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PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA OP 1HE NEW INDIA BY ROMAIN ROLLAND TRANSLATED BY E. F. MALCOLM-SMITH CASSELL AND COMPANY LTD. LONDON, TO* MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY TRANSLATOR'S NOTE translation of this work by Romain Rolland was undertaken in the first instance for the Indian Edition, which is being published by the Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Himalayas, for circulation in India, Ceylon and the Federated Malay States. The present Edition is substantially the same as the Indian Edition so far as the text is concerned, but it contains additional notes for the greater enlightenment of Western readers. The Translator desires to express her sense of the impos- sibility of doing justice to the exquisite style of the Author's French. At the Author's request she has, therefore, sought to give as literal a translation of his thought as possible, and style has been a secondary consideration. The bulk of the text has been submitted to the Author's sister, to whom the work is dedicated, and to Swami Ashokananda, the Indian Editor, for purposes of correction before being cast in its final form. The Translator desires to express publicly her deep sense of obligation to those two helpers for their unfailing and unwearied assistance. Too little is known of Indian thought in the West. May others share the experience of the Translator, and discover through these pages that the great thinkers of the earth are essentially brothers. Conditions may differ widely at the foot or up the slopes of the mountains, but above are " the shining tablelands, to which our God Himself is moon and sun." From those pure heights the divisions that part mankind are no longer discernible. E. F. M.-S. AHMEDABAD, INDIA, February, 1930. AUTHOR'S PREFACE IN writing this book I have had constant recourse to the advice of the Ramakrishna Mission, which has been kind enough to place all the requisite documents at my disposal. In particular I owe a great deal to the present venerable head of the Belur Math and Superior of the Order, Swami Shivananda, who has been good enough to give me his precious personal memories of the Master ; to his pious direct disciple and Evangelist, Mahendra Nath Gupta, whose name is modestly concealed behind the simple initial M ; to the young and religious savant, Boshi Sen, a disciple of Sir J. C. Bose and a devotee of Vivekananda, who with her permission communicated to me the unpublished Memoirs of Sister Christine, she who with Sister Nivedita was the most intimate of Vivekananda's Western disciples ; to Miss Josephine MacLeod, who was an active and devoted friend of the great Swami ; above all to the editor of the Review, Prabuddha Bharata, Swami Ashokananda, who has never wearied of my unwearied questions, but has answered them with the most precise erudition. It was he who gave me the most complete information with regard to the actual position of the Ramakrishna Mission. I must also express my gratitude to Mr. Dhan Gopal Mukerji, who first revealed Ramakrishna's existence to me, and to my faithful friead, Dr. Kalidas Nag, who has more than once advised and instructed me. May I have made the best use of so many excellent guides for the service of the India which is dear to us and of the human Spirit ! R. R. December, 1928. vu CONTENTS PAGE To Mv EASTERN READERS xi To MY WESTERN READERS ...... xiii BOOK I RAMAKRISHNA PRELUDE ........ 3 I THE GOSPEL OF CHILDHOOD ..... 7 II KALI THE MOTHER ....... 13 III THE Two GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE ; THE BHARAVI BRAHAMI AND TOTAPURI 25 IV IDENTITY WITH THE ABSOLUTE .... 41 V THE RETURN TO MAN ...... 53 VI THE BUILDERS OF UNITY, RAM MOHUN ROY, DEVEN- DRANATH TAGORE, KESHAB CHUNDER SEN, DAYAN- ANDA ........ 67 VII RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA . 112 VIII THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES 132 IX THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN . . . 144 X NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE . . . .170 XI THE SWAN SONG 193 XII THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA .... 201 EPILOGUE TO BOOK I 217 RAMAKRISHNA BIBLIOGRAPHY ..... 223 ICONOGRAPHY ........ 227 BOOK II VIVEKANANDA PART I THE LIFE OF VIVEKANANDA PRELUDE 231 I THE PARIVRAJAKA : THE CALL OF THE EARTH TO THB SOUL 235 ix CONTENTS PAGE II THE PILGRIM OF INDIA . . . ... .246 III THE GREAT JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND THE PAR- LIAMENT OF RELIGIONS ..... 256 IV AMERICA AT THE TIME OF VIVBKANANDA'S FIRST VISIT. THE ANGLO-SAXON FORERUNNERS OF THE SPIRIT OF ASIA : EMERSON, THOREAU, WALT WHITMAN 267 V THE PREACHING IN AMERICA ..... 286 VI THE MEETING OF INDIA AND EUROPE . . . 299 VII THE RETURN TO INDIA . . . . . .314 VIII THE FOUNDING OF THE RAMAKRISHNA MISSION. . 325 IX THE SECOND JOURNEY TO THE WEST . . .351 X THE DEPARTURE 358 PART II THE UNIVERSAL GOSPEL OF VIVEKANANDA I MAYA AND THE MARCH TOWARDS FREEDOM . . 369 II THE GREAT PATHS (THE YOGAS) .... 380 1. Karma-yoga ....... 385 2. Bhakti-yoga 395 3. Raja-yoga 405 4. Jnana-yoga ....... 418 III SCIENCE, THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION . . . 437 IV CIVITAS DEI : THE CITY OF MANKIND . . . 457 V CAVE CANEM ! 469 CONCLUSION ........ 481 PART III I THE RAMAKRISHNA MATH AND MISSION . . . 485 II THE AWAKENING OF INDIA AFTER VIVEKANANDA, RABINDRANATH TAGORE AND AUROBINDO GHOSE. 497 APPENDICES : c I CONCERNING MYSTIC INTROVERSION AND ITS SCIENTIFIC VALUE FOR THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE REAL . 509 II ON THE HELLENIC-CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM OF THE FIRST CENTURIES, AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO HINDU MYSTICISM : PLOTINUS OF ALEXANDRIA AND DENIS THE AREOPAGITE 520 TO MY EASTERN READERS " Greeting to the feet of the Jnanin ! Greeting to the feet of the Bhakta ! Greeting to the devout who believe in the formless God I Greeting to those who believe in a God with form I Greet- ing to the men of old who knew Brahman 1 Greeting to the modern knowers of Truth. ..." (Ramakrishna, October 28, 1882.) I MUST beg my Indian readers to view with indulgence the mistakes I may have made. In spite of all the enthusiasm I have brought to my task, it is impossible for a man of the West to interpret men of Asia with their thousand years' experience of thought ; for such an inter- pretation must often be erroneous. The only thing to which I can testify is the sincerity which has led me to make a pious attempt to enter into all forms of life. At the same time I must confess that I have not abdicated one iota of my free judgment as a man of the West. I respect the faith of all and very often I love it. But I never subscribe to it. Ramakrishna lies very near to my heart because I see in him a man and not an " Incarnation/' as he appears to his disciples. In accordance with the Vedan- tists I do not need to enclose God within the bounds of a privileged man in order to admit that the Divine dwells within the soul and that the soul dwells in everything that Atman is Brahman : although it knows it not ; that view is a form of nationalism of spirit and I cannot accept it. I see God in all that exists. I see Him ,as completely in the least fragment as in the fthole Cosmos. There is no difference of essence. And power is universally infinite ; that which lies hidden in an atom, if one only knew it, could blow up a whole world. The only difference is that it is more or less concentrated in the heart of a conscience, 1 This book is to appear in India and Europe at the same time. Xi PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA in an ego, or in a unit of energy, an ion. The very greatest of men is only a clearer reflection of the Sun which gleams in each drop of dew. That is why I can never make that sacred gulf so pleasing to the devout, between the heroes of the soul and the thousands of their obscure companions past and present. And neither more nor less than I isolate Christ and Buddha, do I isolate Ramakrishna and Vivekananda from the great army of the Spirit marching on in their own time. I shall try in the course of this book to do justice to those person- alities of genius, who during the last century have sprung up in reawakened India, reviving the ancient energies of their country and bringing about a springtime of thought within her borders. The work of each one was creative and each one collected round him a band of faithful souls who formed themselves into a church and unconsciously looked upon that church as a temple of the one or of the greatest God. At this distance from their differences I refuse to see the dust of battle ; at this distance the hedges between the fields melt into an immense expanse. I can only see the same river, a majestic " chemin qui marchc " in the words of our Pascal. And it is because Ramakrishna more fully than any other man not only conceived, but realized in himself the total Unity of this river of God, open to all rivers and all streams, that I have given him my love ; and I have drawn a little of his sacred water to slake the great thirst of the world. But I shall not remain leaning at the edge of the river. I shall continue my march with the stream right to the sea. Leaving behind at each winding of the river where death has cried " Halt I " to one of qur leaders the kneeling company of the faithful, I shall go with the stream and pay homage to it from the source to the estuary. Holy is the source, holy is the course, holy is the estuary. And we shall embrace within the river and its tributaries small . and great and in the Ocean itself the whole moving mass of the living God. R. R. VlLLENEUVE, Christmas, 1928. xii MY WESTERN READERS I HAVE dedicated my whole life to the reconciliation of mankind. I have striven to bring it about among the peoples of Europe, especially between those two great Western peoples who are brethren and yet enemies. For the last ten years I have been attempting the same task for the West and the East. I also desire to reconcile, if it is possible, the two antithetical forms of spirit for which the West and the East are wrongly supposed to stand reason and faith or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, the diverse forms of reason and of faith ; for the West and the East share them both almost equally although few suspect it. In our days an absurd separation has been made between these two halves of the soul, and it is presumed that they are incompatible. The only incompatibility lies in the narrowness of view which those who erroneously claim to be their representatives share in common. On the one hand, those who call themselves religious shut themselves up within the four walls of their chapel and not only refuse to come out (as they have a right to do) but they would deny to all outside those four walls the right to live, if they could. On the other hand, the freethinkers, who are for the most part without any religious sense at all (as they have a rigfet to be), too often consider it their mission in life to fight against religious souls and in turn deny their right to exist. The result is the futile spectacle of a systematic attempt to destroy religion on the part of men who do not perceive that they are attacking something which they do not understand. A discussion of religion based solely on historical or pseudo-historical texts, rendered sterile by time and covered with lichen, is of no avail. As well explain the fact of inner psychological life by the dissection of the physical organs through which it flows. xiii PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA The confusion created by our rationalists be.tween the out- ward expression and the power of thought seems to me as illusory as the confusion common to the religions of past ages of identifying magic powers with the words, the syllables or the letters whereby they are expressed. The first qualification for knowing, judging, and if desir- able condemning a religion or religions, is to have made experiments for oneself in the fact of religious consciousness. Even those who have followed a religious vocation are not all qualified to speak on the subject ; for, if they are sincere, they will recognize that the fact of religious consciousness and the profession of religion are two different things. Many very honourable priests are believers by obedience or from interested or indolent motives, and have either never felt the need of religious experience or have shrunk from gaining it because they lack sufficient strength of character. As against these may be set many souls who are, or who believe they are, free from all religious belief, but who in reality live immersed in a state of super-rational consciousness, which they term Socialism, Communism, Humanitarianism, Nationalism and even Rationalism. It is the quality of thought and not its object which determines its source and allows us to decide whether or not it emanates from religion. If it turns fearlessly towards the search for truth at all costs with single-minded sincerity prepared for any sacrifice, I should call it religious ; for it presupposes faith in an end to human effort higher than the life of the individual, at times higher than the life of existing society, and even higher than the life of humanity as a whole. Scepticism itself when it proceeds from vigorous natures true to the core, when it is an expression of strength and not of weakness, joins in the marcji of the Grand Army of the religious Soul. On the other hand, thousands of cowardly believers, clerical and lay, within the churches have no right to wear the colours of religion. They do not believe because they choose to believe, but wallow in the stable where they were born in front of mangers full of the grain of comfortable beliefs upon which all they have to do is to ruminate. The tragic words used of Christ that He will be in agony xiv TO MY WESTERN READERS to the end of .the world 1 are well known. I myself do not believe in one personal God, least of all in a God of Sorrow only. But I believe that in all that exists, including joy and sorrow and with them all forms of life, in mankind, and in men and in the Universe, the only God is He who is a perpetual birth. The Creation takes place anew every instant. Religion is never accomplished. It is a ceaseless action and the will to strive the outpouring of a spring, never a stagnant pond. I belong to a land of rivers. I love them as if they were living creatures, and I understand why my ancestors offered them oblations of wine and milk. Now of all rivers the most sacred is that which gushes out eternally from the depths of the soul, from its rocks and sands and glaciers. Therein lies primeval Force and that is what I call religion. Everything belongs to this river of the Soul, flowing from the dark unplumbed reservoir of our being down the inevit- able slope to the Ocean of the conscious, realized and mastered Being. And just as the water condenses and rises in vapour from the sea to the clouds of the sky to fill again the reservoir of the rivers, the cycles of creation proceed in uninterrupted succession. From the source to the sea, from the sea to the source everything consists of the same Energy, of the Being without beginning and without end. It matters not to me whether the Being be called God (and which God ?) or Force (and what Force ?). It may equally be called Matter, but what manner of matter is it when it includes the forces of the Spirit ? Words, words, nothing but words ! Unity, living and not abstract, is the essence of it all. And it is that which I adore, and it is that which the great believers and the great agnostics, who carry it within them consciously or unconsciously, alike adore. * * * To her, to the Great Goddess, the invisible, the immanent, who gathers in her golden arms the multiform, multicoloured sheaf of polyphony to Unity I dedicate this new work. 1% r&v dlaytg&rrwv xcMforrp ' 1 Pascal: Penstts* Le mysttrt d* Jtsus ; " J6sus sera en agonie jusqu'a la fin du monde : il ne faut pas dormir pendant ce temps-la." 1 " The moot beautiful harmony, composed of discords/' (Hera- clitus of Ephesus.) XV b PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA For a century in new India Unity has been the target for the arrows of all archers. Fiery personalities throughout this century have sprung from her sacred earth, a veritable Ganges of peoples and thought. Whatever may be the differences between them their goal is ever the same human unity through God. And through all the changes of workmen Unity itself has expanded and gained in precision. From first to last this great movement has been one of co-operation on a footing of complete equality between the West and the East, between the powers of reason and those not of faith in the sense of blind acceptance, a sense it has gained in servile ages among exhausted races but of vital and penetrating intuition : the eye in the forehead of the Cyclops which completes but does not cancel the other two. From this magnificent procession of spiritual heroes whom we shall survey later 8 I have chosen two men, who have won my regard because with incomparable charm and power they have realized this splendid symphony of the Universal Soul. They are, if one may say so, its Mozart and its Beethoven Pater Seraphicus and Jove the Thunderer Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. - The subject of this book is threefold and yet one. It comprises the story of two extraordinary lives one half legendary, the other a veritable epic unfolded before us in our own time, and the account of a lofty system of thought, at once religious and philosophic, moral and social, with its message for modern humanity from the depths of India's past. Although (as you will see for yourselves) the pathetic interest, the charming poetry, the grace and Homeric grandeur of these two lives are sufficient to explain why I have spent two years of my own in exploring and tracing their course in order to show them to you, it was not the curiosity of an explorer tjiat prompted me to undertake the journey. 1 See Chapter VI of this volume the Builders of Unity. (Ram Mohun Roy, Devendranath Tagore, Keshab Chunder Sen, Daya- nanda.) Cf. also " India on the March " (Revue Europe, December 15, 1928), where I have found a place for our great contemporary, Aurobindo Chose, of whom I shall speak again at the end of this volume. xvi TO MY WESTERN READERS I am no dilettante and I do not bring to jaded readers the opportunity to lose themselves, but rather to find them- selves to find their true selves, naked and without the mask of falsehood. My companions have ever been men with just that object in view, whether living or dead, and the limits of centuries or of races mean little to me. There is neither East nor West for the naked soul ; such things are merely its trappings. The whole world is its home. And as its home is each one of us, it belongs to all of us. Perhaps I may be excused if I put myself for a brief space upon the stage in order to explain the source of inner thought that has given birth to this work. I do this only by way of example, for I am not an exceptional man. I am one of the people of France. I know that I represent thousands of Westerners, who have neither the means nor the time to express themselves. Whenever one of us speaks from the depths of his heart in order to free his own self, his voice liberates at the same time thousands of silent voices. Then listen, not to my voice, but to the echo of theirs. I was born and spent the first fourteen years of my life in a part ofj central France where my family had been established for centuries. Our line is purely French and Catholic without any foreign admixture. And the early environment wherein I was sealed until my arrival in Paris about 1880 was an old district of the Nivernais where nothing from the outside world was allowed to penetrate within its charmed circle. So in this closed vase modelled from the clay of Gaul with its flaxen blue sky and its rivers I discovered all the colours of the universe during my childhood. When staff in hand in later years I scoured the roads of thought, I found nothing that was strange in any country. All the aspects of mind that I found or felt were in their origin the same as mine. Outside experience merely brought me the realization of my own mind, the states of which I had noted but to which I had no key. Neither Shakespeare nor Beethoven nor Tolstoy nor Rome, the master that nurtured me, ever revealed anything to me except the " Open Sesame " of my subterranean city, my Herculaneum, sleeping under its lava. And I am convinced that it sleeps xvii PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA in the depths of many of those around us. , But they are ignorant of its existence just as I was. Few venture beyond the first stage of excavation, which their own practical common sense has shown them to be necessary for their daily use, and they economize their needs like those masters who forged first the royal and then the Jacobin unity of France. I admire the structure. A historian by profession, I see in it one of the masterpieces of human effort enlightened by the spirit. " Aere perennius . . ." 4 But according to the old legend which demanded that if a work was to endure a living body should be immured in the walls, our master architects have entombed in their mortar thousands of warm human souls. They can no longer be seen beneath the marble facing and the Roman cement. But I cam hear them 1 And whoever listens will hear them as I do under the noble liturgy of " classic " thought. The Mass cele- brated on the High Altar takes no heed of them. But the faithful, the docile and inattentive crowd kneeling and standing at the given signal, ruminate in their dreams upon quite different herbs of St. John. 6 France is rich in souls. But she hides them as an old peasant woman hides her money. I have just rediscovered the key of the lost staircase leading to some of these proscribed souls. The staircase in the wall, spiral like the coils of a serpent, winds from the subterranean depths of the Ego to the high terraces crowned by the stars. But nothing that I saw there was unknown country. I had seen it all before and I knew it well but I did not know where I had seen it before. More than once I had recited from memory, though imperfectly, the lesson of thought learned at some former time (but from whom ? One of my very ancien^ selves. . . .). Now I re-read it, every word clear and complete, in the book of life held out to me by the illiterate genius who knew all its pages by heart Ramakrishna. In my turn I present him to you, not as a new book but as a very old one, which you have all tried to spell out (though many stopped short at the alphabet). Eventually 4 Horace : " More lasting than brass." On the Feast of St. John all kinds of herbs are sold in the fairs, having so-called magic properties. xviii TO MY WESTERN READERS it is always the same book but the writing varies. The eye usually remains fixed on the cover and does not pierce to the core. It is always the same Book. It is always the same Man the Son of Man, the Eternal, Our Son, Our God reborn. With each return he reveals himself a little more fully, and more enriched by the universe. Allowing for differences of country and of time Rama- krishna is the younger brother of our Christ. We can show, if we choose, and as freethinking exegesists are trying to do to-day, that the whole doctrine of Christ was current before him in the Oriental soul seeded by the thinkers of Chaldea, Egypt, Athens and Ionia. But we can never stop the person of Christ, whether real or legendary (they are merely two orders of the same reality fl ), from prevailing, and rightly so, in the history of mankind over the personality of a Plato. It is a monumental and neces- sary creation of the Soul of humanity. It is its most beautiful fruit belonging to one of its autumns. The same tree has produced, according to the same law of nature, the life and the legend. They are both made of the same living body and are the emanation of its look, its breadth and its moisture. I am bringing to Europe, as yet unaware of it, the fruit of a new autumn, a new message of the Soul, the symphony The attitude of religious Indians with regard to legend is a curious and critical one akin to faith. It is very remarkable that the historic existence of the personalities they worship as Gods is almost a matter of indifference at all events quite secondary. So long as they axe spiritually true their objective reality matters little. Ramakrishna, the greatest of believers, said : " Those who have been able to conceive of such ideas ought to be able to be those ideas themselves." And Vivekananda who doubted the objective existence of Krishna and also of Christ (that of Krishna more than that of Christ), declared : " But to-day Krishna is the most perfect of the Avatars.** And he worshipped him. (Cf. Sfster Nivedita : Notes of some Wanderings with the Swami Vivekananda.) Truly religious souls recognize the living God just as much in the stamp with which He has marked the brains of a people as in the reality of an Incarnation. They are two equal realities in the eyes of a great believer, for whom everything that is real is God. And he can never quite make up his mind which of the two is the more imposing the creation of a people or the creation of an age. xix PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA of India, bearing the name of Ramakrishna. It can be shown (and we shall not fail to point out) that this sym- phony, like those of our classical masters, is built up of a hundred different musical elements emanating from the past. But the sovereign personality concentrating in him- self the diversity of these elements and fashioning them into a royal harmony is always the one who gives his name to the work, though it contain within itself the labour of generations. And with his victorious sign he marks a new era. The man whose image I here evoke was the consummation of two thousand years of the spiritual life of three hundred million people. Although he has been dead forty years 7 his soul animates modern India. He was no hero of action like Gandhi, no genius in art or thought like Goethe or Tagore. He was a little village Brahmin of Bengal, whose outer life was set in a limited frame without striking incident, outside the political and social activities of his time. 8 But his inner life embraced the whole multiplicity of men and Gods. It was a part of the very source of Energy, the divine Sakti, of whom Vidyapati, 8 the old poet of Mithila, and Ramprasad of Bengal sing. Very few go back to the source. The little peasant of Bengal by listening to the message of his heart found his way to the inner Sea. And there he was wedded to it, thus bearing out the words of the Upanishads : 10 T In 1886. He was fifty years old. His great disciple, Vive- kananda, died in 1902 at the age of thirty-nine. It should never be forgotten how recently they lived. We have seen the same suns, and the same raft of time has borne us. The life of Vivekananda was quite different, for he traversed the Old and the New Worlds. t " Show Thyself, O goddess with the thick tresses ! . . . Thou art one and many, Thou containest the thousands and Thou fillest the field of battle with the enemy ! . . ." (Hymn to the Goddess of Energy, Sakti.) * M Taittiriya Upanishad. According to the Vedanta, when Brahman the Absolute became endowed with qualities and began to evolve the living universe, He became Himself the first evolution, the first-born of Being, which is the Essence of all things visible and invisible. He who speaks thus is supposed to have attained complete identity with Him. XX TO MY WESTERN READERS " I am more ancient than the radiant Gods. I am the first-born of the Being. I am the artery of Immortality." It is my desire to bring the sound of the beating of that artery to the ears of fever-stricken Europe, which has murdered sleep. I wish to wet its lips with the blood of Immortality. R. R. Christmas, 1928. xxi Book I RAMAKRISHNA PRELUDE I SHALL begin my story as if it were a fable. But it is an extraordinary fact that this ancient legend, belong- ing apparently to the realm of mythology, is in reality the account of men who were living yesterday, our neighbours in the " century," and that people alive to-day have seen them with their own eyes. l I have received glowing testi- mony at their hands. I have talked with some among them, who were the companions of this mystic being of the Man- Gods and I can vouch for their sincerity. Moreover, these eye-witnesses are not the simple fishermen of the Gospel story ; some are real thinkers, learned in European thought and disciplined in its strict school. And yet they speak as men of three thousand years ago. The co-existence in one and the same brain in this our twentieth century of scientific reason and the visionary spirit of ancient times, when, as in the Greek age, gods and goddesses shared the bed and the board of mortal man, or as in the age of Galilee, when against the pale summer sky the heavenly winged messenger was seen, bringing the Annunciation to a Virgin, who bent meekly under the gift this is what our wise men cannot imagine ; they are no longer mad enough. And indeed, therein lies the real miracle, the richness of this world that they do not know how to enjoy. The majority of European thinkers shut 1 At the date when this book was being written (the autumn of 1928) the following direct disciples and eye-witnesses of Rama- kriahna were still living i Swami Shivananda, the Abbot of the central Math (monastery) at Belur near Calcutta and the President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission ; Sw. Abhedananda ; Sw. Akhandananda ; Sw. Ninnalananda ; Sw. Vijnanananda ; Sw. Subhodananda ; Mahendra Nath Gupta, editor of Discourses with the Master under the title " The Gospel of Ramakrishna " ; Raxnlal Chattezji, Ramakrishna's nephew, not to mention lay disciples, whom it is difficult to trace. 3 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA themselves up on their own particular floor of the house of mankind; and although this floor may be stored with libraries containing the history of the other floors inhabited in the past, the rest of the house seems to them to be unin- habited, and they never hear from the floors above or below them the footsteps of their neighbours. In the concert of the world the orchestra is made up of all the centuries past and present, and they all play at the same time ; but each has his eyes fixed upon his own stand and on the conductor's baton ; he hears nothing but his own instrument. But let us listen to the whole splendid harmony of the present, wherein the past dreams and the future aspirations of all races and all ages are blended. For those who have ears to hear every second contains the song of humanity from the first-born to the last to die, unfolding like jasmine round the wheel of the ages. There is no need to decipher papyrus in order to trace the road traversed by the thoughts of men. The thoughts of a thousand years are all around us. Nothing is obliterated. Listen 1 but listen with your ears. Let books be silent 1 They talk too much. . . . If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. Her unique privilege, as Earth 2 has shown with great clearness, has been that of a great elder sister, whose spiritual development, an autonomous flower continuously growing throughout the Methuselah-long life of the peoples, has never been interrupted. For more than thirty centuries the tree of Vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from that torrid land, the burning womb of the gods. It renews itself tirelessly, showing no signs of decay ; all kinds of fruit ripen upon its boughs at the same time ; side by side are found all kinds of gods from the most savage to the highest to the formless God, the Unnanjeable, the Boundless One. . . . Always the same tree. And the substance and thought of its interlaced branches, through which the same sap runs, have been so closely knit together, that from root to topmost twig the whole tree is vibrant, like the mast of the great ship of the Earth, and 1 A. Earth : The Religions of India, 1879. 4 PRELUDE it sings one great symphony, composed of the thousand voices and the thousand faiths of mankind. Its polyphony, discordant and confused at first to unaccustomed ears, discovers to the trained ear its secret hierarchy and great hidden form. Moreover, those who have once heard it can no longer be satisfied with the rude and artificial order imposed amid desolation by Western reason and its faith or faiths, all equally tyrannical and mutually contradictory. What doth it profit a man to reign over a world for the most part enslaved, debased or destroyed ? Better to reign over life, comprehended, reverenced and embraced as one great whole, wherein he must learn how to co-ordinate its opposing forces in an exact equilibrium. This is the supreme knowledge we can learn from " Uni- verse Souls," and it is some beautiful examples of such souls that I wish to depict. The secret of their mastery and their serenity is not that of the " lilies of the field, arrayed in glory, who toil not, neither do they spin." They weave the clothes for those who go naked. They have spun the thread of Ariadne to guide us through the mazes of the labyrinth. We have only to hold the length of their thread in our hands to find the right path, the path which rises from the vast morasses of the soul inhabited by primitive gods stuck fast in the mire, to the peaks crowned by the outspread wings of heaven nrav tiUWJQ* the intangible Spirit. And in the life of Ramakrishna, the Man-Gods, I am about to relate the life of this Jacob's ladder, whereon the twofold unbroken line of the Divine in man ascends and descends between heaven and earth. 8 Empedocles, "the Titan Ether/' THE GOSPEL OF CHILDHOOD l AT Kamarkupur, one of the conical villages of Bengal, set in the midst of palm trees, pools and rice fields, lived an old orthodox Brahmin couple, called Chattopad- hyaya. They were very poor and very pious, devotees of the cult of the heroic and virtuous Rama. The father, a man as upright as the men of old, had been despoiled of all he possessed, because he had refused to bear false witness to the advantage of the great landowner, who was his neigh- 1 Note. I must warn my European readers that in describing this childhood, I have abstained from using my critical faculties (though they keep watch on the threshold). I have become simply the voice of the legend, the flute under the fingers of Krishna. For the present we need not concern ourselves with the objective reality of facts, but only with the subjective reality of living impressions. To undo the web of Penelope is an idle task. I am concerned rather with the dream fashioned under the fingers of a good work- man. A great master of learning has set us an example in this. Max Miiller, a faithful adherent of the critical methods of the West, and at the same time a respecter of other forms of thought, took down from the lips of Vivekananda an account of the life of the Paramahamsa and faithfully reproduced it in his precious little book, (a) For he maintained that what he calls the " dialogue or dialectic process," used to describe events seen and experienced by contemporaries, a process, which is a kind of inversion of reality by credible and live witn&ses, is one of the indispensable elements of history. All knowledge of reality is an inversion through the mind and the senses. Hence all sincere inversion is reality. Critical reason must later evaluate the degree and angle of the vision, and must always take into account the reflection given in the distorting mirror of the mind. (a) Max Miiiler : Ramakriskna, His Ufa and Sayings, 1898. A Paramahamsa is a great bird which flies high, literally, the Indian goose, although it bears no resemblance to the European species. The name is often used for a saint or sage, and is com* monly coupled with that of Sri Ramakrishna. 7 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA bour. He received a visitation from the Gods. Although he was then sixty years of age he went on q, pilgrimage to Gaya, where is an imprint of the foot of the Lord Vishnu. 8 The Lord appeared to him during the night, and said, " I am about to be reborn for the salvation of the world." About the same time in Kamarkupur his wife, Chandra- mani, dreamt that she had been possessed by a God. In the temple opposite her cottage the divine image of Shiva quickened to life under her eyes. A ray of light penetrated to the depths of her being. Under the storm Chandramani was overthrown and fainted. When the prey of the God came to herself, she had conceived. Her husband on his return found her transfigured. She heard voices ; she carried a God. 8 The child, whom the world was to know as Ramakrishna, was born on February 18, 1836. But the gay name with the tripping cadences of a bell that he bore in childhood was Gadadhar. He was a little boy full of fun and life, mischievous and charming, with a feminine grace he pre- served to the end of his life. Nobody imagined himself least of all what infinite spaces, what tremendous depths lay hidden in the little body of this laughing child. They were revealed to him when he was six years old. One day in June or July (1842), he was sauntering along with a meal as small as a bird's of a little puffed rice carried in a fold of his garment. He was going to the fields. " I was following a narrow path between the rice fields. I raised my eyes to the sky as I munched my rice. I saw a great black cloud spreading rapidly until it covered the heavens. Suddenly at the dge of the cloud a flight of snow-white cranes passed over my head. The contrast was so beautiful that my spirit wandered far away. I lost con- sciousness and fell to the ground. The puffed rice was scattered. Somebody picked me up and carried me home in his arms. An access of Joy and emotion overcame me. . . . This was the first time that I was seized with ecstasy." He was destined thus to pass half his life. Even in this first ecstasy the real character of the divine 1 Buddha is now regarded by the people as one of the numerous Incarnations of Vishnu. 1 Indian legends tell of more than one " Immaculate Conception." 8 THE GOSPEL OF CHILDHOOD impress on the soul of the child can be seen. Artistic emotion, a passionate instinct for the beautiful, was the first channel bringing him into contact with God. There are as we shall see many other paths along which revela- tion may come, either love of a dear one, or thought, or self-mastery, br honest and disinterested labour, of com- passion or meditation. He came to know them all, but the most immediate and natural with him was delight in the beautiful face of God which he saw in all that he looked upon. He was a born artist. In this how greatly he differs from that other great soul, the Mahatma of India, whose European evangelist I have already become Gandhi, the man without art, the man without visions, who does not even desire them, who mistrusts them rather the man who lives in God through reasoned action, as is inevitable in a born leader of the people. The path of Ramakrishna is a far more dangerous one, but it leads further ; from the precipices skirted by it limitless horizons open out. It is the way of love. It is the way made peculiarly their own by his Bengal countrymen, a race of artists and lover poets. Its inspired guide had been the ecstatic lover of Krishna, Chaitanya, and its most exquisite music the delicious songs of Chandidas and Vidyapati. 4 These seraphic masters, the scented flowers of their soil, have impregnated it with their fragrance 4 Chaitanya (1485-1553), the descendant of a family of Bengal Brahmins, after having achieved a great reputation as a theological and Sanskrit scholar, shook off the dust of the old religion with its paralysing formalism. He went out into the highways to preach a tiew gospel of love founded on mystic union with God. It was open to all men and women of all religions and all castes as brothers, and even to those without caste ; Musulmans, Hindus, beggars, pariahs, thieves, prostitutes, all came together to listen to his burning message and went away purified and strengthened. An extraordinary " Awakening " was heralded during the course of a century by the songs of a series of wonderful poets. The most exquisite of these singers was t^handidas, the poor priest of a ruined temple in Bengal, the lover of a young peasant girl, whom he hymned in mystic form in a number of immortal little poems. Nothing in the treasury of our European lieder can surpass the touching beauty of these divine elegies. Vidyapati, the aristocrat, whose inspiration was a Queen, attained by refined art to the natural perfection of the simple Chandidas, but his key is a more joyful one. (My earnest desire is to see some real Western poet 9 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA so that Bengal has been intoxicated with it for centuries. The soul of the little Ramakrishna was ma,de of the same substance ; it was flesh of their flesh, and he was looked upon as a flowering branch of the tree of Chaitanya. 6 The lover of divine beauty, the artistic genius as yet unaware of itself, appears again in a later ecstasy. One night during the festival of Shiva this child of eight years old, a passionate lover of music and poetry, a skilful modeller of images and the leader of a small dramatic troupe of boys of his own age, was taking the part of Shiva in the sacred representation ; suddenly his being was possessed by his hero ; tears of joy coursed down his little cheeks ; he lost himself in the glory of God ; he was transported like Gany- mede by the Eagle carrying the thunderbolt he was thought to be dead. . . . From that time the ecstasies became more frequent. In Europe the case would have been foredoomed and the child would have been placed in a lunatic asylum under a daily douche of psycho-therapy. Conscientiously day by day the flame would have been quenched. The magic lantern would transplanting these songs into our rose garden. There they would bloom afresh in every loving heart.) Chaitanya's disciples spread throughout Bengal. They went from village to village, singing and dancing to a new form of music called Kirtana, the wandering Bride, the Human Soul, seeking the Divine Love. The Ganges boatmen and the peasants took up this dream of the Awakened Sleeper, and his melodious echoes still fill the sovereign art of Tagore, especially in the Gardener and the Gitanjali. The feet of the child Ramakrishna moved to the rhythm of these Kirtanas. He drank the milk of this Vaishnavite music, and it is true to say that he himself became its masterpiece, his own life its most beautiful poem. A letter from Ramakrishna's learned disciple, the author of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Mahendra^Nath Gupta, has cleared up certain points with regard to this question. Ramakrishna knew the great Vaishnavite poets, but it appears that his knowledge was gleaned mainly from popular adaptations used in the performances of the native theatres, called jatras, such as the one wherein as a child he played the part of Shiva. He was inspired by Chaitanya especially after 1858, and ended by identifying himself with him. In one of his first interviews with the young Naren (Vivekananda) he scandalized the young man by saying to him that he had been Chaitanya in a previous Incarna- tion. He did a great deal to revive Chaitanya's mystic meaning, which had been forgotten in Bengal. 10 THE GOSPEL OF CHILDHOOD have been no more ! " The candle is dead." 6 Sometimes the child also dies. Even in India, where the centuries have seen a constant procession of such magic lanterns, anxiety was felt, and his father and mother, although accustomed to the visitation of gods, regarded the child's transports with fear. But apart from these crises, he enjoyed perfect health and was not at all supernormal in spite of his many gifts. His ingenious fingers fashioned gods from clay, the heroic legends blossomed in his mind ; he sang divinely the pastoral airs of Sri Krishna ; and sometimes his pre- cocious intellect took part in the discussions of learned men whom he astonished as Jesus had astonished the Jewish doctors. But this boy with his clear skin, beautiful flowing locks, attractive smile, charming voice and independent spirit, who played truant from school and who lived as free as air, remained a child to the end of his life, like the little Mozart. Until he was thirteen he was adored and petted by the women and girls. They recognized in him some- thing of their own femininity ; for he had so far assimilated their nature that one of his childish dreams, cradled as he was in the legend of Krishna and the Gopis, was to be reborn as a little widow, a lover of Krishna, who would be visited by him in her home. This was but one of the innumerable incarnations he imagined. Instinctively this Protean soul took on instantly each of the beings whom he saw or imagined. No man is entirely void of this magic plasticity. One of its inferior manifestations is that of a mimic, who copies attitude and facial expressions ; its highest (if such an expression may be used) is that of the God who plays for Himself the Comedy of the Universe. It is always the sign of art and love. Thus was foreshadowed the marvellous power manifested later by Ramakrishna a genius for espousing all the souls in the world. His father died when he was seven years old. The next few years were difficult ones for the family, for they had no resources. The eldest son, Ramkumar, 7 went to Calcutta and opened a school there. He sent for his younger brother, now an adolescent, in 1852, but the latter, filled with the Allusion to the well-known French folksong : " Au dair de la lune." f Ramakrishna was the fourth of five children. II PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA urge of his inner life and quite undisciplined, refused to learn. . At that time there was a rich woman, named Rani Ras- mani, belonging to an inferior caste. At Dakshineswar on the Eastern bank of the Ganges, some four miles from Calcutta, she founded a temple to the Great Goddess, the Divine Mother, Kali. She had considerable difficulty in finding a Brahmin to serve as its priest. Strangely enough religious India with its veneration for monks, Sadhus, and seers, has little respect for the paid office of priest. The temples are not, as in Europe, the body and the heart of God, the shrines of His daily renewed sacrifice. They are the praiseworthy foundations of the rich, who hope thereby to gain credit with the Divinity. True religion is a private affair ; its temple is each individual soul. In this case, moreover, the founder of the temple was a Sudra, an addi- tional disqualification for any Brahmin who undertook the charge. Ramkumar resigned himself to it in 1855 > but his young brother, who was very strict in all questions relating to caste, was only reconciled to the idea with very great difficulty. Little by little, however, his repugnance was overcome, and when in the following year his eldest brother died, Ramakrishna decided to take his place. 12 II KALI THE MOTHER r I ^HE young priest of Kali was twenty years old. He JL did not know what a terrible mistress he had elected to serve. As a purring tigress that fascinates her prey, she was to feed upon him, playing with him while ten long enchanted years passed beneath Her gleaming pupils. He lived in the temple alone with Her, but at the centre of a whirling cyclone. For the burning breath of a crowd of visionaries blew like the monsoon its eddies of dust through the door of the temple. Thither came countless pilgrims, monks, sadhus, fakirs, Hindus and Musulmans a congrega- tion of the madmen of God. 1 The temple was a vast building with five domes crowned with spires. It was reached by aft open terrace above the Ganges between a double row of twelve small domed temples to Shiva. On the other side of a great rectangular paved court arose another vast temple to Krishna and Radha next to that of Kali. 2 ^The whole symbolic world was represented the Trinity of the Nature Mother (Kali), the Absolute (Shiva), and Love (Radhakanta : Krishna, Radha), 1 There were the madmen of the Book, controlled by the single word, O M. There were those who danced and were convulsed with laughter, crying Bravo to the Illusion of the world. There were naked men living witn the dogs on beggars' scraps, who no longer distinguished between one form and another and were at- tached to nothing. There were the mystic and drunken bands of Tantrikas. Young KaTnalrrih"a observed them all (he was to describe them later, not without humour) with a watchful and anxious eye, and a mixture of repulsion and fascination. (Of. Life of . * The temple is still in existence. Ramakrishna's room at the north-west corner of the court, adjacent to the series of the twelve temples of Shiva, has a semi-circular verandah, its roof supported by columns, looking on to the Ganges on the west. A great liall 13 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA the Arch spanning heaven and earth. But Kali was the sovereign deity. Within the temple She dwelt, a basalt figure, dressed in sumptuous Benares tissue, the Queen of the world and of the Gods. She was dancing upon the outstretched body of Shiva. In Her two arms on the left She held a sword and a severed head, on the right She offered gifts and beckoned, " Come ! Fear not ! . . ." She was Nature, the destroyer and the creator. Nay, She was something greater still for those who had ears to hear. She was the Universal Mother, " my Mother, the all-powerful, who reveals Herself to Her children under different aspects and Divine Incarna- tions," the visible God, who leads the elect to the invisible God, " and if it so please Her, She takes away the last trace of the ego from all created beings and absorbs it into the consciousness of the Absolute, the undifferentiated God. Thanks to Her the finite ego loses itself in the illimitable Ego Atman Brahman." 8 But the young priest of twenty was still far from reaching the core where aU reality was fused even by the indirect ways of the intellect. The only reality, divine or human, accessible to him as yet, was that which he could see, hear and touch. In this he was no different from the majority of his people. That which is most striking to European believers, to Protestant Christians even more than to Catholic, is the intense concreteness of religious vision experienced by Indian believers. * When later Vivekananda asked Ramakrishna, " Have you seen God ? " he replied, " I see Him, as I see you, only far more intensely," meaning^hot in the impersonal and abstract sense, although he practised that as well. And it is by no means the privilege of a few inspired for music and sacred representations opened on to the great court. On either side there were guest-rooms, with kitchens for visitors and for the Gods. To the wtst lay a beautiful shady garden and ponds on the north and the east. It was carefully cultivated and full of flowers and scents. Beyond the garden can be seen the group of five sacred trees, planted at the deeire of Ramakrishna. They became famous under the name of the Panchavati. There he spent his days in meditation and prayer to the Mother, Below murmured the Ganges. , 14 KALI THE MOTHER persons. Every sincere Hindu devotee attains this point with ease, so overflowing and so fresh is the source of creative life in them even to-day. One of our friends went to the temple with a young princess of Nepal, a beauti- ful, intelligent and educated girl. She left her to pray for a long time in the intoxicating silence of the incense-filled dimness, lighted only with a single lamp. When the young Princess came out, she said, very quietly, " I have seen Rama. . . ." How then could Ramakrishna have escaped seeing " the Mother with the dark blue skin " ? She, the Visible One, was the Incarnation of the forces of Nature and of the Divine in the form of a woman, who has intercourse with mortal men Kali. Within Her temple She enveloped him in the scent of Her body, wound him in Her arms and entangled him in Her hair. She was no lay figure with a fixed smile, whose food consisted of litanies. She lived, breathed, arose from Her couch, ate, walked, lay down again. The service of the temple docilely followed the rhythm of her days. Every morning at dawn the peals of little bells chimed, the lights were swung. In the music-room the flutes played the sacred hymn to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals. The Mother awoke. From the garden, embowered in jasmine and roses, garlands were gathered for Her adornment. At nine in the morning music summoned to worship and to it came the Mother. At noon She was escorted to rest on Her silver bed during the heat of the day to the strains of more music. 4 It greeted her at six in the evening when She reappeared. It played again to the accompaniment of brandished torches at sundown for evening ^orship ; and conches sounded and little bells tinkled ceaselessly until finally at nine in the evening it heralded the hour for repose when the Mother slept. * And the priest was associated with all the intimate acts of the day. He dressed and undressed Her, he offered Her flowers and food. He was one of the attendants when the Queen arose and went to bed. How could his hands, his eyes, his heart be otherwise than gradually impregnated 4 At the north-west corner of the temple. 15 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA with Her flesh? The very first touch left the sting of Kali in his fingers and united them for ever. But after She had left Her sting in him She fled, and withheld Herself from him. Having pierced him with Her love, the wasp had concealed Herself in Her stone sheath, and all his efforts failed to bring Her to life again. Passion for the dumb Goddess consumed him. To touch Her, to embrace Her, to win one sign of life from Her, one look, one sigh, one smile, became the sole object of his existence. He flung himself down in the wild jungle-like part of the garden, meditating and praying. He tore off all his clothes, even to the sacred cord, which no Brahman ever lays aside ; but love for the Mother had revealed to him that no man can contemplate God unless he has shed all his prejudices. Like a lost child in tears he besought the Mother to show Herself to him. Every day spent in vain effort increased his distraction, and he lost all control over himself. In despair he writhed oil the ground in front of visitors, and became an object of pity, of mockery, even of scandal ; but he cared for none of these things. Only one thing mattered. He knew that he was on the verge of extreme happiness nothing but a thin partition, which he was, nevertheless, powerless to break down, separated him from it. He knew nothing of the science of directed ecstasy, as minutely noted and codified by religious India for centuries past with all the minutiae of a double Faculty of Medicine and Theology, and so he wandered haphazard, driven by a blind delirium. As his exaltation was entirely undirected, he ran considerable danger of extinction. Death lies in wait for the imprudent Yogin, whose path traverses the very edge of the abyss. He is described by those who saw him in those days of bewilderment, JLS having face and breast reddened by the afflux of blood, his eyes filled with tears and his body shaken with spasms. He was at the limit of physical endurance. When such ^ point has been reached, there is nothing but descent into the darkness of apoplexy or vision. . The partition was suddenly removed and he saw ! Let him speak for himself. 6 His voice rings in our ears ' For this description I have used three separate accounts given by Ramakrishna himself. They all tell the same story, but each enriches the other with several details. 16 KALI THE MOTHER with the accents of our own " madmen of God," our great seers of Europe. " One day I was torn with intolerable anguish. My heart seemed to be wrung as a damp cloth might be wrung. . . . I was wracked with pain. A terrible frenzy seized me at the thought that I might never be granted the blessing of this Divine vision. I thought if that were so, then enough of this life ! A sword was hanging in the sanctuary of Kali. My eye fell upon it and an idea flashed through my brain like a flash of lightning ' The sword ! It will help me to end it.' I rushed up to it, and seized it like a madman. . . . And lo ! the whole scene, doors, windows, the temple itself, vanished. ... It seemed as if nothing existed any more. Instead I saw an ocean of the Spirit, boundless, dazzling. In whatever direction I looked great luminous waves were rising. They bore down upon me with a loud roar, as if to swallow me up. In an instant they were upon me, they broke over me, they engulfed me. I was suffocated. I lost consciousness 6 and I fell. . . . How I passed that day and the next I know not. Round me rolled an ocean of ineffable joy. And in the depths of my being I was conscious of the presence of the Divine Mother." 7 It is noticeable that in this beautiful description there is no mention of the Divine Mother until the end ; she was merged in the Ocean. The disciples who afterwards quoted his exact words, asked him whether he had really seen the Divine form. " He did not say, but on coming to himself from his ecstasy he murmured in a plaintive tone, ' Mother ! . . . Mother ! ' " My own view, if I may be pardoned the presumption, is that he saw nothing, but that he was aware of Her all- * The exact text reads, " I lost all natural consciousness." This detail is important, for the rest of the story shows that a higher consciousness, that of the inner world, was on the other hand most keenly perceptive. * 7 Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master, Vol. II, by Swami Sara- dananda, published by the Ramakrishna Math of Mylapore, Madras, 1920. Saradananda, who died in 1927, was on terms of intimacy with Ramakrishna and likewise possessed one of the loftiest reli- gious and philosophical minds in India. His biography, unfortun- ately unfinished, is at once the most interesting and the most reliable. 17 c PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA permeating presence. He called the Ocean by her name. His experience was like a dream, to give a lesser example, wherein without the slightest feeling of incongruity, the mind attaches the name of the being filling its thoughts to quite a different form ; the object of our love is in every- thing ; all forms are but its cloak. On the shores of that sea which rolled down upon Ramakrishna, I see immedi- ately the form of St. Theresa of Avila. She also felt herself engulfed in the infinite until the scruples of her Christian faith and the stern admonitions of her watchful directors led her against her own convictions to confine God within the form of the Son of Man. 8 But Ramakrishna the lover had not to struggle against the bent of his heart. On the contrary it led him from the formless to the form of his Beloved. He wished it to ; for once he had seen and possessed it for an instant, he could not live without it. From that day onward he would have ceased to exist if he had not constantly renewed the fiery vision. Without it the world was dead, and living men as nothing but vain shadows, painted figures upon a screen. It was also at a moment of extreme lassitude that Theresa perceived, like a sudden inflooding, the invasion of the Invisible ; just such a sea engulfed her. Later on the hard scruples of Sal- cedo and Gaspard Daza forced her, at the cost of considerable suffering, to confine the Infinite within the finite bounds of the body of Christ. Further, the ecstasy in Ramakrishna's case followed the normal course of such revelations, as was only natural. Cf. the full col- lection of documents, gathered together by Starbuck under the title, The Psychology of Religion, a collection used by William James. Almost always it comes about that when effort has been exhausted the spirit attains through anguish. The despair crushing the old self is the door leading to the new. Again it is a remarkable fact that the great vision often mani- fests itself through " photisms " (luminous phenomena) and by an oceanic flood. Cf. pp. 215-16, William James, Religious Experience, giving the beautiful account'of President Finney's vision : " ' Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love . . .' These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, ' I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me/ I said, ' Lord, I cannot bear any more ' ; yet I had no fear of death." Cf . also the magnificent account of the great mystic as observed and described by Th. Flournoy. 18 KALI THE MOTHER But nobody. faces the illimitable with impunity. The shock of the first encounter was so violent that his whole being remained in a shuddering state. He only saw those around him through a veil of drifting mist, of dissolving waves of silver shot with sparks of fire. He could no longer control his eyes, his body, or his mind; another will guided them, and he passed through some terrible hours. He prayed the Mother to come to his aid. Then suddenly he understood. He was possessed by the Mother. He ceased to resist. " Fiat voluntas tual . . ." She filled him. And out of the mists little by little the material form of the Goddess emerged, first a hand, then Her breath, Her voice, finally Her whole person. Here is one of the marvellous visions of the poet, among a hundred others. It was evening. The rites were over for the day. The Mother was supposed to be asleep, and he had returned to his room outside the temple above the Ganges. But he could not sleep. He listened. ... He heard Her get up ; She went up to the upper story of the temple with the joy of a young girl. As She walked the rings of Her anklets rang. He wondered if he were dreaming. His heart hammered in his breast. He went out into the court and raised his head. There he saw Her with unbound hair on the balcony of the first floor, watching the Ganges flow through the beautiful night down to the distant lights of Calcutta. . . . From that moment his days and nights were passed in the continual presence of his Beloved. Their intercourse was uninterrupted like the flow of the river. Eventually he was identified with Her, and gradually the radiance of his inner vision became outwardly manifest. Other people seeing him, saw what he saw. Through his body as through a window appeared the bodies of the Gods. Mathur Babu, the son-in-law of the foundress of the temple and the master of the place, was sitting one day in his room opposite Ramakrishna's. Unobserved he watched him pacing up and down upon his balcony. Suddenly he uttered a cry, for he saw him alternately in the form of Shiva as he walked in one direction, and of the Mother as he turned and walked in the opposite direction. 19 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA To most people his madness of love was a -crying scandal. He was no longer capable of performing the temple rites. In the midst of the ritual acts he was seized with fits of unconsciousness, sudden collapses and petrifactions, when he lost the control of the use of his joints and stiffened into a statue. At other times he permitted himself the strangest familiarities with the Goddess. 9 His functions remained in a state of suspension. He never closed his eyes. He no longer ate. If a nephew who was present had not looked after his most pressing needs, he would have died. Such a condition brought those evils in its train, from which our Western visionaries have also suffered. Minute drops of blood oozed through his skin. His whole body seemed on fire. His spirit was a furnace, whose leaping flames were the Gods. After a period when he saw the Gods in the persons about him (in a prostitute he saw Sita ; in a young Englishman standing upright cross-legged against a tree, he saw Krishna), he became the Gods himself. He was Kali, he was Rama, he was Radha, the lover of Krishna, 10 he was Sita, he was the great monkey, Hanuman ! u Without insisting on detail, I have no intention of passing lightly over these deliriums of a soul with neither check nor pilot, given over to the f He no longer showed any consideration for his patrons, whose exemplary fidelity consistently defended him against all attack. One day when the rich devotee, the foundress, Rani Rasmani, was praying with her mind elsewhere, Ramakrishna discerned the frivolous objects passing through her thoughts, and publicly re- buked her. Those present were greatly excited, but Rasmani her- self remained calm. She nobly considered that it was the Mother, who had rebuked her. 10 Later he was the gopi (milkmaid), Krishna's lover, for six months. 11 The process of these realizations is interesting. He became the person of Rama by stages, through the people who served Rama, beginning with the humblest, Hanuman. Then in reward, as he himself believed, Sita appearea to him. This was his first complete vision with his eyes open. All his succeeding visions came by the same successive stages. First he saw the figures outside himself \ then they vanished within himself, finally he became them himself. This ardent creative act is striking, but was natural to one of his astounding plastic genius. As soon as he visualized a thought, his vision became incarnate. Imagine living within the innermost being of a Shakespeare, while he was producing a film. 2O KALI THE MOTHER furious v^aves of his passion, to the insatiable voracity of a wolf, ravening for the Gods. Later they had their revenge and preyed upon him in their turn. I have no intention of deceiving my Western reader. He is at liberty, just as I was myself, 12 to judge whether the madman of God ought to have been put in a strait jacket or not. We have good ground for such an opinion, for even in India men of the greatest sanctity held that view when they saw him. At the time he submitted patiently to be examined by doctors and followed their vain prescriptions, and later, when he looked back over the past and sounded the depths of the abyss from which he had escaped, he himself could not understand why his reason, and even life itself, had not foundered. But the extraordinary thing for us, and the only thing that matters, is that, instead of foundering, they rounded the Cape of Storms victoriously. Nay, this period of hallucination appears to have been a necessary stage whence his spirit was to rise in the fullness of joyous and harmonious power to mighty realizations for the benefit of humanity. Here is a subject of research tempting to great physicians both of the body and of the mind. There is no difficulty in proving the apparent destruction of his whole mental structure, and the disintegration of its elements. But how were they reassembled into a synthetic entity of the highest order? How was this ruined building restored to a still greater edifice and by nothing but will power ? As we shall see by the sequel, Ramakrishna became master alike of his madness and of his reason, of Gods and of men. At times he would open the floodgates of the deeps of his soul, at others would conduct with his disciples smiling dialogues, in the mannsr of a modern Socrates, full of ironic wisdom and penetrating good sense. But in 1858 at the time of the facts related here, Rama- krishna had not yet achieved tke mastery. He had still a long way to go. And if I have anticipated somewhat 11 1 will not deny the fact that when I had reached this point in my researches, I shut up the book. Probably I should not have opened it again for a long time, if I had not known by certain indications what heights of wisdom he was to attain in the later years of his life. 21 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA the end of his life, I have done so to warn the European reader against his first judgment, which was also my own. Patience 1 The ways of the spirit are disconcerting. Let us await the end ! * * * In truth at this period the tramp of God went about like a blind man with closed eyes and without a guide. Instead of keeping to the path, he forced his way through the briars of the hedges and fell into the ditches. Never- theless he advanced ; each time that he fell he picked himself up again and went on his way. Do not imagine that he was proud or obstinate. He was the most simple of men. If you had told him that his condition was a disease, he would have asked you to prescribe a remedy, and he would not have refused to try any cure. For a time he was sent back to his home at Kamar- pukur. His mother wished him to be married, hoping that marriage would cure him of his divine enchantment. He made no demur ; indeed, he showed an innocent pleasure at the thought. But what a strange marriage it was, not much more real (less real, indeed, in spirit) than his union with the Goddess ! His bride (1859) was a child of five years old. I feel, as I write, what a shock this will be to my Western reader. I do not wish to spare him. Child- marriage is an Indian custom, and one which has most often roused the indignation of Europe and America. The virtuous Miss Mayo has recently raised its flag, though rather a tattered one ; for the best minds of India, the Brahmo Samaj, Tagore, Gandhi, 18 have for long condemned the practice, although it is usually more of a formality 4 11 Gandhi, who knows too much about child-marriage (for he was one of those children who has kept throughout his life the burning confusion of his precocious experiences), is particularly virulent against this abuse.* Nevertheless, he recognizes that in exceptional cases among chosen souls, who are loyal and religious, a mutual engagement dating from infancy may have very pure and beneficent results. It removes all other temptations common to the unhealthy preoccupations of adolescence, and it gives to the union a quality of holy comradeship. It is well known what an admirable companion the little child, whose fate was joined to his, has been for Gandhi during the difficult course of his life. 22 KALI THE MOTHER than a reality-Tchild-marriage being generally nothing more than a simple religious ceremony, akin to a Western betrothal remaining unconsummated until after puberty. In the case of Ramakrishna, making it doubly revolting in the eyes of Miss Mayo, the union was between a little girl of five and a man of twenty-three ! But peace to scandalized minds ! It was a union of souls and remained uncon- summated a Christian marriage so-called in the days of the Early Church and later it became a beautiful thing. A tree must be judged by its fruits, and in this case the fruits were of God, pure and not carnal love. Little Sara- damani 14 was to become the chaste sister of a big friend who venerated her, the immaculate companion of his trials and of his faith, the firm and serene soul, whom the disciples associated with his sanctity as the Holy Mother. 1 * For the time being the little girl returned according to custom to the house of her parents after the ceremony of marriage had been performed, and did not see her husband again for the long period of eight or nine years, while her husband, who seemed to have regained some measure of calm at his mother's house, returned to his temple. But Kali was waiting for him. Hardly had he crossed the threshold than divine delirium in its most violent form was rekindled. Like Hercules in a Nessus shirt, he was a living funeral pyre. The legion of Gods swooped upon him like a whirlwind. He was torn in pieces. He was divided against himself. His madness returned tenfold. He saw demoniac creatures emerging from him, first a black figure representing sin ; then a sannyasin, who slew sin like an archangel. (Are we in India or a thousand years ago in some Christian monastery of the West ?) He remained motionless, patching these manifestations issue from him. Horror paralysed his limbs. Once again for long periods 16 at a time his eyes refused to close. He felt madness approaching and terrified, he appealed to the 14 Her family name was Mukhopadhyaya. Afterwards she was known by the name of Saradadevi. 11 So she has been called. The Indian of good family has always had this exquisite custom of giving the name " Mother " to all womanhood, however much younger than himself. 16 He claims for six years. 23 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Mother. The vision of Kali was his only hope of survival. Two years went by in this orgy of mental intoxication and despair. 17 At length help came. 17 In 1861 his protectress, Rani Rasmani, died. Fortunately her son-in-law, Mathur Babu, remained devoted to him. Ill THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE ; THE BHARAVI BRAHAMI AND TOTAPURI UP to this point he had been swimming alone at the mercy of chance in an uncharted and boundless stream with its roaring rapids and whirlpools of the soul. He was on the verge of exhaustion, when two beings appeared on the scene, who held his head above water, and who taught him how to use its currents in order to cross the stream. The age-long history of the spirit of India is the history of a countless throng marching ever to the conquest of supreme Reality. All the great peoples of the world, wittingly or unwittingly, have the same fundamental aim ; they belong to the conquerors who age by age go up to assault the Reality of which they form a part, and which lures them on to strive and climb ; sometimes they fall out exhausted, then with recovered breath they mount undaunted until they have conquered or been overcome. But each one does not see the same face of Reality. It is like a great fortified city beleaguered on different sides by different armies who are not in alliance. Each army has its own tactics and weapons to solve its own problems of attack and assault. Our Western races l storm the bastions, the outer works. They desire to overcome the physical forces of Naturft, to make her laws their own, 1 In order to explain my meaning I am obliged to use the doubt- ful terms, West and East. But I hope that wise readers will dis- tinguish, as I do, many divisions of Mie West. For us the East in its ordinary sense means the Near East, the Semitic East, which in my sense of the word is further in spirit from India than some parts of the West, Slav, Germanic or Nordic. At this place in the story I am using the term West to indicate the march to the West of the great European races and those on the other side of the Atlantic, who have detached themselves from the common Indo-European stock. 25 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA so that they may construct weapons therefrom for gaining the inner citadel, and forcing the whole fortress to capitulate. India proceeds along different lines. She goes straight to the centre, to the Commander-in-Chief of the unseen General Headquarters ; for the Reality she seeks is transcendental. But let us be careful not to put Western " realism " in opposition to Indian "idealism." Both are "realisms." Indians are essentially realists in that they are not easily contented with abstractions, and that they attain their ideal by the self-chosen means of enjoyment and sensual posses- sion. They must see, hear, taste and touch ideas. Both in sensual richness and in their extraordinary imaginative power they are far in advance of the West. 2 How then can we reject their evidence in the name of Western reason ? Reason, in our eyes, is an impersonal and objective path open to all men. But is reason really objective ? To what degree is it true in particular instances ? Has it no personal limits ? Again, has it been carefully noted that the " reali- zations " of the Hindu mind, which seems to us ultra- subjective, are nothing of the kind in India, where they are the logical result of scientific methods and of careful experi- ment, tested throughout the centuries and duly recorded ? Each great religious visionary is able to show his disciples the way by which without a shadow of doubt they too may attain the same visions. Surely both methods, the Eastern and the Western, merit an almost equal measure of scientific doubt and provisional trust. To the truly scientific mind of to-day a widely generalized mistake, if it be sincere, is a relative truth. If the vision is false, the important thing to be discovered is wherein lies the fallacy, and then to allow it other premises to lead on to the higher reality beyond it. The common belief of India, whether clearly defined or vaguely felt, is that nothing exists save in and through the 1 1 am far from denying to Indian thinkers a capacity for intel- lectual concentration in the Absolute ; but even the " Formless " of the Advaita Vedanta is embraced to a certain extent by their burning intuition. Even if the " Formless " is without attributes and beyond vision, is it so certain that it is beyond some form of mysterious touch ? Is not revelation itself a kind of terrible contact ? 26 THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE universal Spirit,, the one and indivisible : Brahman. 8 The diverse images of everything contained in the universe had their birth in Him, and the reality of the universe is derived from the same universal Spirit, whose conception it is. Individual spirits, we who form an integral and organic part of the Cosmic Spirit, see the idea of the multiform and changing universe, and we attribute an independent reality to it. Until we have achieved knowledge of the one Brah- man, we are bewildered by Maya, Illusion, which has no beginning and is outside time ; and so we take what is nothing but an incessant stream of passing images, spring- ing from the invisible source, the One Reality, 4 to be the permanent reality. Hence we must escape from the stream of Illusion, rolling all round us, and like trout that leap over all barriers and scale waterfalls, we must go back to the source. Such is our unavoidable destiny, but it leads to salvation. Sadhana is the name given to this painful but heroic and magnificent struggle. The Sadhakas are they who wage it. Their small legion, renewed from age to age, is recruited from the fear- less souls ; for they have to submit to a system of appli- cation and rough discipline having the sanction of age-long experiment behind them. Two ways or weapons 6 are open to them, both needing long application and constant practice. The first is the way of " Not this ! Not this ! " 6 which may be called the way of Knowledge by radical negation " Everything is Brahman, all the various objects, both coarse and refined. Everything exists only in Brahman, the one and indivisible/ ' Shastras. 4 I have taken this brief summary of thought from the masterly exposition of Swami Saradananda at the beginning of his Sri Rama- krishna, the Great Master. There are many others which I shall discuss in the second part of this work, when I study the philosophic and religious thought of Vivekananda. There I shall find room for a long exposition of the Yoga principle of India. Neti (not this) is the name givem to Brahman himself by the authors of the Upanishads. Cf. the work of the Christian mystic, St. Denis, the Areopagite : Treatise on Mystic Theology, Chapter V, where he says that the supreme author of intelligible things is absolutely nothing that can be conceived by the understanding. There the master theologian collects on one page all the negatives in order to define God. (The Works of St. Denis the Areopagite, trans, and ed. by Mgr. Darboy, new edition, 1887, pp. 285-86.) 