard work to—"be renewed in

the spirit of your mind." This is an excellent phrase with a philosophical background and a practical intent. We must cease to concern ourselves with and to converse about the old man, "corrupt according to the deceitful lusts," and purify and elevate the mind, looking at the spirit of the mind. The mind of the carnal man is deceitful and lusty—hypocritical and concupiscent. When the spirit of the mind is invoked, the very first result is the recognition that the New Man is created in the Divine Image, full of "righteousness and true holiness." (24)

The man who resolves to recreate himself must learn to recognize the truly beneficent power hidden within his mind. That power is of the Supreme Spirit, of which every human being is an aspect. Once that is recognized, the Divinity within each, which each one is, begins to shape the mind. The mind must be trained to co-operate with it. Therefore the initial step is to destroy the devil who has been allowed to occupy a place in the mind. (27) St. Paul names the aspects of that devil in us—Lie, Wrath, Theft, Corrupt Communication, Bitterness, Clamour, Malice, These will not go only because we say to the author of their being—"Get thee behind me." The subtle power of temptation assails us only when we aspire to be as one newly born. When the good resolve is taken then the forces of the earth jeer, "Look at this fellow, he has got religion." But with the resolve, the aspirant's New Life begins and he is tempted. He has before him the model in Those who have completely overcome temptations. Christ overcame Satan, Buddha Mara, Zoroaster Ahriman. They have pointed the Way, by precept and by example. Paul says to the Ephesians, "Grieve not the holy Spirit

of God" (30) but "be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another," (32). This endeavour will, in the progress of time, bring forth the New Man. The animal cannot become Divine; it has to become human; the human can become Divine. The wicked cannot become spiritual; they have to become good; the good can become spiritual. The selfish cannot become selfless; they have to become unselfish; the unselfish can become selfless. But none can become good without knowledge. All people, even the wicked, believe in good; but it is blind belief. Knowledge reveals what is good and why. It creates in us faith in the Good and real Faith is enlightened. But what kind of knowledge? There is knowledge terrestrial and demoniacal. Satan is learned and has a lore of his own for his votaries. Celestial Wisdom, the true and eternal Gnosis, is different—of which Paul says, "none of the princes of the world knew" anything (I Corinth, ii, 8), nor do the archons of modern science. Pontius Pilate, the man of worldly knowledge, saw "the crown of thorns" and jestingly said of Jesus, "Look at this man." The devotee of Celestial Wisdom, the Kingly Science, sees in the Crown of Thorns the Power to suffer and to sacrifice; sees in Jesus not the King of the Jews to be scoffed at but the Word become Flesh, and so exclaims—"Behold the Man."

The Good Resolve of Christmas or Makara Sankranti or the Winter Solstice should enable us to apprehend the nature of the Great Sacrifice of the Noble Enlightened Ones. To perceive it means a step forward on the Path of Good, towards the Spiritual. Let us take it.

"YE ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH"

The ideal which every Sage-Teacher has held before the mental eye of his disciples, as a model for their copying, is high. To be noble not only in aspiration but also in achievement. To be strenuous in the sustained service of all souls. To immolate the self of matter on the altar of the Supreme Spirit. To give light to the ignorant; to nourish the starving; to love the poverty-stricken. To help the mind of man even more than to nourish his body; to awaken the intuition of the heart even more than to educate the mind. To see the One Self in every form of life and to act, as far as in one lies, as that One Self.

To the common man these instructions should make a particular appeal. Today a very large number of men and women are aspiring to work at self-improvement, to gain Soul-light, to feel and to express peace, calm and inner strength.

In exhorting their disciples, different teachers have used different images. Concrete images convey greater instruction and deeper inspiration than do abstract formulae. Thus, the Enlightened Gautama used many images to appeal to his Bhikkhus; among them, the image of the Lamp. "Be ye lamps unto yourselves, O Bhikkhus; work out your salvation with diligence!" The great Shankara may also be cited and the Gita is full of precious images used by Krishna, the Master of Yoga. Even casual reading stirs the mind and in not a few hearts one or another image awakens the slumbering Soul-energy. The stirring of the mind, however, is rarely sustained and the heart energy aroused

subsides, often and often, into a vague feeling of pining "for what is not." It is necessary for the mundane mind to revert to the images of abstractions which stir and energize the consciousness.

Let us, as an example, consider four images which the Christian Master used in his grand Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew (V: 13-16) we find:—

"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

"Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candle-stick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

Jesus describes his disciples as "the salt of the earth." To life, drab and sordid, they, by receiving the knowledge which he imparted, gave savour—taste, appreciation, zest. Also, salt is preservative and they preserved their Master's wisdom. Again, in ancient thought salt and incense went together—salt which preserved and immortalized the Soul's wisdom and the incense of the teachings which wafted fragrance for the benefit of men and Gods. "Bread and salt" is a common phrase and represents a universal symbol; offerings were made of them on sacred occasions. So, when Jesus describes his disciples as "salt," he wants them to give real savour to life by preserving within themselves the

knowledge and offering it in faith and generosity. In each man the real preserver is the Soul and to express its savour is to speak as the Soul. In his Epistle to the Colossians Paul wrote:—

"Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man." (IV : 6)

"Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?

"It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

Can a disciple lose his "savour"? Yes, he can, by faithlessness to his instructions and to his discipline. He cannot be absorbed by the masses of good men, and even for a "dunghill" he may become unfit. In speaking in parables Jesus knew that his followers could comprehend the real import of his statements and so he reminds them to give their heart attention to this parable: "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."

The limits of allotted space have been reached. The other images remain to be dealt with on another occasion. *

THE FESTIVAL OF CHRISTMAS

At the end of this month Christendom will once again celebrate its chief festival. The spirit of jollity will animate many homes. Here in India, non-Christians will as usual participate in the festivities in their own way. But how many who call themselves Christians know the true significance of this festival? Understanding and expounding the wisdom thereof, they would win many "heathen" but ardent hearts to observe in a true fashion the Rite of Christmas. But their churches do not teach them about their own true Saviour; because such instruction would necessitate a mystical interpretation of the term Christ. Real knowledge, always universal and to be used by all men, is not made available by sectarian popes and padres. The meaning of Christ-Birth, of Crucifixion, of Resurrection, their mythological and mystical significance, is not taught by the churches, ever since they rejected the Gnosis and substituted theological dogmas. With the fall of pure Christianity and the rise of churchianity exclusive claims have been made about the Prophet and the Book. How truly applicable to the learned priests are the words of the Gospel:—

"Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the Key of Knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."

It would not suit the churches to promulgate that Christ, the true esoteric Saviour, was no man. Christ represents the Divine Presence latent in the heart of every man. It needs to be awakened by self-knowledge, which enables a mortal to feel the power of the glorified

spirit of Truth. No man, no institution, can monopolize it. It cannot be confined to any creed or sect. This glorious experience of awakening is not to be sought either in the wilderness or in the sanctuary of any church, synagogue or temple, not by ascending to a mountain top or walking to a monastery, but by looking within one's own consciousness, where the Light of Calmness and Compassion is abiding.

It would be a distinct advantage to the Cause of Truth, of the Wisdom of all Prophets, if the story of the origin and development of the Christian festival were to be known by all. The Church Fathers of the fourth century proclaimed the 25th of December as the day for celebrating this festival. It is not the birthday of Jesus Christ, but the very ancient Festival of the Winter Solstice, observed by the entire pagan world. The psychical and spiritual aspects of the seasons, and therefore of the Winter Solstice, were known to the Sages of every civilization. The festival was meant to bring to the mind of the masses the fact that the world of the Psyche and of the Nous affected the Psyche and the Nous in man. The early Church Fathers rightly took advantage of the ancient knowledge, but their successors wrongly interpreted it and made it sectarian.

Esoterically the Sun stands for the Christos. One grand function of this Divine Power is to hold forth the Light of Hope, centred in its manifestation in the mortal world as the Great Sacrifice. Therefore in the Jewish-Christian tradition It represents the Messiah. That Macrocosmic truth has a Microcosmic, or human, psychological and mystical aspect. The realization of the Divine Presence and seeking Its aid in the daily routine of life must begin one day for every man: it is his real

Winter Solstice. Cosmically, in the evolutionary process, in accordance with cyclic law, Divinity manifests as Divine Men. We know them as Avataras or Divine Incarnations. When a man manifests his innate Divinity, having found it in his "inner man" as Paul taught, then verily has he become spiritually awakened, and is nearing his Second Birth.

Many are the living Dead in our civilization. Steeped in delusion born of ignorance, men pass from death to death. They live for the gratification of their lusts and appetites; and their minds are covered over with false knowledge, with muck and filth. Mind-cleansing brings about the death of sin and sinful tendencies. The final death of the lower man brings to birth the Higher Man. This is the individual's Second Birth, leading to Adeptship.

Let us, this coming Christmas, resolve to so live our life that we experience a series of births, awake to new realities. Let us purify our hearts, and the Wisdom of the Christos will radiate its Light.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

As we enter the month in which Jesus Christ is supposed to have been born, much will be spoken of his life and message from church pulpits. Christian homes will put on a festive appearance and their inmates glorify Jesus as their Redeemer. But how many among the orthodox will seek greater acquaintance with the Mind and Soul of Christ—an acquaintance which is open to anyone who will free his consciousness from prejudice and seek for true Knowledge? Christendom has always paid a superstitious reverence to the letter of the Law and has not made a sustained attempt to interpret the spirit of the Law and the Prophets Jesus said he came to fulfil. It has accepted Christ as guide and leader, but has ignored his ideas. Christendom has shown great devotion to his person; rare have been the attempts to know his Soul.

How spiritually unenlightened are the church-going followers of Christ can be seen, for instance, from their inability to grasp what their Master meant by the "Kingdom of God" or the "Kingdom of Heaven"— "they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."

Christ wrapped up his teachings in parables. If these parables are to yield up their inner meaning they must be interpreted by the light of the real teaching of Christ as distinct from the theological or social interpretations. The current belief of his day was that on some future day the reign of Satan on earth would come to an end, and the Messiah, a divinely commissioned ruler of superhuman wisdom and power, would establish the

This dream of an outward, visible, temporal and supernatural kingdom is fundamentally antithetical to what Christ meant by the Kingdom of God. Again and again we see him trying to dematerialize and spiritualize men's thinking, to take the Kingdom out of time and out of space, to make men realize that it was "not of this world," that it was inward and spiritual, that it was among them and within them. The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Soul-life, of the realized presence of God in the Soul of man, felt in the regenerate heart of man. He did not proclaim the advent of the Kingdom on some day in the future (it "cometh not with observation") but tried to bring men to the realization that it is internally present in their very midst. God is immanent in Nature and in man, and the least and the lowliest of us carries within himself the ray of the Divine. Deity is the All-Father, "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." It follows that all men are brothers and that the Kingdom of God is open to all. Within the illimitable limits of the inward Kingdom there is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female," for God "is all, and in all." To unfold and realize the divine potencies of one's nature, to become the God that one really is (though now in the germ), to earn the right to say, "I and my Father are one"— this is to inherit the Kingdom of God and this is the whole duty of man.

What kind of life should man lead if he is to realize Christ's conception of the Kingdom? He should turn within to his true Self, the Light Divine. What should

be his conception of duty? To grow towards spiritual perfection, to die to the lower self and to radiate the Light of his true Self. Thus he finds God. Let us resolve this coming Christmas, the season of Birth and of Awakening, to tread the Narrow Way that leadeth to Life Eternal.

"Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.

"Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." (I Corinthians, VI: 9-10)

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." (Matthew, VII:21)

The Kingdom of Heaven is not offered as a gift; it has to be taken by violence. It lies open before us, but to enter it we have to fight against and subjugate the tempting passions and abandon our own personal and selfish will. Only by following the behests of the Will Divine can we find the Peace and Joy which all seek. But, though the Soul is nearer to us than our hands and feet, it seems to be far, far away. Mortals' will is ruled by selfishnesses, many and varied, and it creates the distance between man and his Divinity. But there are some words of the emancipated John Donne which bring hope:—

"Through the ragged apparell of the afflictions of this life; through the scarres, wounds, and palenesse, and morphews of sin, and corruption, we can look upon the soul it self, and there see that incorruptible beauty "

"THUS HAVE I HEARD"—

"The Initial Existence in the first twilight of the Maha-Manvantara is a CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL QUALITY.

"It is Substance to OUR spiritual sight. It cannot be called so by men in their WAKING STATE; therefore they have named it in their ignorance 'God-Spirit.'

"In our Solar world, the One Existence is Heaven and the Earth, the Root and the flower, the Action and the Thought. It is in the Sun, and is as present in the glowworm. Not an atom can escape it. Therefore, the ancient Sages have wisely called it the manifested God in Nature."

"Who, Where, What is God?" "What is a secular State?" "What is Religion in the life of a citizen?"—these are questions which many an Indian must have asked himself or his neighbour. For there has been discussion in the Constituent Assembly at New Delhi about permitting the highest officer of the State, if he desires to do so, to invoke the blessing of God in assuming office in our secular State.

Freedom of religious worship is already recognised by the Constitution and so the protection of places of worship is guaranteed. This is as it should be. But what God is to be invoked? Certainly not the God of the Christian or of the Jew, of the Hindu or the Muslim or the Parsi.

A secular State cannot recognise tribal gods or racial deities, but, as Egypt inspired by Akhnaton recognised the One and Indivisible Spirit which, like the sun, sheds its countless rays dwelling in countless minds of men and women, our secular State should recognise as God That which is common to all men who intuitively hold the belief that Deity is potent in every form of matter which is Life.

All speak of the Omnipresence of God but many picture God as a gigantic person ruling earth and its humanity from a distant heaven. This false doctrine is the womb of atheism. Between idiotic anthropomorphism and speculative atheism there must be a philosophical mean and a reconciliation. The secular State of India can never be atheistic any more than it can be creedal and sectarian. The genius of the ancient land is persistently active; the ancient culture is still vital and viable; therefore here this philosophical mean is not difficult to get at. The Boundless and the Infinite can never be limited and conditioned to one manifestation individualised in one man—Krishna, Buddha, Christ or any other—or even in one nation or one race—Aryan or Semitic or Teutonic.

A dozen texts can be cited from the Hindu Shastras, the Zoroastrian Fragments, the Semitic and the Christian Scriptures, to show that Deity is the Great Living Presence which is potent at every point of space and moves from within outwards by infallible Law which is Wisdom Itself.

Educate the citizen to seek the Light of the Soul, to look to the heights of the heart. This is of primary importance if our secular State is to succeed in establishing a real Democracy. The voice of the people will become the Voice of God only when people feel that the Light of Spirit is active in the Kingdom of India, because It is activating themselves. The true citizen must feel himself to be the vehicle of the Light of Spirit which finds expression in growth—not only in the Virtue of Justice but also in the Wisdom of Mercy.

cycle is not conducive to this inward recognition. Everywhere the striking regret expressed in the Mahayana text is echoed:—

"Alas, alas, that all men should possess Alaya, be one with the Great Soul, and that possessing it, Alaya should so little avail them!"

If, therefore, the highest officer of the secular State is to take the Name of Deity, the common citizen must be educated and become intelligent so that he may comprehend the true nature and power of the Divine Presence.

"Man ought to be ever striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best of his ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart—invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through 'the still small voice' of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship before it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls; making their spirit the sole mediator between them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence."

"Behold how like the moon, reflected in the tranquil waves, Alaya is reflected by the small and by the great, is mirrored in the tiniest atoms, yet fails to reach the heart of all. Alas, that so few men should profit by the gift, the priceless boon of learning truth, the right perception of existing things, the knowledge of the nonexistent."

"A COCK TO AESCULAPIUS"

The Cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the God of day; and at his warning
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine

—SHAKESPEARE

He [Socrates] was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words)—he said: Crito, I owe a cock to Æsculapius; will you remember to pay the debt? —Phaedo

The ancient Sages were highly scientific in creating their symbols and emblems, their tales and talismans. The Hierophants were not only mystics who felt the unity and moral power behind the manifested universe, relying on intimations which, however intuitive, were vague all the same. The experiences of most mystics consisted in feelings, lofty and stirring. They touched heights of the heart and in themselves were content in the hope that others in due course would have similar experiences. Not so the Sages who also felt but who sought knowledge to understand what they felt and, not content with the experience of bliss, secured full mastery over the Powers of Nature as of Self. The Sages saw and understood the mighty magic of Prakriti, and controlled it through the power of Purusha, the Spirit.

Such a Sage is able to rise to the Highest Place; controlling both Spirit and Matter he becomes Uttam Purusha, the Superior Man, the Mahatma very difficult to find. The Sage not only feels the Presence of the Macrocosm, within and beyond himself, as the mystic

does. He knows the Great Universe, how it comes into being, what laws govern it, how evolution spirals onward. He gains the victory over death and so becomes Master of Life, surviving every change, every transmutation, every destruction. He is the Regenerated, Puissant One in whom Compassion Absolute throbs, keeping time and rhythm with the heart-beats of Wisdom.

Therefore, Sages who see the sorrowful plight of humankind try to save man from the death of the Soul which follows mental blindness and moral decay. The Light of Wisdom-Compassion which the Sage-Seer embodies is constantly, as well as cyclically, used by him to help human souls drowning in the ocean of Samsara. One way in which such helpful knowledge is imparted is through symbols, allegories which can awaken the human mind.

Ancient Symbols are profound. Such true symbols are not arbitrarily created. They are true, living messengers in the manifested universe. The Sage has deciphered and points to them as visible signs of hidden eternal verities. The Powers of Krishna, enumerated by himself in the Gita are an example. In Iranian Mythology as in those of Greece and Scandinavia and in others, many striking symbols are to be found. Thus the Egg is a symbol; the Tree is another. There are flowers and birds and beasts and reptiles which are concrete messengers of grand truths.

Symbols and allegories were not invented by sages; they were natural concrete objects which carried hidden truths, through the verities they represented. Between the Seer's penetrating gaze and the poet's or the philosopher's flights of fancy there is a difference. Between true symbols, emblems and allegories which form part of

living Nature of Pan-Sophia and man-made images, similes and comparisons a distinction must be made. The former prove the Law of Correspondence and Analogy actually at work in living Nature. Man-made images often distort the operation of that Law, confusing human perception.

Today we are pointing to one such true symbol from the Zoroastrian Vendidad, which mentions the Holy Cock Paro-darsh.— "He who fore-shows the coming dawn."

The cock is known for his eerie crowing and poets and dramatists have sensed its weird significance. But not all have evaluated truly the nature and character of the bird which the Greeks named Alectroun because it is the most magnetic and sensitive of the feathered tribe. The cock was sacred to Æsculapius, the Soter, the Saviour, who had the power to raise the dead to life. The cock was always connected in symbology with the Sun, Death and Resurrection. The cock crows in time producing one rhythm; out of time and then it is out of tune. Its crowing is held to be a sign of death unless the bird crows in the small hours of the morning—herald of the dawn, the resurrection of night into a new day.

In this sense some verses in the Vendidad, are worth reflecting upon. In the 18th chapter, Ahura Mazda declares that the cock Paro-darsh is the vehicle of the shining Sarosh who embodies the Holy World. In the small hours of the morning that cock absorbs the peculiar dauntless energy of the Ushah period and gives out his cry. This period is also that of Usha, the Maiden who is at work preparing to welcome the Sun. What does the cock cry?—"O men, awake, praise the Purity of the True and thus destroy the powers of

darkness! If you do not, the demon of idleness and inertia, Bushyasta of the very long arms, will crush you." This demon tries to throw over the waking men his darkening net of lazy lolling, whispering "Sleep, O poor man; this is no time to do work." But the cock crows again: "O men, overlong sleep is not suitable for you!"

This which is written in reference to the body is an allegory of the Soul. The mind waking to the pearly light of a New Day, while catching a glimpse of the Rosy Dawn, is tempted to procrastinate, and too often returns to his material, sensuous environment wherein the Demon of real idleness rules. The devil of the sensuous social order is busy; keeping men and women tied to their sense-life he is the destroyer and harasser of Soul Life. Verily that demon has long, long arms and they catch to his embrace thousands of men, many of whom have glimpsed the Light of the True, and who, therefore, should be beyond his reach.

There is the Christian Gospel story of Peter and the cock crowing thrice. Is not this its message?—That the Master gave the opportunity to Peter to resurrect himself—to die so that he might live—an opportunity which Peter failed to use? Who can say that the failure of the Roman Church to be true to the pure teachings of the Master was not due to this failure of Peter, who denied his Lord to save his own skin?

We may well take these lines in Hamlet about the Birth of the Christ-Spirit as an intuition which the great dramatist expressed:—

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long.

The cock has the power to resurrect. His cry is the symbol of the resurrecting power of the benign Spirit, which lights the mind and works for the series of progressive awakenings. Those who refuse to receive its benign influence go from death to death. Those who bow to its influence pass from life to life. Does not everyone aspiring to resurrection owe, like Socrates, a cock to Æsculapius?

ON A "MOST UNUSUAL BOOK"

Thus writes Mikhail Naimy, the Syrian mystic, friend and biographer of the famous Kahlil Gibran. His book, The Book of Mirdad: A Lighthouse and a Haven, was published in 1948; we had heard about it and now are so fortunate as to possess our own copy— thanks to the author, our esteemed friend. It is printed in Lebanon by the Sadar-Rihani Printing Company of Beirut. The Publisher's Foreword tells the story of this "most unusual book," for such it certainly is. It contains instruction on a variety of subjects. The sayings and the aphorisms are striking and many of them will be treasured by every mystic and every student-practitioner of the spiritual way. Age-old but forgotten truths are here presented in attractive form. Their simplicity is remarkable; yet they carry profound and sublime ideas. As is our wont, we will let the reader judge by quoting a few of the lofty sayings.

What will be the reaction of social butterflies, braggarts and egotists to this saying?

"One of the ancient rules for companions was to avoid, so much as possible, the use of the word I in their speech."

"To pierce the veils you need an eye other than that shaded with lash, lid and brow.

"To break the seals you need a lip other than the familiar piece of flesh below your nose."

"When you observe the clouds riding the South Wind northward, you say they bring rain. Why are you not as wise in measuring the drift of human clouds? Can you see how fast have men become entangled in their nets?"

In this age who does not wish for the painless life of freedom! But how many will accept this prescription to secure peace?

"So think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire upon the sky for all and everything to see. For so, in truth, it is.

"So speak as if the world entire were but a single ear intent on hearing what you say. And so, in truth, it is.

"So do as if your every deed were to recoil upon your heads. And so, in truth, it does.

To practise these rules in life one should be a true altruist after the pattern of these verses:—

"I say to you, your very flesh and bone are not the bone and flesh of you alone. Innumerable are the hands that dip with you in the same fleshpots of earth and sky whence come your bone and flesh and whither they return.

"Nor is the light in your eyes the light of you alone. It is as well the light of all that share the sun with you.

"Nor is the house the house of you alone. It is as well the dwelling of your guest, and of the fly, the mouse, the cat and all the creatures that share the house with you.

"Beware, therefore, of fences. You but fence in deception and fence out the Truth. And when you turn about to see yourselves within the fence, you find you are face to face with death which is deception by another name."

And the All-Self, the whole, should be the object of our love"— "And whom, or what, is one to love? Is one to choose a certain leaf

upon the Tree of Life and pour upon it all one's heart? What of the branch that bears the leaf? What of the stem that holds the branch? What of the bark that shields the stem? What of the roots that feed the bark, the stem, the branches and the leaves? What of the soil embosoming the roots? What of the sun, and sea, and air that fertilize the soil?"

"When you are able to equip your blood with one Master-Desire that silences and overshadows all desires; and trust one Master-Thought with the discipline; and charge one Master-Will with drilling and commanding then certain you may be of that desire's fulfillment."

"This silence I command unto you and not a mere respite for your speech-worn tongues.

"Whoever cannot find a temple in his heart, the same can never find his heart in any temple."

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF IDEAS

The demand for a religious philosophy which would satisfy the urge of the human heart for some mystical experience of inner contentment has been gathering momentum. In several places and in different ways this demand has found expression. But the man who is its most earnest and persistent public exponent at the present hour is Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, practical statesman and idealistic philosopher. His silent but effective work at Oxford; the point of view which his books present; his fine attempts, through his translations of Sanskrit and Pali texts, to educate the Western world in Indian mystical thought; his advice and admonitions to his own countrymen to eschew the outer trappings of ritualism and blind belief and to make their faith enlightened;—these are beneficent influences.

Appropriately he brought this out at the Philosophical Congress held in Christmas week at Mysore, pleading for "a generous view of the ideas of different philosophies." He asserted that

"the function of philosophy was a metaphysical demonstration to elucidate, define and reconcile propositions and the human problem. The supreme reality made no distinction between man and man, to whichever class of religion he might belong. They should have a broad vision and take into account the increasing knowledge and also the different religious traditions; it was thus the duty of the philosophers to make a samanvaya of these."

The comparative study of religions begun by the Western Orientalists in the 19th century was a splendid

philological attempt; but while it enthused the special scholar it left the ordinary man cold; for the reading of the former's critical tomes, of his learned but wooden translations, did not take the ordinary man any further. He wanted bread but was given stones in the shape of technical translations. The labours of Indologists, Egyptologists and others demonstrated that the ancient world had numerous peaks of sublime knowledge which revealed the timeless and spaceless Wisdom-Culture of Humanity. But of what practical use was this demonstration to the civilization of our era, made and sustained by materialistic and technological science? The results of the two wars and their aftermath compelled the thoughtful to recognize not only the fallibility of modern science but also the futility of its underlying philosophy of might and empiricism. Large numbers of people are looking, not for a creed to believe in, but for a religion to live by—a Universal Religion of Man, who must teach himself to become godlike. Dr. Radhakrishnan said that

"if the present world was to be led on the path of peace, fundamental ideas of different religious traditions must be co-ordinated with generosity in human relationship and they must interpret Sutras and Brahmasutras in a liberal sense."

A comparative study only of the language structures of old-world faiths is not sufficient; a comparative study of the ideas, philosophical and ethical, is essential. And this again, not with a bias in favour of the fetish theory and the ludicrous notion of the old civilizations having expressed but the babblings of infant humanity. Did humanity begin in savagery? The answer is in the negative

and the splendid work of archaeologists and others presses us to the opposite view. Of narrow views have been born some anthropological and other theories, e.g., such an interesting and even plausible but not altogether correct or consistent interpretation as that of Sir James George Frazer in The Golden Bough and other works.

Our highly esteemed and intuitive philosopher Dr. Radhakrishnan is setting for himself and his colleagues a very arduous but not an impossible task in proposing to co-ordinate the ideas of the different religious philosophies. This involves dealing with the annals and traditions of many nations; even so far as historic material goes, i.e., that which is found scattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical literature is difficult of co-ordination. H. P. Blavatsky wrote:—

"If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress behind them. It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them. There must be truth and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the foundation of its religions and its faith." (The Secret Doctrine, II. 794)

The sublime task of divining the Fountain Source of Wisdom from which religions, philosophies, sciences, all branches of knowledge, have sprung is at least partially done by H. P. Blavatsky in her great books, especially The Secret Doctrine. Why should not the researcher of the middle of the 20th century use the information and the arguments there offered? An unbiased endeavour in

this direction requires courage, but that it will be amply rewarded is the conviction of

THE TATHAGATA LIGHT

The light of the spirit is the eternal Sabbath of the mystic or the occultist. That which is meant by the allegorical sentence, Fiat Lux is—when esoterically rendered—"Let there be the 'Sons of Light.'"

—H. P. Blavatsky

Without spiritual afflatus the mind remains the playground of the senses and falls prey to the sweet tongued voices of illusion. The mind needs not only breadth and depth but also points to draw it to the Supreme. To help aspiring minds, teachers of soul wisdom have always presented simple but profound images which awaken the mind, assisting it to assimilate one or more aspects of the eternal verities.

To continue our study of some of these images which energize us to high endeavour: last month* we wrote of the first of the four which Jesus used to exhort his admirers to right practice—"Ye are the salt of the earth." The next three bring in the imagery of Light, which almost every teacher has used in instructing the few elect or the many less ardent. The image of Light is profound and may well be compared to the ocean, shallow enough at the shore for a child to paddle in but gradually deepening until it may drown the most expert of swimmers. The light of the eyes, the light of the mind, the light of the Soul, are the phrases most commonly used. But there are philosophical and mystical aspects to them which make the understanding and interpretation of the image of light most fascinating.

"Ye are the light of the world," exclaims Jesus and calls upon his devotees not to hide the light within them, but to let it shine so that some at least among

the hoipolloi, struck by the radiance, may be emboldened to kindle their own small lamps. But why does he address his intimates thus? How did they come to possess the Divine Light? In silence and secrecy, listening to his words, reflecting upon his parables, perceiving the "miracles" he wrought which drew their attention not only to the existence of the worlds invisible but to the fact that the laws governing them could be mastered by the humble yet persevering learner provided his heart was pure.

But the human tendency to hide the knowledge of such experiences, lest they be doubted and scoffed at, prompts many who know to hold their tongues, to compress their brain and slow down the beats of the heart. How many men of today do we not know, who, aware of the mystical urges of their mind, seek knowledge in secret like the good Nicodemus? And again, how many are there who keep mum about their quest, findings and realizations of spiritual things, lest they be laughed at by their colleagues of the business world for "getting religion," or by their club friends for "becoming queer"! The followers of Jesus had more reason to "light a candle and put it under a bushel"— the suspicious, tyrannical Sanhedrin! But Jesus demands that they let their divine light shine so that all may know of their real Self, the Christos, the Buddha, the Krishna within. And such showing would not be out of egotism but as a sacrament which would give an outward and visible sign of the grace of Light Supernal within, ever ready to preside in the heart of the meek, the humble, the aspiring lover of mankind. This is the Light of all lights. (Gita XIII, 17)

the Spirit; and even the light of the Thinker, the real man, does not shine equally in all mortals. Ordinary education gives breadth and depth to the mind and increases mind light; but extraordinary instruction is necessary to make the Spirit Light manifest through the human mind. It is the self-imposed task of the divine avataras and the real gurus to offer special knowledge and to light that which is named the Tathagata Light—to create in the mortal man a Son of Light by whose grace that mortal can become immortal.

The Wisdom-Religion, Bodhi-Dharma, teaches a way of living founded upon a moral philosophy which is a very definite body of knowledge, called in the Gita the Kingly Science and the Kingly Mystery. It is ageless. Ever does it move silently and secretly in the midst of ignorance begotten by false knowledge. The study of its doctrines stirs the depths of the human mind; the application of them stirs the depths of the heart, causing it to respond to the higher morality of the Universal and the Impresonal. When the altruistic service of teaching ignorant or proud minds and empty or depraved hearts is undertaken, the glorification of "the Father which is in heaven" takes place. In the process the Light of the Buddhas and the Christs—the great Sons of Light—begins to glow in us—the Tathagata Light—the Light of the Illustrious Predecessors. Of such are the words of the image:

SECURITY AND INSURANCE

All men desire security. Safety first in all things. The UNO Security Council is more a symbol than a reality, and neither Member States nor their nationals feel quite secure. Even the rich and powerful U.S.A, would like security against probable Soviet attacks; and so also does Moscow feel uncertain of Washington D.C. Everyone cries, "Give us security." Whence will it emerge?

A materialistic philosophy wedded to a false psychology has boosted insurance business in our civilization ruled by finance. In the spheres of economics and politics the term insurance acts as a spur to find security and as a bait for safety. Not only is life insured against the certain event of death but we have accident insurance. Our houses are protected by fire insurance and our goods on sea by marine insurance. Our motor-cars are insured and so on. But some of our readers may not know that there is in vogue "Business Interruption Insurance" against "loss of net profits and continuing fixed charges during a period of total or partial suspension of activity resulting from damage to or destruction of building, equipment," etc. And did you know of "Fidelity Insurance"? "Insuring against loss arising from the default or dishonesty of employees, or from failure to perform a contract"! Even a cursory study of insurance business principles reveals the passion of the modern civilized man for "immunizing" himself against risks of any kind. Insurance companies and agents devise insurability and supply the demand of those who desire to be insured against destruction, decay and death. And yet people die, accidents occur, contracts are broken, defaults take place

and dishonest employees flourish! No insurance gives real satisfaction to any one, and the insured life ebbs away equally with the uninsured life.

And yet—is there a man with his Divine Intuition so covered up by the tons of the false knowledge of the "educated" or by the gross superstitions of the illiterate, that he does not feel that, somehow, somewhere there is safety and security, there is a state not touched by destruction, decay, death? Treasures upon earth corrupt, but is there not a state where thieves do not break through and steal? Is there not somewhere sure safety and security requiring no insurance policy?

What type of insurance principles are noticeable in Nature? Do we not feel safe—albeit unconsciously to ourselves—in the fact of law and order operating in Nature? Do we need to insure against a loss due to late rising of the sun? The Law and Order of Nature are very different from the Law and Order of a mundane government, however powerful.

Next, is it not something that doubting man can learn from and feel secure in the fact that rain, clean and sweet, falls from above.

Which might be salt and black and bitter. Why
The soft clouds gather it from off the seas,
To spread it o'er the pastures by and by.

And yet man, interfering with the working of Nature, deprives himself even of the beneficence of wind and rain. But, however little, when it does fall rain is never black and bitter.

The abundance of Nature, her generosity, her powers to turn forces of evil to lessons which elevate, her

compensations which ever create opportunities—these speak of order, harmony, repose, peace, understanding, enlightenment, great power. In Nature's flawless working we feel security. When we are less dependent on mundane man-made laws we become more and more channels of Nature, depending on her, and find that she depends on us. In these days prohibition-legislation does not touch the total abstainer. Clauses of the Penal Code do not disturb the sleep of the man free of thieving propensities. One who has emancipated himself from the superstition of caste customs and habits is not afraid of the legalized abolition of untouchability; he welcomes it. Each man's place on the ladder of evolution is not determined by his struggle for existence and his survival in the great fray; it is marked by his power to carry his life forward in unison with Nature, by a due observance of her laws and a proper respect for her processes. Each man is secure as he lives naturally; his insecurity piles up as he violates Nature's Law of Unity and disregards the principle of interdependence.

Nature does not force man to live in struggle and strife but to grow as the flower grows. Nature offers the necessary resistance of soil to every seed. That resistance is not painful, not death-dealing; it is creative as night is creative of day. There are growing pains, e.g., teething. But there are other types of pain to which human beings have made themselves heir. Man has made for himself these pains, in ignorance, through pride and egotism, through lust and obstinacy. These human frailties disturb the even tenor of Nature's ways and Nature finds its own device to restore rhythm. Compassionate Nature always makes a response. When man creates for himself unnecessary pain Nature creates reaction. Man sins, Nature recompenses; that compensation

is suffering—and people say "What a compensation!" If man would, he could overcome the reaction. Suffering has educative and creative aspects but right knowledge alone can make use of it. Right knowledge is the knowledge of the Laws of Nature.

When the warning of pain is not heeded man's craving compels Nature to create the force of Temptation. This force is a peculiar aspect in the Karmic operations of the Law of Mercy which is Justice.

More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

The mythical Satan goes about the world tempting men, but hoping and praying for his own redemption through man's resistance to his temptations. H.P. Blavatsky has explained:—

"There is one eternal Law in nature, one that always tends to adjust contraries and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this Law of spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, that mankind will become freed from its false gods, and find itself finally —SELF-RDEEMED."

India's Vice-President, the philosopher-statesman, has exposed the weakness enveloping the UNO. The UNO Security Council will be able to fulfil its mission only when it is able to act up to the principle—Security for each being and in all things. Nature offers universal security, while man demands it for himself, his family,

his city, his state, his religion, and so creates insecurity and goes on to invent insurances against his own creations.

There is security. There is safety. Nature does insure us against sin and sorrow. We must pay for our insurance policy in the coin of noble Knowledge, on proper due dates, as nature works in and by cycles. This applies to individuals as to all groups. A united world alone will be secure and increasingly progressive. Under Nature's Law—World Security is the only security available.

THE WORLDS INVISIBLE

Ours is a materialistic civilization. This can be determined in numerous ways; but here is a sure and undeniable proof: All men and women today are educated to value very highly the great Without. To the "civilized" world objects seem more important than ideas. Scientific investigators use the power of thought, will and feeling to enrich the world of objects. "Factual and objective" approaches to politics, sociology and education are increasingly called for. Pragmatism, "matter-of-fact treatment of things" and Utilitarianism, which make actions right because they are useful and profitable, are the soul of modern business. If finance is the soul of politics and business, the pride of possession is the spirit of finance.

Even in the sphere of religion also creedalism teaches the Asiatic, the European, the American and the Australasian to look to priest and church, so seek guidance from the Without. The irreligious, the agnostic, the atheist, the rationalist, also seeks guidance in the Without. If God and Heaven are believed in they are "above" while the powers of evil dwell in Hell "below." Even God and Heaven are not one; the former lives and labours in Heaven and so "All's right with the world"; but is it? Modern philosophers, Oriental and Occidental alike, speculate about the Great Reality and they are not able to value truly the instruction of sages and seers, mystics and occultists, for they study but do not practise.

It is reported that a revival of religion is taking place. But it is not religion per se that is being revived but creedalism and sacerdotalism, in truth an expression of

a lower and dangerous psychism. Spiritualists, Psychical Researchers, Pseudo-Theosophists and Pseudo-Mystics, Vaguely feeling that the sensuous world is nothing but dust and ashes, are trying to point to the world within and speedily find themselves in the Hell within the blood and brain of man. The babble of the ghosts is taken for the message of the gods! The light which shines from the great ensnarer Mara is valued as the Tathagata Light of Wisdom Supreme. Psychic healers, psychoanalysts, hypnotists, parapsychologists, are becoming the padres and purohits of the neurotic, the morally confused and the mentally defective.

Turning from the Without to seek God and Heaven and Peace and Bliss and Enlightenment within is often not only futile but dangerous when done in ignorance. For within the skull is the brain and it is mistaken for the mind. Mind is mistaken for soul; psyche for nous; soul for spirit and the glamourous luminosity of Hell for the supernal light of Heaven. And above all an anthropomorphic God for the summum bonum. This is the price our "civilization" is paying for rejecting the doctrines of the True Wisdom-Religion and adopting the teachings of religious creeds, Pseudo-Socialism, Marxian Communism, Scientific Materialism. George Santayana was stating a profound truth—"O World, thou choosest not the better part!" Equally right is he in pointing to modern knowledge as

...a torch of smoky pine
That lights the pathway but one step ahead
Across a void of mystery and dread.

Men of modern knowledge—theologians, philosophicules, psychiaters, bomb-builders, nationalist politicians and

others of that ilk—are in power, seeing with only one eye, the mind, blind in the other, the heart. Such are the leaders; how then can humanity be helped? They are teaching humanity to blind the heart and to use only the mind. Blind belief and superstitions of an earlier era are reincarnating in our cycle as neo-blind belief and new superstitions. "The tender light of faith" will not be found in this Psychic World. Only the pure and compassionate reason can make itself a fit and worthy channel for the Presence of the Divine Spirit. The true World Within is simple, single, impartite, eternal; the radiance of Wisdom and Compassion suffuses it but only the Pure Thinker, the Unfettered man, can osmose it into his own being. Such should be the guides, philosophers and friends of humanity.

The age is revelling at a debauch of phenomena. The same marvels that the spiritualists quote in opposition to the dogmas of eternal perdition and atonement, the Roman Catholics swarm to witness as proofs of their belief in miracles! The sceptics make game of both. Who is to open their eyes and those of their class in other creeds?

In this country Gandhiji set the example of a sincere seeker of the True and had his own Voice within him; he experimented with Truth. It is not given to many to follow that difficult path. His findings are there but they will not satisfy many. What are the first steps for men and women of this decade, that they themselves may shun ignorance and the glamour of world-deception and train their minds to cognize the World of Light within?

THE SPRING OF THE SOUL

The mighty ones who have attained to peace dwell in righteousness, bringing life to the world like the coming of spring; they, who have themselves crossed the dread sea of passional life, aid others to cross it through compassion that seeks no return.

It is the essence of the very being of those of mighty soul to seek to heal the sorrows of others, as the nectar-rayed moon of itself cools the earth, scorched by the fierce fire of the sun.

Shankaracharya's Crest Jewel of Wisdom

The season of Spring is pleasurable to all. Some exhilaration is experienced, often unbeknown to himself, by every man. But the season awakens in the poet a strange creative urge. He feels within himself the life of nature bourgeoning. The mystic also experiences the magic of the Season. It is however the métier of the occultist to understand and explain such a psychical phenomenon.

Many mystics and occultists hold that the seasons reflect in gross matter Nature's psychic and noetic moods. To them Nature is alive in a very different and deeper sense than it is to the scientist, or even to the poet and the painter. For the occultist the earth is the home of gnomes, the ocean of the undines, the air of the sylphs, while salamanders make the fire glow and blaze. The occultist holds that the psychic world, interpenetrating the physical, has its own denizens, not only the above mentioned nature spirits but also a variety of non-self-conscious intelligences and others. Angelic hosts, Devatas, swarm the psychic world. But more: the occultist further refers to a superior world, the noetic, which interpenetrates the psychic, as the

latter does the gross physical. The noetic or superpsychic also has its own august inhabitants—Shining Ones, Devas and Seers and Sages, Rishis and Gnyanis of old who are the Instructors of mortals, Servants of Nature, Worshippers of the Most High. Such benign beings help Nature and work on with her and Nature regards Them as her creators and makes obeisance.

The great Shankaracharya in his beautiful verses compares Their worshipful work to the coming of Spring.

The erudite occultists, like Paracelsus, were persecuted by the fanatical clergy and they were forced to retire into silence and secrecy. Then, decades ago, the mystics and their experiences were scoffed at and the theologian and the scientist succeeded in minimizing their influence in Europe, the seat of modern civilization. And so during the last several centuries our civilization has brought itself to live "scientifically," and now it is being ruled by the machine. Technology is trying to banish poetry and literature and the humanities and the classic from our educational institutions, including the universities.

There are however some good signs—drama and dancing and the other arts are in demand among the general public. Governments and non-official organizations try to supply the demand and some poetry will relieve the drab life of the people. But this will not educate the people to gain the vision of the world of the Muses and their Masters. On the other hand, sensuous feelings and emotions may become powerful to the detriment of the morality that is founded upon true knowledge.

Pride rules the will of teachers of modern knowledge, of scientists and scholiasts, of politicians and priests.

Even when the psyche is tickled and stirred, the illusion, ignorance and suffering of people will not abate. That can only be when the true Philosopher, the Lover of Wisdom, the Mystic, the Knower of the Self, and the Occultist, the Servant of True Magic who sees into the essence of things, are once again able to instruct the masses.

We must look for and labour for the coming of that Spring when the Mighty Lovers are able to touch the hearts and contact the minds of the common people. Then, at least, a few among them will be able to exclaim:—

"Honour, honour to thee, Master, mighty-souled, liberated from bondage, most excellent being, in thy nature the essence of eternal, secondless joy, mighty, a shoreless ocean of compassion.

"As he who, wearied by the heat of day, is refreshed by the abundant beams of the rising moon, so in an instant have I gained the dwelling of the Self, the partless majesty and joy, the imperishable."

THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS

The wisdom of the Sages points to the meaning and purpose of festivals. These, like folklore and so many persistent social and religious customs, have a core of truth hemmed in by superstition and sham. When dissociated from their form side, these festivals reveal a spiritual significance. Men and women who desire to celebrate them in an enlightened manner should make use of such significance. Divali, which falls this year on the 14th of November, is such a festival with a message for the earnest learner.

Deepavali is a festival associated with the symbol of Light. Light in Nature is universal and impersonal and occupies an important place in the code and classification of symbols.

The physical sun is commonly supposed to be the giver of light and life and is widely worshipped as such; but esoterically, and as the ancients well understood, it is but the visible symbol of the Spiritual Sun— the impersonal Deity, from which all has proceeded and into which all will return. Its first manifestation, as the opening chapter of Genesis points out, was Light; and Light is Life.

Focused in the heart of every living being is a ray of this pure Light of Divinity—some call it the Light of Christos; others, the Light of Krishna or of Allah or of Ahura Mazda. It is "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world," in the words of the Apostle John, and a parallel teaching can be found in all the great world scriptures. This is how the Gita describes it:—

"It is the light of all lights, and is declared to be beyond all darkness; and it is wisdom itself, the object of wisdom, and that which is to be obtained by wisdom; in the hearts of all it ever presideth." (XIII. 17)

This inner Light of Truth dispels the moral darkness of ignorance and illusion that has fastened upon our minds. Further, that Light guides us in the great pilgrimage which our life should be but is not for most men and women. Most people are aimless wanderers or travellers seeking pleasure or profit.

The Enlightened One calls upon us to be Lamps unto ourselves and an ancient Chinese proverb instructs us— "It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."

In the thickest gloom can be discerned a glimmer of light, often sufficient for the pilot to find the polestar and so to fix his course. Many of us are infants "crying for the light" but failing to discern its glimmer, blinded by the tears of self-pity.

But, however dim that Light may appear to us to begin with, if we but remember that it is within us and look to it for guidance in our daily life, it will steadily grow and illuminate our path; also it will fall on the path of others, our fellow pilgrims struggling amid the encircling gloom.

During the Divali festival houses will be illuminated—with humble oil lamps or with glowing electric bulbs. This is symbolic of the lighting up of our tabernacle of flesh with the radiance which comes from within. This "imprisoned splendour" cannot escape from the recesses of the heart, where it has been hemmed in by wall after wall of flesh, save through the acquirement of spiritual knowledge which is not mere head learning.

One of the worst forms false knowledge can take is oblivion of the unity of all life, of the brotherhood of man. This deludes us into thinking that our heart-light is different from that shining in our brother men.

The symbol of light can yield many meanings. The derivation of the various colours and the multiplicity of hues from the one pure light is suggestive in more ways than one—e.g., as applied to the various religions and sects. Equally suggestive is the image of countless flames getting lit at the one central flame without in any way diminishing its radiance. "Those having lamps will pass them on to others," taught Plato in The Republic. The fully Illuminated Ones, the Buddhas, have kept ablaze the Torch of Truth across the ages for the benefit of those who aspire to kindle their humble wicks at that Sacrificial Light of Pure Wisdom—the Tathagata Light. How profoundly significant does Divali, the Festival of Lights, become for those so aspiring!

ORIGINALITY AND QUOTATION

Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds: our language, our science, our religion, our opinions, our fancies, we inherited. Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair,—all these we never made; we found them ready-made; we but quote them. — EMERSON

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favour. — GOETHE

"Originality" is prized and honoured by our civilization. But are we not overlooking what many thinkers, some of them profound, have asserted—that nothing is said, written, or imagined, that has not been anticipated by men in the past? Man has been called an imitative creature. He walks in the paths trodden by others. Even those who are famous as original thinkers or writers have, often unconsciously to themselves, "stolen" ideas from others. Literature is full of "coincidences" which some call plagiarism—the pilfering of another person's "brain property." But is there any writer who is not a plagiarist in some sense? Is there a book but is the shadow of another volume? Is there anything that is not the reflection of something that exists somewhere, in some form, in the infinitudes of space?

Emerson's essay on "Quotation and Originality" offers very important truths; they will lead sincere and earnest minds to a "new" line of thought. Emerson writes:—

"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs, by imitation. The Patent Office Commissioner knows that all machines in use have been invented and re-invented over and over; that the mariner's compass, the boat, the pendulum, glass, movable types, the kaleidoscope, the railway, the powerloom, etc., have been many times found and lost, from Egypt, China, and Pompeii down....

"The highest statement of new philosophy complacently caps itself with some prophetic maxim from the oldest learning....

"If we confine ourselves to literature, 'tis easy to see that the debt is immense to past thought. None escapes it. The originals are not original. There is imitation, model and suggestion, to the very archangels, if we knew their history. The first book tyrannizes over the second. Read Tasso, and you think of Virgil; read Virgil, and you think of Homer; and Milton forces you to reflect how narrow are the limits of human invention. The 'Paradise Lost' had never existed but for these precursors; and if we find in India or Arabia a book out of our horizon of thought and tradition, we are soon taught by new researches in its native country to discover its fore-goers, and its latent, but real connection with our own Bibles."

How do our thoughts and images emerge in our own consciousness? How do they come from others? How is it that our ideas and inventions which we value as "original" can be traced to older roots—that in reality they are but reflections of what men before us have thought, maybe aeons ago?

One aspect of the invisible counterpart of the visible universe is a picture gallery, a library wherein are to be found our ideas and images, our phantasies and fancies. It has its higher phase or aspect, Nature's Noble Archives, the Æther-Akasha of the ancients. The archetypal Ideas shine in Akasha and radiate their reflections, from within and above, in a denser medium called the Astral Light by the European mystics such as the Rosicrucians, the Fire-Philosophers, etc. Paracelsus, Boehme, St. Martin and others were familiar with the truth of its existence and its influence on humankind.

Professor H. H. Price of Oxford University has written of the concept of a third realm intermediate between mind and matter as having

"long been familiar in the philosophy and cosmology of the Far East; and something not unlike it is found in NeoPlatonism Perhaps if

His "ether of images," "like matter in being extended, and yet like mind in that it retains in itself the residua of past experiences" is obviously none other than the Astral Light.

Our memory in the present is related to this sphere in more than one way. From it come the "bolts from the blue," the sudden flashes of premonition and hunches. The Akasha is the Divine Astral, and its lower and gross counterpart also absorbs and retains our thoughts and images. Says H. P. Blavatsky:—

"Occultism teaches that no form can be given to anything, either by nature or by man, whose ideal type does not already exist on the subjective plane. More

than this; that no such form or shape can possibly enter man's consciousness, or evolve in his imagination, which does not exist in prototype, at least as an approximation."

Men of today need to recognize their "vast mental indebtedness," not only to the knowledge and experience of the ancients, but also to Living Nature. Goethe had the humility and the insight to admit his indebtedness to many:—

"What would remain to me if this art of appropriation were derogatory to genius? Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a thousand different persons, a thousand things: wise and foolish have brought me, without suspecting it, the offering of their thoughts, faculties, and experience. My work is an aggregation of beings taken from the whole of nature; it bears the name of Goethe."

Applying rightly a thought one finds in a book need not imply the mental inferiority of the borrower. "Only an inventor knows how to borrow." True talent, a Sage has said, "will become original in the very act of engaging itself with the ideas of others." Shakespeare is a classic example. The plots, the characters and the major part of the incidents of his plays he borrowed from others, yet he is considered to be "more original than his originals." He transformed the dross of previous novella into the gold that shines in his dramas and carries the hallmark of his originality. "The bees pillage the flowers here and there, but they make honey of them which is all their own," says Montaigne. The Dhammapada exhorts us to be like them:—

"The bee gathers honey without injuring the scent or the colour of the flower, so should a silent one (Muni) live

Let us then take all knowledge to be our sphere, for truth is the monopoly of no individual. What does matter? Great Ideas, noble Truths and true Sentiments. These are immortal. Their source, their authorship, is of passing interest. The long line of Sages and Seers, rightly described as Lords of Meditation, have been the mediators between the Divine Archetypal Ideas and the human creators who use Their Wisdom-Light.

POLITICIANS NEED PHILOSOPHY

Life is essentially synthetic; therefore no problem can be solved if it is isolated and viewed as a unique phenomenon. Unfortunately, we have fallen into the dire heresy of separateness to the extent of dividing every department of life from Life itself. Is it any wonder then that confusion and anarchy are so prevalent in our civilization?

A specialist in any field of human endeavour is apt to narrow his vision in his attempt to focus it exclusively on one sphere. "I am interested only in politics," says one, "I do not read philosophy or even fiction unless it bears on some political issue." This attitude is all too prevalent among politicians and many party leaders. But the man imprisoned in the narrow groove of politics has neither breadth of vision nor depth of insight. Like an engine confined to its special track, his consciousness travels backwards and forwards on the same line, exercising itself only along that limited route. He inevitably becomes short-sighted and superficial, and ultimately he fails in his very aim as a politician.

An impartial survey of twentieth-century political problems leads to the conclusion that before calmness, prudence, foresight or sagacity can be expected in the management of public affairs there must be a return to true philosophy. Its quest not only elevates the mind but enables the politician to speak with the liberality of thought and act with the justice which marks the great statesman. Philosophy may not seem directly related to political activity, and may appear to the politician abstract and remote, yet philosophy alone can give him the

necessary detachment to judge impartially and to see clearly, and can bring to him the light of universal principles by which to evaluate particular problems.

Each man, no matter what his field of active work, if he would be really practical should make it a rule to study true philosophy to determine the righteousness of his motive and seek inner direction, lest in the fever and the hurry of objective life he forget his true direction and injure his public work. Especially is this necessary for the politician and the public leader, whose blood is apt to become heated and to run too fast!

Plato and Confucius and their peers made no real distinction between politics and philosophy, or between metaphysics and morality. Their political philosophy should be studied by every politician. Self-examination in the light of such moral philosophy would soon reveal to the modern legislator and administrator why and how they fall short of their models. Plato's philosopher-statesman is the need of the hour. Or take another book, the Tirukkural; it lays down the principles that should govern the conduct of princes, statesmen, public leaders. Or take the Manava-Dharma-Shastra, which begins with details of cosmology, to the puzzlement of the modern lawyer and legislator! But the ancient lawgivers and social reformers were practical philosophers. Their aim was to build a state in conformity with the unity and harmony of Nature.

In modern times, through the persistent efforts of Gandhiji, at least a few men have developed a real insight into the peculiar modes by which moral principles can be applied to mundane politics. But ambition, selfishness and greed die hard. The animal in man fights the divine in him. International morality has been at a

low ebb for long years now and exploitation of the smaller nations and unarmed peoples has been systematically attempted.

The most pressing requirement of the world today is the leader for the new world of tomorrow, who places the good of humanity above profits to his own country. In the words of Confucius:—

"With the right men the growth of government is rapid, just as vegetation is rapid in the earth....

"Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.

"...the sovereign may not neglect the cultivation of his own character. Wishing to cultivate his character, he may not neglect to serve his parents. In order to serve his parents, he may not neglect to acquire a knowledge of men. In order to know men, he may not dispense with a knowledge of Heaven....

"To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge. To practise with vigour is to be near to magnanimity. To possess the feeling of shame is to be near to energy.

"He who knows these three things, knows how to cultivate his own character. Knowing how to cultivate his own character, he knows how to govern other men. Knowing how to govern other men, he knows how to govern the kingdom with all its States and families."

THE SIN OF SPEECH

Wise, of a wisdom far beyond our shallow depth, was that old precept: Watch thy tongue; out of it are the issues of Life! "Man is properly an incarnated word": the word that he speaks is the man himself. Were eyes put into our head, that we might see; or only that we might fancy, and plausibly pretend, we had seen? Was the tongue suspended there, that it might tell truly what we had seen, and make man the soul's brother of man; or only that it might utter vain sounds, jargon, soul-confusing, and so divide man, as by enchanted walls of Darkness, from union with man? Thou who wearest that cunning, heaven-made organ, a Tongue, think well of this. Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy thought hath silently matured itself, till thou hast other than mad and mad-making noises to emit: hold thy tongue (thou hast it a-holding) till some meaning lie behind, to set it wagging. Consider the significance of SILENCE: it is boundless, never by meditating to be exhausted; unspeakably profitable to thee! Cease that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to waste, to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor: out of Silence comes thy strength. "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden; Speech is human. Silence is divine." Fool! thinkest thou that because no Boswell is there with ass-skin and blacklead to note thy jargon, it therefore dies and is harmless? Nothing dies, nothing can die. No idlest word thou speakest but is a seed cast into Time, and grows through all Eternity! The Recording Angel, consider it well, is no fable, but the truest of truths: the paper tablets thou canst burn; of the "iron leaf' there is no burning.

— THOMAS CARLYLE: "Boswell's Life of Johnson,"
Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. III

One of the evils by which modern society is debased is constant misuse of the power of speech. Too many talk for the sake of talking: small and random talk, business talk, often inimical, at home or at office; jests at the expense of friends and especially of foes which may degenerate into gossip; and there are also malice

and backbiting; and lies, which in political circles pass under the name of diplomacy and elsewhere under that of courtesy or cleverness or what not.

In all these there is at work a common factor which is rarely into account—the corruption of the speaker's own mind and morals, character and health. Indulgence in destructive speech poisons the human system and injures it as few venoms do. Many who indulge in it, however, are not wicked but thoughtless. If only they would listen to the saying that "a single word may ruin a whole city or put the spirit of a lion into a dead fox" they would start thinking. Selden has well said: "Syllables govern the world." The mischief done by words at the U.N.O., in parliaments and through the press, begins in clubs and homes, at lunch counters and around tea tables.

Real knowledge about words and sounds, meanings and tones, is highly important. Our "civilized" people neglect it.

Sound, Word and Speech are regarded as profoundly important by the mystics, the philosophers and the philologists, each valuing them from his own angle of vision. Gupta Vidya, the Esoteric Philosophy and Occult Science have a special point of view, rooted in the synthetic power of perception. The mystic looks upon words as living; the philosopher uses them as vehicles for his own thoughts and speculations; the philologist is interested mainly in their lineage. The Occultist uses words as living messengers of incommunicable secret and sacred verities, using their sound values and their colour tones to reveal the indissoluble relation between the spiritual, the psychic and the material; between the divine, the human and the animal; between the invisible and the

The primal vibration, Sound emanating from the Unmanifest, is named the Word—Shabda Brahman, called the Logos by the Greeks, whose wisdom Apostle John used to begin his gospel—"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." This is the Pranava, the AUM, of Eastern Esotericism. Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita proclaims It as one of His Vibhutis, Excellences—"Of words I am the monosyllable OM."

The sound values of words and phrases—mantras—are not a matter of serious study by our learned men of today, though the creative and destructive powers of sound are beginning to be accepted by some medical men and by some musicians. But the power of sound, the potencies of words and language, even as ordinarily used—these are terra incognita for men of modern knowledge. The mysterious and mighty magic of speech at which Calyle hints in the above passage is desecrated every day and every hour by leaders and the led alike. Even Hindus who believe in their tradition about the power of mantras, speech-sounds, never think of the power brought into play in their daily use of language. A superstition has grown up that mantras belong only to Sanskrit, the language of the Gods. But, whether men curse or bless in English or in Hindi, words and phrases and tones of all tongues have an invisible influence. They soothe or irritate, depress or energize, not only those who hear, but also those who speak.

All this offers the metaphysical and psychological basis for the precept that those who aspire to simple and high living, to feel devotion to the Supreme and

to Humanity, should guard their speech. We must learn the place of silence in our daily living. In useless babbling we fritter away soul force. We should cultivate the power to listen. But the modern style of living, labouring, even loving, encourages talk and more talk. Modern society is very suspicious of the "silent fellow! One never knows!" It says, "How can bread be earned and business be done without proper phrases, suggestive remarks, flattery and threats?" "What would club life be without conversation, salty and peppery, pungent and smart?" says the social drone and butterfly. As to love, "What nonsense! How can you make love without endearments?" And yet it is taught that the human devotee receives into his heart the grace of the Divine Lover which is silent when his own heart and mind and tongue are silent. Is it not said that the Guru speaketh not and yet the pupil learneth?

Misuse of speech results from the mishandling of the mind. Petty mind, petty speech; mean mind, mean speech; wandering mind, rambling speech; seeing mind, sage speech. Without wisdom, speech cannot be true or good or beautiful. Speech is personified as one of the wives of Dharma. Speech which is not properly wedded to the Lord of Law and Duty is compared to a prostitute; unchaste though she be pretty, false though she be lavish.

Between mind and speech, understanding and words, there is a kinship. Plutarch, introducing his life of two grand orators, Demosthenes and Cicero, refers to himself— "It was not so much by the knowledge of words that I came to the understanding of things, as by my experience of things I was enabled to follow the meaning of words." Wisdom enshrined in words does not come

to us by a study of words and idioms, construction of phrases and sentences, and the like.

We are called upon to control wrong speech and to cultivate right speech. Meditation or Tapas on Speech, according to the Bhagavad-Gita, is to be on gentleness of words which causes not excitement or anxiety; on true words; on friendly words; on words of Holy Writ. The Laws of Manu (iv. 138) advocate practice of the rule belonging to Sanatana Dharma, the Immortal Wisdom-Religion: speak true words pleasantly, but never unpleasantly, and avoid falsehood even though it be pleasant to oneself or to another. A sevenfold exercise is recommended to the earnest and sincere aspirant as part of his self-discipline:—

A LIVING EPIC

The Epic Named Jaya must be listened to by him who desires success.

—Adi Parva, Mahabharata

Scholarly and very useful work has been done by painstaking Sanskritists at Poona's Bhandarkar Oriental Institute with the recension of the authentic text of the great Epic. That recension of the original text of the Mahabharata is a monument of more than historical significance.

We hope that a team of able men of insight will undertake the task of translating the Mahabharata using the Bhandarkar Institute text. Meantime we continue to be indebted to the translation published in the last century by Pratap Chandra Roy. But the bulky volumes of that "close and valuable translation" do not attract many readers among the busy public of our busy civilization. We therefore welcome the result of two new ventures at abridgment; both commencements are based upon that translation. The first is the issue of the Adi and Sabha Parvas by Shri C.V. Srinivasa Rao, M.A., C.I.E., of Bangalore; the second is "selections from" the Adi and Sabha Parvas by Mr. S. C. Nott of Chelsea, London.

These two condensations are done from different points of view: the former should interest especially many Indians, not only Hindus, but also all who are Indian citizens and who have their roots in the Noble Land of Aryas, whose culture is chronicled in the Mahabharata. Long generations of Hindus have learned the Mahabharata's lore mainly by osmosis, through hearing the stories and legends repeated for children by their mothers and

grandmothers, for the youths by their instructors. But now, when education is dependent chiefly on sight and reading, that osmosis process has stopped its beneficent work. Shri Srinivasa Rao's labour of love in planning an English translation in abridged form will supply a need. The first instalment is attractively got up and the contents are very readable. It is "a smaller canvas, but sufficiently large to admit...as much as possible of this unique epic." This abridgment is being issued in parts and so the ordinary reader will not be frightened by the bulk of the original. The point of view of Shri Rao is not only to present the main story, so very admirably done in verse by the great Indian, Romesh Chunder Dutt, whose handy volume is most attractive. Valuing highly "the greatest work of imagination that Asia has produced," Shri Dutt regrets that "tales, traditions, legends and myths...found a shelter under the expanding wings of this wonderful epic." His abridged rendition is modelled on the Greek Epics, and it certainly is pleasing and informative and in many respects remains the best version of the main story.

The Mahabharata, however, has many aspects. To quote Shri Srinivasa Rao, it is "an encyclopaedia of knowledge and a social history of the times." To give some idea of it to his Western friends and readers Shri Dutt described the heterogeneous contents of the Epic thus:—

"The religious works of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, the philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, the commentaries of Blackstone and the Ballads of Percy, together with the tractarian writings of Newman, Keble, and Pusey, were all thrown into blank verse and incorporated with the Paradise Lost."

Shri Rao has rightly given in his rendition some mystical and mythical incidents also which will interest many readers. These incidents do not mar the smooth running of the main story, while they bring out some other important features of the colossal Epic.

Allegories, myths and mystical doctrines are valued by the student of Eastern Occultism. Thus, for example, Shri Dutt mentions "the 18 battles fought on 18 days"; and we might add that there are 18 chapters of the Gita; and that the contending armies were divided into 18 army corps. Is this only coincidence? The late Shri T. Subba Row, an Adwaiti philosopher and a devotee of Adi Shankara, states: "The book is called by name which means 'eighteen.' This number is mysteriously connected with Arjuna."

It was the mystical and the occult current of traditional thought running through the Mahabharata which greatly attracted the late Mr.

A. R. Orage—one of the very few Europeans who had this intuitive conviction: "What Greek and Roman culture did for the dark ages, I believe the Mahabharata may do for our own benighted age—more, in fact, because it springs from a higher source." With these words he closed his first contribution to THE ARYAN PATH (Vol. I, p. 89, February 1930) entitled "The Next Renaissance."

The second abridged selection mentioned above, which has now been done by Mr. S. C. Nott, is inspired by the memory and work of Mr. Orage. In an Appendix to the volume a few extracts are given from his writings.

Mr. Orage a philosopher, familiar with Esoteric Doctrines has impressed Mr. Nott, who himself is attracted by the Occult; therefore in his selection the student of the

Gupta Vidya, the Secret Science, will find many thought-provoking, clarifying and uplifting ideas.

H. P. Blavatsky believed in the esoteric character of the Mahabharata. She says that the allegorical descriptions are full of significance to the students of the Secret Doctrine. In another place she writes: "The Mahabharatan War, which to the Europeans is the fabulous, to the Hindus and Occultists the historical."

The Epic is also designated as Niti-Shastra—Code of Morality: how men and women of all ages, different castes and classes, various stages and statures, should behave. Especially is this to be found in the Shanti Parva and in the magnificent discourse of Bhishma.

Or take this: For those who aspire to live the Higher Life a teaching is offered for practice. This piece of practical instruction is to be found in the Anugita, which like the more popular Bhagavad-Gita is part of the great Epic. The Instructor says:—

"I have crossed beyond that very impassable place, in which fancies are the gadflies and mosquitoes, in which grief and joy are cold and heat, in which delusion is the blinding darkness, in which avarice is the beasts of prey and reptiles, in which desire and anger are the obstructors, the way to which consists in worldly objects, and is to be crossed by one singly. And I have entered the great forest."

"There is nothing else more delightful than that, when there is no distinction from it. There is nothing more afflicting than that, when there is a distinction from it. There is nothing smaller than that, there is

nothing larger than that. There is nothing more subtle than that; there is no other happiness equal to that. Entering it, the twice-born do not grieve, and do not exult. They are not afraid of anybody, and nobody is afraid of them. In that forest are seven large trees, seven fruits, and seven guests; seven hermitages, seven (forms of) concentration, and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the description of the forest."

H. P. Blavatsky has spoken of the Anugita as "a very occult treatise" and quoting at some length from it offers explanations which the earnest student of psycho-philosophy will do well to read.

This Epic is great (Mahat) and weighty (Bharavat) and of it there is this record:—"Where the Bharata is read, there all sins subside, and there prosperity, fame and knowledge flourish in all joy."

"THE CEDARS OF LEBANON"

The destruction of the body, the sense-powers, the life-breath, the mind, is as the destruction of a leaf, a flower, a fruit; but the Self stands firm like the tree, the Self of true Being, formed of bliss. —Vivekachudamani.

Those who walk, as pilgrims or peddlers, the plains of Hindusthan, with the sun blazing in the sky, scorching the earth, worship the trees which shelter them. As a religious duty Ashoka not only dug wells for the thirsty wayfarer, but also planted trees on the roads he built, to give the traveller refuge.

But the mountain passes and high plateaux of India reveal a different protective value of trees to the climber who seeks the vision that high altitudes alone bestow. He who slowly mounts the circling path, thousands of feet above sea level, knows how trees protect when the gale blows and the rain beats down or the snow swirls against him. As he ascends and the track becomes bare and barren, longingly he strains his eyes to detect some green foliage at the next turn, like a camel-rider taut and concentrated to catch sight of an oasis in the desert. And the climber's delight turns into surprise when, coming upon a grove of firs, he finds a Vairagi who welcomes him to his humble ashram.

In this issue* is published an interesting article by J. S. Collis on "The Symbol of the Tree in Mythology." Though myths are slowly coming into their own, thanks especially to the work of Carl Jung and some fine publications of the Bollingen Foundation, still the world of modern learning has to find the key to the symbolic language of myths, Indian or Hellenic.

The careful student of the philosophy of the Ancients comes to learn this important lesson:

All the kingdoms of visible Nature are but reflections of their invisible prototypes. Therefore every kingdom, nay, every form in every kingdom, has not only its outward and ordinary meaning but also an occult one. Each kingdom and each form is a symbol, i.e., an embodied idea. For Plato the lower types were but the concrete images of the higher abstract ones—an Eastern Esoteric teaching. The meaning and mission of any object in Nature can be comprehended only when the higher abstraction which ensouls it, and of which it is a representative and a symbol on earth, is perceived. This apperceptive faculty can be unfolded only by a proper study of the Esoteric Philosophy according to the Law of Correspondences, and full use can be made of it only when the learner is "initiated into perceptive mysteries."

This is true of the Tree as a botanical fact and as a mythological symbol. The poet and the mystic may sing as the intuitive Keats did:—

But only a true philosopher, the genuine lover of Wisdom, is able to read the symbol of the Tree and the Marks or Monograms (Lakshana) of many trees. Those dispassionate philosophers of the ancient world from the highest antiquity connected trees with the "gods" and the hidden forces in Nature. Thus in India the Ashvattha and the Bo-tree, in Scandinavia the Yggdrasil, in Egypt the Sycamore, in Syria the Cedar,

spoke the metaphysical truth to the purified and sensitive ear of the student of the Occult.

The Tree is the symbol for Sacred and Secret Knowledge, and in antiquity it stood for the Scriptural Record. Again, it symbolized the Initiate, the Master of Light and the Good Law, as the Tree of Life; and "Withering Trees" was the name given to those of the dark way of death.

Every man is a tree of life in which dwells the Thinkers, the Ego, the Dragon, the learner from the Master Dragons; but also there is the serpent of the lower mind of passions and desires. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must shed the sensuous and the sensual, and then it will stand, as the great Shankara says in the verse quoted above, in the glory of Truth, Immortality and Bliss, sending down its roots like the ever-green Banyan. Such is also called "the Incense-Bearing Tree." Every aspirant to the Wisdom of the Most High, to the service of the Compassionate Great, would like to be what George Herbert aspired to be:—

I read, and sigh, and wish I were a Tree—
For sure then I should grow
To fruit or shade; at least some bird would trust
Her household to me, and I should be just.

THE VOICE OF THE "ZEITGEIST"

Just before the close of the nineteenth century the concepts which made science materialistic received what should have proved to be their deathblow. The discovery of radium and of kindred facts and forces unknown to an earlier generation compelled physicists and chemists, and therefore also physiologists and biologists, to abandon their notions about atoms and ether, about organic and inorganic forms of life.

By 1950 it was evident that the civilized world had failed to read the message of the closing decade of the last century. The discovery of radiation and of other recondite scientific knowledge was put to the use and service of violence, selfishness and pride born of ambition and avarice.

The end of the Second World War left the soul of the world suffering the abject poverty of falsely motivated knowledge. Hiroshima and Nagasaki thundered proclamation of the moral bankruptcy of political leaders and of the many men of science who had allowed themselves to be exploited by the politicians. From Leningrad to Los Angeles and from China to Peru every nation was attacked by the disease of violence.

The story of the failure of our so-called civilization continues even now, but the stirrings of a greater power than that which political kings can wield or scientific genii use are steadily growing stronger. That power is the Still, Small Voice of Deity which has begun to articulate the Divine Intuition in the Heart of Man.

The Influence of the Eternal Now is working in the ever passing present, but its meaning and message are

missed by the majority of our civilized people. The Influence of that Eternal Now focuses on a person here, in an event there, e.g., Gandhiji's personal life speaks not of past, present and future but of that Eternal Now—the manifested aspect of the Absolute Boundless Duration which is named in the Zoroastrian scriptures as Zervane Akarne. Similarly, in the mistaken action which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there thunders forth the truth of eternity. The former, Gandhiji's soul life, is a bright and noble expression of Immortal Love; Hiroshima, the dark and ignoble expression of immortal hate. Light and Darkness, the Gita teaches, are the world's eternal ways. The Divine Presence of Ahura-Mazda is there in the action of the Good Spirit, Spenta-Mainyu, as also in that of the Evil, Angra-Mainyu. These two Ahura-Mazda calls "My Spirits."

"The spirits primeval are a pair and they together communed. These two differ in thought, in word, in deed, one the enhancer of betterment, the other the fashioner of evil....The two spirits came together at the dawn—one the maker of life, the other to mar it, and thus they shall be unto the last." (Yasna XXX. 3,4)

"I announce to you life's first two spirits of whom the Good accosted the Evil: Never our thoughts, nor creeds, nor understandings, nor beliefs, nor words, nor deeds, nor consciences, nor souls can be the same." (Yasna XLV.2)

There are unmistakable signs of the Good Spirit of the Most High Ahura-Mazda working in the mind-manas and the intellect-buddhi of the race. We have before us a remarkable volume which in itself is a good sign of our times—Winds of Hiroshima by Ralph Tyler

Flewelling. The author is a great-hearted philosopher whose fine work has energized many to a better understanding of the nature of man and his evolution, and has brought to them a deeper insight to enable them to live by enlightened faith and not by blind belief. He is the Diogenes of the twentieth century and, as Editor of the quarterly Personalist, has served well the cause of culture and of universal brotherhood. Winds of Hiroshima (Bookman Associates, New York) should be in the hands of every publicist and every lover of his fellow men. Its author points to the enemies of modern civilization; what he says about creedal church Christianity is no less applicable to every other creed—Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam, etc.:—

"...the elements in Christianity which indicate its aptness as a universal religion, a cosmic faith, must supersede the narrow, bigoted, and unyielding fanaticism which has to a startling degree nullified the plain teachings of the Man of Nazareth. The time is overdue for the reign of the spirit of truth in the hearts of Christians to take the place of trust in the great lie. The age of the Holy Spirit, which is to lead into the truth is at the doorstep of the world, that or destruction. Nothing can bind men together but a Gospel of Love."

But something other than creedal religion stands in the way of true progress:—

"Not only are we hindered by barriers set in the way of common sympathy among men of varying faiths who yet believe in the existence of Deity, but the situation is further complicated by the appearance of a widely disseminated "religion of irreligion," now, for the first time in history setting itself up to capture the world as

a political movement. Professing democracy, it would destroy the very roots of democracy. It rests upon the exploitation of persons by forcing all to a slavery to the state, only substituting slavery to a bureaucracy for its former enslavement to the Tsar. In the name of freedom, freedom is denied. For the sake of persons, personality is smothered."

To fight these two enemies, the leaders of which are dictators, we need more men and women in whom the Divine Intuition stirs. In every normal intelligence the Sense of Immortality and Divine Selfhood works. It stresses love of Spirit and its Power of Unity in manifestation and therefore the solidarity of men or universal brotherhood. Says our esteemed author:—

"Forces are coming into play which violence cannot overcome. These forces lie in the realm of the mental and spiritual, too often held in contempt. These powers do not act, however, apart from the active cooperation of man. The victory will not be to him who can only outrun the excesses of the violent, but to him who, while strong in physical power, resists the temptation to abuse it, and meets such an enemy at the level of his greatest weakness, that of spiritual values."

The propagation of this truth of unfolding the love which casteth out fear and hatred is the highest duty that truly religious men have to perform towards those who are imprisoned by sacerdotalism, materialism and superstition.

"There must be new inquiry ab initio concerning the reality of religion, as revolutionary and as searching as the scientific investigations of the day, not so much for the disclosure of old errors as to provide an intelligible

vernacular of discourse for a new age. Religion must be viewed from the standpoint of spiritual reality, rather than from religious dialectic, and judged by the fruits of the spirit which it produces. This judgment must be applied to all efforts after the understanding of God, in all systems, with an outlook so broad as to resemble the Divine mercy; as wide as the sea of the Eternal Love. There is no thirty-eighth parallel for the Divine solicitude. For the new age, what any sincere man anywhere has learned of goodness, beauty, and truth in the meaning of life, is a matter of prime importance."

The volume has a special message for Indians. Gandhiji, paid lip-tribute to by millions as the Father of the Nation, has not yet received the reverence of their hearts; very few have the reverence to worship the Ideal which his life embodied; millions of us have still to prove ourselves worthy of kinship with him. Worship by lips will hinder— it has already begun to do so—but worship by a contrite, humble and truthful heart will help not only worshipper but also his neighbours the world over.

THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and the life... The way and the truth come first, then follows the life.

—Light on the Path

Perception, inference and testimony are declared by the ancient teachers to be the means of obtaining knowledge, whether fallible or infallible.

Knowledge is threefold—sense-knowledge, head-learning, Heart-Wisdom. Each one of us, now and here, possesses a triple storehouse of knowledge. We have the powers of observation and of the sensations which are ours through the use of the sense organs, offering data for one order of information. We have the power of the mind—from mere cerebration to profound thinking—which yields to us our head-learning. We have our emotions—lower passions or exalted aspirations—which manifest our Heart-life and bespeak our Heart-Wisdom.

All three are partial and faulty for all mortals. Those only who attain to true Immortality possess in perfection complete and infallible Wisdom. This is the coordinated, concordant and complete Wisdom. Sense data are correctly comprehended by head-learning, which in its turn is inspired by the pure light of the Heart, which is the seat of the Great Self. Real Immortality means possessing this triple Wisdom.

Mortality implies not only death through the decay of the body but also the presence of ignorance about innumerable things in space, the motions of time and the events in history; further, the separation which

personal feelings and lack of altruism make between the human heart and the grand heart of Nature, which is Compassion Absolute.

Men suffer because the body decays, the mind continues to be ignorant and the heart remains selfish. Death is feared; ignorance is found difficult to overcome; selfishness is considered a natural inheritance of every man, woman and child. And so from death to death mortals pass, knowing only sorrow at which they tap their foreheads and say, "Kismet."

But the innate divinity at the very core of our being whispers— "There must be a way out of the death of the body, the darkness of ignorance, the corruption of selfishness." We do not seek the Way to Wisdom—we lose ourselves in our busy-ness to exist day after day, to eat, to earn, to pursue pleasures, to avoid pains. It hardly occurs to us to seek the meaning and the purpose of life. We do not live progressing from light to greater light, from love to deeper love, but stumble from confusion to corruption.

All Prophets and Perfected Men have pointed the Way, have spoken the Truth. We remain ignorant about such instruction; the Gita and the Upanishads, the Gathas and the Kabbala, the Sermon on the Mount and the Epistles of Paul, the greatest of the Apostles—these are instinct with a life of their own. Many read them; some read them with triple attention of eye, head and heart; but only the rare few attempt to accept the advice—"Mistrust thy senses, they are false"; or "Separate Head-learning from Soul-Wisdom," as is advocated; or bring the heart to "forsake every other religion and take refuge alone with the Great Self." We do not appreciate because we do not understand the

promise contained in the potent words of Krishna: "I shall deliver thee from all thy transgressions."

There is the Path, there is Truth; if we find these the possibility of Living the Life is perceived and the experience of Immortality is assured.

How to find the Path? There are diverse ways which the knowledge of materialistic sciences, of speculative philosophies, of creedal theologies, tells us about. Broad are these paths, visible and accessible to all. But they have not led the educated and civilized man to the light, strength and peace of Truth. The Upanishads call this lower knowledge, and name the Wisdom of the Supreme as the Higher. But it is also taught that the Path to the Supreme True is inward—from thought and mind to Heart and Soul—and that the Science of the mystic and the occultist is hidden, esoteric, named Gupta Vidya and described as the Royal Wisdom. The search for that Way to Hidden Truth proceeds from the mundane and mortal mind to the Soul of Light in the Cave of the Heart. Awake, arise, seek the Great Teachers—it is said. Between the mortal and the Immortal there is The Bridge. What is that Bridge?

DEATH OF BODY AND THE MIND

All fear death of the body and use the will to live to prolong embodied existence. All are certain that death will come, but many do not relish the thought of enquiry as to the nature of death, its how, and the life hereafter which we have made. The superstition prevails that it is very inauspicious to think and talk about death. And yet all great Teachers have strongly recommended "a meditation upon birth, death, decay, sickness and error." Similarly we find in the Dhammapada:—

"This body is wearing out; it is a nest of diseases; it is frail. This heap of corruption is breaking to pieces. Life ends in death."

"What pleasure is there in looking at these bleached bones, like gourds cast away in the autumn?" (Verses 148-9)

This meditation upon the decay of the body, resulting in its disintegration, is strongly recommended; for it turns our ideation from effect to cause. Shankaracharya's remarks on the verse of the Gita quoted above point this out:—

"Pain itself is evil, death is misery; old age is a misery; sickness is a misery. They are all miseries, because they produce misery. They are not miseries in themselves."

Again, all spiritual Sages teach the conquest of death and recommend a contemplation which results in the strength-giving exclamation: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

Kathopanishad, and another aspect of it is dealt with in the story of Savitri's overcoming of Yama, the King of Death, and of the restoring of her husband to life. The scientific-minded materialist dismisses, with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders, such impractical talk!

The full consummation of Immortality may not be, is not, within the reach of ordinary men and women. But many of them have not lost belief in the immortality of the soul. There is in them the presence of a divine intuition about the existence of a deathless soul, in spite of their schooling in the world of the senses. For such, the true spiritual philosophy points to a line of knowledge which is valuable and practical. Simply put, it is this.

The death of the body is caused not only by the processes of the body; the wear and tear of the body is caused mainly by human consciousness. Our thought, will and feeling manifest as our habitual temperament; and also they produce our passing moods of elation and depression. The life of the body is affected by the activity of consciousness; and the health of the latter is affected by the functioning of the organs and the senses. The state of human consciousness and that of the human body are linked and both together produce death. The belief of the common man in the existence of the soul and its survival of bodily death can be better utilized by him than is done at present. His belief is more or less a stagnant influence. He should acquire knowledge about the nature of the soul and its immortality; about the body and its mortality; to what extent the mortal aspect of his bodily nature robs the immortal aspect of his soul, and in what measure the immortal nature of the mind gains from its experience

as an embodied intelligence. This knowledge is highly important, and it is available.