27 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA or the weapon of the Jnanin ; the second is the way of " This 1 This 1 " which may be called the way of Know- ledge by progressive affirmation, or the weapon of the Bhakta. The first relies solely on intellectual knowledge, and has always rejected everything, either real or apparent, outside it, proceeding with strained resolutions and eyes fixed on the supreme goal. The second is the way of love. The love of the Well-Beloved (whose form varies as it becomes more pure) gradually leads to the renunciation of all else. The way of Jnana is that of the absolute or im- personal God. The way of Bhakti is that of the personal God at least its pilgrims linger long on the way before finally rejoining the pilgrim of Jnana. The way of Bhakti was the way the blind instinct of Ramakrishna had unconsciously adopted from the first. But he knew nothing of its windings and lurking ambushes. It was true that a complete Itinerary from Paris to Jeru- salem 7 existed, wherein the whole course from the starting point to the winning post was carefully mapped out, con- taining all the accidents of the way, the mountains and the gradients, the dangerous corners and the stopping places, carefully arranged in advance and wisely distributed. But the runner of Kamarpukur knew nothing of it. He went where his wild heart and his legs carried him ; and at last, exhausted by his superhuman efforts, without guidance or assistance, maddened with solitude in the depths of the forest, he had moments when he gave himself up for lost. He had almost reached the last rough halting place, when help came to him through a woman. One day from his terrace he was watching the boats with their multi-coloured sails darting to and fro upon the Ganges, when he saw one put in at the foot of his terrace. A woman came up the steps. She was tall and beautiful, with long unbound hair and wearing the saffron robe of a Sannyasin* She was between thirty-five and forty, but 7 Allusion to the name of a famous book by Chateaubriand. 8 A Sannyasin, according to Max Miiller's definition, is a person who has left everything and renounced all worldly desire. The definition of the Bhagavadgita is, " One who neither hates *nor loves anything." The lady in question had not yet attained this state of divine indifference, as we shall see later. 28 THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE she looked younger. Ramakrishna was struck with her appearance and sent for her. She came. As soon as she saw him, she burst into tears and said, " My son, I have been looking for you for a long time." 9 She was a Brahmin of a noble Bengal family, a devotee of Vishnu, 10 highly educated and very learned in holy texts, especially in the Bhakti Scriptures. She said she was look- ing for the man inspired by God, whose existence had been revealed to her by the Spirit, and that she had been entrusted with a message for him. Without further introduction and without even discovering her name (she was never known by any other than that of the Bhairavi Brahmani, the Brahmin nun) the relations of mother and son were estab- lished there and then between the holy woman and the priest of Kali. Ramakrishna confided in her as a child might have done and told her all the tortured experiences of his life in God, of his Sadhana, together with the misery of his bodily and mental sufferings. He told her that many thought him mad, and asked her humbly and anxiously whether they were right. The Bhairavi , having heard all his confessions, comforted him with maternal tenderness, and told him to have no fear, for he had certainly reached one of the highest states of the Sadhana as described in the Bhakti texts by his own unguided efforts. His sufferings were simply the measure of his ascent. She looked after his bodily welfare and enlightened his mind. She made him in broad daylight go back over the road of knowledge, which he had already traversed alone and blindfold in the This encounter with the simple charm of a story from the Arabian Nights, has roused doubts in the mind of European historians. They are inclined to see in this episode, as does Max Miiller, a symbol of the psychic evolution of ilamakrishna. But the personality of his instructress during the six years she remained with him contains too many individual traits (and not always to her credit), for there to be any doubt that she was a real woman, with all a woman's weaknesses. * 10 The Vaishnavite cult was essentially a cult of love. Rama- krishna belonged to a Vaishnava family. Vishnu, the ancient sun god, established his sovereignty over the whole world by his incarnations, the chief being Krishna and Rama. (Cf. Barth, op. cit., pp. 100 et seqq.) Both these divinities appear in the name of the hero of this story, while he was himself saluted later in his life as a new incarnation, an Avatara, God and man. 29 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA night. By instinct alone Ramakrishna had obtained in the course of several years " realizations " which mystic science had taken centuries to achieve ; but he could not become truly their master until he had been shown the way whereby he had achieved them. The Bhakta, whose knowledge is derived through love, begins by accepting one form of God as his chosen ideal, as Ramakrishna the Divine Mother. For a long time he is absorbed in this one love. At first he cannot attain the object of his devotion, but gradually he comes to see, touch and converse with it. From that moment the slightest concentration is enough to make him feel the living presence of his Lord. As he believes that his Lord is in everything, in all forms, he soon begins to perceive other forms of Gods emanating from his own Beloved. This divine polymor- phism peoples his vision. Eventually he is so filled with its music that there is no room in him for anything else, and the material world disappears. This is called the Savikala Samadhi or state of superconscious ecstasy, wherein the spirit still clings to the inner world of thought, and enjoys the sentiment of its own life with God. But when one idea has taken possession of the soul, all other ideas fade and die away, and his soul is very near its final end, the Nirvikalpa Samadhi the final union with Brahman. It is not far to that cessation of thought wherein at last absolute Unity is realized by complete renunciation. 11 Ramakrishna had travelled along three quarters of this spiritual pilgrimage as a blind man. 12 The Bhairavi, whom he adopted as his spiritual mother, as his Guru or teacher, 11 1 am still depending for this explanation on the treatise of Sw. Saradananda. (Cf. Ruysbroeck : De ornatu spiritalium nup- tiarwn : " Go forth 1 It is God wko speaks. . . . He speaks through the darkness to the spirit and the spirit sinks and slips away. It must lose itself in the sacred gloom, where bliss delivers man from himself, so that he never finds himself again according to human ideas. In the abyss where love gives the fire of death, I see the dawn of eternal life. . . . By the virtue of this immense love we possess the joy of dying to ourselves and of bursting from our prison house, to be lost in the ocean of the Essence and in the burning darkness/' III, i, 2, and 4, and passim, trans. Ernest Hello.) 11 But his nature had held him back on the last mile of the way, at the cross roads where man takes leave of the personal God and of 30 THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE showed him all its phases and their import. Having herself practised religious exercises, she was conversant with the roads of knowledge, and so she made him try all the roads of the Sadhana in turn and methodically according to the rules of the Holy Books, even the most dangerous ones, the Tantras, which expose the sense and spirit to all the disturbances of the flesh and the imagination, so that these may be overcome. But the path skirts the precipices of degradation and madness, and more than one who has ventured upon it has never returned. 18 Ramakrishna the pure, however, came back as pure as he started out, and tempered as steel. He was now in possession of all forms of union with God by love " the nineteen attitudes/ 1 or different emotions of the soul in the presence of its Lord, such as the relations of a servant and his master, a son and his mother, a friend, a lover, a husband, etc. He had invested all sides of the Divine citadel ; and the man who had conquered God partook of His nature. His initiator recognized in him an Incarnation of the Divinity. She accordingly called a meeting at Dakshines- war and after learned discussion by the Pandits, the Bhairavi insisted that the theological authorities should give public recognition to the new Avatar a. Then his fame began to spread. People came from afar to see the wonderful man, who had succeeded, not only in one Sadhana, but in all. The ascetics, who by one road or another were straining towards God monks, sages, his love. His spiritual mother, the Bhairavi, did not try to urge him beyond them. They both instinctively shrank from the blind vision, from the last abyss, the Impersonal. 1S The greatest Hindu thinker of to-day, Aurobindo Ghose, of whom I shall speak in the second part of this work, has rehabilitated the way of Tantra, which had become discredited on account of the licentious misuse of certain of its methods. While castigating these, he has vindicated its original sense, and he has shown its grandeur. Contrary to the other Vedic Yoga whoso Lord is the Purusha (the conscious soul) and Knowledge the aim, the Lord of the Tantra is Prakriti (Energy the soul of Nature) and its end the fullness of possession. Instead of fleeing from Nature, the Tantra faces and seizes her. It is Dionysias as opposed to Apollyon. It is of some importance to note that Ramakrishna, alone of all Indian Yogin, united in himself the two complementary aspects. 31 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Sadkus, visionaries all came to seek his advice and to be instructed by him, who now sat at the cross-roads and dominated them. Their accounts speak of the fascination produced by the appearance of the man who had come back not, as Dante, from Hell but as a pearl-fisher from the deep sea of the golden radiance of his body burnt and purified so long in the fires of ecstasy. 14 But to the end of his life he remained the most simple of men without a trace of pride ; for he was too intoxicated with God to consider himself, and was preoccupied much less with what he had already achieved than with what was still to do. He disliked all mention of his being an Avatara, and when he had arrived at the point that everybody else, even the Bhairavi, his guide, took to be the summit, he looked up to the rest of the ascent, the last steep arete. And he was obliged to climb to the very top. But for this last ascent the old guides were not sufficient. And so his spiritual mother, who had jealously cherished him for three years, had, like so many other mothers, the pain of seeing her son, once dependent on her milk, escape her to follow a higher command from another master with a sterner and more virile voice. * * * Towards the end of 1854 J us ^ a ^ the moment when Rama- krishna had achieved his conquest of the personal God, the messenger of the impersonal God, ignorant as yet of his mission, arrived at Dakshineswar. This was Tota Puri (the naked man) an extraordinary Vedantic ascetic, a wander- ing monk, who had reached the ultimate revelation after forty years of preparation a liberated soul, who looked with impersonal gaze upon the phanton of this world with complete indifference. For a long time Ramakrishna, not without anguish, had felt prowling round him the formless God and the inhuman, the superhuman indifference of His Missi Dominici those Paramahamsas from the ratified heights, detached for ever from all things, terrible ascetics denuded of body and spirit, 14 The Yogins of India constantly note this effect of the great ecstasy caused by an afflux of blood. As we shall see later, Rama- krishna could tell as soon as he saw the breast of a religious man, whom he was visiting, whether or no he had passed through the fire of God. 32 THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE despoiled of the heart's last treasure : the diamond of love of the divine. During the early days of his stay at Dak- shineswar he had felt the terrible fascination of these living corpses ; and he had wept with terror at the idea that he too might have to come to a similar condition. Imagine what it must have cost a nature such as I have described that of this madman of love, this born lover and artist. 15 He needed to see, to touch, to consume the object of his love, and he remained unsatisfied until he had embraced the living form, had bathed in it as in a river, and had espoused the divine mould and all its beauties. Such a man was to be forced to abandon the home of his heart and sink body and soul in the formless and the abstract ! Such a train of thought must have been more painful and more alien to his nature than it would be to one of our Western scientists. But he could not escape it. His very terror fascinated him like the eyes of a snake. Dizzy though he was at the contemplation of the heights, he who had reached the peaks was obliged to go on to the very end. The explorer of the continent of the Gods could not stop until he had reached the source of the mysterious Nile. I have said already that the formless God lay in wait for him with all his terror and attraction. But Ramakrishna did not go to Him. Tota Puri came to fetch the lover of Kali. He saw him first without being seen as he was passing by ; for he could not stay longer than three days in one place. Seated on one of the steps of the temple, the young priest, 16 was lost in the happiness of his hidden vision. Tota Puri was struck by it. 41 My son," he said, " I see that you have already travelled far along the way of truth. If you so wish it, I can help you to reach the next stage. I will teach you the Vedanta" Ramakrishna, with an innocent simplicity that made even the stern ascetic smile, replied that he must first ask leave 11 It is a remarkable fact that Ramakrishna, though gifted for poetry and the arts, had no taste for mathematics. Vive- kananda's mind was of a different order. Though not less artistic he knew and loved the sciences. lf He was then twenty-eight years old. 33 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA of the Mother (Kali). She gave Her permission, and he then put himself with humble and complete confidence under the guidance of his divine teacher. But first he had to submit to the test of " Initiation." The first condition was to renounce all his privileges and insignia, the Brahmin cord and the dignity of priest. These things were nothing to him ; but he had also to renounce his affections and the illusions whereby he had hitherto lived the personal God and the entire harvest of the fruit of his love and sacrifice here and elsewhere, now and for ever. Naked as the earth he had symbolically to conduct his own funeral service. He had to bury the last remains of his ego his heart. Then only could he reclothe himself in the saffron robe of a Sannyasin, the emblem of his new life. Tota Puri now began to teach him the cardinal virtues of the Advaita Vedanta, 17 the Brahman one and undiffer- entiated, and how to dive deep in search of the ego, so that its identity with Brahman might be realized and that it might be firmly established in Him through Samadhi (ecstasy). It would be a mistake to think that it was easy even for 17 The Advaita " without second " is the strictest and most abstract form of the Vedanta. It first appeared in the ninth century A.D., and its most famous exponent in the eleventh century Sankara, of whom I shall have more to say later. It was absolute Non-Dualism. Nothing but one unique Reality existed to the exclusion of every other. Its name was immaterial, God, the Infinite, the Absolute, Brahman-Atman, etc. : for this Reality did not possess a single attribute to assist in its definition. To every attempt at definition Sankara, like Dems the Areopagite, had only one answer " No ! No 1 " Everything which has the appearance of existence, the world of our mind and senses, is nothing but the Absolute under a false conception (^vidya). Under the influence of Avidya, which Sankara and his school found it very difficult to explain clearly, Brahman adopts names and forms, which are nothing but non-existence. The only existence beneath this flood of " ego " phantoms is tb^true Self, the Paramatman, the One. Good works are powerless to help in its realization, although they perhaps help to bring about a propitious atmosphere from whence Consciousness may emerge. But Consciousness alone and direct can deliver and save the soul (Mukti). Hence the yv&dt aearrov (Know thyself) of the Greeks, is opposed, as has been shown, to the " See the Self and be the Self" of the great Indian Vedantists. . . . Tat tvam asi (Thou art that). 34 THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE one who had gone through all the other stages of ecstasy, to find the key to the narrow door leading to the last. His own account deserves to be reproduced, for it belongs not only to the sacred texts of India, but to the Archives of the West, wherein are preserved all the documents relating to the revelations of the science of the Spirit. " The naked man, Tota Puri, taught me to detach my mind from all objects and to plunge it into the heart of the Atman. But despite all my efforts, I could not cross the realm of name and form and lead my spirit to the Unconditional state. I had no difficulty in detaching my mind from all objects with the one exception of the too familiar form of the radiant Mother, 18 the essence of pure knowledge, who appeared before me as a living reality. She barred the way to the beyond. I tried on several occasions to concentrate my mind on the precepts of the Adviata Vedanta ; but each time the form of the Mother intervened. I said to Tota Puri in despair, ' It is no good. I shall never succeed in lifting my spirit to the " uncon- ditional " state and find myself face to face with the Atman/ He replied severely, ' What ! You say you cannot ? You must I ' Looking about him, he found a piece of glass. He took it and stuck the point between my eyes, saying, ' Con- centrate your mind on that point/ Then I began to meditate with all my might, and as soon as the gracious form of the Divine Mother appeared, I used my discrimin- ation as a sword, 19 and I clove Her in two. The last barrier fell and my spirit immediately precipitated itself beyond the plane of ' conditional ' things, and I lost myself in the Samadhi" The door of the Inaccessible was only forced with great strain and infinite suffering. But hardly had Ramakrishna crossed the threshold than he attained the last stage the Nirvikalpa Satnadhi wherein subject and object alike disappeared. > " Always Kali, the Beloved. lf This is not a case of the clumsy auto-hypnotism of the hen, who falls into a catalepsy along a chalk line in the sun (thus I read the disrespectful thought of my Western reader). The action of mind described by Ramakrishna was an effort of severe concentra- tion, which excluded nothing, but which involved keen and critical analysis. 35 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA " The Universe was extinguished. Space itself was no more. At first the shadows of ideas floated in the obscure depths of the mind. Monotonously a feeble consciousness of the Ego went on ticking. Then that stopped too. Noth- ing remained but Existence. The soul was lost in Self. Dualism was blotted out. Finite and Infinite space were as one. Beyond word, beyond thought, he attained Brahman/ ' In one day he had realized what it had taken Tota Puri forty years to attain. The ascetic was astounded by the experience he had provoked, and regarded with awe the body of Ramakrishna, rigid as a corpse for days on end, radiating the sovereign serenity of the spirit, which has reached the end of all knowledge. Tota Puri ought only to have stayed three days. He remained eleven months for intercourse with the disciple who had outstripped his master. Their parts were now reversed. The young bird came down from a higher region of the sky, whence he had seen beyond the loftiest circle of hills. His dilated pupils carried a wider vision than the sharp narrow eyes of the old " naga." 20 The eagle taught the serpent in his turn. This did not come about without considerable opposition. Let us put the two seers face to face. Ramakrishna was a small brown man with a short beard and beautiful eyes, " long dark eyes, full of light, obliquely set and slightly veiled, 81 never very wide open, but seeing half-closed a great distance both outwardly and inwardly. His mouth was half open over his white teeth in a bewitch- ing smile, 22 at once affectionate and mischievous. Of medium height, he was thin to emaciation and extremely delicate. 28 His temperament was exceptionally highly strung, for he was super-sensitivfc to all the winds of joy and sorrow, both moral and physical. He was indeed a living reflection of all that happened before the mirror of his eyes, a two-sided minror turned both out and in. His unique plastic power allowed his spirit instantaneously to 10 The name of the sect to which Tota Purf belonged. Naga also means snake. 11 Mukerji. 11 Mahendra Nath Gupta. if In the journeys he took afterwards with Mathur Babu he became tired at once. He could not walk and had to be carried. 36 THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE shape itself according to that of others without, however, losing its ovmfeste Burg,** the immutable and infinite centre of endless nobility. " His speech was Bengali of a homely kind . . . with a slight though delightful stammer; but his words held men enthralled by the wealth of spiritual experience, the inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, the unequalled powers of observation, the bright and subtle humour, the wonderful catholicity of sympathy and the ceaseless flow of wisdom. 26 Facing this Ganges with its depths and its reflections, its liquid surface and its currents, its windings and meanders and the millions of beings it bore and nourished, the other rose like the Rock of Gibraltar. He was very tall and robust, with magnificent physique, resolute and indestruct- ible a rock with the profile of a lion. His constitution and mind were of iron. He had never known illness or suffering, and regarded them with smiling contempt. He was the strong leader of men. Before adopting a wander- ing life he had been the sovereign head of a monastery of seven hundred monks in the Punjab. He was a master of disciplinary method which petrified as argil the flesh and the spirit of men. 26 It never entered his head that any- thing could check his sovereign will passion, danger, the storms of the senses, or the magic force of Divine Illusion, which raises the tumultuous waves of existence. To him Maya was something non-existent, a void, a lie, which only required to be denounced to vanish for ever. To Rama- krishna Maya itself was God, for everything was God. It too was one face of Brahman. Moreover when he had 14 That is from the moment when he had succeeded in uniting all the threads of the groups of forms and destinies in their centre, Brahman. Until then he hail been taken by each in turn. 11 The last touches of this portrait are taken from the memory of an eyewitness still living, Magendranath Gupta. (Cf . Prabuddha Bharata, March, 1927, and The Modern Review, May, 1927.) * The educational psycho-physiolog^ of our day should interest itself in the methods used in the exercise of meditation ; first com- fortable seats, then harder and harder ones, then the bare ground, while at the same time clothing and food are gradually reduced until a state of nakedness and extreme privation is reached. After this initiation the novices are scattered to wander through the country, first with companions and then alone until the last ties binding them to the outside world have been completely severed. 37 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA reached the summit after the stormy ascent, Ramakrishna forgot nothing of the anguish, the transports, the accidents of the climb. The most insignificant pictures of his journey remained in his memory, registered according to their kind, each in its own time and place in the wonderful panorama of peaks. But what was there for the " naked man " to store up in his memory ? His mind was like himself, void of emotions and loves " a brain of porphyry," as an Italian described the greatest painter of Umbria. 27 This marble tablet needed to be carved by the chisel of fruitful suffering ; and so it came about. In spite of his great intellect, he did not understand that love could be one of the paths leading to God. He chal- lenged the experience of Ramakrishna and poured scorn on prayers said aloud, and on all external manifestations, such as music, hymns and religious dances. When he saw Ramakrishna at the close of the day beginning his repetition of the names of God to the accompaniment of clapping of hands, he asked with a derisive smile, " Are you making bread ? " But in spite of himself the charm began to work within him. Certain hymns sung in his companion's melodious voice moved him, so that hidden tears came into his eyes. The insidious and enervating climate of Bengal also affected this Punjabi, although he tried to ignore it. His relaxed energy could no longer keep such rigorous control over his emotions. There are contradictions, often unobserved by their owners, even in the strongest minds. This scorner of cults had the weakness to adore a symbol in the shape of fire ; for he always kept a lighted one near him. One day a servant came to remove some brands, and Tota Puri protested against such disrespect* Ramakrishna laughed, as only he knew how to laugh, with the gaiety of a child. " Look, look," he cried. " You also have succumbed to the irresistible power oi*Maya \ " Tota Puri was dumbfounded. Had he really submitted to the yoke of Illusion without being aware of it ? Illness too made his proud spirit realize its limitations. Several months in Bengal brought on a violent attack of dysentery. 17 Pietro Pemgino, the master of Raphael. The judgment is Vasari's. 38 THE TWO GUIDES TO KNOWLEDGE He ought to have gone away, but this would have been running away from evil and sorrow. He grew obstinate. " I will not give in to my body ! " The trouble increased, and his spirit could no longer abstract itself. He submitted to treatment, but it was of no avail. The sickness grew more virulent with every dawn like a shadow gradually overcasting the day, and became so overwhelming that the ascetic could no longer concentrate his mind on Brahman. He was roused to fury by this evidence of decay, by his body, and went down to the Ganges to sacrifice it. But an invisible hand restrained him. When he had entered the stream he had no longer either the will or the power to drown himself. He came back utterly dismayed. He had experienced the power of Maya. It existed every- where, in life, in death, in the heart of pain, the Divine Mother ! He passed the night alone in meditation. When morning dawned he was a changed man. He acknowledged before Ramakrishna that Brahman and Shakti 28 or Maya are one and the same Being. The Divine Mother was appeased and delivered him from his illness. He bade farewell to the disciple who had become his master, and went on his way, an enlightened man. 29 Afterwards Ramakrishna summed up in these words the double experience of Tota Puri. " When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive, neither creating, nor preserving, nor destroying, I call him Brah- man or Purusha, the impersonal God. When I think of Him as active, creating, preserving, destroying, I call Him Shakti or Maya or Prakriti,* the personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The personal and the impersonal are the same Being, in the same way as milk and ks whiteness, or the diamond and its lustre, or the serpent and its undulations. It is impos- i Shakti means Divine Energy, the radiance of Brahman. M The departure of Tota Puri took fJlace towards the end of 1865. It is possible that it was he who gave to the son of Khudiram the famous name of Ramakrishna that he bears to-day, when he initiated him as a Sannyasin. (Cf. Saradananda : Sadhaka Bhava, p. 285. Note I.) Prakriti is " Energy, the Soul of Nature, the power of the will to act in the Universe." (Definition of Aurobindo Ghose, who puts it in opposition to the " silent and inactive Purusha") 39 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA able to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one." 31 91 Compare this text with another, less known but still more striking, showing what should be our judgment of the impassioned cult of JRamakrishna for Kali, and the profound sense of Unity underlying this apparent idolatry. " Kali is none other than He whom you call Brahman. Kali is Primitive Energy (Shakti). When it is inactive we call it Brahman (literally : we call That . . .). But when it has the function of creating, preserving or destroying, we call That Shakti or Kali. He whom you call Brahman, She whom I call Kali, are no more different from each other than fire and its action of burning. If you think of the one, you automatically think of the other. To accept Kali is to accept Brahman. To accept Brahman is to accept Kali. Brahman and His power are identical. That is what I call Shakti or Kali." (Conversations of Ramakrishna with Naren (Vivekananda) and Mahendra Nath Gupta, on the subject of the theories of Sankara and of Ramanuja published in the Vedanta Kesari, November, 1916.) 40 IV IDENTITY WITH THE ABSOLUTE THIS great thought was by no means new. The spirit, of India had been nourished upon it for centuries and in their course it had been constantly moulded, kneaded, and rolled out by Vedantic philosophy. It had been the subject of interminable discussions between the two great Vedantic schools, that of Sankara the pure Advaita school and the Ramanuja or Visistadviata school (qualified monism). 1 The first, the absolute non-Dualist, considers the Universe unreal and the Absolute the only reality; the second, relatively non-Dualist, recognizes Brahman as 1 It is impossible to give here a full explanation of the deep and often complicated system of Vedantic metaphysics. But it may be useful to give a brief summary of the two principal systems. Sankara, the greatest name in Indian philosophy, lived in the second half of the eighth century A.D. He was the genius of the Brahmanic spirit working in antagonism to the Buddhist, although it was not free from traces of the latter. He professed absolute Monism, the unique reality of Brahman- Atman, the " without second " (Advaita), the only Substance, one can hardly say the only Cause, since its apparent effects the visible world and indi- vidual souls are nothing but phenomenal illusory modifications. It is useless to seek, as do the Buddhists, for the conquest of the Absolute in stages, since all motion of the individual spirit is equal to zero. It is in one movement that the veil can and ought to fall in order to allow the Unity to shine forth. Formidable though this abyss of the One is wherein the world disappears, it has had an unparalleled fascination for the spirit of India, whose mirror is Sankara. * But only a select band of thinkers can fully realize this Himalayan ideal of an impersonal Absolute. The individual soul yearns to vindicate its reality. After the undivided triumph of the teaching of Sankara throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, religious revolt raised its standard in the eleventh century in the Tamil. It spread to Kashmir and thence to Southern India, where it found an undis- puted leader in Ramanuja, the pontiff or saint (Alvar) of the patri- 41 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA we nibble at Its outer shell, but there is a- point of fusion when It takes us again into Its great mouth and absorbs us into Itself. But before that point of fusion is reached where was the salt doll ? Where do the ants come from ? In the case of the worker under the lamp, saintly hermit or forger, where is his home, where is the object he reads and his eyesight itself ? Ramaknshna tells us that even the inspired Holy Scrip- tures have all been more or less defiled because they have passed through human mouths. But is the defilement real ? (For it presupposes the purity, the Brahman.) Where do the lips and the mouth exist, which have eaten some portions of Divine food ? The "Differentiated," although it is "without attach- ments," must then be some part of the " Undifferentiated " especially since " attachment " in the last resort, " union between the ' Undifferentiated ' and the ' Differentiated ' is, to use Ramakrishna's own words, " the real object of the Vedanta." * In fact Ramaknshna 5 distinguishes two distinct planes and stages of vision : that under the sign of Maya, which creates the reality of the " differentiated " universe, and the super-vision of perfect contemplation (Samadhi) wherein one instant's contact with the Infinite is sufficient to make the Illusion of all " differentiated " egos, our own and other men's, disappear immediately. But Ramakrishna expressly maintains that it is absurd to pretend that the world is unreal so long as we form part of it, and receive from it for the maintenance of our own identity, the 4 It is to be noted in passing how the metaphysics of the Advaitic Absolute are akin to the doctrines of the pre-Socratian Greeks to the doctrine of the " Indeterminate " of Anaximander of Ionia for instance, wherein he laid down that all things have been produced by separation to the doctrine of the One without Second of Xeno- phanes and the Eleates, who* exclude all movement, all change, all future, all multiplicity as nothing but Illusion. There is much research still to be done before the unbroken chain of thought linking the first pioneers of Hellenic philosophy to those of India is re-established. For this I rely upon the Interviews of 1882, when he was near the end of his life and which therefore contain the essence of his thought. 44 IDENTITY WITH THE ABSOLUTE unquenchable conviction (although hidden in our own lan- tern) of its reality. Even the saint who comes down from Samadhi (ecstasy) to the plane of ordinary life is forced to return to the envelope of his " differentiated " ego, however attenuated and purified. He is flung back into the world of relativity. " So far as his ego is relatively real to him, so far will this world also be real ; but when his ego has been purified, he sees the whole world of phenomena as the manifold manifestation of the Absolute to the senses." Maya will then appear under its true colours, at once truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance (Vidya and Avidya), everything that leads to God, and everything that does not lead to Him. Therefore it is. And his assertion has the personal value of a St. Thomas the Apostle, who has both seen and touched, when he bears witness to these Vijnanis, these men of super- knowledge who win the privilege of " realizing " in this life the personal and the impersonal God for he was one himself. They have seen God both outwardly and inwardly. He has revealed Himself to them. The personal God has told them, " I am the Absolute. I am the origin of ' differentiation/ " In the essence of Divine Energy radiating from the Absolute they have perceived the very principle differentiating the supreme Atman and the universe, that which is alike in the Absolute God and in Maya. Maya, Shakti, Prakriti, Nature is no Illusion. To the purified ego She is the manifestation of the supreme Atman, the august sower of living souls and of the universe. From that moment everything became plain. The visionary hurled back from the gulf on fire with Brahman, discovered with rapture that on the brink the Divine Mother, his Beloved, was awaiting him. And he saw Her now with new eyes, for he had grasped her deep significance, Her identity with the Absolute. She was the Absolute manifesting Herself to men, the Impersonal made man or rather woman. 6 She was the source of all In India the personal God is conceived also as a female principle : Prakriti, Shakti. 45 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Incarnations, the Divine Intercessor between the Infinite and the finite. 7 Then Ramakrishna intoned the Canticle of the Divine Mother. " Yea ! My Divine Mother is none other than the Absolute. She is at the same time the One and the Many, and beyond the One and the Many. My Divine Mother says, ' I am the Mother of the Universe, I am the Brahman of the Vedanta, I am the Atman of the Upanishads. It is I, Brahman, who created differentiation. Good and bad works alike obey me. The Law of Karma 8 in truth exists ; but it is I who am the Lawgiver. It is I who make and unmake laws. I order all Karma, good and bad. Come to Me ! Either through Love (Bhakti), through Knowledge T Compare the part of the Son in Christian mysticism. " Effulgence of my glory, Son Beloved (It is God who speaks) Son, in whose face invisible is beheld Visibly, what by Deity I am, And in whose hand what by decree I do, Second Omnipotence I . . ." (Milton, Paradise Lost, VI, 680.) This might have been said by Ramakrishna with the exception perhaps of the word " second," which makes the expression sub- ordinate to the Supreme Will creating it. But both of them are the same Omnipotence. The God of Milton, like the Brahman of Ramakrishna, being the Absolute, not manifest, could not act ; He wished and it was the Son who was the Creator God, the acting God (as was the Mother in the case of Ramakrishna). The Son is the Word, He speaks, He dies, He is born, He is made manifest. The Absolute is the invisible God. " Fountain of light, Thyself invisible. . . ." (Paradise Lost, III, 374.) He is impalpable and inconceivable. He is immovable and nevertheless omnipresent ; for he is im all things : " The Filial Power arrived, and sat him down With his great Father ; for he also went Invisible, yet stayed (such privilege Hath Omnipresence) . . ." (Paradise Lost, VII, 588.) (Cf. Denis Saurat : Milton and Material Christianity in England, 1928.) The similarity of the mysticisms is obvious and natural. Both had their origin in the East, and both came from the same human brain with its limited operation. 1 Action the generating power of successive existences. IDENTITY WITH THE ABSOLUTE (Jnana) or through Action (Karma), for all lead to God. I will lead you through this world, the Ocean of action. And if you wish it, I will give you the knowledge of the Absolute as well. You cannot escape from Me. Even those who have realized the Absolute in Samadki return to Me at My will/ My Divine Mother is the primordial Divine Energy. She is omnipresent. She is both the outside and the inside of visible phenomena. She is the parent of the world, and the world carries Her in its heart. She is the Spider and the world is the web She has spun. The Spider draws the thread out of Herself and then winds it round Herself. My Mother is at the same time the container and the contained. 9 She is the shell, but She is also the kernel/ 1 The elements of this ardent Credo are borrowed from the ancient sources of India. Ramakrishna and his fol- lowers never claimed that the thought was new. 10 The Master's genius was of another order. He roused from lethargy the Gods slumbering in thought and made them incarnate. He awoke the springs in the " sleeping wood " n and warmed them with the heat of his magic personality. And so this ardent Credo is his own in its accent and its transport, in its rhythm and melody, in its song of passionate love. 12 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, according to M., a son of the Lord and a disciple. (In the Life of Vivekananda, last edition, 1922-24.) 10 On the contrary their tendency was to deny the fact, even when they might have claimed originality. The great religious minds of modern India, and, I believe, of all other countries, have this in common, that their very power lies in the assurance that their truth is a very ancient one, and eternal verity, the Verity. Dayananda, the stern founder of the Arya Samaj, was very angry if new ideas were attributed to him. 11 An allusion to the title of the well-known fairy story, " The Sleeping Beauty." (The French title is : La Belle au Bois Dormant, and its literal translation is : the Beauty in the Sleeping Wood. TRANSLATOR.) 11 It must not be forgotten that its poetic and musical elements are in part borrowed from the popular treasures of Bengal. We have seen (p. 9) how his mind had been impregnated with the classical Vaishnavite poets through their adaptations in the jatras or popular theatrical representations. He often sung a hymn from the works of Kabir, but his mind was also stored with the works of more 47 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Listen closely to it, for it is a magnificent. song, illimitable and yet harmonious. It is not confined within the form of any poetic measure, but it falls of itself into an ordered beauty and delight. Adoration of the Absolute is united without effort to the passionate love of Maya. Let us keep in our ears its cry of love until we can measure its depth later by listening to Vivekananda. The great fighter, caught in the toils of Maya, tried to break them, and he and she were constantly at war. Such a state was com- pletely foreign to Ramakrishna. He was at war with nothing. He loved his enemy as a lover, and nothing could resist his charm. His enemy ended by loving him. Maya enfolded him in Her arms. Their lips met. Armide had found her Renaud. 18 The Circe who bewitched crowds of other suitors became for him the Ariadne who led Theseus by the hand through the mazes of the labyrinth. Illusion, the all-powerful, who hoods the eyes of the falcon, unhooded Ramakrishna's and threw him from Her wrist into the wide regions of the air. Maya is the Mother 14 who reveals recent poets and musicians. (Cf. The Gospel of Ramakrishna.) One of the oldest and one for whom he seems to have had a particular affection was Rama Prasad, a poet of the eighteenth century. Ramakrishna constantly quoted and sang his sacred hymns to the Divine Mother. It was to Prasad that Ramakrishna owed some of his most striking metaphors (that of the flying kite, for example, mentioned later) and some characteristic traits of the Mother (the mischievous twinkle in the corner of Her eye, when She made use of Illusion to bewilder the child She loved). Among the other poet-musicians mentioned in the Gospel I note the names of Kamalakanta, a pandit of the beginning of the nine- teenth century, a devotee of the Mother ; Nareschandra, belonging to the same period, also a devotee of Kali ; Kubir, a Bengal Vaish- navite saint of the same epoch, author of popular songs ; and among the more recent, Premdas (his real name was Trailokya Sannyal) a disciple of Keshab, author of songs, which often owed their inspira- tion to the improvisations of Ramakrishna, and Girish Chandra Ghosh, the great dramatist, who became Ramakrishna's disciple (songs from his plays, Chailanya-lila, Buddha-charity, etc.). 11 Allusion to the characters of Torquato Tasso's poem, Jerusalem Delivered. 14 Or the " eldest sister." Elsewhere Ramakrishna said to Keshab Chundra Sen, " Maya is created by the Divine Mother, as forming part of her plan of the universe." The Mother plays with the world. The world is Her toy. " She le ~ lets slip the flying kite of the soul, held by the string of illusion " (October, 1882). 48 IDENTITY WITH THE ABSOLUTE Herself to Her children through the various forms of Her splendour and by Divine Incarnations. With Her love, with the fire of Her heart (Bhakti) She moulds the sheath of the ego so well that it becomes no more than " something that has length but no breadth/' a line, a point, which melts under the magic fingers of this subtle refiner into Brahman. So praised be the fingers and the water ! Praised be the face and the veil ! All things are God. God is in all things. He is in the shadow as well as in the light. Inspired by the English " Mortalists " of the seventeenth century, 16 Hugo said that the Sun is only the shadow of God. 16 Ramakrishna would have said that the shadow is also light. But it is because like all true Indian thinkers he believes in nothing that he has not first " realized " throughout his entire being that his thought has the breath of life. The " conception " of the idea regains with him its plain and carnal meaning. To believe is to embrace, and after the embrace to treasure within oneself the ripening fruit. When a Ramakrishna has once known the grasp of such truths, they do not remain within him as ideas. They quicken into life ; and fertilized by his Credo, they flourish and come to fruition in an orchard of " realizations," no longer abstract and isolated, but clearly defined and having a practical bearing on everyday life for the satisfaction of the hunger of men. He will find the Divine Flesh, which he has tasted and which is the substance of the universe again, the same, at all tables and all religions. And he will share the food of immortality in a Lord's Supper, not with twelve apostles, but with all starving souls with the universe. * * * After the departure ofr Tota Puri towards the end of 1865 Ramakrishna remained for more than six months within the magic circle, the circle of fire, and prolonged his identity with the Absolute until the limit of physical endurance had been reached. For six months, if such a statement is credible, he remained in a state of cataleptic 1 Denis Saurat : Milton and Christian Materialism in England, p. 52. Cf. Milton, " Dark with excessive light thy skirts appear." (Paradise Lost, III, 374.) 49 E PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA ecstasy, recalling the descriptions given of the fakirs of old the body, deserted by the spirit like an empty house, given over to destructive forces. If it had not been for a nephew, who watched over the masterless body and nourished its forces, he would have died. 17 It was impossible to go further in ecstatic union with the " formless." It is, moreover, the extreme period of this long Yogic trance which is likely to puzzle, nay, to irritate my French readers, who are used to treading on firm earth, and have not experienced the shocks of spiritual fires for a long time. Patience for a little while longer 1 We shall come down from the Mount of Sinai down among men. Ramakrishna himself recognized afterwards that he had been tempting Providence and that it was a miracle that he had ever returned. He was careful to warn his disciples against submitting to any such test. He even forbade it to Vivekananda, on the ground that it was a form of pleasure forbidden to those noble souls, whose duty it was to sacrifice their own happiness to the service of others. 18 17 It is said that a monk who happened to come to Dakshineswar at that time, seeing him on the point of breathing his last, recalled his escaping life with blows. The great disciple, Saradananda, the most learned in Hindu metaphysics, and more deeply versed in the intellectual make-up of his Master than any who came near Ramakrishna, has described this Nirvikalpa Samadhi, this great ecstasy of six months, as a state where the consciousness of the ego disappeared completely, coming back now and again very gently, just veiling the perfect " realization." According to Saradananda, Ramakrishna would perceive in these moments of semi-consciousness the order of the Cosmic Spirit (or we may style it, the obscure recall and tyranny of the vital force) " which forced him to remain in the Bhavamukha." It said in effect, " Do not lose complete consciousness of the ego, and do not identify thyself with the*transcendental Absolute, but realize that the Cosmic ego, wherein are born the infinite modes of the universe, is within thee ; at every moment of thy life, see and do good in the world." And so it was during the descent from this long Samadhi that Ramakrishna came to " realize " his divine mission, not perhaps in a single day or suddenly, but gradually. In any case it would be in the first half of 1866. 11 How much more then did he dissuade ordinary men from it ; for those whose bed in life is a narrow one, would have been sub- merged by its torrents to their own hurt and the hurt of the com- munity. The way he cured his Sancho Panza, his young nephew, 50 IDENTITY WITH THE ABSOLUTE When young Naren 19 importuned him to open to him the Niroikalpa Samadhi the terrible door leading to the gulf of the Absolute Ramakrishna refused with anger, he, who never lost his temper and who was always careful not to hurt the feelings of his beloved son. " Shame on you ! " he cried, " I thought you were to be the great banyan tree giving shelter to thousands of tired souls. Instead you are selfishly seeking your own well-being. Let these little things alone, my child. How can you be satisfied with so one-sided an ideal ? You might be all- sided. Enjoy the Lord in all ways ! " (By this he meant both in contemplation and in action, so that he might translate the highest knowledge into the highest service of mankind.) Naren wept, humiliated and heartbroken with the duty of renunciation. He acknowledged that the Master's severity was just, but to the end of his life he carried a sick longing in his heart for the Abysmal God, although he devoted that life with humility, hardihood and courage to the service of man. the faithful and matter of fact Hridoy, and his rich patron, Mathur Babu, of their longing for the forbidden fruits of ecstasy, shows a humour and good sense worthy of Cervantes. Hridoy, a good soul and devoted to his uncle but of the earth earthy, desired to share his uncle's fame. He thought he had a family right to benefit from the spiritual advantages of Rama- krishna. He had no patience with the latter 's disinterestedness. In vain his uncle tried to dissuade him from experimenting in ecstasy. The other persisted, with the result that his brain became completely disordered and he had attacks of convulsions and scream- ing. " Oh Mother," cried Ramakrishna, " dull the sense of this idiot 1 " Hridoy fell to the ground and overwhelmed his uncle with reproaches. " What have you done, uncle ? I shall never experience these ineffable joys again." Ramakrishna maliciously let him alone to do as he pleased. Hridoy was soon visited by frightful visions and was obliged to ask his uncle to deliver him. The same experience befell the rich Mathur Babu. He longed for Ramakrishna to procure the Samadhi for him. Ramakrishna refused for a long time, but at last he said, " Very well, so be it, my friend." As a result of the coveted Samadhi, Mathur Babu lost all interest and sense in business. This was more than he had bargained for ; he became very anxious, and wished to go no further in the matter, so he besought Ramakrishna to remove ecstasy from him for ever. Ramakrishna smiled and cured him. 19 Narendranath Dutt, the real name of the man who was after- wards called Vivekananda. 51 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA But we must remember that at the point we have reached in our story, Ramakrishna had not yet finished his Lehrjahre, his apprenticeship. It is also noteworthy that his life's experience was won at his own risk and expense, and not by common experience, as is partly at least the case with most of us. His recovery was not due to his own merits or his own desire. He said that the Mother recalled him to a sense of his human duties by physical suffering. He was gradu- ally forced back from the Nirvikalpa Samadhi by a violent attack of dysentery, which lasted for six months. Both physical and moral suffering attached him to the earth. A monk, who knew him, 20 has said that during the first days of his return from ecstasy to the bosom of identity, he howled with pain when he saw two boatmen quarrelling angrily. He came to identify himself with the sorrows of the whole world, however impure and murderous they might be, until his heart was scored with scars. But he knew that even the differences leading to strife among men are the daughters of the same Mother ; that the " Omnipotent Differentiation " is the face of God Himself ; that he must love God in all sorts and conditions of men, however antagonistic and hostile, and in all forms of thought controlling their existence and often setting them at variance the one with the other. Above all he must love God in all their Gods. In short he recognized that all religions lead by different paths to the same God. Hence he was eager to explore them all ; for with him comprehension meant existence and action. * (Cf. D. G. Mukerji : The Face of Silence.) THE RETURN TO MAN THE first path to be explored was the religion of Islam. He was hardly convalescent when he started out upon it at the end of 1866. From his temple he saw many Musulman fakirs passing by ; for the large-hearted patron of Dakshineswar, Rani Rasmani, a nouvclle riche of a debased caste, in the breadth of her piety had desired rooms to be reserved in her foundation for passing guests of all religions. In this way Ramakrishna saw a humble Musulman, Govinda Rai, absorbed in his prayers, and perceived through the outward shell of his prostrate body that this man through Islam had also " realized " God. He asked Govinda Rai to initiate him, and for several days the priest of Kali renounced and forgot his own Gods completely. He did not worship them, he did not even think about them. He lived outside the temple precincts, he repeated the name of Allah, he wore the robes of a Musulman and was ready imagine the sacrilege to eat of forbidden food, even of the sacred animal, the cow ! His master and patron, Mathur Babu, was hor- rified and begged him to desist. In secret he had food pre- pared for Ramakrishna by a Brahmin under the direction of a Musulman in order to save him from defilement. The complete surrender of himself to another realm of thought resulted as always in the spiritual voyage of this passionate artist, in a visual materialization of the idea. A radiant personage with grave countenance and white beard appeared to him (thus he had probably visualized the prophet). He drew near and lost himself in him. Ramakrishna realized the Musulman God, " the Brahman with attributes.' 1 Thence he passed into the " Brahman without attributes/' The river of Islam had led him back to the Ocean. 53 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA His expositors have later interpreted this experience, following as it did immediately upon his great ecstasy in the Absolute, in a very important sense for India, that Musulmans and Hindus, her enemy sons, can only be re- united on the basis of the Advaita, the formless God. The Ramakrishna Mission has since raised a sanctuary to Him in the depths of the Himalayas, as the corner-stone of the immense and composite edifice of all religions. Seven years later (I am grouping the facts for the sake of clearness) an experience of the same order led Ramakrishna to " realize " Christianity. Somewhere about November, 1874, a certain Mallik, a Hindu of Calcutta, with a garden near Dakshineswar, read the Bible to him. For the first time Ramakrishna met Christ. Shortly afterwards the Word was made flesh. The life of Jesus secretly pervaded him. One day when he was sitting in the room of a friend, a rich Hindu, he saw on the wall a picture representing the Madonna and Child. The figure became alive. Then the expected came to pass according to the invariable order of the spirit ; the holy visions came close to him and entered into him so that his whole being was impregnated with them. This time the inflowing was much more powerful than in the case of Islam. It covered his entire soul, breaking down all barriers. Hindu ideas were swept away. In terror Ramakrishna, struggling in the midst of the waves, cried out, " Oh Mother, what are you doing ? Help me ! " It was in vain. The tidal race swept everything before it. The spirit of the Hindu was changed. He had no room for anything but Christ. For several days he was filled by Christian thought and Christian love. He no longer thought of going to the temple. Then one afternoon in the grove of Dakshineswar he saw coining towards him a person with beautiful large eyes and a serene regard. Although he did not know who it was, he succumbed to the charm of his unknown guest. He drew near and a voice sang in the depths of Ramakrishna's soul, " Behold the Christ, who shed his heart's blood for the redemption of the world, who suffered a sea of anguish for love of men. It is He, the master Yogin, who is in eternal union with God. It is Jesus, Love incarnate." The Son of Man embraced the seer of India, the son of 54 THE RETURN TO MAN the Mother, and absorbed him into Himself. Ramakrishna was lost in ecstasy. Once again he realized union with Brahmin. Then gradually he came down to earth, but from that time he believed in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God. 1 But for him Christ was not the only Incarnation. Buddha and Krishna were others. At this point I can imagine our uncompromising Chris- tians, body-guards of their one God, raising their eyebrows haughtily, and saying, " But what did he know of our God ? This was a vision, a figment of the imagination. This was too easy, for he knew nothing of the doctrine." He did in truth know very little, but he was a Bhakta, who believed through love. He did not claim to possess the knowledge of the Jnanins, who believed through the intellect. But when the bow is firmly held, does not each of the two arrows reach the same target ? And do not both roads meet for the man who journeys to the very end ? Vivekananda, Ramakrishna's great and learned disciple, said of him, " Outwardly he was Bhakta but inwardly Jnanin.* At a certain pitch of intensity great love comprehends and great intellect forces the retreats of the heart. Moreover it is surely not for Christians to deny the power of love. It was love that made the humble fishermen of Galilee the chosen disciples of their God and the founders of his Church. And to whom did the risen Christ first appear but to the re- pentant sinner, whose only claim to the privilege lay in the 1 He used the title very sparingly, however. He had a great veneration for saintly men, such as the Tirthankaras (the founders of the Jain religion), and the ten Sikh Gurus, but without believ- ing that they were Incarnations. In his own home amongst his Divine pictures was one of Christ, and he burnt incense before it morning and evening. Later it came to pass that Indian Christians recognized in him a direct manifestation of the Christ and went into ecstasy before him. 1 And Vivekananda added, " But with me it is quite the con- trary." Another very great religious thinker of India, also a highly intellectual man, more deeply imbued with European thought than any of his contemporaries, Keshab Chunder Sen, had the noble humility to sit at the feet of the Bhakta, whose intuition of heart enlightened for Him the spirit underlying the letter. 55 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA tears of love wherewith she had washed the feet of Christ and dried them with her hair ? ' ' Lastly, knowledge does not consist in the number of books a man has read. In Ramakrishna's India, as in the India of old, culture is largely transmitted orally, and Ramakrishna gained during the course of his life through intercourse with thousands of monks, pilgrims, pandits, and all sorts of men preoccupied with religious problems, an encyclopaedic know- ledge of religion and religious philosophy, a knowledge constantly deepened by meditation. 3 " One day a disciple wondering at his knowledge asked him, ' How were you able to master all past knowledge ? ' And Ramakrishna answered, ' I have not read, I have heard the learned. I have made a garland of their knowledge wearing it round my neck, and I have given it as an offering at the feet of the Mother/ " He could say to his disciples, " I have practised all religions, Hinduism, Islam, Chris- tianity, and I have also followed the paths of the different Hindu sects. ... I have found that it is the same God towards whom all are directing their steps, though along different paths. You must try all beliefs and traverse all the different ways once. 4 Wherever I look I see men quarrelling in the name of religion Hindus, Mohammedans, Brahmins, Vaishnavas and the rest, but they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Shiva, and bears the name of Primitive Energy, Jesus and Allah as well the same Rama with a thousand names. The tank has several ghats (flights of steps). At one Hindus draw water in pitchers, and call it jal ; at another Musulmans draw water in leathern bottles, and call it pani ; at a third Christians, and call it water. Gan we imagine that the water is not jal, but only pani or water 1 How ridiculous ! The substance is One under different names and everyone is seeking the same Substance ; nothing but climate, tem- * Ramakrishna understood Sanskrit though he could not speak it. He said, " In my childhood I could gather all that the Sadhus were reading in the house of a neighbouring family, even though it is true that the sense of individual words escaped me. If a pandit spoke in Sanskrit I understood him, but I could not speak it my- self." Gospel, II, 17. 4 Gospel of Ramakrishna, II, 17. 56 THE RETURN TO MAN perament and name vary. 5 Let each man foUow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him ! He will surely realize Him." The period after 1867 added nothing vital to Ramakrishna's inner store, 6 but he learnt to use what he had treasured. His revelations were brought into contact with the outside world and his spiritual conquests were confronted with the achievements of other human experience and he realized more fully the unique prize that had been awarded him. It was during these years that he came to a knowledge of his mission among men and his present duty of action. He resembles the Little Poor Man of Assisi in many ways both moral and physical. He too was the tender brother of everything that lives and dies, and had drunk so deep of the milk of loving kindness that he could not be satisfied with a happiness he could not share with others. On the threshold of his deepest ecstasies he prayed to the Mother as She was drawing him to Herself, " Oh Mother, let me remain in contact with men ! Do not make me a dried-up ascetic ! " And the Mother, as She drew him back to the shores of life from the depths of the Ocean, replied (half consciously he heard Her voice), " Stay on the threshold of relative consciousness for the love of humanity." 7 And so he returned to the world of men and his first experience was a bath of warm and simple humanity. In May, 1867, sti U much enfeebled by the crises he had passed through, he went to rest for six or seven months in his own countryside of Kamarpukur after an absence of eight years. 8 *Ibid., II, 248. 6 Except for his Christian* experience, which I have described in the previous pages in its logical place, though it belongs chrono- logically to the year 1874. 7 From that time he resisted all temptation to seek an ecstatic death and avoided its dangers. He refused to run the risk of cer- tain dangerous emotions, such as the sight of a holy place, Gaya, in 1868, because it was too full of memories and he knew that he would not be able to bring his spirit back to the plane of ordinary life. He had received the order from within to stay in the world of everyday things in order to help others. The Bhairavi Brahmani accompanied him, but the experiences of the journey do not rebound to her credit. This eminent woman's 57 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA He gave himself up with the joy of a chilcj to the familiar cordiality of the good people of the village, happy at the sight of their little Gandahar, whose strange fame had reached them and made them rather anxious. And these simple peasants were nearer by their very simplicity to the profundity of his beliefs than the doctors of the towns and the devotees of the temples. During this visit he learned to know his child wife. Sarada Devi was now fourteen years old. She lived with her parents, but she came to Kamarpukur when she knew her husband had arrived. The spiritual development of the little wife with her pure heart was greater than her age, and she understood at once her husband's mission and the part of pious affection and tender disinterestedness she was to play in it. She recognized him as her guide and put herself at his service. Ramakrishna has at times been blamed, and very coarsely blamed, fl for having sacrificed her. She herself never showed any trace of it ; she irradiated peace and serenity throughout her life on all who came in contact with her. Moreover, there is a fact, which has never before been revealed except by Vivekananda, that Ramakrishna himself was gravely aware of his responsibility and offered his wife the greatest sacrifice of which he was capable if she demanded it his mission. " I have learnt/' he said to her, " to look upon every woman as Mother. That is the only idea I can have about character was not equal to her intelligence, and her meditations had not raised her above human weaknesses. Having taught Rama- krishna and revealed him to himself, she claimed proprietory rights over him. She had already suffered from the ascendancy of Tota Puri, and she could not bear to see him re-absorbed in the atmo- sphere of his birthplace, monopolized by his old companions to whom she was a stranger, without ctremony. Moreover the pres- ence of his young wife, humble and sweet though she was, troubled her and she had not the tact to hide it. After some painful scenes, which did not make her more amiable, she recognized her weakness. She begged Ramakrishna's pardon and left him for ever. He met her again for the last time in Benares, whither she had retired to spend the remainder of her days in a strict search for truth. She died shortly afterwards. 9 This was especially the case from certain Brahmo Samajists, who were irritated by Ramakrishna's ascendancy over their leader, Keshab Chunder Sen, and they could not forgive him his wide popularity. 58 THE RETURN TO MAN you. But if you wish to draw me into the world (of Illusion) , as I have been married to you, I am at your service." 10 Here was something entirely new in the spirit of India. Hindu tradition lays down that a religious life ipso facto frees a man from every other obligation. Ramakrishna had more humanity and recognized that his wife had binding rights over him. She was, however, magnanimous enough to renounce them, and encouraged him in his mission. But Vivekananda specifically declares that it was " by consent of his wife " that he was free to follow the life of his choice. Touched by her innocence and self-sacrifice, Ramakrishna took upon himself the part of an elder brother. He devoted himself patiently during the months they were together to her education as a diligent wife and good manager. He had a great deal of practical common sense curiously at variance with his mystic nature. The peasant's son had been brought up in a good school and no detail of domestic or rural life was alien to him. All who knew him remarked on the order and cleanliness of his house, in which respect the Little Poor Man of God might have taught his disciples, drawn though they were from the intellectual and upper middle classes. He returned to Dakshineswar at the end of 1867, and in the course of the following year made several pilgrimages with Mathur Babu, his patron and the master of his temple. In the early months of 1868 he saw Shiva's city, Benares, and Allahabad at the sacred junction of the Ganges and the Jumna, and Brindaban, the very home of legend and of the Song of Songs, the scene of the Romancero pastoral of Krishna. His transports, his intoxication may be imagined. When he crossed the Ganges before Benares, " the city of God " seemed to him not built of stone, but like a heavenly Jerusalem, " a condensed mass of spiritu- ality/ 1 On the cremating fields of the holy city he saw Shiva and His white body and tawny matted locks and the Divine Mother bending over the funeral pyres and granting salvation unto the dead. When twilight fell on the banks of the Jumna, he met the herdsmen leading their cattle home, and he was carried away with emotion, and ran shouting, " Krishna ! Where is Krishna ? " " Vivekananda : My Master. Vol. IV of his Complete Works, 3rd edition, 1923, p. 169, 59 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA But if he did not see the God Himself, he met something else in the course of his travels of greater importance and deeper meaning for us of the West he discovered the face of human suffering. Up to that time he had lived in a state of ecstatic hypnosis within the gilded shell of his sanctuary, and the hair of Kali had hidden it from him. When he arrived at Deoghar with his rich companion, he saw its almost naked inhabitants, the Santhals, emaciated and dying of hunger : for a terrible famine was ravaging the land. He told Mathur Babu that he must feed these unfortunates. Mathur Babu objected that he was not rich enough to support the misery of the whole world. Ramakrishna thereupon sat down among the poor creatures and wept, declaring that he would not move from thence, but would share their fate. Croesus was obliged to submit and to do the will of his poor priest. During the summer of 1870 Mathur made the mistake of taking him in the course of another journey to one of his estates at the time of the payment of dues. The harvests had failed for two years running and the tenants were reduced to extreme misery. Ramakrishna told Mathur to remit their dues, to distribute help to them and to give them a sumptuous feast. Mathur Babu protested but Rama- krishna was inexorable. " You are only the steward of the Mother/' he said to the rich proprietor. " They are the Mother's tenants. You must spend the Mother's money. When they are suffering, how can you refuse to help them ? You must do so." Mathur Babu had to give in. These things should not be allowed to fall into oblivion. Swami Shivananda, the present head of the Ramakrishna Order (the Ramakrishna Math ad Mission), one of the first apostles and a direct disciple of the Master, has des- cribed the following scene, which he saw with his own eyes. One day at Dakshineswar, while he was in a condition of super-consciousness, Ramakrishna said, " Maya is Shiva (all living beings are God). 11 Who then 11 On another occasion he said, " God is in all men, but all men are not in God : that is the reason why they suffer/ 1 (Sri Rama- krishna' s Teachings, I, 297.) 60 THE RETURN TO MAN dare talk of showing mercy to them ? Not mercy, but service, service for man must be regarded as God 1 " Vivekananda was present . When he heard those pregnant words, he said to Shivananda, " I have heard a great saying to-day. I will proclaim the living truth to the world/' And Swami Shivananda added, " If anyone asks for the foundation of the innumerable acts of service done by the Ramakrishna Mission since then, he will find it there/' 12 * * * About this time several deaths left the mark of Sorrow's cruel, yet brotherly fingers upon Ramakrishna. Though a man lost in God, who regarded departure from this life as a return to endless bliss, he was seen on the occasion of the death of a young friend and nephew to laugh for joy and to sing his deliverance. 13 But the day after his death he was suddenly assailed by the most terrible anguish. His heart was broken, he could hardly breathe and he thought, " Oh God ! Oh God ! If it is thus with me, how they must suffer, those who lose their loved ones, their children ! " And the Mother bestowed upon him the duty and the power of administering the balm of faith to mourners. " Those who did not see it," Swami Shivananda wrote to me, " cannot imagine to what extent this man, so detached from the world, was constantly occupied in listening to the story of their worldly tribulations, poured out to him by men and women alike, and in lightening their burdens. We saw innumerable examples of it, and there may be some householders still living, who call down blessings upon him for Mis infinite pity and his ardent 11 Ramakrishna set the example of the most humble service. He, a Brahmin, went to a pariah's house and asked permission to clean it. The pariah, overcome by the proposal, a criminal one in the eyes of an orthodox Hindu, which might have exposed his visitor and himself to the worst reprisals, refused to allow it. So Ramakrishna went to his house at night when all were asleep and wiped the floor with his long hair. He prayed, " Oh Mother, make me the servant of the pariah ! " (Vivekananda, My Master.) 19 At that moment he had the vision of a sword drawn from the scabbard. 6l PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA attempts to relieve the sufferings of men. One day in 1883 Mani Mallick, a rich and distinguished old man, lost his son and came to Ramakrishna with a broken heart. He entered so deeply into the old man's sorrow that it almost seemed as if he were the bereaved father, and his sorrow surpassed Mallick's. Some time passed thus. Suddenly Ramakrishna began to sing." But not an elegy, not a funeral oration. He sang a heroic song, the story of the fight of the soul with death. " To arms ! To arms ! Oh Man, death invades thy home in battle array. Get up into the chariot of faith, and arm thyself with the quiver of wisdom. Draw the mighty bow of love and hurl, hurl the divine arrow, the holy name of the Mother ! " 14 " And," concluded Shivananda, " I remember how the father's grief was assuaged by it. This song gave him back his courage, calmed his sorrow and brought him peace/' As I describe this scene my thoughts go back to our own Beethoven, who without saying a word came and sat down at the piano and consoled a bereaved mother with his music. This divine communion with living, loving, suffering humanity was to be expressed in a passionate, but pure and pious symbol. When in 1872 his wife came to him at Dakshineswar for the first time, 16 the tenderness of 14 I give a fragment of this song from the Gospel of Ramakrishna. The scene was by no means unique. Ramakrishna consoled more than one mourner with more than one song. But its heroic character always remained the same. In the Life of Ramakrishna (pp. 652-53) the account is rather different. Ramakrishna listened to tne broken-hearted father ; he said nothing but passed into a state of semi-consciousness. Sud- denly he began to sing the battle hymn with energetic gestures and a radiant face. Then he became normal again and talked affectionately to the unhappy man and consoled him. D. G. Mukerji also describes the same scene as Swami Shiva- nanda and with his usual art. But he was not an eye-witness, while Shivananda and the author of the GospM were. 11 She stayed with him from March, 1872, to November, 1873, from April, 1874, to September, 1875, again in 1882 and finally in 1884, when she remained with him until the end. The story of her first journey to rejoin her husband, when she was in bad health, 62 THE RETURN TO MAN Ramakrishna, a tenderness compounded of religious respect purged of all trace of desire and sensual disturbance, recognized the Goddess under her veil, and he made a solemn avowel of it. One night in May, when everything had been prepared for worship, he made Sarada Devi sit in the seat of Kali, and as a priest he accomplished the ritual ceremonies, the Shorashi Puja, 16 the adoration of womanhood. Both of them were in a condition of semi- conscious or super-conscious ecstasy. When he came to himself he hailed his companion as the Divine Mother. In his eyes She was incarnate in the living symbol of immaculate humanity. 17 * * * His conception of God, then, was one which grew by degrees, from the idea of the God who is omnipresent and in whom everything is absorbed, like a sun fusing every- thing in itself, to the warm feeling that all things are God, like so many little suns, in each of which He is present and active. Both, it is true, contain the same idea, but the second reverses the first, so that not only from the highest to the lowest, but from the lowest to the highest, there is a twofold chain joining without a break the one Being to all living Beings. Thus man becomes sacred. Two years before his death, April 5, 1884, he said, " I can now realize the change that has taken place in me. A long time ago Vaishnav Charan told me that when I could see God in man, I should have attained the per- and bravely accomplished with much fatigue and no little danger, is one of the most touching chapters in the life of Ramakrishna. (See Note I at the end of the volume a charming adventure, the meeting of Sarada Devi with the brigands.) No less extraordinary was her first stay of twenty Inonths and the common life led by the two mystics, both equally chaste and equally passionate. lf A Tantric ceremony. 17 The sole witness of this strange scene was the priest from the neighbouring temple of Vishnu. Ramakrishna's cult of womanhood did not limit itself to his blameless wife. Ha recognized the Mother even in the most de- graded prostitutes. 1 " I myself have seen this man standing before these women," said Vivekananda, " and falling on his knees at their feet, bathed in tears, saying ' Mother, in one form Thou art in the street and in another form Thou art the universe. I salute Thee, Mother. I salute Thee/ " (My Master.) 63 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA fection of knowledge. At the present moment I see that it is He who moves under a diversity of forms sometimes as a pious man, sometimes as a hypocrite, sometimes even as a criminal. So I say, ' Narayana in the pious man, Narayana in the hypocrite, Narayana in the criminal and the libertine.' " 18 I must take up again the course of his life, so that my readers may not lose the thread of the story, and that they may know in advance where the river is flowing despite its immense meanders, and windings, at times seeming to dissipate itself in numerous channels, and at others appearing to turn back on its course. I take it up again at a point round about 1874 when the full cycle of religious experience had been achieved, and when, as he says himself, he had plucked the three beautiful fruits of the tree of Knowledge Compassion, Devotion 19 and Renunciation. 20 During the same period his interviews with the eminent men of Bengal had made him aware of the inadequacy of their knowledge and of the great starving void awaiting him in the soul of India. He never ceased to make use of all the sources within his reach for adding to his knowledge, from the religious or the learned, from the poor or the 18 Life of Ramakrishna, p. 543. Narayana is a certain aspect of Brahmin or Purusha, the supreme Soul, who brings forth gods and men. (Cf . Paul Masson-Oursel : Outline of the History of Indian Philosophy, p. 105.) lf The word Devotion, the term sanctioned by the European translations of Hindu mysticism, is quite inadequate to express the sentiment of a passionate gift of self implied in it. The true meaning of the old word ought to be revived, as it was used in Christian mysticism, for that gives its exact parallel, viz. Dedica- tion. (Cf. Ruysbroeck, Of Inward Dedication.) "If we wish to belong to God through inward dedication, we shall feel in the depth of our wills and in the depth of our love what may be called the welling up of a living spring, which will rise to eternal life." (De septem custodiis libellus, trans. E. Hello.) What Hindu Bhakta is there who will fail to recognize himself in the act of " dedication " described here by the Flemish priest of the fourteenth century ? 10 " Compassion, Devotion and Renunciation are the glorious fruits of knowledge." (Interviews of Ramakrishna with the cele- brated pandit, Vidya-Sagar, August 5, 1882. Cf. Life of Rama- krishna, p. 526.) 6 4 THE RETURN TO MAN rich, from wandering pilgrims or pillars of science and society. Personal pride was quite alien to him ; he was instead rather inclined to think that each " seeker after truth" had received some special enlightenment, which he himself had missed, and he was anxious to pick up the crumbs that fell from their table. He therefore sought them out wherever they might be found without consider- ing how he might be received. 