Religious allegories about heaven and hell, about the seven heavens and the seven hells, about purgation and reaching heaven, and so on and so forth, are misunderstood under the baneful influence of creedalism and priestcraft. All men die, be they Christians or Hindus; in life we know that there is no difference between a saintly Christian and a saintly Hindu, nor is there any between sinning ones. So also after death. That an orthodox Christian or a "faithful" Muslim will go to heaven and men of all other creeds to hell is crass superstition.

Man's own mind makes its heaven or hell, here and hearafter. One who has no inner perception of and faith in the immortality of his soul remains slumbering, wrapped in the cloak of his mortality. In order to live in the world to come, a conscious life, one has to believe first of all in that life during the terrestrial existence. Knowledge about man's post-mortem states, acquired during the life of the body, enables a man to prepare for death intelligently. Moreover, such knowledge affects his day-to-day living, makes it more intelligent, because the light of wisdom sheds its benign light on the nature of waking consciousness, and its power of renovation.

THE POWER OF KARMA

"To seek to achieve political reforms before we have effected a reform in human nature, is like putting new wine into old bottles. Make men feel and recognise in their innermost hearts what is their real, true duty to all men, and every old abuse of power, every iniquitous law in the national policy, based on human, social or political selfishness, will disappear of itself. Foolish is the gardener who seeks to weed his flower-bed of poisonous plants by cutting them off from the surface of the soil, instead of tearing them out by the roots."

Free and independent India is neither really free nor truly independent though the alien British have quit the country. On every hand we see exploitation: Government servants from peons and clerks to many heads of departments are exploiting the situation. While the organised Government is led by a man of unimpeachable honesty, moral and intellectual as well as financial, Pandit Nehru is not getting the support he deserves. His patriotism is applauded but his example is not copied.

Inflation may be a natural product of after-war conditions prevailing in many countries of the world but the avid black-marketeer and the covetous money-maker are adding to the burden which inflation lays upon the nation.

The period since the Indian peoples gained their liberty from foreign rulers has revealed their numerous weaknesses. The desire to do good to the country is absent; most are self-centred, concentrated upon making money so that they can enjoy. The teachings of Gandhiji are forgotten or are only paid lip service. Strikes by the working-class and lockouts by the capitalists; party

politics dividing party politicians more than is good for the country; impulsive actions and grand paper schemes on the part of many publicists and reformers;—these things (and there are others) cause instability and spread a sense of insecurity, leading to mass excitement. Psychic inflation is worse than its monetary counterpart, and the orgy in moral disarray is worse in its results than are disorders in the financial and the economic spheres.

Intoxication has followed political victory and problems forced on the Country by the partition have thrown the ranks of the people into confusion, including a large number of members of the Indian National Congress. This is due, let it be admitted, to weakness of character. But some stabilising influence has become imperative. What is the best of such influences?

The large-scale national frenzy manifests in and through an unholy greed for money. Greed is a gate of Hell and brings forth lust and wrath. These dark powers energise minds and hearts to be exploiters. The best and most stabilising influence is a right perception of the infallible Law of Karma—as you sow so shall you reap. The most lucid as well as profound Teacher of this Law is Buddha, and he asserted:

By this the slayer's knife did stab himself;
The unjust judge hath lost his own defender;
The false tongue dooms its lie; the creeping thief
And spoiler rob, to render.

Let our people, at least a few among them, perceive that the interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive Karma, of which National

"the one terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some form or another. Hence Karma gives back to every man the actual consequences of his own actions, without any regard to their moral character; but since he receives his due for all, it is obvious that he will be made to atone for all sufferings which he has caused, just as he will reap in joy and gladness the fruits of all the happiness and harmony he had helped to produce."

Not without a visioned purpose have Sages and Saints emphasised the teaching of Karma. Thus say Jesus and Paul:—

"Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? ...I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgement." Matthew VII. 16; XII. 36.

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Galatians VI.7.

"Whatever misfortune befalleth you is sent you by Allaha, for that which your hands have deserved." XLII. 29.

Beneficence would result if our people began to understand that "rigid justice rules the world," that "the pepper plant will not give birth to roses, nor the sweet jessamine's silver star to thorn or thistle turn."

"VAJRA"—THE THUNDERBOLT

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

This is a Proverb of the wise Solomon. But the young psychology of the Western world emphasizes that modern civilization so strikes fear into men and women that none feels safe or secure. All live in fear from day to day. And the psychologists point to the widely prevailing neurosis as the result.

The psychology of the ancient East regards fearlessness as a virtue. Among the godlike qualities enumerated in the Gita, Fearlessness is the very first. It is an expression of the Human Soul.

That virtue is not the type of freedom from fear which some modern psycho-analysts and others recommend. That fearlessness leads man to disregard his soul. That untrue recommendation makes for what is called "independence." "We shall do as we please: we don't care what people say; if we err we shall take the consequences." This is swaggering and not courage. The type of independence exhibited is not fearlessness of Soul but foolhardiness of the sensorium.

The antidote to this kind of fearlessness and independence is Fear—the Spiritual Fear which leads to search for Knowledge, as the Wise Solomon taught. Our Indian Philosophy also has referred to it. Around the symbol of Vajra have gathered stories explaining an important aspect of the Law of Karma. Vajra is one of the Vibhutis— Excellencies—of Krishna himself: "Of weapons I am the Vajra, the Thunderbolt." This Vajra, according to Shankara, was fashioned by Indra, whose weapon it is, out of the

bones of the Vedic Rishi Dadhichi (past Karma gathered together). It is the Thunderbolt of Zeus, the Greek Indra.

The popular interpretation of the action of Vajra, the Thunderbolt, is punishment. But the more philosophical and mystical aspect of the justice of Karma is the restoration of the disturbed Unity of the Cosmos to the pattern of Order necessary for progression in the manifested universe. Men make chaos and the unerring Law sweeps on to remove it. Men and women of sense-mind, "free and independent and fearless," obstinately disregard the Law which works to Righteousness and so are broken by the Divine Vajra. Increasing obstinacy weakens the Will of such persons; pitting themselves against the Law they are tossed hither and thither, are bruised and maimed by the Vajra, till at length they learn to fear the Law that pardons only through punishment. Fear leads to search through knowledge; then "independence" is given up, interdependence is recognized and inspiration comes—inspiration enshrined in the mantramic phrase—"Work with the Law." When the lesson is learnt the necessity for punishment ceases and the protective aspect of Vajra is active. Vajra defends the oppressed while it strikes the tyrant.

In the Kathopanishad (Part 6) it is said that in the Life of the manifested universe is hidden the Vajra. Like a drawn sword, like a weapon raised aloft, the Vajra is poised. It is the forward-moving impulse of Nature. Because of it the Fire burns, the Sun shines and Death strikes. Man should know of It before his body is struck down by Yama, for thus the Supreme can be realized. The Vedanta Sutras (I. 3. 39) say that the Universe vibrates, abiding in Life—Prana—and therein something very terrible arises called a Thunderbolt.

In mystical Buddhism Vajra plays a significant part. It is the symbol of Buddha's power over Evil. Hence it became the sceptre of the Initiate—the symbol of his possession of Siddhis—wielded during certain ceremonies. The possessors of the Wand are Known as Vajrapani. It frees man from his Ahankaric self.

Karma is just and merciful—not blind but all-seeing; it punishes those who go against its smoothly flowing stream which invisibly guides conditioned life, but it protects and helps forward all those who help it and swim with its current.

Nations also feel the effects of Karma: at this hour Vajra is punishing India for the folly of her children who have laboured wrongly. Unmindful of the doctrine of Attavada, against which the Master Buddha warned, they have committed the dire heresy of separateness. The false self of India, sensuous and psychic, creedal and egotistic, ambitious and divisive, has produced bad Karma. The nefarious influence still prevails. It is Karma not pleasing to Ishwara. The divine Vajra has been striking it for a millennium.

Vajra is striking, striking, striking, and will continue its punitive justice till religious dogmatism and exclusiveness are destroyed and the men and women of India live for the Soul and enable the Land of their birth to serve the World-Soul. For that it has survived the strokes of Vajra in the past. With its help India will protect and guide the future of Humanity.

GOD IS LAW

The struggle for existence is universal. The poverty-stricken struggle hard to keep body and soul together, face problems which they are not able to solve and ultimately die, without any knowledge of death and the great hereafter. Those loaded with the gifts of fortune spend much of their time in dancing to the delusive music of life to avoid ennui and boredom. They too live by false knowledge and die in ignorance of what death is and of the great hereafter. Everyone seeks happiness, each according to his own notion of it and happiness escapes almost everyone; men and women pay in disappointment and headaches for the whirligig of the night before. Frustration of hopes in time sours life and embitters character.

The Great Masters of all ages have tried to help men and women to avoid frustration and the consequent discontent. Each of them has pointed to the truth that Nature's purpose fulfils itself in justice which is merciful, inasmuch as it is educative. This gives meaning to pain and points to a remedy.

Modern science recognizes that Law operates in Nature. But for it Nature or the Universe would be without any Moral Order. Justice is known as Determinism in modern materialistic science. It cannot yet accept the merciful aspect of the Law because its universe is guided by a living something which is automatic and blind. A Moral Universe is not known to modern science. This is a natural revulsion from that theological absurdity—propounded by theologians, Christian and non-Christian alike—a Personal God. Life has become

unbearable for thousands of human beings because they accept such a God and address Him thus:—

Thou great Mysterious Power, who hast involved
The pride of human wisdom, to confound
The daring scrutiny and prove the faith
Of thy presuming creatures.

Absurd as this may sound there are in this twentieth century thousands who believe in this ludicrous notion. Truly a robust "faith" is required to believe that it is "presumption" to question the justice of one who creates helpless little man but to "perplex" him, and to test a "faith" with which that "Power," moreover, may have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes. Among the Hindu masses the same ignorance and superstition exist today, for the real meaning of the Law of Karma is not learnt. Karma—Action implies effort, and self-chosen effort at that; therefore the power of will, exerted in ignorance or by knowledge, is also implied.

"It is not the wave which drowns a man, but the personal action of the wretch, who goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws that govern the Ocean's motion." — H.P. Blavatsky

What have the Sages and Seers taught? Jesus asked, "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" and the great Apostle Paul warned, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." The Master Krishna has traced the stages on the downward way. "He who attendeth to the inclinations of the senses, in them hath a concern." From this follow passion, anger, delusion, loss of memory, loss

of discernment and, finally, loss of all. Right effort is also described in the Gita, and each mind can select and act upon one or another prescription. Most lucidly also has Gautama the Enlightened One Expounded Karma. This grand teaching had been corrupted in India when He appeared and one of His noble endeavours was to restore to His countrymen the true meaning of Karma.

"The Self is the Lord of self; what higher Lord could there be? When a man subdues well his self, he will find a Lord very difficult to find.

"The evil done by oneself, born of oneself, produced by oneself, crushes the fool even as the diamond breaks a hard precious stone.

"Easy it is to do evil; deeds which are harmful to oneself come easy. Exceedingly hard it is to do that which is beneficial and good.

"Evil is done by self alone: by self alone is one defiled. By self alone is evil left undone; by self alone is one purified. Purity and impurity belong to oneself. No man can purify another.

"The foolish man reviles the teachings of the holy ones, the noble and the virtuous; he follows false doctrines which bear fruit to his own destruction, even like the fruit of the Katthaka reed."

KARMA AND DHARMA

Even sages have been deluded as to what is action and what inaction; therefore I shall explain to thee what is action by a knowledge of which thou shalt be liberated from evil. One must learn well what is action to be performed, what is not to be and what is inaction. The path of action is obscure. That man who sees inaction in action and action in inaction is wise among men; he is a true devotee and a perfect performer of all action.

—Bhagavad-Gita, IV. 16-18.

We need insight for the comprehension of the terms "Karma" and "Dharma." Among philosophical texts and treatises, the Bhagavad-Gita offers profound thoughts, and by its light different persons form their own concepts of the two words, which are archetypal in character and enshrine a compact and consistent philosophy which affects every aspect of man's being. Naturally, therefore, each tends to emphasize his own interpretation. The monotheist, the polytheist and the pantheist; the philologist, the littérateur, the philosopher and the mystic; and even the politician and the social reformer—these and all others formulate contradictory philosophies of life in the light of their own partial understanding of the grand Poem, which expresses a sublime allegory and a profound practical philosophy.

The Occultist who tries to realize what he has heard from the Wisdom of the long line of illustrious Sages and Their Living Peers is humble and cautious in presenting his own understanding of the archetypal aspects of Karma and Dharma.

Here we are confining ourselves to a consideration of what is advanced in the above-quoted verses. They

deal with the Path of Action, Karma-Marga; they offer the philosophy of what not to do as well as of what to do. And yet the Path of Action remains obscure for most. One reason for this is the failure to see that for actions to be truly righteous and beneficent one must possess knowledge and also devotion. The dire heresy of separateness has compartmentalized the much-spoken-of three paths—Karma, Gnyana and Bhakti. The result is that none of the three ways is correctly comprehended.

In examining the Religion of Works as it affects man's own routine life and his relationship with his fellow men, a few "do's" and "don't's" have to be considered in the light of the Gita teachings.

Not to be inactive is the first of the negative rules. Bodily laziness, moral lethargy, mental indolence, are grave dangers which touch the very soul of man. Strong is the cosmic principle of perpetual motion, and so it is stated, "No one ever resteth a moment inactive." To loll about idly is a deed in itself.

But what actions must we perform? First, our congenital duties, duties which are ours by our very birth. Dharma is the fulfilment of our destiny built by ourselves through a long past; it offers us opportunities for further unfoldment through the elimination of defects, for which the most suitable environment and conditions are provided as part of our destiny. To determine what are our congenital duties we have but to look at our own mental and moral capacities and limitations.

The second "don't" reiterated in the Gita is—don't ever attempt the duty of another. What is implicit in this? The Law of Necessity. Those deeds which it is not necessary for us to do cannot be our obligatory

duties. The Rule of Necessity helps us to avoid many a pitfall, and saves that most precious of possessions— time.

The third "don't" is—don't be tempted by desires and lusts. The universe is surrounded by compassion— a divine, gracious power. Human beings, listening to the urges and the inclinations of the senses, grab at compassion-power without knowledge, selfishly and egotistically, and find passion in their brains and blood. This tempts a man so often to abandon the very path of duty which is righteous and good.

The first of these is—renounce the fruits of action, not action itself. Even when we have determined to fight our passions we need the field of duty, Dharmakshetra. Not looking for fruits or rewards implies labouring without being impelled by likes and dislikes. Are not our sense-impulses, our fleshly appetites, part of our destiny and Karma? Should we not allow them to function? No, says the Gita. They were built by us in the past, and in the present they are to be overcome. Our Karma is related to our Dharma; if our destiny points to a defect in us, our duty requires that we correct it. Therefore the remedy is suggested.

There are three motives for right action, and, when the motor-power of wish and will is used to guide us aright in the daily routine of life, we walk fast on the Path of Good Works. Dana, Charity; Tapas, thoughtful Control; and Yagna, enlightened Sacrifice, are called Krishna's own deeds. There are two main stages connected with the deeds which are Krishna's. First, we must establish the habit of performing acts of right charity which hurts no one, of right asceticism which harms

neither body, mind nor soul, and of sacrifice which does not require special rites or elaborate ceremonials but endows certain small deeds with the purity of water, the humility of a leaf, the beauty of a flower, the nourishment of a fruit. This habit of doing daily a few acts of Dana, of Tapas, of Yagna, leads us to perform all our duties for the Ray of the Supreme Spirit at the core of our consciousness. Acts of daily life, whether at home, at the office, or at the club, should be pure in motive, humble in execution, orderly and tidy so that they are beautiful, and helpful to the soul of everyone. Thus man become "a perfect performer of all action."

We must not be hasty; the art of performing Good Works, like true knowledge, is not acquired easily or speedily; our aspirations should go hand in hand with ever-deepening devotion which makes the waters of wisdom spring up spontaneously. Good acts require knowledge; true assimilation of knowledge requires devotion; these three ever go together.

Thus only will the aspirant of Right Living realize in time the instruction of The Voice of the Silence:—

"Both action and inaction may find room in thee; thy body agitated, thy mind tranquil, thy Soul as limpid as a mountain lake."

HUMAN JUDGEMENT AND DIVINE COMPENSATION

"Let the sins of the whole world fall upon me, that I may relieve man's misery and suffering."

Thus spake the Enlightened Buddha, the Compassionate One, the Sage of high heart and not only of philosophic mind. Destiny, suffering, sins, confuse mortal minds; and even students of logic, metaphysics and moral philosophy are bowled over, very often, when face to face with the work of Nemesis.

Joseph Addison is not only a master of English prose, but at times proves himself a practical philosopher of mystic insight. In The Spectator of the 13th of September, 1712, he writes an essay full of wise thoughts founded upon these words of Horace:—

(Neither should a god intervene, unless a knot befalls worthy of his interference).

"We cannot be guilty of a greater Act of Uncharitableness, than to interpret the Afflictions which befall our Neighbours, as Punishments and Judgments. It aggravates the Evil to him who suffers, when he looks upon himself as the Mark of Divine Vengeance, and abates the Compassion of those towards him, who regard him in so dreadful a Light. This Humour of turning every Misfortune into a Judgment, proceeds from wrong Notions of Religion, which, in its own Nature, produces Good-will towards Men, and puts the mildest

Construction upon every Accident that befalls them. In this Case, therefore, it is not Religion that sours a Man's Temper, but it is his Temper that sours his Religion."

Among church-going persons there are hard-hearted and narrow-minded unjust men and women whose arbitrary self-righteousness is riveted on the misdemeanours of others. They are unfaithful to their Master, who demanded, "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Similarly, in the minds of many Indians who believe in the Law of Karma, suffering and error, justice and mercy, acts of men and curses or blessings of God and Gods, are so mixed up that confusion worse confounded results.

The first expression of man's real religion is in his belief in Karma or Nemesis—the nature of fate and the function of human free will. Whence suffering and what is its source? Kismet? Whence "accident" and "chance"? Whither the active man? Where do his pleasures take him? Have they lessons to teach? Or is learning only from affliction and agony? Can one be the maker of one's destiny and the master of one's fate? How can we rise above "this place of wrath and tears"? How many of our race and our civilization can assert with Henley:—

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

Addison in his essay castigates, and rightly, the habit of judging our neighbour, acquaintance or friend in the language of fault-finding and condemnation. He instances the gentlewoman who "is so good a Christian that whatever happens to her self is a Trial, and whatever happens to her Neighbour is a Judgment." He goes on to say:—

"I cannot but look upon this Manner of judging upon Misfortunes, not only to be very uncharitable, in regard to the Person whom they befall, but very presumptuous in regard to Him who is supposed to inflict them."

He refers in passing to God and Judgment Day from the then prevailing theological notions, but he lights perforce on a great fact of spiritual philosophy:—

"We are all involved in the same Calamities, and subject to the same Accidents; and when we see any one of the Species under any particular Oppression, we should look upon it as arising from the common Lot of humane Nature, rather than from the Guilt of the Person who suffers."

In the course of his discussion he gropes after an answer to the question: "What are Calamities and what are Blessings?"

"If we could look into the Effects of every Thing, we might be allowed to pronounce boldly upon Blessings and Judgments; but for a Man to give his Opinion of what he sees but in Part, and in its Beginnings, is an unjustifiable Piece of Rashness and Folly."

Karma is merciful: it brings to the unjust judge the nemesis of revealing to him his own weaknesses, his

own foibles, frailties and follies. Our very inner faith is shaken by the test of our own Karmic precipitations: we commit offences which we have not intended or planned; we omit to do the good that we have planned to do. The Wisdom of Karma, the Law which ever compensates, is a shield which has Justice for its one side and Mercy for its other; it protects us against "the bludgeonings of chance," and also it takes the offensive against "the Horror of the shade" and "the menace of the years."

The trials of the neophyte are the test of his faith and he may fail, as in the story told by Rabindranath Tagore:—

"There has been related in one of our Bengali epics the legend of a merchant who was a devout worshipper of Shiva the Good, the Pure,—Shiva who represents the principle of renunciation and the power of self-control. This man was perpetually persecuted by a deity, the fierce snake-goddess, who in order to divert his allegiance to herself inflicted the endless power of her malignance upon her victim. Through a series of failures, deaths and disasters he was at last compelled to acknowledge the superior merit of the divinity of frightfulness. The tragedy does not lie in the external fact of the transfer of homage from one shrine to the other, but in the moral defeat implied in the ascribing of a higher value of truth to the goddess of success,—the personification of unscrupulous egotism—rather than to the god of moral perfection."

On the other hand, the great drama of Job's bodily leprosy and soul-suffering reveals a lesson in Resignation leading to Redemption—"My redeemer liveth."

Judge not, condemn not, and it is added: "Forgive and ye shall be forgiven." The final way of paying Karmic debts to individual fellow men or to collective influences, national, racial, and even cosmic, is enshrined in the word "Forgiveness." In the "Vana Parva" of the Mahabharata this is said:—

"Strength might be vanquished by forgiveness; weakness might be vanquished by forgiveness; there is nothing which forgiveness cannot accomplish; therefore forgiveness is truly the strongest."

MAN'S DIVINITY AND SOPHISTICATION

"How can a man expect spiritual gifts or powers if he persists in ignoring spiritual conditions, in violating spiritual laws?"

At the core of every man's heart there is the aspiration to be good, noble, generous. What happens to it? How is it that that Divine Intuition which each feels from time to time does not express itself more abundantly and more frequently?

Man's divinity is natural to him; his sophistication is acquired. Born alone with his experience, the Soul possesses the capacity to deal with the material universe, to learn from it and to enrich his wisdom. The child experiences the first touch of sophistication in his schooling at home and his breeding at school. He acquires by osmosis thoughts and feelings not natural to the Soul, which affect adversely his native goodness, rhythm and light. The Soul's own vesture is of sattva-guna. Its native hue is golden, its native content, bliss.

Every Soul is born with the prospective vision of his future life, the purpose of which is that he shall live in harmony by dissolving disharmony and labour for and in unity with others, with all men, with the whole of Nature.

The Great Seers have reported that at the end of Swargic bliss, of the paradisal joy which each disembodied Ego experiences, there comes to him, on the threshold of a new incarnated existence, a Vision of what is to be. The Soul sees in silhouette his next incarnation; the radiating lines of forces reveal the picture of his coming life. It is like an architect's plan of a new

house—a blue print whose delineations are in its own peculiar language of linear measurements; but it gives some idea, however hazy to intelligent beholders of the blue print, of what the house is going to be. The details are not on the blue print but the size of the rooms and the general character of the structure are shown.

The human soul comes down to material life "trailing clouds of glory." The doors and the windows of his body bring him intimations of his heavenly affiliations. Very soon, however, by the influence of his family at home and his companions at school, a "strong personality" is developed, i.e., one which becomes possessive, fights for possessions and overpowers others in securing them. Thus the boy or girl becomes a dual intelligence—the Vision of the Being of Sattva is clouded over.

Shankara and other Occultists have taught that there is the projective power of ignorance. The power of projection which envelops the Soul is that of false knowledge, worldly wisdom; it leads men astray into the belief that "all is for enjoyment only" which the Gita describes in its Sixteenth Chapter. This force becomes in man the womb of love and hate—for the world. Its chief characteristic is that it smothers the noetic memory of the divine and the heavenly, and induces the psychic memory of the devilish and the earthy.

In pain, in anguish and in suffering, the Soul's noetic memory awakens but he is lulled into sleep by worldly wisdom—again and yet again. Thus a whole life, a full incarnation, finishes—much lost, very little gained.

divine, the other demoniacal. The latter predominates in our civilization. How very true is the description in the Gita of the demoniacal, who

"know not the nature of action nor of cessation from action, they know not purity nor right behaviour, they possess no truthfulness. They deny that the universe has any truth in it, saying it is not governed by law, declaring that it hath no Spirit; they say creatures are produced alone through the union of the sexes, and that all is for enjoyment only...Fast-bound by the hundred chords of desire, prone to lust and anger, they seek by injustice and the accumulation of wealth for the gratification of their own lusts and appetites.... Indulging in pride, selfishness, ostentation, power, lust, and anger, they detest me who am in their bodies and in the bodies of others."

And yet the Divine persists. Unlike the demoniacal, which is changing and mortal, the Rhythm of the Divine persists for it is ever abiding, Immortal. Its intimations come to each of us in darkness and gloom as well as through light and beauty. Man has to seize these intimations and work with them. Therefore it is said—"Put yourself at once in line with the Divine ways, in harmony with the Divine laws."

REINCARNATION EXPLAINS

The mistakes and the sufferings of human life make me think sometimes that those ancient seers, or interpreters of the secrets of heaven and the counsels of the Divine Mind, had some glimpses of the truth, when they said that men are born in order to suffer the penalty for some sins committed in a former life. — Cicero.

Successive lives on earth in human bodies for the unfolding Mind-Soul of man is a reasonable and satisfying doctrine. It solves problems and answers questions which no other doctrine does. It is logical and our minds are satisfied if we examine its basis and principles. It not only engenders hope in the heart but brings it the contentment born of understanding and the dauntless energy to press forward on the road to self-improvement leading to Self-realization.

Cicero speaks of "ancient seers"; in the modern world they are not revered because their ideas are not studied. But no era has been without its own seers, however few or however exotic. Mystics and Occultists down the ages have uniformly asserted the truth of Reincarnation. Transmigration, Metempsychosis and other terms are also used. But the main and central idea is that the human soul is immortal and unfolding. Its growth takes place in the soil of the body and its sensorium. The nature, as the genesis of the Soul, need not remain matters of conjecture and speculation. There is knowledge. It is not sought earnestly and sincerely because modern knowledge has pronounced the soul as mortal and the minds of large numbers are lazy, unquestioning and charged with blind belief. There are other minds not influenced by materialistic science but by illogical theologies.

"Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life."

Since the days of this German, Asiatics have also become "civilized" and reject the immortality of the Soul. But the tide has been turning and there have been not only mystics and poets but scientists and men of affairs who hold fast to their own intimations of Reincarnation. The Law of Cycles, by which the processes of Nature take place, compels a logical mind to arrive at the conclusion that Reincarnation represents the cycle of human evolution. Man is born and dies as the universe is making the vast cycles of the days and nights of Brahma. Voltaire saw this when he said that "It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in Nature is resurrection."

One whole issue of this magazine would not suffice to present the intuitive expressions of poets, ancient or modern. They are in a class by themselves and are not bothered by the strictures of science or the syllogisms of logic. Relying on their own intuitions they have sung in China, India, Persia, and in Europe—from Virgil and Ovid to Masefield, the Poet-laureate of Britain.

"One argument against a serious consideration of Reincarnation is its supposed impracticability. It is taken to be a teaching that stresses other-worldliness. This, once again, is a hasty deduction. It has been recommended that Reincarnation may be taken as a working hypothesis

not only for the purposes of solving our personal problems, but also national and social ones. If Reincarnation be true what a vast change, a revolution, must take place in educating the young. If children's bodies enshrine immortal souls, who have been here before and who are here once again to pick up the thread of learning and experience, then the system of education and the methods of teaching would have to be transformed. Is there an idea more significant than this which favours and ought to compel a sincere and unprejudiced enquiry into the principles and details of Reincarnation? Or take Penal Reform. Are not delinquent boys or habitual criminals evolving intelligences? Is it right to deprive them of individual responsibility by saying society makes criminals? We do not deny the truth implicit in the statement that all of us are in a measure responsible for the crimes and sins committed by our brothers. But they are young souls, or sick souls, who need schools and clinics run on the principles of a spiritual philosophy. But is there such a philosophy, which can sustain its consistency, without the teaching of Reincarnation?"

Numerous aspects of Reincarnation are accepted by men of modern knowledge. Recurrence and resurrection create the spiral of progress everywhere. Death and Regeneration are to be seen everywhere. Why should it be otherwise with man's body which dies but which must refashion itself with the Will to Live which every human soul possesses and holds to with a superb tenacity? No, the great American, Benjamin Franklin was right in penning his own Epitaph when he was only 23 years old:—

its contents worn out, and
stripped of its lettering and gilding,
lies here, food for worms:
but the work shall not be lost;
for it shall, as he believed, appear
once more,
in a new and more elegant edition,
corrected and improved by THE AUTHOR."*

Corrected and formatted to match the epitaph at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. — e-Ed.

WORDS—TRAPS AND MESSENGERS

The stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword; but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.

—Ecclesiasticus XVIII, 17.

Once again, during the last few weeks, in connection with the India-Pakistan Pact, our Prime Minister has had to condemn the sin of irresponsible talk and gossip.

From frivolous chatter and whispers of innuendo to calumny and blackmail—the kingdom of social animals is enveloped by the crimes of speech. Everybody talks about such harmful talk but few try to put a curb to their own tongue-wagging. Why is this? Because the real nature of speech is not understood.

Human speech is dual, corresponding to man's dual nature. Spirit in man is creative, and so is higher speech; its influence is far-reaching in space and in time. Like Vishnu, that speech sustains the ideation of the Spirit, immortalizes the images created. Inherent in that higher speech is the regenerating influence of Shiva, under which word-messengers become more pure, more beautiful, more peace-giving, and, like the human soul, they spiral heavenward.

The converse is also true. Lower speech stammers useless words, harmful words, violent words, obscene words and these may well be named expressions of lie.

The organ of speech may appropriately be compared to a Bridge which connects the World of Sages and Seers with the world of mortals. Man's tongue and his vocal cords sing heavenly hymns or utter terrible curses. Silent repetition of sacred texts is done by the same organ which utters obscenities. The purification of

speech is an early requisite of higher life. This implies that man, with his will and thought, his faith and aspiration, must endeavour to practise the art by which he makes his brain and blood channels of higher speech. Between the body and the mind, speech is a link. The Gita in its 17th Discourse speaks of three exercises—tapas of body, speech and mind.

"Gentle speech which causes no anxiety, which is truthful and friendly, and diligence in the reading of the Scriptures are said to be austerities of speech."

"Let him say what is true, let him say what is pleasing, let him utter no disagreeable truth. Let him utter no agreeable falsehood. This is the Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Law."

The Master Buddha has spoken of the anger of the tongue and has advised that one should leave off the sins of the tongue; "practise virtue with thy tongue."

Family life, friendships, statecraft as well as spiritual endeavours, suffer grievous harm through wrong speech. Impulsive and egotistic speech are very common phenomena. Thoughtlessness is the womb of wickedness and impulsive speech begets egotistic speech. Egotistic speech has numerous manifestations from simple bravado to cunning conceit. The desire to hear one's own voice is very general and quickly descends to speaking about "I" "me' "mine"—joke, innuendo, white lie, grey lie, black lie; here is a concatenation.

Not all men are prepared to assume the responsibilities attendant on the spiritual life; but all desire a better life—better than the one they are living. Most however, fall and fail through forgetfulness to apply what they

know to be right; that is because regular study and reflection on self-improvement are weak. The India of today suffers from this. Greed in business, anger in frustration, lust in society, beget the brood of falsehoods, from foolish rumours to black treachery.

Even more important than the work of legislating for the welfare of India is the task of reforming as quickly as possible the speech of its citizens. To meditate on the few quotations given above and to attempt to practise them will soon produce a good result. Here is one more from the Buddhist canon. It enshrines valuable ideas. It gives to speech a unique position. "Anything that is well said is a word of the Buddha." In the Sutta-Nipata good words are defined as

"the words that are well spoken, which conform to the Dhamma, which confer salvation, which are pleasant and true as opposed to unpleasant and false, and because of their intrinsic merit may be assumed to be spoken by the Buddha, despite the fact that no text containing them is available."

This not only sounds exaggerated but borders on very dangerous ground. And yet the statement enshrines a profound truth of Raja-Yoga.

Let us put away ignorance and its misleading child, ordinary speech. Here is an aphorism from Light on the Path, a small and sparkling gem which deserves to be better known in the world of today where people are struggling for light. "Attain to knowledge and you will attain to speech."

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

What conscious Art of man can give me the panoramic scenes that open out before me, when I look up to the sky above with all its shining stars? This, however, does not mean that I refuse to accept the value of productions of Art, generally accepted as such, but only that I personally feel how inadequate these are compared with the eternal symbols of beauty in Nature. —GANDHIJI

These are the words of Gandhiji. They signify the importance of real Beauty in man's mortal life. Man's environment is not to be neglected. The soul has environed itself in the corpus and not without a purpose.

In India both body and environment are grossly undervalued. For centuries we have neglected the teachings of the Sages, on body and environment. It would seem as if one of the hidden purposes of the British Rule in India had been to awaken us to the truth that matter, body, environment have values.

The Occident has over-emphasized and over-valued environment. It has blundered into the belief that sanitation and architecture, pictures and songs, radio and television sustain and evolve the soul. Nay more—these are the creators of the human soul! India seems likely to be lured by the glamour of gadgets.

Lusts of all kinds continuously enslave man; often he knows it not. When his attention is drawn to his enslavement he excuses himself after a fashion and philosophizes—it all is as Science teaches, Determinism. Modern knowledge, even of psychology, psychiatry and pscho-analysis, does not provide the answer which the ancient Oriental Psychology gives. The latter offers an explanation and a remedy for the lust of things.

The constant enemy of man on earth is a power which circulates in his brain, his blood, his glands and his senses. It overpowers his mind, blinds his intuitions and silences the action of Spirit Itself. The process is well described in the closing portion of the third chapter of the Gita.

It is this power, inimical to Man, the spiritual Thinker, which brings about "enjoyments which arise through the contact of the senses with external objects which are wombs of pain." This power inclines man's senses to objects of possession and creates in him the strength of egotism and causes pride to rule his will. It causes the contact of the senses with the many objects created by human hands and human mind. These are often created for the purpose and in the hope of increasing the wealth and power of their creators. Such man-made objects are not always after the pattern of the pure mind.

What human hands create as objects are surcharged with human feelings; they carry the magnetism of the maker of the objects. In the shop window, objects attract by their form, their colour, their glitter. But the attraction is ensouled by the ambitions, yearnings and hopes of the fabricating hand and brain. The lure of the world is not as imponderable as it appears to be. The substantial nature of human magnetism is not suspected by ordinary knowledge. The transmission of the fabricator's magnetism to the objects of his making has become very complex in our machine age with its mass production. But the subtle aura of man-made goods, however invisible, is a fact and it plays an important part in the lure which attracts men and women to the siren song of the "constant enemy."

Occultism, the Science of the Higher Life, warns against following the desires and the passions and advocates discrimination even in the purchase and use of objects. That great Science does not advocate foolish asceticism, or recommend sensuous hedonism. It suggests the Vow of Poverty to be observed in and by the mind of the Heart. The motive of such poverty is the enjoyment of objects of the senses as vehicles of experience which will lead to true development.

To enjoy the totality of human creation without coveting the wealth of another is possible, when the Gita teaching is followed. The good, the beautiful and the true have pragmatic values. To use the world as his footstool in the true sense, man must be practical, as the up-to-date capitalist, bourgeois, or proletarian is not; nor is the modern aesthete practical. Between the creative artist and the skilful artisan there is a gulf. It has to be bridged. The Sage who worships Pure Truth, the Saint who embodies Pure Virtue, the Seer who creates Pure Beauty are builders of that bridge.

The great pair of opposites, Necessity and Luxury, contains a clue. The balance point between the two must be reached. The pride of poverty is as false and as ugly as the pride of possessions. Egotism, separating the True from the Beautiful, is the source of Evil. Destroy Egotism and Evil dies and Good lives. Then man-made beauty reflects Divine Beauty. Is not that the truth to which the Buddha was pointing when he said to Bhaggava, the Wanderer, "Whenever one reaches up to the Release, called the Beautiful, then he knows indeed what Beauty is"?

DISCIPLINE AND CULTURE

There is great activity all over the world to further the ideals of freedom, of peace and of culture. It is not difficult to understand that these three great ideals are inter-twined; there cannot be peace of the right kind when the citizens of a state are slaves or savages.

There are people who think that freedom is of primary value, who look upon peace as a distant goal and regard culture as means to further national ends. This causes great confusion, and it would be worth our while to consider the interrelationship of the ideals of culture, peace and freedom.

The present clash of ideologies—turning upon whether the state is for the citizen or the citizen is but a cog in the great machinery of the state—has to be resolved if the world is to free itself from the nightmare threat of another great war. For this, what order of importance shall we give to freedom, peace and culture, we who are lovers of our fellow men, who have no political bias, national or international, who neither consider Soviet Russia a republic of free men, nor look upon the Western nations as true democracies of men with peace in their own hearts?

We have to reorient our thinking; an individual revolution ought to take place in every educated mind. If a man has not real culture, he cannot be at peace with his fellow men; he cannot tolerate, far less appreciate, a point of view other than his own. It is, therefore, real culture enshrined in the soul of man, the real man, which will resolve the friction of conflicting ideologies.

not be looked upon as a slave of the state but also that the state is properly a playground for the full development of its citizens. The citizen has, however, reciprocal obligations which culture will also reveal. The man of culture will not take his stand upon the all-importance of his rights but will acknowledge the duties of man as the citizen of the state.

Such culture cannot come out of a view of life which is materialistic and mechanistic, maintaining that might is right. A man of real culture will recognize that humanity is one, diversified into groupings called nations, communities, races, and that culture alone will enable him and the group to which he belongs to live at peace with all other men and all other groups. Therefore, if war is to be banished and peace made permanent it cannot be by any other way than by a large number of people, especially among the leaders of the world, undergoing self-discipline and self-training to make themselves men of culture. Those leaders and their followers will then be able to adapt themselves to view-points different from theirs, because within those view-points they will find something of value of self-improvement.

Then only can liberty of the individual as a citizen come to birth. Therefore the triad of culture, peace and freedom ought to be properly understood, and it should be recognized that culture is the apex; from it alone can come peace for the many nations of the world and freedom for all men and citizens.

SELF-DISCIPLINE

The wise Solomon spoke of "the holy spirit of discipline." Statesmen of every nation today advocate the practice of discipline by the citizen. Sometimes it is sought to impose discipline from without, and then, invariably, soon or late, rebellious tendencies break loose. The lesson of the Sages, ancient and modern, is that there is only one discipline truly efficacious and that is Self-discipline. From within his own consciousness a man must evolve his own code of discipline. No one can be coerced for long by another, be the other politician or priest; the feeling that the politician is exploiting his loyalty and patriotism, the priest his devotion and faith, arises and rebellion of some kind occurs.

Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy speaks of "the fear of some divine and supreme powers, which keep men in obedience." Nevertheless, the growth of human conscience and of moral insight does take place, however indirectly, as these are not directly taught. Then the fear of powers, divine or demoniac, is overcome and the mind becomes ready to exclaim: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God!"

Therefore discipline from within one's own mind must arise and become the guide to conduct. In the early stages of this looking within for guidance of outer acts, the person's own motives are hidden from him. Pride and self-regard are so natural to his being that the Egotist becomes the disciplinarian. Declaiming that he is the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, he proceeds to devise ways and means to express his

own soul's freedom. This does not take him very far and soon his pride and self-regard, subtly disguised, begin to function, covering his ambition for money and popularity with the veneer of a desire to do good, for which these are necessary.

The ways of Providence and Nemesis are strange. In earning money, in gaining fame, in wielding power, in practising kindness, charity and sympathy, in pouring out love itself, the human mind-soul learns the art of disciplining its personal self. Strength of character, the habit of gentle service and the manifesting of devotion to the interests of loved ones begin to unfold. But pride continues to rule the will. Self-regard dies hard. Both hide their faces subtly and unless these are perceived and noted true self-discipline cannot be undertaken with success. When one aspect of our lower personal self tries to discipline another, it is a contest between the Devil and his disciple.

The Soul's disciplining of its personal self is the higher, true discipline. It begins to operate only when the foibles of the good, kind, affectionate, but all the same Egotistic, person stand revealed to the inner Divinity which shapes its own ends however rough the hewing by the personal ego. The human being is a sprite, an elemental, posing as a godling. Karma tears the veil of his consciousness and reveals him as possessing in germ the powers of the Spirit, of a God, and as capable of evolving into a Sage-Seer. Then only does the real discipline begin.

The discipline of the disciple seeks the true teacher who has the faculty of imparting knowledge without coercion or controlling the freedom of the will. A true guru does not make slaves of his disciples; does not

claim obedience from them. The disciple has grown to recognize that docility and receptivity are necessary if he is to acquire the knowledge imparted; that concentration and reflection are necessary if he is to understand, to discern, to evaluate; that obedience to the teaching carries within itself the higher obedience to the teacher.

In the course of his development he perceives how the great Guru, the Self-realized Teacher, in instructing the self-prepared pupil, is Himself the Sublime Pupil of the Most High, whose Body, invisible and visible, is Living Nature Herself. The real Guru observes the Divine Discipline of obeying Nature and, having obtained mastery over Nature's Law and laws, obeys them. Thus the disciple learns the lesson of true discipline—to obey Teachings and Teacher, the former permeating Living Nature, and the latter embodying the Wisdom in the single book-volume of His Disciplined Brain. And so there is this piece of instruction in H. P. Blavatsky's Voice of the Silence:—

"Desire nothing. Chafe not at Karma, nor at Nature's changeless laws. But struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.

"Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance.

"And she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret chambers, lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depths of her pure virgin bosom. Unsullied by the hand of matter, she shows her treasures only to the eye of Spirit—the eye which never closes, the eye for which there is no veil in all her kingdoms."

RELIGION AND RELIGIONS

In every organized religion the most striking phenomenon is the gap in the life of its votaries, between their beliefs and their deeds. Every Christian admits Jesus to be his Saviour but how many endeavour to follow the Way taught in the Sermon on the Mount? Would there be rivalry and competition if all Christians tried to overcome their covetousness for money on the economic plane or for prestige and prominence on the social, or their pride and possessiveness on the political and national? Similarly, every Hindu believes in the immanence of Deity and the solidarity of man. But how many act up to the great teaching that the Mleccha has the Light of Krishna within him? Would there be the degrading practice of untouchability if all Hindus understood and applied the truth of the Upanishad that the same Self shines in all, albeit It does not shine forth equally in all? And that even they in whom the shining forth is meagre yet carry the Light of all lights and therefore are deserving of respect and affection.

The most vital need of humanity today is to seek the way of return to Religion. The foundation of the Temple of Religion is the brotherhood of all, the service of all. The priest repeats the teachings, quoting what he calls, his Holy Writ; but in his personal interpretation he murders the doctrine by disregarding its principle of universality. This priestly way cannot be accepted by the man of real Faith who intuitively feels Divine Presence in all space, Divine Motion in all evolution, Divine Intelligence operating everywhere, God being omniscient. This forces him to conclude that true Religion is different from that religion which the

Religious creeds beget sectarian charities, sectarian educational and social institutions, leading to sectarian exclusiveness, rivalry and hatred. The extent of evil which creedal dogmatic religions perpetrate is not fully recognized. Very little thought is paid to religious sectarianism as an enemy to secular humanism. False loyalties are more potent for evil than rank disloyalties.

But whence sectarianism and false loyalties? From man himself; his personal feelings usurp, in priestly fashion, the control of his mind. This results in irreligious tendencies—creedalism in belief, unbrotherliness in social behaviour, nationalistic patriotism inimical to internationalism. The Gita recommends the rendering of universal service joined to inquiry and search and humility, for then only will the Sages communicate the truth "knowing which thou shalt never again fall into error."

Intellectually it is not very difficult to perceive that Deity is immanent and human solidarity is a fact. Also, it is not hard for the mind to recognize the truth that the One shines in the many and that therefore there are order, rhythm and law in the diversity and manifoldness not only in the human kingdom but in the whole of nature. But such mental perception is not sufficient for the Inner Life. We have to learn to feel the reality of that perception. If mental recognition alone does not suffice, feelings not vitalized and energized, enlivened and enlightened by the higher mind also fail.

The outstanding practical questions for the leading of the life of true religion are—(1) how shall I extricate my mind from its thraldom to personal feelings? (2) How

shall I train the mind to elevate my feelings to manifest divine virtues in human personality?

The mind must be freed from personal feelings, especially of pride and self-regard. This freedom requires the process of transmutation; not killing out of feelings but transmuting them. The mind flourishes in the world by the force of passion—the personal mind is the passionate mind; it must seek and secure the Light of the Soul, the Dispassionate Thinker. That higher mind brings to the transmuted personality the supernal power of the Paramitas, the Divine Virtues. The person acquires the power to feel divinely or spiritually by the activating of devotion which has been latent.

To learn to feel as we learn to think, rightly and righteously, is a duty each person owes to his own soul. We must avoid the way of becoming feeling-less and also avoid falling prey to the lower type of devotion or bhakti, so common among the emotion-fraught minds of the religiously inclined.

For one who really desires to practise the dual truth of brotherhood and service, the following instruction of Mahayana Buddhism will prove most useful both for mind and for heart:

"Live in the eternal. For this, thou hast to live and breathe in all, as all that thou perceivest breathes in thee; to feel thyself abiding in all things, all things in SELF.

"Thou shalt not let thy senses make a playground of thy mind. "Thou shalt not separate thy being from BEING and the

rest, but merge the Ocean in the drop, the drop within the Ocean. "So shalt thou be in full accord with all that lives; bear love to men

as though they were thy brother-pupils, disciples of one Teacher, the sons of one sweet mother.

"Of teachers there are many; the MASTER-SOUL is one, Alaya, the Universal Soul. Live in that MASTER as ITS ray in thee. Live in thy fellows as they live in IT."

THE EYE OF THE HEART

Thus the great Shankara Acharya the Adept-Teacher who was more than a metaphysician and a philosopher. Like his illustrious predecessor, Gautama Buddha, he was a religious reformer, an occultist, an enlightened man. If his above-quoted saying is true then most men and women living and labouring on this globe are in bondage. Many are unconscious of their bondage; and the "clever" among them would ask: "What is real? Is the food we like and eat unreal? Are the clothes dressing our bodies unreal? Is money unreal, and fame and all the rest of it?"

Shankara's doctrine of glamour, Maya, has been discussed by generations of logicians and speculative philosophers. But for the understanding of the doctrine of Maya,—Glamour and Moha— Infatuation, (more generally spoken of as Illusion and Delusion) a better approach is the sight of the heart. The cold intellectual analysis and speculation cannot be easily and readily accepted by the practical man who aspires to apply the teaching to himself. The flights of the mind may satisfy those who desire merely to comprehend the doctrine but continue to live in the ocean of Maya. The man who desires to see the inwardness of the teaching with a view to improve his life uses his heart-instinct to unlock the door of the mystery of Maya and Moha. He feels that there is truth in this teaching.

The vivekachudamani, a small book but one very highly valued by devotees of the spiritual life, from which

the above saying is quoted, contains some verses of practical significance which help the man of heart to pierce the shell and get at the kernel of what is the Real lying hidden within the unreal.

"As a cloud wreath, brought into being by the Sun's shining, spreads and conceals the Sun, so the personal self, which comes into being through the Self, spreads and conceals the true Self."

The simple-minded but honest-hearted man knows that the divine and the demoniac jostle each other in his blood and brain. To him the above verse offers an image of a psychological truth he has actually experienced. He is aware that his sensuous cravings glamour and infatuate his mind; also that the sun of his soul-nature is there—often powerless to bring the mind to listen to the divine voice within. He seeks the next step:—

"Cut thy bonds stained with the stains of the world; by strong effort make thy manhood fruitful."

A little reflection on this injunction convinces him that his dual nature is really triple—his sensorium and himself, the Soul, are joined by his mind. The mind is the ambassador of the King Soul in the land of the senses; the mind entangled in the social whirl of the kingdom of the senses forgets his duty to his King. By strong effort he should make his manhood fruitful. How?

"The fixing of the heart on sensuous things causes the increase of evil mind images, progressively as its fruits; knowing this through discernment, and rejecting sensuous things, let him ever fix the heart on the true Self."

The control of the wandering heart results in control of mind. The heart's nobler aspirations free the mind, dispersing dark images born of the personal self, and then the Light of the Soul guides the Mind. Having glimpsed the sun let him fix his attention thereon. Having created the knowledge of the Real let him preserve its good effects. There are Those who have attained to this high position permanently and who radiate the Light of the Spiritual Sun.

"Drawing near to that being whose form is ever stainless, illuminated and blissful, put far from thee this disguise inert and impure. Let it not even be remembered again; for, to remember as an object of desire the thing that has been vomited, brings contempt."

These steps are simple and what is required is not knowledge so much as the courage to apply the teaching about glamour and infatuation to the personal self. Machinations of the mind hide from us the weakness of our character; the courageous heart sees his weaknesses and seeks to remove these by the aid of his mind. The mind is our enemy now; it becomes our friend when the desire to improve begins to function.

FROM GLUTTONY TO RAGE

Bodily health is valued highly by all. That "Health is Wealth" is true in more than one sense. Great efforts are made by governmental and social organizations to educate the people as to how not only to prevent disease but also to build up health.

As in other spheres, modern knowledge here started off with some false premises. The ancients and their modern heirs like Paracelsus, Mesmer, Du Potet and others were long suspected and scorned. Thanks, however, to the discovery that people who worry seem especially prone to such an aliment as ulcer of the stomach, psycho-somatic medicine has recently gained ground. The Body-Mind interrelation is now universally recognized, and psychiatry has become an acknowledged branch of medicine.

Ancient Sages emphasized the connection between body, psyche and human spirit. The indissoluble links between Man, the Microcosm, and the Supreme, the Macrocosm, were thoroughly understood. Health and Holiness, which come from the same root, meaning "whole," were deemed necessary for the progress of man, the mortal, towards the Integrated Immortal, the Master of His Own Being and so the Master of the Living Universe.

Manu and other lawgivers have laid down rules of health for the attainment of this progress: health of the corpus, and of feelings, of thoughts, of will; and of the links which bind these together to create Man, the unit.

and when to eat. In our own times Gandhiji experimented with various edibles, considering dietetics to be a vital art. But he took the same view that the old Sages did—the body being the temple of the Most High, not only what goes into the mouth as food but also what comes out of it as words and tones has to be considered, the latter being more important than the former.

Man must not be looked upon as a body, or a mind, or a soul, but as a unit in which many forces are at work; forces in Nature which, with due co-operation, keep all forms of life in good health.

Pythagoras is reported by Iamblicus and others as taking the same view. His pupils in the Sodality of Krotona were not only instructed in mathematics and music but also in dietetics—what might be eaten and what should not be touched. Thus, in his Golden Verses:—

Eat not the foods proscribed,
But use discretion
In lustral rites,
And freeing of thy soul.

Foods should be taken with such discernment that the inner psychological purification is not hindered or halted. For the freeing of the Soul from the bondage of the senses, purificatory rites were undertaken, but their efficacy was lowered by indulgence in proscribed foods.

Pythagoras, however, did not advocate the extreme asceticism of body-torture:—

Nor should'st thou thy body's health neglect,
But give it food and drink and exercise
In measure; cause it no distress.

One cause of ill health, disturbing to the concord between brain and mind, is an unbalanced diet, one which does not maintain the balance between the body and the dweller in the body. Measured exercise aids both assimilation and elimination, thus restoring the equilibrium. There exists a parallelogram of forces of the body, speech, emotions and ideas, and food is a factor of its equilibration. Bodily distress is Nature's signal of the imbalance of forces which have therefore become discordant.

Know this for truth,
And learn to conquer these:
Thy belly first;
Then sloth, luxury and rage.

Proscribed food, taught the Greek Sage, caused inertia. Gluttony is not only overeating but also consuming the wrong quality of food. Sloth results; indifference to life sets in; then luxuries are sought while real needs are neglected. Comfort, ease, luxury and more luxury are followed by frustration, and thus anger, wrath and rage are born.

All diseases emanate from the Great Disease—discord and disturbance between Man and the forces of Nature. Earth, water, fire, air and light are in him as they are in the Macrocosm. His Powers, of Will, of Thought, of Speech and all others are derived from Nature, Mother of all Powers. Man's prerogative is to help Nature by recognizing that his own creative spirit and the Great Spirit are in constant unison, and living accordingly. This is Holiness; this is Health. Turning away from them, man enters the universe of Great Disease.

PILGRIMAGE

Our civilization is guided by financiers and politicians. Our citizens accept them as their natural leaders. As a result, a social order has arisen different from those known to history. Ancient ideals have become unsuitable in modern life. Thus the institution of the Pilgrimage which had great educative value, which inspired minds and hearts to rise to nobler heights, is lost to us. Even where it exists and is observed, for example among the orthodox Hindu Tirthakas or the Muslim Hajis, it is a creedal rite which may bring respect to the "pilgrims," but does not possess the power of mind transmutation.

Leaving aside the minority even of such pilgrims as visit Kashi and Rameshwaram, or Mecca and Medina, or Lourdes and Canterbury, etc., what about the others? Today the secular form of pilgrimage is holidays. Vast populations take advantage of vacations and leaves of different types (casual leave, sick leave, annual leave, etc., which are customary, and now in many cases legally enforced on the employer) to entertain themselves, each according to his tastes and desires. The true Pilgrim is rare; he has given place for the most part to the secular traveller. "Change of air for the body," "freedom from work," the "putting aside of business worries and family concerns," "sight-seeing," and the like allure the tired earner of daily bread and his family. They all use time, money and energy differently from when he and they are in harness at office, home or school. Decent folk—and most are that—desire to forget the routine of life by breathing a cleaner air, drinking different and health-giving waters, consuming "richer and better"

foods, seeing different sights and scenes. The glamour exercised by all these strengthens their illusion. It is the bodily and sense life, the mundane mind and morals, which are titillated during holidays. True soul refreshment and mental re-creation are not so gained. That is why so many return home from their vacation a little refreshed in body but with a sense of disappointment. Holidays and travels do, however, have their uses and are in some ways beneficial—we are not overlooking that.

But the traveller is not the pilgrim. The pilgrim does travel, does glimpse sights and scenes his eye had never beheld, but his vision is fixed upon the Place of Pilgrimage, where his Soul is going. The moral and spiritual purpose of the Pilgrim enables him to gain from new sights and scenes, from new foods and herbs, from new human contacts, moral and intellectual values and an uplift which the traveller misses out. The object of the traveller is his own entertainment; that of the Pilgrim is mental enlightenment, moral uplift and above all some spiritual realization of the Divine.

In these days when life presses hard on millions of men and women and sheer existence demands laborious efforts, it is rarely possible to go on a real pilgrimage. But this Kali-Yuga, our dark cycle, affords us the opportunity to turn ordinary acts and events into sacraments. So we must learn to utilize our short vacations and well-earned office-leave to the very best advantage. Free-Masons go from labour to refreshment; philosophers value re-creation; poets themselves need the repose from work to listen to the Silence singing to them. And did not Jesus himself tell his disciples returning from their holy labour to come apart into a desert place and rest awhile?

But what are true rest and repose? How can we refresh ourselves in real re-creation? Are holidays and vacations to be merely mundane experiences?

Pilgrims go to holy places because these are hallowed by the ideas and images of holy men—saints, seers, sages. Such centres have been called "spiritual seminaries." They recall to the mind the penances and prayers performed, the praises sung, the sermons preached; and the pilgrims try to gain their inspiration and energy for self-purification and soul-enlightenment.

The ordinary holiday-maker is centred in his sensorium; the serious traveller is bent upon educating his brain; the earnest and sincere pilgrim returns home a better-hearted and a nobler man, if he has been able to osmose the merit which is enshrined in the place of pilgrimage, the light which radiates therefrom and the peace which surrounds it.

"Man is an Eternal Pilgrim. His responsible purpose in life is to visit Holy Places. Thereby he learns to erect within himself the Temple of Seven Shrines."

THE WORLD CYCLE AND INDIA

Those who have the weakness to believe that Nature works according to the Law of Cycles, and that therefore in human history also the rise and fall of civilizations occurs under the operation of that Law, will find a recent controversy of unusual interest. It is the Toynbee-Jerrold controversy which took place in the columns of The Times Literary Supplement.

What is of particular interest to us here is the deduction of Dr. Toynbee, after prolonged study, reflection and consideration, about the nature of the cyclic activity in the history of humanity in the last few centuries. He wrote, on the 16th of April 1954:—

"I guess that both the West and the world are going to turn away from man-worshipping ideologies—Communism and secular individualism alike—and become converted to an Oriental religion coming neither from Russia nor from the West. I guess that this will be the Christian religion that came to the Greeks and Romans from Palestine, with one or two elements in traditional Christianity discarded and replaced by a new element from India. I expect and hope that this avatar of Christianity will include the vision of God as being Love. But I also expect and hope that it will discard the other traditional Christian vision of God as being a jealous god, and that it will reject the self-glorification of this jealous god's "Chosen People" as being unique. This is where India comes in, with her belief (complementary to the vision of God as Love) that there may be more than one illuminating and saving approach to the mystery of the universe."

"The only way to be uniquely Christian in reality is to repent like the publican, to see the beam in one's own eye, to take up the cross, to drink the cup. These conditions have been fulfilled by saints in all the Christendoms, but there have been Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists who have fulfilled Christ's conditions too.

"The sin of which I feel that we Westerners need to repent is Pharisaism When Pharisaism bears its inevitable fruit of violence,

Christians are appalled, as we are at the violence of Communism and of our own past Western wars of religion. That other half of the world which has derived its religion, not from Palestine, but from India, has, like pagan Greece and Rome, been less guilty of this particular sin (though no doubt, it has peculiar sins of its own). In our new "one world," in which the wages of fanaticism are going to be genocide, India will have something to say about this; and we cannot afford to be deaf to her voice."

The Voice of India—but which India? we may well ask Dr. Toynbee and our other friends in the Occident. The voice of orthodox Hinduism, of Caste-ism, of untouchability and of evil social customs, of psychics afflicted with the disease of mediumship? The Muslim, the Christian and the Parsi India are no better. The vision of Gandhiji proclaimed India to be an irreligious country in spite of its million shrines.

In the public world, however, we have the Holy Writ, from the Vedic Hymns to the Bhagavad-Gita; and it is good to note that there are not only psychically afflicted

religionists but also spiritually inspired Minds. The great texts are known to the Occident through the splendid work of philologists; but mystics and intuitive philosophers alone can reveal the Truth, the Power and the Beauty enshrined in the words and phrases, allegories and symbols of those ancient texts.

So, the message of the East, whence even the Light comes, may be heard in this: Do not mistake the Eastern sky for the Source of Light. Eternal Wisdom is pre-Vedic, pre-Aryan. The Luminary of Pure Wisdom sheds its rays with impartial fidelity and the glory and the grace of those rays have touched many individuals in every cycle, in every period of history. The accumulated Wisdom of the Ages and the Yugas is one great storehouse of knowledge which learners can and should use to drive away the darkness of ignorance.

But who is the learner? The decaying brain? The ever-shifting mind? Feelings and emotions which express themselves now as carnal love and now as great love? The true learner is the immortal human Soul, each Soul an Image of the Spirit.

Through self-discipline born of Knowledge the learner makes his mind a repository of Divine Ideas whose light it radiates; he transforms his heart into a Temple where shines the Light of Unfailing Compassion which is Justice itself; such an aspiring and practising learner surely arrives at the Lodge which is the Home of Perfect Sages and Seers.

That is the second great source open to the modern world. That influence is potent and powerful in the India of today, the true India which the daring, devout pilgrim soul will find if he has humility, the spirit of fearless

quest for truth, and love for his fellow men. Universal and timeless Wisdom is available to all who walk the way of Universality and true Brotherhood.

DISCIPLINE AND SELF-DISCIPLINE

One of the major differences which mark our civilization as inferior to some ancient ones is our outlook on discipline. Instead of Self-Discipline we live and labour under discipline imposed upon us from without. When Divine Kings and Raja-Rishis ruled, and even when such wise Emperors as Asoka or Marcus Aurelius reigned, their guidance and instruction engendered Self-Discipline. The seeking of inner contentment and environmental satisfaction was then a pleasure, and brought some happiness born of understanding.

Among the great Gurus who were and are the Fathers of their Chelas it was Self-Discipline which was enjoined. The Philosophy of Discipline is founded upon the knowledge of the divinity of man's higher nature, controlling, purifying and elevating the lower and carnal nature. Those great Gurus were and are Master Psychologists, not experimenting in ignorance and limitations of their own. Nor are they so rash and so misguided as to stir up the animal tendencies of their patients and pupils. Many modern psycho-analysts and psychiatrists do that, mainly because the real character of the Will-Power of the human being is, more or less, a sealed book to them.

Modern schools, colleges, academies and research institutions, consider that they must impose a discipline, through a code of rules and instructions. Revolt rather than conformity is the order of the day. Employees and college students, among others, are suffering from frustrated wills, and resort to retaliation which is more harmful to themselves than to others.

In a general way, in our civilization, indiscipline marks the life of the individual in the home; and a variety of groups is formed, such as social clubs, students' associations, chambers of commerce and trade unions, which sanction indiscipline. Class war results. What looks like success or failure as the outcome of such strife, in reality degrades the moral fibre, not only of the contestants on both sides but also of society as a whole.

Nowadays real Discipline plays a minor part in spiritual life. The Divine Discipline called Yoga offers useful instruction regarding (1) the subduing of the animal psyche, (2) the raising of the human psyche to a nobler attitude, and (3) the creating of a channel through which the Divine Psyche can speak and act. (4) Knowledge is offered for study, (5) meditation is advocated for the purpose of application, (6) the service of fellow souls is recommended as essential for testing one's own knowledge and the efficacy of one's own efforts at right practice. Above all, there is taught (7) the Development of the Will, which is not wholly dependent on the mind, but is separable from it.

These seven steps to Divine Discipline or Yoga are timeless, and as necessary today as in the past for right living, which implies living in and by the power of the One Spirit.

Discipline is manifesting itself in Super-Nature, the Discipline of the One Self in relation to all selves—sub-human, human and superhuman.

This Divine Discipline of the Lord of Yoga encompasses every member of the human kingdom. His Great Sacrifice is primeval and is performed through Ideation-

Imagination (Tapas) and Boundless Compassion (Dana or Karuna). Violence is the force which disturbs the smoothness of its flow.

Violence very often is involved in mistakes. Further, violence in a thousand blunders is expressed by men and women unconsciously to themselves, ignorant of the serious harm they are causing. There are cases when, with evil intent, men and women indulge in committing violence; this is the real Sin against the Holy Spirit.

Political legislation, social reform, including educational, and economic adjustments should take into account this important and fundamental principle active in Nature. What was obscured till Gandhiji appeared on the scene and courageously proclaimed, to all and sundry, the mighty and majestic truth of Ahimsa, Non-violence, is now acknowledged by everyone as the real panacea for all human ills; but how many legislative and reform bodies are there which act upon that beneficent principle?

Individuals must practise non-violence in the daily affairs of life as a matter of soul-discipline, for that is one of the surest ways to build up a non-violent State—the true Welfare State, wherein harm to one is harm to all and beneficence is universal and impersonal.

WE ARE TRUSTEES OF OUR POSSESSIONS

The manner of using our money or spending our estate enters so far into the business of every day, and makes so great a part of our common life, that our common life must be much of the same nature as our common way of spending our estate. If reason and religion govern us in this, then reason and religion have got great hold of us; but if humour, pride, and fancy, are the measures of our spending our estate, then humour, pride, and fancy, will have the direction of the greatest part of our life....

If you do not spend your money in doing good to others, you must spend it to the hurt of yourself. You will act like a man, that should refuse to give that as a cordial to a sick friend, though he could not drink it himself without inflaming his blood. For this is the case of superfluous money; if you give it to those that want it, it is a cordial; if you spend it upon yourself in something that you do not want, it only inflames and disorders your mind, and makes you worse than you would be without it. —WILLIAM Law: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

Our attitude to our possessions, especially money, greatly colours and shapes our life. In our economic civilization money rolls with a tremendous force.

Generally speaking three attitudes are current. By far the most prevalent attitude is to regard wealth and possessions, whether material possessions or possessions such as fame and power, as ends in themselves. And they are used for personal and selfish purposes, for self-glorification and sense-gratification. This in spite of the positive evidences that these alone do not produce happiness. The Gita describes those who are ever in pursuit of wealth and who even stoop to questionable means to obtain it as "deluded" and "demoniac."

Secondly, there are those who believe that economic prosperity cannot go hand in hand with spiritual progress. And so they take to the begging bowl and call themselves sannyasis. But often their thoughts and feelings dwell on riches and sannyasis turn bhikharis (beggars), a great tax upon the country and a nuisance to society. They are "false pietists of bewildered soul."

Thirdly, there are those who look upon money and possessions as being neither good nor evil in themselves; these are simply objects of trust and avenues of experience. They do not subscribe to the view that poverty is essential for spiritual living; for them asceticism consists in the wise and beneficent use of all things, the right attitude of mind to wealth and poverty. They are the practitioners of the Divine Discipline or Raja-Yoga.

Money can prove a curse and a corruptor of Soul-life if it breeds selfishness or egotism. If used with a righteous motive and a correct method it can prove a blessing. Poverty is as great a curse if it begets vice; if assessed at its proper value as an instrument for the growth of endurance, patience and moral stamina it is a boon and a blessing. It is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and yet there is truth in the words of John Donne that "the incorrigible vagabond is farther from all ways of goodness than the corrupt rich man is." On the other hand King Janaka, Ashoka, Marcus Aurelius and other Raja-Rishis, Royal Sages and Divine Kings, were spiritually rich and used their vast fortunes wisely because dispassionately. Their attitude to wealth was of Trusteeship, not of ownership. The Great Buddha Himself accepted with approval the gifts made to the Sangha.

exclusive and absolute ownership over wealth—of bullion, of knowledge or of virtues. Much of the suffering and misery now prevailing could be alleviated if people would understand and approve the Trustee-Dharma. The beneficiary of the trust is collective humanity. One should not wait to become rich to become a trustee. However small one's stock of money, let him begin now. His success does not consist in giving away much, but in using whatever he has in the right way, with discrimination and detachment. Only then will he be a "Conqueror of Wealth."

Money is the emblem of a Power in Nature, personified as the Goddess Laxmi by the Hindus, Amalthaea by the Greeks. The modern world, ignorant of the real nature of that Power, exploits it, and so money instead of healing the wounds corrupts the heart of poor humanity. Those who would be masters of that Power in Nature must learn the correct utility of money, one of the vehicles of that Power. There are wrong forms of charity dealing with mere effects; one must by real personal exertion use money for removing the hidden causes of evil—false knowledge, personal ambitions to gain fame and power, and the like. But above all one should imitate the sweet and abiding virtue of that Power—Bounty. Enlighten all who sit starving not only for the bread which feeds the body, but know not they are starving for the bread of wisdom. When wealth is used in an unselfish way and intelligently, for the elevation of the race-mind, that Power in Nature produces an alchemical change in the good giver of real gifts. The trustee attracts more wealth for his beneficent work.

of "those who desire possessions." These are soul-possessions, of which sense-possessions are the dark shadow, ugly and misleading. Soul-possessions grow as they are shared, unlike sense-possessions, which diminish in the sharing. What type of possessions should one yearn for? In the profound treatise Light on the Path aspirants are told to "desire possessions above all." It is explained:—

"But those possessions must belong to the pure soul only, and be possessed therefore by all pure souls equally, and thus be the especial property of the whole only when united. Hunger for such possessions as can be held by the pure soul, that you may accumulate wealth for that united spirit of life which is your only true self."

Wisdom is one such possession; Compassion is another. From Wisdom, it is said, seven branches of knowledge spring; from the womb of Compassion are born the seven divine virtues. For the right comprehension of Wisdom and the practice of Compassion a third factor is necessary—Good Company. The friendship of those who are like-minded and like-hearted helps us to develop the sense of real unity with all that lives and breathes. This is Real Wealth. It is divested of all selfishness, pride, envy. Desiring such wealth and using it for the good of all, we shall be filled with enjoyment and satisfaction.

THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT DISEASE

Why this laughter, why this jubilation, when this world is burning, burning? Shrouded in darkness why do you not seek for light?

—The Dhammapada

This great and important fact is not generally recognized: that men and women should educate themselves adequately, using the very sphere of life in which they enjoy and suffer, ultimately to pass through the gate of death and find themselves surviving.

Human memory is a trickster. Is it not conceivable, and even likely, that, having passed through the experience of death, we shall forget about it, and find ourselves continuing our life of longings or of aspirations? Our lustful longings make our hell; our noble aspirations, to feel unselfish love, to acquire deeper knowledge, make our heaven.

Some study of this subject followed by quiet reflection brings to us the age-old truth (which may strike us as a startling discovery of our own!) that human self-consciousness, like everything in Nature, must continue surviving every kind of transformation and transmutation. It is imperative, therefore, that we should now and here enquire about the continuity of self-conscious life after the death of the body. Will the conviction of that fact not give to life added purpose and meaning?

It is considered morbid to dwell upon the subject of death, and yet great prophets and poets have called upon us to "meditate upon birth, death, decay, sickness and error." We, self-conscious men, are bound to survive all the changes represented by these states. In life we survive

sickness; also our ignorance and errors; whether we succumb to them or overcome them, we survive them. Life is stronger than both birth and death, and human self-consciousness outlives many births and deaths. Therefore it is folly to suffer sicknesses born of errors without ascertaining the how and why of it all. We are decaying because we are dying moment by moment and each of us is bound to see his body die. But is each one of us— are you, good reader—ready to die to pain because no trouble is taken in advance to know the origin and end of suffering? Body ages and brain decays; what about our love and lust? What about our yearning to know? We leave behind our physical possessions. What about our mental and moral wealth? We feel love and patience and generosity—these possessions will bring peace and contentment in the hour of death and take us each to his own heaven. We feel lust and wrath and greed—these are possessions comparable to aches of the body dying in pain; they, surviving, take us to our hell. From both we shall emerge to live again.

Krishna asserts (The Bhagavad-Gita, IX. 19) that he is death and immortality. Each one of us dying, lives; living, learns; learning, attains Wisdom and Power, not only over death but also over life. From ignorance we proceed to gain knowledge; from agnosticism we press forward to rise as Gnostics.

Disease is omnipresent, but all diseases, through decay or through death, give birth to life which also is omnipresent. The Wisdom attained by the Great Gnostics is available to us as a grand record. A study of this record will give us insight if we have the dispassion of the true scientist and are free from the self-assertiveness of modern man. (Cf. The Bhagavad-Gita, XIII. 8)

In the priceless collection of the sage sayings of the Enlightened One, The Dhammapada, we have been given the philosophy of birth, death and the Great Hereafter, Nirvana, the Immortal Bliss or Self.

"Not in the sky, nor in the depths of the sea, nor in mountain clefts is there a place on earth where a man can be and death cannot overcome him." (128)

"Death overpowers the man who is gathering the flowers of sense, even before he is satiated in his pleasure." (48)

"He who seeking his own happiness uses on others the rod of punishment because they seek their own happiness, will not find happiness after death." (131)

"Looking upon his body to be fragile as an earthen jar, valuing his mind as a firm fortress, let a man fight Mara with the sword of wisdom. Let him guard what he has gained, but let him fight on." (40)

"As a cowherd with his staff drives the cows into pasture-fields, so old age and death drive men to new living." (135)

In this last verse is implicit the great truth that a new life results from death. There is knowledge available which, properly applied, enables a man to shuffle off his mortal coil with the triumphant exclamation—"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

THE FIGHTING-COCKS AND THE TURKEY

Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is mine adversary? Let him come near to me.

—Isaiah, L. 8

Give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.

—1 Timothy, V. 14

Almost all human individuals recognize the existence of evil in the world and in themselves. The cultured further recognize that evil is circulating in their blood, is making grooves in their brain and is in every throb of their heart. Good and evil create, respectively, the light by which man sees and the darkness which blinds him. We are all like Mr. Doolittle, the dustman in Shaw's Pygmalion, who avows that like the rest he is a little of both honest man and rogue.

The modern psychologists and philosophers are still struggling with the problem of the source of evil, of how to make man good. The psychologists of the ancient world solved the problem ages ago. Let us point to but one complete answer, that in the Gita, III. 36-43. The constant enemy of man on earth is his own passion. The need for discipline of mind and soul is almost universally felt and many are the methods put forward, one of them being that in the above passage just referred to.

While all cultured individuals admit that they should fight the Adversary, groups of men—classes comprising a single nation, or nations living and labouring side by side with other nations—do not seem to recognize the need for discipline. In disputes between, e.g., capital and labour, the self-discipline which curbs selfishness and

rules out retaliation is not even thought of. Similarly, at this hour, two big powers, the U.S.A, and the U.S.S.R., contending for supremacy, obstinately pursue the way of violence and retaliation, each ignoring its own inherent defects and vices. National and political-party self-examination and self-purification are not even thought of; but unless self-introspection is used and self-righteousness curbed, and the interest of the whole of humanity is set higher than national self-interest, their fate will overtake nations and parties as it did the two fighting-cocks in Robert Dudley's fable:—

"Two cocks of the genuine game-breed met by chance upon the confines of their respective walks. To such great and heroic souls, the smallest matter imaginable affords occasion for dispute. They approach each other with pride and indignation, they look defiance; they crow a challenge, and immediately commence a bloody battle. It was fought on both sides with so much courage and dexterity; they gave and received such desperate wounds, that they both lay down upon the turf utterly spent, blinded, and disabled.

"While this was their situation, a turkey, that had been a spectator of all that passed between them, drew near to the field of battle, and reproved them in this manner: 'How foolish and absurd has been your quarrel, my good neighbours! A more ridiculous one could scarcely have happened among the most contentious of all creatures, men. Because you have crowed perhaps in each other's hearing or one of you has picked up a grain of corn upon the territories of his rival, you have both rendered yourselves miserable for the remainder of your days.' "

In national and international politics the opposing parties will do really effective work for humanity as a whole if they will apply in even a small measure discipline to exorcize the Adversary within. Parties sitting round the table, determined to solve world problems and using introspection with detachment, will soon come to see that every political problem has its ethical side. By moral insight born of moral discipline they will make it possible to agree with the national or political adversary or social opponent.

Classes in a nation are composed of individual citizens: each nation is composed of individual men and women. The interests of the nation come before those of any class in that nation. Similarly, the welfare of the whole human race is vital for the welfare of each and every nation. The hands of the Clock of Destiny clearly point to the emergence of the United World. No single nation, neither the U.S.A, nor the U.S.S.R., can bring contentment and enlightenment to its own citizens without considering the welfare of humanity. A welfare state does not exist to display its own prowess in a competitive world but to promote the welfare of its citizens. That welfare is dependent on the welfare of the human race.

Cultured individuals recognize this truth; and by right effort they can and should compel their respective governments to recognize its importance in corporate life. The technique of achieving this is Love which understands. A sense of justice is not sufficient, nor is a sense of patronage. The Grace of Super-Nature manifests the mighty magic of the visible—bountiful and beautiful. Men must learn to copy Super-Nature, learn to labour in harmony: minerals support the vegetable kingdom,

vegetation sustains the beast and the bird. Super-Nature is ever performing sacrifice—a Nitya Yagna. By copying that, the individual can gain emancipation and enlightenment. And a concourse of cultured individuals can influence nation states to seek emancipation from national pride and selfishness for the Greater Glory of Man.

PSYCHOLOGY: EUROPEAN AND ASIATIC

"European psychology deals with the how of the elimination of evil. Asiatic psychology with the unfolding of moral power, leading to intellectual enlightenment, both surcharged with peace."

— From an Unpublished Letter.

In the 19th century, human thought was tarnished by the coarsening effects of materialistic science. Man was asked to determine whether he was on the side of the Angels or of the ape. A large majority accepted their descent from the ape and became, at best, intelligent social animals. Those, on the other hand, who were on the side of the angels were mostly men of blind belief in one or another creed. Knowledge of their divine ancestry was made available to all, but a very small minority made use of it.

In the 20th century, technocracy has deepened the darkness of materialistic thinking; the social animal has deteriorated into a robot—speedy, automatic, mechanically efficient, turning out work, passing on from hard labour to questionable refreshment and snatched sleep and then—back to labour again. The Machine dominates everything, from the purchasing power of money to bread which must somehow be procured.

applications which dominate "civilization" today have ruined the refinements which endow life with beauty, dignity and purpose.

Erich Fromm is a noted psycho-analyst whose previous books have given him the reputation of a clear and provocative thinker. His recently published Psychoanalysis and Religion—a small volume worth perusing—presents

"The threat to the religious attitude lies not in science but in the predominant practices of daily life. Here man has ceased to seek in himself the supreme purpose of living and has made himself an instrument serving the economic machine his own hands have built. He is concerned with efficiency and success rather than with his happiness and the growth of his soul. More specifically the orientation which most endangers the religious attitude is what I have called the 'marketing orientation' of modern man."

"I want to make it clear at the outset that I understand by religion any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion."

There are many good things in the volume but Dr. Fromm's practical psychoanalytic therapy will not succeed when actually applied. He has quoted from different great religions of the ancient world and his chapter on "Some Types of Religious Experience" contains valuable remarks. But his technique of adjustment will surely have to be revised as his experience grows.

Dr. Fromm's remedy of "adjustment" is a very old method, well known to ancient Oriental Psychology. The great Gurus of old were not only teachers but also healers of souls; their Compassion brought out the devotion of the disciple and then the process of chelaship, i.e., psyche-adjustment, began. The Gurus had real insight and understanding and, adjusting the mind of the learners, enabled them to develop the faculty of

knowing more. They did not pour information into their pupils. They helped each to free his will from the bondage of desires—the great disease. They inspired him to be an altruist, a humanist, whose relations with kin and friends, with men and beasts, were according to Divine Ethics, a science in itself.

Western psychology refers in its classifications to mental states. The psychology of the Ancient East classifies moral states, treating the mental states as mere effects produced by moral conditions. This is recognized to some extent by psycho-analysts like Dr. Fromm. But not sufficiently deeply to make their therapy very, or uniformly, successful.

Haltingly, slowly, western psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychical researchers are nearing the domain of the Wisdom of the Oriental Sages; they would learn more quickly and aid human beings more effectively and thoroughly were they to study with due humility the lore of the ancient healers of the human soul.

GRATIFICATION OF PASSIONS

There is no satisfying lusts even by a shower of gold-pieces. He who knows that lusts have a short taste and bring suffering in their train is wise.

So says the Master Gautama, He who followed in the footprints of His Illustrious Predecessors. This Verse 186 of the Dhammapada contains a principle of conduct which modern Psychology ignores. Lust carries within itself the force of greed: lust is ever avaricious. It craves fulfilment repeatedly, for its pleasures are short-lived.

The ordinary kind of lust is described in the Gita (XVIII. 38) as rajasic—mobile, seeking satisfaction of a craving and, as soon as it is satisfied, asking for more. Its pleasure arises "from the connection of the senses with their objects which in the beginning is sweet as the waters of life but at the end like poison." Furthermore, repeated indulgence tends to draw it downward to a grosser materiality. It becomes more and more dull and dull and dark and tends "both in the beginning and the end to stupefy the soul."

The modern psychotherapist, to whatever school he belongs, not knowing what lust is, whence it arises or how it can be controlled, sometimes tends to the dangerous belief that indulgence will cure by producing satiety. Modern Psychology well knows that man is dual— human and animal. But the origins of humanness and animality are traced to a wrong source called the mind, and that mind once again has remained terra incognita because its nature and its powers are not adequately understood.

comprehended. Their relation, on the one hand, with the senses and organs and, on the other, with the mind—the sixth sense and therefore material—is one factor. Then, the relation between the functions of this combination and the higher mind, Man, the real Thinker, is the other. Unless these relations are recognized the true prescription for the control of lust, be it of sex and the body, or of anger and greed of the mind, will not be discovered.

The profound teaching is presented in these very simple words of the Mahayana tradition:—

"Do not believe that lust can ever be killed out if gratified or satiated, for this is an abomination inspired by Mara. It is by feeding vice that it expands and waxes strong, like to the worm that fattens on the blossom's heart."

How, then, is man to control the force of lust, which, satisfied, develops greed and grosser types of concupiscence, and, when opposed, becomes irritated and wrathful? From passion proceed anger and avarice and thus in this world men and women are ever face to face with the three gates of hell. (Bhagavad-Gita, XVI. 21)

The person desirous of controlling his animal tendencies has to clear his consciousness and fix in his understanding the truth that it is not by gratification or by satiety that he will be able to rise above those tendencies. He must also gain the conviction, born of knowledge, that he need not and should not remain a prey to his animalism—whatever its name and form. Next, that the Controller is within him, nay, is himself. One or two experiments in perceiving that he himself is other than and superior to his animal tendencies will bring him real confidence. Once a man gains the faith,

rooted in knowledge, that he is the master and controller of his animalism, the rest will be easy. Of course, effort will be needed to control the enemy seen and to gain the final victory over him. But well begun is half done, and the initial perception of his own superior nature as the Controller is the preliminary step.

There is one more thing which he who is afflicted with animalism must learn, if he wants to conquer it. Western psychology classifies mental states which are joined to emotional ones. The Psychology of the Gita and the ancient Sages also classifies the moral states, treating the mental states as effects produced by moral conditions. The old-world Psychology lays bare unsuspected bases of error; it discloses the most subtle forms of self-delusion; it marks out the true course so painstakingly that the dullest mind cannot fail to gain a clear perception of the way to gain the victory over animalism. The Will to fight and to succeed will open the ways to knowledge and with this Will as bow and arrow a person can successfully take aim and hit the mark. Otherwise? What happens to the mentally lazy and morally blind? Says the Dhammapada of the Master Gautama Buddha (Verse 240):—

"As rust springing from iron eats into its own source, so do their own deeds bring transgressors to an evil end."