21 At this point it is necessary to give the European reader a brief summary of the great movement stirring in the soul of India for the past sixty years. Too little is heard of this mighty reawakening, although the centenary of one of its most memorable dates, the foundation of the Brahmo Samaj, was celebrated in India this very year (1928). Humanity as a whole ought to have joined with India to commemorate its genial founder ; for despite all obstacles he had the will and the courage to inaugurate co-operation between the East and the West on a basis of equality, and between the forces of reason and the power of faith. He did not understand faith to mean a 11 1 have already pointed out that in his temple he had the daily opportunity of talking to the faithful of all sorts and all sects. From the moment when the Bhairavi Brahmani had announced that he was a man visited of God, that he was perhaps an Incar- nation, people came to see him from far and near. Thus between 1868 and 1871 he saw many famous personalities, such as the great Bengali poet, a convert to Christianity, Michael Madhusadan Dutt, and the masters of Vedantic learning like the pandits Narayan Shastri and Padma Lochan. In 1872 he met Visvanath Upadhyaya and Dayananda, the founder of the Arya Samaj, of whom I shall speak in the next chapter. It has not been possible for me to ascertain precisely the date of his visit to Devendranath Tagore. The Hindu authorities do not agree upon this point. It cannot have been later than 1869-70. The Tagores give 1864-65 as the approximate date. The authorized biographer of Ramakrishna (Mahendra Nath Gupta) ascribes it to 1863 on the ground that Ramakrishna gave it to be understood that in the course of this visit he sa>w Keshab Chunder Sen officiating in the pulpit of the Arya Samaj. Keshab was only the minister of the Samaj from 1862 to 1865 ; and there are several reasons why Ramakrishna could not have made the journey in 1864-65. At all events it was in 1875 that he visited Keshab after he had become the head of the new reformed Brahmo Samaj, and it is from that year that their relations of cordial friendship date. 65 F PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA blind acceptance, as it has degenerated into among down- trodden races, but rather a living and seeing intuition. I speak of Ram Mohun Roy. 22 II As a general picture I recommend the recent work of K. T. Paul : The British Connection with India, 1927, London, Student Christian Movement, which traces with a sure hand the evolution of the national movement and the Hindu religious movements during the last century. K. T. Paul, an Indian Christian and the friend of Gandhi, a great and impartial mind filled with the thought alike of the East and of the West, unites in this work the historical precision of Europe and its science of facts with the science of the soul, a peculiarly Indian science. (Cf . the panoramic sketch, which I published in the Paris review, Europe, December 15, 1928, " India in Movement/') In its number of October, 1928, the Indian review, Prabuddha Bharata, published a very interesting paper of Swami Nikhilananda, which he had previously read in August, 1928, to the Convention of Religions at the Centenary of the Brahmo Samaj, on " The Pro- of Religion during the last Hundred Years " (in India). 66 VI THE BUILDERS OF UNITY, RAM MOHUN ROY, DEVENDRANATH TAGORE, KESHAB CHUNDER SEN, DAYANANDA RAM MOHUN ROY, an extraordinary man who ushered in a new era in the spiritual history of the ancient continent, was the first really cosmopolitan type in India. During his life of less than sixty years (1774-1833) he assimilated all kinds of thought from the Himalayan myths of ancient Asia to the scientific reason of modern Europe. 1 He belonged to a great aristocratic Bengal family,* bearing the hereditary title of Roy, and he was brought up at the court of the Great Mogul, where the official language was Persian. As a child he learnt Arabic in the Patna schools and read the works of Aristotle and Euclid in that language. Thus besides being an orthodox Brahmin 1 Fat the life and works of this great forerunner, see Raja Ram Mohun Roy, his Writings and Speeches, 1925, Natesan, Madras, whose interest is marred by chronological inexactitude ; and the excellent pamphlet of Ramananda Chatterjee : Ram Mohun Roy and Modern India, 1918, The Modern Review Office, Calcutta. These works are based in part on the biography written by Miss Sophia Dobson Collett, who knew him personally. (Cf. N. C. Ganguly, fragments of an important volume bearing on Roy, published in September, 1928, by The Modern Review of Calcutta in a series entitled *' The Builders of India.") Manilal C. Parekh : Rajarshi Ram Mohun Roy, 1927, Oriental Christ House, Rajkot, Bombay, and Professor Dhirendranath Chpw- dhuri : " Ram Mohun Roy, the Devotee," The Modern Review, October, 1928. This year, the centenary of the foundation of the Brahmo Samaj, gave rise in India to the publication of many studies of Ram Mohun Roy. For the Brahmo Samaj, the church founded by Roy, see Siva Math Sastry : History of the Brahmo Samaj, 2 vols., 1911, Calcutta. 1 His family came originally from Murehidabad, He was born at Burdwan in Lower Bengal PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA by birth 8 he was nurtured in Islamic culture. He did not discover the works of Hindu theology until he began to study Sanskrit between the ages of fourteen and sixteen at Benares. His Hindu biographers maintain that this was his second birth ; but it is quite conceivable that he had no need of the Vedanta to imbibe a monotheistic faith. Contact with Islam would have implanted it in him from infancy, and the sciences and practice of Hindu mysticism only re- inforced the indelible influence of Sufism, whose burning breath had impregnated his being from his earliest years. 4 The ardour of his combative genius, mettlesome as a young war horse, led him when he was sixteen to enter upon a bitter struggle, destined to last as long as life itself, against idolatry. He published a book in Persian with a preface in Arabic attacking orthodox Hinduism. His out- raged father thereupon drove him from home. For four years he travelled in the interior of India and Thibet, studying Buddhism without growing to love it, and risking death from Lamaist fanaticism. At the age of twenty the prodigal son was recalled by his father and returned home. In a vain attempt to attach him to the world he was married, but no cage could contain such a bird. When he was twenty-four he began to learn English, as well as Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He made the acquaint- ance of Europeans and learnt their laws and their forms of government. As a result he suddenly cast aside his * On his father's side his family was Viashnavite. 4 The intuitive power and mystic enlightenment of his nature have been somewhat obscured, especially in the West, by his repu- tation as a man of vigorous reasoning power and as a social re- former fighting against the mortal and deadly prejudices of his people. But the mystic side of his^ genius has been brought to the fore again by Dhirendranath Chowdhuri. The freedom of his intellect would not have been so valuable if it had not been based upon devotional elements equally profound and varied. From in- fancy he appears to have given himself up to certain practices of Yogist meditation, even to Tantric practices, which he later repudiated, concentrating for days on the name or on one attribute of God, repeating the word until the Spirit manifested its presence (the exercise of Purascharana), taking the vows of Brahmachariya (chastity) and silence, practising the mystic exercises of Sufism, more satisfying than the Bhakti of Bengal, which he found too sentimental for his proud taste. But his firm reason and will never resigned their functions. They governed his emotions. 68 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY prejudice against the English and made common cause with them. In the higher interests of his people he won their confidence and took them as allies. He had dis- covered that only by depending on Europe could he hope to struggle for the regeneration of India. Once more he began his violent polemics against barbarous customs such as Sati, the burning of widows. 6 This raised a storm of opposition culminating in his definite expulsion from his family in 1799 at the instance of the Brahmins. A few years later even his mother and his wives, his nearest and dearest, refused to live with him. He spent a dozen hard and courageous years, abandoned by all except one or two Scottish friends. After accepting a post as tax- collector, he gradually rose until he became the ministerial chief of the district. After his father's death he was reconciled to his own people and inherited considerable property. The Emperor of Delhi made him a Rajah, and he had a palace and sump- tuous gardens in Calcutta. There he lived in the state of a great lord, giving magnificent receptions in the oriental style with troups of musicians and dancers. His portrait is preserved for us in the Bristol Museum. It reveals a face of great masculine beauty and delicacy with large brown eyes. He is wearing a flat turban like a crown, and a shawl is draped over a robe of Franciscan brown. 6 Although he lived as a Prince of the Arabian Nights, he did not allow it to interfere with his ardent study of the Hindu Scriptures or his campaign for restoring the pure spirit of the Vedas. To this end he translated them into Bengali and English and wrote commentaries upon them. He went even further. Side by side with the Upanishads and the Sutras, he made a close study of the Christian Testaments. It is said that he was the first high caste Hindu to study the teachings of Christ. After the Gospels he published in 1820 a book on It is said that in 1811 he was present at the burning of a young sister-in-law, and that the horror of the sacrifice, heightened by the struggles of the victim, upset him completely, so that he had no peace until he had freed the land from such crimes. He had adopted Mohammedan costume. In vain he tried later to impose it at the meetings of the Brahmo Samaj. In dress he possessed an aesthetic taste and hygienic sense of cleanliness and comfort, which belonged rather to Islam than to Hinduism. 69 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA the Precepts of Jesus, a Guide to Peace and Happiness. About 1826 for some time he became a member of a Uni- tarian Society, founded by one of his European friends, the Protestant minister Adam, who secretly flattered himself that he had converted Roy to Christianity, so that he might become its great apostle to the Indians. But Roy was no more to be chained to orthodox Christianity than to ortho- dox Hinduism, although he believed that he had discovered its real meaning. He remained an independent theist, essentially a rationalist and moralist. He extracted from Christianity its ethical system, but he rejected the Divinity of Christ, just as he rejected the Hindu Incarnations. As a passionate Unitarian he attacked the Trinity no less than polytheism ; hence both Brahmins and missionaries were united in enmity against him. But he was not the man to be troubled on that account. As all other churches were closed to him 7 he opened one for himself and for the free believers of the universe. It was preceded by the founding of the Atmiya Sabha (the Society of Friends) in 1815 for the worship of God, the One and Invisible. In 1827 he had published a pamphlet on the Gayatri, supposed to be the most ancient theistic formula of the Hindus. Eventually in 1828 his chief friends, among whom was Tagore, gathered at his house and founded a Unitarian Association, destined subsequently to have a startling career in India, under the name of the Brahmo Samaj 8 (Adi Brahmo Samaj), the House of God. It was dedicated to the " worship and adoration of the Eternal, Unsearchable and Immutable Being, who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe." He was to be worshipped " not under or by any other name, designation or title peculiarly used for and applied* to any other particular 7 With the exception of the excellent Adam's Unitarian Church, which was not in a prosperous condition. The name of Brahmo Samaj appears erroneously for the first tune in the deed of purchase of land whereon the Unitarian temple was built in 1829. Its first meeting was held on August 25, 1828. Every Satur- day from seven to nine recitations of the Vedas, readings from the Upaniahads, sermons on Vedic texts, the singing of hymns mostly composed by Roy himself and accompanied musically by a Mohammedan, took place. 70 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY Being or Beings by any man or set of men whatever." The church was to be closed to none. Ram Mohun Roy wished that his Brahmo Samaj should be a universal house of prayer, open to all men without distinction of colour, caste, nation or religion. In the deed of gift he laid down that no religion " shall be reviled or slightly or contemptuously spoken of or alluded to." The cult was to encourage " the promotion of the contemplation of the Author and Preserver of the Universe " and " of charity, morality, piety, bene- volence, virtue and the strengthening the bonds of union between men of all religious persuasions and creeds." Roy then wished to found a universal religion, and his disciples and admirers voluntarily called it " Universalism." But I cannot accept this term in its full and literal mean- ing ; for Roy excluded from it all forms of polytheism from the highest to the lowest. The man who wishes to regard without prejudice religious realities at the present day must take into account that polytheism, from its highest expres- sion in the Three in One of the Christian Trinity to its most debased, holds sway over two-thirds at least of mankind. Roy calls himself correctly a " Hindu Unitarian," and did not hesitate to borrow from the two great Unitarian religions, Islam and Christianity. 9 But he defended himself stren- uously against the reproach of " eclecticism," and his disciples are agreed on that point. He held that doctrine ought to rest on original synthetic analysis, sounding the depths of religious experience. It is not then to be con- founded with the monism of the Vedanta nor with Christian unitarianism. The theism of Roy claims to rest on two poles, the " absolute " Vedanta and the Encyclopaedic thought of the eighteenth century in the Formless God and Reason. * It was not easy to define and it was still less easy to realize after he had gone ; for it implied a rare harmony of critical intelligence and faith going as far as the enlighten- ment of a noble mysticism consistently controlled and dominated by reason. Royally constituted physically and morally, he was able to attain the heights of contemplation Rain Mohun Roy's Hindu Unitarianism is nearer to the Bible than the doctrines of his immediate successors at the head of the Bnthmo Samaj, especially Devendranath Tagore. 71 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA without losing for an instant the balance of his everyday life or interrupting his daily course ; he was protected against and disdainfully avoided the emotional excess to which the Bhaktas of Bengal were a prey. 10 It was not until we reach Aurobindo Ghose a century later that we find the same aristocratic freedom of diverse powers linked to the highest type of mind. It was not easily communic- able and in fact proved impossible to communicate intact. Noble and pure though the successors of Ram Mohun Roy were, they changed his doctrine out of all recognition. Nevertheless the Constitution of the Brahmo Samaj the Magna Carta Dei which included such part as could be understood and assimilated by his successors, founded a new era in India and Asia and a century has merely proved the grandeur of its conception. Roy emphasized its other practical aspect in his vigorous campaigns for social reform, 11 supported by the English 10 (Cf. Dhirendranath Chowdhuri : " Ram Mohun Roy, the Devotee," The Modern Review, October, 1928 :) ..." the Raja would be frequently found absorbed (in Brahma- samadhi), all his distractions notwithstanding. . . . For the Raja Samadhi is not an abnormal physiological change of the body that can be effected at will, not unconsciousness generated as in sound sleep, but the highly spiritual culture of perceiving Brahmin in all and the habit of surrendering the self to the higher self. Atmasakshatkar to him was not to deny the existence of the world . . . but to perceive God in every bit of perception . . . Ram Mohun was pre-eminently a Sadhaka. . . . Though a Vedantist in every pulse of his being, he did not fail to perceive that the Upanishads were not sufficient to satisfy the Bhakti hankerings of the soul, nor was he able to side with the Bhakti cult of Bengal. . . . But he hoped that the needs of Bhakti would be met by the Sufis. . . ." 11 We cannot attempt to give here a full list of his innumerable reforms or attempted reforms. Let \t suffice to mention among the chief Sati (the burning of widows), which he proved to be contrary to the sacred texts and which he persuaded the British Government to forbid in 1829 and his campaign against polygamy his attempts to secure the remarriage of widows, inter-caste mar- riage, Indian unity, friendship between Hindus and Musulmans, Hindu education, which he wished to model on the same scientific lines as Europe and for which he wrote in Bengali numerous text- books on Geography, Astronomy, Geometry, Grammar, etc., the education of women based on the example of ancient India, liberty of thought and of the Press, legal reforms, political equality, etc. In 1821 he founded a Bengali newspaper, the father of the native 72 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY administration, more liberal and more intelligent than that of to-day. 12 There was nothing parochial about his pat- riotism. He cared for nothing but liberty and civil and religious progress. Far from desiring the expulsion of England from India, he wished her to be established there in such a way that her blood, her gold and her thought would intermingle with the Indian, and not as a blood- sucking ghoul leave her exhausted. He went so far as to wish his people to adopt English as their universal lan- guage, to make Indian Western socially and then to achieve independence and enlighten the rest of Asia. His news- papers were impassioned in the cause of liberty on behalf of all the nations of the world Ireland, Naples crushed under reaction, revolutionary France in the July Days of 1830. But this loyal partisan of co-operation with England could speak frankly to her, and he did not conceal his intention of breaking with her if his great hopes of her as a leader in the advancement of his people were not realized. Towards the end of 1830 the Emperor of Delhi sent him as his ambassador to England ; for Roy wished to be present Press of India, a Persian paper, another paper called the Ved Mandir for the study of Vedic science. Moreover, India owes to him her first modern Hindu college and free schools, and ten years after his death the first school for women in Calcutta (1843). 11 The recent blunders of the Indian Government and the legiti- mate desire of India to free herself from it, the spirit of brutal and narrow pride of which Lord Curzon as Viceroy was the most striking type, and the spirit of narrow and vainglorious incompre- hension reflected in literature in the works of Kipling, ought not to allow the moral debt which India owes to the British administra- tion to be forgotten. Without her aid the social awakening of India during the nineteenth century would have been impossible, and the same is true of her un^ty through the language of her con- querors. Not to mention the admirable work of the Englishmen who rediscovered Sanskrit from William James to William Carey and Wilson, there were the superior merits of the great Governor- Generals of the first days of the conquest the disinterestedness of Clive, the high intelligence of Warren Hastings, who wrote (who remembers the fact now ?) " that the writings of Indian philoso- phers would survive when British dominion in India should have long since ceased to exist. Ram Mohun Roy would never have been able to make headway against the violence of fanatical Brahmins nor to realize certain of his most pressing social reforms without the friendship and support of the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck. 73 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA at the debate in the Commons for the renewal of the Charter of the East India Company. He arrived in April, 1831, and was warmly received at Liverpool, at Manchester, at London and at Court. He made many illustrious friends, Bentham among their number, paid a short visit to France, and then died of brain fever at Bristol on September 27, 1833, where he is buried. His epitaph runs : " A conscientious and steadfast believer in the Unity of Godhead : he consecrated his life with entire devotion to the worship " or to use the language of Europe, its mean- ing being the same, " of Human Unity." This man of gigantic personality, whose name to our shame is not inscribed in the Pantheon of Europe as well as of Asia, sank his ploughshare in the soil of India and sixty years of labour left her transformed. A great writer of Sanskrit, Bengali, Arabic, Persian and English, the father of modern Bengali prose, the author of celebrated hymns, poems, sermons, philosophic treatises and political contro- versial writings of all kinds, he sowed his thoughts and his passion broadcast. And out of the earth of Bengal has come forth the harvest a harvest and works and men. * * * The poet's grandfather, Dvarakanath Tagore, a friend of Ram Mohun Roy, was the chief supporter of the Brahmo Samaj after the latter's death ; 18 Rabindranath's father, Devendranath Tagore (1817-1905), Roy's second successor after the interregnum of Ramchandra Vidyabagish, was the man who really organized the Brahmo Samaj. This noble figure, aureoled in history with the name of Saint (Maharshi) bestowed upon him by his people, merits some attempt at a short description. 14 He had the physical and spiritual beauty, the high intd- 11 Dvarakanath, like Roy, died during a journey to England in 1846. This double death in the West is a sign of the current carrying towards Europe the first pilots of the Brahmo Samaj. 14 Devendranath left an autobiography in Bengali (translated into English by Satyendranath Tagore and Indiri Devi, 1909, Cal- cutta), which gives the story of the long pilgrimage of his inner life from the depths of illusion and superstition to the Spirit of the Living God, and is in reality the religious Journal of his soul. (Of. an excellent little article by M. Dugard in Feuilks de I'Inde, ist volume, 1928, C. A. H6gman, editor, Boulogne-sur-Seine.) 74 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY lect, the moral purity, the aristocratic perfection, which he bequeathed to his children ; moreover, he possessed the same deep and warm poetic sensibility. Born at Calcutta, the eldest son of a rich family, brought up in orthodox traditions, his adolescence was exposed to the seductions of the world and the snares of pleasure, from which he was rescued by a visitation of death to his home. But he was to pass through a long moral crisis before he reached the threshold of religious space. It is characteristic that his decisive advances were always the result of poetic emotions roused by some accidental happening : the wind that carried to him the name of Hari (Vishnu), chanted to a dying man on a night of full moon on the banks of the Ganges ; or the words of a boatman during a storm " Be not afraid ! Forward ! " or again the wind that blew a torn page of Sanskrit to his feet, whereon were written words from the Upanishads, which seemed to him the voice of God " Leave all and follow Him ! Enjoy His inexpres- sible riches. ..." In 1839 with his brothers and sisters and several friends he founded a Society for the propagation of the truths in which they believed. Three years later he joined the Brahmo Samaj and became its leading spirit. It was he who built up its faith and ritual. He organized its regular worship, founded a school of theology for the training of ministers, preached himself and in 1848 wrote in Sanskrit the Brahmo Dharma, " a theistic manual of religion and ethics for the edification of the faithful." 15 He himself considered that it was inspired. 16 The source of his inspir- 1 An English translation has just been published by H. Chundra Sarkar. The Brahmo Dharma has had a large circulation in India, where it has been translated into different dialects. " It was the Truth of God that penetrated my heart. These living truths came down into my heart from Him who is the Life and .the Light and the Truth." (Devendranath.) He dictated the first part in three hours, and the whole of the treatise was pro- duced " in the language of the Upanishads like a river ; spiritual truths flowed through my mind by His grace. 1 ' The danger with this process of inspired legislation, the natural expression of a man of Devendranath's temperament, is that, on the one hand, his Brahmo Samaj maintained that " Truth is th.e only eternal and imperishable scripture " and did not recognize any other holy book as scripture, and, on the other, that Ttuth rested on the authority 75 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA ation, of quite a different order from that- of Ram Mohun Roy, was almost entirely the Upanishads but subjected to a free interpretation. 17 Devendranath afterwards laid down the four articles of faith of the Brahmo Samaj : 1. In the beginning was nothing. The One Supreme Being alone existed. He created the universe. 2. He alone is the God of Truth, Infinite Wisdom, Good- ness and Power, Eternal and Omnipresent, the One without second. 3. Our salvation depends on belief in Him and in His worship in this world and the next. 4. Belief consists in loving Him and doing His will. The faith of the Brahmo Samaj then is a faith in a One God, who created the universe out of nothing, and who is characterized essentially by the Spirit of Kindness, and whose absolute adoration is necessary for the salvation of man in the next world. I have, no means of judging whether this is as purely Hindu a conception as Devendranath thought it was. But it is interesting to note that the Tagore family belong to a community of Brahmins called Pirilis, or chief Ministers, as posts occupied by its members under the Musulman regime. In a sense they were put outside caste by their relations with Mohammedans ; 18 it is, however, perhaps not too much to say that the persistent rigour of their theism has been due to this influence. From Dvarakanath to Rabindranath they have been the implacable enemies of all forms of idolatry. 19 According to K. T. Paul, Devendranath had to wage a of this inner outpouring which had issued in the last resort from several of the Hindu Scriptures, chosen and commented upon in a preconceived sense. 1T Devendranath's attitude to the Holy Books was not always consistent. Between 1844 and 1846 at Benares he seems to have considered that the Vedas were infallible, but later after 1847 he abandoned fills idea and individual inspiration gained the upper hand. " (Cf. Manjulal Dave : The Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, 1927.) " Over the door of Shantiniketan, the home of the Tagores, an inscription runs : " In this place no image is to be adored." But it goes on to add : " And no man's faith is to be despised." Islamic influences in the infancy of Ram Mohun Roy as well must always be borne in mind in considering the penetration of the Indian spirit with the current of monotheism. THE BUILDERS OF UNITY prolonged struggle, on the one hand against the practices of orthodox Hinduism, and, on the other, against Christian propaganda which sought to gain a footing in the Brahmo Samaj. The need for defence led him to surround the citadel with a fortification of firm and right principles as picket posts. The bridge was raised between it and the two extremes of Indian religion polytheism, which Deven- dranath strictly prohibited, 20 and the absolute monism of Sankara ; for the Brahmo Burg was the stronghold of the great Dualism of the One and personal God and Human Reason, to whom God has granted the power and the right to interpret the Scriptures. I have already pointed out that in Devendranath's case and still more that of his successors, Reason had a tendency to be confused with religious inspiration. About 1860 from the depths of an eighteen months' retreat in the Himalayas near the Simla Hills he produced a garland of solitary meditation. 21 These 10 To such a degree that at his father's death in 1846 the eldest son, whose business it was to arrange the funeral ceremonies, re- fused to bow to family tradition because it included idolatrous rites. The scandal was so great that his family and friends broke with him. I must not linger over the years of noble trial which followed. Devendranath devoted himself to the crushing task of paying back his father's creditors in full and of meeting all the engagements made by his prodigality ; for he died heavily in debt. 11 His young son, Rabindranath, accompanied him. I love to associate with the magnificent memories of this im- passioned retreat in the Himalayas, the wonderful appeal later addressed by Rabindranath to the " Shepherd of the peoples." " Ruler of peoples' minds and builder of India's destiny. Thy name rises in the sky from summits of the Himalayas and Vindhyas, flows in the stream of the Ganges and is sung by the surging sea. " In Thy name wake Punjab and Sind, Maratha and Gujrat, Dravid, Utval and Vanga. They gather at Thy feet asking for Thy blessing and singing Thy* victory. " Victory to Thee, Giver of good to all people, Victory to Thee, Builder of India's destiny. " yhere sounds Thy call and they come before Hindus and Buddhists, the Jains and Sikhs, the mans and Christians. The East and the West love at Thy shrine. " Victory to Thee who makest one the min^ " Victory to Thee, Builder of India's destifl Call to the Fatherland.) In point of fact Rabindranath profited given to the primitive Brahmo Samaj by 77 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA thoughts were later expanded into improvised sermons deeply moving to his Calcutta public. Further he bestowed upon the Brahmo Samaj a new liturgy inspired by the Upanishads and impregnated with an ardent and pure spirituality. A short time after his return from the Himalayas in 1862 he adopted as his coadjutor Keshab Chunder Sen, a young man of twenty-three, who was destined to surpass him and to provoke a schism, or rather a series of schisms in the Brahmo Samaj. This man, 22 who only lived from 1838 to 1884, irresolute, restless but at the same time inspired, was the chief per- sonality to influence the Brahmo Samaj during the second half of the nineteenth century. He enriched and renewed it to such an extent that he endangered its very existence. He was the representative of a different class and gener- ation much more deeply impregnated with Western influ- ences. Instead of being a great aristocrat like Roy and Devendranath, he belonged to the liberal and distinguished middle class of Bengal, who were in constant intellectual touch with Europe. He belonged to the sub-caste of physicians. His grandfather, a remarkable man, the native 11 For Keshab Chunder Sen, see 1. Pandit Gour Govindo Roy : Nine volumes have appeared of a biography in Bengali. 2. Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar (his chief disciple and successor) : The Faith and Progress of the Brahmo Samaj, 1882, Calcutta. Aims and Principles of Keshab Ch. Sen, 1889, Calcutta. 3. Promotho Loll Sen : Keshab Chunder Sen, a Study, 1902, new edition, 1915, Calcutta. 4. T. L. Vaswami : Sri Keshab Ch. Sen t a Social Mystic, 1916, Calcutta. 5. B. Mozoomdar (President of the Keshab Mission Society) : Professor Max Mutter on Ramakrishna ; the world on Keshab Ch. Sen t 1900, Calcutta. 6. Manila! C. Parekh : Brahmarshi Keshab Ch. Sen, 1926, Rajkot, Oriental: Christ House. (This work by an Indian Christian disciple is the only one to show clearly Keshab's Christianity. It was at first tentative, but gradually took possession of him more and more definitely and completely.) 7* Keshab Chunder Sen : A Voice from the Himalayas, a collec- tion oithe lectures delivered by Keshab at Simla in 1868, preceded by an iatro^ /v *^** T*V Simla. THE BUILDERS OF UNITY secretary of the Asiatic Society, had control over the publi- cation of all the editions of books published in Hindustani. He was left an orphan at an early age, and was brought up in an English School. It was this that made him so different from his two predecessors ; for he never knew Sanskrit and very soon broke away from the popular forms of the Hindu religion. 28 Christ had touched him, and it was to be his mission in life to introduce him into the Brahmo Samaj, and into the heart of a group of the best minds in India. When he died The India Christian Herald said of him : " The Christian Church mourns the death of its greatest ally. Christians looked upon him as God's messenger, sent to awake India to the spirit of Christ. Thanks to him hatred of Christ died out/' This last statement is not quite correct ; for we shall see to what point Keshab himself had to suffer as the champion of Christ. The real significance of his life has been obscured by most of the men who have spoken of him even within the Brahmo Samaj ; for they were offended by the heresy of their chief and tried to hide it. He himself only revealed it by degrees, so that it is through documents written as long as twenty years before his death that we learn from his own lips that his life had been influenced from his youth up by three great Christian visitants, John the Baptist, Christ and St. Paul. 24 Moreover in a serious confidential 11 It is only natural that in spite of this fact he never lost the religious temperament peculiar to his race. Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar in the course of a conversation in 1884 with Rama- krishna related the mystic childhood of Keshab. (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.) He was early " marked by non-attachment to the things of this world " and absorbed in inward concentration and contemplation. " He was even subject to fits of loss of conscious- ness due to excess of devotiofl." He later applied the forms of Hindu religious " devotion " to non-Hindu religious objects. And the " Vaishnavited " form of Christianity he adopted was accom- panied by a constant study of Yoga. 14 Easter, 1879 ; Lecture : India Asks, Who is Christ ? "... My Christ, my sweet Christ, the brightest jewel of my heart, the necklace of my soul for twenty years have I cherished Him in this my miserable heart. 1 ' January, 1879 ; Lecture : Am I an Inspired Prophet ? " What was it that made me so singular in the earlier years of my life ? Providence brought me into the presence of three very singular persons in those days. They were among my soul's earliest 79 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA letter to his intimate disciple, Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar, 26 a letter of primary importance passed over in silence by non-Christian Brahmos, he shows us how he was waiting until the time was ripe to make public avowal of his faith in Christ. The double life Keshab led for so long, was partly caused by the duality of his own character, compounded as it was of the diverse and incompatible elements of the East and the West, which were in constant conflict with each other. Hence it is very difficult for the historian to make an impartial study ; Hindu biographers, in nearly every case hotly partizans, have done nothing to lighten his task. 26 He was introduced to the Brahmo Samaj by acquaintances. I met three stately figures, heavenly, majestic, and full of divine radiance. . . . (The first) John the Baptist was seen going about in the wilderness of India, saying, ' Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand/ ... I fell down at the feet of John the Baptist. ... He passed away, and then came another prophet far greater than he, the prophet of Nazareth. ... ' Take no thought for the morrow/ These words of Jesus found a lasting lodgment in my heart. Hardly had Jesus finished his words, when came another prophet, and that was the travelled ambassador of Christ, the strong, heroic and valiant Apostle Paul. . . . And his words (relating to chastity) came upon me like a burning fire at a most critical period of my life." It should be added that he had gained a knowledge of the New Testament at the English College, for a chaplain used to read it to the young people, translating it from the Greek. 15 In this letter, whereon the exact date does not appear, but which it is safe to assume was written to Mozoomdar directly after his famous lecture in 1866 on " Jesus Christ, Europe and Asia," Keshab explained himself thus : "... I have my own ideas about Christ, but I am not bound to give them out in due form, until the altered circumstances of the country gradually develop them out of my mind. Jesus is identical with self-sacrifice, and as He lived and preached in the fullness of time, so must He be in -ftini preached in the fullness of time ... I am, therefore, patiently waiting that I may grow with the age and the nation and that the spirit of Christ's sacrifice may grow therewith." (Cf. Manilal C. Parekh : op. cit. t pp. 29-31.) " Tfie author does not attempt to hide his grudge against these historians ; for nearly all of them seem to consider history as a mass of "material wherein one is at liberty to choose only those facts which serve to plead a personal cause, and systematically to ignore the rest. (This is apart from the superb indifference to scientific exactitude, which characterizes all Hindu historians : it is a miracle if a few dates can be gleaned here and there : even when they do appear they have been scattered with such careless 80 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY Devendranath T.agore's son, a student of the same college, and during the early days of his admission, young Keshab was surrounded with love. He became the darling of Devendranath and of the young members of the Brahmo Samaj, who felt themselves drawn into closer contact with him than with the noble Devendranath, dwelling in spite of himself in Olympian isolation as the result of his breeding and idealism. 27 Keshab had a social sense and wished to rouse the same feeling throughout India. A hyper-indi- vidualist by nature and doubtless just because this was the case, 28 he early in life recognized that part of the evils of his country arose out of this same hyper-individualism, and that India needed to acquire a new moral conscience. " Let all souls be socialized and realize their unity with the people, the visible community/ 1 This conception, uniting 29 the hand that it is impossible to rely upon them.) This short disser- tation on Keshab's personality and its development has had to be rewritten three times, after the discovery of essential points, either omitted or twisted out of all recognition by his accredited Indian biographers. 87 " Devendranath was too preoccupied by his personal relation- ship to God to feel more than moderately the call of social responsi- bilities." From a letter of a friend of the Tagores. 18 His chief disciple, Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar, said that he constantly struggled against the flights of his mystic nature, and that " he always succeeded in containing them " (a fact which is not altogether true) ; "for the great object of his life was to bring religion within the reach of heads of families/' in other words to re-establish it in ordinary e very-day life. This was one of the sources of those contradictions in his character, which compro- mised his work. He attempted to reconcile the irreconcilable the mystic upspringing natural to him, and the canalization of the divine stream for the moral and social service of the com- munity Theocentrism and anthropocentrism, to use the language of Western mysticism as analysed by the able Henri Br6mond. Both of them, moreover, in the case of Keshab existed in the highest degree. But his rich nature, too plastic, too perpetually receptive to all spiritual foods offered for the satisfaction of his appetite, which was greater than his faculty for absorption, made him a living contradiction. It is said that while at College he played the part of Hamlet in a performance of Shakespeare's play. In point of fact he remained the young prince of Denmark to the end of his life. In theory at least. In practice Keshab never succeeded in touching the masses. His thought was too impregnated with elements alien to the thought of India. 8l G PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA each one of whom was charged with his own special message, and was to be accepted without special attachment to any single one. He threw open his Church to men of all countries and all ages, and introduced for the first time extracts from the Bible, the Koran, the Zend Avesta 86 into the manual of devotional lessons for the use of the Brahmo Samaj. But far from dying down, feeling ran higher. Keshab was not the man to be unmoved by it. His sensitive and defenceless heart suffered more than most from disaffection. Public misunderstanding, the desertion of his companions, heavy material difficulties, and over and above all the torments of his own conscience, perhaps even doubts as to his mission added to " a very lively sense of weakness, of sin and of repentance " peculiarly his own as distinct from most of the other religious spirits of Hinduism, 86 resulted in a devastating crisis of soul, which lasted throughout 1867. He was alone with his grief, with- out any outside help, alone with God. But God spoke to him, so that the religious experience of that year when he was racked by conflicting emotions, as he daily officiated as divine priest by himself in his house, led to a complete transformation not only in his ideas but in their expression. Up till then he had been the chief among religious intellec- tuals, a moralist, a stranger to sentimental effusions, which had been repellent to him ; but now he was flooded by a torrent of emotion love and tears and gave himself up to it in rapture. This was the dawn of a new era for the Brahmo Samaj. * This manual, called the Slokasangraha (1866), though a great deal larger than Devendranath's, never had such a wide circulation in India as the Brahmo Dharma. Nevertheless Keshab followed the true tradition of Roy when he said that " the harmony of religions was the real mission of the Brahmo Samaj. 1 ' 11 It was P. C. Mozoomdar who noted in him this " sense of sin " so curiously at variance with the spirit of Devendranath as well as Ramakrishna and above all of Vivekananda. We shall see later that Vivekananda denounced it as evidence of a weak dis- position, a real mental malady, for which be threw the blame on Christianity. The state of mind that Keshab systematically cul- tivated culminated in a sermon delivered in 1881 : We Apostles of the New Dispensation, where he likened himself to Judas much to the scandal of his hearers. 8 4 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY The mysticism 'of the great Bhakta, Chiatanya, and the Sankirtans were introduced within its walls. From morning till night there were prayers and hymns accompanied by Vaishnavite musical instruments, and feasts of God ; 37 and Keshab officiated at them all, his face bathed in tears he, who, it was said, had never wept. The wave of emotion spread. Keshab's sincerity, his spirit of universal com- prehension and his care for the public weal brought him the sympathy alike of the best minds of India and England, including the Viceroy. His journey to England in 1870 was a triumphal progress. The enthusiasm he roused was equal to that inspired by Kossuth. During his six months' stay 88 he addressed seventy meetings of 40,000 persons and fascinated his audiences by the simplicity of his English and by his musical voice. He was compared to Gladstone. He was greeted as the spiritual ally of the West, the Evan- gelist of Christ in the East. In all good faith both sides were labouring under delusions, destined to be dissipated during the following years, not without a naive deception of the English. For Keshab remained deeply Indian at heart and was not to be enrolled in the ranks of European Christianity. On the other hand, he thought he could enroll it. India and the Brahmo Samaj profited from the good disposition of the government. 89 In its reconstituted form, it spread in all directions, to Simla, Bombay, Lahore, Lucknow, Monghyr, etc. A mission tour undertaken by Keshab across India in 1873 with the object of bringing about unity among the brothers and sisters of the new faith, a tour which was the forerunner of the great voyage of exploration undertaken twenty years later by Vivekan- 17 It is noticeable that on Ijjiis occasion there was no question of Christ. The Bhakti of Chaitanya is another aspect of Keshab's religion. " Thus/' wrote P. C. Mozoomdar, " Keshab stood at the threshold of his independent career with the shadow of Jesus on the one hand, and the shadow of Chaitanya on the other." His enemies took account of it in 1884 when some of them reported maliciously to Ramakrishna that Keshab had claimed to be " a partial incarnation of Christ and Chaitanya." 11 He came to know Gladstone, Stuart Mill, Max Miiller, Francis Newman, Dean Stanley, etc., personally. * Especially in the case of several reforms, among them a legis- lative one directly concerning the Brahmo Samaj the legal recog- nition of Brahmo marriages. 85 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA anda in the guise of a wandering Sannyasin. The tour opened up new horizons and he believed that he had found the key to popular polytheism, so repugnant to the Brahmo Samaj, and that he could make an alliance between it and pure theism. But to this union, realized spontaneously by Ramakrishna at the same time, Keshab brought a spirit of intellectual compromise. He was obliged to convince himself (he failed to convince the polytheists) that their gods were at bottom nothing but the names of different attributes of the one God. " Their (Hindu) idolatry," he wrote in The Sunday Mirror, " is nothing but the worship of divine attributes materialized. If the material shape is given up, what remains is a beautiful allegory. . . . We have found out that every idol worshipped by the Hindu represents an attribute of God, and that each attribute is called by a peculiar name. The believer in the New Dispensation is required to worship God as the possessor of all those attributes, represented by the Hindu as innumerable, or three hundred and thirty millions. To believe in an undivided Deity, without reference to the aspects of his nature, is to believe in an abstract God, and it would lead us to practical rationalism and infidelity. If we are to worship Him in all His manifestations, we shall name one attribute Lakshmi, another Saraswati, another Mahadeva, etc., etc. . . ." This meant a great step forward in religious compre- hension, embracing as it did the greater part of mankind. But it never came to anything because Keshab intended that his Theism should have all the real power and poly- theism was to receive nothing but outward honour. On the other hand, he avoided Advaitism, absolute Monism, which has always been forbidden to the Brahmo. The result was that religious reason sat on the fence separating the two camps of the two extreme faiths. The prevailing situation was not an exact equilibrium of rest and the position in which Keshab insisted on placing himself could not be a permanent one. For he believed that he was called by God to dictate His new revealed law, the New Dispensation, from thence. He began to proclaim it in 40 August i, 1880 : " The Philosophy of Idol worship." 86 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY 1875, 41 the year when his relations with Ramakrishna began. Like so many self-appointed legislators, he found it difficult to establish law and order in his own mind, especially as he wished his legislation to be all embracing and to include Christ and Brahman, the Gospels and Yoga, religion and reason. Ramakrishna reached the same point in all simplicity through his heart, and made no attempt to fence his discovery within a body of doctrine and precept ; he was content to show the way, to set the example, to give the impetus. Keshab adopted at the same time the methods of an intellectual European at the head of a school of comparative religion and the methods of inspired persons of India and America Bhakti in tears, Revivals and public confessions. He gave to each of his favourite disciples a different form of religion to study 42 and Yoga to practise. 48 His skill as a teacher was shown in choosing for each disciple the one best adapted to his individual character. He himself oscillated between two advisors, both equally dear to him the living example of Ramakrishna to whom he 41 In the Lecture : " Behold the Light of Heaven in India." 4> Each of his four chosen disciples dedicated himself to a life- long study of one of the four great religions, and in some cases was absorbed into the subject of his study : Upadhyaya Gour Govindo Roy was given Hinduism and produced a monumental work, a Sanskrit commentary on the Gita and a life of Sri Krishna : Sadhu Aghore Nath studied Buddhism, and wrote a life of Buddha in Bengali, following in his footsteps until he was cut off in the prime of a saintly life : Bhai Girish Chunder Sen devoted himself to Islam, translated the Koran and wrote a life of Mahomet and several other works in Arabic and Persian. Finally Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar studied Christianity and published a book called The Oriental Christ. He was so impregnated with its spiritual atmosphere that real Indian Christians such as Manilal C. Parekh, sprang from the school of thought he founded. 4i After January i, 1875, when he inaugurated the new method of spiritual development usually called the Dispensation, he varied the paths of the soul (Yogas) according to the character of his disciples, recommending Bhakti to some, Jnana to others, Raja to others. The different forms of devotion were linked together by the different names or attributes of God. (Cf. P. C. Mozoomdar.) I shall return to this point in the second part of this volume when I study Hindu mysticism and the different kinds of Yoga. PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA went for guidance in ecstasy, and the precepts of the Christian faith as practised by an Anglican monk, who later became a Roman Catholic, Luke Rivington. Moreover he could never choose between the life of God and the life of the world, and with disarming sincerity he maintained that the one was not necessarily harmful to the other. 44 But the confusion of his mind wronged him and reacted on the Brahmo Samaj, all the more because he was a man " of the most transparent sincerity/' 46 who neglected the most elementary precautions to conceal the changeableness and heterogeneity of his nature. The result was a new schism in the Brahmo Samaj in 1878, and Keshab found himself the butt of violent attacks from his own people, who accused him of having betrayed his principles. 46 The majority of his friends deserted him and so he fell fatally into the hands of the few faithful ones that remained Ramakrishna and Father Luke Rivington. Moreover this new trial reopened the door to a whole flood of professions of the Christian faith, which became more and more explicit and in accordance with the deepest metaphysics of Christi- anity. Thus in the lecture " Am I an Inspired Prophet ? " (January, 1879), he described his childish visions of John the Baptist, Christ and St. Paul ; in " India asks, Who is Christ ? " (Easter, 1879), he announced to India the coming of " the Bridegroom . . . my Christ, my sweet Christ, born of God and man 1 '; 47 and in "Does God 44 His well-wishers, such as Ramakrishna, did not fail to remark with a touch of malice that this saintly man left his affairs in good order and a rich house, etc., when he died. Keshab did not renounce the pleasures of society, he took an active part in amusements and played in the dramas acted in his house. (Cf. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, April, 1884.) But Ramakrishna never doubted his sincerity. It was unimpeachable. He only regretted that such a religious and gifted man should remain half-way to God instead of giving himself entirely to Him. 41 Promotho Loll Sen : op. cit. 4i The occasion was a domestic one, the marriage of his daughter before the age established by the law of the Brahmo Samaj to a Maharaja. But here again, as in the schism with Devendranath, the real cause was hidden. A third Brahmo Samaj was founded, the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, more narrow and definitely anti- Christian. 4T " My Master Jesus . . . Young men of India . . . Believe and remember . . . He will come to you as self-surrender, as 88 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY Manifest Himself Alone ? " he showed the son sitting on the right hand of the Father. 48 All these pronouncements, however, did not hinder him from dictating at the same time from the heights of the Himalayas his famous Epistle to Indian Brethren (1880) for the jubilee of the Brahmo Samaj, announcing in a pontifical tone " Urbi et Orbi," 49 the Message entrusted to him by God, the New Dispensation. One might believe that the words came out of the Bible : " Hearken, Oh Hindustan, the Lord your God is one." So begins the Epistle to the Indian Brethren. " Jehovah the great spirit, whose clouds thunder ' I am/ whom the heavens and the earth declare/' (ibid.) " I write this epistle to you, dear and beloved friends, in the spirit and after the manner of St. Paul, however unworthy I am of his honoured Master. . . . (ibid.) But he adds, " Paul wrote full of faith in Christ. As a theist I write to you this, my humble epistle, at the feet, not of one prophet only, but of all the prophets in heaven and earth, living or dead. . . /' For he claimed to be the fulfilment of Christ the fore- runner. " The New Dispensation is the prophecy of Christ ful- filled. . , . The Omnipotent speaks to-day to our country as formerly he did to other nations. . . /' 50 At this moment he even believed that he was formed of the same stuff as the Spirit of God. ascetism, as Yoga . . . The Bridegroom cometh . . . Let India, beloved India, be dressed in all her jewellery." Again Keshab declared in his articles in the Indian Mirror, 11 What the Brahmo Samaj aid to clear the moral character of Christ more than twelve years ago, it does with respect to His divinity at the present day." (April 20, 1879.) There were no half measures about this. Christ was God. And again, " The Mosaic dispensation only ? Perhaps the Hindu dispensation also. In India He will fulfil the Hindu dispensation." 4i This lecture followed and completed another : God- Vision in the nineteenth century, wherein Keshab in his homage to science, is a forerunner of Vivekananda, who has joined heaven and earth. 41 Urbi et OrWthat is to say, the City (Rome) and the world (like the Roman Pope). Cf. sermon : " Behold the Light of Heaven in India " (1875). PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA " The Spirit of God and my inner self are knit together. If you have seen me, you have seen Him. . . ." What then does the Omnipotent, whose voice he is, have to declare ? What " new Love, new Hope, new Joy does he bring ? " (" How sweet is this new Evangel. 11 ) This is what Jehovah as God of India dictates to the new Moses : " The infinite Spirit, whom no eye hath seen, and no ear hath heard, is your God, and you should have none other God. There are two false gods, raised by men of India in opposition to the All Highest the Divinity which ignorant hands have fashioned, and the divinity which the vain dreams of intellectuals have imagined are alike the enemy of our Lord. 61 You must abjure them both. . . . Do not adore either dead matter, or dead men, or dead abstractions. . . . Adore the living Spirit, who sees with- out eyes. . . . The communion of the soul with God and with the departed saints shall be your true heaven, and you must have none other. ... In the spiritual exaltation of the soul find the joy and the holiness of heaven. . . . Your heaven is not far away ; it is within you. You must honour and love all the ancients of the human family prophets, saints, martyrs, sages, apostles, missionaries, philanthropists of all ages and all countries without caste prejudice. Let not the holy men of India monopolize your affection and your homage : Render to all prophets the devotion and universal affection that is their due. . . . Every good and great man is the personification of some special element of Truth and Divine Goodness. Sit humbly at the feet of all heavenly messengers. . . . Let their blood be your blood, their flesh your flesh : . . . Live in them and they will live in you* for ever." Nothing more noble can be imagined. This is the very highest expression of universal theism ; and it comes very close to the free theism of Europe without any forced act il The first divinity condemned is easy to define, the idols of wood, metal and stone. The second is further defined by " the unseen idols of modern scepticism, abstractions, unconscious evolu- tion, blind protoplasm, etc." This, then, is scientific or rational or Advaitist intellectualism. But Keshab was far from condemning real science as is shown by his lecture on The Vision of God in the Nineteenth Century. (1879.) 90 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY of allegiance to* revealed religion. It opens its arms to all the purified spirits of the whole earth, past, present and future ; for the Gospel of Keshab does not claim to be the final word of the revelation. " The Indian Scriptures are not closed. 52 New chapters are added every year. . . . Go ever further in the love and the knowledge of God : . . . What the Lord will reveal to us in ten years' time who can say, except Himself ? " But how is this free and broad theism with its serene and assured tone to be reconciled to his abasement at the feet of Christ in the previous year ? 58 " I must tell you . . . that I am connected with Jesus' Gospel, and occupy a prominent place in it. I am the prodigal son of whom Christ spoke and I am trying to return to my Father in a penitent spirit. Nay, I will say more for the satisfaction and edification of my opponents. ... I am Judas, that vile man who betrayed Jesus . . . the veritable Judas who sinned against the truth. And Jesus lodges in my heart : . . ." The overwhelming effect of such a public confession on those members of the Brahmo Samaj, who had followed their chief up to that point, 54 may be imagined. But Keshab was still debating with himself. He pro- fessed Christ but he denied that he was a " Christian." 65 He tried to unite Christ to Socrates and to Chiatanya in a strange way by thinking of each of them as a part of 81 A favourite idea of Vivekananda may be recognized therein. " In the sermon : " We, the Apostles of the New Dispensation " (1881). 44 That is why their writings about Keshab are very careful (as far as I know) to make no mention of such an avowal. 55 " Honour Christ but nevejr be ' Christian ' in the popular accep- tation of the term. . . . Christ is not Christianity . . . Let it be your ambition to outgrow the popular types of narrow Christian faith and merge in the vastness of Christ " : In an article of the same period called " Other Sheep have I." " We belong to no Christian sect. We disclaim the Christian name. Did the immediate disciples of Christ call themselves Chris- tian ? . . . Whoso believes in God and accepts Christ as the Son of God has fellowship with Christ in the Lord. . . . Hear his words' And other sheep I have. 1 We, the Gentiles of the New Dispensation, are the other sheep. The shepherd knows us ... Christ has found us and accepted us. ... That is enough. Is any Christian greater than Christ ? " 9* PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA his body or of his mind. 66 Nevertheless he instituted the sacramental ceremonies of Christianity in his Samaj, adapt- ing them to Indian usage. On March 6, 1881, he celebrated the Blessed Sacrament with rice and water instead of bread and wine, 57 and three months later the sacrament of bap- tism, wherein Keshab himself set the example, glorifying the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Finally in 1882 he took the decisive step. The Christian Trinity, of all Christian mysteries, has always been the greatest stumbling block for Asia, and an object of repulsion or derision. 58 Keshab not only accepted and adopted it, but extolled it with gladness 69 and was enlightened by it. This mystery seemed to him, and certainly not without reason, to be the keystone of the arch of Christian meta- physics, the supreme conception of the universe . . . " the treasury in which lies the accumulated wealth of the world's sacred literature all that is precious in philosophy, theology, and poetry (of all humanity) . . . the loftiest expression of the world's religious consciousness. . . ." He defines the three Persons very exactly, I believe, from an orthodox point of view. 60 Did anything still separate him from Christianity ? 56 " The Lord Jesus is my will, Socrates my head, Chaitanya my heart, the Hindu Rishi my soul and the philanthropic Howard my right hand/' 57 Keshab read a verse from St. Luke, and he prayed " that the Holy Spirit might turn their grossly material substance into sancti- fying spiritual forces so that upon entering our system they might be assimilated to it as the flesh and blood of all the saints in Christ Jesus." 61 The reason for this is obscure as regards Vedantic India ; for she also has her Trinity, and Keshab rightly made it approach the Christian Trinity : " Sat, Chit, Ananda " (Being, Knowledge, Happiness, which Keshab translated by Truth, Wisdom and Joy), the three in one : Satchidananda. In a lecture of 1882 : " That Marvellous Mystery, the Trinity." " Here you have the complete triangular figure of the Trinity. The apex is the very God Jehovah. . . . From Him comes down the Son . . . and touches one end of the base of humanity . . . and then by the power of the Holy Ghost drags up degenerate humanity to himself. Divinity coming down to humanity is the Son, Divinity carrying humanity to heaven is the Holy Ghost ; this is the whole philosophy of salvation. The Creator, the Exemplar, and the Sanctifier, I am, I love, I save ; the Still God, the Journey- 92 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY * Only one thing but it was a world in itself his own mes- sage, the Indian Dispensation. He could never bring him- self to renounce it. He indeed adopted Christ, but Christ in His turn had to adopt India and the Theism of Keshab. " Begone, idolatry : Preachers of idol-worship, adieu." (This apostrophe was addressed to the West.) Christ is the eternal word. " As sleeping Logos Christ lived poten- tially in the Father's bosom, long, long before he came into this world of ours. ' ' He appeared before his physical life in Greece and Rome, in Egypt and in India, in the poets of the Rig- Veda, as well as in Confucius and Sakya-Muni ; and the role of this Indian apostle of the New Dispen- sation was to proclaim his true and universal meaning. For after the Son came the Spirit, and " this Church of the New Dispensation ... is altogether an institution of the Holy Spirit " and completes the Old and the New Testaments. And so no part of this Himalayan theism was lost in spite of rude shocks from above and below, which might well have undermined its citadel. By a violent effort of thought, Keshab achieved the incorporation of Christ within it, and covered his own New Dispensation with the name of Christ, believing that he was called to reveal the real meaning of Christ to Western Christianity. This was the avowed object of Keshab's last message before his death, Asia's message to Europe (1883). " Sec- tarian and carnal Europe, put up into the scabbard the ing God, the Returning God . . ." Keshab. (Cf. the treatises of classical Catholic mysticism.) " The action whereby the Father engenders the Son is well ex- plained by the term issuing or coming out . . . Exivi a Patre. The Holy Spirit is produced by th% return way. ... It is the divine way and subsists in God whereby God returns to himself. ... In the same way we come out of God by the creation, which is attri- buted to the Father by the Son, we return to him by grace, which is the attribute of the Holy Spirit." (P. Claude Sequenot : Conduite d'Oraison . . . 1634, quoted by Henri Br&nond : La Metaphysique des Saints, I, pp. 116- Surprising though it may seem, Keshab knew the Berullian or Salesian philosophy of prayer. In a note of June 30, 1881, on the renunciation of John the Baptist, he quotes letters of Francis de Sales to Madame de Chantal. 93 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA sword of your narrow faith : Abjure it and join the true Catholic and universal Church in the name of Christ the Son of God. . . ." " Christian Europe has not understood one half of Christ's words. She has comprehended that Christ and God are one, but not that Christ and humanity are one. That is the great mystery, which the New Dispensation reveals to the world : not only the reconciliation of Man with God ; but the reconciliation of man with man : . . . Asia says to Europe, ' Sister, Be one in Christ : . . . All that is good and true and beautiful the meekness of Hindu Asia, the truthfulness of the Musulman and the charity of the Buddhist all that is holy is of Christ. And the new Pope of the new Rome in Asia intones the beautiful Song of Atonement. 61 But he was a real Pope, and the unity of reconciled mankind had to be according to his doctrine ; in order to defend it he always kept the thunderbolt in his hand, and he refused all compromise on the subject of the uni- theistic principle The Unity of God. " Science is one. The Church is one/' His disciple, Mozoomdar, makes him use the denuncia- tory words of Christ, but more violently. " There is only one way. There is no back door into heaven. He who enters not by the front door is a thief and a robber." This is the antithesis of the smiling words of kindness uttered by Ramakrishna. 62 l " And the new song of Atonement is sung with enthusiasm by millions of voices, representing all the various languages of the world, millions of souls, each dressed in its national garb of piety and righteousness, glowing in an infinite and complete variety of colours, shall dance round and round the Father's throne, and peace and joy shall reign for ever." " One day when the young Naren (Vivekananda) denounced certain religious sects with his customary impatience, because their practices roused his furious disgust, Ramakrishna looked at him tenderly and said, " My boy, there is a back door to every house. Why should not one have the liberty to enter into a house by that if one chooses to ? But, of course, I agree with you that the front entrance is the best." And the biographer of Ramakrishna adds that these simple words " modified his Puritanical view of life, which he as a Brahmo had 94 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY The innate need of Unitarian discipline which does not tally with religious universalism, and often unwittingly merges into spiritual imperialism, led Keshab at the end of his life to lay down the code of the New Samhita 68 (September 2, 1883), containing what he calls " the national law of the Aryans of the New Church in India . . . God's moral law adapted to the peculiar needs and character of reformed Hindus, and based upon their national instincts and traditions." It contains in effect a national Unitarian- ism One God, one scripture, one baptism, one marriage a whole code of injunctions for the family, for the home, for business, for study, for amusement, for charity, for relationships, etc. But his code is a purely abstract one for an Indian that had not yet come into existence, and whose advent is doubtful. Was he himself sure that it would ever come ? The entire edifice of voluntary reason rested on uncertain foundations, on a nature divided between East and West. When illness came 64 the cement was loosened. To whom was his soul to belong, Christ or Kali ? On his death-bed Ramakrishna, Devendranath his old master to whom he was now reconciled, and the Bishop of Calcutta all visited him. On January i, 1884, he went out for the last time to consecrate a new sanctuary to the Divine Mother, but on January 8 his death-bed was enveloped in the words of a hymn sung at his own request by one of his disciples about Christ's agony in Gethsemane. It was impossible for a nation of simple souls to find their way amid such a constant mental oscillation. But it makes Keshab nearer and more appealing to us, who can study his most intimate thoughts and can see the mental torture accompanying it. It is also true, that the kind and penetrating vision of Ramakrishna understood better than anybody else the hidden tragedy of a being exhausting itself in searching after God, whose body was held. Sri Ramakrishna taught Naren how to regard mankind in the more generous and truer light of weakness and of strength (and not of sin or virtue) ." (Life of Vivekananda, Vol. I, Chapter XLVII.) " Samhita means collection or miscellany. Diabetes, one of the scourges of Bengal, of which Vivekananda also died. 95 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA the prey of the unseen God. 68 But has, a born leader any right, even if he keeps his anguish to himself, to yield to such oscillations in his very last hours ? They were his legacy to the Brahmo Samaj ; and though they enriched its spirit they weakened its authority in India for a long time, if not for ever. We may well ask with Max Muller 66 whether the logical outcome of this theism was not to be found in Christianity ; and that is exactly what Keshab's friends and enemies felt immediately after his death. His obsequies united in common grief the official repre- sentatives of the best minds both of England and of Western- ized India. " He was the chain of union between Europe and India ; " and the chain once broken, could not be resoldered. None of the subsequent moral and religious leaders of India have so sincerely given their adherence to the heart and spirit of the thought and the God of the West. 67 Hence Max Muller could write, " India has lost her greatest son." But the Indian Press, while unanimous * I shall have more to say about the last touching visit of Rama- krishna to Keshab and the profound words he poured out like balm on the hidden wounds of the dying man. 61 Max Muller in 1900 asked Pratap Chunder Mozoomdar who had taken Keshab's place at the head of the Brahmo Samaj and who shared the " Christocentric " ideas of his master, why the Brahmo did not frankly adopt the name Christian and did not organize itself as a national Church of Christ. The idea found a response in P. C. Mozoomdar himself and a group of his young disciples. One of them, Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya, deserves a special study, for he has left a great memory. He passed from the Church of the New Dispensation to the Anglican and eventually to the Roman Catholic Communion. Another is Manilal C. Parekh, the biographer of Keshab, also a convert to Christianity. Both are convinced that if Keshab had lived several years longer he would have entered the Roman Church. Manilal Parekh says " that he was a Protestant in principle and a Catholic in practice . . . Christian in spirit, inclining to Monatism " (faith in the supremacy of the Holy Spirit). " For myself I believe that Keshab was one of those who would have remained at the threshold of the half-open door. But it was fatal that his successors opened the door wide." T The Indian Empire saluted in hiir " the best product of English education and Christian civilization in India. 1 ' And The Hindu Patriot, " the noble product of the education and the culture of the West/' From the Indian point of view such praise was its own con- demnation. 96 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY in acclaiming his genius, was forced to admit that " the number of his disciples was not in accordance with his desert/ 1 68 He was in fact too far away from the deep-seated soul of his people. He wished to raise them all at once to the pure heights of his intellect, which had been itself nourished by the idealism and the Christ of Europe. In social matters none of his predecessors, with the exception of Roy, had done so much for her progress ; but he ran counter to the rising tide of national consciousness, then feverishly awaken- ing. Against him were the three hundred million gods of India and three hundred million living beings in whom they were incarnate the whole vast jungle of human dreams wherein his Western outlook made him miss the track and the scent. He invited them to lose themselves in his Indian Christ, but his invitation remained unanswered. They did not even seem to have heard it. Indian religious thought raised a purely Indian Samaj against Keshab's Brahmo Samaj and against all attempts at Westernization, even during his lifetime, and at its head was apersonalityof the highest order, Dayananda Sarasvaty 69 '1824-83). This man with the nature of a lion is one of those whom Europe is too apt to forget when she judges India, but whom she will probably be forced to remember to her cost ; for he was that rare combination, a thinker of action 70 with a genius for leadership, like Vivekananda after him. 11 The Hindu Patriot. In 1921 the total number of the members of the three Brahmo Samaj as was not more than 6,400 (of which 4,000 were in Bengal, Assam and Behar-Orissa), a minute number in comparison to the members of the Arya Samaj, of which I shall speak later, or of the new ^ects purely mystical, such as the Radhasvami-Satsang. M His real name, abandoned by himself, was Mulshanker. Sarasvaty was the surname of his Guru, whom he regarded as his true father. For Dayananda's life it is necessary to consult the classical book of Lajput Rai (the great nationalist Indian leader) : and The Arya Samaj, with an introduction by Sidney Webb (Long- mans, Green and Co., London, 19*5)- 70 But although the energy of the two men, the immense power of their preaching and their irresistible attraction for the masses were equal, in Vivekananda's case there was the additional fascina- tion of profundity of soul, the desire for pure contemplation, the 97 H PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA While all the religious leaders of whom we have already spoken and shall speak in the future were and are from Bengal, Dayananda came from quite a different land, the one which half a century later gave birth to Gandhi the north-west coast of the Arabian Sea. He was born in Gujarat at Morvi in the state of Kathiawar, of a rich family belonging to the highest grade of Brahmins, 71 no less versed in Vedic learning than in mundane affairs, both political and commercial. His father took part in the Govern- ment of the little native state. He was rigidly orthodox according to the letter of the law, with a stern domineering character, and this last to his sorrow he passed on to his son. As a child Dayananda was therefore brought up under the strictest Brahmin rule, and at the age of eight was invested with the sacred thread and all the severe moral obligations entailed by this privilege rigorously enforced by his family. 72 It seemed as if he was to become a pillar of orthodoxy in his turn, but instead he became the Samson, who pulled down the pillars of the temple ; a striking example among a hundred others of the vanity of human effort, when it imagines that it is possible by a superimposed education to fashion the mind of the rising generation and so dispose of the future. The most certain result is revolt. That of Dayananda is worth recording. When he was fourteen his father took him to the temple to celebrate the great festival of Shiva. He had to pass the night after a strict fast in pious vigil and prayer. The rest of the faithful went to sleep. The young boy alone resisted its spell. Suddenly he saw a mouse nibbling the offerings to the God and running over Shiva's bofly. It was enough. There is no doubt about moral revolt in the heart of a child. In a bent of the inner being towards constant flights against which the necessity for action had always to struggle. Dayananda did not know this tragic division of soul. Nevertheless he was all that was required for the task he had to accomplish. T1 Samavedi, the highest order of Brahmins in the Veda. Tt The vows of Brahmacharya, chastity, purity, poverty through- out student life, and the obligation to recite the Vedas daily, and to live according to a whole system of regular and very strict rites. 98 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY second his faith in the idol was shattered for the rest of his life. He left the temple, went home alone through the night, and thenceforward refused to participate 78 in the religious rites. It marked the beginning of a terrible struggle between father and son. Both were of an unbending and autocratic will which barred the door to any mutual concession. At nineteen Dayananda ran away from home to escape from a forced marriage. He was caught and imprisoned. He fled again, this time for ever (1845). He never saw his father again. For fifteen years this son of a rich Brahmin, despoiled of everything and subsisting on alms, wandered as a Sadhu clad in the saffron robe along the roads of India. This again seems like a first edition of Vivekananda's life and his pilgrimage as a young man over the length and breadth of Hindustan. Like him Dayananda went in search of learned men, ascetics, studying here philosophy, there the Vedas, learning the theory and practice of Yoga. Like him he visited almost all the holy places of India and took part in religious debates. Like him he suffered, he braved fatigue, insult and danger, and this contact with the body of his fatherland lasted four times longer than Vivekananda's experience. In contradistinction to the latter, however, Dayananda remained far from the human masses through which he passed, for the simple reason that he spoke nothing but Sanskrit throughout this period. He was indeed what Vivekananda would have been if he had not encountered Ramakrishna and if his high aristocratic and Puritan pride had not been curbed by the indulgent kindness and rare spirit of comprehension of this most human of Gurus. Dayananda did not see, did flot wish to see, anything round him but superstition and ignorance, spiritual laxity, degrad- ing prejudices and the millions of idols he abominated. At length, about 1860, he found at Mathura an old Guru even more implacable than himself in his condemnation of all weakness and his hatred of superstition, a Sannyasin blind from infancy and from the age of eleven quite alone in the world, a learned man, a terrible man, Swami Virjananda Ti At the present time this night is kept as a festival by the Arya Samaj. 99 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Saraswaty . Dayananda put himself under bis ' ' discipline " 74 which in its old literal seventeenth century sense scarred his flesh as well as his spirit. Dayananda served this untamable and indomitable man for two and a half years as his pupil. It is therefore mere justice to remember that his subsequent course of action was simply the fulfilment of the will of the stern blind man, whose surname he adopted, casting his own to oblivion. When they separated Vir j ananda extracted from him the promise that he would consecrate his life to the annihilation of the heresies that had crept into the Puranic faith, to re-establish the ancient religious methods of the age before Buddha, and to disseminate the truth. Dayananda immediately began to preach in Northern India, but unlike the benign men of God who open all heaven before the eyes of their hearers, he was a hero of the Iliad or of the Gita with the athletic strength of a Hercules, 76 who thundered against all forms of thought other than his own, the only true one. He was so successful that in five years Northern India was completely changed. During these five years his life was attempted four or five times sometimes by poison. Once a fanatic threw a cobra at his face in the name of Shiva, but he caught it and crushed it. It was impossible to get the better of him ; for he possessed an unrivalled knowledge of Sanskrit and the Vedas, 76 while the burning vehemence of his words brought his adversaries to naught. They likened him to a flood. Never since Sankara had such a prophet of Vedism appeared. The orthodox Brahmins, completely everwhelmed, appealed from him to Benares, their Rome. Dayananda went there fearlessly, and undertook in November, 1869, a Homeric contest. Before millions of assailants, all eager to bring him to his knees, he argued f of hours together alone against 74 Discipline in the ecclesiastical language of an earlier age meant not only supervision, but the instrument used by ascetics to scourge themselves. T His exploits have become legendary. He stopped with one hand a carriage with two runaway horses. He tore the naked sword out of an adversary's hand and broke it in two, etc. His thunderous voice could make itself heard above any tumult. 