LUST FOR LIVING AND REPENTANCE

The Will to live is a most tenacious power and manifests as the Lust for Living, then as the Love of Life, then as the Love of Life Immortal. The great Buddha said that Tanha, the unquenchable thirst to live, by the way of the senses, and by the way of the mind, was a curse; love for life created the fear of death. And the great teaching is given:—

"Kill love of life; but if thou slayest Tanha, let this not be for thirst of life eternal but to replace the fleeting by the everlasting.

"Desire nothing. Chafe not at Karma, not at Nature's changeless laws. But struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.

"Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance."

Man has debased the love of life into the lust for living; this is due more to false knowledge than to ignorance. Most men and women suffer from the lust for living. But there is a struggle; for while man is craving to satisfy the flesh, the Native Soul, awake in the innermost recesses of his being, whispers, insists, when disregarded torments and when submerged afflicts the carnal nature. Evil and wickedness of sensuous life cause pain, decay, death.

The passage from the life of greed and lust and selfishness to some aspect of the True, the Good and the Beautiful is forced upon man by the God of Suffering, a servant of Yama, the God of Death and therefore

One major experience of the man who is passing from the life of selfishness and evil to the good life is the clear perception of his past errors and blunders. These, committed unconsciously and in ignorance, appear to him not as mistakes but as crimes and sins. So he repents. But he repents in ignorance, or, because he has only false knowledge, repents in a wrong manner; and so the lust for living takes, so to speak, its revenge on him. It tempts him to his fall. He does impulsively what he did not mean to do. This, in its turn, activates his conscience, which sometimes assumes an exaggerated tone that confuses and torments the man. This is the stage of transition, and often it is a long one, lasting for years.

If ignorance and false knowledge create sin, ignorance of the modus operandi of the Law of Karma prolongs the period of Repentance that leads to permanent cure. The period is shortened by the blessed knowledge of Karma, which is just, and infallibly so, but which also is merciful, inasmuch as it shows us how to wipe out the evil effects of past misdemeanours and even of felonies.

This important theme is the basis of the remarkable new novel of Sholem Asch. The important psychological problem of sin and repentance is dealt with in A Passage in the Night. The Voice of Conscience neglected in the committing of blunders becomes exaggerated to the point of inducing morbidity and melancholia.

We would draw the reader's attention to this novel. Below we quote a few sentences to attract him to a self-examination: Is he, unconsciously to himself,

gliding into the sphere of sin? Is he, aware of his past blunders, repenting in the wrong way? What is right repentance?

"Like you, I had to start earning my living early, and like every one of us I encountered temptations and pitfalls. Well, I did certain things that I would certainly not do today. And yet, I don't let them tower up and over-shadow my life.

"Human beings like to torment themselves in order to appease their conscience. And Man's conscience has an enormous appetite; give it a finger, it will swallow a hand.

"Certainly one must repent, and determine not to sin again; but one must repent and dismiss the matter.

"With your concentration on your sin, you sin greatly against God. "A man must not speak evil even of himself."

Sholem Asch does not give final or complete answers. But his prescription will lead to that Soul-Discipline which the Sages of the Orient have always taught and teach today:—

"Kill in thyself all memory of past experiences. Look not behind or thou art lost."

CONTENTMENT AND RESIGNATION

The great virtue of contentment is not correctly appraised by our civilization. In the name of progress the forces of rivalry and competition are allowed to take possession of our consciousness. Our educational institutions encourage, through the examination system, prize-giving and the like, the development of competition and rivalry. What the boy or the girl may acquire of the spirit of team-work in the sphere of sport greatly weakens in the class-room where the top rank is the coveted position. The seed of discontent is placed in the heart of the boy, who carries it forward into the field of business and waters it to growth in the strength of rivalry; the girl similarly fosters the sprout of competitiveness in the atmosphere of home, club and society; even the realm of social service is not free from the debasing power of competition and rivalry.

People sometimes fool themselves or allow themselves to be fooled by calling this lethal force "divine discontent." The ordinary discontent, almost universally present, has nothing of divinity in it. Grumbling and grouching, lamenting and bemoaning are marks of a discontent, not divine but pertaining to the sub-human nature, the animal which almost every person carries within his consciousness.

Divine discontent shows itself in silent, intelligent resignation. This resignation has no trace of fatalism or kismet; on the contrary, it is positive and active, and spurs the individual to clear his environment of the fleas and ants and mosquitoes of petty and small weaknesses, or of the ferocious tigers and angry bulls of pronounced

vices. And this is done in silence and with a sense of humour. True resignation always has within it the silence of knowledge and understanding; this silence is not that of the frustrated man who is morose. Similarly, true resignation evinces a sense of humour—that vital virtue which has insight into the imbalance, the disproportion of what the ancient psychologists named the four humours. Hilarity and loud laughter do not always bespeak a sense of humour.

This higher or divine resignation carries with it the really divine discontent. This inner, dual divine power does not produce complaints of the environment with which man has to contend, nor even of his own bodily or mental limitations. The man who has aroused this twofold divine force recognizes the truth of ancient psychology that his outer environment, be it hut or place, his standard of living, whether he eats tasty viands or simple food—are but reflections of his inner and psychological environment. He primarily works with his mind with its knowledge and ignorance, its breadth of vision and depth of insight; his emotions of fear and enmity, of egotism and vanity, or of love, generosity and harmony; and the energy to persevere in the search for Self-Knowledge which is the progeny of righteous acts.

Men and women complain of the street and the town in which they live, ignoring the great truth that the street of untidy thoughts and the town of the mean heart are causal. The heat and cold felt by the human body (and who is there who does not complain about the weather?) is a reflection of the likes and dislikes harboured in the brain and allowed to run their course in the blood stream, and of the ambition for wealth and fame and power which becomes the very energy or prana

valued as self and soul. Each one of us has the inner environment of thoughts and feelings which manufacture words and deeds. This inner environment evaluates, very falsely indeed, our outer environment. Our standard of living is not really dependent on minted gold and silver coins or on paper money, but on the gold of Energy and the silver of Patience, on Harmony of the mind and the Height of the heart.

In the light of the Wisdom of the Rishi or Sage-Seer, of the singing thoughts of the Silent One, the Muni, how very abject and petty is the "philosophy" that millions of mortals hug to their breasts. Such live in fear and compete in stealth, pretend to be good and succeed in tarnishing and debasing their own consciousness and the beautiful and bountiful Nature which surrounds them. Within us is the Land of Content; labouring thereon we shall reap a harvest undreamt of by worldly "planners" who are almost wholly concerned with schemes and dreams of mere economic progress.

THE GEM OF GEMS

O thou sweet nature of the unborn light, purify my mind and enlighten my understanding so that I may be conscious of thee!

— Meister Eckhart.

Is it possible in the midst of trouble and turmoil to practise self-control and reach a point of inner calm? This question occurs to so many in these days of unbalance when feelings and thoughts war with each other.

By analogy, it is certainly possible for an individual to develop an attitude of calmness and carry on with his prayer and puja when national upheaval causes distress to leaders and legislators in the sphere of politics. Even in the midst of family feuds an individual member can withdraw from the atmosphere of hot words and get away to a spot where the noise and the din are not heard. While outer events and struggles do affect us, it is not impossible to find a place of peace where we can keep the company of our high aspirations.

The searcher after inner peace is in reality seeking that knowledge which will teach him not to be disturbed by his fancy and fantasy, by those internal images which his memory of the past and his anticipations for the future raise. Informative knowledge and trained logical reasoning fail to quieten our feelings and emotions. The mind has its own machinations when it has to deal with our personal feelings. Our mind itself is so shot, through and through, with our likes and dislikes, our own prides and prejudices, that in most cases, and most of the time, it is powerless to attain to quietude. Even saintly men and women have complained of how their meditations and prayers, at times, avail them not—they do not bring any

recompense, any response from the Eternal. It is only when the feeling-self and the thinking-self are both subdued, and someone from within the carapace of selfhood is able to say "a plague on both your houses" that the place of peace which is beyond is glimpsed.

Most successful men, even so-called self-made men, suffer from final frustration. Flowers gathered in the gardens of mental endeavour wither and die, and the men and the women who hoped to inhale their fragrance for ever experience desolation. These successful self-made men are goaded by the power of ambition inherent in passions; ambitions rise in a crescendo and ere all yearnings for wealth, fame and power can be realized, old age and decay leave us staring helplessly on the approach of death. This produces frustration, disappointment and despair.

If one individual, after separating himself from national turmoils and family feuds, can find satisfaction in the pursuit of knowledge, in the enjoyment of art, in the creative activities of his own inner being, then, similarly, can Man, the thinker, with his power to use his mind and his will, separate himself from the thraldom of his passions, ambitions and ultimate frustrations. The Real Man must teach his mind that all is impermanent in himself except the power of the true soul or self, the vigilant watcher, the silent creator. The mind can salvage the debris of vanquished passions and put them to use by transmuting cruelty into kindness, selfishness into selflessness and avarice into altruism. But it can only do so when it recognizes the Divinity within and beyond itself and listens to the Song of Life. It must recognize in the Atma, the Spirit, the highest ruler in the realm of perceptions and in the disciplined will the highest

Those (and how many are there!) who aspire to inner psychological stability, to a quieted mind and heart, to an inner place where ambitions do not play havoc, but where the Light of Peace is to be found, have to learn the lesson contained in these words of a great sage:—

"As the lost jewel may be recovered from the very depths of the tank's mud, so can the most abandoned snatch himself from the mire of sin, if only the precious Gem of Gems, the sparkling germ of the Atma, is developed. Each of us must do that for himself, each can if he but will and persevere. Good resolutions are mind-painted pictures of good deeds: fancies, day-dreams, whisperings of the Buddhi to the Manas. If we encourage them, they will not fade away like the dissolving mirage in the Shamo desert, but grow stronger and stronger until one's whole life becomes the expression and outward proof of the divine motive within."

OF REPENTANCE

The writer has in his possession a somewhat rare volume published by John Chapman of 142, Strand, London, in the year 1851. It contains an instructive essay—"Elucidation and Analysis of the Bhagavad-Geeta—Theosophy of the Hindoos" in three parts—(a) Introductory, (b) Summary of the Gita and (c) Hindu Cosmogony, containing a "Note on the Occupations of the Four Castes." But all this by the way.

Our purpose here is to consider the theme of Repentance on which "January Searle" (George Searle Phillips) writes in this book. He is a mystic and a scholar, as the contents of the volume clearly show.

Writing on Repentance, he refers to "a nameless and supersensuous power which keeps the heart pure." Man's stability depends upon his faith in this power, which also "strengthens each good resolution." For this, man—sinner though he be—should have a correct view of self-reliance; "this noble virtue is the pivot on which life turns." We must obey our inner convictions to be truly self-reliant. He points to the prevailing mental attitude—intellectual reasoning— and hints at "the new revelation of whose advent the idolatry itself is the sure and certain sign." He points to the Fourth Chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita and the well-known pronouncement of Krishna about the incarnations on earth of the Divine. "One revelation closes and another begins." He describes thus the "idolatry," "the cultus of the age":—

"We are the idolators of science, art, manufactures, and commerce; we have no longer a Temple for the

Worship of the Invisible, for we no longer believe in the invisible. Our civilization is an intellectual organism, and there is no room within its pale for reverence."

But in the opinion of the writer, who calls himself "January," looking like Janus at the past and the future, a good man can live outside the pale of idolatry and "listen to what the Spirit saith unto him." Referring to the struggle between mind and soul (and it is continuing in a new dimension today) he writes:—

"Let the intellect have free development and play, and occupy all its sphere; let it sift and reason; let it sit in judgment and pronounce sentence on all lies, frauds, and deceitful inventions—on all tricks of men devised to enslave the mind and strip it of its right and liberty; but quench not the spirit; trust it rather to the end; for its silent whispers are the breath of God, and the source of all insight and wisdom."

Man, as an individual, is a part of the great whole in which family, society and nation have their places. As such, man has his beliefs which make him "in all things either too intellectual or too superstitious." His duty to himself calls upon him to examine his beliefs and convictions.

"Do not think, that it matters not what you think." A wrong philosophical formula brings disaster. Every man, however unlearned, has a philosophy by which he lives. It is, therefore, his first duty, his duty to himself, to think aright. "Beware of indifference— for this is death to the soul."

"There are eternal and infinite distinctions between right and wrong, which no intellectual demonstrations to the contrary can ever put aside. Hold by the right, tho thou perish on its golden horns. It is better thus to die, than to die living with the wrong. The conscience is the dial of the man; do not blot out the image of God which burns upon its sacred disc."

Will the greedy commercial man, the wrathful retaliationist in society, the over-sexed man of lust, accept this truth about "eternal and infinite distinctions between right and wrong"? Do the modern psychiatrist, the psychosomatic doctor, the psychoanalyst, affirm that lust is lust? Or do they try to make allowances and to gloss over sex aberrations, upsurges of anger, monetary covetousness, and thus, without meaning to do so, push the poor patient through the "gates of hell" of the Sixteenth chapter of the Gita?

He who aspires to a new dawn, the January of the calendar of soul life, is advised by our esteemed author "to stand upon his conscience and to respect the moral law." There are thousands living today who look to a new dawn. If they turn within, their call of repentance will be heard. It has been said in an ancient text that "Time produces penance and meditation." However wrong and sinful we may have been in the past, it is never too late to mend. Only the door of death shuts off the grand opportunity, but if we have not tried to take it while we had it we shall find it more difficult to recognize in another incarnation. Says our author:—

"The soul is always pure, and delights not in frauds and sorceries, but is for ever enamoured of that divine beauty in whose image it is fashioned."

"A man ought to be so well balanced that sin should be foreign to his nature; in other words he should be master of himself, and suffer no miasma of the passions to foul the purity of his spirit. We are to use, not abuse, our faculties, which even in their lowest functions, are all good and proper to man, and can only be rendered evil by lawless fruition."

He advises us to guard against the lawless use and the lawless fruition of our mental, moral and bodily faculties. Who among us has not erred and blundered and even sinned? What of that? "Life is too short to waste in useless regrets; and regret itself is disease."

"So long as there is vitality in the conscience there is hope for the man," says our author, and he calls all who have erred or sinned to repentance, of which there are two kinds—the theological and the intellectual. About the first he says:—

"All the dreadful penalties and horrid pains recorded in the penal statutes of Christianity against the sinner, take such absolute possession of his nature that he is scared into madness, and sits in mute and awful despair, amidst the ruins of his intellect."

"Repentance of our sin is a holy act, and brings with it—to a mind not diseased by the awful dogmas of innate depravity, with eternal torments as its consequences —both pardon and consolation. I know not how this happens, for it is dark and mystic in its process, altho so beautiful and beneficent in its results. But we get a true insight here into the mystery of atonement;

for the meaning is this—at-one-ment with God; and the repentant man is once more in harmony with God's laws, and is thus literally at-one-with Him."

"We are safe without dogmas"—Christian or Judaic or Hindu. "Morality is the keystone of the world's arch." But what is sin? And what, morality?

Selfishness uses the power of Hate and sin is born, the sin of money and all types of greed, the sin of lust and all other passions, the sin of wrath and all expressions of violence.

The foundation of morality and virtue is selflessness, from which spring Compassion for all, Love for all, Charity for all. Universal Ethics can be learnt by Faith in the Self within, and every transgression against them can be remedied by Repentance. But we have to learn the true language and speech of Repentance. The sound of that speech is silence and secrecy. "Thus have I heard."

DEFEAT AND VICTORY

The expressions of the physical and moral devastation caused by the fury and hatred of war are so very many that we are apt often to overlook the deeds of love and sacrifice which are its real glory and victory. Military victories and defeats are mostly an illusion. The hatred which infects large masses on either side is the real defeat of the war. When fighters return to their native lands coloured by vice and harshness and pride, they proclaim the defeat which their country has suffered. The real victory of war is gained by those few who withstood the fury of enmity and hatred, who fought without malice and with some charity and who return whole of soul, however maimed in body.

On the moral plane, defeat and victory of the last ghastly war still remain to be assessed. Economic and political defeats and victories are ephemeral and illusory, and that is once again becoming clear in the current events, especially at Lake Success. The greater the necessity, then, to be on the lookout for any record of moral strength, intellectual generosity, spiritual sacrifice, on the part of individuals, or groups of them, on either side. Victory is centred in beneficence, which brotherliness radiates; defeat in the ugliness which hate spreads. Thus one of the mysteries of war is that neither party gains victory or suffers defeat. Each has gains and losses on the moral plane, and the balance of moral power must weigh more with the truly victorious. This invisible process, in which the individual plays a very important part, goes on unobserved by economists, politicians and militarists. These leaders

The ghastly effects of the atom bomb on Hiroshima are described in a thousand publications. Acts of mighty valour shown by some among the sufferers are not sung; nor is the deep resentment felt by many United States citizens towards their own Government for perpetrating this act properly assayed. The atom bomb did not win the war for the Allies, nor has it brought defeat and disgrace to Japan. We are once again reminded of this by the noble effort started last September by The Saturday Review of Literature. Its Editor, Norman Cousins, visited the city and wrote from there an account of the resurrection of Hiroshima. How the hospital, under Karma, became the target of the fatal bomb; how "the heart of a city was laid open with a hot knife"; how "if you lived through that second, you found that your clothes were on fire, and your arms and legs and face were on fire";—it was a moving account in The Saturday Review of Literature for 17th September 1949. But we wish to note the movement of love which it and its humane Editor started: the highspot of his visit was the Yamashita Orphanage. His moving account should be read—the heroism of the Yamashitas; their vision and resourcefulness rooted in what the Buddhist called Metta—love, tenderness and mercy; how they created their home where orphans found parents; "there was not enough of it." It moved the American editor and gentle man to his own vision and action. He wrote:—

"Before coming to Japan, several people had told me that they would like to adopt Japanese children

orphaned by the bombing. Under the Oriental Exclusion Act, however, these adoptions are not possible. 1 should like to suggest the next best thing—moral adoptions. By moral adoptions I am thinking of Hiroshima children who would be adopted by American families and who would carry the names of the people adopting them. The children would continue to live in Japan— perhaps in some place such as Mrs. Yamashita's—but the American families would be responsible for their care and upbringing. Then, later, if Congress passes a law permitting Japanese children to come to America, these morally adopted children could become legally adopted as well."

This was a year ago. In its issue of 3rd June 1950 a report-note appears with several letters, one from the world-famous Helen Keller, the blind lady whose vision is as deep as it is correct. The report says that all 71 children have been adopted by SRL readers. In addition, other children are receiving beneficence. Mrs. Teiko Yamashita writes:—

"Concerning the moral parents no adequate words of thanks can be found in my dictionary. I thank you very much, that is all I can say. From many moral parents in your country come kind and gentle letters in large numbers, and the children are rearing much more pleasantly. When a child hears about his moral parent he writes the name on a card. One boy says smiling, "Mine is in California," while a girl says, "My mother is a music teacher." They are all very proud, with filial heartiness. They put the pictures from America near their beds every night. I feel as relieved as if the proposal of marriage for all my sons and daughters were decided."

The spirit shown by U.S.A, citizens, however limited their number, is a sure expression of the victory of the Allies. Signs of defeat strike our mind's eye more often. It is heartening to see signs of victory; this is one.

DEATH OF THE BODY

Wakefulness is the path of immortality, heedlessness the path of death. Those who are awake do not die, those who are heedless are dead already.

Such are the words uttered by the Enlightened One; they are recorded in the 2nd Chapter of The Dhammapada.

It is one of the striking phenomena of the age that modern man, steeped in the ocean of worldly existence, fears the death of the body. Certain that death will come, soon or late, instead of inquiring about it, trying to understand it and prepare for it, the modern man only fears it. His education and civilization have so glamoured him that he takes it for granted that no reliable instruction is available.

While he fears the death of his body and wipes it out of his reflections by a mental gesture of bravado, or runs superstitiously to priest, ritual and propitiation, he has not asked if he is dead already. Emphasis on the body and sense-life is so powerful, the Soul has been looked upon as a myth or a vague unintelligible something for such a long time now, that the state of his Soul is not at all a matter of concern to the ordinary man. He looks upon those who are so concerned as a bit cranky and somewhat peculiar persons.

Man's pain and suffering, including the ill-health of the body, should awaken any intelligent man to seek for explanations. But diseases of body or mind are taken as unrelated to Soul, to consciousness, the causal aspect of all human phenomena. Pains and suffering, aches and anguish, are treated only on the plane of effects. Superficially, and in truth very unscientifically,

the modern man accepts the diagnosis of his doctor, who, if he is really a great doctor, knows within his own conscience that his ignorance overpowers his knowledge. His theories and his treatments, his present-day knowledge and the advances which it has made, certainly deserve respect; and it is not wholly his fault that the patient has blind belief in the miraculous power of the doctor. But modern civilization is so founded upon soullessness that neither the patient nor the doctor bothers about the most vital factor whose functions or the lack of them cause health and disease, knowledge and ignorance, contentment and fault-finding, and the varied factors which are named advantages and disadvantages of life.

Death, of the body, of the mind, aye! even of the Soul, contains not only clues but infallible keys to the problem of human happiness. Who is there who does not wish for happiness? But very often the means are mistaken for the end. Money is supposed to confer happiness. At another period of human evolution knowledge is supposed to contain its own reward of happiness. Still at other times, character, with courage and kindliness and contentment, is supposed to ensure happiness, in spite of poverty and ignorance. Our possessions and the power to secure and retain them are themselves only means to happiness and they change, be they in the form of money or in the shape of knowledge.

That which endures as a means to the real end of unchanging and unchangeable happiness is the Power of the Soul; both the Soul and its power are immortal. The Soul possesses the power to create and, when left to its own devices, strategy and tactics, it sweetly and wisely ordereth all things. It is attentiveness, heedfulness,

wakefulness, which guards us from unconscious errors and mistakes as from conscious crimes and sins. Rightly, therefore, Gautama and His Illustrious Predecessors emphasized this faculty of Chitta—mind consciousness as all-important.

The same teaching is imparted to Dhritarashtra by Sanat Kumar. In Sanatsujatiya, Chapter II, we find the great Sage answering the King's inquiry—"Which is correct—that death exists not or that freedom from death can be obtained by Brahmacharya?"

"Some say, that freedom from death results from action; and others that death exists not. Hear me explain this, O King! have no misgiving about it. Both truths, O Kshatriya! have been current from the beginning. The wise maintain that what is called delusion is death. I verily call heedlessness death, and likewise I call freedom from heedlessness immortality. Through heedlessness, verily, were the demons vanquished; and through freedom from heedlessness the gods attained to the Brahman. Death, verily, does not devour living creatures like a tiger; for, indeed, his form is not to be perceived."

THE MORAL ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE

It is an ancient teaching that mental laziness provides a fertile soil for the germination and growth of many vices, among them vanity, jealousy, avarice. It is not only that Satan proverbially finds mischief for idle hands to do. To produce idle hands, that constant enemy of man on earth must instil indolence into the mind of man. If the mind moves aright it creates virtues and establishes itself on moral principles. But this the minds of men are not doing.

There is prodigious mental activity in the civilization of today. That activity in action spells restlessness and discontent; it deludes men and women into fancying that they are busy. Busy whirling like mad dervishes, hoping for ecstasy! Ratiocination is mistaken for meditation and restlessness for activity; mental laziness is obscured by the myriad motions of passions, prejudices, prides. When men are moved by inordinate likes and dislikes they mistakenly assume that they are mentally active, whereas their minds are more or less inert.

Mental creativeness is rare; imitation of the activity of the few creative minds is rampant and often those imitations are parodies— pathetic when not ludicrous. In the solution of his problems man rarely proceeds in the right way. The calm and dispassionate evaluation of one's own problems by the light of one's own mind, aided by Right Ideas which have always ruled the world, is not undertaken.

Our civilization is built upon false values. The everchanging nature of matter is pointed out by modern

science, but for the scientist himself and those for whom his word is law, the immortal and never-changing nature of Spirit is an unproven, vague generality. The masses of men are influenced by the Divinity at the core of their own being which shapes its ends, rough-hew them how they will. But countless men who admire and worship science transfer their intuitive loyalty from the stability of immortal Spirit to the shifting sands of kaleidoscopically changing matter. Organized religions, on the other hand, confuse the human reason by false notions about god and gods, heaven and hell, and so lead men to a hedonistic activity ruinous alike to mental calm and to a steady life.

To overcome difficulties, to live intelligently and to move onward, one needs to hitch his wagon to some constellation of Divine Ideas. Such cannot be found in the constantly shifting sands called knowledge by the modern schools. There is that Knowledge which changeth not, which, like the Spirit in man, is constant; its laws are thoroughly consistent.

Philosophical ideas and ethical ultimates are the basis on which that knowledge is reared. Though psychoanalysis and the so-called science of psychiatry would do away with man's Divine Intuitions, as biology and physiology and chemistry have all but done away with the philosophical principles of immortality, causality and the activity in the many of Spirit, which is One, still those innate ideas reveal themselves in the intuitive response to their presentation; and even today the moral ultimates command assent from the consciousness of man.

volumes, but the heart of the common man knows what is meant by and is implicit in these Divine Virtues, these moral Principles.

Ethics are difficult to practise because their cosmic counterparts are not glimpsed. The universe is moral—is just and merciful, aye! even harmless, though it may not seem so.

"The pepper plant will not give birth to roses, nor the sweet jessamine's silver star to thorn or thistle turn, for rigid Justice rules the world."

The moral order of the universe is a superb fact; the ancient sages taught that truth in which the human mind today needs to be trained. The moral universe and not only the material one is governed by Law. Our mental laziness will disappear when we perceive this truth and act upon its numerous implications.

THE ARCHETYPAL VIRTUE

Follow the advice of the sages. Meditate on the anomalies and miseries of our civilization. Discover the root of its maladies. We find that the human mind has triumphed by neglecting and defying the moral forces which are at work in the universe. This is not generally perceived, and men and their leaders alike are deluded. Each presumes that he and his nation or class is following moral principles, while they are slaves of passions, prejudices and pelf.

Man, the thinker, has not been able to follow the teachings of a long line of Sages which state: allow not the force of vice to lead your mind, but so educate that mind that it follows the lead of the force of virtue. Knowledge bereft of love, of compassion, of charity, of harmony flourishes and mass thought-action stifles the voice of Spirit even in the good individual.

The Sages and Seers have warned against knowledge, reason and mind bereft of moral principles. They have always taught the superiority of moral ideas over mental thoughts. They have pointed to the truth of truths that Wisdom is Compassion, that Justice is Mercy. Our Divinity is not knowledge-formed but virtue-formed and our vices make us demoniac. Is there a better description of the modern man successful in our social order than that found in the 16th Discourse of the Gita?

Illuminated minds, like Gautama Buddha or the great Shankara, have pointed to moral principles as starting points to a life of peace, goodwill and wisdom. Jesus, the Jewish Prophets before Him, and those who followed

his advice and instruction have emphasized the moral life as necessary for gaining true knowledge. St. Paul affirmed the superiority of Faith, Hope and Charity over all knowledge and in showing "a more excellent way" he exhorted us "to covet earnestly the best gifts."

Christendom knows Faith, Hope and Charity as theological virtues and there are four natural virtues—making in all seven Cardinal Virtues, to which are opposed the Seven Deadly Sins. It was most probably Augustine who attempted to Christianize the four Cardinal Virtues in the teachings of Socrates and Plato. They are Higher Wisdom, Courage, Temperance and Justice. The Neo-Platonists described them as "purifications from the lower contagion."

In the ancient Rig-Veda, virtue is given first place. In the famous hymn (X. 129) Kama-Love-Eros is said to be the first movement that arose in the One after it had come into life through the power of fervour-abstraction. In the Atharva-Veda we find: "Kama-Deva was born the first. Him neither Devas, Pitris, nor men have equalled. Thou art superior to these and for ever great." The concept of Kama-Deva has become degraded in the course of centuries, like the Eros of Hesiod. With the Seers of the Veda, Kama-Deva personifies, says

H.P. Blavatsky, "the first conscious, all embracing desire for universal good, love, and for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness, the first feeling of infinite tender compassion and mercy that arose in the consciousness of the creative One Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the Absolute. There is no idea of sexual love in the conception. Kama is pre-eminently the divine desire of creative happiness and love."

personify the archetypal Virtue. The Sages do not reject the idea that the virtues-vices of the animal-man are relative. But those Sages teach that the relativity of conventional morality befogs the mind and keeps man tied to the kingdom of animal-man. To become truly human it is necessary to get hold of the important philosophical principle that Virtues and Virtue are as definite as metaphysical categories of Spirit, Matter, Mind; Light, Darkness, Sight; Space, Force, Motion, etc. The animal-man becomes human by discarding vicious tendencies and vices; and progresses to divinity by cultivating moods of virtue which become his vibhutis—excellencies—fixed and ever flashing their radiance of Compassion. This Compassion is the archetypal Virtue which manifests as a Trinity of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful: out of the first come the moral factors, out of the second the intellectual, and their joint action is regenerative Beauty which is Joy and Bliss.

Wisdom-Compassion is the Soul of all Virtues—be they the Christian and Greek Cardinal ones, or the virtues of the divine man of the Gita or the six and ten Paramitas of the Buddhistic Philosophy. In the Mahayana Book of the Golden Precepts this archetypal Virtue is thus described:—

Compassion is no attribute.
It is the Law of Laws— Eternal Harmony,
Alaya's Self,
A shoreless universal essence,
The Light of everlasting right,
And Fitness of all things,
The Law of Love eternal.

RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW

Janus am I; oldest of potentates
Forward I look, and backward and below.
I count as god of avenues and gates,
The years that through my portals come and go.

We begin a new year; this magazine begins a new volume. January naturally brings to mind Janus who was reverenced by the

worshipped even before Rome was built. Janus watched "the gate that openeth the year." And so he is the presiding deity over the month of January.

He had two faces—old and young, the former representing the past, the latter the future. He held a key in one hand, a staff in the other. With the key of garnered knowledge he opens the New Year; with the aid of the staff he moves forward to higher altitudes.

Janus-faced is a term of opprobrium, but is not each human being a striving and progressing Janus-like being? Punya-Purusha, the man of merit, and Papa-Purusha, the man of sin, are in each being and are wrestling for victory. And so man is two faced. The two faces representing our two natures, looking in opposite directions, tell us that life and death are still necessary, that the fight between the lower and the higher natures is still going on, that the future and the past are yet separated in the present, that the old and the new continue to cast a glamour—one from the region of memory, the other from that of hope.

he looks forward to the pleasures of the day; how often does he come to the night with hopes frustrated, feeling old; and how dark things look on a sleepless bed! Hopes and fears, memories and anticipations keep human consciousness in a non-integrated state. Time produces birth, growth, decay, death—the old face of Janus has become older; time also produces the delights of Sukhavati, the land of happiness, of Swarga, Paradise, which exhaust themselves and bring to birth the new young face—for a day, for a month, for a year, for a cycle, with the weight of old age still there. The spirit of youth and the spirit of age coalesce in the man who has made his personal nature but a channel of the Impersonal Self. Then he is no more two-faced.

Some of us are young and others of us are old; some look to the past, others dream of the future. Hope in affliction, fear in elation keep us votaries of the two-faced Janus, whose Temple we visit expectant at dawn, repentant at night; so it has to remain open.

He who has resolved to live by the Voice of his Inner God will repeat his resolve as the New Year opens. He who has not is likely to come to such a resolution at this cycle when the psychic life of the earth is young. The making of such a resolve transforms the ordinary man into the warrior soul; he begins to feel within himself the power of the Rex Lucis, the Lord of Splendour and of Light. For such an one some words of Henry David Thoreau will bring inspiration and suggest a line of thought to be practised. Let him do so when Janus of 1952 is young and vigorous. Says Thoreau:—

"Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which

the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.... There are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him."

THE KINGDOM OF THE TRUE

Everywhere people are feeling depressed, caught up in the routine of living. Life seems to revolve like a ruthless machine.

Rich and poor alike desire contentment. The prince as well as the peasant looks for some peace of mind; all wish for a steadier beat of the heart emotions. Many ask: "What's the matter with us?"

"The Kingdom of God is within you. The secure Refuge is your own heart. The Peace born of understanding can unfold in your own mind."

Such an answer puzzles some. It is dismissed with a good-natured shrug by the great majority. A few listen, pause, gaze quietly ahead, begin to reflect and then turn to inquire. Who says that the kingdom of peace and prosperity, of repose and rest, of contentment and understanding are within man? It sounds familiar, sounds authoritative, but whence this idea and what does it mean? This inquiry is the beginning of wisdom. If the search for the first answer and its meaning is pressed, ere long one comes upon the truth that not a single Teacher only but the Sages of all times have asserted this answer to be true.

"Look inward, thou art Buddha." (The Voice of the Silence, p. 29) "The Kingdom of God is within you." (Luke, XVII. 21)

"Self is the Lord of self, what higher Lord could there be?" (Dhammapada. V. 160)

"The spirit in the body is called Maheswara, the Great Lord, the spectator, the admonisher, the sustainer, the enjoyer, and also the Paramatma, the highest soul." (Bhagavad-Gita, XIII. 22)

"This Soul of mine within the heart is smaller than a grain of rice, or a barley corn or a mustard seed, or a grain of millet, or the kernel of a grain of millet. This Soul of mine within the heart is greater than the earth, vaster than the atmosphere, higher than the sky, encompasses the entire firmament. Containing all works, all desires, all odours, all tastes, the whole universe is this Soul in the heart." (Chandogya Upanishad, III. 14.2)

And in another Upanishad the Soul is compared to a tree in which birds nest—our thoughts and feelings, our words and voices, our impressions and expressions.

Our Soul in the heart is a Being within our being. Our heart is a living entity and an intelligent one; but within its innermost recess is another Person, another Being with its own life and its own intelligence. That Being is divine in its powers. We do not know the true nature of our heart, for we have not been told or taught about it by priest or teacher. The bodily heart is a symbol of life, every throb of which tells us that we are alive; the throb stops and others say that we are no more. Modern knowledge tells us of the valves and chambers of flesh, the pumping of the blood in and out by the heart.

Sages spoke of the Heart as the seven-petalled lotus, the Saptaparna, the Cave of the Buddha. They have further said that the Heart has seven brains. The physical heart is the King of the physical body and it is said that in that heart is a spot which is the last to die. But the Heart of the heart is the Kingdom Divine of the Thinker, the Compassionate One, the Inner Being, the Shining Ruler, the Raja whose Power is Peace, whose Strength is Sacrifice. The body can live on "by bread alone," but Man cannot. The body lives in a city, a country, an Empire—an earthly kingdom which fatigues us and wears us out—and in the progress of time the heart of the body dies. But Righteousness and Peace, Lordliness and Strength, Enlightenment and Glory are of the Kingdom of the Spirit in the body.

This is the first lesson—to learn and to feel—that there are two Kingdoms, one without; one within; in Earth's Kingdom we toil for bread and often fail; the inner Kingdom can provide us with Righteousness and give us light where we now see but darkness; it can bring us intimations of immortality when here we are certain only of death. Here we see only the unreal while we aspire to see the True revealed. We live surrounded by shadows cast by myriad men and feel the darkness enveloping us, fold after fold. What did Jesus mean when He said to His Chelas, "Ye are the light of the world"? What did the Enlightened Buddha mean when He said to His Apostles, "Be ye lamps unto yourselves"? What do these statements mean to us? Are they meant for us?

WAR AND LOVE

The root of the matter is a very simple, old-fashioned thing, so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it, for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words. The thing I mean—please forgive me for mentioning it—is love, Christian love, or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty. If you feel this, you have all that anybody should need in the way of religion.

These are the words of Bertrand Russell, a confirmed materialist, a thoroughgoing rationalist, a disbeliever in the psychic and the occult. They are from his latest publication, The Impact of Science on Society, issued on his 80th birthday a month and a half ago. He pleads for the removal of distrust between East and West; he finds the ways and means which are being used or recommended "silly"; he looks to time to bring wisdom. Meanwhile, he offers his own remedy, quoted above, which is a teaching of the many saints and of all sages of all times. It is the ancient teaching repeated by Jesus who came after the Buddha, as of Lao Tzu of China who was Buddha's contemporary. And there are others. In our own days Gandhiji demonstrated the profound significance of that verity which is the centre of the true Religion of Life, whatever the name. By it not only individuals but nations also can live in peace and progress in harmony. That ancient teaching which the Tathagata Himself repeated is: "Hatred ceaseth not by hatred but by love—this is the Eternal Law." Bertrand Russell repeats this. The teaching is scientifically sound, psychologically accurate, and morally true.

expressed his conviction justifying his foreign policy. His words give support to the sage advice of Bertrand Russell and show how deep an impress Gandhiji's influence has made on the heart of Jawaharlal Nehru:—

"Let us understand the historic currents in the present phase of human history, when we stand on a verge which may lead to grave disaster or to a new world. The way of war, including what is called COLD WAR, is not the way we or any country should pursue. It coarsens and degrades people because we tend gradually to live a life surrounded by hatred and anger and violence. It passes my comprehension how, after a terrific war, you can rapidly build up any social or economic order that you may aim at, because it will take generations just to get rid of the ravages of war. It also passes my comprehension how some people who dislike communism and make it an enemy, think they are going to put an end to communism by war."

This moral, religious and spiritual teaching is influencing an increasing number of people. Sword cannot kill Satan. Wars cannot destroy War. Violence cannot overcome violence. These are trite axioms for the religiously minded and principles for practice for the spiritual aspirant. Yet within them lies the seed idea from which the true ideology will grow. Therefore we must welcome such words as these of the famous Pastor Niemöller. Recognizing that Stalinic Communism is not acceptable to the West and referring to the view that "the one alternative to stop it naturally seems to be war," he said:—

"But nobody believes that war really will be an effective means because of its results. And so far as I

know, nobody really wants to have a war. In Russia I have told my story, which I have told many times and in many places of the world, that personally I do not believe that there is a single millionaire in the United States of America today who would not gladly give up all his millions and starve and go as a beggar, if only he could prevent the third world war by this way. So I found that in Russia, as well as in my own country, really nobody believes in war as a means; nobody wants to have a war. But it is just the lack of confidence that the other one will not make war, and so people are afraid of each other, and that brings us into all our difficulties."

This lack of confidence in others, this fear that they will attack us, is a major force which corrodes peoples' hearts. As long ago as 1888

"With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction that our neighbours will no more work to hurt us than we would think of harming them, the two-thirds of the World's evil would vanish into thin air. Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our midst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of races, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, wolves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the 'ways of Providence.' We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own

making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us."

Such statements as those quoted above are bound to open the spiritual intuitions of an increasing number of men and women. Unity through such ideas is bound to produce united action. Let those who believe in the Law of Compassion become active in heart, mind and speech and unite to affirm the truth, to understand it better, and to popularize it widely. What truth? This:—

"Compassion is no attribute. It is the Law of Laws—eternal Harmony, Alaya's SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting right, and fitness of all things, the law of Love eternal."

HAMMERING OUT OUR CHARACTER

"Character is what God and the angels know of us."

— Tom Paine

The educationist and the social reformer of today are seeking adequate answers to the questions: How to enable the learner at school and college to fashion his own character deliberately, scientifically? How to educate the citizen so that by himself he is able to recognize his moral responsibilities? How to elevate the political animal to the status of a moral man accountable for his conduct to his own conscience? So-called religious education and moral education have failed as instruments for character-building. Thoreau's question must find an answer: "How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character?"

If, as the Mahabharata points out, the mark of Dharma (Religion, Law, Duty, Property of Man—the Thinker) is good conduct, then organized religions, codes of law, instruction about the performance of duties, have not succeeded. Why? Parents and teachers who try to build the characters of the young, or the adults who desire to mould and reshape their own, do not quite get the significance of a statement of Froude: "You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one."

Emotions play a major part in human behaviour. They provide the motor power for human actions. They imply motion. They move heavenwards under the impact and influence of the Spirit on the human mind and we have noble aspirations. Lower desires, on the other hand, arise from the response of our sensorium to

mundane objects, which now attract, then repel, causing pleasures and pains and ending in, frustration. The Chinese, Mencius, refers to this dual nature of our character: "He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man."

Why are high aspirations necessary for the building of character? How do low desires affect conduct? What part do Will and resolutions play in the activity of the emotions? What part, Thought and knowledge?

Character-building and the science of conduct are very amorphous subjects in the body of modern knowledge. Its devotees do not know what definite purpose underlies human evolution. Nor do they suspect that laws of Nature are intelligent expressions of submundane and supermundane intelligences. Devas and Devatas, Powers and Principalities, Angels and Archangels, are not realities to men of modern knowledge as they were to sages and to seers of the ancient world.

Our educationists can never succeed in formulating the method of building character or of assigning true values to human conduct or behaviour till they study the ancient doctrine of the existence of invisible worlds with their denizens and citizens, and the influence of these on human beings—infants and adults alike.