7 * " A very learned Sanskrit scholar/' is the opinion of a man, himself a master of exegesis of the Hindu Scriptures, Aurobindo Ghose. (Cf. Arya Review, No. 4, Pondicherry, November 15, 1914, " The Secret of the Veda.") 100 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY three hundred pandits the whole front line and the reserve of Hindu orthodoxy. 77 He proved that the Vedanta as practised was diametrically opposed to the primitive Vedas. He claimed that he was going back to the true Word, the pure Law of two thousand years earlier. They had not the patience to hear him out. He was hooted down and excommunicated. A void was created round him, but the echo of such a combat in the style of the Mahabharata spread throughout the country, so that his name became famous over the whole of India. At Calcutta, where he stayed from December 15, 1872, to April 15, 1873, Ramakrishna met him. He was also cordially received by the Brahmo Samaj Keshab and his people voluntarily shut their eyes to the differences existing between them ; they saw in him a rough ally in their crusade against orthodox prejudices and the millions of gods. But Dayananda was not a man to come to an understanding with religious philosophers imbued with Western ideas. His national Indian Theism, its steel faith forged from the pure metal of the Vedas alone, had nothing in common with theirs, tinged as it was with modern doubt, which denied the infallibility of the Vedas and the doctrine of trans- migration. 78 He broke with them 79 the richer for the encounter, for he owed them 80 the very simple suggestion, 77 A Christian missionary present at this tournament has left an excellent and impartial account of it, reproduced by Lajput Rai in his book. (Christian Intelligence, Calcutta, March, 1870.) 78 These two, according to Lajput Rai, himself affiliated to the Arya Samaj, are " the two cardinal principles which distinguish the Arya Samaj from the Brahmo Samaj." It must be remembered that twenty years before Dayananda (1844-46), Devendranath had ajso been tempted by the faith in the infallibility of the Vedas, but that he had renounced it in favour of direct and personal union with God. He was, it is said, of all the chiefs of the Brahmo Samaj the one nearest to Dayananda. But agreement was impossible. Devendranath, whose ideal was peace and harmony, could have no real sympathy with this perpetual warrior, armed with hard dogmatism and applying methods of pure scholasticism to the most modern social conflicts. 79 In 1877 a last attempt was made to find a basis of agreement between the religious leaders and their divergent doctrines. Keshab and Dayananda met again, but agreement was impossible, since Dayananda would yield nothing. io To Babu Keshab Chunder Sen. 101 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA whose practical value had not struck him' before, that his propaganda would be of little effect unless it was delivered in the language of the people. He went to Bombay, where shortly afterwards his sect, following the example of the Brahmo Samaj but with a better genius of organization, proceeded to take root in the social life of India. On April 10, 1875, he founded at Bombay his first Arya Samaj, or Association of the Aryans of India, the pure Indians, the descendants of the old conquering race of the Indus and the Ganges. And it was exactly in those districts that it took root most strongly. From 1877, the year when its principles were definitely laid down at Lahore, to 1883, Dayananda spread a close network over Northern India, Rajputana, Gujarat, the United Provinces of Agra and Oude, and above all in the Punjab, which remained his chosen land. Prac- tically the whole of India was affected. The only Province where his influence failed to make itself felt was Madras. 81 He fell, struck down in his prime, by an assassin. The concubine of a Maharajah, whom the stern prophet had denounced, poisoned him. He died at Ajmer on October 30, 1883. But his work pursued its uninterrupted and triumphant course. From 40,000 in 1891 the number of its members rose to 100,000 in 1901, to 243,000 in 1911, and to 468,000 in 1921. 82 Some of the most important Hindu personalities, politicians and Maharajahs, belonged to it. Its spontaneous and impassioned success in contrast to the slight reverbera- tions of Keshab's Brahmo Samaj, shows the degree to which Dayananda's stern teachings corresponded to the thought of his country and to the first stirrings of Indian nationalism, to which he contributed. ^ It may perhaps be useful to remind Europe of the reasons at the bottom of this national awakening, now in full flood. Westernization was going too far, and was not always revealed by its best side. Intellectually it had become rather a frivolous attitude of mind, which did away with 1 This is all the more striking since it was in Madras that Vive- kananda found his most ardent and best organized disciples. 11 Of whom 223,000 are in the Punjab and Delhi, 205,000 in the United Provinces, 223,000 in Kashmir, 4,500 in Behar. In short, it is the expression of Northern India and one of its most energetic elements. 102 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY the need for independence of thought, and transplanted young intelligences from their proper environment, teaching them to despise the genius of their irace. The instinct for self-preservation revolted. Dayananda's generation had watched, as he had done, not without anxiety, suffering, and irritation, the gradual infiltration into the veins of India of superficial European rationalism on the one hand, whose ironic arrogance understood nothing of the depths of the Indian spirit, and on the other hand, of a Christianity, which when it entered family life fulfilled only too well Christ's prophecy : " That He had come to bring division between father and son. ..." It is certainly not for us to depreciate Christian influences. I am a Catholic by birth, and as such have known the taste of Christ's blood and enjoyed the storehouse of profound life, revealed in the books and in the lives of great Christians, although I am outside all exclusive forms of church and religion. Hence I do not dream of subordinating such a faith to any other faith whatsoever ; when the soul has reached a certain pitch ocumen mentis 8S it can go no further. Unfortunately the religion of one country does not always work upon alien races through its best elements. Too often questions of human pride are intermingled with the desire for earthly conquest, and, provided victory is attained, the view is too often held that the end justifies the means. I will go further and say that, even in its highest presentation, it is very rare that one religion takes possession of the spirit of another race in its deepest essence at the final pitch of the soul, of which I have just spoken. It does so rather by aspects, very significant no doubt, but secondary in importance. Those of us who have pored over the won- derful system of Christiaif metaphysics and sounded their depths, know what infinite spaces they offer to the soaring wings of the spirit, and that the Divine Cosmos they present of the Being and the Love cleaving to Him is no whit less vast or less sublime than the conception of the Vedantic Infinite. But if a Keshab caught a glimpse of this, a Keshab was an exception among his people, and it would seem that To use the phrase of Richard de Saint-Victor and Western mystics to Francois de Sales. (Cf. Henri Br&nond : The Meta- physics of the Saints.) 103 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Christianity is very rarely manifested to Hindus under this aspect. It is presented to them rather as a code of ethics, of practical action, as love in action, if such a term is per- missible, and though this is a very important aspect it is not the greatest. 84 It is a remarkable fact that the most notable conversions have taken place in the ranks of active and energetic personalities rather than in those of deep spiritual contemplation of men capable of heroic flights of soul. 85 . Whether this is true or not, and it provides an ample theme for discussion, it is a historic fact that when Dayananda's mind was in process of being formed, the highest religious spirit of India had been so weakened that the religious spirit of Europe threatened to extinguish its feeble flame without the satisfaction of substituting its own. The Brahmo Samaj was troubled by it, but was itself willy-nilly stamped with Western Christianity. Ram Mohun Roy's starting point had been Protestant Unitarian. Devendranath, although he denied it, had not the strength to prevent its intrusion into the Samaj, when he yielded the ascendancy to Keshab, already three parts given over to it. As early as 1880 one of Keshab's critics 86 could say that " those who believe in him have lost the name of theists, because they lean more and more towards Christianity." However precisely the position of the third Brahmo Samaj (the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj detached from Keshab) had been defined as against Indian Christianity, Indian public opinion could feel no con- fidence in a church undermined by two successive schisms within the space of half a century, and threatened, as we 14 1 myself independently and intuitively belong to the side of Salesian Theocentrism, as represented by M. Henri Bremond in a recent polemic against the religious moralism or anti-mysticism of M. 1'Abbe Vincent. (Cf. op cit., Vol. I, pp. 26-47.) ' The Sadhu Sundar Singh, whose name is well-known in Europe among Protestants, is a good example. A Punjab Sikh, the son of a Sirdar and brother of a commander in the army, this intrepid man delighted in seeking and braving martyrdom in Tibet, where he found traces of other Christian martyrs belonging to the two warlike races, the Sikhs and the Afghans. (Cf . Max Schaerer : Sadhu Sunday Singh, 1922, Zurich.) To judge of him from this pamphlet, it would appear that in speaking of the other religions of India, he had never penetrated to the core of their thought. " Cf. Frank Lillington : The Brahmo and the Arya in their relations to Christianity, 1901. 104 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY have seen, during the next half century with complete absorption in Christianity. The enthusiastic reception accorded to the thunderous champion of the Vedas, a Vedist belonging to a great race and penetrated with the sacred writings of ancient India and with her heroic spirit, is then easily explained. He alone hurled the defiance of India against her invaders. Dayananda declared war on Christianity and his heavy massive sword cleft it asunder with scant reference to the scope or exactitude of his blows. He put it to the test of a vengeful, unjust and injurious criticism, which fastened upon each separate verse of the Bible and was blind and deaf to its real, its religious, and even its literal meaning (for he read the Bible in a Hindi translation and in a hurry). His slashing commentaries, 87 reminiscent of Voltaire and his Dictionnaire Philosophique,ha.ve unfortunately remained the arsenal for the spiteful anti-Christianity of certain modern Hindus. 88 Nevertheless, as Glasnapp rightly remarks, they are of paramount interest for European Christianity, which ought to know what is the image of itself as presented by its Asiatic adversaries. Dayananda had no greater regard for the Koran and the Puranas, and trampled underfoot the body of Brahman orthodoxy. He had no pity for any of his fellow country- men, past or present, who had contributed in any way to the thousand year decadence of India, at one time the mis- tress of the world. 89 He was a ruthless critic of all who, according to him, had falsified or profaned the true Vedic 7 Contained in his great work, written in Hindi, Satyartha- Prakash (The Torch of Truth). Notably the neo-Buddhists^for, difficult though it is to believe the beautiful name of Buddha, originally symbolizing the spirit of detachment and universal peace, is well on the way in these days to become the standard of an aggressive propaganda having scant respect for other beliefs. i His panorama of Indian History is an interesting one, a kind of impassioned Discourse of Universal History, to allude to a cele- brated work of Bossuet of the seventeenth century. It traces the origin of humanity and the domination of India over the entire globe (including America and the Oceanic Islands ; for according to him, the Nagas (serpents) and the infernal spirits of the legends are the people of the Antipodes ; just so the struggles with the Asuras and the Rakshasas mean the wars with the Assyrians and 105 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA religion. 90 He was a Luther fighting against his own misled and misguided Church of Rome ; 81 and his first care was to throw open the wells of the holy books, so that for the first time his people could come to them and drink for them- selves. He translated and wrote commentaries on the Vedas in the vernacular 9a it was in truth an epoch-making date for India when a Brahmin not only acknowledged that all human beings have the right to know the Vedas, whose study had been previously prohibited by orthodox Brahmans, but insisted that their study and propaganda was the duty of every Arya. 98 the negroids). Dayananda replaces the whole of Mythology upon the earth. He dates all the misfortunes of India and the ruin of the great spirit of the Vedas to the wars of ten times a Hundred Years, sung by the Mahabharata, wherein heroic India destroyed herself. . . . He is filled with hatred, not only against the materia- lism which resulted, but against Jainism, the suborner. For him Sankara was the glorious though unfortunate hero of the first war of Hindu independence in the realm of the soul. He wished to break the bonds of heresy, but he failed. He died by assassination in the midst of his campaigns for freedom, but he himself remained caught by Jainistic decoys, particularly by Maya, which inspired in Dayananda no dreamer of dreams but a man firmly implanted in the soil of reality an invincible repugnance. o He called all idolatry a sin, and considered that divine incarna- tions were absurd and sacrilegious. 91 He scourged the Brahmins with the name of " Popes." fl Between 1876 and 1883 he directed a whole train of Pandits. He wrote in Sanskrit and the pandits translated into the dialects. He alone, however, translated the original text. His translation, which he had no time to revise, is always preceded by a grammatical and etymological analysis of each verse, followed by a commentary explaining the general sense. Article III of the Ten Principles of Lahore (1877) " The Vedas are the book of true knowledge. The first duty of every Arya is to learn them and to teach them." By a strange accident Dayananda concluded a political alliance lasting several years (1879-81) with a Western community, destined for a great work, the Theosophical Society, on the basis of his vindication of the Vedas against the rising flood of Christianity. The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 in the South of India by a Russian, Mme. Blavatsky, and an American, Colonel Olcptt, and had the great merit of stimulating the Hindus to study their sacred Texts, especially the Gita and the Upanishads, six volumes of which Colonel Olcott published in Sanskrit. It also headed the movement for the establishment of Indian schools, especially in Ceylon, and even dared to open schools for " untouch- 106
THE BUILDERS OF UNITY It is true that his translation was an interpretation, and that there is much to criticize with regard to accuracy' 94 as well as with regard to the rigidity of the dogmas and prin- ciples he drew from the text, the absolute infallibility claimed for the one book, which according to him had emanated direct from the "pre-human" or superhuman Divinity, his denials from which there was no appeal, his implacable condemnations, his theism of action, his credo of battle, 95 and finally his national God. 98 But in default of outpourings of the heart and the calm ables." It therefore contributed to the national, religious, and social awakening of India ; and Dayananda seemed about to make common cause with it. But when the Society took him at his word and offered him its regular co-operation, he refused its offer, thereby taking away from the Theosophical Society all chance of spiritual dominion over India. It has since played a secondary part, but has been useful from the social point of view, if the establishment in 1889 of the Central Hindu College at Benares is to be attributed to the influence of Mrs. Besant. The Anglo-American element, preponderant in its strange mixture of East and West, has twisted in a curious way the vast and liberal system of Hindu metaphysics by its spirit of noble but limited pragmatism. Further, it must be added that it has given itself a kind of pontifical and infallible authority, allowing of no appeal, which though veiled is none the less implacable, and has appeared in this light to independent minds such as that of Vivekananda, who, as we shall see, on his return from America categorically denounced it. On this subject there is an article by G. E. Monod Heraen, written in its favour : " An Indo-European Influence, the Theosophical Society " (Feuilles de I'lnde, No. i, Paris, 1928), and a brilliant, comprehensive, and malicious chapter by Count H. Von Keyserling in hifc Travel Diary of a Philosopher, 1918. 4 But not his passionate loyalty, which remains proof against all attack. The extreme difficulty of the task must also be taken into consideration at a time^yhen a knowledge of the philosophy of the Vedas was much rarer in India than at the present time. * Among rules to be followed as set down at the end of his Satyartha Prakash, Dayananda orders : " Seek to combat, to humiliate, to destroy the wicked, even the rulers of the world, the men in power. Seek constantly to sap the power of the unjust and to strengthen that of the just even at the cost of terrible sufferings, of death itself, which no man should seek to avoid." " The Samaj will glorify, pray to and unite with the One and only God, as shown by the Vedas. . . . The conception of God and the objects of the Universe is founded solely on the teachings of the Veda and the other true Shastras," which he enumerated. It is, however, curious (so strong was the current of the age, 107 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA sun of the spirit, bathing the nations of men 1 and their gods in its effulgence, in default of the warm poetry radiating from the entire being of a Ramakrishna or the grandiose poetic style of a Vivekananda, Dayananda transfused into the languid body of India his own formidable energy, his certainty, his lion's blood. His words rang with heroic power. He reminded the secular passivity of a people, too prone to bow to fate, that the soul is free and that action is the generator of destiny. 97 He set the example of a setting at all cost towards unity) that Dayananda's nationalism like the unitarianism of Roy and Keshab had universal pretensions. " The well-being of humanity as a whole ought to be the objective of the Samaj." (Principles of the first Arya Samaj of 1875.) " The primary object of the Samaj is to do good to the whole world by bettering the physical, spiritual and social condition of humanity." (Principles of the Arya Samaj of Lahore, revised in 1875.) " I believe in a religion based on universal principles and embracing all that has been accepted as truth by humanity and that will continue to be obeyed in the ages to come. This is what I call religion : Eternal primitive Religion (for it is above the hostility of human beliefs). . . . That alone which is worthy to be believed by all men and in all ages, I hold as acceptable." (Satyartha Prakash.) Like all impassioned believers, but in perfect good faith, he con- founds the conception of the eternal and universal " Truth," which he claimed to serve, with that of the faith he decreed. He was careful to submit the criterion of truth to five preliminary tests, the first two in conformity with the teachings of the Vedas and to the definitions he had laid down concerning the nature of God and His attributes. How could he doubt his right to impose the Vedas upon humanity as a whole, when he started by decreeing that they contained, as Aurobindo Ghose says, " an integral revelation of religious truth, both ethical and scientific ? According to birri the Vedic gods were nothing but impersonations describing the one Divinity, and names of his powers, such as we see them in the works of Nature. True knowledge of the meaning of the Vedas corresponds then to the knowledge of scientific ^truths discovered by modern research." (Aurobindo Ghose : " The Secret of the Veda," Arya Review, No. 4, November 15, 1914, Pondicherry.) Dayananda's national exegesis of Vedism let loose a flood of pamphlets, whose object was to restore and reawaken the philo- sophies, cults, rites and practices of ancient India. There was a passionate reaction of antique ideals against the ideas of the West. (Cf. Prdbuddha Bharata, November, 1928.) 7 " An energetic and active life is preferable to the acceptance of the decrees of destiny. Destiny is the outcome of deeds. Deeds are the creators of destiny. Virtuous activity is superior to passive resignation. . . ." " The soul is a free agent, free to act as it pleases. But it depends 108 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY complete clearance of all the encumbering growth of privilege and prejudice by a series of hatchet blows. If his meta- physics were dry and obscure, 98 if his theology was narrow and in my opinion retrograde, his social activities and practices were of intrepid boldness. With regard to questions of fact he went further than the Brahmo Samaj, and even further than the Ramakrishna Mission ventures to-day. His creation, the Arya Samaj, postulates in principle equal justice for all men and all nations, together with equality of the sexes. It repudiates a hereditary caste system, and only recognizes professions or guilds, suitable to the com- plimentary aptitudes of men in society ; religion was to have no part in these divisions, but only the service of the state, which assesses the tasks to be performed. The state alone, if it considers it for the good of the community, can raise or degrade a man from one caste to another by way of reward or punishment. Dayananda wished every man to have the opportunity to acquire as much knowledge as would enable him to raise himself in the social scale as high as he was able. Above all he would not tolerate the abomin- able injustice of the existence of untouchables, and nobody has been a more ardent champion of their outraged rights. They were admitted to the Arya Samaj on a basis of equality ; for the Aryas are not a caste. " The Aryas are all men of superior principles ; and the Dasyas are they who lead a life of wickedness and sin." Dayananda was no less generous and no less bold in his crusade to improve the condition of women, a deplorable one in India. He revolted against the abuses from which they suffered, recalling that in the heroic age they occupied on the grace of God for the enjoyment of the fruit of its actions." (Satyartha Prakash.) * 98 Dayananda distinguishes, it seems, three eternal substances God, the Soul and Prakriti, the material cause of the universe. God and the Soul are two distinct entities : they have attributes which are not interchangeable and each accomplishes certain functions. They are, however, inseparable. The Creation, the essential exercise of Divine energy, is accomplished over primordial elements, which it combines and orders. The terrestrial bondage of the soul is caused by ignorance. Salvation is emancipation from error and the attainment of the freedom of God. But it is only for a time, at the end of which the soul retakes another body . . . etc." (Ibid., passim.) 109 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA in the home and in society a position at least equal to men. They ought to have equal education," according to him, and supreme control in marriage over household matters including the finances. Dayananda in fact claimed equal rights in marriage for men and women, and though he regarded marriage as indissoluble, he admitted the re- marriage of widows, and went so far as to envisage a tem- porary union for women as well as for men for the purpose of having children, if none had resulted from marriage. Lastly the Arya Samaj', whose eighth principle was " to diffuse knowledge and dissipate ignorance," has played a great part in the education of India. Especially in the Punjab and the United Provinces it has founded a host of schools for girls and boys. Their laborious hives are grouped round two model establishments : 10 the Dayananda Anglo- Vedic College of Lahore and the Gurukula of Kangri, national bulwarks of Hindu education, which seek to resuscitate the energies of the race and to use at the same time the intellectual and technical conquests of the West. 101 To these let us add philanthropic activities, such as orphan- ages, workshops for boys and girls, homes for widows, and great works of social service at the time of public calamities, epidemics, famine, etc., and it is obvious that the Arya Samaj is the rival of the future Ramakrishna Mission. 102 ff In marriage the minimum age was to be sixteen for girls and twenty-five for boys. Dayananda was resolutely opposed to infant marriage. 100 This was our information ten years ago at the date of the publication of Lajput Rai's book. From that date the educational movement has probably continued to expand. lil The Dayananda Anglo-Vedic College of Lahore, opened in 1886, combines instruction in Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian, English, Oriental and European Philosophy History, Political Economy, Science, arts and crafts. The Gurukula is a school founded in 1902, where the children take the vow of poverty, chastity and obedience for sixteen years. Its object is to reform Aryan character by Hindu Philosophic and literary culture, vivified by moral energy. There is also a great college for girls in the Punjab, where feminine subjects and domestic economy are united to intellectual studies and the knowledge of three languages, Sanskrit, Hindu and English. 101 It would appear that in this respect Vivekananda and his disciples have outstripped him. The first activities of social service noted by Lajput Rai as undertaken by the Arya Samaj, were help in the famine of 1897-98. From 1894 onwards one of Vivekananda's 110 THE BUILDERS OF UNITY I have said enough about this rough Sannyasin with the soul of a leader, to show how great an uplifter of the peoples he was in fact the most vigorous force of the immediate and present action in India at the moment of the rebirth and reawakening of the national consciousness. His Arya Samaj, whether he wished it or no, 108 prepared the way in 1905 for the revolt of Bengal to which we shall allude again. He was one of the most ardent prophets of reconstruction and of national organization. I feel that it was he who kept the Vigil ; but his strength was also his weakness. His purpose in life was action and its object his nation. For a people lacking the vision of wider horizons the accomplish- ment of the action and the creation of the nation might perhaps be enough. But not for India before her will still lie the universe. monks, Ajhandananda, devoted himself to works of social service. In 1897 part of the Ramakrishna Mission was mobilized against famine and malaria, and the following year against the plague. 108 He forbade it in public ; he always claimed to be non-political and non-anti-British. But the British Government judged differ- ently. The Arya Samaj found itself compromised by the activity of its members. It was one of them, Lajput Rai, whose arrest provoked the most serious risings of 1907-08. And it should be recalled here that the same Lajput Rai, the nationalist hero of India, constantly imprisoned, exiled, persecuted, recently died at Lahore (December, 1928) as the result of a collision with the British police during demonstrations in favour of Indian political inde- pendence. Ill VII RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA SUCH then were the great shepherds of the people, the king-pastors of India, at the moment when the star of Ramakrishna appeared in cloudless glory above the mountains. l Naturally he could not have known the first of these four men, the forerunner, Ram Mohun Roy, but he knew the other three personally. He first visited them, urged by that overwhelming thirst for God, which made him always ask himself Are there no more of His wells, which these have found and from which I have not drunk ? But his practised eye judged them at sight. His critical faculties were never abrogated. As he leant over them to taste 1 1 have only mentioned the greatest. There were many others. India has never lacked messengers of God, founders of sects or religions, and they were continually appearing throughout the period. In the recent treatise by Helmuth von Glasenapp : Re- ligidse Reformbewegungen in heutigen Indien (1928, Leipzig, J. C. Hinrich, Morgenland collection), there is an account of the two most curious : the Atheistic Church of the Superman, the Dev-Samaj, and the Mystical Church of the Divine Sound (or Word), the Radhas- vami-Satsang. The question is of the mysterious word which stands for the Almighty Being (and which is no longer the famous Vedic M delegated to an inferior place) the Divine Sound that vibrates through the Universe the spoken *narmony, whence is derived the " Music of the Spheres " (to quote the old language of Greco-Roman antiquity). It is to be found under rather a different form in the mysticism of the Maitrayani Upanishad. They are not included here because they belong to rather a later date. The Dev-Samaj, though founded in 1887 by Shiva Narayana Agnihotra, only adopted the name " Superhuman " atheism after 1894 ; and its violent struggle against God, fought in the name of reason, morality and science, by a " Superman," the Dev-Guru (the founder in person), whose initial step was to make himself the object of worship, is to-day in full swing. As for the Radhasvami-Satsang, founded by a trinity of successive, but indistinguishable holy Gurus, whose deaths 112 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA them with thirsty devotion, he often laughed mischievously, and rose with the words that his own were better. He was not the man to be dazzled by outward show, glory or eloquence. His veiled eye did not blink unless the light he sought, the face of God Himself, shone from the depths. They could penetrate through the walls of the body as through a window-pane and searched the very heart with eager curiosity. But what they found there sometimes provoked a sudden quiet outburst of hilarity untinged with malice from this indiscreet visitor. The story of his visit to the imposing Devendranath Tagore, as told by himself, is a titbit of comedy, wherein the critical humour and the disrespectful respect of the "little brother" towards the great pontiff, the "King Janaka," have free play. " Is it possible/' a questioner asked him one day, 2 " to reconcile the world and God ? What do you think of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore ? " Ramakrishna repeated softly, " Devendranath Tagore . . . Devendranath . . . Devendra . . ." and he bowed several times. Then he said, " Do you know what he is ? Once upon a time there occurred in 1878, 1898 and 1907 respectively, it is only since the end of the last century that their doctrine has become firmly estab- lished. We need not therefore take it into consideration in this account. The seat of the Dev-Samaj is at Lahore, and almost all its adherents are in the Punjab. The two chief centres of the Radhasvami-Satsang are Allahabad and Agra. Hence it is to be noted that both belong to Northern India. Glasenapp says nothing of the appearance of new religions in Southern India, but they were no less numerous. Such was the religion of the great Guru, Sri Narayana, whose beneficent spiritual activity was exercised for more than forty years in the state of Tjravancore over some million f aithf ul souls (he has just died in 1928). His doctrine was impregnated with monist metaphysics of Sankara, but tended to practical action showing very marked differences from Bengal mysticism whose Bhakta effusions filled him with mistrust. He preached, if one may say so, a Jnanin of action, a great intellectual religion, having a very lively sense of the people and their social needs. It has greatly contributed to the uplifting of the oppressed classes in Southern India and its activities have in a measure been allied to those of Gandhi. (Cf. articles by his disciple, P. Natarajan, in the Sufi Quarterly, Geneva, December, 1928, and the following months.) 1 Keshab Chunder Sen. The conversation is reported by an eye- witness, A. Kumar Dutt. (Life of Ramakrishna.) 113 * PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA was a man, whose custom it was to celebrate the feast of Durga Puja with great pomp. Goats were sacrificed from morning till night. After some years the sacrifice lost its brilliancy. Somebody asked the man why it was so greatly reduced, and the man replied, ' I have lost my teeth now ! ' " And so," continued the irreverent story-teller, "it is quite natural that Devendranath should practise meditation at his advanced age/ 1 8 He paused. ... " But," he added, bowing once more, " he is undoubtedly a very illustrious man. . . ." Then he recounted his visit. 4 " At first when I saw him, I thought him rather proud. Oh ! It was natural ! He was overwhelmed by so many good things : nobility, prestige, riches. . . . Suddenly I found myself in the state when I can see through a man. 8 It must be admitted that Ramakrishna's irony did Devendranath a grave injustice. It did not take into account, probably through ignorance, the absolute disinterestedness of the Maharshi and his years of noble and difficult sacrifice. In this I see the attitude of a man of the people to a great aristocrat. Another account, given by Sashi Bhusan Ghosh in his Memoirs written in Bengali (pp. 245-47), lessens the irony without diminishing the penetration of Ramakrishna, so that justice is better done to the royal idealist. Ramakrishna said that he was introduced to Devendranath with the words, " Here is a mad man of God 1 " " Devendranath seemed to me to be concentrated upon his own ego, but why should he not have been so concentrated, when he enjoyed so much knowledge, renown, riches and unanimous respect ? But I discovered that Yoga and bhoga (material enjoyment) ran side by side in his life. . . . I said to him, ' You are a true Janaka in this age of sin. Janaka was wont to see both sides at once. So you have kept your soul for God, while your body moves in the material world. That is why I have come to see you. Tell me something about God !' ..." 4 Rabindranath Tagore was thfti four years old. Ramakrishna was introduced by his patron, Mathur Babu, who had been a fellow student of Devendranath. A curious detail of the visit may interest our European psycho- physiologists. Hardly were the introductions over than Ramakrishna asked Devendranath to undress and show him his chest. Devendranath complied without showing much astonishment. The colour of the skin was scarlet, and Ramakrishna examined it. This persistent redness of the breast is a peculiar sign of the practice of certain Yoga. Ramakrishna never omitted to examine the breast of his disciples, their breathing capacity, and the soundness of their circulation before allowing or forbidding them to undertake exercises of great concentration. 114 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA Then I consider the greatest, the richest, the most learned men as straw, if I do not see God. . . . And a laugh escaped me ... for I discovered that this man at the same time enjoyed the world and led a religious life. He had many children, all young. So in spite of his being a great Jnanin, he had to reconcile himself to the world. I said to him, ' You are the King Janaka of our day/ 6 He belonged to the world and yet he attained the highest realizations. You are in the world, but your spirit rests on the heights of God. Tell me something of Him 1 " Devendranath recited to him some beautiful passages from the Veda, 6 and the interview proceeded on a tone of familiar courtesy. Devendranath was much struck by the fire in the eyes of his visitor, and he invited Ramakrishna to a feast for the next day. But he begged him to " cover his body a little/' if he wished to be present : for the little pilgrim had not put himself to the trouble of dressing up. Ramakrishna replied with wicked good fellowship that he could not be depended upon ; he was as he was, and would come as he was. So they parted very good friends. But early the next morning a very polite note came from the great aristocrat, begging him not to put himself to any trouble. And that was the end. With one caressing stroke of the paw aristocracy remained aloof, secure in its paradise of idealism. Dayananda was summed up, judged and condemned as of less worth still. It must be admitted that when the two men met at the end of 1873, the Arya Samaj had not yet been founded and the reformer was still in the midst of his career. When Ramakrishna examined him, 7 he 5 Janaka, the King of Videha and Mithila, the foster-father of Sita. " This universe is to be likened to a candelabra. And each one of us is a bulb. If we do not burn the whole candelabra becomes dark. God has created man to celebrate His glory. . . ." In Sashi's account Ramakrishna made this naive reflection : " It is strange 1 While I was meditating in the Panchavati (the grove of Dakshineswar), I also saw an image like a candelabra . . . Devendranath must really be a very profound man I " 7 He recognized in him also this characteristic redness of the breast. During one of Ramakrishna's interviews as noted by Mahendra Nath Gupta (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna) on November 28, 1883, a singular statement with regard to Dayananda is attributed to Ramakrishna. He had heard that Dayananda, burning to PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA found in him " a little power," by which he meant, " real contact with the Divine." But the tortured and torturing character, the bellicose athleticism of the champion of the Vedas, his feverish insistence that he alone was in the right, and therefore had the right to impose his will, were all blots on his mission in Ramakrishna's eyes. He saw him day and night disputing concerning the Scriptures, twisting their meaning, and striving at all costs to found a new sect. But such preoccupation with personal and worldly success sullied the true love of God, and so he turned away from Dayananda. His relations with Keshab Chunder Sen were of quite a dif- ferent order. They were intimate, affectionate, and lasting. Before speaking of them I must express regret that the disciples of the two masters have left us such prejudiced accounts. Each side has been at considerable pains to " vassalize " the other man of God in favour of its own saint. Ramakrishna's disciples still speak of Keshab with sympathetic regard, and thank him for the homage he yielded to the Paramahamsa. But some of Keshab's disciples cannot forgive Ramakrishna for the ascendancy, real or apparent, he exercised over their master ; hence in order to deny that any such influence could have existed, they have reverted to the plan of raising between them insurmountable barriers of thought ; they scornfully mis- represent Ramakrishna's true worth, and their harmful spite is also directed against the man who preached his Gospel, and made it victorious, Vivekananda. 8 But having read certain beautiful and fresh pages by measure himself against Keshab Chunder Sen on the subject of his Vedic Gods, in whom Keshab did ot believe, cried out, " The Lord has done so many things 1 Can He not also have made the Gods ? " This was not in accordance with the views publicly professed by Dayananda, the implacable enemy of polytheism. Was Dayananda's exclamation inexactly reported to Ramakrishna, or did it refer, not to the Gods, but to the Vedic sacrificial fire, which Dayananda believed in on the ground of faith in the infallible Vedas ? I cannot ' explain this apparent contradiction. I have in mind chiefly the pamphlet of B. Mozoomdar : Professor Max M&Uer on Ramakrishna ; The World on K. Chunder Sen, 1900, Calcutta. (Cf. Chapter II, " Absurd Inventions and Reports made to Max Mftller by the Disciples of Ramakrishna " ; Chapter III, " Differences between the Two Doctrines " ; and above all the 116 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA Keshab, wherein the ideas and actions of Vivekananda are distinctly foreshadowed, I can well understand that the Brahmos chafe under the silence and oblivion into which the Ramakrishna has allowed them to fall. So far as lies in my power, I shall try to amend this injustice ; for I believe it to be unwitting. But certain Brahmos could not worse uphold Keshab's memory than by confining him within their own narrow limits and by putting in the shade the disinterested affection felt by Keshab for Ramakrishna. In the whole of Keshab's life, so worthy of respect and affection, there is nothing more deservedly dear to us than the attitude of respect and affection adopted from the first by this great man at the height of his fame and climax of his thought, and maintained until the end, towards the Little Poor Man of Dakshineswar, then either obscure or misrepresented. The more the Brahmos attempt, their pride hurt by the familiarities of the " madman of God " with the prince of intellectuals, to extract from the writings of Keshab proud denunciations of disordered ecstasy, such as they attribute to Ramakrishna, 9 the more striking is the contrast of Keshab's actual relations to Ramakrishna. insulting Chapter V, " Concerning Vivekananda, the Informant of Max Miiller," which does not scruple to join forces with some Anglo- American clergymen, lacerated by the thunderous religious polemics of the great Swami.) Cf. B. Mozoomdar, op. cit., Chapter II. In his treatise on Yoga Keshab says : " Knowledge and Bhakti are interchangeable terms. Bhakti is only possible in those who have knowledge, an unknowing Bhakta is an impossibility. ' ' But this does not condemn the religious ecstasies of Ramakrishna ; for first it would be necessary to prove that a higher form of knowledge was not contained therein. It merely marks the different character of Keshab's contemplations ; for him the highest condition consisted in a union of mind with the Eternal, wherein practical intelligence was not obscured in the midst of the manifold occupations of life, society and the home. Keshab's views were in accordance with the spiritual traditions of the Brahmo Samaj. Further, in Chapter III, Mozoomdar quotes Keshab as saying, " Fie a hundred times to the Yogin, if he abandons everything for the love of Yoga ! . . . It is a sin to abandon those whom God has given us to cherish." He claims to find in these words a reference to Ramakrishna as having neglected his duties towards his wife. But it is untrue to say that he neglected them. Not only did he love his wife with a profound and pure love, but he knew how to inspire her with a love, which for her was a source of peace 117 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA If it is true that Keshab, unlike most of the religious men of India, never took a Guru, an intermediary between himself and the Divinity, 10 so that nobody has the right to say that he was a disciple of Ramakrishna, as is claimed by the Ramakrishnites his generous spirit was ever ready to appreciate greatness, and his love of truth was too pure for vanity to have any part in it. Hence this teacher was ever ready to learn, 11 and said of himself, " I am a born disciple ... all objects are my masters. I learn from everything/ 1 ia How then can he have failed to learn from the Man of God ? During the early months of 1875 Keshab happened to be with his disciples at a villa near Dakshineswar. Rama- krishna went to visit him 1S with the words, " I hear you have seen a vision of God, I have come to find out what it is." and happiness. I have already shown how seriously he took his responsibility to her, and that he did not allow his disciples to give up duties they had already contracted to old parents, to wife or children dependent upon them in order to follow him. 10 " From the beginning of my religious life," he wrote, " I have been ever wont to receive instruction from Thee, my God. ..." 11 1 have been happy to find the same point of view that I have adopted, in the beautiful book illumined by the faith of Manilal C. Parekh, a Christian disciple of Keshab (Brahmarshi Keshab Ch. Sen, 1926, Oriental Christ House, Rajkot, Bombay). Manilal C. Parekh clearly recognizes that Keshab owed much to Ramakrishna, probably more than Ramakrishna owed to him. But, like myself, he sees in it another reason for admiring the largeness of his spirit and greatness of his heart. 11 But he says also : " God has implanted in me the power to aspire to the good qualities of every man." 11 He had noticed him as early as 1865, when young Keshab was Devendranath's lieutenant a the head of the Adi Brahmo Samaj. Keshab's face had struck him. It was not the kind that is easily forgotten. Keshab was tall, his face oval, " his complexion clear like that of an Italian " (Mukerji). But if his spirit, like his face, was tinged by the tender sun of the West, the depths of his soul remained Indian. Ramakrishna, watching him as he meditated, was not mistaken. " On the platform of the Brahmo Samaj several people were meditating," he says of his visit in 1865. " * n the centre of the group was Keshab lost in contemplation ; he was as motionless as a piece of wood. He was then quite a young man ; but it was at ;his bait that the fish was nibbling . . ." (a familiar metaphor meaning that God was responding to his appeal alone). RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA Thereupon he began to sing a famous hymn to Kali, and in the midst of it he fell into an ecstasy. Even for Hindus this was an extraordinary sight ; but Keshab, who, as we have seen, was sufficiently suspicious of such rather morbid manifestations of devotion, would hardly have been struck by it, if, on coming out of Samadhi at the instance of his nephew, 14 Ramakrishna had not forthwith launched into a flood of magnificent words regarding the One and Infinite God. His ironic good sense appeared even in this inspired outpouring, and it struck Keshab very forcibly. He charged his disciples to observe it. After a short time he had no doubt that he was dealing with an exceptional personality, and in his turn went to seek it out. They became friends. He invited Rama- krishna to the ceremonies of his Brahmo Samaj ; and used to come to take him from his temple for excursions on the Ganges ; and since his generous soul was obliged to share his discoveries with others, he spoke everywhere of Rama- krishna, in his sermons, and in his writings for journals and reviews, both in English and in the native languages. His own fame was put at Ramakrishna's disposal and it was through Keshab that his reputation, until then unknown to the popular religious masses with a few exceptions, spread in a short time to the intellectual middle-class circles of Bengal and beyond. The modesty shown by the noble Keshab, the illustrious chief of the Brahmo Samaj, rich in learning and prestige, in bowing down before this unknown man, ignorant of book learning and of Sanskrit, who could hardly read and who wrote with difficulty, is truly admirable. But Rama- krishna's penetration confounded him and he sat at his feet as a disciple. But this is not to say that Keshab was the disciple of Ramakrishna, as is claimed by some over-zealous followers 14 For the interest of European science, it is to be noted that the only method of recalling Ramakrishna from his ecstatic trances was to pronounce in his ear such or such a name of the Lord, or some Mantra (form of prayer), differing according to the degree and the form of the ecstasy. The character of psychic concentration was then very marked ; and it was impossible to speak of any initial physiological disorder; the spirit always remained in full control, 119 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA of the latter. It is not true that any one of his essential ideas was derived from him ; for they were already formed when he met Ramakrishna for the first time. We have seen that after 1862 he began to conceive of the harmony of religions and their original unity. He said in 1863 : " All truths are common to all, for all are of God. Truth is no more European than Asiatic, no more yours than mine." In 1869 in the course of a lecture on the future church, he visualized all religions as a vast symphony, wherein each one, while keeping its distinctive character, the tone of its instrument, the register of its voice, united to praise God the Father and Man the Brother in one universal anthem. On the other hand, it is false to claim that Keshab needed Ramakrishna's help to arrive at his conception of the Mother a conception common to all ages in India, as that of the Father in the West. Rama- krishna did not create it. The hymns of Ramprasad, stored within his memory, sing Her in all keys. The idea of God's maternity had been incorporated in the Brahmo Samaj during the pontificate of Devendranath. Keshab's disciples have no difficulty in citing invocations to the Mother all through the work of their Master. 16 Undoubtedly the twin ideas of the Divine Mother and the brotherhood of Her worshippers were beautiful ones, whatever the forms of their ritual and means of expression, and, as ideas, they were already possessed by Keshab and revivified by his sincere faith. But it was another thing to find them alive and vital in a Ramakrishna ! The Little Poor Man was not troubled by theories ; he simply was. He was the communion of the Gods with believers ; he was the Mother and Her lover ; he saw Her ; She was seen through him ; She coulfl be touched. What a dis- 16 1862 ; when Keshab was still the minister of the Adi Brahmo Samaj of Devendranath, a hymn was sung, " Sitting on the knees of the Mother." 1866 ; Manual of the Brahmo Samaj : " O Divine Mother, bind me by thy mercy. ... O Mother, come, draw near 1 " 1875 : " Happy am 1 1 I have been merged in the heart of the Mother, I am now among her children ; the Mother dances with her children. . . ." (But before this last date the meeting of Keshab and Ramakrishna had taken place. Cf. B. Mozoomdar, op. cit., Chapter III.) I2O RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA covery this genius of heart, who communicated to those coming into contact ^ith him the warm breath of the Goddess and the shelter of Her beautiful arms, was to Keshab, and how deeply he must have felt its impact : for he too was a Bhakta, a believer through love : 16 " The sweet, simple, charming and childlike nature of Ramakrishna coloured the Yoga of Keshab and his immacu- late conception of religion/' wrote Chiranjib Sarma, one of his biographers. And one of the missionaries of Keshab's church, Babu Girish Chundra Sen, 17 wrote, " It was from Ramakrishna that Keshab received the idea of invoking God by the sweet name of Mother with the simplicity of a child. . . ." 18 Only the last quotation needs comment ; for we have shown that Keshab did not wait for Ramakrishna before invoking the Mother. Ramakrishna, however, brought him a renewal of love and immediate certitude, the heart of a child. Hence it was not the discovery of the " New Dispensation " that Keshab began to preach in the same year, 1875, that his path crossed Ramakrishna's, 19 but 16 Promotho Loll Sen says that he communed daily with God. " Let prayer be your chief preoccupation 1 Pray ardently and without ceasing, alone and together, let it be the alpha and omega of your life 1 " 17 " The Life and Teachings of the Paramahamsa Ramakrishna," Article in the Dharmatatawa. 18 Babu Chirish Chundra Sen and Chiranjib Sarma, quoted by the Ramakrishnites in support of their thesis, certainly exaggerated the influence of Ramakrishna on Keshab's Brahmo Samaj. Those who try to prove too much lay themselves open to suspicion. To write like Chiranjib Sarma that " The worship of God as Mother was due to Ramakrishna/' is^a contradiction of the facts. It is quite enough to say that Ramakrishna's example developed it in the Brahmo Samaj. The Brahmo cult was rather hard " The shadow of Ramakrishna," to use a simile of Babu Girish Ch. Sen, " softened it." " Nevertheless Pratap Chandra Mozoomdar, in his sympathetic life of Keshab, admits that the meeting with Ramakrishna, without altering the essentially theistic character of the New Dispensation, led Keshab to present it in a more conciliatory and easily accessible form. Ramakrishna " had gathered the essential conceptions of Hindu polytheism into an original structure of eclectic spirituality. . . . This strange eclecticism suggested to Keshab's appreciative mind 121 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA rather an irresistible outpouring of faith and joy which made him cry his message to the world. Ramakrishna was a wonderful stimulant for the Brahmos, a tongue of flame dancing at Pentecost over the heads of the apostles, burning and enlightening them. He was at once their sincere friend and their judge, who spared neither his affection nor his mischievous criticism. When he first visited the Brahmo Samaj his penetrating and amused glance had seen through the rather conven- tional devotion of its excellent members. According to his own humorous account, 20 " The leader said : ' Let us communicate with Him/ I thought, ' They will now go into the inner world and stay a long time/ Hardly had a few minutes passed when they all opened their eyes. I was astonished. Can any- one find Him after so slight a meditation ? After it was all over, when we were alone, I spoke to Keshab about it : ' I watched all your congregation communing with their eyes shut. Do you know what it reminded me of ? Some- times at Dakshineswar I have seen under the trees a flock of monkeys sitting, stiff and looking the very picture of innocence. . . . They were thinking and planning their campaign of robbing certain gardens of fruits, roots, and other edibles ... in a few moments. The communing that your followers did with God to-day is no more serious ! " In a ritual hymn of the Brahmo Samaj this verse occurs : " Think of Him and worship Him at every instant of the day ! " Ramakrishna stopped the singer, and said, " You should alter the verse into ' Pray to Him and worship Him only twice a day.' Say what you really do. Why tell fibs to the Infinite ? " the thought of broadening the spiritual structure ol his own move- ment. . . The Hindu conceptions of the Divine attributes spon- taneously recommended themselves as beautiful and true, and also as the surest means of making his faith intelligible and acceptable in the land. Of course he kept the simple universal basis of theism intact." But Mozoomdar adds with regret that such a presentation of theism with a multiplicity of Divine attributes has since been exploited in favour of popular idolatry. M Cf. Dhan Gopal Mukerji : The Face of Silence, 1926. (Sara- dananda gives a similar account in his chapter on the Brahmo Samaj and Ramakrishna.) 122 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA The Brahmo Samaj of Keshab, while it extolled faith, did so in a purposely stilted, abstract and solemn tone, reminiscent of the Anglican. It seemed to be always on guard against any suspicion of idolatry. 21 Ramakrishna took a mischievous delight in accusing it, not without justice, of mild idolatry. One day he heard Keshab in prayer enumerating all the perfections of the Lord. ''Why do you give these statistics?" he asked him. " Does a son say to his father, ' O my father, you possess so many houses, so many gardens, so many horses, etc. ' ? It is natural for a father to put his resources at the disposal of his son. If you think of Him and His gifts as something extraordinary, you can never be intimate with Him, you cannot draw near to Him. Do not think of Him as if He were far away from you. . . . Think of Him as your nearest : Then He will reveal Himself to you. . . . Do you not see that if you go into an ecstasy over His attributes, you become an idolater ? " 22 Keshab protested against this attack on a sensitive point ; he declared that he hated idolatry, that the God he wor- shipped was a formless God. Ramakrishna answered quietly, " God is with form and without form. Images and other symbols are just as valid as your attributes. And these attributes are no different from idolatry, but are merely hard and petrified forms of it." And again, " You wish to be strict and partial. . . . For myself I have a burning desire to worship the Lord in as many ways as I can; nevertheless my heart's desire has never 11 Here is a type of Brahmo prayer, quoted in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna : " Om ! Thou art our Father, Give us knowledge ! Do not destroy us ! " " Om ! Brahman : Truth : Knowledge : In- finite : He is Bliss and Immortality : He shines : He is Peace : He is the Good : He is the One : " "We bow before Thee, O Supreme Being, O First Great Cause : . . . We bow before Thee, O Light of Knowledge, O Support of all the worlds : " " From the unreal lead us to the real : From darkness lead us to light : From death lead us to Immortality : Reach us through and through our self : And ever more protect us, O Thou Terrible, by Thy Sweet com- passionate Face : " " Life of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 365 and Mukerji. 123 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA been satisfied. I long to worship with offerings of flowers and fruits, to repeat His holy name in solitude, to meditate upon Him, to sing His hymns, to dance in the joy of the Lord : . . . Those who believe that God is without form attain Him just as well as those who believe He has form. The only two essentials are faith and self-surrender. . . ." as I can copy the colourless words, but I cannot communi- cate the real presence, the radiance of person, the tone of voice, the look in the eyes and the captivating smile. Nobody who came in contact with them could resist them. It was above all his living certitude that impressed the onlookers ; for with him words were not, as with others, a loose and ornamental robe, hiding as much as they claimed to reveal of the unfathomable depths of life ; with him the depths of life blossomed, and God, Who for the majority even of religious men, is a frame of thought drawing an impenetrable veil across " The Unknown Masterpiece/ 1 24 was to be seen in him ; for as he spoke he lost himself in God, like a bather who dives and reappears dripping after a moment, bringing with him the smell of seaweed, the taste of the salt of the ocean. Who can rid himself of its tang ? The scientific spirit of the West can indeed analyse it. But whatever its elements, its synthetic reality was never in doubt. The greatest sceptic can touch the diver as he returns from the depths of the Dream, and catch some reflection of submarine flora in his eyes. Keshab and several of his disciples were intoxicated with it. The strange dialogues of this Indian Plato, delivered on Keshab's yacht as it went up and down the Ganges, 26 deserve to be read. Their narrator, afterwards Rama- krishna's evangelist, was the first to be astonished that such a meeting could have c?>me about tfetween such opposite types of mind. What common fcround could there be between the man of God and the man of the world, the great intellectual, the Anglomaniac Keshab, Mukerji. M Allusion to a celebrated novel of Balzac. " Two of them are to be found in an account by M. (Mahendra Nath Gupta), the author of the Gospel of Ramakrishna, dated Octobe* 27, 1882. Another witness, Nagendranath Gupta, gives an account of another interview in 1881. (Cf. The Modern Review, Calcutta, May, 1927.) 124 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA whose reason condemned the Gods? Keshab's disciples pressed round the two sages at the porthole of the cabin, like a swarm of flies. And as the honey of his words began to flow from Ramakrishna's lips, the flies were drowned in its sweetness. "It is now more than forty-five years ago that this happened and yet almost everything that the Paramahamsa said is indelibly impressed on my memory. I have never heard any other man speak as he did. ... As he spoke he would draw a little closer to Keshab until part of his body was unconsciously resting on Keshab's lap, but Keshab sat perfectly still and made no movement to with- draw himself." Ramakrishna looked with affectionate intensity on the faces surrounding him, and described their moral character one by one, as delineated in their features, first the eyes, then the forehead, the nose, the teeth, and the ears ; for they formed a language to which he had the key. As he spoke with his sweet and attractive stammer he came to the subject of the Nirakara Brahman, the formless God. " He repeated the word Nirakara two or three times and then quietly passed into Samadhi as the diver slips into fathomless deep. . . . We watched him intently. The whole body relaxed and then became slightly rigid. There was no twitching of the muscles or nerves, no movement of any limb. Both his hands lay in his lap with the fingers lightly interlocked. The sitting posture of the body was easy but absolutely motionless. The face was slightly tilted up and in repose. The eyes were nearly but not wholly closed. The eyeballs were not turned up or otherwise deflected, but they were fi^ed. . . . The lips were parted in a beatific and indescribable smile, disclosing the gleam of the white teeth. There was something in that wonderful smile which no photograph was ever able to reproduce/ 1 M He was recalled to the world by the singing of a hymn. " He opened his eyes and looked around him as if 16 Nagendranath Gupta. In another ecstasy, the one described by M, to the Mother : " O Mother, they are all fastened They are not free : is it possible to loose them " 125 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA in a strange place. The music stopped. The Paramahamsa looking at us said, ' Who are these people ? ' And then he vigorously slapped the top of his head several times, and cried out, ' Go down, go down : ' . . . The Paramahamsa became fully conscious and sang in a pleasant voice (a hymn of Kali). 1 ' He sang the identity of the Divine Mother with the Absolute. He sang the joy of the flying kite of the soul, launched by the Mother while She keeps it attached to Her by the string of Illusion. 27 " The world is the Mother's plaything. It is Her pleasure to let slip from Illusion one or two flying kites among the thousands. It is Her sport. She says to the human soul in confidence with a wink of the eye : ' Go and live in the world until I tell you to do something else . . . .' " And in imitation of Her he turned to the disciples of Keshab with an indulgent irony that made them laugh. " You are in the world. Stay there : It is not for you to abandon it. You are very well as you are, pure gold and alloy, sugar and treacle. . . . We sometimes play a game in which one must gain seventeen points to win. I have passed the limit and I have lost. But you clever people, who have not won enough points, can still continue to play. ... In truth it matters little if you live in the family or in the world, so long as you do not lose contact with God/ 1 And it was in the course of these monologues, wherein observation and ecstasy, mocking common sense and highest speculation were so wonderfully blended, that the Parama- hamsa produced his beautiful parables, quoted above, of the Divine Tank with several ghats (steps) and of Kali, the Spider. He had too keen sense of reality, he saw too clearly to the very bottom of his listeners, to imagine that he could raise them to the heights of his own liberated soul. He measured their wisdom and their capacity, and he asked 17 The metaphor of the flying kite is to be found, as we have Seen, in a hymn of Ramprasad, which Ramakrishna loved to sing : " The Divine Mother and the Liberated Soul/ 1 It is also used in a hymn of Nareschandra quoted in the Gospel. Nearly all the metaphors, particularly that of the diver to the depths of the Ocean of Life, are 'used again and again with variations in the poetic and musical folklore of Bengal from the fifteenth century onwards. 126 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA nothing of them beyond their capability, but he asked for the whole of that : above all he communicated to Keshab and his disciples the spirit of life, the creative breath, coupled with a wide and intellectual tolerance, which recognized the truth in quite diverse points of view, pre- viously considered by them to be irreconcilable. He freed their intellectual limbs, petrified within the groove of reason, and made them supple. He tore them from their abstract discussions. " Live, love and create : " and blood again flowed through their veins. " To create is to be like God/' he said to Keshab, who was then spending himself in endless and fruitless polemics. " When you yourself are filled with the essence of existence, all that you say will come true. Poets in all ages have praised truth and virtue. But does that make their readers virtuous or truthful ? When a man despoiled of self comes among us, his acts are the very pulses of the heart of virtue ; all that he does to others makes even their most humdrum dreams greater, so that all they touch becomes true and pure ; they become the father of reality. 28 And what he creates never dies. That is what I expect of you. Make the dogs of invective keep quiet. Let the elephant of Being sound the clarion trumpet of his benediction over all living things : You possess this power. Are you going to use it, or are you going to waste this brief span called life in fighting other peoples ? " 29 Keshab listened to his advice and took deep root in this warm living earth, bathed in the sap emanating from the Universal Being. Ramakrishna made him fed that no " Cf . Gandhi, who was averse to all religious propaganda by word or writing. When he waS asked, " How then can we share our experience with others ? " he replied, " Our spiritual experiences are necessarily shared and communicated whether we suspect it or not, but by our lives and our examples, not by our words, which are a very inadequate vehicle. Spiritual experiences are deeper than thought itself. By the very fact that we live, spiritual experi- ence will overflow. But if you deliberately set yourself to share your spiritual experience with another, you raise an intellectual barrier between you/' (Discussions at the Council of the Federation of International Fellowship, Satyagraha Ashram, Sabannati, January 15, 1928.) 11 Mukerji. 127 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA particle of this sap was ever lost, even in the most humble plant of human thought. His mind was sympathetically reopened to all other forms of faith, even to certain outward practices, which he had avoided. He was to be seen invoking by their names Shiva, Shakti, Sarasvaty, Lakshmi, Hari, identifying God's attributes with them. For two years he was absorbed in each of the great religious types, the heroic incarnations of the Spirit : Jesus, Buddha, Shaitanya, each representing one side of the Great Mirror. He sought to assimilate them each in turn, so that through their synthesis he might realize the universal ideal. During his last illness he was especially drawn to that form of Bhakti most familiar to Ramakrishna a passionate love of the Mother. Keshab's disciples told Ramakrishna, when he came to see him during his last days on earth, that " a great change had taken place/' " Often we find him talk- ing to the Divine Mother, waiting for Her and weeping." And Ramakrishna, enraptured by this news, fell into an ecstasy. There is nothing more touching in the whole account of this supreme interview 80 than the appearance of the dying Keshab, shaken by a mortal cough, holding on to the walls, supporting himself by the furniture, coming to cast himself at the feet of Ramakrishna. The latter was still half plunged in ecstasy, and was talking to himself. Keshab was silent, drinking in the mysterious words that seemed to come from the Mother Herself. They explained to him with ruthless but consoling tranquillity, the deep meaning of his sufferings and his approaching death. 81 10 (Gospel of Ramakrishna, I, Section V, Chapters I and II.) It was on November 28, 1883, at the close of the day that Rama- krishna entered the house of Keslyib with several of his disciples. 11 Ramakrishna, hardly awakened from ecstasy, looked round at the drawing-room full of beautiful furniture and mirrors. Then he smiled and spoke to himself : " Yes, all these things have had their uses some time ago ; but now they serve no purpose. . . . You are here, Mother. How beautiful you are : . . ." At this moment Keshab entered and fell at Ramakrishna's feet. " Here I am," he said. Ramakrishna looked at him without seeming to recognize him clearly, and continued his monologue about the Mother and human life. Between the two men not a word was spoken about Keshab's health, although it was the object of the visit. It was not until after some time that Ramakrishna uttered the words I quote here. 128 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA With what deep insight Ramakrishna understood the hidden confusion of this life of faith and restless love : " You are ill," he said sweetly. " There is a profound meaning in that. Through your body have passed many deep waves of devotion seeking for the Lord. Your illness bears witness to these emotions. It is impossible to tell what damage they do to the organisms at the time they are produced. A boat passes along the Ganges without attracting attention. But some time afterwards a great wave, displaced by its passage, dashes against the bank and washes away part of it. When the fire of the Divine Vision enters the frail house of the body, it first burns the passions, then the false ego, and at last it consumes every- thing. . . . You have not yet reached the end. . . . Why did you allow your name to be inscribed on the registers of the Lord's hospital ? You will never be allowed to come out until the word ' Healed ' is written across them." He then invoked the gracious parable of the Divine gardener digging round the roots of a precious rose tree, so that it might drink the night dew. 32 " Illness digs round the roots of your being." Keshab listened in silence and smiled ; for it was Rama- krishna's smile that shed a light of mysterious serenity into the funeral darkness of the house and into the sufferings of the sick man. Ramakrishna did not adopt a solemn tone until Keshab, exhausted, was about to leave him. Then he suggested to the dying man that he ought not to live so much in the inner room with the women and children, but alone with God. And it is said that in his deep agony, Keshab's last words were, " Mother : . . . Mother : . . ." 88 11 " The Gardener knows how to treat the common rose, and how to treat the rose of Bassora. He loosens the earth round her roots, so that she may benefit from the night dew. The dew gives strength and freshness to the rose. It is even so with you. The Divine Gardener knows how to treat you. He digs round you right down to the roots, so that His dew may fall upon you, that you may become purer and your work greater and more enduring." (Gospel of Ramakrishna, Vol. I, Section V, Chapter II.) 11 The repercussion of some of Ramakrishna's words, spoken during his last interview with Keshab, on the latter's last thoughts, have, I think, never before been noticed. Ramakrishna spoke to him for a long time about the Mother 129 K PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA It is so easy to understand how this great idealist, who believed in God, Reason, Goodness, Justice and Truth, should have discovered during these tragic days that he was too far away from the High God, the Unattainable God, and that he needed to draw near to Him and to touch Him with the dust of Ramakrishna's feet, to see Him and hear Him through Ramakrishna, and find refreshment for his fever. Such is an expression of universal experience. But it is just this for which some of Keshab's proud disciples cannot forgive Ramakrishna. On the other hand, I must beg the Ramakrishnites not to make too much of it, but rather let them follow the example of their sweet Master. When Keshab had just left him after this last interview here described, Ramakrishna spoke modestly and with admiration of Keshab's greatness, which had won the respect both of a social and intellectual Mite and of simple believers like himself. And he continued to show his esteem for the Brahmo Samaj. 84 The best of the Brahmos have and said, " She watches over Her children. . . . She knows how to obtain true freedom and knowledge for them. . . . The child knows nothing. . . Its Mother knows everything. . . . All is ordered according to Her will. You fulfil Your own will, O Divine Mother, and accomplish Your own work. The foolish man says, ' It is I, who have accomplished.' " Moreover, when Keshab in the midst of his own sufferings was consoling his real, his mortal mother, who had given him life, he said, " The Supreme Mother sends everything for my good. She plays with me, turning sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other." 4 In 1878 after the fresh schisms within the Brahmo Samaj, Ramakrishna remained faithful to Keshab when he was deserted by a section of his disciples. But he refused to make any distinction between the three separate branches of the Brahmo Samaj, joining them all alike in prayer. The Gospel of Ramakrishna has recorded several of these visits, in particular one of October 28, 1882, when he was invited and was present at the annual festival of Keshab's Brahmo Samaj. He was eagerly surrounded and questioned on religious problems, and replied with his usual breadth of spirit. He took part in the Songs (the song of Kabir), and in the sacred dances. When he retired he saluted all forms of devotion, ending up with homage to the Brahmo Samaj : " Salutations to the feet of the Jnanin : Salutations to the feet of the Bhakta : Salutations to the devout who believe in God with form : Salutations to the devout who believe in a God without form : Salutations to the ancient knowers of Brahmin : Salutations to the modern knowers of the Brahmo Samaj." The other two branches of the Brahmo Samaj showed him far 130 RAMAKRISHNA AND THE KING-SHEPHERDS OF INDIA held him in veneration in their turn, 85 and have known how to profit from their intercourse with him. His influence widened their understanding and their heart and did more than anybody else's to bring them into line in people's estimation with the best thought of India, which the first influx of the scientific knowledge of the West, badly assimi- lated, had threatened to alienate. One example will suffice ; his great disciple, Vivekan- anda, came from the ranks of the Brahmo Samaj and from the most bigoted, at least for a time, of iconoclasts in the name of Western reason against Hindu tradition, which later he learnt to respect and defend. The true thought of the West has lost nothing through this Hindu awakening. The thought of the East is now independent, and hence- forth union can be effected between equal and free person- alities, instead of the one being subjugated by the other, and one of the two Civilizations being assassinated by the other. less regard. The most recent, the Sadharan Samaj, owed him a grudge on account of his influence over Keshab. At the Adi Brahmo Samaj of Devendranath he was doubtless regarded as belonging to a lower level. At one visit which he paid to it (May 2, 1883), and which Rabindranath Tagore may perhaps remember, since he was present as a lad, his reception was hardly courteous. (Cf. Gospel of Ramakrishna.) 86 Especially Keshab's successor, Pratap Chandra Mozoomdar, and Vijaya Krishna Gosvani, who later on separated himself from the Brahmo Samaj. The greater composer and singer of Keshab's Samaj, Trailokya Nath Sanyal, maintains that many of his most beautiful songs were inspired by the ecstasies of Ramakrishna. VIII THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES IT is easy to see what India gained from the meeting of Ramakrishna and the Brahmo Samaj. 1 His own gain is less obvious, but no less definite. For the first time he found himself brought into personal contact with the educated middle class of his country, and through them with the pioneers of progress and Western ideas. He had previously known practically nothing of their mentality. He was not a man to react like a strict and narrow devotee who hastens to put up the shutters of his cell. On the contrary he flung them wide open. He was too human, too insatiably curious, too greedy for the fruit of the tree of life not to taste these new fruits to the full. His long searching glance insinuated itself, like a creeper through the chinks of the house, and studied all the different habitations of the same Host, and all the different spirits dwelling therein, and in order to understand them better, he identified himself with them. He grasped their limitations (as well as their significance), and proportioned to each nature its own vision of life and individual duty. He never dreamed of imposing either vision or action alien to his proper nature on any man. He, to whom renunciation both then and always, so far as he was personally concerned, was the first and last word of truth, discovered that most men would have none of it and he was neither astonished nor saddened by the discovery. The differences men busied themselves in raising between them, like hedges, seemed to him nothing but bushes all flowering in the same field and giving variety to the scene. 1 He loved them all. He could see the goal 1 See previous chapter. f Somebody once asked him what difference there was between 132 THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES and the path assigned to each one of them, and pointed out to each the road he was to follow. When he spoke to an individual one of the things most astonishing to the on- lookers was the way he instantaneously adapted just that individual's particular turn of phrase and method of express- ing his thoughts. This was not mere versatility. His spirit kept firm control of the steering wheel, and if he led men to another point of the bank, it was always the bank of God. He helped them unawares to land by their own power. Because he believed that all nature was of God, he felt that it was his duty to guide each nature along its own lines so that it might attain its fullest development. The realization that he possessed this gift of spiritual guid- ance came upon him without his own volition. A Western proverb, adopted as its motto by the Italian Renaissance, claims that Vouloir c'est pouvoir. This is the bragging of youth with everything still to do. A more mature man, who is not so easily satisfied with words, but who lays emphasis on deeds, reverses the motto so that it reads : " Pouvoir c'esi vouloir." Ramakrishna suddenly perceived the power within him and the call of the world for its use. The ascendancy he exercised over some of the best minds in India revealed the weaknesses and needs of these intellectuals, their unsatisfied aspirations, the inadequacy of the answers they gained from science, and the necessity for his intervention. The Brahmo Samaj showed him what strength of organization, what beauty existed in a spiritual group uniting young souls round an elder brother so that they tendered a basket of love as a joint offering to their Beloved, the Mother. 9 The immediate result was that his mission, hitherto undefined, became crystallized ; it concentrated first in a glowing nucleus of conscious thought wherein decision was centred, and then passed into action. First of all he saw in their entirety his own relations with the Brahmos and the other Hindus. " No very great one/ 1 he re- plied. In a concert of hautboys one holds on the same note while the others weave variations beneath it. The Brahmos always come back to the same note, the formless aspect of God. But the Hindus play his different aspects. 133 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA God. He saw that this God within him 8 could not be satisfied with personal salvation, as was the case with other Sadhakas, 4 but required of him the love and service of mankind. 5 His spiritual struggles, his ecstasies, his realiza- tions were not to be only for his own profit. " Sic vos non vobts. . . ." fl They were meant rather to prepare the way for human development, for a new era of spiritual realization. Other men had the right to aspire to and hope for liberation, but not he. He could not count on that. From century to century he was obliged to go to the help of mankind when- ever they were in danger. 7 And here is the rallying cry, the word of salvation that he was to carry to the men of his day. 8 i. All religions are true in their essence and in the sincere faith of their believers. The revelation of this universal truth, whereat Ramakrishna had arrived by common sense Ramakrishna admitted at this point what the Bhairavi Brah- mani had been the first to proclaim that he was a Divine Incar- nation. But he disliked to talk about it, and could not bear it to be mentioned in front of him. In general, praise was disagreeable to him. He was much more prone to refuse in public all spiritual privileges to the dissatisfaction of some of his followers, who would have liked a share in them. His conviction lay in an inward act, a secret light, which he never paraded. I would ask my Western readers a question that may shock them whether the passionate conviction of a mission which imposes thought and action upon our great men is not vaguely akin to exactly some such intuition, some fullness of Being transcending the limits of personality ? What does it matter by what name it is called ? 4 Sadhana is the practice of spiritual contemplation leading to one form of Realization. Sadhaka is one dedicated to this practice. The word " service " inscribed by Ramakriihna's disciples above their mission was not explicitly pronounced by the Master. But his whole doctrine of love working for others to the limits of personal sacrifice is in essence the doctrine of service. Service, as Swami Ashokananda has well shown, is its motive force (cf. Prabuddha Bharata, Almora, February, 1928, " The Origin of Swami Vivekananda's Doctrine of Service "). We shall return to this question later. A frequently quoted verse of Virgil, meaning : " You work, but not for yourself." T As a curious fact I note here that Ramakrishna said, pointing to the north-west, that after two hundred years he would be re- incarnated there (Russia). Life of Ramakrishna, pp. 342-47. 134 THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES as much as by intuition, was the special object of his coming upon the earth. 2. The three great orders of metaphysical thought : Dualism, "Qualified" Monism and absolute Monism, are the stages on the way to supreme truth. They are not contradictory, but rather are complimentary the one to the other. Each is the perspective offered to the mental stand- point of one order of individuals. For the masses, who are attracted through the senses, a dualistic form of religion with ceremonies, music, images and symbols is useful. The pure intellect can arrive at qualified Monism ; it knows that there is a beyond ; but it cannot realize it. Realization belongs to another order, the Advaita, the inexplicable, the formless Absolute, of which the discipline of Yoga gives a foretaste. It surpasses the logical means of word and spirit. It is the last word of " Realization/ 1 It is Identity with the One Reality. 3. To this scale of thought there is naturally a correspond- ing scale of duties. The ordinary man lives in the world and can and does fulfil his duties there, striving with affec- tionate zeal but without attachment to self, just as a good servant takes care of a house, although he is quite aware that the house is not his. By purity and love he is to achieve liberation from his desires. But only step by step with patience and modesty. " Undertake only those tasks that are within the range of your thoughts and purified dreams. Do not flatter yourself that you can do big things, but fulfil duties as small in size as your self-renunciation to God. Then as your renunciation and purity grow (and things of the soul grow very quickly) they will pay their way across the material world and shed thSir light upon other men, just as the Ganges, having cut its channel through the hard rocks of the Himalayas, waters millions of places with its beneficence." 9 " Do not be in a hurry, but progress each at his own pace : You are sure to arrive at your destination, so there is no need to run : but you must not stop : ' Religion is a path which leads to God, but a path is not a house.' . . . ' And will it be a long one ? ' ' That depends. It is the Cf. D. G. Mukerji, op. cit. 135 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA same for all. But some march for a longer time and the end draws near. . . .' " " The potter dries his pots in the sun. Some are already baked, others not. The cattle pass on and tread them under foot. (Then comes death.) . . . The potter picks up the pots again and if one is not quite baked he replaces it on the wheel ; he does not let it go. But when the sun of God has completed your baking, the potter leaves the remains, now of no further use on the plane of Maya, except for one or two finished vessels to serve as models for humanity." 10 Ramakrishna was one such, and his mission was to seek those who were a stage behind him X1 and with them, in fulfilment of the Mother's will, to found a new order of men, who would transmit his message and teach to the world his word of truth containing all the others. This word was "Universal" the Union and Unity of all the aspects of God, of all the transports of love and knowledge, of all forms of humanity. Until then nobody had sought to realize more than one aspect of the Being. All must be realized. That was the duty of the present day. And the man who fulfilled it by identifying himself with each and all of his living brethren, taking unto himself their eyes, their senses, their brain and heart, was the pilot and the guide for the needs of the new age. 12 No sooner had he perceived this vision than he was afire with the desire to realize it. 18 Like a bird-charmer he flung 10 Interview with Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, December 6, 1884. 11 He said : " To those who are in their last birth." 11 Cf. Swami Ashokananda, loc. cit. 11 It was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna about 1863 that many faithful and pure-hearted souls would come to him. (Cf. Life of Ramakrishna, p. 203.) But Rarn^krishna had hardily given it a thought before 1866. According to Saradananda, it was at the end of the long Samadhi of that year that a violent desire for his future disciples came upon him. Every evening he prayed for their advent with loud cries. The climax of this crisis was towards the end of the next six years (1866-72), which further period was neces- sary for Ramakrishna to reach the height of his powers as a teacher, and to understand the spiritual condition of the India of his age. Towards the close of this period, in a vision his future disciples appeared to him. (Cf. Life of Vivekananda, I, 360.) He first began to preach at the end of 1874 or the beginning of 1875, when he made Keshab's acquaintance. His preaching may be considered to fall within the period of twelve years, from 1874 to August, 1886. 136 THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES a passionate appeal into the air to other winged spirits to come and group themselves round his dovecote. The time was ripe. He could wait no longer. He must collect his covey round him. Night and day the thought of these beloved companions possessed him. He cried in his heart. . . . " My ardent desire knew no bounds. That very day for good or ill I had to realize it. I no longer listened to what was said round me. ... They filled my mind. I could see them. I decided in advance what I should say to this one and that one. ... By the end of the day the thought of them weighed upon me. . . . Another day had gone and still they had not come ! . . . The clocks struck, the conches sounded. I went up to the roof in the fading light and with bleeding heart cried aloud, ' Come my chil- dren : Where are you ? I cannot live without you. . . .' I loved them more than mother, friend or lover ; I desired them ; I was dying in their absence." This mighty cry of the soul soared up into the night like the sacred serpent ; and its attraction was exerted over the winged spirits. From all directions, without under- standing what command or what power constrained them, they felt themselves drawn, as if caught by an invisible thread ; they circled, they approached and soon, one after another they arrived. The first disciples to present themselves (this was in 1879) were two middle class intellectuals from Calcutta. They were cousins : the one a medical student at the Calcutta Medical College, an absolute materialist and atheist : Ram- chandra Dutt ; the other married and the head of a family : Manomohan Mitra. Some lines in a Brahmo Samaj journal mentioning Ramakrishna Iiad attracted their attention. They came and they were conquered. They did not renounce the world and Ramakrishna did nothing to detach them from it ; but the extraordinary man captivated them by his charm and his character. It was they who brought him his two greatest disciples the one who became the first abbot of the Ramakrishna Order, under the name of Brahmananda (Rakhal Chandra Ghosh), and he whose genius was to enlighten India and the whole world under the name of Vivekananda (Narendranath Dutt). 137 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Before considering the chief personalities, here is a short list of the best known of the men, who between the years 1879 and 1885 14 grouped themselves round Ramakrishna, together with some indication of their birth and profession as far as it is possible to draw up : 1879 : i and 2. Doctor Ramchandra Dutt and his cousin, Manomohan Mitra ; 3. Latu, Ramchandra's servant, of low birth from Behar, later known by the monastic name of Adbhutananda ; 4. Surendranath Mitra, a rich employee of an English trading house, a householder and member of the Brahmo Samaj ; 1881 : 5. Rakhal Chandra Ghosh, son of a Zemindar (landed proprietor), later the first abbot of the Order under the name of Brahmananda ; 6. Gopal the elder, a paper merchant (later Advaitananda) ; 7. Narendranath Dutt, a young intellectual, belong- ing to a Kshatriya family (later Vivekananda) ; 1882 : 8. Mahendra Nath Gupta, the principal of the Vidyasagyr High School at Shambazar, Calcutta, who has since written the Gospel of Sri Rama- krishna under the pseudonym M., and who, unless I am mistaken, directs the school he founded, the Morton Institution. 9. Tarak Nath Ghoshal, the son of a lawyer, a member of the Brahmo Samaj, the present abbot of the Order under the name of Shivananda ; 10. Jogendra Nath Chaudhury, a Brahmin of Dak- shmeswar belonging to an aristocratic family (later Yogananda). 1883 : ii. Sasibhurshan (later Ramakrishnananda) ; 12. Saratchandra Chakravarti (later Saradananda), the Secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission for more than a quarter of a century and the great biographer of Ramakrishna, both Brahmins of Calcutta and members of the Brahmo Samaj ; 14 According to Saradananda, all Ramakrishna's disciples arrived before the end of 1884, and most of them between the middle of 1883 and the middle of 1884. 138 THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES 13. Kaliprasad Chandra, the son of a professor of English (later Abhedananda) ; 14. Narinath Chattopadhyaya, a Brahmin (later Turiyananda) ; 15. Hariprasanna Chatterjee, a student (Vijnanan- anda) ; 16. Gangadhar Ghatak, a young student of fourteen (later Akhandananda) ; 17. Girish Chandra Ghosh, a great actor and drama- tist, the founder of the modern Bengal theatre, director of the Star Theatre at Calcutta ; 1885 : 18. Subodh Ghosh, a student of seventeen, the son of a founder of the temple of Kali at Calcutta (later Subodhananda). I have not been able to find the exact dates for the entrance of the following : 19. The rich proprietor, Balaram Bose, a mature and exceedingly pious man, whose gifts helped in the foundation of the Order ; 20. The young spiritualistic medium, Nitya Niranjan Sen, whom Ramakrishna rescued by main force from occult beliefs, 16 and who was later Niran- janananda ; 21. Devendra Mazundar, a mature, married man, an employee of a Zemindar and brother of the Bengal poet, Surendranath ; 22. Baburam Gosh, a student about twenty years of age (later Premananda) ; 23. Tulasi Charan Dutt, a student of eighteen (later Nirmalananda) . It can be seen that with the exception of the poor servant, Latu, the majority belonged to the liberal professions, to the Brahmin aristocracy or to the rich middle class of Bengal. They were either young men or in the prime of life, and several had been fashioned by the Brahmo Samaj. But I have only mentioned those who joined Ramakrishna strictly and who were the exponents of his thought. 15 " If you always think of ghosts, you will become a ghost. If you think of God, you will be God. t Choose : " 139 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA An ever shifting crowd of all classes and all castes inun- dated him with its restless movement. They came jumbled together, Maharajahs and beggars, journalists and pandits, artists and devotees, Brahmos, Christians and Moham- medans, men of faith, men of action and business, old men, women and children. Often they journeyed from afar to question him, and there was no rest for him day or night. For twenty hours out of the twenty-four he replied to all comers. Although his weakened health failed under the strain, he refused nobody, but gave out to all alike his sympathy, his enlightenment, and that strange power of soul, which, even if he did not speak a word, gripped 18 the hearts of his visitors and left them transformed for days. He won the respect of all sincere believers, and gladly received men of different faiths so that they might discuss their diversities before him and he might reconcile them. But this to him was only one of the factors making for harmony. He desired something infinitely greater than the reconciliation of warring creeds that man as a whole should understand, sympathize with and love the rest of mankind that he should identify himself with the life of humanity. For, since Divinity is inherent in every man, every life for him was a religion, and should so become for all. And the more we love mankind, however diverse, the nearer we are to God. 17 It was unnecessary to seek Him in temples, or to call upon Him for miracles and revelations. He was here, everywhere, every second. We could see Him, we could touch Him, for He was our brother, our friend, our enemy, our very self. And it was because this omnipresent God flowed from the soul of Ramakrishna, because his light illumined, quietly and imperceptibly, the crowd surround- ing him, that men felt themselves, without understanding why, uplifted and strengthened. He said to his disciples, " We must build on different foundations from the makers lf " The force of a tiger," was the term used by certain wit- nesses of the gentle master, thus associating in a striking metaphor a savage impression of vital power and freedom of soul. 17 " Are you seeking God ? Then seek Him in man : The Divinity ii manifest in man more than in any other object " (Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 350). 140 THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES of religions. We must live an inner life so intense that it becomes a Being. The Being will give birth to innumerable torches of truth. . . . Rivers flow because their parent, the mountain, remains immovable. . . . Let us raise a mountain of God in the midst of humanity. It matters little where and when. When it has been raised, it will continue to pour forth rivers of light and compassion over mankind for ever." 18 There was then no question of founding or of expounding a new creed : " Mother/' Premananda heard him pray, " do not let me become famous by leading those who believe in beliefs to me : Do not expound beliefs through my voice/' 19 And he warned his disciples against any kind of Rama- krishnaism. Above all things there must be no barriers. " A river has no need of barriers. If it dams itself up it stagnates and becomes foul/' Rather the gates must be flung wide open, the gates of oneself and of other people so that all-conquering Unity might be created. This was to be the real part for his chosen disciples by their common effort they were to " recreate the Being who was to nourish the men and women of the centuries to be." Their part was to be an active one, demanding great gifts and the wide tolerance of spirit and heart. Nobody must stint himself, but give himself wholly. That is why, although all men, without exception, were called into the Divine community, he showed himself very strict in the choice of his disciples ; for they were the way, whereon the feet of humanity was to march. He claimed that it was not he, but the Mother, who chose them. 20 But 18 D. G. Mukerji, op. cit. 19 Once when he was urged to define God, he replied, " And if I were to give you a definition of God, what would you do with it ? Use it as an article of faith in order to found a new religion in my name ? I did not come into the world to begin a new cult : Ah 1 No 1 " And on another occasion, " Do not look for religion : be religion." 10 " I did not choose them. The Divine Mother led them to me. She made me examine them. At night I meditate ; the veil falls and reveals them to me. You can then see the ego of a man or a 141 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA was the Mother any different from the entity we carry in the depths of ourselves ? This entity in the case of those, who, like Ramakrishna, have acquired the exceptional power of keeping intact an intense solitary concentration in the midst of a life passed in the midst of an innumerable throng, possesses antennae, which infallibly seek out the inner man. At the most furtive contact they sound the depths, the capacities and the weaknesses, the virtues and the vices, things obscure even to the person under observation, that which is and that which will be. Ordinary men are apt to call in question the reality of this gift of intuitive vision, which reaches from the present into the future. But it is neither more nor less outside the limits of nature than the vibrations of the rod of the " Diviner " on the surface of the earth revealing the water beneath. Ramakrishna was a wonderful wand in the hand of the Mother. Extraordinary tales are told of his physical and spiritual hypersensitiveness. Towards the end of his life such was his horror of riches that he could no longer touch gold without being burnt. 21 It is also maintained that the mere touch of an impure person gave him physical pain analogous to the bite of a cobra. 22 woman as through a glass case ... I satisfy myself concerning the character of my disciples before I initiate them." What man of intuition can fail to recognize this method of thought, the use of this inward eye opening under lowered lids in the lonely centre of the spirit on the still warm spoils of the world, captured by the lure of the senses ? Only the mode of expression varies and the intensity of the eye. 11 Vivekananda relates, " Even when he was sleeping, if I touched him with a piece of money, his hand would become bent and his whole body would become as if it were paralysed. 1 ' (My Master.) 11 In illustration of this legendary trait : One day when in the kindness of his heart he had consented to touch a man, who, though outwardly without reproach was inwardly defiled, and who insisted that Ramakrishna should enroll him among his disciples, Ramakrishna howled with pain. He said to the man sorrowfully and kindly, " The touch of divine bliss has become in you a cobra's poison. It is not in this life, my son : " and continued under his breath, " Your liberation." A thousand other instances of this hypersensitiveness might be related. A blow given to a man in the street by a furious enemy left its physical mark on the flesh of Ramakrishna. His nephew saw his back red and inflamed at the sight of a man whose back was scored with the whip. And Girish Chandra Ghosh, whose 142 THE CALL OF THE DISCIPLES At sight he could read the soul of those who approached him, and so, if he accepted them as his disciples, it was with full knowledge. 28 He discovered in a hardly formed adolescent with character scarcely developed the exact task for which he had been born. Sometimes he discovered a great destiny, suspected least of all by the person concerned. Perhaps he helped such destiny to be born by announcing it. This great moulder of souls cast with his fingers of fire the bronze of Vivekananda as well as the delicate and tender wax of Yogananda or Brahmananda. A curious fact is that the most resolute to resist him, were bound sooner or later to yield to the spiritual election he had made. They then brought as much passion into play in submitting to him as they had formerly used in withstanding him. He had the power of divining, seizing and keeping those spirits fore-ordained for his mission, and it would appear that the hawk eye of the Paramahamsa was never mistaken. witness is unimpeachable, has certified to the fact of his stigmata. This spiritual contact with all forms of life made him at one even with animals and plants. It has been said of him, that he felt a brutal step upon the earth as it were upon his own heart. 11 He did not blindly depend upon his own intuition. He visited the tutors of his young disciples, he learnt all about them and studied them in meditation. With a remarkable and scrupulous attention he noted their physiological characteristics of respiration, sleep and even digestion. He held that they were of considerable importance in confirming his diagnosis of their spiritual faculties and destiny. 143 IX THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN IT is possible to divide the train of great souls, with which he surrounds himself, into two classes : a third order, 1 as it were of men and women, who remained serving God in the world and the chosen band of apostles. Let us first consider the former : for these disciples or listeners belonging to the second (third Order) illustrate the spirit of broad " catholicity " animating Ramakrishna, and to what an extent his religion took into account, for others as well as for himself, the common duties of humanity. He did not ask men of goodwill to leave all and follow him. On the contrary he was careful to refrain from say- ing, " Forsake all to seek salvation 1 " to those already caught by worldly ties, such as married people and fathers of families. He forbade his disciples to sacrifice the legitimate rights of others " just because you, my son, wish to become a holy man." Personal salvation was mere selfishness in too many cases, and therefore resulted in a worse death of the soul. "... We owe a debt to the gods. We owe a debt to parents. We owe a debt to ojir wives. ... No work can be satisfactorily concluded until the debt to parents at least has been paid. . . . Harish gave up his wife and lives here. But if his wife had not been provided for, I should have called him a wicked fellow. . . . There are those who are constantly quoting scripture, but their deeds and their words do not tally. Rama Prasana says that Manu ordered that Sadhus should be served. And his old mother 1 Third Order : It was the name given by St. Francis of Assisi* to a half lay, half religious order to which pious people living in the world could (and can still) belong. 144 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN was dying of hunger and was obliged to beg for what she needed : . . . That enrages me : Not even a depraved mother ought to be deserted. ... So long as parents remain in want the practice of devotion avails nothing. 2 " The brother of S. came here for several days. He had left his wife and his children in the care of his brother-in- law. I rebuked him severely. . . . Was it not criminal to leave his home, when he had so many children to bring up ? Was it for strangers to feed them and be troubled with them ? It was a scandal : . . . I told him to go and look for work. ..." " You should bring up your children, provide for your wife, and put by what is necessary for her to live upon after your death. If you do not do so you are heartless ; and a man without compassion is not worthy of the name of man." 8 " I tell people that they must fulfil their duties in the world as well as think about God. I do not ask them to renounce all (smiling). The other day in the course of a lecture, Keshab said, ' O God, grant that we may be plunged in the river of Devotion and attain the Ocean of Satchi- dananda (Being, Knowledge, Eternal Felicity) : ' The women were present sitting behind a screen. I showed them to Keshab and said, ' If you are all plunged in at once, what will be their fate ? . . . So you must come out of the water from time to time ; immerse yourselves and come out alternately : ' Keshab and the others began to laugh. . . ." 4 1 Gospel of Ramakrishna, II, 251 et seq. The Ramakrishna Mis- sion has followed the teachings of the Master. It does not admit anyone to the monastic life unless his family voluntarily renounce him. For they hold that a man* who flees from worldly responsi- bility is too weak to be exposed to the heavier responsibility of God's service. (Cf. Mukerji.) Life of Ramakrishna, p. 587. * The Gospel, II. 266. The peasant's son knew much more about the necessities of existence than the rich Keshab, and that there is more merit if a poor workman finds a place for one single thought of God during the day, than if he consecrated hours to religious offices like an idle devotee. " One day (here is one of his pregnant and piquant parables) Narada thought that he was the most pious of men. The Lord 145 L PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA " Your duty as a married man is to live with your wife as brother and sister as soon as one or two children have been born, and to pray to God that you may be granted the power to live a perfect spiritual life exercising self- control." 6 " Undoubtedly a man, who has once tasted the bliss of God, finds the world insipid. To lead a religious life in the world is to stay in a room with only a feeble ray of light. Those who are used to the open air cannot live in prison. 6 But, if you live in a house, you have duties to perform. Learn in accomplishing them always to enjoy the ray of light. Do not lose a particle of it, and never lose touch with it ; when you are at work, use only one of your hands, and let the other touch the feet of the Lord. When your work is suspended, take His feet in both your hands and put them over your heart ! . . . 7 What will you gain, if you renounce the world ? Family life is a fortress for you. Moreover, he who has attained knowledge, is always free. It is only the lunatic who says, ' I am enchained/ that ends by being so. ... The mind is all in all. If it is free, you are free. Whether in the forest or in the world I am not enchained. I am the son of God, the King of kings. Who then dare put me in chains ? . . ." So he offered each one the means of freedom to drink from an inner spring, to share the joy of universal Existence, which is God, contained within each and every individual, without going against his own nature, without mutilating it or " forcing "it, and above all without wronging one told him to go and see a peasant who was more pious than he. He went. The peasant invoked the name of Hari when he got up and when he went to bed ; the rest of the day he worked in the fields. Narada did not understand. Then the Lord told him to take a cup filled to the brim with oil and to cany it round the town without spilling a drop. Narada obeyed. When he came back without having spilt a drop, the Lord asked, ' How many times did you think of Me ? ' ' Lord, how could I think of you ? My mind was concentrated on the cup of oil.' Thus the Lord made Narada understand how great was the peasant's devotion, who, in spite of his work, did not forget to call upon His name. 11 (Sri Ramakrishna's Teachings, I, 45.) 'Gospel, I, 403. Interview with Trailokya Nath Sanyal. T Interview with Keshab and his disciples, 1882. 146 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN hair of the head of anyone dependent upon him. Far from forbidding a man to feel legitimate affection, he showed it to be a means of enlightenment, a peaceful canal with beautiful reflections, leading the pure and the simple to God. Here is a charming example : The daughter of one of his disciples (Manila! Mallik) was troubled. She told him sorrowfully that when she prayed she could not concentrate. Ramakrishna asked her : " What do you love best in the world ? " She replied that it was her brother's little child. " Very well," answered the affectionate Master, " fix your thoughts upon him/' She did so and through the little boy she grew in devotion to the child Krishna. 8 How I love this flower of tenderness in him ! What deep significance it has ! Each one of us, be his heart as dark as night, has the divine spark in the most humble impulse of true love. There is nobody quite destitute of a tiny lamp, just enough to light up his path. And all ways are good ways even the bad ones, 9 and each individual destiny, provided that every man follows his own with loyal sincerity. 8 Here is another anecdote of the same kind : A good grandmother grew old, and wished to adopt a religious life at Brindaban. Ramakrishna dissuaded her, on the ground that she loved her granddaughter too much and that her meditations would be troubled by thoughts of her. He added : " All the good you could expect from living at Brindaban will come of its own accord to you, if you cultivate your sweet affection for your granddaughter in the thought that she is Sri Radhika Herself. Fondle her just as much as you are wont ; feed and dress her to your heart's content but^ always think to yourself that in those acts you are offering your worship to the goddess of Brindaban/' (Sri Ramakrishna' s Teachings, par. 70.) And so live your life and love your dear ones in innocence and peace ! This means that you see God under their veil and give Him thanks. , , " The vital point is your ardent desire for truth, whatever be the path you follow. God knows the secrets of your heart ; and it matters little if you take the wrong path, so long as you are sincere. He Himself will lead you back to the right path It is well-known that no road is perfect. Each person believes that his watch goes well, but in truth none knows the correct time. But that does not hinder people's work/ 1 (Life of Sri Ramaknshna, p. 647.) 147 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA The rest is God's business. Have confidence then and go forward ! Therefore live your life and love your loved ones in all innocence and peace ; all you have to do is to see God under their dear shapes and give thoughts to Him. And how deeply and indulgently Ramakrishna's maternal eye penetrated and understood, so that he knew how to guide the troubled souls of the most lost of his children, is shown in a story worthy of the Franciscan legends of his relations with the comedian, Girish Chunder Ghosh. This great actor and dramatist was a Bohemian and a debauchee, a rebel against God, although his genius enabled him on occasions to write beautiful religious works. 10 But he regarded such writings as a game. He did not realize a fact that struck Ramakrishna at the first glance, that he himself was the plaything of God. He heard people talk of the Paramahamasa, and was curious to see him, as he might have been curious to see a freak in a circus. At their first meeting he was drunk and he insulted him. Ramakrishna in a calm and bantering tone said to him, " At least you might drink to God ; Perhaps He drinks as well. . . ." The drunkard, his mouth agape, exclaimed, " How do you know ? " " If He did not drink, how could He have created this topsy-turvy world ? " Girish remained in stupefied silence. When he had gone, Ramakrishna said quietly to his astounded disciples : " That man is a great devotee u of God/ 1 At his own invitation he went to see Girish act in his Calcutta theatre. 12 Girish w4s vain and looked for com- pliments. But Ramakrishna said to him, " My son, you suffer from a crooked soul." 10 Some of them have been translated from Bengali into English. He is regarded as one of the greatest Bengali dramatists. 11 " Devotee " is used here, as elsewhere in this book, as mean- ing, devoted to God, one who has given himself wholly to God. 11 Towards the end of 1884. He was present at one of the first performances of Chaitanya-lila and in 1885 he saw performances of four or five other plays of Girish, in particular the dramatized life of Buddha. I 4 8 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN Girish was furious and loaded him with insults. Rama- krishna blessed him and went away. The next day Girish came to beg his pardon, and became a disciple of Rama- krishna. But he could not give up drinking. Ramakrishna never asked him to do so, with the result that eventually Girish broke the habit ; for Ramakrishna had strengthened his resolution by allowing him to feel that he was absolutely free. But this was not enough. Ramakrishna told him that to refrain from doing evil was too negative a virtue ; he must draw near to God. Girish found this impossible, for he had never been able to submit to discipline. In despair he said that he would prefer suicide to meditation and prayer. " I am not asking you for much," Ramakrishna replied. " Just one prayer before you eat, and one prayer before you go to bed. Can you not do it ? " " No ; I hate routine. I cannot pray or meditate. I cannot even think of God for a second/' " Good/ 1 replied Ramakrishna. " Well, if you really desire to see the Lord, but if at the same time you will not take a single step towards Him, will you make me your proxy ? I will do your praying for you, while you will lead your own life. But take care ; you must promise me to live from henceforth absolutely at the Lord's mercy/' Girish accepted his suggestion without fully realizing the consequences. His life was no longer under the control of his own will, but at the mercy of inner forces, like a leaf in the wind, or like a kitten whose mother can carry it equally well on to a king's bed as a dustheap. 18 He had to accept this condition without demur, and it was not easy. Girish struggled loyally, but once he was driven to say, " Yes, I will do it." " What is that ? " Ramakrishna cried sternly. " You have no longer the will to do or not to do. Remember, * " Like a cat " (Marjari) is the classical simile of the Bhakti. The cat saves its kittens by carrying them inert. Certain sects of Southern India conceive thus of salvation. They believe it is accomplished exclusively by God. (Cf . Paul Masson-Oursel : Sketch of the History of Indian Philosophy, p. 247.) 149 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA I am your proxy. Your behaviour is according to the will of the Lord within you. I pray for you ; but my prayers will avail nothing unless you abandon all initiative." Girish submitted, and the result of this discipline was that after a time he attained self-surrender to the impersonal Self ; he was conquered by God. But he did not renounce his profession as dramatist and actor, and Ramakrishna never desired it. Instead he purified it. He had been the first to introduce women on to the Bengal stage, and now he rescued many unfor- tunate girls from misery and uplifted them. Afterwards he took them to Ramakrishna's monastery. He became one of the most religious followers of the Master, one of the greatest of his householder disciples. Notwithstanding his freedom of speech and caustic humour, he was respected and venerated after the Master's death by the monastic disciples. As he was dying, he said, " The folly of matter is a terrible veil. Take it away from my eyes, Ramakrishna ! " 14 And so, his religious sense, a sixth sense more highly developed in him than any of the others, revealed to Rama- krishna those among the passers-by, who were predestined for a divine sowing, those in whom God was sleeping. One glance, one gesture, was enough to awaken it. Nearly all the disciples yielded to him at the first meeting, the vibrations of their inner being whether they wished to do so or not. He scrutinized them through and through. Other men had only their own salvation to find, but the true disciples were to be leaders and have the charge of other souls. That was why* when they were recruited, they were, as I have said, subjected to physical 16 and moral examination, followed after their admission by a paternal and ever watchful discipline. He preferred them young, sometimes very young, hardly 14 1 have followed the narrative of D. G. Mukerji in this account. 11 He was very particular about perfect health. The chief dis- ciples, Vivekananda, Brahmananda, Saradananda, Turiyananda, etc., seem to have been of athletic build, tall and broad, and pos- sessing rare physical strength. I repeat that he was always careful to examine the tongue, the chest, the working of the organs, before sanctioning the exercises of intensive meditation. 150 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN adolescent, 16 and unmarried, " not yet caught in the net of desire, nor entrapped by riches, free from ties. . . ." If, like Brahmananda, they were married, he examined the wife as well, and satisfied himself that she would help and not hinder her young husband in his mission. In general the disciples of this unlettered man were well- educated and knew at least one foreign language in addition to Sanskrit. But this was not an essential ; the example of Latu is significant, although it may be said that he was the exception to prove the rule. A humble and ignorant servant, a peasant of Behar and a stranger to Bengal, he was awakened to eternal life by one glance from Rama- krishna, for he possessed unwittingly the same genius of heart as the Master. 17 " Many of us," said Swami Turiyananda, " had to go through the muddy waters of knowledge before we attained God, but Latu jumped over them, like Hanuman." * * * What did Ramakrishna teach his disciples ? Vivekan- anda has emphasized the originality of his methods, especially in the India of his day ; since then some of his educational principles have been adopted and systematized by the new schools of Europe. Up to that time in India the word of the master was law. A Guru exacted from his Chelas (pupils) a deeper respect than that paid to parents. Ramakrishna would have none of it. He put himself on a level with his young disciples. He was their companion, their brother ; he talked familiarly with tlapji and without any trace of superiority. The advice he gave them was not his own* It came from the Mother through his lips. "What has 1 Turiyananda was fourteen yws old, Subodhananda seventeen. 17 Few lives of saints are more moving than that of this boy servant of a householder disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, who came by boat up the Ganges on behalf of his master to lay an offering at Ramakrishna's feet. Their glances met. Two days later Latu came and gave himself to the Master a gift for life. He was so completely emptied of self that he feared, even when he was doing good, lest he should be caught again in the trap of self-love or of routine ; he was only reassured when he felt himself fused in the goodness of God. This illiterate man understood the profound language of music. When he was dying, " Spitting his body " to use his own rude expression, he cried in ecstasy, " I hear the sound of a flute. At last I am going to His meeting-place." PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA it to do with me ? " Moreover, words are mere accessories ; they are not instruction. True instruction does not consist in inculcating doctrine 18 but in " communicating/' But what is to be communicated ? A man's self ? Not even that, or rather something more than that the One self. Or we may describe it as the condition of inward abundance, of vital and digested riches called " Spirituality/' And this is to be communicated " as a flower might be given/' in the same way that a good gardener dispenses the sun and the sheltering shade to the budding souls entrusted to him, so that they may blossom and exhale their spiritual perfume. That is all. The rest comes from within them. " When the lotus is full blown, the bees come and collect the honey. Let the lotus of character expand naturally." Still less was there any question of imposing his own ideas upon them. There was to be no established Credo ; I have already quoted his words : " Mother do not expound beliefs through my voice ; " And ritual even less ; " God cannot be won by a system of ritual," but only by love and sincerity. There were no fruitless discussions on metaphysics and theology ; " I do not like argument. God is above the powers of reason. I see that all which exists is God. Then of what avail to reason ? . . . Go into the garden, eat the sacred mangoes and go out again ; You do not go in to count the leaves on the mango tree. So why waste time in disputes about reincarnation or idolatry ? " 19 What then did matter ? Personal experience. Experi- ment first and then believe yi God. Belief ought not to precede but to follow religious experience. If it comes first, it is inconsistent. Nevertheless Ramakrishna presupposed his own belief that God is in everything, that He is everything, and that 1 " Do not trouble yourselves with doctrine ; It is the Essence of existence in each man, which counts ; and this is spirituality. You must acquire it." According to Vivekananda the principle of his teaching was, " First form character, first earn spirituality, and results will come of themselves." (My Master.) 19 Cf. The Gospel, passim. 152 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN it therefore follows that whoever opens his eyes and looks around him will of necessity end by meeting Him. This union with God was such a deep and constant 20 reality in his case that he did not feel any need to prove it, and he would never have dreamt of imposing it upon others. He was too certain that every sane and sincere seeker would arrive at it by himself, and through himself alone. His sole care was to make his disciples sane and sincere. But who can gauge the moral influence of such a being wholly impregnated with God ? It is obvious that his tranquil and constant vision was intermingled with his flesh, like the scent of pines in autumn honey, and hence it would percolate over the tongues of his young and starving disciples, who drank in eagerly his gestures and his move- ments. But he himself had no suspicion of it. He left them free, so he believed. He believed that God was simply spreading His perfume through his substance, like thyme when the wind blows over it. The thyme makes no effort to convince you. All you have to do is to smell its fresh scent. This then was the essential part of Ramakrishna's dis- cipline. A man must have and keep his body, senses and spirit honest and pure, unspotted, unworn, as young as Adam. To achieve this the first rule was continence. This rule, which our anti-clerics of the West claim with ingenuous ignorance to be a monopoly of the Church of Rome, and against which they are never tired of launching their old and blunted arrows, is as old as the world (though if the whole world had applied it rigorously it would obviously never have Jived to grow old). All great 10 It even reached the pitch of hallucination ; " Do you know what I see ? I see Him in all things. Man and the other creatures seem to me like miniature figures clothed in flesh ; and it is the Lord within them that moves head and feet and hands. Once I had this Vision : One Substance alone had taken all the forms of the Cosmos and all living creatures a wax house, with garden, men, cows, all of wax nothing but wax " (Gospel, I, 437.) " One day it was revealed to me that everything is Pure Spirit ; the temple vessels, the altar, men, beasts all pure Spirit ; and like a madman I began to rain flowers over everything. Every- thing that I saw, I worshipped. . . ." 153 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA mystics and the majority of great idealists, the giants among the creators of the spirit, have clearly and instinc- tively realized what formidable power of concentrated soul, of accumulated creative energy, is generated by a renuncia- tion of the organic and psychic expenditure of sexuality. Even such free thinkers in matters of faith, and such sensu- alists as Beethoven, Balzac and Flaubert, have felt this. " Let me keep it for a higher purpose " (for God and creative art), Beethoven cried one day when he had repulsed the appeal of carnal passion. For a still stronger reason the impassioned of God cannot bear any division of them- selves ; for they know that their God will refuse to visit them in a house cumbered and soiled with desire. (Not only is the act called in question but the thought even more so.) It is not enough to practise sexual continence if concupiscence is hidden in the secrets of the heart ; for this would be impotence another sin rather than freedom. The rule is inflexible for Hindu Sannyasin ; and the spiritual guides as different as the tender, serene, almost feminine Ramakrishna and the masculine, ardent and pas- sionate Vivekananda, a torch of passion shaken by all winds that blow, allowed no compromise. " Absolute continence must be practised, if God is to be realized. If a man remains absolutely continent for twelve years, he achieves superhuman power. A new nerve develops in him, called " the nerve of intelligence." He can remember everything and know everything. Renuncia- tion of Kamini-Kanchana (woman and gold) is essential." n Poverty, chastity, the mystic marriage of St. Francis. The prescriptions of Churches and Sacred Books are super- fluous ; for kindred spirits of Jhe East and the West have arrived at the same conclusions and the same results. Generally speaking the man who dedicates himself to the inner life (whether it be called Christ, Shiva, or Krishna, or the pure idea of thought and art) " must have absolute empire over his senses." fl But that is not enough. Those (and they are in the 11 Gospel of Ramakrishna, II, 223 et seq. t I, 252 et seq. The ques- tion is there treated by the Master in frank and open terms without any false modesty. 11 Gospel of Ramakrishna, II, 223. 154 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN majority) who have to remain in contact with the world and to work in it, must exercise the same " empire " over the object of their work and the intellectual passions that feed it. They must take care not to become the slaves of any activity, however noble, to which they may be devoted. 23 " You cannot escape work, because nature (Prakriti) drives you to it. That being so, let all work be done as it should be done ! Then if it is done without attachment it leads to God, and is a means to attain the end and the end is God." " Without attachment " does not imply without con- science, or zeal of love of good work, but only with dis- interestedness. " To work without attachment is to work without the hope of reward or the fear of punishment, either in this world or in any other. . . ." But Ramakrishna was too human not to know that such an ideal is very rarely attained by frail humanity. " To work without attachment is extremely difficult, especially in our days, and can only be realized by a chosen few. ..." But it is a common duty to aspire at least to such detach- ment, and fervent prayer and true charity are aids to it. But stop ; the word charity is an equivocal one. Charity and philanthropy are usually classed as synonyms. Rama- krishna evinced a curious mistrust of the latter, unsurpassed by any of our Western satirists such as Dickens or Mirabeau, and he unmasked with laugh or insult the hypocrisy of certain " philanthropists," although he ran the risk of shocking many good people. ,More than once Ramakrishna told his faithful followers to be on their guard against ostentatious philanthropy. His intuition of the secret work- 11 High disinterestedness with regard to their work has been shown by some of the most beautiful artists and proudest Chris- tian savants of the West even in the sceptical eighteenth century. I have admired it in men as proud as Gluck and Handel, as sensually human as Hasse and Mozart ; each showed complete indifference to the fate of their work after their death, leaving it, like Racine, to die in the full flood of creative power. I venture to say that no man has been able to achieve greatness unless he has attained to this height. 155 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA ings of the heart led him to discover only too often in the activities and professions of charitable faith nothing but egoism, vanity, a desire for glory, or merely a barren agita- tion, which, without real love behind it, seeks to kill the boredom of life ; when it throws its mite to misery it is in reality trying to rid itself of its own haunting troubled vision rather than to help the unfortunate. To the good Mallik, who spoke to him about founding hospitals and relief works, he said, " Yes, but only on condition that you remain ' detached ' (that is to say entirely disinterested) in doing good/ 1 He was almost carried away when he talked with worldly men, such as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the novelist, or with the manager of a newspaper (the Hindu Patriot), of so little account did he hold the intentions, the depth of soul and above all the acts of those, whose mouth is full of good works roads and works of public utility, etc. He denied that a single real or durable good could emerge from corrupt souls. First then men must purge themselves of their egoism, and not till that has been accomplished can they work usefully for the world. In order to elucidate Ramakrishna's attitude in this connection, I have asked many questions of the most authoritative of his still living disciples, those who represent his doctrine Swami Shivananda and Swami Ashokananda, and they have been at great pains to answer me. But in spite of some isolated instances, quoted above, attesting to the active philanthropy of Ramakrishna, they have not been able to prove that well-doing by works occupied any essential place in his teaching. This would be a grave charge (I say it in all loyalty), from the Western point of view which puts deeds before intentions, and the good of others before individual salvation, if we did not remember, first, that Ramakrishna repudiated the egoism of individual salvation just as much as philanthropy without disinterested love, and, next, that his object was to light the lamp of charity in every heart. What then is the difference between charity and self- love ? t4 Charity is the love emanating from us, not 14 " Self-Love," it goes without saying, is used in its classical meaning of " Love of Self." 156 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN limited in its application to self, family, sect, and country. Therefore a charity, which raises and leads men to God, 25 is to be cultivated. For Ramakrishna charity meant nothing less than the love of God in all men; for God is incarnate in man. 26 Nobody can truly love man, and hence nobody can help him unless he loves the God in him. And the corollary also holds good : nobody can really know God unless he has seen Him in every man. 27 This is what the Abbot of the Order, Shivananda, the man whose task is to represent the true spirit of Rama- krishna in these days, wrote to me M lines whose spiritual sense will be familiar to the readers of Pascal : " You appear to conceive some distinction between the realization of the Divinity in man and the consciousness of universal suffering with regard to motives for service. It seems to me that these are merely two aspects of the same state of mind and not two different ones. It is only by realizing the Divinity inherent in man that we can truly grasp the depths of his misery ; for not till then will his condition of spiritual servitude, and his lack of perfection and divine happiness appeal to our conscience as almost tangible evidence. It is the sad feeling of contrast between the Divinity in man and his present ignorant state with all the suffering it entails that pricks the heart to serve mankind. Without the realization of this Divine Spirit in himself and in others true sympathy, true love, true service are impossible. That is why Sri Ramakrishna wished his disciples to attain Self-realization. Otherwise they could not consecrate themselves profitably to the service of humanity/' 29 "Gospel of Ramakrishna, I, 261. ** " You are seeking God ? Very well, look for Him in man ; The Divinity manifests itself in man more than in any other object. In truth God is everything ; but his power is more or less mani- fest in other objects. God incarnate in man is the most manifest power of God in the flesh. . . . Man is the greatest manifestation of God." (Gospel, I, 350.) 17 " The attainment of perfect knowledge is to see God in every man." (Ibid., Vol. II.) " December 7, 1927. 19 And again Swami Ashokananda wrote : " Service originates from love and sympathy in the ordinary plane. But . . . when 157 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA But meanwhile humanity is suffering, humanity is dying, abandoned. Is it to be left without help ? Certainly not. For that which Ramakrishna never accomplished, which in fact he never could have accomplished within the bounds of his Karma and the limited horizon of his life (a life even then drawing to its close), he left to his greatest disciple, the heir of his word, Vivekananda to the man, whom indeed it was his particular mission to summon from the ranks of mankind to come to mankind's rescue. To him, almost in spite of himself, he entrusted the task of working in the world and of " alleviating the misery of the humble and the poor.' 1 80 And Vivekananda brought a devouring passion and energy of action to it ; for his was a nature cast in a very different mould from his master's, one unable to wait a single day, a single hour before coming to the help of misery. He suffered it in his own flesh. It haunted him. It wrung from him cries of despair. He did not possess the strange serenity wherein, during his last years, the spirit of Rama- krishna floated that disembodied spirit that had pene- trated into the redoubtable sphere of a Beyond where good and evil were not : " The Absolute is without attach- ment to the good as well as to the evil. It is like the light of a lamp. You can with its help read the Holy Scriptures, but you can equally well commit forgery by the same light. . . . Whatever the sin, the evil or the misery we find in the world, they are only misery, evil or sin in relation to us. The Absolute is above and beyond. Its sun lights the evil as well as the good. 31 I am afraid that you must accept the facts of the universe as they are. It is not we learn to look upon suffering humanity as only God in different forms, we find that the consciousness of the Divine in men is the motive of service, and such service becomes a potent means of God- realization/' (Prabuddha Bharata, February, 1928.) Dare I say that it seems to me still more beautiful, still purer and higher to love and to serve the " suffering " without any thought of the " Divine " simply because it is suffering, and that forgetfulness of the Divine is perhaps nearer to the Divine than perpetual preoccupation with it, since it does not allow of the maintenance of any trace of " attach- ment " in the sense implied by Ramakrishna ? * The beautiful episode of 1886 will appear later, as it was told to me by Swami Shivananda, an eye-witness. M Gospel, I, 6, 87. 158 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN given to man to penetrate clearly the ways of the Lord. 82 I see and I realize that all three are of the same substance the victim of the sacrifice, the block and the executioner. . . . Ah, what a vision." 8S Yes, the vision has a tragic grandeur akin to the ocean. And it is good that all visible souls should plunge into it and renew their strength from time to time. It was well that at the bottom of his tender heart Ramakrishna kept its sovereign roaring and salt tang. But it is not for ordinary mortals. They run the risk of being maddened or petrified by terror. Their weakness is not fitted to achieve the synthesis of the Absolute and the Ego. In order that their vital spark may not be extinguished, " the wand of the ego imposed upon the ocean of Satchidananda (Being, Knowledge, Happiness) must be preserved/' It may be no more than " a line traced upon the water/' but " if you take it away, nothing remains but the one undivided Ocean." 34 So keep it as a protection against vertigo. God himself has allowed this semblance to support the stumbling steps of His children. They are none the less His. To those who asked Ramakrishna anxiously, " Lord, you speak to us of those who realize the Unity : ' I am He ' ... But what of those who cannot do so, those who say : ' Thou art not me. I seek Thee/ What becomes of them ? " He replied with a reassuring smile, " There is no difference : whether you call Him ' Thou ' or call Him ' I am He. 1 Men that realize Him through ' Thou ' have a very lovely relation with Him. It is very much like that of an old trusted servant with his Master. As they both grow old, the Master leans and depends on his friend the servant, more and more. . . . The Master consults his servant regarding every serious matter that he wishes to undertake. One day ... the Master takes him by the hand, then seats him on his own august seat. The servant is embarrassed and . . . says, ' What are you doing, my Lord ? ' But the Master holds him on the throne next to Himself saying, ' You are the same as I, my Beloved.' " * Ramakrishna could always adapt his thought to the Gospel, I, 101. ' Ibid., I, 437- i4 && IL " Cf. Mukerji, op. cit., p. 161. 159 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA range of vision of each individual disciple ; and far from destroying the fragile equilibrium of the human spirit, he was careful to establish it by delicately graduating the proportion of the elements constituting it. He could be seen changing his method according to each temperament to such an extent that he sometimes seemed to hold con- tradictory views. He counselled energy to the angelic Yogananda, whose excessive good nature led him into error. " A devotee ought not to be a fool." He scolded him severely for not knowing how to defend himself. But he vehemently enjoined the violent Niran- janananda, ever ready to march against an enemy or to attack anyone who had insulted him, to cultivate a mild and forgiving spirit in face of injury. In the disciples " of the heroic type," he tolerated certain weaknesses, which he denied to the weaker ones, because the former could not be permanently affected by them. With unerring tact he knew how to calculate the force of reaction in each being. It might have been expected that a man who lived in constant contact with the Absolute beyond the norm con- trolling the course of ordinary life, would have been incapable of understanding and guiding the thousand nuances of daily action. But the contrary was true in the case of Rama- krishna. His freedom from the chains of Illusion removed in the first instance the blinkers of all his prejudices, fanati- cism and narrowness of heart and mind. And as there was no longer any impediment to his free and frank regard, he judged all things and all men with laughing good sense. One of his Socratic discussions would have surprised a hearer of to-day. They are often nearer to Montaigne and Erasmus than to the Galilean. Their ironic turn, their gay humour have a refreshing effect. The ardent atmo- sphere of Bengal must have doubled their appeal to young brains, always ready to be carried away. I will here give two piquant examples of them ; the parables of the Elephant and the Serpent. In the former Ramakrishna with divert- ing irony warned his disciples against the two opposite extremes of violence and absolute non-resistance. In the latter he seems to be treating himself ironically ; he had perceived the dangers of amoralism and of indifference to 160 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN action, which tend to give young heads the sun-stroke of the omnipresent God, and he banteringly gauged the degree of His presence in us and our surroundings, and the hier- archy of his forms and laws. The Elephant " Once upon a time there lived in a certain forest a holy man, who had a great number of disciples. One day he taught them as follows : ' God/ he said, ' is in everything. Therefore we ought to bow our heads in adoration before every single object in the world/ It happened that one of his disciples had gone to collect wood for the sacrificial fire. Suddenly he heard a shout : ' Scatter ; Scatter : A mad elephant is coming ; ' Immediately they all fled, except one, who reasoned thus : ' The elephant is God in one form ; why then should I run away ? ' So he stayed where he was, he bowed to the elephant as the Lord, and began to sing his praises. The elephant-driver yelled : ' Save yourself ! Save yourself ! . . / But the disciple would not move a single step. The elephant seized him in its trunk and flung him a great distance. The unfortunate man remained motionless, stunned, bruised and bleeding. When his Master heard what had happened he ran to his assistance with the others. They carried him into the house and cared for his wounds. When he recovered consciousness they asked him : ' Why did you not save yourself when you heard the elephant-driver shout ? ' The young man replied, ' Our Master had just taught us that God reveals Himself in every living creature. I thought of the elephant as God, and so I did not want to leave the place/ Then the Guru said to him, ' My son, it was true that it was an elephant God who appeared ; But did not the elephant- driver God tell you to seek shelter ? It is quite true that God reveals Himself in all things, but if He is manifest in the elephant, is He not just as much manifest in the elephant- driver if not more ? Tell me then why you paid no attention to his warning. . . / " 86 And here is the substance of a mischievous conversation of the Master with the youthful Vivekananda : "Gospel, I, 56. 161 M PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA The Serpent The Master (smiling) : " What think you, Narendra ? 87 People who live in the world often express themselves very bitterly with regard to those who live in God. When an elephant goes his way along the highroad, a crowd of curs and other animals always run after him, yapping and snapping at his heels. But he takes no notice and proceeds along his own undeviating way. Suppose, my child, people speak evil of you behind your back, what would you do ? " Narendra (scornfully) : "I should regard them as the curs in the street barking at my heels/' The Master (laughing) : " No, my child, you must never go as far as that. Remember that God dwells in all things animate and inanimate. So all things deserve our respect. . . . The only thing that we can do in our intercourse with men, is to take care that we consort with the good and avoid the society of the wicked. It is true that God is even in the tiger. But it does not follow that we ought to put our arms round his neck and press him to our heart." (The disciples laughed.) Narendra : " Must one then remain quiet, if rogues insult one ? " The Master : " Once upon a time there was a field wherein herd boys watched over their cattle. In the same field lived a terrible and poisonous serpent. One day a holy man happened to pass by. The children ran to him and cried : ' Holy man, do not go that way. Beware of the serpent/ ' My children/ said the holy man, ' I am not afraid of your serpent. I know the Mantras which will keep me safe from all harm/ So saying, he continued his way. . . . The serpeitf saw him and came towards him raising his hood. The holy man murmured a charm, and the serpent fell at his feet as powerless as an earth- worm. ' Well/ said the holy man, ' Why do you behave thus, doing evil to others ? I am going to give you a Sacred name (that of God) to repeat, and you will learn to love God : in the end you will see Him ; and the desire to do evil will leave you/ He whispered the Sacred Name in the serpent's ear. The serpent bowed and said, ' O 17 1 would remind the reader that Narendra or Narenwas^the real name of Vivekananda. 162 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN Master, what must I do to be saved ? ' ' Repeat the Sacred Name/ said the holy man, ' and do no ill to any living creature ; I shall come again to see how you have been behaving/ And so saying, the holy man departed. . . . Days went by. The little herd boys noticed that the serpent did not bite. They threw stones at it. It remained as quiet and inoffensive as an earthworm. One of the little wretches took it by the tail, waved it round his head and then threw it against the stones several times. The serpent vomited blood and was left for dead. During the night he came to himself ; slowly, slowly he dragged himself to his hole ; his body was broken in pieces. After several days he was nothing but a skeleton ; it took him so much time before he could drag himself out to look for food. For fear of the children he only went out at night. From the time of his initiation by the Brahmin he had stopped doing evil to any creature. As well as he could he tried to live on leaves and other wisps. The holy man returned. He looked everywhere in order to find the serpent. The children told him that he was dead. The Brahmin was astonished ; he knew that the name of the Lord, which the serpent repeated, had the spiritual power to make death impossible before the problem of life had been solved, that is to say, before God had been seen. He recommenced his search, and called the serpent several times by name. The serpent came out of his hole, and bowed to his teacher. The following dialogue took place. The Holy Man : Well, how are you ? The Serpent : Thank you, Master. By the grace of God I am very well. The Holy Man : How is it^ then, that you are nothing but skin and bone ? What has happened to you ? The Serpent : O Master, in obedience to your command I tried not to harm any living creature. I have been living on leaves and other scraps. And so it is possible that I have grown thinner. The Holy Man : I fear that it is not simply a change of diet that has brought you to this state. There must have been something else. Tell me 1 The Serpent: Ah; ... perhaps ... yes ... Icansee what it was without a doubt. One day the little herd boys PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA treated me rather badly. They took me by the tail, and banged me against the stones several times very hard. Poor children ! They had no idea of the change that had taken place in me. How were they to know that I would not bite anyone ? The Holy Man : But what madness ! what madness ! you must be an idiot not to know to stop your enemies from ill-treating you thus. . . . What I forbade you to do was to bite any of God's creatures. But why did you not hiss at those who wanted to kill you, so as to frighten them? . . ." And Ramakrishna looked at his disciples with a twinkle in his eye : " So raise your hood. . . . But do not bite ; . . . A man living in society, particularly if he is a citizen and the father of a family, ought to pretend to resist evil in order to defend himself. But he must at the same time be very careful not to return evil for evil." I will not vouch for the practical and moral excellence of this last receipt, which savours rather of " Si vis pacem, para bellum ; " a fallacy this generation has been obliged to expose, to its cost. But I will preserve the mocking smile of this spiritual story-teller, so reminiscent of La Fontaine. We must necessarily also consider Ramakrishna's method as at bottom a means to re-establish equilibrium in the ship of action, swinging perilously and driven by opposing winds from one bank to another, by interposing a common-sense view between the two extremes. It is obvious that he practised and professed " Ahimsa " (hurt nothing) quite as much as Gandhi. He specifically proclaimed it, not only with regard to man but all living creatures. 88 ai Here is another sheaf of beautiful stories : First this admirable parable : " God in Everything ' (Gospel, II, 129). " Once upon a time there was a monastery, whose inmates went out every day to beg. One day a monk, having issued forth to seek food, found a Zemindar (rural proprietor) beating a poor man very severely. . . . He interfered. . . . The Zemindar in a furious rage turned his anger against the monk and beat him until he lost consciousness. The other monks, warned of what had happened, came running up ; they found him lying on the ground, carried 164 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN But he was more of a humorist and more versatile than Gandhi, never anxious to lay down one definite rule, but weighing in one glance the pros and cons of a question. The result was that this passionate lover of the Absolute possessed in the world of Maya a very fine sense of the golden mean, and although, like the Mother, he flung up kite souls into the vault of heaven, he always brought them back to earth by the string of common sense if the hour had not yet come for them to fly away. He made them remain in the world so that they might teach it ; but first they had to be taught themselves him gently to the Math (Monastery) and laid him upon his bed. Sitting round him sadly they fanned him, and one gently poured a little milk into his mouth. After a time he came to himself, opened his eyes and looked around him. One of them, anxious to know if he recognized his brethren, cried in his ear, ' Brother, who poured the milk into your mouth ? ' The monk replied in a faint voice, ' Brother, He who beat me, He Himself poured the milk into my mouth. . . .' " And this anecdote (Life of Ramakrishna, p. 620) : " Young Kali used to go fishing. The Master asked him, ' Why are you so cruel ? ' Kali replied, ' I am not doing anything wrong. We are all Atman and Atman is immortal, so I do not really kill the fishes/ The Master said to him, ' My dear child, you deceive yourself. A man of realization (that is to say, one who realizes the Divinity in himself) can never be cruel to others. It is a physical impossibility. He could not even think of it. . . .' " (Cf. Life of Ramakrishna, p. 417 ; Gospel, II, 204. Ramakrishna himself reached such a point that he was unwilling to pick the flowers for the offerings of worship.) Finally, this moving scene was enacted, as has been recorded by Swami Saradananda : " One day (in 1884) Ramakrishna was talking to his disciples. He was explaining to them the essential principles of the Vaish- navite religion, of which one is ' Kindness to all creatures/ ' This Universe belongs to Krishna. Know this in the depth of your being, and be kind to all creatures. Kind to all creatures/ he repeated ajid passed into Samadhi (ecstasy). Coming to himself, he murmured, ' Kind to all creatures . . . Kind ? . . . Are you not ashamed, insignificant insect ? How can you show pity to God's creatures ? Who are you to show mercy ? . . . No, No. Mercy is impossible. Serve them as if they were Shiva ; . ' " Thereupon Naren (Vivekananda), as he went out -^ others, expounded to them the deep meaning of these WOE they had only half understood. He interpreted them ff _ of the doctrine of Service, which reconciled the high Mftf4f God with beneficent activity/' 165 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA they had to gain an exact knowledge of their own nature, and the natures of others round them and the Divine Essence permeating them all ; most of them only attained it by laborious, gradual and constant progress ; for this knowledge had to be won by their own efforts, although doubtless they could call upon the paternal help of the Guru ; but the will of the Guru was never substituted for their own ; he was only there to help them to find their bearings. With a few exceptions he refused to interfere 89 in order to modify their will during the first stages, when they were the builders of t9 In general, but not always, he refused to do so. (Further on you will read of his conquest of Vivekananda ; but then, the pos- session of that royal prey was vital ; moreover, Vivekananda was of a stature to defend himself, as will be seen.) But even when Ramakrishna wished to leave his disciples their freedom, was he always able to do so ? He possessed curious and formidable powers of Yoga. He used them as little as possible, for he detested occult methods, and was absolutely opposed to " miracles " ; he did not think that they were impossible, but that they were useless and even harmful. He showed the same repugnance to them as Christ ; so-called supernatural powers seemed to him a hindrance in the path of spiritual perfection, which ought to be the natural fruit of the heart. But was he always sufficiently master of such powers not to use them ? Tulasi (Nirmalananda) had not yet met him and was waiting on a verandah ; he saw a man pass by absorbed, with uncertain gait. This man (it was Ramakrishna) gave him one glance without stopping. Tulasi felt a sort of creeping sensation in his bosom and remained paralysed for a moment. Tarak (Shiva- nanda) was facing Ramakrishna, motionless and silent ; the Master's look fell upon him ; Tarak dissolved in tears and trembled through- out his members. At his first visit Kaliprasad (Abhedananda) touched Ramakrishna, and was immediately flooded with a wave of energy. At other times the Master seemed deliberately to provoke the awakening of inner forces. He* would help the disciples when he saw the efforts they were making of their own free wills. So when he saw Latu (Adbhutananda) exhausting himself by great devotion, he prayed the Mother to grant him the fruit of his pious desire ; and several days afterwards, Latu passed into ecstasy during his meditation. When Subodh (Subodhananda) visited him for the second time, he touched his breast, saying " Awake, Mother, awake 1 and wrote with his finger on his tongue ; Subodh felt a torrent of light rising from his inner self to his brain : the forms of Gods and Goddesses passed like lightning and faded into the infinite ; he lost all sense of personal identity, but was recalled almost at once by Ramakrishna, who was himself surprised at the violence of his re- action. Little Gangadhar (Akhandananda) was led into the temple 1 66 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN their own development. He merely nourished them with his inner sun, and so increased their energy tenfold. In general it was during the last stage of their upward ascent, when they had manfully attained the bliss of the stage at the top of the slope by their own independent efforts. Then the Master often agreed to bestow the final shock of illumin- ation. A little thing was sufficient, a word, a look, a touch, like the lightning of Grace, which never fell except into prepared souls on heights already attained. No new know- of Kali by the Master, who said to him, " Behold, the living Shiva " and Gangadhar saw Him. But the reader must beware lest he labour under a misappre- hension. The Master never tried to impose on the disciples visions or thoughts which were not already there ; he sought rather to awaken them. To intellectual natures he was the first to advise against research for visual realizations. When Baburam (Prema- nanda), whom he loved, begged him to procure ecstasy for him, the Divine Mother warned Ramakrishna that Baburam was destined to have Jnana (knowledge) and not Bhava (emotional absorption in God). He asked the man, who was to be one of his greatest intel- lectual disciples (Saratchandra-Saradananda), " How would you like to realize God ? What visions do you have when you meditate ? " Saratchandra replied, " I do not care for visions. I do not imagine any particular form of God when I meditate. I imagine Him mani- fested in all creatures upon earth. Ramakrishna smiled and said, " But that is the last word in spirituality. You cannot attain to it at first." Saratchandra replied, " I cannot be content with less. 11 Even in the case of the most sensitive, visual realization was only a stage through which they had to pass. Abhedananda, after hav- ing seen Gods and Goddesses in meditation, one day saw all the forms blending into one luminous image. Ramakrishna told him that for the future he would have no more visions ; he had passed that stage. And in fact from that day Abhedananda had nothing but ideas of the infinite and of immensity, finally reaching the im- personal Brahmin. When Sri JJamakrishna heard another per- suading Baburam to obtain special powers from the Master, Rama- krishna called Baburam to his side and said reproachfully, " What more can you ask me for ? Is not all that I have yours ? All that I have won in the way of realization is for you. Here is the key, open and take everything." But he added to the Vedantist, Harinath (Turiyananda), If you think you can find God better away from me, then go ! My one desire is that you should raise yourselves above the misery of the world and enjoy divine beatitude." And so in a thousand ways he used all his influence to direct these young souls in their true religious sense, so that they might develop their own true and highest individuality. He never dreamt 167 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA ledge was revealed, 40 but everything that they had known before, all the store of knowledge that they had slowly amassed, became in a flash tangible life and living reality. " At that point you realize that all things live, like your own self, in God. You become the will-power and the conscience of all that is. Your will becomes that of the whole universe. . . ." 41 of annexing them. He gave himself to them. He never said to them, and never thought, " You ought to give yourselves to me." Herein lies one of the main differences between his guidance and that of Christ. (For the above cf. Life of Ramakrishna, pp. 475, 488, 600, 604, 606, 615, etc.) I have thought it necessary to emphasize for the Western reader this curious aspect of personal action exercised by Ramakrishna over those round him, without giving it the importance it obtains in the East. I hold the same opinion as Saratchandra (Saradananda) in this connection. " We must have more. We cannot be satis- fied with less." That which the eyes could see counted for little compared to the evidence manifested to the spirit. 