To appreciate the greater ideals set forth by Bhishma in the Anushasana Parva (CIV), the aid of the above teachings becomes essential. Says the Mahabharata:—

"Thou shouldst know that conduct is the root of prosperity. Conduct is the enhancer of fame. It is conduct that prolongs life. It is conduct that destroys all calamities and evils. Conduct has been said to be superior to all the branches of knowledge. It is conduct that begets righteousness. Conduct is the most efficacious rite of propitiating the deities."

SERENITY AND SALVATION

The Security Council of the U.N. has not succeeded in lifting the black fog of fear which is affecting everybody. "We have no security," people cry in every part of the globe. Is there not in the minds and hearts of men and women a delusion connected with the Third World War and its consequent wholesale destruction? Modern science in particular and modern knowledge in general are guilty in their sinful use of knowledge—not only now since some of the secrets of atomic energy have been discovered but even before this happened.

Ever since scientists perceived the world of Energy and the forces underlying and interpenetrating that of matter in the last decade of the last century, they have speeded up the growth of applied science. Scientists then were not humble enough to value the implications of their own discoveries. The discovery of the X-ray by Röntgen, of the radio-activity of uranium by Becquerel, G. Marconi's first practical harnessing of electro-magnetic waves for sound transmission, Sir J.J. Thomson's contribution to electronic theory, the discovery of radium by the Curies—all these occurred in quick succession between 1895 and 1898. These new and "accidental" discoveries proved how ignorant and blind and mistaken they were only a decade previously; this was not acknowledged, not even noticed. Modern knowledge has yet to discover the Astras of the ancient science; they were the weapons of forces which ultimately destroyed the "fabled" Atlanteans or Rakshasas who used them for selfish purposes.

of physicists and chemists, biologists and psychologists; many transferred their blind allegiance from religion to science. Millions even today try to carry water on both shoulders by believing in an anthropomorphic god and in atomic energy.

Can the Security Council give full and final security to every man? Can science, materialistic in its motives and mechanistic in its methods, confer health, wealth and happiness upon all the nations of the world? The answer is obviously in the negative.

Mass production and consumption of luxury goods cannot banish fear from the brains and blood of people. Even an International State will not usher in an era of peace, plenty and prosperity founded on money and on the satiety of sense-indulgence. All these are means to a single end—inner contentment and tranquillity. Often unknown to themselves, all are groping in quest of that tranquillity which enlightens and invigorates and enables a person to live happily within himself and in a state of self-respect.

Each man, each woman has the right to inner tranquillity; each feels it, each needs it. Their churches and synagogues, their mandirs and masjids, have not taught people this Divine Right of the Soul. This was proclaimed by every Prophet; the priest, in East and West alike, perverted the teaching by inculcating in some form the doctrines of vicarious atonement and apostolic succession.

Dreadful things envelop every mind, every soul, and as year follows year their number is increasing, their grossness is thickening. Exaggeration? We think not. Let each person sit down in the silent company of his own mind-soul and inquire if the lures and temptations

of the senses, the prides and ambitions of the mind, the machinations of the emotions and the passions, are not the real root cause of his feeling and fear of insecurity. How many of us, face to face with these failings and falterings of the past, can say, "These have not clouded the serenity of my soul"? How then can man earn the right to tranquillity even when his house is falling? Can he have the conviction that Justice is being done to him, as his very heaven falls, and that real serenity is due to it because that Justice is Divine Mercy? Man must learn this; feel this. This is serenity; this is salvation. Can man secure it?

The ancient scientists knew more about the universe of Energy and of forces. Some of them—by no means all (for there were dark, selfish ones among the knowers and the researchers then as now)—followed the Intuitive Wisdom. Such saw that there was the moral aspect to Divine Law: that, if the mango fruit, and no other, grew out of the mango seed on the plane of matter, so also love and chastity and truth and benevolence grew out of their own kind on the moral plane, and that hatred begets hatred, and never anything else.

The Sages were those scientists who followed the Intuitive Wisdom, recognizing the universe of moral forces interpenetrating the universe of material forces. The Christs, the Buddhas, the Rishis, ever taught that man was reaping what he sowed—corn and maize, but also weeds and poisons; that man would win security and tranquillity by right labour—rooting out weeds and poisonous shrubs and planting in their place wholesome seeds which yield sweet nourishment. But to do so man must know the spring of tanha from which gush forth the waters of woe; he must learn to endure the evil he himself

brought forth in ignorance, or in false knowledge, or in obstinate pride, and transmute these dark ills to brightness by right knowledge. Purged of lie and hate, envy and conceit, he must build in his mind and heart truth and love. Once a Master said, "Truth and Love—Sat and Prem. Sat will bring you the vision and the help of your own soul; Prem, Love, will reveal the Beauty and the Light of all souls."

Our birthright to tranquillity will be gained when we discharge our debts to the Law of Duty. Our daily acts reveal the nature of our true inner religion; it expresses itself in our words and deeds which point to our feelings, thoughts and beliefs. But how many will agree that the religion of every person is not necessarily the religion he inherits at birth? We have to learn about our personal religion of daily living and we have to learn to live out the Religion of Duty with deliberation and heedfulness. That which is necessary for man to do, by his Will, Faith and Thought, must become his true religion. By his Will man acts, by his Faith man loves, by his Thought man plans. These three are born of Divine Wisdom. Man is man because of this inherent divinity; without it he is a beast of burden and must remain so for years and ages.

In a few days the anniversaries of two mighty Indian Masters will be celebrated—of Shankara and of the Buddha. Both were mighty metaphysicians but also practical moralists and so were true benefactors; and not only 2,600 years ago. Their Wisdom is a Living Wisdom. Both taught that Divine Law operates not only in the world of matter but also and primarily in that of morals. The material universe is a universe of effect; the moral universe is causal.

In the midst of fear and insecurity we must learn from the knowledge of the Fearless and the Self-sufficient. Let our

Eye look out across the dusk,
Royal eyes amazed with woe,
Dark with forests, blanched with snow,
Bright with magic thrown afar
By the beckoning Northern Star.

SOLIDARITY

We are all members of one body, and the man who endeavours to supplant and destroy another man is like the right hand seeking to cut off the left through jealousy. He who kills another slays himself; he who steals from another defrauds himself; he who wounds another maims himself; for others exist in us and we in them.

The rich weary themselves, detest each other, and turn in disgust from life, their wealth itself tortures and burns them, because there are poor in want of bread. The weariness of the rich is the distress of the poor.

—Eliphas Levi

This year India's Republic Day has been marred by narrow, divisive and parochial views. The false political philosophy underlying the move to create linguistic provinces stands fully exposed. Further, it has evoked an appreciation in thoughtful Indians of the great and good work of the British rule which unified this vast country in a single whole. This unity we must preserve as our common inheritance.

We are once again experiencing our Nemesis—shall we fight and overcome it or shall we succumb to its evil? We allowed ourselves to be exploited by the forces which divided us; our divisions brought to India the dominance of a foreign power; we suffered but we do not seem to have learnt the lesson. In our newly gained political independence we are again falling prey to the evil force of unbrotherliness. British rule compelled us to accept some democratic ways, for the strong hand of the British Raj enforced law and order. The foreign rulers, however, woefully failed us, inasmuch as real education in peaceful and brotherly living was not imparted—they themselves neither preached nor practised it. The false

racial pride of the British in itself should have awakened the Indian classes, if not the masses, to an appreciation of solidarity and should have united them. It is pitiable that the inner lesson of our political enslavement for a hundred years has been lost on us. Our present task should be to make India a Republic of Brotherhood. Our future progress and services to the world depend on this.

Our very way of living reflects our failure to value the first virtue of true morality, viz., Brotherhood. The minds of our legislators and administrators hold not the truth that unity subsists between all men, in essence and in substance. Our educators themselves need to be educated in this fact.

The reflective mind has little difficulty in perceiving the unity of Nature in spite of the manifold diversities. Man, as a self-conscious intelligence, has also reached the abyss of heterogeneity. His task is to cease to wallow in those murky waters. His first task is the mental perception of the supreme homogeneity of Nature. This will enable him to feel himself as one with his fellows. This should become the duty of all.

The strife and suffering of man are peculiar to his state of self-consciousness. Strife persists because the inner purpose of our self-conscious state in not seen. A dire heresy of separateness influences us. Every type of strife—class and caste conflicts or wars of nations— is a kind of tumour formed by that heresy. That man should persist in his illusion of separateness, in spite of knowledge imparted, is unnatural and alas! in our era has reached an abnormal state.

when reasoning persons say, "United we stand, divided we fall," they themselves act contrary to their proclamation. Who dissents from the nobility and truth of the doctrine of Brotherhood? It is something that all desire. Why is it not practised? Because it has been denied in and by man's desire-mind. Whether we recognize it or not, we cannot escape the fact that we are united to all men— mentally, morally and even physically. Modern science points to the ancient truth that the living seeds of which the body is composed are constantly being exchanged. We exude and we take in those living germs which other men have used and stamped with their own influence. The old doctrine of Nitya-Pralaya, constant death, and Nitya-Prabhava, constantly coming to birth, of man's body and mind, has implicit in it the truth of Universal Brotherhood and the Unity of all Nature.

What makes Brotherhood so difficult of realization for us? Our selfishness—the great expression of the mundane and the mortal. Personal pride, rivalry and retaliation, the sense of possession and of power—these are the ingredients which form the "civilized" man. Such a spirit is visible in the business world, in political life, in the social whirl, in so many other spheres. Our perverted religious beliefs, our faulty system of education, justify and encourage rivalry and competition. Marcus Aurelius taught:—

"It is the intellectual part of creation alone that has forgotten its mutual love and unity. Here only we see no waters speeding to rejoin the parent stream. And yet, let man flee as fast as he will, he is none the less overtaken, and Nature is too strong for him. Observation will show the truth of what I say: for the seeker will sooner find earth untouched by earth than a single man absolutely divorced from his fellows."

One sure way to overcome the machination of personal pride and unbrotherliness is to seek the one true way of altruistic service of our fellow men. Such service should not be partisan, for a class or a caste or a group. It should be disinterested and so universal. The right attitude towards vast Nature as a unified whole will bring to birth right behaviour towards all our fellow men. Service to an individual is service to all, provided our attitude is universal and impersonal. A man is truly strong in himself when he values himself as a part of the whole. He acquires the strength of Harmlessness.

JOY BEYOND PLEASURE

"Sorrow Is," taught the great Buddha. The power of the first of his Four Noble Truths is being intensely felt by almost everyone, more particularly among the so-called civilized communities. Poverty and disease, disappointment and frustration, envelope all. Most of us are ever dissatisfied with ourselves and with our lives, with what we have and what we have not.

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that
tell of saddest thought.

If we look around us in Nature we find everywhere joy superseding sorrow, beauty overcoming ugliness. We see Nature "red in tooth and claw" when we look at her superficially; but when we probe deep we come upon the heart of the great Mother, ever throbbing with compassion. In Indian philosophy Nature and her wonderful processes are described as Lila, a gorgeous play; and the highest attribute of Deity is called Ananda—Bliss. Life originated in Ananda; it moves and has its being in Ananda. Intuitive poets, who have perceived this fact, speak of the "pleasure which there is in life itself." and bid us perceive that "the Soul of Things is sweet, the Heart of Being is celestial rest." In the deeper nature of every creature there is a living spring of happiness, of harmony and contentment. Real happiness is an inherent quality of the Soul. According to the Gita, one of the names of the Soul is "the enjoyer."

In spite of being so near, happiness seems to many of us to be afar off, for we are apt to judge Ananda or real bliss by the ephemeral sense pleasures and the deceptive allurements of mundane life which gladden us in their coming and sadden us when they depart. How can that which is external satisfy or bring happiness to the Inner Man? We judge life by its surface appearances —by the many comedies which please and the numerous tragedies which depress. To enjoy life in a real way we must make it a habit to go to the core of every incident and try to learn its lesson. It is because we do not look deep enough that we miss the meaning and purpose of life, and hence its joy. In all events we must look for the hidden meaning, the hidden beauty, the hidden good. The Joy of Life is ours only when we are able to distil out of all experiences, pleasurable or painful, the perfume they contain. Real happiness is above pleasure as it is above pain, for it is made of the essence of both.

In our civilization people are so fervently seeking pleasurable impressions—even though they are brief and transitory and in the ultimate analysis not worth pursuing—and so anxiously avoiding disagreeable ones, that they fail to see the value of pain of suffering. A little thought would convince us that we cannot have happiness without suffering. How could we know joy without the contrast of sorrow? Pain is the womb of progress; without it we would stagnate. But how many recognize this fact? To enjoy life, therefore, we need to go through every experience, pleasant or unpleasant, with graciousness and equanimity. Our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of the events themselves.

People fail to derive joy from life because they try to go through the serious business of day-to-day living without proper knowledge. Study of human events and human problems is essential. It develops in us the true sense of humour which enables us to laugh at our own childishness in being elated over the soap-bubbles of life and to smile at our own weakness in heaving sighs of despair at the least mishap. A real sense of humour also implies the capacity to make others happy, by performing loving deeds, by rendering gentle service.

THE POWER OF THE MYSTIC

"Every one therefore must become divine, and of godlike beauty, before he can gaze upon a god, and the Beautiful itself.

"Having closed the corporeal eye we must stir up and assume a purer eye within, which all men possess, but which is alone used by a few."

Thus Plotinus, the mystic. But his wise recommendation will be regarded as "impractical" by our machinemad and technique-fraught civilization. The senses of the mystic function differently, under the influence of his mind, from those of other men, and he is able to hear the language of the Soul. His sensorium is not keener in perception, but is capable of a different kind of perception. His mind understands words differently, and to him words and names present a different order and a subtler rhythm; they have a different connotation. Not logic and reasoning but analogy and correspondence are the mystic's avenues to knowledge and perception.

Thus, to a mystic, Arjuna is not only the strong-armed warrior, the mighty archer, and one of the Pandavas, but Nara, Man—the Thinker. He is more than Man, for He is a Spirit-Being; and less than Thinker because he is the embodied soul (Dehi) also. Therefore the majestic and martial allegory of the Gita, of which Arjuna and Krishna, Nara and Narayana, are the two chief characters, is interpreted in different ways. The mystic perceives the battlefield of Kurukshetra as the Field of Dharma, and Arjuna as the Learner—Man, the Warrior who learns to dispel his personal perception and stands "collected once more," "free from doubt and firm." The man of mundane, lower, ordinary perception

misjudges the Gita as teaching carnal warfare; to the mystic it sings of the Greatest of All Wars, which the Buddha waged against Mara and the Christ against Satan. Arjuna "is facing the battle of Man, as he grieves there the arrows are already falling." He fought and won. Is there no significance in this message for modern Indians? Or are there no more Kshatriyas left?

Or turn to the New Testament. To St. Paul, Ishmael and Isaac are not only persons; they typify or symbolize bondage and liberty—the former Judaic, and the latter Christian. Ishmael was the son of the bondwoman and was born after the flesh, and Isaac of the freewoman was born by promise—"which things are an allegory" (Galatians, iv).

The mystic is practical inasmuch as he endeavours to learn about the universe by a process different from that of the scholar and the savant. He acquires a different sense of values and when he imparts his knowledge to his fellow men he educates their hearts; the scholar and the savant educate only the mind. Mystics offer a moral elevation to the learner whereby intellect itself is purified and understanding becomes insight. This is valuable not only to the individual learner but to the State also.

Our civilization and all national States recognize and honour the scientist and the scholar, and, better still, recognize and honour the poet and the artist; but they have not yet evolved to the point where the mystic is honoured as an educator and a reformer of a very superior kind.

The real power which Gandhiji wielded was the mystic power. He did not labour with the mind but with the heart, his own and that of others. Millions of Indians

adore him as the "Father of the Nation." We should begin to see in him the Father of a New Order of Being—a Pioneer and not a Prophet, an Exemplar and not a Preacher, a Preceptor by actions, each action an experiment with Truth felt in the heart.

But how many among us recognize this? And, again, how many attempt to follow on the Heart Path he walked?

The practical mystic is the need of the hour, especially in India. To become one is a herculean task, but not an impossible one; but how to recognize the true mystic?

How apt is the poem of Tennyson, "The Mystic"! He writes of the Wakeful Dreamer; and we have space only for the opening and the closing lines:—

Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones:
Ye knew him not: he was not one of ye,
Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn:
Ye could not read the marvel in his eye,
The still serene abstraction: he hath felt
The vanities of after and before;
Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart
The stern experiences of converse lives,
The linked woes of many a fiery change
Had purified, and chastened and made free.

How could ye know him? Ye were yet within
The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached
The last, which with a region of white flame,
Pure without heat, into a larger air
Upburning, and an ether of black blue,
Investeth and ingirds all other lives.

THREE KINDS OF WEALTH

Money, which wields such a tremendous influence in mundane affairs, has a moral counterpart in the world of Spirit. Several ancient texts refer to wealth of mind as superior to silver and gold; and again refer to soul wealth as the highest type of riches.

The world recognizes the superiority of the cultured mind compared to an illiterate and an uneducated mind. But it does not see that there is something higher than mind. Therefore the wealth of knowledge is used by the educated mind to build up a bank account instead of creating the fund of moral power, intuitive perception, true love and heart philanthropy.

It is said in Sanatsujatiya that the real twice-born are not possessors of great material wealth, but rank first and are unrivalled in Knowledge of the Vedas; they are not to be shaken. Such may well be valued as forms of Brahma, for they have creative ability. They have Brahmic wealth, with which they spread moral power and spiritual beneficence, awakening all who aspire to possess that wealth.

Education is considered to be the highest asset for the building up of the prosperous State. But our educationists are far from the right perception of true principles. Our youths are not taught the truth that each one has been the maker of his destiny in the past and is so now. Schools and colleges, universities and academies, turn out "educated" young men and women by the thousand. They use their talent mostly for making money and getting on in life, so that they may become prosperous. Such use the motion of knowledge to hook money for a "happy"

existence, and there are those—not a negligible number—who, failing to gain wealth honestly, use crooked ways and become possessors of filthy lucre.

Everyone knows that most millionaires are not healthy; nor are they truly wealthy, for they are not wise. He who uses his knowledge to gain mundane prosperity for himself lowers himself. Missing out the real meaning and purpose of human evolution, he becomes selfish and makes of himself an egotist.

Mental education should be used not only to improve personal life but also to rise spiritually and bring to birth the truly Moral Man. The educated man who has not learnt the value of unselfishness and sacrifice, is said to have lived in vain. Our mental wealth should be used to procure spiritual wealth. The mind must seek its own higher aspect. The ordinary educated man who lives to amass money lives by the wandering power of the octopus mind; he does not know that there is within him the controller of the animal mind. The professional man, the man of business, the civil servant, are very impractical. In running after silver and gold they prostitute the mind; they miss out the securing of the Moral Power of the soul, wherein is real strength, joy and resourcefulness.

The same text, Sanatsujatiya, asks—"What sin is not committed by that thief, who steals away his own Self, who regards that Self as one thing, when it is a different thing?"

We drag down the Self of Truth-Beauty-Virtue and exploit it for worldly ends. We need to change our point of vision. A highly practical truth is enshrined in what sounds like a very impractical proposition : the educated

man should move his mind to gain knowledge about his own higher mind wherein is the wealth he is looking for. That man should know himself is an oldworld maxim, which all of us quote but which only a few care to probe.

Among the people dear to Krishna are those who desire possessions (Gita, VII. 16). Seeking the higher wealth, we gain all that we are looking for—and more. We unfold Moral Power which is resourceful. Seeking material wealth, fame and power, we enslave and embitter ourselves. The burdens of material possessions, the shining mark they offer to avarice, pride, envy and misfortune, weigh down and haunt the rich until suicides are more frequent among them than among the poor. What then is the way out? The aspirant to the Higher Life has his own formula—"Desire possessions above all; but desire only those possessions which can be enjoyed by all pure souls equally." He who seeks real possessions, to have and to hold by the soul's franchise, envieth not and is never proud, for he knows well that the things that he prizes are the heritage of humanity.

TOWARDS ONE WORLD

As these lines are being penned the news from the four quarters of the globe is disconcerting as well as disappointing. In the names of their respective governments the heads of States, supported by their like-minded colleagues, have been taking steps which threaten to throw the good of the world into the melting pot of war and strife, the apotheosis of evil. We doubt whether the masses of the U.S.A, or of the U.S.S.R., of Great Britain or of France, would support these actions if the whole truth were known.

From the moral point of view, in what measure is the Democratic side, represented by the U.S.A., superior to the tyrannical Autocracy of the U.S.S.R.? Democratic States are superior to Totalitarian States because in them there are liberty of speech and action, impartial courts of law and justice free from executive interference, respect for the dignity of man, the voter, and clean methods of election to the legislatures. All these go to make the Democratic side more moral and truly humanitarian. How is it, then, that representatives of the Democratic side, the U.S.A, and her friends, lapse into the ways of the Totalitarian States represented by the U.S.S.R. and her satellites? And an even more important question, What power and influence do the leaders of the Democratic States wield over their own population?

There is little doubt in our minds that the Democratic States do stand for a liberty of thought and of speech which is ruthlessly suppressed under the Totalitarian regimes. It seems to us, however, that the Democratic States are still in the grip of the evils of Nationalism,

which today is out of place, out of line with evolution; a thing of the dead past. Nationalism is like a spook, a preta, masquerading as the Divine Spirit, as in the séance room, from the limbo of soulless forms. The so-called "Spirits" of the dead tempt and corrupt the minds of men. So also, today the Karma-rupa, the soulless form, of dead Nationalism tempts and corrupts the mass-mind of the Democracies. That soulless passion-form or Kama-rupa, has succeeded in being accepted as the soul of the Totalitarian States. A nefarious type of Nationalism flourishes there, and the U.S.A, and her friends should resist intelligently the absorption and assimilation of those morbific forces of an effete Nationalism.

The cycle of Nationalism has run its course; the wheel of progress and of evolution, the Great Chakra of Vishnu, has rolled forward to enter the cycle of Internationalism, of One World; of Humanitarianism and Universal Brotherhood; of Cosmopolitanism and the true religion of Right and Righteous Living.

The Democracies should unite in the first instance, not to fight Russian and other autocracies, but to labour constructively for the creation of the real "Parliament of man, the Federation of the World." There is rivalry between Democratic States. Totalitarianism has for its motto—"Might is Right"; the freedom-loving Democracies must cleanse themselves of every taint of that impure motto. Justice and Mercy are two major aspects of the Law of Nemesis or Karma, and the Democracies should be stricter than they now are in the self-discipline of developing and expressing the light of justice and the power of mercy.

This, we feel, is what our Prime Minister Nehru has at heart. His many efforts for the good of the

world at large are directed to creating a mental and moral atmosphere of pure brotherhood among all nations, all the peoples of the world. His greatest enemies are those of his own household—those narrow-minded and unintelligent-hearted persons who are engaged in waging fratricidal strife on more than one front. Provincialism, casteism and creedalism are dogmatic and fanatic forces of evil.

We must all work for a United India in a United World. From this point of view Adult Education in India is of greater importance than even school and college education. The Humanities are more needed than technology is in the civilization of today. The Religion of Life and not organized religions; Soul education which enables man to master the machine which at present is enslaving man; the conviction of the need for a Brotherhood in actu and altruism not simply in name; these are some of the means to bring into being One World, One Humanity.

Selfishness, indifference and brutality can never be the normal state of the race—to believe so would be to despair of humanity, and it is said, "God will forgive thee all but thy despair."

THE MEANING OF DEATH

"He who holds the Keys to the secrets of Death is possessed of the Keys of Life."

The Bhagavad-Gita advises "a meditation upon birth, death, decay, sickness and error." People consider such meditation inauspicious and morbid. Death is dreaded, like anything else not understood.

The recent death of Sarojini Naidu should awaken some minds to the contemplation of Death, its meaning, its purpose, and the process involved. Where is Sarojini now? Could she have withered and become nothing, she who asserted—

Say, shall I heed dull presages of doom
Or dread the rumoured loneliness and gloom,
The mute and mythic terror of the tomb?

Sarojini certainly was never afraid of Death. Many people have claimed that death has no terror for them but self-analysis has soon revealed that the claim was not true. Epictetus quotes Socrates and describes the fear of death as a bogey—

"For just as masks seem fearful and terrible to children from want of experience, so we are affected by events for much the same reason as children are affected by "bogies." For what makes a child? Want of knowledge. Want of instruction What is death? A bogey. Turn it

round and see what it is: you see it does not bite. The stuff of the body was bound to be

parted from its airy element, either now or here after, as it existed apart from it before. Why then are you vexed if they are parted now? For if not parted now, they will be hereafter. Why so? That the revolution of the universe may be accomplished, for it has need of things present, things future, and things past and done with."

Implicit in this are the purpose and the process of death. Reflection on the above will lead to fresh enquiry. Thousands avoid solving the mystery of Death by plunging into a round of life which leads to death. They do not like to think that they are going to be overtaken by death. Avoiding meditation on death they miss out on learning the meaning, the purpose and the processes of Life and of Living.

Sarojini Devi was a mystic at heart. Her mind used the medium of verse to convey to her beloved humanity intimations about the real nature of Life and therefore of Death. She lived within herself creatively; she handled the plastic stuff of poetry and fashioned messages which made the whisper of the Spirit audible to many men and women. In her personal experiences and in mundane affairs she read their universal significances. Her world was a wondrous gallery in which hung her suggestive and thought-provoking symbolic expressions—images which, like Plato's Ideas, pointed to macrocosmic principles enshrined in microcosmic events. Very often we come upon clear indications that she used that wing of which Vaughan wrote to "soar up into the Ring."

Let us climb where the eagles keep guard
on the rocky grey ledges.
Let us lie 'neath the palms where per-
chance we may listen, and reach

A delicate dream from the lips of slum-
bering sedges,
That catch from the stars some high tone of
their mystical speech.

Her pain of body, her anguish of heart, her attachment to family, state, country, were to her not only personal experiences. They held for her a universal import—not to sadden but to gladden. And more— each was more than a cloud with a silver lining; each was a mysterious star which shed its radiance to soothe and to energise.

Those who heard Sarojini's songs felt the charm of the lyrics; but those who studied her poems glimpsed her vision that real life is in the spiritual consciousness of that life, in a conscious existence in Spirit, not Matter, and for such Death took on a new meaning. Who can tell, however intimate the friend, of the extent of her realisation of that Vision? How can she help experiencing the truth that real death is the limited perception of life? Her songs and her speeches indicate her faculty of sensing conscious existence outside of form, or at least of some form of matter. When we sense immortality the sting of death is dead. She is no more—but

While she rests, her songs in troops
Walk up and down our earthly slopes,
Companioned by diviner hopes.

Nationals of India and lovers of the Beautiful everywhere can by reflection on the death of Sarojini learn the mystic fact that real Death is not of the body but of the heart and that real Life is not of the senses but of the Soul.

when the corpse is disposed of demands an answer. Krishna implies that the post-mortem state of man begins thus:—

"Whoso in consequence of constant meditation on any particular form thinketh upon it when quitting his mortal shape, even to that doth he go, O son of Kunti."

GOETHE: A LOVER OF THE ANCIENTS

"With the most ancient men and schools I was best pleased, because poetry, religion and philosophy were completely combined into one."

Thus Goethe in his Autobiography. In this he was like Confucius who said, "I believe in the Ancients and therefore I love them." Goethe had not very great respect for the moderns who undervalued the ancient sages and seers, and were busy making new knowledge. His remarks about them are almost defamatory:—

"Bodies which rot while they are still alive, and are edified by the detailed contemplation of their own decay; dead men who remain in the world for the ruin of others, and feed their death on the living— to this have come our makers of literature With the moderns the

The natural consequence of this dual conviction was that he believed in the reiteration of age-old ideas to overcome modern notions.

"The truth must be repeated over and over again, because error is repeatedly preached among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses. In periodicals and encyclopaedias, in schools and universities; everywhere, in fact, error prevails, and is quite easy in the feeling that it has a decided majority on its side."

This is a fit occasion to repeat some fine teachings of the German poet-philosopher-scientist whose Bicentenary is being celebrated all over Europe and in the U.S.A. Goethe was born 200 years ago in Germany but soon became a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world. A mystic

with a vision, he related the microcosmic types to macrocosmic archetypes and his doctrine of Archetypes is of practical value.

What are some of the threads he wove which would help our vision to see the whole Garment of God?

"If I am asked whether it is in my nature to revere the Sun, I again say—certainly! For he is likewise a manifestation of the highest Being, and indeed the most powerful which we children of earth are allowed to behold. I adore in him the light and the productive power of God; by which we all live, move and have our being—we, and all the plants and animals with us. But if I am asked—whether I am inclined to bow before a thumb-bone of the Apostle Peter or Paul, I say,—ʻSpare me and stand off with your absurdities.' "

Goethe, walking through Rome with a friend, said to him, "There is not a relic of primitive Christianity here; and if Jesus Christ was to return to see what his deputy was about, he would run a fair chance of being crucified again."

"To hear people speak, one would almost believe that they were of opinion that God had withdrawn into silence since those old times, and that man was now placed quite upon his own feet, and had to see how he could get on without God, and his daily invisible breath.

He interpreted the Delphic Oracle as exhorting men to self-study and self-discipline.

"If we turn to that significant utterance "Know thyself," we must not explain it in an ascetic sense. It is in no wise the self-knowledge of our modern hypochondriacs, humorists, and self-tormentors. It simply means: Pay some attention to yourself; take note of yourself; so that you may know how you came to stand as you do towards those like you, and towards the world. This involves no psychological torture; every capable man knows and feels what it means."

This function of the higher nature is strikingly described in Goethe's conception of patriotism:—

"The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native land; but the native land of his poetic powers and poetic action is the good, noble and beautiful, which is confined to no particular province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he finds it If the poet

has employed a life in battling with pernicious prejudices, in setting aside narrow views, in enlightening the minds, purifying the tastes, ennobling the feelings and thoughts of his countrymen, what better could he have done? how could he have acted more patriotically?"

Modern India is in ferment, political and economic; its great leaders may well ponder over what sounds like Goethe's message to us all:—

"Revolutions are utterly impossible as long as governments are constantly just and constantly vigilant, so that they may anticipate them by improvements at the right time, and not hold out until they are forced to yield by the pressure from beneath."

BALZAC AND THE OCCULT

So many proven facts have been first discovered by occult science, that some day we shall have professors of occult science, as we already have professors of chemistry and astronomy. —BALZAC, Cousin Pons.

Honoré de Balzac is famous for the gallery of characters that he created with profound imagination based upon acute observation. In his oration at Balzac's funeral, Victor Hugo stressed the fact of these two powers of the great painter in prose. But Balzac has also been called the unconscious occultist of French literature. This is an aspect in the author's prodigious output which is very much overlooked. The abnormal and the psychic elements in his writings are not rare. These are not confined, as is ordinarily believed, to his Séraphita which was praised and damned as was no other volume of Balzac's.

Now comes the news of the publication of the first draft of his unfinished early novel Falthurne, ably edited by M. Pierre-Georges Castex and published by Jose Corti. Its discerning reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement for 25th May reports:—

"M. Castex has also studied Balzac's interest in the occult and lays just emphasis upon it; the realist and the analyst in Balzac have been studied too exclusively. There is another Balzac, who never died— the Romantic with his dreams of the magical arcana."

In Séraphita Balzac puts in the mouth of one of his characters the truth: "You call a fact supernatural because you did not know its cause." In many of his stories "the supernatural" is handled by Balzac with

consummate skill and rare insight. The significance of this "supernatural" is often missed by the ordinary reader and so the real meaning of Balzac's writing is also missed. His observation of objects and events was accurate and the details and similes in his descriptions have an amazing quality which strikes the readers' understanding. These have a profound philosophical background. This was due to his Imagination or Intuitive Vision.

He perceived the universe of Spirit, the Macrocosm, by the soul-power of imagination while his keen and penetrating senses observed the material Microcosm. In his writings he used both of his powers in a conjoint action revealing again and again the intimate connection between heaven and hell in man on earth. The great fundamental idea, "as above so below" was so assimilated by his mind that most naturally it leaped to conclusions derived from his application of the law of Correspondence and Analogy. Thus he got at such Eastern teachings as Karma, Reincarnation, etc., as will be seen from these extracts—one from The Magic Skin and the others from Séraphita:—

"Some day you will lie on your couch, unable to endure noise or light, condemned to live in a sort of tomb, and you will suffer unheard of torture. When you look about for the cause of that slow, avenging agony, remember the woes that you have scattered broadcast on your passage through life. Having sown imprecations everywhere, you will reap hatred. We are the judges, the executioners, of a tribunal that holds sway here on earth, and takes rank above the tribunals of men, below that of God."

heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude whose starry plains are but the vestibule of spiritual worlds."

"The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links which bind each one of our existences to the others— existences which the spirit alone remembers, for matter has no memory for spiritual things. Thought alone holds the tradition of the bygone life. The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius."

"We are born to aspire skywards. Our native home, like a mother's face, never frightens its children."

"Light gave birth to melody, and melody to light; colours were both light and melody; motion was number endowed by the Word; in short everything was at once sonorous, diaphanous and mobile; so that, everything existing in everything else, extension knew no limits, and the angels could traverse it everywhere to the utmost depths of the infinite."

HILLEL, THE BABYLONIAN

A name made great is a name destroyed; he who increases not, decreases; and he who will not learn deserves slaughter; and he who serves himself with the tiara perishes.

There are words of the great Hillel, highly reminiscent of the Chinese Lao-Tzu. As far as we know, there has been no biography of Hillel in the English language, and so we greatly welcome Hillel: Book Against the Sword, recently published in New York. Ely E. Pilchik uses some of the techniques of fiction and has tried to paint the Rabbi, Master of the Torah, in colours suited to the eye and taste of the modern economist and social reformer. He was a Babylonian Jew who was out of sympathy with the sense life which attracted the companions of his youth and so he emigrated with his young and faithful wife to Jerusalem, where in his famous career he was known as the Babylonian. His exact date is not fixed by modern scholarship but there are good grounds for assigning 40 B.C. as the date of his death.

No doubt the author has brought to life the Head of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem during a part of the reign of the notorious Herod. But the portrait loses its real beauty through its painter's lack of a deeper perception in the mystic character of Hillel. No doubt Hillel was a very learned scholar and was respected for his knowledge and application of the Torah; no doubt, also Hillel introduced reforms and bettered the Jewish society of his day; but his own pious life, his instruction to his intimate pupils, his own heart of peace and the legacy of his sayings are grander achievements than his rulings from the seat of honour in the Sanhedrin,

which earned for him trust and recognition from the Jewish people. The socio-economic basis of his reforms, e.g., in the raising of the standard of marriage, his "arrangements" about payment of loans, etc., are important and deserve our tribute. But Hillel the Mystic has for us a profounder significance.

Mr. Pilchik tells the good tale of the strange manner of his entrance into the School of Shemaya and Abtalion, and describes his rise to power till he came to be called "a second Ezra." Some of his sayings are used by Mr. Pilchik, but there are many more; a few of them we give below. They remind us of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels; Hillel was a contemporary of the Nazarene; who borrowed from whom? Probably neither one from the other. They were Soul-Companions and the Heart of each may have caught the throb of the other's Heart. The worth of these inspiring sayings is not in who spoke them or where or when; they carry their own conviction to every mind which loves peace, which seeks truth and which aspires to be brotherly to all minds. We have culled a few for the benefit of our readers. We shall begin with the saying which is said to have been the motto of Hillel: "He who makes a worldly use of the Crown of the Torah shall waste away." And the golden rule: "What is hateful unto thee do not unto thy neighbour; this is the whole Torah and all the rest is commentary. Go now and learn."

Hillel bears further witness to the law of cause and effect, known in India as Karma, in Saying:—

"Because thou drownedst, they drowned thee; and they that drowned thee shall in turn be drowned."

"Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing it; loving all mankind and bringing them nigh to the Torah.

"Separate not thyself from the community, and trust not in thyself before the day of thy death; judge not thy fellow until thou comest into his place; do not delay teaching; say not, 'When I have leisure, I shall study'; perchance thou mayest not have leisure."

"If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when then?"

Again and again Hillel stressed the great value of learning:— "More flesh, more worms; more maid-servants, more lewdness;

more man-servants, more theft. But he who hath gotten unto himself the words of the Torah hath gotten unto himself life in the world to come.

"No boor is a sinfearer; nor is the unrefined pious; the shamefaced is not apt to learn, nor the passionate (prone to anger) fit to teach. Nor is every one that has much traffic wise. In a place where there are no men, endeavour to be a man.

"As in a theatre and circus the statues of the king must be kept clean by him to whom they have been entrusted, so the bathing of the body is a duty of man, who was created in the image of the almighty King of the world."

SERMONS OF JOHN DONNE

...'tis now spring, and all the pleasures of it displeases me; every other tree blossoms, and I wither; I grow older, and not better; my strength diminished, and my load grows heavier; and yet I would fain be or do something; but that I cannot tell what, is no wonder in this time of my sadness.

Good news comes from the University of California. All lovers of literature will rejoice to learn that an authentic ten-volume edition of all the extant sermons of John Donne (of which the first is already published) has been planned. The editors, George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, are known scholars of the 17th century poet-preacher. Many are familiar with Donne's poems but comparatively a few, especially in India, are familiar with his sermons.

The story of Donne's great life is told by his friend and admirer Izaak Walton; it is one of the finest biographies existing in English. The critical point in Donne's life was his inner Repentance-Conversion which turned him from the "wild living and licentious wooing" of which his poems sing so graphically, to his making peace with his God "by penitential resolutions." During this period of affliction and awakening he wrote the above quoted words—those of an agonized heart. He had already had his famous mystical psychic experience in France, which must have contributed greatly to that inner conversion. This led him to the career of the preacher, mainly owing to the insight of King James.

The sermons will fill ten volumes; only a very few will read them through; but those who have tasted the wisdom and beauty in the passages selected by Logan Pearsall Smith and published by Oxford in 1919, will wish

to possess this complete edition for—"a little more." We would like our readers to experience the charm of Donne's words, and those who know them already will rejoice, we feel sure, to re-read them:—

"We have the book of God, the Law, written in our own hearts; we have the image of God imprinted in our own souls; we have the character, and seal of God stamped in us, in our baptism; and, all this is bound up in this velim, in this parchmin, in this skin of ours, and we neglect book, and image, and character, and seal, and all for the covering."

"He that purchases a Mannor, will thinke to have an exact Survey of the Land: But who thinks of taking so exact a survey of his Conscience, how that money was got, that purchased that Mannor? We call that a mans meanes, which he hath; But that is truly his meanes, what way he came by it. And yet how few are there, (when a state comes to any great proportion) that know that; that know what they have, what they are worth?"

"No image, but the image of God, can fit our soul; every other seal is too narrow, too shallow for it. The magistrate is sealed with the Lion; the Wolf will not fit that seal: the magistrate hath a power in his hand, but not oppression. Princes are sealed with the Crown; the Mitre will not fit that seal.

"Men of inferior and laborious callings in the world are sealed with the Cross; a Rose, or a bunch of Grapes will not answer that séal: ease and plentie in age must not be looked for without crosses, and labour, an industrie in youth. All men, Prince, and people; Clergie, and Magistrate, are sealed with the image of God, with a conformitie to him; and worldly seals will not answer that,

"Every man is under that complicated disease, and that ridling distemper, nor to be content with the most, and yet to proud of the least thing hee hath; that when he looks upon men, he dispises them, because he is some kind of Officer, and when he looks upon God, hee murmures at him, because he made him not a King."

"The world is a Sea in many respects and assimilations. It is a Sea, as it is subject to stormes, and tempests; Every man (and every man is a world) feels that. And then, it is never the shallower for the calmnesse, The Sea is as deepe, there is as much water in the Sea, in a calme, as in a storme; we may be drowned in a calme and flattering fortune, in prosperity, as irrecoverably, as in a wrought Sea, in adversity; So the world is a Sea."

"One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks of God, is a Circle; and a Circle is endlesse; whom God loves, hee loves to the end: and not only to their own end, to their death, but to his end, and his end is, that he might love them still."

"God gives us, not only that which is merely necessary, but that which is convenient too; He does not onely feed us, but feed us with marrow, and with fatnesse; he gives us our instruction in cheerfull forms, not in a sowre, and sullen, and angry, and unacceptable way, but cheerfully."

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The death of Albert Einstein has brought forth eulogies, many of them commonplace, a few very thought-provoking. We must, however, remember that the right appraisal of a great mind-soul necessitates our examining his own ideas on all important and vital subjects—not what others say about him.

Each one of us, genius or poseur, paints his own portrait. But to read the meaning of any such portrait needs an extraordinary insight. The teaching attributed to Jesus, "Judge not," is profound. A man's attitude and motive manifest in his behaviour and method; it is not an easy task to evaluate the former pair by even a dispassionate examination of the latter. And again, the greater the thinker, the more universal in sympathy the compassionator, the more complicated our task of appraisement. For example, how shall we evaluate Einstein's statement:—

"Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvellous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in Nature."