40 Disciples who have passed through these experiences and several of the most intellectual are still alive attest that there was not the slightest suggestion of hypnotic power, which violates the will by imposing conditions upon it from an alien conscious- ness. It was rather of the nature of a tonic, a stimulant. Under its impulsion men obtained a clearer vision of their own ideals. The present Abbot of the order, Swami Shivananda, wrote to me : " Ramakrishna had the power to raise others to the greatest heights of consciousness by transmitting to them the energy of his own spirituality. He did it either by the power of his thought or by his touch. Many of us had the privilege of being taken to higher planes of spiritual consciousness according to our capacity. It was neither hypnotism, nor a condition of deep sleep. I myself had the privilege of attaining this high spiritual consciousness three times through his touch and by his will. I still live to bear direct witness to his tremendous spiritual power." Let the learned men of Europe who are preoccupied by the problems of mystic psycho-analysis, put themselves in touch with these living witnesses while there is yet time ; I myself, I repeat, have little curiosity about such phenomena, whose subjective reality is not in doubt, and I believe it my duty to describe them ; for they are hedged about by all possible guarantees of good faith and analytical intelligence. I am more interested in the fact of great religious intuition, in that which continues to be rather than in that which has been, in that which is or which can be always in all beings rather in that which is the privilege of a few. 41 It is to be understood that this means that we espouse the will of the universe, and not that we impose our will upon it. 168 THE MASTER AND HIS CHILDREN This realization was the last stage, for beyond this tem- porary revelation lay the supreme realization, the absolute Identity, obtained in the Nirvikalpa Samadhi (the Highest Ecstasy). But that was reserved for men who had achieved their mission in life ; it was the ultimate and forbidden joy ; for from it there is no return except in a few exceptional cases like that of Ramakrishna himself. In spite of the prayers of his disciples, he was loath to let them taste of it ; they had not yet won the right. He knew only too well that such " Salt dolls" 42 would no sooner touch the first waves of that Ocean than they would be absorbed in it. He who is desirous of attaining Identity with Unique Reality only receives a return ticket by a miracle. The disciples therefore had to remain in this world at the stage before the final, wherein identification with all reality takes place. 43 Properly speaking it is stage of illumination, to which we can all aspire and to which we have the power to attain by ourselves and to guide others to a similar attainment. And what do we, the free spirits of the West, who have realized the unity of living beings through reason or love, do that is different from this ? Is it not the constant aim of our own efforts, the passion inspiring us, the profound faith whereby we live and are carried over the bloody waters of hatred between men without soiling so much as the soles of our feet ? Is it not the one object of our desire and our profound conviction that sooner or later it will come to pass the unity of all nations, races and religions ? And are we not in this, although ignorant of it, the disciples of Ramakrishna ? 41 Cf. the parable already quoted, Note 3, p. 43. 48 " The world is the field of action where man is put to work-- just as men come from their country houses to business in Calcutta." (Gospel, II, 147.) 169 X NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE BUT among the Indian disciples of the Upper Room, all of whom, as I shall show, later distinguished them- selves by faith and works, there was one exceptional disciple, whom Ramakrishna treated in an exceptional way. He had chosen him at the very first glance before the young man so much as knew him, on account of what he was and what he might become a spiritual leader of humanity Narendranath Dutt, Vivekananda. The Paramahamsa with his intuitive genius for souls, for whom time was not, and who could discern in the twinkling of an eye the whole flood of the future, believed that he had seen the great disciple in the womb of the elect before he met him in the flesh. I will give here an account of his beautiful vision. Doubt- less I could try to explain it by ordinary methods as well as any of our psychologists, but such explanation is im- material. We know that a mighty vision creates and produces that which it has seen. In a deeper sense the prophets of the hereafter have been the real creators of what was not yet, but which was trembling on the verge of being. The torrent formiijg the remarkable destiny of Vivekananda would have been lost in the bowels of the earth, if Ramakrishna's glance had not, as with one blow of an axe, split the rock barring its way, so that through the breach thus made the river of his soul could flow. " One day I found that my mind was soaring high in Samadhi along a luminous path. It soon transcended the stellar universe and entered the subtler region of ideas. As it ascended higher and higher, I found on both sides of the way ideal forms of gods and goddesses. The mind then reached the outer limits of that region, where a luminous 170 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE barrier separated the sphere of relative existence from that of the Absolute. Crossing that barrier, the mind entered the transcendental realm, where no corporeal being was visible. Even the gods dared not peep into that sublime realm, and were content to keep their seats far below. But the next moment I saw seven venerable sages seated there in Samadhi. It occurred to me that these sages must have surpassed not only men but even the gods in knowledge and holiness, in renunciation and love. Lost in admiration, I was reflecting on their greatness, when I saw a portion of that undifferentiated luminous region condense into the form of a divine child. The child came to one of the sages, tenderly clasped his neck with his lovely arms, and addressing him in a sweet voice, tried to drag his mind down from the state of Samadhi. That magic touch roused the sage from the superconscious state, and he fixed his half-open eyes upon the wonderful child. His beaming countenance showed that the child must have been the treasure of his heart. In great joy the strange child spoke to him, ' I am going down. You too must go with me/ The sage remained mute but his tender look expressed his assent. As he kept gazing at the child, he was again immersed in Samadhi. I was surprised to find that a fragment of his body and mind was descending to earth in the form of a bright light. No sooner had I seen Narendra than I recognized him to be that sage. 1 ' * The seer does not say who was the child, but we can guess. Indeed he himself avowed to the disciples 2 that it was he. Certainly he remained throughout his life the Bambino, 8 whose lips drank the milk of the Mother, and who only left Our Lady's arms for an instant, in order to fulfil his destiny the destiny, according to his own definition, of sending into the world a man better fitted than himself to guide mankind and to take over the command of the army. His judgment was a sound one. He needed a strong body, arms to turn over the earth, legs to journey over it, a body- guard of workers and the head to command them, in addition to his great heart charged with love for the whole world. *Life of Ramakrishna, p. 438. Saradanayda. 1 A personification of the type so familiar to students of Italian art. PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA That his burning faith made realization spring from the soil not only proves his foresight and the strength of his desire, but that the soil of Bengal was prepared and feverishly awaiting his call. Vivekananda was projected into the " century " by the childbirth of Nature herself ; for the time of parturition had arrived for that form of spirit. Ramakrishna is also to be commended for seeing at once in this wayward, tormented and storm-tossed adolescent, as Narendra then was, the future leader, exactly the Evan- gelist he was expecting. The story of their early meetings deserves to be told in its entirety. The reader will then feel the same attraction that Naren in spite of himself experienced, and which, in spite of himself, united him to the Master who had chosen him. But let us first draw the portrait of this young genius at the moment when his meteor entered and was absorbed in the orbit of Ramakrishna. 4 He was a member of a great aristocratic Kshatriya family, and his whole life showed the stamp of that warrior caste. He was born on January 12, 1863, at Calcutta. His mother was a highly educated woman of regal majesty, whose heroic spirit had been nurtured on the great Hindu epics. 6 His father, who led an ostentatious and restless life, showed an independence of spirit almost Voltairean in quality, like 4 In this account I am following the great biography, The Life of the Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western disciples, Advaita Ashrama, Himalayas, 4 vols. To it I have added some precious details furnished by Sara- dananda in his biography of Ramakrishna, and by the noble Ameri- can disciple of Vivekananda, Sister Christine, whose unpublished memoirs were kindly lent to me. 1 The influence of this woman over her son, Vivekananda, must never be forgotten. He was a difficult child to bring up and gave her much trouble, but until the day of his death he kept a tender regard for her. In America at the end of 1894 ne rendered her public homage ; in his lectures in praise of Indian womanhood he often spoke of her, extolling her self-mastery, her piety, her high character. " It is my Mother/' he said, " who has been the constant inspiration of my life and work." From Sister Christine's unpublished Memoirs, we learn some characteristic details of his two parents, which she gleaned in the course of private conversations with Vivekananda in America. From his mother, his proud little mother, he inherited his royal 172 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE that of a great French seigneur of the eighteenth century, and an indifference to caste, due at once to his large senti- ment of humanity and to the smiling consciousness of his own superiority. But the grandfather, a rich and cultured man, had abandoned wife and children, a high position, fortune and society at the age of twenty-five to retire into " the forest " and become a Sannyasin ; and from that day had never been seen ; . . . His childhood and boyhood were those of a young artist prince of the Renaissance. 6 He was gifted with a multi- plicity of talents, and cultivated them all. He had a leonine beauty coupled to the lithe grace of a fawn. The possessor of physical courage and the build of an athlete, he was a past master in all physical exercises. He could box, swim, row, and had a passion for horses. He was the favourite of youth and the arbiter of fashion. He danced the great religious dances with consummate art, and had a delightful voice, which later was to charm the ear of Ramakrishna. He studied vocal and instrumental music for four or five years under famous Hindu and Musulman professors. He wrote tunes and published a documented Essay on the science and philosophy of Indian music. Indeed he was everywhere regarded as a musical authority. For him music was always the gate of the temple, 7 the vestibule of the palace of the Most High. At college he was distinguished for his brilliant intellect, embracing with equal zest the sciences, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, and Indian bearing and many of his intellectual faculties, his extraordinary memory, and moral purity. To his father he owed his intelligence, his artistic sense, his compassion. This noble India?, who belonged to the generation flooded by the tide of Western positivism, had lost his faith. He treated it as if it were all superstition. He admired the poetry of Hafiz and the Bible as works of art. He said a curious thing^to his son, when he showed him the two Christian Testaments. " If there is a religion, it would be in this book/' But he did not be- lieve in the soul or in a future life. He was generous to the point of prodigality, and seemed to be given over to a smiling and worldly scepticism. But in reality he suffered deeply from life ; and when he heard of the youthful follies of his son, he said, " This world is so terrible, let him forget it if he can." That is to say, of the Italian Renaissance. 7 The temple of the Goddess Sarasvati, the patron of the arts. 173 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA and Western languages. He read the English and Sanskrit poets. He devoured the historical works of Green and Gibbon. He was fired by the French Revolution and Napoleon. From his childhood up he practised, like so many Indian children, the habit of meditation. At night he used to pore over the Imitation of Jesus Christ and the Vedanta. He loved philosophic discussions. It was this mania for argument, criticism, " discrimination/' that later won for him the name of Vivekananda. He tried to weld Hellenic beauty and Indo-Germanic thought into one har- monious whole. But to his universalism, which attained the standards of Leonardo and Alberti with its spiritual empire over life in all forms, was added the crown of a religious soul and absolute purity. This beautiful ephebe, to whom all the good things of life and its pleasures were offered, though free and passionate, imposed upon himself a rigorous chastity. Without being tied to any sect, before he had adopted any Credo, he had already the feeling, the profound reason for which I shall show later, that purity of body and soul is a spiritual force, whose fire penetrates into every aspect of life, but is extinguished by the slightest defilement. Moreover, he was overshadowed by a great destiny, and though he was as yet unaware of its direction, he wished to be worthy of it and to realize it. The result of such a multiplicity of gifts and contending passions made him live for many years in great turmoil of soul before his personality became fixed. Between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one (from 1880 to the end of 1884) he went through a series of intellectual crises increasing in intensity until religious certainty finally put an end to them. He was first moved by reading Stuart Mill's Essays on Religion, which caused his fir*st optimistic surface theism, gleaned in fashionable Brahmo Samajist circles, to crumble away. The face of Evil in nature appeared to him, and he revolted against it. But he was powerless to prevent the intrusion of bored disillusion and antique Melancholy 8 A reference to the famous engraving of Albrecht Durer, Melan- choly, representing a desponding archangel, sitting in the midst of the chaos of science. The sense of melancholy is above the ordinary and signifies a soul, saddened and wearied by its vain intellectual researches. 174 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE (in the sense of Albrecht Diirer). In vain he tried to adopt the theories of Herbert Spencer, with whom he corresponded. 9 He asked the older students in his college classes for counsel, in particular Brajendra Nath Seal. 10 To him he confided his scepticism and begged him to guide him in his search for the truth. It was to Seal that he owed his reading of Shelley and that he bathed his burning soul in the aerial waves of the poet's pantheism. 11 His young mentor then wished to enrol him in the service of the God of Reason the Parabrahman a conception particularly his own. Brajendra's rationalism was of a peculiar kind in that it claimed to be an amalgamation of the pure monism of the Vedanta, the Hegelian dialect of the Absolute idea, and the gospel of the French Revolution : Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. He believed that the principle of individualism was " the evil " and Universal Reason " the good." It was then essential that pure reason should be manifested ; this was the great modern problem, and Brajendra thought to solve it by Revolution. His revolutionary and imperial rationalism appealed to some sides of Narendra's domineer- ing nature. But the latter's tumultuous personality was not to be confined within such limits. Although his intellect 9 Spencer was astonished, so it is said, by his daring criticisms, and admired the precociousness of his philosophic intellect. Accord- ing to Saradananda, Naren pursued the study of Western philosophy between his first examination in 1881 and that of 1884 correspond- ing to our licentiate's degree. He had then read Descartes, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Spinoza, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Auguste Comte and Darwin. But it seems to me that he can only have read them superficially from general treatises and that he did not study their actual works. He also followed a course of medicine, studying the physiology of the brain an(^ nervous system. " The analytic and scientific method of the West had conquered him, and he wished to apply it to the study of Hindu religious ideas." (Saradananda.) 10 This man of great intellect, at present the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mysore and one of the most solid and erudite philosophers in India, has related his reminiscences of the young Vivekananda in an article written for the Prabuddha Bharata of 1907, and reproduced in the Life of the Swami Vivekananda, Vol. I, pp. 172-77. Although at college he was in the class above Vive- kananda, the latter was a little his senior. 11 He also read Wordsworth, of all English poets the one who seems most akin to the poets of the Far East. 175 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA certainly wished to accept (or impose) the sovereignty of universal reason and to make the foundation of morality an imperious negation of individualism, his life would not agree. He was too intoxicated with the beauty of the world and its passions. An attempt to deprive him of it was like condemning a young beast of prey to vegetarianism. His melancholy and anguish redoubled. It was mockery to offer him a diet of immanent Reason, a bloodless God. Being a real Hindu for whom life is the first attribute, if not the very essence of truth, he needed the living revelation, the realization of the Absolute, God made man some holy Guru, who could say to him, " I have seen Him. I have touched Him. I have been Him." Nevertheless, his intel- lect, nurtured as it had been in European thought, and the critical spirit inherited from his father, revolted against this aspiration of his heart and senses, as will be seen in his first reactions against Ramakrishna. He was, like all young Bengal intellectuals of his time, drawn by the pure light of Keshab Chunder Sen. It was then at its height and Naren envied it ; he could have wished to be Keshab. He was naturally in sympathy with his New Order, and joined it. His name was enrolled on the list of members of the new Brahmo Samaj. 12 The Ramakrishna Mission has since maintained that he could not have been entirely in accord with the spirit of categorical reform held by this Samaj, which ran counter to even the most respectable prejudices of orthodox Hinduism. But I am inclined to disagree with them. The reckless character of young Naren would have delighted in wholesale destruction and he was not the man to reproach his new companions for iconoclasm. It was only later, and in great part owing to Ramakrishna's influence, that he came to conceive of and profess respect for even antiquated beliefs and customs, provided they were in accordance with long tradition and 11 His name remained on the list a long time after he had be- come the Swami Vivekananda, and he told his disciples that he had never withdrawn it. When he was asked in later years, " Do you attack the Brahmo Samaj ? " he answered, " Not at all." He considered this society to be a high form of Hinduism. (Cf. Life of the Swami Vivekananda, Vol. I, Chapter 38, devoted to the Brahmo Samaj.) 176 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE deeply assimilated into the substance of the nation. 18 But I am convinced that this did not come to pass without a struggle ; and it is partly this, which explains his first recoil of intellectual mistrust from Ramakrishna. For the time being, however, he had joined the movement of young Brah- mos in Bengal for the education and unity of the Indian masses without distinction of caste, race or religion. Some of them attacked orthodox Hinduism even more bitterly than did the Christian missionaries ; but it was fatal that Naren's free and living intelligence should have quickly realized the unintelligent narrowness of such critics, who were not free from crossgrained fanaticism, and that his spirit no less than his national pride should have been wounded by them. He would not subscribe to the abdica- tion of Indian wisdom before the badly assimilated know- ledge of the West. Nevertheless he continued to attend the meeting of the Brahmo Samaj, but in his heart he was not at rest. He next imposed upon himself the life of an ascetic, living in a dark, damp room, lying on the ground upon a quilt with books everywhere, making tea on the floor, reading and meditating day and night. He suffered excruciating and stabbing pains in his head, but he did not achieve the reconciliation of the conflicting passions of his nature, whose struggles lasted even into his troubled sleep. " From my youth up/' he relates, " every night just as I fell asleep two dreams took shape. In one I saw myself among the great ones of the earth, the possessor of riches, honours, power and glory ; and I felt that the capacity to attain all these was in me. But the next instant I saw myself renouncing all worldly things, dressed in a simple loin-cloth, living on alms, sloping at the foot of a tree ; and I thought that I was capable also of living thus, like the Rishis of old. Of these two pictures the second took the upper hand and I felt that only thus could a man attain 1J In the maturity of his powers he often insisted on this point, that his own message was npt a negation but fulfilment of true Hindu thought. He was a partisan of radical reforms, but he held that they should be carried out by conservative methods. (Ibid.) These are practically the very words of Keshab : " To preach Hindu conservatism in a liberal spirit." (Indian Empire, 1884.) 177 N PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA supreme bliss. . . . And I fell asleep in the foretaste of that bliss. . . . And each night it was renewed. . . ," 14 Such was he at the moment when he went to meet the Master, who was to govern the rest of his life. In the great city where India and Europe meet, he had made the round of the great religious individualities ; 16 but he had returned unsatisfied. He sought in vain, tested, rejected. He wandered. . . . * * * He was eighteen and preparing for his first University Examination. In November, 1880, in the house of a friend, Surendranath Mitra, a rich publican converted to the Indian Christ, during a small festivity at which Naren had sung a beautiful religious hymn, the "falcon's eyes" of Rama- krishna for the first time pierced to the depths of his unsatisfied soul, and fixed his choice upon it. 16 He asked Naren to come to see him at Dakshineswar. The young man arrived with a band of thoughtless and frivolous friends. He came in and sat down, heedless of his surroundings, without seeming to see or hear anything, wrapt in his own thoughts. Ramakrishna, who was watch- ing him, asked him to sing. Naren obe3'ed, and his song had such a pathetic tone that the Master, like Naren, a passionate lover of music, passed into an ecstasy. Here I will leave Naren to speak for himself : " After I had sung he suddenly got up, and taking me by the hand, led me on to the north verandah, and closed the door behind us. We were alone. Nobody could see us. ... To my great surprise he began to weep for joy. He held me by the hand and addressed me very tenderly, as if I were somebody he had known familiarly for a long time. He said, ' Ah ! You Lave come so late. Why have you been so unkind as to make me wait so long ? My ears 14 Extracts from the last volume of the Biography of Rama- krishna (Divya Bhava) by Saradananda, Chapter III. lf It is said that his last attempt had been with Devendranath Tagore, who recognized his great gifts. 19 Ramakrishna said later : "I saw no attention to the body, no vanity, no attachment to outward things in him. And in his eyes : ... It seemed that some power possessed the interior of hia soul. . . . And I thought, ' How is it possible that such a man can live in Calcutta ?'..." J 7 8 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE are tired df hearing the futile words of other men. Oh ! how I have longed to pour out my spirit into the breast of somebody fitted to receive my inner experiences 1 . . .' He continued thus sobbing the while. Then standing before me with his hands together he said, ' Lord, I know that you are the ancient sage Nara, the incarnation of Narajana, 17 reborn on the earth to take away the misery of humanity/ 18 I was amazed. ' What have I come to see ? ' I thought. ' He ought to be put in a strait jacket ! Why, I am the son of Viswanath Dutt. How dare he speak thus to me. . But I remained outwardly unmoved and let him talk. He took my hand again and said, ' Promise me that you will come to see me again alone, and soon !'..." Naren promised in order to free himself from his strange host, but he vowed within himself never to return. They went back to the common drawing-room, where they found the others. Naren sat down apart and watched the personage. He could not find anything strange in his ways or in his words ; nothing but an inner logic, which he felt was the fruit of a profound life of absolute renunciation and a striking sincerity. He heard him say (and these words were an answer to his own nocturnal strivings) : " God can be realized. One can see Him and speak to Him as I speak to and see you. But who takes the trouble to do so ? People will shed tears for a wife, children or possessions. But who weeps for the love of God ? Yet if a man weep sincerely for Him, He will manifest Himself to him." " 17 A certain aspect of Brahman, the cosmic Man, the great Hypostasis. (Cf. Paul Masson-Oursel, op. cit., p. 105 et passim.) 1 So in the first words of his delirium he settled for Vivekananda the duty of social service, to which he was to devote his life, and which distinguishes him from all the other " seers " of India. 1 Another account given by Vivekananda in his Lecture, My Master (cf. also Life of the Swami Vivekananda, Vol. I, p. 212) says that it was he himself who directly addressed Ramakrishna and asked him the eternal question, that he had been taking feverishly round from sage to sage : " Sir, have you seen God ? " and that Ramakrishna replied, " Yes, my son. I have seen God. I do see Him, just as I see you before me. Only I see the Lord in a much more intense sense, and I can show Him to you." It is probable that this dialogue took place at a later date, after Vivekananda had become familiar with Ramakrishna. 179 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA And to the speaker himself it was obvious that these were no idle words, but that he had proved their truth. Naren could not reconcile the picture before his eyes of this simple and serene sage with the amazing scene he had just witnessed. He said to himself, " He is a monomaniac, but he is not with- out greatness. He may be mad, but he is worthy of respect." He left Dakshineswar in much confusion of thought, and if he had been asked at that moment what were to be his relations with Ramakrishna, he would doubtless have replied that they would remain as they were. But the strange vision " worked " upon him. A month later he returned on foot to Dakshineswar. " I found him alone sitting on his small bed. He was glad to see me, and called me affectionately to sit near him on one side of the bed. But a moment later I saw him convulsed with some emotion. His eyes were fixed upon me, he muttered under his breath, and drew slowly nearer. I thought he was going to make some eccentric remark as on the previous occasion. But before I could stop him, he had placed his right foot on my body. The contact was terrible. With my eyes open I saw the walls and everything in the room whirling and vanishing into nothingness. . . . The whole universe and my own individuality were at the same time almost lost in a nameless void, which swallowed up everything that is. I was terrified, and believed I was face to face with death. I could not stop myself from crying out, ' What are you doing ? I have parents at home. . . .' Then he began to laugh, and passing his hand over my breast, he said ' All is well. Let us leave it at that for the moment ! It will come, all in good time.' He had no sooner said these wordcS than the strange phenomena disappeared. I came to myself again, and everything, both outside and in, was as before." I have written down this astonishing account without indulging in futile comment. Whatever the Western reader may think, he cannot help being struck by the power of hallucination in these Indian souls, recalling that of Shakes- peare's passionate visionaries. It may, however, be noted in passing that the visionary in this case was anything but a weak, credulous and uncritical spirit. He revolted against his own vision. His strong personality, scenting danger, 180 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE was violently antipathetic to all hypnotic action ; and he asked himself at first if he had not been the victim of some kind of mesmerism. But he had no symptoms of it. Still trembling from the tornado that had swept over him, he remained on his guard. But after this one great shock the rest of the visit was quite normal. Ramakrishna treated his visitor with simple and familiar kindness as if nothing had happened. At his third visit, probably a week later, Naren was on the defensive with all his critical faculties on the alert. Sri Ramakrishna that day took him to an adjacent garden. After strolling for some time they took their seats in the parlour. Soon the Master fell into a trance and as Narendra watched, he was suddenly touched by him. Narendra immediately lost all outward consciousness. When he came to himself after a while, he saw Ramakrishna looking at him, and stroking his chest. In after days the Master told his disciples : " I asked him several questions while he was in that state. I asked him about his antecedents and whereabouts, his mission in this world and the duration of his mortal life. He dived deep into himself and gave fitting answers to my questions. They only confirmed what I had seen and inferred about him. These things shall be a secret, but I came to know that he was a sage who had attained perfection, a past master in meditation, and that the day he learned his real nature, he would give up the body by an act of will. . . ." 20 But at the time Ramakrishna told him nothing of all this, although he treated him in the light of his special knowledge, and Naren had a privileged place among the disciples. But Naren had not yet accepted the title of disciple. He did not want to be the disciple of anyone. He was struck by the incomprehensible power of Ramakrishna. It attracted him, as a magnet attracts iron, but he himself was made of stern metal. His reason would not submit to domination. If in his recent relations with the rationalist Brajendra Seal it had been his heart that strove against his intellect, now his intellect mistrusted his heart. He was resolved to maintain his independence, and to accept nothing from the Master except what could be rigorously controlled by his 10 Life of Sri Ramakrishna, pp. 439 et seq. 181 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA own reason. The uncritical faith of the others roused his contempt. No stranger relations can be imagined than those now established between the young man and the old Guru. 21 Naren detested all forms of sentimental piety, such as tears or anything that savoured of the effeminate. Naren questioned everything. He never allowed his reason to abdicate for a single instant. He alone weighed all Rama- krishna's words, he alone doubted. Far from being shocked, Ramakrishna loved him the better for it. Before meeting Naren he had been heard to pray, " O Mother, send me someone to doubt my ' realizations.' " The Mother granted his prayer. Naren denied the Hindu gods, but at the same time he rejected Advaitism, which he termed atheism. 22 He openly mocked the injunctions of the Hindu Scriptures. He said to Ramakrishna, " Even if millions of men called you God, if I had not proved it for myself, I would never do so/' Ramakrishna laughingly approved, and said to his disciples, " Do not accept anything because I say so. Test every- thing for yourselves." The keen criticism of Naren, and his passionate arguments filled him with joy. He had a profound respect for his brilliant intellectual sincerity with its tireless quest for the truth ; he regarded it as a manifestation of Shivaic power, which would finally overcome all illusion. He said, " Look, look ; what power of penetration ! He is a raging fire consuming all impurities. Maha-maya, 23 Herself cannot come nearer to him than ten feet ! She is held back by the glory She has imparted to him." And Naren's knowledge called him such intense joy that it sometimes melted into ecstasy. But at other times the old Master was hurt by his sharp criticism, delivered as it was without any consideration for others. Naren said to his face, 11 Naren lived for five years with Ramakrishna, at the same time keeping a home of his own at Calcutta. He went to Dak- shineswar once or twice a week, and sometimes spent four or five days on end with the Master. If he stayed away for a week, Rama- krishna sent for him. 11 This was the attitude of the Brahmo Samaj. " That is to say, Maya the great the Great Illusion the Mother. 182 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE " How do you know that your realizations are not the creations of your sick brain, mere hallucinations ? " And Ramakrishna in his trouble would go away, and humbly seek comfort of the Mother, who consoled him with the words, " Patience ! Soon Naren's eyes will be opened." Sometimes when the everlasting discussions between Naren and the disciples wearied him, 24 he would pray, " O Mother, give Naren a little of Your Illusion ! " so that the fever of his intellect might be somewhat assuaged, and his heart might touch God. But the tortured spirit of Vivekananda cried out, " I do not desire God. I desire peace that is to say, absolute truth, absolute knowledge, absolute infinitude." He did not see that such a wish overstepped the bounds of reason and showed the imperious unreasonableness of his heart. It was impossible to satisfy his mind with the proof of God. Indian fashion, he maintained : " If God is real, it is possible to realize Him." But he gradually discovered that the man of ecstasy, whom he had at first believed to be swayed entirely by the promptings of his heart, was infinitely more master than he was himself in the realm of the intellect. Later he was to say of Ramakrishna, " Outwardly he was all Bhakta, 26 but inwardly all Jnanin. . . , 26 I am the exact opposite." But before he came to make such a statement, and before he had yielded of his own free will his proud independence into the Master's hands, he both sought him and fled from him ; and between the two there was a reciprocal game of passionate attraction and secret struggle. The brutal frank- ness of Naren, his lack of consideration for all things that he mistrusted, the implacable war he declared against all charlatanism, and his proud indifference to the opinion of 14 He said of these discussions, " Water poured into an empty vessel makes a bubbling noise, but when the vessel is full, no sound is heard. The man who has not found God is full of vain disputa- tion about the existence and attitude of Godhead. But he who has seen Him, enjoys the Divine bliss in silence. 1 ' 16 Those who believe through love. Those who know through the intellect. 183 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA others, drew down upon him enmity and slander, which he was too proud to heed. 27 Ramakrishna never allowed them to be said in his presence ; for he was sure of Naren. He said that the young man was of the purest gold and that no taint of this world could sully him. 28 His only fear was lest so admirable an intellect might lose its way, and the multiplicity of powers striving within him might be put to a bad use, such as the founding of a new sect or of a new party, instead of being consecrated to the work of union and unity. He had a passionate affection for Naren, but his anxious or tender manifestations of it, if Naren stayed away for any length of time, both embarrassed and irritated the latter. Rama- krishna himself was ashamed of them, but he could not help himself. He infuriated Naren by his excessive praise, as when he publicly placed the recognized fame of Keshab below the problematical fame of this young man, who had as yet accomplished nothing. He went to look for him in the streets of Calcutta, and even in the temple of the Sad- haran Brahmo Samaj, 29 where his unexpected entry during 17 Saradananda, who was later one of his friends and most devoted followers, and who has written the best account of his relations with Ramakrishna, admits that he was himself ill-disposed towards Naren, when he met hitn for the first time at the house of a mutual friend. Naren came in, well dressed and well groomed, with a disdainful air ; he sat down humming a Hindu song to himself, and began to smoke without appearing to care for any of the others present. But he took part in the discussion that followed about contemporary literature, and suddenly revealed the greatness of his aesthetic and moral sense, as well as his predilection for Ramakrishna, the only man, he said, whom he had found realizing his inner ideal in this life without any compromise. (f. the chapter, Vivekananda and Ramakrishna in the last volume of the great Biography of Rama- krishna by Saradananda : Divya Bhava.) 11 Far from shaking Naren's faith in himself, he encouraged it. He gave him privileges over the other disciples ; for instance, he allowed him to touch all kinds of impure food, saying that for such as he such matters were immaterial. 11 The branch of the Brahmo Samaj that had broken away from Keshab. It was the most uncompromising from the national Hindu point of view ; and it is noteworthy that Naren was then a mem- ber of it. Ramakrishna had unwittingly many enemies among its members, who bore him a grudge for the influence he exercised over Keshab. 184 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE a service provoked a scandal and roused much scornful criticism. Naren, mortified and touched at the same time, spoke harshly to him in order to rid himself of this pursuit. He told him that no man ought to allow himself to be infatuated by another, that if Ramakrishna loved him too much he would forfeit his own spiritual greatness and sink to his level. The simple and pure Ramakrishna listened to him fearfully, and then went to ask the Mother's advice. But he returned comforted. " Ah, wretch ! " he said to Naren, " I will not listen to you. The Mother has told me that I love you because in you I see the Lord. If the day comes when I can no longer see Him, I shall not be able to bear the sight of you." Soon their parts were reversed. A time came when Naren's presence was received by Ramakrishna with com- plete indifference. He did not appear to notice him but occupied himself with the others. This went on for several weeks. Nevertheless Naren always came patiently back. Ramakrishna asked him why, since he no longer spoke to him, and Naren replied, " It is not just your words that attract me. I love you and need to see you." The Master's spirit gradually took possession of the rebel disciple. In vain the latter ridiculed Ramakrishna' s beliefs, especially the two extremes : the cult of images, and faith in an Absolute Unity the fascination of God worked slowly. " Why do you come here, if you do not want to acknow- ledge my Mother ? " Ramakrishna asked him. " Must I acknowledge Her, if I come ? " replied Naren. " Well," said the Master, J" several days hence you will not only accept Her, but you will weep at the mention of Her name." 80 80 Brajendra Seal has confessed the stupefaction caused by the sight of Narendra the iconoclast, jthe hater of superstitions and idols, worshipping before Kali and Her priest. He condemned him merci- lessly, until the day when curiosity urged him to visit Dakshine- swar. He spent an afternoon there and came away in a state of moral and physical astonishment. All his preconceived ideas were wavering. Without understanding it, he was subjugated by the atmosphere which seemed to emanate from the person of Rama- krishna. It may be interesting to trace the unpremeditated reaction 185 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA It was the same when Ramakrishna wanted to open the doors of Advaitist Vedantism, of identity with the Absolute, to Naren. Naren rejected the idea as blasphemy and mad- ness. He did not let any chance go by of ridiculing it ; and one day he and one of the other disciples jeered and gave vent to side-splitting laughter at its extravagance. " This jug," they said, " is God . . . and these flies are God. . . ." From the adjoining room Ramakrishna heard the laughter of the great children. He came in quietly in a semi-conscious state, and touched Naren. 81 Again a of a great intellectual and rationalist thinker, a man high in his University, who to this day has kept his independent judgment. " I watched with intense interest the transformation that went on under my eyes. The attitude of a young and rampant Vedantist cum Hegelian cum Revolutionary like myself towards the cult of religious ecstasy and Kali- Worship may be easily imagined ; and the spectacle of a born iconoclast and freethinker like Vive- kananda, a creative and dominating intelligence, a tamer of souls, himself caught in the meshes of what appeared to me an uncouth, supernatural mysticism, was a riddle which my philosophy of the Pure Reason could scarcely read at the time. . . . " (For pathological curiosity) at last I went ... to Dakshine- swar, to see and hear Vivekananda's Master, and spent the greater part of a long summer day in the shady and peaceful solitudes of the Temple garden, returning as the sun set amidst the whirl and rush and roar and the awful gloom of a blinding thunderstorm, with a sense of bewilderment as well moral as physical, and a lurking perception of the truth that the law orders the apparently irregular and grotesque, that sense even in its errors is only incipient Reason and that faith in a saving Power db extra is but the dim reflex of an original act of self-determination. And a significant confirma- tion of all this came in the subsequent life-history of Vivekananda, who, after he had found the firm assurance he sought in the saving Grace and Power of his Master, went about preaching and teach- ing the creed of the Universal Mao, and the absolute and inalienable sovereignty of the Self." (Article of Brajendranath Seal, published in Prabuddha Bharata, 1907, and reproduced in the Life of the Swami Vivekananda, I, 177.) 11 For scientific men, who study psycho-physiological problems, it is noteworthy that these " touches," which provoked in the sub- jects concerned immediate experience of changed conditions, were nearly always (if not always) produced when Ramakrishna was in a state of semi-consciousness or of complete hypnosis. There was therefore nothing in them analogous to calculated action of the will independent of the energies governed by it. It might almost be described as a forced descent of another into the abyss he had first descended himself. 186 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE spiritual tornado swept him. All at once everything was changed in Naren's eyes. He saw with amazement that nothing existed but God. He went back to his house. All that he saw, touched, ate, was God. ... He stopped doing anything, intoxicated by Universal Force. His parents became anxious and thought he was ill. He remained in this condition for some days. Then the dream vanished. But its remembrance remained with Naren as a foretaste of the Advaitis state, and he never afterwards allowed himself to deny its existence. He then passed through a series of mystic storms. He repeated " Shiva . . . Shiva/' like a madman. Rama- krishna looked on with compassionate understanding. " Yes, I remained for twelve years in that condition." But his leonine nature, which leapt in great bounds from ironic denial to illumination, would never have undergone a lasting transformation, if the citadel had not been mined from within and not from without. The rough scourge of sorrow came suddenly to whip him out of his comfortable doubt, and the luxury of intellectualism on which he prided himself, and brought him face to face with the tragic problem of evil and existence. At the beginning of 1884 his careless and prodigal father died, suddenly carried off by a heart attack, and the family found itself faced with ruin. There were six or seven mouths to feed, and a swarm of creditors. From that day onwards Naren tasted misery, knew the vain search for employment and the denial of friends. He has told his distress in pages that are among the most poignant of confessions. 82 " I almost died of hunger. Barefoot I wandered from office to office, repulsed on all sides. I gained experience of human sympathy. This was my first contact with the realities of life. I discovered that she had no room for the weak, the poor, the deserted. Those who several days before would have been proud to help me, turned away their faces, although they possessed the means to do so. The world seemed to me to be the creation of a devil. One burning day, when I could hardly stand upon my feet, I 11 This account is taken from the Life of Sri Ramakrishna, pp. 428 et seq. 187 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA sat down in the shade of a monument. Several friends were there, and one began to sing a hymn about the abundant grace of God. It was like a blow aimed deliberately at my head. I thought of the pitiable condition of my mother and brothers, and cried, ' Stop singing that song 1 Such fantasies may sound pleasantly in the ears of those who are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and whose parents are not at home dying of hunger. Oh yes, there was a time when I too thought like that ! But now that I am faced with all the cruelty of life, it rings in my ears like deadly mockery/ My friend was hurt. He could not make allowance for my terrible distress. More than once, when I saw that there was not enough food to go round at home, I went out, telling my mother that I was invited elsewhere, and I fasted. My rich friends sometimes asked me to go to their houses to sing, but practically not a single one of them showed any curiosity about my misfortunes ; and I kept them to myself. . . ." Throughout this period he continued to pray to God every morning. One day his mother heard him, and, her piety severely shaken by too great misfortune, said to him, " Fool, be quiet ! You have made yourself hoarse with praying to God from your childhood up. And what has He done for you ? . . ." Then he in his turn was filled with anger against God. Why did He not answer his anguished appeals ? Why did He allow so much suffering on the earth ? And the bitter words of the Pandit Vidyasagar came into his mind : " If God is good and gracious, why then do millions of people die for want of a few morsels of food ? " 8S " The Pandit Vidyasagar (Iswara Chandra, 1820-91) was a social reformer, the director of the Sanskrit College at Calcutta, and knew Ramakrishna. His memory is held in veneration less for his great learning than for his love of humanity. He was the impotent wit- ness of the famine in 1864 with its more than 100,000 victims, which made him reject God, and devote himself wholly to the service of man. Vivekananda in 1898 spoke of him with hushed respect and without a word of blame during a journey in Kashmir, as was noted down by Sister Nivedita in her account of conversations with the Swami. (Notes of some Wanderings with the Swami Vivehananda, Calcutta, Udbodhan Office, Calcutta.) 188 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE A furious revolt arose to heaven. He declared war upon God. He had never been able to conceal his thoughts and now he spoke openly against God. He proved that He was either non-existent or evil. His reputation as an atheist became established, and as is the practice of devout people, unmen- tionable motives were adduced for his unbelief, and his habits were maligned. Such dishonesty hardened him, and he took a sombre delight in boasting publicly that in such a depraved world a victim, as he was, of the persecutions of fortune had every right to seek momentary respite in whatever pleasure he might find ; and that if he, Narendra, decided that such means were efficacious, he should certainly not shrink from using them for fear of anybody. To some of Ramakrishna's disciples who offered their pious remon- strances, he replied that only a coward believed in God through fear. And he drove them away. At the same time the idea that Ramakrishna might blame him like the rest troubled him. Then his pride revolted. " What does it matter ? If a man's reputation rests on such slender foundations, I do not care. I spurn it under foot ; . . ." All judged him lost except Ramakrishna in his retreat at Dakshineswar, and he kept his confidence in Naren ; 84 but he was waiting for the psychological moment. He knew that Naren's salvation could only come from him. The summer passed. Naren continued his harassing search for a means of livelihood. One evening when he had eaten nothing, he sank down, exhausted and wet through, by the side of the road in front of a house. The delirium of fever raged in his prostrate body. Suddenly it seemed as if the folds enveloping his soul were rent asunder, and there was light. 86 All nis past doubts were auto- matically solved. He could say truly : " I see, I know, I believe, I am undeceived. ..." * 4 Afterwards Vivekananda said, " Ramakrishna was the only one who had unswerving faith in me. Even my mother and my brothers were not capable of it. His unshakable confidence joined me to him for ever. He alone knew the meaning of love." " Revelation caine always by the same mechanical process at the exact moment when the limit of vitality had been reached, and the last reserves of the will to struggle exhausted. 189 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA His mind and body were at rest. He went in and spent the night in meditation. In the morning his mind was made up. He had decided to renounce the world as his grandfather had done, and he fixed a day when this definite vow was to be accomplished. Now on that very day Ramakrishna, all unknowing, came to Calcutta, and begged Naren to come back with him for the night to Dakshineswar. Naren tried in vain to escape ; but he was obliged to follow the Master. That night shut up in his room with him, Ramakrishna began to sing, and his beautiful chant brought tears to the eyes of the young disciple ; for he realized that the Master had divined his purpose. Ramakrishna said to him, " I know that you cannot remain in the world. But for my sake, stay in it as long as I live/' Naren went back home. He had found some work in a translation office and in a solicitor's office, but he had no permanent employment, so that the fate of his family was never assured from one day to the next. He asked Rama- krishna to pray for him and his. " My child," said Ramakrishna, " I cannot offer up those prayers. Why do you not do so yourself ? " Naren went into the temple of the Mother. He was in a state of exalted fervour ; a flood of love and faith coursed through him. But when he returned and Ramakrishna asked if he had prayed, Naren realized that he had forgotten to ask for the alleviation of his misery. Ramakrishna told him to go back. He returned a second time and a third time. No sooner did he enter the temple than the purpose of his prayers faded before his eyes. At the third attempt indeed he remembered what he had come to ask, but he was overcome with shame. " What pitiful interests they were, for which to importune the Mother " ; He prayed instead, " Mother, I need nothing save to know and to believe." From that day a new life began for him. He knew and believed, and his faith, born, like that of Goethe's old harpist, 16 in misery, never forgot the taste of bread soaked in tears, nor his suffering brethren who had shared the " An allusion to some of Goethe's most beautiful Lieder in Wil- helxn Meister. 190 NAREN, THE BELOVED DISCIPLE crumbs. One sublime cry proclaimed his faith to the world : " The only God in whom I believe, is the sum total of all souls, and above all I believe in my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races. ..." The Galilean had conquered. 87 The tender Master of Bengal had broken the resistance of his bride. Rama- krishna in future had no more submissive son than the great Kshatriya, who was born to command. So complete did their union become, that at times they seemed to be identified with each other. It was necessary to exercise a moderating influence over this transported soul, that did not know what it meant to give by halves. Ramakrishna knew the dangers it ran. Its rough and tumultuous course leapt beyond the bounds of reason from knowledge to love, from the absolute need for meditation to the absolute need for action. It yearned to embrace everything at once. During the last days of Ramakrishna's life we shall often see Naren urging the Master to allow him the highest super- conscious revelation, the great ecstasy, from which there is no return, the Nirvikalpa Samadhi ; but Ramakrishna emphatically refused him. One day, Swami Shivananda told me, he was present in the garden of Cossipore, near Calcutta, when Naren really attained this state. " Seeing him unconscious, his body as cold as that of a corpse, we ran in great agitation to the Master and told him what had happened. The Master showed no anxiety ; he merely smiled and said, ' Very well/ and then relapsed into silence. Naren returned to outward consciousness and came to the Master. The Master said to him, ' Well, now do you understand ? This (the highest realization) will* henceforward remain under lock and key. You have the Mother's work to do. When it is finished, She will undo the lock/ Naren replied, ' Master, I was happy in Samadhi. In my infinite joy I had forgotten the world. I beseech you to let me remain in that state ' ; ' For shame/ cried the Master. ' How can you ask such things ? I thought you were a vast receptacle of life, and here you wish to stay absorbed in personal joy 87 The cry of the Emperor Julian as he was dying, after having fought in vain against Christ. IQI PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA like an ordinary man ; . . . This realization will become so natural to you, thanks to the Mother, that in your normal state you will realize the Unique Divinity in all beings ; you will do great things in the world ; you will bring spiritual consciousness to men, and assuage the misery of the humble and the poor." He had discerned the part for which Vivekananda was cast, and against his will he forced him to play it. " Ordinary souls/' he said, " fear to assume the respon- sibility of instructing the world. A worthless piece of wood can only just manage to float, and if a bird settles on it immediately it sinks. But Naren is different. He is like the great tree trunks, bearing men and beasts upon the bosom of the Ganges." 88 He had marked on the giant's forehead the sign of St. Christopher the carrier of men. 18 Gospel of Ramakrishna, II, 42. 192 XI THE SWAN SONG FROM 1881 onwards Ramakrishna lived at Dakshineswar surrounded by disciples, who loved him as a father, lulled by the sweet murmur of the Ganges. The eternal song of the river, turning and flowing northwards with the incoming tide at noon, was the undercurrent of his beautiful companionship. And it mingled at dawn and sunset with the chime of bells, the ringing of conches, the melody of the flute (rasunchauki), the clashing of cymbals and the temple hymns, that punctuated the days of -the gods and goddesses. 1 The intoxicating perfume of the sacred garden was borne like incense on the breeze. Between the columns of the semicircular verandah with its sheltering awning, 1 The book containing the conversations (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna) recalls at every turn the setting and the atmosphere. Before daybreak the bells softly announced the service of matins. The lights were kindled. In the hall of music the morning hymns were played by flutes accompanied by drums and cymbals. The east was not yet red before flowers had already been gathered in the garden as an offering to the Gods. The disciples, who had spent the night with the Master, meditated as they sat near the edge of his bed. Ramakrishna got up and walked about naked, singing in his sweet voice ; he tenderly communed with the Mother. Then all the instruments played their symphony in concert. The disciples performed their ablution! ; then returned to find the Master on the verandah ; and the conversations continued overlooking the Ganges. At noon the bells announced the end of worship in the temples of Kali and Vishnu and the twelve temples of Shiva. The sun burned down. The breeze blew from the south, the tide rose. After a meal the Master took a short rest and then the conversa- tions began again. At night the temple lamplighter kindled the lamps. One lamp burned in a corner of Ramakrishna's room where he sat absorbed. The music of conches and the temple bells announced the evening service. Under a full moon the conversations continued. 193 O PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA sails, multicoloured like a swarm of butterflies, could be seen passing along the river, the image of Eternity. But the precincts of the sanctuary were throbbing with the ceaseless waves of a different human river pilgrims, worshippers, pandits, 2 religious and curious persons of all sorts and conditions from the great neighbouring city or other parts of India crowding to see and overwhelm with questions the mysterious man, who yet did not consider himself any way remarkable. He always answered them in his charming patois with unwearied patience and that air of familiar good grace which, without losing contact with the deep realities, allowed nothing to go unobserved in the scenes and the everyday people passing before him. He could both play the child and judge as the sage. This perfect, laughing, loving, penetrating spontaneity, to which nothing human was alien, was the chief secret of his charm. In truth such a hermit was very different from those of our Christian world I If he sought out and absorbed sorrow, it disappeared with him ; nothing morose or austere could grow in his soil. The great purifier of men who could free the soul from its swaddling clothes and wash away all stain, making a saint of a Girish by his indulgent smile and his piercing and serene glance, would not admit into the air of the beautiful garden of Dakshineswar, redolent of the scent of roses and jasmine, the morbid idea of shameful sin veiling its nakedness by an eternal preoccupation with itself. He said : " Certain Christians and Brahmos see in a sense of sin the sum total of religion. Their ideal of a devout man is one who prays, ' O Lord, I am a sinner ! 8 Deign to pardon my sins 1 . . / They forget that a sense of sin is a sign 1 It was at this time (1882) that Ramakrishna went to visit the Pandit Vidyasagar. Their conversations have been recorded. 1 What would he have said if he had known the Oratorian of the seventeenth century, Francis de Clugny (1637-94), whom the Abbe Brmond has revived for us. He revels in a state of sin, and has no other purpose in life than to develop his " Mystic of Sinners " in three books reeking of sin, yet written in perfect inno- cence, (i. The Devotion of Sinners by a Sinner. 2. The Manual of Sinners by a Sinner. 3. Concerning the Prayers of Sinners by a Sinner.) Cf. Henri Br6mond : La MStaphysique des saints, I, 279 et seq* 194 THE SWAN SONG of the first and the lowest step of spiritual development. They do not take the force of habit into consideration. If you say, ' I am a sinner/ eternally, you will remain a sinner to all eternity. . . . You ought rather to repeat, ' I am not bound, I am not bound. . . . Who can bind me ? I am the son of God, the King of Kings. . . / Make your will work and you will be free ! The idiot who repeats without stopping, ' I am a slave, 1 ends by really becoming a slave. The miserable man, who repeats tirelessly, ' I am a sinner/ really becomes a sinner. But that man is free who says, ' I am free from the bondage of the world. I am free. Is not the Lord our Father ? . . / Bondage is of the mind, but freedom is also of the mind. . . ." 4 He let the wind of his joy and freedom blow on all around him. And languid souls, oppressed by the weight of the tropical sky, unfolded again their faded leaves. He com- forted the weariest with the words, " The rains will come. Patience ! You will become green again/' It was the home of freed souls those who were and those who would be time does not count in India. The Sunday receptions often partook of the nature of little festivals, Sankirtans, and on ordinary days his interviews with his disciples never took the form of doctrinal instruc- tion. Doctrine was immaterial. The only essential was practice suited to each spirit, to each occasion of life with the object of drawing out the essence of life in each man, while he exercised full liberty of spirit. All means were good ; inward concentration as well as the free play of the intellect, brief ecstasies as well as rich parables, laughing stories and even the observation of the comedy of the universe by sharp and mocking eyes. The Master is sitting on his little bed and listening to the confidences of the disciples. He shares in their intimate cares and family affairs ; he affectionately prods the resigned Yogananda, curbs the impetuous Vivekananda, and mocks the superstitious ghosts of Niranjanananda. He loves to race these young runaway colts against each other. Then 4 The Gospel, I, 293 and 178. He repeats this great saying, which I should like to inscribe on the heart of all believers : " God can never appear where there is shame, hatred or fear." (Sri Ramakrishna's Teachings, I, par. 316.) 195 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA he will fling into the confusion of impassioned argument just the pregnant and mischievous remark that will enlighten them and bring them back at a walking pace. Without seeming to use the reins he knows how to restore to the golden mean those who go too far and those who do not go far enough, how to awaken the slumbering spirit and how to restrain excess of zeal. His eyes can rest with tenderness on the pure face of his St. John, Premananda (Baburam), one of those whom he classes with the " Nitya- siddhas " those who are pure and perfect before their birth 6 and have no need of instruction or sparkle with irony when faced with exaggerated Puritanism. " Too much concentration on ceremonial purity becomes a plague. People afflicted with this disease have no time to think of man or God." He kept the neophytes from the useless and dangerous practices of the Raja Yoga. 6 What point was there in risking life and health when all that was necessary was to open the eyes and heart in order to meet God at every step ? " Arjuna invoked Sri Krishna as the Absolute. . . . Krishna said to him, ' Come for a while and see what I am like/ He led him to a certain spot and asked him, ' What do you see ? ' 'A great tree/ said Arjuna, ' with bunches of berries hanging from it/ ' No, my friend/ said Sri Krishna. ' Draw near and look closer ; these are not blackberries but innumerable Sri Krishnas. . . ." 7 And was there any need for pilgrimages to holy places ? "It is the sanctity of men that makes the sanctity of 5 To this group of the elect Narendra, Rakhal and Bhavanath also belonged (Gospel, I, 238). ft is noteworthy that their particu- lar type of spirit had nothing to do with their selection. Baburam was a foreordained Jnanin and not a Bhakta. Cf. Saradananda : Ramakrishna said to his disciples, " These practices are no longer for this iron age of Kali, when human beings are very feeble and short-lived. They have no time to run such grave risks. And it is no longer necessary. The sole objects of these practices is concentration of mind ; and this is easily attained by all who meditate with piety. The grace of the Lord has made the way of realization easy. It is only necessary to carry back to Him that power of love, which we pour out on the beings surround- ing us." (A freely condensed translation.) f Gospel, II, 16. 196 THE SWAN SONG places. Otherwise how can a place purify a man? God is everywhere. God is in us. Life and the Universe are His Dream/' But while with his clever fingers he embroidered apo- logues 8 upon this everlasting theme, the little peasant of Kamarpukur, who united in himself the two natures of Martha and Mary, knew how to recall his disciples to practical life and humble domestic details ; he did not allow idleness, uncleanness nor disorder, and in these respects he could teach the sons of the great middle classes ; he himself set the example, scouring his house and garden. Nothing escaped his eyes. He dreamed, he saw, he acted, and his gay wisdom always kept the gift of childlike laughter. This is how he amused himself by mimicking worldlings and false zealots. " The Master imitated a Kirtani (a professional singer of religious hymns, to the great amusement of the disciples. The Kirtani and her troupe made their entrance into the assembly. She was richly dressed and held a coloured handkerchief in her hand. If some venerable gentleman came in she greeted him as she sang, and said to him, ' Please come in ! ' And she would raise her sari on her arms to show the ornaments adorning it. The Master's mimicry made the disciples roar with laughter. Paltu rolled upon the ground. The Master said, smiling at him, ' What a child ! Paltu, do not go and tell your father. The slight esteem in which he holds me would vanish entirely. He has become an Englishman pure and simple ! ' . . ." Here are some other types as he described them, "There are people/' said Ramakrishna, "who never 8 Here is one beautiful example among many others : 11 A woodcutter went to sleep and dreamed. A friend woke him up. ' Ah ! ' said the woodcutter, ' why did you disturb me ? I had become a great king, the father of seven children. My sons were accomplished in war and the arts. I was enthroned and occupied with affairs of state. Why did you shatter this happy world ? ' The friend replied, ' What harm have I done ? It was only a dream.' ' You do not understand/ the woodcutter answered. ' To be a king in a dream is as true as being a woodcutter. If to be a wood- cutter is real, to be a king in a dream is real also. 1 " (Gospel, II, 235.) 197 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA want to chatter so badly as at daily worship. But being forbidden to speak, they gesticulate and grimace with closed lips : ' Euh ! Euh ! Bring me this. . . . Pass me that. . . . Chut ! Chut ! . . .' One is telling his beads, but while so engaged he sees the fishmonger, and while his beads slip through his fingers he has shown him the fish he wants. ... A woman went to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges. She ought to have been thinking about God, but this is what she was gossiping : ' What jewels are they offering your son ? . . . Such and such a person is ill. ... Such and such a person has gone to see his fiancee. . . . And do you think the dowry will be a large one ? . . . Harish adores me, he cannot do without me for a single hour. ... I have not been able to come for a long time ; the engagement of so-and-so's daughter has taken place and I have been so busy ! and ta, ta, ta. . . / She came to bathe in the sacred waters, but she thinks of anything but that. . . ." And at that point as his glance fell upon one of his audience, he passed into Samadhi. 9 When he returned again to earth he resumed the thread of his interrupted discourse without a break, or else sang one of his beautiful songs to the Mother " with the blue skin" or to dark Krishna the Beloved. 10 " Oh, the sound of the smooth flute played in the wood yonder ! I come ! I come ! I must. . . . My Beloved with the dark skin awaits me. ... O my friends, say, will you not come with me ? ... My Beloved ! . . . I fear that to you he is nothing but a name, a sound void of meaning. . . . But to me he is my heart, my soul, my life ! . . ." " Plunge, plunge, plunge in the depths, O my soul ! Plunge into the Ocean of Beauty ! . . . Go and search the regions deeper than the depths of the seas ! Thou wilt attain the jewel, the treasure of Prema (Divine Love). In thy heart is the Brindaban (the legendary home) of the God of Love. Go and seek, go and seek, go and seek 1 And thou shalt find. Then the lamp of knowledge will burn Gospel, II, 285-86. 10 These colours had a symbolic sense for Ramakrishna. The dark blue of the Mother brought the depths of the sky to his mind. 108 THE SWAN SONG inextinguishably. Who is this being that steers a boat over the earth over the earth over the solid earth ? . . ." " Companion of the Absolute, O Mother, Thou art plunged in the bliss of Play. . . . The wine of joy intoxicates. Thy feet reel, but never lose their balance. The Absolute, Thy husband, is lying at Thy side, motionless. Thou drawest Him to Thy breast, and loseth all control of Thy- self. The Universe trembles beneath Thy feet. Madness is in Thine eyes and in the eyes of Thy husband. ... In truth the world is a thing of joy. ... O my Mother with the blue skin ! . . ." " His song shares in the wine of love intoxicating the Mother. " One of his glances," Vivekananda once said, " could change a whole life." And he spoke from experience, this Naren, who had upheld his philosophic doubts in passionate revolt against Ramakrishna, until he felt them melting in his constant fire and avowed himself vanquished. He had proved the truth of what Ramakrishna had told him : that " living faith may be given and received in a tangible fashion and more truly than anything else in the world." Rama- krishna's certainty was so gentle yet so strong that the most brutal denials of these young people made him smile ; he was so certain that they would disappear like morning mist before the midday sun. When Kaliprasad assailed him with a torrent of denials, he said, " My son, do you believe in God ? " "No." " Do you believe in religion ? " " No, nor in the Vedas, nor in any scripture. I do not believe in anything spiritual." The Master indulgently replied, " My son, if you had said that to any other Guru, what would have happened to you ? But go in peace 1 Others have passed through these trials before you. Look at Naren ! He believes. Your doubts will also be enlightened. You will believe." And Kaliprasad later became the holy apostle, Abhe- dananda, 11 Gospel, passim. 199 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Many university men, sceptics and agnostics, were similarly touched by this little man, who said the simplest things in his peasants' language, but whose inner light pierced to the depths of the soul. There was no need for his visitors to confess themselves. " The eyes," he said, " are the windows of the soul/ 1 He read through them at the first glance. In the midst of a crowd he could go straight to a bashful visitor, who was hiding from him, and put his finger on his doubt, his anxiety, his secret wound. He never preached. There was no soul-searching or sadness. Just a word, a smile, the touch of his hand, communicated a nameless peace, a happiness for which men yearned. It is said that a young man on whom his glance rested stayed for more than a year in an ecstasy, wherein he did nothing but repeat : "Lord! Lord! My well-beloved ! My well-beloved 1 " The Master forgave everything, for he believed in infinite Kindness. If he saw that some of those who asked his help were not fortunate enough to attain the God, whom they sought, in this life, he desired to communicate to them at least a foretaste of bliss. No word with him was only a word ; it was an act, a reality. He said, " Do not speak of love for your brother ! Realize it ! Do not argue about doctrine and religion. There is only one. All rivers flow to the ocean. Flow and let others flow too ! The great stream carves out for itself according to the slope of its journey according to race, time and temperament its own distinct bed. But it is all the same water. . . . Go. . . . Flow on towards the Ocean ! . . ." The force of his joyously flowing stream communicated itself to all souls. He was the power, he was the slope, he was the current ; and the other streams and brooks ran towards his river. He was the Ganges itself. 200 XII THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA HE was nearing the Ocean. The end was approaching. His feeble body was almost daily consumed in the fire of ecstasy and worn out by his constant gift of himself to the starving crowds. Sometimes like a sulky child he complained to the Mother of the flood of visitors devouring him day and night. In his humorous way he said to Her : x " Why do you bring hither all these people, who are like milk diluted with five times its own quantity of water ? My eyes are destroyed with blowing the fire to dry up the water ! My health is gone. It is beyond my strength. Do it Yourself, if You want it done. This (pointing to his body) is nothing but a burst drum, and if You go on beat- ing it day in and day out, how long do you think it will last ? " * But he never turned anybody away. He said : " Let me be condemned to be born over and over again, even in the form of a dog, if so I can be of help to a single soul ! " And again : " I will give up twenty thousand such bodies to help one man. It is glorious to help aven one. man ! " 8 He even reproached himself for his ecstasies, because they took time that might otherwise have been given to others. " O Mother, stop me from enjoying them ! Let me stay in my normal state, so that I can be of more use in the world." 1 1 am quite sure that some of our good believers of the Middle Ages, such as the men of the people in Picardy and Burgundy, must sometimes have said the same thing. 1 Life of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 694. * Vivekananda : My Master. 201 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA During his last days when his disciples protected him in spite of himself from the importunity of devotees, he said : " How I suffer because no one needs my help to-day ! " 4 His great friend, the illustrious chief of the Brahmo Samaj, Keshab Chunder Sen, preceded him in death. He died in 1884. With tears in his eyes, Ramakrishna said of him shortly before his death that " the rose tree is to be transplanted because the gardener wants beautiful roses of him/' Afterwards he said : " Half of me has perished/' But the other half, if it is possible to use such an expres- sion, was the humble people. He was as easy of access to them, if not more so, as to the most learned ; and among the familiar friends of his last years he counted, in the same category as the disciples so dear to his heart, simple people, madinen of God. Such a one was old Gopaler Ma, whose simple story is worthy of a place among the Franciscan legends : An old woman of sixty, widowed while still a girl, 6 she had dedicated herself to the Lord. The hunger of her unassuaged maternal love had made her for thirty years adopt the child Krishna, Gopala, as her own, until it had become a harmless mania. No sooner had she met Rama- krishna than his God-filled glance made little Gopala issue from her. The warm compassion of the Master, which made the hidden desires and sorrows of those who came near him his own, lent inspiration to the unsatisfied dream of the childless mother, and he put the God Child into her arms. From that moment the little Gopala never left the mother, who had adopted him. Henceforward she did not pray ; she had no need to pray, for she lived in unbroken communion with her God. She threw her rosary into the river and spent her days prattling with the Child. This state lasted two months and then was mitigated ; the Child only appeared in moments of meditation. But the old 4 Mukerji, loc. cit. 8 For the benefit of my Western readers I would remind them that Hindu religious law strictly forbids the remarriage of widows, and that against this oppressive rule many of the great Hindu re- ligious and social reformers have been ceaselessly striving for the last hundred years. 202 THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA woman's heart was filled with happiness, and Ramakrishna tenderly regarded her joy. But his ever present sense of fun made him ask the old woman to tell her story to the haughty Naren, so proud of his critical reason, who held such visions to be stupid and morbid illusions. The old woman quite simply interrupted her maternal chatter, and made Naren her judge : " Sir/ 1 she said to him, " I am only a poor ignorant woman. I do not rightly understand things. You are learned. Tell me, do you think it is true ? " Naren, deeply moved, answered : " Yes, mother, it is quite true." * * * It was in 1884 that Ramakrishna's health took a serious turn. While he was in a trance he dislocated his left arm and it was very painful. A great change took place in him. He divided his infirm body and his wandering soul into two. He no longer spoke of " I." He was no longer " me." He called himself " This." 6 The sick man more intensely than before perceived, " Lila . . . the Play . . . The God who disports Himself in men. ..." The man roughly seized his real self and then fell into silent amazement ; his joy knew no bounds, as if he had suddenly and unexpectedly met one of his dear ones. ... " When Shiva saw his real self he cried, ' Such am I ! Such am I ! ' and danced for joy." In April the following year his throat became inflamed. Overstrain from constant talking and the dangerous Sam- adhis, which made blood flow in his throat, certainly had something to do with it. 7 The doctors he consulted forbade 8 From the unpublished Memoirs of Ramakrishnananda, who nursed him during his last months. Cf. Sister Devamata : Sri Ramakrishna and his Disciples. (These notes have been communi- cated to me in manuscript.) 7 But there was more in it than this. Like some famous Chris* tian mystics (a) he healed others by taking their ills upon himself. In a vision his body appeared to him covered with sores, the sins of others : " He took upon himself the Karma of others. 11 And to this fact he owed his last illness. He had become the scapegoat of humanity. The idea of suffering the ills of others in his own body, and thus relieving them when a certain degree of sanctity has been attained, is a very old one in India ; and Swami Ashokananda, whom I have 203 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA both speech and ecstasy, but he paid no attention to them. At a great Vaishnava religious festival he spent himself questioned on the subject, has given me some striking illustra- tions from the Holy Books from the Mahabharata (Adi Parva, Chapter 84, and Shanti Parva, Chapter 261) from the sayings of Buddha, and the life of Chaitanya in the fifteenth century. All spiritual personages do not possess this power. It only belongs theologically to the Avataras (Incarnations) and to the chosen souls, their attendants. Neither pious men nor saints possess it, even after they have attained divine realizations, although popular superstition falsely attributes it to them in these days, and simple people may often be seen approaching Sannyasins and Sadhus (as also happened to Jesus) in the hope of unloading upon them their physical and spiritual ills. It is still a common belief in India. One of its consequences is the so-called Guruvada. If a spiritual person accepts a disciple, not only does he give him spiritual in- struction, but he takes upon himself everything that might be an obstacle in his disciple's Karma all his sins. The Guru then has to suffer for the Karmas of his disciples, for nobody can cancel a single Karma ; it is merely transferred to another. Swami Asho- kananda has added this to show to what point the belief of expia- tion by proxy is enrooted in the spirit of the best minds in India to-day. " It is not just a theory with us. We have seen examples of it, as when the immediate disciples of Ramakrishna suffered for having thus taken upon themselves the evils of others, either in their capacity as Gurus or by the effect of simple touch. They have often spoken of their sufferings on this account." (a) In particular St. Lydwine, who was charged with the physical sufferings of others, St. Marguerita Maria, who took upon herself the sufferings of souls in Purgatory, St. Catherine of Siena and Marie de Vallees, who prayed for the pains of hell in order to save other souls from falling into them, and St. Vincent de Paul, who was deprived of his faith for seven years in order to give faith to an unbeliever. Such sacrifices by proxy are in conformity with pure Christian Catholic doctrine, which considers humanity as the mystic body of Christ. Christ Himself set the example. The prophet Isaiah, who realized the Messiah in advance (liii. 45), said, " He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. ... He was wounded for our trans- gressions. . . . The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed." The Sacrifice of the Cross has always been considered by the Catholic Church as the one complete and universal expiation. Thus between ancient India and Judea of the Prophets and of Christ there is the same kindred thought, born of the universal urge of the soul and belonging to the most profound depths of human nature. Cf. also the familiar words of Christ, when He instituted the Lord's Supper. " This is my blood . . . which is shed for many for the remission of sins." (St. Matthew xxvi. 28.) 204 THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA without measure, and in return the disease grew worse. It became practically impossible for him to eat. Nevertheless he continued to receive those who came to him day and night. Then one night he had haemorrhage of the throat. The doctors diagnosed cancer. His chief disciples persuaded him to put himself for a time under the care of Dr. Mahendra Lai Sarkar of Calcutta. In September, 1885, a small house was rented where Ramakrishna's wife found a corner for herself so that she might supervise his regime. The most faithful disciples watched during the night. The majority of them were poor, and they mortgaged, borrowed or pawned their effects in order to pay the expenses of the Master's illness an effort that cemented their union. Dr. Sarkar was a rationalist, who did not share the religious views of Ramakrishna, and told him so frankly. But the more he came to know his patient, the deeper did his respect for him become, until he treated him for nothing. He came to see him three times a day and spent hours with him 8 (which, it may be observed in passing, was perhaps not the best way to make him better). He said to him : " I love you so dearly because of your devotion to truth. You never deviate by a hair's breadth from what you believe to be true. ... Do not imagine that I am flattering you. If my father was in the wrong I should tell him so/' But he openly censured the religious adoration rendered to him by the disciples. " To say that the Infinite came down to earth in the form of a man is the ruin of all religions/ 1 Ramakrishna maintained an amused silence, but the disciples grew animated in these discussions, which only served to increase their mutual esteem ; their faith in their Master, whom suffering seemed to illuminate, was strength- ened. They tried to understand why such a trial was imposed upon him, and divided into groups holding different views. The most exalted, headed by Girish the redeemed sinner, declared that the Master himself had willed his He was present during several ecstasies and studied them from a medical point of view. A study of his notes would be of great interest for European science. It is known that a stethoscopic examination of the heart and the condition of the eyes during Samadhi show all the symptoms of the condition of death. 205 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA illness, so that he might establish round him the communion of apostles. The rationalists with Naren as their mouth- piece admitted that the Master's body was subject to the laws of nature like other men's. But they all recognized the Divine presence in the dying man ; and on the day of the great annual festival of Kali, of which Ramakrishna to their surprise made no mention, but spent it absorbed in ecstasy, they realized that the Mother was dwelling within him. 9 The exaltation excited by this belief had its dangers, the chief of them being an access of convulsive sentimen- talism. They had or pretended to have visions and ecstasies with laughter, song and tears. Naren then showed for the first time the vigour of his reason and his will. He treated them with contempt. He told them that " the Master's ecstasies had been bought by a life of heroic austerity and desperate conflict for the sake of knowledge ; that their effusions were nothing but the vapourings of sick imaginations when they were not lies. Those who were ill ought to take more care of themselves ! Let them eat more and so react against spasms which were worthy only of ridiculous females ! And let them beware ! Of those who encouraged a religion of ostentatious emotion eighty per cent became scoundrels and fifteen per cent lunatics." His words acted like a cold douche. They were ashamed Among the crowds wishing to see the inspired man, there came on October 31, 1885, a Christian from Northern India, Prabhudayal Misra. He had an interview with Ramakrishna, which gives a typical example of the spirit of synthesis enveloping in its accom- modating atmosphere the confessions of men holding seemingly contradictory views, when they have been filtered through the Indian soul. This Indian Christian found it quite possible to be- lieve at the same time in Christ a and Ramakrishna ! People were present during the following conversation : The Christian : It is the Lord, who shines through all creatures. Ramakrishna : The Lord is one, but He is called by a thousand names. The Christian : Jesus is not simply the Son of Mary ; He is God Himself. (And then he turned to the disciples and pointed to Ramakrishna.) And this is a man whom you see before you ; but at times he is none other than God Himself, and you do not recognize Him." At the end of the interview Ramakrishna told him that his long- ing for God would be fulfilled. And the Christian made him the gift of himself. 2O6 THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA and the majority humbly confessed that their ecstasies were shams. Naren's action did not stop there. He gathered these young people together and imposed upon them a virile discipline. In their need for action he advised them to devote themselves to some definite object. The young lion's cub began to assert himself in those days as the future sovereign of the Order, although he himself was not free from his own difficulties and struggles. For him these days marked the crisis of despair, when he had to make the final choice between the conflicting forces of his nature harrow- ing days, fruitful days, preparing the soul for harvest. Ramakrishna grew worse. Dr. Sarkar advised his removal from Calcutta to the country. Towards the middle of December, 1885, he was taken to a house in the suburbs in the midst of the beautiful gardens of Cossipore, and there he spent the last eight months of his mortal life. Twelve of his young chosen disciples never left him until the end. 10 Naren directed their activities and their prayers. They begged the Master to join with them in praying for his recovery, and the visit of a Pandit, who shared their faith, gave them an opportunity to renew their entreaties. " The Scriptures/' said the Pandit to Ramakrishna, " declare that saints like you can cure yourselves by an effort of will." ' ' My spirit has been given to God once and for all. Would you have me ask it back ? " His disciples reproached him for not wishing to be restored to health. " Do you think my sufferings are voluntary ? I wish to recover, but that depends on the Mother." " Then pray to Her." " It is easy for you to say that, but I cannot speak the words." Naren begged. " For our sakes 1 " " Very well," said the Master sweetly. " I will try what I can do." 10 Narendra, Rakhal, Baburam, Niranjan, Yogin, Latu, Tarek, the two Gopals, Kali, Sasi, and Sarat. Ramakrishna said that his illness had divided the disciples for him into those of the " Inner Circle (Antaranya) and those of the Outer Circle (Bahiranga).' 1 207 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA They left him alone for several hours. When they returned the Master said, " I said to her, ' Mother, I can eat nothing because of my suffering. Make it possible for me to eat a little ! ' She pointed you all out to me and said, ' What ! Thou canst eat through all these mouths ! ' I was ashamed and could not utter another word." Several days later he said, 11 "My teaching is almost finished. I cannot instruct people any longer ; for I see the whole world is filled with the Lord. 12 So I ask myself, ' Whom can I teach ? ' " On January i, 1886, he felt better and walked a few steps in the garden. There he blessed his disciples. 18 The effects of his blessing manifested themselves in different ways in silent ecstasy or in loquacious transports of joy. But all were agreed that they received as it were an electric shock, an access of power, so that each one realized his chosen ideal at a bound. (The distinguishing characteristic of Ramakrishna as a religious chief was always that he did not communicate a precise faith, but the energy necessary for faith ; he played the part, if I may say so, of a mighty spiritual dynamo.) In their abounding joy the disciples in the garden whom the Master had blessed, called to those in the house to come and share the bliss of his benediction. In this connection an incident took place that might have come from the Christian Gospel the humble Latu and Sarat the Brahmin were taking advantage of the Master's absence to clean his room and make his bed. They heard the calls and saw the whole scene from above ; but they continued their task of love, thus renouncing their share of joy. Naren also remained Unsatisfied. His father's loss, worldly cares and the fever in his own heart consumed him. He saw the fulfilment of all the others and felt himself abandoned. There had been no response to his anguish, no comforting ray to cheer him. He begged Ramakrishna to allow him to relieve his misery by several days of 11 On December 23, 1885, according to M. (Mahendra Nath Gupta), who noted it down in his Gospel, II, 354. Literally, " All is Rama." 11 Each received an appropriate benediction, so it is said. 208 THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA Samadhi ; but the Master rebuked him severely (he kept his indulgence for those from whom he expected least) and reproached him for such " base thoughts." He must make some arrangement for his family and then his troubles would be at an end and he would receive everything. Naren wept like a lost sheep, and fled through Calcutta and the fields, covered with dust and the straw of a stack into which he had run he groaned, he was consumed with desire for the inaccessible, and his soul knew no rest. Ramakrishna, tenderly and pityingly, watched his wild course from afar ; he knew quite well that before the divine prey could be brought down panting, he would have to pick up the scent. He felt that Naren's condition was remarkable, for in spite of boasting his unbelief, he was homesick for the Infinite. He knew him to be blessed among men in proportion as he was proven. He softly caressed Naren's face before the other disciples. He recognized in him all the signs of Bhakta knowledge through love. The Bhaktas, unlike the Jnanins (believers. through knowledge of the mind), do not seelc liberation. They must be born and reborn for the good of humanity ; for they are made for the love and the service of mankind. So long as an atom of desire remains they will be reincarnated. When all desires are torn from the heart of mankind then at last they will attain Mukti (liberation). But the Bhaktas never aspire to it themselves. And that is why the loving Master, whose heart was the home of all living beings, and who could never forget them, always had a preference for the Bhaktas, of whom the greatest was Naren. 14 He did not hide the fact that he regarded him as his heir. He said to him one day, 14 " The Jnanin rejects Maya. Maya is like a veil (which he dis- pels). Look, when I hold this handkerchief in front of the lamp, you can no longer see its light." Then the Master held the hand- kerchief between him and the disciples and said, " Now you can no longer behold my face." " The Bhakta does not reject Maya. He worships Mahamaya (the Great Illusion). He gives himself to Her and prays, ' Mother, get out of my way 1 Only so can I hope to realize Brahmin.' " " The Jnanin denies the three states, the waking state, the dream and the deep sleep ; the Bhakta accepts all three." So Ramakrishna's tenderness, his natural preference, was for those who accepted everything, even Illusion, who affirmed and 20g P PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA " I leave these young people in your charge. Busy yourself in developing their spirituality/' And in preparation for a monastic life he ordered them to beg their food from door to door without distinction of caste. Towards the end of March he gave them the saffron robe, the sign of the Sannyasin, and some kind of monastic initiation. The proud Naren set the example of renunciation. But it was with great difficulty that he abdicated his spiritual pride. The devil would have offered him in vain (as to Jesus) the kingdoms of this world, but he would soon have found a chink in his armour if he had proposed sovereignty of soul to him. One day, in order to test his spiritual power, Naren told his companion, Kaliprasad, to touch him while he was in a state of meditation. Kali did so and immediately fell into the same state. Ramakrishna heard of it and rebuked Naren severely for casting his seed into the ground for a frivolous object, and he categorically condemned the transmission of ideas from one to the other. To attempt anything against complete freedom of spirit was anathema. You should help others, but you must not substitute your thought for theirs. A little time afterwards Naren, while meditating, had the sensation of a light shining behind his head. Suddenly he lost consciousness and was absorbed into the Absolute. He had fallen into the depths of the terrible Nirvikalpa Samadhi, which he had sought for so long, and which Ramakrishna had refused to allow him. When, after a long time, he returned to himself, it seemed to him that he no longer had loved everything, who denied nothing, since Evil and Illusion itself are of God. " It is not good to say from the very first, ' I see the Impersonal God.' Everything I see men, women, animals, flowers, trees is God.' 1 The image of the veil to which Maya is compared is also given at other times in the form of the beautiful parable of Sita and Rama : " Rama, Lakshmana his brother and Sita were walking in the forest. Rama went first, then Sita, then Lakshmana. Sita was be- tween the two brothers and so prevented Lakshmana from seeing Rama ; but knowing how this made him suffer, in her tenderness and kindness, she sometimes leaned to one side so that he could see his brother." 210 THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA a body, but that he was nothing but a face, and he cried out, " Where is my body ? " The other disciples were terrified and ran to the Master, but Ramakrishna said calmly, " Very well, let him stay like that for a time 1 He has worried me long enough/' When Naren again came down to earth he was bathed in ineffable peace. He approached the Master. Rama- krishna said to him, " Now the Mother has shown you everything. But this revelation will remain under lock and key, and I shall keep the key. When you have accomplished the Mother's work you will find this treasure again/' And he advised him what to do for his health during the succeeding days. The nearer he drew to his end, the more detached he became. He spread his serene heaven over the disciple's sorrow. The Gospel, written practically at the bedside of the dying man, records the harmonious murmurs of his soul like a stream in the night amid the heavy silence of the apostles, while in the moonlight the branches of the trees in the garden rustled gently, shaken by the warm breeze of the south. To his friends, his loved ones, who were inconsolable at the thought of his loss, 15 he said in a half whisper, " Radha said to Krishna, ' O Beloved, dwell in my heart and do not come again in your human form ! ' But soon 15 Naren's passionate soul found it more difficult than the others to suppress his revolt against the law of suffering. (Cf. his dialogue of April 22 with Hirananda.) " The plan of this world is diabolical. I could have created a better world. Our only refuge is the faith that it is I who can do everything." To which the gentle Hirananda replied, " That is more easy to say than to realize." And he added piously, " Thou (God) art everything. Not I, but Thou." But the proud and headstrong Naren repeated, " Thou art I and I am Thou. There is nothing else but I." Ramakrishna listened in silence, smiling indulgently, and said pointing to Naren, " He is moving about carrying as it were a naked sword in his hand." 211 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA she languished for the sight of the human form of her Beloved. But the will of the Lord had to be fulfilled and Krishna did not appear in human form for a long time. . . . The Lord came and was incarnate in man. Then he returned with his disciples le to the Divine Mother." Rakhal exclaimed, " Do not go away until we do ! " Ramakrishna smiled tenderly and said, " A troop of Bauls 17 suddenly entered a house ; they sang God's name and danced for joy. Then they left the house as suddenly as they had entered it and the owners did not know who they were. ..." He sighed. " Sometimes I pray that the Lord will grant that I should no more be sent into this world." But he went on at once, " He (God) reclothes Himself with the human form for love of those pure souls who love the Lord." And he looked at Naren with ineffable affection. On the gth of April Ramakrishna said, looking at the fan, which he was waving to and fro in the hot night, " Just as I see this fan I am holding in front of me I have seen God. . . . And I see . . ." he spoke quite low, laying his hand on Naren's and asked, " What did I say ? " Naren replied, " I did not hear distinctly." Ramakrishna then indicated by signs that He, God, and his own self were one. " Yes," said Naren, " I am He." " Only a line intervenes for the enjoyment of bliss," said the Master. " But," said the disciple, " the great remain in the world even after they have realized their liberation. They keep their own ego and its sufferings so that they may fulfil the salvation of humanity." There was absolute silence and then the Master spoke again, "In Hindu belief each Avatara (Incarnation) is accompanied to earth by a train of elect souls, his disciples. 17 A Hindu sect, intoxicated with God, who have renounced the world. 212 THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA " The roof 18 is within a man's sight, but it is very difficult to reach it ... but he who has reached it can let down a rope and pull others up to him upon the roof." This was one of the days when he realized in full the identity of all within the One Being ; when he saw that " all three were the same substance the victim, the block and the executioner/' and he cried in a feeble voice, " My God, what a vision ! " He fainted with emotion, but when he came to himself he said, " I am well. I have never been so well. 1 ' 19 Those who know how terrible was the disease from which he died (cancer of the throat) marvelled at the loving and kindly smile that never left him. If the glorious death upon the Cross was denied to this man, who is the Christ to his Indian followers, his bed of agony was no less a Cross. 20 And yet he could say, " Only the body suffers. When the spirit is united to God, it can feel no pain." And again, " Let the body and its sufferings occupy themselves with each other. Thou, my spirit, remain in bliss. Now I and my Divine Mother are one for ever. 11 21 18 The metaphor of the roof is often used in Ramakrishna's sayings. " Divine Incarnations can always achieve knowledge of the Abso- lute in Samadhi. At the same tune they can come down from the heights into human guise so that they love the Lord as father or mother, etc. . . . When they say, ' Not this I Not this 1 ' they leave the steps behind them one after the other until they reach the roof. And then they say, ' This is it I ' But soon they discover that the steps are made of the same materials, of bricks and mor- tar as the roof. Then they can ascend and descend resting some- times on the roof, sometimes on the steps of the staircase. The roof represents the Absolute, the %teps the world of phenomena." (Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, I, 324.) 19 Ramakrishnananda, the disciple who nursed him, said, " He never lost his cheerfulness. He always said he was well and happy." (From his unpublished Memoirs.) 10 The Swami Ashokananda has written to me that the photo- graph taken of Ramakrishna directly after his death and of which there is a copy in the Madras monastery, cannot be reproduced, so terribly was the body wasted and ravaged by the disease. The sight is unbearable. 11 Two days before his death in answer to Naren's unspoken desire to drag from him the avowal he was so loath to make, Rama- krishna said, 213 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA Three or four days before his death he called Naren and asked to be left alone with him. He looked lovingly upon him and passed into an ecstasy. It enveloped Naren in its folds. When he came back from the shadows, he saw Ramakrishna in tears. The Master said to him, " To-day I have given you my all and am now only a poor fakir, possessing nothing. By this power you will do immense good in the world and not until it is accomplished will you return/' 22 From that moment all his powers were transferred to Naren. The Master and the disciples were one. Sunday, August 15, 1886. . . . The last day. In the afternoon he still had the almost miraculous " He who was Rama and who was Krishna is now Ramakrishna in this body lying here." But he added, " Not in your Vedantic sense." (That is to say, not merely in the sense of identity with the Absolute, but in the sense of Incarnation.) I am naturally not going to discuss the Hindu belief in the Avataras. Beliefs cannot be discussed and this one is of the same order as the Christian belief in the God-man. But what I want to remove from the mind of the Western reader is the idea that there was any feeling of monstrous pride on the part of those who believed that within them was the presence of God, like the simple Ramakrishna. At other times as when a faithful follower (in 1884) said to him, " When I see you I see God," he rebuked him. " Never say that. The wave is part of the Ganges, the Ganges is not part of the wave." (Gospel, II, 181.) Cf. " The Avataras are to Brah- min what the waves are to the Ocean." (From Sri Ramakrishna' s Teachings, p. 362.) Ramakrishna considered that he was the habi- tation of God, who played within him hidden beneath the veil of his corruptible body. " A Divine Incarnation is hard to compre- hend it is the play of the Infinite on the finite." (Ibid., 369.) Only whereas the Divine Visitor in most men, even " in the saints manifests Himself only in part like honey in a flower . . . you suck the flower and get a little honey ... in the Incarnation it is all honey." (Ibid., 367.) It is all one, for " the Avatar is always one and the same, appearing now here, now there, under different faces and names Krishna, Christ, etc. . . ." (Ibid., 357.) And the name of Christ ought to remind us of another moral aspect, which is always part of an Incarnation. The words " flower," " honey, 11 " joy " should not lead us astray. There is always the element of Divine sacrifice, as in the case of Christ, when God becomes incarnate. (Ibid. t 358.) II " To the Absolute " is to be understood. 214 THE RIVER RE-ENTERS THE SEA energy to talk for two hours to his disciples 28 in spite of his martyred throat. At nightfall he became unconscious. They believed him to be dead, but towards midnight he revived. Leaning against five or six pillows supported by the body of the humble disciple, Ramakrishnananda, he talked up to the last moment with Naren, the beloved disciple, and gave him his last counsel in a low voice. Then in ringing tones he cried three times the name of his life's Beloved, Kali, the Divine Mother, and lay back. The final ecstasy began. He remained in it until half an hour before noon, when he died. 24 In his own words of faith, " He had passed from one room to the other." And his disciples cried, " Victory ! " 26 18 On the subject of Yoga. 84 According to the witness of Sarkar. Cf. the unpublished Memoirs of Ramakrishnananda. " On that last night Ramakrishna was talking with us to the very last. . . . He was sitting up against five or six pillows, which were supported by my body, and at the same time I was fanning (him). . . . Narendra took his feet and began to rub them and Ramakrishna was talking to him, telling him what he must do. ' Take care of these boys/ he repeated again and again. . . . Then he asked to lie down. Suddenly at one o'clock he fell towards one side ; there was a low sound in his throat. . . . Narendra quickly laid his feet on the quilt and ran downstairs as if he could not bear it. A doctor . . . who was feeling his pulse saw that it had stopped. . . . We all believed that it was only Samadhi." I have also consulted the manuscript copy of Sister Devamata : Sri Ramakrishna and his Disciples, and the Memoirs of Sarada Devi, Ramakrishna's wife. 15 Literally, " Victory to Baghavan Ramakrishna," as they car- ried him to the place of cremation, where his body was burned the same evening. 215 EPILOGUE TO BOOK I THE man himself was no more. His spirit had departed to travel along the path of collective life in the veins of humanity. The fellowship of apostles began at once ; for the young disciples, the witnesses of his last months, found it impos- sible to return to the world. They were without resources. But four married disciples Balaram Bose to whom Rama- krishna's relics were entrusted for the time being, Suren- dranath Mitra, Mohendranath Gupta and Girish Chandra Ghosh, the converted comedian, encouraged them and helped them to found a home. Surendranath Mitra con- tributed money for the rent of a half-ruined house at Baran- agore near the Ganges. This became the first Math or monastery of disciples. A dozen or more gathered there under monastic cognomens which have hidden their real names from posterity. He who had been Naren, he who was and is for all time Vivekananda, 1 put himself at their head by common consent. He was the most energetic, the most vital, the most intelligent and the Master himself had nominated him. The others were tempted to shut themselves up in solitude and to allow themselves to be buried beneath an intoxicating stupor of memory and of grief ; but the great disciple t who knew better than they, all the fascination but at the same time the danger of such a course, devoted himself to their instruction. He was like a tornado of fire in the midst of these hermits ; he roused them from their sorrow and ecstasy ; he forced them to learn the thoughts of the outside world ; he flooded them with the refreshing rain of his vast intellect ; he made them taste of all the branches of the tree of knowledge com- parative religion, science, history, sociology ; for he wished 1 This was the name he adopted several years later. In Book II I trace its origin. 217 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA them to gain a universal perspective ; he led them to fruitful discussion without ceasing for a single instant to maintain the sacred fire. It was at the symbolic season of Christmas, 1886, that the act giving birth to the Men of God was signed and sealed. The story is an arresting one, for it contains the thrill of an unforeseen encounter in the night between the " Beau Dieu " 2 of the West and the Word of India. They were assembled at Antpur in the house of the mother of one of the disciples (Baburam). " It was late in the evening when the monks gathered together before the fire. Huge logs of wood were brought by them and ignited ; and soon a raging flame burned upwards, making the darkness beautiful by contrast. And overhead was the canopy of the Indian night, and all around was the ineffable peace of the rural stillness. Meditation began, continuing for a long time. Then a break was made and the Leader (Vivekananda) filled the silence with the story of the Lord Jesus. 3 From the very beginning, from the wondrous mystery of birth it commenced. The monks were raised into beatitude with the Virgin Mary when the Saviour's coming was announced to her. . . . The monks lived with Jesus during the days of His childhood ; they were with Him in the Flight into Egypt. They were with Him in the Temple surrounded by the Jewish Pandits hearing and answering their questions. They were with Him at the time when He gathered His first disciples, and they adored Him as they adored their own Master. 4 The many points of similarity in thought and action as well as the relationship with the disciples, between Christ and Ramakrishna, forcibly brought to their minds the old days of ecstasy with their Master. The words of Christ the Redeemer rang upon their ears as familiar sayings." And the story of the Passion, of the Crucifixion, threw 1 So the French people call a celebrated statue of Christ on the portal of the Gothic cathedral of Amiens. Vivekananda had a passionate regard for Christ, whose divinity Ramakrishna, as we have seen, had acknowledged. 4 Of two among them, Sasibhushan (Ramakrishnananda) and Saratchandra (Saradananda) Ramakrishna had said that they had been the disciples of Christ in a former life. 218 EPILOGUE TO BOOK I them into the depths of meditation. Through Naren's eloquence they had been admitted to the apostolic circle where Paul preached the Gospel. The fire of Pentecost consumed their souls in the peace of the Bengal village ; and the mingled names of Christ and of Ramakrishna stole upon the night air. Then Vivekananda appealed to the monks. He besought them to become Christs in their turn, to work for the redemp- tion of the world, to renounce all as Jesus had done and to realize God. Standing before the wood fire, their faces reddened by the leaping flames, the crackling of the logs the only sound that broke the stillness of their thoughts, they solemnly took the vows of everlasting Sannyasa, each before his fellows and all in the sight of God. And it was not until that moment when all had been accomplished that the monks remembered that that very night was Christmas Eve. 6 A beautiful symbol of profound significance heralding the Nativity of a new Day of God. . . . But Europe must not be misled when she reads this story. This was no return to Jordan. Rather it was the confluence of the Jordan and the Ganges. The two united streams flowed together along their wider river bed. From its very inception the new Order had in it some- thing that was unique. Not only did it contain within itself the energy of faith both of the East and of the West, not only did it unite an encyclopaedic study of the sciences and religious meditation, but in it the ideal of contemplation was wedded to the ideal of human service. From the first Ramakrishna's spiritual sons were not allowed to shut themselves up within the wa^ls of a monastery. One after the other they went out to wander through the world as mendicant monks. Only one, Ramakrishnananda (Sasibhu- shan), the guardian of the relics, remained in the dovecote whither the birds of passage returned from time to time for rest. During the last months of the Master's life the humble ideal of Martha had been adopted Dienen . . . Dienen to serve (the word of Parsifal). They practised it in their service for the suffering Master, in the service of the bodies of those whose spirit was engrossed in the service of 8 The Life of the Swami Vivekananda, Vol. II. 219 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA God, and in service to the praying brethren. This was the Master's own way of " realization/' and the aged Tolstoy would have said that he had chosen the better part. But each had his own part to play, for each unconsciously through the very bent of his nature represented one phase or one aspect of the multiform personality of Ramakrishna. When they were assembled together he was there in his entirety. Their mighty spokesman, Vivekananda, on behalf of them all was to spread throughout the world the World of him, who, he claimed, was the living synthesis of all the spiritual forces of India. "I ... had the great good fortune to sit at the feet of one, . . . whose life, a thousand-fold more than whose teaching was a living commentary on the texts of the Upanishads, was in fact the spirit of the Upanishads living in human form . . . the harmony of all the diverse thought of India. . . . 6 India has been rich in thinkers and sages. . . . The one had a great head (Sankara), the other a large heart (Ramanuja), and the time was ripe for one to be born, the embodiment of both this head and heart . . . who in one body would have the brilliant intellect of Sankara and the wonderfully expansive infinite heart of Chaitanya ; one who would see in every sect the same spirit working, the same God ; one who would see God in every being, one whose heart would weep for the poor, the weak, for the outcast, for the downtrodden, for everyone in this world, inside India or outside India ; and at the same time whose grand brilliant intellect would conceive of such noble thoughts as would harmonize 4 all conflicting sects . . . and bring a marvellous harmony, the universal religion >f head and heart into existence ; such a man was born. . . . The time was ripe, it was necessary that such a man should be born, and he came ; and the most wonderful part of it was, that his life's work was just near a city which was full of Western thought, a city which had run mad after these occidental ideas, a city which had become more Europeanized than any other city in India. There he lived without any f Speeches at Calcutta and Madras : " The Vedanta in All its Phases/' and " The Sages of India." 220 EPILOGUE TO BOOK I book-learning whatever ; this great intellect never learnt even to write his own name, but the most brilliant graduates of our university found in him an intellectual giant 7 . . . the sage for the time, one whose teaching is just now, in the present time, most beneficial. ... If I have told you one word of truth it was his and his alone, and if I have told you many things which were not correct . . . they were all mine, and on me is the responsibility." Thus at the feet of the simple Ramakrishna the most intellectual, the most imperious, the most justifiably proud of all the great religious spirits of modern India humbled himself. He was the St. Paul of this Messiah of Bengal. He founded his Church and his doctrine. He travelled throughout the world and was the aqueduct akin to those arches that span the Roman Campagna, along which the waters of the spirit have flowed from India to Europe 8 7 The greatest philosophical and religious mind of the India of to-day, Aurobindo Ghose, a man unattached to any particular school of thought, has paid a brilliant tribute to Ramakrishna's genius, throwing into prominence the exceptional multiplicity of his spiritual powers and the still more exceptional soul directing them : " In a recent and unique example, in the life of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, we see a colossal spiritual capacity first driving straight to the divine realization, taking as it were, the kingdom of heaven by violence, and then seizing upon one Yogic method after another and extracting the substance out of it with an incredible rapidity, always to return to the heart of the whole matter, the realization and possession of God by the power of love, by the extension of inborn spirituality into various experience and by the spontaneous play of an intuitive knowledge. Such an example cannot be generalized. Its object also was special and temporal, to exemplify in the great and decisive experience of a master soul the truth, now most necessary to humanity, towards which a world long divided into jarring sects and schools is with difficulty labour- ing, that all sects are forms and fragments of a single integral truth and all disciplines labour in their different ways towards one supreme experience. To know, be, and possess the divine is the one thing needful and it includes or leads up to all the rest ... all the rest that the divine Will chooses for us, all necessary form and mani- festation, will be added." (" The Synthesis of Yoga," Arya Review, Pondicherry, No. 5, December 15, 1914.) In this way the essential significance of the personality and life of Ramakrishna has been realized by the master metaphysician of India to-day. Mother Europe and her brood of the Americas. 4 221 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA and from Europe back to India, joining scientific reason to Vedantic faith and the past to the future. It is this Journey of the soul that I intend to trace in future pages. Up to now I have led European thought to the distant countries of religious mythology, whose wide- spreading tree, the giant banyan, too often considered by the West to be dried up and withered, continues to shoot out great flowering branches. I shall then lead it back by unsuspected paths to its home where modern reason sits enthroned. And it will discover at the end of the journey that between one country and another the gulf of centuries dividing them is, when subjected to " wireless " of free understanding, no wider than a hair's breadth and the space of a second. R. R. Christmas, 1928. 222 BIBLIOGRAPHY I . The chief source for the history of Ramakrishna is the great Biography, compiled from the accounts of his disciples and published by the Swami Madhavananda : Life of Sri Ramakrishna, compiled from various authentic sources, one volume of 765 pages in the edition of the Advaita Ashrama (the intellectual centre of the Order), Mayavati, Almora, Hima- layas, 1925. (Himalayan Series, No. XLVII.) It is prefaced with a short introduction by Gandhi, which I feel it is of interest to reproduce : " The story of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's life is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face. No one can read the story of his life without being con- vinced that God alone is real and that all else is an illusion. Rama- krishna was a living embodiment of godliness. His sayings are not those of a mere learned man, but they are pages from the Book of Life. They are revelations of his own experience. They therefore leave on the reader an impression which he cannot resist. In this age of scepticism Ramakrishna presents an example of a bright and loving faith which gives solace to thou- sands of men and women who would otherwise have remained without spiritual light. Ramakrishna's life was an object lesson in Ahimsa. His love knew no limits geographical or otherwise. May his divine love be an inspiration to all who read the fol- lowing pages. M. K. GANDHI. SABARMATI, MARGSHEERSH, KRISHNA I, Vikram Samvati, 1891." As is shown by an editorial note this work is Abased on the labours of Swami Saradananda, a direct disciple of the Master and the Secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission for more than a quarter of a century ; on those of Ramchandra Dutt and of Akshay Kumar Sen, both of them disciples of Ramaicrishna ; on memories collected by Priyanath Sinha (ah* as Gurudas Varman), a disciple of Vivekananda ; on the Discourses of the Master taken down by Mahendra Nath Gupta. This compilation is valuable because of the religious care which has been taken to collect in it literally all the documents at first hand, which had been scattered abroad. But it is inconvenient 223 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA because they are presented without any arrangement and with- out criticism. And the lack (up to the present) of an alpha- betical index makes research into it very difficult. 2. Of much greater value from the point of view of arrangement and reason is the work of Swami Saradananda. It consists of five volumes written in Bengali, which, however, do not give a consecutive and full account of the life. The story, unfortunately interrupted by the death of Saradananda in 1927, stops short at the point when Ramakrishna during his last illness was moved to the gardens of Cossipore, and therefore the last months are missing. The work is also incomplete with regard to Rama- krishna's disciples, with one or two exceptions, the most note- worthy being Vivekananda. The title of the series in Bengali is : Sri Ramakrishna-lila-prasanga (Discourse on the lila (the play) of Ramakrishna). The titles of the five volumes in Bengali are as follows : I and II. Gurubhave (Sri Ramakrishna as Guru or master). III. Valya-jivana (The Youth of Ramakrishna). IV. Sadhakabhava (Ramakrishna as Sadhaka). V. Divyabhava (Ramakrishna in his divine form). Only two volumes have appeared in English ; the first written by Saradananda himself ; the second translated from the original Bengali. Some of the other chapters from the Bengali work have been published in the Reviews of the Ramakrishna Order, Prabuddha Bharata (hi particular the relations of Ramakrishna with Vive- kananda), and in another English magazine. Saradananda planned this work in the form of an exposition of the various aspects of his life without presenting it in the form of a consecutive narrative. The first two volumes in Bengali were written according to this plan. Then Saradananda changed it to the form of an ordinary biography. The third volume is devoted to the youth, the fourth to the years when Ramakrishna was practising his Sadhana ; it takes us to the end of this exercise and to the first relations with the Brahmo Samaj, where the part played by Ramakrishna as a teacher (but not yet as a religious manifestation) is brought out. The fifth volume describes the Master in the midst of his disciples and the beginning of his illness. At this point he saw the death of the " Holy Mother " (Ramakrishna's wife), and then that of Swami Brahmananda, who, with Vivekananda, had been the favourite disciple and the first Abbot of the Order. He was so overwhelmed with grief that he abandoned his written work and gave himself up wholly to meditation. Incomplete though the work remains, it is excellent for the subject. Saradananda is an authority both as a philosopher and as an historian. His books are rich in metaphysical sketches, which place the spiritual apr^earance of Ramakrishna exactly in its place in the rich procession of Hindu thought. 224 BIBLIOGRAPHY If variations appear between the Bengali work of Saradananda and the Life of Sri Ramakrishna (No. i), which is the collective work of the Ramakrishna Order, the latter must be given the prefer- ence (according to the evidence I have received from Swami Ashokananda), for it was drawn up with Saradananda's help after his own work. 3. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (according to M., a son of the Lord and disciple), or the Ideal Man for India and the World, 2 volumes, Madras, published by the Ramakrishna Math, 1897 (preceded by two approving letters of Vivekananda), 2nd Edition, 1911. (New Editions in 1922-24.) * This Gospel of Ramakrishna is as valuable as the great Bio- graphy (No. i), for it is the faithful account of M. (Mahendra Nath Gupta, the head of an educational establishment at Cal- cutta) of the Discourses with the Master, either his own or those which he actually heard from the summer of 1882 for the next four years. Their exactitude is almost stenographic. A good alphabetical index makes it possible to find one's way among the diversity of subjects treated in the course of the days. 4. The Life of the Swami Vivekananda, by his Eastern and Western Disciples, the Advaita Ashrama, Himalayas, the semi-centenary birthday memorial edition, in three volumes, 8 published by the Swami Virajananda from the Prabuddha Bharata Office, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati, Almora, Himalayas. Volumes I and II, 1914 ; Volume III, 1915 ; Volume IV, 1918. This great life of Ramakrishna's chief disciple has not only a capital interest for its own history, but for that of his Master, since it embodies his own direct memories. It is also useful to consult the Complete Works of Swami Vive- kananda, in 7 volumes. He often speaks of his Master with pious gratitude. He dedicated to him in particular a celebrated lec- ture in New York published under the title : My Master t in Volume IV of the Complete Works. 5. Sri Ramakrishna' s Teachings, 2 small volumes, 1916 and 1920 (Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati). These are a collection of thoughts delivered during the various Discourses of the Master, in particular in the Gospel of Sri Rama* krishna, and arranged in methodical order. It is especially valuable as a little practical volume. It appeared piecemeal in the Review of the Order, the Prabuddha Bharata, and in other Indian Reviews between 1900 and 1913. A German edition is at the moment being prepared. 1 To my great regret the only two volumes of the Gospel, which I could procure, were of two different editions : the first volume belonged to the 4th edition of 1924, the second volume to the first of 1922. But it may be presumed that in so short an interval the arrangement and style differed but little. 1 In reality there are four and not three volumes in this publi- cation. 225 Q PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA 6. Words of the Master (Selected Precepts of Sri Ramakrishna), com- piled by Swami Brahmananda, 1924 (Udbodhan Office, Bagh- bazar, Calcutta). Another small anthology, chiefly interesting on account of the personality of the anthologist. 7. Ramakrishna, his Life and Sayings, by Max Miiller (Longmans, Green and Co.), ist edition, 1898, new edition, 1923. Max Miiller knew Vivekananda personally in England ; and he asked him to give him a complete account of the life of his Master. His small work is therefore based on first-hand evidence ; and he uses it with his broad and clear critical spirit, in which are allied the scientific exegesis of the West and a generous understanding of all forms of thought. 8. The Face of Silence, by Dhan Gopal Mukerji (New York, E. P. Button and Co.), 1926. This work, which is of exceptional value as a work of art, is a brilliant evocation of the figure of the Master in the atmo- sphere of the India of his time. Mukerji has consulted all the principal documents. He has also interviewed several of the eminent personalities of the Ramakrishna Mission, who knew the Master, in particular Swami Turiyananda, and he has used the Memoirs of Swami Premananda, one of Ramakrishna's dearest disciples. The Ramakrishna Mission has not taken in very good part the liberties due at times to the lively imagination of the artist in the reported words ; and it has issued a warning against some of its " theological " interpretations, whose character seem of too personal a nature. For my own part I can never forget that it is to the perusal of this beautiful book that I owe my first knowledge of Ramakrishna and the impetus leading me to undertake this work. I here record my gratitude. With extra- ordinary talent and tact Mukerji in this book has chosen and put in the limelight those features in Ramakrishna's personality which will most attract the spirit of Europe and America with- out shocking it. I have felt it necessary to go beyond his pre- cautions and to cite documents exactly without allowing myself to " embroider " them. 9. It is useful to consult the Reviews of the Ramakrishna Order, which have published and still continue to publish studies and unpublished memories of the Master and his disciples chiefly Prabuddha Bharata and The Vedanta Kesari. I said at the outset how much I owe to the good counsels and the information of the Ramakrishna Mission, which has tirelessly put at my disposal its documents and replied to my questions. I can only repeat my thanks. R. R. 226 ICONOGRAPHY There are only three pictures of Ramakrishna which appear to be authentic : 1. One published in the great Biography in English, published by the Advaita Ashrama (p. 262). Ramakrishna was taken to a photographer and involved in a spiritual conversation in the course of which he fell into the Samadhi. A photograph was then taken and when Ramakrishna saw it afterwards he made the remark that it represented an exalted condition of yoga. 2. One published in Volume IV of the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, p. 150. 3. One which I hope to publish sent to me by Swami Ashokananda. It was taken during a Kirtan (religious dances and songs) in which he was taking part with ecstatic joy. The portrait in colours reproduced as the frontispiece of the big Biography was painted by an Austrian artist, but not from the living model. The disciples considered that it was very like him except that it was too highly coloured. NOTE SARADADEVI AND THE BRIGANDS In order to join her husband Saradadevi had often to cross the plain between Kamarpukur and Dakshineswar on foot, and at that time it was infested with bands of brigands, worshippers of Kali. One day she was returning to Dakshineswar in the company of several others. She was so tired when night fell that she could not keep up with the rest of the little band and dropped behind. Soon they were lost to view and she found herself alone in com- plete darkness at the beginning of the dangerous plain. At that moment she saw a swarthy man coming towards her. He was big and strong and carried a club or* his shoulder ; he was followed by another figure. She saw that there was no possibility of escape and remained motionless. The man came up to her and said in a rough voice, 11 What are you doing here at this time of night ? " She answered him, " Father, my companions left me behind and I have lost myself. Will you be so kind as to take me to them ? Your son-in-law dwells in the temple of Kali at Dakshineswar. I am going to him. If you will take me as fax as that, he will be most grateful to you." At that moment the other figure came up. Saradadevi realized with relief that it was the man's wife. She took her by the hand and said, 227 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA " Mother, I am your daughter Sarada. I am lost here and all alone. My companions have deserted me. Fortunately you and my father turned up 1 Otherwise I do not know what I should have done." Her simple ways, her absolute trust, and her sweet words touched the hearts of the man and woman. They belonged to the lowest caste ; but they forgot everything and treated Sarada as their daughter. She was tired. They would not allow her to continue her journey ; they made her sleep at a shop in the neighbouring village. The woman took off her own clothes in order to make a bed for her. The man brought her some puffed rice that he had bought at the shop. They watched over her as if they had been indeed her parents all night, and in the morning they took her as far as Tarakeswar, where they begged her to rest. The woman said to her husband, " My daughter did not have much to eat yesterday. Go and fetch some fish and vegetables for her from the bazaar. She must have better food to-day." While the man had gone to fetch them, Sarada's companions came back to look for her. She introduced her Bagdi 1 parents to them, and said, " I do not know what I should have done, if they had not come to the rescue." " When we separated,' 1 so she told afterwards, " this single night had made us so dear to one another that I wept for grief when I said good-bye to them. I made them promise to come to Dakshineswar to see me. They followed us for some time. The woman picked a few green peas growing at the side of the road and wrapped them in a fold of my sari, and said ' Mother Sarada, to-night when you eat your puffed rice take these with it.' ... They came to see me several times at Dakshineswar and brought me different presents. ' He ' a behaved towards them as if he were their son-in-law, and treated them with great affection and respect. . . . But although my Dacoit father was so good and simple, I suspect that he had more than once committed acts of brigandage. ..." Adapted from the Modern Review, June, 1927. 1 A low caste. * " He," that is to say, " my husband." An orthodox Hindu wife must never name her husband. 228 Book II VIVEKANANDA " Never forget the glory of human nature ! We are the greatest God. . . . Christs and Buddhas are but waves on the boundless Ocean which / am." Vivekananda in America, 1896. Part I THE LIFE OF VIVEKANANDA PRELUDE THE great disciple whose task it was to take up the spiritual heritage of Ramakrishna and disseminate the grain of his thought throughout the world, was both physically and morally his direct antithesis. The Seraphic Master had spent his whole life at the feet of the Divine Beloved, the Mother the Living God. He had been dedicated to Her from infancy ; before he had attained self-consciousness he had the consciousness that he loved Her. And although, in order to rejoin her, he had been condemned to years of torment, that was after the manner of a knight errant the sole object of whose trials was to make him worthy of the object of his chaste and religious love. She alone was at the end of all the interlacing paths in the forest. She alone, the multiple God, among the thousands of Faces. And when he had reached her, he found that he had learned to recognize all those other faces, and to love them in Her, so that with Her he embraced the whole world. The rest of his life had been spent in the serene fullness of this cosmic Joy, whose revelation Beethoven and Schiller have sung for the West. 1 But he realized it more fully than our tragic heroes. Joy appeared to Beethoven only as a gleam of bJue through the chaos of conflicting clouds, while the Paramahamsa the Indian swan rested his great white wing on the sapphire lake of eternity beyond the veil of tumultuous days. 1 Reference to Beethoven's IXth (Choral) Symphony, which ends with a setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy. Translator's Note. 231 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA It was not given to his proudest disciples to emulate him. The greatest of them, the spirit with the widest wings Vivekananda could only attain his heights by sudden flights amid tempests which remind me over and over again of Beethoven. Even in moments of rest upon its bosom the sails of his ship were filled with every wind that blew. Earthly cries, the suffering of the age, fluttered round him like a flight of famished gulls. The passions of strength (never of weakness) were striving within his lion's heart. He was energy personified, and action was his message to men. For him as for Beethoven it was the root of all the virtues. He went so far in his aversion to passivity, whose secular yoke weighs so heavily on the patient bovine brow of the East, as to say : " Above all, be strong ! Be manly ! I have a respect even for one who is wicked, so long as he is manly and strong; for his strength will make him some day give up his wickedness, or even give up all works for selfish ends, and will thus eventually bring him into the Truth/ 1 * His athletic form was the opposite of the fragile and tender, yet wiry, body of Ramakrishna. He was tall (five feet, eight and a half inches), 8 square shouldered, broad chested, stout, rather heavily built ; his arms were muscular and trained to all kinds of sports. He had an olive com- plexion, a full face, vast forehead, strong jaw, 4 a pair of magnificent eyes, large, dark and rather prominent with heavy lids, whose shape recalled the classic comparison to a lotus leaf. Nothing escaped the magic of his glance, capable equally of embracing in its irresistible charm or of sparkling with wit, irony, or kindness, of losing itself in ecstasy, or of plunging imperiously to the very depths of consciousness and of withering with its fury. But his pre-eminent characteristic was kingliness. He was a born 1 1891. To his Alwar disciples in Rajputana. He weighed 170 pounds. In the Phrenological Journal of New York (reproduced in Volume II of the Life of Vivekananda) the exact measurements may be found that were taken at the time of his first journeys in America. 4 His jaw was more Tartar than Hindu. Vivekananda boasted of his Tartar ancestors, and he loved to say that in India " the Tartar is the wine of the race." 232 PRELUDE king and nobody ever came near him either in India or America without paying homage to his majesty. When this quite unknown young man of twenty-nine appeared in Chicago at the inaugural meeting of the Parlia- ment of Religions, opened in September, 1893, by Cardinal Gibbons, all his fellow members were forgotten in his com- manding presence. His strength and beauty, the grace and dignity of his bearing, the dark light of his eyes, his imposing appearance, and from the moment he began to speak, the splendid music of his rich deep 6 voice enthralled the vast audience of American Anglo-Saxons, previously prejudiced against him on account of his colour. The thought of this warrior-prophet 6 of India left a deep mark upon the United States. 7 It was impossible to imagine him in the second place. Wherever he went he was the first. Even his master Ramakrishna in a vision which I have related, represented himself with regard to his beloved disciple, as a child beside a great Rishi. It was in vain that Vivekananda refused to accept such homage, judging himself severely and humili- ating himself, everybody at sight recognized in him the leader, the anointed of God, the man marked with the stamp of the power to command. A traveller who crossed his path without knowing who he was in the Himalayas, stopped in amazement and cried, " Shiva. . . ." 8 It was as if his chosen God had imprinted His name upon his forehead. But this same forehead was weather-beaten like a crag by the four winds of the spirit. He very rarely realized the calm air, the limpid spaces of thought, whereon Rama- 6 He had a beautiful voice like a violoncello (so Miss Josephine MacLeod told me), grave without violent contrasts but with deep vibrations that filled both hall and hearts. Once his audience was held he could make it sink to an intense piano piercing his heaxers to the soul. Emma Calve, who knew him, described it as " an admirable baritone, having the vibrations of a Chinese gong." 6 He belonged to the Kayastha class, a sub-caste of warriors. 7 The Ramakrishna Mission, after its introduction by him, spread rapidly, and he found among Americans several of his most devoted disciples. 8 Related by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. 233 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA krishna's smile hovered. His super-powerful body 9 and too vast brain were the predestined battlefield for all the shocks of his storm-tossed soul. The present and the past, the East and the West, dream and action, struggled for supremacy. He knew and could achieve too much to be able to establish harmony by renouncing one part of his nature, or one part of truth. The synthesis of his great opposing forces took years of struggle, consuming his courage and his very life. Battle and life for him were synonymous. 10 And his days were numbered. Sixteen years passed between Ramakrishna's death and that of his great disciple . . . years of conflagration . . . He was less than forty years of age when the athlete lay stretched upon the pyre. . . . But the flame of that pyre is still alight to-day. From his ashes, like those of the Phoenix of old, has sprung the magic bird faith in her unity and in the Great Message, brooded over from Vedic times by the dreaming spirit of an ancient people the message for which they must render account to the rest of mankind. Although marked very early by the first attacks of diabetes, the poison from which he died. This Hercules had death always sitting by his side. 10 Did he not define life : " The tendency of the unfoldment and development of a being under circumstances tending to press it down." (April, 1891 : Interview with the Maharaja of Khetri.) 234 THE PARIVRAJAKA : THE CALL OF THE EARTH TO THE WANDERING SOUL AFTER Christmas night, 1886, the vigil of Barana- gore, where the New Communion of Apostles was founded amid tears of love in memory of the lost Master many months and years elapsed before the work was begun that translated Ramakrishna's thought into living action. There was the bridge to be built and they could not at first make up their minds to build it. The only one with the necessary energy and constructive genius, Naren x 1 1 would remind the reader that his real name was Narendra- nath Dutt. He did not adopt the name of Vivekananda until the moment of his departure for America in 1893. I have consulted the Ramakrishna Mission on this subject. Swami Ashokananda has been good enough to put at my disposal all the results of a profound research. According to the decisive witness of one of Vivekananda J s most important monastic disciples, the Swami Suddhananda, the present Secretary of the R.M., Rama- krishna always used his name Narendra, or more shortly, Naren. Although he had made Sannyasins of certain of his disciples it was never according to the usual forms and he never gave them monastic names. He had indeed given Naren the cognomen of Kamalaksha (lotus eyed) ; but Naren dropped it immediately. During his first journeys in India he appeared under different names, in order to conceal his identity. Sometimes he was the Swami Vividishananda, sometimes Satchidananda. Again on the eve of his departure for America, when he went to ask Colonel Olcutt, then President of the Theosophical Society, for letters of introduction to America, it was under the name of Satchinananda that Colonel Olcutt knew him, and instead of recommending him to his friends in America, warned them against him. (Olcutt's letter to Sharmapala, in America, has been read by Suddhananda.) It was his great friend, the Maharajah of Khetri, who suggested the name Vivekananda to him at the moment when he was stepping on board the boat to go to America. The choice of the name was inspired by an illusion 235 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA himself hesitated. He, even more uncertain than them all, was torn between dream and action. Before he raised the arch which was to span the two banks, it was necessary for him to know and to explore the other bank : the real world of India and the present day. But nothing as yet was clear : his coming mission burnt dimly in the feverish heart of this young man of destiny whose years only num- bered twenty-three. The task was so heavy, so vast, so complex 1 How could it be accomplished even in spirit ? And when and where was it to be begun ? In anguish he put off the decisive moment. But was he able to prevent its impassioned discussion in the secret depths of his mind ? It pursued him, every night from his adolescence, not consciously but subconsciously through the ardent and con- flicting instincts of his nature with all its conflicting desires the Desire to have, to conquer, to dominate the earth, the Desire to renounce all earthly things in order to possess God. 8 The struggle was constantly renewed throughout his life. This warrior and conqueror wanted to have everything, both God and the world to dominate everything to renounce everything. The superfluity of powers striving within his Roman athlete body and Imperator brain con- tended for mastery. But this very excess of force made it impossible for him to confine his torrential waters within any bed save that of the river of God and complete self- surrender to the Unity. How was this contest between pride and imperious love, between his two great desires, rival and sovereign brothers, to be decided ? There was a third element, which Naren himself had not foreseen, but which the prophetic eye of Ramakrishna had discerned from afar. At a time when the others were showing anxiety or mistrust with regard to this young man, in whom such tumultuous forces were at work, the Master had declared : " The day when Naren comes in contact with suffering to the " power of discrimination " possessed by the Swami. Naren -accepted it, perhaps provisionally, but he could never have changed it wen if he had wanted to : for within a few months the name had acquired an Indo- American celebrity. * Cf . the story told by Naren of his spiritual conflicts in previous 236 THE PARIVRAJAKA and misery, the pride of his character will melt into a mood of infinite compassion. His strong faith in himself will be an instrument to re-establish in discouraged souls the confidence and faith they have lost. And the freedom of his conduct, based on mighty self-mastery, will shine brightly in the eyes of others, as a manifestation of the true liberty of the Ego." 8 This meeting with suffering and human misery not only vague and general but definite misery, misery close at hand, the misery of his people, the misery of India was to be the flint upon the steel whence a spark would fly to set the whole soul on fire. And with this as its foun- dation stone, pride, ambition and love, faith, science and action, all his powers and all his desires were thrown into the mission of Human Service and united into one single flame : "A religion which will give us faith in ourselves, a national self-respect, and the power to feed and educate the poor and relieve the misery around us ... If you want to find God, serve man ! " 4 But consciousness of his mission only came and took possession of him after years of direct experience, wherein he saw with his own eyes, and touched with his own hands the miserable and glorious body of humanity his mother India in all her tragic nakedness. We shall accompany him throughout the pilgrimage of his Wander jahre.* The first months, the first year at Baranagore were devoted to the mutual edification of the disciples. As yet not one of them was prepared to preach to men. They desired to concentrate on the search for mystic realization ; and the delights of the inner life made them turn away 1 That is to say, the one Divine Being. (Quoted from the work of Saradananda : Divya Bhana.) * The Life of Vivekananda, Vol. II, Chapter LXXIII. Conver- sations before 1893. N.B. The Life of Vivekananda to which I shall constantly refer in the course of this book, is the classic work in India in four volumes, published by the Advaita Ashram of Mayavati, under the title : The Life of the Swami Vivekananda, by his Western Disciples. 1914-18. 8 This, as is well known, is the title of a book Wander Years of Wilhelm Meister. (WaiiderjaJir^y^jj^y means wander years. TRANSLATOR.) 237 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA their eyes from outside. Naren, who shared their longing for the Infinite, but who realized how dangerous for the passive soul was this elementary attraction, which acts like gravity on a falling stone Naren with whom dream itself was action would not allow them to be torpidly engulfed in meditation. He made this period of conventual seclusion a hive of laborious education, a High School of the spirit. The superiority of his genius and his knowledge had from the first given him a tacit but definite guidance over his companions, although many of them were older than he. Had not the last words of the Master when he took leave of them, been to Naren, " Take care of these boys ! " . . . 6 Naren resolutely undertook the conduct of this young seminary, and did not permit it to indulge in the idleness of God. He kept its members ever on the alert, he harried their minds without any pity ; he read them the great books of human thought, he explained to them the evolution of the universal mind, he forced them to dry and impassioned discussion of all the great philosophical and religious prob- lems, he led them indefatigably towards the wide horizons of boundless Truth, which surpass all the limits of schools and races, and embrace and unify all particular truths. 7 This synthesis of spirit fulfilled the promise of Rama- krishna's message of love. The unseen Master presided 6 " Memoirs of the Disciple Ramakrishnananda " of the last moments of Ramakrishna, recently published in Messages from the East in the United States. (See Chapter XII of Book I.) f In this panorama of all the heroic and divine thoughts of human- ity, we must again notice the place of honour which seems to have been given to Christ and the Gospels. These Hindu monks kept Good Friday, and they sang the Canticles of St. Francis. Naren, who could never read the immortal story of the Crucifixion with- out tears, spoke to them of the Christian saints, the founders of the Western Orders. The Imitation of Jesus Christ was their bedside book together with the Bhagavadgita. Nevertheless there was never for a moment any question of enrolling themselves within the Church of Christ. They were and remain complete and un- compromising Vedantic Advaitists. But they incorporate in their faith all the faiths of the world. The waters of Jordan mingle with their Ganges. If any westerner waxes indignant at the abuse he sees in this connexion, we would ask him whether the mingling of the waters of the Tibur with the river of Palestine is any better. 238 THE PARIVRAJAKA over their meetings. They were able to place their in- tellectual labours at the service of his universal heart. But it is not in the nature of the religious Indian, not- withstanding Europe's belief in Asiatic immobility, to remain, like a French bourgeois, shut up in one place. Even those who practise contemplation have in their blood the secular instinct of wandering through the universe with- out fixed abode, without ties, independent and strangers wherever they go. This tendency to become a wandering monk, known in Hindu religious life by the special name of Parivrajaka, soon spurred some of the brethren of Baran- agore. From the moment of union the whole group had never assembled in its entirety. Two of its chiefs, Yogan- anda and Latu, were not present at the Christmas con- secration of 1886. Others followed Ramakrishna's widow to Brindaban. Others, like the young Saradananda, sud- denly disappeared, without saying where they were going. Naren, in spite of his anxiety to maintain the ties uniting the brotherhood, was himself tormented with the same desire to escape. How could this migratory need of the soul, this longing to lose itself in the Ocean of the air, like a carrier pigeon that stifles beneath the roof of the dovecote, be reconciled to the necessary fixity of a naissant Order ? It was arranged that a portion at least of the group should always remain at Baranagore, while the other brethren followed the " Call of the Forest. " And one of them one only Sasi (Soshi), never quitted the hearth. He was the faithful guardian of the Math, the immobile axis, the coping stone of the dovecote, whereto the vaga- bond wings returned. . . . 8 Naren resisted the call topflight for two years. Apart 8 1 have said above that Ramakrishna the free, differing in this respect from other Gurus, had not in the case of his disciples, car- ried out the ceremony of initiation in its usual forms. This was later a subject of reproach to Vivekananda. Naren and his com- panions supplemented it themselves about 1888 or 1889 by carrying it to the Viraja Homa, the traditional ceremony of Sannyasa at the monastery of Baranagore. Swami Ashokananda has also told me that another kind of Sannyasa is recognized in India, as superior to the formal Sannyasa consecrated in the usual way. He who feels a strong detachment from life and an intense thirst for God, can take the Sannyasa alone, even without any formal initiation. This was doubtless the case with the free monks of Baranagore. 239 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA from short visits he remained at Baranagore until 1888. Then he left suddenly, not at first alone, but with one companion, and intense though his desire to escape, for two and a half years he always returned if he was recalled by his brethren, or by some unforeseen event. Then he was seized by the sacred madness to escape ; the longing suppressed for five years burst all bounds. In 1891, alone, without a companion, without a name, staff and bowl in hand as an unknown beggar, he was swallowed up for years in the immensity of India. But a hidden logic directed his distracted course. The immortal words : " Thou wouldest not have looked for Me if thou hadst not found Me " 9 were never so true as for those souls possessed by the hidden God, who struggle with Him in order to drag from Him the secret of the mission with which they are charged. Naren had no doubt that a mission awaited him ; his power, his genius spoke within him, and the fever of the age, the misery of the time, and the mute appeal rising all around him from oppressed India, the tragic contrast between the august grandeur of her ancient might of her unfulfilled destiny, and the degradation of the country betrayed by her children, the anguish of death and resur- rection, of despair and love, devoured his heart. But what was his mission to be ? Who was to dictate it to him ? The holy Master was dead, without having defined it for him. And among the living, was any 10 capable of en- lightening his path ? God alone. Let Him then speak. Why was He silent ? Why did He refuse to answer ? Naren went to find Him. Pascal. 10 There was only one : a holy man, revered by the wisest in India, Pavhari Baba of Ghazipur. This great hermit, born of Brahmin parents at Benares, and very learned, knowing all Indian religions, and philosophies, the Dravidian languages and ancient Bengali, who had travelled in all countries, had retired into soli- tude and practised the strictest asceticism. The tranquillity of his intrepid soul, his heroic humility, which had taught itself to look the most terrible realities in the face with a calm smile, and which made him say in the midst of cruel sufferings caused by the bite of a cobra that " it was a message from his Beloved " fascinated the highest spirits of India. He had been visited by Keshab Chun- dar Sen ; and even during the life of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda 240 THE PARIVRAJAKA He suddenly left Calcutta in 1888 and went through Benares, Dayodia, Lucknow, Agra, Brindaban, Northern India and the Himalayas. Nothing is known of this journey or of the subsequent ones Naren kept the secret of his religious experiences except from the Memoirs of the Brethren who met him or accompanied him. 11 In 1888 during the first of these pilgrimages after he had left Brinda- ban at Hatras, a small railway station, he quite uninten- tionally made his first disciple a man one minute a complete stranger, the next impelled by the attraction of his glance to leave all and follow him, and who remained faithful unto death : Sarat Chendra Gupta (who took the name of Sadananda). 12 They went about in the guise of beggars, had been to him (Pavhari recognized Ramakrishna's sanctity). Naren saw him again during the period of uncertainty following Ramakrishna's death ; he visited him daily, and was on the verge of becoming his follower, and demanding initiation of him. This torment of soul lasted several weeks ; he was torn between the two mystic appeals of Ramakrishna and Pavhari Baba. The latter would have satisfied his passion for the Divine gulf, wherein the individual soul renounces itself, and is entirely absorbed with no thought of return. And he would have appeased the remorse, always gnawing at Naren's heart, for turning from the world and social service ; for he professed the faith that the spirit can help others, even without the help of the body, and that the most intense action is that of the most intense concentration. What religious spirit has not heard this voice with its deadly attraction ? Naren was for twenty-one days within an ace of yielding. But for twenty- one nights the vision of Ramakrishna came to draw him back. Finally after an inner struggle of the utmost intensity, whose vicissi- tudes he has constantly refused to reveal, he made his choice for ever. He chose the service of God in man. 11 Saradananda, Brahmananda, Premananda, Yogananda, Yuri- yananda, especially Akhandananda, who was with him the longest. 11 In her Unpublished Memoirs, which have been shown to me, Sister Christine, Vivekananda's great American disciple, has left a precious account of this episode and the attractive personality of Sadananda, gleaned from Vivekananda's confidences to her. Sadananda was the young station master of Hatras. He saw Naren arrive at the station dying of hunger. He was captivated by his glance. " I followed two diabolical eyes," he said later. He made hirn come into his house ; and when his guest departed he followed him for life. Both young men were artists and poets. But, unlike his Master, with Sadananda the intellect held a secondary place, although he was well educated (he had studied Persian and been influenced 241 R PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA often repulsed, at times almost dying of hunger and thirst, with no regard for caste and willing to smoke even the pipe of the pariah. Sadananda fell ill, and Naren carried him on his shoulders through dangerous jungles. Then he in turn fell ill and they were obliged to return to Calcutta. This very first journey had brought ancient India vividly before his eyes, eternal India, the India of the Vedas, with its race of heroes and gods, clothed in the glory of legend and history, Aryans, Moghuls and Dravidians, all one. 18 At the first impact he realized the spiritual unity of India by Sufism). Like him he had a very vivid sense of beauty and enjoyed the delights of Nature and of the countryside. None re- mained more devoted to Vivekananda. He was impregnated with the being of the Master ; he had only to close his eyes, to meditate on his features and gestures to be immediately filled with the pro- fundities of his thought. Vivekananda described him as " the child of my spirit." Without having known Ramakrishna, he was by nature nearer to him than any of the others ; and episodes in his life recall that of the Paramahamsa as well as of several of our saints of the Golden Legend : he saw a buffalo being beaten : immediately the marks of the whip appeared upon his body ; he cared for the lepers, worshipping them as God ; for the whole of one night he held a man burning with smallpox against his body to refresh his fever. More than any other of the future disciples he had the democratic spirit (due partly, according to Sister Chris- tine, to Mohammedan influence). He was one of the first of the Mission to organize a corps of scavengers during the plague. He loved the Untouchables and shared their life. He was adored by young people. During his last illness a devoted band, who called themselves Sadananda's dogs, watched over him with passionate devotion ; they had left all for him, just as he had left all for Vive- kananda. He did not allow the usual relations of disciples and Guru to be established between them ; he was their companion. " I can only do one thing for you," he said to them. " That is to take you to the Swamiji." Although he could at times be severe he was always bubbling over with joy as his chosen name shows and he transmitted this joy to them. They ever hold him in loving memory. My readers will pardon this long note, which breaks the thread of the story to a certain extent. The preservation for pious hearts of the West of this " little flower " of India whose culling we owe to Sister Christine, full as it is of Franciscan grace, seemed to me more important than the exigencies of literary composition. 11 The revelation of Moghul grandeur at Agra reduced him to tears. At Dayodia he re-lived the story of the Ramayana, and at Brindaban the childhood of Krishna. In the retreats of the Hima- layas he meditated on the Vedas. 