Is there not here some assumption that the entire field of post-mortem states of any and all men is known? Einstein tells us that he is "a deeply religious man."

What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life."

"To enquire after the meaning or object of one's own existence or that of all creatures has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view."

Doubtless there is some way in which Einstein reconciled these views and saw no contradiction in them. Though "the mysterious" ever beckoned him on, he seems to have drawn a circle "pass not" for his ideation. The mysterious which so greatly attracted him does not seem to have called him to examine the metaphysics and mysticism of the great Occultists of every nation, especially the Asiatic, and of every era, especially the ancient.

His letter to Sigmund Freud, written so far back as 1931-32, points to "an imperative duty" to form an international association which must "acquire a considerable and salutary moral influence over the settlement of political questions." Even far earlier, in 1919, soon after the League of Nations was formed he wrote:—

"As late as the seventeenth century the savants and artists of the Europe were so closely united by the bond of a common ideal that co-operation between them was scarcely affected by political events. This unity was further strengthened by the general use of the Latin language.

"Today we look back at this state of affairs as at a lost paradise. The passions of nationalism have destroyed this community of the intellect, and the Latin language which once united the whole world is dead. The men of learning have become representatives of the most extreme national traditions and lost their sense of an intellectual commonwealth."

Einstein himself was above the prejudices of patriotism and dogmatisms of creedalism. Therefore he was fit to be a great leader of our entire international world. His personal philosophy of life, judged by his own standard, reveals him to be worthy:—

"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self."

He had freed himself from the tyranny of the lower, personal self. He modelled his simple life on the teaching of Schopenhauer that "a man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants." On the positive side, his faith in the Brotherhood of all men was deep and wide:—

"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labours of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am engrossing an undue amount of the labour of my fellowmen."

Let us salute a large-hearted man who suffered in his feelings but spread the joy of knowledge all around.

MARTYRS AND MARTYRDOM

Last month Gandhiji was specially remembered by his devotees, for it was on the 30th of January, 1948, that he died a martyr.

Martyrdom, in one form or another, has been the price paid by many among those who have sought to restore to humanity the knowledge which it had in the Golden Age of Truth, but which was subsequently lost. These have struggled to achieve freedom of thought and moral emancipation for a large mass of people. They promulgated spiritual ideas as opposed to forms, ritualism and dogmatism. In their efforts to act upon the higher thoughts and nobler aspirations of the people towards the living of a higher and nobler life they burst through the limitations of the established religious and social order of conventionalism and conservatism. Ignorance and fanaticism have done to death not a few of mankind's great benefactors, from Socrates and Jesus to Lincoln and Gandhiji. These were great Protestants and wise Reformers—fearless and compassionate with understanding and forgiveness.

The word "martyr" literally means "witness," but during the early days of the Christian era, when many Christians "testified" to the truth of their convictions by sacrificing their lives, the word assumed its modern sense. Again, at the time of the Protestant Reformation which began as a revolutionary challenge to sacerdotal authority, and may thus be regarded as a notable achievement in human liberation, there was a long roll of martyrs who died for their faith. Each century has

seen the struggle for freedom continuing on all fronts, but with changing circumstances emphasis was transferred from one to another of them. Proverbially "it is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr." Fanatics and foolish men and women too have rushed into needless dangers and sought death. In their enthusiasm for martyrdom they became ego-centric, overlooked and forgot their moral duty. The breaking of conventions is wrong when it drags all down to a lower plane of thought; it is true when it raises others to a higher plane of understanding and of action. "Folly loves the martyrdom of fame," said Byron, but such foolish persons are soon forgotten.

This month our thoughts turn to Giordano Bruno, who, on the 17th of February, 1600, was burnt alive for teaching a spiritual philosophy of life. His execution branded the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church with an infamy which lasts even to this day. Bruno died a martyr for repeating the doctrines taught by Pythagoras and the Eastern Sages, who taught when a bigoted religious organization did not exist and narrow creedalism did not flourish. The ideas of Bruno are recognized today as having been "of epochal importance in the history of the human mind," in the fields of science, philosophy and religion. To quote from his profession of faith before the Inquisition:—

"I hold, in brief, to an infinite universe, that is, an effect of infinite divine power There are infinite particular worlds similar to this of

thus constitute the infinite universality in an infinite space, and this is called the infinite universe.

by virtue of which everything lives, vegetates and moves, and stands in its perfection, and I understand it in two ways; one, in the mode in which the whole soul is present in the whole and every part of the body, and this I call nature, the shadow and footprint of divinity; the other, the ineffable mode in which God, by essence, presence, and power, is in all and above all, not as part, not as soul, but in mode inexplicable.

"Moreover, I understand all the attributes in divinity to be one and the same thing. Together with the theologians and great philosophers, I apprehend three attributes, power, wisdom, and goodness, or, rather, mind, intellect, love, with which things have first, being through the mind; next, ordered and distinct being through the intellect; and third, concord and symmetry through love."

Giordano Bruno and others like him, who could not be persuaded to deny what their souls told them to be right, in dying defeated death. The utmost that the axe of the executioner or the fire of the Inquisition could do was to pluck away its garment from the soul.

Let us recognize these noble martyrs. Had it not been for their death-defying devotion to Truth we would not have that freedom of thought, opinion and expression which is ours to enjoy, to use or abuse, according as we have or have not absorbed "the mind, intellect, love" for which Bruno lived and for which he passed through the fire of death to become a Flame of Life.

REAL LIBERTY

The Immortals of the race, like Gautama Buddha or Jesus Christ, are ever remembered and revered by all pure-minded men and women. Such Teachers and Their Teachings are ever alive in the minds and hearts of mortals. They are Prophets even today, for Their instructions are prophetic, and those who seek find in Their instructions the answers to modern problems, personal or racial.

These Prophets are a class apart; Perfect Sages, They speak Wisdom which is infallible; Profound Seers, the Book of Nature is open before Their vision. Below Them are the Priests of Nature— men and women who have striven to free themselves from the influence of the so-called priests, popes, purohits, maulanas and mobeds. Today we need not only the Prophets whose light is like that of the Sun. We need also the radiance and the warmth of the Fires which true Priests have lit for themselves, and which will help us too if we but go to those Fires, approaching them with respect, and kindle our pieces of wood at their Flames.

Wordsworth wanted Milton to be alive in 1802, for "England hath need of thee." Do we not feel in 1956 that we need not only the author of the Areopagitica but also others who loved Liberty and disliked and condemned legislation which coerces life, State ordinances and ukases cramping free movement of body and speech? These thoughts prompted us to seek contact with the mind of the great man who wrote the pioneering essay on "Civil Disobedience." Henry David Thoreau—

"the bachelor of thought and Nature" as Emerson called him—should be with us today in the world which is groping for the Pattern of Freedom—not the Four or any other number of Freedoms, but Spiritual Liberty. Thoreau's calling in life was comprehensive—"the art of living well"; and he was almost contemptuous of restrictive conventionalities and taboos. This month of July is appropriate for recalling to our hearts some of his ideas. He was born on the 12th of the month of July, in 1817.

To what extent are his views useful and practicable for application in the world of today? He said:—

"...to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it."

Is there today a truly Democratic State functioning anywhere? Is every man capable of saying what government and which leaders command his respect? The very education which citizens are everywhere given accustoms them to slavish living. Thoreau wrote some strong words against the U.S. Government of his day:—

"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also."

"Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation For

eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?"

How far away the U.S.A, still is from the realization of Thoreau's vision! And India—how far away she is from the pattern the Father of the Nation set for her to follow!

The closing words of the essay are dynamic and their truth creates fervour in the mind of an earnest reader:—

"Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbour; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbours and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."

But to appreciate truly Thoreau's vision it is necessary to understand his philosophy of living. Emerson writes of his friend:—

"He interrogated every custom, and wished to settle all his practice on an ideal foundation. He was a protestant à l'outrance, and few lives contain so many renunciations. He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun."

"Yet so much knowledge of Nature's secret and genius few others possessed; none in a more large and religious synthesis....He was equally interested in every natural fact. The depth of his perception found likeness of law throughout Nature, and I know not any genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the single fact."

He condemned sectarianism, but he was a truly religious philosopher. He never bothered about the churches; he worshipped at the Shrine of Nature. "He referred every minute fact to cosmical laws"; and "he was a person of a rare, tender, and absolute religion," wrote Emerson.

Emerson, himself a poet and a mystic—another Priest of Nature— says that Thoreau's "biography is in his verses."

Thoreau is not a great poet, but there is truth in what Emerson says; we do catch a glimpse of his soul as he

uses his imagination in "I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings"; "The Old Marlborough Road"; "Great Friend"; "Tall Ambrosia"; "I Was Made Erect and Lone" and this:—

I am thankful that my life doth not deceive
Itself with a low loftiness, half height,
And think it soars when still it dip its way
Beneath the clouds on noiseless pinion
Like the crow or owl, but it doth know
The full extent of all its trivialness,

How truly applicable are the words of The Voice of the Silence, "Be humble, if thou would'st attain to Wisdom. Be humbler still, when Wisdom thou hast mastered."

GANDHIJI ON IMAGE WORSHIP

"Now whenever we want to worship God in anything, we consecrate it. But if a man excludes his fellows from participation in common worship, we are entitled to say that God flees from such worship. And he is installed where there is repentance and the bar against one's fellows is removed. I hope this explanation is capable of being understood even though it may not be appreciated. In my opinion, it covers a profound truth. If the truth is not seen, the fault lies in my inability to express clearly what I want to say."

On the 2nd of this month devotees of Gandhiji will remember him especially, that being his Natal Day. The mark of the true devotee is his fidelity to the potent ideas of the Gandhian psycho-philosophy.

The adoration of the true devotee is intelligent: understanding with his mind the teachings, he practises assiduously whatever he can of these, noting at the same time his own limitations. No follower can at once apply all of the teacher's philosophy; and between the ideal and the realizable there is a gulf. What is true of any sage-teacher and his followers is equally true of Gandhiji and the hundreds who are endeavouring to make applications in their personal lives of the philosophy of Satyagraha.

One more book* is added to the large number pouring out of the printing-press. A volume of over 200 pages by Miss Mary Barr (known among Gandhiji's circle as Mira Behn) contains much of interest. We select here from two letters which Gandhiji wrote to the

* Bapu: Conversations and Correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi. By F. Mary Barr. (International Book House Private Ltd., Mumbai 1. Rs. 2.75)

author on the subject of idol-worship. A devotee's yagna—sacrificial offering—at the feet of his Guru is one type of idol-worship and its value is well defined in true mysticism.

The words of Gandhiji quoted at the beginning of this article convey a profound truth, as he himself recognizes. Every mystic heart, every mind which has penetrated the realm of Occultism, knows that there is a meaning to the rite of image-worship. The rite has been misused and has become degraded in the process of time, in this country as elsewhere. All acts of Divine Magic have their counterparts in the black art. Between the realm of Pure Light and the abyss of Darkness there are many expressions of traditional image-worship, which dwindle into sacerdotal idolatry. Gandhiji writes something thought-provoking to Miss Mary Barr, which readers of THE ARYAN PATH should become familiar with. Stating that he himself does not "believe in idol-worship," he explains that "in one sense we are all idol-worshippers." He adds that

"in some form or other idol-worship is a condition of our being. Mosque-going or Church-going is a form of idol-worship. Veneration of the Bible, the Koran, the Gita and the like is idol-worship. And even if you don't use a book or a building but draw a picture of divinity in your imagination and attribute certain qualities, it is again idol-worship, and I refuse to call the worship of the one who has a stone image a grosser form of worship. In the imagination of the worshipper God is in a consecrated stone and not in the other stones lying about him. Even so, the altar in a church is more sacred than any other place in it. You can multiply for yourself instances of this character. All this is a plea for a definite recognition of the fact that all forms of honest

worship are equally good and equally efficient for the respective worshippers. Time is gone for the exclusive possession of right by an individual or group. God is no respecter of forms or words, for He is able to penetrate our actions and our speech and read and understand our thoughts, even when we do not understand them ourselves and it is just our thoughts that matter to Him."

This is in accord with the statement in the Gita that along many different paths men walk towards the Supreme Spirit. And yet the warning given by Dr. Bhagawan Dasji in his most useful compilation, The Essential Unity of All Religions, should be heeded:—

"Image-worship would serve its rightful purpose, if it is kept within strict limits; not positively encouraged; and if the elders and spiritual ministers keep constantly reminding the people that the image is only a symbol, a remembrancer, of the one God."

"those who devote themselves to the gods (Devas) go to the gods; the worshippers of the Pitris go to the Pitris; those who worship evil spirits (Bhuts) go to them and my worshippers come to me."

GANDHIJI'S GROWTH TOWARDS TRUTH

"The greatness of Mahatma Gandhi was not simply that he freed India, but that he himself grew toward Truth."

The eightieth anniversary, on October 2nd, of the birth of Gandhiji was the occasion for heart-searching—in the country's periodicals by not a few of his leading countrymen and, in the depths of their own consciousness, no doubt, by some of these and many more who have professed themselves the followers of Gandhiji but have departed more or less widely from his teachings. And there are countless others, following afar off, who in him have glimpsed a light in the surrounding darkness and have tried, in the measure of their vision and their earnestness, to draw nearer to it.

In the October ARYAN PATH* reference was made in these columns to an interesting recently published addition to the growing number of books about the martyred Indian leader—Bapu, by F. Mary Barr. Four more books on Gandhiji, published outside of India, have come to us and may be mentioned here.

The first is a revised edition of the essays and reflections on his life and work, edited by Professor S. Radhakrishnan, which was published first in 1939, under the title, "Mahatma Gandhi."† The new edition has a Memorial Section of some 130 pages in which are brought together nearly twenty tributes to his memory, many of them admirable, some of them self-portraits, reflections in the mirror which every great soul holds to

lesser men. They are all worth reading, though less poignant than the immediacy of many of the shorter tributes at the time of his death which are brought together in an Appendix under the title "Word Homage."

Another and a very valuable reprint is the beautiful one-volume edition of "The Story of My Experiments with Truth" which has been brought out by the Phoenix Press, with a fine speaking photograph of Gandhiji as frontispiece.* The availability in compact form of this inside story of the life of Gandhiji up to 1921 will be welcome to many readers.

Easily the most-talked-of recent addition to the books inspired by Gandhiji is one by the American writer, Vincent Sheean, Lead, Kindly Light,† a large volume written with a certain amount of sincerity but not with deep understanding, though it is obvious that the writer's contact with Gandhiji just before his death and his presence at Gandhiji's assassination made an ineffaceable impression on him.

Of the utmost importance, however, is a smaller and much less pretentious volume, deserving of far more attention than it has received, Herrymon Maurer's Great Soul: The Growth of Gandhi.** The quotation with which this article begins is its first chapter heading. That quotation gives the key-note not only to the understanding

*Gandhi: An Autobiography: The Story of my Experiments with Truth. Translated by MAHADEV DESAI. (Phoenix Press, London. 420 pp. 1949. 21s.)

† Lead, Kindly Light. By VINCENT SHEEAN. (Random House, New York. 374 pp. 1949. $3.75)

**Great Soul: The Growth of Gandhi. By HERRYMON MAURER. (Doubleday and Co., Inc., Garden City, N.Y. 128pp. 1948. $2.00)

of the volume but also to its moving and obvious sincerity and power. Mr. E. M. Forster's contribution to the Memorial Section of

Mahatma Gandhi brings out his honest and intense realization, on hearing the news of the assassination of Gandhiji, of his own smallness and that of those around him,

"how impotent and circumscribed are the lives of most of us spiritually, and how in comparison with that mature goodness the so-called great men of our age are no more than blustering schoolboys."

That feeling of awe before genuine moral greatness is salutary, but holds perhaps less of positive inspiration than the picture that is given us of a Great Soul in the making in Mr. Maurer's small book, written with good insight by one who seems to be a real and genuine admirer of the Great Soul Gandhiji became.

Interwoven with his running account of the outer events of Gandhiji's life are his teachings and the reactions of others to them and to him, the great fact of whose life, Mr. Maurer holds, was growth.

"Into a world lighted by Truth, fed by it, kept alive by it, but yet ignorant of it, there came a man who sought it, felt it, and declared it This man, whom people called Mahatma, the Great Soul, lived so

that men could know that there is a power more real than the power of money or weapons or prisons, and that through it men could break the ancient chains of violence in a world where men were in bondage

"...the world which could still Gandhiji's voice could not still his great soul, the living witness to that for which men hunger, the conquest of evil by good. Whether the victory be of this time or some later time, the overwhelming flood of Truth released by the self-suffering of good men is again upon the world..."

THE WAY TO PEACE

Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
If He's not born in thee, thy soul is still forlorn;
The Cross on Golgotha will never save thy Soul;
The Cross in thine own heart alone can make thee whole.
Oh, shame—the silkworm works and spins till it can fly,
And thou, my soul, wilt still on thine old earth-clod lie?

In this month of December, when the Sun moves northwards, the winter solstice is marked on our calendar as the Natal Day of Nature. Ages before the modern era, many peoples of the world celebrated the festival of Nature's Rebirth—a reflection of the truth of the Second Birth, the Birth of Christos in the mind of man. The first step towards such rebirth comes from the solemn resolve to identify oneself with the Divinity within the Mind of each; then, to seek Its guidance, to act according to Its Will, to take refuge in It. Every mortal feels the need of something more than intellectual assurance of his own immortality. The Mahatmas, Christs and Buddhas of the race have assured us that Power abides within us—the Power to live Peace, to radiate Light, because Wisdom has been learnt.

At Santiniketan and at Sevagram a World Peace conference is to be held at Christmas time. The winter solstice is a fit season for this task and it is good that a few earnest men and women from all parts of the world have come here to meet their comrades in India. The success of their deliberations will depend mainly on the accession of strength to their own souls, the strength which ultimately makes of man a Prince of Peace. This is what Gandhiji, the creator of this Conference, would have told them. For, without personal effort to

live in Peace, labour to establish it in the world must be in vain. The real good of this Conference will be invisible—the change it works in those who attend, making of them men of peace in the home, at the club and in the mart.

A few men can save the world—but they must be not only men of good-will but also men of minds humbled by Wisdom, men of hearts lighted by Knowledge, men of hands strong enough to cleanse their own flesh of the blood of egotism and personal selfishness. Thus only can Gandhiji be remembered, in the Sanctified Silence in the cave of the Head filled by the Light of Compassion.

This gathering ought to derive inspiration; it will not come from India but primarily from him, and to him the Conference must look for energy to remember and to live Peace. And among his teachings is this significant one. He asserts that we are not left "without any guidance whatsoever. The sum-total of the experience of the Sages of the world is available to us and would be for all time to come." To seek the soul within so that our very conscience may become enlightened by its light, needs study of lofty ideas which free the mind from the slavery of personal selfishness.

Our own personal desires, predilections and pride colour the mind. Unless it is freed from these, the mind cannot absorb the truths of the World of Peace. A warring mind, with its army of passions and lusts, is incapable of expressing a truly pacifist attitude. The fact that this problem has not received the attention it deserves has contributed to the failure complained of by many Pacifist organisations.

Therefore a study not only of the ethics of Pacifism but also of its metaphysics is necessary. Is Nature at peace or is it red in tooth and claw? The Masters have taught that Nature is at Peace and, more, that at its heart is Bliss. Study and reflection on Gandhiji's ideas are essential for seekers of a formula for Peace. Let not these lines which have been put in the mouth of Jesus apply also to Gandhiji:—

Of those who sought my crib at Bethlehem
Heeding a voice and following a star,
How many walked with me to Calvary?
It was too far.

LEADERSHIP IN A REPUBLIC

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government, but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.

— Herbert Spencer

As we are penning these few lines all Indians are preparing to celebrate, in the pomp of joy, India's emergence as a Republic into the world of politics. This is to take place on Thursday—Thor's Day—the 26th of January. May the influence of the presiding Regent of the day, Brihaspati (Brahmanaspati) "the father of the Gods" prove auspicious! Greece reverenced him as Zeus, the chief of the Olympian Gods who shook "his ambrosial curls" to say no or gave "the nod" of his approval in proclaiming the fate of individuals and peoples. Less than a week later, on Monday, the 30th all who love India and the Cause of Truth will bemoan in holy remembrance the Martyrdom of the Father of the Nation, which is made up of Hindus and Muslims, Christians and Jews, Parsis and others.

Gandhiji was the architect of the Republic. He was not allowed to live to see the consummation of his noble and unsullied patriotism. Irreligious fanaticism killed the body in which the soul dwelt—the soul which Lives, and it cannot fail to bless the country which Gandhiji served with many sacrifices.

As coincidence would have it—we call it Karma —between these two dates falls the birthday of Thomas Paine on the 29th of January. Paine played a magnificent part in creating the great American Republic, now the United States of America. In his Last Will and

"I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spent in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the Will of my Creator, God."

Similar are numerous thoughts and acts of these two builders— Gandhiji and Paine. Both belong to the Immortals. It looks certain that the influence of the former will touch the human heart more deeply than did that of the great pamphleteer who awoke the American people to their destiny by wielding not the sword but the pen. And his Age of Reason is read by many even today.

But to turn to India, the New Republic. Will it incarnate as Aryavarta, the Land of the Nobles? Will the ancient Soul once again embody the virtues of Truth and Compromise, Patience and Non-violence? Four are the outstanding virtues with which Gandhiji won the freedom of India. Truth was his God with whom he never compromised, though on every necessary occasion he displayed the spirit of holy compromise founded on reason, justice and mercy. His compromises were not those of the politician and the diplomat, the trader or the beggar, but of the saint of tolerance and the wise man of insight. His Ahimsa was guarded by patience which "fears no failure, courts no success." He planned and now millions of freed slaves are attempting to build according to the great architect's plan. In what measure will they follow it?

The Republic is aiming at being a Democratic State. But Plato, who visioned the True Republic, spoke of its powers for good and for evil. In his Eighth Book

"governments don't spring up out of stones and trees but from the quality of mind and way of living of the citizens—as the scale is turned by this or by that, and all the rest is changed with it."

The death of a democracy lurks in its false concept of Freedom says Plato. Tyranny is "an outgrowth from democracy" and it "too came to its end through its idea of good," which is Freedom.

What will the Indians make of their newly born republic? If the Voice of the People is to be the Voice of God, then people of a different calibre and capacity must arise. People must change from what they now are. An appreciable majority must know and apply what Gandhiji taught. But such a class cannot arise till a group of leaders has emerged, leaders who will purify and elevate themselves in the art of sacrifice through personal mortification. Plato also describes the capacity of such leaders:—

"They will have to turn upward the eyes of their soul and look up to that which gives light to all, and when in this way they have seen the good itself, let them use it as their example in the right ordering of the state, the citizens, and themselves. They will give the greater part of their time to philosophy, but when their turn comes they will work as servants of the state, taking office for the good of the state and looking on this not as something to be desired but as necessary."

THE SARVODAYA PLAN AND GANDHIJI

An interesting brochure has been issued. Some devotees of Gandhiji, perceiving that their master's ideas and doctrines, given lip acceptance by almost all in the seats of the legislators and the administrators, are not being carried out in action, are responsible for its issue. Its caption is Principles of Sarvodaya Plan. Prepared by a few and endorsed by 200 earnest workers in various fields, who gathered at the Sarvodaya Economic Conference held at Wardha in December 1949, the document is an important contribution.

Founded upon Gandhian psychology and philosophy it naturally opens with other-worldly ethics—and it is right that it should do so. Equally naturally, however, it does not put forward a system of philosophy which gives a sure and logical basis for such ethics and which the world needs.

The brochure confines itself mainly to economic matters. It puts forward suggestions to discard numerous plans now in vogue and to substitute others founded upon Gandhian economics. It does not perhaps sufficiently take into account that the present Government, composed of Gandhiji's followers and admirers (Can any doubt that Pandit Nehru is one such?) have done their best according to their lights, under trying circumstances. Nor does it take into account the fact that men of Cabinet rank (and there is among them a woman devotee of sterling qualities—Rajkumari Amrit Kaur), though familiar with Gandhian economics and ethics, may not be able to see the pressing need of applying principles of Satyagraha under the existing circumstances. This because they may

not be fully familiar with the principles underlying these economics and these ethics. Those principles are philosophical and metaphysical in character. It may well be questioned if most of those who sponsor the Sarvodaya Plan are themselves familiar with the philosophy and the metaphysics—the thoughtful and thought-provoking Religion of Gandhiji.

His character shining through his actions—personal and national—has caught the imagination of his devotees, who are a few, and of his professed followers, who are numbered by lacs. But Gandhiji's ideation, the soul of those selfless actions, true deeds of love, are not easily perceivable. His words are recorded but his Voice, the Inner Soul Voice, is not registered. Many of Gandhiji's most pregnant and potent sayings and statements, the soul side of Satyagraha, of Truth and Non-Violence, are not quoted by his followers generally for they are not valued at their true worth. Why is this? In some cases, doubtless, because of greed and wrong motive. These have ever formed the self-constructed barriers and obscurers. Legislators and administrators as well as reformers and devotees are influenced, directly or indirectly, by these barriers and obscurers.

"Ethics must have a basis not in fear, not in command, not in statute law, but in the man himself."

Man's attitude moulds his thought and his feelings and expresses itself in his actions in the routine of life as well as on exceptional occasions. Self-discipline is necessary to understand philosophical propositions of Gandhian or any other spiritual lore. What is read is partially understood but what is lived inwardly leads to a full appreciation of what is studied.

"Our competitive system and selfish desire for gain and fame are constantly building a wall around people's minds to everyone's detriment."

So wrote W. Q. Judge. He was writing about the mass influence on the personal human mind. In collective Karma, national and racial, lies the explanation of how even earnest and sincere people are subtly influenced by mass-cerebration and in that cerebration "selfish desire for gain and fame" very greatly prevail.

Our leaders, legislators, administrators, reformers, need to learn the occult truth of mass-hypnosis influencing them. They themselves may become contributors to strengthening further this influence. How instead can they resist and overcome it? W. Q. Judge explains:—

"When you sit down to earnestly think on a philosophical or ethical matter, for instance, your mind flies off, touching other minds, and from them you get varieties of thought. If you are not well-balanced and psychically purified, you will often get thoughts that are not correct. Such is your Karma and the Karma of the race. But if you are sincere and try to base yourself on right philosophy, your mind will naturally reject wrong notions."

What mental attitude and aspiration are the best safeguards and most likely to aid the mind in this predicament?

"Unselfishness, altruism in theory and practice, desire to do the will of the Higher Self which is the 'Father in Heaven,' devotion to the human race. Subsidiary to these, discipline, correct thinking, and good education."

GANDHIJI'S SECULAR STATE

The sum-total of the experience of the sages of the world is available to us and would be for all time to come.

—(Young India, 21st April 1921)

I have no desire to found a sect. I am really too ambitious to be satisfied with a sect for a following, for I represent no new Truths. I endeavour to follow and represent Truth, as I know it. I do claim to throw a new light on many an old Truth.

—(Young India, 25th August 1921)

These are Gandhiji's words. During this month, tomorrow to be exact, India will celebrate his Birthday. Not only in the political sense is he the Father of the Nation. Gandhiji made himself a superb incarnation of the Spiritual Energy—Atma-Shakti—of Ancient India. He laboured not merely for the political freedom of the Country; much more did he work to make India once again the Land of Good Works.

His spiritual programme of Satyagraha has been inspiring men and women in other continents, and today there are many thousands who look to this country and to Gandhiji's immediate followers to lead them on the way to Peace through Non-Violence—the Peace which a war-torn world yearns for, and the Non-Violence which men and women, young and old, ardently wish to hold in their own hearts and express in their own lives. Such have mentally perceived that hatred ceaseth not by hatred and that Love is the fulfilling of the Law.

It is the Religion of Gandhiji, not his political creed or even his social service programme, which attracts the thoughtful all over the world. The world is watching: how

is Gandhiji's India shaping her home and foreign policy, for the redemption not only of India but of all mankind? There is disappointment, at home and abroad, that the political organization which he guided for over a quarter of a century has failed to rise to its opportunities; that the once unsectarian and truly national organization is fast becoming sectarian; that the Congress Governments have so far not succeeded in following the immortal ideas of Gandhiji. Our great Prime Minister, Nehru, has set an example, however feeble it might appear to be, to adapt those ideas to the Foreign Policy which he is shaping. Satyagraha seems to inspire the Prime Minister, on whom the mantle of Gandhiji has fallen. There are sundry good omens in other Departments of Government, but they are obscured not only by nepotism and corruption but also by religious bigotry and political violence prevailing in the country. Communalism is the friend, however unconscious, of Communism, and these two are the enemies of Peace and Non-Violence, of Internationalism and Universal Brotherhood.

The most pressing need of India is a careful study of the Gandhian-psycho-philosophy. How can Gandhiji's principles be applied in national life if they are not studied and expounded? As for understanding his philosophy, at least a few should practise his ideas for purifying and elevating their minds.

Those who talk of a theocratic Hindu State do so on the basis of a very orthodox and untrue interpretation of the Vaidika Dharma, the religion based upon the Vedas. Gandhiji, following the great example of the Buddha, tried to extricate that once pure creed from ritualism, meaningless mummery, false interpretations leading to abject superstitions and even to immorality.

This is a fit occasion to remember and also remind our fellow-men that the Hinduism of Gandhiji is not that of the temples and priests, of rituals practised by the orthodox Hindus for the living and the dead, of absurd caste-rules in the matter of dining, marriage and untouchability. Gandhiji once wrote:—

"Hinduism is in danger of losing its substance, if it resolves itself into a matter of elaborate rules as to what and with whom to eat. Abstemiousness from intoxicating drinks and drugs and from all kinds of foods, especially meat, is undoubtedly a great aid to the evolution of the spirit, but it is by no means an end in itself. Many a man eating meat and with everybody, but living in the fear of God, is nearer his freedom than a man religiously abstaining from meat and many other things, but blaspheming God in every one of his acts."

"It [Dharma] includes Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc., but is superior to them all. You may recognize it by the name of Truth, not the honesty of expedience but the living Truth that pervades everything and will survive all destruction and all transformation.

Our Secular State need not and should not be an irreligious state. To it the teachings of Gandhiji should be nourishment. It is the Religion of Life founded on Knowledge, good works and deep devotion to the Cause of Human Brotherhood.

THE FORCE OF NON-VIOLENCE AND THE SPIRIT OF PEACE

The Spirit of War is synonymous with the Force of Violence. That Spirit has many expressions but in itself is immortal. That Force manifests in numerous ways but conserves itself ever and always. The source of war and of peace, of violence and of non-violence, of mortality and of immortality is one and the same: "I am death and immortality," says Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita (IX. 19)

Unless lovers of peace comprehend the implications of this philosophic proposition their efforts to wage war against wars will not be wholly successful. We cannot destroy violence without destroying peace. But in what way can the death-forces be used to gain immortality? How can the forces of violence be made to serve the cause of peace and non-violence? It is an alchemical process and true pacifists have to learn the art of this alchemy.

The evil omens of war were apparent even on the day when people were celebrating the advent of peace after the ignominious fall of Hitler. Recent events make the destruction of this civilization by war a graver possibility than it ever was. Lovers of peace everywhere are bestirring themselves to organize for peace; and among them are some followers of Gandhiji, firm and convinced believers in the principle of non-violence.

Gandhiji not only understood with his mind, but also applied with his heart the truth that war and peace make a pair. He comprehended the alchemy referred to above so thoroughly that he proceeded to apply its teachings

to mass movements in India; having practised them in his own personal life and having experimented with them publicly in South Africa, he courageously exercised his knowledge and influence in and through events which are now matters of history.

Gandhiji saw that the very forces of ignorance, of moral temerity, of old-fashioned blunderbuss patriotism, have to be transmuted. His was the rare sense which the commonsense of numerous administrators and politicians and publicists could not appreciate. Gandhiji's appeal to the soul-force of the people was rooted in his faith that men did not possess souls, but were souls and possessed mental and moral weaknesses which the powers of the soul could overcome. Therefore he led them to fight with the weapon of non-violence the evils of injustice, exploitation and tyranny. At times he spoke of his "Himalayan blunders" but what were they? The inability of the people to stand firm in the resolve of non-violence. The process of alchemy had gone so far in them and no farther, and so, again and again, he cried halt, took to preaching the doctrine of satyagraha and then, once again, launched into experimenting with the force of truth and non-violence in his people. Within his own personal self the spiritual transmutation was so great, so nearly complete, that he became a target for death by foul murder.

Unless this technique is understood in a greater measure by those who call themselves pacifists, their efforts may consist of feverish or even eloquent propaganda, but will not bring forth Peace.

Pacifists must learn to wage war against the warlike and violent forces in their own flesh and blood and brains. Unhappiness, affliction, suffering, consciously experienced

become a cleanser and a purifier. This is not the suffering ordinarily experienced by everyone. It is an extraordinary type of affliction which brings the sure consciousness that the soul is, that soul-force is available, and that mental anguish, moral suffering, bodily disease are stepping-stones. This higher type of suffering consciously faced brings to birth the new man—the first of the four classes of the righteous ones who are dear to the Divine. Through such conscious evaluation of suffering man transmutes cowardice into courage, ignorance into knowledge, conceit into humility, egotism into altruism.

Unless a few become men of peace after the pattern of Krishna, Buddha and Jesus and follow the example of the 20th-century apostle of peace through truth and non-violence, wars in their destructive character will not cease.

Suffering is upon the whole earth today. It is making for discontent and competition, and leading to national pride and prejudice poisons the international atmosphere. Neither the UNO nor UNESCO will successfully overcome these forces of evil till they plan and create an army, however small, of men and women who study the alchemy of peace by waging the greatest of all wars —the war against their own animalism. The warbeast will prowl the wide world over unless such an Army of Peace-Men face it and help it to overcome its disease by deep heartfelt suffering. Such a reflection gives meaning to a saying in the ancient Mysteries—"Blessed be the Name of the Great God, the Most High, who sends suffering to His devotees so that they may rise to Him in Purity and Beauty." It makes the saying

of the ancient occultists a pregnant aphorism: "Woe to those who live without suffering."

FEAR AND COURAGE

Gandhiji's Birthday on the 2nd of this month will be celebrated by his true friends in heart-silence. Therein alone real memory of the real Gandhiji can be evoked.

Memory and the loss of memory come from the Divinity who overbroods the thinking man. Oriental Psychology teaches the art of conserving memories pleasing to the higher man; at the same time it teaches how to destroy the memory of past experiences which might drag the embodied soul to acts of destruction. "Look not behind or thou art lost." The Dhammapada advocates abandonment of sensuous living:—"Retire, with no backward glance, leaving behind the pleasures of sense, leaving all sorrow behind." The backward glance of memory may prove a treacherous snare dragging us back to the backward life.

As we contemplate the saddening events occurring in India and the ominous ones precipitating themselves in the world, we mourn for "the sound of a voice that is still." But is the voice of Gandhiji so inaudible as we fancy? There is feverish activity in many quarters to collect, collate and comment upon his written and spoken words. That is not altogether a bad sign; it will be even better, however, if a little more deliberate and systematic effort is made to attempt the application of his ideas and teachings. In our personal lives as in the public service a definite attempt at applying his doctrines would benefit the practitioner and the country alike.

Fear and courage form a pair. These two emotions stir the blood and impel to action. Fearlessness is named as the first of the virtues of the Divine Nature described

in the 16th Chapter of the Gita. Mortal man can gain real Courage only from his immortal Spirit-Soul. To gain that Courage the mortal man has to begin by developing that "fear of the Lord [which] is the beginning of wisdom." Fear of enemies, of strong friends, of overpowering events, of sundry forces which attack us from without, these make cowards of us all—almost all of us. To acquire Courage we have to turn the force of fear within us, to that deeper layer of consciousness where the Fearless Warrior abides. There we learn of the root of our many fears.

The soul's natural fear is of the likelihood of its separation from the God and Gods of living Nature. The neglect of the fear of the Law and of Those who are the Perfect Servants of the Law causes the spread of fears, like the "black and soundless wings of midnight bat." The root of our mundane fears is that false spirit of independence of the mortal who in arrogance fancies that he can manipulate and conquer the sources of all opposing and fearful forces. Hitler's fearlessness was of this type. He died a coward's death, committing suicide, unable to face the undoing of his pride.

Gandhiji's courage was rooted in the fear of God, the Fearless Warrior in us, to whom pain and pleasure alike are avenues of experience. Hitler's courage was shot through and through with mundane fears and it killed his will while it strengthened his obstinacy. Gandhiji was fearless in facing mundane obstacles and mortal weaknesses, the wrath of an Empire as well as that of his countrymen, because he feared the Law of Justice, and so honoured the Law of Mercy. He followed the Law of Divine Fear which brings to birth in man Divine Courage.

fears—fear of starvation, of nakedness, of poverty; fear of myriad possessions, of plenty, of prosperity which may be lost; everyone's life is permeated with insecurity and security is sought through armies and aircraft, and in other dubious ways. Courage alone feels security, for through it a man gains his own Soul by losing the whole world. This courage alone is the help of the helpless and in dire calamity it stands its possessor in good stead. Did it not enable Gandhiji to die with understanding in his heart, love in his mind, forgiveness on his lips?

Our civilization is in great danger: will it die as Hitler died or will it live through sacrifices leading perhaps to martyrdom—as Gandhiji still lives?

'Tis true that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore should our courage be.

Let us reflect upon this martyrdom and memorize by heart its great lessons. That would be the best way of celebrating Gandhiji's birthday.

GANDHIJI'S MORAL PHILOSOPHY

On the 2nd of this month of October all true devotees and disciples, many friends and admirers, will celebrate the birthday of Gandhiji. Political followers will salute the Father of the Nation, but will they recall Gandhiji's words and, not satisfied with a verbal repetition, resolve to work toward the goal he points to?

"My love, therefore, of nationalism or my idea of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be the whole of the country may die, so that the human race may live. There is no room for race hatred there. Let that be our nationalism.

"When people come into possession of political power, the interference with the freedom of the people is reduced to a minimum. In other words, a nation that runs its affairs smoothly and effectively without such state interference is truly democratic. When such a condition is absent, the form of government is democratic in name."

Gandhiji always asserted that his political work was ensouled by his religious principles. In formulating and executing our plans— economic, political or social—we all should continuously repeat his advice. Without its inspiration our India is likely to become more and more a totalitarian state. Gandhiji said:—

"Self-Government means continuous effort to be independent of government control whether it is foreign government or whether it is national."

And to those who speak of Hindu Raj, or who indulge in narrow parochial and provincial notions, here is

"It has been said that Indian swaraj will be the rule of the majority community, i.e., the Hindus. There could not be a greater mistake than that. If it were to be true, I for one would refuse to call it swaraj and would fight it with all the strength at my command, for to me Hind Swaraj is the rule of all people, is the rule of justice. Whether under that rule the ministers were Hindus or Mussalmans or Sikhs and whether legislatures were exclusively filled by the Hindus or Mussalmans or any other community, they would have to do even-handed justice."

Gandhiji's moral philosophy constitutes a most important part of his message to India and the world of the 20th century:—

"I claim to have no infallible guidance or inspiration. So far as my experience goes, the claim to infallibility on the part of a human being would be untenable, seeing that inspiration too can come only to one who is free from the action of pairs of opposites, and it will be difficult to judge on a given occasion whether the claim to freedom from pairs of opposites is justified. The claim to infallibility would thus always be a most dangerous claim to make. This, however, does not leave us without any guidance whatsoever. The sum-total of the experience of the sages of the world is available to us and would be for all time to come."

"I do not believe that an individual may gain spiritually and those who surround him suffer. I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him, and if one

"Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization. The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections. I am painfully conscious of both in me. The silent cry daily goes out to Truth to help me to remove these weaknesses and imperfections of mine. I own my fear of snakes, scorpions, lions, tigers, plague-stricken rats, and fleas, even as I must own fear of evil-looking robbers and murderers. I know that I ought not to fear any of them. But this is no intellectual feat. It is a feat of the heart. It needs more than a heart of oak to shed all fear except the fear of God."

India's national Karma has been and is being created by all her sons and daughters through their own personal Karma. The Father of the Nation has dealt with numerous aspects of the country's national Karma; but Gandhiji is more than the Father of the Nation—he is a Soul with its own enlightenment, a lover and compassionator of all human souls.

World Karma carries within itself the national Karma of every country including India. The highest duty of a true devotee of Gandhiji should be to raise himself to the plane of that feeling where love for all humanity is generated and whence its radiation will bring to birth in other hearts the recognition that the Human Family is one and indivisible.

Gandhiji practised and exemplified the instruction of the Mahayana School of the Master and followed in the footsteps of the Tathagata. Will not a few of us, at least, sincerely endeavour to copy the example of Gandhiji?—

"Of teachers there are many; the MASTER-SOUL is one, Alaya, the Universal Soul. Live in that MASTER as Its ray in thee. Live in thy fellows as they live in It."