242 THE PARIVRAJAKA and Asia and he communicated this discovery to the brethren of Baranagore. From his second journey in 1889 to Ghazipur, he seems to have brought back some intuition of the Gospel of Humanity, which the new democracies of the West were writing unconsciously and blindly. He told his brethren how " in the West the ancient ideal of divine right, which had formerly been the appanage of one single being, had gradually been recognized as the property of all without distinction of class, and that the human spirit had thus come to a perception of the divinity of Nature and of Unity." He saw and immediately proclaimed the necessity of introducing into India the same ideas which had been tried by America and Europe with such happy results. Thus from the first he exhibited that liberality and greatness of spirit, which seeks and desires the common good, the spiritual progress of all men by the united efforts of all men. The short journeys that followed in 1889 and 1890 to Allahabad and Ghazipur, still further enlightened this universal conception. During his interviews at Ghazipur he can be seen travelling towards the synthesis of Hindu faith and modern science, of the ideas of the Vedanta and the social realizations of the present day, of the pure Spirit and the innumerable Gods which are the " Lower ideas " of all religions and are necessary for human weakness ; for they are all true in their quality of phantoms of know- ledge, various methods and diverse stages in the development of the human spirit, which climbs slowly towards the summit of its being. These were as yet nothing 'but flashes, rough sketches of his future. But they were all being stored up and fermenting in his brain. A prodigious force was rising in this young man within the narrow bounds of his convent at Baranagore, of the daily round prescribed by duty and even of communion with his friends. It could no longer be contained. He was forced to break the ties that bound him, to cast off his chains, his way of life, his name, his body all that was Naren and to remake with the help of different ones another self wherein the giant which had grown up could breathe freely to be born again. This 243 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA rebirth was to be Vivekananda. He was like a Gargantua rending asunder the swathing bands that were throttling him. ... It can no longer be described as the religious Call of the pilgrim, who bids farewell to his brother men in order to follow God ! This young athlete, reduced to the point of death by his unused powers, was driven forth by a vital instinct and betrayed into the brutal speech over which his pious disciples have drawn a veil. He said at Benares : " I am going away ; but I shall never come back until I can burst on society like a bomb, and make it follow me like a dog." We know how he himself vanquished these redoubtable demons, and turned them to the service of the humble in supreme humility, but we nevertheless rejoice at the con- templation of the savage forces of pride and ambition which suffocated him. For he suffered from that excess of power which insists on domination and within him there was a Napoleon. He accordingly broke loose at the beginning of July, 1890, this time for years, from the dear home of Baranagore, which he had founded, from the spiritual nest whereon Ramakrishna himself was brooding. His wings swept him away. He went first to ask for the blessing of the " Holy Mother" (Ramakrishna's widow) 14 for his long journey. He desired to cut himself free from all ties and to go into retreat in the Himalayas. But of all good things solitude (the treasure ! and terror of gregarious souls !) is the most difficult to achieve. Parents, friends, all would deny it. (Tolstoy knew this and could never attain it until the death- bed of Astapovo . . .) Social life makes a thousand claims 14 Saradadevi, the good and simple woman, who -survived Ramakrishna by more than forty years, and Vivekananda by more than twenty, beloved and revered by all, kept the Master's sentiments with regard to the great disciple. One day Miss MacLeod (who told me the story) said to Saradadevi : " Your husband had the better part ; he stayed in India among his own people : that must have been all joy for him. The Mission of the Swami (Vivekananda) was much more difficult : he had a heroic part to play." " Yes/' Saradadevi replied simply. " Swami Vivekananda was the greater. Ramakrishna always said that he was the body and Vivekananda the head." I have quoted this remark, not because I share the the same view, but to show Ramakrishna's modesty. 244 THE PARIVRAJAKA on those who flee it. And how much more when the fugitive is still a young prisoner ! Naren discovered this to his cost. And also at the cost of those who loved him ! His brother monks were bent upon following him. He was obliged to break with them almost brutally. 15 Even so the tragic world would not allow him to forget it. The death of a sister found him in his solitude. The pitiful victim of a cruel society, she reminded him of the sacrificial fate of the Hindu woman and the sad problems of the life of his people which made it criminal for him to remain a disinterested spectator. By a chain of circumstances, which might be accounted fore-ordained, he was constantly torn from his Beato Solitude, Sola Beatitudo at the very moment when he thought he had at last attained it, and thrown back from the silent Himalayas to the plains filled with the noise and lust of mankind. As the result of these mental agitations added to fatigue, and privation, he had two serious illnesses at Srinagar and at Meerut at the foot of the Himalayas on the Ganges ; he almost died of diphtheria. The extreme weakness which followed made it still more difficult for him to achieve his great solitary journey. Nevertheless that journey was accomplished. If he was to die it should be on the way, and on his own way the way revealed to him by his God ! In February, 1891, in spite of his friends, he left Delhi alone. This was the great departure. Like a diver he plunged into the Ocean of India, and the Ocean of India covered his tracks. Among its flotsam and jetsam he was nothing more than one name- less Sannyasin in saffron robe among a thousand others. But the fires of genius burned in his eyes. He was a prince despite all disguise. 16 Akhadananda accompanied him to the Himalayas ; he there fell ill. At Almora Naren found Saradananda and Tripananda. A little later Turiyananda. They attached themselves to him. He left them at Meerut near the end of January, 1891 ; their anxious affection followed him to Delhi. His anger was kindled and he ordered them to leave him. 245 II THE PILGRIM OF INDIA HIS great journey of two years through India, and then of three years round the world (was this his original intention ?), was the adequate reply of his instinct to the double exigencies of his nature : independence and service. He wandered, free from plan, caste, home, con- stantly alone with God. And there was no single hour of his life when he was not brought into contact with the sorrows, the desires, the abuses, the misery and the fever- ishness of living men, rich and poor, in town and field ; he became one with their lives ; the great Book of Life revealed to him what all the books in the libraries could not have done (for after all they are only collections), which even Ramakrishna's ardent love had only been able to see dimly as in a dream the tragic face of the present day, the God struggling in humanity the cry of the peoples of India and of the world for help and the heroic duty of the new Oedipus, whose task is to deliver Thebes from the talons of the Sphinx, or to perish with Thebes. Wander jahre. Lehrjahre. 1 What a unique education! . . . He was not only the humble little brother, who slept in stables or on the pallets of beggars, but he was on a footing of equality with ev'ery man, to-day an insulted beggar sheltered by pariahs, to-morrow the guest of princes, conversing on equal terms with Prime Ministers and Mahara- jahs, the brother of the oppressed bending over their misery, then probing the luxury of the great, awakening care for the public weal in their torpid hearts. He was as con- versant with the knowledge of the pandits as with the problems of industrial and rural economy whereby the life of the people is controlled, ever teaching, ever learning, 1 " Years of travel." " Years of apprenticeship." (Goethe.) 246 THE PILGRIM OF INDIA gradually making himself the Conscience of India, its Unity and its Destiny. All of them were incarnate in him, and the world saw them in Vivekananda. His itinerary led him through Rajputana, Alwar (February to March, 1891), Jaipur, Ajmer, Khetri, Ahmedabad and Kathiawar (end of September), Junagath and Gujerat, Porbandar (a stay of between eight and nine months), Dvaraka, Palitana the city of temples close to the gulf of Khambhat, the state of Baroda, Khandwa, Poona, Bel- gaum (October, 1892), Bangalore in the state of Mysore, Cochin, Malabar, the state of Travancore, Trivandrur, Madura. . . . He travelled to Cape Comorin, the extreme point of the immense pyramid, where is the Benares of Southern India, Rameswaram, the Rome of the Ramayana, and beyond to Kanyakumari, the sanctuary of the Great Goddess (end of 1892). From North to South the ancient land of India was full of gods ; yet the unbroken chain of their countless arms formed only one God. He realized their unity of flesh and spirit. He realized it also in communion with the living of all castes and those outside caste. And he taught them to realize it. He took mutual understanding from the one to the other, to strong spirits, to the intellectuals obsessed with the abstract, he preached respect for images, and idol Gods, to young men the duty of studying the grand old books of the past ; the Vedas, the Puranas, the ancient annals, and still more the people of to-day to all a re- ligious love for Mother India and a passion to dedicate themselves to her redemption. He received no less than he gave. His vast spirit never for a single day failed to jviden its knowledge a and its experience, and it assimilated all the rivers of thought scattered and buried in the soil of India, for their source seemed identical to him. As far removed from the blind devotion of the orthodox, who were engulfed in the muddy stench of stagnant water, as from the paltry rationalism 1 At Khetri he became the pupil of the foremost Sanskrit gram- marian of the time. At Ahmedabad he completed his knowledge of Mohammedan and Jain culture. At Porbandar he stayed three- quarters of a year, in spite of his vow as a wandering monk, to perfect his philosophical and Sanskrit studies with pandit sages ; he worked with Trigunakita, who translated the Vedas. 247 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA of the reformers of the Brahmo Samaj, who with the best intentions were busied in drying up the mystic fountains of hidden energy, Vivekananda wished to preserve and to harmonize them all by draining the whole entangled reser- voir of the waters of a whole continent possessed by a deeply religious soul. He desired more than this. (Nobody with impunity can be the contemporary of the great engineers who cut a passage between oceans, and willy nilly, rejoin the hands of continents !) everywhere he carried with him the Imitation of Christ, and side by side with the Bhagavad, he spread the thought of Jesus ; 8 and he urged young people to study the science of the West. 4 But the widening of his mind was not only in the realm of ideas. A revolution took place in his moral vision with regard to other men and his relations with them. If ever there was pride in a young man, coupled to intellectual intolerance, the contempt of the aristocrat for all that fell below his high ideal of purity, it was present in the young Narendra : " At twenty years of age (it is he himself speaking) I was the most unsympathetic, uncompromising fanatic ; I would not walk on the footpath on the theatre side of the streets in Calcutta/' 6 During the first months of his pilgrimage when he was with the Maharajah of Khetri near Jaipur (April, 1891), a little dancer gave him all unwittingly a lesson in humility. When she appeared the scornful monk rose to go out. The prince begged him to remain. The little dancer sang : " O Lord, look not upon my evil qualities ! Thy name, 1 But he was merciless towards the intolerance of the mission- aries, and never forgave them for it. The Christ whom he preached, opened His arms to all. 4 During the beginning of his great journey at Alwar in Rajpu- tana (February to March, 1891), when he was hurt by the lack of a spirit of precision, of exactitude and of scientific criticism in Indian history. He set up the example of the West in opposition to it. He wished India to be inspired with its methods, so that a young school of Hindu historians might arise to devote themselves to resuscitating India's past. " That would be real national educa- tion; and thus a true national spirit would be awakened." 1 Letter of July 6, 1896. He added, "At 33 I can live in the same house with prostitutes.' 1 248 THE PILGRIM OF INDIA Lord, is Same-sightedness. Make of us both the same Brahman ! One piece or iron is in the image in the temple, and another the knife in the hand of the butcher. But when they touch the philosopher's stone both alike turn into gold. So, Lord, look not upon my evil qualities ! Thy name, Lord, is Same-sightedness ! . . . " One drop of water is in the sacred Jumna and another is foul in the ditch by the roadside. But when they fall into the Ganges both alike become holy. So, Lord, do not look upon my evil qualities. Thy name, Lord, is Same- sightedness. . . ." 6 Naren was completely overwhelmed. The confident faith expressed in the humble song affected him for life. Many years later he recalled it with emotion. One by one his prejudices disappeared, even those which he had considered to be most deeply rooted. In the Hima- layas he lived among Thibetan races, who practise polyandry. He was the guest of a family of six brothers, who shared the same wife ; and in his neophytic zeal he tried to show them their immorality. But it was they who were scan- dalized by his lessons ; " What selfishness ! " they said. " To wish to keep one woman all to oneself ! . . ." Truth at the bottom of the mountain and error at the top . . . He realized the relativity of virtue at least of those virtues having the greatest traditional sanction. Moreover a transcendental irony, as in the case of Pascal, taught him to broaden his moral conception when he judged of good and evil in a race or in an age, according to the standards of that race or that age. Again he kept company with thieves of the most degraded caste, and came to recognize even in highway robbers " Sinners who were potential saints." 7 Everywhere he shared the privations and the insults of the oppressed classes. In Central India he lived with a family of outcast sweepers. Amid such lowly people who cower at the feet of society he found spiritual treasures, while their misery choked him. He could not bear it. He sobbed, " O my country 1 O my country 1 ..." * The poem of a Vaishnavite saint : Suradas. T He met a thief who had plundered his holy Guru, Pavhari Baba, and then touched with repentance had become a monk. 249 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA when he learnt from the papers that a man had died of hunger at Calcutta. He asked himself as he beat his chest : " What have we done, we so-called men of God, the Sannyasins, what have we done for the masses ? " He recalled Ramakrishna's rough words. " Religion is not for empty bellies." And waxing impatient with the intellectual speculations of an egoistic faith, he made it the first duty of religion " to care for the poor and to raise them." He imposed this duty on the rich, on officials, and on princes : " Is there none among you who can give a life for the service of others ? Let the study of the Vedanta, and the practice of meditation, be left over to the future life ! Let this body be consecrated to the service of others ! And then I shall know that you have not come to me in vain." 8 On a future day his pathetic accents were to sound this sublime utterance : " May I be born and reborn again and suffer a thousand miseries if only I am able to worship the only God in whom I believe, the sum-total of all souls, and above all, my God the wicked, my God the afflicted, my God the poor of all the races 1 ..." At this date, 1892, it was the misery under his eyes, the misery of India, which filled his mind to the exclusion of every other thought. It pursued him, like a tiger following its prey, from the North to the South in his flight across India. It consumed him during sleepless nights. At Cape Comorin it caught and held him in its jaws. On that occasion he abandoned body and soul to it. He dedicated his life to the unhappy m^ses. But how could he help them ? He had no money and time was pressing, and the princely gifts of one or two Maharajas or the offerings of several groups of well-wishers could only nourish a thousandth part of the most urgent needs. Before India woke up from her ataraxy and organized herself for the common good, the ruin of India would be consummated. He lifted up his eyes to the ocean, to the land beyond the seas. He must appeal to the whole The notation of these words belongs to a later date. But the sentiment that inspired them belongs to this time. 250 THE PILGRIM OF INDIA world. The whole world had need of India. The health of India, the death of India was its concern as well. Could her immense spiritual reserves be allowed to be destroyed as so many others had been, Egypt and Chaldaea, which long afterwards men struggled to exhume when nothing was left but debris, their soul being dead for ever ? . . . An appeal from India to Europe and to America began to take shape in the mind of the solitary thinker. It was at the end of 1891 between Junagad and Porbandar that he appears to have thought of it for the first time. At Por- bandar, where he began to learn French, a pandit advised him to go to the West, where his thought would be better understood than in his own country : " Go and take it by storm and then return ! " At Khanwa in the early autumn of 1892 he heard of a Parliament of Religions to be held during the following year at Chicago, and his first idea was how he might take part in it. At the same time he did not allow himself to take any steps toward the realization of this project and he refused to accept subscriptions for the purpose, until he had achieved the vow of his great pilgrimage round India. At Bangalore towards the end of October he specifically declared to the Maharajah his intention of going to ask the West " for the means to ameliorate the material condition of India/' and to take it in exchange the Gospel of the Vedanta. At the end of 1892 his mind was made up. At that moment he found himself at the " land's end" of India, at the extreme southern point where Hanuman the Monkey God made his fabulous leap. But Vivekananda was a man as we are and could not follow the ways of demi- Gods. He had traversed th^ vast land of India upon the soles of his feet. For two years his body had been in constant contact with its great body ; he had suffered from hunger, from thirst, from murderous nature and insulting man ; when he arrived at Cape Comorin he was exhausted, but, having no money to pay for a boat to take him to the end of his pilgrimage, to the Holy of Holies, Kanyakumari, he flung himself into the sea, and swam across the shark- infested strait. At last his task was at an end, and then, looking back as from the top of a mountain, he embraced the whole of the India he had just traversed, and the world 251 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA of thought that had beset him during his long wanderings. For two years he had lived as in a seething cauldron, con- sumed with a fever ; he had carried " a soul on fire/ 1 he was a " tempest." 9 Like criminals of old who suffered the torture of water, he felt himself submerged by the torrents of energy he had accumulated, the walls of his being were crumbling beneath their flood. . . ." 10 And when he stopped on the terrace of the tower he had just climbed at the very edge of the earth with the panorama of the world spread before his eyes, the blood pounded in his ears like the sea at his feet ; he almost fell. It was the supreme assault of the gods striving within him. When the struggle was over, his first battle had been won. He had seen the path he was to follow. His mission was chosen. He swam back to the continent of India. From the opposite coast he went northwards. On foot by Ramnad and Pondicherry he came to Madras. And there in the first weeks of 1893, he publicly proclaimed his wish to conduct a Mission in the West. 11 His fame, contrary to his own desire, had already spread abroad : he was besieged by visitors in this intellectual and vital city where he stayed on two occasions, and it was in Madras that he founded his first group of devoted disciples, who dedicated them- selves to him and who never left him ; after his departure they continued to support him with their letters and their faith ; and he, from countries far away, kept his direction over them. His burning love for India awakened passionate echoes in their hearts, and by their enthusiasm the strength of his own conviction was increased tenfold. He preached against all seeking after personal salvation. It was rather public salvation that ought t(j be sought, the regeneration of the mother country, the resurrection of the spiritual powers of India and their diffusion throughout the universe. . . . " The time is ripe. The faith of the Rishis must become dynamic. It must come forth of itself." f It was Abhedananda, who, meeting him in October, 1893, in the state of Baroda, described him thus. 10 " I feel a mighty power ! It is as if I were about to blaze forth. There are so many powers in me ! It appears to me as if I could revolutionize the world." 11 This was the title of a lecture he delivered at Hyderabad in February, 1893 " My Mission to the West." 252 THE PILGRIM OF INDIA Nabobs and bankers offered him money for his journey overseas, but he refused it. He asked the disciples who were collecting subscriptions to appeal rather to the middle classes : for " I am going on behalf of the people and the poor." As he had done at the beginning of his pilgrimage he asked the blessing of the Holy Mother for the more distant journey. And she sent him Ramakrishna's as well, for he had delivered it to her for the beloved disciple in a dream. It does not appear that he had written to his spiritual brethren at Baranagore : (doubtless he thought that their contemplative souls, used to the warmth of the nest, would be terrified at the thought of social service and evangelizing journeys in the countries of the Gentiles ; such ideas dis- turbed the pious calm of souls who were pre-occupied with their own salvation without troubling about others). But chance decreed that almost on the eve of his departure at Mount Abu station, near Bombay, he met two of them, Brahmananda and Turiyananda ; and he told them with pathetic passion, whose percussions reached Baranagore, 12 the imperious call of suffering India which forced him to go: " I have now travelled all over India . . . But alas ! it was agony to me, my brothers, to see with my own eyes the terrible poverty and misery of the masses, and I could not restrain my tears ! It is now my firm conviction that it is futile to preach religion amongst them without first trying to remove their poverty and their sufferings. It is for this reason to find more means for the salvation of the poor of India that I am now going to America/' 13 11 It does not seem, however, that the monks of Baranagore were tempted to follow his example. Even on his triumphal return from America, they found it difficult to yield to his arguments for sub- ordinating and even sacrificing, if need arose, the contemplative life to social service. Only one, Akhandananda (Gangadhar), moved by the words Brahmananda and Turiyananda had brought back, went during 1894 to open schools at Khetri and to work at the education of the masses. 11 These words quoted in the great Life of Vivekananda are completed by Turiyananda's Reminiscences, which Swami Jnane- swarananda took down and published in the Morning Star in January 31, 1926 : Brahmananda and Turiyananda were withdrawn on Mount Abu, 253 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA He went to Khetri, where his friend the Maharajah gave him his Diwan (Prime Minister) to escort him to Bombay, where he embarked. At the moment of departure he put where they were practising a very strict " Tapasya " (practice of meditation and asceticism). They did not expect to meet Naren. They had seen him at Abu Rd. Station several weeks before his departure. Naren told them his plans, his hesitations, and his conviction that the Parliament of Religions was willed by God to prepare his success. Turiyananda recalled each one of his words and the tone of his voice : " Hari Bhai," Naren cried, his face red with his rising blood, " I cannot understand your so-called religion 1 . . ." With a profound expression of sadness and intense emotion through all his being, he pressed a trembling hand upon his heart and added : " But my heart has grown much, much larger, and I have learnt to feel (the sufferings of others). Believe me I feel it very sadly 1 " His voice was choked with feeling. He was silent. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Turiyananda, in giving this account, was himself deeply moved, and his eyes filled with tears : " You can imagine," he said, " what went through my spirit when I heard these pathetic words and saw the majestic sadness of the Swamiji. ' Are these not/ I thought, ' the very words and feelings of the Buddha/ And I remember that a long time before when he had gone to Buddha Gaya to meditate under the Boddhi tree, he had had a vision of the Lord Buddha, who entered into his body ... I could clearly see that the whole suffering of humanity had penetrated his palpitating heart. Nobody, continued Turiya- nanda with passion, nobody could understand Vivekananda unless he saw at least a fraction of the volcanic feelings which were in him. Turiyananda told of another scene of the same kind, at which he was present after Vivekananda had come back from America probably in the house of Balaram at Baghazar (Calcutta) : " I had gone to see him and I found him pacing the verandah like a caged lion. He was deep in thought and did not notice my presence. . . . He began to hum under his breath the celebrated and pathetic song of Mirabhai. And the tears welled up in his eyes. He stopped and leaned against the balustrade, and hid his face in his two palms. His voice became more distinct and he sang, repeating several times : " Oh, nobody understands my sorrow I " And again : " Only he who suffers knows the anguish of sorrow I . . ." His voice pierced me through and through like an arrow. I could not understand the cause of his affliction. . . . Then sud- denly, I understood. It was his rending sympathy which made 254 THE PILGRIM OF INDIA on, with the robe of red silk and ochre turban, the name of Vivekananda, which he was about to impose upon the world. 14 him often shed tears of burning blood. And the world would never have known it . . ." But addressing his listeners, Turiyananda said : " Do you think that these tears of blood were shed in vain ? No 1 Each one of these tears, shed for his country, every inflamed whisper of his mighty heart, gave birth to troops of heroes, who will shake the world with their thoughts and their deeds/' 14 I have noted on pages 4 and 4-b the origin of this name, which was given him by the Maharajah. During his journey in India, he bore so many different names that, just as he desired, he usually passed by unobserved. Many of those who met him had no sus- picion of his identity. It was so at Poona in October, 1892 ; Tilak, the famous savant and Hindu political leader, took him at first for a wandering monk of no importance and began by being ironical; then, struck with his replies revealing his great mind and know- ledge, he received him into his house for ten days without ever knowing his real name. It was only later when the newspapers brought him from America the echoes of the triumph of Viveka- nanda, and a description of the conqueror, that he recognized the anonymous guest who had dwelt beneath his roof. 255 Ill THE GREAT JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS journey was in truth an astonishing adventure. The young Swami went into it at random and with his eyes shut. He had heard vaguely of a Parliament of Religions to be opened some day somewhere in America ; and he decided to go to it although neither he, nor his disciples nor his Indian friends, students, pandits, ministers or Maharajahs had taken any trouble to find out about it. He knew nothing, neither the exact date, nor the conditions of admission. He did not take a single credential with him. He went straight ahead with complete assurance, as if it was enough for him to present himself at the right time God's time. And although the Maharajah of Khetri had taken his ticket on the boat for him, and despite his protests had provided him with a beautiful robe, which was to fascinate American idlers no less than his eloquence, neither he nor anybody else had considered the climatic conditions and customs : he froze on the boat when he arrived in Canada in his costume of Indian pomp and ceremony. He left Bombay on May 31, 1893, and went by way of Ceylon, Penang, Singapore, Hongkong, and then visited Canton and Nagasaki. Thece he went on foot to Yokohama, seeing Osaka, Kioto and Tokyo. Everywhere, in China as in Japan, his attention was attracted by all that might confirm his hypothesis his conviction alike of the religious influence of ancient India over the Empires of the Far East and of the spiritual unity of Asia. 1 At the same time the 1 He was struck when he visited the Chinese temples, conse- crated by the first Buddhist Emperor, to find Sanskrit manuscripts written in Bengal characters. He noticed the same in Japan in the temples inscriptions of mantras (sacred texts) in Sanskrit in ancient Bengal characters. 256 THE GREAT JOURNEY TO THE WEST thought of the ills from which his country was suffering never left him ; and the sight of the progress achieved by Japan reopened the wound. He went from Yokohama to Vancouver ; thence by train he found himself towards the middle of July in a state of bewilderment at Chicago. The whole way was strewn with his feathers, for he was a marked prey for the fleecer : he could be seen from afar ! At first like a great child he wandered gazing, mouth agape, in the world's fair, the Universal Exhibition of Chicago. Everything was new to him and both surprised and stupefied him. He had never imagined the power, the riches, the inventive genius of this Western world. Being of a stronger vitality and more sensitive to the appeal of force than a Tagore or a Gandhi, who were oppressed by the frenzy of movement and noise, by the whole European-American (especially American) mechanism, Vivekananda was at his ease in it, at least at first ; he succumbed to its exciting intoxication, and his first feeling was of juvenile acceptance ; his admiration knew no bounds. For twelve days he filled his eager eyes with this new world. Then he bethought himself to go to the Enquiry Bureau of the Parliament of Religions . . . What a shock ! He found out that the Parliament did not open until after the first of September and that it was too late for the registration of delegates moreover, that no registration would be accepted without official references. He had none, he was unknown, without credentials from any known group ; and his purse was nearly empty ; it would not allow him to wait until the opening of the Congress ... He was overwhelmed. He cabled his distress to friends in Madras so that some official religious society might make him a grant. But official societies do not pardon independence, which has had the audacity to leave their ranks. The chief of this society sent the reply : " Let the devil die of cold ! " 2 The devil neither died nor gave up ! He threw himself upon fate, and instead of hoarding in inaction the few dollars remaining to him, he spent them in visiting Boston. Fate helped him. Fate always helps those who know how 1 More is said of this later. 257 S PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA to help themselves. A Vivekananda never passed any- where unnoticed but fascinated even while he was unknown. In the Boston train, his appearance and conversation struck a fellow traveller, a rich Massachusetts lady who questioned him and then interested herself in him, invited him to her house, introduced him to the Hellenist, J. H. Wright, professor at Harvard : the latter was at once struck by the genius of this young Hindu and put himself entirely at his disposal ; he insisted that Vivekananda should represent Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions and wrote to the President of the Committee. He offered the penniless pilgrim a rail- way ticket to Chicago, and letters of recommendation to the Commission for finding lodgings. In short, all his difficulties were removed. Vivekananda returned to Chicago. The train arrived late ; and the dazed young man, who had lost the address of the Committee, did not know where to go. Nobody would deign to instruct a coloured man. He saw a big empty box in a corner of the station, and slept in it. In the morning he went to discover the way, begging from door to door as a Sannyasin. But he was in a city that knows, Panurge-like, a thousand and one ways of making money except one, the way of St. Francis, the vagrancy of God. It must be added that he found himself in a purely German-speaking district where nobody understood him ; they treated him as a negro and shut the door in his face. After having wandered for a long time, he sat down exhausted in the street. He was remarked from a window opposite and asked whether he were not a delegate to the Parliament of Religions. He was invited in ; and once more fate found for him o^e who was later numbered amongst his most faithful American followers. 8 When he had rested he was taken to the Parliament, and he remained during its sessions in the house of his rescuer. His adventurous journey, which had almost ended dis- astrously, brought him on this occasion into port, but not for rest. Action called him, for now that fate had done its worst it had to give place to resolution ! The unknown of yesterday, the beggar, the man despised for his colour by a mob wherein the dregs of more than half a dozen of the Mrs. Hale. 258 THE GREAT JOURNEY TO THE WEST peoples of the world meet at the first glance was to impose his sovereign genius. On Monday, September n, 1893, the first session of the Parliament was opened. In the centre presided Cardinal Gibbons. Round him to the right and left were grouped the Oriental delegates : Protap Chunder Mazoomdar, 4 the chief of the Brahmosamaj, an old friend of Vivekananda, representing with Nagarkar of Bombay the Indian theists, Bharmapala, representing the Buddhists of Ceylon ; Gandhi, 6 representing the Jains ; Chakravati, representing with Annie Besant the Theosophical Society. But amongst them all it was the young man who represented nothing, and everything the man belonging to no sect but rather to India as a whole, who drew the glance of the thousand present. 6 His fascinating face, his noble stature and the gorgeous apparel 7 which heightened the effect of this apparition from a legendary world hid his own emotion. He made no secret of it. It was the first time that he had had to speak before such an assembly ; and as the delegates, presented one by one, had to announce themselves in public in a brief harangue, Vivekananda let his turn go by hour after hour until the end of the day. 8 But then his speech was like a tongue of flame. Among the grey wastes of cold dissertation it fired the souls of the listening throng. Hardly had he pronounced the very simple opening words : " Sisters and brothers of America ! . . ." than some of them got up in their places and applauded. He wondered whether he really spoke of his own volition. He was certainly the first to cast off the formalism of the Congress and to speak to the masses in the language for 4 See p. 78. 5 Naturally this was not the same as our M. K. Gandhi, who about that time was landing in South Africa. But his family had intimate relations with the Jains and it may well have been that the Gandhi of the Parliament of Religions was a distant connexion. The American Press testified the truth of this. 7 His red robe drawn in at the waist by an orange cord, his great yellow turban, accentuated the raven black of his hair, his olive complexion, his dark eyes, his red lips. (Description of the papers.) 8 Let us add that the improvident one had prepared nothing, while the others read from a written text. 259 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA which they were waiting. Silence fell again. He greeted the youngest of the nations in the name of the most ancient monastic order in the world the Vedic order of Sannyasins. He presented Hinduism as the mother of religions, who had taught them the double precept : " Accept and understand one another ! " He quoted two beautiful passages from the sacred books : " Whoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him." " All men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to Me." Each of the other orators had spoken of his God, of the God of his sect. He he alone spoke of all their Gods, and embraced them all in the universal Being. It was the breath of Ramakrishna, breaking down the barriers through the mouth of his great disciple. The Parliament of Religions gave the young orator an ovation. During the ensuing days he spoke again ten or eleven times. 9 Each time he repeated with new arguments but with the same force of conviction his thesis of a universal Religion without limit of time or space, uniting the whole Credo of the human spirit, from the enslaved fetishism of the savage to the most liberal creative affirmations of modern science. He harmonized them into a magnificent 9 Both at the plenary sessions of the Parliament and at the scientific sections which were affiliated to it. His principal disser- tations were on the following subjects : 1. " Why we disagree." (He there denounced the insularity of different religious points of view, which is the source of fanaticism.) 2. " Religion not the crying need of India." (But bread. An appeal for help for all^his people who were dying.) 3. September 22. " Vedantic Philosophy." 4. September 23. " Orthodox Hinduism and Modern Religions of India." 5. September 25. " The Essence of the Hindu Religion." 6. September 26. " Buddhism, the fulfilment of Hinduism." And four other Lectures. But the most famous discourses were : 11. September 19. The most famous Paper on Hinduism, although he was its sole universal representative at the Congress without distinction of sect. We shall return to it later when we examine Vivekananda's thought. 12. September 27. Address at the Final Session of the Congress. 260 THE GREAT JOURNEY TO THE WEST synthesis, which far from extinguishing the hope of a single one, helped all hopes to grow and flourish according to their own proper nature. 10 There was to be no other dogma but the divinity inherent in man and his capacity for indefinite evolution. " Offer such a religion and all the nations will follow you. Asoka's council u was a council of the Buddhist faith. Akbar's, 12 though more to the purpose, was only a parlour meeting. It was reserved for America to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord is in every religion. "May he who is the Brahmin of the Hindus, the Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you. . . , 18 The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve its individuality and grow according to its own law of growth . . . The Parliament of Religions . . . has proved . . . that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character . . . Upon the banner of every religion will soon be written in spite of ... resistance : ' Help and Not Fight.' ' Assimilation and not Destruction/ ' Harmony and Peace and Not Dissension. 1 " " The effect of these powerful words was immense. Over the heads of the official representatives of the Parliament, they were addressed to all, and appealed to outside thought. Vivekananda's fame at once spread abroad ; and India as a whole benefited. The American Press recognized him : 10 But the young Hinduist, convinced in spite of himself of the superiority of his own ideal, presented Hinduism in its essentials, but rejuvenated and purified of its degenerate parts, as the universal religion of which he spoke. 11 The Council of Patalipura, to which the Emperor Asoka con- voked the Buddhists about 253 B.C. 11 The great Moghul Emperor of the sixteenth century (1556- 1605), who, abjuring Islam, tried to found with the agreement of the Hindus, Jains, Musulmans, Parsis, and even Christians, eclectic rationalism, which was to become an imperial religion. 11 Paper on Hinduism. (September 19.) 14 Address at the Final Session. (September 27.) 26l PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA "He is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him, we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation." 16 It can be imagined that such an avowal did not sound sweetly in the ears of Christian missionaries, and Vive- kananda's success roused bitter rancour amongst them, which did not stop short of the use of the most dishonourable weapons. It sharpened no less the jealousy of certain Hindu representatives, who saw themselves put in the shade by this " wandering monk, 11 without title or ties. Theosophy in particular, which Vivekananda did not spare, never forgave him. 16 What did he think of his victory ? He wept over it. The wandering monk saw that his free solitary life with God was at an end. Is there any truly religious soul who does not sympathize with his regrets? He had himself desired it ... or rather he had been desired by the un- known force, that had dictated his mission . . . But there was always the other inner voice, which said to him : " Renounce ! Live in God ! " He never could satisfy the one without partially denying the other. Hence the periodic crises traversed by this stormy genius, and the torments, which, apparently contradictory but really logical, can never be understood by single-minded spirits, by those who, having only one thought in their heads, make of their poverty an obligatory virtue, and who call the mighty and pathetic struggling towards harmony of souls too richly 11 The New York Herald. The Boston Evening Post stated that he was " the great favourite of the Parliament." It was only neces- sary for him to cross the platform to be greeted with acclamations. And the only way of keeping tne public at the meetings, for their attention often wearied, was to announce that Vivekananda would speak at the end. li In an address at Madras on his return from America, " My Plan of Campaign," Vivekananda unmasked all those who had attacked him, and told the Theosophical Society sharply what he thought of them. See further, Note at the end of the Volume, where we shall give the text and treat of the question of Viveka- nanda's relations with the Theosophists. The reader may also con- sult the Account of the Journey of a Philosopher, by Count Keyserling, the chapter on Adyar, the Headquarters in India of the Theosophical Society, where the spirit of the society is impregnated with singular narrowness of view. 262 THE GREAT JOURNEY TO THE WEST endowed, either confusion or duplicity. Vivekananda was and will always be the butt of such malevolent interpre- tations which his high pride made no attempt to excuse. But his complexities at this [time were not only of the spirit. They were inherent in the situation itself. After as before success (and perhaps even more so) his task was a difficult one. Having nearly succumbed to poverty, he was now in danger of being overwhelmed by riches. Ameri- can snobbery threw itself upon him, and, in its first flush, threatened to smother him with its luxury and vanities. Vivekananda grew almost physically sick from this excess of money. At night in his bedroom he gave vent to cries of despair, and rolled on the ground when he thought of the people who were dying of hunger. " O Mother/' he groaned, " What have I to do with fame when my people are lying in misery ! . . ." In order to serve the cause of his unfortunate India and to free himself from the tutelage of his rich protectors, he accepted the offer of a Lecture Bureau for a tour of the United States : The East and Middle West, Chicago, Iowa, Desmoines, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Detroit, Boston, Cam- bridge, Baltimore, Washington, New York, etc. But this proved a risky method ; for it was a mistake to imagine that he, like so many other lecturers, was going to buy applause and dollars by burning incense under the nose of the American public. His first feeling of attraction and admiration for the formidable power of the young republic had faded. Vive- kananda almost at once fell foul of the brutality, the inhumanity, the littleness of spirit, the narrow fanaticism, the monumental ignorance, the crushing incomprehension, so frank and sure of itself tfith regard to all who thought, who believed, who regarded life differently from the paragon nation of the human race . . . And he had no patience. He hid nothing. He stigmatized the vices and crimes of Western civilization, with its characteristics of violence, pillage, and destruction. Once when he was to speak at Boston on a beautiful religious subject particularly dear to him, 17 he felt such repulsion at sight of the audience, the artificial and cruel crowd of men of affairs and of the 17 Ramakrishnsu 263 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA world, that he refused to yield them the key of his sanctuary, and brusquely changing the subject, he inveighed furiously against a civilization represented by such foxes and wolves. . . , 18 The scandal was terrific. Hundreds noisily left the hall, and the Press was furious. He was especially bitter against false Christianity and religious hypocrisy. " With all your brag and boasting where has your Christi- anity succeeded without the sword ? Yours is a religion preached in the name of luxury. It is all hypocrisy that I have heard in this country. All this prosperity, all this from Christ ! Those who call upon Christ care for nothing but to amass riches ! Christ would not find a stone on which to lay His head among you . . . You are not Christians. Return to Christ ! . . ." An explosion of anger was the answer to this scornful lesson, and from that moment he had always at his heels a band of clergymen, who followed him with invective and accusation, even going so far as to spread infamous calumnies of his life and behaviour in America and India. 19 No less shameful was the action of certain Hindu representa- tives of rival societies, who were offended by Vivekananda's glory, and did not scruple to spread the base charges started by malevolent missionaries. And in their turn, the Christian missionaries used the weapons provided by the jealous Hindus, 20 and denounced the free Sannyasin in India with 11 1 have heard a similar scene related about a great Hindu poet, whom we venerate. He was invited to the United States to address a meeting on the subject of a work very near to his heart. But when he saw the audience, who were prepared to subscribe to it, he was so revolted at the sight that he attacked them and their stifling material civilization. Hence he himself destroyed the work whose success seemed assured. lf It goes without saying that they produced the classic accusa- tion of Anglo-Saxon countries, seduction 1 In order to stop the false rumour spread by a vulgar-minded clergyman, that he had wronged a servant dismissed by the Governor of Michigan, letters of public denial (March, 1895) were necessary from the Governor's wife, testifying to the moral dignity of Vivekananda. But no denials ever repair the damage done by unscrupulous lies. 10 Some of the Brahmos treated as blasphemy certain of Vive- kananda's expositions of Vedantism in America : his " pretensions to divinity " (that is to, say to the divinity of the human soul), 264 THE GREAT JOURNEY TO THE WEST almost comic zeal because in America he no longer kept to the strict regime prescribed by orthodox Hinduism. 21 Vivekananda with disgust saw the scum of the rancorous wave raised by the devotees returning to him from India in the frightened letters of his disciples. And with what scorn he flung it back in the face of those who had be- spattered him with it ! 22 A letter from one of his American disciples, Swami Kripananda, 28 depicts in retrospect his tribulations in the United States. " This hotbed of pseudo-religious monstrosities, devoured by a morbid thirst for the abnormal, for the occult, for the exceptional whence a senseless credulity leads to the his " denial of sin " (which came to him from Ramakrishna), his " evolutionism/' his " Western ideas introduced into Hinduism," etc. (cf. B. Mozoomdar in a pamphlet on Vivekananda, the informer of Max Miiller). He had against him a curious alliance of Pro- testant missionaries, of Theosophists, and some members of the Brahmo Samaj. 11 The chief charge was that he had eaten beef. He made no secret of it. He hated bigotry which believes that it is acquitted in respect of morality and God, when it has observed certain prac- tices, holding their non-observance as a cardinal sin. He held nothing inviolable save his two vows of poverty and chastity. For the rest with much common sense he held that a man should follow as far as possible the customs of the country in which he was living. 11 To the scandalized remonstrances of Indian devotees, horrified to hear that their Swami ate impure food at the table of infidels, he retorted : " Do you mean to say I am born to live and die one of those caste-ridden, superstitious, merciless, hypocritical, atheistic cowards that you only find amongst the educated Hindus ? I hate cowardice. I will have nothing to do with cowards ... I belong to India just as much as to the world ; no humbugabout that . . . What country has any special claim upon me ? Am I any nation's slave ? . . . I see a greater Power than man, or God, or devil at my back. I require nobody's help. I have been all my life helping others. ..." (Letter written from Paris, September 9, 1895, to his Indian disciples.) 18 Kripananda was the name taken by Leon Lansberg, at his initiation. He was a Russian Jew by birth, a naturalized American citizen, and part owner of a big New York journal, and was one of the first Western disciples accepted by Vivekananda. I shall speak of him later. The letter, of which I give a summary, was written in 1895 in the Madras Journal, The Brahmavadin. 265 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA dissemination of hundreds of societies : goblins, ghosts, mahatmas, false prophets this refuge for aliens of all colours was an abominable place to Vivekananda. He felt himself obliged at the outset to cleanse this Augean stable." He committed to the devil the idlers, buffoons, fishers in troubled waters, gulls, who thronged to his first lectures. He was immediately the recipient of offers of association, promises, threats, and blackmailing letters from intriguers, busybodies, and religious charlatans. It is needless to state their effect on a character such as his. He would not tolerate the slightest domination. He rejected every alliance of one sect against another. And more than once he embraced the opportunity to engage in a public struggle without quarter against " combinations " wishing to use him for their own ends. For the honour of America it must be said here and now that his moral intransigeance, his virile idealism, his dauntless loyality attracted to him from all sides a chosen band of defenders and admirers, a group of whom were to form his first Western disciples and the most active agents in his work for human regeneration. 266 IV AMERICA AT THE TIME OF VIVEKANANDA'S FIRST VISIT. THE ANGLO-SAXON FORERUNNERS OF THE SPIRIT OF ASIA : EMERSON, THOREAU, WALT WHITMAN IT would be a matter of deep interest to know exactly how far the American spirit had been impregnated, directly or indirectly, by the infiltration of Hindu thought during the nineteenth century : for there can be no doubt that it has contributed to the strange moral and religious mentality of the modern United States which Europe has so much difficulty in understanding, with its astonishing mixture of Anglo-Saxon Puritanism, Yankee optimism of action, pragmatism, " scientism," and pseudo-Vedantism. I do not know whether any historian will be found to occupy himself seriously with the question. It is nevertheless a psychological problem of the first order, intimately connected with the history of our civilization. I do not possess the means for its solution, but at least I can indicate certain elements in it. It would seem that one of the chief people to introduce Hindu thought into the United States was Emerson, 1 and that Emerson in so doing had been deeply influenced by Thoreau. He was predisposed to such influences ; from 1830 onwards they began to appear in his Journal, wherein he noted references to Hindu religious texts. His famous lecture, which created a scandal at the time, given in 1838 at the University of Harvard, expressed belief in the divine in man akin to the concept of the soul, Atman Brahman. 1 The article of a Hindu Brahmachundra Maitra, entitled " Emer- son from an Indian point of view," in the Harvard Theological Review of 1911 was mentioned to me in this connexion. But I have not been able to study it. 267 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA It is here that he attached a strictly moral or moralist interpretation to it, his own mark and that of his race. But its fulfilment was the ecstatic realization of a veritable yoga of " justice/ 1 conceived in the double sense of moral good and cosmic equilibrium and uniting at one and the same time Karma (action), bhakti (love), and jnana (wisdom). 2 Emerson exercised little method either in his reading or writing ; and Cabot, in his Memoir of him, tells us that he was easily satisfied with extracts and quotations and did not consult the authorities as a whole. But Thoreau was a great reader ; and between 1837 an( i 1862 he was Emerson's neighbour. In July, 1846, Emerson notes that Thoreau had been reading to him extracts from his Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Now this work (section, Monday) is an enthusiastic eulogy of the Gita, and of the great poems and philosophies of India. Thoreau suggested "A joint Bible" of the Asiatic Scriptures, " Chinese, Hindus, Persians, Hebrews, to carry to the ends of the earth." And he took for his motto, Ex Oriente Lux. 9 1 " If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God : the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice . . . For all beings proceed out of this same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes . . . The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Won- derful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air ... It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. . . ." (Address to the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge (U.S.A.), July 15, 1838.) 8 Thoreau gives his sources : a French translation of the Gita, whose author must be Burnouf, although he does not mention him, published in 1840, and more important, the English translation of Charles Wilkins of which an edition had just appeared in 1846 with a preface of Warren Hastings. I have said that this great man (Hastings), the conqueror, although he governed India, submitted to and publicly avowed the spiritual domination of the land of the Vedas. In 1786 he " recommended " a translation of the Bhaga- vadgita to the President of the East India Company, and wrote a preface to it. I have quoted from Thoreau himself in an earlier chapter, the magnificent witness of Warren Hastings, where he declares that " the writers of the Indian philosophies will sur- vive when the British dominion in India shall long have ceased to 268 AMERICA AT THE TIME OF VIVEKANANDA'S FIRST VISIT It may be imagined that such suggestions were not thrown away upon Emerson, and that the ardent Asiatism of Thoreau extended to him. It was at the same time that the " Transcendental Club " he had founded was in full swing ; and after 1850, the Dial, its quarterly, which he edited with the American Hypatia, Margaret Fuller, published translations from the Oriental languages. The emotion produced in him by Indian thought must have been very strong for him to write in 1856 such a deeply pedantic poem as his beautiful Brahma. 4 It must be taken into consideration that New England was passing through a crisis of spiritual renaissance and intoxicating idealism, corresponding (though composed of very different elements, less cultivated, more robust, and infinitely nearer to nature) to the idealistic flame of Europe before 1848. 6 The anarchic Brookfarm of George Ripley exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance. " Thoreau also mentions other Hindu works, such as the Shakuntala of Kalidas, and speaks enthusiastically of Manu, whom he knew through the translations of William Jones. His Week's Journey, written from 1839 onwards, was published in 1849. I owe these details to Miss Ethel Sidewick, who was kind enough to look them up for me with the learned help of the Master of Balliol College and a Professor Goddard of Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania). I here make grateful acknowledgment to them for their valuable help. 4 It may please the reader to study it here : If the old stayer think he stays Or if the stainer think he is stain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass^ind turn again. My friends Waldo Frank and Van Wyck Brooks have given me some important details. In 1854 the Englishman, Thomas Chol- mondeley, the nephew of the great Bishop, Reginald Heber, visited Concord and became the friend of the whole intellectual colony. On his return to England, he sent Thoreau a collection of Oriental classics in forty-four volumes. Thoreau said that it was practically impossible to find any of these works in America. It may justly be thought that Emerson's poem, Brahma, was the flower of the tree which had just drunk deep of this flood of Indian thought. * This is only one example among a thousand others of the syn- chronism of the human Soul in its most diverse ethnic expressions 269 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA (between 1840 and 1847), ^ e feverish assembly of the Friends of Universal Progress at Boston in 1840, brought together in one group men and women of all opinions and professions, all fired with primitive energy, and aspiring to shake off the shackles of past lies without knowing what truth to adopt ; for no human society can live unless it has persuaded itself that it possesses the Truth ! 6 Alas ! the Truth espoused by America during the sub- sequent half century bears no resemblance to the generous expectation of the honeymoon ! Truth was not ripe, still less those who wished to pluck it. Its failure was, however, by no means due to lack of noble ideals and great ideas, but they were all too mixed and too hastily digested without time for them to be healthily assimilated. The nervous shocks, produced by the grave political and social upheavals after the war of Secession, the morbid haste which has developed into the frantic rhythm of modern civilization, have thrown the American spirit off its balance for a long time. It is, however, not difficult to trace during the second half of the century the seeds sown by the free pioneers of Concord, Emerson and Thoreau. But from their which has often led me to think, as I have studied history, of the different branches of one same tree, mutually sharing the same changing seasons. The conviction has slowly ripened in my mind until it is now firmly established that all the laws governing the particular evolution of peoples, nations, classes and their struggles are subordinate to greater cosmic laws controlling the general evolution of humanity. 6 John Morley, in his critical Essay on Emerson, has painted a charming picture of this hour of intellectual intoxication of this " madness of enthusiasm/' as Shaftesbury called it, which from 1820 to 1848 turned the heads of New England. Harold D. Carey, in a recent Article in the Bookman (February, 1929) devoted chiefly to this strange Brookfarm, has shown the revolutionary character of its spiritual and social movement and the impression of " Bolshevism " which it produced on the minds of the governing classes and on middle-class opinion. It was an unchaining of terrifying and troublous furies. Especially did they turn against Emerson, and accuse him of being chiefly responsible for the spirit of revolt. Our generation has all too soon forgotten the very brave part played by Emerson and his friends. Thoreau and Theodore Parker at the same time publicly flagellated legal lies, and protested against the nascent monster of imperialism in affairs (on the occasion of the war engineered by the American Government against Mexico in 1847). 270 AMERICA AT THE TIME OF VIVEKANANDA'S FIRST VISIT grain what strange bread has been kneaded by the followers of the "mind cure" and of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy! Both of them have used, more or less wittingly, Indian elements strained through the idealism of Emerson. 7 But 7 William James said of the " mind cure " : " It is made up of the following elements : the four Gospels, the idealism of Berkeley and Emerson, spiritism with its law of the radical evolution of souls through their successive lives, optimistic and vulgar evolu- tionism, and the religions of India/' Charles Baudouin adds that after 1875 the influence of the French hypnotic schools was superimposed. He notes that in re- turn Cou6 had profited by it, for he learnt English especially to make the acquaintance of the vulgarized mysticism of America and has developed from it its simplest, most rational and positivist expression. But it is necessary to go back to the magnetism of Mesmer at the beginning of the eighteenth century for the common source and further to the elements making up this powerful and enigmatic personality (cf . Pierre Janet : Meditations psychologiqties, Vol. I, Alcan, 1919). As for Christian Science, it is enough to mention the little lexicon of philosophic and religious terms added by Mrs. Eddy to her Bible, Science and Health, in order to see the likeness of certain of its fundamental ideas to those of Hindu Vedantism : " Me or I. The divine principle. The Spirit, the soul . . . Eternal Mind. There is only one ME or US, only one Principle or Mind, which governs all things . . . Everything reflects or re- fracts in God's Creation one unique Mind ; and everything which does not reflect this unique mind is false and a cheat. . . ." " God. The great I AM . . . Principle, Spirit, Soul, Life, Truth, love, all substance, intelligence." It would appear that Mrs. Eddy did not wish to acknowledge their origin. She has been silent on that point in the new editions of her book. But in the first she quoted from Vedantic philosophy. The Swami Abhedananda, a disciple of Ramakrishna, has related that the 24th edition of Science a#d Health contained a chapter, now suppressed, which began with four Vedantic quotations. In the same chapter Mrs. Eddy quoted the Bhagavadgita, from the translation of Charles Wilkins, published in London in 1785 and in New York in 1867. These quotations were later omitted from the book : only one or two veiled allusions can be found to Indian thought. This attempt at dissimulation for the sake of the un- warned reader is a clumsy confession of its importance. (Cf. an article by Madeleine R. Harding in the Prabuddha Bharata Review, March, 1928.) Lastly, analogies to Indian thought are still more striking in the most important treatises on the Mind cure by Horatio W. Dresser, Henry Wood, and R. W. Trine. But as they date from the end of 271 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA they have reduced them to the dead level of a utilitarianism looking only to the immediate profit, of a kind of mystic hygiene, resting on a prodigious credulity which gives to Christian Science 8 its proud pseudo-scientific aspect and its pseudo-Christianity. One trait common to these doctrines is the vulgar optimism, which resolves the problem of evil by a simple denial, or rather by its omission. " Evil does not exist. Then, let us turn away our eyes ! " . . . Such an intellectual attitude in all its native simplicity was too often that of Emerson. He omitted as often as possible from his subjects those of illness or death. He hated the shades. " Respect the light ! " But it was the respect of fear. His eyes were feeble and so he began by putting the sun under a shade. In this he was only too closely followed by his fellow-countrymen. Perhaps it is not too much to say that such optimism was necessary for action, but I have no great faith in the energy of a man or of a people, which rests on conditions contrary to the Natura Rerum. I prefer Margaret Fuller's saying, " I accept the universe/' But whether one accepts it or not, the first essential is to see it and to see it as a whole ! We shall soon hear Vive- kananda saying to his English disciples : " Learn to recog- nize the Mother, in Evil, Terror, Sorrow, Denial as well as in Sweetness, and in Joy/' Similarly the smiling Rama- krishna from the depths of his dream of love and bliss, could see and remind the complaisant preachers of a " good God" that Goodness was not enough to define the Force which daily sacrificed thousands of innocents. 9 Therein lies the capital difference separating India from heroic the century, that is to say after the death of Vivekananda, they may well have owed much to the teachings of the latter. They agree on all points with the rules of concentration and with the faith behind it. The French reader will find some characteristic extracts in the Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. (Pages in French edition are 80-102.) 8 It is to be remarked that this name, Christian Science, had already been used by a precursor of Mrs. Eddy, Dr. Quimby, who several years before her (about 1863) had laid down a similar doc- trine under the name of Christ Science, Christian Science, Divine Science, the Science of Health. Quimby's manuscripts, recently published, establish his influence over Mrs. Eddy. f See later, p. 346. 272 AMERICA AT THE TIME OF VIVEKANANDA'S FIRST VISIT Greece and Anglo-Saxon optimism. They look Reality in the face, whether they embrace it as in India or struggle against it and try to subdue it as in Greece ; but with them action never impinges on the domain of Knowledge as in America, where Knowledge has been domesticated in the service of action and wears a livery with gold-braided cap bearing the name : Pragmatism. 10 It is easily under- stood that a Vivekananda would not like such trappings, concealing as they did puny and degraded bastards of his glorious free and sovereign Vedantism of India. 11 But overtopping this herd of living men there was a dead giant, 12 whose shade was a thousand times warmer than such pale reflections of the Sun of Being seen through 10 In weakened post-war Europe these same moral characteristics have unfortunately the tendency to be established : and the worst feature of this moral slackness is that it is accompanied with false bragging which flatters itself on its realism amd virility. 11 At the time of his first stay in the United States, the Meta- physical College of Massachusetts, opened by Mrs. Eddy at Boston, where she taught in seven years more than four thousand pupils, was temporarily closed (in October, 1889) in order to allow the foundress, " Pastor Emeritus of the first Church of Christ Scientist/' to write her new Science and Health, which was published in 1891. The College reopened under her presidency in 1899. The Mind Cure was flourishing, and produced the New Thought, which is to Christian Science what rationalistic Protestantism is to orthodox Catholicism. The Theosophical Society, of which one of the two founders, Colonel Olcott (in 1875), was an American, worked vigorously in India and elsewhere. His action, as I have said, now and then came up against that of Vivekananda. I have only mentioned here the three chief currents then stirring the religious subconsciousncss of America, together with " revival- ism " (the religion of revivals), also leading to abandonment to sub- conscious forces while Myers was evolving (between 1886 and 1905) the scientific spirit theory of knowledge and the subconscious life. A crater in eruption. Mud and fire. 12 Besides Whitman, who was already dead, there was another, no less great, who had no less affinity to the spirit of India : Edgar Allen Poe : his Eureka, published in 1848, showed thought closely akin to that of the Upanishads. Some people, such as Waldo Frank, believe that he must in the course of his wanderings (it is practically certain that he visited Russia in his early youth) have come in contact with Indian mysticism. But Eureka did not affect contemporary thought. Even though Whitman for a time colla- borated with Poe (in the Broadway Journal and in the Democratic 273 T OF tHE NEW INDIA their cold methodist window panes. He stood before Vive- kananda and held out his great hand to him . . . How was it that he did not take it ? ... Or rather (for we know that later in India Vivekananda read his Leaves of Grass) how is it that Vivekananda's chroniclers, however careless and ill-informed, have managed to leave this capital event out of their story ? the meeting of the Indian Ambas- sador of the Atman Brahman with the epic singer of Myself Walt Whitman ! He had just died on March 26, 1892, the previous year, near Camden, the workman's suburb of Philadelphia. The triumphant memory of his obsequies not pagan as they have been described, but exactly in the spirit of Indian universalism, 18 were still reverberating. Vivekananda saw more than one of Whitman's intimates coming to him ; he was even joined in friendship to him who had bidden the last farewell to the poet, 14 the famous agnostic and materialist author, Robert Ingersoll. 16 He more than once Review), it is certain that he never made an intimate of Poe, that he never fathomed his thought, that he in fact felt an instinctive antipathy for him, and that it was only with an effort that he made a tardy recognition of his greatness. (In 1875, at the age of 56, he went to Baltimore for the inauguration of a monument to Poe.) Poe remained an isolated figure in his age. 11 Between each discourse some great saying was read from the Bible of humanity : " Here are the words of Confucius, of Gautama Buddha, of Jesus Christ, of the Koran, of Isaiah, of John, of the Zend Avesta, of Plato ..." 14 In this farewell speech Ingersoll celebrated the poet who had sung the splendid Psalm of Life and tribute of thanks to the mother in response to her kiss and her embrace. Ingersoll thought of Nature as " the Mother." Whitman's poems are full of Her, and there she is sometimes Nature, f " the great, savage, silent Mother, accepting all," sometimes America, " the redoubtable Mother, the great Mother, thou Mother with equal children." But whatever may be the mighty entity to which the word is attached, it always represents a conception of a sovereign Being, and their deep tones recall the conception of India ; they are always attached to the visible God, whereon all living beings depend. 16 The great Life of Vivekananda, published by his disciples, has very briefly noticed several of these interviews, merely remarking about them that they show that Vivekananda had the entrte into the freest and most advanced circles of American thought. Inger- soll in the course of one discussion, warned Vivekananda in a friendly way to be prudent. He revealed to him the hidden fanaticism of 274 AMERICA AT THE TIME OF VIVEKANANDA'S FIRST VISIT argued with him in friendly fashion, so it is impossible that he should not have heard of Whitman. However famous this great man may be through the many works that have been devoted to him in all lands, it is necessary for me to give here a short account of his religious thought ; for that is the side of his work that has come least into the limelight and at the same time it is the kernel. There is nothing hidden in the meaning of his thought. The good Whitman does not veil his nakedness. His faith appears best of all in Leaves of Grass, and is especially concentrated in one great poem which has been thrown too much into the shade by his Song of Myself, but which must be replaced in the front rank where Whitman himself placed it, at the head of his own definitive edition, immedi- ately following the Inscriptions, namely his Starting from Paumanok. 16 What does he say there ? " I inaugurate a religion . . . " ... I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake . . . " Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater religion . . . " I sing ... " For you to share with me two greatnesses, and a third one rising inclusive and more resplendent. The great- ness of Love and of Democracy, and the greatness of religion . . ." (Why then have the first two " greatnesses/' which are of an inferior order, generally eclipsed the first, which America, not as yet stamped out. Forty years before, he said, an Indian Vedantist would have run the risk of being burnt alive, and still more recently of being stoned. 16 Paumanok does not appear in the first three editions (1855, 1856, and 1 860-61). It is not included until the fourth (1867), where it is placed at the beginning of the volume. But in the first edition of the Leaves of Grass, as my friend Lucien Price pointed out to me, the Song of Myself opens on page i ; and in its primi- tive, much shorter, much starker and more virile form, it produces a striking impression : everything that is vital and heroic in the Great Message is to be found in it, condensed with flaming clarity. Cf . William Sloane Kennedy : The Fight of a Book in the World. 275 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA embraces and dominates them, in the minds of Whitman's commentators ?) What was this religion which so filled his heart that he meditated spreading it abroad throughout all lands by means of lectures, in spite of the little taste he had for speaking in public ? 17 It is summed up and contained in one word, which rings in the ears wonderfully like Indian music ; the word Identity. It fills the whole work. It is to be found in almost all his poems. 18 Identity with all forms of life at every instant ; the immediateness of realized Unity ; and the certainty of Eternity for every second, for every atom of Existence. How had Whitman come by this faith ? Certainly by enlightenment, by some blow he had ex- perienced, by illumination, probably arising from some 17 He thought of it before and after the publication of his poems. 18 Starting from Paumanok, Song of Myself, Calamus, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, A Song of Joys, Drum Taps, To Think of Time, etc. The word can be used to mean two rather different things : (i) the more usual : an immediate perception of Unity ; (2) the per- manence of the Ego throughout the eternal journey and its meta- morphoses. It seems to me that it is this latter meaning that predominates in his years of illness and old age. If I was about to make a complete study of Whitman here, it would be necessary to trace the evolution of his thought (without however losing sight of its essential unity, under the blows of life, from which he suffered much more than his publicly confessed optimism would lead one to believe. (Cf . in the collection : Whis- pers Divine of Heavenly Death, his Hours of Despair. Then the invincible spirit insufficiently nourished by life is restored by death. Then the " known " life is completed by the Unknown. Then " day " brings new light to " ^on-day." Cf. To Think of Time : Night on the Prairies. And his ear is opened to other " music " that his " ignorance " had not previously recognized. Finally the dead are more alive than the living, " haply the <5nly living, only real." (Pensive and Faltering.) " I do not think that Life provides for all ... But I believe Heavenly Death provides for all." (Assurances.) " I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not- day exhibited . . . Oh 1 I see how that Life cannot exhibit all to me as the day cannot I see that I am to wait for what will be ex- hibited by death." (Night on the Prairies), etc. But the foundation of the faith : Identity, the solely existent eternity, never varied. 276 AMERICA AT THE TIME OF VIVEKANANDA'S FIRST VISIT spiritual crisis a short time after he had reached his thirtieth year and experienced the emotions aroused by his journey to New Orleans, 19 of which little is known. It is improbable that it was any reading of Indian thought that touched him. When Thoreau in November, 1856, came to tell him that his Leaves of Grass (first appeared in July, 1855, then a second edition in the summer of 1856) recalled to his mind the great oriental poems and to ask if he knew them. Whitman replied with a cate- gorical " No ! " and there is no reason to doubt his word. He read little, certainly very few books ; he did not like libraries and men brought up upon them. To the very end of his life he does not seem to have had any curiosity to verify the similarity between his thought and that of Asia obvious to the little circle of Concord. The extreme vagueness of the expressions used every time that he intro- duced a glimpse of India into his Homeric enumerations is the best guarantee of his ignorance. 20 It is then all the more interesting to discover how he could without going beyond himself a 100 per cent American self all unwittingly link up with Vedantic thought. (For its kinship did not escape any of the Emer- son group, beginning with Emerson himself, whose genial quip is not sufficiently famous : " Leaves of Grass seem to be a mixture of the Bhagavadgita and the New York Herald:') The starting-point with Whitman was in the profundities 19 Cf. Bucke : Walt Whitman. * Once or twice he mentions Maya (Calamus : " The basis of all metaphysics "), avatar (Song of Farewell) and nirvana (Sands of Seventy Years: Twilight), but in the way of an illiterate: "mist, nirvana, repose and night, forgetf illness." The Passage to India, whose title has a symbolic and quite un- expected sense, does not furnish him with anything more precise about Indian thought than the poor verse : " Old occult Brahma, interminably far back the tender and junior Buddha. . . ." What he says of the Hindu and of India is still poorer in Greeting to the World. The only piece whose inspiration seems to have come from an Asiatic source is in the last collection of his seventy-second year : Good-bye my Fancy I (1891), the Persian Lesson, where he makes mention of Sufi. And there is no need for him to go to Persia to hear these very banal truths. 277 PROPHETS OF THE NEW INDIA of his own race, in his own religious line paradoxical though it may seem. His paternal family belonged to the Quaker Left, grouped round a free believer, Elias Hicks, to whom at the end of his life Whitman dedicated a pamphlet : He was a great religious individualist, free from all church and all credo, who made religion consist entirely of inner illumin- ation, "the secret silent ecstasy/' 21 Such a moral disposition in Whitman was bound to bring about from his childhood a habit of mystic con- centration, having no precise object but filtering never- theless through all the emotions of life. The young man's peculiar genius did the rest. His nature possessed a kind of voracious receptivity, which made him not only, like ordinary men, glean from the vine above of the spectacle of the universe, some grains of pleasure or pain, but in- stantaneously incorporate himself with each object that he saw. He has described this rare disposition in the admir- able poem : Autumn Rivulets. " There was a child went forth . . . And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of th |