FREEDOM—FULL AND PARTIAL

"Our voice is raised for spiritual freedom, and our plea made for enfranchisement from all tyranny, whether of SCIENCE OR THEOLOGY."

These words came to our mind when we were perusing the reports of many speeches delivered on the day of Gandhiji's Martyrdom— 30th January. Those words were penned by H. P. Blavatsky in the first volume of her first book, Isis Unveiled, published in 1877. She was deeply sensible of the titanic struggle of our civilization that was developing then and which now is in full and fast swing.

In the last quarter of the 19th century the great war of ideas was waging. The two opposing ideas were— the quest and application to life of the laws of the true knowledge of the Immortal Sages, and the pursuing of a course which bifurcated into the opposing blocs of materialistic science and superstitious theology, both dogmatic, each in its own way.

That war of ideas brought forth many vital changes in human thinking. On every plane—scientific and religious, philosophical and social, political and economic—revolution in and of knowledge took place. In the midst of the babel of tongues of that pedagogic revolution a silent spiritual renaissance came to birth and has been silently progressing. The number of natural born mystics was greatly augmented by those who educated themselves in mystical thinking and living. This was before the close of the century. Among poets and novelists and other creative artists mystical expressions became more pronounced. And, furthermore, mystics of rare quality arose all over the world; some became known

but most have remained unrecognized. The process is continuing. India produced its own crop of mystics in the wake of Ram Mohan Roy—Dayanand Saraswati, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Ramanarishi, and the greatest and profoundest of them all—Gandhiji.

The tragedy of Gandhiji's martyrdom was dual: his passing combined the tragedy of Abraham Lincoln, the hero of Nationalism, and that of Jesus Christ, the hero of the Kingdom of the Spirit. It is but natural that India reveres Gandhiji as the Father of the Nation, while the world at large reveres him as the Man of Spirit, the Man of God.

"The world today is in greater need of Gandhiji's teachings of peace and universal brotherhood than ever before."

Similarly, India's leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, advised the children to try their hardest to unify the people of India despite the many diversities among them of language, culture and religion. Also, he charged the adults to broaden their hearts and to develop national unity. He rightly pointed out that "political freedom is not enough, we have to achieve economic freedom also." But Gandhiji wanted more and ever emphasized the need of moral principles and ever spoke of spiritual freedom. We missed that note in the reports of Shri Nehru's speeches, although he did point out the truth:—

"Today is Mahatma Gandhi's day of martyrdom. If we merely express sorrow, then it will have no meaning. We have to look to Mahatma Gandhi's entire life, understand

The economic independence of a politically free state is not enough. Was not that the burden of Gandhiji's teachings? We must grant that the U.S.A, enjoys economic independence and so does the U.S.S.R., but are the peoples of these States happy, contented, enlightened, ready to enhance intelligently the cause of peace and of one world? As political freedom without economic freedom does not suffice, so both these freedoms without real spiritual freedom do not suffice. We cannot do better than quote these words of Gandhiji from Harijan of 2nd January, 1937:—

"Let there be no mistake about my conception of Swaraj. It is complete independence of alien control and complete economic independence. So at one end you have political independence, at the other economic. It has two other ends. One of them is moral and social, the corresponding end is Dharma, i.e., religion in the highest sense of the term. It includes Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc., but is superior to them all....

"By political independence I mean....sovereignty of the people based on pure moral authority....Economic independence is not a product of industrialization of the modern or the Western type. Indian economic independence means to me the economic uplift of every individual male and female by his or her own conscious effort I

have no doubt that we can make as good an approach to it as is possible for any nation, not excluding Russia, and that without violence."

GANDHIJI'S MARTYRDOM

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their's is the kingdom of heaven.

—The Sermon on the Mount

The eighth anniversary of the passing away of Gandhiji, on 30th January, should be an occasion for heart-searching by all those who profess to be his followers. The best way of remembering the Father of the Nation is to reflect upon his martyrdom, to learn by heart its great lessons and to consider afresh what should be done to atone correctly for his sacrifice, so that the blood of this martyred saint might water the Garden of Peace and Unity in the India he loved.

Not only in the political sense is Gandhiji the Father of the Nation. His greatness is not to be measured by the fact that he freed India from foreign bondage; or even by his endeavours and achievements which gave a deathblow to social and religious evils. His greatness is enshrined in his devotion to and growth toward Truth and in the inspiration of his example. It is in his Religion of Life, his moral philosophy, his dynamic programme of Satyagraha, which he did not only preach but actually embodied. Very striking indeed are his own earnestness and sincerity in practising in day-to-day living the eternal principles he enunciated. He showed the grand triumph of the Human Soul. Is Gandhiji's moral philosophy something original and unique? His humility unfolded an insight and he declared:—

"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-Violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

"My strength lies in my asking people to do nothing that I have not tried repeatedly in my own life."

It is significant that he called his autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth. They alone do really follow him who are daring enough to experiment with Truth in all walks of life and to follow wherever Truth may lead them. Many have given lip acceptance to Gandhiji's ideas and teachings, but few have made a deliberate attempt to apply them in their personal lives or in public service. Why is it so? Because the knowledge which brings enlightenment and conviction is not pursued. The most pressing need of India, as of the world, is a careful study of the potent ideas of the Gandhian Psycho-philosophy. How can Gandhiji's principles be applied in individual or national life if they are not studied and understood? It is through self-discipline of the whole man that true knowledge of moral verities can be absorbed by the mind. Such knowledge is an effective purifier. Even the Buddhas can but point the way which man himself has to walk.

Since Gandhiji's death much has been done to popularize the Gandhian teachings. His written and spoken words have been collected, collated and commented upon; but unless these are "learnt by heart," digested by the mind and assimilated by the consciousness, practical application is impossible. Many of his pregnant and potent pronouncements, the Soul side of Satyagraha, are not generally quoted even by his avowed followers. Why? Are such not quite palatable even to them? Or is their true worth not comprehended?

Can India make history by creating the Gandhian Era, when Russia and China and the U.S.A, and so many other

countries are manufacturing the Era of the Atomic Bomb? This work is for the sincere individual and to him these words of Gandhiji are sure to bring inspiration:—

"My uniform experience has convinced me, that there is no other God than Truth...the only means for the realization of Truth is Ahimsa To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face

"Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings.

"But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know, that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms,"

GANDHIJI ON THE SIMPLE LIFE

Gandhiji will be specially remembered and spoken of on the 2nd of this month, that being his Natal Day. The roots of his life and the tree of his being bear the name—Simplicity. How many among us are endeavouring sincerely to live a simple life of self-discipline? In this age sensual pleasures and their continuous enjoyment are the be-all and end-all of life; it looks upon the artificial stimulation and multiplication of wants as the sign of progress; its highest worship is of Mammon. History shows that living the simple life in accordance with Truth and Love has been difficult in any cycle; it is more difficult today. It entails penance and suffering. In the Gandhian philosophy the ideal man is he who has definite moral and social principles of asceticism.

What kind of asceticism did Gandhiji practise advocate? He was not a hatha-yogi. He saw "no inherent merit in the mortification of the flesh."

"Mortification of the flesh is a necessity when the flesh rebels against one; it is a sin when the flesh has come under subjection and can be used as an instrument of service."

He did not believe in running away from the din and disturbances of life. His asceticism consisted in the regulation of desires for the purposes of the soul, in disciplining the body and the mind in the light of reason and intuition. His principle of simplicity made him avoid the two extremes—indulging the senses and forcefully suppressing them.

Objection has often been taken to Gandhiji's love and praise of poverty and suffering. But the fact that these are to be voluntary endows them with deep soul-significance. No one has fought more valiantly than Gandhiji against the enforced poverty and misery of the Indian masses. What he pleaded for was the deliberate and voluntary restriction of wants; this promotes inner contentment and happiness in one's environment and increases the capacity for service. His aim was to identify himself with the poorest and the lowliest and thus to realize the feeling of Brotherhood.

"Non-possession is allied to non-stealing. A thing not originally stolen must nevertheless be classified stolen property, if one possesses it without needing it. Possession implies provision for the future. A seeker after Truth, a follower of a Law of Love cannot hold anything against tomorrow If each retained possession only of what

he needed, no one would be in want, and all would live in contentment....ʻTake no thought for the morrow' is an injunction which finds an echo in almost all the religious scriptures of the world."

Gandhiji held non-possession to be applicable not only to things but also to thoughts. He who harbours impure and selfish thoughts, and craves power or possession, violates simplicity. "A man is the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes." Throwing away possessions without the eradication of desires is not the way; lust of every type is the womb of evil.

"The conquest of lust is the highest endeavour of a man or woman's existence. Without overcoming lust man cannot hope to rule over self. And without rule

overcome lust can hope to render any genuine service to the cause of Harijans, communal unity, Khadi, cow-protection or village reconstruction Brahmacharya must be observed in thought, word

Gandhiji's conception of real living can be summed up in this single phrase: "That conduct which puts one in touch with God." He wrote in his Autobiography:—

"What I want to achieve—what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years—is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha. I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and all my ventures in the political field, are directed to this same end."

He translated this devotion to God, to the Ishwara-Allah seated in the hearts of all, and zeal for union with Him into love and active service of his fellow men. Service of the suppressed classes is the very essence of the simple life according to Gandhiji. He describes his gospel of selfless action thus:—

"It is wrong to call me an ascetic. The ideals that regulate my life are presented for acceptance by mankind in general. I have arrived at them by gradual evolution. Every step was thought out, well-considered, and taken with the greatest deliberation. Both my continence and non-violence were derived from personal experience and became necessary in response

man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith."

MORAL PRINCIPLES IN THE INTERNATIONAL WORLD

Only base minds reckon whether one be kin or stranger. Men of noble conduct take the whole world for their home.

—Hitopadesha.

Time drags on slowly; but time also flies. The ten years since the martyrdom of Gandhiji look very long, but also very short—so many outer changes have taken place in India and in the world, and so few as far as moral principles are concerned.

Much has been written about Gandhiji's strenuous life and stupendous work, and their magnificent outcome in and for India.

The second day of October is his Natal Day and naturally the minds of all lovers of peace and real human progress will turn to Gandhiji's efforts and achievements.

At this hour the inhuman, unjust and cruel policy of the South African Government affects the hearts of millions of men and women, and world opinion is trying to gather force for adequate expression. It is opportune, therefore, to reflect upon the work of Gandhiji in South Africa. The story of his struggle there between 1893 and 1914 has a message today for the entire international world.

Professor A. Berriedale Keith says that "for the history of the British Commonwealth prime importance must attach to his [Gandhiji's] services in South Africa." Why? Because his programme and policy espoused "the cause of recognition of the value of human

personality." This was said in 1939. The results of the Second World War and the agonizing conditions found today everywhere, in East and West alike, make the Edinburgh Professor's words applicable to the human race as a whole. A great loss has already been suffered, for the value of human personality has declined.

Berriedale Keith added that since Gandhiji's departure "a narrow-minded racialism has once more gained increasing power"; if in 1939 this was "a matter for deep regret," what is the position in 1957? The United Nations Organization and the great Powers, the U.S.A, and Britain, Russia and China, are unable to stop the tyranny and immorality involved in the South African Government's crime of apartheid. It seems as if his stupendous achievement in beneficence is now lost.

What about Gandhiji's native land—India? The Hon. Jan H. Hofmeyer, then (in 1939) Chancellor of Witwatersrand University, had insight, for he wrote:—

"Often there is justice in the working of history. India, though not of its own volition, had given to South Africa one of the most difficult of its problems. South Africa in its turn, likewise not of its own volition, gave to India the idea of civil disobedience."

Karma, the Law of Justice that adjusts effects to causes, implicit in the above-quoted passage, needs proper study, reflection and consideration by all Indians who are lovers of humanity and champions of the building of One World. How is India going to use South Africa's gift referred to in the above quotation? It is not enough that India should negotiate on behalf of the Indians in South Africa and try to alleviate their woes. India must rise to help the millions of Negroes in South Africa.

India must put into practice the doctrine of Universal Brotherhood and not only National Brotherhood. India must uphold "the value of human personality" and not merely the status of her own nationals. The former attitude is ensouled by moral principles; the latter by socio-political expediency. The Black Man is as valuable to civilization as the Brown Man; both the White Man and the Black are brothers to the Brown.

Are we strong enough morally to champion the cause of Human Personality? Are we living in peace and harmony among ourselves? In other words, are we following the principles of Gandhian Morality? If so, to what extent?

Is the Indian Government of today practising moral principles in the formulation of its budget, in its industrial planning, in its language and provincial programmes, in its religious secularism, and in other ways?

Let us search our hearts on the 2nd of October—leaders and led alike. Self-examination in the light of Gandhiji's moral principles will reveal our limitations as well as our achievements. Intellectual honesty will lead us to the insight necessary to purify our national morality. It will bring us the courage to effect self-improvement. This is a greater and holier task than Five-Year Plans, than the starving out of English and the forcing of Hindi on all Indians, than any other projects for outer change, important though some of these may be.

THE WILL TO REAL FREEDOM

We who break tradition, we believe mankind is one,
Humanity will only rise when nations decompose.
It is by constant suffering that man can conquer pain,
Thus too much pain itself has put an end to all my woes.
The cities that ye see today, tomorrow will in ruins lie,
The tears that flow from Ghalib's eye are words of one who knows.

—Ghalib

On the fifteenth of this month India will celebrate the eleventh anniversary of the political freedom she won in 1947. Five months later Gandhiji, the chief who had won that freedom, was martyred. His murderer was a Maharashtrian, a religious fanatic ensouled by hatred and ignorance, who fancied himself a patriot. What kind of patriotism was this?

If Gandhiji was a channel for the forces of love and constructive labour and a spokesman for millions, his murderer was a medium for the forces of religious, provincial and national dogmatism, infused into him by a few narrow-minded and mean-hearted people.

"Light and darkness are the world's eternal ways," says the Gita, and, while the drama of Indian Independence displays the White Light of Truth and Harmlessness on the one side, it is stained by the black, violent evil on the other.

Patriotism of the right type ensouled Gandhiji and his true devotees and followers. He said:—

"For me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India. Imperialism has no place in my scheme of life.

The law of a patriot is not different from that of the patriarch. And a patriot is so much the less a patriot if he is a lukewarm humanitarian. There is no conflict between private and political law."

At the present hour India is suffering from the fratricidal spirit of false patriotism. To begin with, there is inimical feeling towards things foreign; for example, those who advocate the use of English as the official language are dubbed unpatriotic and those who put the good of the country above that of their city or province are condemned. In the State declared to be secular, creedal rivalries flourish. And so on and so forth, and all in the name of patriotism. Such patriotism is of the dark side; it is parochial and, therefore, violent. In scathing language Leo Tolstoy has described this false type of patriotism:—

"Every government explains its existence and justifies all its violence on the ground that if it were not there things would be worse. Having convinced the people that they are in danger, the governments dominate them. And when the peoples are dominated by governments the latter compel them to attack each other. And in this way a belief in the governments' assurance of the danger of attacks by other nations is confirmed among the peoples.

"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed.

"The subjection of men to government will always continue as long as patriotism exists, for every ruling power rests on patriotism— on the readiness of men to submit to power for the sake of the defence of their own people and country, that is, their State, from the dangers supposed to threaten them."

These views of the great humanitarian compeer of Gandhiji are worthy of serious study and calm reflection.

Has the India of 1958 something to learn from the ideal of Ahimsa and the ideas of Gandhiji and Tolstoy? Or is India to continue in its parochial mentality? Should no serious effort be made to instil into Indian hearts and minds the grand words of William Lloyd Garrison: "Our country is the World; our countrymen are all mankind"?

The real strength and supremacy of a state rests not on its wealth, not on its trade, not even on its education and culture. By its embodiment and expression of moral principles does a state show its real power. In the international world it is by its justice or injustice that any State is to be recognized as great or small, powerful or weak, good or wicked—justice not only within its own geographical boundary and to its own citizens, but mighty and magnanimous justice to all nations, to all peoples. Justice free from animosity and hatred, implies justice free from selfishness, justice charged by the spirit of wisdom which "sweetly ordereth all things."

On this occasion, before the celebration of Independence Day, it would be wise for all among the rulers and at least some among the ruled to seek for the causes of the prevailing parochialism, corruption, nepotism and mean parti pris. Devi Bhagavata asks: "How shall there

What is the real problem of India? It is not to be located in the north in Kashmir, or in the south in Kerala State—these are effects and symptoms. Not in the language disputes, fraught with bitterness alike in Tamil Nad and in Uttar Pradesh. Not in provincial rivalry, silly and unprofitable, as between "Maha Gujarat" and "Samyukta Maharashtra." These effects will not be removed by technology, by mechanical and engineering skill, by several five-year plans.

A great proclamation is made in the old world History of Ch'u— "The State in Ch'u has no treasure, doing good is our only treasure." Not the force of greatness but the spirit of goodness should be brought forth. And so again the Wisdom of Ancient China proclaims: "The material prosperity of a nation does not consist in its material prosperity, but in righteousness." Men of affairs on Capitol Hill in Washington or in Westminster in London may smile smugly at these words, but for all that they are impractical. It was the politicians at Paris and Berlin, at London and Washington, who made wars and created Lenin and his cohorts, and not only the autocratic Czars. Let not Delhi and India follow their pattern, their rule of life, but let us look to the truly practical men—Confucius and Christ, Lao Tzu and Buddha, Pythagoras and Plato, and their modern pupils like Thoreau and Garrison, Tolstoy and Gandhiji.

Gandhiji is acclaimed everywhere as the Father of the Nation. Is not the true way to honour his memory to adopt fearlessly his policy of non-violence in State affairs—in our national planning and our international relationships? India produced Gandhiji, the man of peace,

the patriot who loved all humanity, whose murder made him a martyr; we must salute him, his peers and his teachers—the Long Line of Cosmopolitan Souls, the Real Servants of the Human Race.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

"The killing of a human being by the authority of the state is morally wrong and also an injury to all the people; no criminal should be executed no matter what the offence."

These words were penned by William Quan Judge in 1895. He was a great Theosophist, a practical Occultist whose knowledge of the invisible and of the human constitution was deep.

Every Sage, Seer and Religious Reformer has asserted the truth of the sacredness of all life, human and animal, and has given the same command as Jesus did—"Thou shalt not kill." Six hundred years before Jesus, in our India, the great Buddha named Pity as the first of the five virtues to be practised by monk and layman alike.

Kill not—for Pity's sake—and lest ye slay The meanest thing upon its upward way.

To this day the Pancha-Shila, along with the Three Refuges, are accepted by one about to become a Buddhist. Even the murderer is careening on the upward way.

It is with very satisfying pleasure then that we have read the words spoken in the Indian Constituent Assembly on 3rd June by the Law Member of Pandit Nehru's Cabinet, Shri B.R. Ambedkar. Referring to the necessary legislation in the matter of the Death Penalty, Dr. Ambedkar uttered words that were acclaimed with cheers:—

"The other view, rather than the provision of power for the Supreme Court to hear criminal appeal in cases

country by and large believes in the principle of non-violence. It has been her ancient tradition. Some people may not be following in actual practice but all certainly adhere to the principle of non-violence. The proper thing for our country therefore is to abolish the death sentence altogether."

This is as it should be. We are glad our Constituent Assembly is showing courage and foresight in this matter, and we trust it will set an example to the British House of Lords and the present Labour Government, which has been pusillanimous in the matter.

Lest this reform be considered merely a matter of sentiment, it will be well to reflect upon a couple of ideas related to capital punishment. The immortality of the human Soul and its survival of bodily death are innately believed in by vast masses of people everywhere. This innate idea is one of those divine intuitions which cannot be destroyed, let materialism do what it may. And it has done plenty!

But the doctrine of the Immortality of the soul is neither illogical nor unscientific. More than ample evidence is available for any one who is unprejudiced and not fettered by the bigotry of modern science. Similarly the states of the surviving consciousness have been described, allegorically and otherwise, down the ages. The Garuda Purana and Dante's Divine Comedy are but instances. No less a scripture than the Gita refers to them directly; and the most cogent reference to the subject of capital punishment is implicit in VIII : 5-

6. "Last thoughts strong in death" affect each one of us. What about the thoughts of the executed, surcharged

with the fierce emotions of hatred, revenge and the like? The nature, the passions, the state of mind and the bitterness of the criminal have to be taken into account; for the condition in which he is when cut off from mundane life has much to do with this subject of Capital Punishment.

Violent death is different from natural death, hence the religious supplication, "From sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us." There is truth underlying this. Explains Mr. Judge:—

"A natural death is like the falling of a leaf near the winter time. The time is fully ripe, all the powers of the leaf having separated; those acting no longer, its stem has but a slight hold on the branch and the slightest wind takes it away. So with us; we begin to separate our different inner powers and parts one from the other because their full term has ended, and when the final tremor comes the various inner component parts of the man fall away from each other and let the soul go free. But the poor criminal has not come to the natural end of his life."

"Floating as he does in the very realm in which our mind and senses operate, he is for ever coming in contact with the mind and senses of the living."

It is good therefore if India is determined to abolish Capital Punishment, not only cruel for the executed but dangerous to the executioner—the State and its citizens.

THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR

No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will.

These lines of Lowell's came to our mind as we were reading the sage advice given by Rajaji, India's Governor-General. He was speaking to the Pressmen of Bombay on the 10th of August. In answer to the remarks about the grave vicissitudes of the middle class he is reported to have said that if the people of that class "gave up caste feeling and readily jumped over to the occupations of the working-class, they could better their prospects." The chief reason why this is not done is the lack of real appreciation of the dignity of all labour.

This concept, which all sages have taught, including the National Hero, Gandhiji, is not understood by the sons and daughters of India who speak of him as the Father of the Nation. What more striking precept could he have given, backed by his own great example, than the teaching about doing the scavenger's work? The Governor-

"any disinclination to work was the worst form of caste feeling. In his experience, he found there was an element of obstinate attachment to caste, creating class feelings among the middle-class people. They must be prepared to accept any occupation."

or mental, are also born with us; they are within us. How many of us are neglecting our tools endeavouring to make use of somebody else's? The last condition in our opening quotation, however, is the most important—"for those who will," When we depend on outer and extraneous influences we run the risk of neglecting the use and employment of our own resources, which are intrinsic and within us. The curse of the stupid doctrine of vicarious atonement affects the race of the plane of business and economics; graft, personal "pull," family and hereditary influence are some of its manifestations. If as a religious belief this tenet kills the soul through debasement, in the sphere of business and on the plane of action it impoverishes the Will, kills initiative, begets cowardice, and makes man a slave of others. The will to work enables a man unerringly to come upon his vocation— the work with which, and to do which, he is born.

And why do so many not find their own job and their own place? Because of false standards. What is right and proper to do, what are the honourable and non-honourable ways of earning livelihood, are not judged in the light of one's own aptitude and character, but in the garish light of worldly opinions. It is not recognised that work as work is holy—cleaning the street, cooking the dinner as ennobling as painting a picture or creating a poem. Nay, still worse; mental corruption has gone so deep in modern society that it will not acknowledge that cleaning the street is more ennobling to the soul and more serviceable to the race than selling commodities that dirty the very mind of the race, like some books and periodicals, like some foods and drinks. How many fair readers will accept the fact—for that is what it is—that cooking a dinner is a

more noble, more important, more spiritual vocation than "thumping" a typewriter? Each profession will find its own divinity, even the typewriting, and the book-keeping, when it will accept all work as sacred, all professions as holy.

There is a very telling tale, which George Eliot has versified, of Stradivarius, the maker of violins. She says:—

My work is mine,
And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked
I should rob God—since He is fullest good—
Leaving a blank instead of violins.
I say, not God Himself can make man's best
Without best men to help Him. I am one best
Here in Cremona, using sunlight well
To fashion finest maple till it serves
More cunningly than throats for harmony.
'Tis rare delight: I would not change my skill
To be the Emperor with bungling hands
And lose my work, which comes as natural
As self at waking.

The purpose of the Inner Divinity in man is not only to draw him out of his carnal nature but also to aid him so to transmute it that it shall radiate the Efficiency and the Beauty of the World of Spirit, with which that Inner Divinity shines.

TRUE DEMOCRACY

In these days all States call themselves democratic: some are capitalistic, others are totalitarian, others still are welfare States. Consider the true meaning of Democracy: although freedom and democracy are so much talked of, no nation in the world today is truly democratic, for, in our concern for the mere political implications of the term, its inner, spiritual significance is overlooked. In a true democracy foremost thought should be given not to rights and privileges but to duties and responsibilities. Until and unless we change our basis of thinking and of acting and regard humanity as one great family and strive together for the enlightened freedom of each unit of that family, we shall continue to have counterfeit democracy.

What is it that makes democracy successful? Universal franchise, it may be said. But even in countries where universal franchise obtains, the will of the people does not prevail. And what is "the rule of the people"? No better words can be found to enshrine the ideal of true democracy than the noble words of Lincoln—"government of the people, by the people, for the people." It is easy enough to repeat these words; it is not so easy to grasp the great sentiments they enshrine.

The word democracy (derived from the Greek terms demos, people, and kratos, strength) means the strength or power of the people. It does not mean the rule of the people only in the political sense; it means the strength of the people to express their will in action—wise action. It implies that supreme power is vested in the people that compose the State.

The three factors involved in Lincoln's definition must all be present if democracy is to succeed. In so-called democratic countries there are governments of the people, i.e., the rulers are elected by the people themselves, but the prevailing discontent and discord bear testimony to the fact that they are not governments for the people. Democracy has failed because only the good of a few is taken into account, without regard to the good of other peoples. The first and foremost requisite for true democracy is self-sacrifice. In our age when the idea of One World and World Government is gaining ground, we needs must take into account the good of the whole of mankind. True democracy, therefore, begins with the concept of fraternity, and only when this idea is accepted can we talk of freedom. It is through the idea of fraternity that people rule their own State and aid others to rule theirs.

True democracy, therefore, is rooted in the idea of equal opportunity for all souls, leading to the freedom of the individual soul. The aim of any truly democratic form of government should be to give its people opportunities to receive real self-education—the State educates its citizen for the State; it should educate him for cultivating his own nobility.

Though such ideal democracy does not prevail today, in ancient times, both in the East and in the West, under great spiritually inclined rulers and statesmen, democracy was a successful institution because its spiritual basis was taken into account. The people were then happy and prosperous, for the governments were of the people, by the people and, above all, for the people in a very real sense. So, for democracy to be successful, those at the helm of affairs in a State have to be sincere men,

spiritually inclined, and democrats in their own individual lives, for the power of individual example is tremendous.

What part can each individual play in building a truly democratic State? Let each one practise true democracy in the primary unit where it can be practised, i.e., in the home or the family. The home has often been looked upon as a miniature State. The State and the family are so closely linked that when the institution of the family becomes degraded the fall of the State results. The family is the sphere where qualities like affection, love, harmony, reverence for elders, protection of the young and so forth have full scope for development, and this enables people to participate in building larger democracies. Besides, in the home rights and duties, privileges and responsibilities go hand in hand.

So the importance of the individual as the builder of democracy has to be recognized. Each one, in order to make the task successful, has to control his thoughts, purify his passions, uproot his prejudices and radiate forth the light of the Soul.

Confucius says that "the ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom" in order to govern well their States, took as the starting point "the investigation of things" or "knowing the root."

"Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. "Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. "Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. "Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.

"Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. "Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed,

MONEY: BLESSING OR CURSE

Shri Nehru, who was addressing the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said:

"When the country is working hard and has got a difficult journey ahead, there is a certain incongruity in some people not doing so and just lazying and displaying and indulging in ostentatious display. It is bad form. It verges on vulgarity that when millions of people are struggling for the barest necessities of living, others should flaunt their wealth—I would say even to possess it is bad form, but certainly this business of flaunting it is excessively bad form.

"I am afraid Delhi at the present moment is not a good example to the rest of India or anybody. I should like to tell people in Delhi—and people in Delhi consist of all kinds of official and non-official elements; I refer to both— when I see the type of feasting that is going on here, your cocktail parties and the rest, you will forgive my using the word, I am disgusted."

There have been whisperings and criticisms for some time past about the social life in the capital of India. Both officials and non-officials have been guilty of what Shri Nehru calls "ostentatious display." Not only the rich but also the not so wealthy who copy the rich are involved; and the latter, unless wrong methods of making money are resorted to, must be piling up debts.

Money gained in the black market, through nepotism, and in other illegitimate ways brings its own reaction—degradation and corruption of moral character. There is the blunting of the voice of conscience which leads to a variety of crimes and sins. Let us hope that the warning words of the Prime Minister, and the fine example he has been setting all along, will produce the desired result.

Is there not an intimate connection between the method of making money and the way in which it is spent? Ill gotten wealth is tainted wealth and to cleanse it of the taint knowledge of spiritual alchemy is needed; if not cleansed that taint may act as a curse. This psycho-spiritual alchemy, elevating or degrading money and its possessors is an idea worth reflecting upon, i.e., to be a trustee of money made or inherited for Sattvic Dana, Spiritual Charity, is the one and only way of enjoying wealth.

Our materialistic outlook ignores the psychic influences which surround money. Buying and selling, hoarding and spending, borrowing and lending have not only economic consequences. Money also brings curses, not only blessings; the motives and the methods involved in creating wealth and in enhancing it, produce blessings or curses as the case may be. This is not only true of persons but of business houses and governments as well. Such an idea will be pooh-poohed, but for all the scoffing and the ridicule it is true. There is a moral side to the well-known Gresham's Law in economics—"bad money drives out good."

The Hindus at least ought to enquire into the legend of Kuvera. Having performed austerities for a thousand years, he obtained the boon of becoming the God of Wealth. Kuvera is the keeper of gold and silver, jewels and pearls, and all the treasures of the Earth; besides, he has nine particular Nidhis or treasures—who comprehends the nature of these? But Kuvera according to the Vedas, is a chief of the evil spirits. He is represented as a white man (leucodermic) deformed in body, having three legs and only eight teeth. His very name points to his ugliness. He is known by several titles: Dhanopati, Lord of Wealth,

Ichchha-Vasu, one who has Wealth at Will, Ratna-Garbha, Womb of Jewels, and is the King of Yakshas, Kinnaras, and Rakshasas, powers inimical to men. How different are these characteristics from those of the benign Luxmi, the Goddess of Prosperity!

Our legislators, administrators, civil servants, police officers, as well as merchants and scientists, bankers and bakers of different types should read from time to time these old-world narratives, folk-tales, fairy tales, epics and myths which are as true, if not truer than history. Man as a thinker owes it to himself to look at his actions by the light of the mind; not with his passion-fraught mind, Kama-Manas, which can see but glamorous distortions but with his truth-shot mind, the Sat-Chit, which reveals the Good and the Beautiful.

MANU FOR MODERN MINDS

There is much reason to fear that modern systems of administering human Society will prove a commentary on and a justification of Manu's ideals— but by contrast.

These words were spoken in 1909 by the venerable Dr. Bhagavan Das. Read today they sound like a prophecy fulfilled. The two wars were a direct result of wrong principles used in governing nations. But even the devastating wars have not awakened the States to change their system of administration built upon false foundations.

In his excellent lectures published under the title, The Science of Social Organization, Dr. Bhagavan Das has pointed out how modern society can and should be built on the pattern drawn by the great Lawgiver Manu, who is quoted:—

"Only he who knows the Science of the true and all-embracing Knowledge, only he deserves to be the leader of armies, the wielder of the Rod of Justice, the King of men, the Suzerain and Overlord of Kings."

Even India has forgotten the Laws of Manu, and Gandhiji's interpretation of the Varna-Ashrama Dharma has been more often ignored than followed. Perhaps it was difficult for his many followers to examine that interpretation while they were engaged in the struggle for the country's freedom. But now, in shaping the India of tomorrow, that interpretation should be studied, with a view to its application.

One major difficulty is that Gandhiji's Religion expresses itself through political, social and economic ideas and therefore appears diffusive. The task of the Indian

legislator and administrator is to understand and apply those principles; the understanding of them will be simplified and their application strengthened if they will take the trouble to examine the ideas propounded by Dr. Bhagavan Das in his Science of Social Organization. Not only is his exposition of the important subject of education valuable, but also his teaching on the building of the State. In these days the democratization of the State has been given a wrong direction, not only in Russia but also in all Occidental States, and by those Oriental ones who copy them.

One common defect is related to the principle of equalization. The triad of the French Revolution is not equitably applied—Liberty and Equality outrun Fraternity, and so Liberty turns into license and Equality becomes the womb of self-assertion and ruinous pride. Manu also teaches that Self-Dependence is the mother of happiness and other-dependence the womb of unhappiness. Nature reveals the principle of equality in and through diversity in every kingdom, including the human. Nature is intelligent and counteracts the foolish attempt, say, in Russia, to destroy the capitalist and the bourgeois, or in the U.S.A, to do away with the Socialist and the Communist. Some Indians take pride in pointing to Australian or New Zealand social phenomena, and especially applauding the Russian custom, that the taxi-driver will sit down to dine with his passenger and will drink with him. It is good that humble birth is no handicap and aristocratic birth no advantage. But this kind of equality has another side to it. Our esteemed friend Dr. Bhagavan Das would, we imagine, say:—

"While it is quite right that the chauffeur should eat at the same restaurant table with the owners of the

car and the minister and his wife, and be treated as an equal in this respect, yet he will scarcely be able to carry on equally well the minister's work, or a bank manager's, or a general's, or a science professor's. And that the latter should have to wash their own dishes and clothes, and cook their own food would mean much loss of time from their proper work. This is where Manu's fourfold scheme comes in and is justified."

In modern India, Fraternity, Universal Brotherhood, should be stressed as of the highest value. Then "equality" of men and women, of human beings and animals, etc., will be correctly understood. Further, liberty will not turn into license, and the talk of rights will be replaced by the due recognition of the Duties of Man. Manu does not advocate untouchability any more than the levelling down of all to a uniform mediocrity when he teaches:—

"One's own ploughman, an old friend of the family, one's own cow-herd, one's own servant, one's own barber, and whoever else may come for refuge and offer service—from the hands of all such Shudras may food be taken."

THE COMING REVOLUTION

A sense of impending doom is present in the consciousness of millions of men and women. Vast masses are experiencing disease of body, agony of mind, torture of heart. "Whither?" they ask and somewhere an echo answers "To doom and annihilation." Only a very few stop to consider if this be true, and if true, in what measure? How many perceive in this vague feeling an opportunity to want to go to the School of Life?

Steeped in religious superstitions the blind belief of many is stripped of real assurance or even consolation. "Let us live, fearing God, obeying the priest, doing what good we can, for tomorrow we die." How many of such folk enquire "Who, Where, What is God?" Does the craft of the priest reveal to them the justice of Deity or Mercy in Nature, or the real spirit of Universal Brotherhood without distinction of creed?

An equally large number are steeped in false Knowledge, especially of the ever-shifting scientific theories; they are desperate, and for them the only panacea is to answer the tempting call of hedonism—eat, drink, be merry in a variety of ways, including the gross debauch in tasty foods and strong drinks, and worse, for—"to-morrow we die."

Religious believers suffer by a non-questioning passive attitude, by accepting theological dogmas and ritualistic clap-trap, and fail to enter the School of Life. But so also do all men of modern Knowledge who are killing out the urge of the heart, whence intuitive wisdom flows.

in the absence of true Knowledge, remain mostly amoral. Great advance in modern Knowledge, especially technology, has popularized materialistic and mechanistic views of life and nature, and has made its votaries amoral in another way.

The special feature of this psychological phenomenon is its grim universality. The doom is expected and is talked about in every part of the world. If war comes, it will destroy everybody and everything; Washington, D.C., will perish together with Stalingrad! The grimness and the universality of the coming doom should stir the human mind on both sides of the iron curtain to abandon the course of action which has created the desperate situation. It ought to occur to that mind that what is needed is not the pursuing of the old mistaken course, nor some new technique in action, but a different philosophy of life. If the atom-bomb is about to destroy civilization then it is high time that the atom-bomb philosophy and technique should be abandoned. What can replace it? Why should not the Welfare States of the U.S.A., the British Commonwealth, and other Democracies destroy every vestige of spiritual and military Totalitarianism and take to preaching Truth and practising Non-Violence? Is it really impossible for Christendom to follow the teaching of "Resist Not Evil" and "Love Thy Enemy"? Is there no warning for the President of the U.S.A, and the Prime Minister of Great Britain in the words of their own Prophet (St. Matthew, xxvi. 52) "Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword"? It did not seem impossible to the great pioneer, Gandhiji; he acted and he won, and left the grand legacy of friendship and peace between

Political leaders and even political parties are not likely to adopt the way of Gandhiji. This applies to Russian political leaders perhaps even more than to the leaders of any other country. Both have vested interests. But what of the mass of common people? There is native instinctual understanding, and the common people are almost ready "to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks." In the very depths of the collective Human Heart burns the divine spark, all negations notwithstanding. It is called Love for Humanity, an ardent aspiration for a universal reign of justice— hence a latent desire for light, harmony and goodness. Its realization, wrote H.P. Blavatsky.

"can come to pass only when Greed, Bias and Prejudice shall have disappeared before the elements of Altruism and Justice to all. Freedom, or Liberty, is but a vain word just now all over the civilized globe; freedom is but cunning synonym for oppression of the people, and it exists for castes, never for units."

The question that we must now ask ourselves is: how can we fan the fire of peaceful aspirations residing in common people into a mighty flame? If neglected, this flame will be quietly quenched by the vested interests of all nations—of Church and State, Army and Big Business. If not properly guided, the collective voice of a desperate humanity will produce a volcanic eruption that will throw our globe into the convulsion of disintegration. A new age needs a new type of leader. An awakening world community awaits the emergence of

men of vision, courage and altruism to guide it along the paths of peace. Atomic scientists and "cold war" politicians must be replaced by workers for world government, by champions of mutual aid, by votaries of the spiritual unity and universal ideals of mankind. The world has known great national leaders and mighty men of war. Can it now throw up great world leaders and mighty men of peace? It is high time that we began to face this formidable challenge of the Atomic Age.

Preface

Contents

SHRI KRISHNA'S MESSAGE

REVERING THE "GITA" IN LIFE

THE GREATEST OF ALL WARS

THE PERFECT LISTENER

ELEMENTS AND GODS

OUR REAL FRIENDS

LORD BUDDHA'S TEACHINGS

BUDDHA AND SHANKARA

THE SPIRIT OF GOODWILL

ON THE "DHAMMAPADA"

ASOKA'S STATESMANSHIP

THE INNER CONVERSION OF TOJO

GOOD COMPANY — BUDDHA'S VIEW

APPLYING THE DOCTRINE

THE SANCHI ENSHRINEMENT

ON GETTING RICH

HUNGER AND HAPPINESS

LEARNING BY COMPASSION

RIGHT LIVELIHOOD

TO BUDDHA, ON HIS BIRTHDAY

WHEN THE PUPIL IS READY THE MASTER APPEARS

HEAVENLY CHARITY

LIGHT AND LIFE

THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSHTRA

GOD AND MIND

THE PATH OF PURITY

JAMSHID-I-NAURUZ

NATIVITY OF JESUS AND HIS DOCTRINES

THE BIRTH OF THE SOUL

THE FESTIVAL OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE

ECCE HOMO

"YE ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH"

THE FESTIVAL OF CHRISTMAS

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

"THUS HAVE I HEARD"—

"A COCK TO AESCULAPIUS"

ON A "MOST UNUSUAL BOOK"

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF IDEAS

THE TATHAGATA LIGHT

SECURITY AND INSURANCE

THE WORLDS INVISIBLE

THE SPRING OF THE SOUL

THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS

ORIGINALITY AND QUOTATION

POLITICIANS NEED PHILOSOPHY

THE SIN OF SPEECH

A LIVING EPIC

"THE CEDARS OF LEBANON"

THE VOICE OF THE "ZEITGEIST"

THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

DEATH OF BODY AND THE MIND

KARMA AND REINCARNATION

THE POWER OF KARMA

"VAJRA"—THE THUNDERBOLT

GOD IS LAW

KARMA AND DHARMA

HUMAN JUDGEMENT AND DIVINE COMPENSATION

MAN'S DIVINITY AND SOPHISTICATION

REINCARNATION EXPLAINS

DIVINE DISCIPLINE

WORDS—TRAPS AND MESSENGERS

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

DISCIPLINE AND CULTURE

SELF-DISCIPLINE

RELIGION AND RELIGIONS

THE EYE OF THE HEART

FROM GLUTTONY TO RAGE

PILGRIMAGE

THE WORLD CYCLE AND INDIA

DISCIPLINE AND SELF-DISCIPLINE

WE ARE TRUSTEES OF OUR POSSESSIONS

THE CONQUEST OF THE GREAT DISEASE

THE FIGHTING-COCKS AND THE TURKEY

ORIENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

PSYCHOLOGY: EUROPEAN AND ASIATIC

GRATIFICATION OF PASSIONS

LUST FOR LIVING AND REPENTANCE